Vengeance Strength Kvlt Gym in East Nashville Has Links to Alt-Right

It's summertime and you're seeking a new workout program to look hot in your skimpy summertime clothes. But one of the newest gyms in town is probably a place you want to avoid — that is, unless you like the white supremacist overtones.

To be fair, the newly opened Vengeance Strength Kvlt — their exact spelling — bills itself as a workout program not for the faint of heart. (Nor for the faint of wallet — unlimited access to the gym costs $399 monthly.)

"This is probably not the gym for you," the gym's website states. "Our ideology is simple: Weakness is a sickness which rapidly degenerates the quality of body and mind. The dominant fitness culture is selling you a shallow concept of exercise, keeping you weak and misinformed. Taking the first step towards the eradication of this cancer is the most important thing which you may ever do. It means taking up the ritual of proper training. It means purging the willfully weak people out of your life. It means the burning away of everything and everyone which does not benefit you. Therefore, we at Vengeance, battle weakness here and at home, pledging to help you do the same."

Further on, the website states, "Only the inferior strive for equality":

This is not a "safe Space." This is not for those worried about "micro-aggressions", or who hold the white flag of "trigger warnings". ... Vengeance is designed to be confrontational in order to drive individuals to greater and greater risk, trial and reward. This is strength worship. Those who remain willfully weak in body and mind will not be tolerated. ...

Instead of becoming victims to life's circumstances, join the rebellion against the world's complacency and sloth. Take the Profane Oath to do battle against that force which degrades humankind into the disgusting, diseased, incapable, grey masses that you see before yourself. We leave no revenge up to the slavery of a god that does not exist.

So, yeah, not your average gym. That's fine. But the gym's owner, Sky Lemyng, is not just your average trainer. Lemyng is a supporter of

, a collective that describes itself as "equal parts fight club, strength regimen, motorcycle club and esoteric order." On

, he frequently posts the hashtags #operationwerewolf and #wolfpack, and in between the many, many pictures of his abs, there are a few images of him wearing Operation Werewolf clothing.

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But Operation Werewolf is not just a weird fitness cult — it was founded by Paul Waggener. He, along with his brother Mattias, also founded the crypto-facist Wolves of Vinland, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has deemed a hate group. One "wolf" was sentenced to more than two years in prison after setting fire to a historic African-American church in Virginia. And acccording to Encyclopaedia Metallum, before moving to Virginia both Waggeners played in a white-power metal band in Wyoming called Valhalla Saints. One song the band covered was "Skinhead," better known as the song "Pulling Up the Boots" from the movie Romper Stomper. The lyrics include lines like:

Skinhead, skinhead, running through the night

Making lots of trouble, starting lots of fights

Skinhead, skinhead, getting really pissed

Skinhead, skinhead, tatted on my wrist!

waiting in the lane way, waiting for the scum

Smash their yellow faces, kick their fucking bums

When they plee for mercy, we will show them none

Skinhead, skinhead, 'til the job is done

Although many Operation Werewolf members say the organization is not about white supremacy — that it's about finding strength and listening to black metal and participating in pagan rituals ostensibly based on

 (including animal sacrifice,

) — scrolling through

doesn't show any pictures of anyone who is not white. The Waggeners live partially off the grid in the woods outside of Lynchburg, Va., promoting survivalism and working out — that is, when they aren't driving their motorcycles across the country, which they are currently doing with Jake Furnish,the Vengeance gym's co-founder. (For anti-materialists, they really seem to have some nice bikes.) Furnish describes

as a "WOV Appalachia Prospect" and has been posting about

, referring to the Waggeners by their wolf names, Grimnir (Doug) and Jarnefr (Mattias).

The Waggeners also post a lot of pictures of weapons on Instagram, including this one post of a custom-built rifle, with the accompanying text:

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"Be radical, have principles, be absolute, be that which the bourgeoisie calls an extremist: give yourself without counting or calculating, don't accept what they call ‘the reality of life' and act in such a way that you won't be accepted by that kind of ‘life', never abandon the principle of struggle." - Julius Evola 

Evola was a

beloved by Benito Mussolini. But Mussolini's fascism didn't go far enough for Evola, who advocated not for nationalism but for a Europe organized on the principals of the

— the armed wing of the Nazi SS. Evola wanted a return to paganism, and wrote that Buddhism could be used to create a superior warrior caste. He above all believed in the ruling of the elites and the inferiority of women. Unsurprisingly, his ideas have gained popularity with many neo-fascist and neo-Nazi groups, like the National Front.

