Asatru Folk Assembly - March 30, 2023


3⧸29⧸23 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 38 - Eyvind Kinnrifi


Episode Stats


Length

1 hour and 29 minutes

Words per minute

135.31

Word count

12,158

Sentence count

411

Harmful content

Misogyny

11

sentences flagged

Toxicity

5

sentences flagged

Hate speech

30

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode of Victory Never Sleeps, we continue our series on the Aryan hero, Ivan Kinriffy. Join us as we discuss his story and how he became a hero in Norse Mythology.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Transcribed by ESO, translated by —
00:00:30.000 Thank you.
00:01:00.000 Thank you.
00:01:30.000 Thank you.
00:02:00.000 We'll be right back.
00:02:30.000 Transcription by CastingWords
00:03:00.000 hello and welcome again to another exciting edition of victory never sleeps
00:03:11.420 my throat is kind of destroyed but i'm going to try this anyway so i appreciate you guys
00:03:17.720 patience with that tonight is the second in our series on also true heroes um tonight we're going
00:03:27.260 to talk about the AstroTru hero, Ivan Kinriffy. And to tell us about him for the first time
00:03:35.600 joining us is apprentice folk builder, Lou Nickerson of Arizona. Before we talk about
00:03:43.420 Ivan, something I like to do with everybody in their first time on the show is can you
00:03:48.240 tell folks a little bit about yourself? How you came to AstroTru and how you came to the
00:03:55.120 AstroFocus? Yeah, that's a great question. I love talking about it because when I first
00:04:03.400 started out, when I first was a kid, I was really interested in Greek mythology and Norse mythology
00:04:08.860 and in the gods of the Indo-European, the Aryan peoples. I was always interested in that just
00:04:17.240 growing up but didn't really have a handle on any of the lore specifically and what was sort of lost
00:04:25.760 just like everybody else when they first start out you know where do i go what do i how do i find
00:04:31.300 this information out and funnily enough it was in college where a professor showed me this book
00:04:38.180 called on the genealogy of morality and it was talking about the judeo-christian versus the
00:04:45.920 european moral system and something in in that book sort of turned a light bulb on in my head
00:04:52.760 i just started reading more and more and got to a point where i i started looking at you know who
00:05:02.740 were the gods of my european ancestors what did what did my ancestors believe and i wanted to
00:05:10.040 draw power from that this is i'm about 18 years old at this point and one day i just start reading
00:05:18.980 something about odin and in the background i'm surrounded by these big pine trees just everywhere
00:05:25.560 and something about just thinking about odin in that space it it just completely opened something
00:05:34.980 up inside me and it's an unforgettable it's almost indescribable what I felt at that moment
00:05:41.520 but it was almost like someone opened the door somewhere deep inside where I it's really hard
00:05:47.720 to explain but just kind of in my chest is what it felt like and from that point on I knew that
00:05:53.200 I wanted to pursue Asitru but like a lot of us went and found the AFA didn't actually join I saw
00:06:02.440 it hey it's there they're doing things and sort of chickened out until about about five years later
00:06:11.800 i finally got to the point where i said you know what i'm confident enough in who i am i'm not 18
00:06:19.240 anymore you know i i know i know that this is the path i want to go down i knew it all along but
00:06:25.320 but just was a little bit too fearful, I guess, to do anything about it.
00:06:32.520 And that's something I'm definitely going to talk about today with Avend on honoring him.
00:06:37.900 But from there, joined the AFA, got put in contact with a really great guy, Mike,
00:06:44.500 who just rejoined and will be coming to Midsommar.
00:06:48.880 So I'm excited to see him again.
00:06:51.080 But Mike taught me a lot about Ossetru, about doing bloat.
00:06:55.320 about the gods honoring them honoring our ancestors so he was kind of my mentor just up
00:07:01.380 there in the mountains and I owe a lot to him but from from there I mean the path just sort of laid
00:07:08.880 itself out in front of me and finally nine years later you know nine there it is again
00:07:14.400 I'm an apprentice folk builder and here I am. Excellent. So I appreciate you sharing that.
00:07:27.360 For folks that are unfamiliar, could you briefly tell us the story of Avend Kinrithi?
00:07:37.220 so avind kinrithi was actually not just a random guy living in norway he was a leader
00:07:49.300 in his community which was hologaland i believe in old norse they they would have said hollow
00:07:57.140 galand in modern norse hologaland but he's living up there it's northern norway
00:08:02.820 And at this point, he's one of the men resisting Olaf Tchigvesen and the forced conversion and just the subjugation in general of Norway.
00:08:16.220 so avind along with harek of tyota and thor the heart of vulgar the three of them gather together
00:08:27.460 a force that is actually so powerful that olaf and his elite warriors refuse to meet them in the
00:08:36.380 field they're too scared of what's going to happen if i mean they would take too many losses
00:08:42.160 So 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.
00:09:00.160 And it involves Olat's men following one of his comrades, Harek, to his home, and then sort of lying in wait.
00:09:14.440 And 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.
00:09:26.260 and essentially what they ended up doing is they knew that he was the most powerful chieftain in
00:09:33.460 Hologalan with the most warriors and they said you have a choice you can either convert to
00:09:39.640 Christianity and accept Olaf as the king of Norway or we will drop a hot brazier onto your stomach 0.99
00:09:48.560 and you will watch as your innards just burn and as you burn alive from the inside out while the 0.99
00:09:55.740 rest of you is is watching so he said do your worst and he died an ignoble death but he would 0.95
00:10:04.780 rather die that way than live a dishonorable life for the rest of his however long his life was and
00:10:11.880 go to the afterlife meeting his ancestors hanging his head in shame because he
00:10:16.540 abandoned the gods of his people this folk
00:10:18.940 yeah for folks that aren't familiar and quite a number of our uh our astro heroes come from
00:10:32.680 being martyred during uh during olaf's reign and um this story is really
00:10:39.940 i don't know i think it's really meaningful in a lot of ways because he was you know he was
00:10:47.760 powerful, and he was used to having quite a bit of influence. And he was offered land, he was
00:10:53.220 offered gold, he was offered, you know, fame, fortune and position, if he would just just flip
00:10:59.800 as Olaf had recently done. And with all of those offers him still refusing, and then, you know,
00:11:08.520 being threatened at the point of death, and refusing to subject himself to very slow, painful
00:11:15.620 and shocking, torturous death, it says a lot.
00:11:23.580 And I mentioned this a couple of weeks ago when we did our first show on heroes.
00:11:27.060 But it's very easy in the in the mists of history to lose sight of these men as being real people.
00:11:39.380 Ivan was a man like the rest of us.
00:11:42.000 He had the same feelings, the same kind of thoughts and concerns and worries and fears that we all have.
00:11:51.940 And this was a very real sacrifice that he made to stay loyal to his gods.
00:11:58.800 um sadly in today's day and age there's so much fear all around us and so many people are
00:12:09.260 entrapped in a fear mindset that they get scared over you know relatively small things when it's
00:12:18.880 compared to having a bowl of hot coal set on your guts until you burn to death
00:12:25.080 But it's really inspirational that this man was so loyal to his gods.
00:12:31.100 And 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.
00:12:44.460 Courage and loyalty are in short supply, especially when compared with the fear-based mentality I mentioned earlier.
00:12:55.080 So 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?
00:13:07.060 So 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.
00:13:18.700 It was Odin that I was meditating on, and that's sort of where it all began for me.
00:13:23.400 And for me, the quest for wisdom is something that I've always put at the forefront.
00:13:32.340 I've always wanted to learn more, even when sometimes learning more isn't the best option.
00:13:38.420 Maybe maybe now, you know, too much.
00:13:41.660 Now you won't be able to sleep at night on certain subjects.
