Anton Long: Evil Genius?
“I, and others like me, are the darkness which is necessary and without which evolution and knowledge are impossible. I am also my own opposite, and yet beyond both. This is not a riddle, but a statement of Mastery, and one which, alas, so few have the ability to understand.” Diablerie: Revelations of a Satanist by Anton Long
Almost exactly thirty-five years ago, David Myatt was interviewed by an enthusiastic student reporter for a local University newspaper, and the published account of the encounter appeared under the headline “Evil Genius”. This was Myatt’s second interview, and the young reporter was a certain Nick Witchell who would go on to have a very successful career in British journalism and broadcasting, becoming a familiar face on BBC Television where, for many years, he presented the main evening BBC news.
At the time of this interview, Myatt himself was in his early twenties and had not that long ago been released from jail after serving a prison sentence for violence, having been convicted of leading a gang of skinheads in a “racial attack” - what, at the time, was called ‘Paki-bashing’. Only a few months before this early interview, Myatt was the co-founder of a violent neo-nazi group, the NDFM (National Democratic Freedom Movement), which in the months after its founding had already been involved in a series of violent demonstrations and brawls and at whose meetings and public rallies Myatt was often the main speaker, known for his violent revolutionary rhetoric. Myatt was often to lead NDFM members in violent attacks on their opponents, with these attacks including twice smashing up an anti-apartheid exhibition, attacking ‘Red’ paper sellers, and assaulting members of a pro-communist Trades Union March, for which assault Myatt was arrested and convicted yet again, and which arrest and conviction was to be only one among many more for violence.
At the interview with Nick Witchell, Myatt was - as Witchell reported - accompanied by “two unidentified supporters, one of whom only became animated when violence was mentioned or discussed…”, and Myatt then already had an unsavoury reputation as not only a fanatic, a man of violence, but also as a Satanist.
The NDFM was to end, as it had begun, in violence - disbanded after Myatt’s arrest following another vicious mass brawl after Myatt had, for over half an hour, harangued a crowd of several hundred people (mostly communist supporters) from the top of the steps of Leeds Town Hall. Myatt would be sent to prison, again, for what was described as inciting and leading the violence on that occasion.
Almost exactly thirty-five years later, a certain Anton Long - regarded by many esoteric folk and all journalists as one of Myatt’s many pseudonyms - would yet again be publicly described, this time by a group of Satanists (WSA352), as “a genius”:
” We had always admired this Genius which expresses itself as Anton Long. Like a mushroom that scatters spores into the wind to spawn new mycellium, his Genius spawn many works, thoughts, systems, identities, which the Order of Nine Angles is but one.
I suppose we had long been infected with one of these spores, and found ourselves in awe and admiration of his mind. For a while we followed the Way he Precenced which was given to him. But we soon felt an urge to follow his Genius, and carve out our own unique trail to that common summit. If we truly admired him we should aspire to be like him; just as Satan aspired to be like god. So we tapped into his Genius, and did what he would have done - spawn a new exoteric expression, with a new name, to Presence the Dark, to help manifest his Dreams and Visions. “
Whether this is literally meant, or is part of some sinister jape, some building of an icon only to, later on and dialectically, smash it (1), there is no doubt that in these thirty-five years the ONA has inspired literally thousands of people world-wide, significantly changing the way of life, and the way of thinking, of many people. David Myatt - aka Anton Long - himself has also directly influenced thousands of people in diverse ways, through his practical political and religious involvements, and through his political, religious, philosophical and literary writings.
It has been alleged, for instance, that he inspired David Copeland (2) whose bombs in London killed three people and seriously injured hundreds more. For many years one of Myatt’s articles defending and praising “suicide attacks” was on the Izz al-Din al-Qassam (the military wing) section of the Hamas website (3) whose members have killed many Jews in such attacks. Several of his articles praising and defending bin Laden - such as his The Aims of Al-Qaida and his In Reply to Sheikh Salman bin Fahd al-Oadah - have been widely circulated by Jihadists, and Professor George Michael has claimed that Myatt has “arguably done more than any other theorist to develop a synthesis of the extreme right and Islam.”
In the 1990’s and for many years into the first decade of the 21st century - before Myatt (in his guise as Abdul-Aziz ibn Myatt) become publicly known as a radical Islamist and supporter of bin Laden and the Taliban - his Greek translations of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Sappho and Homer were often used by or referred to by Colleges, Universities and some American High Schools - for example by Sogang University, Korea; Suffolk University (Boston); and the University of Reading (UK).
His National Socialist writings have been translated into Swedish, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German, Norwegian, Polish, Finnish, Serbo-Croat, and several other languages, and even as recently as a few days ago, one supporter of that particular political ideology wrote:
“Myatt has arguably done more for post-war National-Socialism than anyone else. His emphasis on the ethical and honourable aspects of National-Socialist philosophy enables that philosophy to remain a viable ethos for a small number of people today, and keeps alive the hope that National-Socialism might one day be viewed with more objectivity by larger numbers of people…” Nexus of Life
Even his - by sinister standards - innocuous poetry has its many admirers, one of whom was once moved to write:
What we find expressed in much of this poetry is a profound desire for a more natural and a more human way of life. We also discover, in his poetry, a sensitive man, in love with Nature, who seems to enjoy the company of women far more than the company of men, and who finds:
There is much that is beautiful
But nothing that surpasses the beauty some women
Reveal
Through their eyes
(The Silent Wisdom)
The list of Long’s/Myatt’s influence goes on….. But what all these diverse influences reveal is an outpouring of creativity, by a single individual. That is, they do seem to reveal an “evil genius” at work; someone assuming diverse roles, and diverse personae, in order to cause, or bring about, disruption, and change.
