Michael Moynihan (journalist)
Encyclopedia
Michael Moynihan is an American
journalist, publisher and musician. He is best known for co-writing the book Lords of Chaos, about black metal
.
Moynihan is founder of the music group Blood Axis
, the music label Storm Records and publishing company Dominion Press. Moynihan has interviewed numerous musical figures and has published several books, translations and essays. In the 1990s, Moynihan was frequently identified as a fascist
or neo-fascist by some critics and fans. Moynihan accepted these descriptions with reservations in the 1990s, but in the 2000s dismissed them as inapplicable buzzwords used by "anti-this and anti-that activist types" and denounced the far right.
father. Moynihan identifies his background as entirely Northern Europe
an: Irish, English, Welsh, and German. He is involved in a long standing collaborative and romantic relationship with musician Annabel Lee, with whom he has fathered a child. He became active in experimental music from 1984, forming Blood Axis
in 1989 and releasing his first album under the name in 1995.
Moynihan attended Buckingham Browne & Nichols
, a private day school in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Moynihan collaborated with Boyd Rice
from 1989, and in 1990 the two moved into an apartment in Denver.
Like Rice and Thomas Thorn
, Moynihan was a member of the Church of Satan
at this time.
Moynihan appeared as a guest with Rice on Bob Larson's
"Manson Maniacs", a special for Larson's Christian
radio talk show. During the summer of 1991, Moynihan states that he was visited at his apartment by agents of the United States Secret Service
about an alleged plot to assassinate
then President of the United States
George H. W. Bush
.
Moynihan agreed to a polygraph
test and no charges were filed. Moynihan stated that it was a simple case of intimidation stemming from his correspondence with Charles Manson
and visits to Sandra Good
. Moynihan stated that he felt that the he had been monitored by the Federal Bureau of Investigation
since 1984, that they had taken his luggage on an occasion, and that they had once called his father, admitting to him that they had taken a parcel from his mail. Moynihan cited his then-friendship with Peter Sotos
as a potential cause.
Differences between Boyd Rice and Michael Moynihan led to an acrimonious split between the two in the mid-1990s, though Rice would later remember their time together fondly and refer positively to Moynihan. After the split, Moynihan disassociated himself with Rice and was no longer involved with the Abraxas Foundation. Moynihan has been a member of the small Asatru
collective Wulfing Kindred since 1994.
In 1995, Moynihan released the first full length album by Blood Axis, The Gospel of Inhumanity
and moved from Denver to Portland, Oregon
where he became an editor at Feral House
, a publishing company owned by Adam Parfrey
. After studying language and history at the University of Colorado
and Portland State University
, Moynihan received his B.A.
in German language
in 2001.
and the North America
n editor of Rûna.
In 1992, Moynihan edited and published a collection of writings by ex-National Socialist Mansonite
James N. Mason into a book entitled Siege: The Collected Writings of James Mason
. Published by Feral House, he co-authored the 1998 book Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground with Norwegian journalist Didrik Søderlind won the 1998 Firecracker Alternative Press Award.
During this period Moynihan contributed to various magazines and journals, including Seconds and The Scorpion, and has interviewed artists and figures such as power electronics founder Whitehouse
, Unleashed
, Bathory
, In the Nursery
, Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey
, controversial figure Charles Manson
, Peter Steele
of Type O Negative
, discussing Social Darwinism
, Misfits founder Glenn Danzig
, Throbbing Gristle
and Psychic TV
founder Genesis P-Orridge
, and Swans
founder Michael Gira
.
In 2001, Moynihan co-authored The Secret King with Stephen Flowers
. 2001 also saw Moynihan also editing a reprint of Introduction to Magic
, originally published in 1929, and in 2002 edited the first English language translation of the 1953 book Men Among the Ruins
, both by Julius Evola
and both published by Inner Traditions - Bear & Company
. In 2005 Moynihan edited and published a collection of essays by British writer John Michell's
The Oldie
entitled Confessions of a Radical Traditionalist.
Reviews of Lords of Chaos have been mixed, with several critics praising the book for offering an informative or at least interesting view on a relatively obscure sub-culture, winning the 1998 Firecracker Alternative Press Award. The publication was sometimes criticized for a perceived lack of distance towards its subject matter. This was considered especially alarming to groups and figures that had accused Moynihan of right-wing sympathies, charges which Moynihan has dismissed as inapplicable due to the "intricacies of such subjects".
.
The editorial preface of Tyr, vol. 1 defines an anti-modern, anti-capitalist ideal of "Radical Traditionalism
" encompassing:
artists such as SPK
and Throbbing Gristle
,
Moynihan started his first musical project in 1984, a power electronics project named Coup de Grace, for which he produced cassettes, image booklets, essays and performed live. In 1988, at the age of 18, Moynihan published an edition of Friedrich Nietzsche
's The Antichrist
featuring artwork by Trevor Brown
.
According to Moynihan, a cassette from his project Coupe de Grace was received by a group called Club Moral
in Belgium
, resulting in a positive review in an art and music magazine called Force Mental. This resulted in an invitation for Moynihan to come to Europe, which he accepted, and resulted in a small European tour for Coup de Grace. Here, he came in contact with Cthulhu Records. Upon returning to Boston in the United States, he was invited to join the experimental music group Sleep Chamber
.
While a member of Sleep Chamber, Moynihan met Thomas Thorn
. According to Moynihan, a falling out occurred between Thorn and John Zewizz
, founder of Sleep Chamber, resulting in Moynihan leaving Sleep Chamber and moving to Belgium, where he lived in a warehouse on invitation by Club Moral
. During this time, Moynihan described himself as a Skinhead
. Living without electricity, a low monthly fee and illegally in Belgium, Moynihan stated it was "worth the risk" but had to install many of his own utilities.
