Kerry Raymond Bolton (born 1956) is a New Zealand white supremacist and Holocaust denier,[1] and a writer and political activist on those subjects.[2][3] In 1980, Bolton co-founded the Church of Odin as the New Zealand branch of the Australian neopagan organization, First Anglecyn Church of Odin.[4] He is involved in several nationalist and fascist political groups in New Zealand.[5]
Neopagan background
In 1980, Bolton co-founded, along with David Crawford,[6] the Church of Odin, the New Zealand branch of the First Anglecyn Church of Odin, a pro-Nazi neopagan organisation[4] for "whites of non-Jewish descent".[5] Though officially a branch of the First Anglecyn Church founded by Alexander Rud Mills in Melbourne in 1936,[4] the Church of Odin also considered Else Christensen's Mills-inspired Odinist Fellowship as a parent organisation.[7] By 1983 Bolton had left the Church.[8] The church creed, two newsletters, and other materials are archived at the Alexander Turnbull Library.[9]
Political activism
Bolton has published and edited newsletters such as The Watcher, The Flaming Sword, The Heretic, The Nexus, Ab Aeterno (assistant editor) and Western Destiny. He founded the national-socialist Order of the Left Hand Path (OLHP) in 1992,[3][5] following a quarrel with other members of the Temple of Set.[10] Two years later it was renamed the Ordo Sinistra Vivendi ("Order of the Left Way"), and in the same year created the fascist Black Order.[3][11][12] It claimed to have a network of national lodges in six European countries plus Australia and the U.S.[3] It was intended to be an activist front promoting an "occult-fascist axis" by mobilising political groups and youth culture elements such as industrial music.[3] Bolton created and edited the Black Order newsletter, The Flaming Sword, and its successor, The Nexus, a satanic-Nazi journal with special attention given to figures such as Savitri Devi, Julius Evola, and Ezra Pound, and which especially catered to the black metal movement. It later changed its name to Western Destiny.[3] In 1996, Bolton formed The Thelemic Society which blended rightist politics with the teachings of the English occultist Aleister Crowley and the philosophy of the German thinker Friedrich Nietzsche.[13]
Bolton was a co-founder of the Nationalist Workers' Party,[3] and was briefly secretary for the New Zealand Fascist Union in 1997,[14] in which he promoted the 'patriotic socialism' of 1930s Labour hero John A. Lee.[15] In 2004 he was the secretary of the New Zealand National Front[16][17][18] and spokesman for the New Right group.[19][20] He was also involved with the New Zealand National Front but resigned because of disputes with neo-Nazi and white supremacist factions.[21] In 2021, the University of Otago student magazine Critic Te Ārohi reported that Bolton is in regular contact with the white supremacist organisation Action Zealandia.[22][23]
He has also written articles which have been published in magazine run by the Church of Satan with the same name as the magazine he started as The Flaming Sword.[24]
Controversies
In 2008, a masters thesis written about Bolton published by the Waikato University was temporarily pulled from the library pending investigation after Bolton complained to the vice-chancellor.[25][26][27] The thesis, titled "Dreamers of the Dark: Kerry Bolton and the Order of the Left Hand Path; a Case-study of a Satanic/Neo Nazi Synthesis", dealt with the link between neo-Nazi and satanic beliefs in New Zealand.[25][27] It had been passed by the university, had been reviewed by senior academics from two other universities, and had received full class honors.[25][26] Professor Dov Bing, who supervised the thesis, called it a first-class piece of work.[25][26] Bolton claimed the thesis was "poorly researched" and was "a poorly contrived smear-document against a private individual, namely myself".[25][20] After criticism from the Tertiary Education Union,[28] Vice Chancellor Crawford issued a one-page letter stating that the thesis was sound because it had been externally examined by "two well qualified academics".[29]
In December 2009, Bolton filed a complaint with the Broadcasting Standards Authority concerning the Ideas programme on Radio New Zealand National, which featured Marxist poet and sociologist Scott Hamilton. Hamilton had stated that Bolton was an avid "holocaust denier", had a "close relationship" with the revisionist Adelaide Institute, insinuated himself into the anti-war movement where he made anti-Semitic and "holocaust denial" statements, and exercised a bad political influence over "unwary youth". Bolton claimed that all of Hamilton's allegations were incorrect.[citation needed] The Broadcasting Standards Authority initially upheld Bolton's complaint on all grounds, and criticised Radio New Zealand for not having verified the accuracy of Hamilton's statements before broadcasting the programme,[30] but reversed this decision in December 2010 and declined to uphold any of Bolton's complaints.[31]
In December 2009, Bolton complained to the Press Council against a lengthy feature article run by The Press, Christchurch, "A Right Muddle" by John McCrone. Bolton stated that the article wrongly stated that Bolton was a "neo-Nazi Satanist", that he was associated with "white power" and "pseudo-fascist views", that he was the founder of New Right New Zealand, among other matters. The Press Council in a ruling dated for release as 26 March 2010, upheld parts of the complaint, determining that the article is "inaccurate and biased".[32]
Other activities
In 2014, Bolton was involved in a campaign seeking (unsuccessfully) to save a young dog from euthanasia for allegedly nipping another dog on the hind leg in the course of play.[33][34] The dog was euthanised two days early after threats on Facebook of violence against council staff members.[35]
In 2019, he appeared in court for breaching the name suppression of a sexual assault victim in 2018 on a radio show.[36] Bolton was discharged without conviction by Porirua District Court judge Ian Mill on the condition that he pay reparation of $1500 to the victim within a month. Police prosecutor Sergeant Paul Macky said it was inconceivable that he did not know about the suppression.[37]
Published works
Thinkers of the Right: Fascism, Nationalism & Elitism Amongst the Literati (Luton Publications, 2002)
^Kaplan, Jeffrey; Weinberg, Leonard (1998). The emergence of a Euro-American radical right. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. p. 143. ISBN0-8135-2564-0.
^Final Conflict. Satanism and its Allies: The Nationalist Movement Under Attack (London 1998)
^Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas (2002) Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity, New York University Press, pp. 228-229
^Coogan, Kevin (1999). Dreamer of the day: Francis Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International. Brooklyn, New York: Autonomedia. ISBN1-57027-039-2.
^"Leaked documents show discord over thesis". stuff.co.nz. 2011. Retrieved 5 December 2011. Nexus today published a feature detailing at length the criticisms around the university's processes, including a letter from the New Zealand Tertiary Education Union (TEU).
