Unfortunately, these human (and occasional AI) weeds have a tendency to choke out life in this garden, and anecdotally, it seems like its harder for new (and not so new) writers to get their voices heard amidst the clamor of Lemonite-Bulwarkian-Kinzingerism. I’m sure many of us have had the experience of reading someone and thinking, “why isn’t this person a bestseller?” I know I have. So I thought I’d take the occasion to list some favorites of mine who aren’t favorites of the algorithm.

Note: I list these names in no particular order. I purposely avoided anyone who is already a bestseller, people with whom I have (or have had) cooperative or business relationships, and people whom I appeared with on podcasts or the like. I wanted to shy away from people who mostly do political commentary, since you’ll probably encounter them anyway if you follow my publication. I also avoided listing people who are not especially big here, but have a large audience elsewhere. I want to strictly promote people here with whom my only concern is that they’re not as big as they should be. That said, I have many paid subscribers you should check out, particularly , , , , , , , and so many others (please forgive me if I forgot you).

1. Bruce Ivar Gudmundsson

Bruce Iver Gudmundsson writes not one, not two, but three distinct stacks, each dealing with a different topic. The Tactical Notebook is a deep dive into the extreme minutia of militaries from days gone by- structure, equipment, command and control, wargaming, etc. It’s like an Osprey Book in narrative form, and Gudmundsson is very much that friend you would wish you had next to you at the wargaming table. Extra Muros explores liberal education beyond the confines of the modern university, something I’ve explored at length as well. A Wealth of Nations is a bit more universal and the least active of the three, but definitely worth checking out.

It’s a unique talent to take a very specialized subject with a great amount of dry detail and turn it into something compelling. The discerning reader will always appreciate the talent born of love that it takes to write at length about such particular topics. I don’t even smoke or drink, but I find reviews of cigars and wine fascinating for that reason. If you’re of a similar temperament, you’ll enjoy reading Bruce Ivar Gudmundsson.

Check this out by way of example:

The Tactical Notebook

Short Problem Number 1

The following problem appeared in the first semi-annual volume of the Infantry School Mailing List, which rolled off the press in 1931. (This periodical, which might well be described as a journal in all but name, replaced the collections of instructional materials that the US Army Infantry School sent out to subscribers in the 19…

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2 days ago · 12 likes · Bruce Ivar Gudmundsson

2. R. H. Snow

R. H. Snow publishes “R. H. Snow’s Deep Thoughts From The Dubble Wide of D00M,” which showcases her fiction and poetry, as well as some slice of life accounts from her life in Texas, with the occasional photograph. It’s not the sort of account that grabs wide attention- FictionStack is famously broken anyway and she doesn’t pick fights or engage in the kind of self-promotion that gets a lot of notice. A generation or so ago, she’d be the beloved local columnist for a community newspaper with a circulation of a few thousand. On Substack, such earnest voices can get drowned out.

I especially love the chance to promote fellow Southerners, and Ms. Snow reflects the charm and humanity of rural life in our part of the world with real talent and love. I don’t always see her latest in my feed; presumably she’s a casualty of the algorithm, but when I do, her prose always grabs me. There’s nothing especially involved about her work, pieces that tend to be short and punchy, often with something of a melancholy feel, but her offerings stay with you. She reminds me a bit of from Sean of the South, who I was also going to include here before discovering he has a much bigger presence on X (sub to him anyway).

Here’s an example I feel is representative:

R. H. Snow’s Deep Thoughts from the Dubble-wide of D00m

THE SECRET of TEXAS BBQ

This is not conjecture, or fiction; this is my lived experience - Texas BBQ is a Sacred Journey. To understand, one cannot simply ask; one must seek.Approach the counter. Respectfully ask the Little Old Lady if you can see the PitMaster; if you are humble, she may deem you worthy and send an emissary. You must politely wait until the emissary calls you…

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2 months ago · 20 likes · 7 comments · R. H. Snow

3. Yakubian Ape

I really have no idea why this author isn’t much bigger. Yakubian Ape publishes both “The Lake of Lerna,” which covers pop culture and internet lore, and “Simian Fiction” where he publishes short stories very informed by the same influences. I suppose part of the reason might be that, compared to some others, he’s not especially prolific, but this is due to the sheer industry he pours into each essay. Like , Yakubian Ape is pure effortpost. Unlike Carter, who is very, very Canadian and an avowed rightist, Yakubian Ape is, like the material he covers and produces, clouded in a kind of ambiguous liminality. There is nothing to quite place him definitively in any sort of place or alignment; he simply appears in one’s inbox, delivers a thoroughly researched, incredibly readable deep dive into some obscure children’s’ show or Japanese horse racing, and then he’s just gone. He has no significant presence on Notes or any other platform I can find. Yakubian Ape would be a great subject for a five-part series by Yakubian Ape.

Representative of his work is this older piece, one which engagingly blends what appears to be (and may in fact be) a real memory from childhood into a strange and slightly disturbing premise:

The Lake of Lerna

Were you an Angel Hare kid?

Does anyone else remember Angel Hare? Or was that just a me thing growing up…

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2 years ago · 19 likes · 16 comments · Yakubian Ape

4. Billionaire Psycho

I almost didn’t include Billionaire Psycho and his eponymous publication because I assumed at first that he had long since hit bestseller status already. He’s a great writer of wide talent; his latest on Avatar is definitely worth reading. For that matter, check out his “Crocodile Tears and the Conservative Movement” as being especially emblematic of charged and defiant energy he brings to his work. It breaks my rule a bit to mention him, because he does get political, but talking about Billionaire Psycho also provides the opening to mention a whole raft of other people sharing the same general status, and a great opportunity to showcase them as well.

There’s almost an entire genre of talented male writers of a rightist persuasion, mostly (it seems) below middle age but no longer especially young, mostly northerners or Canadians, who generate excellent work, but somehow haven’t yet made that leap into white check territory. Their work tends to be highly critical of society and its institutions without overt dooming and very much centered on a kind of longing for normative masculine success in the managerial system they find themselves in. This very much includes family life, the specter of which often haunts their prose like something from Mark Fisher. There’s , and , , , (seems a bit younger), maybe would fit as well; all of these and more that I’m sure I’ll remember as soon as I publish this, deserve far more notice than they have, and I encourage all of you to subscribe today.

5. Lisa Kuznak

Lisa Kuznak at “Mechanical Pulp” is, I believe, another casualty of Substack’s challenging environment for fiction writers. Her novel, Pallas, is the kind of science fiction that one would expect a website devoted to promoting writers to embrace, which it has. The problem is that it embraces literally everything else as well, leading to decent work drowning in a sea of DE(A)I and softcore pornography. From the outside (I don’t publish much fiction) I’d say the problem is a lack of curation. There are a lot of people writing, and a large audience that wants to read, but no editors and tastemakers and promoters in the middle- no decent, honest ones, anyway.

This is a shame, because Kuznak also puts out thoughtful pieces about the writing process as well, and she and people like her deserve a wider audience where they could perhaps evolve into those very same nodes of excellence that Substack so needs. There’s a sci-fi story there, perhaps, castaways floating on a great post-apocalyptic slop ocean, trying to find some kind of shore to land on and rebuild something enduring. It would be like Waterworld, but with crappy writing instead of water and no Dennis Hopper. Anyway, here’s the latest from Lisa Kuznak:

Mechanical Pulp

Characters are Actually the Most Important Part

Hello, and welcome to Mechanical Pulp, where I, Lisa Kuznak, will sometimes rant write about writing (gross,) and things related to storytelling in general…

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a month ago · 56 likes · 16 comments · Lisa Kuznak

6. Kent Peterson

Substack can be a cruel place. You put yourself out there, and in return, you get a gaggle of autistic malcontents calling you a Zionist shill over and over in your comments like the chorus of a Greek tragedy set in Gaza. But as Aristotle knew, the point of tragedy was catharsis, the cleansing of the soul. And fortunately, for every (100) sperging Nietzschean based pagan wingnats, there’s a Kent Peterson.

Peterson’s essays at his eponymous stack all relate to his daily life in small town Wisconsin, a state to which I’ve never been, but that he makes feel like home. Earnestness doesn’t quote cover it; the man posts pictures of typewritten prose adorned with pictures from rubber stamps he hand carved. You’ll learn about the local squirrels and other fauna. You’ll follow him on his bicycle. It’s like his byline is the Shire.

Protect this man at all costs:

Kent’s Substack

Spring Cleaning

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7 days ago · 46 likes · 9 comments · Kent Peterson

7. The Brothers Krynn

“Bros Krynn’s Newsletter” is the project of, as the name implies, a pair of brothers. I confess I lose track of which one writes what, but the fact that there’s two of them would certainly account for the sheer volume of work these guys are able to churn out. They have to be some of the hardest working people on Substack, which is all the more amazing since they both (as far as I know) have day jobs. They cover a very wide array of literary analysis, writing engagingly about everything from Homer to Star Wars, and are (at least) bilingual, which is also reflected in the range of their output.

In addition to the main stack they also produce publications relating to their fiction, which I think is- as I’ve noted with some other stacks- where they get a bit lost in the mix. This is, again, a shame, because these guys should be much bigger than they are here. As I understand it, they’ve branched out into YouTube, where commentary on pop culture has a bit easier time finding an audience, and I have no doubt they’ll do well there. But, readers, help them do well(er) here as . . . well, and subscribe today.

Bros Krynn’s Newsletter

Nolan's War Against Homer! Defending the Odyssey - Odysseus & Telemachus Analysis & Why their Bond is the Most Important in Mythology and Why the Odyssey Still Matters

Nolan VS Homer…

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4 days ago · 33 likes · 12 comments · The Brothers Krynn

8. Ishmael Wallace

Ishmael Wallace of “Castalia” (not to be confused with the of Vox Day) is one of the most interesting cases of overlooked excellence, because his focus is not really writing or podcasting, but music. Wallace records himself playing very beautiful classical pieces, often with his own vocal accompaniment, along with short explanations of the works- generally quite poetic. Perhaps I’m just not that informed about the music side of Substack, but I never get anyone else in my feed whose focus is playing rather than commentary. Wallace is not only an extremely talented musician, but such a gentleman that he personally thanks people who restack his work. Unfortunately, the algorithm doesn’t always send his latest my way, but I’m grateful whenever I come across it. I think you will be as well.

Castalia

Castalia 359

Dear Friends…

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15 days ago · 6 likes · 2 comments · Ishmael Wallace

9. Charlotte Pendragon

Charlotte Pendragon of “The Charlotte Pendragon Diaries” is one of those people with a truly unique niche that not enough readers have discovered. A long time fitness model and stage performer in the world of magic, her posts are full of stories from the days of entertainment gone by, where one encounters Jack LaLanne, the Rat Pack, Smokey Robinson, various presidents, comedians like Jack Belushi and George Carlin, and others. It’s a fascinating window into a bygone era, the sort of thing Martin Scorsese would do a three hour movie about if he could write female protagonists.

She can tell her story better than I can, so check out her stack today:

The Charlotte Pendragon Diaries by Charlotte Pendragon

Retro Vegas Nights: Geno Munari

Welcome to my fifth episode of Retro Vegas Nights! Recently I join the talented team at KIYQ Radio in Las Vegas where I talk about my slant on show business, magic, performers and celebrities who have graced the Vegas stages. I'm especially grateful for friend and fellow magi…

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10 months ago · 25 likes · 3 comments · Charlotte Pendragon

10. Peregrinus

Given the presence of so many Traditionalist Catholics on Substack, its almost a crime that Peregrinus isn’t more popular. On his eponymous stack, he posts near-daily readings from Church Fathers, theologians, and poets, as well as art and his own works. I’m not a Catholic myself, but I respect the work he puts into his publication, and in a religious landscape where everyone is trying to dunk theology on one another, his posts are endlessly positive and focused on a singular moral vision. He seems especially fond of Ignatius of Loyola and old-school Jesuitry, so if that’s your interest as well, you’ll find a lot here.

But even if it isn’t, it’s also good to expand your horizons for their own sake. Substack, with its curated feed and slop-dispensing algorithm, can have the effect of siloeing us. There are worlds out there we have yet to even imagine, much less discover, and there is more out there just here than any of us know. Give him and these others a shot. I think you’ll find them all very worthwhile.

Peregrinus

4 May 2026

A man may be justified in using less care about human concerns; but to serve the immortal God negligently is in no wise to be borne…

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10 days ago · 11 likes · 3 comments · Peregrinus

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Is this Gaza-La Raza-Groyper lucri causa going to succeed? Not likely, but that it’s even a possibility, along with a possible general election Republican loss to Nurse Ratched, is a testament to the general negative energy surrounding tech industry Indians and Indian-Americans. A large segment of internet rightists work in that industry, and their opinions about their subcontinental colleagues are fairly nuanced, running the gamut from contempt to hatred. For my part, I’ve generally had positive interactions with Indians and can’t recall any of them ever wronging me, and I’ve always found them- notable instances of corruption and nepotism notwithstanding- pleasant and law abiding. Then again, I don’t really compete with them in a rapidly changing industry, so I’m not judging the grudging. I will venture that it can go to some unhealthy extremes. What follows is the one such story, complete with some harsh lessons that both Indophiles and -phobes will find at once comforting and unsettling.

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John Nicholson really, really hated India. This was unfortunate for him in one sense, since he spent nearly his entire life after the age of sixteen there, until he died- violently- while still a young man. But in another sense, it really worked out for him, since it afforded him the opportunity to live out his dream, which was to abuse Indian people. Clearly, he was a complicated man.

At one time, Nicholson was a celebrity martyr of British imperialism, a man held up as an example to other aspiring administrators of Indians that they too could brave the tigers and malaria and flyblown street food of the subcontinent in order to lord over the people there. His brutal career and glorious flameout were exactly what comfortable officials in London hoped would inspire the bright young men of the middle class to take up their white man’s burden abroad. Of course, after WWII all that reverence for Nicholson and empire were replaced by contempt, while the British government decided that it would be cheaper to administer India if the population were imported wholesale to England and Canada. Thus, John Nicholson is far less well known than he once was.

This is a shame, because he and his career have much to teach us about the nature of men and how to rule them. In many ways, Nicholson represents, in his person, a repudiation of both the presumptions and consequences of the then-ascendant liberalism. The latter ideology sought to flatten hierarchies, rationalize authority, and use the power of science to remove constraints on the will of the individual. Nicholson, a despot in the truest sense, did quite the opposite. Liberalism led to world wars, decadence, and spiritual decay such as the world had never seen, manifesting most conspicuously in the idea of multiculturalism. Nicholson carved a brutal order out of one of the most dysfunctional corners of the planet. And as that dysfunction spreads to the core of the West, we may yet find ourselves returning to his grim, forgotten methods.

Nicholson was quite literally a born colonizer, as his family were Ulster Scots planted in Ireland to suppress recalcitrant natives. They presence there served to secure Britain’s greater imperial project, and it was perhaps Nicholson’s destiny that he would grow up to play a role in that. Had he entered the world a generation or two before he actually did, in 1822, he might have fought against rebellious Americans. But in his day, the dust from the Napoleonic Wars long settled, the new focus was India.

The British government didn’t directly control the territories they claimed in India. Rather, in a strikingly modern arrangement, the functions of state were put in the hands of a corporation, the British East India Company, a public-private partnership authorized to make laws, collect taxes, and raise armies from the native peoples. While securing a place as an officer in the regular British Army meant purchasing your commission, and with promotion there heavily dependent on connections, Indian service was far more accessible and meritocratic. For a young man from a middle class background, service with the BEIC offered the chance to move up in the world and gain the notice of powerful people. Nicholson had relatives with connections to the company, and at the age of 16, he was packed off to the subcontinent to serve in the Bengal Army as a cadet. Other than a single visit home, he would largely remain there for the rest of his life.

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Attitudes towards India and Indians varied greatly among the British who lived there, and given the circumstances the same people might believe different things at different times. The land represented something truly ancient and bewilderingly complicated, populated with hundreds of different ethnic groups who varied enormously in language, custom, and religion. Regarding the latter, India and the Middle East represent the point of origin for pretty much every major world religion, with the syncretistic Sikh faith coming into full form only a few centuries earlier. Many Europeans were intrigued by what such a storied place offered. William Jones, working as a judge there, was the first to posit a systematic theory that the ancient liturgical language of Hinduism- Sanskrit- was related not only to Greek and Latin, but also the Celtic, Germanic and Persian languages, a revolutionary discovery. Henry Rawlinson got his start in the subcontinent, and his research there paved the way for the rediscovery of Sumerian. India, along with Greece and China, was one of the few civilizations to develop a true body of indigenous philosophy proper, and this made its way, through translation, to the West, where it was enormously influential; there is hardly a modern rightist (or other) thinker not impacted by it to some degree. It was not uncommon, in the early days, for BEIC personnel to convert to Islam or Hinduism, marry native women, and go largely native, reciting Urdu poetry in the Mughal court during their leisure hours while handling trade negotiations. There were always Westerners enchanted with India, with the people, the art, the music, the food, the architecture, the history, the spirituality, the literature, and the ways in which such varied peoples interacted, despite the overall violent, squalid scamminess of the place.

It wouldn’t be fair to say that Nicholson didn’t care about any of that stuff; he did, he just hated pretty much all of it. It would likewise be unfair to call him merely prejudiced against Indians. He was, but he was also quite postjudiced- having learned their languages and become thoroughly acquainted with the varied nations of India, he never evinced anything but the most withering contempt for them. He was firmly of the camp of British colonialists who could see nothing but the teeming squalor of India, the enormous material and moral poverty of that very multicultural place. In almost two decades of service there, he never found a single thing to like about it.

Exactly why he felt the way he did is hard to pin down. His father died when he was young, and his devout mother raised him. Some have tried to frame him as an over-compensating religious bigot, and given that his own sister described him as a “great bully as a child,” it seems the bigotry was the main attraction he had to Christianity. But unlike many of his peers, he was indifferent to efforts to spread the faith in India and generally thought poorly of missionaries. The most obvious candidate for a turning point in his life is his disastrous service in the First Anglo-Afghan War (1838-1842), but as can be shown, its effects on him were a bit more nuanced.

The war itself began with the British efforts to replace Afghan Emir Dost Muhammad with a more pliant leader, which in a pattern seen from the days of Alexander onward, involved an invasion, an attempt at a pacification, followed by a grim and growing awareness that the place is full of some of the most brutal and fractious people on Earth and is simply ungovernable, which terminates in a costly retreat, the country itself returning to its customary barbarism, efforts to change it having had all the effect of flinging an encyclopedia into a chimp enclosure. For the British, this meant early success, then an overwinter occupation in which their position deteriorated, then a mass uprising, whereupon they negotiated with the locals for a peaceful exit upon surrendering their arms. The retreating British were of course betrayed and massacred. One man made it out.

Nicholson, serving as an adjutant officer with a native regiment, had earlier been taken prisoner, and endured horrific conditions as such. He watched as his Hindu soldiers refused- to a man- to convert to Islam, and were executed one after the other. After having been released, he discovered that his younger brother Alexander had been murdered and mutilated by the Afghans while retreating with the rest of the army. The entire effort had been a great traumatic waste.

One might expect that Nicholson would hate the Afghans and perhaps revise upward his estimation of the brave Indian soldiers who had served under him. But while he did indeed revile the Pashtun tribesmen (“the most vicious and bloodthirsty race in existence”) he actually seems to have disliked them slightly less than the Hindus, perhaps on the grounds that no one that eager to kill Indians can be all bad. Indeed, he seems to have learned there some harsh lessons concerning what it would take to actually accomplish anything in the subcontinent, doctrines he would apply fastidiously and thoroughly. In many ways, he went a bit more native than he would have cared to admit.

After the war, Nicholson was promoted and given a series of administrative jobs, where he became well-acquainted with the chaotic political situation in the Punjab region. Mostly under the control of the Sikh Empire, the area had long been contested ground between that new faith and Islamic invasions from the Mughals to the southeast and the Afghans through the Khyber Pass to the west, not to mention restive Hindu Rajputs and Marathas to the south. The unstable (then and now) region of Kashmir lay to the north, and the whole of the region was plagued by innumerable bandits and warlords. The BEIC ruled through direct administration, client kings, and various alliances, the latter two of which its political officers (“politicals”) had to interact with on a regular basis. It was very much a situation out of George R. R. Martin’s fever dreams, constant betrayals, perversions of every kind, and even a Ramsey Bolton-esque Sikh despot who flayed men alive for amusement.

Nicholson was in charge of the Bannu area, where he rapidly made a name for himself as a local administrator. The whole of the Bannu was infested with bandits of all kinds, from jihadis to Hindu cultists to normal brigands, and the people lived in constant fear of their depredations. Nicholson had no real interest in bettering lives, but he had even less interest in allowing any Indian, anywhere, to challenge his authority. So he set about fixing the problem as only he could.

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Nicholson arrested and executed scores of bandits, rapidly processing them through his very efficient court system. The idea of impartially dispensing justice without respect to person or affiliation was quite new to the area, but Nicholson made sure the locals adjusted quickly, tolerating not even the slightest hint of disrespect from anyone, no matter who he was. When a local Muslim leader casually spit on the ground in front of him, Nicholson made him kneel and lick it up. Anyone who failed to display prompt obedience to his commands he had flogged immediately, and was the bane of servants, who were often the causal recipients of hurled cups and dishes. He was a very hands-on leader, not the least hesitant to get them dirty in a quite literal sense. At one point, when his local police were unwilling to pursue a dangerous gang leader, Nicholson rode alone to the man’s village, approached him on the street, and killed him with his sword after the suspect failed to submit to arrest. Nicholson kept his severed head on his desk pour encourager les autres.

Interestingly, such draconian brutality seems to have actually made Nicholson popular. He was harsh, unyielding, and wholly indifferent to their culture, but that very indifference made him unassailable to anything but his sense of duty. He was unbribable, as the people of India had absolutely nothing he wanted, and his complete contempt for their social norms meant that Hindu, Muslim, or Sikh, Brahmin or outcast, Aryan or Dravidian, all got the exact same treatment, prompt and thorough. His mad fearlessness meant that he was similarly immune to threats. Criminals, whoever they were, received savage punishment, but the law-abiding were left in peace; Nicholson had no desire to ‘improve’ them or their society like his contemporary Macaulay. In a real sense, for the first time, the diverse people of the area were free, under Nicholson’s rule, to live as they wished without the violent misery that had previously characterized the region. It was a multicultural success story, festooned with the occasional decapitated head.

This being India, the people expressed their feelings towards him in particular ways. A body of wild Pashtun raiders, admiring Nicholson’s capacity for ruthless violence and his grim charisma, attached themselves to him as a personal guard, fedaykin to his Muad’Dib, serving without pay and loyal only to him. In a theologically fecund area with a strong tradition of syncretism and cults of personality, Nicholson naturally became the object of worship for a group of fanatical devotees. He in turn naturally despised this, having his worshipers flogged as public nuisances, but this only served to increase their devotion to their inscrutable, violent deity. In some parts of India, the Cult of Nikal Seyn survived as a Shia devotional movement, with Nicholson cast as a Muslim saint bringing justice to a war torn land. The last member died in 2004.

I should note that Nicholson was a complex and in many ways strange man, and there were some small flourishes of humanity as well as baffling behavior otherwise out of keeping with his straitlaced persona. He seems to have had a slight soft spot for children; one local he rescued from abuse became a lifelong personal servant. But apart from a small group of friends he had little in the way of relationships. His made little attempt to spend time with his brothers who also came out to India and never married, preferring the company of other men in the India service. This naturally led to speculation regarding his sexuality, and there was a certain unstable bitchiness in his dealings with peers and superiors consistent with that, but he himself claimed that he was putting off marriage, as it would mean bringing a woman to live in India, which he figured was a nightmare of a prospect for any proper lady.

There was also the fact that Nicholson seems to have grown increasingly unstable over time. The justice he administered was supposed to be that of the Bengal Presidency, but increasingly, he substituted his own protocols for what he came to regard as a soft and impractical commitment to mercy on the part of his higher-ups. He was very much alone in a very alien world that had more than once tortured and almost killed him, and the constant pressure of ruling in such a place under such conditions no doubt wore at him. He chafed at orders, regulations, and anything he regarded as interference, which was pretty much anyone telling him to do anything. Nicholson conceived a bizarre and entirely one-sided hatred for his immediate superior John Lawrence, whom he more than once mused about murdering in letters to his friends. There were but a few of his peers whom he could tolerate, and they in turn regarded him as queer (in the old sense) and brutal in a way they thought over-the-top. There was something of a Mr. Kurtz about Nicholson, save that he never went in with high hopes of improving the natives; exterminating the brutes was pretty much the general policy from the beginning. It’s likely that had not a great emergency intervened, his career would have ended quite differently and with a very different sort of notoriety.

The Indian Mutiny began for a number of reasons, built on layers of resentment towards British contempt for Indian social norms- the use of beef and pork fat to seal the paper cartridges the sepoys would have to bite to use as well as the recruitment of lower-caste men into ranks previously held by Brahmins and Kshatriyas made for an extremely tense situation, which finally exploded in the spring of 1857. Most British officers were caught by surprise as their men turned on them and united across religious and ethnic lines to murder and drive out Europeans. The nucleus of the rebellion was Delhi, the old Mughal capital where the elderly Shah still held court. From there, a number of regional uprisings were coordinated into a serious threat to British power throughout the subcontinent.

Nicholson, however, was fully expecting something like this would happen, and proceeded in his customary way to crush any resistance to his authority. His Afghan bodyguards disarmed disloyal units in his area, and he quickly and with great discernment gathered faithful forces and speedily marched them out. Joining with the larger British force being assembled to suppress the rebellion and take Delhi, he was characteristically furious at the soft and slow approach favored by the overaged commanders (famously, he had a number of their cooks hung for attempted poisoning, curtly informing his superiors of his actions after the fact). Taking the initiative on his own authority, he fought several engagements against rebellious forces before the rest of the army caught up with him at the Siege of Delhi.

It was here that Nicholson passed into legend. In the initial stages of the storming of the city, Nicholson was front and center, leading his men through the breach. Shooting and hacking his way through the narrow streets amidst apocalyptic destruction, Nicholson was struck by a bullet and severely wounded. Lying in the field hospital, refusing to die, Nicholson was enraged to learn that the attack was faltering, and expressed gratitude that he still had enough strength to shoot the British commander if necessary. Only when he learned that Delhi had finally fallen did he pass away, nine days after he was shot. He died as he lived, hating f****** Indians.

So what can we learn from all of this? Well, we have here a great example of a number of perennial rightist theories about humanity being demonstrated true in real time. Most people have no desire for liberalism or the mores necessary to sustain it, and especially in a multicultural society, it is simply impossible to sustain those mores and preside over a society that is safe and functional. At the same time, following very basic protocols regarding the harsh and indifferent punishment of criminals and maintaining order, and any number of different peoples can live in peace. What Machiavelli says of Hannibal would be immediately apparent to Metternich or Nayib Bukele- an iron fist can pound out an E pluribus unum, but only that, and the blows can never stop falling.

It’s also true that Nicholson’s life was in many ways tragic, a great man who could not see anything good around him, among the people he ruled and despised. Scores of other men who never approached his energy and enterprise found much to admire in India and its culture. It says a lot that the Vedas and Upanishads and such could inspire and influence such diverse minds as Schopenhauer and Emerson, Evola and Guenon and Eliade, Oppenheimer and Savitri Devi and Foucault. The individualism that so characterizes the Yankee American character owes a good deal to the influence of Transcendentalism and Unitarianism, both of which owe a great debt in turn to Hindu philosophy. Indians are very much a cultural ‘other’ for those of us in the West, but in some very important ways, they are quite among us even without a significant physical presence. And while mass immigration is an unmitigated disaster, so too is a dismissive unwillingness to learn from that ‘other.’ He is, after all, a mirror, and if you don’t like what you see, that’s not the reflection’s fault.

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Plenty of people far better informed than me are posting as we speak, and of course, many who know much less. I was hesitant to believe the supposed identity of the shooter when it was first revealed, as it seemed just too pat: a California schoolteacher? But this has been confirmed by law enforcement and the president himself tweeted out a picture of his trussed-up would-be murderer on the floor of the hotel where the attack took place. He didn’t actually beat him up like Andrew Jackson would have, but we live in decadent times.