Thorn, who had formed a new group called Slave State, visited Moynihan in Belgium and the two played in a room beneath the warehouse where Moynihan was staying at this time. After the show, Moynihan became displeased with his illegal status and visited the founders of Cthulhu Records in Germany for a few days. After returning to the US in 1989, Moynihan formed the musical group Blood Axis and no longer produced music under the name of Coup de Grace.
Experimental musician Boyd Rice
invited Moynihan to go to Japan
and collaborate with him on some NON
performances there in 1989. Moynihan performed in concert with the various musical groups rotating around Tony Wakeford
, Douglas P.
, and Rose McDowall
who were also performing. His performance in Japan with NON was later released as the "Live in Osaka" DVD. That year, an album entitled Music, Martinis, and Misanthropy grew out of these collaborations.
In 1995, Moynihan also released the first full length album by Blood Axis, The Gospel of Inhumanity
and has seen several subsequent re-issues on various labels. It was followed by a second Blood Axis album in 1997 entitled Blot: Sacrifice in Sweden
for the Swedish post-industrial music label Cold Meat Industry.
In 2001, Moynihan released a musical collaboration with French artist Les Joyaux De La Princesse
entitled Absinthe: La Folie Verte
themed around absinthe
, a beverage Moynihan has expressed fondness for, and collaborated with Portland natives B'eirth
of In Gowan Ring, his partner Annabel Lee and Markus Wolff of Waldteufel for a project dubbed Witch-Hunt. Largely playing traditional acoustic Irish folk music
, the group played various local shows in Portland and also, in 2001, performed in Portugal
, where the album Witch-Hunt: The Rites of Samhain was released. In 2008, Moynihan appeared on the album "Hoodwinked" by The Lindbergh Baby and an Italian language
book entitled Day of Blood was published focusing on the musical group.
: "Featured in different contexts, Moynihan projects many different faces and has been classified as an "extreme rightist
" (Coogan 1999) an "extreme leftist
", (Wulfing One 1995) a Nazi, a fascist, and an anarchist
."
Gardell also writes about Moynihan, that he had "developed an early interest in things beyond the ordinary, from extremist politics to occult sciences. Intelligent, energetic, and creative, his inquisitiveness soon began to manifest in music, art and writings." As people to whom Moynihan is attracted in his ideas, Gardell lists Charles Manson
, Muammar al-Gaddafi
, Michael Bakunin, Julius Evola
, James Mason
and Miguel Serrano
.
In accordance with one of the main theses of his book (that "the conventional left wing-right wing binary has become increasingly insufficient to map out the scene of contemporary politics"), Gardell concludes that Moynihan may "best be described as a heathen anarchofascist, with all the paradoxes and ambiguities that follow from such a categorization."
Mattias Gardell further writes that: "While certainly [Moynihan] does not care about the majority of mankind, he cares even less about building gas chambers" and that "Moynihan is hardly anti-Semitic or a White Supremacist and is definitely not a radical right "leader" of anything".
has linked Moynihan more explicitly with the extreme right but states that Moynihan does not fit into a "conventional definitions of fascism". Coogan has classified Moynihan unspecifically as an "extreme rightist". Coogan states about Lords of Chaos:
Coogan states that Lords of Chaos "itself, however, is not a "fascist" tract in the strict sense", since Moynihan co-wrote it with Didrik Søderlind and Feral House editor Adam Parfrey wanted to publish a popular book on black metal, not a "political polemic." Coogan then points out: "Nor does Moynihan himself fit easily into the more conventional definitions of fascism."
Coogan continues with an account of Moynihan's biography and mentions "rumours" about Moynihan having a "blood fetish" and that he was suspected "of setting fire to a manger scene on the Cambridge Commons" in 1987, and further gives an account of Moynihan's involvement with the Church of Satan
and industrial music
. Coogan views certain tendencies of the industrial music subculture
as similar to a phenomenon of the time before World War II: "The sense of despair felt by industrial culture was not unique. A similar heroic/pessimistic worldview appeared in Europe after World War I." Coogan describes this worldview as "counter-cultural fascism," and in this milieu he says Moynihan is said to have operated, too.
The controversies stirred Moynihan as a topic of interest in industrial music, experimental music
, metal music, Satanic, Neo-Nazi, and Neo-völkisch movements
, and the album The Gospel of Inhumanity
released at the same time met with favourable reception from an amount of these quarters; the US Nazi skin journal Resistance (no. 6, 38) praised it as a "fascist symphony". The album also brought Moynihan to the attention of the German Neo-Nazi scene, a favourable review appearing in Einheit und Kampf. Das revolutionäre Magazin für Nationalisten (no. 18, p. 29, Aufruhr-Verlag, Bremen
). As a consequence, Moynihan was targeted by anti-fascist activists in the late 1990s. Blood Axis performances attracted protesters, on one occasion in 1998, "about 75" San Francisco protesters mobilized by a flyer denouncing Moynihan as "a fascist and a hatemonger" succeeded in preventing his appearance. Moynihan dismissed activists labeling him a Nazi or a Fascist as misinformed hysterical alarmism.
German social scientist Christian Dornbusch remarks that Moynihan's work "evokes a mindset which wants to design a future based on völkisch
and fascist respectively national socialist thinkers. It's the same goal that the British fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley rants about for minutes in the sample at the beginning of the live album Blot – Sacrifice in Sweden: »... we are fighting for nothing less than the revolution of the spirit of our people ...«".
1999 Intelligence Report as a "leader of new a generation of hate mongerers" amongst convicted felons and right wing activists. The section in the report regarding Moynihan was criticized by Decibel Magazine
in 2006, who stated that:
Moynihan responded to the report:
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
journalist, publisher and musician. He is best known for co-writing the book Lords of Chaos, about black metal
Black metal
Black metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal music. Common traits include fast tempos, shrieked vocals, highly distorted guitars played with tremolo picking, blast beat drumming, raw recording, and unconventional song structure....
