Tom Eiternes

Tom Eiternes is portrayed as a far-right activist whose career connected a local Ku Klux Klan chapter, a gun-store robbery, imprisonment, and an alliance with Varg Vikernes. In the book’s account, he became the most prominent member of the Einsatzgruppe, a group whose alleged plans included freeing Vikernes from prison and taking direct action against Norwegian public figures. Eiternes’s importance lies in that convergence: what had appeared to be shared slogans and imagery was described, by 1997, as a practical political alliance with weapons and targets in view.

Early political activity and the robbery

Eiternes’s earlier political activity included starting a local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. At the time, he claimed to have received $26,000 in financial support from the organization’s American parent body. The book presents this as part of his political history, not as independently established proof of the chapter’s resources or influence.

He also served a prison sentence after robbing a gun store in Stavanger, Norway, with four other members of the later Einsatzgruppe. The robbery went awry, and the store clerk was nearly fatally stabbed. The five fled toward the border with Sweden in a stolen car. They encountered a customs post that, according to the account, had not appeared on their map; when officials tried to stop them, they continued driving. Armed police stopped them farther into Sweden, and the group was immediately extradited to Norway. The episode placed Eiternes in a criminal network already linked to weapons, but the book distinguishes this earlier robbery from the later political plans attributed to the Einsatzgruppe.

Prison, Vikernes, and a new alliance

While serving his sentence at Ila prison, Eiternes met Varg Vikernes. The account says that Eiternes publicly described himself as having converted to Odinism, presumably after discussions with Vikernes. He then broke contact with the Ku Klux Klan and formed an alliance with Vikernes. The text offers this sequence as a shift in political association; it does not establish that Vikernes alone caused the change.

Eiternes’s association with Vikernes also acquired a public visual form. In early 1997, a Burzum T-shirt made to Vikernes’s specifications was produced and sold in England by Misanthropy Records. Its front combined a Burzum logo with an SS death’s-head, while the back carried the slogan Support Your Local Einsatz-Kommando. The shirt drew criticism and negative publicity, but sales were brisk. Many observers treated the design as an attempt to provoke; the book argues that its connection to the group was more than a pose, and that Vikernes’s commitment had existed before the group became headline news.

Political beliefs and the use of force

Shortly before what the account calls his escape from prison, Eiternes was interviewed for a television program about political extremism. He advocated a one-party system and described immigrants as victims rather than as the principal enemy. In his explanation, blame lay with politicians who encouraged large-scale racial mixing. He also advanced an antisemitic conspiracy theory in which international Jewish power, Freemasons, and the United Nations were supposedly directing events from Washington, D.C., and Tel Aviv to destroy the white race. These are reported as Eiternes’s beliefs, not as factual descriptions of political events.

The book links those beliefs to his stated support for political violence. Eiternes argued that violence was justified and that people needed to defend themselves against the Norwegian regime. His approach is characterized as revolutionary National Socialism, and the account identifies David Lane, a prominent member of the American terrorist group The Order who was serving a life sentence for conspiracy to commit murder and robbery, as a figure Eiternes appeared to admire.

The intended use of the weapons is presented as contested but politically suggestive. After the gun-store robbery, Eiternes and his accomplices said they had wanted to sell the guns for money. The book questions the credibility of that explanation, pointing to a shopping list that included rifles with telescopic sights and guns fitted with silencers—equipment it describes as suited to terrorism. Asked whether the weapons were for an approaching race war, Eiternes gave an answer the book treats as an awkward partial acknowledgment. The evidence records his political statements and the items on the list; it does not establish that a race war was imminent.

The Einsatzgruppe and its reported plans

On April 8, 1997, police arrested five young men at Hemnes, a small community 60–70 kilometers from Oslo. Norwegian newspaper headlines reported the arrests on Saturday, April 12. Investigators then uncovered information about the group, which the book calls the Einsatzgruppe and describes as composed of figures from the neo-Nazi scene. Eiternes, then 22, is identified as its most prominent member.

According to police, the group planned direct action against prominent Norwegian politicians, bishops, and other public figures, as well as a forceful attempt to break Vikernes out of prison. Its equipment and preparations gave the reported plan a paramilitary character: bulletproof vests, steel helmets, cartridge belts, ski masks, a list of twelve firearms, and a map marking a mountain hiding place. Police initially confiscated sawed-off shotguns and dynamite with blasting caps. The book also reports that some sources said the group intended to escape to Africa with Vikernes, an alleged destination it notes was at odds with the group’s professed racial politics.

The episode marks a change in the book’s framing of the relationship between black metal and the revolutionary right. Before 1997, their connection had seemed largely to consist of overlapping symbols and slogans; the Einsatzgruppe case presented Vikernes as a source of motivation to actual political extremists and Eiternes as a key figure in the alliance. The account thus distinguishes theatrical provocation from a reported program involving weapons, political targets, and an attempted prison breakout, without treating every reported plan as a completed action.