It turns out the identification was mostly right, but missed one detail. Internet sleuths found a mention of the alleged attempted murderer’s name, Cole Allen, on an award given to a “Teacher of the Year” at C2 Education in Torrence, California. People evidently assumed this was some kind of charter school or something and the narrative took off that Allen had been a schoolteacher in California’s notoriously Maoist system. But this proved not to be the case; C2 is a tutoring service that employed Allen part time, providing math instruction presumably otherwise crowded out by daily readings of Paolo Friere and Ibram X. Kendi in the public schools, where Allen didn’t work and never has.

This in turn led to a general lambasting of teachers as a whole, decrying the overall leftism of the profession, deriding its value, and otherwise connecting a straight line from ed school to gunning down the president. This is understandable given the emotions at play, but mistaken. And that isn’t the only thing a bit off about the analysis. There are a lot of things I feel people aren’t paying enough attention to here, and I thought I might take a few minutes to elaborate.

It’s true that public school teachers vote heavily (though not overwhelmingly) Democrat, and that teachers’ unions funnel almost all their political donations to Democrats, but this is hardly the same thing as them being the mujahadeen of woke. Teacher voting patterns track fairly closely with the political alignment of government workers more generally. Teachers don’t vote for AOC because they’re lunatics. They vote for the party of big government because they benefit from having one. It’s just as transactional as any other voting preference, like boomers electing politicians who drain young people of their essence like Skexis to prolong their unnatural lives.

Now of course, they might be lunatics incidentally, but in my experience, that’s not especially common. I’ve taught at the high school level for twelve years, in charters and private schools, and I’ve seen drunks, drug addicts, wife abusers, child predators, scammers, grifters, and overall degenerates, but I have yet to meet a true commie-kazi. They do exist, especially in places out west like California and Oregon where the concentrations are notable, but even there I doubt they represent the general tenor of the people teaching. Most of the teachers I’ve known were like most of the other people I’ve known- not especially engaged, possessed of one or two deeply held but uninterrogated political dogmas, and otherwise simply at the mercy of impressions made upon them by some formative experiences they could probably not recall if asked. That latter point is why school (or some equivalent process) is important. My students don’t remember every word, or even the vast majority, of what I say, but the impressions I make upon them, for good or ill, will linger long after I’m gone.

At any rate, public school teachers have about as much agency as DMV workers in executing their duties; such leftism as exists doesn’t even really come from them, and if they step too far over the neoliberal line, especially in red states, they will be turned out like yesterday’s comrade. The real fanatics occupy our institutions of higher learning, where MAGA is a distant menace only encountered when the university is inundated with tailgaters in the fall. Ed schools are an absolute cesspool of this, worse than probably anywhere else, as the leftist dogmatism is unhindered by any brakes being applied by intelligence or humility. I met some good people there during my time, but overall, there was a level of groupthink that would have been extreme for a politburo session. They seemed genuinely shocked when I questioned (politely) the utility of lessons like “The People vs. Columbus,” pure Zinn communist agitslop that anyone not in that room would probably assume was a hoax made for Fox News viewers.

The general process is that education professors teach bug-eyed leftist cant to not especially intellectual student-teachers, who then go into the classroom and learn that their Diversity Circles are not going to happen unless they can restoratively justify some better test scores for the district, which is fine in any case since the kids you’ll get are far too checked out to care about your To Kill A Mockingbird LARP anyway, and most of your time is spent yelling at (and endlessly documenting the behavior of) the 5-10 percent of your students that make it a challenge for the others to learn anything. Leftist activism in your personal life is basically the equivalent of coaching- an outlet that gives you enough freedom in your professional life to make it feel worthwhile, or at least tolerable. 99.999999999% of them have no genuine desire to kill Donald Trump. They just want to consume product like everyone else.

But with that said, who was Cole Allen? It only takes a day for a man’s whole life to come spilling out over the internet like a samurai’s disemboweled guts after such an attempted crime, and the problem is to sort what can be known from inevitable rumor. Allen seems to be of mixed race, sexuality unknown, from a middle class family in California. Probably the most interesting thing about his background is where he went to college- The California Institute of Technology. I’ve seen a bunch of people on X take one look at his diversity-enriching beige countenance, put that together with the word ‘California,’ and assume he affirmative-actioned his way into school. But Cal Tech is famously averse to that; one gets in purely on grades and test scores. Mr. Allen, it seems, got a world class education as an engineer there because he was genuinely smart, a pure meritocrat. He’s the sort of person that or would have been eager to put in charge of society. Perhaps they still would.

He doesn’t seem to be any kind of foreigner, not a Jew, and not a tr00n. Concerning his motives, educated man that he is, Allen has helpfully provided a manifesto:

On to why I did any of this:

I am a citizen of the United States of America.

What my representatives do reflects on me.

And I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.

(Well, to be completely honest, I was no longer willing a long time ago, but this is the first real opportunity I’ve had to do something about it.)

While I’m discussing this, I’ll also go over my expected rules of engagement (probably in a terrible format, but I’m not military so too bad.)

Administration officials (not including Mr. Patel): they are targets, prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest

Secret Service: they are targets only if necessary, and to be incapacitated non-lethally if possible (aka, I hope they’re wearing body armor because center mass with shotguns messes up people who *aren’t*

Hotel Security: not targets if at all possible (aka unless they shoot at me)

Capitol Police: same as Hotel Security

National Guard: same as Hotel Security

Hotel Employees: not targets at all

Guests: not targets at all

In order to minimize casualties I will also be using buckshot rather than slugs (less penetration through walls)

I would still go through most everyone here to get to the targets if it were absolutely necessary (on the basis that most people *chose* to attend a speech by a pedophile, rapist, and traitor, and are thus complicit) but I really hope it doesn’t come to that.

Rebuttals to objections:

Objection 1: As a Christian, you should turn the other cheek.

Rebuttal: Turning the other cheek is for when you yourself are oppressed. I’m not the person raped in a detention camp. [Edit: update on that status no doubt incoming] I’m not the fisherman executed without trial. I’m not a schoolkid blown up or a child starved or a teenage girl abused by the many criminals in this administration.

Turning the other cheek when *someone else* is oppressed is not Christian behavior; it is complicity in the oppressor’s crimes.

Rebuttal: I need whoever thinks this way to take a couple minutes and realize that the world isn’t about them. Do you think that when I see someone raped or murdered or abused, I should walk on by because it would be “inconvenient” for people who aren’t the victim?

This was the best timing and chance of success I could come up with.

Police officers directing attendees outside of the hotel.REUTERS

Objection 3: You didn’t get them all.

Rebuttal: Gotta start somewhere.

Objection 4: As a half-black, half-white person, you shouldn’t be the one doing this.

Rebuttal: I don’t see anyone else picking up the slack

Objection 5: Yield unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.

Rebuttal: The United States of America are ruled by the law, not by any one or several people. In so far as representatives and judges do not follow the law, no one is required to yield them anything so unlawfully ordered.

I would also like to extend my appreciation to a great many people since I will not be likely to be able to talk with them again (unless the Secret Service is *astoundingly* incompetent.)

Allen (coldforce) was definitely a full-blown leftist maniac with the Bluesky resume to prove it:

But all the same, his rationale is far more complex that Trump simply being an istaphobe. Notice that the specific reasons he gives for killing Trump are that the president is a “pedophile, rapist, and traitor.” It’s the kind of thing you hear on MSNBC, sure, but its also the stuff increasingly coming out of the right. Not to the same degree in all places, certainly, but as I’ve said before, Covid, Epstein, and now the War in Iran have just fried a lot of brains, on top of the general deluge of grifting that’s only increased exponentially of late. Granted, there are some differences in the political nature of the unhinged posting that seems to have inspired. Leftists and liberals profusely label Trump a pedophile, for example, though in other contexts they generally have little problem with that lifestyle choice. The non-Groyper right is still characterized by a manifest, visceral disgust for chomos and anything like that, and thus those who’ve fallen out with Trump, those grifting off his name, or those who fit both categories usually frame Trump’s relationship with Epstein as one of submission to blackmail or some sort of acquiescence to Jewish power rather than outright sex crimes. This has led to a the creation of a vast scaffolding of fever-dream conceptualization of power and its ends, with talk of an “Epstein class” that supposedly governs the West, or even the whole world.

There’s no vibe like this with Allen’s posting. There are, however, other interesting points. Pace everything he said on BlueSky, he describes himself here as a Christian, and his theory of a Christian’s duty to oppose evil with violence is not far from that of Ivan Ilyin. He seems to know his firearms, and unlike the tr00n (and tr00n adjacent) shooters that have become the hot new trend on the left, Allen seems not to have been wholly indifferent to human life. Note the odd specification that he wasn’t after Kash Patel. His overall ‘resistance to tyranny’ rationale would not be out of place in a 90’s militia group or some Boogaloo Boys cell.

I don’t think Allen was some secret rightist. I think that his somewhat comprehensible (though wholly evil) justification for his actions stems from the fact that he represents something really quite new in the world of leftist violence. The other recent shooters of note were to a man/woman/undecided mentally deranged, emotionally damaged, and sexually confused- the default for the left in general, simply refined to a purer, more destructive form. But Allen was normal. Unlike the losers who usually commit these sorts of crimes, he had a ticket to the good life in America. He was a Cal Tech engineer able to live in California tutoring part time while he developed video games for Steam. He doesn’t seem to have ever been in trouble with the law or illness, mental or otherwise; he made a lifetime’s worth of good choices that got him into a position most of his peers would envy. If you followed the same path, he might have been your neighbor. This sickness has metastasized to healthy tissue.

And this is the main dysfunction of conspiracy theories. Blaming the Jews, or a saying Trump orchestrated the whole thing to get his new ballroom, or whatever else is being spun onto the web as I type this, are, on one level, rationalizations designed to help those who hold them avoid facing a reality they’d prefer wasn’t real. Denial is a stage of grief. This isn’t some plot by the Epstein class. Cole Allen tried to kill Donald Trump, just like so many others like him would happily kill you, because they have all made a considered decision that the world would be a better place with him and you dead. It’s nothing personal. They probably smile at you when they make your latte at Starbucks. They don’t do personal. To the leftist, the individual is superstructure; class determines consciousness, and you’re in all the wrong categories. The rhetoric is (mostly) not openly exterminationist, but in its feminine, circumlocutory way, it points inexorably in that direction. Unearned privilege, toxic manhood, end whiteness- its all just a bunch of seeds planted in receptive minds that germinate into an ethic of murder and expropriation. I mentioned earlier that 99% of the teachers who mouth leftist slogans have no real desire to kill Donald Trump; this is not to say they wouldn’t rejoice to wake up in a world where someone did. They’d celebrate it and rationalize it, as though someone had hung Columbus- he deserved it really, enemy of the people and all that. They all do. Just ask Hasan Piker:

There’s an urban legend, “The Babysitter and the Man Upstairs.” A teenage girl, alone with the child she’s left to watch over, begins receiving harassing phone calls. She wonders who it must be, some pervert far away trying to scare her for his sick pleasure. But she slowly and horrifically discovers that the man isn’t calling from elsewhere. He’s already there with her.

The threat isn’t coming from Mossad, or Mormons, or Epstein acolytes answering to beings from Alpha Draconis. It isn’t coming from someone far away, someone alien, someone from outside intruding on your normal life. No, he’s already right there beside you. The call is coming from inside the house. They made a movie about it.

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Now, no one has, to my knowledge, actually administered any sort of proper diagnostic test to Timmy, a large, humpback whale. I assume this is because no psychometrician has yet developed a battery of assessments able to be given in clicks and whistles, nor has anyone yet conceived of a way for a 40 ton animal to sit at a desk for hours. Or maybe SPED teachers in Germany are just lazy; I don’t know- I’m not a nerd. Timmy’s dysgenic intellectual capacity instead has to be inferred from his behavior. Eugyppius notes the following:

Authorities cut Timmy free [from a net] in the hopes that he would swim back to the Atlantic like a good whale, but instead he continued to poop around off the German Baltic coast where he does not belong, finally stranding himself on a sandbar near Niendorf like a complete fucking retard [scientifically speaking]. An intensive rescue ensued – breathlessly livestreamed by the German press and regrettably also live-tweeted by myself. Ultimately the effort succeeded and Timmy swam free, only to strand himself again, and again, and again, and still again.

Consistent with my surmise that German SPED teachers might just be phoning it in, it seems that the Timmy saga has shined a not especially flattering light on the entire educated class of Germans, revealing them to be emotionally incontinent adult children with severe and wholly uninterrogated displaced emotions. Timmy is the child they never had and the Palestinian they just aren’t able to rescue. He’s a symbol of the sad state of any planet Earth where white humans exist. It may actually be that Timmy is smarter than any of us realize, and that he is actually repeatedly beaching himself on German soil in hopes that these the miserable SSRI-blitzed women of both sexes that constitute his fandom will ensure that he’s given political asylum and welfare checks. But, given that humpback whales are generally peaceable creatures who live in harmony with their environment, it’s difficult to see how Timmy would fit in as an immigrant in Germany. Perhaps the Green Party can get him to convert to Islam.

The inescapades of Timmy reminded me of another story about a very different whale from a very different time. Not only are the humans of Europe in a sad decline into stagnant irrelevancy, historically speaking, but so are the whales. Both used to be much tougher, more confident, and altogether more interested not merely in surviving, but thriving. Let us look to the days of the Byzantines, when things were rougher out there. Let us recall the story of Porphyrion.

Porphyrion lived in the Sea of Marmara near the Bosphorus Straits, flourishing closely in time with the reign of the Emperor Justinian the Great. This is fitting because each in his own way was a monarch, and arguably Porphyrion was the more powerful of the two, as his human peer tried and failed for decades to dislodge him from his ocean demesne. The urgency was due to the fact that Porphyrion was a random and formidable terror to the ships of the era, with sailors and fishermen spending season after season dreading an encounter with him. There’s not any exact record of how much havoc he wreaked, but the main source on Porphyrion, Procopius, mentions him not once but in two different works, so he evidently looked large in the imagination of his contemporaries. The following is from The Gothic Wars:

It was at this time also that the whale, which the Byzantines called Porphyrius, was caught. This whale had been annoying Byzantium and the towns about it for fifty years, not continuously, however, but disappearing sometimes for a rather long interval. And it sank many boats and terrified the passengers of many others, driving them from their course and carrying them off to great distances. It had consequently become a matter of concern to the Emperor Justinian to capture this creature, but he was unable by any device to accomplish his purpose.

We modern people are so used to a tame and distant nature that it is easy for us to forget how even a single large, dangerous animal can paralyze a whole community, even one of significant size. The Great White Hunters of the Age of Imperialism were often summoned to deal with tigers in the Indian jungle that made a habit of devouring villagers. Specialists existed to deal with bears in the remoter parts of Meiji Japan. More recently, Gustav, a fiendishly large Nile crocodile, is reported to have killed some 300 people in Burundi; I say killed, because crocodiles only need to eat relatively rarely, but Gustav often just slaughters and abandons human corpses. One could be forgiven for thinking he just likes doing it.

That notion that there is just something… different about certain animals pervades tales of creatures like the ones I’m describing. There’s an aura of the supernatural or paranormal about them, a cryptid-like quality that distinguishes them from normal animals, which brings forth into the conscious mind the atavistic fear that early man must once have felt toward the primordial horrors of the Pleistocene. The man eating Lions of Tsavo that brought the construction of an entire railroad to a halt until hunters could finally dispatch them were two exceptionally large, maneless male lions with very particular behavior- they dragged prey back to caves to eat it. Normal African lions don’t do this, living in the open as they do, and some have suggested that the pair represented a local relict population of a subspecies of lion ecologically and phenotypically similar to the Eurasian cave lion. The rail workers they dined upon thought of them as evil spirits rather than the big cats they were familiar with. Likewise the Beast of Gevaudan that terrorized south-central France in the mid-1760s, killing over 100 people, was wolf… like, but even after it was finally shot and killed, it’s identity remained inconclusive. That body count is extraordinarily prolific for a man-eating wolf, leading contemporaries to assume some sort of demonic influence. The villagers of rural Burundi believe the same about Gustav.

In much the same way, there was an overall strangeness about Porphyrion. Most modern readers of Procopius have concluded that the animal he’s writing about is a sperm whale, which accords fairly closely with the description Procopius gives. The name Porphyrion means something like “the purple one,” and this would fit the shimmering dark grey appearance a surfacing sperm whale would have. The size Procopius gives, approximately 45’, is consistent with that animal, by far the largest predator on Earth. In terms of aggression, this too makes sense, since sperm whales are fully willing and able to attack ships and have famously done so in documented episodes. They also live a long time, and Porphyrion’s five-decade long episodic career of violence also suggests the same.

But there are some issues with that classification. Procopius notes that the whale had been terrorizing “Byzantium and the towns about it” which places it as operating in the Bosporus and the Sea of Marmara, possibly also the Aegean. This is not the normal habitat for sperm whales, then or now. Sperm whales are prolific divers, descending up to 10,000 feet into the black depths of the ocean in search of their favorite prey, the mysterious giant squid, only recently filmed live in the wild. They travel tens of thousands of miles a year, and generally operate far from human habitation. The area Procopius describes is relatively shallow and congested, and given the currents, it would be difficult for a large whale to enter and exit regularly, which seems to be implied as happening with his being inactive there for “long intervals.” The water in the Sea of Marmara is also not suitable for sperm whales, as it is almost brackish, and the Black Sea on the other side of the Bosporus would be wholly uninhabitable to a sperm whale, making the Sea of Marmara a dead end, the sort of restriction such a creature would naturally avoid.

The description Procopius gives of Porphyrion’s behavior mostly, but does not entirely, fit a sperm whale. Here, describing his end, Procopius notes the following:

It happened that while a deep calm prevailed over the sea, a very large number of dolphins gathered close to the mouth of the Euxine [Black] Sea. And suddenly they saw the whale and fled wherever each one could, but most of them came in near the mouth of the Sangarius. Meanwhile the whale succeeded in capturing some of them, which he swallowed forthwith. And then, either still impelled by hunger or by a contentious spirit, it continued the pursuit no less than before, until, without noticing it, it had itself come very close to the land. There it ran upon some very deep mud, and, though it struggled and exerted itself to the utmost to get out of it as quickly as possible, it still was utterly unable to escape from this shoal, but sank still deeper in the mud.

Dolphins definitely live in the area, but sperm whales do not eat them, or at least there are no documented cases of such. It would be extremely difficult for that to happen, as dolphins are fast and agile, adapted to live near the surface, while sperm whales are slow stalkers of the deep. The behavior described by Procopius, with Porphyrion outswimming and swallowing multiple dolphins, is not really physiologically possible for a normal sperm whale. There has never been a recorded instance of a sperm whale beaching itself while hunting as described by Procopius, which makes sense given the way they pursue prey. Perhaps something else was really going on and it was misinterpreted as the story made its way to him, but as it stands, it’s not plausible.

The word Procopius used to label Porphyrion is ketos, (“τὸ κῆτος, ὃ δὴ Βυζάντιοι Πορφύριον ἐκάλουν”/ “the ketos whom the Byzantines called Porphyrion”) but that’s not as helpful as it might appear. While it is indeed the basis of our modern term ‘cetacean,” the taxonomic label used for the modern whales, dolphins, and porpoises, and while it was commonly used to indicate whales in Procopius’ day, the word encompassed a much broader conceptual category in Ancient Greek, which an Atticizer like Procopius would be fully aware of. The astute reader of myth will recognize ketos in the Latinized Cetus, the sea monster sent to kill Andromeda, which was slain by Perseus. Cetus shows up as a generic term for any giant, dangerous, and unnatural marine creature in other stories; Heracles killed one. There was also the Bible Procopius would have known. In the Septuagint, ketos is the preferred term for translating the Hebrew tanninim, a word which describes the great beasts of the deep that God creates on the fourth day (Gen 1:21) as well as the creature that swallows Jonah; rendering the latter animal as either ‘whale’ or ‘great fish’ in English is a persistent matter of debate.

Some have theorized that what Procopius is describing is an exceptionally large orca rather than a sperm whale. This has its solid points as a theory, as orcas do live in the area normally and do eat dolphins (and occasionally beach themselves doing so), but otherwise it does not fit. Orcas never get to 45’ long as Procopius documents, and he notes this is not an estimate, but the actual measurement taken after locals set up on the stranded Porphyrion and butchered him. And while orcas do attack boats, the larger merchant ships of the period would be at little risk from a single orca, not least because they are exclusively pack hunters who are never alone for any extended period of time, much less fifty years.

Could Procopius actually be describing a relict megalodon? I’m not saying that’s necessarily true, but it should be, and if so, the only thing Justinian could have done is call Jason Statham to fight it, as presumably Chuck Rampart and Captain Jack Harkness have retired since filming this documentary concerning the threat such prehistoric sharks pose. Yes, this would involve time travel, but I think that’s the least of the logistical problems:

I think the most likely theory is that Porphyrion was just one of those creatures destined to haunt the nightmares of peaceful civilized peoples, living reminders that were are never so far from the wild places as we assume. He was the deep-dwelling analogue to the barbarians menacing the Roman Empire at the same time. He, like they, represented the forces of anti-civilization, a creature of appetite and rage, set loose upon placid communities. Monsters are meant to call forth heroes, men of another cast than their peers, like Jim Corbett roaming the wilderness of India, stalking and being stalked in turn by deadly game. The decadent age of Justinian didn’t produce such saviors and the Western Empire was lost to those barbarians, until a greater force than martial valor could tame them in turn.

Thinking in those terms, it’s interesting to speculate what Timmy represents. He is a true anti-monster, a creature so non-threatening that he’s actually a danger to himself. But perhaps there’s something more subtle at work. Perhaps every age gets the monsters it deserves. Perhaps nature has loosed Timmy on the nice boomers of Germany, not to awaken them to valor, but to lull them further to sleep. Perhaps the threat he represents is the idea that nature really is in need of rescue, and that humans are in the way of it thriving. For, in the end, his goal and the goal of the Greens are one in the same- voluntary extinction.

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The general conceptual framing in her article is that the Ancient Athenians prized open, frank, public discourse, which was quite different from our own, modern notions of freedom of speech as a right. The Classical conception was that bold, public speech, especially that criticizing powerful public figures or institutions, was a kind of moral obligation, one bounded by powerful cultural norms that would necessarily assert themselves over the speaker, such that he could be in real danger from saying certain things. In other words, it wasn’t freedom of speech in the sense of being a presumption of restraint on the part of the state and one’s fellow citizens, but quite the opposite, the duty of a brave and honest man to speak the truth to an indifferent or hostile community. She then describes how this idea died out during the Middle Ages, due to the suffocating control of the Catholic Church over discourse, but was revived during the Reformation, and then given new form in the Enlightenment that arose in the wake of the Thirty Years War, which removed the corrective, culturally coercive element in free speech, such that we now conceive of it as being the general right to say whatever one wishes, with no presumption of truth. The implication here is that we should return to the Classical form of parrhesia.

Among the Greek city-states, Athens stood out for its culture of open discourse. By contrast, the Middle Ages were largely shaped by the domination of the Catholic church in both worldly and spiritual affairs; parrhesia as a cultural norm did not exist because the horizontal axis of religion ruthlessly prevented challenges to its worldview, suppressing the vertical dimension. It is only with the Reformation that parrhesia reasserted itself. The protestant churches inaugurated by Martin Luther, King Henry, and others broke the Catholic church’s chokehold on public discourse. The newly won religious freedom, however, coincided with Protestantism splintering into its various branches. This might be thought of as a desire for the localization of religious function that had prevailed in ancient Greece.

But as the above quote shows, the piece gives a quite distorted impression concerning the Late Antique and Medieval conceptions of parrhesia. Parrhesia very much existed as a cultural norm throughout that period and beyond, because it was an essential feature of Christian witness, a feature preserved in the Bible and the sacred tradition of the Church as represented by the Church Fathers. This is because parrhesia is bound up with the fundamental Christian concepts of evangelism and martyrdom, both of which were quite real to the pre-Reformation Church and remain relevant today. Understanding this is key to restoring a fuller notion of what it means to speak freely.

The Koine documents of the New Testament reference parrhesia quite often and generally with the same connotations from the Classical world. It mostly appears with the force of an adjective or adverb- when you see Jesus described as doing something “boldly” or “openly” or “plainly” in English the word in the original was usually parrhesia. Consider Mark 8:31-33:

³¹ He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. ³² He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.

³³ But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. “Get behind me, Satan!” he said. “You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”

8:32 in Koine reads:

καὶ παρρησίᾳ τὸν λόγον ἐλάλει. καὶ προσλαβόμενος ὁ Πέτρος αὐτὸν ἤρξατο ἐπιτιμᾶν αὐτῷ.

Quite literally, this is:

And in forthrightness/ openness/ candor He spoke the word. And having taken him [aside], Peter began to rebuke him.

Jesus speaks very directly to His closest associates, men who at this point have seen Him perform miracles and have committed to His mission. He tells them the truth, something He anticipates will be hard for them to accept. Peter’s response to this is not his own forthright speech, but προσλαβόμενος, to take Him aside, and argue with Jesus privately. He lacks his master’s boldness. To this, Jesus responds with still harsher frankness, comparing Peter to Satan and stating that Peter knows nothing of the things of God, and cares only about the opinions of men. Contrast Peter here with the man depicted in Acts 2:29-33-

²⁹ “Fellow Israelites, I can tell you confidently [μετὰ παρρησίας, with boldness] that the patriarch David died and was buried, and his tomb is here to this day. ³⁰ But he was a prophet and knew that God had promised him on oath that he would place one of his descendants on his throne. ³¹ Seeing what was to come, he spoke of the resurrection of the Messiah, that he was not abandoned to the realm of the dead, nor did his body see decay. ³² God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of it. ³³ Exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear.

His experience of the Resurrection has solidified his faith in Christ and has given him the spiritual power of parrhesia, with which he now addresses the masses.

The term parrhesia is found most often in The Gospel of John, which is natural given the profoundly Greek character of that book, but can be seen throughout the New Testament, always in the same context. Interestingly, while Jesus spoke with parrhesia- with directness- He also communicated in παραβολαί, parables, elliptical, allegorical narratives. He tended to use the latter with friendly or neutral audiences, the former with those deemed hostile, as a parable is an invitation to reflection, while parrhesia is necessarily a judgement of sorts. Socrates did this as well, communicating in both direct, forceful questioning and myths and thought exercises like Er and the Chariot as the situation demanded.

This speaking of the truth to powerful people is at the heart of the Christian experience. The Gospel of Christ, the εὐαγγέλιον- literally, the "‘good message”- is itself the fundamental parrhesia of the faith, proclaimed in confident boldness on street corners, palaces, distant jungles, and online with equal force. The Christian tradition of martyrs, from the Greek μάρτυς, “witness,” carries with it the connotation of someone offering honest testimony even with the prospect of personal danger. The ultimate test of faith is really only a small form of words, but with cosmic implications- are you a Christian, when the word ‘yes’ means more to you than your life?

This differs from the Classical conception of parrhesia in one key way, however. In the Christian framework, through the sacrificial death of Christ, the speaking of truth to the powers of the world is a statement of profound, transcendent alignment rather than a mere social duty. Parrhesia is not standing against men, but the assertion of a deeper truth over and against a cosmos mired in sin and delusion. The cross, the stauros, is the instrument through which parrhesia acquires its real significance. It represents the profoundest sort of sacrifice possible in the cause of speaking the truth. And through Christ’s Resurrection, and through proclaiming it to the world, we are able to say the truest thing possible, that death has been defeated, and all men can love God and one another as they were always intended.

The term parrhesia with this full inventory of connotations was readily deployed by early Church Fathers in letters and sermons. The last line of the Book of Acts contains it, as does the first century letter of 1 Clement. One can find it in the words of Athanasius, Ambrose, St. John Chrysostom, the Cappadocians, and many others. Parrhesia is an important part of our Classical heritage sanctified and brought into its full conceptual possibilities by Christianity.

The notion that this was abandoned by the Church of the Middle Ages, or that some form of total control by the Church meant that parrhesia lost its place as a cultural value, is not really supported by the evidence. In the first place, historically speaking, the Catholic Church of Medieval times had universal authority, but its actual power was contingent on the character of individual Popes, the material circumstance of the institutional Church, and such political alliances as could be arranged, for and against. Popes would denounce kings boldly, but kings would do the same to them, and either could be deposed with the judicious application of force. The Church’s ability to mandate ideological conformity was nearly wholly dependent on cooperative secular authorities willing to deploy force. The literature of the period was just as skeptical of the institutional clergy as anything that might be written today- look up what Chaucer and Boccaccio had to say about the Church. There’s no sense anywhere that frank expressions of truth to those in power, religious or secular, is anything other than praiseworthy, being both brave and an expression of Christian duty.