.
Moynihan is founder of the music group Blood Axis
Blood Axis
Blood Axis is an American Neofolk/Post-industrial band consisting of journalist and author Michael Moynihan, music producer Robert Ferbrache and musician and author Annabel Lee.-Early Blood Axis :...
, the music label Storm Records and publishing company Dominion Press. Moynihan has interviewed numerous musical figures and has published several books, translations and essays. In the 1990s, Moynihan was frequently identified as a fascist
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
or neo-fascist by some critics and fans. Moynihan accepted these descriptions with reservations in the 1990s, but in the 2000s dismissed them as inapplicable buzzwords used by "anti-this and anti-that activist types" and denounced the far right.
Biography
Moynihan was born in Boston, Massachusetts to a lawyerLawyer
A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...
father. Moynihan identifies his background as entirely Northern Europe
Northern Europe
Northern Europe is the northern part or region of Europe. Northern Europe typically refers to the seven countries in the northern part of the European subcontinent which includes Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Finland and Sweden...
an: Irish, English, Welsh, and German. He is involved in a long standing collaborative and romantic relationship with musician Annabel Lee, with whom he has fathered a child. He became active in experimental music from 1984, forming Blood Axis
Blood Axis
Blood Axis is an American Neofolk/Post-industrial band consisting of journalist and author Michael Moynihan, music producer Robert Ferbrache and musician and author Annabel Lee.-Early Blood Axis :...
in 1989 and releasing his first album under the name in 1995.
Moynihan attended Buckingham Browne & Nichols
Buckingham Browne & Nichols
Buckingham Browne & Nichols School, often referred to as BB&N, is a private school located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, by the Charles River. The school educates students from pre-kindergarten to twelfth grade. It was established by a merge of two independent schools, the Buckingham School founded...
, a private day school in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Moynihan collaborated with Boyd Rice
Boyd Rice
Boyd Blake Rice is an American experimental sound/noise musician using the name of NON since the mid-1970s, archivist, actor, photographer, author, member of the Partridge Family Temple religious group, co-founder of the UNPOP art movement and current staff writer for Modern Drunkard...
from 1989, and in 1990 the two moved into an apartment in Denver.
Like Rice and Thomas Thorn
Thomas Thorn
Thomas Torquemada Thorn was born August 2, 1964 in Madison, WI.He is best-known as co-founder of, and lead vocalist for, the industrial metal band The Electric Hellfire Club....
, Moynihan was a member of the Church of Satan
Church of Satan
The Church of Satan is an organization dedicated to the acceptance of the carnal self, as articulated in The Satanic Bible, written in 1969 by Anton Szandor LaVey.- History :...
at this time.
Moynihan appeared as a guest with Rice on Bob Larson's
Bob Larson
Bob Larson is an American radio and television evangelist, currently based in Scottsdale, Arizona. Larson has authored numerous books on the subjects of rock music and Satanism, written from a Christian perspective.-Life and career:...
"Manson Maniacs", a special for Larson's Christian
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
radio talk show. During the summer of 1991, Moynihan states that he was visited at his apartment by agents of the United States Secret Service
United States Secret Service
The United States Secret Service is a United States federal law enforcement agency that is part of the United States Department of Homeland Security. The sworn members are divided among the Special Agents and the Uniformed Division. Until March 1, 2003, the Service was part of the United States...
about an alleged plot to assassinate
Assassination
To carry out an assassination is "to murder by a sudden and/or secret attack, often for political reasons." Alternatively, assassination may be defined as "the act of deliberately killing someone, especially a public figure, usually for hire or for political reasons."An assassination may be...
then President of the United States
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
George H. W. Bush
George H. W. Bush
George Herbert Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 41st President of the United States . He had previously served as the 43rd Vice President of the United States , a congressman, an ambassador, and Director of Central Intelligence.Bush was born in Milton, Massachusetts, to...
.
Moynihan agreed to a polygraph
Polygraph
A polygraph measures and records several physiological indices such as blood pressure, pulse, respiration, and skin conductivity while the subject is asked and answers a series of questions...
test and no charges were filed. Moynihan stated that it was a simple case of intimidation stemming from his correspondence with Charles Manson
Charles Manson
Charles Milles Manson is an American criminal who led what became known as the Manson Family, a quasi-commune that arose in California in the late 1960s. He was found guilty of conspiracy to commit the Tate/LaBianca murders carried out by members of the group at his instruction...
and visits to Sandra Good
Sandra Good
Sandra Collins Good a long-time member of the Manson Family and a close friend of Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme. Good's Manson Family nickname is "Blue," given to her by Charles Manson because of her blue eyes....
. Moynihan stated that he felt that the he had been monitored by the Federal Bureau of Investigation
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
since 1984, that they had taken his luggage on an occasion, and that they had once called his father, admitting to him that they had taken a parcel from his mail. Moynihan cited his then-friendship with Peter Sotos
Peter Sotos
Peter Sotos is a Chicago-born writer and musician. In his books, Sotos examines sadistic sexual criminals and sexually violent pornography, particularly involving children. His writings are interpreted by some as commenting on media hypocrisy around these issues...
as a potential cause.
Differences between Boyd Rice and Michael Moynihan led to an acrimonious split between the two in the mid-1990s, though Rice would later remember their time together fondly and refer positively to Moynihan. After the split, Moynihan disassociated himself with Rice and was no longer involved with the Abraxas Foundation. Moynihan has been a member of the small Asatru
Ásatrú
is a form of Germanic neopaganism which developed in the United States from the 1970s....
collective Wulfing Kindred since 1994.
