Yesterday I came across a news item today (syndicated across numerous web based news services). It said Thesis on Neo-Nazism pulled by university. It relates to a Masters Degree thesis by philosophy and religious studies student Roel Van Leeuwen and is titled ‘Dreamers of the Dark: Kerry Bolton and the Order of the Left Hand Path, a Case-study of a Satanic/Neo Nazi Synthesis’.
Some chatter on the net asks if this removal is Academic Freedom? Well it is too early to tell exactly why Waikato University removed the thesis, as according to the news reports both the thesis’ author and his University Supervisor weren’t even notified that the thesis would be removed. It just happened. It is hoped that the thesis will be back in the library soon, so then maybe the public can read the thesis and make up their own minds as to what is going on.
According to the Waikato Times the “[The university's student newspaper, Nexus,] said it established that no legal threat had been received against either Mr Van Leeuwen or the University of Waikato. Rather, the thesis was the subject of a mere complaint…”
However 3News writes that “Waikato University is surprised it has been threatened with legal action over a well-regarded thesis exploring a neo-Nazi group.”
It appears that a complaint from Kerry Bolton, who is the subject of the thesis, has lead to it being removed.
So what is this synthesis “Satanic/Neo Nazi” ideologies?
The Wikipedia entry for Neo-Nazism states: “The term neo-Nazism refers to post-World War II political movements, social movements, and ideologies seeking to revive Nazism, or some variant that echos core aspects of Nazism such as racial or ethnic nationalism or Völkisch integralism.”
According to Wikipedia, Satanism “can refer to a number of belief systems depending on the user and context. The word, in basic context, can refer to the worship of the Christian devil, thus being a Christian denomination, the Occult/Ritual Magic, and the left hand path belief system founded by Anton LaVey. It is often the practice of any given Satanist not to refer to themselves with a hyphenated prefix. Each “type” of Satanist will usually refer to themselves only as Satanists.”
The alt.satanism FAQ states that: “Throughout history, the label of ‘Satanism’ has been applied variably by the opposing religious factions, by the practitioners themselves, by historical revisionists some time later, and by combinations of the above. This document will focus on active modern forms of self-proclaimed Satanism, and modern religious groups of undeniably dark character. It should be considered that since dark and/or forbidden gods exist in many cultures other than European-descended Christianity, forms of Satanism other than those familiar to English-speakers do exist and in some cases flouris … The one unifying theme among the Satanisms is the last of the three dictionary definitions; one can say with some certainty that all Satanisms and Satanists have diabolical or satanic dispositions in that they are ‘like Satan.’ They possess the virtues of antinomianism, self-reliance, rebellion and adversarialism.”
There is no immediate grounds for seeing some global conspiracy linking Satanists and Neo-Nazis. However I have come across some interesting search results which I will post in a further entry.
The New Zealand Census figures show how widespread Satanism is in New Zealand (not very!) but of course there is no indication of political affiliations. The Religious Affiliation statistics from the past three census nights show that in 1996 there were 909 individuals listing their religion as Satanism, dropping to 894 in 2001, and growing to 1,167 in 2006.
Satanism is listed in the New Zealand census under Spiritualism and New Age Religions. The number of people listing their religion within this category has increased dramatically over the past decade. In 1996 there were 9,786 people in this grouping, growing to 16,062 in 1996 and up to 19,800 in 2006.
The 2006 Census figures certainly show a European majority in Spiritualism and New Age Religions with 14,373 being identified as European, 4,026 identified only as New Zealander, and 2,946 as Maori (the other ethnicities all being well under 1,000 individuals).
While it would seem that Satanism is alive and well in New Zealand it is not possible to know how many of those listing themselves as Satanists have any real active interests in this religion and how many put it down for a joke or reason known only to them.
Here is a recorded interview with those involved, from the Radio New Zealand website: University of Waikato Thesis Removed From Website. “A former secretary of the National Front says it’s fraught with errors in its research and analysis. (duration: 3′43″)”
Breaking news stories about this topics can be found here: http://news.google.co.nz/news?q=Roel+van+Leeuwen+thesis
Yahoo Group from Australian and New Zealand Satanists: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AustralianSatanists/
Tags: Kerry Bolton, neo-Nazism, Roel van Leeuwen, Satanism, Waikato University
