Apocalypse Culture II is an anthology of the fringe and transgressive edited by Adam Parfrey and published by Feral House in 2000. A sequel to his previous work, Apocalypse Culture, it continues the probing of societal taboos, with special attention given to conspiracy theories, neo-Nazism, child pornography, cannibalism, terrorism, assorted paraphilia, scatological research, racisms, misanthropic ecology, and mind control.
Entries included are authored by, among others, John Hinckley Jr., Michael Moynihan, Crispin Glover, and Peter Sotos. The book's final entry is an essay by the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski. The book was published in a combined edition with its predecessor in Russia in 2006, where it was banned as "drug propaganda" due to the entry on ketamine. Several reviewers found the volume disturbing, but complimented it for what it was.
Apocalypse Culture II was edited by Adam Parfrey, the sequel to the 1987 anthology volume Apocalypse Culture. Parfey's works often focused on the bizarre. It covers similar topics and ground to the first volume. The book was first published in 2000 by Feral House, Parfrey's publishing house. The first edition was 468 pages long. Talking to Willamette Week, Parfrey said of the book that:
While promoting the book and asked on his feelings on it by the Los Angeles Times, he said: "Upsetting people is a beautiful thing." Parfrey had problems finding a printer for the book due to some of the illustrations in the pedophilia sections. He found a printer that would take on the job, but only if six images were removed. Parfrey agreed, and instead put the six removed images on his website.
In 2006, the book and the original Apocalypse Culture were translated into Russian in 2006 and published combined as one volume by the Russian counterculture publisher Ultra.Kultura as . The book was afterwards banned in Russia as "drug propaganda" due to David Woodard's entry on ketamine. All copies were confiscated.
Parfrey clarifies, in the preface, that the collection is not a "manifesto or a smorgasbord of personal fetishes or beliefs", but that "the book was compiled to examine far-reaching and extreme societal tendrils." It is dedicated to "the memory of Vladimir Jabotinsky 1880-1940." It opens with quotations from Wilhelm Stekel's Sadism and Masochism and Woodrow Parfrey's (the editor's father) death scene as a mass murderer in the Naked City episode, "Burst of Passion".
It continues the probing of societal taboos, with topics ranging from child pornography, neo-Nazism, Nazism, cannibalism, terrorism, assorted paraphilia, scatological research, racisms, misanthropic ecology, and mind control. Other topics include Jews for Hitler, conspiracy theories and satanic ritual abuse. The book is illustrated. Authors included are John Hinckley Jr., Michael Moynihan, actor Crispin Glover, and Peter Sotos, among others. The book concludes with an essay by the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski.
Given its subject matter, several reviewers found it disturbing or recommended against it for the easily disturbed. A review from The Austin Chronicle called it a "roundup of sociopathology for the new millennium". They called most of its entries brutal, but others "frankly hilarious", though "all of it is to be taken with a grain of salt". Mike Tribby recommended it for "those interested, healthily or not, in the dark and scary limits of the human imagination. Scholar Jeffrey Kaplan wrote in a review that "no better guide to these nether regions can be offered than Parfrey's Apocalypse Culture II", though given its content said it was "not to every readerâÂÂs taste â the squeamish and the censorious are advised to give this book as well as its illustrious predecessors a wide berth". Writer Spencer Sunshine wrote of its contents that, much like other Parfrey collections, the book contained "politically unproblematic articles. Alongside them were essays by Hoffman, Moynihan, and Rice; the misanthropic racist Pentti Linkola; and pieces from Aryan Nations and the gay neo-Nazi group National Socialist League". Zach Dundas of Willamette Week said it "cuts with a nastier knife" than the prior book with "enough dark matter to permanently alter the curvature of your mind".
Writing for Wired, Charles Paul Freund compared Parfrey to other cataloguers of the weird, saying that in comparison, "Parfrey and his assembled authors let freaks speak for themselves. The result not only challenges many readers' points of reference, but suggests that, in one way or another, everybody may be some sort of freak." He complimented Moynihan's piece on Bobby Beausoleil and the pieces on "truth suppression" and the fear of small people, but criticized Parfrey's "Jews for Hitler" essay as incorrect in places. Mark Dery for The Village Voice called it far better than its predecessor. Dery wrote that it was "a better book in almost every way", saying it was beter edited, had a better scope, and was better illustrated than Apocalypse Culture I; however, he said that this came at a time when America was much weirder, which lessened the book's impact. Kaplan said it came in contradiction to "all those who still entertain the hope that the millennium would bring, if not the much sought global harmonic convergence, at least some sign that the human race has grown not only older but wiser with time". Freund was unsure of the effect of the book, writing that he was unsure if it meant "Edgelessness? Or is the human borderland an infinite space with uncounted cultures and uncountable apocalypses?"