2 accused of race-war plot tied to Asatru religion in Va. prisons
Inside the Augusta Correctional Center one evening nearly 16 years ago, inmate Brent H. Parker was stabbed 68 times by two fellow Asatru worshipers at the foot of a makeshift altar.In 2001 interviews with the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the killers — inmates Michael Lenz and Jeffrey Remington — said Parker blasphemed and disrespected the Norse gods of their religion. They feared their faith, new to Virginia prisons, might fade in the wake of the murder and their pending executions.Remington killed himself in 2004, and Lenz died by injection in 2006. Asatru, however, survived.There are now 350 inmates who report themselves as members of Asatru/Odinism in state prisons, according to the Virginia Department of Corrections. According to those tracking white supremacists, Asatru or Odinism, a recognized pagan Nordic religion, also has become popular with white racist inmates across the country.The FBI says at least two of three area men allegedly tied to a group plotting a race war, Robert C. Doyle and Ronald B. Chaney III, “ascribe to a white supremacy extremist version of the Asatru faith.” The Anti-Defamation League says the third man, Charles D. Halderman, has Asatru tattoos.Doyle and Halderman also were said to be linked to the Aryan Brotherhood, a prison-born criminal/white supremacist gang, some members of whom practice Asatru.In 2013, all three men were held at the Deep Meadow Correctional Center in Powhatan County. Doyle and Chaney were released from there in 2013 and Halderman from Augusta in 2014.Their lawyers either declined to comment or did not return calls and emails for comment for this story.Mark Pitcavage, with the Anti-Defamation League’s center on extremism, said most Asatruists are not white supremacists. But he said a minority are, often referring to themselves as Odinists or Wotanists. The Virginia Department of Corrections would not comment, but Pitcavage said prison officials had designated Doyle, Chaney and Halderman as white supremacists.In 2000, the Southern Poverty Law Center, based in Montgomery, Ala., warned that Asatru was attracting white racists inside and outside correctional centers and that a number of officials across the country identified Odinism/Asatru as the fastest-growing religion behind prison walls.“It seems to have slowed down, although certainly hundreds if not thousands of white supremacists are still into it,” Mark Potok, a senior fellow with the center, said last week.Another authority, Randy Blazak, a professor at the University of Oregon, said there has been an increase in white supremacy among convicts.“We’ve been sort of celebrating the demise of the Ku Klux Klan and the racist skinheads and all these groups that were such a plague 20 or 30 years ago — they’re all sort of just falling apart. But where we’re really seeing the growth (of white supremacists) is inside prisons,” Blazak said.“The larger question is how much of this racial agitation and radicalization is happening under the guise of Asatru? Is this our Americanized version of the fear of jihadis being radicalized in prison?” asked Blazak, who has researched and written extensively on the topic, and notes that the inmates’ beliefs can follow them when released from prison.Blazak said one reason Asatru is popular behind bars is because it’s a religion that celebrates warriors and dying to enter Valhalla.“It’s a much more macho, masculine religion which celebrates violence. These guys who are stabbing this guy to death in front of everybody, I’m sure they are true believers who believed that that ensured their place in the Hall of Heroes in Valhalla,” Blazak said.He said inmates have a right to organize and practice religion under a 1964 U.S. Supreme Court decision, which requires officials to treat inmates of all religions equally unless there are good reasons otherwise, and other more recent court cases that have opened prison doors to paganism, Satanism and other nontraditional faiths.A spokeswoman for the Virginia Department of Corrections said prisoners have the opportunity to participate in practices of their religious faith, limited only by a documented showing of a safety threat or that the activity itself disrupts order in the facility. Some religious activities may be limited, restricted or denied at a facility based on security, safety or other legitimate concerns, she said.***Blazak described Asatru as a kind of modernization of the Odinist/Viking faith that jumped from Scandinavia via Iceland and Newfoundland to this country.“It really starts becoming a part of the prisons in the late 1980s when the Aryan Brotherhood discovers it,” Blazak said. He described two versions of Asatru found inside and outside prisons: One is the recognized paganist faith rooted in ancestral worship, and the other is “a way to get white supremacist stuff out there” under the guise of a recognized religion.There is no inmate right to set up a racial organization in prisons, although that happens in terms of gangs, he said. “But you can organize as a faith,” and many, including white supremacists, are doing so.