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James Mason's newsletter for the National Socialist Liberation Front, 1980 to 1986, collected as a book by Michael Moynihan's Storm Books in 1992 and revived on Iron March in 2015. | 1992 | 2026-09-22 | 2026-10-15 |
Siege was the newsletter that James Mason wrote for the National Socialist Liberation Front, a group rooted in a 1970s periodical of Joseph Tommasi, from 1980 to 1986. Its essays argued that democratic institutions were too corrupt to reform and had to be destroyed by terrorism, that lone attackers were harder to infiltrate and prosecute than groups, and that tensions should be escalated until a race war became unavoidable.1 Mason drew on the "leaderless resistance" of Louis Beam.2
The Book
After Mason had failed for years to find a publisher, Michael J. Moynihan set up the Storm Books imprint and in 1992 published the collected essays as Siege: The Collected Writings of James Mason. Tom Metzger praised and distributed it; the rest of the neo-Nazi movement largely ignored or criticized it, and it stayed marginal for about two decades.2 The ICCT study counts 217 of the op-ed style pieces Mason wrote for the newsletter in the 1992 Storm Books edition, which it gives a length of 434 pages.1 Later printings followed in 2003, 2017 and 2018, and the 2018 edition ran to 684 pages through the self-publishing service CreateSpace.1 ProPublica describes a 563-page edition, which the ICCT study identifies as the 2017 third edition.3 An Open Library record for a 1992 Storm Books edition issued in Denver, Colorado, credits Michael M. Jenkins as editor and introducer.4 The SPLC profile credits Moynihan with editing the newsletters into the book.2
Revival
From 2015 members of the Iron March forum promoted the book, and Atomwaffen Division, announced there by Brandon Russell on October 12, 2015, made it required reading.35 Mason made his first documented in-person appearance with the group at the 2019 AWD Nuclear Congress in Las Vegas, which was organized by the paid Federal Bureau of Investigation informant Joshua Caleb Sutter.6 A 2018 study by the Counter Extremism Project identified 33 extremist entities (21 individuals and 12 organizations) with ties to Siege, of whom nine individuals had been involved in acts of violence, four in specific murders and four in threats or acts of terrorism; later versions of the study count 32 and then 41 entities.78 The International Centre for Counter-Terrorism paper states that AWD members have been implicated in or convicted of five murders.1 Europol's report on 2021 stated: "Siege and Accelerationism, both with significant potential for inciting violence, were the most prominent ideologies in 2021, especially attracting young people radicalised online."9 The Terrorgram Collective treated it as a foundational text.10
The book has turned up in the material of attackers. The manifesto package of the attacker in the 2024 Eskisehir Mosque Stabbing in Turkey included it, together with Ted Kaczynski's manifesto.11 The 75-page manifesto of Cain Clark and Caleb Vazquez, who 2026 Islamic Center of San Diego Shooting in May 2026, called Siege and The Turner Diaries works that "should be read almost biblically by all soldiers of the white race."12
Footnotes
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Bethan Johnson and Matthew Feldman. "Siege Culture After Siege: Anatomy of a Neo-Nazi Terrorist Doctrine." ICCT Research Paper, July 2021, DOI 10.19165/2021.1.07 (the five murders at p. 15). https://icct.nl/sites/default/files/2022-12/siege-culture-neo-nazi-terrorist-doctrine.pdf ↩︎
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Southern Poverty Law Center. "James Mason." Extremist Files. https://www.splcenter.org/resources/extremist-files/james-mason/ ↩︎
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A.C. Thompson, Ali Winston and Jake Hanrahan. "Inside Atomwaffen As It Celebrates a Member for Allegedly Killing a Gay Jewish College Student." ProPublica, February 23, 2018. https://www.propublica.org/article/atomwaffen-division-inside-white-hate-group ↩︎
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Open Library, "Siege," work OL43490555W, edition record for Storm Books, Denver, CO, 1992. https://openlibrary.org/works/OL43490555W ↩︎
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Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. "The Iron March Forum and the Evolution of the 'Skull Mask' Neo-Fascist Network." https://ctc.westpoint.edu/the-iron-march-forum-and-the-evolution-of-the-skull-mask-neo-fascist-network/ ↩︎
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Winston, Ali. "The Satanist Neo-Nazi Plot to Murder U.S. Soldiers." Rolling Stone, June 5, 2022. https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/the-satanist-neo-nazi-plot-to-murder-u-s-soldiers-1352629/ ↩︎
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Matthew Feldman and Bethan Johnson, "The Godfather of Fascist Terrorism," Fair Observer, August 17, 2021, quoting the Counter Extremism Project's 2018 study of Siege. https://www.fairobserver.com/region/north_america/matthew-feldman-bethan-johnson-james-mason-siege-culture-neo-nazi-groups-radical-right-news-12512/ ↩︎
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Counter Extremism Project, "Siege's Ties to Extremists." https://www.counterextremism.com/sites/default/files/Siege_Ties_to_Extremists.pdf ↩︎
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Europol, European Union Terrorism Situation and Trend Report 2022 (TE-SAT), PDF p. 44. https://www.europol.europa.eu/cms/sites/default/files/documents/Tesat_Report_2022_0.pdf ↩︎
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"The Rise and Fall of Terrorgram: Inside a Global Online Hate Network." ProPublica and PBS Frontline, March 25, 2025. ↩︎
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Anti-Defamation League. "Turkey Attacker Inspired by Accelerationism and Mass Killers, Manifesto Shows." https://www.adl.org/resources/article/turkey-attacker-inspired-accelerationism-and-mass-killers-manifesto-shows ↩︎
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Anti-Defamation League. "San Diego Mosque Shooters' Apparent Manifestos Reveal Anti-Muslim Extremism." May 2026. https://www.adl.org/resources/article/san-diego-mosque-shooters-apparent-manifestos-reveal-anti-muslim-extremism ; "San Diego mosque shooters left 75-page neo-Nazi manifesto." i24NEWS. ↩︎