I wrote an email yesterday protesting the use of our holy symbols by an English racist group, the British People's Party. Indrani gave me a head's up about these people, for which I wish to thank her. To make matters worse, the BPP has a Hitler Youth-type group called the "Viking Youth" and they use an Othala rune as its symbol. It's all very Nazi-ish and disgusting and is the kind of thing we, as Heathens, are going to be combating and competing with for a long time. It's difficult for the general public not to see these things and associate them with the Nazis and having these debased (if that term can be used) forms of Nazism just serves to keep that association alive.
Living in a free society there is little that can be done about such flagrant abuses of what are, to us, holy symbols, but we can make our displeasure known and we can try to shout louder than they do that the images they create are false.
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3 months ago
6 comments:
Hrafnkell,
The BPP is exactly what the Church wants as it's instrument, for the sake of opposition to Pagan Recons.
I think Church Christianity knows quite well that Pagan Reconstructionism does not incorporate racial supremacy in it's world view. But not finding the reasons they need to oppose our peaceful movement, they'll grab at anything that hints at Nazism, so as to be able to forcefully connect our philosophy to a form of extremism.
This is why, we must point out again and again, that groups like the BPP are Christian thoroughbreds! The site has several articles that drool over the one-God of Christianity and paint those who have rejected this God, as Satanists.
There's a video up on the site, where British Labour leader Gordon Brown has been parodied as a Satanist, who worships the sun and belongs to the society of Freemasons.
The first video below is titled 'Gordon Brown - Puppet of the Illuminati'. Play it and you'll find out. http://www.bpp.org.uk/videoclips.html
I want to express my thanks to you for having emailed the BPP guys with a strongly worded message.
I read the copy of it you send me, yesterday.
Good for you, H, for speaking out about this. Just imagine the outrage if they did this with the Jewish Star of David. But yet, oh, it's ok to abuse anyone else's symbolism right?
Keep up the fight!
Who says that such symbols cannot be used in it's ethnic meaning? Who owns those symbols?
Indrani, thanks for commenting and you're right - the BPP like the Nazis is composed of Christian men, women and children, not Pagans. As you say, we'll be combating that image for a long time as well.
Thank you, Granamyr. I agree with regards to the Star of David, and look how Christians react when the cross is abused.
Caturo, I think those symbols are very much ethnic. After all, they are the symbols of an ethnic religion. Some of the symbols used by one ethnic religion are also used by another (the fylfot, better known as the swastika, for one).
Ownership is a more difficult question. But I'm not complaining that they're not paying for their use. I'm complaining that our holy symbols, even our sacred alphabet, the runes, are being put to such uses (I even read somewhere that the futhark had been banned on MySpace but I don't know if that's true).
So I'd argue that the symbols, when used by Heathens or other groups that have those symbols in their past, that they're being put to both a religious and ethnic use. Using them as hate symbols, however, is not an ethnic use. The only "ethnicity" recognized by racists is "white" which is not an ethnicity at all, and as for race, there is only one, the human.