Counter-Currents
4,904 words
This is an article I really wish I didn’t need to write. I suspect many of Counter-Currents’ readers wish I didn’t have to write it, either, since I believe that most people who visit sites like this one do so because they are interested in ideas and incisive commentary rather than interpersonal drama and feuding. And when the conflict between my colleague Greg Johnson and my former colleague Daniel Friberg broke out earlier this month, I had fully intended to stay out of it. My involvement with Arktos and its internal squabbles had already ended, I was content to move on in life and let my former associates do the same, and I had hoped that the story of what had happened in Arktos would remain restricted to those who had been involved.
However, after a vicious two-pronged attack bristling with accusations was launched against me, completely unprovoked, at AltRight.com and on one of Matt Forney’s podcasts (of all places) recently, I have been left with no choice but to present the facts about my involvement in this affair. And ironically, because of Daniel Friberg’s actions, now many more people are aware of what went on than would have been otherwise, but that is solely his responsibility and that of those who helped him with it.
I realize that many people in our circles would simply like these conflicts to end and for things to get back to normal. Nobody would like that more than me. I can honestly say that this affair in recent months – not just this attack on me, but the entire saga of my departure from Arktos – has been the most deeply unpleasant episode of my adult life. But given the number and nature of the lies being spread about this, not responding is simply not an option. And really, there is no way to fully understand the controversy surrounding the Scandza Forum last month without knowing about what was going on in Arktos that led up to it.
So, to those of you who follow the work that I have done in various places over the past decade because you are interested in me as someone who discusses and deals with ideas, I apologize for having to deviate into soap opera territory, but I ask you to bear with me. I certainly hope to be able to get back to truly important matters after this. Indeed, it’s embarrassing for the True Right as a whole that this is what we’re talking about right now, given the intensity of the crisis and the importance of the historical moment we’re currently living in. So hopefully this will all be put to rest soon.
Before I respond to the specific accusations made against me in the AltRight.com article, I need to describe a bit of my history with Arktos and Daniel Friberg – not least because Daniel has been attempting to downplay my role in recent interviews. Prior to 2010, I was part of an earlier venture called Integral Tradition Publishing (ITP). That company had been founded by two friends of mine, and I joined them to work as an editor, and later Editor-in-Chief. In late 2009, they entered into negotiations with Daniel and some other new partners to create what ended up becoming Arktos.
Daniel has attempted to deny that I was one of the founders of Arktos on the basis that I was not involved in these initial discussions. While it is true that I did not play a role in the merger between ITP and what became Arktos (mainly because I lacked the funds to invest in the company at the time), I was involved in all the discussions that began following the creation of Arktos as a company concerning the direction it should take and did much of the work of helping to get its new website set up (including writing the “About Us” text of Arktos, which remains largely unchanged on the site to this day, and helping to select the books that were sold), and all of this began well before Arktos’ official launch to the public in May 2010. From the very beginning I was Arktos’ Editor-in-Chief and was soon made a Director of the company as well. My duties ranged far beyond just editing books, and included helping to maintain the Website and its shop, corresponding with customers and authors, dealing with social media and other promotional efforts, and other tasks too numerous to outline here.
When we first started Arktos, all of its founding members were basically equal, and all important decisions were made collectively. At this time, Daniel was only a minority shareholder, and he was not even appointed CEO of Arktos until several months after the company had been founded, and this was only because he asked to be and because he was the only one of us who had an MBA. The title of CEO was entirely symbolic, anyway – he didn’t have any more power than any of the other Directors. I don’t mean to denigrate Daniel’s contributions to the creation and early days of Arktos, but it is nevertheless the case that the company was always a group effort, and was not the brainchild of Daniel alone, or even mostly.
Being a stranger to the Swedish Right-wing scene at the time, I had never heard of Daniel prior to the founding of Arktos. During Arktos’ first year, my contact with him was limited to e-mails and Skype conversations. At the beginning of 2011, Daniel decided to move to India, where I was already based, in order to work for Arktos full-time, and all of the Arktos staff shared an apartment there. This was when we first became personally acquainted. My view of Daniel at that time was extremely positive, and I would say that he was the hardest and most dedicated worker of us all during those early years. And while he and I had very different personalities, we got along quite well and went through many adventures in India together, and I certainly felt like we were very good friends during our time there.
Our salaries were extremely low, which was one of the reasons why we had decided on India as a base in the first place – my own came to roughly two dollars per hour, paid out in Indian rupees. While I was (and remain) an idealist, and I certainly never got involved with Arktos out of a desire to get rich, there was always an understanding among us that if and when Arktos became more profitable, we would gradually increase our salaries until hopefully one day we would all be making something comparable to a normal Western salary for the jobs that we were doing.
During the first three years of Arktos’ existence, several of the people who had been among its founding personnel gradually fell away for one reason or another, and by 2012 there were only three of us left. In 2011, I was given a small number of Arktos shares for completing my first year of work for the company, and in early 2012 I purchased an additional number, although my share of the company never came to more than about two percent.
At the beginning of 2014, Arktos relocated to Hungary. Apart from one small raise, our salaries had remained basically the same during our time in India, although it was no longer sufficient for the higher living expenses in Hungary. My salary was raised to approximately $5 per hour. This was certainly sufficient to live reasonably well in the country, but there was rarely much left over at the end of each month, and of course it was a bit disheartening to be in my 40s, with a university degree and two decades of work experience behind me, and yet be earning nearly half the US minimum wage and have no significant savings to speak of. And while Arktos’ profits had gone up since we began, I recognized that it was important to keep reinvesting what we were making into the company so that it could grow. So, out of idealism, I agreed to it without complaint.
Our majority shareholder decided to part ways with us, and in mid-2014 he sold most of his shares to Daniel and several newcomers. By 2016, Daniel’s own share of the company had risen to slightly more than fifty percent.
It was after this transition in 2014 that I began to notice a change in Daniel. I started to feel less like a friend and colleague and more like an employee, if not a servant, given his attitude toward me. He seemed more interested in Budapest’s club scene than in doing Arktos work. He took to wearing suits and drinking every day, and had an enormous, posh, and pricey apartment in central Budapest (he has since moved to a new place). He also began mocking me when I didn’t have the money to go to some overpriced restaurant or bar with him – something which I came to resent, given that the reason I had to be careful with my money was precisely because I was working for Arktos. But I still remembered the Daniel I had known during our first years in India, and I stayed with Arktos in the hope that this was just a passing thing and that everything would soon be back to normal.
By 2015, however, things were beginning to get strange. Daniel’s lifestyle had become so lavish that some of his Swedish friends would ask me where he got his money. (This was during the period when Arktos’ promotional photos, which I was not involved with, began to feature copies of our books alongside expensive watches, leather briefcases, and such.) I would reply that I didn’t know, but that it certainly wasn’t from Arktos. Arktos had been steadily growing in terms of profits all the time, but we were still far from riches. But I never really gave it much thought at first.
By late 2015, we began to see a really significant spike in Arktos’ sales, and yet it seemed like the company was still always broke. Sometimes we were unable to pay authors and translators on time because of insufficient funds. As the person who was primarily dealing with the authors and translators, this was sometimes quite embarrassing for me. Up until this point, I had never given much thought about Arktos’ finances, and rarely ever looked into them, as I trusted that Daniel had things well in hand. Given everything I have just described, I first began to wonder about that at this time. This feeling was compounded when my colleague Tor Westman, who had been reviewing our sales figures for each month, told me repeatedly that it was “impossible” that Arktos could be out of money and that he suspected something was amiss. (In the interests of accuracy I should say that Mr. Westman reversed his position on this later, although he is still an employee of Arktos.)
The turning point came in January 2016, when I met with Arktos’ then accountants on a trip to London. They showed me that over the previous two years, there had been a large number of undocumented transactions on Arktos’ account. When these unidentified transactions were finally added up in September, they totaled approximately £57,000 (approximately $90,000 at the exchange rate during the period in question), many of which were transfers into his personal account, for which Daniel had provided no receipts or other documentation. The finances were in a mess, and as one of the accountants expressed it at the time, he “couldn’t believe that the person in charge of Arktos’ finances was someone with an MBA” given the careless and amateur way in which they were being handled. I knew that some of the transactions were justified, but there were others that I had no idea about. Our accountants strongly suspected malfeasance.
