Miguel Serrano’s Antisemitism and its Impact on the Twenty-First-Century Countercultural Rightists

The Writer, the Diplomat, the Nazi

Long before being praised by American white supremacists and European neo-Nazis, Serrano had become a name in Chilean literature. Offspring of a traditional family of landowners and nephew of the famous poet Vicente Huidobro, Serrano began his literary career young, publishing short stories and essays in diverse newspapers, magazines, and anthologies. By the late 1940s, when he started working as a journalist in the influential newspaper El Mercurio, he had already issued three books (1938, 1941, and 1948). In the 1950s, his literary prestige increased as a result of the publication of two acclaimed chronicles, Ni por mar ni por tierra (Neither by Sea nor by Land) and Quién llama en los hielos (Who Calls in the Ice). The former recounts his personal trips to southern Chile; the latter, his experience as correspondent of the first local expedition to Antarctica (1950, 1957). Far from hindering this literary career, Serrano’s later accession to the Chilean diplomatic service enhanced it by expanding his contacts and locating him closer to Anglo-Saxon readership.

After fourteen years of Radical governments, the Chilean presidential elections of 1952 faced four main candidates: Pedro Enrique Alfonso (Radical), Arturo Matte (Liberal, also supported by Conservatives), Salvador Allende (Socialist, also supported by Communists), and retired general Carlos Ibáñez del Campo, former dictator and leader of a vigorous populist movement. Although the bourgeoisie and the landowners mostly supported Matte, there was a significant portion of young rightists backing Ibáñez, given his nationalist credentials and authoritarian style (Correa 2001, 189–198). Serrano was one of them and as such worked actively in the campaign, being generously rewarded for that. Briefly after his election as Presidente de la República, Ibáñez appointed him as the first Charge d’Affairs of Chile in India, inaugurating the author’s diplomatic career. Presumably, his family background also helped to obtain this appointment, as his grandfather Joaquín Fernández Blanco and his uncle Joaquín Fernández y Fernández had been ambassadors previously (Serrano 1998, 27–37, 96).

In India, Serrano not only fulfilled his official duties and made important contacts –such as Nehru and Indira Gandhi–, but also wrote books that reshaped his literary career. In Bombay, he released The Mysteries, his first work to be published in English (1960a) as well as The Visits of the Queen of Sheba, prefaced by the famous psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung (1960b).

In 1963, President Jorge Alessandri appointed him as ambassador to Yugoslavia. In Beograd, Serrano wrote La serpiente del paraíso (The Serpent of Paradise), a chronicle of his trips in India (1963) and El círculo hermético (The Hermetic Circle), famous for its recounting of the author’s friendship with Carl Gustav Jung and Hermann Hesse (1965a). This was his first work to be issued by big international publishers, such as Routledge & K. Paul and Schocken Books (1965b, 1966).

Later, President Eduardo Frei Montalva named him as ambassador to Austria, something that put him closer to postwar Nazi circles. Serrano held this position between 1967 and 1970, when President Salvador Allende put an abrupt end to his diplomatic career (1999, 198). Being in Vienna, he wrote La flor inexistente (The Ultimate Flower), a text simultaneously published in Spanish and English by Routledge & K. Paul, stressing Serrano’s new status as an international author (1969a, 1969b).

After the 1973 military coup, as Chile passed from President Allende’s democratic socialism to General Pinochet’s right-wing dictatorship, Serrano stayed in Europe, specifically in Switzerland. From there, he weaved a rich network of Nazi contacts, which included figures as conspicuous as Otto Skorzeny and Léon Degrelle, whom he visited in Franco’s Spain (Goodrick-Clarke 2002, 190–191). Around the same time, Serrano met in Rome one of the most influential thinkers of the European right-wing counterculture: Julius Evola. According to Serrano, he visited the Italian in his apartment at la Via Corso Vittorio Emmanuele, where they held a long conversation on racism and esoterism (1984, 92–93).

Another crucial figure among his European far-right connections was Savitri Devi, with whom Serrano maintained epistolary contact (1999, 196). Born in France as Maximiani Portas, Devi became one of the most iconic figures of postwar Nazism due to her true religious devotion for Hitler. Indeed, she was the first Western author to identify him as an Avatar –this is, as an incarnation of god Vishnu (Goodrick-Clarke 1998, 4). Such an idea, emanated from the Indian Brahmanic caste in the 1940s and introduced in the West since the 1960s onwards, became central in the Chilean’s antisemitic oeuvre.

Yet, Serrano did not reveal these connections until the late 1970s, when he published his first antisemitic book, El Cordón Dorado. Hitlerismo Esotérico (The Golden Thread. Esoteric Hitlerism). Until then, he had developed a conventional literary career, avoiding positions that may harm his prestige as an author. This drastically changed in 1978.