There is certainly, it seems, a propensity to be sinister; to sinisterly manipulate; to - as the quote above says - scatter “spores into the wind to spawn new mycellium…”.
There is, most certainly, a desire to infect the mind’s of others; most certainly a desire to get others to dream, to have and be inspired by and then develop a grand vision or even a personal mythos; a desire to have others realize and explore and develope their potential, as human beings - to evolve beyond what they are; and most certainly - and possibly most important of all - a desire to challenge the ‘old aeon’ type of thinking that stereotypes an individual by assigning to them some label and categorising them according to their perceived ‘political’ or ‘religious’ views.
In short, there is - to use a word often used by the ONA - a desire not to be a mundane; a desire to challenge, to be genuinely heretical and perplexing. A promethean desire to be like gods; to emulate the diabolical heresy of Satan. A desire to form better, complete, strong, free, unique individuals.
For many of the individuals affected or influenced by Myatt’s/Long’s personae, writings, and ideas, their psychic Myattian infection lasts only a short time; perhaps some months; often a year or so; occasionally, longer. Then, they return to or resume their life among the mundanes. For some others, however, the infection will have changed them, often profoundly, giving them a new perspective on life; new visions and dreams. Others, instead, will revert to being mundanes.
But what matters for Myatt/Long is stimulating, provoking, causing, change - not especially ‘in society’ (that is a bonus), but in individuals; in changing, transforming, the very basis of our human nature, and it was to cause this change, this transformation, that he created what is perhaps his most sinister, and most effective, means, and a pure expression of his ‘evil genius’: The Order of Nine Angles.
For, rather than trying to personally maintain control of this creation of his, he released it (or rather, them) - like some fledgling symbiotic demons - out into the world, having given them a life, a mission, a purpose, all of their own. Now, one can imagine him, like a true Satanic Master, smiling as his now grown demons - true shapeshifters, and succubus and incubus - breed not only progeny of their own, but hybrids with human beings.
“We human beings possess the potential to consciously evolve to become the genesis of a new human species, and … genuine esoteric Arts - and especially and in particular The Dark Arts - are one of the most viable ways by which such a conscious evolution can occur…” Anton Long: The Quintessence of the ONA - The Sinister Returning
As Anton Long also once wrote (4):
“For over three decades I have been on both a quest and a mission. The quest has been to experience, and learn from, the possibilities of life. The mission has been to change this world of ours: to move it toward the next stage of our human evolution. This next stage involves us in learning to develope, and use, certain faculties. In simple terms, the next stage involves us in growing-up: in living, behaving, as mature human beings, and in leaving home, that is, this planet.
The reality of the present is that the majority of people are far from human maturity, living as they do like human children in adult bodies, in thrall to their passions, desires, and easily influenced and swayed by other people, by rhetoric, by Media manipulation, by unconscious energies, and other such things.
A truely mature human being is one who has mastered themselves; one who can know and experience great sorrow, great happiness, great joy, great suffering, but who remains strong despite such things. Such a mature individual is unique, and truely free. One of the signs of our immaturity is that most of us need to assign labels to ourselves and others, for this gives us a sense of security, of identity. It enables us to believe that we “know and understand” other people. For a mature individual, the labels of society are irrelevant.
Thus, in my own life I have been many things, according to conventional labels… But these conventional labels are irrelevant.
The error is that life, being in essence acausal, cannot be described in the finite causal terms inherent in all such labels, categories, concepts and isms. To so describe it, is to limit and mis-understand it: to impose a causal perception upon what is not-causal….. “
PointyHat
January, 120 (Year of Fayen)
Footnotes
(1) Anton Long has never taken himself too seriously, for instance writing that
“One of the least-known but important signs of a genuine Adept of our Dark Tradition, our sinister way, is the ability to not take one’s self too seriously - to laugh at one’s self…..” (Anton Long: The Laughter of the Adept)
He also wrote:
“Even my own life - rich, diverse, sinister, of both Light and Dark and thus perplexing to others - is only some new guide, one inspiration, one intimation of what all genuine Adepts should be. It, like that outer ONA which is now “known”, can and should be surpassed, by others…”
As someone once commented:
“David Myatt is: inscrutable; impossible to place him politically, almost as if he’s doing it all for laughs behind that beard of his.”
(2) Shortly after Copeland’s conviction for murder, a BBC Panorama programme about Copeland featured Myatt, claiming that Myatt was the person who had the most influence on Copeland. Several newspapers also published articles about the link between Myatt and Copeland, with one publishing a large photograph of Myatt on its front-page and stating that:
” THIS is the ‘Satanist Fuhrer’ who shaped the warped mind of neo-Nazi nail-bomber David Copeland. Riding a bicycle around his Worcestershire home town sporting a wizard-like beard and quirky dress-sense, the former monk could easily pass as a country eccentric or off-beat intellectual. But behind David Myatt’s studious exterior lies a more sinister character that has been at the forefront of extreme right-wing ideology in Britain since the mid-1960s.”
(3) Martin Durham: White Rage: The Extreme Right and American Politics. Routledge, 2007, p.113 ISBN 0415362326
(4) Preface to Presencing the Dark: The Weird Life of Anton Long, dated 114yf