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Paper short abstract

This paper addresses explicit racism within contemporary Slavic Paganism in Poland. The study explores the logic utilized by far right Pagans who divide Poles into two races based on religion: Christians are considered "spiritual Semites" and therefore non-white, only Pagans are Aryans=Whites

Paper long abstract

Racialization is a popular interpretive framework that researchers apply to class differences, such as the people versus the elites, as well as to various religious or ethnic groups, such as Muslims and Roma. This intellectual practice is often justified by concepts such as "cultural racism" or "racism without racists." However, an overabundance of these metaphorical forms of racism has the effect of distracting attention from the investigation of literal forms of racism, that is, ideologies and practices explicitly based on the concept of race.

To counteract this, I would like to focus on the National Socialist movement existing within contemporary Slavic Paganism in Poland, as represented by the Order of Zadruga “Northern Wolf”, among others. In particular, I will explore the role of religion in forming racial hierarchies. I will argue that the racialization of religion in this context is enabled by the enrichment of global racist doctrine with the locally developed ideas of culturalism by Jan Stachniuk. According to Stachniuk, the "power of creation" is the sine qua non of culture. This power is said to be evident in Paganism, but not in Christianity, which Stachniuk disregards as anti-culture. From the culturalist perspective, the Pagan far right in Poland is able to challenge the default whiteness (Aryanism) of the Polish body by appealing to religious criteria. Therefore, the majority of Polish society are ‘spiritual Semites’ and in fact non-humans. Only the far right Pagan minority deserves to be called Aryans, and thus truly white people.