The ruling military authorities invited Miguel Serrano to give a master class at Universidad de Chile’s 1978 summer courses, an offering this experienced right-wing intellectual joyfully accepted. Some weeks after the event, Cosas magazine published an interview with him that brought great controversy, especially with Chilean Jews. As the magazine mainly devoted itself to entertainment topics, the interviewer showed more interest in the rumors that sentimentally linked the author with Indira Gandhi than in his political opinions. However, since Serrano praised Hitler as “the most important anti-Communist politician in Western history,” the conversation took another course. As the reporter repeatedly inquired about the Holocaust, the interviewee replied that it was “the greatest falsehood of the twentieth century,” recommending him the “illuminating revisionist works” by Paul Rassinier, Richard Harwood, and Arthur Butz.^[2]

Serrano was trying to install Holocaust denial in the media, something unprecedented in Chilean history. The leaders of the main Jewish institutions noticed this and complained to the magazine’s editor, stressing “denying the Holocaust of six million Jews constitutes an affront on those who were victims of such inhuman acts, and a scorn for the survivors.” Accordingly, they requested the editor not to re-tribune the author in the future.^[3]

Seen in perspective, this episode was but a prolegomenon to what occurred a few months later, when Serrano published his first antisemitic book, El Cordón Dorado. Hitlerismo Esotérico (1978). This is one of his most influential works, being edited on multiple occasions during the last two decades. In this sense, although its first foreign editions were released in 1980s West Germany and 1990s Colombia, it has been in the twenty-first century that the book has achieved a greater impact. In 2002, the American publisher Fourteen Word Press, belonging to Wotansvolk, issued the text’s first English edition (Serrano 2002). Later, the Roman publisher Settimo Sigillo released an Italian version of it (Serrano 2007). More recently, two almost simultaneous editions were published, in London and Melbourne. The latter is notable for its attractive graphic design and for being the first Australian edition of this work (Serrano 2017b). Nonetheless, it is the former that constitutes a milestone in the spread of his antisemitic oeuvre. This edition, finely bound, excellently translated, and accompanied by a thorough set of critical notes, is well above its peers. Likewise, it is the only edition approved by the author’s widow and heir, Sabela Quintela (Serrano 2017a).

What does this uncommon text raise to be issued so many times and in so many places during the last two decades? This is a question difficult to answer given its bizarre content, on the one hand, and the varied characteristics of its readers, on the other. Briefly speaking, the text claims the existence of a spiritual continuity –a Golden Thread– between diverse historical groups that allegedly stood in opposition to Judeo-Christianity, such as Cathars, Rosicrucians, Templars, and Nazis. Likewise, it alleges that World War II was in truth a “cosmic war” in which two opposite “Archetypes” clashed, one belonging to the Aryan peoples and the other to Jews (Serrano 2017a, 6–7). Eccentric ideas like these, along with his outstanding narrative skills, allowed Serrano to shape a heterodox interpretation of Nazism that is susceptible of being appropriated by diverse right-wing actors across the globe. Needless to say, this imaginary, aestheticized “Hitlerism” has very little in common with historical Nazism, becoming a space for expressing right-wing identity dissidences.

Unsurprisingly, some of the spectacular statements contained in the book, such as “Hitler is alive” (Serrano 2017a, 16), were what caught the attention of Chilean media the most,^[4] overshadowing the text’s antisemitic appeal. Yet, it is precisely this which makes El Cordón Dorado a unique piece: regardless of the disparate, often incoherent elements put together by the author throughout its pages, such elements are constantly bound by an alluring antisemitic narrative able to explain virtually everything.

In order to illustrate the alleged “cosmic” opposition between Aryans and Jews, for instance, Serrano does not hesitate to offer an alternative ancient history of Jews. According to this, most of the Hebrew tribes were actually lost during the years in the desert, after which only the tribe of Judah remained, “the least moral,” and “the most primitive one” (2017a, 159–160). Serrano does not hesitate to express grandiloquent ideas of a theological nature either. In some passages of the book, for example, he defends the existence of “a Principle of Evil acting upon creation,” a principle he sees embodied in “the Jewish Jehovah of the Old Testament, the Demiurge of this Earth” (2017a, 172). This scatological tone is one of the most distinguishing characteristics of Serrano’s antisemitic oeuvre, and surely plays a role in its current success.

Still, El Cordón Dorado not only offers an imaginary past but also an alleged close, apocalyptic future. Its protagonist is, unsurprisingly, “the Messiah, the King of the Jews,” whose advent is being “prepared in the womb of the Lodges, in deep secret, in the centres of global power” (Serrano 2017a, 181). These fantastic antisemitic expressions were absolutely unprecedented in Chilean history. Despite the existence of long-standing anti-Jewish tendencies within the local right, linked with its Catholic identity, none of the local antisemites had ever expressed such bizarre ideas on Jews. Not even the 1930s nacistas, strongly influenced by the European antisemitism of the period, embraced comparable perspectives (Deutsch 1996; Guzmán 2012).

Nevertheless, it was not these eccentric ideas that most brought controversy on El Cordón Dorado. As previously had occurred with the Cosas magazine’s interview, what put the book in the limelight was its passages denying the Holocaust. “With relation to those ‘tremendous acts’ judged at Nuremberg,” asserts the author, “it is necessary to say once and for all that this matter of the six million Jews that were made disappear in the crematory oven is one of the greatest farces in the history of humanity” (Serrano 2017a, 258).

