Career
After dropping out of UCLA, Parfrey moved to San Francisco, where he began a short-lived experimental magazine, IDEA, in May 1981. That publication folded after two issues. In 1984, with George Petros, Parfrey launched EXIT magazine, which they described as an "outlaw liberal Fascist Sci-Fi Pop Art magazine". Topics in this magazine included serial killers, depraved sexuality, and Nazism. The first issue excerpted Jim Jones and Adolf Hitler.
In 1987, Parfrey and Kenneth Swezey co-founded Amok Press in New York. Amok Press's first title was an English translation by Joachim Neugroschel of the Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels's novel Michael (1929), which was reviewed in the New York Times and The New Republic. This was followed by Parfrey's Apocalypse Culture, a collection of articles, interviews, and documents that explore various marginal aspects of culture. Apocalypse Culture was Parfrey's most successful book, selling 100,000 copies by 2010.
Parfrey was one of the members of the Abraxas Foundation, an "occult-fascist" collective made up of Parfrey, Boyd Rice, Nikolas Schreck, and later Michael J. Moynihan. At this time, introduced by William Grimstad, Parfrey met Keith Stimely, with whom he became friends; Stimely was a Holocaust denier and a former member of the Institute for Historical Review.
Parfrey moved back to the west coast and while living in Portland, Oregon, founded another imprint, Feral House, in 1989. The name was suggested by Boyd Rice. The company's first book was The Satanic Witch by Anton LaVey. Parfrey co-wrote many Feral House titles. Stimely sent out a press release saying Parfrey and his publisher, Feral House, had signed to his publicity agency. Parfrey later denied that Stimely had been his publicist and said that he had done so without his permission. In 1994, Parfrey released the album Deep Inside a Cop's Mind on Amphetamine Reptile Records as the musical project S.W.A.T. The album featured Nick Bougas and Jim Goad as vocalists, among others, and focuses on the police as a theme.
In 1998 Parfrey was sued over a book, The Oklahoma City Bombing and the Politics of Terror, authored by investigative reporter David Hoffman, alleging government involvement in the Oklahoma City bombing. As a result of the lawsuit (brought by a former FBI official named in the book), Parfrey had to destroy all remaining copies of the book and issue a statement disavowing its allegations.
In 2005, Parfrey co-founded the publishing company Process Media with Jodi Wille of Dilettante Press.
A 2010 Seattle Weekly profile stated that "what Parfrey does is publish books that explore the marginal aspects of culture. And in many cases—at least back when his interests were almost exclusively transgressive—he sheds light on subjects that society prefers to leave unexplored, carving a niche catering to those of us with an unseemly obsession with life's darkest, most depraved sides."