In 1995, Moynihan released the first full length album by Blood Axis, The Gospel of Inhumanity
The Gospel of Inhumanity
The Gospel of Inhumanity is the first album by Blood Axis. Conceived in the winter of 1994/95, it was performed, recorded and engineered at Absinthe Studios by Michael Jenkins Moynihan and Robert Ferbrache....
and moved from Denver to Portland, Oregon
Portland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...
where he became an editor at Feral House
Feral House
Feral House is a book publisher owned and operated by Adam Parfrey. The publisher itself describes the books it sells as "pure information", and says the topics of the books are "forbidden"....
, a publishing company owned by Adam Parfrey
Adam Parfrey
Adam Parfrey is an American journalist, editor, and the publisher of Feral House books, whose work in all three capacities frequently centers on unusual, extreme, or "forbidden" areas of knowledge.-Life:...
. After studying language and history at the University of Colorado
University of Colorado System
The University of Colorado system is a system of public universities in Colorado consisting of three universities in four campuses: University of Colorado Boulder, University of Colorado Colorado Springs, and University of Colorado Denver in downtown Denver and at the Anschutz Medical Campus in...
and Portland State University
Portland State University
Portland State University is a public state urban university located in downtown Portland, Oregon, United States. Founded in 1946, it has the largest overall enrollment of any university in the state of Oregon, including undergraduate and graduate students. It is also the only public university in...
, Moynihan received his B.A.
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
in German language
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
in 2001.
Publishing
Moynihan is one of the editors of TYR: Myth - Culture - TraditionTyr (journal)
Tyr: Myth—Culture—Tradition is the name of an American Radical Traditionalist journal, edited by Joshua Buckley, Michael Moynihan, and Collin Cleary....
and the North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
n editor of Rûna.
In 1992, Moynihan edited and published a collection of writings by ex-National Socialist Mansonite
Charles Manson
Charles Milles Manson is an American criminal who led what became known as the Manson Family, a quasi-commune that arose in California in the late 1960s. He was found guilty of conspiracy to commit the Tate/LaBianca murders carried out by members of the group at his instruction...
James N. Mason into a book entitled Siege: The Collected Writings of James Mason
Siege (book)
Siege is a book collecting the articles of American neo-Nazi James Mason, former leader of the National Socialist Liberation Front and Universal Order. It collects the text of Mason's SIEGE newsletter and other propaganda, arranging it according to topic...
. Published by Feral House, he co-authored the 1998 book Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground with Norwegian journalist Didrik Søderlind won the 1998 Firecracker Alternative Press Award.
During this period Moynihan contributed to various magazines and journals, including Seconds and The Scorpion, and has interviewed artists and figures such as power electronics founder Whitehouse
Whitehouse (band)
Whitehouse are a pioneering English power electronics band formed in 1980, largely credited for the founding of the power electronics subgenre.-History and personnel:...
, Unleashed
Unleashed (band)
Unleashed is a Swedish death metal band that was formed in 1989 by Johnny Hedlund. Viking culture, recollection of a pre-Christian world, and Norse folklore are common themes found in the band's songs. A number of their recent songs also contain references to J. R. R. Tolkien.-Biography:Unleashed...
, Bathory
Bathory (band)
Bathory was a Swedish heavy metal band, formed by Quorthon in 1983. They are regarded as pioneers of both black metal and viking metal. Quorthon remained the main songwriter and member of Bathory for more than two decades. Bathory was permanently ended after Quorthon's death in 2004...
, In the Nursery
In The Nursery
In the Nursery are a neo-classical/martial electronica band, known for their cinematic sound. The duo has provided soundtracks to a variety of TV programmes and films, and is known for its rescoring of silent films.- Career :...
, Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey
Anton LaVey
Anton Szandor LaVey , born Howard Stanton Levey, was the founder of the Church of Satan as well as a writer, occultist, and musician...
, controversial figure Charles Manson
Charles Manson
Charles Milles Manson is an American criminal who led what became known as the Manson Family, a quasi-commune that arose in California in the late 1960s. He was found guilty of conspiracy to commit the Tate/LaBianca murders carried out by members of the group at his instruction...
, Peter Steele
Peter Steele
Peter Thomas Ratajczyk , better known by his stage name Peter Steele, was the lead singer, bassist, and composer for the gothic metal band Type O Negative...
of Type O Negative
Type O Negative
Type O Negative was a gothic metal band from Brooklyn, New York City. The band also incorporated elements of doom metal and thrash metal. Their dramatic lyrical emphasis on themes of romance, depression, and death resulted in the nickname "The Drab Four"...
, discussing Social Darwinism
Social Darwinism
Social Darwinism is a term commonly used for theories of society that emerged in England and the United States in the 1870s, seeking to apply the principles of Darwinian evolution to sociology and politics...
, Misfits founder Glenn Danzig
Glenn Danzig
Glenn Danzig Glenn Danzig Glenn Danzig (born Glenn Allen Anzalone; June 23, 1955 is an American singer-songwriter, musician, author, entrepreneur, and a progenitor of the horror punk subgenre of music. He is a founder of bands the Misfits, Samhain, and Danzig...
, Throbbing Gristle
Throbbing Gristle
Throbbing Gristle were an English industrial, avant-garde music and visual arts group that evolved from the performance art group COUM Transmissions...
and Psychic TV
Psychic TV
Psychic TV or PTV, is a video art and music group that primarily performs psychedelic, punk, electronic and experimental music...
founder Genesis P-Orridge
Genesis P-Orridge
Genesis Breyer P-Orridge is an English singer-songwriter, musician, writer and artist. P-Orridge's early confrontational performance work in COUM Transmissions in the late 1960s and early 1970s along with the industrial band Throbbing Gristle, which dealt with subjects such as prostitution,...
