Alexander Rud Mills

Alexander Rud Mills (1885-1964) was a prominent Australian Odinist, and one of the earliest proponents of the rebirth of Germanic Neopaganism in the 20th Century. He was a published author, lecturer and Barrister. He founded the "First Anglecyn Church of Odin" in Melbourne in 1936. He was also known by the pen-name Tasman Forth.

Life

Mills was born in Forth, Tasmania in 1885. Around 1910 he moved to Victoria to enroll at the Melbourne University Law School at the University of Melbourne. Mills was admitted to the Victorian Bar in 1917. He married Evelyn Lousia Price at Holy Trinity, Church of England, Surrey Hills, Victoria 2nd June 1951. She was the daughter of Frederick Andrew Price and Helena Louisa Rogers. Rud was 65, Evelyn was 62. They had a long friendship and romance continuing for over 30 years prior to their marriage. Witnesses at the wedding were Henry Jamieson and Edward Clare. Rud Mills died on 8th April 1964, buried at Ferntree Gully Cemetery, Victoria. His wife, Evelyn died on 9th July 1973 and is buried with her husband.

Odinism

The Odinic Rite of Australia (ORA) is a tax-exempt non profit organisation which seeks to continue the pioneering work of the founder of modern Odinism, Alexander Rud Mills. The Australian Tax Office accepts the ORA's definition of Odinism as "the continuation of ... the organic spiritual beliefs and religion of the indigenous peoples of northern Europe as embodied in the Edda and as they have found expression in the wisdom and in the historical experience of these peoples".

Pro Nazi Sympathies and Activities

Mills became politically and religiously active during a trip to Europe between 1931 and 1934. While in England during this time he attended meetings of Sir Oswald Mosley's 'British Union of Fascists', but shifted his support to Arnold Leese's smaller and more radical 'Imperial Fascist League, distributing Leese's newspaper, "The Fascist", until the outbreak of war in 1939. Leese's attitude to Mosley (and thus a weather-gauge of Mill's own sympathies) can be summed up by Leese, who believing the British Union to be a Jewish front and accusing Mosley of being a 'kosher fascist' and describing the British Union as the 'British Jewnion' of Fascists ['1932-1938 Fascism rises - March of the Blackshirts' at www.searchlightmagazine.com/features/century/cbf.php?include=page3] .

In 1933 Mills travelled to Germany and met Hitler [Bruce Muirden, The Puzzled Patriots: The Story of the Australia First Movement (Melbourne, Melbourne University Press: 1968), p. 186] . According to the Odinic Rite website, on meeting Hitler Mills simply wrote "I saw him. Talked to Him. He would not discuss my theme"; though while he was there he also met General Erich von Ludendorff, the famous strategist and hero of the First World War who was also interested in a Nordic religious revival.

On Mills' return to Australia in 1934 he established the Anglecyn Church of Odin and in 1935 he founded the 'British Australian Racial Body'. He had also established two short-lived newspapers, the "National Socialist" and "The Angle" as a vehicle through which to espouse his racial, religious and political views [Muirden, p.75] . In 1941 he became associated with the anti-War, pro-Isolationist and largely anti-Semitic 'Australia First Movement' and contributed to its newspaper "The Publicist" [Muirden, p.106] . "The Publicist" (before 1939) described itself in its manifesto as being 'for national socialism' and 'for Aryanism; against semitism' [Muirden, p.101] and was the mouthpiece for W.J. Miles, another vociferous anti-Semite who developed a close relationship with the German Consul-General and National Socialist Party in Australia before the war [John Perkins, 'The Swastika Down Under: Nazi Activities in Australia, 1933-39' in Journal of Contemporary History 26, no.1, p.114] .

Detainment

Given Mill's known Nazi sympathies and his association with (even if he was not a member of) the nationalist "Australia First Movement", it was unsurprising that he was detained without trial for suspicion of sympathies to the Axis, and for offering his legal services to other members on 10 March 1942. He was interned until 17 December 1942, having been set free at last by a tribunal. No charges were ever brought against him. Mills was cleared of any wrongdoing by a judicial panel, but received no compensation for his imprisonment.

In Parliament in March 1944 Robert Menzies, then leader of the opposition, said "I happen to know him quite well..... he was hauled out of his home, imprisoned and put in an internment camp..... his association, so I am informed, with the Australia First Movement amounted to this: some man who had secured appointment with the movement wrote to him and asked him to subscribe, and he forward 10s 6d. as a subscription..... I know this man and I know something of the disaster which this has brought upon him..... Here is a man who for twenty-odd years was building up a practice as a professional man. He was taken out of his home, just as anybody might be. He was incarcerated in circumstances of immense notoriety. When he came out, what happened? His friends were gone, his practice gone, his reputation was gone."

In "The Puzzled Patriots," by Bruce Muirden, Melbourne University Press 1968, page 128 refers to a bashing of Mills by an army offcer at Loveday Internment Camp in South Australia. This allegation was backed up by Mills wife, Evelyn Louisa Mills.

Alexander Rud Mills applied to join the AIF during World War 1 to fight against the Germans and Turks but was rejected on medical grounds. His soldier's reject badge was No. 65039.

