00:06:51.080But Mike taught me a lot about Ossetru, about doing bloat.
00:06:55.320about the gods honoring them honoring our ancestors so he was kind of my mentor just up
00:07:01.380there in the mountains and I owe a lot to him but from from there I mean the path just sort of laid
00:07:08.880itself out in front of me and finally nine years later you know nine there it is again
00:07:14.400I'm an apprentice folk builder and here I am. Excellent. So I appreciate you sharing that.
00:07:27.360For folks that are unfamiliar, could you briefly tell us the story of Avend Kinrithi?
00:07:37.220so avind kinrithi was actually not just a random guy living in norway he was a leader
00:07:49.300in his community which was hologaland i believe in old norse they they would have said hollow
00:07:57.140galand in modern norse hologaland but he's living up there it's northern norway
00:08:02.820And at this point, he's one of the men resisting Olaf Tchigvesen and the forced conversion and just the subjugation in general of Norway.
00:08:16.220so avind along with harek of tyota and thor the heart of vulgar the three of them gather together
00:08:27.460a force that is actually so powerful that olaf and his elite warriors refuse to meet them in the
00:08:36.380field they're too scared of what's going to happen if i mean they would take too many losses
00:08:42.160So what ends up happening, rather than facing them in direct battle, facing Avend in direct battle, what ends up happening is there's this elaborate ruse to sort of get Avend in a place where he can be captured by treachery.
00:09:00.160And it involves Olat's men following one of his comrades, Harek, to his home, and then sort of lying in wait.
00:09:14.440And they end up capturing Avon that way and overpower his guard and take him back to Trondheim, where Olat had his capital, where all his warriors were.
00:09:26.260and essentially what they ended up doing is they knew that he was the most powerful chieftain in
00:09:33.460Hologalan with the most warriors and they said you have a choice you can either convert to
00:09:39.640Christianity and accept Olaf as the king of Norway or we will drop a hot brazier onto your stomach
00:09:48.560and you will watch as your innards just burn and as you burn alive from the inside out while the
00:09:55.740rest of you is is watching so he said do your worst and he died an ignoble death but he would
00:10:04.780rather die that way than live a dishonorable life for the rest of his however long his life was and
00:10:11.880go to the afterlife meeting his ancestors hanging his head in shame because he
00:10:16.540abandoned the gods of his people this folk
00:10:18.940yeah for folks that aren't familiar and quite a number of our uh our astro heroes come from
00:10:32.680being martyred during uh during olaf's reign and um this story is really
00:10:39.940i don't know i think it's really meaningful in a lot of ways because he was you know he was
00:10:47.760powerful, and he was used to having quite a bit of influence. And he was offered land, he was
00:10:53.220offered gold, he was offered, you know, fame, fortune and position, if he would just just flip
00:10:59.800as Olaf had recently done. And with all of those offers him still refusing, and then, you know,
00:11:08.520being threatened at the point of death, and refusing to subject himself to very slow, painful
00:11:15.620and shocking, torturous death, it says a lot.
00:11:23.580And I mentioned this a couple of weeks ago when we did our first show on heroes.
00:11:27.060But it's very easy in the in the mists of history to lose sight of these men as being real people.
00:11:42.000He had the same feelings, the same kind of thoughts and concerns and worries and fears that we all have.
00:11:51.940And this was a very real sacrifice that he made to stay loyal to his gods.
00:11:58.800um sadly in today's day and age there's so much fear all around us and so many people are
00:12:09.260entrapped in a fear mindset that they get scared over you know relatively small things when it's
00:12:18.880compared to having a bowl of hot coal set on your guts until you burn to death
00:12:25.080But it's really inspirational that this man was so loyal to his gods.
00:12:31.100And the reason that we celebrate these things is that hopefully our folk will be inspired by these examples of courage to stand loyal to our gods.
00:12:44.460Courage and loyalty are in short supply, especially when compared with the fear-based mentality I mentioned earlier.
00:12:55.080So I'm noticing we have a few questions popping up so far. Lou, is there a particular god or goddess you feel closest to? If so, why?
00:13:07.060So the god that I've always looked up to the most is Odin. He was the one that was there when I first had my eyes open to Asatru in that one moment.
00:13:18.700It was Odin that I was meditating on, and that's sort of where it all began for me.
00:13:23.400And for me, the quest for wisdom is something that I've always put at the forefront.
00:13:32.340I've always wanted to learn more, even when sometimes learning more isn't the best option.
00:19:23.580i do i think i was asked something similar last month and i don't want to
00:19:32.780yeah why not it's always a good one to double up one pina coladas are my favorite spring go-to
00:19:39.260pina coladas are awesome can't do wrong by them but what i had one time that was fantastic that
00:19:45.400i want to do next time is a horchata colada headed at this uh taco place downtown
00:19:52.660but it's like a mix of horchata and pina colada and it's one of the best things i've ever had
00:19:59.400so that's what i recommend for your april celebrations you're welcome
00:20:04.360um another question i ordered astro a native european spirituality on the runestone website
00:20:14.260in february it still has not arrived so i was told by the manager of our store that she has
00:20:20.320contacted the folks that have ordered that and told them how long it is going to be out of stock.
