Forn Sidr of America

first of all, explaining the psychological warfare part:

“The Fools most extraordinary role, however, was their occasional use in war. It was a common sight when two armies were preparing for battle to see the jesters of the opposing leaders cavorting on foot or riding in front of the troops. These brave Fools would tell jokes and mock the enemy to raise their own army’s spirits- or provoke the enemy into a premature attack. For Fools had a psychological role in warfare. The night before a battle, they even acted as early wartime entertainers, diverting the soldier’s minds with songs and stories.”

now thats funny enough on its own, but it gets better

“However, the Fools were not just battlefield buffoons. For quite often, the leaders of armies would use their jesters to convey messages to the opposing side. Fools were used to carry the terms of surrender – or to deliver the conditions for the release of hostages. This role was a dangerous one. For although traditionally, messengers were sacred and therefore not to be harmed, it was not unusual for disgruntled war leaders to literally ‘shoot the messenger’ – right back at their army.

Any Fool unfortunate enough to carry a message that displeased the recipient could find themselves loaded into a trebuchet or catapult and shot back into their army by way of reply. If they were lucky, the enemy would have killed the fool beforehand, with only their severed head acting as a reply. However, if a war leader was particularly truculent, it was the intact and living fool who made his way, airborne, back across the battlefield.”

Outside of battle and the usual entertainment for guests, the Fool was also a vehicle for speaking truth to power. In European courts, the entire state of a nation could turn on the whim of a king, so monarchs were often surrounded by flatterers and sycophants. People could literally be executed for disagreeing with the King (or Queen), and there were even consequences just for telling them something they didn’t want to hear, no matter how true or necessary it was.

A Fool or Court Jester was given license to mock, lampoon, and contradict the nobility TO THEIR FACES using the veil of buffoonery and humor. No one took jesters too seriously, so they could act and speak with a certain amount of impunity. They would tell the hard truths no one else dared to utter by disguising them as a joke. This could be used to break tension, de-escalate a confrontation, and bring people back down to earth. 

We see it in a number of classical depictions, a notable example of which is the jester Feste in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, a man described as “wise enough to play the fool.” Consider the following rapidfire exchange between Feste and Lady Olivia, after she gives him leave to prove that she is the foolish one of the two of them (because she is bored and in mourning and needs a lift).

I’ve been on hiatus from Tumblr while I focus on finishing college and managing a nonprofit, but I feel called to comment on this situation and how it affects me, my religious community, and other communities that I’m a part of. 

Last week many Americans woke up to a reality where alt-right extremists are able to carry out an agenda of terror to usurp the free and democratic norms of our culture. For people such as myself, this isn’t new. As a queer Heathen, I’ve been contending with alt-right infiltration and recruitment in my communities for years. Such experiences prompted me to become a security studies major and to involve myself in community-led education on extremist methodologies for the last 4 years.

The violence carried out last Wed is the culmination of successfully coordinated efforts by the alt-right for far longer. While many of us have rolled our eyes and mocked the most radical actors as ‘NeoNazis’, we’ve been unwitting participants in minimizing the threat they posed until it was too late. They planned it this way.  They played the long game with the goal of shifting cultural norms ever closer to promoting neofascist ideologies or, at the very least, inserting ideologies of cultural purism and exclusionism into communities that might inhibit their goals. Such efforts have included infiltrating religious communities, hobby communities, and co-opting cultural norms and language.

It’s this last part that is particularly insidious and why decent well-meaning people have been ineffective thus far in inhibiting the alt-right’s momentum. We’ve seen a lot of activism in the last few years of openly calling out racist rhetoric, refusing “nazis” entry to our spaces, and making it part of our rally cries that we will not stand idle while they co-opt our communities, religions, and symbols. But while call-out language, exclusionary policies, and antagonizing the alt-right may be the most natural reactionary response -

It’s also, unfortunately, the most divisive and fulfills the alt-right’s following goals:

They keep themselves at the center of our activism which prevents us from prioritizing the people and identities they pose the greatest danger to (BIPOC, LGBTQA+, and people with disabilities).

They remain an elusive and abstract enemy that keeps us distrustful of our allies and in a reactionary state of shutting out anyone who might have begun to be sucked into their propaganda, which just helps drive their radicalization and recruitment.

They keep us focused on who and what we are against, instead of identifying our own values and identity. In this way they keep control of the narrative and prevent us unifying over anything other than our oppression, fear, and anger at them.

All of this prevents us from maintaining appropriate boundaries with racism and fascist values and replaces them with arbitrary ones. Instead of self-assessing they keep us focused on policing others. Instead of holding ourselves personally accountable for confronting our own racism, biases, and prejudices we become fixated on pointing out everyone else’s. 

While I don’t claim to have the solution to alt-right influence, it’s clear that our approach will need to be as multilayered and intentional as theirs has been. The attack on the Capitol have made the world aware of the urgency now and new voices will enter this conversation. We can’t keep promoting reactive action.

Whatever we do now, we need to start by addressing how to avoid these recurring obstacles and, most importantly, how we can prioritize BIPOC and other marginalized voices to guide the solutions.

Join the Heathen community in defending our religious terms from aggressive copyright and trademarking!

HEATHENS DON’T TAKE ADVERSITY LYING DOWN and we’re saying NO MORE!

We can’t do it without you!

Because Forn Sidr doesn’t have the systemic protection of being a large colonizer monotheistic religion, the burden of protecting our rights lays on our community.

Let’s spread our encouragement of a compassionate and inclusive Heathen community across Midgard!