Adam Parfrey: A Neo-Nazi’s Best Friend

After Adam Parfrey’s death in May 2018, numerous obituaries of the founder of Feral House press appeared, including in the New York Times. They lavished praise on this publisher who had championed fringe, outsider publications while testing the limits of morality and tolerance, although some did mention his more tasteless offerings. However, the paper of note forgot to mention his role in creating Siege—although this was not lost on the White Supremacist press.

Parfrey himself received significantly more attention for his creative endeavors than the others in the Abraxas Clique combined. Starting with a magazine in the downtown New York City underground scene, in the late 1980s as co-editor of Amok Press he published several well-received titles, including the cult classic Apocalypse Culture. He turned his next press, Feral House, into a major independent publishing house. Parfrey was just one of many publishers, musicians, and artists who promoted various kinds of extreme material under the cover of irony or morbid fascination. But starting in the mid-1980s with EXIT, he was already in touch with Holocaust deniers and publishing neo-Nazi and White Supremacist material—including being one of the first outside neo-Nazi circles to publish James Mason. He would go so far as to publish one of his own works in Tom Metzger’s WAR newspaper and was thanked in, and privately praised, Siege. But as Parfrey’s success grew—Feral House books were eventually made into Hollywood movies—he moved further away from the use of White Supremacist materials, which he had made a cornerstone of his early publications. And as people questioned his own politics, he engaged in verbal acrobatics that succeeded in keeping his own publishing boat afloat through the end of his life.

The typical approach writers have taken has to look at Parfrey in terms of his cultural impact during the 1980s and ’90s, brushing off political questions by excusing them as a mere participation in a carnivalesque celebration of extremes. Sometimes, the articles mentioned his own bigoted publications, although usually they were contextualized away. When the question of his relationship with White Supremacists was broached, it typically focused on what it meant to him when he published them: Was he or wasn’t he a believer in these doctrines?

What this approach has ignored, among a number of other things, is analyzing what it has meant to them. Parfrey was embedded in neo-Nazi and Holocaust denial networks, and he gave them a rare platform outside of their circles. And, many years before Siege came into existence, Parfrey championed Mason, breathing new life into his work, giving him a new audience that they otherwise would not have been able to reach, and reinvigorating his flagging spirits. These pre-Siege reprints of Mason’s works are easily accessible in Parfrey’s most famous early book, Apocalypse Culture, and in a magazine he helped edit whose issues are online. And so it is curious that after his death in 2018, Parfrey’s role in helping disseminate terrorist ideology did not merit even a passing mention in the paper of record.[1]

Mason wasn’t the only White Supremacist that Parfrey platformed, although he was the most important. Parfrey went through a period of involvement specifically with the neo-Nazi milieu that roughly paralleled Boyd Rice’s: mostly from mid-1986 to early 1988. But also like Rice, he maintained his connections with them afterward, incorporated Nazi aesthetics into his works, obscured his previous (and sometimes ongoing) involvement, and vehemently attacked those who criticized him. He also kept up a crudely racist and antisemitic correspondence with Mason. And while Parfrey held Far Right views for the rest of his life, he was probably less authentically interested in neo-Nazism than Rice. But Parfrey’s evasions, omissions, and denials tend to suggest that his sympathies were substantially stronger than what he said in public.

Living in the ’80s

Parfrey’s career in publishing began in 1975 when he started college at UCLA and wrote for its student paper, the Daily Bruin. He dropped out, enrolled at UC Santa Cruz, dropped out again, and moved to San Francisco. There he made his first stab at publishing, with a magazine called IDEA. Describing it as “a punk rag without coverage of punk music,” it lasted two issues. The first, published in May 1981, included interviews with both RE/Search’s V. Vale and a member of the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang.[2]

He later moved to New York City, where he met George Petros; together they started the “outlaw liberal Fascist Sci-Fi Pop Art magazine” EXIT. Its five published issues of collages, drawings, and text dwelt on themes of negativity and included portrayals of extreme sexuality, serial killers, and copious usage of Nazi imagery.[3] The first issue in 1984 included Parfrey’s image of Hitler with a child as well as Jim Jones’s final sermon.[4] The second issue, in 1985, dove much deeper into Nazi material; it included more Hitler images, a set of détourned photos named “Hiding from Heinrich Himmler” and “Hiding from Simon Wiesenthal,” and the Petros and Parfrey image “What is Democracy?” (Answers included “Forced Integration,” “Mandatory Miscegenation,” and “Overpopulation.”) Contributors included Genesis P-Orridge, formerly of Throbbing Gristle, and Mark Mothersbaugh from DEVO. (Petros and Parfrey would even design some of the interior images for the DEVO CD E-Z Listening Disc.[5]) EXIT fit right in with the nihilistic mood embraced by the Lower East Side’s art and music scene.

In early May 1986, Rice sent Mason a copy of a Parfrey collage, The Revelation of the Sacred Door, which would play a notable role in the Abraxas Clique–neo-Nazi interaction. It portrayed Manson as Jesus, clinging to a left-facing swastika and in front of a door with “Helter Scelter” [sic] and “Love, Charlie” written on it. Rice added that he sent Mason’s address on to Parfrey.[6] Mason wrote back that it was “absolutely GREAT!” and asked for a better-quality copy. He was so excited that he also wrote Manson himself about it.[7]

On May 27, 1986—while SIEGE was winding down but was still being published—Parfrey wrote Mason directly.

My friend Boyd Rice informs me of your interest in Manson as an important figure in saving the white race from a dysgenic conclusion. Well, I happen to concur with your particular beliefs: I thought I was the only one who held them until I knew of Boyd.[8]

He described EXIT, which he co-published and where the piece would appear, as a magazine that “repudiates the kind of liberal humanism which is infecting this country like a plague.” In an ensuing quick exchange of letters, Mason told Parfrey how much he liked the image, asking if he could turn it into a poster. Parfrey demurred, explaining that it was already slated for a forthcoming ten-page piece “titled Helter Skelter which details Race-War, Nuclear Detonation and the resultant conversion to an orderly, white society.”[9] Parfrey’s next letter elaborated that EXIT was

aimed at cynical and lazy but “hip” young people. We feel it is a propaganda tool to legitimize a certain type of thought among race-mixing and otherwise polluted people. We’ve already had a number of conversions to our racialist stance. Now these once “liberal” types are gun owning Spenglerians.[10]

Parfrey admitted to Mason that while his father was “Nordic,” his mother was Jewish—thereby making him a Jew, too, by the tradition of matrilineal descent. (His father was, in fact, actor Woodrow Parfrey, who played Dr. Maximus in Planet of the Apes and even had a part in Dirty Harry.) Nonetheless, he assured Mason that “I am sympathetic to all your stated ideals in Siege, and particularly your edict to Race Traitors.” Mason replied with the characteristic practicality that he had already used to justify collaborating with gay neo-Nazi Russell Veh. “Things are so desperate,” Mason said, “that no one can afford to get ‘personal’ with anyone else who is performing a service to the cause”— especially when it came to “top-notch, competent artists” whose “work electrified me.” Mason included some of his old National Socialist Movement posters in his reply.[11]

In the summer of 1986, Parfrey teamed up with Ken Swezey, then living in Los Angeles, and started a new publishing house: Amok Press.[12] When their books appeared the next year, two of the press’s earliest and most important (both of which would later be republished on Feral House) incorporated Mason’s work.

