ABSTRACT
The Atomwaffen Division was the most notorious neo-Nazi group that emerged in the Alt Right era. Forming in 2015, they were associated with five murders and spun off numerous affiliated groups and splinters that continued to be active into the mid-2020s. Atomwaffen Division had a “bible”: James Mason’s Siege. This book, which originated in newsletters he published between 1980 and 1986, espoused a new version of neo-Nazism that was avowedly revolutionary and condemned almost all other White Supremacists as mere right-wing reformists. Siege advocated not just armed neo-Nazi guerilla warfare but also serial killers and other mass murderers, who Mason hoped would help disrupt “the System.” He also promoted Charles Manson, the imprisoned cult leader whose followers committed gruesome murders in 1969, as the new neo-Nazi guru. Mason summarized his approach as “TOTAL ATTACK or TOTAL DROP-OUT.” While his writings were all but ignored when they were originally published, Mason’s arguments found their moment decades later. Starting with Siege’s reissue in 2015 by a younger generation, it has become today’s best-known, and most radical, neo-Nazi book.