The religious establishment of the Ancient Athenians, and their democratic political structures, were at least as censorious as the Papacy aspired to be. No Pope ever ordered the death of a military leader for sacrilege on the eve of a campaign, and they deployed the punishments of death and exile for religious crimes no less than the leadership in the Middle Ages. Likewise, the Protestant Reformation did not inaugurate some new era of free speech, but created new structures against which criticism would not be permitted. The Henry VIII who lambasted the Pope killed tens of thousands of his own subjects for similar criticism of him and his ideas. Catholic Thomas More would have marveled at the notion that his newly Protestant monarch was teaching him to value bold defiance of power once more. Parrhesia is universally and continually recognized as a virtue precisely because there has never been an age where the worldly advantage was to engage in it. It is always and everywhere the province of a relatively small number of brave men.

All of this is to say that Ms. Sybil is quite correct in diagnosing the post-Enlightenment era concept of ‘free speech’ as an inadequate perversion of the Classical ideal, but it’s worse than she allows, because it also represents the abandonment of the fact that parrhesia in its fullness can only be experienced through the stauros. Fortunately for us, the same possibilities for the boldness of our forbears are still there. The secular governments of the West routinely jail and otherwise proscribe those who do nothing more that quote the Bible or pray for the murderers of children and their victims. Like the tyrants of old, they seek to co-opt sacred institutions for worldly ends. God, in his kindness, allows us all, no matter how weak or lowly, the means to fight back against them, which requires nothing more than speaking the truth in boldness. When we do so, we tell the world we are truly free.

I should close with my own parrhesia. I am not a good Christian. I fail the teacher I call my Lord with pathetic consistency. I, me- not Pilate, not the Jews, not the crowd- me, I’m the reason Christ is on that cross today. I flogged Him and spat on Him and drove the nails into His body, because my sins put Him there. All He did was love me, and that’s what I did. Please pray for me, and for all those who need it, and remember Christ on His Cross.

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There are no jokes in this one. I never thought my personal life and public persona would crash into each other like this, but, in retrospect, I suppose it was inevitable. In a way, I feel some relief at having been doxxed, but at the same time, I realize now that it never should have gotten to this point. If you read on, I think you’ll understand.

Below is the full text of the most thorough article on the incident that led to all of this, which I am posting in the interest of full transparency. Those of you who have read my work and supported me these last few years deserve to know what’s really been going on, and as you’ll see, the story has many elements that may lead you to question what’s been happening on Substack this whole time. I can’t speak to how management will react. Note that I am not providing the link, because I think the article was written maliciously with the larger intent to discredit authors within my sphere, but I’m sure you’ll be able to find it on your own if you are tech savvy enough.

Manatee Kidnapping Case Takes Bizarre Turn as Florida Man Is Revealed to Have Significant, Complex Online Presence

By [redacted]

SEBASTIAN, FL- A man arrested in Indian River County in the early morning hours of March 29th for violating the Marine Mammals Act of 1972 was already well known in certain quarters online.

William Martin, originally of Quincy, Florida, was apprehended at 4:32 AM near the Sebastian River Lagoon while attempting to load a live, adult male manatee into the back of his 2018 Honda Odyssey.

“It was pure chance that I came on scene,” said arresting Deputy Clarence Spangen of the Indian River County Sheriff’s Office. “He had his van backed up to right to the water’s edge, and I could see the tail of the manatee sticking out the back. He was trying to shove the animal all the way in. Five more minutes and I might have missed him”

When the officer asked Martin, 46, how he had managed to lift the nearly 12’, 2000 lb animal into his minivan without equipment or assistance, he replied angrily, “that’s not the point!” Martin was arrested on-scene.

After booking, detectives discovered that Martin, though a Florida native, did not actually live in the state at the time, but instead resided many hundreds of miles away in Marianna, Arkansas, where he is employed as a high school teacher, as well as being a beloved but controversial football coach. But stranger still than the circumstances of his arrest was Martin’s online presence.

“He has an account on Substack under his own name, where he posts content that could really only be deemed extreme. A lot of racist and antisemitic stuff. It’s a wonder this wasn’t discovered before, honestly,” said Detective Stephanie Boatman of the IRC Sheriff’s Office .

This was especially unexpected because Martin is a prominent member of Marianna’s small but very active Jewish community.

Reached for comment, Rabbi Matt Levine of Congregation Beth Shalom stated, “I don’t understand. I was there at his Bar Mitzvah decades ago. He’s always been an aggressive advocate for Jewish causes and Israel. He’s on the board of the local ADL chapter. This isn’t the Will Martin I know.”

As it turns out, Martin’s online activities didn’t end there.

“He had other accounts as well, all sort of on the right side of the spectrum politically, but with different messaging,” said Detective Boatman. “In addition to his “Quarterly Musings” identity, he also blogged as The Librarian of Celaeno, where he often wrote about being a teacher. They seem pretty different, but after I went through them you really can see a lot of overlap in terms of themes and content, even though Martin went to a lot of trouble to fake a conflict between those two personas.”

But perhaps most boldly, Martin was revealed to have been impersonating former Congressman Adam Kinzinger on Substack since October of 2023.

A spokesman for Kinzinger told this author, “he created AI videos featuring the Congressman, whole articles attributed to him, the works. It’s all just really amateur and embarrassing. Congressman Kinzinger is a thoughtful and dedicated public servant, and it’s pretty vile that this Martin guy could spend years painting him as this one-note Trump-obsessed hack, especially since the articles look like pure ChatGPT slop. Substack should be ashamed for hosting this stuff that’s so obviously fake and letting people profit from it.”

It is unclear what, if anything, Martin’s online presence and his attempted removal of the manatee have to do with one another. When asked what he’d planned to do with the large, docile sirenian, Martin would only state that his school had an Olympic-sized pool and that he’d “done the research.”

Marine biologist Victor Kerns told this reporter over the phone that “Mr. Martin asserted in court filings that manatees can live on acorns, lawn clippings, and GNC vitamins, which simply isn’t true, nor are they adapted to live in chlorinated fresh water, indoors, in the Delta region of Arkansas. He apparently also tried to get the animal to consume a Bang Energy drink once he’d gotten it in the van, and told the cop that it was to ‘even him out,’ which honestly just makes no sense.”

Still, Martin has his supporters in Marianna, though one coworker at the Marianna Military School for Boys would only speak to this reporter anonymously.

“It was just like what you see online. He was always saying and writing really offensive stuff with, like, the feedback on the tests he gave the kids- Jewcuck, stuff like that. I remember he called one boy in his history class a ‘retarded BAPn————r’ and he would explode if kids used AI for anything, just screaming ‘Thielf————t‘ over and over. The students would complain all the time. But to be real, he went 9-1 in regular season play last year and he’s taken us to state six times, and that’s kind of important too.”

Reached for comment, Dean Liam Newsome declined to confirm any plans to fire or even discipline Martin in the aftermath of the arrest and revelations, pointing out instead that Martin was friends with Ryan Silverfield- the current head coach for the University of Arkansas Razorbacks- with whom he attends synagogue, and “that tells me everything I need to know about Will Martin’s character.”

For his part, Martin was defiant at his arraignment yesterday, refusing to plead or even acknowledge the charges. When asked by the presiding judge whether Martin knew that it was illegal to capture manatees, Martin responded, “do you know it’s illegal to be a giant f—————t?” No such law exists in Florida or on the federal level. And officers are not convinced they’ve discovered all of his online identities.

“We’ve found three accounts on Substack so far, but I’m confident he’s been pretending to be way more people than that,” said Det. Boatman. “I predict there will be a lot more fallout from this. He could be anyone, really.”

So, obviously, I’m pretty embarrassed by all this. I guess I’ve been fooling all of you. But mainly, I’ve been fooling myself this whole time. I think a lot of it frankly stems from self-hatred, and my activities online as Will Martin were an attempt to resolve the psychological tensions emanating from that sense of inner weakness. My Librarian persona was me writing things mainly to get people to call me “Jew” in a hateful way, and I took a sick pleasure in all the pagans, white nationalists, Muslims, and National Socialists flooding my comments with anti-Jewish rants. I guess that’s who I was really producing content for this whole time. Of course, my Kinzinger stack was just pure grift, a way to make money off of gullible people. That is honestly my biggest regret, because the kind of readers who are that credulous and undiscriminating are probably just getting scammed in every other area of their lives as well. I will naturally be shutting that stack down as well, and if you see anyone else posting under the name “Adam Kinzinger” from this point on, you can be assured it’s just as fake as what I was doing.

I hope that you can find it in your hearts to forgive me, as I explore therapeutic options and reconnect with my rabbi. I would like to apologize to the Florida Department of Wildlife Management, the people at the 7-11 convenience store near Ft. Pierce where I shoplifted that Bang Energy drink, the Indian River County Sheriff’s Office, the cast and crew at the Boca Raton Community Theater (iykyk), Ryan Silverfield, my readers at my other two alts (they’re totally lying about there being more), most of my students, co-workers, and superiors, my wife and children, the ADL, all the fine people I disparaged as wignats, the Soda Stream corporation, His Holiness Pope Leo XIV, the actual Adam Kinzinger, the janitorial staff at the Indian River Hospital Behavioral Heath Center, and of course, Substack. I would like to especially thank Peter Thiel, who despite everything has reached out to me to wish me well and offer to pay for my continued recovery and who has always supported my career, and to Bronze Age Pervert, Vice-President JD Vance, and my whole network of friends and benefactors.

But for now, this is the Will Martin, the Librarian of Celaeno, signing off. I will obviously no longer be asking for subscriptions, but I would be grateful if you could find it in your heart to donate to the Save the Manatees Club, which- thanks to the interventions of Mr. Thiel and some very understanding personnel in the Florida Department of Justice- I will now be serving as a spokesman. My own subscriber solicitations below are just automatic and should of course be ignored.

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Why also should I speak of one (whose name we had rather not mention as he is still alive), who for a long while received a devil in the brightness of an angelic form, and was often deceived by countless revelations from him and believed that he was a messenger of righteousness: for when these were granted, every night he provided a light in his cell without the need of any lamp. At last he was ordered by the devil to offer up to God his own son who was living with him in the monastery, in order that his merits might by this sacrifice be made equal to those of the patriarch Abraham. And he was so far seduced by his persuasion that he would really have committed the murder unless his son had seen him getting ready the knife and sharpening it with unusual care, and looking for the chains with which he meant to tie him up for the sacrifice when he was going to offer him up; and had fled away in terror with a presentiment of the coming crime.

-St. John Cassian, Conferences 2:7

In the midst of the metastasizing online crack up around the Iran War, Charlie Kirk, and the Epstein Files, you may have missed that Andrew Anglin announced the other day that he’s shutting down The Daily Stormer. It seems that the conflict in Iran, in Anglin’s opinion, is soon to devolve into a nuclear Holocaust, and as such, he’s concluded that further struggle against hegemonic global Zionism is futile. Anglin dedicated his whole adult life to fighting Jewish power, in the course of which he was driven from public life, sued into mega-oblivion, rendered a permanent exile, and now, at long last, compelled to leave behind the publication that was his signature contribution to American media. The Jews won.

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But of course, the Jews were always going to win. That outcome was predetermined given Anglin’s fundamental understanding of the world. Jews run everything, have always run everything, and will always run everything until the white man finally wakes up from his deluded slavery, which the Jews will of course inevitably prevent from happening. Anglin was fond of asking, “what would Hitler do?” Well, that’s easy, he’d looz to the jooz. It’s what he’s most known for, and now it’s what Anglin is most known for.

There are those who believe Anglin had potential once. Some might theorize about what might have been. Anglin certainly had energy, and charisma, and a certain fearlessness in confronting pieties that genuinely deserved to be mocked. But the truth is, there never really was a might have been. The end was as certain as a sunset, given the foundation the whole enterprise rested upon in the first place. He became a truly loathsome person and took a lot of others with him into what can only be called a collective paranoid delusion.

When I think of paranoia, I’m reminded of a story I’d heard about a long time ago, from when I was a kid watching Unsolved Mysteries. If you’re my age I’m sure you remember; you can probably hear that insanely creepy music playing alongside the Robert Stack introductory voiceover. The story I have in mind is one of the most bizarre of all of them, the still-unexplained murder of Blair Adams. Though ostensibly unconnected to the current contretemps on the online right, I actually think there are some illustrative, and perhaps frightening, parallels.

In the summer of 1996, Blair Adams was a 31 year old construction foreman living in Surry, British Columbia. Despite a few run-ins with the law in his twenties related to drugs and drinking, he had by all accounts turned things around and had a steady, well-paying job, one which actually took him overseas to Germany for an extended period the year before. As events would show, he’d actually socked away a considerable sum of money from his work. Generally speaking, he was a perfectly normal working class Canadian man, with friends, romantic interests, and a secure if not especially interesting future ahead of him.

But there were some dark clouds on the horizon. Ever since returning from Germany, Adams had not quite been himself. Formerly gregarious, he became increasingly withdrawn as the months went by, then suspicious of others. By June of 1996, he was telling his mother that unspecified “people” were spreading “rumors” about him, though he refused to elaborate. His sleep became erratic, as did his moods. Formerly careful and reliable, he stopped locking up worksites. He told several friends that he feared for his life, but as close as he got to any sort of specificity was mentioning his worry about co-workers who’d returned from Germany after he had come back. To the other members of his crew he wearily announced “I don’t know if I can continue on here” before abruptly quitting his job and emptying his bank account of some $6,000 in various currencies, jewelry, and precious metals. He didn’t pick up his final paycheck.

It’s easy to forget that alongside all the neoliberal triumphalism of the 1990s, it was, in its way, a dark and paranoid time. The Siege at Ruby Ridge (1992), the attempt by the government to arrest cult leader David Koresh at Waco (1993), and the Oklahoma City Bombing (April, 1995) were just a few of the high profile events from the era that remain slathered in conspiracism to this day. The end of the Cold War introduced a strange anomie to western life; without the familiar specter of doom that nuclear annihilation represented, men groped for a new dark force creeping in the shadows of everyday life. The victory of globalist capitalism opened the way for the promise of security and abundance to be fulfilled, which it was not, the specter of which haunts us to this day. The paradigmatic television shows of the period were Friends, featuring the empty relationship dynamics of a group of young adults living an inexplicably luxurious life in a big city shorn of racial and class tensions, and The X-Files, which set the template for later shows like Lost in creating a lore of hidden conspiratorial realities so complex but inexplicable that the whole narrative structure collapsed in on itself in the end. Both Friends and The X-Files reflected a deeper reality, the former by holding up a funhouse mirror of happiness rooted in a material prosperity that would become increasingly impossible for the people represented in the demographics of the main cast, the latter by recapitulating, in its ultimate fracturing into incoherence, the exact arc of the paranoid worldview, one which would become increasingly prevalent as the internet (1994) became ever more a normal part of life.

Beginning on July 5, Adams began desperately trying to enter the United States. In itself, this is nothing unusual; many Canadian men experience a sudden, overwhelming urge to cross the border during the long, frozen months of the Canadian summer, especially with the lure of the recent Independence Day fireworks no doubt visible along the entire boundary. But as with everything else in the story of Blair Adams, this case was particularly bizarre. Adams first attempted to board a ferry driving his Chevrolet Chevette, but was turned away by customs, as he was carrying a large amount of cash, lied about his (very minor) criminal record, and presumably because the other drivers objected to travelling alongside such a hideous vehicle. He then visited some friends, the last people he would ever see in Canada, to whom he repeatedly stated his need to get out of the country due to death threats. He tried to cross the border again, this time on foot, after apparently stealing a different car that he abandoned some ways back from the crossing, but was once again told to turn around. Finally, he drove the Chevette to Vancouver Airport, where a much more casual attitude prevailed towards people who present as drug traffickers, and leaving behind the Chevette was easily able to rent a Nissan Altima, and with this less embarrassing car was finally able to get to America on July 9th.

Adams immediately drove to the Seattle-Tacoma Airport, where he left the Altima behind and proceeded to try to get a flight out of town. Why he didn’t just attempt this at the Vancouver Airport is unclear. He first purchased a round-trip ticket to Frankfurt, Germany, where he’d worked previously and where he’d dated a woman while there. She later told investigators that Adams had never reached out to her about coming to town, which is just as well, since he immediately changed course and refunded that ticket in favor of one to Washington, DC. For some reason, he specified one-way despite a round-trip ticket costing half as much. Adams did not know anyone in Seattle or DC, which is also just as well, since as soon as he got to the US capital on the early morning of July 10th, he rented a Toyota Camry and left town immediately, driving south.

Paranoia takes many forms. Most specifically the term refers to a collection of mental derangements. It is commonly connected to schizophrenia, though this is but one way it can manifest. There is also the pervasive condition of paranoid personality disorder, which lacks the hallucinations of true schizophrenia, but which warps the soul nonetheless into an all-encompassing suspicion of others. Then there are the persecutory delusional disorders, which can manifest quite suddenly (relative to the other conditions) and feature complex narratives of abuse and targeted malignancy on the part of parties familiar to the sufferer. I’ve written about the latter elsewhere; the paradigmatic case for the latter condition is that of James Tilly Matthews, who was rendered insane by his experiences in Revolutionary France and ended his days in an asylum, though not without controversy. As I offer in that essay, it is far too limiting to think of paranoia as a condition distinct from modern life, wherein there are those who suffer and those who don’t. To live in this world is to be ever exposed to it, to feel its effects even if one avoids its grip. I should note that Blair Adams was never diagnosed with any mental disorder at any point in his life, even near the end, and at the time of his death was tested and found wholly free of intoxicants.

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Apart from a report of him getting into a minor fender-bender in southern Virginia, nothing else is known about the rest of Adams’ trip until he arrived in Knoxville, Tennessee at around 5:45 PM. It’s unclear if he’d slept in the previous 24 hours. In perhaps the strangest encounter of the trip, Adams told the clerk at a gas station that he was unable to start his car because the key didn’t work. The clerk called a repair service, and when the mechanic arrived, the man noticed that the key Adams was trying to use was an Altima key, which was in fact the one from the car he’d left behind in Seattle. Since he obviously must have had the Camry key when he pulled in, the mechanic looked around for where Adams might have dropped it, with Adams mysteriously but resolutely refusing to check his own pockets for the missing key. Sensing his time being wasted, the mechanic called a wrecker and gave Adams a ride to the nearby hotel to where his Camry was being towed. Adams walked into the lobby sometime after 6:00 PM without the duffel bag that contained everything he had with him other than the items on his person; the mechanic had to chase after him to give it back.

I mentioned earlier that the paranoia and conspiracism of the 1990s arose as a direct outgrowth of the triumph of McWorld. Men need myth because they think in narratives, and the great liberal project of desacralizing and rationalizing has left this need largely unfulfilled in the masses. We long to make sense of the world, and its most characteristic feature, suffering. We sense there must be some purpose behind everything, which itself is both logical and wholesome. Expressed in its highest form, it’s the great ur-myth of man’s fall and resurrection in the person of Christ, and our return to what we were meant to be. God is the man behind the curtain. In lieu of that, however, something will always fill the gap. For Anglin and so many others, that need for some kind of heuristic certainty is filled by the narrative of omnipotent Jewish control of all human life, which must always be fought but can never be conquered, a narrative of pure despair and doom that lacks anything like the dark nobility of the Norse gods, struggling in futility against their Gotterdammerung. There’s a degree to which the trolling and edgy jokes are a welcome sign of courage and a stand against conformity and stultification, but beneath the surface the mirth is a cope, gallows humor for the hangaguð, a cry against the impossibility of joy or victory. People cling to paranoid explanations of the world because they offer the illusion of understanding, wisdom, gnosis. Suffused with cancerous pride, they imagine they are prophets and visionaries, and that the lack of support they receive from those around them is simply evidence of how far beyond their fellow men they are. It’s the blackest of black pills, but by far the most addictive.

The cameras at the Fairfield Inn recorded Adams entering and leaving the lobby repeatedly over the next hour; the clerk at the desk explicitly stated that he looked “paranoid,” constantly looking at the door as though expecting someone unwanted, but also approaching entrance fitfully. Finally, he asked for a room for the night, paying for it with a $100 bill. Before the clerk could look up from adding up his change (oh for 90s’ prices) he had already left the desk and the hotel. She called the room, but it seems he never entered it. He was never seen alive again.

I’ve seen people become deranged just as things are, objectively speaking, looking up. We have an administration that speaks the language of the right, that talks of remigration and closed borders, that wants to restore manufacturing and end DEI, that prosecutes communist street terrorists and embraces its mandate as never before. The energy and youth are all on the side of the right. There’s every reason to hope, and every reason to envision a better future, at least in the US. But for large swaths of people on the right, that’s simply not what they see. Ten million immigrants not immediately being deported- He SOLD OUT! A month to round up the thugs who busted up a church service in Minnesota- Trump CUCKED! The War in Iran isn’t over in a week- He’s LOSING! Because of course, behind it all, lies the sinister specter of Jeffrey Epstein- locutus of World Jewry- as the supposed mastermind of everything nefarious for decades. He’s an indictment of our entire class of elites, despite it being unclear that any beyond a relatively small core group of elites had anything to do with him, and his machinations can be fitted into any scenario demanded by a demented imagination, including the abjectly despicable slurs against the widow of Charlie Kirk from some of the most debased human beings imaginable. Obviously, not everyone is on board with all or even part of this disgusting campaign of mendacity, cowardice, ignorance, slander, and abject stupidity, but too many are, and it is quite sad to see. Of all things, Trump is the real prophet here, because he warned a long time ago that you would get tired of winning. What a man like him couldn’t fathom was that it was because you are (and will remain) addicted to losing.

The corpse of Blair Adams was discovered at a construction site near the hotel around 7:00 AM on the morning of July 11th by a pair of construction workers. What killed him is clear; he sustained a brutal series of injuries indicative of having been beaten to death, including a ruptured stomach which created septic shock that was the primary factor in his mortality. Examining his stomach also revealed he’d eaten very recently, but despite the fact that he was limited to establishments within walking distance, there were no credible sighting of him dining anywhere. He also sustained what appeared to be a crowbar wound to the head, and one of the detectives believed he was also hit by a car. A news story quoted authorities as describing injuries consistent with sexual assault, though no further elaboration is given.

Apart from that, the scene- like everything else about the case- was bizarre. Adams’ shirt was ripped open and he was naked from the waist down. His socks and pants had been turned inside out, in a way that investigators noted likely indicated that they had been removed by someone else. Scattered all around his body were many thousands of dollars in American, Canadian, and German currency, and his fanny pack (it was the 90s) lay open next to him, though the gold bars and jewelry inside were undisturbed. The sole piece of physical evidence was a single long hair Adams was found to be clutching in his stiff fingers; subsequent DNA testing has never found a match. Despite his desperate efforts, death had found Adams after all.

Nothing about the scene made sense, and thirty years later it is still baffling. The leading theory among investigators is that Adams had wandered over to a nearby truck stop, arranged some sort of sexual encounter, it went wrong somehow, and he ended up dead. The biggest hole in that theory is that if a random lot lizard was attempting to roll Adams, she (or he) had done the worst job possible of it, since thousands of dollars were left scattered in the area with no sign whatsoever that he’d been robbed- literally nothing Adams could be demonstrated to have had on his person when he left Canada was unaccounted for. Of course, it’s possible that money wasn’t what someone was looking for, that the scattered cash and treasure were hastily flung away by hands emptying his pockets to get to some unknown item more valuable than Adams’ lifetime accumulation of loonies and toonies. But he knew no one in Knoxville, there was no indication he was planning to go there (his stop was seemingly inadvertent), and he is not known to have contacted anyone about where he was, so if “they” were looking for him, it’s hard to see how “they” might have found him. The best detectives could do was that a random truck stop habitue had decided for unknown reasons to beat Adams to death, strip his corpse, scatter the equivalent of two-and-a-half month’s salary for the average 1996 person around his corpse, and just leave, never to be seen again or enter the system for any other crime. Needless to say, the case remains unsolved.

Further muddying the water was Adams’ mother, who gave a single interview about the episode in 2017, over two decades after her son’s mysterious death. She told the reporter that her son had not been mentally ill at all at the time, that he had been on his way to the Olympics, due to begin in Atlanta a couple of weeks after his death, and, apropos of nothing, that he had once been in a gay relationship, none of which she had ever conveyed to authorities, before or since. The first claim was belied by literally everyone else who knew him in 1996 who authorities had spoken with; the second wasn’t supported by any other evidence and made no sense- why would’t he just fly from Canada to Atlanta if he was fine and that was the goal? Interestingly, the Atlanta games did have a conspiracy connection; it was there that Eric Rudolph set off a bomb that was originally blamed on security guard Richard Jewel, which led to a debacle for law enforcement and lingering suspicions that the real story has yet to be told, as well as conspiracy theories from the other direction linking Rudolph with wider rightist movements. And while the third did open the possibilities in terms of the range of truck stop denizens he might have sought out, nothing would come of it and no one else seems to have back up that characterization of Adams. When the reporter reached out for further comment, Adams’ stepfather angrily refused any further cooperation with the media on the part of the family, and they have not commented since.

So what’s the real story? What’s the neat summary, the lesson we can all take away to know what the right thing to do is? That’s the scary part- there isn’t one. We will probably never know, this side of the grave, what really happened with Blair Adams, much as we cannot now fully comprehend the forces at work behind powerful people and the choices they make. Something brought him to his doom; something will bring each of us to our own doom in our time. Paranoia and conspiracism represent a kind of shortcut out of that fear, the way sorcery is a spurious form of miracle-working, wherein the secrets of the universe are laid bare to those who open themselves up to them, but only hear the voices of the spirits of the air. There’s a semblance of comfort in paranoia, though whatever peace it brings is false, and in reality it inculcates such agitation as to shake one’s soul to pieces. But what we can do is cleanse our minds with humility and charity, remembering that the people we theorize about online are real human beings with all the same flaws and foibles that we possess, and being mindful of that, to approach the news of the day with objective eyes. Looking at the world this way lacks the certainty of paranoia, the all-encompassing explanation for everything. But it has the virtue of opening oneself up to truth, insofar as men are able to grasp it.

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I’ve written about Florida before- my native state, my favorite state. Its past is as fascinating as its present. In the period before the Civil War, it was very much a Southern state, but the whites who settled in the torrid, malarial, hurricane-blasted land were a breed apart. Even the area of the Cotton Belt, that triangle bounded by Tallahassee, Jacksonville, and Gainesville, where most of the population lived in those days and where the climate was considered the most salubrious, had to tough out an existence mitigated elsewhere by a more gentle progression of seasons. Like their mostly Scots-Irish forbears they were hardy and violent, but also eccentric and- in interesting ways- somewhat fanatical. Florida was the third state to secede from the Union, close on the heels of fire-eating South Carolina and the very Mississippian Mississippi. But the commitment of those latter two states to the cause was dwarfed by the energy coming out of the Citrus Kingdom. Florida had the smallest white population of any Confederate state but contributed by far the highest per capita ratio of military participation, with an astonishing 94% enlistment rate among eligible whites, along with arguably the highest death rate at a staggering 33%. The secessionist governor, John Milton, killed himself rather than surrender, like some Japanese general from WWII. Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee just went on with their lives.

The black population of Florida, nearly half the state at the time, was naturally less enamored of the now-Lost Cause than their white neighbors, and attempts by the occupying Union government to enforce racial equality were met with no small amount of what we in the South might call “unpleasantness” on the part of the latter. During the period known to historians as the Nadir of American Race Relations, Florida achieved the lamentable distinction of having the highest per-capita lynching rate of any state. Interestingly, though black Floridians left the state in significant numbers during the period of the Great Migration, others moved in, and the state’s black population actually experienced a net increase. Florida, after all, hadn’t been ravaged by Union marauding like its neighbors to the north, and also interestingly, for all the racial tensions, Florida was actually home to prosperous black communities that had long thrived even in the Antebellum period. With a growing agricultural economy, a booming shipping industry, and plenty of inexpensive land, Florida made for an attractive place for blacks looking to move up in the world.

The Hurston Family was one such group, making their way down from northern Alabama in 1894, the toddler Zora (b. 1891) riding with her mother on a horse-drawn carriage. John Hurston and wife Lucy had heard about Eatonville, a town in Florida inhabited and governed solely by black people, and John set up shop there as a carpenter and itinerant Baptist preacher. He did well; the eight Hurston children grew up in a spacious, two-story, eight room house on five acres in the center of town. Eatonville, just northeast of Orlando, was a wholly black community not because of segregation, but by the choice of its founders, who departed the mixed yet more-or-less racially harmonious nearby town of Maitland for still better prospects on their own. Hurston would claim for the rest of her life to have been born there and may have believed it to be true, but as we’ll see, in many ways she was her own most complex fictional character.