00:20:26.120I hope that was the case with you. If not, send me a message on the back end,
00:20:31.960mattflavell at runestone.org, and I can get you sorted out. The publisher has been very slow in
00:20:37.880coming with the next round of those books for us. So I know that's been on hold on our website for
00:20:44.400a little while now. I apologize for any inconvenience on that.
00:20:50.320um brandy lou what are your recommendations for those of us raising young men how do we teach them
00:20:58.000nobility and courage well i have daughters so i can't answer that no i'm just kidding
00:21:04.780um i think the best way is to lead by example and in general the men in the afa do a pretty
00:21:13.500good job of being noble and figuring out what's right and what's wrong. I think that
00:21:22.260if the young men of the AFA see how the men of the AFA are acting, I'm not really worried about
00:21:32.900them. Who I'm really worried about is kind of everybody else with getting bombarded with the
00:21:39.180media and what the general culture is throwing at young men. I definitely am a little bit worried,
00:21:45.700but I think for us, the best thing that we can do is to lead by example,
00:21:53.720treat everybody else around you with respect, and hopefully they're going to do the same thing.
00:21:59.340They're going to live with nobility and respect for those around them, love for their folk,
00:22:04.000love for the gods and their ancestors. I think that's what's important.
00:22:09.180So we've got a number of good questions lining up, but before we get to them, just so I make
00:22:16.280sure we get to this and don't pass it up, I've had a lot of folks on from, I'd say,
00:22:26.340certainly the eastern half of the United States. You are the first person we've had on in Arizona.
00:22:33.300Can you tell folks in the Southwest, you know, kind of what we've got going on in the Southwest, what we've got going on in Arizona, how that area is kind of shaping up?
00:22:44.620Yeah, that's a great question. We actually have a pretty tight knit group of people in Arizona.
00:22:51.220Everyone is really good about speaking to each other, about communicating.
00:23:50.080Now, the saga is going to sound basic, but I'm sorry.
00:23:54.500The saga of Ragnar Lothbrok, maybe it might not be the most, have the most profound lore in that saga, but just the adventure of it.
00:24:06.580I mean, they're leaving their home and they're just sweeping into England, conquering big sections of the British Isles and sort of in the name of the gods, but also in their own, they're all sort of interrelated.
00:24:22.900I don't know, something in that speaks to me. I think maybe it's just the adventure story. I love the, I think growing up, my favorite movie was Indiana Jones. So maybe it speaks to that.
00:24:32.560But in terms of the books on the genealogy of morality by Nietzsche, I already mentioned that one, but he really breaks down in that book, Judeo-Christian morality versus European morality, how they're diametrically opposed and how they've clashed throughout history and what the effects of that have essentially been.
00:24:56.380the horse the wheel and language by david anthony it's a good archaeological work i don't think
00:25:04.840politically he's on our side but he does really good archaeology relating to the aryans the
00:25:11.200indo-europeans as they are also called but he goes into barrows i mean he he's digging up
00:25:19.500and helping preserve the different artifacts of the aryan people and he
00:25:24.680and and one of his main arguments is that they did come from europe no they did not come from
00:25:31.160elsewhere in asia or you know modern turkey or anything like that he he definitely puts that
00:25:37.400forward so it's while he may not be on our side politically it's i mean we're not a political
00:25:43.560organization but we may not you know agree with him on everything he says in that book but it
00:25:49.640It's a great intro to the Aryans, for sure.
00:25:54.200Memoirs of Service Afloat During the War Between the States.
00:25:58.040One of the best naval books of all time.
00:26:39.360I think in most of the published versions, it's Zaire, however you pronounce that.
00:26:44.240and a more basic one a game of thrones by george martin that's just a good fantasy book i don't
00:26:51.860care who you are all right fair enough besides the addas and sagas what other lore books have
00:27:03.900you learned a lot from there's a lot i think the one that that spoke to me the earliest and
00:27:12.480had the most impact was definitely germania even though he's speaking from the point of view of
00:27:18.660the romans and he sort of has strange ideas about who the germanic people really are i mean
00:27:26.460no we're not we're not we weren't noble savages back then you know we were just people just like
00:27:34.800the romans were you know descended from the arians but he goes into details about the
00:27:42.800the germanic the germanic people that have to be accurate i mean looking back they have to
00:27:49.600have come from some source that was actually on the ground in the area and it's it's really
00:27:58.880powerful to see how similar a lot of what they were doing 2 000 years ago how similar it is to
00:28:05.760what we're doing today and i mean if that if that doesn't kind of move you then i don't know what
00:28:12.000will i mean that's we have over 2 000 years of tradition sort of coursing through our
00:28:20.400our bodies are our essences and we're putting forward that energy
00:28:26.160today just like they did 2 000 years ago or our forefathers did so that's a good one
00:28:35.440yeah any other any other lore books right now i'm reading uh culture of the teutons and
00:28:42.880i should have read that one a lot earlier because wow there's there's so many great ideas and just
00:28:50.000the way that he lays out their germanic world view of the viking age and before i mean it's
00:28:56.160is powerful so i'm i'm getting through that right now that's kind of what i'm
00:29:00.080i'm working on but i definitely wish i would have read that a few years ago
00:29:07.920next question is a really interesting one and it can be taken a lot of different directions but i
00:29:12.400think it's very important question and i'll go ahead and let you go first but it's a question
00:29:16.480for both of us uh it comes from shay our folk builder in excuse me our folk builder in oklahoma
00:29:23.600any trade talent or skill that gave you gentlemen a step up in the world or that you are practicing
00:29:32.480go ahead and go first all right i'll i'll go first um i don't really have a trade i would say
00:29:41.140i do work in an industrial job and it took me a long time to actually find
00:29:47.100something that I was pretty good at that I could do that I could actually enjoy doing
00:29:53.680and at the same time be relatively successful at I did go to college you know on the one hand
00:30:04.160it was kind of a mistake but on the other hand I actually did learn a lot and I met a woman that
00:30:09.360later became my wife and has two of my children so that's a success right there but in terms of
00:30:15.160Financially, college was, I mean, really nothing.
