Wotansvolk (English: "Odin's Folk") promulgates a white nationalist variant of Neo-Paganism—founded in the early 1990s by Ron McVan, Katja Lane and David Lane (1938–2007) while Lane was serving a 190-year prison sentence for his actions in connection with the white supremacist revolutionary domestic terrorist organization The Order. After the founding of 14 Word Press by David Lane and his wife Katja to disseminate her husband's writings, Ron McVan joined the press in 1995 and founded Temple of Wotan (co-writing a book by that name). 14 Word Press – Wotansvolk proceeded to publish several books for the practice of Wotanism before becoming defunct in the early 2000s.
History
Wotansvolk was launched following the publication by David Lane of a 1995 article titled "Wotan's Folk", which gave the group its name. Wotan is the Germanic name for Odin, a central figure in Norse faith and other Germanic mythologies. Lane had been publishing white supremacist and neopagan work under the name "14 Word Press", along with his wife Katja Lane and Ron McVan, an artist who had become involved in the white supremacist movement from the 1970s after reading the works of Ben Klassen. Headquartered at a mountain outside St. Maries, Idaho, Wotansvolk rapidly evolved into "a dynamic propaganda center that spread its message throughout the United States and abroad". According to Mattias Gardell, Wotansvolk was not founded as a membership organization but rather as a propaganda center, providing "a philosophical foundation for independent kindreds and fraternities" with a large number of individual supporters helping disseminate Wotansvolk materials in their local communities.
A number of pagan white-power bands have referenced Wotansvolk in their lyrics, including Darken's Creed of Iron album and Dissident's album A Cog in the Wheel. The original group eventually split in 2002, when administration of Wotansvolk was transferred to John Post in Napa, California. In March of the same year, Post announced the formation of the National Prison Kindred Alliance, as a joint effort of Wotansvolk and a number of independent Asatrú/Odinist tribal networks seeking to improve their religious rights in penitentiaries.
Presence in US prisons
Wotansvolk operated a successful prison outreach program. As of January 2001, Wotansvolk catered to more than 5,000 prisoners, There were fewer than a hundred prison kindreds by the fall of 1996; more than three hundred of them were present by the year 2000. Prison authorities however often break groups by disseminating their members to various establishments. Lane's campaigning has contributed to the fact that all states now allow any prisoner to wear a Thor's hammer as a religious medallion. While the movement is primarily associated to prison culture in the media, Wotansvolk co-founder Katja Lane asserted in a 1999 interview that prisoners constituted only an estimated 20 percent of Wotansvolkers in the United States.
While Wotansvolk followers have endorsed the white separatist project of the Northwest Territorial Imperative, they mostly dismissed the constitution of the white ethnostate proposed by Aryan Nations in April 1996 on the ground that it restricted liberties, especially the freedom of religion.
Anti-Christianity
David Lane attributed the current weakness of the "Aryan man" to Christianity, a creed "diametrically opposed to the natural order" and part of a Jewish conspiracy to rule the world. "God is not love", he said, "God the Creator made lions to eat lambs; he made hawks to eat sparrows. Compassion between species is against the law of nature. Life is struggle and the absence of struggle is death." McVan and Lane have described many rituals and practices, none of which are required of practitioners. Lane often used "Odinist" and "Wotanist" as synonymous in his writings, and the Southern Poverty Law Center regards Lane's Wotanism as a form of Odinism, whereas Ron McVan labelled it "Heathen".
Universalist Asatruars—notably The Troth—along with some non-folkish Odinists, have rejected what they perceive as an attempt to appropriate the revival of the ancient native faith of northern Europe for political and racial ends. Folkish Heathens on their side, such as Stephen McNallen of the Asatru Folk Assembly, generally support Lane's Fourteen Words, although they are not generally in favor of domestic terrorism to establish a white ethnostate.