After this meeting, I really didn’t know what to do with this information. I found it hard to believe that Daniel could actually be misappropriating Arktos’ funds, certainly not to that extent. I still wanted to believe that he was the same person I had thought I had known in India. So, for several months, I did nothing about it.
Things were not going well in Arktos as far as working conditions were concerned, however. My colleagues and I would show up at Daniel’s apartment (part of which was used as an office, and which Arktos footed part of his rent for, even though it was always extremely inadequate for that purpose) at nine or ten in the morning to work. Daniel, who had usually been out partying the night before, usually wouldn’t get up until noon or later, and then would remain ensconced in some part of his apartment away from the rest of us. He always claimed to be working, although much of the time it wasn’t clear to us what he was doing, although we could hear the sounds of beer cans and whiskey bottles being opened. In 2015 we knew that he was spending some of his time doing work for Wiking Mineral, but his role in that company had ended by this time. We speculated on occasion that the only real reason Daniel wanted us to work from his apartment each weekday was so that we could be there to receive the various deliveries that came in and to take out the garbage each day, things which he considered himself to be above doing on his own.
All of this, coupled with the knowledge that there was possible malfeasance going on while the rest of us were being kept on subsistence salaries, really stretched my patience to the breaking point. It seemed like Daniel had come to see himself as the master and the rest of us as his servants. I knew that if I confronted him about these things, however, he would just get angry and deny everything, which is his usual way of dealing with criticism.
In April I finally demanded a salary increase, pointing to Arktos’ fast-rising profits, saying that I would quit if something wasn’t done. Every year since we had started Arktos, Daniel would always say that there was no money for raises or to pay out dividends to the shareholders, but that if we could just hold on for one more year, untold riches would be ours. He brought on several new shareholders over the years with these same promises.
After six years of hearing this mantra repeated with no follow-up, it began to ring hollow for me. There had been no increases since we came to Europe, and not a dime in dividends had ever been paid out to the shareholders. Grudgingly, Daniel agreed to raise my salary by sixty pence per hour (about seventy-five cents) with further promises of much more significant increases in the future. Being ever the idealist, I swallowed my pride and agreed.
In June 2016, I took another trip to London on unrelated business and met with Arktos’ accountants again. They showed me that there had continued to be lots of unexplained transactions on our account, and they were convinced that there was embezzlement going on. They told me that as a registered Director of the company, it was among my legal responsibilities to make sure that its funds were being used for legitimate purposes. But I didn’t really know what to do. I knew that if I confronted Daniel about it, he would simply fire me and the malfeasance would go on. Also, I didn’t want to jump to any conclusions or take any drastic actions without giving Daniel a chance to defend himself.
One of Arktos’ accountants, who also happened to be a lawyer, offered to address the issue. I told him that Daniel should be confronted with the suspicious transactions and given a chance to explain them, and that only if he couldn’t do so should we proceed with more strident measures. I did speak with one of Arktos’ minority (yet significant) shareholders who also happened to be in London at the time about our concerns, which Daniel has interpreted as being conspiratorial but which was actually my legal obligation as a Director.
Shortly after my return from London, in July, I received a message from Daniel at ten o’clock at night informing the rest of us that we should meet at his apartment the following morning. Given that we hadn’t actually met in person for work in some time, this took me by surprise, and I had already arranged for a maintenance crew to come to my apartment to fix a leak the following morning. I informed Daniel about this, and to my surprise he exploded, accusing me of being irresponsible. I don’t know if he was drunk or stressed out or what. Given the situation that had been going on for some time, I lost it myself, and told him that he had no right to dictate to us about work responsibilities given the fact that he had felt free to sleep in every day while the rest of us were working. That night, Daniel fired me, and my six-and-a-half-year term as Arktos’ Editor-in-Chief came to an end.
Given that I had almost no savings to speak of thanks to my subsistence-level Arktos salary, I needed to find some other employment fast. If possible I wanted to keep doing similar work. So I went to work at Counter-Currents. I have known Greg Johnson for many years. I regard him as a friend, as well as the most serious and brilliant intellectual in the American branch of the Right, and I knew that his viewpoints and goals were similar to my own, so when he made me a concrete offer to work for him after my dismissal, it didn’t take much persuading for me to take him up on it.
By the end of July, Daniel and I were speaking again and he offered to allow me to return as Editor-in-Chief (a strange thing to do if he really regarded me as incompetent at my job), although on a greatly restricted basis, and he said he wanted me to continue as a Director. I told him that I couldn’t continue as Editor-in-Chief given my new commitments to Counter-Currents, but that I could continue as a Director and do occasional editing work for Arktos. He agreed to this. I had been tempted to just leave Arktos behind completely, but given the fact that I had been putting my heart and soul into the Arktos project for so long, I wanted to keep my hand in in some way.
While all of this was going on, I knew that Arktos’ accountant was preparing the case with which to confront Daniel, but we were not in contact during the weeks before it finally occurred, nor was I in contact with any of the other shareholders involved. I didn’t even know precisely what they intended to do or how they were going to go about doing it. So Daniel’s assertion that I was “conspiring” during this period is completely false. At this stage I was still hoping that there would be a resolution that would be positive for everyone and that we could avoid getting the law involved. I never approached the problem with the idea that the goal was to have Daniel removed from Arktos, although of course I knew that this would have to happen if he were unable to explain the transactions that were under review.
In late September, the attorney who was representing two of Arktos’ shareholders – minority shareholders, but who between them owned a significant chunk of the company – contacted Daniel with the message that he has reproduced in his attack on me at AltRight.com. During the intensive exchanges that occurred in the months that followed, I tried to remain neutral. Although I was not part of the legal case against Daniel, I was still a Director of the company, so I still had an important role. At first Daniel’s response to the accusations was to insult and threaten those who were pressing the case, and to deny everything without offering any real response. When he realized that this wasn’t going to work, he did finally attempt to answer the charges seriously, but never offered confirming documentation for much of it, and tried to justify a lot of it by claiming that he had given himself a secret salary increase in 2014 that none of the other shareholders or Directors had known about (something which isn’t allowed in a company that is owned by several shareholders and governed by a Board of Directors).
According to Daniel’s account, the entire goal of this process was to remove him from Arktos so that either Greg Johnson could move in or so that I could wreck Arktos as a competitor of Counter-Currents. In fact, I was never at any point part of the legal case against Daniel, so I had no influence on whatever outcome was going to be decided. And Greg never at any time suggested to me that I should attempt to exploit the situation for his benefit. In fact, all during this period, as he had before the case against Daniel had commenced, Greg was encouraging me to move on, focus on my new responsibilities, and just forget about Arktos. So that accusation is a complete fabrication.
In fact, throughout this process I attempted to remain as impartial as possible, even to the point of doing things that I now regret. I could cite many examples, but the clearest one is the fact that on November 12, 2016, the attorney in charge of the case put a resolution to a vote in the Arktos Board to initiate legal action against Daniel in order to reclaim damages and remove him. Although the only other Director besides Daniel voted in favor, and thus it was up to me to create a majority, I refrained from doing so because I wanted to give Daniel more time to defend himself.
I suppose, in spite of everything that had happened between us, there was still some spark of misplaced loyalty in me due to my memories of the Daniel that I had known in India. Also, admittedly, I didn’t realize that this was the only chance we would have of removing Daniel from Arktos, and thought it would be possible to initiate that process at a later date. In fact, Daniel quickly restructured the Board and stacked it with people loyal to him to make sure that such a thing could never happen again.
This is something that I deeply regret now and I owe a humble apology to the people who were pressing the case against Daniel at the time, who I know were counting on me to take their side. All I can say in my defense is that, as Greg has said before about the worst people in our circles, Daniel exploited my decent and idealistic feelings for his own personal and destructive ends. But it is nevertheless entirely accurate to say that the main reason that he is still CEO of Arktos today is because of my generosity. Strangely, he has yet to thank me for it.
After November, I didn’t hear much more about what was going on in the case. Nothing more involving me happened until late February of this year. At Daniel’s invitation, I arrived in Stockholm in order to speak at the Identitarian Ideas conference and met up with an old friend who was also a mutual acquaintance of Daniel’s. He told me that he had heard from Daniel that the latter was planning to ambush me at the conference, which was being held the following day, with accusations about conspiring to have him removed from Arktos. I was rather stunned by this, but Daniel and I happened to be attending the same birthday party for another mutual friend that evening, so I decided to have it out with him afterwards. He claimed that Melissa Mészáros, a mutual acquaintance of ours in Hungary, had provided him with evidence that I had conspired to have him removed from Arktos while acting on Greg’s instructions, as well as other bizarre claims that I won’t repeat here.