00:13:45.220 But I've always wanted to know as much as I can about every subject that I've been interested in.
00:13:53.400 so so that his quest for knowledge at the well of mimir that always really spoke to me directly
00:14:03.000 another god that i really look up to especially lately especially now having two children
00:14:08.600 is fray i think that without the power of fray i mean rp our folk our people won't experience
00:14:16.440 regeneration it comes in the form of both financial but also in the form of the next
00:14:22.520 generation of of our folk i i did want to say one thing too about the courage of avend and um
00:14:34.120 so avend and all of his men and our ancestors i mean they stared death in the face pretty
00:14:42.840 regularly i mean they had to stand there with their shields up as arrows were raining down
00:14:48.120 around them if they had to go to battle you know sometimes maybe they didn't want to but
00:14:54.280 they were ordered into battle and they had to stand there in line with everybody else
00:14:59.640 and basically stare death in the face on a regular basis defending their communities and
00:15:07.560 i don't think it's that they were all fearless i don't think that they were all superhuman and
00:15:12.920 they never felt any fear i think what they were able to do is they took the fear and moved forward
00:15:20.680 anyway and if we are able to do that the afa our folk in general if we're able to do that
00:15:28.360 we might experience setbacks but we will never experience defeat we might have a temporary
00:15:34.200 setback but we will always keep going forward but if we let fear cripple us if we let fear stop us
00:15:40.760 from moving forward that's when defeat becomes possible fear is a terrible disease and it
00:15:49.720 it's virulent it spreads it spreads in a
00:15:57.800 in a shocking way i've noticed that there's some people that crumble under fear because there's
00:16:04.200 actual threats placed on them. But in this day and age, I've seen a lot of people that don't even
00:16:12.440 start with things that they'd like to do because they're so fearful. They crumple before fear,
00:16:19.440 before threats even made, because fears become such a prevalent mindset. That's really sad,
00:16:28.420 but it is something I think we see all around us. And, you know, I've mentioned this earlier
00:16:34.000 when we were doing a show on the noble virtues, it's very popular for people in our circles,
00:16:42.660 for Al-Satruar, for other folks to, you know, post memes of Vikings with axes and talk about
00:16:50.960 courage. We're very comfortable acknowledging or celebrating courage, but people get very,
00:16:59.280 very uncomfortable if you point out cowardice, as if that's, you know, a low blow that you're
00:17:04.600 not allowed to do. But courage is, the contrast between the two is what provides the value.
00:17:14.600 You can't have courage without acknowledging what it means to be cowardly. The one juxtaposed
00:17:22.960 to the other is what gives it its magnitude and its force. So it's important to remember that we
00:17:28.880 can't celebrate courageous things without also acknowledging and looking down upon cowardly
00:17:36.040 things. I've got another question. Matt got wrap snacks. Do not have wrap snacks. Have
00:17:50.500 these little turkey sausage jerky things. They're called chomps. You can't see them because of the
00:18:00.000 glare, but that's okay because they're gross. They're not great, but they've got good macros.
00:18:04.940 Each one of them's got five grams of protein. I just needed a few to finish off my macros today,
00:18:10.140 so I'm making it work. Besides with my sore throat, I don't think wrap snacks would be great
00:18:14.720 on it uh next question is lou what's your favorite genre of music that's a good question i actually
00:18:23.980 listen to literally everything from classic country to classic hip-hop to metal to edm
00:18:33.180 to just you name it i pretty much enjoy listening to it i would say in terms of uh in terms of
00:18:42.060 also true band that's sort of related also true related peripherally is uh eluviti elevati i i
00:18:50.300 like their sort of combination of folk and metal it's it's awesome but i mean there's other great
00:18:55.180 ones there's amana marth there's all kinds of bit i mean you name it i i'll i'll enjoy listening to
00:19:02.620 it i just like music in general
00:19:11.740 sorry i'm chewing up one of these disgusting turkey sticks
00:19:16.700 brandy asks i'll share your goofy do you have any particular cocktail recommendations
00:19:21.660 for our april celebrations
00:19:23.580 i do i think i was asked something similar last month and i don't want to
00:19:32.780 yeah why not it's always a good one to double up one pina coladas are my favorite spring go-to
00:19:39.260 pina coladas are awesome can't do wrong by them but what i had one time that was fantastic that
00:19:45.400 i want to do next time is a horchata colada headed at this uh taco place downtown
00:19:52.660 but it's like a mix of horchata and pina colada and it's one of the best things i've ever had
00:19:59.400 so that's what i recommend for your april celebrations you're welcome
00:20:04.360 um another question i ordered astro a native european spirituality on the runestone website
00:20:14.260 in february it still has not arrived so i was told by the manager of our store that she has
00:20:20.320 contacted the folks that have ordered that and told them how long it is going to be out of stock.
00:20:26.120 I hope that was the case with you. If not, send me a message on the back end,
00:20:31.960 mattflavell at runestone.org, and I can get you sorted out. The publisher has been very slow in
00:20:37.880 coming with the next round of those books for us. So I know that's been on hold on our website for
00:20:44.400 a little while now. I apologize for any inconvenience on that.
00:20:50.320 um brandy lou what are your recommendations for those of us raising young men how do we teach them
00:20:58.000 nobility and courage well i have daughters so i can't answer that no i'm just kidding
00:21:04.780 um i think the best way is to lead by example and in general the men in the afa do a pretty
00:21:13.500 good job of being noble and figuring out what's right and what's wrong. I think that
00:21:22.260 if the young men of the AFA see how the men of the AFA are acting, I'm not really worried about
00:21:32.900 them. Who I'm really worried about is kind of everybody else with getting bombarded with the
00:21:39.180 media and what the general culture is throwing at young men. I definitely am a little bit worried,
00:21:45.700 but I think for us, the best thing that we can do is to lead by example,
00:21:53.720 treat everybody else around you with respect, and hopefully they're going to do the same thing.
00:21:59.340 They're going to live with nobility and respect for those around them, love for their folk,
00:22:04.000 love for the gods and their ancestors. I think that's what's important.
00:22:09.180 So we've got a number of good questions lining up, but before we get to them, just so I make
00:22:16.280 sure we get to this and don't pass it up, I've had a lot of folks on from, I'd say,
00:22:26.340 certainly the eastern half of the United States. You are the first person we've had on in Arizona.
00:22:33.300 Can 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?
00:22:44.620 Yeah, that's a great question. We actually have a pretty tight knit group of people in Arizona.
00:22:51.220 Everyone is really good about speaking to each other, about communicating.
00:22:56.020 we do get together regularly
00:22:58.960 and if you're in Arizona
00:23:02.200 and if you're thinking about joining the AFA
00:23:03.920 I would love to hear from you
00:23:05.520 and we will definitely
00:23:06.880 we'll definitely get
00:23:09.340 I'm hoping
00:23:11.560 we're going to get a pretty big event
00:23:13.320 happening in the near future
00:23:15.100 so I will keep you posted
00:23:17.660 and keep everyone posted on that
00:23:19.180 but
00:23:20.940 the group of people we have down here
00:23:23.620 is great
00:23:24.500 And we're just getting more in the last few weeks.
00:23:28.760 We've we've gotten quite a few new members.
00:23:30.560 So we're definitely growing down here.
00:23:32.840 It's it's awesome to see.
00:23:38.340 All right.
00:23:39.440 The next question, Mr. Nickerson, five favorite books, not lore related.
00:23:45.100 And what's your favorite saga?
00:23:47.960 So I'm going to give you seven.
00:23:50.080 Now, the saga is going to sound basic, but I'm sorry.
00:23:54.500 The 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.
00:24:06.580 I 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.
00:24:22.900 I 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.
00:24:32.560 But 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.
