Asatru_ Native Spirituality of European Folk
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Summary
In the wake of recent attacks on the AFA, we thought it would be a good idea to talk about the origins of Asa True and why it's important to understand what it means to be a part of it. In this episode, we talk to the founder of the organization, Matt Flayville.
Transcript
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This is Radio 314 on the Red Ice Radio Network.
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So many European folk today are attracted to it.
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Asa True is about roots, connection, and coming home.
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It's an expression of the native pre-Christian spirituality of Europe.
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No, it's not role-playing, playing dress-up or something witchy feminist liberals practice.
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And we'll talk about this as the AFA has been under fire for being a discriminatory organization.
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Yeah, I had the pleasure of meeting you and your lovely wife at an austera celebration.
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A lot of our people have been big fans for a long time.
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I thought that today we'd, you know, start with some of the basics because people always
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So maybe we can talk about that and then talk about some of the other recent attacks that
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It's kind of an old Norse word that means trough or loyalty to the Aesir.
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So it basically means loyalty to the old gods of Europe.
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Well, it's our belief that it started with the dawn of our people way back, you know,
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as soon as our people became identified as a group.
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But more recently, it kind of got a restart back in the early 70s.
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And it was interesting because it got a simultaneous reboot unbeknownst to one another, both in Iceland
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and in England and then in the United States, and all within about three years of each other
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I guess an easy way to explain it would probably be it's an expression of the native, you know,
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I know people are attracted to the Abrahamic religions because I think humans, we have a
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You know, why is the religion of our ancestors best for us, in your view?
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Well, I mean, I guess let me ask you to answer that in two ways.
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I'll tell you a little bit about my coming to Alistair and what my thought process was.
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I was a very spiritual person growing up, and I got into my early adulthood, and I was
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really spiritual, but I wasn't raised with a lot of religion.
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And my aunt and their family were Jehovah's Witnesses.
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And so I got into that for a little bit because I figured, you know, what options do I have
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So I tried to do that really hard and found out that it was progressively more and more
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trying to beat a square peg into a round hole, and it just wasn't good.
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I examined the biblical God, and I went through and I read my Bible several times.
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I finally decided that if this is what there is, then the God of the Bible is not someone
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I want to associate with and not someone I want to be a part of.
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By human standards, they would be a bad person, and I couldn't be part of that.
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And so then I broke with Christianity, and I found myself still very spiritual.
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And so it occurred to me, you know, what did our people have before Christianity?
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Because, you know, I was a student of history, and I appreciated those things.
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So I tried to think, what did we have before that?
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And that got me thinking, got me looking, and soon enough I found the AFA, and I found,
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you know, I wasn't the only person who thought like that, and that was a really good feeling.
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It's amazing that our parents and our grandparents, a lot of them don't even know, but it's up
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to people like us to kind of do the research and kind of bring it back to life.
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Yeah, and when I think about, you know, Asatru and paganism, I think it was started by our
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Not just some strangers in the Middle East that we don't really have much in common with,
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You asked, you know, why this is the best for our people, and it's because it's native
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It springs from the very folk soul, the root of our people.
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The gods of Asatru are the gods of our blood, of our heritage.
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They reflect our people and our unique way of dealing with the world.
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The founder of the AFA, Steve McNeill, and he talks about that when he talks about metagenetics.
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It's, and it's the idea that your spiritual outlook and your spirituality is passed on
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genetically, much like your other traits you passed on.
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So what do you think about the claim, you know, that our ancestors, they were just simple-minded
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savages, you know, they just ate meat and drank mead.
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We always hear that when people think of pagans or Vikings.
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Well, one of the things that I'd like to clear up that's different from the AFA and, you
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You know, I, the Vikings did a lot of cool stuff.
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But in the same way that gangster rappers all want to wear Jesus pieces and have their blinged
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out crosses, they're not an example of the Christian faith.
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I don't think that Viking marauders are the prime example of thousands of years of European
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We have a spiritual tradition that was very rich and it dates back, you know, into Neolithic
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times and to isolate it to one very, very small expression at a time where we happened
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I think too, the Vikings and the various Germanic tribes, they were the source of some of our,
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you know, finest civilized traditions, if you will.
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I mean, trial by jury, parliaments, common law, right to bear arms, rights of women, right?
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Actually, I think the word law even comes from the Norse language.
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So, I mean, there's not just simpletons that didn't bring anything and just drank and ate.
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No, they're not a complex society and they're not a society that's got roots back, you know,
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They've got a really proud spirituality with a lot of really important traditions.
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The runic tradition was a really very well-developed tradition.
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It certainly wasn't the simple picture that we did with it.
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It's funny that you mentioned kind of the role-playing or Viking reenactments.
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A lot of times when we mention paganism, a lot of people just seem to think, oh, that's
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Live-action role-playing, like you're doing dress-up or D&D and doing silly rituals.
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Unfortunately, for a lot of folks, as became obvious to me this week, it is about that.