It is indeed true that I had spoken with Melissa in the summer of 2016 about Daniel. At the time, she had just gotten out of a brief fling with Daniel, and was sad that he seemed to have no further interest in her. In an attempt to comfort her, I unwisely told her about some of our suspicions about Daniel, so that she would see what he was really like and hopefully feel better about the situation. I still don’t know what reasons she had for telling Daniel about all of this in February, which she certainly had no right to do considering that we were supposedly still friends at the time, but all I can assume is that she did it in order to get closer to Daniel.
In any event, when Daniel confronted me with all of this, which I was hearing about for the first time, I admitted that I may have said some not very nice things about him but that I certainly never discussed any plot to remove him from Arktos. He accused me of being a liar and disinvited me from the conference on the spot and “ordered” me to leave Budapest. I saw no point in discussing things with him further (as I don’t even now), and left.
Subsequent to this, I learned that Daniel had been sending bizarre audio recordings of himself and others ranting about me insanely to many people, and I know that on at least one occasion he surreptitiously recorded a conversation with me that he then sent to one of the other Arktos shareholders in an attempt to drive a wedge between us. This is in addition to the fact that both Greg and I have heard from several people that Daniel was privately spreading the story that he and I had colluded to try to “destroy Arktos” as well as even nastier things about the two of us in the months after our final break. So under the circumstances, Greg was entirely justified in requesting that Daniel not be invited to the Scandza Forum event.
After all of this happened, needless to say, I had no desire to be involved with Arktos in any way, so I resigned as a Director and sold all of my shares in the company to Jason Jorjani at his request. I was actually never officially notified that I was fired as an editor, although I assume that to be the case and haven’t particularly cared to argue the point.
As for the question, “Is Daniel Friberg an embezzler?” there is no official document or legal verdict I can refer to in order to say definitively one way or the other. There are company records that certainly demonstrate this, but I cannot disclose them publicly due to confidentiality (if Daniel has evidence proving the contrary, as CEO, he is free to do so). Nevertheless, this evidence was compelling enough to cause Arktos’ accountants and two of its shareholders to take action on it. If they had been satisfied with Daniel’s answers, they surely would have dropped the case, but ultimately, when they were unable to remove him, they settled for selling their shares instead. So it’s not that Daniel’s innocence was ever proven.
As for why no case was ever filed against him, given that I was never part of their team I can only speculate, but I assume it was because a court case would have taken months, possibly years, and would have required a great deal more time and money to prosecute. It was more advantageous for the shareholders involved to simply sell and get out, which is what they did, and the fact that they got a good deal out of it is more indicative of the strength of the evidence against Daniel rather than of his generosity.
Additionally, I have been told that nearly all of Arktos’ shareholders who owned shares at the time that this crisis first began have sold their portions over the past few months, or are currently in the process of trying to sell them. Obviously, they weren’t persuaded, either, and had lost confidence in Daniel’s ability to lead the company. If Daniel’s response had been so convincing, why would all of the shareholders suddenly have bolted for the exits when shown the evidence?
It’s unrealistic, and downright silly (not to mention insulting to the intelligence of the shareholders), to assert that all of these people were tricked and manipulated by me and Greg into doing so.
I’ve already addressed many of the falsehoods that were propagated in Daniel’s article at AltRight.com (I’ve had to use a proxy server to access it given that he has blocked my home IP address), but there are still some additional things in it that need to be refuted. First of all, I had no serious discussions with Greg about me working for Counter-Currents prior to my departure as Editor-in-Chief of Arktos in July 2016. It was also claimed that Daniel fired me because I “miss[ed] crucial deadlines and errors in published works.” As I related above, that certainly wasn’t what triggered it.
I don’t know what “errors” are being referred to – I have never claimed that my editing of Arktos’ books was perfect, although my work on them has been widely praised by readers, and if there are any lingering errors in them it’s a result of Arktos’ ridiculous editorial policy of only having one editor go over each book one time in order to keep costs down (something no serious publisher should ever do). In any event, I worked on the vast majority of books that Arktos published up through 2016, and their quality speaks for themselves. I found this accusation particularly baffling since Daniel was going around telling everyone that I was a “genius” in the work I did on the English version of his own book at the time.
As for “missing deadlines,” it’s true that the year prior to my departure in 2016 was not the most productive for Arktos in terms of the number of its publications, but this was mostly because, beginning in September 2015, I had been tasked with soliciting, editing, and posting articles at the now-defunct Right On Website (for which I was given no commensurate salary increase, by the way), and I did at least ninety percent of the editorial work on that site between September 2015 and mid-July 2016.
After my departure, Right On’s content was reduced to occasional excerpts from already-published Arktos books and material from Matt Forney, which should be telling. Given that during my tenure, Right On was updated seven days a week, and that I was also expected to appear on several of its podcasts each week, it did indeed take a toll on the time I had to do my Arktos work.
Daniel goes on to say that I was “hiding crucial information from the management, such as several volunteer applications.” This is pure fabrication, given that the general Arktos e-mail account was always accessible by both Friberg and me; if there were messages there that he missed, it’s only because he couldn’t be bothered to check the messages himself. Also, he probably doesn’t remember this now but I forwarded messages from volunteers to him at the time (given that I didn’t have the time to deal with them myself) that he ignored.
Daniel then states that when I joined Counter-Currents, I was given “a signing bonus of 20 percent of the shares in the company.” Again, this is a complete fabrication.
Then he brings up the fact that I was once involved with the Hare Krishnas (ISKCON), which is a serious and traditional form of Hinduism and not a “cult,” as Daniel refers to it. I’m not sure what the purpose of this was, since it doesn’t relate to the overall narrative in any way, although I suppose it was a lame attempt to discredit me. I have never denied that I was involved with ISKCON during my first three years in India, and in fact have spoken about my experiences in interviews. I have not been involved with ISKCON in five years, but I make no apologies for my time with them, as I learned a great deal from it.
It’s also rather strange that Daniel would choose to attack ISKCON in this way given that Arktos has published two books by one of the Hare Krishnas’ major authors, Steven J. Rosen, on Hare Krishna-related themes, as well as one other book on the movement called Hare Krishna in the Modern World – all of which Daniel agreed to publish at the time, which he worked on, and which Arktos still keeps in print. Additionally, Arktos has published Sri Dharma Pravartaka Acharya’s The Dharma Manifesto and five books by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar – both Hindu authors.
All this just illustrates what I long suspected, which is that Daniel has no real values and cares nothing about the material that he publishes as long as he can make money off of it. Furthermore, Arktos’ current Editor-in-Chief is a half-Persian and a practicing Zoroastrian who has already stated his intention of using Arktos to promote his pan-Aryanist beliefs encompassing Persia and India – so it’s interesting, and quite idiotic, that Daniel would choose to attack me in this way, although I think it well illustrates what his actual views are, which are quite different from those that he usually offers in public. (I point this out not to denigrate Dr. Jorjani’s heritage but to illustrate the absurdity of this form of attack.)
Daniel also reproduced a message from Greg in which he made an offer to purchase Arktos shares and presented it as though this were proof that there was collusion between him and the people who pressed the legal case against Daniel. Contrary to Daniel’s claims, Greg was not the originator of all his woes. Indeed, he was the last person to hear about them. When Greg heard that Daniel was blaming him for his problems in Arktos, he came to us to find out what he was being accused of doing. Greg thought that buying out Daniel might end the conflict to the satisfaction of everyone involved. I told Greg that I was quite sure that Daniel would never sell, but he thought there was nothing to lose by asking.
Daniel also mentions that Arktos has been forced to spend £40,000 (more than $51,000 at the present rate of exchange) in order “to regain control of the company.” Actually, if it is true, this was the cost of his personal legal expenses, for which he made Arktos foot the bill – in effect, the company was made to pay to fight itself. Really, he should have been paying those fees himself, but of course he couldn’t (the idea of Daniel as some sort of wealthy “tycoon” is entirely a myth that he himself feeds to gullible reporters). Apparently Matt Forney, who I have met three times in my entire life, hates me for this reason, because he was not paid for his Right On work during the period of the legal case. All I can say is that that was entirely of Daniel’s doing, not mine.
