New York, NY – Nazi Cult Graffiti Spray-Painted in Brooklyn

New York, NY – Even ardent neo-Nazis would have a hard time figuring out the bizarre graffiti cops are investigating in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. It seems to be written in an obscure alphabet by someone interested in obscure occult ideas that inspired some of Adolf Hitler’s followers.

The characters in the peculiar graffiti tags look like runes, the ancient alphabets of pre-Roman tribes in central and northern Europe. Some people associate runes with magical powers.

One tag says: “Das Geheinns der Runen,” German for “The Secret of the Runes,” a book by Guido von List, an Austrian occultist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The other tags are phrases from Lists’ writings, said Professor Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke of the University of Exeter in England and author of “The Occult Roots of Naziism: Secret Aryan Cults and their Influence on Nazi Ideology.”

List wanted Austrians and Germans to replace their Christian and Jewish beliefs with the paganism of pre-Roman people who lived in German-speaking regions.

Some of the tags in Greenpoint are directly religious or spiritual — such as “alaf sal fena,” which Goodrick-Clarke said translates to “all solar salvation to him who knows his power.”
“Sal und sig,” says another tag, which translated roughly means “Salvation and victory.” An Internet site run by a List enthusiast notes that the phrase is similar to the Nazi salute “Sieg heil!”

Greenpoint has a few neo-Nazi skinheads — but the graffiti’s reference to the “rather obscure” List probably goes over their heads, said Todd Gutnick, a spokesman for the Anti-Defamation League.

The black spray-painted tags just seemed strange to a business owner who painted one over soon after it appeared Sunday on her shop.

“I don’t know what to think about it. I don’t know what kind of writing it is,” said the owner of Maria’s Deli on Meserole Street, who asked her last name not be used.