Growing up in a confident and prosperous world comprised solely of fellow black people profoundly influenced Hurston. Being black was both the most and least significant thing about her; she was at once almost the pure product of a black American Bildungsroman and yet fiercely determined to be seen as a black woman individual, not a cipher for her race. She would, in her time, be at the forefront of avant garde black art and culture across an astonishing array of mediums as well as a researcher into the most fundamental aspects of the traditional black experience, but scorned the prospect of black causes as such, especially any political movement she saw as emphasizing victimhood or dependence. In this, she would befriend (and alienate) a staggeringly long list of important black and white intellectuals throughout her life, and it would be they, rather than the frictions of the wider white world, that would prove a source of strength and a persistent drag.

Two things stood out early. First, she was determined to be independent, which for her meant freedom from attachments. The example of her strong and hardworking but hypocritical and philandering father showed what she might expect from living as her mother did. In addition to not being a housewife, she would do everything she could to avoid regular, paid employment. Second, she had an intense intellectual drive quite unlike any other black figure of her day. Her mind was eclectic, capacious, and never satiated, but most of all characterized by a spirituality informed by the rejected Baptist Church of her youth but fundamentally more primal and questing. She had visions as a girl, each of which she would claim came true, and which she followed as her guide in favor of any council any person might give her. Valerie Boyd’s eminently readable biography of Hurston gives this anecdote of her as a young girl encountering some books sent to her school by missionaries from Minnesota:

… She was enamored of characters who exhibited strength and who thirsted for knowledge. She particularly loved “the great and good Odin, who went down to the well of knowledge to drink, and was told that the price of a drink from that fountain was an eye. Odin drank deeply, then plucked out one eye without a murmur and handed it to the grizzled keeper, and walked away. That held majesty for me,” Hurston would remember (37).

On the right, it’s common to encounter the notion that aesthetics and culture and race are all bound up with each other; it’s thus an interesting counterexample to see a preteen black girl from the rural Florida of more than a century ago being shaped by the Eddas as surely as if she were some contemporary German nationalist. Her life would be dedicated to the single-minded pursuit of knowledge and the work she produced- fiction and nonfiction- was the creative expression of that very Odinic drive. It was a quest for which she was quite willing to sacrifice everything a normie might hold dear.

Ruby McCollum, neé Jackson, grew up about 70 miles to the northwest, in Zuber, near Ocala, a generation after Hurston was born. Like Hurston, the young Ruby was determined to escape the limitations she faced as a black woman in the rural South, but very unlike Hurston, McCollum would seek her fortune by attaching herself to a powerful man. She married the ambitious Sam McCollum after graduating high school, and they moved to New York for a time. She and Sam would later return to Florida and amass a fortune, more on that to come.

Hurston made her way to New York by a far more circuitous route. Leaving home after the death of her mother and her father’s remarriage to a girl near her own age whom she hated, much of her time between the ages of 20 and 26 is lost to history. Parsing through the hints Hurston left in her own writing, Boyd posits some sexual abuse at the hands of some (probably white) employer, as she worked a number of short-term secretary and housemaid jobs while she made her way around the South in search of nothing in particular but knowledge. She wanted to go to school, and through family connections and her own wits made it to Baltimore, where in those days it was still possible to get a high school education.

The 26 year old Hurston claimed to be 16 in order to qualify for a scholarship, and her grades and evident talent landed her a chance to enroll at Howard University in nearby Washington DC. Then as now, Howard was foremost in black higher education, then boasting a formidable program that demanded graduates be proficient in Latin and Greek. She never was good with languages, and didn’t graduate, but did get her start in journalism and fiction there, writing for The Stylus and coming to the attention of philosophy professor Alain Locke, who was one of the leading black intellectuals of his day and a man with friends all over. She’d always known her worth; now others would see as well.

There’s an almost whimsical randomness to Hurston’s life, where she more or less just ends up in interesting places doing interesting things. Even the odd jobs she had to perform to stay afloat over the years were of the most varied type. She worked as a makeup artist for a travelling theater company, where she learned the conventions of drama. She learned politics from the powerful all-white clientele at the black barbershop in Washington where she worked as a manicurist. She smooth-talked her way into Barnard and then Columbia University, where she would study under none other than Franz Boas. And her friendship with Locke brought her entre into the Harlem Renaissance.

Otherwise known as the New Negro Movement, the Harlem Renaissance was much like the Groypers- a mostly non-white, mostly homosexual collective of politically subversive edgelords determined to troll the respectable world. Unlike the Groypers, they were bright, talented, committed intellectuals who sought to showcase a novel creative vision. Staid old-timers like W.E.B Dubois hated them, but that was kind of the point. It’s common to see Hurston listed as one of their number, but in many ways, she was an odd fit. In addition to being an (aggressively) heterosexual woman, Hurston was the only Southerner in the mix. Black northerners had (and have) all the same prejudices toward their bottom-half-of-the-map cousins that whites do, and leading figures of the New Negro Movement like the prissy, Carlton-esque Locke looked to Hurston for a kind of primitive authenticity that he felt rural black Southerners possessed rather than her intellectual abilities. For her part, Hurston dubbed the particular circle around her, which featured Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen, the “Niggeratti.”

It’s also interesting that during the heyday of the Harlem Renaissance, from roughly the end of WWI to the Great Depression, Hurston created little in the way of original output. Most of her energy during the period was spent in school, learning anthropology from the aforementioned Boas, godfather of the field in the US. Typically, she learned a lot without bothering to finish the degree program. Pace the oft-expressed idea that culture is the product of some urban caste of experts, Hurston did nearly all of her best work either in the rural South or abroad in the Caribbean, where she would work over much of the next two decades collecting material related to black folklore, religion, and magic.

Among her more notably scholarly work, she wrote Of Mules and Men (1935), a (largely) carefully amassed collection of traditional stories from the region, an important resource for those wishing to study the rapidly disappearing world of rural black America. I can remember as a young man, working with a crew of mostly black laborers from such places as Valdosta, GA, and No F******where, AL, who would matter-of-factly describe scorned girlfriends burying their panties in the workers’ yards, or bewitching them such that they were unable to leave home. It was simply taken for granted by them that such powers existed and could be manipulated for and against them, a folklore born of the same genetic mixture in their blood- the Dark Continent, the Scots Borderlands, along with bits and pieces from the Indians and the scarier parts of the Caribbean. Of the latter, she wrote Tell My Horse (1938), which was the result of her fieldwork in Jamaica and Haiti.

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Hurston was perfectly willing to immerse herself in those practices herself, both for scholarly and personal reasons. She sat at the feet of root doctors and witches, Hoodoo priests and Voodoo hougans, learning their arts in ways she would write about, but never quite fully reveal. In a scientific and materialistic age, she sought wisdom in the more primal, atavistic forces of the universe, an intuitive and pre-psychological understanding of man and his relationship with the world. In her way, she was something of the black analogue to contemporaries Evola and Guenon, save that her Tradition was ultimately rooted in the primordial spiritual landscape of Africa.

This approach to black life and spirituality informed all of her work. Her early novels- the semi-autobiographical Jonah’s Gourd Vine (1934) and Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)- widely considered her masterpiece- were stories about rural black people being black people, complete with their low-coded dialect and eclectic spiritual practices, rather than making an actionable political issue out of the black condition, which further set her apart from her peers, from whom '“the movement” demanded serviceable fiction. Most notable in that regard was Moses: Man of the Mountain (1939) her most ambitious and ambiguous effort, a strange, allusive exploration of male power, faith, subversion, and magic. Always and everywhere she sought to center the black experience, but solely to showcase its depth, its particularities, and the ways in which it could be understood in terms of human universals, which to her was an end unto itself. Hurston was fully aware of the prejudice she faced and denounced the injustices and violence emanating from the wider white world, but refused to delineate the black experience as protest or suffering. Blackness, for her, was an antonymous, collectively-actualized universe unto itself, possessed of a unique spiritual presence, that produced a people with a distinct identity who yet had to struggle to become fully themselves as individuals. Race propaganda, however politically useful, was for her a degradation.

Ruby McCollum also left New York to return to Florida in the early 1930s, along with her husband Sam. They settled in Live Oak- midway between Tallahassee and Jacksonville. While Hurston pursued knowledge at the cost of money and family life, and led a peripatetic existence, the McCollums set up permanently in a large home, producing a number of children and no small amount of wealth. The latter came by way of crime. The McCollums ran a numbers racket based on bolita- an illegal gambling enterprise- as well as a network of juke joints throughout the state that provided places to consume liquor in the many counties that remained officially dry after the end of prohibition. They were perhaps the richest black couple in Florida at the time, but keeping it all going necessitated the corrupt connivance of law enforcement and politicians. It was through this relationship that they came to the attention of Dr. Leroy Adams.

Dr. Adams was the scion of a political family that dated to before the Civil War, a good-old-boy’s good-old-boy beloved by the residents of Live Oak and beyond, white and black, the poorer of either of whom he would call upon at home and treat without cost or prejudice. He had political ambitions himself, and would successfully run for state senator as what he hoped would be a prelude to higher things, which he had every reason to suppose were possible. But beneath the facade of folksy, small town noblesse oblige was a vicious, hateful psychopath and a prolific and versatile criminal. His loving care for the poor was the pretext that allowed him to scam the Department of Agriculture and Blue Cross insurance*, as well as profit from drug dealing and illegal abortions. After the trial it came out that he’d faked his way into medical school in the first place. He muscled into the McCollums’ racket using both charm and the implicit threat of his closer relationships to white officialdom to shut them down, then proceeded to force himself on Ruby, whom he made to bear a child by him as an act of domination, while also addicting her to drugs and having her forcibly committed to an insane asylum when she resisted.

[*Edit: The article originally mentioned “Medicare” mistakenly. Dr. C. Leroy Adams actually scammed a number of other institutions.]

As with all things racial in the South, of course, it was not simply about race. Ruby McCollum was both attracted to powerful men and resentful of their dominance. Her feelings for Adams were ambiguous, rooted in a longing for the power he could command as the town’s crimelord and her increasing resentment of her abusive and adulterous husband Sam, but repulsed by the doctor’s own brutality and his indifference to her suffering. When he impregnated her a second time, she demanded an abortion, his response to which was to threaten to kill her, which she knew would also be Sam’s reaction if she bore another child by the doctor. Her increasing desperation over the week before his death, as well as the effects of mental illness and drugs, would have made what was coming obvious to anyone who cared to notice, which no one did.

For her part, Hurston was also having a hard time by the 1950s, though of a very different nature. Whereas McCollum had all the wealth in the world but no freedom, Hurston found herself, by the mid-40s, on the downslope of her career, with little prospect of things improving-free, but with nowhere to go. Her final novel, Seraph on The Suwanee (1948) was an ambitious attempt to write about rural white people from a black perspective, but did not net her much money. She became embroiled in a bizarre scandal wherein she was arrested and accused of molesting a young boy in New York. She was able to prove she’d been in the Bahamas during the time of the alleged crime, but false accusations, then and now, linger on in the public imagination far more powerfully than the proof of their mendacity, and it made publishers leery of her at a time when she really needed their support. The incipient post-WWII Civil Rights Movement was led by exactly the sort of black people who disagreed most profoundly with her approach to politics and culture, and she found herself on the wrong side of a number of issues, most notably her disdain for the Brown v. Board of Education ruling that ended de jure segregation (she predicted it would lead to the destruction of black schools and communities). The more radical elements of the movement found her rural settings and authentic dialect backward and patronizing, apparently on the assumption that real black people live and speak like whites.

She had never been able to bring herself to work a steady job for any length of time, but she had no interest in charity, so when the grants and advances and royalties dried up, she did what she had to do. The former student of Franz Boas should have been able to secure some comfortable academic appointment, like others from the Harlem Renaissance did, but she was as temperamentally unsuited for academia as she was for heavy industry, and alienated college presidents with her need for more freedom than they were prepared to grant. So she went to work as a technical librarian on an army base, which didn’t last. She cleaned homes as a maid. And saddest of all, she got hired on as a public school teacher, where she encountered the educational anomie unleashed by the Civil Rights Movement firsthand, but was soon forced to leave, as the other teachers were jealous of her fame and the state of Florida was unwilling to grant the foremost black woman author in the US a license to teach English to teenagers.

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She had actually married several times, just as randomly as she did everything else. Her biographer Boyd herself seems surprised when her primary sources show Hurston causally announcing a wedding to some man she’d hardly mentioned in correspondence, and she is at pains to understand how the some of the relationships even came about. She never lived with any of her husbands for any significant length of time, and would causally divorce them years later as a afterthought, having had a number of other relationships in the meantime. The man she called the love of her life was Percy Punter of Barbuda, a college student more than twenty years her junior, whom she refused to marry (she instead immortalized him as Tea Cake in Their Eyes Were Watching God). The man who should have been the love of her life, Langston Hughes, was indifferent to women, and the two had at any rate had a pointless falling out over a play they’d co-authored that left an unnecessarily permanent rift between them.

The painful truth was that Hurston simply couldn't accept any compromise in her lifelong pursuit of knowledge and creation, nothing that the demands of a family or a career would entail. Through struggle and suffering she won the right to be herself, but at the cost of poverty and loneliness. Love was the eye she had to pluck from her face to drink from the well. She claimed no regrets.

Thus was her life when the opportunity arose to cover the Ruby McCollum trial as a freelancer for the prominent black newspaper The Pittsburg Courier. With a small stipend, she traveled to Live Oak from her latest home in Eau Gallie, Florida (near Daytona Beach) to report from the scene. As it happened, Hurston had some unique qualifications to cover the case, not only as a quasi-native Floridian, but from her earlier research into the logging camps in the northern part of the state, where, as with McCollum, powerful white men would simply claim black women as concubines and demand children of them. In any case, she well understood the racial and sexual dynamics at play.

The verdict in one sense was a foregone conclusion. Ruby McCollum had openly stalked the doctor for a week and shot the unarmed man multiple times in the back in front of witnesses. A generation earlier, she would almost certainly have been lynched. But in the period after the war, with mass media ever more interested in covering racial issues, that was simply not going to happen.

This was unfortunate for the locals because the last thing anyone in Live Oak-black or white- wanted was a light shined on their town, given that most of the officials there and a good part of the citizenry were complicit in the McCollums’ criminal activities. The IRS was already snooping around and asking pointed question of notable townspeople. Ruby had kept the books for the racket. She could name names if it came to it, though she seemed disinclined to do so. Her defense rested on a tenuous claim of self-defense, and she was allowed to testify, for the first time in US history, to being a black woman raped by a white man, and that Dr. Adams had fathered her youngest child. But any further elaboration on their relationship was hastily shut down by the judge, who had known Adams before the trial and served as a pallbearer at his funeral. The prosecution argued that the sexual elements were all made up or irrelevant, and that McCollum was actually upset over a bill Dr. Adams had given her, which she’d refused to pay.

Sam was unavailable to testify. Realizing that his life was essentially over, he drove his children to his mother’s house and took an overdose of his heart medication. Ruby lost her unborn child in an stress-induced miscarriage while incarcerated. She’d begged Adams to kill her baby; now Adams was dead, Sam was dead, and Ruby would be sentenced to death in turn.

As it happens, she had been upset about the bill, but not in the way the state argued. McCollum of course had the money to pay. The issue was what the bill was for. What finally drove Ruby McCollum over the edge was that Dr. Adams had performed an abortion, but for Sam’s mistress. She’s discovered the note while doing the books for the criminal operation, from which Adams expected to be compensated.

Though put on death row after her conviction, there would be a reprieve. No one important in the area wanted an appeal that would drag on through less friendly venues and with increasing risk of unpleasant facts becoming public knowledge. So far, Ruby McCollum had not opened up about the dark side of Live Oak, other than to note that the bolita ring existed and that Adams had been a part of it. But he was dead, and it hardly mattered that people at the trial had testified about him concerning the envelopes full of cash he regularly received at his office. The living, however, had a strong interest in the story ending there. Thus, when the Florida Supreme Court overturned the original verdict on a technicality, opportunities presented themselves. It’s impossible to prove, but one might conjecture that all parties involved contrived to make the whole thing go away by having McCollum declared too insane to stand further trial, the plausibly of which having ironically been established by the late Dr. Adams’ paper trail when he’d had her institutionalized earlier. She was thus packed off to Chattahoochee, Florida, to the Florida State Mental Hospital, a forlorn place that remains quite rural to this day. She remained there for twenty years, until she was deemed safe to reenter society. She died in 1992, never having named names.

It’s a shame that Hurston only ever published dispatches from the trial, as the novelistic nature of the case is readily evident to anyone who knows the story. But perhaps the reason is that the Southern Gothic elements present require a Christian mindset to truly grasp. The Ruby McCollum story is one of secret sin, sexual violence, vice and greed, and the torments of souls corrupted by evils petty and grand. It’s something Flannery O’Conner, William Faulkner, or Tennessee Williams could have done much with; it would have made a Dominick Dunne masterpiece. But the profoundly pagan Hurston left it as it was. That’s tragic in its own way, because her coverage of the trial would be her last significant bit of writing.

She was getting old now, and it was showing. The typical southern diet had done her no favors over her later years, and her chain-smoking certainly didn’t help an increasingly severe heart condition. She lived in poverty in a small rented home, gardening and gossiping with neighbors until she had to be taken off to charity hospice care. Zora Neale Hurston died on January 28th, 1960. She’d been working on a novel about Herod the Great at the time. Hilariously, in keeping with her lifelong practice of obscuring her actual age, no one could agree how old she was in the announcements.

She’d never owned a house or had children, and her estate lacked the funds even to bury her. Enough in the way of donations came in from friends and neighbors for her to be placed in an unmarked grave on the grounds of what is today the Garden of Heavenly Rest Cemetery in Fort Pierce, Florida. It remained that way until writer Alice Walker became interested in Hurston’s work, leading a revival of her legacy and commissioning a proper gravestone. It’s probably fitting that Walker is another political and religious oddball (a huge fan of David Icke, Holocaust denial, lesbianism, and Transcendental Meditation) and unlike the male homosexual communists of black literature who’d worked to sideline her, she could appreciate where Hurston was coming from.

In writing an essay like this, it’s impossible not to become immersed in the person who forms the subject. You wish you’d known him or her. You wonder what you might say to the person were he or she in front of you. Could you relate? It’s here that I think it’s important to understand identity, not as a fixed and distinct thing, or at least, not as one fixed and distinct thing, but as a series of concentric rings, some of which overlap with the rings of others at points. There are ways in which I am similar to others and ways I’m distinct, and those points of contact can vary a great deal. Zora Neale Hurston was a black woman, a pagan, politically sui generis and culturally formed by a past very different from my present. I have a family and a career; she made her way through life her own way. But we are both writers, both Americans, and perhaps most significantly, both Southerners. We come from the same state, breathed the same salt air, had our very different skins warmed by the same sun.

If she were here, I would tell her about Substack and the internet more generally, how now it’s easier than ever to make your way without publishers and middlemen. She would have thrived here, with an Alice Walker-esque The Color Purple checkmark, with readers from across the spectrum of race and class and politics and religion. She would have known the security she’d given up for independence, without losing the latter in the process. I might hope she’d subscribe to me.

At any rate, one thing that unites all of us, whether we wish it or not, is the fate we all share. Mortality is our common inheritance, and suffering our lot in life, no matter who we are. It’s what unites us all across all lines of race and class and nationality. For my part, when I meet my end, I’d be happy knowing I was remembered the way Walker memorialized Hurston, right down to the words:

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[GAYLIB] If TRUMP-> Dumb and Wrong sequence
[TR00NLEFT] If TRUMP-> Evil and White sequence
[BOOMCON] If TRUMP-> Good and Israel sequence
[YTNAT] If TRUMP-> Bad and Israel sequence

Given that latter reality, a number of people simply jumped ahead and argued with the position the modem noises in their heads told them I held, rather than what I’d explicitly written. I’ve been called a shill- though it’s not clear for whom- and lambasted for a “send in the troops” stance that perhaps only one with advanced Straussian training can decode from my text. Some people were offended that I was praying or that I hoped Iran would turn to Christ. Many e-ranted about my once more missing the big JOOOOO conspiracy. It would be easy to say something like “well that’s just how the internet is” save for the fact that the vast majority of my commenters understood where I was coming from and supported me. I have an informed and broad-minded readership for which I am grateful. It’s actually heartening to see that most people, at least in my circle, aren’t blinkered idiots.

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It has been interesting to see how things have broken down online, however. Very few people in right wing internet spaces wanted any kind of conflict with Iran before the bombings started- I being among that number- but then a lot of people within that sphere also valorize the specter of American power at home and abroad. The capture of Maduro from Colombia Venezuela (I always confuse those most mustachioed of Latin nations) seems to have been widely popular, as has the aggressive action domestically taken against illegal immigrants and the rebellious jurisdictions that harbor them. I don’t think it would be too much to say that there is a kind of chaotic ambivalence on the right at the moment when it comes to the use of state power to impose the will of the administration.

This has led to some interesting splits and strange bedfellows. I had someone taunt me with the prospect that Academic Agent () was totally vindicated by recent events. For my part, I’m just glad that Neema Parvini and Matt Walsh seem to have reconciled, and that the former is now retweeting the latter as someone who shares his views. I hope I had a hand in that; blessed are the peacemakers and all.

Regarding the latter, and , who I admire as a thinker, and a great many others, the consensus seems to be that- while the Venezuela operation and punking out Canada and Denmark are valid goals for American foreign policy, the Iran attacks are not what we voted for, not in our interest, and the energy and political capital devoted to overthrowing the Ayatollahs is better spent domestically. I think those are all very valid points, with which I have sympathy, but which I also think require a bit more nuance. I also think there is an angle that I’m not yet seeing anyone mention, but which I believe will have the greatest long-term implications.

In the first place, it is true that no one on the right- again, including myself- was jumping to attack Iran or even wanted that as the hundredth item on the list of priorities. I thought it was a bad idea before and I’m not really behind it now. Had Iran attacked the US, it’s fair to say the right would have prescribed a brutal response, but the mere specter of Iran’s existence and the threat it posed to Our Greatest Ally was not any kind of motive force for war. It’s thus easy to feel betrayed by Trump’s initiation of hostilities following the unlikely prospect of success in negotiations with the regime, and with the refreshingly frank but seemingly tone-deaf explanation on the part of Secretary of State Marco Rubio that the attack took place because Israel was going to move whether we liked it or not, so it made sense to join in. That is not, indeed, what any of us voted for.

But that’s us. It’s easy to forget that the true right is first of all relatively young and secondly very online, and that a large segment of Trump’s electoral coalition are neither. I mention seemingly tone-deaf framing because, while the notion of doing the whole Schwarzenegger-Weathers hand-holding meme with Israel plays very poorly with those of us on X and Substack, the NormieCon Boomers who are just as major a part of his constituency absolutely love hearing that narrative as they listen to OAN while they read about it in the local newspaper. Israel and Iran mean very different things to that generation than those that came after; the former conceived of as the plucky nation that brought freedom and democracy to the Middle East after their own Greatest Generation dads stopped Hitler from holocausting everyone, the latter being the land of bearded nutjobs who inexplicably hate America and humiliated it at the tail end of the decade of disgrace that formed the period of the Boomers’ mature adulthood. They like Israel and tend to support it and they hate Iran and tend to want it bombed. Matt Walsh might not like it, and I might not like it, but unless the ongoing war interferes with this year’s Jimmy Buffett Ultimate Margaritaville Red Sea Cruise, it’s going to play well in The Villages.

War is an extension of politics and in a managerial state that means assembling the pretense of popular support for executing the will of the managerial elites. Trump is our guy, but he also has to be the Boomers’ guy- indeed, fundamentally, he’s one of them more than us. To that point, there is no Trump without those people, and there is no us (politically speaking) without Trump, us being the Ascendant Right. While the forms of democracy are still being obeyed, the prospect of abandoning that coalition and striking off in a direction where the Boomers hold no power will result in President Kamala and an America that might as well be England (I’m done picking on Canada). It’s not ideal, or even good, but it’s the right direction for the time being.

But of course the bigger question is: is the war in Iran a good thing for America, or put more aptly, is this putting America first? That in turn requires a clear idea of what is good for America in the short and long term and what the nation’s priorities should be. There is also the fact that any war is the result of a decision made on the part of a state that killing and dying are better than the status quo, in anticipation that some better situation will result. One’s intentions can be known at the outset, but results are inherently unpredictable; war, like religion, can’t be put back in the box once it’s unleashed until its energy is exhausted.

I have no doubt that President Trump means well, and he can argue- quite correctly- that Iran is essentially a bandit state, a modern Corsair kingdom causing havoc throughout a region that inhibits American freedom to act there in significant ways. The traditional response throughout history to pirate nests is brutal eradication- it’s something the Romans would have done and even the otherwise pacific Thomas Jefferson wouldn’t abide the Barbary Deys during his presidency. Regarding the latter, it’s doubtful very many American’s during his time would have experienced the Barbary Wars as anything especially useful or beneficial other than as a demonstration of American power and force projection. But that ounce of prevention made for a pound of cure, and it’s impossible to quantify the havoc that wasn’t unleashed on American travel and commerce as a result of the successful campaigns in North Africa. It’s still possible, I think, to make the case for what the administration is doing along those lines, though Trump, for some reason, has yet to do so.

The right gets that, but the obvious objection to that line of reasoning is the far more recent example of the War on Terror, where two decades of good intentions (at least as publicly expressed) resulted in bad outcomes in every conceivable metric. It began with invasions of Muslim countries and resulted in being invaded by Muslims in turn. We fought them there and now we have to fight them here. No one wants a repeat of the last twenty (or really fifty eighty) years, and the current campaign can easily be interpreted as more of the same.

But beyond the Newsmax Huckabee high-fiving and superficial parallels to past debacles, I believe something else is taking shape, a new approach to both foreign and domestic policy that is at the same time a reversion to something more traditional and perhaps more beneficial, in the long term, for the right, and thus, for civilization as a whole. Consider first the character of the messaging. While the Trump administration has encouraged Iranians to rise up and liberate themselves, there is nothing like the universalist liberal messianism of the Bush years. Trump has clearly decided the Ayatollahs need to go, but is largely indifferent, for now at least, concerning what replaces them. The US and the IDF are more or less just blasting away at one tier of Iranian government after another until they get to the layer where someone is holding a white flag.

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These aren’t the actions of a liberal republic ideologically committed to the spread of freedom and democracy as universal solvents of political dysfunction, but an imperial power killing the chicken to scare the monkeys. One might say that Bush was essentially doing the same thing, but that effort was fatally compromised by an attempt to impose an ideology that was already in crisis where it originated. Trump is showing no such pretensions, and the stark and brutal realpolitik of the whole thing, I believe, is for a purpose. People have downplayed the notion that all of this is really about China, but the PRC gets (or got) close to 20% of its oil from Iran and previous American stomping ground Venezuela, about what it gets from Russia. The success of this campaign in Iran is bound up with the future of the petrodollar and the ability of the BRICS to construct an alternative reserve currency and oil economy. If Trump is successful, the latter will be far less feasible. In the short term, this looks like higher oil prices and longer term a move to shore up the dollar against any incipient threats.

Regarding Russia, no one to my knowledge has yet made the connection that the fighting in Iran is also perhaps about positioning the US in a far stronger negotiating position apropos the War in Ukraine. With Iran neutralized, America necessarily has more pull than it otherwise would have after nearly five years of feckless support for Kiev as it has lost a fifth of its territory. Invading Venezuela and bombing the Iranian government into hummus sets the tone for an agreement that acquiesces to Russia’s territorial expansion, which is anyway a forgone conclusion, while demonstrating that the US is still the dominant power in terms of force projection on Earth. Dugin is correct that the world to come will be multipolar, but Trump means to show that America pitches the biggest tent.

I’m theorizing a bit here, necessarily extrapolating from public information to try to discern some deeper notion of the president’s motives. But that’s all any of us can do. I voted for him, I watched him take a bullet and keep going, and I stand by him. That said, intentions matter, but results are what shape history. If the outcomes are what the administration seems to assume, as noted above, I predict that the actions taken will be considered good for the American people. If the whole thing goes south, which it well could, it might go down as the final straw that broke the camel’s back- ironically, in a region where that is a major worry for the average person. But none of that can be known at the moment.

