In June 2020, American soldier Ethan Melzer was arrested after investigators uncovered a terrifying betrayal. Instead of protecting his fellow soldiers, he had been secretly helping extremists prepare a deadly attack against his own military unit.
Melzer had supplied sensitive information about troop movements, security arrangements, and military locations. The intended victims were the soldiers serving alongside him, people whose survival depended partly on the loyalty of their fellow service members.
The plot emerged as his unit prepared for deployment to Turkey. Investigators discovered communications indicating that Melzer wanted extremists to use the information for an ambush that could kill American soldiers and provoke a wider conflict.
What made the case especially disturbing was the organization behind his radicalization. Melzer was associated with the Order of Nine Angles, an extremist movement combining neo-Nazi ideology, occult symbolism, and the glorification of violence.
The investigation revealed something more disturbing than an isolated soldier’s extremist beliefs. Melzer had allegedly used his position inside the American military to advance the objectives of a movement that encouraged infiltrating established institutions.
The Order of Nine Angles, commonly abbreviated O9A, traces its modern development to Britain during the late twentieth century. Its own literature claims far older origins, describing secret pagan traditions supposedly preserved through centuries of religious change.
According to those internal accounts, small occult communities survived in the Welsh Marches, the borderlands between England and Wales. They allegedly maintained traditions that eventually contributed to the movement’s consolidation during the late 1960s.
Those ancient origins remain claims made within the organization’s mythology rather than independently established history. Its modern development is more clearly associated with extremist publications, underground networks, and the writings of a figure called Anton Long.
Anton Long became central to the movement’s ideology during the 1970s and subsequent decades. The pseudonymous writer promoted an elaborate occult philosophy that rejected conventional morality and portrayed destructive personal experiences as pathways toward transformation.
Researchers have frequently associated the Anton Long identity with David Myatt, a British extremist whose history included involvement in neo-Nazi activism. The identification has been disputed, making attribution of particular writings and activities important.
Under Anton Long’s influence, O9A literature expanded through underground publications during the 1980s and 1990s. One journal, The Fenrir, helped circulate material combining esoteric language with explicitly violent and authoritarian political ideas.
Unlike mainstream Satanist organizations, many of which reject supernatural beliefs or violence, O9A promoted an extremist worldview. Its publications embraced elements of fascism, racial hierarchy, social Darwinism, and revolutionary destruction under a distinctive occult framework.
Its objective was not simply to practice unconventional religion. The movement imagined existing political and social systems collapsing, creating conditions in which an entirely different authoritarian civilization could eventually emerge from the resulting disorder.
Violence occupied a central position in this worldview. Certain O9A texts presented criminality, cruelty, and deliberate social transgression as ideological tools, portraying destructive behavior as a means of accelerating the breakdown of established institutions.
One particularly notorious concept involved human sacrifice, described in some publications as culling. These writings promoted the selection and killing of people deemed undesirable, illustrating the extreme departure from ordinary religious or philosophical practice.
The movement’s literature also encouraged hatred toward perceived ideological enemies. Christians, political opponents, journalists, and members of rival organizations appeared among the categories targeted by its rhetoric of hostility and supposed ideological purification.
Sexual violence also appeared in material attributed to the movement. The documentary discusses publications that allegedly glorified assault and exploitation, demonstrating how extremist communities could combine political hatred with other forms of predatory behavior.
However, promoting brutality in literature does not establish that every person influenced by the movement committed those crimes. Individual responsibility requires specific evidence, even when the surrounding ideology explicitly encourages horrifying conduct against others.
One of O9A’s most disturbing ideas concerned infiltration. Followers were encouraged to enter institutions or social environments they opposed, adopting roles that could provide influence, access, and opportunities to advance the movement’s destructive objectives.
These assignments were sometimes described as insight roles. Their purpose was to immerse adherents in unfamiliar or hostile environments, supposedly transforming their identities while potentially enabling ideological influence or institutional disruption from within.