Evola has also been a big influence on men's rights activist Jack Donovan, who's all buddy-buddy with noted white nationalist Richard Spencer (who, ironically, lost his own gym membership earlier this year). Donovan started his own Wolves of Vinland chapter in Portland, Ore. According to activists there, Donovan has regularly held Wolves events on land owned by local white supremacists. 

Donovan claimed to not be a "white nationalist" in a lengthy blog post in May — a post Lemyng shared on his personal Facebook page:

As anyone familiar with my work knows, I support tribalism always and everywhere. As the 1970’s motto goes, I believe that “small is beautiful” when it comes to human communities. However, a tribal community has to have a lot more going for it than race. And this is where the idea of White Nationalism falls apart for me. Race alone isn’t enough to unite a people.

But in the same post Donovan defends Spencer's ideals and says he stands by his 2011 writings on white nationalism,

, "I support White Nationalists. They are not all equally right about everything, but I am sympathetic to many of their general aims. I think white people should be able to organize and advance their own interests just like every other group of people."

The Portland activists also note:

“Operation Werewolf” shares its name with the guerilla German resistance force organized by Adolf Hitler in 1944 during the decline of Nazi control. OW uses Nordic and Germanic symbols from both before the Christian era and also the Medieval period — one example being the Wolfsangel, a medieval chivalric arm erroneously identified and used by Nazi occultists as a "rune." This symbol has also been used by the Azov Regiment, a far right Ukrainian neo-Nazi military formation currently fighting Russia under State sanction.

Paul Waggener has a tattoo of a sonnerad on his chest — 

 often associated with Neo-Nazi imagery.

Lemyng may not be a white nationalist in the way members of the KKK are, but he's a member of group that sells T-shirts stating, "We want the total war." It's a group that has received funding from Counter-Current Publishing, the press of the alt-right run by the racist Greg Johnson, who thinks white people in the United States are victims of "genocide." And Lemyng has posted on Instagram, "'All men are created equal' is just as an intellectually depraved statement as it is false. ... It takes being in an airport for 5 minutes to realize that you are not equal to everyone else in the building. Zoom out to a larger scale and the trend is the same. Why would you want to be equal to all of these people you don't even know?"

The Scene asked Lemyng how closely the gym is tied to Operation Werewolf. (Vengeance has a post pinned to their Facebook page that says, "We don't give a shit what colour, sex, social status, orientation, or religion you are," but the same post continues on to say, "Egalitarianism is a false god you've purchased on insecurity and spiritual credit.") Here's what he said:

Scene: I've been contacted by some folks concerned that your new gym has ties to Operation Werewolf and the Waggener brothers, who have espoused what some say are extremist and white supremacist ideas. Their Wolves of Vinland groups have been classified a hate group by the SPLC and called "crypto-fascist" by many. Your response? The other co-founder of the gym is on a trip with the Waggeners right now — does that mean Vengeance supports their same beliefs?

Lemyng: This business doesn't have ties to our personal lives. I think the controversial claims made against the WOV ultimately come from a place of ignorance, fear and bigotry. Vengeance is comprised of an eclectic group of people who support many different ideals. What are you referring to specifically?

Scene: I mean, you have an Instagram post saying that "all men are created equal" is "an intellectually depraved statement" — which is a point of view also held by a lot of neo-fascist groups.

Lemyng: Are all Catholics pedophiles? Are all feminists man haters?

Scene: That has nothing to do with what I'm asking.

Lemyng: It does absolutely.

Scene: You publicly participate in a group that has been designated a hate group. The other gym founder is close enough to the founders of said group to be on a cross-country trip with them. You have stated you don't believe in equality. Why should a would-be customer of the gym think that it is not affiliated with neo-fascism? (Not a rhetorical question.)

Lemyng: Because they would be customer which is equipped [sic] with such an intellect which is capable of critical thinking. I think these kinds of questions would be better suited for my non-white members and or co-trainers here at vengeance. ... Just FYI, I think any kind of hatred towards an individual or a group of people based on their appearance, nationality, color, sex, religion or orientation stems from a place of weakness. At Vengeance we violently pursue the cultivation of strength on all levels. Weakness, such as the aforementioned flavor of thereof, is the only thing which is not tolerated here. You're welcome.

For what it's worth, no pictures by Vengeance on Facebook or

appear to show anyone not white, including this group photo posted a few days ago:

If this what you want out of your expensive workout — semi-fascistic tribalism — then go on right ahead. Or you could just join a crossfit gym, get the same physical results and same cult-like atmosphere, and none of your money will go to werewolves. 

This post has been updated to clarify that Valhalla Saints did not write the lyrics to "Skinhead" themselves.