As for the final consideration- why do this rather than focus on domestic issues? I believe there are more interesting considerations than others have noted. Just today, Matt Walsh asked why mass deportations are deemed impractical, while the war in Iran proceeds smoothly and with great energy? I have said before that I like Matt Walsh, and he’s hardly the only person I respect asking this question, but- to be blunt- everyone already knows the answer. To get things done domestically, Trump has to run a gauntlet of enemies and traitors who sandbag his efforts at every turn. His own party is slow-walking the passage of the vital SAVE Act, seemingly waiting out the clock in order to throw the midterms and enter the minority status they so love, raising streams of cash while promising that this time they’ll do something when they’re the majority again.

Contrast this with Trump’s campaigns abroad, characterized thus far by focus, decisiveness, ruthless energy, and technical competence. People see that Trump can topple the Iranian government, but can’t get similar results at home. There he can call the shots and get things done; here he has to contend with political opponents abetting a foreign invasion and the human speed bumps of his own party. I don’t think Trump is deliberately trying to draw attention to the dichotomy, but sooner or later it will dawn on people that the part of the system that works does so under the command of one man. Roman parallels are done to death, but looking at the late Republic, one is struck by the similarities between our situation and theirs- a feckless Senate, grown fat with the riches generated by exploited foreign peons, unable to change or act in the public interest, and the series of charismatic generals who built followings through conquest abroad and patronage at home. Caesar had his faults, but he knew what he was doing, and in a systemic crisis, that’s what people look for.

Trump is no Red Caesar. He’s a Boomer, as noted, and understands that he will shape the future, but not be there for it. But someone will. Neoliberalism and the managerial system it undergirds are in a death spiral. Reality is reasserting itself against the hubris of men who thought they could shape it according the narratives. At its core, being a rightist is nothing more than the acceptance of reality, of fixed, transcendent truths that cannot be changed. The force being shaped to instantiate the return to that awareness is a man, out there somewhere.

I should say in closing that my fondest hope is for peace. I admire the Persian people, fellow Sons of the Steppe alongside the men of the West. I don’t want to see people bombed and hurt and rendered homeless and impoverished, either there or here. I’m not convinced there weren’t better ways to handle this. I also understand that we live in a fallen world, and that leaders have to make hard decisions that result in the death of good people, where often no positive end is achieved despite the best wishes of wise and honest men- and that such men are few on the ground.

I should also note that I give Trump the benefit of the doubt, but I’m not uncritical of him. I think that while in the short term, for some of his constituents, going all in with Israel makes sense and suits his temperament, in the long run it’s bad optics and alienates the next generation, especially those rightists who have already put up with a lot. When you’ve got Daily Wire hosts aghast at your over-the-top Zionism, perhaps it’s time to rein it in. In the same vein, he needs to be forthright with the American people about his goals. Specifying that he only plans on a campaign of a few weeks is a good start; keeping that promise will be even better.

Provided all continues to go well, I could see this being the sort of success that’s the most characteristically Trump- audacious, over the top, slathered in shameless mendacity, and yet somehow triumphant in the face of universal doubt. He’s been written off a thousand times by people who should know better by now, and while he may still Alcibiades it up, for now, I’m willing to hope things work out with minimal further death and destruction. I can see a path forward for the right in this, at home and abroad, where the new multipolar landscape creates a need for men attuned to the deeper realities noted. I don’t think Trump understands all this or thinks in those terms, but he’s always been able to intuit more than he comprehends or articulates. He’s opening a door. It remains to be seen who walks through it.

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I’m serious about the positivity, too. I would say that that’s my general tone, and even when get a touch vitriolic I try to insert as much humor as I can. I realize that the internet can be a toxic place, but I want to assure readers that it doesn’t have to be that way. Like attracts like online, and I’ve gathered a readership of close to (but not quite) 10,000 subscribers who represent a following I’m quite proud of. Even when people disagree with me, they tend to do so respectfully, and my comment section, notes feed, and correspondence I would say are nearly entirely salutary. When they’re not- when they turn out to be bad actors or try to hijack what I’m doing toward their own ends, I ignore them or block them as needed.

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It’s one of the best things about Substack. I know everyone can find something to criticize about it. People don’t like notes; people don’t like the video feature. I and many other people I greatly respect have mocked the invasion of washed-up TDS grifters from the mainstream media or politics who churn out slop at the combined hands of interns and AI. You might disagree, but as a whole, I have greatly enjoyed my time here and I am deeply grateful for what I can only call a life changing opportunity. I started with nothing- no big name, no big followers- and now I count among my readership leading academics, national pundits, successful businessmen, bestselling authors, prominent activists, and best of all, other grinding strivers like me. If I had tried to do this- as the kids say- IRL, every door would have been shut to me and, as a white male (a rightist Southerner no less), none of you would ever have heard of me.

Thus, I tend to be a bit wary every time one of these ‘petitions to rid Substack of hateful istophobes’ comes around. I’ve addressed this before, during the “Substack Against Nazis” fracas, when woke Cringesaders tried to shame management into banning a whole bunch of people who were exercising their free speech rights within the Substack terms of service. “Nag-Swarming Substack” was written back in 2023, but like some infectious fungus that grows in dark places and feeds on crap, the problem never really goes away. I thought it might be good to look at the situation then, compare it to now, and see what lessons can be derived.

The immediate pretext for this is a petition currently being circulated by some refugee Tumblrinas claiming that the threats and harassment they face on Substack make them feel unsafe, and that they want Substack leadership to ban all of the people they deem problematic. The clutch of hens who pecked it out wrote an essay decrying said leadership’s lack of interest in their carping, to which I offered some nuanced and broad minded commentary. I can’t link to it, as the authors have blocked me, which suggests they already know how to deal with the issue they claim to be triggered by in the first place. But of course, just like with the Nazis, that’s only the superficial cover for what they actually want. Before I get to that, however, I should note some things.

I will stipulate that one argument I advanced at the time was that Substack did not feature many people who actually style themselves Nazis in any case- Nazi was just the campaign’s catch-all term for anyone to the right of Will Stancil (though he himself seems to be edging in that direction, prompting Antifa to beat him up). That has changed; there are now scores of ACTUAL NAZIS!!! on Substack, complete with swastika avatars and a strong collective desire to blitzkrieg the comments sections of others. But while their numbers have shot up like a V2 rocket, their brains remain as smooth as the Autobahn, and you can multiply any number times zero relevance, and the result will be the same. Letting them exist gets exactly the same result as banning them.

But of course, the people who sought to ban the Nazis and the people who supposedly want to end abuse and hate don’t actually care about any of those things. There are Nazi stacks that express a general contempt for most of humanity, but such sentiments exist under every banner. Nor are they the only Substack degenerates. One of the people who came after me in the wake of Substack Against Nazis is a long-standing advocate for pedophilia; others support infanticide, the sexual mutilation of children, and any number of other horrors. Many people will contest that point, arguing that those things are normal subjects for political debate, and that I’m wrong to characterize them as such. But that’s to concede their framing, which I refuse to do, which is the deeper context for the controversy.

What the people circulating that gaywad petition really want is not security, but validation. They are demanding that Substack management enforce the culture and moral norms the petitioners absorbed in school and have never questioned. It’s a code that goes by many names- ‘woke’ being au courant- but it’s essentially a signalling system for the devotee to express his/her/their adherence to the values of a global neoliberal elite. The dim-bulb votaries of this religion are attempting to police Substack according to its dictates, that and their own malignant vanity.

If you doubt me, just check out the actual text from Change.org. Here’s how it opens:

Substack was supposed to be my sanctuary after a tragedy. Following my brother's death, I was lost, searching for a supportive community in the vastness of the internet, a place to express, reflect, and heal. Substack provided that haven—a place where voices mattered, where discussions thrived, and where I could finally breathe again.

Yet, today, this haven is under threat. A growing epidemic of online abuse is targeting women, BIPOC communities, and the LGBTQIA+ individuals on Substack. This isn't just about offensive comments; it's a barrage of death threats, insidious harassment, and even the malicious creation of deepfake pornography. These abuses aren’t just breaking spirits—they’re driving away people who once considered this platform a home.

Substack is not a platform for writers from all backgrounds, you see, but her home and personal therapy circle, which other people are ruining with all the deepfake porn you can’t actually make on the site and their déclassé thoughts on Acronym-Americans. She doesn’t make an argument or offer examples; she just sympathy baits her own brother’s death to guilt you into listening to her rant. She could just block these people she claims are harassing her, like a mentally healthy person might- and which I have no doubt was the prompt and correct response of management- but of course that doesn’t solve the more fundamental problem of these people existing and her having no power to cancel them. Thus, the petition.

But there’s another side to it as well. Looking back at my older piece, I thought this quote especially relevant concerning what is going on here:

As a thought experiment, I think it would be instructive to see what she and the other common scolds would replace all of us with, were they given the chance. Going over to her page, The Handbasket, I see that she too has a broad range of topics that she covers. They generally range from Republicans are bad to Republicans are Nazis- also, Elon Musk is a Nazi and also RFK Jr. There’s a good bit about women in journalism, trans-inclusion- and you can pretty much predict everything else. I mean that quite literally. Miss [Marisa] Kabas is a central-casting urban neoliberal white Jewish Millennial woman from New York. Her prose is what you would get if a fair-trade pumpkin-spice latte could type.

“One could argue that after January 6, 2021, the halls of Congress would never be the same. With the insurrection, a piece of the institution died—and along with it went any modicum of faux-respect many congressional Republicans showed towards their workplace. If that awful day was the culmination of how Trump fundamentally changed voters, this past Tuesday was the culmination of how he’s fundamentally changed the way lawmakers comport themselves.

There have been plenty of examples of heinous behavior in the House and Senate—lest we forget Marjorie Taylor Green calling Lauren Boebert a “little bitch” on the House floor—but the total sum of Tuesday’s events made it feel like we are headed straight to hell…in a handbasket.”

All of this tame and banal. You can almost hear the programmed laughter of the in-house audience for an unwatchable late-night comedy show- “Yeah, give those antivaxxer Nazis hell Stephen Colbert!” I’m not entirely convinced this text isn’t the product of an AI trained on John Oliver and NPR. And to be clear, she does this for a living. Miss Kabas is featured on MSNBC and writes as an independent journalist. She is the proud recipient of an orange check mark, signifying that she has hundreds of paid subscribers on Substack and something over 6,000 regular subs. And even with that . . . no one seems that interested.

One thing that the people who get behind these sorts of petitions all seem to have in common is that- left to their own devices- they are terrible writers. They’re boring, predictable, and above all utterly safely within the boundaries of elite respectability. Because they read nothing else but the exact same stuff they write about, they exist within a closed epistemic loop whereby everything just gets recycled and repeated over and over, an increasingly threadbare simulacrum of prose, devoid of imagination or insight, all under the theory that reality can be constructed according to a narrative. The problem is, though, that they can’t really craft a narrative, either.

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You could do some kind of quantitative measurement, I imagine, where you could compare the ratio of subscribers with the collective engagement as represented by likes, comments, and shares, but that can of course be manipulated, though honestly a quick review shows that they get little interest from readers despite superficially impressive numbers. I prefer looking at things qualitatively. Find someone who wants to ban all the Nazis or abusers or rightists (which amount to the same thing to them) and look at what they’re producing. It’s crap. It’s all crap.

When they say they want to be safe, what they mean is, they want to be free to perpetuate the illusion to themselves that they are creative intellectuals with important things to say, like they’ve been expensively prepared to be their entire lives. It’s what their parents told them, their schools, their MFA creative writing programs. They write the same things all the smart-presenting people they know read. But the great terror they all have is that the minute they step outside of that bubble, others not so conditioned will see them for what they really are- dull, mediocre, and fungible.

The online right makes it impossible for them to believe they are what they imagine they are. The hateful “alt-right” that haunts their nightmares does not defer to their certificates or their tastes or their pretensions. In our presence, they’re unable to convince themselves that they’re better than us. Thus, the radical feminist vanguard runs speedily to the nearest male authority figures to dispense with us, so they can lay in bed, smoke cigarettes, and write about their boutique traumas.

The saddest part about all this is that, were they as open to ideas as they imagine themselves to be, they might actually gain some insights into the human condition from people very different from them. These people project an aura of personal and collective misery, loneliness, and mental and emotional dysfunction.

I fucking hate men. Walking down the street in the middle of the sidewalk, all confident, in the middle of the night, when I’m frightened of being attacked. But you know what? I’ve come to learn that I hate them even more online, where they can hide behind their AI pictures and fake names.

The woman who wrote this lives in pain, pain caused by the spectacle of the happiness and confidence of others in the face of her all-consuming fear. Notice that it’s not the men who might attack her that she hates, but the men who aren’t afraid of them. The latter is her enemy, and she identifies that enemy with the anons who contest her ideas online.

And this is what it all comes down to. We simply can’t abide in the same place. They are working overtime to drive us from this platform so it can reincarnate as Bluesky- that open-air asylum for people too mentally fragile for Mastadon. Substack is a place for the free exchange of ideas, and if you are too damaged, weak-minded, or fearful to engage, then step out of the ring, and shut up.

I’m not any kind of liberal, so I don’t really go in for free speech arguments as such. While as a general polite heuristic I’m happy to share space with people who disagree with me, when they actively try to run me off, well, it’s on. Therefore, I encourage everyone in my audience to courteously and peacefully make your feelings on the subject clear to the people trying to censor you and to those who may be inclined to listen to them. They are pure bad actors. Don’t give them the benefit of the doubt, don’t accept their framing, and above all don’t write something like this:

All simping, white-knighting, and Milhousing aside, there’s no greater show of respect you can give someone than to take his or her ideas seriously, and taking terrible ideas seriously means ensuring they’ll never have any influence over you. Given such consideration, I think it vital to make sure this petition dos nothing more than prove the perils of combining SSRIs and White Claw. So, and and everyone else, I urge you to keep me safe from these joyless, unstable harridans, prevent their abusing my rights, and try to stop them from firing up Substack AI to create haunted library porno featuring this author. The future of this platform is at stake.

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So the other day, I set off some controversy by critiquing the theories of one Neema Parvini, writing at , prompted in the first place by an essay he’d written some two weeks ago now where he lambasted the right as being nothing but a swamp of slop, personified by Donald Trump. To illustrate his point, Parvini blamed Trump for the misfortunes of the right in Europe, claiming that his hard-line acquisitiveness regarding Greenland was destroying any prospects of success for them. This seemed like an odd line of criticism to me (not least because the man so worried about the future of rightist thought does not consider himself a rightist), but I certainly underestimated its appeal among a subset of rightist fans of his work. Amidst the chorus of JEW JEW JEW there were those who advanced a more substantive response to my two essays on the the subject of slop on the right, and they deserve a response.

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Some people simply echoed Parvini’s point about Trump destroying the international right with his saber-rattling and general bombast. Parvini seemed to think as well that the shooting deaths of two communist agitators in Minneapolis discredited Trump’s regime abroad, along with his policy of aggressive deportation, and so far as I can tell none of my critics from among his disciples disputed that. The two essays I wrote evoked some pretty strong emotions, and I was somewhat surprised to see people from other countries expressing more anger at the President of the US than their own leaders and countrymen. Perhaps that reflects some provincialism on my part. Nonetheless, this view is misguided.

I’ve addressed this in places in individual responses, but in sum, the idea that the success of the international right is somehow bound up with the whims of MAGA is either true or isn’t. If it’s true that Trump is a more important issue than anything else in your country, such that he can determine electoral outcomes and the popular appeal of rightism, you are not a free people. You are not a free people in any case, because you live under oppressive regimes that inundate you with foreigners, propagandize you to accept it, and censors and jails you if you don’t. But I can see the appeal of shifting the blame to Trump, since you’re allowed to do that on the internet, as opposed to blaming anyone actually responsible, and I can understand why people would gravitate towards an entire politics of impotent rationalization to cope.

But the theory falls apart at the level of basic political logic. One poster, , kept asking me, how I’d feel if “Europeans” were demanding Alaska from the US. Well, I suppose my response would be to vote for Donald Trump (I don’t really believe in democracy, but go with it), on the grounds that, of the available candidates, he would be the one most likely to successfully defend Alaska from foreign invasion. When American interests are threatened, I support the people who I believe will uphold them. My reaction would be to become more nationalistic/patriotic/extreme. The response my critics seem to think normal and appropriate is

URGGGG that Donald Trump makes me SOOOOO HECKIN’ MAD when he talks about seizing Greenland that I’m going reject even the faint shadow of a nationalist like him who might do something about it and instead support communists who would happily hand over anything demanded of them, since they are cowards and also since we have little to fight with apart from the gear Americans provide and pay for. While they’re failing to defend the territory I suddenly care so much about, they’ll also import tens of millions of people from the rapeyer parts of the globe, but it’s a small price to pay because that will sure show that evil Trump, somehow.

My critics themselves might not think that’s a good plan, but they seem to believe their countrymen do, and thus Trump’s rhetoric equals their political powerlessness.

This points to a wider cultural problem. We see this closer to home (my home). wrote a lengthy response agreeing with the general critique noted earlier, criticizing my piece from a Canadian perspective. He stated:

I can’t speak for the Europeans, but I can speak for the Canadian Right. Which isn’t the Cons. Or the PPC. It’s groups like the Dominion Society of Canada. Or the Second Sons of Canada. We’re fighting to reclaim our homes from the degenerates running our nation. We’re growing. People are waking up. But Trump and MAGA is absolutely fucking it up for us.

Every time we make a little progress, MAGA says or does something that riles up all the Canadian normies and distracts them from the real domestic issues we’re trying to bring attention to. Whether it’s Greenland or Trump making open or insuated [sic] threats towards us, it sets us back. MAGA doesn’t seem indifferent to nationalists reclaiming our homes, they seem actively hostile to it.

This is basically the political heuristic I outlined above. The Canadian public would otherwise be predisposed to rightist ideas, but because those ideas are associated with Trump, they reject them. An American is threatening Canadian sovereignty, and for the beflannelled normies of the north, the solution is to vote for Canadians who threaten Canadian sovereignty. I was a bit hesitant to accept the wisdom of defending the Maple Tundra from the US by dividing it between India and China instead, and to this rejoinder ImperialistCanuck offered this:

You mentioned our dynamic, how we react to Trump’s rhetoric, as a “problem”. It is not. It is a feature of Canadians. It is baked into our psyche. The thing about Canada is that it was founded as an explicit rejection of the American and later French Revolutions. Our Anglo half was founded by the American Loyalists, those who chose loyalty to the Crown at the costof [sic] everything. Their homes, their livelihoods and even their very lives. Our French half, the oldest and most established of Canada, rejected the French Revolution and refused to embrace its ideals. We are at our core a reactionary, illiberal culture that chose to build a civilization out of fhe [sic] harsh wilderness rather than follow after the American liberal project. We’ve spent our entire EXISTENCE resisting American expansionism. It became a cornerstone of the Canadian national identity. That’s why we react do [sic] strongly to the 51st State rhetoric. It’s our blood memory. And that’s why, even if Trump is sending a message to the others it’s still screwing us. He is triggering an existential and generational fear of EXTINCTION and the external threat is always more apparent than the internal threat.

So I’ve heard this theory of Canadian political order before, and I think it’s true in a sense, but there’s some important nuance missing in the framing. ImperialistCanuck mentions , whom I’ve read on the subject and respect, and I’m also familiar with ’s well-thought out relevant effortpoasting. As much as I yield to them as extremely knowledgeable lifelong Canadians, I can’t fully embrace their takes, because though they are largely accurate on one level, I feel like there’s something deeper they miss about America, something a lot of European and other Western rightists miss as well.

A thing can be both “a feature of the Canadian psyche” and a “problem;” they’re not mutually exclusive. In this particular case, they are in fact both true at once. I say in all charity and intending no offense: there is a problem with the Canadian psyche. I doubt any Canadian rightist would disagree concerning that general proposition. The dispute centers on what that is, exactly. But from what I’ve read, it all comes back to America, and to the alternating cycles of terror, resentment, smug dismissal, and terror once more that have led to Canadians constructing a society wholly around the American other.

The characterization of the Loyalists in the comment is telling. They weren’t people who sacrificed everything for the crown, choosing exile over abandoning their monarchist principles. They were trimmers who rolled the dice on the very sensible proposition that their very powerful imperial government would crush the upstart Patriots and that they would be rewarded once it was all over. They bet wrong. They didn’t choose exile; it was chosen for them by their neighbors. New York basically ethnically cleansed them. In a sense, a major part of Canada’s national myth is the need to portray a defeat as some kind of moral victory. That’s not so bad in and of itself (I’m from the South, where this is normal). The problem is the habits of mind it can create, a stultifying need to preserve what is rather than asking deeper questions about what should be.

Thus we see the framing of Canada as reactionary and illiberal, over and against a liberal America. Canadians are loyal to king and country; Americans are dangerous revolutionaries. This, again, is plausible on one level, but ignores some more fundamental realities. The British monarchy of 1776 was itself liberal, the product of an explicit social contract between Parliament and the usurping Mary Stuart and her husband William of Orange. The English Bill of Rights is as thoroughly Lockean a document as the Declaration of Independence. The Hanoverian Dynasty that took over after the last of the Stuarts, the one in power during the founding of the US, was invited to rule mainly because it was foreign and would be easy for the grandees in Parliament to manage, as proved the case. If Canadians were reactionary and illiberal, they’d have been Jacobites, a plausible position even after the disaster of 1745. The main boeuf the Anglo Canadians have with their French neighbors is precisely the latter’s fondness for the absolute monarchy and Catholic Church they were conquered away from in 1763

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Superficially, the American Revolution was indeed liberal and radical. Thomas Jefferson, probably the most radically liberal of the Founding Fathers, wrote that Declaration noted earlier that spelled out American rights in terms any Whig could appreciate. But even Jefferson, who would go on to support (and walk back his support) for the French Revolution, understood those rights not as abstractions, but rooted in tradition- he read Old English and believed that the English monarchy had gone off the rails not in 1776, but with the Norman Conquest. Americans didn’t reject monarchy; following the British pattern and the lessons of Classical antiquity (the Founders loved their Plutarch and Polybius) they made a new one, an elected head of state and government. President George had more power than King George. I could go on and talk about the powerful role that religion played in this reactionary spirit, or the most reactionary section, my beloved South, but space precludes such digressions. Suffice to say that, while there were liberal dimensions to it, the American Revolution was a revolution in the true sense, a return to something.

That return unleashed a titanic wave of violent creation on a continental scale. It’s true in a sense that Canada built a civilization out of the harsh wilderness, but nothing like to the degree the US did. Part of the reason the Americans rebelled against the crown was the latter’s conscious efforts, after the French and Indian War, to restrict American settlement to the lands east of the Appalachians. We wanted more and fought to have it, and once we threw off the British shackles the US exploded into the world.

Canada . . . not so much. Pretty much all Canadians live where the original Canadians settled, and nearly the whole population lives within 100 miles of the US border (I don’t know what that is in kilometers and no one cares). Where Canada did spread it did so largely peacefully, town by town, facing little in the way of resistance from the native peoples, and when they did, the problems were handled by Mounted Police. America fought, again and again, periodic eruptions of violent energy on the part of a young and dynamic people. We defeated the British at New Orleans (yes, they had burned DC, but that was in revenge for Americans torching York, Canada), and prevented England from handing over Louisiana to the Spanish. We defeated Mexico, the sick man of the Continent, preventing their blocking our progress west. One after another, America defeated the native peoples of the New World, the Five Civilized Tribes, the Plains Horse Nations, the wily remnants down to the last few desperadoes under Geronimo. And of course, most famously, we fought ourselves in the bloodiest war ever seen in North America, losing the equivalent of some 22 million people if the ratios were the same today. No one has ever done to America what America did to America.

There is no Canadian equivalent of Texas, not even a Missouri. California is a nation unto itself; the province of British Columbia boasts as many people as the Atlanta metro area, a third of whom are Chinese. It’s cold there, one might object. Well, Florida represents a terraforming project impossibly more difficult than settling the Yukon, a land lashed by hurricanes, baking in a languid, malarial tropical heat that- thanks to American energy and engineering prowess- is now home to more people than Ontario. And that’s not a dig at the snowbros; they’re a hardworking, talented, brave, and hardy people who have every means to surmount all the challenges of the New World. The basic issue that differentiates Americans from Canadians is not liberalism vs. reaction, it’s that the latter accepted a subordinate role in someone else’s empire, while the former chose to become one instead.

While I agree with much of what John Carter had to say about his homeland, Canada is not the Prussia of the North. It’s the Hesse of the North. It’s a pool of brave manpower meant to figure into the plans of others. In Carter’s retelling of Canada’s noble contributions in many wars, I was struck by the fact that none of them involved Canadians fighting for Canada. They fought as part of the British Empire; they fought as part of the Commonwealth, and they fought along with the UN. They crossed the border voluntarily to fight in Vietnam while a greater number of Americans fled north to avoid it. But the phrase “Canada declared war” does not appear in history books absent a bunch of more powerful allies in the same paragraph. Prussia had a very different historical experience.

It’s not that they didn’t have the opportunities. Alaska with all its riches was right there for the taking, yet no scrap with Russia. Imagine the Kingdom of Hawaii falling to predatory lumberjacks rather than American pineapple magnates. Canadians have boats and they’re quite capable of violence; heck, Prussia only had the latter. But not only was there never a Greater Canada, the existing one never quite reached its full potential. It’s a bit like a bonsai tree kept by small by restricting nutrients and careful pruning, which now languishes in the shade of a massive oak.

Why? Canadians aren’t reactionary. They’re conservative. They accept the world as it is- as it was given to them- and seek to preserve it. It’s why the Canadian right wants their flag with someone else’s flag on it back. It’s why they don’t have their own king. They should. I support that. Instead, like Australia, they live under the lash of a persistent culture cringe, seeking to be as English as they can be rather than as Canadian as possible.

Being conservative is a wonderful instinct when the world around you is worth conserving. When it isn’t something else is required. The American Founding Fathers faced the choice of a stifling physical and cultural confinement or war against the most powerful empire on Earth. They made their decision, and the ones who chose otherwise moved to Canada. There was a time when that made a kind of sense. That time is long past.

There is little to imitate about today’s England, about deferring to a Britishness that itself is now in a state of apocalyptic flux. There is little, indeed, to recommend much of the Old World of the West, which tore itself to pieces in a series of generational cataclysms and decided that the solution to preventing WWIII was to teach the various nations of Europe to hate themselves so much they’d be unwilling to fight in their own interests. And yes, I recognize that America played a role in all of this. The managerial state is a largely American creation, the dark egregore of our gigantism, our materialism, and our drive to mastery of man and nature. But it’s not our only contribution to the state of things.

America is the new Rome. Like the city on the Tiber, we were forged in the wilderness by outcasts and reprobates, but possessed of a noble lineage that no oppression could erase. Like Rome, we conquered. Like Rome, we stamped our name into history like a coin being struck by a press. And like Rome, long after we’re gone, barbarians will connive to bear the title of President of the United States. We lack only the crisis and man on horseback to fully realize an imperial destiny, and perhaps a fully-formed religious vision, but that’s a different discussion. I know it’s a bold claim, but if not us, then what? What axis apart from us is there for the West to revolve in the emerging multipolar order? And no, El Salvador is too small.

It’s fine and true to speak of America’s Western heritage, our European culture. But while we must remember where we came from, we must also recognize that America is a great world civilization in its own right. We’re all someone’s son, but there comes a time when we become men, or should. America’s energy is frightening. People I admire did their best not to think about it- Lewis and Tolkien had nothing but contempt for the US; Evola hated America. But it is my firm belief that the dynamism of my country is the still the hurtling comet that represents the power of the West.

Canada is only Canada because it came from England, which is good, but it will cease being Canada if it keeps being England, which is not so good. A tipping point is being reached where the question is not going to be whether Trump will violate Syrupean sovereignty by threatening Alberta but whether he’ll preserve it by rescuing it from a rapacious China. And this is what Canadian and European public misunderstands about Trump. His bluster is meant to warn. If he has no respect for you, neither does Russia, China, India, heck- probably Indonesia at this point. If he boasts that he can grab Greenland any time he wants, and you know that the only thing you can do in response is embargo IKEA exports, you’ve already lost, and he wants you to know you’ve lost so you’ll stop losing.