The military represented an especially alarming potential target. Armed forces depend on disciplined relationships, shared information, and mutual trust, meaning a radicalized individual with access to operational details could create extraordinary danger for colleagues.
Ethan Melzer’s case demonstrated that threat in concrete terms. According to federal prosecutors, he had entered the military while concealing extremist commitments and later exploited his position to obtain information intended to facilitate an attack.
His disclosures concerned the location, movements, and security of his own unit. Rather than protecting that information, he transmitted sensitive details to associates connected with O9A and individuals sympathetic to jihadist violence abroad.
The combination of neo-Nazi extremism and jihadist sympathies might seem contradictory. Yet O9A’s accelerationist worldview could accommodate seemingly incompatible movements when their actions were believed capable of creating chaos, bloodshed, and political destabilization.
Melzer was willing to contemplate his own death during the planned attack. Prosecutors described communications indicating that he viewed a mass-casualty incident as a possible trigger for a larger American military conflict.
The consequences could have been catastrophic. American service members faced the possibility of being ambushed using information supplied by someone within their own ranks, transforming an ordinary military deployment into a potential scene of calculated betrayal.
Before the ambush could occur, military authorities and federal investigators disrupted the plot. Melzer was arrested in June 2020, and the investigation revealed the communications and ideological commitments underlying his attempt to endanger fellow soldiers.
The case later resulted in a guilty plea. On June 24, 2022, Melzer admitted offenses involving attempted murder of service members, support for terrorists, and the unlawful transmission of national defense information.
On March 3, 2023, a federal judge sentenced him to 45 years in prison. The punishment reflected the seriousness of a plot aimed at murdering American soldiers through deliberate betrayal of military trust.
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Yet the wider movement’s history did not end with Melzer. Long before his arrest, O9A literature had traveled beyond Britain’s extremist underground, reaching international audiences through publications and eventually internet-based communities.
As online communication expanded, the movement became increasingly decentralized. Rather than functioning exclusively through a single hierarchy, adherents and sympathizers could participate in small independent groups sharing ideological material and occult terminology.
These small formations were sometimes called nexions. Their loose structure complicated efforts to distinguish committed members from sympathizers, imitators, ideological consumers, and people using the movement’s imagery for unrelated criminal activities.
In the United States, Joshua Sutter became associated with distributing O9A-related material. He was linked to the Temple of Blood, an American extremist formation influenced by the movement’s violent and occult-oriented worldview.
Sutter also operated Martinet Press, which distributed provocative extremist literature. These publishing activities helped introduce O9A-associated ideas to American audiences who might never have encountered the movement through traditional underground publications.
Later reporting raised questions about Sutter’s relationship with federal investigators. Accounts describing him as an FBI informant inspired speculation, but such relationships alone do not establish that intelligence agencies created or controlled the movement.
The distinction matters because O9A’s secretive history makes it especially vulnerable to exaggerated interpretations. Genuine intelligence relationships, disputed identities, and anonymous online accusations can become entangled without establishing a single coordinated conspiracy.
Another concerning development involved online exploitation communities allegedly influenced by O9A symbolism. The documentary identifies the network known as 764, associated with Bradley Chance Cadenhead, as an example of extremist themes entering predatory digital environments.
The 764 network became notorious for allegations involving coercion, sexual exploitation, threats, and psychological abuse directed toward vulnerable young people. Its activities demonstrated how online communities could weaponize humiliation and fear against minors.
The documentary describes ideological overlap between some 764 participants and O9A-related communities. However, shared symbolism or individual extremist affiliations do not establish that every participant belonged to a formally organized O9A branch.
The relationship nevertheless highlights an unsettling pattern: violent extremist imagery can provide language and justification for abuse. In online environments, perpetrators may use ideological identities to normalize acts that would otherwise provoke immediate condemnation.
Another case discussed in the documentary involved the murders of two sisters in a London park during June 2020. The perpetrator, Danyal Hussein, pursued an occult fantasy promising supernatural rewards in exchange for violence.
Hussein murdered Bib