In mid-July 1986, it was Parfrey’s turn to gush over Mason’s posters. “You are better than an ‘artist’—your work is effective. I was quite taken w/ most the pieces, and particularly with the one of Manson w/ the Shaw quote.” He asked to use it in the upcoming EXIT as part of the ten-page piece he had mentioned.[13]

A December 1986 letter from Parfrey showed that he was in touch with Holocaust deniers from the very beginning of his book publishing career. In it, he asked Mason, as he had before, for additional issues of SIEGE, as well as the writings of Perry Warthan and copies of any of Mason’s correspondence with Manson, to use in Nikolas Schreck’s upcoming Manson File book (then titled Manson Apocrypha). Parfrey pitched it to him by saying, “I really need your cooperation on this, so Manson’s racial and action-oriented ideas get their exposure.” He also shared the draft of the book cover, which again featured his Manson collage, as well as covers for two other forthcoming Amok Press titles, including the press’s initial offering: a translation of Michael, Joseph Goebbels’s novel.[14]

Life with the Holocaust Deniers

Parfrey also asked if Mason would share his mailing list to promote both EXIT and his forthcoming titles from Amok Press. He then name-dropped two of his “movement correspondents.” The first was William Grimstad, who had edited the NSWPP newspaper White Power as well as David Duke’s Crusader but was most famous for writing The Six Million Reconsidered: Is the ‘Nazi Holocaust’ Story a Zionist Propaganda Ploy?[15] In this December letter, Parfrey complained to Mason that “I seem to be getting some flak from movement correspondents concerning the Manson affiliation. Good people such as Bill Grimstad have really rode me about involving myself with the ‘psychotic derelict.’”[16]

Grimstad would be involved in the Abraxas Clique. In September 1987, he put another Holocaust denier, Keith Stimely, in touch with Parfrey, and the two met in 1988. With a view to the situation quite like Mason’s, Grimstad described Parfrey’s circle to Stimely as “an apparently vital and by no means traditional ‘right wing’ reactionary group, of the type that we absolutely have to have if we are to get anywhere.”[17] The three were soon in mutual contact; Michael Moynihan would later be added as well. In October 1988, Parfrey suggested that Grimstad write the introduction to a George Lincoln Rockwell book Mason was planning.[18]

Additionally, Parfrey mentioned “my friend” Michael A. Hoffman II, another prominent Holocaust denier, whose work would appear in both Apocalypse Culture and its follow-up.[19] Parfrey then again stepped over the line into actively encouraging the participation of others in the neo-Nazi milieu when he asked for Mason’s help in encouraging Rice to go on the show.[20]

Mason wrote back in December 1986 with some more material and mailing list contacts, but now it was his turn to ask a favor: Would Parfrey make an image for him? He described it as the Norse god Thor superimposed on a nuclear mushroom cloud, overlooking a street filled with panicked New Yorkers trying to flee. “Contrast the anything-else-but-White faces in the mob with his Nordic countenance” as Thor swung his hammer to deliver a “completely devastating blow to the scum of the earth…. This would be a poster for OUR side to be massively reproduced and distributed. Can you imagine the effect?”[21]

This would not be the last time in his correspondence with Parfrey that Mason would refer to them as being part of the same movement. In 1988, Mason told Parfrey that Holocaust denier David Irving “is one of us.” On his part, Parfrey would take quite an interest in Irving, whose assessment of Goebbels—“a tender, introspective patriot”—was used as a blurb for his edition of Michael.[22] Parfrey later said,

I hear that politically correct forces are hounding Irving on all ends of the earth, making it very difficult for him to earn a living. You cannot express revisionist views in public, or else you’re made a pariah. You’re going against very powerful interests with big museums, big money, and a very dependent Zionist state.[23]

Parfrey did not elaborate on whom he thought the Zionist state was dependent on. (In a turnabout, Parfrey himself would gleefully say that “I get a thrill out of being a professional pariah.”[24])

Although warning that it was a very time-consuming process to create the images, which he was doing on a computer, Parfrey told Mason that “Your idea for the propaganda poster sounds good…. effective. I’d like to collaborate with you on such a project.” He asked Mason to help in finding appropriate images.[25]

1987

Despite their discussion, Parfrey does not appear to have created the collage. In January 1987, he told Mason that, “As for the scum I’m tempted to go out with a camera myself and document the most despicable varieties.” In April, Parfrey promised that he hadn’t forgotten about the image but in the same sentence also spoke about his increasing publishing obligations.[26]

Parfrey also sent a flyer for the upcoming concerts by the Friends of Justice, of which he was part and which listed both Chillicothe, Ohio and New York City as participating cities—illustrating the extent to which Parfrey and Mason were, at that moment, collaborators. (Parfrey was to be the emcee at the New York City event.[27]) Similar to how Rice portrayed 8/8/88 to Mason, Parfrey added,

We wanted to soft-peddle the movement aspects in order to get a more receptive inroad into the press and potential musicians and filmmakers to back to the concerts. I have it in mind to invite some guys from the CT KKK to come and tell it like it is to the dysgenic crew who shows up at the proceeding.[28]

In February 1987, Parfrey asked Mason to do an on-camera interview with Ken Swezey and Brian King. (In an extremely confusing situation, King ran Amok Books in Los Angeles with Stuart Swezey. The latter’s brother, Ken, had started Amok Press with Parfrey the year before.) At the time, King and Ken Swezey were working on a documentary about Satanists and neo-Nazis who were into Manson.

Parfrey’s letter to Mason was probably his most hammy missive to the neo-Nazi: “From what I can tell of King and Swezey, they are a couple of armchair bourgeoisie [sic] however instilled with a curiosity for ‘alternative’ information.” But, he stressed, it might expose “non-movement types” to Mason’s ideas, even suggesting that it could “start a minor ‘vogue’ for subversive racialist views.”[29] (After the interview, Mason had a very different assessment, saying “they’ve been around for some time and are more than loosely familiar with the movement.”[30])

Later that month, the two travelled to Chillicothe to film the 50-minute interview. The only extensive video of him in the 1980s, Mason would make use of it repeatedly in the future. A transcript of part of it appeared in Siege, and Mason would make an edited version for community access television. In the Alt Right era, the interview would widely circulate in militant neoNazi circles.[31]

While the documentary was never completed (King said that, in addition to financial problems, he was “sick of racist freaks”), they also did a joint interview with Rice and Schreck the month after Mason’s. More importantly, King would go to San Quentin to film Schreck’s interview with Manson, which became the basis of Charles Manson Superstar.[32]

Soon after, Parfrey told Mason that, with EXIT #3 done, he was no longer going to work with “my prima donna collaborator” Petros. (By the next year, Rice had also fallen out with Petros.) Instead, Parfrey was starting the new magazine, Blood and Flame with Schreck, and Mason was asked to contribute to the first issue.[33] The planned magazine, which never seemed to come out, appeared to have a racist and antisemitic thrust. In a late March letter, Parfrey blamed the shutdown of the Friends of Justice concerts on “The Jewish Press frothing + RANTING + DEMANDING OUR SEVERED HEADS on a platter.” With it, he enclosed an ad reading “Above ground burial. The Jewish choice,” which he said would appear in the magazine. In a similar vein, Parfrey later sent Mason a newspaper clipping reporting on Soviet accusations that the United States had “developed a lethal gas that kills black people but not whites.” Parfrey wrote in red below it, “Let’s keep our fingers crossed.”[34]

Mason told Parfrey that “Working now with other creative and productive people has regenerated my own juices which is resulting in a stream of fresh printed material.” In March 1987, Mason printed the pamphlet Charles Manson: Drugs, Power & Sanity under the Universal Order label. He asked Parfrey to help him out by buying half the run from him: $100 for 500 copies. At the time, he was planning on making two further Manson pamphlets, although they did not seem to ever appear.[35]

Parfrey pled relative poverty, although he still sent $20, for which Mason gave him 80 copies. But Parfrey also suggested several possibilities for getting the pamphlet out. A new mail-order distribution was being set up by Hoffman, whom he described as “more open-minded than most movement types,” and said it “could be put across…quite forcefully…that Mansonism converts the heretofore unconverted, as it did with a few friends of mine.” Parfrey also suggested people, stores, and magazines that might either carry or review the pamphlet. Last, he said he would ask Mike Kosmatka, whom Parfrey described as William Pierce’s former “right-hand man” and known to help out a “good cause.” Parfrey signed his letter with a left-facing swastika—the only time this appeared in his direct correspondence with Mason.[36]

The exchange occurred just as EXIT #3, Parfrey’s last issue as an editor, was released—the one that trafficked most heavily in Nazi references. (Parfrey later called the look he created for EXIT “equal parts National Socialist and social realist.”) Parfrey and Petros had jointly created the cover image of a swirling universe with Hitler at its center.[37] The inside cover included a quote from Goebbels. Two Parfrey collages, each featuring a slightly different picture of Hitler with a child, had in small text “Eugenics Now!” (Parfrey would often return to the themes of eugenics and dysgenics.) A collage by a different artist was based around a figure being stabbed, with the words “No Free Speech for Racists” superimposed on their body. Last was Parfrey’s promised ten-page spread, now titled “The Book of Charlie.” In addition to The Revelation of the Sacred Door, it included Mason’s “Independent Genius” flyer, complete with the Universal Order logo.[38] If the correspondence with Parfrey hadn’t already been convincing, surely EXIT #3 must have settled any doubts Mason had about whether Parfrey was playing on the same team.

