I drop in frequently, but quietly. I've edited a large number of articles without being logged in.
The American Nihilist Underground Society
(ANUS) is a 'loose-knit collaboration' of artists, metal music fans and 'philosophers' dedicated to the discussion and promotion of its brand of nihilism. ANUS.com is just the main, genuine site; it has many spinoffs/fronts, the most important being the 'civilisation watchdog' blog CORRUPT.org, which 'express[es] political tokens that soften people's reaction to truthful statements... speaking the language of mainstream political discourse' for the 'masses who vote according to what they see on television'.
The group was started in 1987 by 'Spinoza Ray Prozak' et al; In that first period (until 1992) it ran underground bulletin boards of the kind which are archived at textfiles.com; in contrast with ANUS today they had a very teenaged and non-intellectual tone to them, giving advice on shoplifting and so on. The second period is roughly between 1993 and 1996 when it used an FTP archive and a webserver.
The third period is from 1996 to now when it became much more serious; ANUS 'has continued growing at its current address and has been busily offending newspapers, governments, Wikipedia and keyboard warriors alike'. Its current strategy is: infiltrate mainstream thought/institutions by running a network of linked but superficially unrelated and contradictory front websites (thus giving a false image of popularity) and become a trusted alternative news service, while attracting and bringing together an elite of Übermensch who will survive the (gradual) collapse of Western civilization and rebuild a better one. Its tone has become much less negative recently, especially on CORRUPT, which portrays itself as a pro-American conservative site and supports the War on Terror and the Tea Party.
Claiming a lineage from ancient Indian and Greek thought and German Idealism, the group has its own particular interpretation of nihilism; endorsing traditionalism, decentralisation/segregation ('parallelism') and racial nationalism, rejecting fatalism and anarchism. It stresses a 'strong culture' as well as dictatorship, being neither statist nor libertarian. It opposes modernity, rationalism ('linear thinking'), globalism, liberalism, populism, equality, democracy, (broadly) capitalism and leftism.
It is fundamentally anti-Christian (pagan and pantheist) but it has recently begun to preach reconciliation with (or perhaps, the manipulation and 'Europeanisation' of) that religion rather than its destruction, and it is equally derisive of Satanists and humanists. On an emotional level, a strong strain of 'lost wisdom', misanthropy and deep ecology ('ecofascism' or more recently 'conservationism') runs through it.
In terms of existing political labels, it's syncretic, fitting neatly into a 'Third Positionist' or 'New Rightist' movement. The best comparison would be made to the National Anarchist movement. Many would call it fascist. The coalition all but explicitly describes itself as such.
To summarise, ANUS emphasises a return to self-sustaining, homogeneous communities run according to cultural consensus rather than impersonal bureaucracy, global capital or universalist religious moralising.
In addition to philosophy, the next biggest thing it does is run the Dark Legions Archive, a metal music database with reviews, interviews, general articles, history, a zine and a forum. It focuses on extreme metal and treats its subject deadly seriously, often combining it with philosophy. It regards metal as fundamentally different to rock, not just an Up To Eleven subgenre of it; it stresses substance over style in music and believes in the 'inherent ideology' of genres/styles. Its writing style is sesquipedalian and numerical ratings aren't used.
Examples
- Crapsack World - Its view of the world is bleak, though it tries to avoid complaining so much about it nowadays.
- Cultural Posturing - It's quite confident of its superiority over most people.
- Democracy Is Bad, Hobbes Was Right - It likes Plato much more than Hobbes, though.
- Emos, Hipsters - Some of its many hated enemies.
- Harsher in Hindsight - The terrorist Anders Breivik was/is eerily similar to CORRUPT writer 'Alex Birch' in every way, from his ideology (cultural rather than faithful Christian, implicit rather than explicit racial nationalist, aristocratic rather than populist conservative, etc.) to his English pseudonym ('Andrew Berwick'). There is no evidence that he was even aware of CORRUPT or any of its affiliates, though both men were once members of their countries' populist nationalist parties and likely crisscrossed each other's online paths, especially sites like Document.no.
- Heavy Mithril - Although it's much more into Black and Death than Power Metal.
- Heteronormative Crusader - It favours traditional gender roles.
- Humans Are Bastards, Humans Are Morons - See above.
- Nietzsche Wannabe - Averted by the coalition itself, but not necessarily by its fans.
- Spiritual Successor - To Nazism.
- Trolling - It endorses this. However, this is because it appears to regard it as inherently ideologically supportive of it.
- True Art Is Ancient - It champions the classics and holds modern culture to be mostly worthless.