00:30:19.980I mean, I have a degree, but later on in life, right about when I turned 30, I discovered down here in Arizona, the mining industry, which is something that's booming and they're hiring.
00:30:35.380So I went into that and I really enjoy it.
00:30:39.700and it's it's not really a trade because you don't really it's not like a something that you
00:30:46.040apprentice at you know i mean there are okay if you want to be an electrician sure or mechanic
00:30:51.100yeah you're you can be an apprentice but there's other just uh operational production jobs out
00:30:56.980there where you don't really need to do that you just kind of step right in there and and it's a
00:31:02.040relatively quick learning curve and yeah i mean those jobs are out there if if someone ever needs
00:31:08.420a job, just reach out to me. My email is lnickerson at runestone.org. I will point you in the right
00:31:14.200direction. So like I said, there's a lot of ways that you could take this question, but it's
00:31:26.400important. I think it's really important that any experience you go through in life that you learn
00:31:35.520you learn from and you pick up things in it that you can apply to other aspects of your life to
00:31:40.780help you be successful. You know, I had, I'll go with this for right now. I was a bouncer for a
00:31:56.180time. I was a bouncer for a long time, actually. I was a bouncer for 10, 11 years and it was a
00:32:02.620really, really fun job for all of the reasons that it would be fun. And I learned a lot about
00:32:08.640myself, you know, getting in fights and stuff. And that's the, that's the fun stuff. But on a
00:32:15.240much bigger macro level, I was pretty sheltered growing up. I didn't really get out there in the
00:32:23.380world that much. I was not particularly popular in school and I was very insulated person.
00:32:30.080And part of the change in my life when I was, you know, a young man is I wanted to be much more than I was.
00:32:39.700So through bouncing, what was cool, because I worked at a very diverse place and a place that was thousand person capacity.
00:32:49.420I got to interact with so many different kinds of people.
00:32:53.620And I got to work with, you know, again, all shades of people, but also people from all different walks of life with all different levels of life experience and people who were people who were crazy, people who were, you know, obviously people who were drunk, but people who were on various different kinds of substances.
00:33:18.560people who are really in a strange environment and were out of their mind a lot and I get to
00:33:26.000I got to learn how to interact with a lot of different groups of people
00:33:29.180and because I dealt with some pretty sketchy things and you know there was gun fights in the
00:33:36.240in the parking lot and knife fights in the bar and crazy stuff it got me to where I'm much more
00:33:44.100comfortable around people in more extreme, I guess, situations to where I can keep calm and I know how
00:33:54.960to interact with people that would otherwise be scary. You know, I've noticed that a lot
00:33:59.560between interacting with homeless people or anything else. You know, I've interacted with
00:34:05.440crazy people. I've learned how to de-escalate situations with crazy people. I've learned how
00:34:11.380to deescalate situations with people on a variety of narcotics. I've learned how to deescalate
00:34:17.640a lot of different races of people. I've just been able to learn how to deal in a social situation
00:34:25.540with a lot of very extreme circumstances thrown at me very quickly. And so I was able to figure
00:34:32.960that out. And I think that's helped me a lot in life. And I think that's helped me more than I
00:34:38.600realize. Still not the most outgoing person in the world, but when thrust into a situation or
00:34:43.720a situation thrust itself at me, I'm pretty good at being able to handle it and de-escalate and
00:34:49.100work with conflict. And that's been really helpful.
00:34:55.100Another thing, I've been able to work with and manage people in different situations. I was
00:35:04.740running security at the place I worked for a number of years and that taught me a lot about
00:35:09.380managing different people in that kind of environment and building those kind of relationships
00:35:15.620to where people will trust you when things are uh when things are hectic when things are dangerous
00:35:22.820building that rapport with a variety of different people to where they'll trust you and where you
00:36:04.760And I wasn't sure what to expect, but I really enjoyed it.
00:36:07.760But if you're at Midsommar, I mean, you're not even going to be the first first timer.
00:36:12.380So that's a perfect, a big event like that, like a star at Thor's off or Midsommar at Odin's off.