The leaders of the main Chilean Jewish institutions reacted to the book’s release by denouncing it in the press. The President of the Representative Committee of Jewish Entities, Gil Sinay, stressed the text’s only aim was to “deny the reality of the six million Jews assassinated in World War II.”^[5] On the other hand, the President of the Zionist Federation, Hernán Fischman, accused the arrival in Chile of a “worldwide neo-Nazi campaign” whose most recognizable face was Holocaust denial.^[6]

From the perspective of this paper, two issues related to the global spread of Serrano’s antisemitic oeuvre are particularly relevant. First, the subsequent transmission of other Chilean voices into the transnational right-wing counterculture, such as Nicolás Palacios, whose racist ideas are constantly celebrated in Serrano’s antisemitic books. Second, Serrano’s attempt to stand alongside central figures of the right-wing counterculture. A clear example of the latter is the imaginary dialogue that he establishes with Julius Evola throughout El Cordón Dorado.

Three main issues should be emphasized regarding the latter. First, Serrano’s overt admiration for “the most important Italian thinker of these times.” In this sense, the Chilean author especially praises Evola’s works on Jews, for they supposedly demonstrate that “Communist Marxism and Capitalist Liberalism are operated by the same forces and lead to an identical end: to destroy all tradition based on blood and soil” (2017a, 281). Second, Serrano’s adoption of a crucial idea by Evola: “If the Protocols [of the Elders of Zion] are not genuine, they are true” (2017a, 282). This assertion, profusely quoted by the Serrano throughout his antisemitic oeuvre, highlights his particular approach to history –and historical facts. Third, his disagreement with Evola’s “spiritualist definition of the races.” According to Serrano, this was an attempt “to create the Fascist esoterism; but Mussolini was not Hitler” and “Rome had been thoroughly upset by Christian Semitism” (2017a, 134–135). Thus, he pays tribute to a central far-right intellectual as Evola and, at the same time, defends his own antisemitic positions.

By the end of 1978, the Chilean author returned to his home in Switzerland. He publicly reappeared only in 1984, at the funeral of Walter Rauff.

At the Funeral of a German War Criminal

In early 1984, The New York Times repeatedly reported on the situation of Walter Rauff in Chile. This war criminal had been captured there in 1962 at the request of the German justice for his role in the murder of thousands of people in World War II, but the Chilean Supreme Court denied his extradition by arguing the statute of limitation.^[7] However, at the beginning of 1984, important foreign actors pressed General Pinochet to expel Rauff. On January 25, for instance, the New Yorker newspaper announced that Israel had “made a formal request to Chile” in this regard, and that the Simon Wiesenthal Center had equally called for “American pressure on the Chilean government.”^[8] Also the Anti-Defamation League had sent a telegram to Pinochet, with the same request.^[9]

A couple of days later, The New York Times reported the arrest in Chile of the renowned “Nazi hunter” Beate Klarsfeld, who had traveled there to draw the attention of the international public and ask for Rauff’s expulsion. Indeed, she held a rally in front of the government house along with a group of young Jews and Human Rights activists, being immediately arrested by the police.^[10] Although Klarsfeld left the country shortly after, her visit had been successful, reinforcing the international pressures on Pinochet. Yet, the dictator’s position remained steady: Rauff would not be expelled from the country.^[11]

The demands on Pinochet did not stop, though. As foreign governments and important Jewish organizations kept pressing from abroad, some Chilean Jews did the same from within. In this regard, it is worth highlighting the role played by the Sephardi weekly El Vocero and by Amiti Pilowsky, an important community leader. The former was the only Jewish publication that reported on Klarsfeld’s activities in Chile;^[12] the latter, one the few local Jews that publicly requested the authorities to expel the German.^[13]

Undoubtedly, Rauff had become one of the main international problems of General Pinochet, a reason why the German’s sudden death –in May 1984, allegedly due to a lung cancer– must have been a true relief for him. To be sure, Foreign Affairs Minister Jaime del Valle quickly stated this put an end to the Rauff Affaire, “eliminating a point of friction in the foreign relations” of Chile.^[14]

From the perspective of this paper, Rauff’s funeral was as interesting as his prosecution itself. As this ceremony was concluding, three men stood by the tomb, made the Nazi salute, and shouted “Heil Hitler! Heil Walter Rauff!” One of them was Serrano, who was immediately approached by reporters there. “It is not true that Walter Rauff created the mobile gas chambers,” he stressed, “and the so-called Holocaust is indeed a Jewish disguise for taking over the world.”^[15]

This homage allowed him to be interviewed by influential local right-wing newspapers, such as La Segunda and Las Últimas Noticias. In those long interviews, Serrano was able to freely express his antisemitic ideas, denying the Holocaust and claiming a cosmic Jewish conspiracy.^[16] Thus, his antisemitism reached a massive readership.

The approach adopted by the Chilean right-wing press, an approach acutely lacking of criticism, was made even clearer in Serrano’s interview at Revista del Domingo. The journalist in charge of it portrayed him as a freethinker, a sort of rebel who bravely defended his heterodox ideas. Moreover, she friendly announced the forthcoming launch of a new “Hitlerist” book by the author.^[17] That book was Adolf Hitler, el Último Avatãra.

Adolf Hitler, the Ultimate Avatar

This is the most important “Esoteric Hitlerist” work by Serrano. As such, this long, illustrated volume has been published in different languages and continents throughout the twenty-first century, becoming a reference work for multiple countercultural rightists.

