Introduction
The Order of Nine Angles (ONA or O9A) is U.K.-based Nazi, Satanist occult group founded in the 1970s. The group reveres Adolf Hitler and imbues Nazi symbology with mystical meaning.* ONA heralds Nazi Germany as the pinnacle of societal development and deifies Adolf Hitler. The U.S. Department of Justice has noted ONA’s “Satanic, anarchist, neo-fascist, neo-Nazi, and anti-Semitic beliefs.”* ONA has affiliated groups in the United States, Australia, and Europe.*
ONA is an accelerationist group that seeks the “breakdown and the downfall of existing societies” and their replacement with “new tribal societies.”* It believes society has become corrupted by Judeo-Christian beliefs.* ONA thus believes society must be destroyed and replaced with a new fascist order based on social Darwinism and Satanism, a Satanic Empire. The group views modern societal norms and morality as signs of decay.*
ONA promotes what it calls an esoteric philosophy focused on the hidden, inner nature of beings rather than the outer nature.* ONA intends to use its “Dark Tradition” to create a “new, more evolved, human species” centered on this new tribalistic society.* Unlike other neo-Nazi groups, ONA also supports violent jihadist terrorism, in line with its accelerationist philosophy to support the destruction of the current world order. In addition to its veneration of Hitler, the group has praised Osama bin Laden.* Some of its texts also employ Islamic terminology, though the group is firmly Satanist.*
ONA encourages its member to infiltrate military and Christian organizations to subvert them from within. Among the activities ONA promotes are pedophilia and sexual crimes, which the group views as methods of undermining society.* ONA members have been involved in several violent terrorist plots. In 2019, for example, a 16-year-old British boy from Durham, England, became the youngest individual in the country to be convicted of planning a terror attack. The boy was reportedly partially influenced by ONA.* In June 2020, American authorities arrested U.S. soldier Ethan Melzer, who was planning an attack on his own unit stationed in Italy. Melzer had been communicating online with members of ONA.* After Melzer’s arrest, the National Counterterrorism Center, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security drafted a report on the dangers presented by ONA, “a largely decentralized group that advocates a violent extremist interpretation of Satanism” and has “influenced” some racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists.* In June 2022, Melzer pleaded guilty to charges of attempting to murder U.S. service members, providing and attempting to provide material support to terrorists, and illegally transmitting national defense information.*
ONA founder David Myatt is a former member of Combat 18 and a former leader of Britain’s neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement (NSM). Myatt reportedly influenced NSM member David Copeland, who set off multiple nail bombs around London in the spring of 1999, killing three people and injuring 139 in the hope of starting a race war.* In 2006, Myatt converted to an extreme form of Islam and supported killing Muslim apostates. He claimed that the far right was incapable of bringing out societal revolution and Islam was the answer.*
ONA’s influence can be seen in neo-Nazi groups such as the U.S.-based group Atomwaffen Division and its U.K.-based offshoot Sonnenkrieg Division.* Other far-right groups condemned AWD as a cult front for ONA. In January 2018, a former AWD member wrote online that the group had been infiltrated by Satanists. According to leaked chat transcripts, several AWD members resigned as of March 2018 because of the growing occult fixation, while others embraced the satanic imagery.* ONA founder Myatt wrote the book Hostia: Secret Teachings of the Order of Nine Angles, which details ONA’s beliefs and was available through AWD’s website. AWD officially disbanded in March 2020.* An AWD successor organization, National Socialist Order (NSO) emerged in July 2020.* A September 7, 2022, announcement on the American Futurist website accused “bad actors” of taking over NSO on behalf of ONA and promoting “Satanism and Child Rape.”*