With The Manson File in the works, Parfrey complained to Mason that “Manson and Lynette Fromme have inexplicably turned against me, Nikolas Schreck, and especially Boyd. Guess they think we’re hustling them somehow.”[39] Parfrey had previously shared with Mason a letter he sent to Manson but was returned. Again, in a clear exaggeration (although still reflecting ideas he expressed elsewhere in milder forms), Parfrey wrote,

Yeah, the Jews got pissed at that magazine I sent you. None of them want to see my friend Hitler get his due…. [Hitler] lifted the pride of the white people up and tried to get rid of the commies and exile the Jews where they wouldn’t hassle anyone but themselves…But of course “society” is making an “example” of Charles Manson in the same way they made an example of the Germans at Nuremburg.

Explaining that he was sick of living in “Jew York,”

I was looking for a spot 3,000 miles away from California, and found it in spades and spics and Jews and rich assholes…I want to work with you, but more than that, I hail you with a stiff-armed salute from ground zero.[40]

Here Parfrey drew a left-facing swastika.

But Mason remained on good terms with Manson, who approved of his proposed series of pamphlets.[41] This must have made it even more important for the Abraxas Clique to keep Mason close, as they jockeyed for position and clout in a cultural milieu that fetishized Manson.

Things sped up for Parfrey as the Amok Press titles made a splash. In August 1987, the Goebbels novel was reviewed in the New York Times—an incredible achievement for a first book by a rookie publisher. Other reviews were not so kind, however; Parfrey complained that The New Republic said he was trying to start a “neo-Nazi revival.”[42]

By October, Mason received his copy of the Parfrey-edited anthology Apocalypse Culture. Parfrey signed the copy, “To James Mason—Dragon slayer, propagandist extraordinaire!” The book became an underground classic. In the summer of 1988, Parfrey claimed it was already on its third printing on Amok Press. It was reissued on Feral House, went through multiple editions, spawned a sequel, and was reported to have sold 100,000 copies by 2010.[43]

Apocalypse Culture was like a less-illustrated EXIT but with similar Nazi and neo-Nazi content. Mason, Schreck, and Rice were all thanked in the acknowledgements. “The Importance of Killing” by Daniel Burros, a former American Nazi Party member who committed suicide after he was outed as a bar-mitzvahed Jew, came before a Savitri Devi excerpt, which in turn was followed by Rice’s selection of Hitler quotes. Two of Mason’s flyers, including “Political Terror,” were included. Parfrey’s friend Hoffman had a piece and was thanked in the beginning, as was Grimstad. And Parfrey’s thoughts on eugenics came complete with quotes by prewar racists Arthur de Gobineau, Lothrop Stoddard, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, and Madison Grant, plus, of course, Hitler. If one wished to read White Supremacist and neo-Nazi literature, Apocalypse Culture had a sampling on offer. The revised edition also included contributions from the Abraxas Foundation and Robert N. Taylor. (Taylor was a 1960s White Supremacist folk singer, writer, and Heathen who established a close relationship with Moynihan.[44])

But there was plenty of other fringe material that was not related to racism or antisemitism: interviews with an “Unrepentant Necrophile” as well as Peter Sotos (who was arrested for child pornography and was part of the larger Abraxas Circle), anarchists Hakim Bey and John Zerzan, and a statement from the Red Brigades, an Italian armed Marxist-Leninist group.[45]

Mason told Parfrey that the book was “FABULOUS” and reminded him of Rockwell’s White Power. Mason even requested that a copy be sent to his occasional ally Harold Covington.[46] On their part, the neo-Nazis who embraced the Abraxas Clique did seem to hope that Parfrey’s work would be a vehicle for their movement’s revival—or at least help it attract a new, young, hip audience.

Parfrey caught the attention of other neo-Nazis as well. Pierce picked up Michael for his mail-order bookstore. This caused Mason to write Parfrey, “Congratulations! He is very discerning about what he offers for sale under his heading.” In September 1987, Metzger told Mason that he had “met Parfrey briefly in L.A. at a Radio Werewolf gig about a month ago. His ‘Exit’ magazine has some very interesting material.” Parfrey sent him a copy of Goebbels’s Michael, which Metzger said he would promote. Metzger also said, “We included a couple of Parfrey’s pieces of art in our latest issue.”[47]

It was perhaps one of the most flagrant instances of Parfrey’s associations with neo-Nazis. Instead of him reprinting their material—something that could always be dismissed as part of his business of trafficking in extremes—now he was being reprinted by them. And indeed, the fall 1987 WAR issue that Metzger referred to included part of Parfrey’s The Revelation of the Sacred Door collage. Curiously, the image was uncredited.[48] Afterward, publishing in WAR was not something that Parfrey bragged about.

In March 1988, Mason received his copy of the Schreck-edited The Manson File. Featuring contributions from numerous members of the Abraxas Circle, it included yet another reprint of Parfrey’s Manson-as-Jesus collage. The Manson File was another underground hit for Parfrey.[49]

The Rockwell Book that Wasn’t

Parfrey rung in the new year by writing Mason, “My very best to you in this year of 88.”[50] At the end of January 1988, shortly before The Manson File was released, Mason made his big pitch to Parfrey: a book about Rockwell. Not only did Mason have access to rare Rockwell materials, but a decade before he had already made an outline for the book, then titled The Swastika Bearers.[51]

Parfrey was “very interested” in the proposal and also wanted a chapter on Rockwell for a “follow-up to Apocalypse Culture.” (Parfrey also hoped to get a chapter on the unorthodox fascist Francis Parker Yockey.) In the same typewritten letter, next to this passage about Rockwell and Yockey—both of whom died under unusual circumstances—Parfrey wrote an asterisk and, in big letters, “OUR MARTYRS.”[52]

Excited about its political potential, Mason wrote Rice that it “will be a super-sneaky way to get out GLR’s [George Lincoln Rockwell’s] propaganda message over twenty years after his death.” Mason suggested to Parfrey that it look like The Manson File and sent a prospectus.[53]

However, Parfrey quickly took a step back. The New Republic was not the only magazine that had taken issue with his promotion of White Supremacist material. In 1994, Parfrey claimed that reviews of Apocalypse Culture were killed at both the Village Voice and Artforum, and he feared stores would refuse to carry his books.[54] Whereas in his private letters to Mason he had railed against the “Jewish publishing industry” (and later “ZOG,” the supposed Zionist Occupied Government), Parfrey was now more circumspect. What happened in New York City, he said, was that

the media there is really controlled by certain people and if they just don’t like you…and they smell that you aren’t part of the team you’re not going to get anywhere…. So I thought of a way to publish something I like at the same time and try to appeal to that liberal sensibility.[55]

And, in fact, Amok Press titles would include titles like Rants—an anthology that Parfrey edited with anarchist Bob Black. But despite this willingness to collaborate, anarchists split over him. He published some of them and some of them published him in turn, while others denounced him as a reactionary. At least one, Hakim Bey (né Peter Lamborn Wilson) did both.[56]

Whether Parfrey was afraid of “ZOG,” “certain people,” or what he later called “oligarchic totalitarianism”[57]—or whether he just realized that this might be a bridge too far even for an edgy underground publisher—his ardor for the Rockwell book wavered. In April 1988, he wrote Mason that

I’m tiptoeing the tightrope in between mass market and oblivion. I can sell this book to my business partner, my distributors, bookstores, and the media with just the right approach. It will take a lot of brainstorming and a few compromises. But the end result will be a media coup.[58]

He also asked Mason, “Are you aware of the fact that the little monkey Michael Jackson has Rockwell and Hitler on his video ‘Man in the Mirror’?” (It included Rockwell’s “Hate Bus.”) Parfrey hoped that the Rockwell book could piggyback on the media attention on White Supremacists at the time, and he even offered to write the forward.[59] But soon after that, Parfrey fell out of touch and the project was dropped.

Mason didn’t give up on the book idea, though, and over a decade later, he tried again with Siege’s second publisher. It ended with a very similar result.

A Big Fish in a Small Pond Doesn’t Completely Forget Old Friends

Parfrey’s attention was taken up with, among other things, the 8/8/88 event with Rice and Schreck. Two group pictures from the event (both of which included two White Supremacists, American Front leader Bob Heick and Metzger collaborator Nick Bougas), obviously taken one after the other, illustrated Parfrey’s approach to and relationship with these politics. Parfrey is in the one where they are merely standing and posing. In the other, where the group is sieg-heiling, Parfrey is no longer in the visual frame.

No doubt of more importance to Parfrey’s delay in writing Mason was the collapse of Amok Press. Out of its ashes came his new venture: Feral House. Its name was suggested by Rice.[60]

However, as Parfrey said in a Halloween 1988 letter, he needed to have some money-making books first, like his initial offering: Anton LaVey’s The Satanic Witch.[61] (Parfrey had been introduced to LaVey by Rice in 1987 or 1988, and a later commentator described LaVey books “as cash cows for Feral House.”[62]) Nonetheless, Parfrey said the Rockwell book was still on track for a spring 1990 release, but he had to be careful about possible blowback.