MAGA in its crude American way wants you all to wake up and become what the hour demands. MAGA represents the repudiation of conservatism on the part of the ruling party of the most powerful nation on Earth. Making America great again will be impossible to confine to America. You can dismiss it as lowbrow, or slop, or whatever helps the cope, but new kings, a revival of tradition, tons of babies- it starts with recognizing the need. It’s not time for continuity, but resurrection. If Trump’s public statements make it hard for you foreign rightists to accomplish this goal because he scares the hoes, the problem isn’t Trump. It’s that you’re ruled by hoes, or have become them. Revere what made you what you are. Become what you were meant to be.

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I had little previous experience of him, but having reviewed his recent X posts, I anticipated that Parvini would either rage-block me or respond with anger to what I’d written. He seems to handle criticism poorly and has busied himself denouncing people who otherwise like him and his work as agents of the Zionist entity for their entirely polite and thoughtful responses to the essay I mentioned. If vitriolic Jewbaiting is the best his fans could hope for, I was sure that he’d either drop the banhammer or come at me for my take. Instead, something else happened.

Just this morning, Parvini published Activating Agent Smith: How the Slop Right Matrix Exposed Itself, in which he (I think) argues that the latest release of the Epstein Files has exposed the Slop Right Matrix, which is odd since one would think it had already been exposed at the time of “Escaping the Slop Right Matrix” four days earlier, but maybe people had forgotten about it in the meantime, making his latest still more . . . exposeyer? The real purpose of the piece is to respond to his critics, which he does by flamboyantly declaring that they are alternately too compromised to speak to or too dumb to speak of, and are thus unworthy of his notice. However, despite this declaration, he eagerly proceeds to do just that, coming after this author as only he can.

In all seriousness, I’m not trying to be mean here. But this is the strangest, most bizarrely effeminate, gammatastic, poorly thought out piece of passive aggression I’ve yet encountered online, and I’ve dealt with Groypers after having written about Nick Fuentes. It’s lazy, off-putting, dooming, logically indecipherable, and dumb. Between this and his last effort, I have to confess I’m honestly confused why this guy has any kind of following on the right.

Something of flavor of what I mean can be gleaned from the introductory paragraph. In explaining the negative reaction that his essay received, Parvini makes a point of a type that will be common throughout:

whenever someone looks to be at risk of exposing the Matrix, all the other people magically transform into Agent Smith in a bid to take that person down.

Ok, so, Donald Trump publicly advocated the release of the Epstein Files, which took place under the authority of his administration. As we’ll see in a moment, it’s the Epstein Files that exposed the Matrix (sort of), so by that logic, Donald Trump is a threat to the system, and anyone going after him is Agent Smith. As a side note, this man is a professor at a major university whose academic specialty is the study of William Shakespeare, and his full well of allusive imagery over the course of two essays consists of a popular movie long ago fully mined of any emotional resonance by the right. “We live in the Matrix!” is something that would have last struck a chord in maybe 2018, other than for humor or irony.

On the most public and visible level, Agent Smith was activated by the release of the Epstein Files. Like many, I’ve watched with a mixture of disgust and resignation to see mutuals, MAGA advocates, GOP-adjacent operatives, former friends — now compromised and beyond redemption — try to downplay their contents and minimise awareness of the incredibly obvious ethno-supremacist network they expose. It has been incredible to watch significant portions of the “online right”, once supposedly fearless in speaking truth to power, walk in lock-step with the legacy Matrix represented by the mainstream media, in working overtime to limit damage to Trump, the US swamp, and, of course, to Israel. Earlier this week, in somewhat fired up mode, I named some names.

Feel free to click on that link to listen to him rant about this for two hours on YouTube if you choose, but I’m sure you’ll get the same thing you get here. The release of the Epstein Files somehow exposed something that was already “incredibly obvious” and this is bad for Israel, so that ethno-supremacist network sprung into action with its all-encompassing political and propaganda power to suppress discussion of the thing they somehow lacked the power to prevent in the first place, and the mission now is to save Trump, the guy whose administration released the documents, because the Elders of Zion apparently decided that it would somehow be easier to put the documents out there and lie about them than just . . . you know . . . not ever reveal them or acknowledge their existence to begin with. Also, he seems to think that the worst thing about Epstein wasn’t the exploitation and sexual abuse of underage girls, but the fact that Jews were involved. He continues:

If you didn’t get the memo yet, MAGA – where MAGA is an alive authentic dissident force for any sort of genuine change – is dead. It’s an ex-parrot. It has ceased to be. “I think people are realising”, said Marjorie Taylor Greene, that MAGA “was all a lie”. Greene might have an IQ of around 90, but she can still see the obvious, so what’s the excuse of your favourite influencer still carrying the can for all of this? What’s your excuse? Don’t think you can move on next week and slide back into the polite old fictions, you can’t. People like me won’t let you.

MAGA has achieved a net negative rate of immigration for the first time in decades, is actively deporting or driving out millions of illegal immigrants, and standing up to the full force of the left as Republicans have not done for generations. There is no constituency whatsoever for anything other than MAGA among normie conservatives- the deportations are popular among them and Americans generally. Public attitudes toward social conservatism are trending in a positive direction. Crime is down. It’s interesting that the only authority Parvini thinks to cite in support of his contention that MAGA is some spent force is someone he himself believes is stupid.

After making these non-points, Parvini then- strangely- asks AI to explain his argument from his previous essay, evidently being unable to do so himself (to be fair, I had the same issue). This results in five bullet points:

»The “red pill” promise of escaping ideological illusion (as in The Matrix) has failed for many on the right; instead of reaching truth, they have entered a new trap called the “Slop Right Matrix”—a fantasy world of performative online outrage, cruelty for clicks, and tweets substituting for actual politics, effectively a “new blue pill” more delusional than the original mainstream one.

»As per Louis Althusser and Plato’s Cave, true escape from ideology is impossible—humans only swap one “goldfish bowl” (e.g., liberal capitalism) for another; the Slop Right fills the innate human “religion-shaped hole” (per David Sloan Wilson) with a deranged, imagination-driven simulation rather than reality.

So, point one is that “many” people on the right have not escaped ideological illusion- but then, presumably, others have? But then point two is that “true escape from ideology is impossible.” So, which is it? Ignoring the fact that one can, in fact escape Plato’s cave, is the implication here that we all, inevitably live in a total vale of illusion? Well, ok Buddha, but if no human can be free of ideology, and all humans are inevitably deluded, that would include you, and therefore, you have no greater claim to any knowledge of reality than any MAGAt. But then, we also have a “religion-shaped hole” that is meant to be filled with reality, which one might take to mean that revelation holds out some hope, but he also seems to be some kind of atheist. In short, he’s arguing that people can be more or less delusional, and that all people are equally deluded, and that everyone is an inevitable prisoner of ideology, and that one can only escape one ideology for another, and yet MAGA is uniquely evil for being immersed in ideology, despite the implication that any notions of good or evil are themselves the necessary product of a totalizing system of propaganda.

And who is behind it all? I suspect the answer from Parvini would be “Jews,” but Jews are people, and he’s informed us that escape from ideology is categorically impossible for anyone. So if the Jews are propagandizing us, who propagandized them into propagandizing us? The Bible? The not-so-good-book itself, though, was produced by men and those men must also suffer from some imposed ideology. It’s just turtles all the way down, all reading the Protocols of the Elders of the Galapagos.

» The contemporary right is degenerating into “demonic” emotionalism and performative sadism (e.g., cheering kidnapping of leaders, celebrating ICE shootings, erratic threats against allies like Canada/Denmark/Greenland), squandering a decade of built-up moral capital and confirming liberal stereotypes of the right as driven by unthinking hate.

There are innumerable examples of liberals and leftists who do all of those things and display all of those traits. In the US, thousands cheered the attempted assassination of Donald Trump and the successful assassination of Charlie Kirk. Liberals and leftist issue erratic threats against law enforcement and white Christians on a daily basis. The neoliberal regime under which Parvini cowers in Britain has adopted “performative sadism” as its basic heuristic of rule. Why are these things taken to uniquely characterize MAGA and discredit it, and not any other ideology? And if you think that demonic emotionalism and sadism are bad, why are you citing Louis Althusser, who, again, was an unrepentant Stalinist who strangled his own wife to death with his bare hands.

»This behaviour—amplified by platforms like Elon Musk’s X turning into a “sewer” of extremist one-upmanship (“based Olympics”) and fantasy (“Nationalist Narnia”)—achieves no real organizing or policy wins, while creating digital evidence trails that empower crackdowns (e.g., potential X bans) and alienate European allies, threatening NATO and strengthening neoliberals.

»The right is failing a historic test: continuing down this path risks discrediting rightist ideas for a generation, making it appear unfit to govern and putting itself “to bed for a decade”; the only path forward is resisting the easy “slop” addiction to hold onto reality instead of letting the brain “turn into cheese.”

What would Parvini consider a right wing policy win? Nuking Tel Aviv? Nowhere does he mention which right wing ideas he actually supports and with which audience they are being discredited. Trump won an election convincingly by advocating specific policies based on right wing ideas and is now working to implement them. There is no evidence these policies or ideas are now suddenly unpopular among the coalition that brought him to the White House.

And it’s here we come to the part where he mentions the critics.

Responses to my article took three forms. First, were people straightforwardly agreeing with it. Well done: you passed. Second, there was low-level name-calling. Those people have simply been blocked. Do likewise. There must be a pitiless weeding out of people who aren’t going to make it. Third, there were longer pieces whose authors decided to take the extraordinary step of actually trying to defend the slop. These pieces are a waste of time. None of them were able in the remotest sense to engage with the core argument as laid out above. I am simply not going to respond to a 10,000-word hand-wringing exercise attempting to lay out the case for why Matt Walsh is doing “good work”. You must be joking.

Sir, respectfully, you are 100% every part of a whole bitch. You are gayer than Lindsey Graham’s toilet seat. What kind of a man cattily and obviously references someone else’s work without naming him and then lying about what he wrote. I didn’t address your argument? My piece was 10,000 words? Hand wringing? And the stupidest part is, immediately after wrist-flappingly proclaiming that he will not waste his time by responding, he does exactly that in the very next f****** paragraph!!!

Picture a man with a sock on his left hand and a sock on his right hand. In an elaborate performance, he starts pretending that the right-sock hand is attacking the left-sock hand. If someone told you seriously to support the right-sock hand’s struggle against the left-sock hand, you would rightly think them insane and probably deserving mockery. When you’re asking me to take Matt Walsh seriously, you are on the level of asking me to believe in the right-sock hand. If you think Matt Walsh is anything other than a right-sock hand what are you even doing here?

See everyone, the Librarian is wrong because Matt Walsh is a sock. QED! That’s it. That’s right, its all just a show. Matt Walsh isn’t actively getting insane laws allowing child mutilation repealed. He’s not working to reduce mass immigration. He’s not risking his life. He’s not reporting on the Epstein Files and directly stating the role that powerful Jewish men and women played in promoting and protecting Epstein. No, don’t trust the documented history of his public stances and successful activism; Parvini knows what’s really going on.

But let’s suppose Matt Walsh is a fraud. He’s secretly bought off; he’s a wall-kissing, Netanyahu-loving, complete phony. All the things he’s done are just in the interest of serving his Jewish paymasters. If everything you said about him were true he’d still be more good to the world than you. The purported fake successes he’s had have benefited more lives than any real ones from any of his whinging detractors, people who run away from even the prospect of success like fat, cowardly animals hoisting their white tails to signal to the other timid herbivores that it’s time to flee.

And that’s really what this is about. Donald Trump and Matt Walsh and others like them aren’t hated by their detractors on the right for selling out or being fake or Epstein or anything else like that. They don’t hate them for their failures and faults. They hate them for their successes. To be very blunt, the big problem on the right isn’t slop. It’s losers. There are too many people who are the earth’s beaten dogs who come to the right because it represents truth and hierarchy and power and strength. But though they desire those things they have no appreciation for them, and the sight of them in others can only fuel in the loser an insensate rage that prompts him to abandon all hope and run for his life like a Denethor gif not when the right is losing, but when it’s winning. They hate winning. It scares them. It disabuses them of their favorite notion, that the world is controlled by powerful others, and that they are thus relieved of their need for agency and action.

If you want to escape Plato’s Cave, do what Plato says to do, get up and walk the f*** out. If you’re sick of slop, stop writing articles about all the slop and write something that isn’t f****** slop yourself. If you believe in right wing ideas, stop f****** worrying about whether the effete academic princesses (of all genders) around you will get the vapors. Stop caring about what the world thinks and give it a reason to think what you think. Stop letting it impose mediocrity and timorousness on you. And stop following any intellectual who flatters your sensibilities for a moment only to find out later that he’s essentially an unhinged e-girl trolling for attention from people not used to being taken seriously.

Evola wouldn’t feel bad for this guy, but I do. I pray that he snaps out of whatever mental breakdown is fueling this online meltdown. I hope that he’s happier as a centrist or a center-leftist or whatever he’s calling himself now, though it remains to be seen how that bodes for his expressed plans to purge the right of people like me. If you’re his friend, be his friend, and I hope you have some positive influence on him. For my part, I leave all of this now happily behind me.

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Star Wars as a Right Phenomenon

Star Wars needs little introduction as an entertainment phenomenon in the modern West. It is culturally ubiquitous, the characters ready touchpoints even for people not fully conversant in the details of the story. For those more fully immersed, there is an entire world of dialogue and creativity around it, an extended universe of novels, comic books, and fan fiction. It’s escapism that’s hard to escape.

This omnipresence has occasioned a good bit of criticism. Star Wars is perhaps the archetype of what was once called a series, then a franchise, and now an Intellectual Property (IP). The semantic shift is illustrative; what was once purely a work of fiction has become a commodity, not art but slickly packaged evocative imagery meant to evoke transient feelings of awe and warm nostalgia. The neoliberal revolution, like Saturn, devours its children, and as in the Classical Age the rock he subsequently vomited forth is now a tourist attraction.

It would be a mistake, however, to dismiss Star Wars as either lightweight entertainment or a cynical cash grab. Star Wars can be mined for a good bit of meaning, both in an artistic sense and in terms of its impact. Constantin von Hoffmeister offers this slender but dense volume as an interpretation of Star Wars in light of the political philosophy of Multipolarity, viewing it through the lens of rightist political thought generally but specifically through the work of Alexander Dugin, whose Eurasianism informs this whole work. It is certainly the only explication of Star Wars from this perspective amid a great paucity of rightist critique related to the films and wider universe.

This is, on one level, quite understandable, as a surface-level engagement with Star Wars will naturally lead one to see it as an expression of Boomer liberalism, not the confident 60’s vision of Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek, but a post-apocalyptic tale of plucky young rebels fighting for freedom against a Nazi-coded evil empire. We discover halfway through the original trilogy that it’s literally a battle between an authoritarian father against his pure-hearted liberal son, such that Theodore Adorno might have sued for a writing credit. This is not surprising, as Star Wars is the creation of George Lucas, product of 1960s Modesto, California, that epitome of confident mid-century liberal values that collapsed into chaos amidst riots and campus unrest in the latter part of the decade, which in turn resulted in the rise of Darth Nixon and Emperor Reagan. In many ways, both Star Wars and its creator are period pieces, meant to evoke a new hope in what must have seemed like a deeply threatened liberal world order. It’s no coincidence that the sequels came about at the tail end of the American Hyperpower era and the inception of the War on Terror.

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But there are many timeless lessons for the aspiring rightist creator in the work of Lucas. For one, immersion in one’s culture in every sense is important. Lucas came of age at a time of liberal chauvinism, when the great works of the Western world were still taught in places like the fairly typical public schools he attended. And while his early aesthetic influences were mundane- Flash Gordon serials and pre-queer Disneyland- he was able to receive a broad education at the local Modesto Junior College before some racing buddies introduced him to film studies at USC, where he studied under Francis Ford Coppola and hung out with John Milius, Steven Spielberg, and Martin Scorsese, among others. It would be easy to dismiss him as the archetypal boomer who lucked into fame and fortune in a way that would be impossible later, but such dismissal belies the fact that Lucas worked hard, immersing himself in the art and science of filmmaking. Lucas had a flexible mind, a driven nature, and eclectic tastes, capable of incorporating high art and pop sensibilities into his work, fusing them into works that broke down the aesthetic distance between his audience and his vision.

Lucas’ interests went beyond the Western canon, which offers another lesson. He was and remains firmly rooted in storytelling in a tradition going back to Homer, and his Star Wars films feature single combat of a sort a Mycenaean anax would have recognized, along with knights and princesses and fairy-tale romance. He also pulled from America’s mythogenic space- the Wild West- both in terms of the old-school movies of his youth and the modernist Spaghetti Westerns of Sergio Leone. But as a student and afterwards Lucas was a devotee of foreign films, not merely avant-garde French cinema and Italian New Wave, but also the profoundly distinct Japanese films of the post-WWII era. Kurosawa was a major influence, and Lucas’ Jedi knights are very much a western interpretation of serene Zen Samurai. Seeing them, one wonders what might have been had Yukio Mishima anticipated the coming age of science fiction films.

But perhaps the element of Lucas’ Star Wars films that draws the most intellectual interest is his incorporation of myth into his work. There is of course the ambient cultural Christianity of Lucas’ youth, which certainly informs the main redemption arc of the villain of the original trilogy. But Lucas had gotten to know Joseph Campbell while at USC, and the professor became a longtime mentor and intellectual influence. Very much the Jordan Peterson of his day- for good or ill- Campbell was a formidable intellect if not the most careful scholar, and his legacy is less a body of research than a singular vision, a belief that mankind can be most understood most fundamentally through universal mythic archetypes along quasi-Jungian lines. Lucas was not subtle in incorporating Campbell’s work into his films- Star Wars is basically A Hero’s Journey: The Movie- but subtlety was something for Parisian arthouse fare. Lucas had other ideas.

And this brings us to perhaps the most important lesson for the modern rightist storyteller. Lucas (and his buddy Spielberg) essentially invented the blockbuster, the big-budget film with mass appeal that appeals primarily (though not exclusively) to the visceral, emotional, and experiential. Lucas was able to move millions (and accumulate billions) by taking sophisticated and transcendent ideas and packaging them (or rather, translating them) for the demos. Lucas had no specific cultural or political agenda for his art; he simply wanted to tell a good story. His boomer liberalism is uninterrogated to this day. But he proved that the mythic tropes of the West and beyond can be summoned back into aesthetic vitality with the right combination of force of will, intellectual depth, artistic vision, and luck. If he can do it, so can we.

Constantin von Hoffmeister offers up Lucas the storyteller of political myth, of the tropes of modernity reflected in art. Politics, like film, is all about narrative, about drawing on the power of myth to execute a vision instantiated as policy. Viewed through the lens of Multipolarity, we can incorporate the lessons noted previously and entertain what might happen were they put into practice in a broader story than summer popcorn fare. Life might imitate art, but political life is art.

To begin with, a coming age of Multipolarity forces contending civilization-spheres back upon themselves in a way that necessitates reflection and renewal. Gone, for example, is the Star Trek notion of a Federation of Planets that is essentially an intergalactic liberal American Empire. The Multipolar future will be like the past, different societies fighting for cultural space in a world with no clear default setter of norms. As such, people will need to know who their enemies are, but more importantly, they will need to know who they themselves are. The great upheavals of mass immigration have done a hero’s share of work in that regard, where despite the best efforts of managerial globalism to inundate settled populations with hordes of foreigners in order to render the host deracinated and fungible, the peoples of the West have instead been waking up to the robbery of the home and heritage. The powers that be have introduced an Other into the midst against which a self can be constructed. Cultural confidence will return.

This is not to say that one needs foreigners to know oneself, but in a world in which the exotic is both immediate and mediated all at once regardless, it is simply a necessity of life that one must confront that which is not one’s own. And there is a lot of promise in this chaos. For one, the wise rightist will cultivate a sense of discernment regarding which things are universal and which are particular, and which in turn are worthy of honor, or to be disdained. The man who admires the knight errant recognizes a kindred spirit in the ronin, and can construct a Jedi on that basis. Likewise, politically speaking, a common good constitutionalist post-liberal can see in neo-Confucianism the same focus on transcendent political and spiritual order as the basis of right government. When society puts aside the privileging of an ephemeral political order as a human universal and stops treating the truth of the ubiquitous love of God for all of creation as a mere cultural artifact, real progress will have been achieved.

In this regard, myth too will make a comeback. First must come the resurrection of the old forms, drawing from the deep wellspring of the culture of the West, then the reconciliation of those tropes with modernity, a resacralization in the sense Eliade meant, men in time participating in timeless things. But this great return, as with the others in the Western past, will mean the incorporation of novel but aligned elements, the products of more contemporary mythogenic spaces, like Lucas’ Wild West and the internet. The Renaissance added Medieval lore and Christian morality to a reborn Classical heritage. Lucas showed this was both artistically and commercially viable twice over.

And of course, there can be no snobbery, no contempt for masses too dull to appreciate the refined vision of the right. It is true that the right is centered upon hierarchy and transcendence, but what follows from this is that everyone is somewhere on a chain owing duties to those both above and below. If you are godlike or a complete dullard you wouldn’t be reading this anyway, so if you know more than others, if you see what they cannot, the higher station you occupy obligates you to pass down that which you’ve received. Thus, if you have a vision of some right political or artistic truth, you must make every effort to make it as accessible to others as you can without compromising its truth. Sometimes this will result in something meant for the few, but if one is honest, more often it will mean something for the many, something which draws them upwards.

Some final notes on this book. Von Hoffmeister’s main intellectual debt is clearly to Dugin and through him to Martin Heidegger, but he draws upon a staggering array of other sources as well. Not all of these are rightists. He does not hesitate to cite even leftists who have cogent theories of modernity, and in fact privileges them over more moderate and mediocre voices closer to his own views. His seeking out honest views over strict ideological conformity is bold if nothing else, and if you were expecting a down-the-line rightist polemic, you will be disappointed. That said, this is also a distinctly and uncompromisingly rightist take nonetheless, with many voices from liberaldom’s naughty list casually mentioned alongside leftists with just as much radical baggage but mysteriously devoid of censure. If you have any instinct to point and sputter at wrongthink, this is also not the book for you.

Also, von Hoffmeister makes the authorial choice to avoid (mostly) commenting on the specifically American Culture War dynamics around Star Wars. Note that von Hoffmeister does not really mention the third trilogy of Star Wars films, produced by Disney and widely considered slop unworthy of the legacy of the Lucas era movies. A moment’s reflection will show that in a book about Multipolarity, privileging the American reception of Star Wars would only serve to further the ideals of a normatized liberalism, and that little in the way of true rightist views inform that partisan back-and-forth in any case. While there is certainly a great book to be written about the titanic DeSantis-Disney War of 2023, this is not that tome.

You will find the insights in this book to be true not only regarding Star War, but art more generally. There are critiques of other IPs (that label again) to be made along Multipolar lines, and certainly the Marvel Cinematic Universe merits a similar treatment, among others. We may be entering a world in which the global blockbuster or political order is a thing of the past, but this is not the same thing as saying that nothing again will have universal appeal. But a new age requires a new sort of artist, his novelty informed by the timeless things.

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As you’ve probably already guessed from my title: I believe something like this has happened to people who thought they had become “red-pilled” and stepped out of The Matrix a few years ago. All that has really happened is that they’ve left the old neo-liberal goldfish bowl and plonked themselves in a new one that can be broadly called “Slop Right”, a strange make-believe world in which tweets substitute for politics, and performative outrage and cruelty for clicks substitutes for any sort of real-world result.

With respect to , , and others, I don’t share the sentiment. I think this piece is exactly what the right doesn’t need, and following the advice given in “Escaping The Slop Right Matrix,” such as it is, will result in the utter failure of any rightist program, anywhere.

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To begin with, it would have been useful if Parvini had included specific names and examples of the sort of thing he’s talking about, but the piece is short on both- short generally, really- and despite the purported importance and pervasiveness of the phenomenon he describes the only Agent Smith he names is Matt Walsh, with no notion of what Walsh said or did to earn that categorization. He laments the lack of “liberal overlords” on X- unironically- before explaining the threat as he sees it:

Serious policy is replaced by this “based Olympics”. Some people, addicted to this environment, have sadly become “slop brained” and taken leave of reality. Actual politics is replaced by a fantasy world – “Nationalist Narnia” as I heard one commentator say – in which the power of tweets will, as if by magic, deport tens of millions of people.

What policy? What people? Who used the phrases, “based Olympics” and “Nationalist Narnia” and what do they even mean or signify as elements of discourse? And most importantly, who, exactly, thinks tweets will “deport tens of millions of people?” The whole thing is like this, just vague insinuations about rightists-in what numbers and to what degree unclear- having had their brains melted by… something.

The pretext for this seems to be the recent aggressive immigration enforcement operation in Minneapolis and several geopolitical moves on the part of the Trump administration:

Over the past decade, there was an acute sense that “we” held the moral high-ground – the enemy cheated, the enemy called us names, the enemy got us fired from jobs, the enemy tried to put Donald Trump in jail, the enemy killed Charlie Kirk – but this accumulated capital has been squandered rapidly over the past month or so. I have watched “the right” degenerate into a near-mindless and emotional cheerleading squad for, among other things, kidnapping a world leader on the thinnest of pretexts for reasons that still are not abundantly clear, the shooting of a mother of three by scarcely-trained government officials (among several such incidents involving ICE), and increasingly erratic threats from President Trump against long-standing allies, such as Canada and Denmark.

The right were the good guys, but then, a month ago, they (again, who exactly?) did a heel turn and are now evil, because the right are now cheerleaders for shooting mothers and kidnapping people. For a piece ostensibly about the dangers of propaganda, written out of purported concern for the state of the right, it’s especially shameful to see this ridiculously tendentious framing. Untrained ICE agents shot a mother of three? That’s the whole story? They just saw this random mom and shot her because they didn’t have the manual with them that day?

I find it similarly interesting that the things that he feels gave the right its moral high ground all come back to their being victims of liberals and the left. The right are good people when they’re defrauded and mocked and cancelled and jailed and assassinated. They become evil at the exact moment when they have the power to do anything to redress the systemic injustices that motivated them to support Trump’s wholly unprecedented comeback. Their villain arc culminated with them displacing their tormentors, at least in part.

No one thinks that tweets will deport people. ICE agents deport people. Tweets aren’t a substitute for policy; they’re the means through which advocates track and urge its further implementation, or else its replacement by something better. The people of the United States came together in a free and fair election and put Donald Trump in power for a second time with the express mandate to enforce immigration laws. In most places this proceeds smoothly. In some places, deluded and evil people have refused to accept the results of the election and the right of the government to enforce laws passed by elected representatives. Donald Trump’s actions in Minneapolis are not cruelty; they are, if anything, a restrained response to an organized rebellion against lawful authority, orchestrated by an alliance of local and state officials and subversive political actors. Everyone has the right to protest. No one has the right to grind law enforcement to a halt.

But by implication, that’s what Parvini seems to argue for. It looks cruel, and will discredit right wing ideas, and therefore, we should stop, because the right will lose the midterms:

I have no doubt the midterms will take place (it’s a liberal talking point that they won’t), and I have no doubt the Democrats will win them. My fear, rather, is that all this is going to kill the viability of rightist ideas for a generation: “We gave you the shot and you blew it by acting like excitable monkeys; furthermore, you confirmed our predictions and proved that the right is driven by nothing but unthinking hate”. What makes things worse is that, as things stand, the liberal assessment is correct.

The theory seems to be that right wing ideas (which ones, exactly?) are good and true, and that it’s important that the masses have a positive opinion of them (even though elites are all that matter) but it’s also necessary that those ideas never actually be implemented, because if they are, they will be seen as evil. Rightist thought is for debate, discussion, academic conferences, and risqué parties where you talk HBD with the likes of . It’s not for governing. It’s part of a big game where you show liberals how daring you can be, and how threatening you aren’t.

The oddest part for me in this is Parvini’s take on the state of the European right, the fortunes of which are apparently bound up with the status of Greenland. Yes, like others, Parvini seems to think that the various European powers involved will break up NATO over the issue, and that this puts Nigel Farage in a tough spot:

On the global stage, there is serious concern that NATO cannot survive. Last week, on a very mainstream liberal radio station (yes, it’s LBC!), I heard a British general say that if American soldiers fire on European troops in Greenland, it would spell the end of American bases in Europe and signal the end of the postwar order. Again, this is nothing I am worried about (I prefer a sovereign Europe and an end to postmodern fictions!), but the political impact of all of this is that it is discredits the right in Europe. In fact, so unpopular are these moves by Trump, that the net effect has been to split the European right from the American right along lines that ultimately strengthen the neoliberal establishment. On this, Farage and Le Pen have had to fall in behind Starmer and Macron, and the balance of opinion from dissident voices on the right has also been to fall in behind them – an extremely rare moment of moral unity among the establishment, insurgent populist leaders and the so-called online right. The trouble is, those populists and many online right figures have spent the past decade cheerleading Trump too, so they have been made to look ridiculous. Again, I fear, once the excitement is over, all this might serve to put “the right” to bed for a decade as it will be argued – correctly perhaps – that it is unfit to govern.