The last shot that Daniel takes at me in the article is in accusing me of having a “weak and passive personality.” And I have to concede that in my dealings with Daniel, I was indeed too weak and passive, something that I greatly regret now. In my eyes, I was merely trying to act decently and fairly; in Daniel’s eyes, I was merely showing weakness. I should have spoken up sooner about these problems, and I should have more strongly supported the attempt to remove him from Arktos when the shareholders came to the conclusion that that was the best course of action. Now he’s free to do as he pleases. This is how Daniel operates: he gets people who are idealistic and willing to accept his leadership around him and then exploits their virtues in order to pursue his own private goals. But this doesn’t cause him to respect them; if anything it only earns them his contempt. When they finally wake up to what’s going on and leave him, he just finds new people to do his bidding.
I cannot and would not deny that Daniel has made valuable contributions over the many years he has been active in the “movement,” both in Arktos and other ventures. But whatever idealism he may have once had, I am fully convinced that today his only interest in our circles is in how he can exploit them to fatten his wallet and his reputation by taking advantage of others’ labors while doing very little work himself. And to exploit others’ virtues in such a way is nothing short of nihilistic.
Daniel has nothing positive or constructive to offer anymore. This is why he has to resort to lies to get what he wants; when that fails, he threatens people, as he has been doing to the people behind the Scandza Forum. Given how much of AltRight.com’s content has been devoted to its founders’ personal grudges, it seems that their strategy is to try to intimidate anyone who disagrees with them in order to gain a position where they can be the absolute arbiters of what is or is not acceptable in “the movement.” This will fail, of course, because already many people are seeing through it.
For example, below is the last e-mail I received from Daniel (on June 19) in response to a message I had sent him before the attack articles on me had appeared. For context, in my original message I had said that I knew I wasn’t his favorite person, but asked if he would be willing to let Arktos sell me a copy of each of its future titles at cost given my previous role in the company. This was his response:
The letter he refers to was one that I allowed myself to sign under pressure while the legal case was still going on, one which I regret signing but which I thought was in the best interests of Arktos at the time, as it seemed that both Daniel and the shareholders were willing to let Arktos go bankrupt before the situation would be resolved. But once again, I can only apologize to the people behind the legal case for giving in, although as far as I know it had no impact on the outcome.
As for the rest of the message, this is the only way that Daniel knows how to deal with people, because he has no real argument. All he can do is try to discredit those who he dislikes through personal attacks. And really, the way he has been behaving both in public and privately recently is far more damaging to his reputation than anything I can write about him.
The only people who can say anything meaningful about what happened are those of us who were involved. Matt Forney, who seems to have become Daniel’s collaborator and primary supporter in all of this, has never been a part of Arktos at any time and was certainly not involved in any aspect of the dispute. As I mentioned before, we barely even know each other personally. Neither was Melissa Mészáros ever involved with Arktos in any way. Jason Jorjani did not begin working for Arktos until October 2016, after the dispute was already underway. Tor Westman was an employee of Arktos during the period in question, but he was never a Director or a shareholder until after the dispute began, although I know that he will say anything about it that Daniel asks him to say.
I’m unsure if Daniel has really changed or if this was the way he was all along, and he just kept it suppressed until he was firmly in control of Arktos. Either way, as he is now, he is not suitable to be acting as a representative or exemplar of the Right or anything else. I sincerely hope that perhaps the Daniel I knew in India will reemerge at some point – but there is certainly no sign of that at the moment.
What antifa do with Daniel Friberg: Arktos CEO Daniel Friberg (left) hanging out & posing for pictures with Swedish antifa founder Mathias Wåg (center)
What antifa do to Richard Spencer
Since I first became publicly involved in the arena of radical ideas, there have been more attacks and lies propagated against me by the antifa and the mainstream media than I can count. But none of them were nearly as inaccurate, mean-spirited, and demoralizing as Daniel’s recent attacks on me. This confirms what I had long suspected, which is that there are people in our own circles who are far more destructive than anything the opposition is doing to us. As long as we tolerate people who choose to handle their disagreements with others in the manner of twelve-year-olds, I don’t think the “movement,” such as it is, will ever make real progress. That’s not up to me, of course, but at least I have put my side of the story out there so that people can judge for themselves.
And now I hope we can get back to something constructive.
60 comments
Wow. This was the piece a lot of us have been anxiously waiting for.
Thank you, Mr Morgan.
I can’t say it was a pleasure to write, but you’re welcome.
TLDR
Non-readers are not our target audience.
The original commenter has a point.
Im fairly bright, but with work and all the other time constraints in my life, I am not consuming white nationalist writing for it’s beautiful prose. I just want facts, arguments, and some time to think about it for myself. I do not want to spend a half hour reading an article in my free time, especially if it conveys it’s rhetoric inefficiently.
Extrapolating to a more general level, it is not just that the idiots don’t want to read. But even if that is true, longwindedness is impractical with regards to persuasion and this debacle.
Counter currents has published lengthy responses to this controversy, while altright.com has published shorter narratives that take less effort to read thoroughly. So more people have read all the way through those articles, and are on side of Friberg.
Personally, I have been a supporter of Greg Johnson. I find that he has unique insights, indicative of an intelligent and original thinker. However I don’t know what to think of this situation. I’m tempted to just ignor it and take Johnson’s ideas at face value.
Well, you’re in the right place now. Counter Currents is in a league of its own. I hope this unfortunate chapter has not hindered the writing/publishing of The White Nationalist Manifesto which I eagerly await.
BTW Mr. Morgan, I listened to your interview on Red Ice a while back and had the impression that you are sincere and extremely idealistic. If our movement only had the brainpower behind CC to harness, we’d be in an excellent position to convey the ideas and truths that White nationalists hold.
I arrived in Budapest on May 30th, with the intention of spending a month here free of distractions finishing the White Nationalist Manifesto. June 1, and Friberg/Spencer’s slime appeared at Altright.com. I couldn’t ignore it or the controversy that blew up, the other attacks and betrayals that followed, the task of crafting a reply, etc. Beyond that, I am not a machine. People attack you because they want to hurt you, and it did hurt. I have been completely unable to work on the Manifesto because of this. Fortunately, I have been able to work on a lot of other projects that do not require the level of calm and concentration that writing does for me. So this has been an enormously productive time. Just not productive in the way that I planned. I will put the Manifesto out in the fall.
Looking forward to that manifesto. Don’t go pulling a Geroge RR Martin on us now!
Thank you very much. I certainly plan to continue the work of bringing new ideas and brainpower into the True Right in my new projects.
Daniel “Based Antifa” Friberg is clearly a lunatic. I don’t think Richard Spencer is, despite what I believe are certain ideological flaws and a weirdly constant need to have his presumably rather fragile ego stroked by his fanboys (rare is the man who posts so many selfies on Twitter), so I wonder what his response to this will be. Probably nothing, unfortunately. In fact, he has positioned himself so that by not responding to these charges he appears to be the one taking the high road. Not very White of him, I’d say.
It would be nice if he could admit his mistake, apologize to Greg, John, Aedon, Counter-Currents writers (“cowardly academics,” right?) and supporters so we could all move on from this but, alas, psychology is a bitch and frankly admitting one’s own wrongdoing is the exception to human behavior rather than the norm. Since such forthrightness is doubtful, I wonder if any of the other people who immediately pounced on Greg will be man enough to come forward and admit his mistake, even if not for CC itself but for the good of the movement.
P.S. I find it extremely disturbing that Forney and Roosh seem to be okay guys now for these people once they jumped on this bandwagon. JFC. Where are the goddamned standards? That alone should raise eyebrows across the movement.
I think he’s busy with that whole “Unite the Right” thing.
It’s a sign of sociopaths that they NEVER apologize. They are never wrong.
The average person will apologize if it is clearly in their interest to do so. If apologizing and admitting you are wrong is the ONLY way to get your girlfriend back, depending on the circumstances, some guys might apologize even if they don’t actually believe they are wrong. If it was over some unimportant, they might say “Fuck it. It’s not worth it” and apologize.
Or if enough evidence of one’s guilt is presented, the average person might well conclude that it is in their interest to apologize and throw themselves at the mercy of whoever.