I’m counting on heavy censorship, condemnation and subtle boycotts by ZOG when it appears. I’m trying to get together a book written by nigger and spic gang members on youth gangs for release at about the same time.

To me, letting these cocaine-addled nigger murderers prattle on about their miserable lives will be rope enough for them to hang themselves. But then I can always point to the book when the ADL gets on my case about racism, neo-Nazism, etc.[63]

Parfrey also appeared to have a particular bigotry against Latinos. He also asked Mason to send mail to his post office box rather than his home address because, “I live in a Mexican neighborhood, and their respect for mail parcels left outside the apartment complex is reputed to be quite small.”[64] In 2002, he said,

Next spring I’m publishing a book version of a cholo gang magazine by one Reynaldo Berrios called “Mi Vida Loca.” Reynaldo is all about “Aztlan”—the idea that brown-skinned people will retake North America from the honkies in any way possible. It occurred to me that this is not a good time to be light-skinned.[65]

Parfrey also thought that Rice’s Social Darwinist views were too “optimistic” when it came to new arrivals in the country. Parfrey espoused a version of the racist “Great Replacement theory,” which would become popular in the late 2010s and early ’20s.[66] In an interview, he said that in another time period,

a country that is overcome by immigrants of racial difference would have been called an “invasion.” I live in a Mexican gang neighborhood, gunfire every night. Many of the Mexicans who move here aren’t aware that we have flush toilets, so many deposit their babies’ shitty diapers in public places.[67]

Furthermore, he mused, “What might happen when these people cannot get food stamps or welfare? What about a simple drought, or severe economic situation?” Integrating his larger worldview, he said “I don’t look forward to those times, but I do have front row seats to the apocalypse.”[68]

Despite the fact that his father was an American soldier in World War Two who had been captured and interned in a Nazi prison camp, Parfrey described that war as “really a civil war between white people, and white people have been feeling guilty about themselves ever since.” Instead of taking responsibility for the impact of White Supremacy, white people have “forgotten about themselves. They should listen to the words of Spengler.”[69] (Oswald Spengler, an influence on but not a follower of National Socialism, was most famous for his work The Decline of the West, which portrayed Western civilization as being in a period of decay.)

Parfrey also floated the idea of pairing the book with a biography of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. The black separatist leader had had discussions with Metzger, just as Farrakhan’s predecessor Elijah Muhammad had a parley with Rockwell. Mason approved of both the idea of a Grimstad introduction and a Farrakhan book, but afterward Parfrey seemed to have moved on to more lucrative projects—or at least easier sells.[70]

In July 1989, Hustler ran Parfrey’s “Skinned Alive,” one of many pieces around that time about the Nazi skinhead movement. At least half of it consisted of verbatim quotes from neo-Nazis like Heick, Metzger, and his son John. The opposing view consisted of a two-sentence quotation from the Center for Democratic Renewal’s Leonard Zeskind. It was basically a sixpage advertisement with a mass audience that allowed neo-Nazis to elaborate their views and deliver recruiting pitches. In it, Parfrey described the typical Nazi skinhead as “a vessel of wrath, shaved for battle and at all times ready to bust heads.”[71]

Parfrey’s journalistic ethics showed here, as he did not divulge that he was personally acquainted with said neo-Nazis, had contributed to Metzger’s publication, or had been publishing neo-Nazi content himself. He also specially mentioned that Heick’s Aryan Warrior included “contributions from a Manson-inspired group called the Abraxas Foundation that preaches a doctrine of evil”—while conveniently omitting his own membership in said group. As in other dealings with White Supremacists, Parfrey had no vested business interest in writing this. Mason loved the article.[72]

Around this time, Parfrey floated away from Mason, and their correspondence petered off. Petros stayed in touch, however. In 1989, EXIT #4 came out. In it was a quote from Goebbels, two of Mason’s old flyers, and— despite the falling out—Parfrey’s “Eugenics” piece that also appeared in Apocalypse Culture. [73] In 1991, the Petros-edited EXIT #5 included another Goebbels quote and a long piece by Taylor. Also included were quarter-page images from Mason, Schreck, and Zeena LaVey.[74]

After EXIT, Petros went on to more popular publications but at first continued to work with many of the same people. The music magazine Seconds, which he helped put out between 1990 and 2000, became a regroupment vehicle for the Abraxas Circle. Its gravitational pull attracted even more musicians, writers, and fringe cultural figures, leading to the extended Abraxas Circle. Moynihan was a prolific contributor to the magazine, and Rice and Taylor also got into the show. Parfrey, having buried the hatchet with Petros, did at least eight interviews starting in 1996. Unsurprisingly, the Abraxas Circle’s circular promotion migrated to this new platform. LaVey was interviewed twice, first by Moynihan and then by Rice; Thorn by Rice; Rice jointly by Parfrey and Petros; and Moynihan by Petros.[75]

In late 1992, Mason thanked Parfrey for being “primarily the one that first picked up my old leaflets from the mid-Seventies and breathed new life into my stuff” and sold him the mockups of his late 1970s flyers and magazines.[76] Parfrey was also thanked in Siege and after he got his copy, told Mason that, “I’m bowled over by the SIEGE book” and that “it’s better than good: it’s definitive!” He told Moynihan he would offer the names of potential reviewers. Additionally, Parfrey had a book agent looking for a contract for his own book in which he wanted to include a Universal Order chapter, with Siege as “a prominent lynchpin for that section.”[77]

Parfrey didn’t just help out with advice. He had already bought pamphlets and publishing mockups from Mason in the past. In December 1993, Parfrey didn’t just send a broke Mason money, he gave him pointers on how to place a classified ad in Willis Carto’s White Supremacist newspaper The Spotlight— even offering to pay for it to run four times.[78]

However, Parfrey said one thing to Mason’s face and another thing behind his back. Elsewhere, while the publisher complimented Mason’s flyers, he called Mason’s promotion of Manson as a neo-Nazi leader “remarkable but dumb.” Parfrey’s final judgment? Mason “had some ideas that didn’t really go very far.”[79]

Whatever his true feelings, Parfrey arranged an art show to promote his upcoming book Cult Rapture. In September, a show he curated, bearing the same name, opened at a Seattle gallery. Amid the usual Feral House extremes was a Universal Order booth as well as contributions from Taylor.[80]

Feral House would expand the range of political views it published, but when Parfrey’s Cult Rapture came out in 1995, there wasn’t much in it that represented “both sides.” While most of the essays were Parfrey’s, there were a few other contributors. They included neo-Nazi murderer Jonathan Haynes; Fritz Springmeier, a conspiracy theorist arrested for bombing an adult video store; and the militia leader Linda Thompson, whose “Ultimatum” threatened an armed march on Washington, DC. Hoffman and Grimstad were also thanked.[81]

While the book’s last 100 pages consist mostly of slavish militia movement apologia, the most important was Parfrey’s own essay, “Finding Our Way Out of Oklahoma,” about the Oklahoma City bombing and its perpetrators, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. One of the more comprehensive and openly political pieces Parfrey authored, it echoed how his previous Hustler piece dealt with Nazi skinheads: by doing everything short of praising them. And even more so than the skinhead piece, Parfrey’s new piece was more explicit about his own Far Right beliefs.

Published right after the Oklahoma City bombing, the essay attacked the major watchdog groups, denounced President Bill Clinton for giving a “hate rant” after the massacre, and compared him to Mussolini—while also telling readers to ignore the viciously racist and antisemitic Christian Identity groups which had a sizeable influence on the militias. Parfrey demanded that media outlets ask 19 conspiratorial questions, several of which contradicted each other, about the Oklahoma City bombing. He accused Jews of being “oversensitive” and waved away mass casualty terrorism altogether (“Does it really matter who blew up the Oklahoma City building?”). Last, he not only asked whether McVeigh’s and Nichols’s appearances at militia meetings were actually body doubles but also brought up the possibility that McVeigh had a microchip implanted in his buttocks.[82]

Parfrey’s fact-free approach to the bombing would soon land him in trouble, though. After a lawsuit over a 1998 Feral House book about the bombing which made allegations against a former FBI official, Parfrey was forced to apologize and pulp the remaining copies.[83]

In another article, Parfrey quoted a Thompson supporter saying that even if some of the information she heard was wrong, 80 percent was true.[84] In light of Parfrey’s own history, this perspective seems to represent his views quite well. In 1988, he made a related statement, claiming he was providing “pure information” (Manson’s and LaVey’s philosophies were named as examples) as opposed to the mainstream’s “world of illusions,” which could only create “automatons” and “good consumers.”[85] Apparently, if a whole spectrum of fringe ideas—including contradictory extremes, blatantly false information, and rank bigotry—was provided to the public, this false veil could be broken through. (As with the Abraxas Clique members, Parfrey’s notion of life as a pernicious illusion appeared to be influenced by Gnosticism.)

