CYMOPHANE - NORDLAND

In Norway, the name Cymophane has been used since the early 1990s, when Varg Vikernes used the company to distribute Burzum's records in Scandinavia. According to Monitor, the Norwegian Heathen Front had run the company for several years, until early this year when the record label suddenly moved to Stockholm, Sweden, modifying its name to Cymophane Records-Nordland.

The purchase of Cymophane, will undoubtedly increase Pierce's already significant influence in Sweden. Pierce's race-war pulp novel, The Turner Diaries, has given him a large following among Scandinavian nazis, and is required reading for activists in several nazi groups. In the early 1990s, the terrorist group VAM, White Aryan Resistance, was formed largely on Pierce's teachings.

VAM collapsed in 1992-1993 as several members of the organisation were jailed for armed band robberies and thefts from military arms depots. VAM's ringleader, Klas Lund, was released in 1996, and is today one of the core members of the newly formed Swedish Resistance/National Youth (SR/NY).

This organisation is made up of, among others, several activists from the old VAM hardcore. The National Youth has close links with the National Alliance in the United States. At the same time as Pierce was establishing himself as a player on the white power music scene via his purchase of Resistance Records and the record production part of Nordland last year, Nordland Magazine merged with the People's Tribune, the mouthpiece of the pro-Pierce Swedish Resistance/National Youth.

The chief editor of the People's Tribune is none other than former VAM terrorist Klas Lund. The three nazis convicted for last year's murder of Stockholm trade unionist Björn Söderberg were all associated with the National Youth.

For the last two years, the entire nazi scene has gone through several, often confusing, shuffles, making it difficult to understand who is actually aligned with whom. The Blood & Honour has, on the surface, been the most active organisation. Several new B&H branches have been formed and the organisation has branched out into Eastern Europe. At the same time, several key players generally associated with Nordland's turf, have moved back and forth between the camps, while others have turned up in connection with the tiny Swedish Heathen Front.

In Sweden, an anti-fascist observer recently spotted a leading Nordland activist, formerly a virulent skinhead, who has let his hair grow and is now all dressed in black. He was hanging out with a known Black Metal fan at a Stockholm club - a pointer as good as any about what direction Nordland will take under Pierce.

Contact between Nordland and the nazi Black Metal scene goes back at least to 1996, when Nordland magazine profiled Varg Vikernes in an interview. In addition, a leading National Youth activist is writing ideological texts published on the home page of the Swedish Heathen Front.

An investigation by Searchlight's sister magazines in Scandinavia, Expo in Sweden and Monitor in Norway, has uncovered the fact that the Swedish address for Cymophane-Nordland is also the address of the Swedish Heathen Front.

The Heathen Front is based on the "teachings" of Vikernes, which fit well into the nazi world thanks to their rabid anti-Semitism, which in its turn is based on Vikernes' hatred of the "Judeo-Christian Church".

Today, the Heathen Front is an openly nazi group, describing itself as "a neo-heathen and racially aware movement, which struggles to secure the Aryan people's existence" with offshoots in seven countries: Norway, Sweden, Finland, Germany, Russia, the Netherlands and the United States.

Cymophane-Nordland currently hawks not only CDs by Burzum, but other white power acts like Before God, the black metal project of the U.S. white power skinhead band Bound for Glory, and Endupdead, Finland's premiere white power act. From Pierce's standpoint, an expansion into Black Metal would be most welcome and opportune. Black Metal offers a new market and, no doubt, that Pierce wants a piece of the action.

by Stieg Larsson in Stockholm and Devin Burghart and Justin Massa in Chicago

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