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And I want to make a very clear separation between the AFA and the folks that that's
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Pagan tends to be a category that's, you know, synonymous with other.
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And if you don't fit in with any of the other religions, y'all get lumped in this big melting
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A lot of people do that, but it's not what we do.
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And as always, it faces the challenges that our people face and becomes and is relevant
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We're not talking about Wiccan witches or these so-called, you know, people practicing
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white magic or this modern day kind of witchy stuff, which attracts a lot of liberal feminists.
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You know, it really bothers me that people, when they think paganism, they think of these
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And it seems like they've kind of hijacked some of these fun rituals.
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And, you know, I don't want to speak to every single Wiccan out there.
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I'm sure that there are some people that do some fairly authentic spiritual practices
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There's this big milieu of hyper-liberal paganism that starts out with some kind of form of magic
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and ritual, but ends up just being an engine for social justice warriors and for very extreme
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Well, recently, I think the AFA was under fire for being racist, sexist, homophobic, discriminatory,
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Well, the AFA and myself in specific stand accused of all manner of evils from racism
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and bigotry and intolerance and homophobia and this phobia and that phobia.
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I come find out the AFA, I guess, is scared of a whole lot of things I didn't think that
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But because I had the audacity to make this post, so I posted, today we are bombarded with
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confusion and messages contrary to the values of our ancestors and our folk.
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The AFA would like to make it clear that we believe gender is not a social construct, it
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is a beautiful gift from the holy powers and from our ancestors.
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The AFA celebrates our feminine ladies, our masculine gentlemen, and above all, our beautiful
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The children of our folk are our shining future and the legacy of all those men and women of
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It exploded and it reached a shocking number of people.
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As of right now, I've got 70,519 people reached.
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So we have, you know, these are numbers that we've never seen before with a post on our website.
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And unfortunately, a lot of the early shares were to, uh, really extreme social justice
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And so we got, you know, we got floods of people we'd never heard from, never wanted to
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And, uh, very few of them had anything productive to say or any honest disagreement.
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We had a lot of threats, a lot of name calling, and a whole lot of just hate and vitriol because
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I had the audacity to say what I just told you guys.
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I mentioned that I appreciate traditional genders and that the AFA likes beautiful white children.
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It would never be an issue with non-whites gathering for their native religion, only when
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it's these European people who are preserving and wanting to honor their heritage and have
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You know, no one tells these tribes deep in, you know, South America that they need to add
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I mean, really, I mean, when did it become a heathen sin to be focused?
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Uh, you know, I don't, I certainly don't think that was the case with our ancestors.
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And at the, the founding of Auschwitz in the United States, that was never a case.
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It wasn't until so much, much later that we started getting these, uh, what we call universalist,
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uh, Auschwitz people, universalist heathen people.
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And then, then that kind of just became, like I said earlier, that mixed in the pot of this
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generic other paganism that, uh, really doesn't have a lot of form and is fairly amorphous.
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And, uh, seems to have coalesced around self-loathing and pushing a hyper-liberal agenda.
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I mean, it doesn't focus mean it means a tribe, ethnic or a racial group, a nation.
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And there's a certain number of people that became okay with that on some level, but,
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uh, you know, I'm having to become familiar with this whole new, whole new liberal lexicon
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now, but I guess that using, using the word white to identify, uh, to self-identify or to
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identify our people has, it triggers some folks.
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I mean, we really, we don't owe any kind of explanation for this.
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But what I notice, isn't it mostly white people that are attacking you over this?
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I, I, I'm unaware of any, uh, any other races of people that are, that are speaking out
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Um, but yeah, self, self-loathing, self-loathing, uh, other white people are the ones that are
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To tell them, okay, well, why don't you go join an African or Asian native religion and
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see, see if how, if they welcome you with open arms, right?
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Apparently, apparently that argument has, has very little weight with them.
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One of the other things that made them very angry is, uh, we didn't allow, we didn't allow,
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We decided our page wasn't a, uh, a platform for them to spew, spew hatred.
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And, uh, so we, we didn't let their comments be viewed and that incensed them that how,
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how dare we not give them, you know, free space to post hatred and threats about us.
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When we say the truth, it's hate speech, but then they just have the right to be hateful
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It's funny because I have literally had people advocating violence and death to, uh, to me
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and to, to our people in the same statement of, because of our hate speech, because of
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our hate, because of our hate and intolerance, they were going to do this violence to us.
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So it's amazing how they just, they can't see like what has gone on in their head.
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I think it's just so much of this Marxist anti-white programming.
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I think we've been, we've been bombarded with that.
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And that's, that's one of the reasons that I posted what I posted is I wanted to be very
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Um, some people are so conditioned that they, they don't get it.
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And, uh, I don't know why, but these things, you know, have this guttural reaction that
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I'm, I'm very proud of who I am and I'm very proud of my people and the Astrofocus
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in me being proud of, of being a proud white organization for the advancement of our
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I mean, worst case scenario, what do these people think is going to happen?