00:36:18.840that's the perfect place to go your first time because you'll actually have people like us who
00:36:25.640have been going for years but then you'll have other people who it's your first time so it's
00:36:29.720the perfect mix of of people and that's just a really powerful event too the oven blow is is
00:36:38.360going to be life-changing so i i i don't know if i have any tips really i just want to say i'm
00:36:45.400excited that you're going to be there uh please come up to me and introduce yourself i'd love to
00:36:50.440meet you and uh yeah it's great that you're coming yeah i i remember my first uh my first afa event
00:37:00.200my first afa event i was ever at was a midsummer and it was
00:37:04.040mid-summer 2010, I think. Yeah, and actually, we've got a video of that on this YouTube
00:37:24.080channel somewhere. But anyways, that was my first that I went to, and I would,
00:37:28.660you know, I agree with Lou. You're going to, you're not going to be the first person there
00:37:33.900that, you know, it's their first time. There'll be several people there who it's their first time.
00:37:38.720And I think that's good. Other thing is you're getting to really see our biggest event that we
00:37:44.720do. Midsummer is liable to be our biggest event of the year. It was very, very close between
00:37:50.780Midsummer and Winter Nights last year. We had a really big turnout at Winter Nights in Ohio last
00:37:57.300year, but midsummer was still larger. More than that, you're going to get to see a Hoff for the
00:38:05.260first time. You need to see Odin's Hoff, and it's the first Hoff that the AFA acquired. It's, you
00:38:12.860know, it's been sanctified and spiritually charged for, you know, almost eight years now,
00:38:21.140and it's a really powerful place. I look forward to that. I look forward to seeing
00:38:27.160you there. I would say come with an open mind and an open heart. Don't expect stuff. Just be open
00:38:38.320to things and see what happens. I think when you burden things with expectation, you miss a lot of
00:38:46.900the really special things that happen. And I think in order to appreciate the special things that
00:38:50.680happen. You have to be open to those things. If you've shut off your mind or your heart or you're
00:38:57.140too guarded, then you miss out on some of that. So I'd say go in with an open mind and open heart.
00:39:04.060And yeah, just I'm excited. Don't there's nothing to worry about. It's going to be a great event.
00:39:11.300Always is. You're going to meet some really cool people and it's going to be a great thing for you.
00:39:16.920i'm excited for you i often talk excuse me often talk with afa leadership about about that
00:39:25.480when any of us were at our first you know our first big event it blew our mind and it was
00:39:31.160life-changing and it was all of these amazing things and it's different when you're you know
00:39:39.64015 years into this when you're you know you've been doing this for a long time
00:39:45.640you see it from a different way. The new and special fresh things aren't like they were.
00:39:53.080So you get to appreciate seeing that in other people and it's, it matures over time. So in a
00:39:59.640lot of ways, I'm envious of you going to your first big event at Midsommar. That's,
00:40:05.160that's going to be a beautiful thing for you. And I'm really excited.
00:40:07.560uh next question i believe is from sierra lou we love you what inspired you to become a folk
00:40:16.120builder and making all the sacrifices you do for the afa how do you balance life afa and work
00:40:25.880thank you thank you sierra you're awesome dude i appreciate you very much
00:40:31.960um i think that what it's what inspired me to be a folk builder was
00:40:37.560it was sort of just something opened up in me. And I just said to myself, you know what,
00:40:44.220it's been long enough, nine years, I'm ready to kind of take the next step rather than just be a
00:40:50.400regular kind of member that showed up when he could sort of that sort of thing to actually
00:40:56.980committing myself to it a little bit, a little bit more, a lot, I mean, a lot more of my time
00:41:02.160on it definitely but but just putting more of myself into it i think i just sort of felt that
00:41:08.780it was time to do that in terms of how i balance it that actually is a challenge i mean i'm still
00:41:13.740an apprentice i'm less than a year in i think i'm about nine months in and i'm still working
00:41:19.380that part out so if you have any tips uh you tell me no um i'm really trying to work with my my wife
00:41:27.780on everything. I'm making time for her and making time for the kids. Work obviously takes up a ton
00:41:33.880of my time. For those of you who know me, you already know that, but I try to get it all in
00:41:39.480there. So don't feel bad about reaching out to me. I love to speak to anyone that is something
00:41:48.600to say to me, whether it's just, hey, hi, or if it's an actual issue, please don't hesitate.
00:41:54.300I'm always I'm always up. All right. Next question. Matt, in what ways does the AFA uphold traditional gender slash family values?
00:42:08.480I saw this one coming up and it's an interesting question because it's not like our flavor of family values and gender roles.
00:42:26.480It's the natural realignment of family values and gender roles.
00:42:34.840There's not a lot the AFA has to do to enforce it.
00:42:38.660It's what happens naturally when there's not coercive and degenerative forces skewing that in some way.
00:42:48.520So in the AFA, we allow for and celebrate that when it occurs more than trying to force that in places to where it moves more slowly.
00:43:07.320And all this sounds like a non-answer because it is. There's not a lot that we do to enforce gender roles. We just allow them to flourish and we celebrate them when they do.