00:24:56.380 the horse the wheel and language by david anthony it's a good archaeological work i don't think
00:25:04.840 politically he's on our side but he does really good archaeology relating to the aryans the
00:25:11.200 indo-europeans as they are also called but he goes into barrows i mean he he's digging up
00:25:19.500 and helping preserve the different artifacts of the aryan people and he
00:25:24.680 and and one of his main arguments is that they did come from europe no they did not come from
00:25:31.160 elsewhere in asia or you know modern turkey or anything like that he he definitely puts that
00:25:37.400 forward so it's while he may not be on our side politically it's i mean we're not a political
00:25:43.560 organization but we may not you know agree with him on everything he says in that book but it
00:25:49.640 It's a great intro to the Aryans, for sure.
00:25:54.200 Memoirs of Service Afloat During the War Between the States.
00:25:58.040 One of the best naval books of all time.
00:26:04.420 1066, The Year of Three Battles.
00:26:06.720 It goes into extreme detail about the war between Harold, Harold Ardrada, and William.
00:26:15.640 William, apparently, was the bad guy.
00:26:17.720 I've read that book enough times to know that.
00:26:21.800 The Eastern Front by Leon de Grel.
00:26:25.340 That's another good war book.
00:26:27.500 And he's got some good language in there.
00:26:30.100 The best World War II book, though, is The Forgotten Soldier by Guy Mamenu.
00:26:37.480 He also goes by Zaire.
00:26:39.360 I think in most of the published versions, it's Zaire, however you pronounce that.
00:26:44.240 and a more basic one a game of thrones by george martin that's just a good fantasy book i don't
00:26:51.860 care who you are all right fair enough besides the addas and sagas what other lore books have
00:27:03.900 you learned a lot from there's a lot i think the one that that spoke to me the earliest and
00:27:12.480 had the most impact was definitely germania even though he's speaking from the point of view of
00:27:18.660 the romans and he sort of has strange ideas about who the germanic people really are i mean
00:27:26.460 no we're not we're not we weren't noble savages back then you know we were just people just like
00:27:34.800 the romans were you know descended from the arians but he goes into details about the
00:27:42.800 the germanic the germanic people that have to be accurate i mean looking back they have to
00:27:49.600 have come from some source that was actually on the ground in the area and it's it's really
00:27:58.880 powerful to see how similar a lot of what they were doing 2 000 years ago how similar it is to
00:28:05.760 what we're doing today and i mean if that if that doesn't kind of move you then i don't know what
00:28:12.000 will i mean that's we have over 2 000 years of tradition sort of coursing through our
00:28:20.400 our bodies are our essences and we're putting forward that energy
00:28:26.160 today just like they did 2 000 years ago or our forefathers did so that's a good one
00:28:35.440 yeah any other any other lore books right now i'm reading uh culture of the teutons and
00:28:42.880 i should have read that one a lot earlier because wow there's there's so many great ideas and just
00:28:50.000 the way that he lays out their germanic world view of the viking age and before i mean it's
00:28:56.160 is powerful so i'm i'm getting through that right now that's kind of what i'm
00:29:00.080 i'm working on but i definitely wish i would have read that a few years ago
00:29:07.920 next question is a really interesting one and it can be taken a lot of different directions but i
00:29:12.400 think it's very important question and i'll go ahead and let you go first but it's a question
00:29:16.480 for both of us uh it comes from shay our folk builder in excuse me our folk builder in oklahoma
00:29:23.600 any trade talent or skill that gave you gentlemen a step up in the world or that you are practicing
00:29:32.480 go ahead and go first all right i'll i'll go first um i don't really have a trade i would say
00:29:41.140 i do work in an industrial job and it took me a long time to actually find
00:29:47.100 something that I was pretty good at that I could do that I could actually enjoy doing
00:29:53.680 and at the same time be relatively successful at I did go to college you know on the one hand
00:30:04.160 it was kind of a mistake but on the other hand I actually did learn a lot and I met a woman that
00:30:09.360 later became my wife and has two of my children so that's a success right there but in terms of
00:30:15.160 Financially, college was, I mean, really nothing.
00:30:19.980 I 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.
00:30:35.380 So I went into that and I really enjoy it.
00:30:39.700 and it's it's not really a trade because you don't really it's not like a something that you
00:30:46.040 apprentice at you know i mean there are okay if you want to be an electrician sure or mechanic
00:30:51.100 yeah you're you can be an apprentice but there's other just uh operational production jobs out
00:30:56.980 there where you don't really need to do that you just kind of step right in there and and it's a
00:31:02.040 relatively quick learning curve and yeah i mean those jobs are out there if if someone ever needs
00:31:08.420 a job, just reach out to me. My email is lnickerson at runestone.org. I will point you in the right
00:31:14.200 direction. So like I said, there's a lot of ways that you could take this question, but it's
00:31:26.400 important. I think it's really important that any experience you go through in life that you learn
00:31:35.520 you learn from and you pick up things in it that you can apply to other aspects of your life to
00:31:40.780 help you be successful. You know, I had, I'll go with this for right now. I was a bouncer for a
00:31:56.180 time. I was a bouncer for a long time, actually. I was a bouncer for 10, 11 years and it was a
00:32:02.620 really, really fun job for all of the reasons that it would be fun. And I learned a lot about
00:32:08.640 myself, you know, getting in fights and stuff. And that's the, that's the fun stuff. But on a
00:32:15.240 much bigger macro level, I was pretty sheltered growing up. I didn't really get out there in the
00:32:23.380 world that much. I was not particularly popular in school and I was very insulated person.
00:32:30.080 And 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.
00:32:39.700 So through bouncing, what was cool, because I worked at a very diverse place and a place that was thousand person capacity.
00:32:49.420 I got to interact with so many different kinds of people.
00:32:53.620 And 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.
00:33:18.560 people who are really in a strange environment and were out of their mind a lot and I get to
00:33:26.000 I got to learn how to interact with a lot of different groups of people
00:33:29.180 and because I dealt with some pretty sketchy things and you know there was gun fights in the
00:33:36.240 in the parking lot and knife fights in the bar and crazy stuff it got me to where I'm much more
00:33:44.100 comfortable around people in more extreme, I guess, situations to where I can keep calm and I know how
00:33:54.960 to interact with people that would otherwise be scary. You know, I've noticed that a lot
00:33:59.560 between interacting with homeless people or anything else. You know, I've interacted with
00:34:05.440 crazy people. I've learned how to de-escalate situations with crazy people. I've learned how
00:34:11.380 to deescalate situations with people on a variety of narcotics. I've learned how to deescalate
00:34:17.640 a lot of different races of people. I've just been able to learn how to deal in a social situation 1.00
00:34:25.540 with a lot of very extreme circumstances thrown at me very quickly. And so I was able to figure
00:34:32.960 that out. And I think that's helped me a lot in life. And I think that's helped me more than I
00:34:38.600 realize. Still not the most outgoing person in the world, but when thrust into a situation or
00:34:43.720 a situation thrust itself at me, I'm pretty good at being able to handle it and de-escalate and
00:34:49.100 work with conflict. And that's been really helpful.
00:34:55.100 Another thing, I've been able to work with and manage people in different situations. I was
00:35:04.740 running security at the place I worked for a number of years and that taught me a lot about
00:35:09.380 managing different people in that kind of environment and building those kind of relationships
00:35:15.620 to where people will trust you when things are uh when things are hectic when things are dangerous
00:35:22.820 building that rapport with a variety of different people to where they'll trust you and where you