, and Swans
Swans (band)
Swans are an influential American post-punk band initially active from 1982 to 1997, led by singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Michael Gira. The band was one of the few groups to emerge from the early 1980s New York No Wave scene and stay intact into the next decade. Formed by Gira in...
founder Michael Gira
Michael Gira
Michael Rolfe Gira is an American musician, author, and artist. He is the main force behind the recently reformed New York City musical group Swans and fronts the Angels of Light...
.
In 2001, Moynihan co-authored The Secret King with Stephen Flowers
Stephen Flowers
Stephen Edred Flowers is an American Runologist and proponent of occultism and Germanic mysticism. The Bonham, Texas-born author has over two dozen published books and hundreds of published papers on a disparate range of subjects. He is also known by the pen-name Edred Thorsson...
. 2001 also saw Moynihan also editing a reprint of Introduction to Magic
Introduction to Magic
thumb|150pxIntroduzione alla Magia quale scienza dell'Io ; translated as Introduction to Magic: Rituals and Practical Techniques for the Magus, a work by Italian fascist philosopher and racial theorist Julius Evola. A collection of articles by Evola and the UR Group appearing in the journals Ur and...
, originally published in 1929, and in 2002 edited the first English language translation of the 1953 book Men Among the Ruins
Men Among the Ruins
Men Among the Ruins: Post-War Reflections of a Radical Traditionalist is a book by Julius Evola.First published as Gli uomini e le rovine in 1953, it is a statement of Evola's view of the political and social manifestations of our time...
, both by Julius Evola
Julius Evola
Barone Giulio Cesare Andrea Evola also known as Julius Evola, was an Italian philosopher and esotericist...
and both published by Inner Traditions - Bear & Company
Inner Traditions - Bear & Company
Inner Traditions – Bear & Company, also known as Inner Traditions, is a book publisher founded by Ehud Sperling in 1975 and based in Rochester, Vermont in the United States....
. In 2005 Moynihan edited and published a collection of essays by British writer John Michell's
John Michell (writer)
John Frederick Carden Michell was an English writer whose key sources of inspiration were Plato and Charles Fort...
The Oldie
The Oldie
The Oldie is a monthly magazine launched in 1992 by Richard Ingrams, who for 23 years was the editor of Private Eye. It carries general interest articles, humour and cartoons, and has an eclectic list of contributors, including James Le Fanu, John Sweeney, Thomas Stuttaford, Virginia Ironside,...
entitled Confessions of a Radical Traditionalist.
Lords of Chaos
Moynihan is best known for his 1998 account of the early Norwegian Black Metal scene.Reviews of Lords of Chaos have been mixed, with several critics praising the book for offering an informative or at least interesting view on a relatively obscure sub-culture, winning the 1998 Firecracker Alternative Press Award. The publication was sometimes criticized for a perceived lack of distance towards its subject matter. This was considered especially alarming to groups and figures that had accused Moynihan of right-wing sympathies, charges which Moynihan has dismissed as inapplicable due to the "intricacies of such subjects".
Tyr
Tyr: Myth—Culture—Tradition is a journal edited by Moynihan together with Joshua Buckley. The publication is named after Tyr, the Germanic god. The editors state that it "celebrates the traditional myths, culture, and social institutions of pre-Christian, pre-modern Europe." The first issue was published in 2002 under the ULTRA imprint in Atlanta, GeorgiaAtlanta, Georgia
Atlanta is the capital and most populous city in the U.S. state of Georgia. According to the 2010 census, Atlanta's population is 420,003. Atlanta is the cultural and economic center of the Atlanta metropolitan area, which is home to 5,268,860 people and is the ninth largest metropolitan area in...
.
The editorial preface of Tyr, vol. 1 defines an anti-modern, anti-capitalist ideal of "Radical Traditionalism
Traditionalist School
The term Traditionalist School is used by Mark Sedgwick and other authors to denote a school of thought, also known as Integral Traditionalism or Perennialism to denote an esoteric movement developed by authors such as French metaphysician René Guénon, German-Swiss...
" encompassing:
- ResacralizationResacralizationResacralization is the return of religious meanings to public sectors of social life such as politics, the arts, and the body, and the resistance of secularization. This is consistent with Berger's definition of secularization as the removal of religious meanings from public life, or privatization...
of the world versus materialism. - Natural social hierarchy versus an artificial hierarchy based on wealth.
- The tribal communityNeo-TribalismNeotribalism or modern tribalism is the ideology that human beings have evolved to live in tribal society, as opposed to mass society, and thus will naturally form social networks constituting new "tribes."-Sociological theory:...
versus the nation-state. - Stewardship of the earth versus the "maximization of resources."
- A harmonious relationship between men and women versus the "war between the sexes."
- HandicraftHandicraftHandicraft, more precisely expressed as artisanic handicraft, sometimes also called artisanry, is a type of work where useful and decorative devices are made completely by hand or by using only simple tools. It is a traditional main sector of craft. Usually the term is applied to traditional means...
and artisanArtisanAn artisan is a skilled manual worker who makes items that may be functional or strictly decorative, including furniture, clothing, jewellery, household items, and tools...
ship versus industrial mass-production.
Music
Influenced by first wave Industrial musicIndustrial music
Industrial music is a style of experimental music that draws on transgressive and provocative themes. The term was coined in the mid-1970s with the founding of Industrial Records by the band Throbbing Gristle, and the creation of the slogan "industrial music for industrial people". In general, the...
artists such as SPK
SPK (band)
SPK, formed in 1978 in Sydney, Australia, was a 1980s and early 1990s industrial music and noise music group. One member, Graeme Revell, would later go on to become a successful Hollywood movie composer.-History:...
and Throbbing Gristle
Throbbing Gristle
Throbbing Gristle were an English industrial, avant-garde music and visual arts group that evolved from the performance art group COUM Transmissions...