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You almost want to ask them, what do you think is going to happen?
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I mean, what are they honestly in their demented view of us think that we're going to do at
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I have the audacity to have a different opinion than me.
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And I think that in and of itself is, is something that's, that's a step too far for them to be
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It's almost like too, they think that we're going to be plotting some kind of genocide of
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other people or something there, you know, Oh, too many white people getting together.
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It's going to mean that they're plotting some kind of conquest, right?
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Well, well, maybe, but I've heard in their very responses to, uh, to my posts, suggestions
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that they were going to breed us out and that in a generation there wouldn't be any more white
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And their advocacy of genocide seems to be, be to the forefront.
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I've been to a lot of AFA events and never have we discussed genociding any other groups
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Well, the other thing is our ancestors, they didn't talk about trans rights or multiculturalism
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Worrying about those, you know, those petty things is beneath them.
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So do you think now that you're going to get kind of maybe some of these lefty types infiltrating
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some of your gatherings to spy and keep an eye on you guys?
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One thing that we're kind of fortunate about is these other groups of people seem to be
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fairly dysfunctional and, uh, and unable to really, to really come out of the various
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basements and things and, and, and show up and get things accomplished.
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One of the suggestions by our supporters in response to this is, hey, if you guys don't
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like it, how about you guys go do your own thing?
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How about you guys, you know, get together with groups that support the things that you believe
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in and things you want to do instead of spending your time complaining.
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But unfortunately, I guess that's more fun or takes a little bit more effort or, uh, is
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I mean, what, what would make them happen in their view to, to be acceptable in their
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Would it mean that you would have to be multicultural and have trannies and gay families?
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I think that, you know, some of these people, and certainly not everybody who disagrees with
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Um, but the really, the really vicious ones that made such a stink, I think so.
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I think anything short of complete and total giving up and praising of their strange lifestyles
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and their strange choices, anything short of that's unacceptable.
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I think not only do they want us to accept them, but I think they want us to praise them
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and champion their, uh, their extreme stances and extreme behaviors.
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And, uh, you know, I think that if they, some of them literally from what they've said to
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me would, will only be happy when, uh, our race is no longer a distinguishable group of
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Yeah, it's interesting how, I mean, what we're talking about, this religion, it's in touch
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So then how is someone who does shots to change their sexuality, what would they relate to
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And one of the reasons I want to make a clear distinction between us and this greater, greater
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You get people that for whatever reason, and I don't mean this for every other pagan out
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This is specifically to the people that I've heard, uh, attack us in the past week.
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I think quite often they suffer from some rather severe mental illness problems that I don't mean
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But I think there's probably very big problems in those people's lives.
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Um, they suffer from a lot of these things to where life just doesn't work out for them.
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And so they get pushed to a fringe and they get marginalized.
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And unfortunately, that fringe tends to coalesce in, you know, these alternative fringe things,
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which that greater pagan community seems to be a net that scoops those people up.
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And then you have, and then you have on the extreme opposite, there's probably some gay people
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that are like, yeah, the family unit, that is the healthy way.
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And I think that, you know, I think that you, I think that you guys see that in the alt-right
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You've got, you've got people that, you know, just because it's not their lifestyle or what
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they're doing, they can still see that the healthy families and traditional families are
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And obviously our ancestors valued them or we wouldn't be here today having this conversation.
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It's just what times are we in when just the thought of white couples making white babies
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It's like, it's like looking at a gas chamber or something when you see families like that.
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Well, it seems to, that seems to be the same thing in a lot of these people's heads.
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You know, looking, looking back and I've looked back and looked over my statement over and
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over, there's nothing negative said in there at all.
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There was no slams at any other people in the other communities.
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There was simply a statement of things that we like and things that we support as an organization.
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And it's unfortunate that, you know, we can't, we can't specify things that we like without
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that immediately meaning some kind of hate, some vitriol towards anybody else.
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It's like they want to police everyone's thoughts where you can't even do things peacefully,
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organizing and having your group and minding your own business.
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They now even want to go into those places and force you to do what they want.
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Well, the champions of diversity and of tolerance are anything but, and they cannot tolerate
00:21:18.220
And it's kind of shocking the level that they will go, like I say, there's been an abdication
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of violence and of preventing people's rights to have free speech and free exercise of our
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And it's, it's really shocking that they don't get the disconnect between tolerance and the
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So what do you think the future of the AFA would look like if these people got their
00:21:42.180
There would be no future of the AFA if these people got their way.
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If these people got their way, eventually there'll be no separation.
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And you already see this in some of the other, like I said, universalist organizations.
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They're not, they're not about something that they're, they're positively for.
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They're increasingly about things that they, they're against.
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Whereas the AFA is for the worship of our gods, for the establishment of our, of our
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religion, for a positive set of values for, like I mentioned, the things that we believe
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You read theirs and it's, well, we will not tolerate racism.
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And they just have a list of will nots and do nots.
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You can't define yourself by all the things you're against.