00:35:27.700 You can have a solid relationship.
00:35:31.760 That's meant a lot.
00:35:32.840 So I learned a lot from that.
00:35:36.280 Next question, any tips for first comers to an AFA event?
00:35:40.840 I'm planning on coming to Midsommar for my first event.
00:35:44.920 Lou, do you have any tips for somebody who's coming to their first event?
00:35:48.260 And keeping in mind that first event is going to be Midsommar.
00:35:52.060 I think that's a great first event.
00:35:53.960 I think my first event was a backyard meetup in Ken Waddell's house.
00:36:01.540 And it was maybe about 10 of us.
00:36:04.760 And I wasn't sure what to expect, but I really enjoyed it.
00:36:07.760 But if you're at Midsommar, I mean, you're not even going to be the first first timer.
00:36:12.380 So that's a perfect, a big event like that, like a star at Thor's off or Midsommar at Odin's off.
00:36:18.840 that's the perfect place to go your first time because you'll actually have people like us who
00:36:25.640 have been going for years but then you'll have other people who it's your first time so it's
00:36:29.720 the perfect mix of of people and that's just a really powerful event too the oven blow is is
00:36:38.360 going to be life-changing so i i i don't know if i have any tips really i just want to say i'm
00:36:45.400 excited that you're going to be there uh please come up to me and introduce yourself i'd love to
00:36:50.440 meet you and uh yeah it's great that you're coming yeah i i remember my first uh my first afa event
00:37:00.200 my first afa event i was ever at was a midsummer and it was
00:37:04.040 mid-summer 2010, I think. Yeah, and actually, we've got a video of that on this YouTube
00:37:24.080 channel somewhere. But anyways, that was my first that I went to, and I would,
00:37:28.660 you know, I agree with Lou. You're going to, you're not going to be the first person there
00:37:33.900 that, you know, it's their first time. There'll be several people there who it's their first time.
00:37:38.720 And I think that's good. Other thing is you're getting to really see our biggest event that we
00:37:44.720 do. Midsummer is liable to be our biggest event of the year. It was very, very close between
00:37:50.780 Midsummer and Winter Nights last year. We had a really big turnout at Winter Nights in Ohio last
00:37:57.300 year, but midsummer was still larger. More than that, you're going to get to see a Hoff for the
00:38:05.260 first time. You need to see Odin's Hoff, and it's the first Hoff that the AFA acquired. It's, you
00:38:12.860 know, it's been sanctified and spiritually charged for, you know, almost eight years now,
00:38:21.140 and it's a really powerful place. I look forward to that. I look forward to seeing
00:38:27.160 you there. I would say come with an open mind and an open heart. Don't expect stuff. Just be open
00:38:38.320 to things and see what happens. I think when you burden things with expectation, you miss a lot of
00:38:46.900 the really special things that happen. And I think in order to appreciate the special things that
00:38:50.680 happen. You have to be open to those things. If you've shut off your mind or your heart or you're
00:38:57.140 too guarded, then you miss out on some of that. So I'd say go in with an open mind and open heart.
00:39:04.060 And yeah, just I'm excited. Don't there's nothing to worry about. It's going to be a great event.
00:39:11.300 Always is. You're going to meet some really cool people and it's going to be a great thing for you.
00:39:16.920 i'm excited for you i often talk excuse me often talk with afa leadership about about that
00:39:25.480 when any of us were at our first you know our first big event it blew our mind and it was
00:39:31.160 life-changing and it was all of these amazing things and it's different when you're you know
00:39:39.640 15 years into this when you're you know you've been doing this for a long time
00:39:45.640 you see it from a different way. The new and special fresh things aren't like they were.
00:39:53.080 So you get to appreciate seeing that in other people and it's, it matures over time. So in a
00:39:59.640 lot of ways, I'm envious of you going to your first big event at Midsommar. That's,
00:40:05.160 that's going to be a beautiful thing for you. And I'm really excited.
00:40:07.560 uh next question i believe is from sierra lou we love you what inspired you to become a folk
00:40:16.120 builder and making all the sacrifices you do for the afa how do you balance life afa and work
00:40:25.880 thank you thank you sierra you're awesome dude i appreciate you very much
00:40:31.960 um i think that what it's what inspired me to be a folk builder was
00:40:37.560 it was sort of just something opened up in me. And I just said to myself, you know what,
00:40:44.220 it's been long enough, nine years, I'm ready to kind of take the next step rather than just be a
00:40:50.400 regular kind of member that showed up when he could sort of that sort of thing to actually
00:40:56.980 committing myself to it a little bit, a little bit more, a lot, I mean, a lot more of my time
00:41:02.160 on it definitely but but just putting more of myself into it i think i just sort of felt that
00:41:08.780 it was time to do that in terms of how i balance it that actually is a challenge i mean i'm still
00:41:13.740 an apprentice i'm less than a year in i think i'm about nine months in and i'm still working
00:41:19.380 that part out so if you have any tips uh you tell me no um i'm really trying to work with my my wife
00:41:27.780 on everything. I'm making time for her and making time for the kids. Work obviously takes up a ton
00:41:33.880 of my time. For those of you who know me, you already know that, but I try to get it all in
00:41:39.480 there. So don't feel bad about reaching out to me. I love to speak to anyone that is something
00:41:48.600 to say to me, whether it's just, hey, hi, or if it's an actual issue, please don't hesitate.
00:41:54.300 I'm always I'm always up. All right. Next question. Matt, in what ways does the AFA uphold traditional gender slash family values?
00:42:08.480 I saw this one coming up and it's an interesting question because it's not like our flavor of family values and gender roles.
00:42:26.480 It's the natural realignment of family values and gender roles.
00:42:34.840 There's not a lot the AFA has to do to enforce it.
00:42:38.660 It's what happens naturally when there's not coercive and degenerative forces skewing that in some way.
00:42:48.520 So 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.
00:43:07.320 And 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.
00:43:19.300 Um, if you attend AFA events and watch how things work, men naturally assume a lot of
00:43:30.840 that leadership space, women automatically assume a lot of that support space. 0.99
00:43:37.840 Um, the men naturally do a lot of the logistics and the, uh, and the labor, whereas the ladies 0.99
00:43:44.840 naturally gravitate towards dealing with the children, the children's events, dealing with 1.00
00:43:51.320 the kitchen, taking care of things, making sure stuff works out that way. People naturally kind
00:43:57.080 of separate into ways that are organically appropriate for who they are. I'd say one of the
00:44:04.520 things in terms of family values and gender roles that the AFA does do is
00:44:11.540 has to treat the illnesses of society to try to help folks be more comfortable 0.52
00:44:19.220 in those positions. Because folks, you know, especially new people come to the AFA with all of
00:44:25.960 the horribly mixed and just wrong messaging that society gives. And they have to re-become 1.00
00:44:37.120 comfortable being themselves and doing things that make themselves happy our ladies the ones 1.00
00:44:44.160 that come in with the strongest feminism girl power thing are the ones that are the most broken 0.81
00:44:53.280 and the most damaged and the most uncomfortable taking value in themselves as women as opposed 0.57
00:45:00.960 to seeing their value and how much they can pretend to be a man um so working on that has
00:45:08.960 is a big part of what the afa does dealing with kids and trying to get kids these days
00:45:16.480 to behave respectfully and to respect their elders and to you know grow up in a way that's not
00:45:25.280 in tune with the rampant gender dysphoria insanity that goes on around us is also a struggle. A lot 0.91
00:45:34.480 of these kids get really bad influences from public school. And so we have to try to add
00:45:41.780 AFA events and as an AFA community, get them comfortable just being kids and being normal
00:45:48.420 and letting little boys be little boys. And so there's a lot of things we do that way. But like
00:45:54.920 I said, it's not about, you know, forcing people to act according to traditional gender roles. It's