But a true narcissistic sociopath will not apologize even when it is clearly and obviously in their interest to do so. It doesn’t matter how much evidence you put in front of them, they will defend their web of lies to the point of logical absurdity. No amount of threats or incentives will get them to admit the truth. Not for a million dollars, not with a gun to their head.
Thank you for writing this. Freiberg, Spencer etc. are poison.
You’re welcome.
A long time friend, Omar, speaks out against Daniel and now a long time partner.
Daniel is not, by any standard, a sane person. Looks like Spencer saw the facade of “the successful mining/publishing tycoon”. I see Identity Evropa and Spencer as very valuable for our movement. It is sad that they will be tainted by a fraud like Daniel.
Anyone familiar with the prefaces and meticulous notes in the Arktos volumes knows who was doing the work there, and that it was clearly a labor of love and passion, for ideas and their promulgation.
I’d like to ‘like’ this comment.
Thank you. That’s very flattering, and encouraging.
In a wider view of the altright´s (in the sense of “White Identitarian”) endeavours, all this is particularly unfortunate: I take it that the people behind the altright.com-site have some quite visionary plans, i.e. expanding into a very big media-site of the likes of Breitbart, but for WN. This is exactly the right step, it´s what we need, and what is in reach now. And it could be a very serious financial success. It is therefore unfortunate that we learn that Friberg may not be an adequate person to perform such tasks. I do feel for Spencer and Jorjani, and the redice-people, of-course, who now find themselves partnered with someone who may well be something else than they had thought.
It´s also a sad reality that with money, you can always kind-of grow away from conflicts. Maybe altright.com can attract the capital necessary to realize their all sensible venture: then all questionable behavior of Friberg would be forgotten. In movements like ours, people start with idealism; after some time, however, they find themselves in a place where they can´t take the financial dearth of their idealistic days anymore, and they are desperate to find a place with a halfways sustainable business-model. I think that might explain comrade Forney´s behavior wrt Friberg (if Friberg falls, watch Forney coming crawling back with half-assed excuses). And many of that kind will spiral to such a project, i.e. a very big WN media site; and Friberg will be sitting on top and will be celebrated and respected and glamorous. And he will continue his damaging behavior. Until it finally will yet blow up into the faces of all those involved, once at the point where things can´t be burried with money.
P.S.: while at the subject of WN media businesses: why not run such a media project and at the same time sell everyday products like milk, beer, soap etc. I.e. we Whites would buy our basic products, or actually anything, from the media site, and that way, finance a whole pro-White media empire, but moreover, we would create a whole White economy! We Whites would only buy products from pro-White companies. That would drive all anti-White companies out of business. Wouldn´t that be just the road to establish the White Republic!?
Bro look at his face. His facial features scream “danger! Danger!” You seem like a nice guy, but you need to take a long hard look in the mirror and ask why you trusted a guy with that face, let alone the 1300 red flags that should have had you running for the hills instantly. Seriously man, you need to be more discriminating. Also, he hangs with Forney, which is more than enough info to know he’s a loser. Don’t beat yourself up, but seriously take real stock of the fact that you trusted a guy who looks and acts like that.
I set for Team Greg pretty soon because of lookism reasons alone… physiognomy is real.
Speaking of the latter, Matt Forney is a supreme scumbag.
Likewise, I decided to side with Morgan simply because he produces valuable content and is a good writer, even if he had dome something wrong. I have always assumed that is was mostly his imput that made Arktos interesting. It was indeed notable that Right On declined badly after he left. Altright.com is the same lame shit, every day the same non-interesting guys writing three non-interesting articles, and half of them are altright navel gazing. The Spencer Fuhrer-Fanboykult is becoming more and more shallow and appalling. I felt he merely bought into Friberg’s story so quickly so he could release a long harboured resentment against Greg who is intellectually superior. I used to like him, but ever since Heilgate things were going downward (and probably before) (I do miss the altright/lite/Trumpians etc honeymoon during the election campaign….)
I am a friend of John’s and I would like to attest that John is extremely quick to trust people. This article shows that he is similarly reluctant to admit that trust has been broken.
I see this as neither good nor bad. John is not a natural businessman and he must take responsibility for that part of this drama. But we should rather detest Daniel all the more for taking advantage of John’s extensive goodwill. A sociopath like Daniel naturally destroys organizations and movements of any kind.
Thanks for the support, all of you. In my defense, all I can say is that, as I wrote above, Daniel was very different during the first four years of Arktos’ existence. I knew he had flaws, I just didn’t realize the extent of them. And quite honestly I didn’t become involved with Arktos in order to be a businessman. I was always happy to leave that to somebody else so that I could focus on the books. (Caste and all that, vaishyas and brahmanas.) But then I never realized that Daniel would take advantage of that.
As for my own role in what happened, this is why I decided to present it fully, my own personal warts and all. I can’t deny that I enabled it to a certain extent. But it was more important to me to get the truth out there than to make myself look good.
I’ve spent quite a lot of money at Arktos over the years and thought I was safe in the thought that my money would be going back into the cause. It was a win win. It’s particularly galling to learn now that it went to line Daniels pockets and fund a lavish lifestyle. I’m glad you had your say, John, I don’t know you personally but you always come across as a well rounded, well meaning and genuine person and after reading the article on altright dot com I found what Daniel was accusing you of very hard to believe. I definitely find your version of events to have the ring of truth.
Thank you, I appreciate it.
Daniel sounds just like a miserly alcoholic boss I once had, so I can see where you’re coming from.
We will have to admit that people on our side will not be free of the sort of avarice practiced by mega-church pastors who have private jets and mansions. Whites are not perfect and neither are the whites on our side. We will have to carry on in spite of the Fribergs of this world and not confuse our ideals with those individuals who fall far short of them.
I hope the books you edited with Arktos inspire many to come to pro-white beliefs and/or to solidify their support of it in spite of the unscrupulous characters who may profit from them. Thank-you for defending yourself John. You owed it to yourself.
Thanks for this. I am proud of what I did at Arktos while I was there, but I am even more excited by what I will be accomplishing from now on, which I expect to be even more interesting.
“I’m unsure if Daniel has really changed or if this was the way he was all along, and he just kept it suppressed until he was firmly in control of Arktos.”
That’s how he’s been all along. Why do you think Friberg basicly left the swedish movement and went out in to the world, where people didn’t know him personally?
Well, the only answer to that is that no one wants to work with him in Sweden, he’s well known for being a greedy person always in the midst of intrigue.
You should look up his involvement in the intrigues ten years ago, regarding embezzlement in Nordiska Forlaget and Nordiska Forbundet. Or just have a talk with any veteran that’s been in the movement for more than ten years and had any kind of influence.
We were glad when he started Arktos internationally. Finally we got rid of him from the Swedish movement. But he’s back and I promise you that this conflict will not end with Greg, you or Counter-Currents. It will almost surely continue in Sweden. But here everyone knows what kind of person he is and will surely not take his crap.
Thanks for this. During the first few years of Arktos, I did hear stories and rumors about what Daniel had been up to in Sweden previously, and it did seem like he had already alienated a lot of people. But I didn’t really know how to take them at the time, so I just ignored them. I realize now that it was likely all true, but as they say, hindsight is 20/20.
It seems you had an awfull experience. Nothing is worse than being taken advantage of by people you trust, and in the name of a great ideal, too. You do seem to have a weakness: the desire to be “a nice guy.” Something I myself also have to grapple with. I find your story quite recognizable and utterly convincing. Thank you for this article, and for not giving up!
Thanks. Perhaps I was excessively nice, but as I wrote, I thought I was just being civil. But don’t worry, I’m going to stick with this thing.
You lost all credability when you deliberatley portrayed Daniel as a friend of antifa Wåg. Daniel was walking around a demonstration and was taking selfies with journalists and antifa just to get on their nerves.
You discredit yourself by believing such transparent tripe. There are other connections between these two going back to the 1990s. Ask yourself what happened to Richard Spencer when he was wandering around in an environment where antifa were circulating. Friberg obviously had no fear that someone would take a swing at him. Why is that?
I’ve always known in an abstract way that people make sacrifices for the movement. Reading your article really made those concrete. Not just your economic sacrifices, but having to be involved in things like this. Thank you for all the work you’ve done. I hope you’re rewarded well for it going forward.