The book is divided into five parts. The first one, Memorias del Arquetipo (Memoirs of the Archetype), gives an account of the 1930s and 1940s in Chile from an obsessively antisemitic perspective. In this sense, two issues deserve to be highlighted. First, when tracing the roots of an alleged Jewish conspiracy in his country, Serrano offers a whole alternative history of the Americas, from prehistory to the 1980s. According to this imaginative narration, Vikings and Templars had been in the continent long before Jews sent their “coreligionist” Columbus to trace the “White Gods.” Likewise, the Independence process had been “promoted by Masonic Lodges (…) to finish what Spanish Catholicism had started, the delivery of the American ‘New World’ to Judaism” (2014, 55–57). Passages like this abound in Adolf Hitler, el Último Avatãra, giving it a distinguishing apocryphal tone.

The second issue that must be noticed about this part of the book is how it combines global and local antisemitic voices. The long section on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, for example, resorts to anti-Jewish ideas by Nicolás Palacios and Julius Evola alike. “To appreciate either the good or danger of a philosophical or scientific theory one must first ask about the racial origin of its author,” Serrano says echoing Palacios; “if it is a Jew, then the theory must be false and harmful to non-Jews” (2014, 79). Similarly, he praises Julius Evola for stressing, “the relevant point about the Protocols is not their authenticity, but their veracity” (2014, 98–99). Both notions are critical in Serrano’s antisemitic rhetoric.

Miguel Serrano also celebrates Evola for suggesting the presence of a “Prince of Darkness” in the Jewish conspiracy described by the Protocols, a notion that he leads to paroxysm. “As there is a Hyperborean Archetype, a God of the Black Sun, there is also Entropic Chaos, a Lord of galactic shadowy corruption, who tends to nothingness and disorder,” and whose “incarnation” is to be found in the Jewish “anti-race” (2014, 119). Throughout the book, he indistinctly calls this figure “the Demiurge,” “the Demiurge Jehovah,” or “the Lord of Darkness” –and “the Jew, his acolyte” (2014, 208, 230). This Manichaean, apocalyptic narrative is one of the most characteristic aspects of Serrano’s antisemitism, and surely plays a significant role in his current success among alternative rightists.

The second part of the book, Más allá del Arquetipo (Beyond the Archetype), reveals another distinguishing feature of Serrano’s antisemitic oeuvre, namely the use of Hindu concepts to stress his anti-Jewish cosmogony. Concepts such as Divyas, Vîras, Yugas, Manvantaras, etc., constantly interact with Western and Chilean myths, shaping a unique antisemitic narrative. For instance, Serrano tells us that in immemorial times a group of Divyas –or divines– abandoned their paradise in the celestial Hyperborea to penetrate the demiurgic creation and become Vîras –this is, heroes combating Jehovah and his Jewish “servants.” According to him, these Divyas entered the demiurgic universe through “the Morning Star, Oiyehue” –in reference to the Mapuche name for planet Venus (2014, 240–245).

Más allá del Arquetipo essentially claims that Hitler was an Avatar –an incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu. Such an idea did not belong to Serrano but to anti-British sectors within the Brahmanic caste, which saw Hitler as an ally. Savitri Devi introduced this idea to the West in the 1960s, afterwards being embraced and reshaped by the Chilean author (Goodrick-Clarke 1998, 4). Serrano identifies Vishnu with the German god Wotan and the Scandinavian Odin, different denominations for the Aryan Archetype who allegedly incarnated in Hitler to combat both Jehovah and the Jews (2014, 311).

This heterodox, imaginative interpretation of Hitler’s role and World War II is also the core of the fourth and fifth parts of the book (Sangreal, Initiation of the SS and The Ultimate Avatar, respectively). Although inventive and extended, they offer few elements to be highlighted in light of this paper. What is really worth emphasizing is the third part of the book, El Otro Polo (The Other Pole), for it delves into Serrano’s alternative history of Chile and the Americas. According to the latter, the Jesuits, General Franco, the Bourbon King, and the Pope himself were Jewish; so were Fidel Castro, Salvador Allende, and many other political figures (2014, 425–428). In this sense, his antisemitic history offers an explanation for virtually everything on the continent, from Columbus’ trips to the Cuban Revolution.

The third part of Adolf Hitler, el Último Avatãra also interprets the Chilean modern history from this conspiratorial antisemitic perspective: Salvador Allende’s government, the coup d’état of September 1973, and General Pinochet’s dictatorship were but consequences of the cosmic Jewish plot revealed in the Protocols. Indeed, Pinochet’s adoption of “Jewish” neoliberalism as well as his visits to Synagogue only confirmed such a plot, he believed (2014, 607–622).