Another event of importance was Moynihan’s 1995 move to Portland, where Parfrey was at the time. There, Moynihan worked with Feral House as managing editor and worked on his book about Norwegian black metal.[86]

Mason was to have one last direct influence on Parfrey. In late 1994, Mason sent him a Special Olympics medal he found in a thrift store. The next year, a drawing of it was used as the cover of a record by one of Parfrey’s musical projects, the Tards.[87] It continued Parfrey’s bigotry against those who held the least amount of power in a society as well as his interest in dysgenics. Parfrey also sent Mason a clipping of a book review of Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray’s The Bell Curve, a famous restatement of scientific racism; in the accompanying letter he wrote, “Americans aspire to the dysgenic idea.” He added, “The Jews, of course, are the biggest racists of all,” comparing them to “MTV (Miscegenation TV), who see great profit from preaching gangster rap to middle america.”[88]

Post-1995

In 1996, there was an attempt to start a record label, Feral House Audio, but only one release came out of it, Burzum’s Filosofem.[89] (Burzum was the oneman band Varg Vikernes, a neo-Nazi Satanist murderer-turned-racist pagan.) In 1998, the press published another underground classic, Moynihan and Didrik Søderlind’s Lords of Chaos, which focused on the Norwegian black metal scene, of which Vikernes was the most famous figure.

However, Parfrey did not forget his old friend who had helped him get his start. When Ryan Schuster was working on reissuing Siege in 2003, Mason told him that “Adam Parfrey indicated that he would be most happy to talk to with you, offering any advice he may have that you might need,” and included Parfrey’s phone number.[90]

By this time, Feral House had not just become a fixture in underground circles; its influence permeated into the mainstream, including the film industry. These films included two directed by Tim Burton: Ed Wood, a 1994 Hollywood production starring Johnny Depp, and Big Eyes in 2014. Meanwhile, the 2018 Lords of Chaos was based on Moynihan’s book.

And the press moved into publishing a more diverse range of authors and topics; even its critics owned its books. Authors included liberals, leftists, and assorted other radicals, such as Chicana feminist punk musician Alice Bag and anarcho-primitivist theorist John Zerzan. Other books ranged in subject matter from American Advertising Cookbooks to Extreme Islam.

But Feral House continued to publish other Far Right, including neo-Nazi, material. Like Parfrey’s other edited collections, Apocalypse Culture II, released in 2000, contained politically unproblematic articles. Alongside them were essays by Hoffman, Moynihan, and Rice; the misanthropic racist Pentti Linkola; and pieces from Aryan Nations and the gay neo-Nazi group National Socialist League. And it also included former ANSWER ME! editor and convicted domestic abuser Jim Goad.[91]

ANSWER ME! ran the usual extreme content about serial killers, suicide, and pedophilia. Issues also included Bougas’s racist cartoon of black politician Al Sharpton; a back page image of Hitler on a cross with a soldier praying to him; an interview with David Duke; and LaVey, Rice, and Parfrey. Feral House would do two of Goad’s books in the ’00s.[92]

In the fall of 1992, Moynihan was still figuring out his publicity strategy. He suggested four fanzines to target: Petros’s EXIT as well as Ungawa, Geek, and ANSWER ME![93] Mason agreed that the last one was good because of its anti-system approach but warned that because Goad had “A Jewess for a wife” and as the contents were “liberally laced with Blacks,” it “might give some people of our stripe pause.”[94]

Goad ended up as one of the direct lines from the extended Abraxas Circle to the Alt Right. After prison, Goad started writing for Taki’s Magazine, which ran White Supremacist content; Gavin McInnes wrote for them as well. According to the Proud Boys founder, Goad was “The greatest writer of our generation,” and he would attend the election night celebration of Donald Trump’s 2016 victory with the group. In 2020, Goad became a columnist at Greg Johnson’s openly White Supremacist website Counter-Currents.[95]

Feral House released other books about Nazis and neo-Nazis. In 2007 was a re-release of a book Moynihan worked on about SS occultist Karl Maria Wiligut, and in 2015 was a book about Nazi skinhead music written by participants from inside the scene.[96]

Parfrey’s private connections with neo-Nazis also remained intact. In the 2010s, he participated in the secret Facebook group of New Resistance, a fascist group led by James Porrazzo, the second leader of the American Front. Parfrey chimed in on conversations about Holocaust denial. Ever the salesman, he used this as an opportunity to promote his Nazi skinhead book to the group’s members. (He also attacked an essay by the author which called on the Left to expel white separatists, antisemites, and Islamophobes—as well as their publishers.[97])

Near the end of his life, Parfrey gave up his practice of not associating with White Supremacists in public. In October 2015, he gloated on Feral House’s website that Porrazzo came to an art show Parfrey curated and spoke at in Salem, Massachusetts; they took a picture together to mark the occasion.[98] (Porrazzo had called Feral House “the best publisher on Earth” and said, “Apocalypse Culture quite literally changed by life.”[99]) Parfrey also made appearances in media that either were openly White Supremacist or would run such content, doing an interview with Heathen Harvest in 2016 and a podcast with The Stark Truth in 2017.[100] He passed away at age 61 in May 2018.

After his death, Michael Gault wrote in Vice that Parfrey’s books “exposed white supremacists for what they are, then and now—ridiculous, intellectually bankrupt, racists.”[101] This statement would come as a surprise to all the “ridiculous” White Supremacists who were eager to be published by Parfrey, considered him a friend and helped him out, and were helped out by him in turn. And so unsurprisingly, after his death, he received praise from a number of White Supremacists—and some of them, unlike Vice and the New York Times, remembered Parfrey’s relationship to James Mason and Siege.[102]

Parfrey Is Always Innocent

Parfrey said that, regarding his own politics, “God help me, I’m a pot-smoking libertarian.”[103] And while that might have been true to some extent, bigoted attitudes have long been common among libertarians. In the United States, they were pioneers of Holocaust denial, and during the Alt Right years, a whole “libertarian-to-fascist pipeline” emerged.[104] If Parfrey was a libertarian, he was in good company.

Parfrey had a lot to lose from being publicly branded a White Supremacist, something he was aware of from the very beginning of his book publishing career. And so, like the others, Parfrey denied being a White Supremacist or even admitting he might be a sympathizer.

Parfrey frequently invoked his Jewish background as a reason for this. His other rhetorical strategies included attacking the Left, feminists, and groups that monitored the Far Right; projecting his own claims and actions on opponents by accusing them of the very same things he did; defending, dismissing, and downplaying the Far Right’s beliefs and crimes; and misrepresenting his own actions and statements. Last, he could always duck under the protection of the numerous writers and followers who belonged to his “apocalypse culture” cult.

It is true, at least to some extent, that his propagation of White Supremacist material was driven by his business model of flaunting a variety of extremes. But, especially in the eyes of his apologists, this excused practically anything he did. And, in fact, he occasionally admitted to enjoying being able to épater le bourgeoisie. The introduction to Cult Rapture said,

How, why, did I sit with some of these characters long enough to not only obtain quotes, but glean their reptilian essence? Easy. My mind was on the payoff: thousands of people receiving an antidote to the Hallmark Card reality of America. Consider this book an emetic for the soul.[105]

Even if this could be taken at face value—his writings in the same book contradict that—there were numerous people in his cultural cohort who also mined a variety of extremes for content but avoided associating with the Far Right. And, of course, seeing Parfrey’s actions as merely promoting “extremes for their own sake” obscured his own positive interactions with the White Supremacist milieu—even at the same time that he made no shortage of public statements which overlapped with their politics.

Parfrey’s mother was Jewish, and he frequently trotted this out to deny claims to neo-Nazi and related associations or adherence or those of allies like Rice.[106] This would work on many journalists, though not those familiar with the Far Right. There is, of course, a long history of Jewish involvement in neo-Nazi political circles. This has included the NSPA’s Frank Collin, Daniel Burros (one of Parfrey’s interests), and even the Association of German National Jews, a prewar pro-Nazi group.

When he did invoke this, Parfrey would invariably forget to mention his own antisemitic statements, including about ZOG, and his associations with Holocaust deniers in particular. He also made a point of mocking and disparaging Jews—for example, blaming the Jewish community for Burros becoming a neo-Nazi.[107]

There was also a deep irony about Parfrey invoking his Jewish parentage as supposed proof that he couldn’t have White Supremacist views. Actual neo-Nazis he dealt with, like Mason, were well aware of his background and didn’t care.