00:43:19.300Um, if you attend AFA events and watch how things work, men naturally assume a lot of
00:43:30.840that leadership space, women automatically assume a lot of that support space.
00:43:37.840Um, the men naturally do a lot of the logistics and the, uh, and the labor, whereas the ladies
00:43:44.840naturally gravitate towards dealing with the children, the children's events, dealing with
00:43:51.320the kitchen, taking care of things, making sure stuff works out that way. People naturally kind
00:43:57.080of separate into ways that are organically appropriate for who they are. I'd say one of the
00:44:04.520things in terms of family values and gender roles that the AFA does do is
00:44:11.540has to treat the illnesses of society to try to help folks be more comfortable
00:44:19.220in those positions. Because folks, you know, especially new people come to the AFA with all of
00:44:25.960the horribly mixed and just wrong messaging that society gives. And they have to re-become
00:44:37.120comfortable being themselves and doing things that make themselves happy our ladies the ones
00:44:44.160that come in with the strongest feminism girl power thing are the ones that are the most broken
00:44:53.280and the most damaged and the most uncomfortable taking value in themselves as women as opposed
00:45:00.960to seeing their value and how much they can pretend to be a man um so working on that has
00:45:08.960is a big part of what the afa does dealing with kids and trying to get kids these days
00:45:16.480to behave respectfully and to respect their elders and to you know grow up in a way that's not
00:45:25.280in tune with the rampant gender dysphoria insanity that goes on around us is also a struggle. A lot
00:45:34.480of these kids get really bad influences from public school. And so we have to try to add
00:45:41.780AFA events and as an AFA community, get them comfortable just being kids and being normal
00:45:48.420and letting little boys be little boys. And so there's a lot of things we do that way. But like
00:45:54.920I said, it's not about, you know, forcing people to act according to traditional gender roles. It's
00:46:01.340a matter of letting them be who they are and celebrating that and taking away some of the
00:46:08.180negativity that society's put on natural gender relations. King of Cheese. Matt, Lou, good to see
00:46:17.280you both on. How are we doing tonight? Also, Matt, you say they're disgusting, but you seem to
00:46:22.380continue munching. It can't be too bad. See, that's not true, Tony. I've eaten a lot of
00:46:27.640disgusting things in an effort to meet my macros and to build myself to who I'd like to be.
00:46:35.120And so if the macros are right, there's a lot of things that are disgusting that I'll still
00:46:40.160power through. I had exactly as many of those as I needed to. I'm not going back for more because
00:46:45.520they're not great, but I got the job done. Appreciate you asking, Tony, as always. Got a
00:46:50.920different answer for you today. Doing good. I look forward to these. I'm glad to be talking
00:46:54.760to Lou, but my throat hurts really bad, so that's not great. I'm drinking some tea. I'm doing what
00:47:01.760I can, but no, my throat hurts the past few days, and that kind of sucks, but I got to say, I'm not
00:47:07.540doing all that bad, and the AFA reached a new membership high today of 1,010 members. All in
00:47:14.920all really not doing that bad. Lou, how are you doing tonight? I'm doing very well. Thank you
00:47:21.320for asking, Tony, as always. Appreciate it. All right. Next, Lou, do you think your history degree
00:47:29.200had any influence on your decision to follow Ausitru? I think my love of history did,
00:47:37.640definitely i think it and just going to going to college did sort of put me around certain ideas
00:47:46.280that led me down that path but i wouldn't say that the degree program or anything led me to
00:47:53.140follow ossature i think it was something that was kind of there all along but it it did end up
00:47:57.880college actually did end up being positive even though there was some so much negative stuff going
00:48:03.660on at the same time in terms of my following also true but i think it was always there it was always
00:48:09.420there i just finally had to find it and then once i found it actually had to act on it which is the
00:48:15.340hardest part that's a really good point that you make and i i don't want us to just gloss over it
00:48:24.540it because I think it needs to be focused on a little bit. I've said this before and I say this
00:48:34.400a lot and I think it's important to clear up. Ausatru does not mean belief. It doesn't mean
00:48:40.780belief in the gods. It means trough with the gods. It means loyalty to the gods. Ausatru isn't about
00:48:48.940what you think or what you believe. It's about how those thoughts and beliefs affect your actions.
00:48:56.540Doing is so much harder than thinking. You know, a lot of us will reach points in our minds where
00:49:02.460we come to a conclusion about something or to a strong position about something.
