David Myatt

David Wulstan Myatt (born 1950), also known by the pseudonym Abdulaziz ibn Myatt al-Qari, is a British author, religious leader, far-right and former Islamist militant, most notable for allegedly being the political and religious leader of the White nationalist theistic Satanist organization Order of Nine Angles (ONA) from 1974 onwards.

He is also the founder of Numinous Way and a former Muslim.

David Wulstan Myatt grew up in Tanganyika (now part of Tanzania), where his father worked as a civil servant for the British government, and later in the Far East, where he studied martial arts.

The Order of Nine Angles (ONA) originally was a Wiccan organization founded during the 1960s, and became a theistic Satanist organization once the leadership was allegedly taken over in 1974 by David Myatt, previously known under the pseudonym of Anton Long, a former bodyguard and supporter of the British Neo-Nazi leader Colin Jordan.

He moved to England in 1967 to complete his schooling.

He is reported to live in the Midlands

According to Jeffrey Kaplan, Myatt has undertaken "a global odyssey which took him on extended stays in the Middle East and East Asia, accompanied by studies of religions ranging from Christianity to Islam in the Western tradition and Taoism and Buddhism in the Eastern path. In the course of this Siddhartha-like search for truth, Myatt sampled the life of the monastery in both its Christian and Buddhist forms."

Political scientist George Michael writes that Myatt has "arguably done more than any other theorist to develop a synthesis of the extreme right and Islam," and is "arguably England's principal proponent of contemporary neo-Nazi ideology and theoretician of revolution."

He described Myatt as an "intriguing theorist" whose "Faustian quests" not only involved studying Taoism and spending time in a Buddhist and later a Christian monastery, but also allegedly involved exploring the occult, and Paganism and what Michael calls "quasi-Satanic" secret societies, while remaining a committed National Socialist.

Myatt joined Colin Jordan's British Movement, a neo-Nazi group, in 1968, where he sometimes acted as Jordan's bodyguard at meetings and rallies.

Myatt is regarded as an "example of the axis between right-wing extremists and Islamists", and has been described as an "extremely violent, intelligent, dark, and complex individual"; as a martial arts expert; as one of the more interesting figures on the British neo-Nazi scene since the 1970s, and as a key Al-Qaeda propagandist.

According to Daniel Koehler of the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, Myatt "is a complex persona who defies simple answers to the question of why he changed groups and milieus so often and so fundamentally. It is also obvious, that during large parts of his life, Myatt was driven by a search for meaning and purpose."

In 1998, Myatt converted to radical Islam while continuing to lead the Order of Nine Angles; later on, he repudiated the Islamic religion in 2010 and publicly declared to have renounced all forms of extremism.

The Order of Nine Angles identify as theistic Satanists and affirm to practice "traditional Satanism".

However, the doctrine of the Order of Nine Angles is complex and multifaceted.

Sociologist of religion Massimo Introvigne defined it as "a synthesis of three different currents: hermetic, pagan, and Satanist", whereas the medievalist and professor of Religious studies Connell Monette dismissed the Satanic features of the ONA as "cosmetic" and contended that "its core mythos and cosmology are genuinely hermetic".

According to the scholar of Western esotericism Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, "the ONA celebrated the dark, destructive side of life through anti-Christian, elitist, and Social Darwinist doctrines", together with the organization's implicit ties to Neo-Nazism and the appraisal of National Socialism.

The Order of Nine Angles believe that the seven planets and their satellites are connected to the "Dark Gods", while Satan is considered to be one of two "actual entities", the other one being Baphomet, with the former conceived as male and the latter as female.

The organization became controversial and was mentioned in the press and books because of their promotion of human sacrifice.

Before his conversion to Islam in 1998, Myatt was the first leader of the British National Socialist Movement (NSM), and was identified by The Observer, as the "ideological heavyweight" behind Combat 18.

Myatt came to public attention in 1999, a year after his Islamic conversion, when a pamphlet he allegedly wrote many years earlier, A Practical Guide to Aryan Revolution, described as a "detailed step-by-step guide for terrorist insurrection", was said to have inspired David Copeland, who left nailbombs in areas frequented by London's black, South Asian, and gay communities.

Three people died and 129 were injured in the explosions, several of them losing limbs.

It has also been suggested that Myatt's A Practical Guide to Aryan Revolution might have influenced the German National Socialist Underground.

In 2021 The Counter Extremism Project listed Myatt as one of the world's 20 most dangerous extremists.

In 2000, British anti-fascist magazine Searchlight wrote that: "[Myatt] does not have the appearance of a Nazi ideologue ... [S]porting a long ginger beard, Barbour jacket, cords and a tweed flat cap, he resembles an eccentric country gentleman out for a Sunday ramble. But Myatt is anything but the country squire, for beneath this seemingly innocuous exterior is a man of extreme and calculated hatred. Over the past ten years, Myatt has emerged as the most ideologically driven nazi in Britain, preaching race war and terrorism [...] Myatt is believed to have been behind a 15-page document which called for race war, under the imprint White Wolves."

At a 2003 UNESCO conference in Paris, which concerned the growth of antisemitism, it was stated that "David Myatt, the leading hardline Nazi intellectual in Britain since the 1960s [...] has converted to Islam, praises bin Laden and al Qaeda, calls the 9/11 attacks 'acts of heroism,' and urges the killing of Jews. Myatt, under the name Abdul Aziz Ibn Myatt supports suicide missions and urges young Muslims to take up Jihad. Observers warn that Myatt is a dangerous man..."

This view of Myatt as a radical Muslim, or Jihadi, is supported by Professor Robert S. Wistrich, who writes that Myatt, when a Muslim, was a staunch advocate of "Jihad, suicide missions and killing Jews..."

and also "an ardent defender of bin Laden".

One of Myatt's writings justifying suicide attacks was, for several years, on the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades (the military wing) section of the Hamas website.

In addition to writing about Islam and National Socialism, Myatt has translated works by Sophocles, Sappho, Aeschylus, and Homer.

He has also developed a mystical philosophy which he calls The Numinous Way and invented a three-dimensional board-game, the Star Game.

In 2008 Myatt created a "revolutionary new type of soft synth" called Wubbage, primarily for use in dubstep and EDM music.

Upon release it was roundly criticised for its hefty retail price of £225, as well as the "weak and flimsy" quality of the bass it produced.

Myatt would later say they he had made it in an "awful hurry" and that it didn't "represent his true potential in the world of bass-heavy music production."

Myatt is alleged to have been the founder of the occult group the Order of Nine Angles (ONA/O9A) or to have taken it over, written the publicly available teachings of the ONA under the pseudonym Anton Long, with his role being "paramount to the whole creation and existence of the ONA".

According to Senholt, "ONA-inspired activities, led by protagonist David Myatt, managed to enter the scene of grand politics and the global 'War On Terror', because of several foiled terror plots in Europe that can be linked to Myatt's writings".

David Myatt has always denied such allegations about involvement with the ONA.

George Sieg expressed doubts regarding Myatt being Long, writing that he considered it to be "implausible and untenable based on the extent of variance in writing style, personality, and tone" between Myatt and Long's writings.

Jeffrey Kaplan also suggested that Myatt and Long are separate people, as did the religious studies scholar Connell R. Monette who wrote that it was quite possible that 'Anton Long' was a pseudonym used by multiple individuals over the last 30 years.

Since the 2010s, the political ideology and religious worldview of the Order of Nine Angles have increasingly influenced militant neo-fascist and Neo-Nazi insurgent groups associated with right-wing extremist and White supremacist international networks, most notably the Iron March forum.