The Pagan internet blew up starting on September 11 about a planned event by the Asatru Folk Assembly (AFA), a white supremacist hate group, at Stonehenge. We first became aware of this planned event through the Pagan Federation, in a copy of their blog post on Facebook. You can read the original post at https://www.paganfed.org/a-response-to-the-proposed-asatru-folk-assembly-winter-nights-event-at-stonehenge/ where they go into great detail with references on why the AFA is a racist hate group, and should not be allowed to expand into the UK, or anywhere for that matter. As a part of this effort to stop the AFA, a change.org petition was started.
We as an organization support the Pagan Federation and all the other groups out there fighting to stop this event and the AFA. We have signed on to their initial statement, and our leadership as individuals have signed the petition. We stand against racism, homophobia, misogyny, antisemitism, and intolerance wherever it rears its ugly head. We stand against the AFA which has based their organization and beliefs on all of these repugnant concepts.
There has been good news though. As the Pagan Federation updated us: "As a result of this display of solidarity by the entirety of the UK’s inclusive Pagan and Heathen faith communities, the AFA have now cancelled the event and will no longer attempt their efforts to co-opt a symbol of our national heritage as a platform on which they can promote their hateful and exclusive narratives."
This is a win, for sure, but it reminds us that we cannot sit idle while groups like this are still out there trying to expand. We were lulled into the false belief that the AFA was going to stay in the US and Canada and that other, equally horrible groups were going to stay where they are already prominent in Europe and the rest of the world. This demonstrates that this is not the case. They are all trying to expand and spread their hate world wide. We need to stand up to it when we see it. This event will hopefully embolden the inclusive pagan community to do such thing as it shows what we can do when we work together.