00:49:08.940But if we never act on it, we don't take those first steps. It's all
00:49:13.580it's all an illusion it's all masturbatory it's not real um
00:49:19.820in also true a very old and a very good saying for us is that we are our deeds our deeds define
00:49:27.100us the biggest distance between things is the distance between you know your couch and the
00:49:34.700front door um everything else comes so much easier but taking that initial step to break
00:49:41.980the uh the surface tension or the friction of you sitting down of you actually getting up and going
00:49:49.900to a moot going to an event meeting another also true or standing before our gods with
00:49:56.940your brothers and sisters in faith that makes all the difference in the world and i don't you know
00:50:04.860i i say that tongue-in-cheek about the couch thing but it's it's very true and i mean that
00:50:09.180for myself as much as anybody else it was very hard for me to take those first steps to go meet
00:50:14.700people i didn't know involved in something that sounded kind of odd certainly different from the
00:50:19.900norm that's intimidating and it's it's the most worth it thing i've ever done but if you don't
00:50:29.100take those steps you'll never know so i think it's really important to just make that point
00:50:34.940for anybody who needs to hear it. Yeah, I just wanted to say too, once I did end up making the
00:50:41.600decision to join, the thing I kept asking myself was, why didn't I do this sooner? This is where
00:50:47.020I belonged all along. Why didn't I do it sooner? But we all have our own path and hopefully we are
00:50:54.300going to get there in the end. That's the hope. That's what we're working for. But that is also
00:50:59.660a very common thing that I hear from folks is, man, I wish I would have found this years ago,
00:51:04.300oh man, why didn't I do this sooner? I know I felt that. We can only move forward, but
00:51:11.700just know that is a common refrain for people. Mr. Nickerson, where are you from and where do
00:51:21.720you call home? So like the AFA itself, I'm from California originally. I decided to leave
00:51:31.480for a variety of reasons, but I now live in Southern Arizona. Originally, I'm from Southern
00:51:38.140California. All right. Now, no idea who this person is that is going under the name main
00:51:47.860player character, but certainly somebody who's been privy to some conversations.
00:51:54.000They want to know, why did I fight a midget when I bounced? And is it true that they have good
00:52:00.080marbling. So record indicate I've never fought a midget in my life. I did fight alongside a midget
00:52:15.020many times in that job. This guy I worked with named Joe Chavez was a good friend of mine,
00:52:20.720honestly, was a lot more effective than you would think. But he was, in fact, a midget bouncer.
00:52:26.360and uh and we worked together for a number of years there missy joe haven't talked to you in a long
00:52:32.400time um and then a completely different incident at a completely different bar there was a midget
00:52:40.680and she was was in her midget cups and uh decided she wanted well first she had to go because she
00:52:48.720was just too drunk but on the way out she decided that she wanted to be handsy and could not resist
00:52:54.980my my masculine glory and uh because of her height it put certain things in midget t-rex arms reach
00:53:04.260and so i had to i had to physically restrain uh that situation from going a direction i didn't
00:53:10.740want it to go but that's fine we picked her up we stuffed her in a cab and we
00:53:16.100got her ride home and i hope she's doing well there's a picture of that somewhere
00:53:24.980Oh, and the marbling. It's a very strange conversation. I'm not going to go into all the details. I don't know they have good marbling, but I would assume that they do.
00:53:36.680Mr. Nickerson, are you on any social media platform?
00:53:39.880one yes i am i am on me we is probably where i'm the most active so if you would like to
00:53:49.080uh get on me we the afa has me we page and we post a lot of pictures on there
00:53:56.840but uh i was banned from facebook in 2020 like most of us so i'm not on there anymore
00:54:05.000don't look for me on Facebook. So that's a good kind of point for folks out there. The AFA does
00:54:12.480a lot of our interaction on MeWe, certainly our in-group interaction there. It's a much better
00:54:20.200platform than I thought it would be. We went there out of necessity when Facebook was purging
00:54:24.880everybody with a conservative or traditional mindset a number of years ago, but it's really
00:54:30.740turned out to be kind of a nice place. Also, you can find us a lot of places, but the social media
00:54:36.780realm that's been the best for us the past few years since the Facebook purges
00:54:41.220has been Twitter and YouTube. So I appreciate those two companies for doing right by us.
00:54:49.960Next question, where do your ancestors come from? It's not directed to one of us or the other,
00:54:54.740so you go first, Lou. Okay. Hopefully we have all night because I could just pull up my family
00:55:02.460tree and start listing it one by one, but I'll just give you my four grandparents and we can
00:55:09.860go from there. My grandfather's from British Columbia. I'm a paternal grandfather. My paternal
00:55:17.780grandmother's from Denver. My maternal grandfather is from Austria-Hungary, the country of the
00:55:24.640no longer exists. And my maternal grandmother is from Soviet Ukraine. And yes, she did go through
00:55:34.880the Holodomor and survived. But going further back than that, I mean, I am in the Sons of
00:55:42.240Confederate Veterans. I am eligible for the Sons of the American Revolution. I never actually
00:55:48.280joined that one but um i do have one ancestor on the mayflower i love genealogy so i could i could
00:55:57.240go on i'm just going to giving you some highlights but i could go on a long long time about genealogy
00:56:02.900i love going into family trees a lot of us in the afa love the genetics part of it we love the
00:56:10.460family tree part of it so we we talk a lot back and forth about that
00:56:14.140um so because there was no name on it i'll throw mine in there also
00:56:21.460um my people have been on this continent for a very long time as far as the folks i can trace
00:56:29.500back you know any of these trails eventually end in mist and obscurity um
00:56:35.980Um, yeah, my people have been here a real long time.