“It gives them a legitimate claim on a meeting place and a regular meeting time,” he said. “It’s a tough thing to monitor because you have to respect First Amendment rights and the Supreme Court decisions on these things, but it is also manipulated by groups.”Blazak said there is a schism in prisons between those who see Asatru as an expression of their ethnic and religious/spiritual identity, and white supremacists who just want a place to hang out “where they could do stuff that was sort of Nazi-friendly.”He recalled speaking with a group of Odinists in a prison in Texas: “I’m looking at the tattoos that people have. As soon as I started talking about the racist stuff, I saw a bunch of guys pull their sleeves down so I couldn’t see what was on their arms because they knew that I knew what was going on: They were hanging out there as sort of a safe space to say racist things and have their space.”“In prison, it’s very important to have space because it’s such an intense, violent, hyper-masculine place — to have an hour a week where you don’t have to worry about someone stabbing you in the neck,” Blazak said.***Given what happened in the Parker slaying in 2000, a meeting might not be a safe place if you have angered the wrong person.In 2001 interviews while they were on death row, Lenz and Remington said they were attracted to Asatru after they entered prison.“It’s something that’s been calling to me on the inside all of my life, and it took me quite a few years to find it. It’s just right for me. I hear the voice of my ancestors speaking from within my soul,” Lenz said.The Jan. 16, 2000, slaying took place in a meeting of six Asatru believers. Remington said that, like Lenz, he had a theological disagreement with Parker, but his primary motive for killing him was a long-standing beef.The Asatru meeting, or “blot,” on the night of the murder was attended by the two killers, the victim and three other inmates. Parker was asked to come up to the altar made out of a prison table. “If Parker was genuinely Asatru, he should have known what was going to happen,” Lenz said.“He seemed shocked at first,” Lenz said. Parker attempted to struggle but was overpowered. The three other inmates fled the room.“It wasn’t a real fast thing. It was a struggle; it took a few minutes. There was a little bit of interference from Parker, and there was a couple of moments when it was just me and him, and there was moments when it was just Remington and him,” Lenz said.“But once both of us got on him, it was pretty much over.”Remington said the “Ironwood Kindred,” a group of half a dozen inmates following Asatru at the Augusta Correctional Center, was the first in the state. “That’s one of the tragedies of Parker’s slaying — it took us three or four years to get that thing all organized and running smooth. There was a lot of opposition because of superstition. The administration certainly gave us a hard time.”Remington said: “It’s sad that he had to die and, on top of that, me and Mike are going to be put to death. That’s a tragedy to Asatru because there’s not a lot of us.”Parker’s murder, he said, “destroyed the possibility we had worked for — to get Asatru into the penal system here, the expansion of it. There’s a lot of negative to this whole case.“I hope, somehow, that we can promote a more positive light on this whole tragedy,” Remington said.***At the time the story ran in 2001, the Virginia Department of Corrections said there were no “kindreds,” or chapters, in state prisons. Last week, prison officials said there are 16 facilities where inmates say they are members of Asatru or Odinism. However, citing security concerns, the corrections department would not identify the prisons.The website of the 700-member Asatru Folk Assembly in Nevada City, Calif., proclaims: “Ours is an ancestral religion, one passed down to us from our forebears from ancient times and thus tailored to our unique makeup. Its spirit is inherent in us as a people. If the People of the North ceased to exist, Asatru would likewise no longer exist. It is our will that we not only survive, but thrive, and continue our upward evolution in the direction of the Infinite.“Asatru is not just what we believe, it is what we are. Therefore, the survival and welfare of the Northern European peoples as a cultural and biological group is a religious imperative for the AFA.”However, “The belief that spirituality and ancestral heritage are related has nothing to do with notions of superiority. Asatru is not an excuse to look down on, much less to hate, members of any other race. On the contrary, we recognize the uniqueness and the value of all the different pieces that make up the human mosaic.”Stephen A. McNallen, founder and head of the Asatru Folk Assembly, said the vast majority of Asatru followers are not members of any national organization. He said the assembly has kindreds in the U.S. and as far away as Spain and Sweden.McNallen said his Asatru members are not white supremacists, and they certainly do not condone murder for such offenses as blasphemy or anything else. He said he also appreciated the FBI’s reference in the recent case involving Doyle and Chaney to an “extremist version” of the Asatru faith.McNallen said Doyle and Chaney have never been members of the Asatru Folk Assembly, nor have they ever attempted to contact the organization.“Attacks on innocent and unarmed people are reprehensible,” he said. “Racial hatred is not a positive thing. It is absolutely in itself not right, and it is counterproductive to anything constructive that we’re trying to do — so obviously we are very much against that.”