00:46:01.340 a matter of letting them be who they are and celebrating that and taking away some of the 0.99
00:46:08.180 negativity that society's put on natural gender relations. King of Cheese. Matt, Lou, good to see 0.87
00:46:17.280 you both on. How are we doing tonight? Also, Matt, you say they're disgusting, but you seem to
00:46:22.380 continue munching. It can't be too bad. See, that's not true, Tony. I've eaten a lot of 0.96
00:46:27.640 disgusting things in an effort to meet my macros and to build myself to who I'd like to be.
00:46:35.120 And so if the macros are right, there's a lot of things that are disgusting that I'll still
00:46:40.160 power through. I had exactly as many of those as I needed to. I'm not going back for more because
00:46:45.520 they're not great, but I got the job done. Appreciate you asking, Tony, as always. Got a
00:46:50.920 different answer for you today. Doing good. I look forward to these. I'm glad to be talking
00:46:54.760 to Lou, but my throat hurts really bad, so that's not great. I'm drinking some tea. I'm doing what
00:47:01.760 I can, but no, my throat hurts the past few days, and that kind of sucks, but I got to say, I'm not
00:47:07.540 doing all that bad, and the AFA reached a new membership high today of 1,010 members. All in
00:47:14.920 all really not doing that bad. Lou, how are you doing tonight? I'm doing very well. Thank you
00:47:21.320 for asking, Tony, as always. Appreciate it. All right. Next, Lou, do you think your history degree
00:47:29.200 had any influence on your decision to follow Ausitru? I think my love of history did,
00:47:37.640 definitely i think it and just going to going to college did sort of put me around certain ideas
00:47:46.280 that led me down that path but i wouldn't say that the degree program or anything led me to
00:47:53.140 follow ossature i think it was something that was kind of there all along but it it did end up
00:47:57.880 college actually did end up being positive even though there was some so much negative stuff going
00:48:03.660 on at the same time in terms of my following also true but i think it was always there it was always
00:48:09.420 there i just finally had to find it and then once i found it actually had to act on it which is the
00:48:15.340 hardest part that's a really good point that you make and i i don't want us to just gloss over it
00:48:24.540 it because I think it needs to be focused on a little bit. I've said this before and I say this
00:48:34.400 a lot and I think it's important to clear up. Ausatru does not mean belief. It doesn't mean
00:48:40.780 belief in the gods. It means trough with the gods. It means loyalty to the gods. Ausatru isn't about
00:48:48.940 what you think or what you believe. It's about how those thoughts and beliefs affect your actions.
00:48:56.540 Doing is so much harder than thinking. You know, a lot of us will reach points in our minds where
00:49:02.460 we come to a conclusion about something or to a strong position about something.
00:49:08.940 But if we never act on it, we don't take those first steps. It's all
00:49:13.580 it's all an illusion it's all masturbatory it's not real um
00:49:19.820 in also true a very old and a very good saying for us is that we are our deeds our deeds define 0.58
00:49:27.100 us the biggest distance between things is the distance between you know your couch and the
00:49:34.700 front door um everything else comes so much easier but taking that initial step to break
00:49:41.980 the uh the surface tension or the friction of you sitting down of you actually getting up and going
00:49:49.900 to a moot going to an event meeting another also true or standing before our gods with
00:49:56.940 your brothers and sisters in faith that makes all the difference in the world and i don't you know
00:50:04.860 i i say that tongue-in-cheek about the couch thing but it's it's very true and i mean that
00:50:09.180 for myself as much as anybody else it was very hard for me to take those first steps to go meet
00:50:14.700 people i didn't know involved in something that sounded kind of odd certainly different from the
00:50:19.900 norm that's intimidating and it's it's the most worth it thing i've ever done but if you don't
00:50:29.100 take those steps you'll never know so i think it's really important to just make that point
00:50:34.940 for anybody who needs to hear it. Yeah, I just wanted to say too, once I did end up making the
00:50:41.600 decision to join, the thing I kept asking myself was, why didn't I do this sooner? This is where
00:50:47.020 I belonged all along. Why didn't I do it sooner? But we all have our own path and hopefully we are
00:50:54.300 going to get there in the end. That's the hope. That's what we're working for. But that is also
00:50:59.660 a very common thing that I hear from folks is, man, I wish I would have found this years ago,
00:51:04.300 oh man, why didn't I do this sooner? I know I felt that. We can only move forward, but
00:51:11.700 just know that is a common refrain for people. Mr. Nickerson, where are you from and where do
00:51:21.720 you call home? So like the AFA itself, I'm from California originally. I decided to leave
00:51:31.480 for a variety of reasons, but I now live in Southern Arizona. Originally, I'm from Southern
00:51:38.140 California. All right. Now, no idea who this person is that is going under the name main
00:51:47.860 player character, but certainly somebody who's been privy to some conversations. 1.00
00:51:54.000 They want to know, why did I fight a midget when I bounced? And is it true that they have good 1.00
00:52:00.080 marbling. So record indicate I've never fought a midget in my life. I did fight alongside a midget 1.00
00:52:15.020 many times in that job. This guy I worked with named Joe Chavez was a good friend of mine, 1.00
00:52:20.720 honestly, was a lot more effective than you would think. But he was, in fact, a midget bouncer. 1.00
00:52:26.360 and uh and we worked together for a number of years there missy joe haven't talked to you in a long 0.80
00:52:32.400 time um and then a completely different incident at a completely different bar there was a midget 1.00
00:52:40.680 and she was was in her midget cups and uh decided she wanted well first she had to go because she 0.99
00:52:48.720 was just too drunk but on the way out she decided that she wanted to be handsy and could not resist 1.00
00:52:54.980 my my masculine glory and uh because of her height it put certain things in midget t-rex arms reach 0.89
00:53:04.260 and so i had to i had to physically restrain uh that situation from going a direction i didn't
00:53:10.740 want it to go but that's fine we picked her up we stuffed her in a cab and we
00:53:16.100 got her ride home and i hope she's doing well there's a picture of that somewhere
00:53:24.980 Oh, 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.
00:53:36.680 Mr. Nickerson, are you on any social media platform?
00:53:39.880 one yes i am i am on me we is probably where i'm the most active so if you would like to
00:53:49.080 uh get on me we the afa has me we page and we post a lot of pictures on there
00:53:56.840 but uh i was banned from facebook in 2020 like most of us so i'm not on there anymore
00:54:05.000 don't look for me on Facebook. So that's a good kind of point for folks out there. The AFA does
00:54:12.480 a lot of our interaction on MeWe, certainly our in-group interaction there. It's a much better
00:54:20.200 platform than I thought it would be. We went there out of necessity when Facebook was purging
00:54:24.880 everybody with a conservative or traditional mindset a number of years ago, but it's really
00:54:30.740 turned out to be kind of a nice place. Also, you can find us a lot of places, but the social media
00:54:36.780 realm that's been the best for us the past few years since the Facebook purges
00:54:41.220 has been Twitter and YouTube. So I appreciate those two companies for doing right by us.
00:54:49.960 Next question, where do your ancestors come from? It's not directed to one of us or the other,
00:54:54.740 so you go first, Lou. Okay. Hopefully we have all night because I could just pull up my family
00:55:02.460 tree and start listing it one by one, but I'll just give you my four grandparents and we can
00:55:09.860 go from there. My grandfather's from British Columbia. I'm a paternal grandfather. My paternal
00:55:17.780 grandmother's from Denver. My maternal grandfather is from Austria-Hungary, the country of the
00:55:24.640 no longer exists. And my maternal grandmother is from Soviet Ukraine. And yes, she did go through
00:55:34.880 the Holodomor and survived. But going further back than that, I mean, I am in the Sons of
00:55:42.240 Confederate Veterans. I am eligible for the Sons of the American Revolution. I never actually
00:55:48.280 joined that one but um i do have one ancestor on the mayflower i love genealogy so i could i could