The Chilean Jewish institutions quickly reacted to the publication of Adolf Hitler, el Último Avatãra. The Committee Representative of the Jewish Entities spoke of “an increase in the Nazi activity” in the country, denouncing the situation to government authorities. Additionally, the committee complained to El Mercurio’s owner, Agustín Edwards, about the interview with Serrano in Revista del Domingo.^[18] Also the Jewish leader Amiti Pilowsky criticized the approach of Edwards’ newspapers to the Nazi writer. As he correctly observed, it was not only El Mercurio but also La Segunda and Las Últimas Noticias that most persistently gave visibility to Serrano.^[19] To be sure, the launch of Adolf Hitler, el Último Avatãra had been covered by Las Últimas Noticias.^[20]

Antisemitic Activism in General Pinochet’s Chile

After publishing Adolf Hitler, el Último Avatãra, Serrano devoted the rest of the 1980s to developing an antisemitic activism unparalleled in Chilean history. The latter included the publication of brief volumes, the edition of anti-Jewish “classics,” and the organization of Nazi rallies on symbolic dates –such as the centenary of Hitler’s birth. This activism turned the author into the undisputed leader of Chilean Nazis.

For instance, in 1986 alone, Serrano published three antisemitic books. In June, he released Nacionalsocialismo, única solución para los pueblos de América del Sur (National Socialism, Only Solution for the Peoples of South America), a short text that summarizes National Socialism’s “two basic pillars,” namely “the racist conception of History and a special economic ideology” (1986a, 3). Actually, the book reproduces passages of Adolf Hitler, el Último Avatãra, leaving most of the Hindu concepts and other complexities aside. Something similar happens with La resurrección del héroe (The Resurrection of the Hero), released in October 1986. The main novelty regarding this text is Serrano’s constant attacks on “the Pope of the Jewish church of Rome,” John Paul II, who would visit Chile in 1987 (1986b, 11). Besides El Cordón Dorado and Adolf Hitler, el Último Avatãra, this is his only antisemitic book of the 1980s to be translated into English, so far (Serrano 2015).

In July 1986, Serrano published El ciclo racial chileno (The Chilean Racial Cycle), a short volume that condenses his lecture on Nicolás Palacios at the Superior Academy of National Security (1986c). It is not the content of the text itself that deserves to be highlighted here, though, but the fact that he expressed such ideas in a public institution as the mentioned academy. In front of an audience that included generals, diplomats, and scholars, Serrano made antisemitic statements that not only were morally reprehensible but also incompatible with the pro-Israel, even philo-Semitic attitude adopted by Pinochet’s government since the mid-1970s onwards (Harvey 2011; Kacowicz 2017). In this sense, antisemitism became a dividing line within the Chilean right: as the right-wing establishment abandoned it and replaced it by a positive approach toward Jews and Israel, other minority actors embraced antisemitism as a central identity marker. Needless to say, that was the case of Serrano’s followers.

The Representative Committee of Jewish Entities reacted to the publication of these texts by denouncing it to the governmental authorities. According to the country’s main Jewish institution, the release of these books was part of a larger antisemitic campaign.^[21]

In mid-1987, Serrano took another important step in the development of this antisemitic activism by editing and publishing two foreign anti-Jewish “classics.” First, he issued Gottfried Feder’s Manifesto for the Abolition of Interest-Enslavement, a German text originally published in 1919 to which the Chilean writer added an own prologue on “the virus” of usury (1987a). Later, Serrano edited and published El Plan Andinia. Estrategia sionista para apoderarse de la Patagonia argentina y chilena (The Andinia Plan. Zionist Strategy to Take Over the Argentine and Chilean Patagonia). This local version of the Protocols essentially claims the existence of a Jewish conspiracy to control Patagonia, where a second Jewish state will be established (1987b).

Serrano prefaced this text, too. There he argues, “If we analyze the history of the Southern Cone in light of the Zionist aspirations of the Andinia Plan, the whole previous dark years are illuminated by a revealing light.” This is, he offers local antisemites a key for the correct interpretation of their own History. Furthermore, exposing his characteristic apocalyptic tone, he claims that in the Andinia Plan are involved both “the Catholic Church, the Freemasonry, and the Great Synagogue, which commands them.” Their ultimate aim, he believes, is the establishment of a “Zionist Empire in the Patagonian south,” to be headed by the “Messiah of Judah” (1987b, 9–12).

The perfect opportunity to launch this edition of El Plan Andinia was at the rally in which Serrano and the Chilean Nazis honored the recently deceased Rudolf Hess, in September 1987. There, with the acquiescence of local authorities, around two hundred Nazis gathered at Cementerio General to pay tribute to one of the most conspicuous figures of Nazism.^[22] Unsurprisingly, Serrano delivered the main speech of the event, blaming Jews for Hess’ death and labeling Pinochet’s only Jewish minister, Sergio Melnick, as Chile’s “invisible and secret ruler.” After the speech, his young followers distributed copies of El Plan Andinia among attendants and reporters.^[23]

Carlos Leiva was one of those collaborators and his testimony surely sheds light on Serrano’s 1980s antisemitic activism. According to Leiva, after the publication of Adolf Hitler, el Último Avatãra, Serrano’s prestige increased enormously among “foreign comrades,” especially Spanish and South American Nazis. As these ordered a growing number of copies, the sale of his books became the main objective for the writer. “Everything became a show for the press and for the comrades abroad, which could order copies of Serrano’s books,” narrates Leiva in his autobiography (Leiva 1998, 18).