In 2019, U.K. authorities separately arrested four teenagers who cited accelerationism and Satanism as their influences.* In March 2020, some British lawmakers began calling for ONA to be banned.* Those calls gained further traction three months later following the arrest of an ONA-linked U.S. soldier who was planning to attack his own military unit.* According to British Labour parliamentarian Yvette Cooper, ONA’s “combination of Nazi-Satanism, extreme violence and sexual abuse makes it particularly troubling and action needs to be taken to prevent them grooming and radicalizing other people.”* In April 2021, U.S. Representative Elissa Slotkin called on the U.S. government to designate more than a dozen foreign white supremacist groups as terrorist organizations, including ONA.* In March 2023, a U.S. court sentenced former soldier Ethan Melzer to 45 years in prison for sharing location and layout information about a sensitive U.S. military installation with ONA. According to the prosecution, Melzer sought “to orchestrate a murderous ambush on his own unit by unlawfully revealing its location, strength, and armaments to a neo-Nazi, anarchist, white supremacist group.”* Administrators of the U.S.-based white supremacist website American Futurist blamed ONA infiltration for the collapse of Atomwaffen Division successor group National Socialist Order. A September 2022 website post claimed “bad actors” had taken over the organization on behalf of ONA, promoting “Satanism and Child Rape.”* According to the American Futurist, these bad actors attempted to remove NSO co-founder Ryan Arthur because of his opposition to Satanism. The American Futurist declared the NSO to be “dead.”*
Leadership
David Myatt, a.k.a. Anton Long and Abdul-Aziz ibn Myatt, is the founder of ONA.* ONA claims Anton Long may or may not have been multiple people.* Richard Moult, a.k.a. Christos Beast, is said to have taken over the group’s leadership in the 1990s, resigned in 2001, and returned to ONA in 2008.* Moult disputes that he was ever a leader and claims he now rejects the group’s ideology.* Myatt claims to have left ONA but still maintains a relationship with the organization.* ONA’s central administration now appears to rotate.*
Base of Operations
United Kingdom
Website
Membership Size and Relevance
ONA does not maintain public membership rolls. It organizes into interconnected chapters while the central administration appears to rotate. ONA has been linked to or inspired multiple terror plots.* ONA requires its recruits to self-initiate through violent and physically challenging acts.*
Recruitment and Propaganda
ONA does not welcome recruits who seek out the organization. Instead, it claims that membership is earned through “a life-long commitment to personal, esoteric, and Aeonic change/development/evolution.”* ONA seeks recruits who share “similar, sinister, subversive interests, aims, and life-styles, together with the desire to co-operate when it is beneficial to them and the pursuit of our shared aims.”* ONA offers two methods to join: a guided and an unguided way. The unguided way asks potential recruits to immerse themselves in ONA texts and start living their lives according to ONA philosophies. The guided method is to seek out an ONA member and follow his guidance and training.*
ONA divides society into two groups, esoteric and mundane. Esoteric refers to the occult and those practicing it, primarily followers of ONA. Mundane refers to everybody else “who do not associate with our sinister tribes, our traditional nexions, or who do not share our sinister ethos, or our sinister way of life.”* ONA literature is replete with references to “esoteric” and “sinister,” words ONA uses as primary descriptions of its philosophies. ONA seeks to create “sinister Adepts” who practice the “sinister dialectic” in order to create its new societies.* ONA considers the word sinister as a replacement for satanic. While ONA is a satanic organization, it believes the word itself has been coopted by others who do not follow what ONA considers traditional Satanism. They thus use the word sinister to represent their form of what they consider traditional Satanism.*
ONA members, including founder David Myatt, have written numerous books and articles about ONA’s beliefs. However, the group has since shifted to focus its propaganda online through Telegram, Instagram, and other platforms.* ONA-related channels on these platforms include Rapewaffen Division Channel and Order of the 9 Rapes Chat.* U.S. Army Private Ethan Melzer allegedly communicated with ONA members through the Rapewaffen Division Channel to plan an attack on U.S. soldiers.* An “authorized” ONA blog on WordPress called Lapis Philosophicus has collected ONA written materials from 1985 through 2012. Lapis Philosophicus translates to the jewel of the alchemist, which a sorcerer or sorceress needs to use the Dark Arts to discover.*
ONA literature promotes subversive activities such as human sacrifice and the rape of women and children. ONA refers to human sacrifice as culling, which ONA claims is necessary and distinguishes ONA members from the mundane.* One piece of propaganda the group produced is called The Rape Anthology, a collection of ONA writings praising Hitler, Satan, and rape, while employing Islamic terminology and demonizing Jews and minorities. Some of the essays suggest that rape is necessary for the ascension of the Ubermensch (German for “superman”) and all should strive for “spiritual arousal from violent sexual rape.”* Another claims Allah created HIV/AIDS to allow the “phallic warrior to permanently leave his mark on the world.”*
