Death Cults and Dystopian Scenarios: Neo-Nazi Religion and Literature in the USA Today

In this article, I investigate the literary representation of the religious convictions and political strategy of neo-Nazi ideologues who are influential in rightwing authoritarian movements in the USA today. The reason that I do this is because in contemporary fascism, the novel has replaced the political manifesto, the military manual and proselytizing testimony, since fiction can evade censorship and avoid prosecution. I read William Luther Pierce’s Turner Diaries and Hunter together with his text on speculative metaphysics and religious belief, Cosmotheism. Then, I turn to Harold Covington’s Northwestern Quintet with The Brigade, reading this with Christian Identity and his own conception of Nazi religious tolerance. Finally, I look at OT Gunnarsson’s Hear the Cradle Song, reading this together with discussions of racism in Californian Odinism. I propose that what this literature shows is that the doctrinal differences between the three main strands of neo-Nazi religion—Cosmotheism, Christian Identity and Odinism—are less significant than their common ideological functions. These are twofold: (1) the sacralization of violence and (2) the sanctification of elites. The dystopian fictions of fascist literature present civil war scenarios whose white nationalist and genocidal outcome is the result of what are, strictly speaking, supremacist death cults.

Exoskeleton Application to Military Manual Handling Tasks

Objective The aim of this review was to determine how exoskeletons could assist Australian Defence Force personnel with manual handling tasks. Background Musculoskeletal injuries due to manual handling are physically damaging to personnel and financially costly to the Australian Defence Force. Exoskeletons may minimize injury risk by supporting, augmenting, and/or amplifying the user’s physical abilities. Exoskeletons are therefore of interest in determining how they could support the unique needs of military manual handling personnel. Method Industrial and military exoskeleton studies from 1990 to 2019 were identified in the literature. This included 67 unique exoskeletons, for which Information about their current state of development was tabulated. Results Exoskeleton support of manual handling tasks is largely through squat/deadlift (lower limb) systems (64%), with the proposed use case for these being load carrying (42%) and 78% of exoskeletons being active. Human–exoskeleton analysis was the most prevalent form of evaluation (68%) with reported reductions in back muscle activation of 15%–54%. Conclusion The high frequency of citations of exoskeletons targeting load carrying reflects the need for devices that can support manual handling workers. Exoskeleton evaluation procedures varied across studies making comparisons difficult. The unique considerations for military applications, such as heavy external loads and load asymmetry, suggest that a significant adaptation to current technology or customized military-specific devices would be required for the introduction of exoskeletons into a military setting. Application Exoskeletons in the literature and their potential to be adapted for application to military manual handling tasks are presented.

Arrian’s Ektaxis in the Roman Empire

This paper proposes to discuss one of Arrian’s so-called ‘minor texts’—the Acies contra Alanos which I prefer to call Ektaxis kata Alanōn—and show how it is not only a military manual, but also allows Arrian to discuss identity, fitting into broader patterns and discourses of the Second Sophistic. In the Ektaxis Arrian, much like a sophist, creates different personas and layers of identity not just for himself but also for his troops, and takes the opportunity to present the Roman army in a diverse way, which differs from portrayals in other authors.

LEO VI ARABUS? An Unknown Fragment from the Arabic Translation of Leo VI’s Taktika

The aim of this article is to introduce a hitherto unknown Arabic quotation from the military manual written originally in Greek under the name of the Byzantine Emperor Leo VI (886-912). This quotation is found in the fourteenth century Arabic military treatise At-tadbīrāt as-sulṭānīyya fī siyāsat aṣ-ṣanā’i’ al-ḥtarbīyya written by a Mamlūk high ranking officer, a “colonel” Ibn Mankalī. Greek quotations and longer passages found in military manuals of the Arabs are of great importance. They allow a modern historian to evaluate Byzantine influence on Arab military thought and, moreover, occasionally give some ideas on medieval Arab military intelligence.