separation of coven and state

At the Libertarian Convention:

On the way out of the Denver convention, defeated candidate and Massachusetts party chair George Phillies pulled me aside to express how worried he was about the Barr/Root ticket. "This is a train wreck," he said. "My delegation* is majority pagan.”

Meanwhile:

Why is everyone so totally gobsmacked when they meet a Witch who is also a patriot, a committed libertarian and a firearms instructor?

Comments

[Demon]

So pagans can become right wing war-lovin' American yahoos too?

The power of social conformity revealed again.

Europe also has quite a big crossover between Odin/Thor worshipers (the Norse Gods revivalists) and fascist, Aryan supremacists.

Will we see English Druids joining the BNP? (let's get the indigenous population of this island back to its original religious practices - away with the alien, semitic faiths of the Christian, Jew and Muslim!)

The local bank manager can perform a human sacrifice at Stonehenge, then pop off to the Monday Club for its weekly meeting on Tory party immigration policy.

[Nick L]

In 2007 I lived in the flat above a Druid priestess who told me that many pagans and druids in the UK did indeed worry about neo-nazis being attracted to their religion.

[Cian]

Druids tend to be quite left wing, and can be quite militant (fair few were involved in the anti-roads protests). There's some crossover with the anarcho-Crass types as well, apparently. I've liked the Druids I've met.

Wicca (particularly the barmy lot who believe that there used to be a real witch cult) can be quite right wing in a Daily Mail kind of way. Lots of mutterings about Europe and foreigners, that kind of thing. I guess not that surprising, given the attraction to tradition (however made up), ancient beliefs, that kind of thing. On the other hand, plenty of them are pretty decent types.

But the truly barmy lot are indeed the Norse revivalists. Also quite a few of the Magick lot (post Alistair Crowley/Chaos Magick) have a kind of Niestsche uberman thing going on. I hesitate to call them fascistic, as these are the kind of people who could have a row in solitary, but certainly there are tendencies. You also get a lot of these types in the post-Industrial music world (the stuff that came in the wake of Nurse With Wound, Coil, Psychic TV, etc), who tend to be into magick/bonkers politics of the extremely selfish kind.

Actually if you want bizarro politics, the occult world is a really good place to start.