The National Socialist Kindred was a group that sought to combine

Esoteric Nazism Esoteric Nazism, also known as Esoteric Fascism, refers to a range of mystical interpretations and adaptations of Nazism. After the Second World War, esoteric interpretations of the Third Reich were adapted into new religious movements of white na ...

and

Odinism Heathenry, also termed Heathenism, contemporary Germanic Paganism, or Germanic Neopaganism, is a modern Pagan religion. Scholars of religious studies classify it as a new religious movement. Developed in Europe during the early 20th cent ...

with a plan to create a White separatist " Folk Community" in

Northern California Northern California (colloquially known as NorCal) is a geographic and cultural region that generally comprises the northern portion of the U.S. state of California. Spanning the state's northernmost 48 counties, its main population centers incl ...

called Volksberg. The group was founded by Joseph Turner (1946-1996), also known as Jost. Turner was a Vietnam War veteran who was disillusioned when he returned to California in the late 1960s. While contemptuous of much of the

1960s counterculture The counterculture of the 1960s was an anti-establishment cultural phenomenon that developed throughout much of the Western world in the 1960s and has been ongoing to the present day. The aggregate movement gained momentum as the civil rights mo ...

, racial integration, drug use and civil disobedience he found, Turner also sympathized with the

hippies A hippie, also spelled hippy, especially in British English, is someone associated with the counterculture of the 1960s, originally a youth movement that began in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to different countries around ...

rejection of selfishness and materialism, which he believed was characteristic of the White majority of the time, and like their idea of "destroying the system by non-participation". Taking inspiration from the back-to-the-land and communalist movements of the decade, Turner and his family left the "urban social and economic system"—which Jost felt was characterized by the growing power of non-whites and "indifference and growing materialism of whites -- and began homesteading in the isolated mountains of Northern California. There were a number of other communalists in the area whose ideology Jost describes as a mix of " left-wing politics,

oriental religion The Eastern religions are the religions which originated in East, South and Southeast Asia and thus have dissimilarities with Western, African and Iranian religions. This includes the East Asian religions such as Confucianism, Taoism, Chinese ...

, Robin Hood and brotherhood" that was "permeated with anti-establishment idealism". Turner appreciated the amount of research and effort that the communalists had put into their projects of simple living and self-sufficiency, and praised their development of organic farming, animal husbandry, herbal medicine weaving, spinning, leather craft and success in living outside the mainstream economy. He and his family spent several years learning these skills from their neighbors and living in "crude octagon cabins, barns and even tepees." However, this peaceful coexistence did not last. Jost attributes the decline to the other communalists' lack of discipline and embrace of "Jewish permissiveness", as well as their failure to pass their ideas down to their children. The cultivation of

marijuana Cannabis, also known as marijuana among other names, is a psychoactive drug from the cannabis plant. Native to Central or South Asia, the cannabis plant has been used as a drug for both recreational and entheogenic purposes and in various tra ...

led to conflicts among the communalists and with law enforcement and the idealism and live and let live atmosphere that Jost saw in the experiment shattered. Jost then decided to form the National Socialist Kindred, with the aim of bringing together like minded racialists into a new self-seficient community, to be called Volksberg. To that end he formed the National Socialist Kindred. For the next fifteen years or so, the NSK distributed pamphlets and exhorted like minded people to pull up stakes and join the community at Volksberg. However, Jost grew impatient with the quality of people who came to live in the commune. In a letter to Tommy Ryden in Sweden he stated that there were few people who were willing to forsake jobs, home, family, and friends to move to the Folk-community. More often than not, they were willing to pull up stakes because they did not have any of those things and wished for somebody to take care of them. He continued "Most were psychopaths and dangerous." Jost disbanded the NSK in 1995, feeling that it was counter-productive to keep an organization apparatus. Moreover, Josts ideas had evolved, and he was concentrating on developing a system of yoga called Arya Kriya that concentrated on developing a more personal relationship than was possible in an organizational setting. He still distributed literature and correspondence under the imprimatur Jost. However Jost died of a heart attack in 1996.

Publications

*Jost ''The Essentials of Mein kampf'' Volksberg, CA; NS Kindred 1988 *Jost
The Path of Wotan: our spiritual heritage
' NSJ. CA; NS Kindred 1994 *Jost
National Socialism; Adolf Hitlers Revelations of the Eternal Laws of Nature for Family and Folk
' Nevada City, California; National Socialist Kindred

References

Sources

*{{cite book , last=Kaplan , first=Jeffrey , authorlink=Jeffrey Kaplan (academic) , title=Encyclopedia of white power : a sourcebook on the radical racist right , publisher=AltaMira Press , location=Walnut Creek, CA , year=2000 , isbn=9780742503403 , oclc=42889808 Germanic neopagan organisations Intentional communities in California Neo-Nazi organizations in the United States Modern pagan organizations based in the United States White nationalism in California White separatism Defunct modern pagan organizations Modern pagan organizations established in the 1960s