"They're not really heathens" is not, has never been and will never be an effective way of confronting pagan fascism and in fact just continues to allow it to flourish and it's long past time people grappled with that. https://twitter.com/BoatsojTsahke/status/1347340358347321344

There's not any actual basis for lamenting the "theft" of these symbols, at the end of the day. Fascists built the house. In many cases we don't have any historical basis for what some symbols meant; fascists defined a number of them outright.

Most well meaning heathens i see fundamentally misunderstand the geography of the battlefield they find themselves on, they don't understand the positioning of the combatants or the context for the conflict. This is absolutely fucking ubiquitous. 3/

I'll say it again. Fascists built the house. They didn't steal the symbols, the symbols have to be stolen back from them (in cases where they aren't too far gone). Heathenry was born in imperial nationalism and proto nazi lecture halls. 4/

The framework of "Indoeuropean" theology came from fascists like Eliade who baked their political ideas of the return to the golden age into their academic works. And the modern heathen movement came out of a too amicable split that let fascists operate with impunity for yrs 5/

While the "inclusive" side of that split passively accumulated members the Odinists were doing prison outreach, recruiting within the military. Actively building and converting. And yet a "vocal minority" narrative has prevailed as baseless as the theft narrative 6/

And to be clear: universalists helped and readily prioritized and worked with them on making inroads in the military. Wittingly or not, aided in Odinist recruitment. 7/

The only answer to fascist heathenry- which, however much we don't wanna hear it, is baseline heathenry- is actively, doggedly, intentionally antifascist heathenry. Purposely redesigned from the ground up. 8/

No more valknuts. No more "tribalism" middle ground. No more viking machismo. No more NNV. No more settler hero archetype. No more "religion with homework" exclusionism. No more insularity. No more inneryard. 9/

No more "indoeuropeanism" that's still rooted in aryanism. No more islamiphobic alliances w/ hindutva and others under the guise of that indoeuropeanism. No more anti-queer sentiments disguised in anti-Lokiism. No more misogyny veiled in anti-wiccanism. 10/

No more fucking anti-semitism and islamiphobia buried in discussions of "abrahamic religions." No more valorization of imperial militarism. No more nationalism. No more appropriation. 11/

At which point you'd be right to ask "what's left?" Which is why I say something new has to be built. A heathenry that stops whining about fascists and starts protecting the actual victims of fascists. That recognizes pagans' obligations to indigenous peoples. 12/

That stops making its environmentalism about consumerism and starts making it about ecological justice-- something even iron age heathens were fucking shit at. Which means not being so married to historicity that we don't give a shit about the actual world we live in. 13/

A heathenry that snuffs out atavism as readily as it does fascism bc it understands they're drawn from the same well. Other people have better ideas than me of what's needed. My skillset has always, for better or worse, been tailored to seeing what's wrong. 14/

This is too long a thread at this point and no one will read it but I'm so tired of seeing the impotent whining that never accepts our own complicity and responsibility. 15/15