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You have to define yourself by a positive vision you have for what you're doing going
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And that's what the AFA always has done and will continue.
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If you keep telling people what they can't do, they're going to want to do exactly those
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That's why I think a lot of young kids are going to start rebelling against that.
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But it tells you how controlling they are when now they want to go in there and police
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You are free to do all manner of very strange things that our grandparents' generation would
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be shocked and mortified by it, but you're not free to express your faith if there's
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any exclusivity to it, assuming that you are heterosexual or white.
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Any other groups of people, though, by all means, go ahead and do it as exclusive as you
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But I don't know why there's a different set of rules that apply.
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Now, do you think that you're going to get some kind of organizations trying to peg the
00:23:32.000
Oh, I think people try to do that all the time.
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But, you know, as I've said before, they won't find anywhere where the AFA is talking about
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the things we hate because, quite frankly, it's a waste of our time.
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We have too many good things we're trying to do.
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So let's talk about some of those good things that you do there.
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You mentioned earlier that there's a lot of natural cycles that we celebrate.
00:24:01.640
The kind of big things we celebrate are the solstices and the equinoxes.
00:24:06.020
But just about every month, there's something that our folks are celebrating.
00:24:10.180
And we've got now four big celebrations, five big celebrations as of this year that we do
00:24:19.660
The next one's coming up in Minnesota this weekend.
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We get groups of families and our folk together to give bloat, which is our big worship service
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to the gods, to kind of share in an offering with the gods.
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We talk about things we'd like to see progress on moving forward, ways to better ourselves
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We also do an event called Sumble at these things.
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And that's kind of a between-people communion ritual of sharing meat as we go around and
00:25:00.760
honor our ancestors and honor the heroes of our folk.
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But there's a whole lot of smaller events that the AFA does.
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Just about every weekend, we have an AFA group in some part of the world or another
00:25:14.780
getting together with their community and celebrating our holy gods and our ancestors.
00:25:19.900
Yeah, I think anything that we can do to remember our line, our ancient culture, and inspire
00:25:25.220
young children to be interested in their culture is a positive thing.
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I mean, I saw kids at the gathering that we went to, and kids love the seasonal celebration.
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It's going to be a good association growing up with it.
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But I think Baluta is also, it's a good way to take time to just slow down and remember
00:25:44.680
and honor the change in season and your ancestors, because we just get so busy.
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But then also, it's a good way to come together, I think, with like-minded people and encourage
00:25:56.520
each other, kind of recharge your batteries and be encouraged and have fellowship, because
00:26:01.180
people do need that in these times we're in, right?
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I run into people that are what we call solitary practitioners, and they're off by themselves
00:26:12.140
And if that's all they can do in their situation, that's great.
00:26:17.760
But you really get the feel for it when you have a community and when you get together
00:26:25.920
We don't have anybody that comes out to our events and then regress it afterwards.
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But I have heard a lot of people come out to our events, and it's life-changing for them.
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I know that was my case when I went to my first one.
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Now, a lot of times people think, oh, you're just worshiping nature or worshiping your
00:26:45.680
I think, I don't know, words have different meanings to different people.
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We certainly worship our ancestors, and we worship the gods of our people.
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But more than that, we try to honor them and respect them.
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And we view our ancestors, and even gods themselves to a degree, as our ancestors, as our most ancient
00:27:05.140
We try to live the values that they inspire in us and have always inspired in our ancestors.
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It really roots us in who we are and where we come from.
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And I think you'll find across the board that any people, when they are proud of themselves,
00:27:21.260
proud of the people that they come from, proud of their identity, they function better in
00:27:31.680
You can never function without having some sense of identity.
00:27:36.140
Well, and at the risk of going back to the W word, I think that's why people are so offended by the
00:27:42.740
word of life, because it is a way for us to specifically identify our people.
00:27:51.460
But we can't even mention, you know, what race of people we are.
00:28:05.020
This is what we're talking about is rooted in biology.
00:28:07.660
It's rooted in what's right in front of our face.
00:28:11.120
I mean, you're not ever going to stop this or change the fact that we're white.
00:28:22.260
So let's talk about some of these basic tenets of Asatru, if you can summarize that.
00:28:28.080
Well, some of the basic tenets of Asatru, and this is something that most people generally
00:28:32.820
are very accepting of, is the nine noble virtues.
00:28:37.020
And these are values that come to us through, you know, an understanding of our ancestors
00:28:45.040
And there's ways to apply these and live these in their later lives.
00:28:50.180
The second is truth, honor, fidelity, discipline, hospitality, self-reliance, industriousness,
00:29:04.080
And, you know, we think by living those values and trying to practice those in our daily
00:29:14.060
And those are good things to live your life by.
00:29:17.560
And things that certainly were very important to our ancestors and to our people from time
00:29:22.700
Yeah, it's interesting how people think, where would we be without the Ten Commandments, as
00:29:27.520
though our ancestors were just wild people who treated everyone like crap and treated each
00:29:33.580
No, they had these values instilled into them and talked about it all the time, right?