Like Rice and Moynihan, Parfrey would claim he was the victim of persecution by feminists, liberals, and a totalitarian, politically correct police state. For example, when there was a 1992 protest against his appearance at a Portland, Oregon bookstore, he blamed “ultra-feminists to want to silence anyone who doesn’t hew to their views.”[108] To those opposed to his association with Rice, he said, “To cull Boyd Rice out of a group of published friends and then do a guilt-by-association trip is sinister McCarthyism.”[109]

Parfrey also accused his critics of what he himself was guilty of. In 1994, when asked if he’s a racist, he said “I think the better way to approach this is to ask all these egalitarian-minded people if they’re racist,” criticizing white liberals for patronizing people of color and being unwilling to “start treating everyone the same.”[110]

Parfrey would try to weasel out of accusations. For example, he said he would never publish Holocaust denial (“No, I’m not going to get into that world”).[111] But he published writings on other subjects by Holocaust deniers and had extensive personal connections with a number of them.

He was careful to tailor his public image, such as when he made sure not to be photographed sieg-heiling at the 8/8/88 event. After all, a full disclosure of what was happening behind the scenes would only harm to his reputation. These techniques can be seen clearly in an exchange with antifascist researcher Kevin Coogan, after he published a deeply researched piece which focused on Moynihan but also addressed Rice and Parfrey. Parfrey claimed that it was “verifiably wrong. Incredibly wrong.”[112] While he nitpicked facts—even picking a fight about a particular fact where he was verifiably wrong—and argued about interpretations, the dispute over RE/Search’s Andrea Juno shows the intentionality of his strategies. In Coogan’s article, one of endnotes said, “Feral House types hated women like Andrea Juno.” Parfrey replied that “not one word has ever been printed in a Feral House book insulting or even discussing Andrea Juno.” Coogan’s reply was to quote an interview where Parfrey himself called Juno a “psychotic cunt.”[113]

The exchange illuminated Parfrey’s strategy. In his parry, Parfrey said nothing had been printed about Juno “in a Feral House book.” Although Coogan accurately cited Parfrey’s slander, Parfrey had been very careful to misdirect the claim being made. The quote was not from a Feral House book at all, as Parfrey himself had introduced into the argument; rather, it was from an interview with him in a publication. Parfrey never denied the insult happened somewhere else.[114]

So was Parfrey a White Supremacist or even a neo-Nazi, as some of his critics claim? At least some of the bigotry in his private correspondence with Mason was undoubtedly an act, although it certainly was not a necessary one. Mason never used this language in his own letters. To say that Parfrey merely availed himself of an opportunity to do so is a charitable reading— although one must wonder why a person would want to convince a neo-Nazi that they were of the same mind.

In 1994, in a rare moment in which Parfrey admitted anything, he said, “I never really considered myself (part of the Nazi movement)—I was just flirting around with the aesthetics.”[115] Of course, he did more than just that. But this statement is unusual in that Parfrey appeared to agree that it was not completely unreasonable for an outside observer of his actions to conclude that he was a neo-Nazi.

National Socialism aside, Parfrey’s public statements were readily identifiable as part of the Far Right. These included his wild conspiracy theories, bigotry toward disabled people and people of color, and support of the militias. He attacked his critics in other political movements—especially accusing feminists and leftists of being “totalitarian”[116]—and groups that monitored the Far Right; meanwhile, he let the Far Right itself slide. And his loud defense of “free speech for fascists” was something he made extensive use of—whether for business reasons, ideological sympathy, or both.

Whether or not Parfrey was a neo-Nazi sympathizer, especially during the second half of the 1980s, is something only he could know. Any statement he made about this could be contradicted by a different one. But what is clear is that Parfrey was connected to, promoted, shared ideological positions with, and financially assisted neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers. Both his public record and private correspondence show this in abundance.

[1] Sam Roberts, “Adam Parfrey, Publisher of the Provocative, Dies at 61,” NYT, May 14, 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/05/14/obituaries/adam-parfrey-publisher-of-the-provocative-dies-at-61.html

[2] Scott Timberg, “Prince of Darkness: Adam Parfrey, publisher of the troublemaking press Feral House, has made it his life’s work to propagate the apocalypse,” New Times L.A., August 26, 1999, https://web.archive.org/web/20001101070309, www.newtimesla.com/issues/1999-08-26/feature.html/index_html?qs=8; Parfrey, “Three Criminal Brotherhoods Exposed: Aryan Brotherhood” and “RE/Search Unveiled,” IDEA Magazine #1, May 1981, pp.5, 7–9, 26 [Labadie, HM 647.I34].

[3] Art That Kills, p.161. A sixth issue was unfinished, but its contents posthumously appeared online; Exit #6, https://exitmagazine.net/index.php

[4] EXIT #1, 1984, www.exitmagazine.net/page.php?id=. As he did with a number of different images, Parfrey recycled the Hitler image, using it in Parfrey, ed., Apocalypse Culture II, p.235.

[5] EXIT #2, 1985, https://exitmagazine.net/page.php?id=111; Art That Kills, p.163; see also Parfrey to Mason, [February 16] 1987 [Box 17, Folder 4].

[6] Rice to Mason, May 12, 1986 [Box 9, Folder 20]. The collage was reprinted as part of a larger piece in EXIT #3, 1987, https://exitmagazine.net/page.php, as well as in Schreck, ed., The Manson File, p.32.

[7] Mason to Rice, May 14, 1986 [Box 9, Folder 20]; Mason to Manson, May 17, 1986 [Box 9, Folders 1–3].

[8] Parfrey to Universal Order, May 27, 1986 [Box 17, Folder 4].

[9] Parfrey to Mason, May 27, 1986; Mason to Parfrey, May 30, 1986; Parfrey to Mason, June 30, 1986 [all three Box 17, Folder 4].

[10] Parfrey to Mason, June 30, 1986 [Box 17, Folder 4].

[11] Ibid; Mason to Parfrey, July 2, 1986 [Box 17, Folder 4].

[12] Parfrey to Mason, July 14, 1986 [Box 17, Folder 4].

[13] Ibid.

[14] Parfrey to Mason, December 14, 1986 [Box 17, Folder 4].

[15] Bridges, The Rise of David Duke, p.41.

[16] Parfrey to Mason, December 14, 1986 [Box 17, Folder 4]. In the early ’00s, Grimstad repeated his objection to Manson, expanding it to include LaVey; Grimstad to Mason, September 25, 2003 [Box 30, Folder 29].

[17] Grimstad to Keith Stimely, September 7, 1987 [Stimely collection].

[18] Linda Maizels, “The Universal Nature of Hatred: Keith Stimely and the Culture of Holocaust Denial,” MA thesis, Portland State University, History Department (Dissertations and Theses, Paper 5836), 1999, p.64, https://doi.org/10.15760/etd.7707; Parfrey to Mason, October 31, 1988; Parfrey to Mason, [June?] 1989 [both Box 17, Folder 4].

[19] Michael A Hoffman II, “Alchemical Conspiracy and the Death of the West,” in Parfrey, ed., Apocalypse Culture, pp.233–38; “The Scapegoat: Ted Kaczynski, Ritual Murder and the Invocation of Catastrophe,” in Parfrey, ed., Apocalypse Culture II, pp.64–88.

[20] Parfrey to Mason, December 14, 1986 [Box 17, Folder 4].

[21] Mason to Parfrey, December 17, 1986 [Box 17, Folder 4].

[22] Mason to Parfrey, January 29, 1988 [Box 17, Folder 4]; James Joll, “The Nazi in the Rye” (review of Goebbels’s Michael), New Republic, October 13, 1987, p.43.

[23] Parfrey interview in Fifth Path #4, p.23.

[24] Knipfel, “The Other Nazis,” p.26 (Articles, p.75).

[25] Parfrey to Mason, December 28, 1986 [Box 17, Folder 4].

[26] Parfrey to Mason, [early January] 1987; Parfrey to Mason, [April 15] 1987 [both Box 17, Folder 4].

[27] “Friends of Justice Benefit Concerts: March 21, 1987; Los Angeles, New York, London” (press release) [Box 17, Folder 4].

[28] Parfrey to Mason, [early January] 1987 [Box 17, Folder 4].

[29] Parfrey to Mason, [January] 1987 [Box 17, Folder 4].

[30] Mason to Parfrey, February 28, 1987 [Box 17, Folder 4].

