James Nolan Mason was born on July 25, 1952 and grew up in Chillicothe, Ohio. At the age of 14, he began exploring white supremacist ideology and joined the Youth Movement of George Lincoln Rockwell's American Nazi Party (ANP). Mason left school at the age of sixteen to work at the ANP's headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. After Rockwell was murdered in 1967, the ANP underwent several permutations and shifts in leadership. Mason remained active in neo-Nazi politics and affiliated himself with the National Socialist White People's Party (NSWPP) - the successor of the ANP - and the National Socialist Liberation Front (National Socialist Liberation Front (NSLF), led by Joseph Tommasi. Mason returned to Ohio and continued his political agitation and activism.

In 1980, Mason took over writing and publishing Siege, the monthly National Socialist periodical of the NSLF. Although the NSLF became defunct by 1982, Mason continued producing Siege until 1986. During this time Mason began corresponding with Sandra Good and Lynette Fromme, two of Charles Manson's incarcerated followers. He eventually exchanged letters with Charles Manson himself and, along with the convicted killer, founded a movement called Universal Order. Unlike other National Socialist groups, Mason intended for Universal Order to be a self-sustaining ideological philosophy rather than a physical organization with members and buildings. Unlike more traditional Nazi groups that advocate political or armed struggle to achieve their objectives, Mason's preference through Universal Order was merely to wait for 'the system' to consume and destroy itself from within.

Although Mason ceased communicating with Manson by the late 1980s, he continues to hold the convict and his world view in high esteem. More conservative elements of the white power movement were displeased with Mason's idolatry of the killer, which has resulted in a sometimes acrimonious relationship between Mason and his fellow National Socialists.

In 1993, Mason moved to Colorado where he spent much of the decade writing and self-publishing. The entire run of Siege was collected and published in a single volume in 1992, followed by a second edition in 2003.