00:29:39.840
A person's reputation and how they behaved was key to our ancestors on how they valued people.
00:29:47.900
You were judged by your deeds and by your reputation.
00:29:54.640
It's one of the things when we talk about, you know, the Aryan tribes of people, that's
00:29:58.180
a Sanskrit word that means noble and implies shining nobility.
00:30:03.100
There's a time where our people were identified by how noble they were.
00:30:06.320
And then you can flip all the opposites, too, that they probably despised.
00:30:17.080
All that kind of reminds me of liberalism, actually.
00:30:21.560
There was definitely things that they didn't tolerate.
00:30:24.040
And the kind of shenanigans I've seen from our detractors this last week, I think our ancestors
00:30:29.140
have been pretty clear in there that are disavowing of that kind of behavior.
00:30:33.060
It's different because back then they could just take it out on the battlefield, right?
00:30:45.940
Oftentimes the biggest detractors and these Viking reenactors that we run into, they're
00:30:53.660
the least likely to want to live an authentic lifestyle that our ancestors would have lived
00:30:58.680
that, you know, required industriousness and required courage on the battlefield in doing
00:31:05.320
We've replaced that, I guess, with courage on the keyboard.
00:31:10.540
Well, I see a resurgence of things changing, especially in the pro-white scene and also
00:31:15.540
true, you know, more manly men are coming back and people who are more vocal and unapologetic
00:31:22.940
And I think that's another reason why our enemies are kind of worried about us getting
00:31:27.680
into our native religions and native history and learning the truth about that because
00:31:32.400
it awakens something powerful and awakens something where we're not, we're not a shame.
00:31:37.380
We just charge head, charge ahead and don't care what they say.
00:31:42.620
I think that's one thing that's kind of irritated them, you know, in this last week is the response
00:31:47.520
has been overwhelmingly positive and successful as far as people that we would actually want
00:31:53.780
We've had support pouring in from all over the place because they were, they felt the
00:31:58.680
need to spread their outcry so far and wide that it, you know, it kind of advertised the
00:32:03.060
positive things that we were about to a lot of different people.
00:32:05.300
So that's been, that's been a really beautiful thing that's come of it.
00:32:08.040
I think our enemies are very incensed that we've been so successful.
00:32:11.380
The Austria Folk Assembly is by far the most successful Austria organization, certainly
00:32:27.340
Like I said, just about every weekend, we've got AFA members getting out, doing something,
00:32:31.300
meeting other people and honoring their thoughts.
00:32:33.640
I think there's a lot of anger because we have been so successful.
00:32:36.680
Now you guys are seeing a lot of growth I hear.
00:32:38.660
Now, are you guys expanding into Europe at all?
00:32:40.560
Is there any networks over there and, and Australia and New Zealand?
00:32:45.380
And specifically in Europe, we've got some really, really good people over in Europe.
00:32:49.820
We've got a very, very good group of folks over in Scandinavia.
00:32:53.360
We got to visit our, our Denmark folks a number of years ago, and that was a really positive
00:32:59.460
You know, a lot of, we got, we just got a new, new apprentice folk builder over in Sweden.
00:33:04.660
And his name's Anders, and he's doing really good things over there.
00:33:15.540
We've got, we've got a number of people doing things in Europe.
00:33:19.360
We've got people, we've got people internationally now.
00:33:23.320
Wouldn't it be great, great to plan a big meetup in Europe for all these different groups
00:33:27.740
to come fly over there and meet in one central place and have a big celebration together?
00:33:40.120
Kind of like a mecha trip, you know, a yearly mecha trip.
00:33:42.860
I think we, we need that, you know, all these other groups have that and we've abandoned
00:33:47.500
Well, yeah, I'll tell you what, going over to Denmark a few years ago was very much like
00:33:51.980
Um, got to see a lot of, uh, a lot of ancient burial mounds, got to go visit dolmens and
00:33:58.840
We got to do rituals and stone circles that our ancestors have done ritual in, uh, since,
00:34:04.240
since bronze age, at least when most of these places we were at, it was really kind of special
00:34:09.500
because it wasn't like, you know, we weren't looking at history and observing something.
00:34:14.160
We were participating in rituals that our ancestors would have understood and done something very,
00:34:24.220
I wanted to ask you, what is the Asatruz stance on good and evil?
00:34:29.800
Well, there's a lot of detractors out there that want to say our people don't have those.
00:34:37.500
What we have that's more similar to that is, is order versus chaos.
00:34:42.160
Our gods are gods of order and the chaotic forces, be it the, be it the Jotuns or any of
00:34:49.960
these other forces of chaos are things that try to destroy that order.
00:34:55.660
Our gods, they're gods of order and consciousness and their struggle is always to, to beat back
00:35:04.420
You know, one, one step ahead of the, the, the maw of the wolves.
00:35:07.700
So that's kind of, that's kind of our things and things that support order and support the
00:35:14.620
Things much like I mentioned in that post are good things.