00:55:57.240 go on i'm just going to giving you some highlights but i could go on a long long time about genealogy
00:56:02.900 i love going into family trees a lot of us in the afa love the genetics part of it we love the
00:56:10.460 family tree part of it so we we talk a lot back and forth about that
00:56:14.140 um so because there was no name on it i'll throw mine in there also
00:56:21.460 um my people have been on this continent for a very long time as far as the folks i can trace
00:56:29.500 back you know any of these trails eventually end in mist and obscurity um
00:56:35.980 Um, yeah, my people have been here a real long time.
00:56:41.080 My most recent, uh, ancestors from the, the old country are a couple, um, Fritz and Sophie
00:56:49.640 Montandon, uh, him being a Swissman and her being French.
00:56:54.480 And they came over in, in the early 1900s.
00:56:58.540 Um, I actually have some pictures of the ocean liners they were on and that was pretty cool.
00:57:02.380 They came over separately.
00:57:03.420 um before that my people have pretty much been here since the late 1600s um originally
00:57:14.600 english folks that uh took root in the carolinas doing plantations there in the carolinas
00:57:22.760 uh the branch that i know the most about um comes to me through through my mother and her father
00:57:32.220 and her people who, my sixth great grandfather was Colonel John Bond. He fought as a captain
00:57:42.920 in the American Revolution. That's his family was part of that Carolina planting
00:57:48.220 ancestors that I had. And anyway, he fought in the revolution. He fought in some really bloody
00:57:55.120 conflicts there in the Carolinas. It was a lot of fighting against Indian tribes that were aligned
00:58:01.400 with one side or the other, and it was musket butts and bayonets and hatchets and stuff,
00:58:08.300 and it was pretty brutal. He made it through. He again served his country as a much older man,
00:58:15.620 as a colonel, with some of his sons in his service in the War of 1812, and he helped to
00:58:22.440 construct a roadway that went from the Carolinas to New Orleans to get munitions there. And along
00:58:29.700 the way he kind of stopped and uh ended up putting down roots in south central mississippi in a place
00:58:36.660 called wiggins and my people have on my mom's side both all of my mom's ancestors have been
00:58:42.420 there for for quite some time i think since war of 1812. so that's where most of my people are from
00:58:48.260 but going back to the old world uh mostly english some french some swiss some uh some scotsmen in
00:58:58.500 there. Clan Ross is my, you know, the clan that I have relatives from. Yeah, that's where my people
00:59:07.040 come from. Mr. Nickerson, being from Arizona, I hope you're preparing folk and yourself for
00:59:18.940 the future and realize all the limitations of literal desert, water gardening, the killing
00:59:27.300 heat open borders too thanks do you have any response on uh your your situation there
00:59:34.740 literal desert rather than figurative or any other form but no arizona is a big state there's
00:59:42.100 actually different climates throughout the state of arizona i actually do happen to live in a
00:59:47.860 literal desert and you're right water is a big concern in the entire southwest southern nevada
00:59:57.300 southern california southern arizona i mean there's a pretty much a water shortage that's
01:00:04.500 i believe at least 10 years now there's been water issues so i don't know how much i'm really
01:00:12.940 qualified to talk about water i mean yes we do need to prepare uh you know we we have prepared
01:00:19.420 in terms of emergency water supplies and food supplies and i don't want to talk about some of
01:00:26.640 other stuff but i mean yeah we're we try to make ourselves as as ready as we can in terms of open
01:00:33.220 borders uh open borders affects every single state you know unfortunately it's not just the border
01:00:39.160 states although we are the biggest uh maybe drug trafficking point in the country so yeah this is
01:00:45.640 where all the drugs come in but but in terms of the the long-term effects and it's it's going to
01:00:52.540 affect everybody in the end equally. All right. So Allie says, are midget cups shot glasses?
01:01:04.760 That is clever, Allie, but no, they're not. If they were, the lady in question might have stayed 0.99
01:01:10.720 in the bar longer and not had to get escorted out in the way that she was. 1.00
01:01:14.760 So we know how the ADL and Wikipedia treat the AFA. How secure is the personal info on the
01:01:26.540 application? Will it ever be shared? Locally, an Oath Keepers group had all of their member info
01:01:34.500 released. So I understand that being a concern. Information is as secure as we can reasonably
01:01:48.280 do it. We've never had a security breach of our site. We have never had the implied security
01:01:55.280 breach of our site. We can't make that 100% perfect, but our policy is no, we do not give
01:02:03.880 member information out unless people have selected that that's okay and we have no intention of doing
01:02:10.680 so until you know unless and until there's some kind of a court order and then that's a legal
01:02:17.720 battle that we'll get into at that point but barring that no we don't divulge people's
01:02:23.560 membership information the thing that i think is an uncomfortable truth for people to know
01:02:33.880 the public getting a lot of your information is harder to do, but
01:02:41.140 the federal government has all your information anyway. Most people, if they're able to pay a
01:02:48.560 couple bucks here and there for a verification website, can get almost all of your information.
01:02:54.540 The privacy that we think we have isn't really there so much. The big piece of information
01:03:00.600 that's proprietary in that circumstance is that you are a member of the afa or not and we don't
01:03:07.320 tell people that we don't we absolutely do not do that unless people have volunteered for that
01:03:13.640 for example our members of leadership our folk builders and such um so please know we do take
01:03:20.360 that really seriously and we don't hand that out and we keep it as secure as we can and uh we do
01:03:26.200 cherish those things but i want to encourage folks not to not to let fear of that dissuade you
01:03:32.840 um like i said we've never had had a breach of our security that way and we've got people
01:03:37.320 diligently working on that all the time to make sure those kind of breaches don't happen
01:03:45.480 um what do you think the ouster true can learn from the native americans and their
01:03:52.840 current community structure lu do you have any thoughts on that i'm not exactly sure
01:04:00.920 what you're referring to by current community structure but i do know that back in the day
01:04:07.240 steve mcnallen did do a lot with the aim in terms of just keeping in contact with them and being in
01:04:14.360 good relations with them i mean they're not really around anymore this is we're talking about the
01:04:18.520 70s but but yeah i mean they were essentially folkish amerindians you know doing their thing
01:04:26.920 and steve mcnalen sort of corresponded with them and said yeah i like what you're doing i'm kind
01:04:33.080 of doing the same thing except we're european and uh and i thought that was pretty cool and uh i
01:04:39.160 think the the native americans were kind of like how do we get all the people of european ancestry
01:04:46.680 out of our ritual space. And that sort of, I think, speaks to what we are kind of about in
01:04:54.360 terms of an ancestral religion and ancestral spirituality. So I definitely see the sort of
01:05:01.360 connection there. But in terms of current community structure, I would need to sort of
01:05:07.100 figure out exactly what you're asking on that one.
01:05:09.680 Um, so I can't, you know, I don't claim to be an expert on Native American community structure.
01:05:18.600 um i think that also true can learn a lot from that as far as
01:05:30.600 as far as organizing in a way to where folks are unified and where folks have a voice in
01:05:41.280 local concerns and local issues. One thing that, you know, you've seen a stark contrast in a lot
01:05:48.660 of Native American contexts to where you'll have some tribes and tribal structures that are very
01:05:54.740 successful, that run businesses, run casinos, run stuff on their reservations that can really
01:06:01.760 uplift their people and provide jobs and homes and really nice things. And we have seen some of
01:06:07.860 that, and that's really something to look up to. I think we can learn from that, certainly.
01:06:13.400 I think what you see very often is poverty and shantytown, drug-addled, alcohol-addled