You’re welcome. But as I wrote, I didn’t get involved with this stuff to get rich. However, I did expect my colleagues to treat me fairly. And not steal from me, of course. But I do appreciate what you wrote.
I know, for a fact, that those photos with Wåg and Friberg doesn’t say anything about the ongoing events. He took those photos “just for fun” it isn’t anything more to it.
I also know, for a fact, that Friberg wasn’t invited to attend the Scandza meeting and that had nothing to do with Greg. Friberg lies about this.
Being paid $2 is shamefully for the work that you have put down. It isn’t better than being paid in kratom (Forney). Friberg admitted that he had given himself a “secret salary raise”? I feel sorry for you mr Morgan that Friberg used you and threw you under the bus.
Some comments on Friberg’s latests article.
“the supposed “sabotage” and “doxing” against the Scandza Forum is a fantasy unsupported by any evidence and that, on the contrary, we helped Scandza guests with lodging and congratulated them on a successful conference afterwards.”
That’s two lies and perhaps even three. Some whom had bought their tickets did not attend the Scandza meeting because they swallowed Friberg’s lies. I know that the congratulatory statement was very forced and not honest at all. Friberg knows this. And to use Friberg’s own words “I find that a bit too convenient to be a coincidence” when Friberg comes with demands and later the organisers are doxxed when his demands weren’t met.
“For us to become a movement capable of defending our civilization, we need masculine leadership, and we need to get rid of the passive-aggressive castrati trying to pose as our leaders.”
When did Friberg lead anything? Why is he masculine when he started the drama with Scandza? We all saw Omar’s messages. Another post under Greg’s article lead me to discover the many dramas that he had started in Sweden. He travels around in Europe (with Brinkman’s money?) and give speeches but that’s about it. The statement about ‘castrati’ is rich coming from someone who is fourty and childless. Throwing bricks in a glass house?
I will never buy a book from Arktos again.
Thanks for your sympathies and support, goy.
Enlightening. Thanks. After reading this I also searched for some information about the company Wiking Mineral, that Daniel Friberg was “spending some of his time doing work for” in 2015. Some possibly interesting information here about one of the two founders of that company:
Brinkmann has later changed parts of his former political views and opinion towards a pro-islam stance, stating that “The muslim view on families supports a positive demographic development and is good as counterpoint to all the single men in the Sweden Democrats party”. Brinkmann attributes his changed views to “having gotten to know some immigrants of the muslim faith”. Brinkmann’s view of islam actually changed over the last 5–6 years. […] Since the 1990s he has been inspired by identitarian and ethno-pluralist political currents and by the French New Right. He has worked with and for a number of European right-wing parties, including FPÖ, Vlaams Belang, UKIP, NPD and the Islamists critical Pro-Bewegung, both directly and through patron activities in support of conservative and nationalist organisations. He has sought a dialogue between European and Israeli right-wing parties and in this connection made a visit to the Knesset together with Kent Ekeroth of the Sweden Democrats and Mike Huckabee, ex-governor of Arkansas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrik_Brinkmann
As a bystander living in a country where there’s no racial displacement and someone who is just passively consuming content I guess my opinions and insights mean very little. However I have managed to pull out certain conclusions here.
First, it’s clear that the one thing that has been estabilished – namely the invitation to the Scandza Forum – shows that Friberg lied. And if he lied at this point, which was the instigator of this whole drama, it is quite reasonable to suspect everything else he claims.
Second, in the several articles he authored or co-authored at altright.com, he demonstrates many of the low qualities he has been accused of here. He seems dishonest to the core, petty, spiteful and, comically, seems to be hostile to idea of reading 5000 words while being a book publisher.
Third, the crowd he attracted (not he so much to be honest since he seemed to be more of a behind the scene person, but group he is part of at least) is even more hostile to reading 5000 word essays and great majority of them seem to be incapable of coming up with any other support for their and Friberg’s position than accusations of homosexuality, because that is in itself supposedly proof of something. I’m in no way sympathetic to gay movement or homosexuals in general, on the contrary. But being a homosexual doesn’t make one right or wrong when making claims. I can make this distinction, they can’t. I’m not a great intellect of any sort, which makes me conclude that they are intellectually a very low quality bunch that get carried away emotionally like teenage girls. To make things even worse, they seem to include Matt Forney.
Anyhow I like CC a lot, I came here after listening to some Jonathan Bowden interviews on Youtube and it was more or less my introduction to the far right. While you could still be wrong about many things in this particular affair and while you might even be gay drama queens that Friberg’s camp claim you are, you definitely managed to demonstrate superior quality in both content you create (even if the strong anti-Christian stance isn’t something I particularly care for) and the way you conducted yourselves now. Best of luck to you in future.
It was when I read Daniel describing ISKCON as a ‘cult’ that I knew he was a fraud (given some of the work Arktos publishes).
At first I had assumed that Daniel had blocked my home IP address, as I get the “sitelock” alert every time I try to bring up AltRight.com without using a proxy, but considering the number of people who have told me that they have the same problems, it seems that the site just isn’t very well maintained. Either that or its management has become so paranoid that they have started blocking entire regions of the world.
The Motpol website has also been “SiteLocked.”
I am receiving the same message and also need a proxy to view the site. I had assumed my IP had been blocked for constantly leaving critical comments on the Alt Right website.
Thanks for your kind words. I enjoyed doing them as well, even though they were quite time-consuming. I’ll be doing podcasts here periodically, however. As for Right On, it was never very successful in terms of traffic, and you’re right that Daniel decided to discontinue it in favor of AltRight.com, although I think it’s pretty clear that AltRight, which mainly features short articles on US-related news topics, is very different from Right On, where we usually featured longer interpretive, cultural, and philosophical articles on topics mainly related to Europe (apart from Matt Forney’s stuff). In any event all of the old Right On stuff is still available in AltRight’s archive. Or at least I assume it’s all there – since I can’t access AltRight, I haven’t checked lately, but it used to be there, although I wouldn’t put it past them to remove anything that I was featured on.
Friberg, as usual, in his latest repsonse tries to get an advantage on his opponents by suggesting they are less manly and strong than him, refering to them as, weak men, ”passive-aggressive castrati” and so on.
I think first of all as a nationalist you should not divide people into strong and weak men and look down on those who possesses less strength than yourself. Everybody has a role within a community. Some are suitable to be leaders while others are meant to be subordinated. To shame people because they are not leader material is not good for the cohesion of society. It creates a mindset of competition instead of cooperation.
Moreover I would say that someone who needs to speak about how manly he is displays insecurity rarher than strength. A real man does not need to talk about it, he just is, and people knows it.
One can only feel for mr. Morgan, a genuine idealist, but it is not very surprising he was taken advantage of. As Friberg has a long history of taking economic advantage of naive and idealistic people. His mo seems to more or less repeat itself over and over.
He did it with his “Frihet” magazine back in the late 90’s , when he heavily promoted and sold subskriptions for his glossy and very proffessional looking magazine, that only came out a few times over a long period.
Fast forward a few years and something similar plays out in bigger form with Fribergs then publishinghouse Nordiska Forlaget in the 00’s. The last thing that happend before that venture folded was an extensive promotion of a fancy €25 (in Swedish currency) hardback Swedish edition of D.Dukes “My Awakening”. The promotion went on for many months. Lots of excited people pre ordered (and of course prepaied) the book, that was marketed as the piece de resistance of the publishing house. Many also took advantage of volume discounts and ordered 5-10 copies or even more at reduced prices in order to sell to their friends in the movement. The book’s release date kept however getting delayed… then the company folded. Nobody ever got the book. God only knows what excuse Friberg used and one can only speculate what happend to the money. To an outsider it certainly looks like a smart and ruthless final “pump and dump” move by Friberg, to squeeze out the last pennies (or in this case crowns) of the brand Nordiska Forlaget from trusting people.
If Arktos ever folds, don’t be surprised if a similar scenario gets played out once again. As Friberg no doubt paid good attention in business school class when his professor went over the dynamics of “vaporware”. The day Arktos goes down, it would be no surprise if they first vapowared for months a bunch of exciting and unique soon to be released books with super-cool cover art.
Before the next Scandza Forum event, find someone who can come and hold a lecture about Fribergs business and marketing practices, as well as his treatment of staff over the last 20 years. It would most probably be one of the more interesting lectures of the day?