,
Moynihan started his first musical project in 1984, a power electronics project named Coup de Grace, for which he produced cassettes, image booklets, essays and performed live. In 1988, at the age of 18, Moynihan published an edition of Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
's The Antichrist
The Antichrist (book)
The Antichrist is a book by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, originally published in 1895. Although it was written in 1888, its controversial content made Franz Overbeck and Heinrich Köselitz delay its publication, along with Ecce Homo...
featuring artwork by Trevor Brown
Trevor Brown
Trevor Brown is an English artist from London presently living in Japan whose work explores paraphilias, such as pedophilia, BDSM, and other fetish themes. Innocence, violence and Japanese popular culture all collide in Brown's art....
.
According to Moynihan, a cassette from his project Coupe de Grace was received by a group called Club Moral
Club Moral
Club Moral is a Belgian noise band formed in 1981 by Danny Devos and Anne-Mie van Kerckhoven based in Antwerp, Belgium . They are known for their controversial performances and imagery. In 2001 "Dylan" briefly joined the band...
in Belgium
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
, resulting in a positive review in an art and music magazine called Force Mental. This resulted in an invitation for Moynihan to come to Europe, which he accepted, and resulted in a small European tour for Coup de Grace. Here, he came in contact with Cthulhu Records. Upon returning to Boston in the United States, he was invited to join the experimental music group Sleep Chamber
Sleep Chamber
Sleep Chamber is an American industrial band fronted by John Zewizz. The band is known for using S&M, bondage and Magick imagery on their art work, during their performances, and within their lyrics...
.
While a member of Sleep Chamber, Moynihan met Thomas Thorn
Thomas Thorn
Thomas Torquemada Thorn was born August 2, 1964 in Madison, WI.He is best-known as co-founder of, and lead vocalist for, the industrial metal band The Electric Hellfire Club....
. According to Moynihan, a falling out occurred between Thorn and John Zewizz
John Zewizz
John Zewizz is an American industrial music performer. Since the late 1970s Zewizz has recorded hundreds of cassettes, LPs, vinyl, and CD releases. He has also worked as a video director, magazine publisher, and record label owner .- Early life :John McSweeney was born in Essex, England on...
, founder of Sleep Chamber, resulting in Moynihan leaving Sleep Chamber and moving to Belgium, where he lived in a warehouse on invitation by Club Moral
Club Moral
Club Moral is a Belgian noise band formed in 1981 by Danny Devos and Anne-Mie van Kerckhoven based in Antwerp, Belgium . They are known for their controversial performances and imagery. In 2001 "Dylan" briefly joined the band...
. During this time, Moynihan described himself as a Skinhead
Skinhead
A skinhead is a member of a subculture that originated among working class youths in the United Kingdom in the 1960s, and then spread to other parts of the world. Named for their close-cropped or shaven heads, the first skinheads were greatly influenced by West Indian rude boys and British mods,...
. Living without electricity, a low monthly fee and illegally in Belgium, Moynihan stated it was "worth the risk" but had to install many of his own utilities.
Thorn, who had formed a new group called Slave State, visited Moynihan in Belgium and the two played in a room beneath the warehouse where Moynihan was staying at this time. After the show, Moynihan became displeased with his illegal status and visited the founders of Cthulhu Records in Germany for a few days. After returning to the US in 1989, Moynihan formed the musical group Blood Axis and no longer produced music under the name of Coup de Grace.
Experimental musician Boyd Rice
Boyd Rice
Boyd Blake Rice is an American experimental sound/noise musician using the name of NON since the mid-1970s, archivist, actor, photographer, author, member of the Partridge Family Temple religious group, co-founder of the UNPOP art movement and current staff writer for Modern Drunkard...
invited Moynihan to go to Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
and collaborate with him on some NON
Non
Non, non or NON can refer to:* French equivalent to English "no"; Italian equivalent to English "not"; Latin equivalent to either "not" or "no"...
performances there in 1989. Moynihan performed in concert with the various musical groups rotating around Tony Wakeford
Tony Wakeford
Anthony Charles "Tony" Wakeford is an English folk and neoclassical musician who primarily records under the name Sol Invictus.Wakeford lives in London and is married to Sol Invictus violinist Renée Rosen....
, Douglas P.
Douglas P.
Douglas P. , is an English folk musician, record label owner, photographer and actor who records under the name Death In June. He was born in Sheerwater in Woking, Surrey, and resides in Australia. Douglas P. is openly gay.-Crisis:Pearce began his musical career in a British punk band called Crisis...
, and Rose McDowall
Rose McDowall
Rose McDowall is a Scottish musician, most notably as a vocalist in the pop band Strawberry Switchblade.-History:...
who were also performing. His performance in Japan with NON was later released as the "Live in Osaka" DVD. That year, an album entitled Music, Martinis, and Misanthropy grew out of these collaborations.
In 1995, Moynihan also released the first full length album by Blood Axis, The Gospel of Inhumanity
The Gospel of Inhumanity
The Gospel of Inhumanity is the first album by Blood Axis. Conceived in the winter of 1994/95, it was performed, recorded and engineered at Absinthe Studios by Michael Jenkins Moynihan and Robert Ferbrache....
and has seen several subsequent re-issues on various labels. It was followed by a second Blood Axis album in 1997 entitled Blot: Sacrifice in Sweden
Blot: Sacrifice in Sweden
Blót: Sacrifice in Sweden is the second album by Blood Axis. It was recorded live in November 1997, at the Cold Meat Industry 10th Anniversary Feast in Skylten, Linköping, Sweden.-Overview:...
for the Swedish post-industrial music label Cold Meat Industry.