01:06:24.540 places on the reservation that are homes of despair, and we don't want any of that. We
01:06:33.540 learn how to avoid that i think one of the things and this may not be what was meant by the question
01:06:39.700 but i think it's valuable for us to learn about native american community things is uh
01:06:51.060 we can't let depression or things seduce us into escaping through alcoholism or drug abuse
01:07:03.540 We 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. 0.52
01:07:19.100 it's one of the reasons it's so important that we keep positive in things and we focus on things 0.77
01:07:24.060 that we can do and not just things that we don't like one of the problems with the internet and
01:07:30.100 social media is when used improperly we can ramp up this never-ending abusive cycle of just
01:07:39.660 constantly flagellating ourselves with everything we don't like in the world and that causes
01:07:47.340 depression and suicide and things like the situation we talked about on the res.
01:07:53.860 So let's make real sure that we learn from that example and focus on positivity.
01:08:05.620 What books or teachings do you recommend for newcomers, Lou?
01:08:09.840 i like also true a native european spirituality by steve mcnallan that's i think a really good
01:08:19.520 starting point because a lot of the stuff that's in that book i kind of learned from
01:08:24.740 just talking to steve mcnallan because that book wasn't around yet when i joined
01:08:29.060 so reading that book it really is like you're kind of in a conversation with him a little bit
01:08:34.600 and you kind of are picking his brain on i mean he is the founder of modern asatru so you're kind
01:08:41.420 of in his headspace about what he thinks about certain aspects of asatru or gods or heroes
01:08:49.640 how we conduct rituals and it's it's a good resource for that reason i think another one
01:08:56.960 that i love recommending i mean i already brought it up once but germania is such an easy read
01:09:03.280 and it really connects you to the past versions of our own folk
01:09:10.540 in a way that's really powerful.
01:09:13.060 So that's another one.
01:09:14.940 And then you have, I would say start with the prosetta
01:09:20.340 because it's a little bit more accessible.
01:09:22.320 So if you're a total newcomer, start with that
01:09:26.080 and it's going to give you a great, you know,
01:09:28.520 Snorri is going to give you a good rundown of who are our gods
01:09:33.240 Who are our goddesses? Who do we hail?
01:09:35.700 I think that's a really good place to start, and it's not a hard read at all.
01:09:42.240 Absolutely. I think that's probably the best intro for new people.
01:09:48.260 Are the gods of the Celts the same as the Germanic Norse gods with different names?
01:09:53.500 Yes.
01:09:54.520 Is there some overlap that doesn't fit perfectly? Absolutely.
01:09:58.180 But as a general answer to the question, yes.
01:10:02.660 What do you think of groups like the Sami people or the Corellians in Scandinavia?
01:10:10.640 Some argue that the Sami are not white, although I've also seen some people say Finns are not white, too.
01:10:16.840 Do you have any thoughts?
01:10:18.460 Lou, do you have any thoughts on the ethnology of Sami and Corellian people?
01:10:22.620 i i think that that's it's kind of a tough question because
01:10:30.240 with with that i mean you might have a little bit of of mixed ancestry but it's it's almost a
01:10:38.780 question of hey do you look european are you european you consider yourself european which
01:10:44.740 is the standard that we've always had when i from back when i first joined to now
01:10:48.920 in terms of are fins white i think they definitely are i think everyone kind of knows it but
01:10:57.540 i think anyone saying that fins are not white are kind of just throwing a meme at you i don't i don't
01:11:05.380 think anyone really believes that deep down i don't think that's something that serious people
01:11:11.200 believe Finns are white. Absolutely. Yeah, I don't have any great thoughts on those things
01:11:21.540 other than most of those people are probably white. I know in the case of the SAMI, there's 1.00
01:11:27.980 some mixture there at some point, but I don't know how prevalent that is in that community or how
01:11:33.620 much that has been, you know, watered down over the centuries. But something really important.
01:11:47.280 It's important that we don't purity spiral ourselves into non-existence. 0.70
01:11:52.760 That'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. 0.70
01:12:11.340 And it's often over very piddly things that are academic arguments and not real arguments. 0.69
01:12:17.100 people can tell like from like you can tell people that are yours and people that are other
01:12:24.300 we can tell those things we all know those things it's one of the reasons that the afa uses the
01:12:30.060 term white is certainly in the united states and i assume in some other countries as well
01:12:35.000 when you have to fill out surveys there's these little boxes that you check
01:12:39.120 there's lou's beautiful family
01:12:42.760 hello
01:12:45.880 but what i'm saying on that is everybody knows what box you check
01:12:55.900 we understand those things instead of constantly looking for internal division we should focus on
01:13:02.940 unity and uh facing the challenges of this world together as opposed to subdividing into more and
01:13:11.280 more extreme groups of people with less cohesion and less,
01:13:14.560 less force behind their numbers.
01:13:21.560 We were just talking about that. And I think it's,
01:13:26.580 it's important that we have standards, but at the same time,
01:13:29.200 we don't want to break it down to the point, like you just said,
01:13:31.920 that was a great point.
01:13:33.140 We don't want to break it down to where now our cohesion as a group is
01:13:36.460 actually negatively affected because we're purity spiraling too much.
01:13:41.280 There's a balance there that we, I say in general, we do a good job of.
01:13:49.180 Matt, is the idea of a youth group only stopped by distance of AFA children or not enough children?
01:13:54.900 Have the AFA hitting 1,000 changed anything, or is this all just to be determined in the future?
01:14:04.000 So 1,000 is a number, and it's really cool.
01:14:08.340 substantively for this issue. It's not particularly different from 999, nor is it
01:14:16.680 different from, you know, 1,001. So 1,000 is a really cool mark that we've reached,
01:14:21.980 but it doesn't fundamentally change the equation that our children are separated by too much
01:14:26.880 distance. It is absolutely something we would love to do is to have more youth programs, to have,
01:14:33.040 an AFA version of scouting. Shoot, if we had enough close together, an AFA youth sports kind
01:14:42.660 of a deal. But it's very hard right now with having not only enough proximity of children,
01:14:48.960 but also proximity of children of the same age groups. One thing I'm very hopeful for is with
01:14:54.360 Sigerheim, especially if we get more members to move to that general area, that we'll be able to
01:14:59.940 do more getting our kids together more often i think that is a spot we can very realistically
01:15:05.300 consider um summer camps for children those kind of things i think it's also
01:15:13.540 something that many of us very much like to do is get local children local afa children
01:15:18.820 that are in the area to be able to come together and be educated in a uh like a frontier school
01:15:25.300 house kind of thing where you have all the ages in the same room being educated by a couple of
01:15:30.580 teachers but with the advance of the astrue academy that's a very realistic thing we could
01:15:36.500 do at siggerheim is have everyone meet in the hall or meet in a in a spot and a couple of the parents
01:15:42.500 do the teaching for all of the children even if we have a wide age uh spread
01:15:47.460 those of you who may not know by this um the fall you know the fall registration for the
01:15:57.620 astro academy we will be offering um grades k through third at the very least it's possibility
01:16:07.800 of k through fourth but k through third for sure so uh that's something i'm very proud of
01:16:14.020 Dean Rob Stamm has done an amazing job with it. All of his volunteers have done excellent work.
01:16:19.860 That has been a huge thing moving us to the next level and I'm very excited about it.
01:16:25.060 It runs for all to be compliant with all 50 states as well as some provinces in Canada.
01:16:35.060 So if you were interested in homeschooling your child and your child this fall is going to fall
01:16:39.860 between um kindergarten and third possibly fourth grade please let us know and we can try to get
01:16:46.980 you involved in that so far it's being very well received by parents the students are doing very