00:35:19.560
And any things that are, that are chaotic and want to tear that down, tear down society,
00:35:25.740
So those are, those are forces of chaos and destruction.
00:35:28.200
And that's, that's the stuff we have to fight against.
00:35:30.000
It's funny because that's the one thing that lefties really worry about.
00:35:33.900
Even with Trump, they were freaking out about law and order, right?
00:35:39.480
They start fearing fascism and Nazis and they just want just total chaos all the time.
00:35:48.840
I think, especially if you're, if you're dysfunctional in your own life and you're dysfunctional
00:35:54.100
and you can't function in the society that's there, I think you're, you think you're drawn
00:36:02.900
What's good in one case may not be good in another.
00:36:07.300
I mean, people view us, what we're talking about right now is evil.
00:36:11.020
Yeah, those people are mistaken, but yeah, I see exactly what you're saying.
00:36:14.960
You know, our ancestors thought, you know, the great good was what was good for your people.
00:36:21.840
And they, they saw it, you know, evil for lack of a better term.
00:36:26.720
And what was bad for your people, bad for your family and bad for your tribe by extension.
00:36:31.120
That's how the AFA likes to do those kinds of concepts as well.
00:36:38.700
There's kind of a lot of different thoughts on our afterlife.
00:36:41.740
And a lot of that varied from region to region in Europe.
00:36:45.480
But the focus of the AFA has never been really that focus on the afterlife.
00:36:49.820
Because Alistair True is a life-embracing religion.
00:36:53.040
We're not, we're not trying to, trying to wait from the, for the glorious hereafter.
00:36:57.540
We're trying to make things glorious in the world that we live in now.
00:37:00.980
We're trying to celebrate life and live a good and noble life and be remembered by our, by our families, by our friends, for the noble words and noble deeds.
00:37:12.020
So, yeah, I think it's, it's about owning your own destiny, making your life happen for yourself, not praying for someone else to do it for you or to open up the opportunities, but forging the path on your own.
00:37:26.460
That's something we've talked about within the AFA for a while now, is living that noble life and becoming the hero, doing those things for yourself, making those bold stands.
00:37:36.020
You know, for, for, for what is known of our afterlife, heroic action was the surest way to that afterlife, be that in Valhalla or be that just in the songs and the stories of your folk.
00:37:48.180
Yeah, thinking in terms of politics today, it seems like the hero is being ripped down.
00:37:53.700
You know, they might as well just raise up the court jester, right?
00:37:56.640
The victim is the, the highest, most noble thing you can be.
00:38:00.900
Strong and mighty is looked at something like, like it's wrong.
00:38:04.280
Like you should be ashamed for being strong and mighty and wanting to own your destiny and be the best that you can be.
00:38:11.920
Those things have all been pilloried in the world that we live in.
00:38:15.400
And that's something the AFA wants to really fight against.
00:38:22.340
And we're all about each of us becoming as close to that as we can be.
00:38:26.080
It's easy to, to feel, feel victimized or feel downtrodden by, by detractors and by different states of the world.
00:38:34.040
But one thing we can always do is better ourselves.
00:38:36.740
That's the AFA is all about, about making each one of our members, helping them to be better mentally, physically, spiritually,
00:38:43.680
helping them to live a more noble life, have more pride in themselves, hold their head up high and do great things.
00:38:51.580
And the only, that's, that's the one thing that we all have control over is ways to make our individual lives better.
00:39:00.340
And then when you guys come together as a whole, you're even stronger because everyone's managed to conquer things in their own life, right?
00:39:08.900
And that's exactly what we need in this interim instead of sitting around and playing victim and seeing what's happening out there.
00:39:14.600
At least we can work on our own lives and get our own houses in order and start planning and being prepared for what's going to come ahead.
00:39:21.460
Absolutely. That coming together as a, as a group and helping each other, because we've been able to be strong ourselves, that's, that's tremendous.
00:39:30.440
There's nothing I'd like better than, you know, we're all, we're all human and we have times where we need help.
00:39:34.460
There's nothing I would like more than to be surrounded by a group of strong people that have been able to fix the things in their lives to help me through it when there's something that I can't fix.
00:39:41.980
And I'd love to be able to do that for, for my fellow people, for members of my tribe.
00:39:48.800
We have a program called the Folk Services Program to where when we have members of the AFA to go through hardships, go through, you know, natural disasters, things like that, we all step forward as a community and try to help those people out and get them through.
00:40:04.340
So we're all about lifting ourselves up and then by virtue of being able to do that, lifting each other up, coming each other out.
00:40:10.220
Yeah, I think white people have been so, especially in America, we've so been independent and on our own for so long that a lot of people are craving that brotherhood or sisterhood or community or having neighbors that they can just call up and say, hey, can you help me cut down this tree or whatever?
00:40:27.740
No, and we've lost that within, you know, within a generation or two.
00:40:31.360
You know, in my grandparents' time, my grandparents knew their neighbors.