[31] Mason interview with Swezey and King (video). Ken Swezey’s name did not appear in Siege, only King’s; “James Mason Interview with Brian King,” Siege, pp.558–60.

[32] Schreck and Rice interview with King and Swezey (video); Brian King, email to author, March 16, 2023.

[33] Rice to Mason, July 4, 1988 [Box 9, Folder 20]; Parfrey to Mason, [February] 1987; Parfrey to Mason, [February 25] 1987 [both Box 17, Folder 4].

[34] Parfrey to Mason, [March 30] 1987; Parfrey to Mason, June 14, 1987 [both Box 17, Folder 4]. The article was Bill Keller, “American Outraged by Soviet Article,” NYT, June 6, 1987, www.nytimes.com/1987/06/06/world/american-outraged-by-soviet-article.html

The next year, Grimstad said Schreck and Parfrey “have recently completed issue 1 of their new ideological/political mag, BLOOD.” It is unclear if it was ever printed, however; Grimstad to Stimely, April 16, 1988 [Stimely collection].

[35] Mason to Parfrey, February 28, 1987; Mason to Parfrey, April 1, 1987 [both Box 17, Folder 4].

[36] In addition to implying that Mason pressure Rice and Schreck to buy copies, Parfrey also suggested reaching out to small stores that carried fanzines, including See Hear in New York City, as well as trying to get reviews in Forced Exposure and Factsheet Five. Parfrey said he would ask that Amok Books list it in their next Amok Catalog. Parfrey to Mason, April 15, 1987; Mason to Parfrey, April 17, 1987 [both Box 17, Folder 4].

[37] Timberg, “Prince of Darkness”; EXIT #3, https://exitmagazine.net/page. php?id=26. By April 11, Mason had received a copy, and asked Parfrey to send one to his comrade and fellow “Manson devotee” Ed Reynolds; Mason to Parfrey, April 11, 1987 [Box 17, Folder 4].

[38] EXIT #3.

[39] Parfrey to Mason, [early June] 1987 [Box 17, Folder 4].

[40] Parfrey to Manson, December 16, 1986 (letter returned) [Box 17, Folder 4]. Parfrey forwarded it to Mason with a note that he would try again.

[41] Mason to Parfrey, June 18, 1987 [Box 17, Folder 4].

[42] John Gross, “Books of the Times,” NYT, August 28, 1987, www.nytimes.com/1987/08/28/books/books-of-the-times-494887.html; Parfrey interview in Fifth Path #4, p.22.

[43] “8-8-88 Rally Plus Interviews” (video); Mason interview with Swezey and King (video); Ellis E Conklin, “For Adam Parfrey, Publishing the Unabomber’s Book Is All In a Day’s Work: ‘America’s most dangerous publisher’ lives in Port Townsend and enrages readers worldwide,” Seattle Weekly, November 23, 2010, www.seattleweekly.com/news/for-adam-parfrey-publishing-the-unabombers-book-is-all-in-a-days-work

[44] Parfrey, “Eugenics: The Orphaned Science,” in Apocalypse Culture, pp.155–66; R N Taylor, “The Process: A Personal Reminiscence,” in Parfrey, ed., Apocalypse Culture, Expanded & Revised.

[45] Parfrey, ed., Apocalypse Culture, pp.27–34, 125–27, 63–66, 129–39, 205–6.

[46] Mason to Parfrey, October 26, 1987 [Box 17, Folder 4].

[47] Mason to Parfrey, April 11, 1988 [Box 17, Folder 4]; Metzger to Mason, September 2, 1987 [Box 7, Folder 21].

[48] WAR 6(4) 1987, p.12.

[49] Parfrey to Mason, [March 9] 1988 [Box 17, Folder 4]; Schreck, ed., The Manson File, p.32.

[50] Parfrey to Mason, [January 1988] [Box 17, Folder 4].

[51] Mason to Parfrey, January 29, 1988 [Box 17, Folder 4]; Mason to Schuster, October 24, 2001 [Box 32, Folder 33]; Mason to author, November 26, 2022.

[52] Parfrey to Mason, [March 9] 1986 [Box 17, Folder 4].

[53] Mason to Rice, May 8, 1988 [Box 9, Folder 20]; Mason to Parfrey, March 9, 1988; Parfrey to Mason, [mid-April] 1988 [both Box 17, Folder 4].

[54] Parfrey interview in Fifth Path #4, p.22.

[55] Ibid.

[56] Whether from lack, tact, or opposition, Rants did not include the quotes from Rockwell and Tommasi that Parfrey had previously solicited from Mason; Bob Black and Parfrey, eds., Rants and Incendiary Tracts: Voices of Desperate Illumination 1558 to Present (New York: Amok Press / Loompanics Unlimited, 1989), https://archive.org/details/rantsincendiarytractsvoicesofdesperateillumi nation1558present; Parfrey to Mason, December 14, 1986 [Box 17, Folder 4].

Many of Rants authors were leftists and anarchists—including Hakim Bey, Emmett Grogan, Wilhelm Reich, and Louis Lingg. But the collection also included Redbeard, LaVey, former neo-Nazi Kurt Saxon, and antisemites Louis-Ferdinand Céline and Ezra Pound. Feral House would go on to publish Black’s Beneath the Underground (Portland, Oregon: Feral House, 1994). But Black—also one with a long history of fallings out—would denounce Parfrey as “a pissant hustler, a liar, and a thief”; Black, introduction to “The Realization and Suppression of Situationism,” Spunk Library, www.spunk.org/texts/writers/black/sp001671.html; originally 1994.

In addition to Black, Parfrey’s reception was warmest with those anarchists most influenced by a mix of pro-Situ ideas and Stirnerite individualism, and which sought to separate themselves from the more traditional socialist Left. Strongly overlapping with the freewheeling underground fanzine culture, these anarchists sometimes entertained other fringe ideas, including discredited science, conspiracy theories, and reactionary politics.

Hakim Bey, author of T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, was originally co-editor of Rants with Parfrey until leaving over his “strangely reactionary mind-set.” Bey denounced the publisher’s crowd as fetishists for Manson, as well as “occult 3^rd-Reich bricabrac & child murder.” Whatever the motivation, Bey’s denunciation itself appeared in Rants, and he also contributed to Apocalypse Culture; Bey, “Intellectual S&M Is the Fascism of the 80s,” Rants, pp.214, 216; “Instructions for the Kali-Yuga,” Apocalypse Culture, pp.63–66.

Jason McQuinn, the editor of Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed, reprinted Parfrey’s conspiratorial rant “Finding Our Way Out of Oklahoma” in another magazine he ran; Alternative Press Review, Winter 1996, pp.60–67. John Zerzan, in particular, made Feral House his primary outlet, publishing seven books on the press starting in 2005. Moynihan would publish a sympathetic review of one of Zerzan’s Feral House books, comparing him to Evola; see TYR #1, pp.212–13.

But Parfrey also drew harsh condemnation from anarchists positioned more firmly on the Left, such as Janet Biehl from Murray Bookchin’s Institute for Social Ecology. She hazed Parfrey’s Oklahoma City essay, advocacy of Left-Right alliances, and dismissal of antisemitism, concluding that “the left has nothing to learn from paranoid racists, no matter how psychedelic their conspiracies may be”; Janet Biehl, “The Fallacy of ‘Neither Left nor Right’: Militia Fever,” Left Green Perspectives #37, April 1996, https://social-ecology.org/1995/10/the-fallacy-of-neither-left-nor-right-militia-fever

[57] Knipfel, “The Other Nazis,” p.13 (Articles, p.70).

[58] Parfrey to Mason, [mid-April] 1988 [Box 17, Folder 4].

[59] Ibid.

[60] Parfrey, “Introduction” to Rice interview with Petros and Clark in Seconds, p.64.

[61] Parfrey to Mason, October 31, 1988 [Box 17, Folder 4]. The Satanic Witch (Los Angeles, California: Feral House, 1989) was a reissue of LaVey’s The Compleat Witch which first appeared in 1971. The introduction to the Feral House edition was by Zeena LaVey.

[62] Parfrey interview in Fifth Path #4, p.24; Timberg, “Prince of Darkness.”

[63] Parfrey to Mason, October 31, 1988 [Box 17, Folder 4].

[64] Ibid.

[65] “Adam Parfrey – July 2002” (interview), Mark’s Record Reviews, www. markprindle.com/parfrey-i.htm

[66] Jason Wilson and Aaron Flanagan, “The Racist ‘Great Replacement’ Conspiracy Theory Explained,” May 17, 2022, SPLC, www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2022/05/17/racist-great-replacement-conspiracy-theory-explained

[67] Parfrey interview in Mark’s Record Reviews.

