Can't Evil Just Get Along?

It truly is hilarious to watch right-wing extremists eat their own. According to this story from The Daily Beast, the White Nationalist movement is working to cut ties with an extremist group called Atomwaffen Division. But it has nothing to do with the group being neo-Nazis, or being violent, or anything like that. The problem is that Atomwaffen Division is associated with a satanic group called the Order of Nine Angles. So they're still evil, but they're the wrong kind of evil.

White nationalists are disavowing the murderous neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen Division—not because of the murder, but because the group can’t shake persistent rumors that it’s a gateway organization for a satanic cult.

Atomwaffen is an extremist group that received national attention after being implicated in five murders from May 2017 to January 2018. But even before the most recent slaying, Atomwaffen was under fire from others on the far right who claimed the group was actually a mouthpiece for the Order of Nine Angles, a satanic group that encourages members to infiltrate extremist political movements, whose members might be susceptible to conversion.

It doesn’t help that, until recently, Atomwaffen pushed the satanic group’s literature on one of its websites. Atomwaffen claims to have been founded in 2013, although its membership surged after a deadly white nationalist demonstration in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August, ProPublica previously reported. The group now has approximately 20 cells across the U.S., according to ProPublica. “The satanist group requires members to spend six months either hitchhiking, working as a burglar, working as a police officer, or infiltrating an extremist political group—a group like Atomwaffen.”

The Order of Nine Angles is British-based, but steeped in Nazism. A fringe occultist group whose literature encourages human sacrifices, the ONA champions Nazi Germany and pushes Holocaust denialism. One of the group’s longest-running leaders, Anton Long, is rumored to have been a pseudonym for the known neo-Nazi David Myatt.

And I just have to laugh. I supposed that ONA can be proud that it's being shunned as "too evil" by other Nazis. I also find it amusing, in a darkly humorous sort of way, that being a murderous terrorist group with cells and everything isn't a dealbreaker, but if you mention anything about Satan - well, there's the door. My guess is that it has something to do with Christian White Nationalists getting spooked by anything having to do with the devil, but failing to comprehend that whether or not they're any better remains an open question.

This reminds me of comic book super-villains who try to team up, but find themselves at each other's throats practically right away. Let's hope this trend continues. If it does, the resulting discord might just tear the entire movement apart.