00:40:36.300
Unfortunately, where we live in today, that's far more scarce.
00:40:41.540
We've always been a people that was about the community and about our folk, about our tribe.
00:40:46.220
So the AFA in a small way is trying to make that happen.
00:40:49.900
We're seeing communities like that pop up throughout the world.
00:40:54.920
Now, what are some ways that we can incorporate some of these also true tenets or ideas into our daily life?
00:41:01.780
Well, one thing, you know, there's a lot of debate whether it's a religion or a way of life, and it's both.
00:41:10.180
Spirituality to our ancestors wasn't something you did, you know, every once in a while.
00:41:17.880
You should be also true with how you do your job at work.
00:41:20.860
You should be also true with the kind of father you are, the kind of mother you are, the kind of husband you are, the kind of son or daughter you are.
00:41:27.340
You should be also true in everything that you do and every way that you do things.
00:41:31.440
If you have that noble ideal in front of you, you know, how would my ancestors be honored by what I'm doing now?
00:41:37.540
Or would they be ashamed of me for what I'm doing now?
00:41:39.980
That's a powerful way to think, and it should affect every aspect of your life.
00:41:45.460
So how did our native ways or native spirituality die out in Europe?
00:41:50.200
I know a lot of people say Christianity, but what are your thoughts?
00:41:56.560
And I think inherently a lot of those values got passed on in different forms.
00:42:03.280
You find that the Christian church, when it came to Europe, it drastically had to alter its way of doing things to conform to the mindset of our ancestors.
00:42:11.620
You know, most of what we recognize as medieval Christianity came about by blending in a lot of our native folkways in a way that our people would accept.
00:42:21.120
So a lot of the traditions stayed on and kind of laid dormant for a while, and that's important.
00:42:29.680
But a lot of it was people giving up a faith that was theirs, that was their cultural identity they held on to, and trading it for a universal faith that didn't come from their people, that didn't represent, you know, the things that they needed in their soul.
00:42:46.900
And over time, that just kind of eroded our people, and that's given us a lot of the problems that we have today.
00:42:52.940
Well, thinking in terms of that, with some of those principles still kind of in Christianity, I know the Slavs, they had a dual faith for a couple hundred years, right?
00:43:00.240
Side by side, two different faiths, and they kind of orthodoxy merged a lot of these pagan concepts.
00:43:05.100
But do you think that the Abrahamic religions have done more harm than good?
00:43:13.420
I think that you see European culture really affecting European Christianity and making it better than it otherwise would be for a while,
00:43:22.860
and maintaining a lot of our virtues through various ways that the church did things.
00:43:27.780
But yeah, over time, we would have been much better off if we would have been able to keep our ancestral faiths intact and develop them.
00:43:35.900
Who knows how much better off we would be if we didn't have that stunted growth from this foreign creed.
00:43:41.340
Yeah, it's interesting. I see a lot of these hard Islamic people, they seem to be more concerned about paganism than Christianity.
00:43:48.880
I don't know if you've noticed that, but they really just go nuts about European pagans, more than Christians. Have you seen that?
00:43:54.360
You know, I haven't seen a whole lot of that, honestly.
00:43:58.940
That's interesting. I think maybe it's because paganism seems to be on the rise, whereas Christianity, in this age that we live in, has become weaker and weaker and weaker.
00:44:09.820
It's really trailed off with the number of people that are active participants, and the values have just kind of eroded.
00:44:16.020
You have a pope right now that doesn't stand for much of anything that the traditional church stood for, so it's kind of become unrecognizable.
00:44:25.040
So what do you think about the word heathen? A lot of people kind of fight on that.
00:44:28.900
That's what the Christian said, and, you know, it's kind of had bad associations.
00:44:33.060
What about the word heathen to describe people?
00:44:38.280
That comes up a lot, believe it or not, in our conversations.
00:44:41.960
I tend to not like it, and the reason I tend to not like it is, right now, most of the people that, you know, ended up with their hateful attacks on us last week, they like to identify with the word heathen.
00:44:59.240
So a lot of the things that they do, I try to keep my distance from as much as possible for obvious reasons.
00:45:08.700
I know a lot of people, certainly people within the AFA and people that are good friends of mine, like to use it just fine.
00:45:14.680
And the only problem I have with it is it associates us with a group of people that I would kind of not like to be associated with.
00:45:21.500
Yeah, I think it's good to come up with new terms, too.
00:45:25.800
Well, yeah, I noticed that their response to a lot of what we do is they don't want to use the term house to true anymore now.
00:45:36.860
You guys can go figure out what you'd like to call it.
00:45:41.260
Do they sit around and talk about, you know, feminism and sexism and our evil white ancestors?
00:45:49.900
It's supposed to be a religion of your ancestors and here they are, like bashing their own people.
00:45:57.100
I think that a lot of what they do is confined to the Internet and various things that they can stay from the safety and comfort of their or their parents' basements.