It is also relevant to emphasize how the Chilean press of the 1980s, particularly the right-wing media, reported on Serrano’s antisemitic activism. After the release of every book, newspapers such as Las Últimas Noticias commented them in their literary page, stressing the uniqueness of the “Hitlerist” writer.^[24] In some cases, these media also published long interviews with the author, allowing him to spread his bizarre anti-Jewish ideas into a massive readership.^[25] Something similar happened when he organized Nazi meetings. For instance, when he headed a gathering at Hitler’s birth centenary (April 1989) on the piedmont of the Andes Mountains, the local press adopted a profoundly trivial approach to it.^[26]

Between the tribute to Rudolf Hess (September 1987) and the end of General Pinochet’s dictatorship (March 1990), Serrano edited two other important antisemitic texts. First, in collaboration with the Spanish group CEDADE, he issued Los Protocolos de los Sabios de Sión y su aplicación en Chile (The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Their Application in Chile, 1988). Later, he published El informe Leuchter (The Leuchter Report, 1989), the most important negationist text of the 1980s.

Written by the American pseudo-engineer Fred A. Leuchter at the request of Ernst Zündel, the “report” denies the existence of execution gas chambers in Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek by claiming supposed scientific data collected there. Zündel was a Nazi prosecuted by the Canadian authorities for distributing negationist propaganda. He hired Leuchter to obtain “forensic samples” in those camps and thus demonstrate the falseness of the “Holocaust myth.” Although Zündel was sentenced to 15 months of imprisonment and the Leuchter Report was demonstrated to be scientifically fallacious, the latter became one of the most important texts of the Holocaust denial canon, next to the works by Arthur Butz, Robert Faurisson, and Richard E. Harwood (Lipstadt 1994, 159–163).

Among other issues, the publication of these texts in Chile highlights Serrano’s transnational far-right connections, able to collaborate with European and North American actors in order to update the local antisemites. Still, this collaboration not only implied to import antisemitic ideas to Chile but also to export them, as we will see in the second part of this paper.

Wotansvolk, the American Odinists, and the Chilean Author

In the 1990s, racist paganism emerged as one of the most dynamic tendencies of the American radical right. Since then, several groups have claimed to embody the ancient Nordic religions that allegedly represent the genuine Aryan spirituality, free of Jewish influences. In doing so, these actors surpassed traditional racist organizations, such as the Nazi parties and the Ku Klux Klan(s), broadening the boundaries of the already heterogeneous, schismatic White Power milieu. Likewise, these neo-pagans eclipsed other novel racist movements, such as Christian Identity, whom they accused of being “white people trying to be Jews” (Gardell 2003, 205).

The most remarkable representative of these American racist pagans is the group Wotansvolk, founded by David and Katja Lane, and Ron McVan. David Lane was a long-standing white supremacist convicted of multiple crimes, including bombing a synagogue and assassinating a Jewish radio host. Once in prison, Lane developed an interpretation of Nordic paganism according to which Christianity is the main Jewish tool for the corruption of Aryans. Further, in prison he coined the “Fourteen Words,” a motto that made him famous among white supremacists: “We must secure the existence of our people and the future for white children.” This fame attracted his future wife, Katja, and the artist Ron McVan, who joined him to establish Wotansvolk in 1995. The chosen place for the organization’s headquarters was St. Maries, a little town in the mountains of Idaho (Gardell 2003, 191–194).

In less than a decade, Wotansvolk had significant achievements. First, it became a long-reaching propaganda center, providing printed and electronic material to racists in the United States and abroad. Second, it developed a successful prison outreach program, which increased its number of members and turned the group into a valid religious actor for the American authorities. In fact, such a program allowed Wotansvolk to get its third achievement: to be legally recognized as a church in 2000. After this, the group organized a network of “kindreds” both in the United States and abroad. In the early 2000s, it was possible to detect some of these branches in Europe, Australia, and Latin America (Gardell 2003, 206–225).

Wotansvolk’s fourth achievement was the establishment of its own publisher house, Fourteen Word Press. Among the vast racist literature issued by this press, Ron McVan’s Temple of Wotan: Holy Book of the Aryan Tribes stands out, as it synthesizes the group’s beliefs and aspires to be a Bible for its followers. The book essentially merges white supremacism with esoterism, runes, and a fanatical antisemitism.

As stated in the beginning of this paper, Temple of Wotan is not dedicated to either the founders of Ariosophy, such as Guido von List, or to conventional Nazi icons, such as Hitler. “This book is dedicated to Miguel Serrano. May your legacy of Honor and Loyalty inspire the future generations of Aryan mystics, philosophers and warriors” (McVan 2000, vii).

The fact that these American Odinists dedicate their “Bible” to a Latin American, Chilean writer is remarkable. It reveals that since the publication of Serrano’s “Esoteric Hitlerist” books, in General Pinochet’s Chile, the author’s antisemitism reached places as distant and unexpected as Idaho. And it did so through underground channels, before English-language editions of his works were available. Thus, regardless of the author’s nationality, the American Odinists made him their own, turning him into one of their main inspirers.

On a more general level, the latter challenges the prevailing notions on Latin America as a mere receptacle of foreign anti-Jewish tendencies. In opposition to that assumption, Wotansvolk’s adoption of Miguel Serrano shows that the Latin American continent not only imports antisemitism but also exports it.