Watch Friberg’s interview with Tara McCarthy. He can’t even look at the camera. He just seems “off” to me somehow. Altright.com was a terribly edited site, full of misspellings and clickbait headlines. I had stopped contributing to Counter Currents a while ago for financial reasons, but the fact that John’s article rings so obviously true is spurring me to donate again. Consider also that we don’t really know who Greg Johnson is, as he feels it necessary to conceal his identity. I consider this a positive, as it’s the sign of a man who truly has something to lose by revealing himself, as opposed to Spencer and Friberg who seem to be media whores. I don’t agree with John and Greg on everything, but as the dust is settling it seems quite clear that Counter Currents is a platform that at least truly cares about the Right, and the future of our civilization.
I have read both this article by Mr. Morgan and the previous relevant one by Mr. Johnson carefully from beginning to end without missing a word. Originally I felt like refrain from making any comment as I am not a White person myself and it is seemingly inappropriate or unnatural for me to chime in on this matter of purely internally White Nationalist nature of lamentable internecine warfare, but as an ardent East Asian National Socialist and staunch advocate and supporter for White Nationalism as well as an occasional essay contributor to CC which I deeply love and cherish, I finally decided to say a few words from the bottom of my heart as I indeed do have tons of words to say that reflect both my strong emotion and my instinctive as well as deliberative thoughts after reading these two articles. In my following comments, besides my strident and scathing excoriation of Friberg, there are also some honest and objective criticism of Mr. Morgan, whom I respect and admire consistently, in his handling of the matter. But my words are all sincere and conscientious and I make my remonstrations completely and genuinely food the goodness of Mr. Morgan, so I wish he won’t take offense at my comments.
First of all, I firmly and unreservedly believe in the honesty and veracity of the coherent, logical, reasonable, convincing and crystal-clear accounts stated by Mr. Morgan, he is the good guy and is totally innocent although unfortunately the bad guy that is Friberg seemed to be the winner (at least temporarily) judged from the immediate results of the hassle. What a bloody shame!
Now allow me to speak my mind in the most candid and forthright manner. Friberg is a morally bankrupt and extremely ruthless man with incorrigibly and irredeemably flawed character. He is a vicious, vile, and exceedingly vindictive and vengeful human being, a hazard and a vermin to the White Nationalist movement and should called out as such and be named and shamed at every possible turn. He is undoubtedly a criminal embezzler, an horrendously lazy and exploitative man who sits on the piles of others’ work and claims all credit for himself, and also an hideous backstabber, and all the egregious and repugnant misdeeds and malfeasances he has done are more than enough to utterly discredit him and forfeit all his credibility and rip off the last fig-leaf he wears. And his last letter to Mr. Morgan is so full of nasty smears, threats, and insults, malice and diabolism on parade, that is simply ghastly and appalling. I felt so indignant at his misdeeds and scabby personality that I literally want to slap his face if I meet him. This guy is a proverbial Judas, a wolf in sheep’s hide, a human drudge and scumbag, and shall live in eternal infamy. All the former and current associates of him, his company staffs and friends, acquaintances, readers and business partners, once coming to light with the truth, shall abort and abandon him right away, leaving him and his business utterly embarrassed and bankrupt beyond relief, as long as they have a slight sense of honor and decency. Friberg deserves all this amply and justifiably, for the sake of justice and karma, and of all the decent and good-willed people he manipulated, exploited, insulted and harmed. Pox on Friberg!
On the other hand, Mr. Morgan is such an idealistic, kind-hearted, generous and forgiving man, to the extent of hurting not only himself but other honest and decent people working together to overthrow the heinous despot Friberg. He repeatedly showed his naivety, credulity, hesitation, irresolution, misguided trust and clemency, and misplaced loyalty that all played into the hand of the wretched and treacherous Friberg. He missed the golden opportunity to topple the “naked king” i.e. Friberg, he childishly and unguardedly chose to trust a woman dabbling in the movement who was perhaps temporarily estranged from Friber but eager to curry favor with and go back to him and thus unsurprisingly betrayed Mr. Morgan’s trust (a painful lesson that must be learned by all, never trust a capricious and unreliable woman, a majority of women being like that!). The result were a huge opportunity lost to rid the movement of a rotten apple and a dangerous time-bomb that is Firberg and a heavy damage to the movement in terms of both the prolonged damage of reputation caused by the bickering and infighting and the huge distraction of valuable attention, human energy and other resources that have been unnecessarily used on the matter which otherwise should have been devoted to our great cause of advancing important intellectual ideas and bringing the fight to the real ideological enemy across the aisle. All the said, I feel heartened and uplifted a little bit to see that Mr. Morgan seems to have learnt his lesson, as illustrated by this particular and crucial paragraph I quote from this article:
“The last shot that Daniel takes at me in the article is in accusing me of having a “weak and passive personality.” And I have to concede that in my dealings with Daniel, I was indeed too weak and passive, something that I greatly regret now. In my eyes, I was merely trying to act decently and fairly; in Daniel’s eyes, I was merely showing weakness. I should have spoken up sooner about these problems, and I should have more strongly supported the attempt to remove him from Arktos when the shareholders came to the conclusion that that was the best course of action. Now he’s free to do as he pleases. This is how Daniel operates: he gets people who are idealistic and willing to accept his leadership around him and then exploits their virtues in order to pursue his own private goals. But this doesn’t cause him to respect them; if anything it only earns them his contempt. When they finally wake up to what’s going on and leave him, he just finds new people to do his bidding.”
Although the tone and wording here and there in his article shows Mr. Morgan still holds some lingering thoughts about salvaging Friberg in an expectation of his “reemerging” at some point as the previous good guy in India, it seems Mr. Morgan has fully seen through the real nature of Friberg and taken a grave and somber lesson, which is encouraging to me. But then I spotted a place in the article which, in my humble and candid opinion, still casted some doubts in my mind as to the degree of Mr. Morgan’s awakening from this calamity and made me want to call his serious attention to his lack of full understanding of the sinister figure of Friberg, and broadly speaking, of other latent demons in the White Nationalist movement as I perceived. Mr. Morgan made this following remark near the end of his great article: “As long as we tolerate people who choose to handle their disagreements with others in the manner of twelve-year-olds, I don’t think the “movement,” such as it is, will ever make real progress. ” This sentence suddenly triggered my internal warning mechanism. The overall theme and idea contained in the statement is of course true and correct, but my problem is with the phrase “in the manner of twelve-year-olds”. Let me explain: If this “twelve-year-olds” Mr. Morgan announced that we should rightfully not tolerate refer to Friberg and his likes, it is by all means an inaccurate identification and a mistaken and misleading underestimate of the object concerned. Friberg is not a “twelve-year-old” that is usually characterized as naughty, juvenile and mischievous who play harmless pranks on others and overreact to mild criticisms, he is the opposite to “twelve-year-olds”. From his obnoxious record of shameless embezzlement, calculated exploitation of others’ work fruits, and mudslinging character assassination, he is definitely a corrupt, malignant and destructive adult capable of high level crime and malfeasance, something a “twelve-year-old” can never think of, let alone practice. Mr. Morgan and other decent minds of our movement underestimate this at the peril of themselves and our movement. Treacherous and cunning degenerates such as Friberg must be thoroughly discredited and banished from our movement with our utmost joint effort and without the slightest mercy.
At last, I really cannot help letting out a deep sigh of lamentation from my perspective of a East Asian Nationalist and based on my observation of and reflection on the matter, which is like a mirror reflecting the deplorable and woeful state of Western Nationalist movement. Something that has kept me constantly baffled is that while the leftist liberal camp has been able to form a coalition force among their different members and elements aiding and assisting each other and largely free of internal bickering and disputes, the right nationalist camp has always been afflicted by dichotomies and disharmonies, rendering a truly united and coordinating force that literally resembles the sign of Fascism impossible, to the great delight of our enemies and woe of our own people. Of course, the secret and active infiltration and sabotage by agents of ruling establishment deliberately sowing seeds of discord and creating division in our movement and its various organizations has been an undeniable cause to such problem, but the problem on the part of the White Nationalists themselves also has played a significant role, the problem that I mean vices, weaknesses and shortcomings like too much ego, deceit, arrogance, greed, jealousy and all the other personality flaws, foibles and follies. Friberg is ultimately emblematic of such vices, besides his actual crime of corruption and embezzlement. The White Nationalist movement has been grievously and persistently undermined and compromised by such elements of drag and hindrance. Imagine if the leading figures of the whole movement could put their egos aside and forms a united army of offense and a bulwark of defense in fighting our real enemies, the agents and infiltrators from government and leftist enemy organizations would have great difficulty in doing their infiltration and sabotage inside us, as an old saying of our Eastern folklore goes: “a fly does not stick on an egg whose shell has no cracks”.