In 2001, Moynihan released a musical collaboration with French artist Les Joyaux De La Princesse
Les Joyaux De La Princesse
Les Joyaux De La Princesse is a French industrial band, founded in 1986 by Erik Konofal. The musical style is a mixture of ambient and neo-classical, often utilizing samples from original works in tandem with French chansons, operatic works, and historical speeches...
entitled Absinthe: La Folie Verte
Absinthe: La Folie Verte
Absinthe: La Folie Verte is a concept album by Blood Axis and Les Joyaux De La Princesse. It is an homage to the cordial absinthe.It was released by Athanor in 2001 as a digipack CD...
themed around absinthe
Absinthe
Absinthe is historically described as a distilled, highly alcoholic beverage. It is an anise-flavoured spirit derived from herbs, including the flowers and leaves of the herb Artemisia absinthium, commonly referred to as "grande wormwood", together with green anise and sweet fennel...
, a beverage Moynihan has expressed fondness for, and collaborated with Portland natives B'eirth
B'eirth
Jon Michael better known as B'eirth or B'ee , is the vocalist and conductor/composer in the experimental psych folk band In Gowan Ring.-Biography:...
of In Gowan Ring, his partner Annabel Lee and Markus Wolff of Waldteufel for a project dubbed Witch-Hunt. Largely playing traditional acoustic Irish folk music
Music of Ireland
Irish Music is the generic term for music that has been created in various genres on the island of Ireland.The indigenous music of the island is termed Irish traditional music. It has remained vibrant through the 20th, and into the 21st century, despite globalizing cultural forces...
, the group played various local shows in Portland and also, in 2001, performed in Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
, where the album Witch-Hunt: The Rites of Samhain was released. In 2008, Moynihan appeared on the album "Hoodwinked" by The Lindbergh Baby and an Italian language
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
book entitled Day of Blood was published focusing on the musical group.
Reception and controversy
Due to interpretations of particular comments that Moynihan has made and some of the imagery he has employed, Michael Moynihan has been a controversial figure.Matthias Gardell
Swedish professor Matthias Gardell writes in his Gods of the BloodGods of the Blood
Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Separatism is a book by Swedish scholar Mattias Gardell discussing Neopaganism and white separatism, neo-fascism and antisemitism.It was published by Duke University Press in May 2003....
: "Featured in different contexts, Moynihan projects many different faces and has been classified as an "extreme rightist
Far right
Far-right, extreme right, hard right, radical right, and ultra-right are terms used to discuss the qualitative or quantitative position a group or person occupies within right-wing politics. Far-right politics may involve anti-immigration and anti-integration stances towards groups that are...
" (Coogan 1999) an "extreme leftist
Far left
Far left, also known as the revolutionary left, radical left and extreme left are terms which refer to the highest degree of leftist positions among left-wing politics...
", (Wulfing One 1995) a Nazi, a fascist, and an anarchist
Anarchism
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
."
Gardell also writes about Moynihan, that he had "developed an early interest in things beyond the ordinary, from extremist politics to occult sciences. Intelligent, energetic, and creative, his inquisitiveness soon began to manifest in music, art and writings." As people to whom Moynihan is attracted in his ideas, Gardell lists Charles Manson
Charles Manson
Charles Milles Manson is an American criminal who led what became known as the Manson Family, a quasi-commune that arose in California in the late 1960s. He was found guilty of conspiracy to commit the Tate/LaBianca murders carried out by members of the group at his instruction...
, Muammar al-Gaddafi
Muammar al-Gaddafi
Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar Gaddafi or "September 1942" 20 October 2011), commonly known as Muammar Gaddafi or Colonel Gaddafi, was the official ruler of the Libyan Arab Republic from 1969 to 1977 and then the "Brother Leader" of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya from 1977 to 2011.He seized power in a...
, Michael Bakunin, Julius Evola
Julius Evola
Barone Giulio Cesare Andrea Evola also known as Julius Evola, was an Italian philosopher and esotericist...
, James Mason
James Mason (National Socialist)
James N. Mason is an American National Socialist.- American National Socialist :When he was 14 years old he began communicating with George Lincoln Rockwell's American Nazi Party and became a youth member until his 18th birthday when he was sworn into the renamed National Socialist White People's...
and Miguel Serrano
Miguel Serrano
Miguel Serrano was a Chilean diplomat, explorer and author of poetry, books on spiritual questing and Esoteric Nazism...
.
In accordance with one of the main theses of his book (that "the conventional left wing-right wing binary has become increasingly insufficient to map out the scene of contemporary politics"), Gardell concludes that Moynihan may "best be described as a heathen anarchofascist, with all the paradoxes and ambiguities that follow from such a categorization."
Mattias Gardell further writes that: "While certainly [Moynihan] does not care about the majority of mankind, he cares even less about building gas chambers" and that "Moynihan is hardly anti-Semitic or a White Supremacist and is definitely not a radical right "leader" of anything".
Kevin Coogan
The investigative journalist Kevin CooganKevin Coogan
Kevin Coogan is an American investigative journalist. He is the author of the biography Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International....
has linked Moynihan more explicitly with the extreme right but states that Moynihan does not fit into a "conventional definitions of fascism". Coogan has classified Moynihan unspecifically as an "extreme rightist". Coogan states about Lords of Chaos:
Yet what really makes the book fascinating is that its main author, Michael Moynihan, is himself an extreme rightist whose fusion of politics and aesthetic violence shapes a not-so-hidden sub current that runs throughout LOC.
Coogan states that Lords of Chaos "itself, however, is not a "fascist" tract in the strict sense", since Moynihan co-wrote it with Didrik Søderlind and Feral House editor Adam Parfrey wanted to publish a popular book on black metal, not a "political polemic." Coogan then points out: "Nor does Moynihan himself fit easily into the more conventional definitions of fascism."
