Thanks for sending me Head #8. I appreciated the reviews and found some of the other stuff (John Eden, Brian Glick etc.) very useful and informative. Unfortunately my reading pleasure was spoiled by the notes at the end of the Manwoman interview. I guess you already realise that I think wanting to "reclaim" the swastika is at best stupid and very often goes hand-in-hand with "right arm" problems. However, my reason for addressing this issue is that on page 54 it says: "Pennick was once dubbed a "Nazi apologist" by the Neoist Alliance, but this seems to be yet more shit-stirring from Stewart Home." I have commented on Pennick’s unsavoury fascination with the swastika in "Proletarian Post-Modernism" included in Suspect Device. However, it was not me who described him as a Nazi apologist but Richard Essex of Unpopular Books. This criticism was not made simply on the basis of Pennick’s interest in the swastika but because it appeared side by side with his support for the white supremacist and one time American Nazi Party member Kurt Saxon. This does not strike me as "shit-stirring" but serious criticism, especially as I have been told by Richard Essex that Pennick was also involved in the dissemination of material sympathetic to the Ku Klux Klan (this has not been proved to me but in the light of the material I have seen I am inclined to believe it). I did not make the charge of apologetics for fascism but it appears appropriate on the basis of material Pennick contributed to Stuart Christie publications. While the criticisms I have made of this ley-spotter are not nearly as severe as those of Richard Essex, since you have dragged me back into this debate I think the best thing would be if Pennick apologised for his attempts to push forward the agenda of the far-Right. If he did this we could all forget his follies and hobby-horses and concentrate on something more interesting instead.

Follow on: an article for Head Magazine by Stewart Home was published in badly mutilated form after above letter was sent to them, to make it look like he was into dodgy right-wing nonsense. It is reproduced as he wrote it here.

Feuds