[68] Ibid.

[69] “8-8-88 Rally plus Interviews” (video).

[70] Parfrey to Mason, [December 22?] 1989 [Box 17, Folder 4]. Mason tried one more time in May 1993, sending Parfrey a film script for a documentary about Rockwell. Parfrey passed, referring him to Bougas; but as before, the project didn’t go anywhere. When Mason finally did make several Rockwell videos for community access TV, he wrote Parfrey to offer copies—but his letter came back undeliverable. Parfrey to Mason, [May?] 1993 [Box 17, Folder 4]; Mason to Parfrey, October 13, 2003, letter returned [Box 30, Folder 49].

[71] Parfrey, “Skinned Alive,” pp.78–80, 90, 92, 106, 114; quote on p.80.

[72] Ibid, p.90; Mason to Rice, May 25, 1989 [Box 9, Folder 20].

[73] Goebbels, “Manifesto,” Robert Luther 267, “We Can Kill You,” and Parfrey, “Eugenics,” EXIT #4.

[74] EXIT #5, 1991, www.exitmagazine.net/page.php?id=58. The unpublished EXIT #6 also had a Mason contribution; www.exitmagazine.net/page.php?id=198

[75] Petros would go on to become a contributing editor at the art magazine Juxtapoz and a senior editor at the goth magazine Propaganda. Seconds, https://secondsmagazine.com/pages/mags.php; Art That Kills, p.302.

[76] Mason to Parfrey, November 12, 1992; Mason to Parfrey, November 21, 1992 [both Box 17, Folder 4].

[77] Parfrey to Mason, [late April or early May] 1993 [Box 17, Folder 4]; Moynihan to Mason, May 28, 1993 [Box 11, Folder 2].

[78] Parfrey to Mason, December 13, 1993 [Box 17, Folder 4].

[79] Art That Kills, p.155.

[80] “Archives: 1990–1995,” Center on Contemporary Art, https://cocaseattle. org/1990-1995

[81] Parfrey, Cult Rapture (Portland, Oregon: Feral House, 1995), pp.99–111, 241– 48, 217–20. Haynes had also appeared in the Petros-edited EXIT #5 in 1991.

[82] Parfrey, “Finding Our Way Out of Oklahoma,” Cult Rapture, pp.323–47.

[83] The book was David Hoffman’s The Oklahoma City Bombing and the Politics of Terror (Venice, California: Feral House, 1998); Nolan Clay, “Publisher to Destroy Bomb Book,” Oklahoman, December 10, 1999, www.oklahoman.com/story/news/1999/12/10/publisher-to-destroy-bomb-book/62218121007

[84] Parfrey, “Finding Our Way Out of Oklahoma,” Cult Rapture, p.306.

[85] “8-8-88 Rally plus Interviews” (video).

[86] “INTERVIEW: Michael Moynihan of Blood Axis: conducted by Matt G. Paradise for Not Like Most #4,” Purging Talon, https://web.archive.org/web/20040206154414, http://www.purgingtalon.com/nlm/moynihan.htm

[87] Mason to Parfrey, October 22, 1994; Parfrey to Mason, [October/November] 1994 [both Box 17, Folder 4]; The Tards, “Pissed You in the River”/“Wind-up Doll” 7” (Sympathy for the Record Industry, 1995), www.discogs.com/master/1406213-The-Tards-Pissed-You-In-The-River

[88] Parfrey to Mason, [October or November?] 1994 [Box 17, Folder 4].

[89] Burzum, Filosofem (Misanthropy Records/Cymophane Productions/Feral House Audio, 1996), www.discogs.com/Burzum-Filosofem/release/1327160

[90] Mason to Schuster, May 13, 2003 [Box 32, Folder 27].

[91] Parfrey, ed., Apocalypse Culture II.

[92] ANSWER ME! The First Three (Edinburgh: AK Press, 1994).

[93] Ungawa! featured trash and exploitation films from the 1950s and ‘60s. Boyd Rice interviewed Martin Delany in #4, pp.36–39, https://archive.org/details/Ungawa_4/page/n35/mode/2up

[94] Mason to Moynihan, September 30, 1992 [Box 11, Folders 1–4].

[95] Adam Leith Gollner, “The Secret History of Gavin McInnes,” Vanity Fair, July/ August 2021, online June 29, 2021, www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/06/the-secrethistory-of-gavin-mcinnes; “Jim Goad Joins White Nationalist Publishing House as a Biweekly Columnist,” Angry White Men, October 30, 2020, https://angrywhitemen.org/2020/10/30/jim-goad-joins-white-nationalist-publishinghouse-as-a-biweekly-columnist. See also https://counter-currents.com/tag/jim-goad

[96] Moynihan and Stephen E Flowers, The Secret King: The Myth and Reality of Nazi Occultism (Los Angeles, California: Feral House, 2007); Robert Forbes and Eddie Stampton, The White Nationalist Skinhead Movement: UK & USA 1979–1993 (Port Townsend, Washington: Feral House, 2015).

[97] Screenshots from New Resistance Facebook group, March 2015, in possession of author. The offending essay was Sunshine, “Drawing Lines Against Racism and Fascism,” Political Research Associates, March 5, 2015, www.politicalresearch. org/2015/03/05/drawing-lines-against-racism-and-fascis. The author was deeply wounded to be lumped in with other “wimpy White intellectuals.”

[98] Parfrey, “Against the Modern World,” Feral House, October 16, 2015, https://web.archive.org/web/20190815063657, https://feralhouse.com/against-themodern-world; James Porrazzo, New Resistance group post, Facebook, October 12, 2015, screenshot in possession of author.

[99] Porrazzo, comment on New Resistance group post, Facebook, October 7, 2012, and Porrazzo, New Resistance group post, Facebook, October 16, 2015, screenshots in possession of author.

[100] Tenebrous Kate, “Fringe Culture and Fearlessness: An Interview with Adam Parfrey of Feral House,” Heathen Harvest, March 11, 2016, https://web.archive. org/web/20160429034533, https://heathenharvest.org/2016/03/11/fringe-cultureand-fearlessness-an-interview-with-adam-parfrey-of-feral-house; “Robert Stark Interviews Adam Parfrey,” The Stark Truth with Robert Stark, March 6, 2017, www.starktruthradio.com/?p=3948

[101] Matthew Gault, “Adam Parfrey’s Feral House Was the Forerunner to Reddit and 4chan,” Vice, May 11, 2018, www.vice.com/en/article/ywez7w/adam-parfrey-dies-feral-house

[102] Margot Metroland,“‘Zine Master Adam: Remembering Adam Parfrey, April 12, 1957–May 10, 2018,” Counter-Currents, May 11, 2018, https://counter-currents.com/2018/05/zine-master-adam

[103] Mark Dery, I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts: Drive-by Essays on American Dread, American Dreams (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012), p.238.

[104] John P Jackson, Jr., “The Pre-History of American Holocaust Denial,” American Jewish History 105 (1–2), January/April 2021, https://muse.jhu.edu/article/804147; John Ganz, “Libertarians Have More in Common with the Alt-Right than They Want You to Think,” Washington Post, September 19, 2017, www.washingtonpost. com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/09/19/libertarians-have-more-in-common-with-the-alt-right-than-they-want-you-to-think

[105] Parfrey, “Introduction,” Cult Rapture, p.9.

[106] For examples of Parfrey’s use of being Jewish as a defense against accusations of either being a White Supremacist or working with them, see Iconoclast and Coogan, “Kevin Coogan Responds” (response to Parfrey’s letter to the editor), Hit List #3, June/July 1999, p.6.

[107] “Annotated Bibliography,” Cult Rapture, p.368.

[108] Parfrey interview in Fifth Path #4, p.24.

[109] Dery, I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts, p.238.

[110] Knipfel, “The Other Nazis,” p.13 (Articles, p.70).

[111] Conklin, “For Adam Parfrey.”

[112] Parfrey, “If We’re So Wrong,” p.5.

[113] Coogan, “How Black Is Black Metal,” p.48n38; Parfrey, “If We’re So Wrong,” p.5. Coogan’s rebuttal letter (“Kevin Coogan Responds,” p.6) cited Parfrey’s interview in Fifth Path #4, p.24.

[114] The exchange also featured disputes over whether Stimely had ever been Parfrey’s publicist and when IDEA #1 was published. In both, Parfrey made claims contradicted by the documentation Coogan had.

[115] Knipfel, “The Other Nazis,” p.13 (Articles, p.70).

[116] Parfrey interview in Fifth Path #4, p.24.