Coogan continues with an account of Moynihan's biography and mentions "rumours" about Moynihan having a "blood fetish" and that he was suspected "of setting fire to a manger scene on the Cambridge Commons" in 1987, and further gives an account of Moynihan's involvement with the Church of Satan
Church of Satan
The Church of Satan is an organization dedicated to the acceptance of the carnal self, as articulated in The Satanic Bible, written in 1969 by Anton Szandor LaVey.- History :...
and industrial music
Industrial music
Industrial music is a style of experimental music that draws on transgressive and provocative themes. The term was coined in the mid-1970s with the founding of Industrial Records by the band Throbbing Gristle, and the creation of the slogan "industrial music for industrial people". In general, the...
. Coogan views certain tendencies of the industrial music subculture
Subculture
In sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, a subculture is a group of people with a culture which differentiates them from the larger culture to which they belong.- Definition :...
as similar to a phenomenon of the time before World War II: "The sense of despair felt by industrial culture was not unique. A similar heroic/pessimistic worldview appeared in Europe after World War I." Coogan describes this worldview as "counter-cultural fascism," and in this milieu he says Moynihan is said to have operated, too.
Further accounts
Schobert (1998) considers Moynihan a musical lightweight who profited from association with Rice and successfully and managed to style himself as a provocative "cult figure". Examples for such provocative behaviour include a 1994 interview with No Longer A Fanzine (no. 5, p. 8) which led to activist allegations that he was "a major purveyor of Neo-Nazism, occult fascism and international industrial black metal music."The controversies stirred Moynihan as a topic of interest in industrial music, experimental music
Experimental music
Experimental music refers, in the English-language literature, to a compositional tradition which arose in the mid-20th century, applied particularly in North America to music composed in such a way that its outcome is unforeseeable. Its most famous and influential exponent was John Cage...
, metal music, Satanic, Neo-Nazi, and Neo-völkisch movements
Neo-völkisch movements
Neo-völkisch movements, as defined by the historian Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, cover a wide variety of mutually influencing groups of a radically ethnocentric character which have emerged, especially in the English-speaking world, since World War II...
, and the album The Gospel of Inhumanity
The Gospel of Inhumanity
The Gospel of Inhumanity is the first album by Blood Axis. Conceived in the winter of 1994/95, it was performed, recorded and engineered at Absinthe Studios by Michael Jenkins Moynihan and Robert Ferbrache....
released at the same time met with favourable reception from an amount of these quarters; the US Nazi skin journal Resistance (no. 6, 38) praised it as a "fascist symphony". The album also brought Moynihan to the attention of the German Neo-Nazi scene, a favourable review appearing in Einheit und Kampf. Das revolutionäre Magazin für Nationalisten (no. 18, p. 29, Aufruhr-Verlag, Bremen
Bremen
The City Municipality of Bremen is a Hanseatic city in northwestern Germany. A commercial and industrial city with a major port on the river Weser, Bremen is part of the Bremen-Oldenburg metropolitan area . Bremen is the second most populous city in North Germany and tenth in Germany.Bremen is...
). As a consequence, Moynihan was targeted by anti-fascist activists in the late 1990s. Blood Axis performances attracted protesters, on one occasion in 1998, "about 75" San Francisco protesters mobilized by a flyer denouncing Moynihan as "a fascist and a hatemonger" succeeded in preventing his appearance. Moynihan dismissed activists labeling him a Nazi or a Fascist as misinformed hysterical alarmism.
German social scientist Christian Dornbusch remarks that Moynihan's work "evokes a mindset which wants to design a future based on völkisch
Völkisch movement
The volkisch movement is the German interpretation of the populist movement, with a romantic focus on folklore and the "organic"...
and fascist respectively national socialist thinkers. It's the same goal that the British fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley rants about for minutes in the sample at the beginning of the live album Blot – Sacrifice in Sweden: »... we are fighting for nothing less than the revolution of the spirit of our people ...«".
SPLC report
Consequently, Moynihan was listed on the Southern Poverty Law Center'sSouthern Poverty Law Center
The Southern Poverty Law Center is an American nonprofit civil rights organization noted for its legal victories against white supremacist groups; legal representation for victims of hate groups; monitoring of alleged hate groups, militias and extremist organizations; and educational programs that...
1999 Intelligence Report as a "leader of new a generation of hate mongerers" amongst convicted felons and right wing activists. The section in the report regarding Moynihan was criticized by Decibel Magazine
Decibel magazine
Decibel is a monthly heavy metal and extreme music magazine published by the Philadelphia-based Red Flag Media. Since October 2004, Decibel has featured a plethora of extreme metal bands and musicians. Its sections include Upfront, Features, Reviews, Guest Columns and the Decibel Hall of Fame...
in 2006, who stated that:
The main problem with this particular part of the article—besides being totally misleading—is that Blood Axis is not a black metal band. Rather than interview Moynihan, the authors of the article excerpted quotes from an issue of Compulsion zine published in 1998.
Moynihan responded to the report:
“Regarding their attacks on me, these too have been packed with misinformation and outright errors,” Moynihan adds. “They ignore my artistic work as whole—it’s clear they’ve never even listened to the records they’re condemning—and merely focus on a few provocative statements selectively culled from interviews done nearly 15 years ago. These statements become far more ambiguous when contextualized into everything I’ve said and done over the years. From the very beginning I have said that Blood Axis represents a grey area of Nietzschean amorality and paradox; the inability of people to handle it, or even grasp it on these terms, only proves how successfully it embodies this.”
Moynihan's response
Moynihan has repeatedly denied political ties. In response to the various political accusations leveled against him, Moynihan calls the Far right "a bunch of isolated losers" and further that:
Whether they're the Marxist/Communist/Socialist people who think that humans want to get along on a grand scale, or whether it's the Nazis, who think that if everyone was just of the same race, they'd all get along perfectly, or the anarchists, who think everyone would love to live this way if you just took away the police.
They're all deluded. People should worry about what happens on their block. They should get along with their neighbors before they worry about the great ills of society and about telling someone who lives 200 miles away what to do.