01:16:52.820 well we're currently only running kindergarten this year but we're making really rapid advancements on
01:16:58.580 it um gentlemen your thoughts on current ai rollout and metaverse escapism hype
01:17:09.780 any thoughts on a technological society and its future by professor
01:17:17.860 uh keksinsky of kogsinski's books thanks lou do you do you have a lot on this
01:17:25.860 I think that as Asatruar, as AFA members, I don't think we really have too many transhumanists
01:17:40.020 here in AFA. I think what we're trying to do sort of speaks to our roots that go into
01:17:47.180 the ground, our ancestors' bones buried in the ground and sort of bringing life to us 0.96
01:17:55.140 here in the present day in terms of uh of ai and transhumanism i do think it's kind of a trap
01:18:04.420 and i think it's kind of a way to sort of take away the power that we have and i think generally
01:18:10.820 speaking i think most of us would sort of stay away from that now in terms of kaczynski and
01:18:16.580 sort of his warnings about the ai and about technology negatively affecting humanity
01:18:26.020 yeah i can sympathize with some of it i'm not you know i'm not the biggest uh ted kachinsky fan but
01:18:32.020 i could definitely see he he did make some good points absolutely i mean no i i think i fall
01:18:38.500 somewhere in between i'm i'm not a transhumanist by any means not even close but i think that
01:18:44.500 that there is some good in technology, that there is something to be said for advancing
01:18:51.140 the way that we do things. And I think one day, a lot of us have always talked about this,
01:18:57.080 but one day I think our future is beyond, possibly beyond this planet and into others. But
01:19:03.300 you know, it's hard to say, but in terms of AI or putting yourself in a virtual metaverse,
01:19:09.780 I don't think that really appeals to that many of us or any of us certainly doesn't appeal to me.
01:19:17.720 So, yeah, I did not realize that we were talking about the Unabomber's book.
01:19:21.860 Yeah, this last name is hard for me to wrap my English speaking mind around.
01:19:26.860 Cool. No, I.
01:19:33.120 That's one of those things that you can drive yourself insane stressing about.
01:19:37.640 um i don't think any of us like transhumanism but it's like i talked about earlier if we
01:19:45.380 obsess about transhumanism all day every day it leads to us sitting around in a in a meth shack
01:19:51.520 and it leads to suicide and really bad things so i don't spend my time stressing about things
01:19:57.740 that there's not a lot to be done about um technology is awesome there are ways that
01:20:06.640 you can use it for absolutely evil, evil purposes. There's also amazing, amazing things that have
01:20:12.060 been done by it. And we're all enjoying this chat this evening because of the wonders of technology.
01:20:18.940 Us doing this in this way 20 years ago would be, you know, shocking. So technology is really cool.
01:20:28.320 It's all in how you use it and what purpose you use it for. It's an uncomfortable truth that as
01:20:35.680 much as we are fearful of technology under the current overlords, Steve MacNallan's always
01:20:44.100 talked about intergalactic space travel and all of these things. We can't achieve that without
01:20:49.760 technology. And I don't think that we can achieve travel between the stars without some form of AI.
01:20:55.980 So I think that it's all in how these things are used, but it's very easy to have a fear response
01:21:03.140 to it and i don't think that's necessary and uh not an expert on everything that uh
01:21:11.860 mr kaczynski did or didn't do or thought or didn't think
01:21:17.540 but i don't think his obsession with this subject was healthy
01:21:21.940 and i think that any of us could see that it metastasized in a very unhealthy way for him 0.68
01:21:26.900 um if you had a hof close to you in the western usa where would be a great spot
01:21:35.660 and what gods or goddesses would it honor
01:21:37.980 so lou what are you hoping for if you get a hof down in the southwest
01:21:44.920 what do you do you have uh of our upcoming gods do you have one that you would like to see
01:21:53.200 their half land in i don't know say phoenix what do you think yeah i i would say heimdall
01:22:01.920 out of the ones that are coming up just because he is the the shining god the brightest
01:22:07.660 god and living in the desert we can definitely relate to that we can relate to the power of
01:22:14.040 light i mean it has an extreme amount of power over us and and we hail of course we hail suna
01:22:22.280 to just the sun itself but but i think heimdall also guarding the entrance into oscar that sort
01:22:31.220 of appeals to us too because the southwestern states are border states now i don't know if
01:22:36.220 i don't know which state if it's going to be arizona or texas or whichever it is but i think
01:22:41.960 that uh heimdall the heimdall's hof would be uh a border state that sort of that sort of fits in
01:22:51.360 that's sort of what I think about it I don't think that's a bad I like all those reasons
01:23:00.320 and I don't think that's an impossible thing in an impossible time frame either
01:23:05.080 we are very set on Frazehoff very set on Tiershoff the the question mark is what to do where to put
01:23:15.020 Bragge's Hoff, and then Heimdall would follow directly after Bragge, figuring out where that
01:23:21.480 Hoff would be. You know, we do definitely, we would love to have some more Hoffs out west. We
01:23:26.220 have a lot of Hoffs in the east as present. We've got to get the population there, and we've got to 1.00
01:23:31.440 get ordained Gothar to be able to man these Hoffs, and so that's kind of one of the things on the
01:23:36.120 back end that we're really looking for, but this, you know, we're several years out from that, and I
01:23:41.220 that's a realistic goal that we can try to work towards make it happen
01:23:46.740 uh lou you said one of your ancestors was born and lived in austria-hungary do you know if you
01:23:53.060 are in any way hungarian that is a great question and i actually recently relatively recently in the
01:24:01.300 last couple years found out that yes i am hungarian somewhere around i mean it's not a lot
01:24:06.980 somewhere around four to five percent but yes i am i am part hungarian i've actually found a guy
01:24:14.980 that that's uh completely hungarian who is related to me on one of the uh the gene services that i
01:24:22.980 use i use several of them but i was able to find him and kind of reach out to him but uh yes i am
01:24:30.260 a small part hungarian was it the great value charles bronson have you seen that guy that
01:24:35.380 makes his living like pretending to be charles bronson no some people on this chat know what
01:24:42.260 i'm talking about remember he even changed his name to be more similar anyway somebody somebody
01:24:47.300 out there knows what i'm talking about i'm not making it up a promise um and then last question
01:24:52.020 that i see for us this evening is uh anything in east tennessee from a guy named smoky mountain
01:24:58.900 bushcraft tons of stuff in tennessee coming up eastern tennessee not quite so you may not be
01:25:07.460 aware but we got uh we recently acquired about 70 acres of land in northern east central tennessee
01:25:19.140 and um we're very excited we are building um that's where tiershoff will eventually go
01:25:27.140 That's where a big AFA hall will go. That will be the capital and administrative center of the
01:25:33.460 Astro Folk Assembly, as well as housing. Several members of the AFA are going to move there and
01:25:41.060 build homes there on that site. And we're hopeful that quite a few of our members will move to the
01:25:46.740 general area. So we've got big things planned in Tennessee. Hope that answers your question.
01:25:54.180 It's a pretty short one tonight, but I don't know how much my throat can really take on it.
01:25:58.960 Lou, thank you so much for joining us.
01:26:01.440 It's a pleasure to have you on the program.
01:26:03.400 And we appreciate you telling us a little bit about AFA hero Ivan Kinriffi.
01:26:10.540 And just being on here and sharing your thoughts with us tonight.
01:26:13.200 Thanks, Lou.
01:26:14.240 Thank you for having me.
01:26:15.640 Appreciate that.
01:26:16.980 Absolutely.
01:26:17.420 All right.
01:26:18.160 Well, we'd love to have you on again sometime and hopefully very soon.
01:26:21.020 And guys, until next week, hail the gods, hail the folk, hail the AFA.
01:26:27.040 And remember, victory never sleeps.
01:26:51.020 Transcription by CastingWords
01:27:21.020 Thank you.
01:27:51.020 Thank you.
01:28:21.020 Thank you.
01:28:51.020 We'll be right back.
01:29:21.020 We'll be right back.