America is NATO, and the fungible Eurocrats who’ve spent the last three years screeching to the heavens about the existential threat posed by Vladimir Putin are hardly going to be willing (or able) to remove American forces from their midst over Greenland. But assuming they were, what would this have to do with the ascent of the right in Europe in the big picture? The right exists as a political force in Europe for the same main reason it does in the US, the destructive and destabilizing effects of mass immigration, which is the main issue on which Trump has demonstrated effective and inspiring leadership. The European right wishes they could point to a head of state who actually used the term “remigration” to describe his policy (le Pen and Farage sure won’t).

While Parvini will describe the right as cruel and unfit to govern, he is carefully nuanced and anodyne in his description of the censorious EU tyrants who actually embody performative outrage and cruelty. For the people who will jail you for describing immigrant crime uncharitably, he can only call them “draconian” and describes the proposed banning of X in Britain as “the best thing to ever happen to the right.” It’s difficult to see how, unless you believe that rightist ideas are like dangerous viruses meant to be kept locked up in universities for study and experiments, but never released. While rightist propaganda is slop, liberal propaganda, whatever critique one might make of it as a thought exercise, is never to be challenged in a way that might injure its legitimacy. There’s no level of stupid they could reach on Bluesky that would motivate Parvini to urge Starmer to undertake a similar crackdown there.

Is Parvini correct that the right is under the control of a new Matrix? I don’t know, because he’s not really making an argument. The whole brief piece is a pose, a string of cant with the point of demonstrating how above it all he is. But to be fair, let’s examine the one example he does give of someone who is a purveyor of slop, Matt Walsh.

I used to dislike Matt Walsh. He was NeverTrump back in 2016- annoyingly so- and I had written him off as yet another cuckservative. But in the time since, I occasionally had one of his videos pop up in my YouTube feed, and I found them- despite myself- compelling and entertaining. But what cemented my reappraisal of Walsh was his bold stance against transgenderism. At a time when the whole world seemed ready to descend another rung on the ladder of degeneracy, Walsh stood firm, and didn’t just talk, but went out to confront this evil in person. He never surrendered the framing; he never called men ‘women’ and refused to accept any part of the conceptual framework. At a time when the creepy Republican governor of Utah was proclaiming his pronouns on a Zoom call to teenagers, and fellow former NeverTrumper David French was welcoming Brian Reidl to the New York Times as a newly-minted lady named Jessica, Walsh was visiting colleges, going on television, lobbying the legislature, and making a hit film- all with the goal of not just legislating against transgenderism, but rendering it nonviable as a publicly held sentiment. While there’s still a long way to go, we’re a long way from Target having a prominent tr00n youth swimsuit section like they once did, and that’s certainly in large part due to Walsh’s (and many others’) advocacy.

Matt Walsh lives under constant threat of death from pro-trans leftists, people Parvini couldn’t be bothered to describe as cruel and demonic. One of them killed Charlie Kirk, to the widespread approval of the same sorts of people now forming mobs to attack ICE agents. They would kill Walsh if they could. They may yet. And if that happens, the Parvinis of the world say nothing too harsh about it. Walsh was a slop merchant, no big loss.

Matt Walsh is not an intellectual. He doesn’t read Louis Althusser, a communist who defended Stalinism and the Cultural Revolution, driven so insane by the evil he advocated that he strangled his own wife to death, because Walsh has sense enough to know that a man like that isn’t guiding you out of any Plato’s Cave. Walsh isn’t a theorist; he’s not a politician, and he’s not a brilliant artist (though he is very hardworking and prolific). What he does have, however, is courage. It’s his courage that has gained him the following and the influence that he has, and it’s that same courage that inspires others to adopt rightist ideas. A display of bravery has infinitely more impact than a display of wit. Walsh may not be sophisticated but he’s not slop and he’s not propaganda.

The mistake Parvini makes is to confuse the emotional appeal Walsh’s messaging makes with some attempt to deceive, because he has to live in fear of a worm like Keir Starmer and his cronies working to “collect all the evidence they need to follow the lead of Australia and crackdown as hard as they can on dissidents.” He lives under a regime where being honest gets you jailed, and he hates that others are freer that he, and rather than condemn the injustice, he hopes that others suffer under the same yoke, that those who actually live out the ideas he plays with might have to do without X, because they, not the degenerate managerial elites he cowers before, are cruel.

If I sound harsh it’s because I’ve seen this a lot, and it always bothers me greatly. The right needs intellectuals and academics; I count a number of them among my friends and supporters. But the right needs a full spectrum of support if rightist ideas are ever going to be actualized. We need artists and writers and musicians. We need filmmakers. We need memesmiths. We need shitposters. We need research autists. We need rabble-rousers on the ground. We need cops and soldiers and politicians. We need Matt Walsh. And we need everyday people like the ones I live among, for whom Tradition isn’t something you study, but something you live, tradition in the proper sense of a thing handed down from your ancestors, a way of life that reaches into the past and into the transcendent above. Those who know who Schmitt and Pareto are might be an elite, but that only obligates them to defend and work with those not so equipped.

We on the right are engaged in a war against an enemy that wants us broke, imprisoned, hurt, or dead. They are the enemies of our faith and civilization. They aren’t attacking ICE because they love illegals; they’re doing it because they hate Americans. They don’t celebrate Trump almost dying because of who he is as a man, but because he represents the instantiation of power of the part of people they’ve been taught to despise as beneath them, history’s losers destined to be steamrolled by progress. The left is the force motivated by hate- hatred for everything noble, excellent, beautiful, true, and good. Theatrical denunciations of “the right” as being cruel, evil, demonic, etc. are nothing more than self-serving concern trolling. The right is screwing up in Minneapolis? How are they doing in London? Perhaps you could go down to the local jail and tell them how demonic they are for objecting to foreigners killing little girls in their streets.

If you don’t like Walsh, don’t watch his stuff. But don’t slight him and those like him as shady grifters when they’ve demonstrated to the world their willingness to put their lives on the line for ideas you claim to love. If you think there’s too much slop on the right, make something better. I had something to say, so I sat down at the end of a long day, with my family asleep, typing in the dark for three hours straight to say it. If you have a response, do likewise.

To be clear, I am not arguing that there are no problems on the right, that there are no grifters or conmen or idiots or nuts. I’ve dealt personally with many of them, whether the JOOOOOOOOOOZ crowd or the sorts who want a scene instead of a movement. But if you’re going to criticize, do so by name and by stating clearly the parameters of your objections. Simply saying “the right” is a cesspool or that X is a propaganda mill avoids the hard and real distinctions that are necessary in favor of scoring head pats from people who hate you anyway. I have some of the best people I’ve ever met here and on X, and every day I see posts that are uplifting, inspiring, thoughtful, funny, and above all true.

Matt Walsh has called for unity on the right in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s murder.

I agree. In the spirit of unity, I hope that everyone on the right will take this in the spirit of constructive criticism, and that we can work together toward common political and philosophical goals. Let us come together and fight the good fight, with positivity and clarity. That’s the real redpill on offer- the truth that we can win.

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Even in a land of throwbacks, though, there are creatures still more atavistic than those we commonly think of. When you recall a nature show, how often does a giraffe or zebra come to mind? Now, in your memory, give the scene some context; what else is there? There might be the odd wild dog or warthog, but seldom to we think about the ubiquitous birds perched upon the large mammals’ backs, just sort of part of the background. But these small birds are actually quite interesting in their own right, creatures that at first seem benign, but actually have a much more sinister aspect. The oxpeckers are not what they seem.

Oxpeckers (buphagidae) are an especially archaic family of avians, almost living fossils, with no close relatives among living birds- their nearest relations are mockingbirds, but they are quite different from them. They live throughout the savanna in two species- red-billed and yellow-billed- though they overlap in range and apart from superficial distinctions of color their behavior and lifestyle are largely the same. In terms of size and form they are fairly average for passerine birds, about 8 inches long and not especially robust, built to fly moderate distances and spend much of their time perching. They nest in small holes in trees in structures lined with animal hair, lay 3-5 eggs during mating season, and tend to live gregariously in large flocks.

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What makes them interesting is their feeding habits. The large herbivores of the plains carry an immense ectoparasite load, being infested at any given time with ticks, mites, biting flies, botfly larvae, and other tiny menaces that make life an unpleasant experience. Many of these, like the tsetse fly, spread disease. Lacking the means to remove these creatures manually, the megafauna generally must simply accept the irritation- that is, unless the oxpecker shows up.

Oxpeckers, as their name (sort of) implies, eat these parasites as their main food source. Interestingly, while they are largely insectivorous, they do not hunt bugs or look for them anywhere apart from the bodies of large mammals, and even then, they can be somewhat selective. They will not perch on certain types of antelopes and avoid anything smaller than a gazelle. They often live in proximity to human pastoralists, and will feed from cattle, but do not like camels- for whatever reason- and though they will settle on goats don’t seem interested in sheep. There are a great number of gaps in the understanding of oxpecker behavior; being an unobtrusive, gray little bird in a world of charismatic megafauna necessarily means getting overlooked by smart people dependent on money from rich people and the government.

This has, in turn, made it easy to dismissively misunderstand the nature of the oxpeckers’ relationship with their host animals. If you did recall anything about the oxpecker when I mentioned it, then it was probably some half-remembered lesson from biology class about mutualism, the type of relationship wherein two animals jointly benefit from some ongoing interaction. The article linked in the previous sentence actually uses the oxpecker as its masthead example of the phenomenon. The takeaway from this is that the oxpecker and the host animals each get something good out of the deal; the zebra gets some relief from all the bugs feasting on it and the oxpecker gets to eat. It’s a win-win situation, or so it seems. Human life offers many such examples as well.

It is true that the oxpecker works hard. A typical bird will remove over a hundred ticks a day for the typical animal, which objectively leaves the host better off than it otherwise would have been. It’s thus easy to see how it could be said that the quadrupeds of the grassland benefit from their presence. But such an analysis would be overly simplistic and misleading.

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One of the pitfalls in ascribing values to animal behavior is that their motivations are not those of the humans observing them. It’s easy to fall into the trap of imagining that, since the host often gains in some way from the oxpecker’s presence, that the latter is somehow doing a favor of sorts to the former. But the oxpecker isn’t being kind, nor does it have any sort of charitable purpose in mind as it delouses the various ungulates in its environment. Any aid it provides to its host is incidental. It’s not trying to help; it’s trying to eat.

The thing about the oxpecker is that, while it consumes insects, that’s secondary to what it’s really after. There’s a reason it doesn’t go after bugs not actively feeding on animals. There’s a reason it likes ticks so much. If you observe oxpeckers closely, you’ll find that while they do in fact eat them, this doesn’t actually benefit the host animals as much as it could, because the oxpeckers prefer their parasites after they’ve become engorged. Think back to the scientific name- buphagidae doesn’t mean ‘ox-pecker,’ it means ‘ox-eater’- the Greek tag is more perceptive than the English. Oxpeckers aren’t really insectivores. They’re vampires.

Looking at that photo from before again, you’ll notice that the oxpecker is perched next to a small but significant wound. In the course of searching out bugs, the birds are always on the lookout for lesions like that, and after pulling out and consuming, say, a bot fly larva, they will peck at the bleeding hole and lap up the blood. Sometimes there’s not even any kind of bug involved; animals with the various dings and scratches one naturally accumulates in the bush will attract oxpeckers, who descend on them, taking advantage of even the smallest gap in otherwise thick hide to tear away, forcing open still larger wounds. It’s mutualism when they remove dead skin, earwax, and mucus- not so much when they rip off scabs and peck out chunks of soft mucosa. While they’ll do the unpleasant work of cleaning off bugs, it’s ultimately only done in the service of getting access to the bloodstream of the host.

Oxpeckers are the only birds that regularly seek out blood in preference to other food sources; even the kawaii-horror vampire finch only becomes a hematophage when the insects it otherwise hunts are scarce. The other birds that occasionally feed on blood generally prey on chicks or other small creatures. Not the oxpecker. Animated by a more primal mind than other creatures, shaped by the weight of far more time, it purposely seeks out the largest prey on earth, because instinct has given it an insight that more clever animals lack.

An elephant is a massive animal, the biggest thing on four legs by far. Its hide resists the claws of lions and even the bullets of its most cunning would-be predator, man. But ultimately, it’s built to fight off large and obvious threats. It is immensely vulnerable to things that are small, and no matter how thick its skin, there are holes in its defenses that only the most lowly creatures can spot. The oxpecker is invisible to such a great beast; its touch is light and its presence barely noticed. It has all the time and opportunity it needs to roam the whole outer layer of a five-ton animal looking for even the smallest opening. And when it finds it, it stabs its way in, tearing away the tiniest bits of flesh in order to tap into the bloodstream.

Large creatures might swipe at them with trunks or tails, but this simply causes them to flit away and descend once more to peck away at other open wounds. The horns of a wildebeest might intimidate a wild dog, but to an oxpecker they are nothing more than a convenient perch from which to lacerate a scalp. At most, the oxpecker is perceived by the great beasts of the world as a useful but occasionally irritating non-entity, which is what allows it to thrive and get what it wants. But even if they wanted to, once the oxpecker has found the roost it prefers, the host’s defenses are hard pressed to do anything about it.

There are a few things that mitigate the threat oxpeckers might pose to megafauna. For one, though they are gregarious, they’re a bit too primitive for the kind of cooperation they would need to actually cause serious harm to most large animals. An antelope might end up with a secondary infection from too many bites, but under normal circumstances there isn’t the prospect of a critical mass of oxpeckers such that they could actually bring one down. Though they’re not clever in the sense other birds are said to be, oxpeckers seem to grasp instinctively that only living animals bleed, and thus, they’re better off keeping them that way. What damage they do is usually debilitating and chronic rather than acutely dangerous.

They’ll also fight each other over access to the blood of the host, flapping and squawking while the behemoth they live on just chews his cud in oblivious disinterest.

But, ultimately, the oxpecker is oblivious to the big picture in any sort of rational way. While it would benefit him to simply and surreptitiously feed from his host in such a way that the relationship continues for as long as possible, sometimes the opportunity for a big dinner is just too much to resist, and it can’t really conceive in a comprehensive way that destroying the beast it lives on is in its disinterest. Sometimes they do get noticed, perceived as an actual menace, and the host takes firmer measures to deal with them.

But in general, as noted, large animals are more or less at the mercy of the smaller creatures that nip at them, even those that provide some service to them in some contexts. Mutualism is bilateral self-interest, and once one party no longer needs the other, he can safely be dispensed with and left behind. When a swarm of vampires descends on some beast in a moment of vulnerability, no matter how strong he is- how noble, how wise, how thick-skinned- he dies the death of a thousand cuts. The hippo below, in his prime, was the terror of his world, a four-ton behemoth that could bite any predator- human or animal- in two. Now he staggers about, helpless, as a flock of yellow-eyed scavengers descends to consume what blood he has left in his veins.

Humans lack the fearsome defenses of other creatures, but our one advantage over them is the greatest possible, our rational mind. It is thus absolutely essential that that faculty of reason remains unclouded by self-deception, delusion, or willful ignorance. We are very much betrayed by the comfort we enjoy in prosperous Western societies, and it is all to easy to forget that we still live in nature, and in our mortal lives we are ultimately subject to its laws. We alone among God’s creatures have the capacity to transcend our animal nature and act, not according to instinct and appetite, but to a higher law. We also, tragically, have the ability to descend lower. For animals never lie; they are never anything other than what they were made to be. To live as we were meant to is a choice, one we make every day when we choose between civilization and anarchy. Act accordingly.

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Everything about the scenario I just painted remains controversial to some extent, though of course much of the cloud of lies surrounding it is being dissipated by the internet. The narrative of her being a simple mother unconnected to the wider protests, who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, is of course untrue, unless the public is expected to believe that her blocking the road right in front of ICE while her partner filmed everything was the way anyone would spontaneously react to finding themselves in that situation. There is still debate as to the exact depth of her involvement and training on the part of the sinister cabal of leftist NGOs and activists groups coordinating the mayhem, but there is no denying she made the conscious choice to insert herself into a tense situation and commit a deliberately provocative act that set in motion the violence that followed. I suspect that in the coming days, more information will surface that will dispel more of the nonsense making its way around the media. This isn’t the 1960’s anymore, and leftist martyrs don’t have quite the same shelf life as they once did.

But what is more interesting to me than the specifics of this particular death are the circumstances surrounding it, the thought-world of the leftist agitators who seem so willing to risk their lives and safety to prevent the police from arresting criminals. It’s not surprising that a woman died, nor that the reaction was so strongly gender-coded. The anti-ICE protests have a strongly feminine character to them, and the widespread support for violence among liberal woman is manifestly the driving force behind them:

The refusal of liberals and the left to accept the results of legitimate elections and wage war on the will of the people despite claiming validation on exactly those grounds is simply another facet of the great post-Enlightenment war on civilization on the part of those who claim a mandate to remake society according to their notion of progress. This force is the most destructive in human history, an endless cycle of revolution and anarchy going back to 1789, with antecedents. It manifests in different modes in different places, according to the nature of those receptive to it, but everywhere bears the same character, a deadly and intractable pride rooted in a (and resulting in further) distortion of the soul, such that any connection to tradition and transcendence is rejected in favor of the imposition of theory by force of will.

In the anti-ICE mobs we see the dynamic at play in the form of feminism. Throughout history, prior to the Enlightenment, society was fundamentally organized around related principles rooted in both spirituality and biology- men are physically larger and stronger than women, and women (and only women) can bear children. This made men and women, each in their own way, both powerful and dependent on the other. Only men could be kings and warriors, but only women could produce them. This need for a functioning dynamic between the sexes informed every aspect of life. Christianity’s solution to this was to accept that certain spheres of life were restricted to one or the other sex, and that men would rule, but as Christ ruled His Church, with a positive duty to protect and even die on their behalf, with women bearing the same divine dignity as their male counterparts.

But as Patrick Deneen notes, liberalism is about the removal of constraints, and, per Philip Pilkington, concerned with rationalizing relationships and abolishing hierarchies. Once the spiritual part is discarded, there are only the biological restrictions on the realization of full equality- in a worldly, material sense- between men and women. This is plausible if you assume at the outset that man as an animal is a great blank canvas onto which progress can be painted. But the full weight of hundreds of years of liberalism, even in the face of the seeming conquest of nature in so many other areas, have put only slightest dents in human nature, and the very real differences between the sexes.

The foundational, uninterrogated theory that equality in every sense should be possible, and yet isn’t, can only be experienced by feminists as comprehensive injustice. They are of course aware that they have full legal equality with men in Western societies, though unaware or uninterested in the fact that they are in many ways privileged over them, but this comes with the knowledge that the order that enforces their rights in a liberal democracy remains a masculine one. Women do not occupy positions of power in proportion to their numbers because- despite the system’s best efforts- they do not occupy positions of violence in like ratio. Women have such power as they do because some men are committed to preventing other men from removing them, men willing to do violence in their name. Their equality is thus contingent on men assuming a role as its guarantors. The paradox of male violence being both threat and security feminists have labeled, “the patriarchy.”

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At it’s core, apart from the pride that animates all Enlightenment ideologies, are two emotions coexisting in a fine Freudian ambivalence, fear and envy. Christians have as their model The Virgin Mary, the Blessed Theotokos, who freely chose to be the vessel of the Incarnate God, glorious beyond all other humans, to whom the most powerful kings of the earth must bow. Feminists have no heaven, only the here and now, a world in which indifferent forces of natural selection have set women up with intolerable physical handicaps relative to men. On a fundamental level, feminism posits femininity as weakness, with women as eternal victims of a system set up to oppress them at every turn, and like all weak people, they can only experience strength in others as a terrifying threat. Like Nietzsche, the feminist projects her weakness outward as a compulsion to conquer and dominate others. But unlike Nietzsche, this is conceptualized not as daydreams of being a Homeric hero, but, rather, deconstructing the ideals that would produce one, or any other variety.

This is where the envy presents. Every natural slave is a natural tyrant. The feminist can only conceive of men as being consumed with an urge to control them, because they themselves long to control others, and can imagine no other dynamic. The patriarch is a figure of both loathing and longing, something to be destroyed, but also to become. Violence is seen as the defining feature of manhood, which is to be feared, but also neutralized on the part of men and appropriated by women. The animating principle of feminism politically is therefore to remove the male capacity for violent action from individual men and sublimate it into institutions where authority is diffused such that accountability becomes impossible, yet feminist control is absolute.

Thus, men within the orbit of feminists will be removed or co-opted as possible. The sort of men feminists will tolerate within their sphere are of a type that other men generally find loathsome- emasculated, sobbing cringepuppets who project total deference to a project committed to undermining and destroying them:

The natural role of men as protectors of the community is wholly deconstructed by hegemonic feminism into one in which those same men are made to parade their obedience to dogmas that subvert and destroy that security. Below, we see the queering of law enforcement:

Thus, as noted above, the whole character of the protests against ICE on the streets or among blue area leaders, whether on the part of men or women, is manifestly feminine. The whistles and yelling and insults present less as civil disobedience than repulsive nagging. The protesters show an obvious, malign glee in their taunting, doing everything they can to provoke violence, in the general expectation that they will not actually experience it. They are- males and females alike- the sort of women who abuse men because they count on them being too chivalrous to seek physical redress themselves, or, failing that, that some other men will come in to rescue them.

This sense of abusive arrogance is central to feminism- preening victimhood masking privileged distance from the circumstances brought about as the logical endpoint of the policies they favor. The illegal immigrants they rant about live far from them, or else are encountered as servants. That they come from countries where women are routinely abused in ways that Western women could never imagine, and that sexual abuse is a routine part of the culture in many of these places matters to them not at all, or else offers a kind of subconscious frisson in knowing that such violence is being directed at those beneath them. Likewise, the ICE agents present as red state white men of the most contemptible kind, and encouraging attacks on them only serves to reinforce the feminist sense of entitlement. She can pick up a Starbucks, cruise over to the scene, yell some profanity for Tik Tok engagement, and go home, patting herself on the head that she’s fighting the system, which is to say, the men risking their lives and safety to remove dangerous foreign criminals from their midst.

But this cognitive dissonance manifests in other interesting ways. The above video attracted a lot of comments pointing out the underlying psychosexual tensions. Social conditioning notwithstanding, in the end, men are men and women are women, and there is no dynamic between them that does not include that dimension. The sorts of men feminists will tolerate in their midst are just as repulsive to them as they are to normal men, thus leading to a disheartening situation for the feminist in that her fear of men, and envy of them, prevents her from forming the sort of relationship with them that might actually make her happy.

The spectacular amounts of mental illness among liberal women are a testament to the depths to which this miserable ideology can drag someone. There is no right wing equivalent to this:

You know the statistics. Their ideology has rendered them wholly despondent, but to the AWFL, the only cure is more of the same. It inculcates a self-loathing that manifests in an urge to spread itself to others, to try to shore up a fragile sense of self, dissolving loneliness into a mob and meaninglessness into fervent action, each of which only serves to further the pattern of self-destruction, with despicable men cheering it on. In the case of the anti-ICE mob in Minneapolis that day, it eroded their capacity for empathy such that none of the people there could imagine how their actions might be interpreted and dealt with by the armed men they were harassing. And in the end, like all delusions, it leads to a confrontation with reality that can only be tragic.

Renee Good was my enemy. She dedicated at least the final years of her life to destroying the rule of law in my country and flooding it with foreign criminals, helping to prop up conditions of mass fraud and corruption. All of this was in the service of a network of traitorous NGOs and nonprofits for whom she was just a useful and expendable tool. They will stand on her tombstone and cry out for money, which they’ll get, and use to train the next ‘legal observer’ to put herself in harm’s way.

I don’t hate her, or the people who are trying to be her. Even as I hope they’re driven from the streets, arrested, and removed from any influence in public life, I can respect that the spirits of the air never rest, and are always looking for a vulnerable point of entry, and as a man, I pity them. No one should celebrate her death, however justified it was, and I write hoping that maybe just one person in similar circumstances might read this and reconsider his or her actions. Pray for her soul, and for her family, and that the civil authorities act to prevent this from happening again.

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But what if I told you there’s a better way?!

That’s right! Right now, in the comfort of your own home, for the low price of $20.99 (or free on DailyMotion), you can learn devastating techniques from a legendary street fighter. In just over 90 minutes, you can gain the skills and confidence to destroy any opponent, any time, anywhere- with some caveats. If you want results, you turn to the best. So borrow your mom’s DVD player, staple together some yoga mats in front of the TV, and find an at least semi-willing training partner (mom?), because you’re about to fire up Bas Rutten’s 2003 classic, Lethal Street Fighting.

Sebastiaan Rutten was born in Tilburg, the Netherlands, in 1965. Growing up, he was a frequent target for bullies, which presumably involved him being chased through tulip fields by sheeshed-up Moroccans. As a teenager, he discovered he had an aptitude for martial arts, and built strength and confidence practicing several disciplines, eventually earning black belts in taekwondo and karate by his early 20’s. To support himself, he worked as a chef and a bouncer while embarking on a career as a competitive fighter, one which carried him through kickboxing, the wrestling-fighting hybrid promotion Pancrase, and the UFC.

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All jokes aside, it should be made very clear that Rutten is not only the real deal when it comes to fighting, but a legend. Inside MMA rates him as the 4th-best MMA fighter of all time- a three-time King of Pancrase and a UFC Heavyweight champion, with victories over some of the best competition in the 1990’s martial arts world. If you doubt what an absolute beast Rutten was in his prime, check out his brutal championship Pancrase battle against Masakatsu Funaki in 1996:

With injuries adding up, Rutten retired from competition in 1999 at 34, leaving the ring behind after a 22 bout winning streak (he fought once more in 2006 for another win). For many fighters, the transition to a post-fight career is economically and psychologically difficult, but Rutten was not only a gifted martial artist, but naturally charismatic and funny, and he segued easily into commentary, acting, and coaching. The explosion in popularity of MMA in the early 2000’s meant there was a ready market for pros of proven ability and popularity dispensing wisdom concerning fighting techniques and self-defense, and this made for a perfect niche for him. I remember feeling quite lucky that I’d stumbled onto the DVD of Lethal Street Fighting at Media Play some time around 2005, spending my hard-earned server money on a gleaming silver disk that offered the promise of merciless destruction of my enemies. However, that’s not quite what you get, though it’s all the better for it.

It would have been easy to churn out a paint-by-numbers ‘here’s how to escape a full nelson’ type effort, slap his name on it, and cash the checks. That’s definitely not what this is. Lethal Street Fighting is very obviously the result of one man’s vision of what a self-defense video should be, and there are no corporate notes or legal advisors between you and the inner workings of Rutten’s mind when it comes to the instruction. Describing something so profoundly unique takes some unpacking.

To begin with, when introducing himself, Rutten- despite only recently having left behind a prolifically successful career as a fighter- barely notes that fact when describing his qualifications, and only after mentioning his earlier life as a bouncer (the video also seems to be unsure what its specific title is supposed to be). Granted, the awesome early 2000’s graphic overlay describes him as an Ultimate Fighting champion, but that’s about it. He just moves forward briskly after assuring the audience that he’s “been around” and knows “the things.” Given the tone of the rest of the video, it’s clear that Rutten just assumes you know who he is already, along with a bunch of other background.

Most notably, one of the Lost-style mystery boxes in this instructional tape is the gigantic fight in Sweden that he frequently alludes to but never bothers to elaborate on, evidently feeling that- like the Iliad- it’s just part of the cultural memory of the Western world at this point.

There are quite a few other prerequisites to getting the most out of this program. For one, unlike with most self-defense instructional videos, Rutten seems to take for granted that his viewing audience consists primarily of trained fighters, since many of his techniques involve boxing combinations or grappling takedowns that would require a great deal of prior practice to execute- at the very least, he expects you to have read his book. The setting for the video- a bar- is no coincidence; Rutten apparently assumes that this is where his viewership spends all of their free time, and many of the techniques he demonstrates require the use of items like bar stools or beer bottles- but then, Rutten also seems to anticipate that the tavern patrons he envisions will be toting around knives and baseball bats, so presumably at least some of the techniques will be applicable for disputes at salmon canneries or little league games as well. The notion that it might be a good idea simply to avoid the stabbier sorts of dives to begin with is presumably so bizarre and contemptible that Rutten does not entertain it. If you want to party the right way, you’ll probably need to shove a rocks glass into someone’s face at some point, and that’s just how life is; Rutten is here to help.

