Name Kerry Bolton | Role Writer | |
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Books Artists of the Right: Resisting, The Parihaka Cult, Stalin ‑ The Enduring Legacy, The Psychotic Left, The Banking Swindle Similar People Francis Parker Yockey, Kyle Chapman, Jim Saleam | ||
Kerry Raymond Bolton (born 1956) is a New Zealand writer and political activist noted for his extremist neo-Nazi ideology. His writings and views have been called pro-Nazi, anti-Jewish, and nationalist.
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Biography
In 1980 Bolton co-founded the New Zealand branch of the Church of Odin, a pro-Nazi organisation for "whites of non-Jewish descent".
Bolton has published and edited several newsletters such as The Nexus and Western Destiny. He founded the national-socialist Order of the Left Hand Path (OLHP) in 1992, following a quarrel with other members of the Temple of Set. 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. It claimed to have a network of national lodges in six European countries plus Australia and the U.S. 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. 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 heavy-metal' movement. It later changed its name to Western Destiny.
Bolton was a co-founder of the Nationalist Workers' Party, and was briefly secretary for the New Zealand Fascist Union in 1997, in which he promoted the 'patriotic socialism' of 1930s Labour hero John A. Lee. In 2004 he was the secretary of the New Zealand National Front and spokesman for the New Right group. He was also involved with the New Zealand National Front but resigned because of disputes with neo-Nazi and white supremacist factions.
He has been published on the websites of the politician Alfred Vierling and the holocaust denier Gerald Fredrick Töben. Bolton's 2003 self-published book Thinkers of the Right was described by Paul Gottfried as one of the most enlightened he has read on the inter-war Right.
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. 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. It had been passed by the university, had been reviewed by senior academics from two other universities, and had received full class honors. Professor Dov Bing, who supervised the thesis, called it a first-class piece of work. Bolton claimed the thesis was "poorly researched" and was "a poorly contrived smear-document against a private individual, namely myself". After criticism from the Tertiary Education Union, 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".
In December 2009 Bolton filed a complaint with the Broadcasting Standards Authority concerning the Ideas program 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. 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 airing the program, but reversed this decision in December 2010 and declined to uphold any of Bolton's complaints.
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".