00:56:41.080My most recent, uh, ancestors from the, the old country are a couple, um, Fritz and Sophie
00:56:49.640Montandon, uh, him being a Swissman and her being French.
00:56:54.480And they came over in, in the early 1900s.
00:56:58.540Um, I actually have some pictures of the ocean liners they were on and that was pretty cool.
00:57:03.420um before that my people have pretty much been here since the late 1600s um originally
00:57:14.600english folks that uh took root in the carolinas doing plantations there in the carolinas
00:57:22.760uh the branch that i know the most about um comes to me through through my mother and her father
00:57:32.220and her people who, my sixth great grandfather was Colonel John Bond. He fought as a captain
00:57:42.920in the American Revolution. That's his family was part of that Carolina planting
00:57:48.220ancestors that I had. And anyway, he fought in the revolution. He fought in some really bloody
00:57:55.120conflicts there in the Carolinas. It was a lot of fighting against Indian tribes that were aligned
00:58:01.400with one side or the other, and it was musket butts and bayonets and hatchets and stuff,
00:58:08.300and it was pretty brutal. He made it through. He again served his country as a much older man,
00:58:15.620as a colonel, with some of his sons in his service in the War of 1812, and he helped to
00:58:22.440construct a roadway that went from the Carolinas to New Orleans to get munitions there. And along
00:58:29.700the way he kind of stopped and uh ended up putting down roots in south central mississippi in a place
00:58:36.660called wiggins and my people have on my mom's side both all of my mom's ancestors have been
00:58:42.420there for for quite some time i think since war of 1812. so that's where most of my people are from
00:58:48.260but going back to the old world uh mostly english some french some swiss some uh some scotsmen in
00:58:58.500there. Clan Ross is my, you know, the clan that I have relatives from. Yeah, that's where my people
00:59:07.040come from. Mr. Nickerson, being from Arizona, I hope you're preparing folk and yourself for
00:59:18.940the future and realize all the limitations of literal desert, water gardening, the killing
00:59:27.300heat open borders too thanks do you have any response on uh your your situation there
00:59:34.740literal desert rather than figurative or any other form but no arizona is a big state there's
00:59:42.100actually different climates throughout the state of arizona i actually do happen to live in a
00:59:47.860literal desert and you're right water is a big concern in the entire southwest southern nevada
00:59:57.300southern california southern arizona i mean there's a pretty much a water shortage that's
01:00:04.500i believe at least 10 years now there's been water issues so i don't know how much i'm really
01:00:12.940qualified to talk about water i mean yes we do need to prepare uh you know we we have prepared
01:00:19.420in terms of emergency water supplies and food supplies and i don't want to talk about some of
01:00:26.640other stuff but i mean yeah we're we try to make ourselves as as ready as we can in terms of open
01:00:33.220borders uh open borders affects every single state you know unfortunately it's not just the border
01:00:39.160states although we are the biggest uh maybe drug trafficking point in the country so yeah this is
01:00:45.640where all the drugs come in but but in terms of the the long-term effects and it's it's going to
01:00:52.540affect everybody in the end equally. All right. So Allie says, are midget cups shot glasses?
01:01:04.760That is clever, Allie, but no, they're not. If they were, the lady in question might have stayed
01:01:10.720in the bar longer and not had to get escorted out in the way that she was.
01:01:14.760So we know how the ADL and Wikipedia treat the AFA. How secure is the personal info on the
01:01:26.540application? Will it ever be shared? Locally, an Oath Keepers group had all of their member info
01:01:34.500released. So I understand that being a concern. Information is as secure as we can reasonably
01:01:48.280do it. We've never had a security breach of our site. We have never had the implied security
01:01:55.280breach of our site. We can't make that 100% perfect, but our policy is no, we do not give
01:02:03.880member information out unless people have selected that that's okay and we have no intention of doing
01:02:10.680so until you know unless and until there's some kind of a court order and then that's a legal
01:02:17.720battle that we'll get into at that point but barring that no we don't divulge people's
01:02:23.560membership information the thing that i think is an uncomfortable truth for people to know
01:02:33.880the public getting a lot of your information is harder to do, but
01:02:41.140the federal government has all your information anyway. Most people, if they're able to pay a
01:02:48.560couple bucks here and there for a verification website, can get almost all of your information.
01:02:54.540The privacy that we think we have isn't really there so much. The big piece of information
01:03:00.600that's proprietary in that circumstance is that you are a member of the afa or not and we don't
01:03:07.320tell people that we don't we absolutely do not do that unless people have volunteered for that
01:03:13.640for example our members of leadership our folk builders and such um so please know we do take
01:03:20.360that really seriously and we don't hand that out and we keep it as secure as we can and uh we do
01:03:26.200cherish those things but i want to encourage folks not to not to let fear of that dissuade you
01:03:32.840um like i said we've never had had a breach of our security that way and we've got people
01:03:37.320diligently working on that all the time to make sure those kind of breaches don't happen
01:03:45.480um what do you think the ouster true can learn from the native americans and their
01:03:52.840current community structure lu do you have any thoughts on that i'm not exactly sure
01:04:00.920what you're referring to by current community structure but i do know that back in the day
01:04:07.240steve mcnallen did do a lot with the aim in terms of just keeping in contact with them and being in
01:04:14.360good relations with them i mean they're not really around anymore this is we're talking about the
01:04:18.52070s but but yeah i mean they were essentially folkish amerindians you know doing their thing
01:04:26.920and steve mcnalen sort of corresponded with them and said yeah i like what you're doing i'm kind
01:04:33.080of doing the same thing except we're european and uh and i thought that was pretty cool and uh i
01:04:39.160think the the native americans were kind of like how do we get all the people of european ancestry
01:04:46.680out of our ritual space. And that sort of, I think, speaks to what we are kind of about in
01:04:54.360terms of an ancestral religion and ancestral spirituality. So I definitely see the sort of
01:05:01.360connection there. But in terms of current community structure, I would need to sort of
01:05:07.100figure out exactly what you're asking on that one.
