Date: 20 June 2024
Time: 18:30 to 20:00
Location: In person – Birkbeck, University of London, Clore Lecture Theatre, Clore Management Centre, Torrington Square, London WC1E 7JL

Free event – book here.

A new wave of aspiring neo-Nazi terrorists has spread around the world, including Atomwaffen Division and National Action splinters, and the Feuerkrieg Division. And they have a bible: James Mason’s Siege, which praises terrorism, serial killers, and Charles Manson. Spencer Sunshine’s book, Neo-Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism, based on years of archival work and interviews, documents for the first time the conception of Siege.

In this talk, Dr Spencer Sunshine will explore the book’s origins in 1970s debates among neo-Nazis who left the American Nazi Party/National Socialist White People’s Party (NSWPP) and then spun off a terrorist faction. Second, it will address how four 1980s countercultural figures — musicians, Boyd Rice and Michael Moynihan; Feral House publisher, Adam Parfrey; and Satanist Nikolas Schreck — discovered and promoted Mason.

Spencer Sunshine has been researching the U.S. Far Right for 20 years. He holds a PhD in Sociology and is the author of Neo-Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism: The Origins and Afterlife of James Mason’s Siege (Routledge, 2024) and the co-editor, with Pam Chamberlain, Matthew N. Lyons, and Abby Scher, of Exposing the Right and Fighting for Democracy (Routledge, 2022), documenting the life and work of scholar-activist Chip Berlet.