Serrano not only inspired Temple of Wotan but also prefaced it. In that brief foreword, the Chilean author expresses three of his characteristic ideas. First, “the God of the Christians, who has come to replace Wotan, impersonating him, is no more than a poor imitation.” Second, Wotanism is a “path of the Initiate” that has “derailed by the well-planned and all pervasive Jewish deception of Saul (Saint Paul) of Tarsus.” Third, “at the end of time, our Volk Leader will return (…) He will be the Last Avatar, also known as Wotan and Vishnu-Kalki. This time He will come to conquer and to judge” (Serrano 2000b).

Wotansvolk’s reverence for the Chilean author does not finish there. In 2002, Fourteen Word Press published an English-language version of El Cordón Dorado. Hitlerismo Esotérico. This was the first of multiple foreign editions of Serrano’s antisemitic books to be published in the twenty-first century.

Serrano’s Editorial Success: A Countercultural, Transnational Phenomenon

Stressing his desire of being read by the twenty-first-century European “Hitlerists,” in 2000 Serrano published the first German-language version of Adolf Hitler, el Último Avatãra by himself (2000a). Since then, several publishers have released their own editions of his antisemitic books in the United States, Europe, and Australia, making of him a true cult figure among alternative rightists.

Wotansvolk’s publisher house carried out the first of these editions in 2002. Then, Fourteen Word Press released The Golden Chain: Esoteric Hitlerism, which gave him more visibility within the American radical right (Serrano 2002). As Goodrick-Clarke correctly observed, the Chilean found in Wotansvolk “a major promoter in the English-speaking world” (2002, 277).

Later, Serrano also found a promoter in Italian language, as Settimo Sigillo released Il Cordone Dorato: Hitlerismo Esoterico (2007). This Roman publisher, founded by Enzo Cipriano in the 1980s, declares itself a “specialist in the diffusion of works of anti-conformist culture and traditional thought,” offering multiple books by Julius Evola, René Guénon, and Serrano himself.^[27] This publisher house released Adolf Hitler, l’ultimo Avatara (2010), too.

More recently, Hermitage Helm Corpus published Serrano’s works in Australia. First, it released Adolf Hitler: The Ultimate Avatar, in 2014. The edition of this long volume –949 pages– was carried out in collaboration with “the Brahmanic Order of Kristos-Lucifer-Wotan,” a small group linked to the Maltese writer Norman Lowell (2014, 2). This version likewise contains an initial statement that deserves to be highlighted: “The contents of this book are intended for religious instruction and personal education purposes only. The Authors and Publishers assume no responsibility or liability for any person or entity who uses or misuses the information either written text or images, contained in this book” (2014, 2).

Such an assertion not only reveals the publisher’s legal caution but also its self-identity awareness. Although those who own Hermitage Helm Corpus are undoubtedly right-wing antisemites that gladly edit “Hitlerist Esoteric” literature, they do not necessarily fit in conventional categories such as “neo-Nazi.” Better, those categories do not accurately characterize these twenty-first-century actors, who rather seem to be part of a countercultural right.

Mattias Gardell (2003) used this term when studying the pagan milieu of the 1990s and 2000s to stress that diverse tendencies coexisted within the American radical right, all of which defined their own identities in utter opposition to the mainstream. As suggested, this concept depicts these new right-wing actors better than others. Unlike other radical rightists, these countercultural actors seem distant from collective organizations, conventional political aims, physical violence in the streets, and other distinguishing features of the twentieth-century far right. Rather, these countercultural rightists seem closer to individualism, online associativity, an aestheticized vision of World War II, and so on. Likewise, many of these actors primarily call for a spiritual fight against the mainstream, an “inner combat” in the Chilean author’s words.

For those who embrace Serrano’s “Esoteric Hitlerism,” such a combat is essentially against Jews –or what they imagine as such. As seen in the first part of this paper, the Chilean author offers to its audience an antisemitic narrative able to explain virtually everything, from the origins of mankind to the modern world history. Currently, a growing number of individuals across the world believe Serrano’s anti-Jewish claims, as the proliferation of his books suggests. And these individuals do so despite the overt irrationality, incoherence, and falseness of his claims.

An insightful approach to this phenomenon is Michael Barkun’s “stigmatized knowledge.” Barkun termed this concept when studying conspiracy theories in twenty-first-century America, defining it as a type of information that claims to have been “ignored or rejected by those institutions we rely upon to validate such claims.” Those who embrace conspiracy theories, Barkun says, tend to believe in other forms of stigmatized knowledge as well, such as UFOs, Atlantis stories, and so on (2016, 2). From this perspective, Serrano’s antisemitism is a clear example of stigmatized knowledge. This is, information that regardless of its falseness finds an audience that enthusiastically believes and reproduces it.

In 2017, Hermitage Helm Corpus also released The Golden Cord: Esoteric Hitlerism (Serrano 2017b). Like Adolf Hitler, the Ultimate Avatar (Serrano 2014),^[28] this volume can be purchased online.^[29]

Remarkably, none of the editions mentioned hitherto were done with the legal permission of Serrano or his heirs. The exception to this is The Golden Thread: Esoteric Hitlerism, recently issued by the Londoner publisher Wermod & Wermod. This version, excellently translated and accompanied by a thorough set of notes, is the only edition approved by the author’s widow and heir, Sabela Quintela. “As the sole person in charge of Miguel Serrano’s literary estate,” she highlights Alex Kurtagić’s “honest and selfless attitude as editor and translator.” Likewise, she recognizes “the exemplary respect and generosity with which he has behaved from the beginning, in contrast with the high-handedness displayed by other editors and translators who have illegally published works” by Serrano (2017a, xvii–xix).

