David Eden Lane (November 2, 1938 – May 28, 2007) was an American white supremacist leader, author and convicted felon. A founding member of The Order, he died while serving a 190-year prison sentence in the Federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana.
See also: ADX Florence
Lane was born in Woden, Iowa to an itinerant farmworker. He had one brother and two sisters. His father was an abusive alcoholic who abandoned them in 1942. After his brother was caught rummaging in a neighbor's trash for food the next year, he and his siblings were placed in an orphanage. Lane was soon adopted by a traveling Lutheran minister, a "doctrinaire, fundamentalist [...] from the old school". Bored with endless hours of church services, Lane rejected Christianity.
Living in several places throughout his childhood, Lane's family settled in Aurora, Colorado where he attended Hinkley High School. Originally aspiring to become a golf professional, Lane worked as real estate broker until his license was revoked because, "[he] wouldn't sell homes to coloreds in white neighborhoods."
Lane was a member of the John Birch Society before joining the Ku Klux Klan, becoming the organizer of the Denver unit of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in 1979. In late 1981, Lane became Colorado State Organizer of Aryan Nations.
Lane met Robert Jay Mathews in July 1983 at the Aryan Nations world congress. On September 22, 1983, Lane was among the nine founding members to be sworn into The Order, a group which dedicated itself to delivering "our people from the Jew and bring total victory to the Aryan race."[6] The Order was accused of stealing over $4.1 million in armored car hijackings, killing two people, detonating bombs, counterfeiting money, organizing militaristic training camps and carrying out numerous other crimes with the ultimate goal of overthrowing the United States government.
Lane was serving consecutive sentences totalling 190 years for racketeering (20 years), conspiracy (20 years) and violation of the civil rights of radio talk show host Alan Berg on June 18, 1984 (150 years).[8] Berg was shot and killed in the driveway of his Denver home by three members of The Order. Lane was captured on the evening of March 30-31, 1985 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Lane was also among fourteen men prosecuted for sedition in Fort Smith, Arkansas, but was acquitted. Lane was considered extremely dangerous by the American justice system and was incarcerated at various times after his conviction in the United States Penitentiary, Marion, the United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, Colorado and the Federal Correctional Complex, Terre Haute.
While incarcerated, Lane wrote books and articles about gematria and the demographic and socio-political state of the white race for White nationalist periodicals and websites. With his wife and Ron McVan, he ran a publishing company called 14 Word Press in Idaho to disseminate his writings.
His voice was featured in Nazi Pop Twins, a documentary aired on July 19, 2007, on Channel 4, UK. In it he was shown speaking by phone with Prussian Blue and termed them "fantasy sweethearts" and that he viewed them like daughters.
Lane's earliest possible release date from prison would have been on March 29, 2035 (at age 96), but he died on May 28, 2007 in the Federal Correctional Complex, Terre Haute due to an epileptic seizure. On June 30, White nationalists held memorial demonstrations for Lane in cities across the United States, England, Germany, Russia and the Ukraine
Lane stated his views can be best summarized by the 14 words, a term he coined: "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White children." He held that view "because the beauty of the White Aryan woman must not perish from the earth."
Lane believed whites needed their own ethnostate to survive and stated, "Today, in the year 2005, approximately two percent of earth's population is White female of child bearing age or younger... The remaining whites are hopelessly integrated, terrorized, brain washed, miscegenated and are rapidly being overrun by six billion coloreds."
He believed that Christianity is problematic to white people because its philosophies are anti-nature and Jewish in origin. He preferred a nature-based European Paganism as the original religion of whites. Similarly, he believed that completely white nations are necessary to eliminate miscegenation. He considered white people who supported what he viewed as the Zionist conspiracy to be "race traitors."
Lane authored the 88 Precepts, a collection of statements on Natural Law, which combine in White nationalist shorthand to "14-88" or "14/88"
Wotanism
Lane was a major proponent of Wotanism, inspired by an 1936 essay by Jung titled "Wotan". Lane had expressed derision for the Odinist religion whose adherents rejected what they perceived as his attempt to appropriate their religion for political and racist ends. Lane explained his motivations:
So, I first chose the name Wotanism over Odinism. First because W.O.T.A.N. makes a perfect acronym for the Will Of The Aryan Nation. Secondly because he was called Wotan on the European continent and only called Odin in Scandinavia. Therefore Wotan appeals to the genetic memory of more of our ancestors. And finally because a split had to be made with the game players, deceivers and universalists who had usurped the name Odin."
Lane contributed a one-page introduction to a book by Ron McVan called Creed of Iron: Wotansvolk Wisdom which the Odinic Rite claims was heavily plagiarized from The Book of Blotar.
Wotansvolk and 14 Word Press are now defunct and no longer have mailing addresses or websites. The Temple of Wotan still exists, but the organization was no longer run by Lane or his associates and has distanced itself from racist and neo-nazi ideologies. Based on letters written from prison to his supporters, Lane appeared to remain committed to spreading his message through Wotanism, and it is unclear what his final relationship was with The Temple of Wotan.
In 2004, Lane authored a short story entitled KD Rebel, which is set in the near future and tells the story of a Wotanist colony who have established tenuous control over portions of Western Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming,which they call Kinsland. The story mostly focuses on the Kinslanders' practice of kidnapping miscegenating or "wayward" young girls and women from urban areas, in order to indoctrinate them into Wotanism and so the Kinslanders can practice polygamy and have large numbers of children. Lane advocated the inclusion of polygamy as part of Wotanism.