Finally, while I have been tempted to believe that the White European people, especially the Nordic and Germanic North-Western nations might inherently lack a collective trait of unity and cohesion, which is compensated by their individualistic creativity and brilliance, in comparison to the less imaginative, innovative but more coordinated, disciplined and “robotic” East Asians, the people, society and general public of the National Socialist Germany (1933-1945) presents itself as a stark exception in the area of collective unity and discipline no lesser than that of imperialist Japan of the same era while also maintaining the inherent strengths of creativity and individual brilliance. Thus the crux hinges on leadership, ideology and education, essences of the internal statecraft of the Third Reich under the genius, mighty and gloriously functioning governance of Adolf Hitler, which is a great legacy we need to inherit, refine and apply to our movement today.
Mr. Morgan, are you sure you don’t want to respond to my caring, considerate, empathetic, and sincere 1,800-word long comment with my strongest and righteous condemnation of Friberg albeit also with some circumspect, respectful and faithful minor criticism of you? Am I really asking too much to expect a brief reply comment of only a few words from you?
Dear Riki-Eiki,
Thank you, I do appreciate what you wrote, but I have been overwhelmed with positive responses since this article went up and I haven’t had time to reply to everything.
As for what you say about my hopes for “salvaging” Friberg, I included my comments about whether Daniel has changed or not so that my narrative would not be entirely negative. Nothing in reality is ever entirely black or entirely white, and I knew it would have more of the ring of truth about it if I conceded some of Daniel’s positive traits (at least in the past) and didn’t focus exclusively on the bad. But as I already wrote to another commenter, as for whether he ever changes back to something more positive or not is a matter of complete indifference to me, since too much has passed between us now for there to ever be a reconciliation, and I fully intend to go my own way and let him go on his. So that’s somebody else’s problem now.
As for my 12-year-olds comment, I didn’t mean to suggest that what Daniel and his cohorts did in their attempts to slander me wasn’t serious or to be taken lightly. Quite the opposite. What I meant is that the mentality they exhibited in the sort of attacks they made, especially those on me personally, is identical to that which you find among schoolchildren. But people who are middle-aged can’t be so easily forgiven for this as children can. As I said, though, in the end I think their attacks did much more harm to themselves than they did to me, given that now people see what these people are really like, which is very different from how they like to portray themselves.
John
Dear Mr. Morgan,
Thanks for your kind reply in which you have elucidated your stance in a very coherent, mature and balanced way. I am now glad and relieved to see you have clearly and thoroughly drawn the valuable lesson from this hassle with Friberg and have certainly emerged stronger, tougher and more resilient in both mentality and in handling real world matters like this in the future. I’m sure you won’t be taken advantage of by clowns like Friberg again. Sorry for my previous hastiness to urge you to respond, and my best wishes to you, Mr. Johnson and your great common endeavor with CC.
Sincerely and cordially,
Riki-Eiki
The Clintons are what happen when you ignore obviously sociopathic behavior because they are useful and you don’t want infighting. Before you know it, they control your whole party and are too big to kick out even if you wanted to.
After all, Friberg did manage to find a way to become owner and CEO of a company that started as a partnership of friends. Sociopaths are fantastic networkers. That’s how Hillary Clinton can become her party’s nominee despite nobody liking her. All the right key individuals liked her.
Most people have a flawed definition of what a sociopath is. When you hear someone say “that person is a sociopath”, 9 times out of 10 what that person means is “That person is a huge asshole”. As in “they said perfectly reasonable statement about Group X? What a sociopath!”
This is what a sociopath actually looks like:
https://youtu.be/qSSGJ_km1mQ
They showed that Ted Bundy interview to us in my Sunday school when I was a kid and actually believed he was being sincere. I mean, he’s REALLY good in that interview.
But watching it now, having a bit more street knowledge, it is obvious that every word of what he is saying is a lie and the point of the whole interview is to make sure he is remembered a not so bad of a guy.
Real sociopaths are no joke. And considering of how destructive they are and you’re dealing with someone who has no conscience or sense of fair play, you can not deal with them the same level of due process that you would give a normal person.
If someone is clearly and undeniably a sociopath, you don’t wanna get too worked up over the fact that you can’t “prove” all of it. There’s tons of things that everyone knows Hillary did but no one can “prove”. If they are acting and talking like a sociopath and are accused of sociopathic behavior by people of sound reputation, that should suffice.
Now, it is very possible, perhaps even likely, that Friberg will eventually self-destruct and get himself in a situation that even he can not lie his way out of. This is the fate of many a sociopath. They don’t all go on to become Hillary Clinton.
But then you have to wonder how much damage they will cause before that day comes and how much damage they will cause in the process of self-destructing. You have to isolate these people early.
As much as you may emotionally want to believe that the Daniel Friberg you knew in India was the real Daniel Friberg and something has gone wrong since then. “They have issues” or “they are going through something” but maybe if they can work through those issues and go back to being the person I knew at the beginning.
But if you know anything about sociopaths, you know it is far, far more like that the person you knew in India was fake and the monster you see today was the real them all along.
It’s a bitter pill to swallow but the sooner you take it the better. It feels like having to shoot your rabid dog. But the dog you knew is gone (or in this case, never existed) and not coming back. Sucks that you have to tarnish those good memories but the sooner you take that pill the better.
You may be right. I don’t know which is “the real Daniel Friberg.” But to be honest, I no longer care. Given what has transpired between us, there’s no chance for any sort of reconciliation now. So I hope he eventually changes, for his own sake, but it’s a matter of indifference to me, given that I plan to have as little contact with him as possible from now on.
John, Travis Le Blanc’s comment is quite on targent and provides important lessons. Friberg’s nature should not ultimately be a “matter of indfference” to you because it goes to your understanding of the world and your ability to recongize and handle such people / situations in the future.
For any movement, such as the Alt Right / WN, that purports to base itself on reality, on a true understanding of matter such as race and biology, a sober recongitio of sociopathy, its characteristics and its mainfestation is important, because it is real, and it goes to a person’s understanding of the world.
Hearing you say things like “the good and the bad of Friberg” and how “he changed” over the years or that you are “indifferent” to the question of the characterological reasons behind his actions, means you do not accept or do not recognize the possibility of sociopathy at play here. It is a bit like reading a crime story involving a Black man’s murder of his White girlfriend, where the family’s victim obviously fails to understand racial realities. They will never really understand what happened if they fail to appreciate the law of averages, the truth of stereotypes and the truth of race. Without making a final judgment about Friberg, which I am probably not in the best position to do, you make an error in proclaiming indifference to the analysis of sociopathy.
I write this comment out of admiration and well-meaning to you as a person, even if it sounds a bit harsh.
Search “sociopath alert” on the following blog. John Craig has a deep understanding of the phenomenon: justnotsaid.blogspot.com
I appreciate that you’re trying to be helpful, Mr. Nock, but you don’t know me, so I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t lecture me on what lessons I should be deriving from my own life experience. I haven’t said anything about sociopathy because I did not want my article to devolve into an amateur psychoanalysis of Daniel Friberg’s behavior. That was not my intention with this article, and it would only have served to distract readers from understanding the facts as they occurred. I have confidence that people can come to their own conclusions from what I wrote without me having to tell them what to think about it. When I say I am indifferent it is because, quite frankly, Daniel’s behavior is other people’s problem now, not mine, and I am not going to comment on it publicly any further.
It is always sad to hear these kind of stories that happen everywhere now and then. The fact, as someone pointed out above is that Daniel Friberg is now on full control of Arktos, even if the project has achieved what it has accomplished based on the efforts of several people. Vigilance is mandatory for the future, and action sometimes has to be taken to protect the movement as a whole.
The strange thing is that types like Friberg and Morgan ever started a business together.
Forney and Mészáros are pretty obvious opportunists.
It’s incredible that you were making so little. The volumes that you edited always had great footnotes, erudite yet not opinionated or obtrusive — I notice those things, and at times I would think, “Good job, John.”
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