Violent Activities
- In October 2018, a 16-year-old British boy from Durham, England, declared himself an accelerationist and began searching for targets for a terror attack. The boy was reportedly partially influenced by ONA. The boy initially followed the white supremacist group National Action, which was outlawed in 2016. Police arrested the boy in March 2019. Later that year, he became the youngest individual in the country to be convicted of planning a terror attack.*
- In May 2020, American authorities broke up a plot by U.S. soldier Ethan Melzer, who was planning an attack on his own unit while it was stationed in Italy. Melzer began communicating online with members of ONA and the affiliated Rapewaffen Division in April and provided details on his unit’s movements and planned redeployment to Turkey. Authorities discovered the plot in May and took Melzer into custody. He confessed on May 30 and was arrested in June. Melzer reportedly joined ONA in 2019, a year after enlisting in the U.S. Army. In June 2022, Melzer pleaded guilty to charges of attempting to murder U.S. service members, providing and attempting to provide material support to terrorists, and illegally transmitting national defense information.*
Rhetoric
- David Myatt, 2006: “There will not be an uprising, a revolution, in any Western nation, by nationalists, racial nationalists, or National Socialists — because these people lack the desire, the motivation, the ethos, to do this and because they do not have the support of even a large minority of their own folk. If these nationalists, or some of them, desire to aid us, to help us . . . they can do the right thing, the honourable thing, and convert, revert, to Islam — accepting the superiority of Islam over and above each and every way of the West.”*
- David Myatt, 2005: “From the get-go the ONA have propagated holocaust revisionism, have praised Hitler, have encouraged members to join NS groups, with one of their core principles being, to quote Professor Monette, ‘theWay of Defiance of and Practical Opposition to Magian Abstractions’. This principle refers to the ONA’s opposition to what it perceives as illegitimate Magian (western Judaeo-Christian) control of global culture and economics.”*
- David Myatt, 2005: “Magian is ONA code for ZOG [Zionist Occupation Government – a phrase to describe the Jewish control of the state that became widely adopted by nazis in the 1980s and 90s].”*
- David Myatt, undated: Myatt has tried to “create some things which can disrupt our societies and which can lead to the creation of strong, really dangerous, ruthless individuals.”*
- ONA Frequently Asked Questions, undated: “Three of the primary aims of the ONA are:
“(1) to use our Dark Tradition to create sinister Adepts and, over a long period of causal Time, aid and enhance and create that new, more evolved, human species of which genuine Sinister Adepts may be considered to be the phenotype;
“(2) to use the sinister dialectic (and thus Aeonic Magick and genuine Sinister Arts) to aid and enhance and make possible entirely new types of societies for human beings, with these new societies being based on new tribes and a tribal way of living where the only law is that of our kindred honour;
“(3) to aid, encourage, and bring about – by practical and esoteric means (such as Dark Sorcery) – the breakdown and the downfall of existing societies, and thus to replace the tyranny of nations and States – and their impersonal governments – by our new tribal societies.”* - ONA propaganda, undated: Nazi Germany is a “practical expression of Satanic spirit . . . a burst of Luciferian light – of zest and power – in an otherwise Nazarene, pacified, and boring world.”*
- ONA text The Mass Heresy, undated: “Adolf Hitler was sent by our gods to guide us to greatness
We believe in the inequality of races and in the right of the Aryan to live according to the law of the folk
We acknowledge that the story of the Jewish ‘[H]olocaust’ is a lie to keep our race in chains and express our desire to see the truth revealed
We believe in justice for our oppressed comrades and seek an end to the world-wide persecution of NationalSocialists[.]”* - ONA text The Rape Anthology, undated: “Listen thus, Judeowhite children of Israel – to free yourself from your yoke of ‘morality’ and ‘decency’, and to redeem your sins in the eyes of Shaytaan, you must become the spear that tears through virgin hymen, you must become the phallic warrior, you must experience spiritual arousal from violent sexual rape.”*
Social Media
Not determined.