The Anglecyn Church of Odin

Mills' articulation of Odinism is quite different in flavour to modern iterations of the Grey God. In his liturgical text, "The First Guide Book to the Anglecyn Church of Odin" of 1936, Mills gives a version of the Ten Commandments that is only slightly different from that in Exodus and Mill's formulary includes vigils, hymns, evensong and communion [Alexander Rud Mills, "The First Guide Book to the Anglecyn Church of Odin" (Sydney, Forward Press: 1936), pp.63, 11] , making it abundantly clear that Mills based the liturgy of the Anglecyn Church of Odin on that of the Anglican Church [For a further discussion of Christian influence on Mill's Odinism see A. Asbjorn Jon, '"Skeggold, skalmold; vindold, vergold": Alexander Rud Mills and the Asatru Faith in the New Age' in Australian Religious Studies Review 12 no.1 (1999), pp.77-83] . However, while structurally there is a debt to Christian worship, textually Mills expresses strong anti-Christian sentiments throughout:

…the Christian religion is, in one phase at least, a form of Jewish propaganda, as well as a condemnation of ourselves [Mills, p.18]

…our Christian culture…has now bought us to ever-greater worship of time-subservient materialism… [Mills, p.20]

…in the Christian religion its doctrines and outlook has been personified and adorned with stories calculated to appeal to a certain weakness of man [Mills, p.24] .

Anti Semetic comments can likewise be found scattered throughout the Guide Book. The Jews evidently plot world conquest:

…the Jews, generally speaking, recognise the degradation and disintegration of the peoples under Christian culture, and by its direction or otherwise, have hopes of ruling over such peoples…and because Jews try to hasten the process by using the many powers in their control [Mills, p.34] .

… many Jewish Leaders have deemed it an intellectual conquest of other peoples, [if they pursuade] other races to forget their own race and Lords, and at the same time induce them to…self –renunciation (take-the-lowest-seat)…making such persons and nations unworthy to live and only fit to be ruled, before their extinction [Mills, p.45] .

Control the media:

…in our newspapers, colleges, wireless and the like news-services (even when not directly controlled Jews [sic] )…the word 'Jew' is only spoken with circumspection… [Mills, p.43]

And dominate Freemasonry:

[Freemasonry has] been seriously affected by reason of the pervading Jewish culture, which war against our national and racial identity…and the Jewish racial spirit…and the denial of our own [Mills, p.25]

While Mills vision of what Odinism is, is very much 'obsolete technology' and too Christian for modern Asatruer and Odinists, nevertheless Mills prefigures many of the concerns of volkisch pagans today- The morally and culturally corrosive effects of Judeo-Christianity [Mills, p.20 ] , the importance of Eugenics and breeding programmes [Mills, p.21] , the linking of individual with national vitality [Mills, p.26] , the fall from grace of the White Race by being untrue to the spirit of their forefathers [Mills, p.26] , valourisation of the use of force [Tasman Forth [A.R. Mills] , "The Call of our Ancient Nordic Religion" (Coventry, Northern World, 1957) p.15] , intrinsic healthiness of freedom of heterosexual expression [Mills, p.31] and so on.

Influence on Germanic neopaganism

"Forthcoming.."

Influence on Nationalist/neo-Nazi neo-Paganism

After Mills was released from internment in late 1942 he never really picked up the public work of the Church of Odin and no doubt the defeat of Nazi Germany and the horrors discovered by the Allies after the war played a part in Mills decision not to evangelise his vision of Odinism. However, he remained an active writer, publishing a eight books and numerous articles and pamphlets between 1933 and 1957 on Odinist and anti-Semitic themes [see 'Attachment A: Index of Mills Works' at www.geocities.com/osred/ArticlesaboutMills/Mills_works.htm (accessed 2 Aug 2006)] .

However, in the early 1960s a Danish ex-patriot living in Canada with pro-Nazi sympathies, Else Christensen, was given a cast-off pile of papers by James K Warner, an organizer for the American Nazi Party who had experimented with Odinism before becoming a Christian Identity minister and a Grand Dragon of the KKK [Mattias Gardell, "Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Separatism" (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), p.152] . Some of those papers originated from the Australian Anglecyn Church of Odin. Christensen took a cue from the Church of Odin and formed the 'Odinist Fellowship' in 1969. The work of the Odinist Fellowship in promoting a racist, Nazi, vision of the Nordic gods is directly responsible for the use of Odinist as a common descriptor of racist Nordic paganism.

In 1980 Kerry Raymond Bolton from Christchurch, New Zealand, along with with David Crawford, co-founded the New Zealand branch of the Church of Odin [Paul Spoonley "The Politics of Nostalgia: Racism and the Extreme Right in New Zealand" (Palmerston North: Dunmore Press, 1987), pp. 145-170] . Crawford was the former leader of the New Zealand National Front and Bolton, who had joined the New Zealand National Socialist Party in 1972 at age 14, was a veteran of numerous far-right political activities. Paul Spoonley quotes Crawford as saying that the Church of Odin was exclusively for whites, and specifically whites "of non-Jewish descent" and that "the main Odinic law requires loyalty to race" [Spoonley, p.170] . Despite the racial criteria and National Socialist heritage of the Church of Odin, by 1983 Bolton had left the Church because "it became obvious that the Odinists were merely going to be a cult without any relevance to New Zealand politics" [Bolton, letter to the editor, Herald (26/6/83), cited in Spoonley, p. 170.] . Bolton later founded the more politically active and ideologically adventurous 'Order of the Left Hand Path' and its companion journal "The Watcher" (later "The Heretic" and then "The Nexus"), in which he advocated a synthesising of National Socialism, Satanism, and Germanic neo-Paganism. Through the Order and his journal Bolton exerted considerable influence in Nationalist neo-Pagan circles between the years 1990-c.1999 [See Gardell and Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, "The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and their Influence on Nazi Ideology: the Ariosophists of Austria and Germany, 1890-1935". (London: Taurus, 1992).] .

Partial bibliography

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References

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External links

* [http://www.geocities.com/osred/Rud_Mills.htm Alexander Rud Mills, a project by Odinic Rite Australia]
* [http://www.odinic-rite.org/ruddmills.html Review of "The Call of our Ancient Nordic Religion"]