This is a new one to me: A Neo-Nazi Satanist Cult (a mouthful descriptive) called “The Order of Nine Angels?”
Rolling Stone headline: Neo-Nazi Satanist Cult Is a Terrorist Group, Feds Say
Sub-headline: In the trial of a U.S. GI accused of plotting to murder his fellow soldiers, the United States says the Order of Nine Angles sect should be treated like Al Qaeda
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/neo-nazi-1…
The Order of Nine Angles, founded in the 1960s by British Satanists, has spread throughout the world in the succeeding decades. Over the past five years, the ideology became intertwined with neo-fascist terrorist groups like the Atomwaffen Division, National Action, and the Base. O9A’s followers stand accused of murder, pedophilia, rape, terrorism, and other crimes in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Russia, and elsewhere. The Federal Bureau of Investigation also indirectly helped accelerate the spread of O9A by employing Joshua Caleb Sutter, the head of the Tempel ov Blood nexion and prolific publisher of O9A-related books through his Martinet Press imprint, as a paid informant for almost 20 years.
Melzer’s conviction is significant: He embodied the worst fears of military and law-enforcement leaders of an “inside threat” intent on inflicting lethal harm on his fellow Americans. Melzer even joined the military in what O9A refers to as an “insight role” to gain weapons and tactical training while using his position in the Army to subvert or damage the institution. The former soldier’s conviction is the first time American authorities have articulated and prosecuted actions driven by a Satanist sect that has inspired millenarian neo-Nazi domestic terrorists and led to several homicides overseas. British law enforcement is so alarmed by the noxious ideology that the Home Office is under pressure to formally ban the Order of Nine Angles as they have done to Al Qaeda, National Action, and other terrorist groups. The importance of Melzer’s case was signaled by the dozens of federal law-enforcement officers in plainclothes present in court last Friday to watch the disgraced G.I. plead guilty.
Furthermore, federal prosecutors have used this case to establish legal precedent for the Order of Nine Angles as an extremist ideology now officially linked to a terrorism conviction. In both the presentation of Assistant U.S Attorney Matthew Hellman on June 24 and the expert testimony a month prior of Dr. Pete Simi, an academic specializing in right-wing extremism, a formal record was made not only of Melzer’s ties to the ideology, but specifics of its origins, influence on the contemporary far right at large, practices and goals, and how the former soldier’s actions comported with the Satanist cult’s “social Darwinist” principles, as Dr. Simi testified on May 24th. One of the counts Melzer pleaded guilty to, providing material support for a terrorist organization, states that people found to have violated this particular code “must have knowledge that the organization is a designated terrorist organization.” Crucially, his plot involved providing classified material to a purported member of Al Qaeda about his unit’s movement, in hopes that Islamist militants would carry out an ambush. In their formal press release about Melzer’s guilty plea, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York placed heavy emphasis on Melzer’s involvement with O9A, which, they stated, traces back to 2017. In short, Melzer’s case is now the precedent that formally connects O9A to terrorism in the American court system, putting the Satanist cult on par with the jihadis Melzer hoped would kill his fellow soldiers.
Wait. This gets worse. Obviously (just see the accompanying photos) this new Neo-Nazi Satanist Cult is not just for white boys:
However, there is reticence about the adoption of a “war on terror” framework to combatting O9A. “What the government wants through these designations is expanded surveillance powers,” says Hannah Gais, a senior researcher at the Southern Poverty Law Center. “The harm that Order of Nine Angles adherents and proponents have perpetrated cannot be healed through designating it as a terrorist organization.”
Given O9A’s current influence on right-wing extremists, law enforcement will almost certainly investigate and prosecute adherents of the ideology in future criminal cases. Indeed, in New York City’s other federal jurisdiction, the Eastern District of New York, prosecutors have divulged O9A-related evidence in the gun possession case of Angel Almeida, a Queens man who also professed a desire to sexually abuse young women. Almeida was also found in possession of a Tempel ov Blood banner and ToB patches — the proceeds of which would benefit FBI informant Joshua Sutter.
In the past half-decade, young Neo-Nazi propagandists associated with or aping the Atomwaffen Division and the Base have used social media to saturate extreme right-wing channels with O9A imagery and texts, relying heavily on the industrial-meets-horrorcore aesthetic of Sutter’s Tempel ov Blood. Pushing rape, child abuse, murder, and manipulation vaults young edgelords like Almeida to online notoriety. With Melzer and incarcerated members of the Atomwaffen Division and the Base, those transgressive ideas came dangerously close to grievous real-world consequences. While the former soldier will end up in federal prison, where O9A adherents like John Cameron Denton and Kaleb Cole of AWD are currently serving time, Joshua Sutter, the FBI informant and leading O9A proselytizer, is a free man and still selling Satanist books.