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A fan of Charles Manson and follower of Hitler, James Mason published essays in the 1980s that now act as the inspiration for a militant neo-Nazi group linked to multiple murders in the U.S.

“Revolutionary discipline must mean that WE will be the single survivor in a war against the System,” Mason wrote in 1985. “A TOTAL WAR against the System.”

But nowadays, Mason isn’t waging war with the system. He is, in fact, dependent on it.

The 67-year-old white supremacist lives in a government subsidized apartment in Denver and eats at soup kitchens.

In a brief interview last week, a few days after he was spotted picking up a meal at a city-run center for “homeless and hungry seniors,” Mason said he sees no contradiction between his writings and his lifestyle.

“Guerilla warfare, man. Guerilla warfare,” Mason told NBC’s Denver affiliate KUSA. “You’ve gotta take what you have to get what you need.”

Mason’s old writings have gained new life with the rise of the Atomwaffen Division, a white supremacist group bent on overthrowing the government through terrorist acts and guerrilla warfare tactics.

The extremist organization, whose name means “atomic weapons division” in German, formed in 2015 in the now defunct neo-Nazi online forum Iron March. Experts say it’s a largely decentralized group, small in size but large in ambition.

“Members see themselves as soldiers preparing themselves for an impending race war,” said Joanna Mendelson, senior investigative researcher with the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism.

“They create this apocalyptic worldview that their future is hanging by a thread. They paint a picture of a genocide and that they see themselves as needing to rise up against the tide that seeks their destruction.”

In the past two years alone, men with ties to Atomwaffen have been accused of killings in Florida, California and Virginia.

In the California case, an Atomwaffen Division member named Samuel Woodward was arrested and charged with fatally stabbing Blaze Bernstein, a gay, Jewish student, inside a park in Orange County in January 2018. Woodward pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial.

Experts say the group has greatly expanded the influence of Mason and his decades-old writings. His SIEGE newsletters, which have been posted on numerous online forums and compiled into a 563-page book, serve as Atomwaffen’s ideological foundation.

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