Jonas Akerlund
Lords of Chaos

I admit I have a weakness for Varg Vikernes, in his videoblogger version.

For those who don't know, Varg (aka Burzum) is a proud racist, confessed murderer, genius of Black Metal and Dark Ambient, role-playing enthusiast, self-proclaimed expert on neo-paganism and former admirer of National Socialism. He spent sixteen years in prison in Norway for murdering Øystein Aarseth (aka Euronymous), guitarist of the Black Metal band Mayhem, in 1993.

So if he's such a scum, why can't I detox from Varg's videos?

I've tried many times to answer this question, but the only answer I've managed to come up with is that Varg is an excellent communicator. It must be said that the channel in question, ThuleanPerspective, is actually a means of propaganda for his ideas, drawing from a series of pseudoscientific theories to assert what for him are absolute truths. Although he does not define himself as an Aryan supremacist, Varg claims that there are a series of conspiracies in place to exterminate the European, blonde, blue-eyed race, which he claims descends directly from Neanderthals (!!!). He supports the veracity of the so-called Kalergi plan and a whole series of Zionist conspiracies aimed at weakening racial purity through forced hybridization of human species, thus making humanity better subjugated to the ruling elites. As if that weren't enough, he is convinced that a new Ice Age is imminent, for which he prepares by living a survivor's life. From his home located in an unspecified forest location in central France, Varg makes at least one video a day and shows the lifestyle he imposes on himself and his "tribe," consisting of his wife and five children. They live without electricity, apart from that produced with solar panels, without hot water, nor media (which, of course, are all subjugated to anti-white power). He subjects his children (whom he homeschools because school is obviously in the hands of the occult power he fights against) to exhausting and hilarious war games, barbaric-style combat simulations, exploratory campaigns based on the Hobbits from The Lord of the Rings, with the clear intention of hardening their physical and mental abilities in preparation for the difficult new world that is at hand, a world in which civilization will collapse, everyone will perish except for those who, like him, know how to fend for themselves.

Varg's videos are addictive also because, methodically like a Nazi, he tackles one theme at a time with the motto "let's find out": although he is Norwegian, Varg indeed possesses notable expressive skills in the English language. He has a charming and even pleasant tone, at least until you feel like you belong to a mixed and parasitic scum that threatens the survival of good and pristine Aryans.

All this rambling to say that Varg's story is actually the story that this film would pretend to tell: how, as a young man, he met Euronymous and his group of depressed friends, how the two came into conflict (certainly for economic reasons before ideological ones), until the tragic conclusion of the murder, with the backdrop of Protestant church fires set in Norway precisely in those years. The film is based on the book of the same name by Michael Moynihan and Didrik Søderlind and portrays a story significantly different from the one always claimed by Varg (and the other survivors of the incident), but that is not the point. The problem is that the film doesn't work on the narrative level. If the authors had possessed even a small part of Varg's communicative skills, the whole thing would have flowed much better: certainly, the story of a Black Metal band like Mayhem needs the Satanic component (which always sells) and also the morbid details concerning the suicide of Mayhem's singer, Dead. Just as it would have needed the original music of that band (as well as Burzum, Emperor, and Dark Throne). But none of this happens: the mentioned bands label the book and film as containing lies and accuse the authors of wanting to profit at the expense of the victims of those events, denying permission to use the original music as a soundtrack. Which is a bit like making Bohemian Rhapsody without Queen's music.

So someone like me isn't interested in knowing why there's hostility, whether or not it's true that those kids burned churches because they were Satanists or rather neo-pagans; whether there's truth or not in what is told; whether the court documents about Varg tell the truth or rather, as the latter claims, his statements were coerced; whether what you see are reliable reconstructions of the protagonists or they are telling a "Disneyfication" of it all.

Someone like me would rather know why a film like Lords of Chaos is released about a story with a known ending, made of events altered and denied by all the protagonists involved, and moreover, this story doesn't work precisely from a dramatic point of view. The characters and their motivations don't hold up: it's okay to paint Varg as the villain of the situation (someone with his background deserves it), but why tell details invented out of thin air? Why insert non-existent characters (like the supposed girlfriend of Euronymous)? Why indulge in the morbid detail of Euronymous tasting pieces of Dead's shattered skull instead of showing us the motivations behind this group of Nordic and misfit young men? It would undoubtedly have been more interesting to show how reality was distorted by those minds rather than attribute every deviation to Varg's Nazi ideology rather than his alleged Satanism.

Labeling the origins of this metal subgenre as the delirious actions of a group of exhausted individuals is at the very least reductive, but intolerance is not fought by trivializing evil, nor is there any benefit to the truth by romanticizing a dark-toned event that, whether you like it or not, changed the lives of its protagonists.

Today Varg amasses thousands of views on his channel, I myself came across him thanks to Lords of Chaos, spreading his bizarre ideas to bizarre individuals who worship him (but also to former girls who painted their faces like Dead and tried to sing with a growl voice taking advantage of the shower's reverb), selling books and role-playing games, training his army of infants to conquer the European forests of the new Ice Age, propelled by the advertisement of what is a bad film made on a bad book.

But the real question is: in the end, who really profited?

Let's find out...