Israel's Metalist website recently published this interview with Varg Vikernes. I think it's great that they secured the interview and more importantly, that the interviewer Alon Miasnikov did not shirk from answering the hard questions. These days Vikernes' interviews seem to be characterised by his charm and good humour rather than a desire to shock (and they can be all the more dangerous for that). He is also extremely evasive and sometimes downright misleading. When asked for his views on Nazi antisemitism and the Holocaust he first of all talks about other massacres throughout history and the way the facts are distorted and then goes on to argue that:
My problem with all these massacres is that I really don't know if they happened as described by the victors. Nor do I trust the descriptions of the victims, as they tend to at least exaggerate. I say this because I see how even my unimportant and (to most) uninteresting story has been presented by the Norwegian system. They actually teach children in school today that I am a devil-worshipping satanist who burned churches, and they use me to prove the existence of a satanic presence in our midst. Everything they teach them is a lie, and what they teach is even easily unveiled as nonsense. You don't even need any sources to figure this out. The whole story falls apart on its own due to a complete lack of logic. When it comes to the Holocaust I have the same problem. I don't trust the official story, because I have no reason to trust those who tell me this story.
So is he a Holocaust denier or not? I guess he is, although he couches it in terms of suspicion of all mainstream historical narratives. He has never made denial a central part of his work and public statements though and it's good that the interview got this out of him. His proof of why official narratives can't be trusted is also hilariously weak. While he may never been a Satanist in the conventional sense of the word, he did indeed burned churches.
Vikernes is also asked in the interview about the notorious incident when he sent a letter bomb to Zeev Tannenboim of the Israeli metal band Salem. His response is as follows:
Well, I don't remember much of this. I was 18 years at the time and was «at war with the world», so to speak. All I remember was that I sent an electronic detonator to a guy in Salem and wrote to him that «Here is the device you needed to blow up that government building», as if he had asked for it. Then I wrote «cassette tape» on the customs note, knowing perfectly well that it did not look as if the package contained a cassette tape. It was a rotten joke intended to end our communication. As far as I know he was interviewed by the police and that was it, and I expected nothing more than that. It did, by the way, very efficiently end our comunication, as intended. «Big surprise».
Who knows whether this is true or not as Vikernes tends to manipulate his past continuously. It may be true though and in which case the conventional story only needs to be rewritten to the extent that the letter momb was only a detnonator and that it was couched as a joke designed to get Tannenboim into trouble. Whatever - Vikernes was clearly aiming to attack an Israeli musician for the simple reason that he was Israel and hence a Jew.
I was dissapointed with the interview to the extent that Vikernes could have been pushed more on his views on Jews. Still, kudos to Metalist for asking questions that other avoid.
Read the interview here.
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