00:46:07.700
I think that when you get those groups and they do get together, I think that they probably have a pretty fun Viking-themed barbecue.
00:46:15.160
But I don't think that they have the same, in my experience and from what I hear, I don't think they have the same level of spirituality at their events.
00:46:21.860
And I think they're really missing that connection.
00:46:26.560
Maybe they're just heathen because it's anti-Christian, right?
00:46:29.420
They hate Europe and Europe they think is Christianity.
00:46:31.940
So it's a way for them just to rebel against that.
00:46:36.820
There's an awful lot of rebellious strain, especially when somebody first is new to Ausatru.
00:46:43.140
They want to throw out anything that has any Christianity associated to it.
00:46:47.680
And that could be the opposition between Eden and Christian.
00:46:53.420
A lot of people ask, well, how can the Norse myths help us?
00:46:59.140
Well, I think that they give us a unique window into a time of our people's development.
00:47:07.660
And it gives you a window into the things that they value.
00:47:11.140
And the trick is being able to apply those things in a modern context.
00:47:16.520
Very few of us get the opportunity to go get on our longboat and go raiding things.
00:47:21.200
So figuring out ways to exhibit the courage of a warrior in your own life, that's a challenge.
00:47:28.560
But I think that if you find ways to internalize those things, it does a lot.
00:47:34.220
A lot of those myths, once you have a historical context for them, really helps you to internalize the values, the way that our ancestors saw the divine, the way that our ancestors saw our interactions with the divine, and the way that our ancestors saw their interactions with other people and with nature.
00:47:52.260
So what else do you want people to know about Ossetru as we come to the end here?
00:47:57.960
Well, I want you to know that Ossetru, specifically practiced by the Ossetru Folk Assembly, is a modern faith for modern people.
00:48:09.800
We're not about pretending and finding how historically accurate we can larp.
00:48:15.200
What we're about doing is practicing the ancestral faith of our people back to the beginning of time and establishing that and practicing that in our modern world and meet our modern needs.
00:48:27.300
It's absolutely a faith that has serious things that we talk about, serious things that we do that are relevant to the modern families, modern people living in the world that we live in.
00:48:38.160
It has relevant answers for people's lives and helping the betterment of ourselves individually and the betterment of our people.
00:48:48.840
Well, coming up next, as I said earlier, we've got Fall Fest up in Minnesota this weekend.
00:48:57.980
It's a part of the country we haven't had a national event in before, so I'm really excited to see what we've got going up there.
00:49:02.940
We've also got Winter Nights in Poconos coming up in October, and that's always one of our big events.
00:49:11.220
That is perhaps our biggest event of the year, and it's always spectacular.
00:49:16.220
That's coming up mid-October, and that's going to be really good, and we're looking forward to that.
00:49:22.720
I've really enjoyed this, and hopefully people are going to check it out.
00:49:27.500
You guys also have a good reading list there, correct?
00:49:31.420
If you read it, if it's something that you like, please feel free to join us, because we'd love to have you with us.
00:49:40.920
There's nothing more grounded than being in tune with the Earth's natural cycles and honoring your ancestors.
00:49:46.860
Pre-Christian seasonal celebrations are a way to rejuvenate yourself, step back from your busy modern life, and connect back with nature and your folk.
00:49:54.820
I find when I get too busy and I'm on the computer too much, crave being outside in nature, away from the noise, away from the artificial aspects of life.
00:50:04.020
Too much of it is unhealthy, and, well, it kind of makes us crazy.
00:50:07.240
As unpredictable as our lives and future might be, the one constant we can count on is seasonal cycles.
00:50:16.660
It's easy to get beaten down and fed up with the ongoing war on our folk.
00:50:21.560
That's why it's important to meet up with like-minded people as a way to find encouragement, inspiration, and new energy.
00:50:28.040
The planet is constantly in a state of death and renewal, and so are we.
00:50:32.140
I think it's important to take the time to be conscious of that process and where we are in that cycle.
00:50:44.360
When one thing is out of whack, it can cause havoc and suffering in our lives.
00:50:48.440
So come to an Also True meetup or honor the seasons and folk with your friends, or privately.
00:50:54.500
You'll notice a big difference in your life when you do.
00:50:56.940
Whether we admit it or not, humans crave spirituality and need meditative, contemplative time,
00:51:01.880
and they need to connect with those of their tribe.
00:51:06.000
And like I said in the interview, children love celebrating pre-Christian traditions.
00:51:10.600
It's the best way to anchor them into the ways of their folk and their ancient culture.
00:51:15.300
Tune in this Saturday for another Weekend Warrior,
00:51:17.760
where Henrik and I talk about the latest news and events from an alt-right perspective.
00:51:21.880
Redice.tv is the website, and if you'd like to help support us with our Red Ice membership
00:51:26.700
and access all our material, including over 1,000 plus radio shows in our archives,
00:51:33.420
We're also updating the design for that, too, by the way.
00:51:38.100
Eugene, monitoring the podcast, shoved on the abbreviation.