Early life and activism[edit]

Mason grew up in Chillicothe, Ohio. In SIEGE, Mason recounted having been interested in politics at a young age, describing how his father once took him to a Richard Nixon rally in 1960. He would continue to support mainstream conservative politicians like Barry Goldwater and eventually populist ones like George Wallace.^[10] Sometime after supporting the latter, Mason would describe this as the last instance of himself supporting mainstream political parties. In 1966, when he was 14 years old, he joined the youth movement of George Lincoln Rockwell's American Nazi Party (ANP).^[3] In 1968, when he was 16, Mason planned to murder the principal and other staff members at his high school. Instead, following the advice of William Luther Pierce, he quit school and began working at the ANP headquarters in Virginia.^[3]


After the assassination of Rockwell in 1967, Mason aligned himself with the National Socialist White People's Party (NSWPP) and Joseph Tommasi's National Socialist Liberation Front (NSLF).^[1] In 1970, at the age of 18, Mason became a full-fledged member of the NSWPP and returned to Chillicothe.^[3]


In the early 1980s, Mason began corresponding with Sandra Good and Lynette Fromme, two followers of Charles Manson. In 1982, along with Manson, Mason founded Universal Order, an organization that encouraged terror with notoriety, similar to that achieved by the Manson Family.^[1][3][11]