Alex Kurtagić, an underground author and musician with residence in the United Kingdom, founded Wermod & Wermod in 2009 to “offer a cultural alternative to present orthodoxies.” To achieve this, he established two different printing offices under Wermod & Wermod. Whereas Iron Sky Publishing issues texts on “dystopian, apocalyptic, and post-apocalyptic, as well as alternative (modern) history,” The Palingenesis Project publishes volumes on “metapolitics, cultural criticism, sociobiology, anthropology, history, and European paganism.”^[30]The Golden Thread belongs to the latter (2017a).

Besides his two main “Esoteric Hitlerist” works, his only antisemitic book of the 1980s to be published in English so far is The Resurrection of the Hero (Serrano 2015). Like other editions mentioned above, this short volume is easy to purchase online.^[31] In this sense, the availability of his anti-Jewish literature on the internet is a matter that cannot be overlooked from the perspective of this paper. Neither can the multiple musical tributes to Serrano be overlooked.

Tributes to Serrano: Music as a Channel for the Diffusion of Antisemitism

If Serrano’s influence on foreign radical rightists can be traced from the 1980s onwards, his specific impact on music is instead a recent matter. In fact, it has been after his death in February 2009 that several tribute albums and songs have been released in his memory, both in Europe and Latin America.

The Chilean band Giboraltar (2009) released the first of these discs a few months after the author’s death. Lichtgeburt (Light Birth) is a black metal album whose songs implicitly allude to Serrano’s oeuvre. This is the case of “Gathered in the Vision of the Black Sun” and “At the Gates of the Blazing Sudpolar Circle.” This short disc is fully available on Youtube.com.^[32]

In parallel, alternative electronic musicians coming from Russia and Austria released In memory of Miguel Serrano. In comparison with the former album, the songs contained in this disc –such as “Conspiracy” and “Die Schwarze Sonne”– reveal a more explicit influence of the author’s antisemitic narrative (Various 2009).

Something similar happens with the French band Barbarossa (2011) and its album Distant Shores of Hvetramannaland: A Tribute to Miguel Serrano. Among its songs, “El Cordón Dorado/A Glimpse of Kali Yuga” and “The Icy Path to Oiyehue-Lucifer” stand out, pieces that show a true reverence for Serrano’s “Esoteric Hitlerist” oeuvre. Additionally, the album’s melodies and graphic design recreate an ambience that seems to match with Serrano’s bizarre universe. In this sense, Distant Shores of Hvetramannaland exposes interesting aesthetic aspects of Serrano’s impact on countercultural rightists.

The Greek black metal band Draugluin (2014) released the fourth of these tribute albums. Among the songs that compose Hidden Kingdom, it is worth mentioning “El Último Avatãra” and “Miguel Serrano,” pieces that pay tribute to the author even more explicitly than the former. Draugluin also took part in El Círculo Hermético: Miguel Serrano Tribute, an album that brings together groups from Italy, Portugal, Greece, Brazil, and Chile (Various 2014).

The last of these tribute albums is Miguel Serrano–100 Años, by the Chilean band Pillanche (2017). If the previous discs expose Serrano’s global impact on music, this album represents a local tribute to the author. In this sense, “Tonada de adiós a Miguel Serrano” (Goodbye Tune to Miguel Serrano) is noteworthy, as it mixes Spanish guitars and Mapuche instruments.

In addition to these albums, it is possible to find online singles that pay tribute to the author as well. Two examples of this are “El Último Avatãra,” by the Spanish group Irminsul,^[33] and “Miguel Serrano,” by the Chilean black metal band Wangelen.^[34]

These examples highlight the heterogeneity of the musicians paying tribute to Serrano. As seen, these artists come from places as disparate as Russia, Spain, Greece, Brazil, and Temuco, in the south of Chile. These musicians likewise belong to diverse genres, from black metal to electronic music.

More important, these examples expose the importance of music as a non-conventional channel for the diffusion of antisemitism. If one of the main differences between anti-Jewish hostility and other forms of social discrimination was the former’s textual dimension, its printed character, so to speak, today we see the consolidation of music as another avenue for the expression of antisemitism. Certainly, this is not exclusive to Serrano’s admirers. At least from the 1990s onwards, it is possible to trace the existence of a prolific “White Power” musical scene in the United States, Europe, and Latin America. This process is related to the internet’s impact on music industry, which allowed the spread of all sort of works, without the censorship of labels or producers.

Likewise, these cases pose interesting questions for those who scholarly study antisemitism. One of these questions is whether these musicians can be labeled as “neo-Nazis,” “far rightists,” or other conventional terms. In some cases, such as Draugluin and Irminsul, it is perfectly possible to do so. In other cases, such as Barbarossa Umtrunk or Wangelen, to use such categories would be inaccurate, misleading. These bands are rather formed by countercultural rightists who aesthetically express their admiration for Serrano and his heterodox “Esoteric Hitlerism.”