01:05:09.680Um, so I can't, you know, I don't claim to be an expert on Native American community structure.
01:05:18.600um i think that also true can learn a lot from that as far as
01:05:30.600as far as organizing in a way to where folks are unified and where folks have a voice in
01:05:41.280local concerns and local issues. One thing that, you know, you've seen a stark contrast in a lot
01:05:48.660of Native American contexts to where you'll have some tribes and tribal structures that are very
01:05:54.740successful, that run businesses, run casinos, run stuff on their reservations that can really
01:06:01.760uplift their people and provide jobs and homes and really nice things. And we have seen some of
01:06:07.860that, and that's really something to look up to. I think we can learn from that, certainly.
01:06:13.400I think what you see very often is poverty and shantytown, drug-addled, alcohol-addled
01:06:24.540places on the reservation that are homes of despair, and we don't want any of that. We
01:06:33.540learn how to avoid that i think one of the things and this may not be what was meant by the question
01:06:39.700but i think it's valuable for us to learn about native american community things is uh
01:06:51.060we can't let depression or things seduce us into escaping through alcoholism or drug abuse
01:07:03.540We see that in a lot of white communities now with methamphetamines and things that way, and we need to be very vigilant against letting that become something that we do, especially when we see more and more people wallowing, wallowing depression or wallowing negativity.
01:07:19.100it's one of the reasons it's so important that we keep positive in things and we focus on things
01:07:24.060that we can do and not just things that we don't like one of the problems with the internet and
01:07:30.100social media is when used improperly we can ramp up this never-ending abusive cycle of just
01:07:39.660constantly flagellating ourselves with everything we don't like in the world and that causes
01:07:47.340depression and suicide and things like the situation we talked about on the res.
01:07:53.860So let's make real sure that we learn from that example and focus on positivity.
01:08:05.620What books or teachings do you recommend for newcomers, Lou?
01:08:09.840i like also true a native european spirituality by steve mcnallan that's i think a really good
01:08:19.520starting point because a lot of the stuff that's in that book i kind of learned from
01:08:24.740just talking to steve mcnallan because that book wasn't around yet when i joined
01:08:29.060so reading that book it really is like you're kind of in a conversation with him a little bit
01:08:34.600and you kind of are picking his brain on i mean he is the founder of modern asatru so you're kind
01:08:41.420of in his headspace about what he thinks about certain aspects of asatru or gods or heroes
01:08:49.640how we conduct rituals and it's it's a good resource for that reason i think another one
01:08:56.960that i love recommending i mean i already brought it up once but germania is such an easy read
01:09:03.280and it really connects you to the past versions of our own folk
01:10:18.460Lou, do you have any thoughts on the ethnology of Sami and Corellian people?
01:10:22.620i i think that that's it's kind of a tough question because
01:10:30.240with with that i mean you might have a little bit of of mixed ancestry but it's it's almost a
01:10:38.780question of hey do you look european are you european you consider yourself european which
01:10:44.740is the standard that we've always had when i from back when i first joined to now
01:10:48.920in terms of are fins white i think they definitely are i think everyone kind of knows it but
01:10:57.540i think anyone saying that fins are not white are kind of just throwing a meme at you i don't i don't
01:11:05.380think anyone really believes that deep down i don't think that's something that serious people
01:11:11.200believe Finns are white. Absolutely. Yeah, I don't have any great thoughts on those things
01:11:21.540other than most of those people are probably white. I know in the case of the SAMI, there's
01:11:27.980some mixture there at some point, but I don't know how prevalent that is in that community or how
01:11:33.620much that has been, you know, watered down over the centuries. But something really important.
01:11:47.280It's important that we don't purity spiral ourselves into non-existence.
01:11:52.760That's why the AFA is so broad in our Pan-Arian view, is when you start subdividing all of the people that are very obviously white people, the more you cut off, the less relevant you are.
01:12:11.340And it's often over very piddly things that are academic arguments and not real arguments.
01:12:17.100people can tell like from like you can tell people that are yours and people that are other
01:12:24.300we can tell those things we all know those things it's one of the reasons that the afa uses the
01:12:30.060term white is certainly in the united states and i assume in some other countries as well
01:12:35.000when you have to fill out surveys there's these little boxes that you check