Many of the scenarios are thus very specific to the sort of milieu that Rutten inhabits. In this scene, for example, Rutten remarks in an offhand way that women getting choked happens “a lot,” casually demonstrates the correct way to choke a woman, and then describes how to deal with that common scenario by noting what happens when you strangle an infant according to Israeli commandos:

The most effective elements of the video for the average viewer are where Rutten demonstrates very practical techniques that are easy to employ, ones which are purely defensive. The ‘thinker’ stance with the chin tucked in is great and applicable anywhere- similar to the ‘prayer hands’ pose the Gracies recommend in their self-defense book.

But what really sets Lethal Street Fighting apart from other self-defense videos is the underlying theory of violence. Rutten has a very expansive definition of what constitutes “defense” and a gleeful, almost childlike indifference to any potential legal consequences that might arise from following his advice. For example, to return to his woman-choking segment, once you move past how Rutten takes for granted that the women in his world can casually overpower their male attackers before executing headbutts, knee strikes, and roundhouse kicks to the face, note that after succeeding in breaking free, Rutten then recommends that you stab your assailant with a broken beer bottle.

That would certainly . . . work, but it’s possible that slashing up an unarmed person with an improvised weapon might lead to further issues down the line. Yes, it’s arguable that the person still represents a lethal threat, but then again, to get to that point you must have demonstrated high-level striking skills already, and it’s at least worthy of consideration that the legal system might deem it overkill in a very literal sense. Rutten, for his part, simply notes that “anything goes” in a street fight, which is true in one sense, but since there’s no such thing as “street court” or “street jail,” other parties may later hold you to a different standard. Perhaps he simply figures that his target audience doesn’t call the cops or go anywhere where anyone else does either, so it’s a moot point.

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Rutten seems to have been profoundly influenced by the post-911 foreign policy of the contemporary Bush administration, since his go-to heuristic when dealing with potential threats is the preemptive strike. Rutten sizes up his fellow bar patrons like Donald Rumsfeld profiled Iraqi peasants- potential threats to be eliminated at the first sign of trouble, or better yet, before that. As seanbaby from Cracked.com once hilariously noted of the video, in “at least half the bar fight scenarios, he's the one who initiates the violence.”

And as with the W. administration, there’s a comically vengeful savagery informing Rutten’s philosophy. Here, Rutten explains how to defend yourself from an unconscious attacker by sodomizing him with a bottle of Tabasco sauce:

You might think he’s joking, but remember, Rutten specified that he’s drawing from personal experience with these scenarios (he mentions the hot sauce more than once), and even where he’s more clearly being serious the same mindset is at work:

Here, Rutten shows you how to defend yourself from fat shaming against a man sitting down with his legs crossed. After you’ve crippled him for the indefinite future, roundhouse kick all of his friends- just kidding- you should actually punch them before walking away, avoiding any further confrontation by being the bigger man. It’s called de-escalation:

And finally, Rutten isn’t wholly unaware that the cops might attempt to harass you during your normal evening round of cocktails, headbutting and glassing, so don’t worry, he covers his bases there too. On the off chance the police do enter one of the no-go area bars he favors and attempt to apprehend you, here’s how to escape custody by putting the officer in a wrist lock and kneeing him in the face:

The big question with any self-defense program is, ‘does it work?’ But with Lethal Street Fighting, the answer comes with a lot of asterisks. Certainly, Rutten has beaten up a lot of people, and if you can do what he can do, you’ll be able to beat up a lot of people too. But if not, you’ll probably find that throwing punches and kicks untrained is as dangerous to you as to anyone else. But there are concerns apart from the issues of personal physical safety. I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure a plurality of what he recommends has a good chance of landing you in prison. As one random YouTube commenter noted, a good subtitle for this video would be “how to turn a simple verbal dispute into an aggravated battery charge.” Perhaps has the relevant case law background on Bud Lite bottle related grievous bodily harm, or Prof. can inquire from the Harvard Law School resident expert on barfight jurisprudence (assuming it’s not him) for more clarity, but I would expect that the law would frown on grabbing a man by the back of the neck and knee striking him into a CTE diagnosis for touching your chest with his finger.

To his credit, Rutten has given serious thought to his philosophy, and closes with a short monologue where he lays out, directly, his thoughts on violence. In this postscript- perhaps added after some fretting notes from the distribution company’s legal team- Rutten urges his viewers to avoid conflict if possible, notwithstanding his earlier advocacy for going full Grok-on-Will-Stancil with hot sauce, and declares that despite what you might think given everything he’s said and done for last 90 minutes, he’s not a violent person.

He’s not lying. Rutten is not a violent person in the sense that he seeks to harm others for his personal gratification. People like that prey on the weak, and Rutten spent his life testing himself against the best the world could offer him. But Rutten is a warrior. Some force drove him, not to a life of violence, but to confront the violence that life presented. He was a sickly kid from a middle-class family who found his calling braining people with barstools and fighting hand-to-hand in front of thousands of spectators. It’s his nature, and it’s that authenticity that shines through as the best and most useful aspect of this video.

What Rutten is really teaching is not various ways to crotch-kick low-life alcoholics. It’s that violence fundamentally is not avoidable; one can only confront it, succumb to it, or defer it somewhere else. Most adults don’t regularly engage in the kind of brawling where you would need the techniques on offer here, but that’s only because other people- the police on behalf of the state- have been delegated to deal with that savagery on our collective behalf, and only on rare occasions will a psychologically healthy person be called upon to push a receipt spike into someone’s neck. Rutten opens our eyes to the sort of mindset required to survive in a world where things are very different, where the veneer of civilization is removed, where cops are, at most a minor, distant nuisance that interferes with the normal brutality of life when it deigns to enter the demi-monde and round up unfortunates who haven’t yet learned from Rutten how to break their forearms.

If you choose to do what Rutten advocates, you are more likely to go to jail than if you flee or call the cops. But if you need to use Rutten’s methods, you will be more likely to survive when there’s nowhere to run and no authorities on hand. He’s not preparing you for the world around you, but for the one most of us are blessed not to see, the one roped off by uniformed officials for our health and safety. It’s something both pre- and post- modern, a world of medieval, honor-based violence and a harbinger of the emerging multicultural bellum omnium contra omnes foisted on the West by politicians insulated (for now) from the chaos they authored. Do watch Lethal Street Fighting, enjoy the humor both intentional and otherwise, but open your mind. You’ll learn more than you expect.

But that bundle of asinine tropes at least has the virtue of being largely culturally inert. “You stole our Yule!!!” has no emotional valence beyond the small coven of internet white hoteps looking to climb to the top of the modern victim pyramid, and perhaps some perennially smug deboonking rationalists. If you were to somehow convince the public that Christmas was some kind of Da Vinci Code-esque conspiracy, the public would shrug its collective shoulders and just continue to buy crap like the more pervasive propaganda instructed. The same cannot be said for a newer and more pernicious theme: Jesus the Refugee.

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I can’t really quantify it, but I’m noticing it more and more. There are a number of variations on it, but the central idea remains the same, a kind of moral equivalency meant to inform specific types of immigration policy changes. Jesus was a refugee, therefore, anyone claiming to be a refugee is… Jesus. You wouldn’t deport Jesus- thus, you shouldn’t wish to deport enterprising Somali daycare owners struggling to find clients for their empty facilities, a problem to be remedied by taxpayer largesse. Checkmate, MAGA.

There are few things more disgusting than attempting to use a Christian people’s kindness as a weapon against them, and naturally, the people advancing this argument either otherwise despise the faith or feel free to reject Christian teachings they find inconvenient or incompatible with their actual religion, liberalism. Related to this is the scandal caused by associating acceptance of mass immigration with some fundamental aspect of Christian teaching, thus leading non-Christians to reject the faith on the rational but misinformed grounds that Christians think the path to heaven is paved with infinity grateful migrants. It puts Christian leaders in a bind, as they genuinely are called to care for the needy and to love their neighbors, and are thus have to tread lightly through nuance when confronted with a media blitz telling them that the only way to do that is to sanction the wholesale replacement of their countrymen. The whole ‘Jesus was a refugee’ theme is really just an attempt to remove the issue of mass immigration from the realm of politics and transmute it into an unalloyed, unquestionable dogma.

The broader question of the correct approach to admitting migrants into one’s settled population is complex and much dependent on circumstances. But the question of whether Jesus was a refugee in the sense we understand the term today, as member of a class of people crossing international boundaries seeking safety from persecution, with the de facto understanding that they will remain indefinitely, can be answered succinctly. Jesus was not a refugee in the same way as those crossing the border into the United States, and attempts to hijack the Christmas story toward propagating that line are reprehensible.

I say “Christmas story,” but any refugee angle must necessarily derive from an episode that took place some indeterminate time after the birth of Christ, that being the Flight into Egypt, when Joseph, Mary, and perhaps toddler-aged Jesus fled from King Herod’s plans to kill the Savior. Nonetheless, in their eagerness to make their point, it’s not uncommon to see proponents of the refugee theme use the Nativity narrative itself as their example:

It’s a pretty bold strategy to use the story of a man complying with the law to return to his birthplace to pay taxes as evidence for his seeking to escape his country to live somewhere else, illegally. To be fair though, Rep. Swalwell is particularly stupid even for a congressman. Generally, however, the propagandists use the Nativity imagery while noting by way of text that what you’re actually supposed to be focusing on is the different, later story. The point of tying it to Christmas is to tug heartstrings; the story of the Flight into Egypt lacks that emotional resonance propaganda demands. Thus you see things like this:

These are, of course, simply blasphemous memes. For a more thorough explication of the theme, one can look to people like prominent Evangelicuck , whose article from last January, “Yes, Jesus Was a Refugee” spells out his version of the argument. It should first be noted that Moore had previously designated Jesus as an “illegal immigrant” back in 2011, saying the following in that piece:

First of all, our Lord Jesus himself was a so-called “illegal immigrant.” Fleeing, like many of those in our country right now, a brutal political situation, our Lord’s parents sojourned with him in Egypt (Matt. 2:13-23). Jesus, who lived out his life for us, spent his childhood years in a foreign land away from his relatives among people speaking a different language with strange customs.

Evidently having paid better attention in marketing than history class in seminary, Moore has now apparently decided that ‘refugee’ is a more accurate and palatable word than the currently microagression-coded ‘illegal immigrant.’ The point he tries to make in the newer article also differs from his previous one, the latter of which amounted to “people should be able to move to the US to work whenever they want, something-something Bible.” In the new version, the idea that it’s great that immigrants are coming to America to make money gives way to the theory that we should let in the exact same people because they’ve suddenly ceased to be economic migrants and now suffer persecution.

This past week, the US State Department ordered World Relief and other organizations to “stop all work” related to paused federal grants, through which these organizations help refugees resettle in their first months in the country. This comes shortly on the heels of a last-minute order from the United States government that put those fleeing Taliban persecution in Afghanistan—including those who helped the US in the war against al-Qaeda—in precarious limbo.

Moore somehow forgot to mention the reason for this shift in policy, leaving the impression that the US government randomly decided it just hates Afghans. But if there’s one thing he knows, it’s that filling America with the unvetted escapees from one of the most savagely anti-Christian countries on earth is what Jesus would have wanted, because Jesus was a refugee, like these guys:

Moore believes it’s wholly appropriate to use examples from ancient times paradigmatically for modern political policy. He states that Jesus would be considered a refugee under the UN definition:

The question of whether Jesus was ever a refugee is straightforward and without any ambiguity. The United Nations currently defines a refugee as someone who “has been forced to flee his or her country because of persecution, war or violence.” This is consistent with the normal everyday usage of the word in English. Merriam-Webster, for instance, defines refugee as “one that flees,” especially “a person who flees to a foreign country or power to escape danger or persecution.”

Of course, Moore is playing games with the word ‘country’ here. The nation state is a modern concept, but the closest analogue in the world of the Nativity- a political entity over which there is no higher level of sovereignty- was the Empire. Pace Fr. Martin and his like-minded activists, it does matter that the events described in the Flight into Egypt took place wholly under the jurisdiction of the Roman government. Citizens and subjects alike generally had free reign to move about as they pleased from one province to the next, meaning that the Holy Family’s sojourn in Egypt presented none of the thorny legal problems that characterize modern, international migration. Moving from Judea to Egypt would be most akin to going from New York to Michigan, both in terms of law and the respective population densities of Jews and Arabs. Likewise, the cultural issues would have been largely moot; Moore is educated enough to know (but disingenuous enough to pretend he doesn’t) that his “illegal immigrant” Jesus wasn’t “among people speaking a different language with strange customs” but rather almost certainly living within the large and established Jewish community in Egypt.

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Moore naturally doesn’t follow the implications of the story to their exemplary conclusion, either. The Holy Family’s sojourn in Egypt was just that, a very temporary move made under extraordinary circumstances, the expectation being that they would shortly return to their homeland and continue life among their former neighbors. Neither the Nativity nor the Flight into Egypt narratives give any kind of sanction to the idea that any sovereign state has any moral duty to accept massive numbers of foreign people as permanent residents or citizens on Biblical grounds, assuming that there even is any way (or desire) on the part of those governments to efficiently determine whether refugees are in fact refugees, as opposed to economic migrants fleeing the normal circumstances of their societies, which they mean to replicate in their new ‘home.’

Nor does Moore seem especially eager to follow through on what one would assume to be the logical endpoint of an immigration policy informed by Christian principles. Nowhere in his article does he mention evangelizing all of these illegal immigrants hapless refugees; the only people he seems to think in need of witness are American Christians who want to restrict the inflow. The implication of comparing an undifferentiated category of would-be immigrants to Biblical figures like Rahab, Ruth, and King David is that those opposed to more of them coming in are akin to to the enemies of God, rather than people exercising responsible statesmanship. Moore does allow for the possibility that some restrictions are necessary, but gives no idea of what those might look like or why the Trump administration’s policies are imprudent or evil in and of themselves, just that they are. Refugees are Joshua’s host. America is the Promised Land. Americans, you’re the Canaanites.

The worst thing about this campaign of cynical manipulation of Biblical imagery from the Taylor Sheridans of the Christian world is that its brazenness, once understood, hardens the hearts of believers and potential believers to actual Christian charity. Moore isn’t wholly wrong in his wormtonguing. While Jesus was not a refugee in the modern legal sense, he was one in a very colloquially way- someone in a bad situation needing help, refuge. To sacrifice for another in need is a profound statement of Christian witness, and to offer alms and protection to people in need of it is noble in every sense. But people otherwise possessed of an inclination to such kindness recoil at the notion that such love somehow demands policies that result in the degradation of their communities, the corruption of the rule of law, and the pervasive and pervasively dismissed fraud that they rightly suspect characterizes much of the ‘charity’ done in the name of helping the less fortunate. Faith must precede sacrifice, and there is no greater barrier to either than the notion one is being lied to, and nothing is as colored by mendacity in American politics as immigration, with which is the refugee issue is bound up.

So what might a responsible, Christian-informed refugee policy look like for America? First, only those people suffering under extraordinary circumstances should be considered for any sort of settlement in the US. This means no people simply seeking escape from any country that has been a failed state since its inception. This also means following “safe third country” protocols- migrants must seek help from those nearest and able first. Second, anyone admitted is presumed to be waiting out said extraordinary circumstances; when the crisis ends, they follow the example of the Holy Family and depart to whence they came. Should this prove nonviable, and the refugee needs to stay, he or she should have no voting rights and no claim on state funds (private charity should, however, be encouraged); this should continue to the third generation, per the principle established in Deuteronomy. No community should be expected to absorb more refugees than 2% of its population, perhaps 5% for major urban areas. And finally, all refugees would be required to learn English, be gainfully employed, and of course, be law-abiding. Any refugee that becomes a criminal burden on his host community is subject to immediate deportation to his homeland or some safe third country.

It is also important to remember that your neighbors- not the neighbor as abstraction as represented by some distant foreigner- but the ones actually in your community, are just as in need of help as anyone suffering abroad. Rulers have the obligation to dispense justice to those under their rule before they seek to repair the wider world, and a system set up to help people from the Congo find jobs in Ohio could at least do as much for Ohioans. A community being perpetually reforeignized is no community and is certainly not conducive to Christian witness. And if that is the ultimate goal, as it should be, then let our policies be geared toward that end, and not sanctimonious preening about ICE raiding a manger.

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There is much to recommend this article. Savage has done the research and writes eloquently about a real problem, one that many people overlooked or pretended didn’t exist when it mattered. There are recriminations flying around social media as I write, with people accusing one another of being collaborators of commission or omission, so far as I can tell, largely confined to rightist spaces. I understand on one level why this article resonates with so many on the right, given that it neatly encapsulates the great anger at both the situation and its lack of prominence in the public sphere. But at the same time, I think it reveals, yet again, a problem at the core of the rightist experience- the nature of our relationship with the neoliberal order.

By way of background, I am a very late Gen-Xer, born in 1979, and being 35 in 2014 I was thus exactly midway between the people who were '“established” in media careers in Savage’s account and those like him who had yet to break through. My experience was quite different from his- community college followed by nondescript state school, over a decade in the service industry, and in 2014 just starting a career as a secondary school teacher following a stint as a third shift security guard. Growing up, I can’t recall knowing what Princeton was, nor would it ever have occurred to me to orient my life toward the goal of attending there if I did. Thus, to some degree, the world the author inhabits and the expectations inculcated thereby are quite foreign to me, but I think that perspective as an outsider gives me some insights others may have missed.

Or perhaps not. Jeremy Carl (who went to Yale) seems to get what’s wrong with this take:

His is the lament of the intellectual dark web (IDW) —the so-called “homeless liberals” —people who at some level still believe in the elite system and refuse to give up that belief even in the wake of overwhelming evidence that it has betrayed them. But it is far from clear that such a belief is either clear-headed or admirable. Savage and his subjects can be quite self-critical at times, but at others they seem to shrink back from acting on the logical conclusions of their observations. Savage, like his IDW contemporaries, seems content to fish in the Rubicon rather than to cross it and travel to terrain that would mark him to the establishment not just as a critic but as an enemy.

To be fair, while many people on the right are reading this as the sort of critique they are used to and themselves produce, it’s not at all clear that Savage is a rightist himself, and the impression he conveys is that of a perhaps slightly conservative (inasmuch as he’s even willing to entertain the notion of anti-whiteness) but largely comfortable with the basic liberal power structure of the media world. The conclusions he should draw from his experiences are rightist, but he doesn’t seem to be there yet. But that in turn should prompt some reflection on the right regarding how readily this mode of thought finds purchase among us.

There is a kind of schizophrenia on the right. On the one hand, a big part of the general critique of modernity on the part of rightists is that the neoliberal world is systemically broken, that we live in an managerial state run according to an ideology of profoundly antihuman humanism, and that all of the degeneracy we see around us- the feminism, the gender-queering, the materialism, the reign of quantity, the multiculturalism, the whole globohomo GAE package- is the product of, or at least heavily exacerbated by, that system. And yet, time and time again, we laud tweets and videos and essays because they make the point that, “SEE, SEE, THEY’RE BEING UNFAIR TO US BY NOT GIVING US STATUS!!!!” We tell ourselves that the system is evil, and lambaste it for not including us; indeed, we marvel that it wouldn’t want to do so.

A lot of the more general anti-boomer rhetoric functions along the same lines. They had things easy; they walked into jobs and bought houses when they were 20 within a functioning society- and also they screwed everything up for everyone else. But there’s no rejection of boomer mores as such- their indifference to tradition, their reflexive liberalism, the very abundance of their lives flowing directly into a politics of indifferent, exploitative greed wherein socialist hippies become tax hawk Reaganites before morphing into bobo social security sponges drinking Margaritas at their spot in The Villages, served by an illegal, complaining to their friends about young people being lazy. It’s a disgusting (if a bit un-nuanced) phenomenon, but an even more uncomfortable truth is that many rightists don’t really reject this- they’re really mad because they themselves can’t live this way.

The sort of person who goes to Princeton and moves to Los Angeles is one who is content to play by the rules of team blue; to acquiesce to its values and seek reward within that system. Well, as it turns out, the rewards are ostracism, contempt, and having to watch diverse mediocrities hold up awards on TV for anyone out of favor with the regime of the month. And these rules weren’t new. They didn’t suddenly appear on tablets carried by a Jew descending the Hollywood Hills in 2014. Hollywood was a censorious yet degenerate place back when Andrew Breitbart was criticizing it back in the 2000s, and indeed, long before- perhaps always. If you didn’t object when they were tossing the headshots of conservatives in the trashcan, you have no right to complain now that the Eye of Soros has shifted its gaze. Live for the Current Thing, die for the Current Thing.

This pick-me-ism on the right is especially bizarre because I can’t think of a single person who doesn’t recognize that the fields Savage described are and have been- as the kids would say- pozzed. This is true in a very literal sense. has compared progressivism in the workplace to cancer; if so, it’s Kaposi’s Sarcoma, metastasizing lesions brought about as the result of an autoimmune infection, the body’s own defenses turning against it. We inhabit a cultural AIDSgeist.

To see the manifest truth of this one need only look at the areas of employment Savage laments didn’t give him and those like him a chance. Perform this thought experiment. Imagine Savage had gotten a writing deal from a Hollywood studio and gained the opportunity he wanted. In the first place, do you think this article ever would have seen the light of day, even if he were to watch scores of other white men denied the chance he’d been given? But aside from that, given existing circumstances, consider what his career would have been like- abasing himself on a daily basis to progressive shibboleths, censoring his (apparently normielib) views on an increasingly large range of subjects, and having his creative output put through the filter of critical studies slop theory such that what emerged onto TV was vegan sausage excreted into 22 minute long tubes of colon casing by a writers’ room that hated him for the crime of existing. All for what? To be able to produce the show he always wanted to produce that they’ll never actually let him produce?

That’s what he wishes he could have been a part of, and why the ending of the piece comes off as such a letdown. For all he went through, he’s not even mad at the people who excluded him from the career he wanted. He’s just sad. But mad or maudlin, he still, after all that, on some level, wishes he could have been a part of that world that despised him. There are guys online as I write this who just know that if it wasn’t for all the haters, that e-girl who he sent all those superchats would totally be in love with him. His problem as he sees it, is that some injustice prevented him from connecting with his true love. It never occurs to him that his affections were improperly oriented in the first place.

I had thought originally I might link to other individual comments on X and Substack around this article and point out further instances of where I saw (from my point of view) misguided rage at being excluded from a system that was in any case set up to emasculate, deracinate, and lobotomize exactly the sort of people mad about being kept out. But I thought better of that; it would only come off as judgmental and unfeeling. Perhaps it would be best to simply note my own feelings on the issue and my experiences trying to make it in that world. It may be that someone might find in my perspective a way to move forward in light of current realities.

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As I noted, my horizons as a young man were very limited. I always knew that I wanted to live the life of the mind, long before I had heard the term or had any notion of what it really meant. I was a kid who went to a terrible high school fully enriched with vibrant diversity. My refuge was the library, where I spent every lunch period. But I had no real specific thoughts of college and none of the habits of a scholar apart from a love of learning. I lacked discipline and cultural awareness, and thus had no means to navigate into the future I wanted.

The SAT saved me. People knock standardized tests, but without my score I never would have gotten into college. Were I nonwhite it would have gotten me into Harvard; today it wouldn’t get me into a Mississippi juco. I was just happy to be learning, working my way to that professor job I wanted. But because I still had no real idea what getting there would really entail, it was all very abstract. I suppose on some level it was so unreal a dream that I never really expected it would happen, and thus I wasn’t really crushed when it didn’t.

But then, being a professor wasn’t really the goal; the goal was always the life of the mind. I read books in class; I read them in the break room at my server job at the hotel where I spent thirteen of my most productive years, toiling for scraps. But I kept reading. I bought a Greek textbook at Borders (I miss Borders) and went through it sitting at the golf course clubhouse bar when shifts were slow. I read Peter Brown’s Through The Eye of a Needle at my desk working security in downtown Atlanta at 3:00 AM.

I inured myself to the knowledge that no one cared long before. I didn’t do it for a career or recognition or money; I had none and expected none. I’d probably still be there save for the fact that along the way I found myself with a wife and children, and thus a need to provide, as well as a more mature awareness of who I was and what I might offer the world. Having learned, I had an obligation to teach, and being unable to have the job I would prefer, I found another way.

Had I somehow managed to find a job as a professor when it might have been possible, I would have just found myself in the same position as my hypothetical Savage with his dream writing position. I would have been forced to either make wholly untenable moral compromises or else walk away from something I’d by then become deeply attached. Looking back, I probably would have failed myself, because I wouldn’t have had the strength that only time spent in struggle had given me. I was too soft to hack it, and I would have been eaten by that system, and as with Savage, for what?

The proper path for a man of the right, as I see it, is heroic struggle for transcendence in the face of a modernity wholly hostile to virtue as such. For some this means war, for others asceticism, and for some it means the daily struggle of navigating a world hostile to a differentiated being. The latter man is Jünger’s anarch, bending but never breaking within the uncertain storm of tyranny. In the Christian sense, it is to be in the world but not of it, a stranger and a sojourner. It is not to seek status and comfort within the acceptable boundaries of liberalism.

I wanted to teach bright young people about all the wonderful things I’d studied; that’s what I do now as a teacher. I wanted to write about the things that moved me- I have my Substack. I can provide for my family and be real, without having to add pronouns to my bio to do it. And best of all, I get to help others with the same vision I have.

I see people from all walks of life succeed here every day, on Substack and other places. At the same time Savage was desperately trying to write for people who were too cowardly to give him the time of day, PewDiePie was earning views on YouTube that any TV producer would kill for. Diverse Disney churns out films and TV shows that are best known as fodder for Critical Drinker. Nerdrotic was a drug addict turned comic store owner who made his channel into the bane of Hollywood sludge. What they all have in common is that they intuited that the system was stacked against them, and that inspired them to make their own way.

There are a lot of people who are angry at what Savage laid out. They’re not wrong to feel that way. I’m angry too. But I’m not especially mad at the system. What infuriates me is that I ever wanted to be a part of it. I hate my own ignorance and indifference. I despise that part of me that would have accepted what they offered, had they deigned to do so. I’m hurt because I know deep down how hard I would have worked for them, the late nights and long hours of toil of which I know I’m capable, all for them, all for nothing, all to be tossed aside at the first hint of not respecting this year’s trendy new contempt for me.

Apart from that, I don’t have any ill will toward the people who hate me. They don’t have the power to make me feel anything. I want nothing from them; they gave me nothing, and I owe them nothing. I don’t want to be part of whole fields that are simply whitened sepulchers, slowly dissolving the bones of the dead within. The universities, the media, entertainment, all the things Savage mentions, are all collapsing in on themselves, black holes from which light does not escape. I don’t want to tear them down; I want to ignore them. I want take blocks from their ruins and build a great tower from them. There’s all the talent in the world out there waiting for a call, men who’ve been praying for the chance to use their powers for some great purpose. I know, because I was and remain one of them. But I believe in my path I’ve found that for myself. I believe you can too. The way forward is to make new things.

People will perhaps criticize this for its lack of specificity. What new things? What I’m preaching here is that the days of the fixed path are in one sense over, and in another never more clear. I want to disabuse people of the notion that there is a safe way forward, make clear that the idea that men can assume X input will result in Y success in life is simply no longer tenable. But in that uncertainly lies freedom, a space to carve out a new relationship with the world. This will be different for different people; there’s nothing I could say to one that would apply to all, and no sure knowledge I’d be right in any case about any particulars. No one knows exactly what’s coming, but the good news is, no one can stop it either.

You see a lost generation. I see men who haven’t gotten started yet. I see an untried army, a great surging orb of potential energy, a big bang waiting to fill a universe. I see Alan Rickmans and Rodney Dangerfields and Robert E. Lees and Ulysses S. Grants and Harlan Sanders and Owen Barfields and Philip Rivers- men who became legends long after the world said their time had passed. Some will lose, some before they even tried. Nothing is promised in life but our shared fate as humans. But it’s never too late, until it is.

To the white men cast aside by the system, you’re not alone, even when you are. Because behind you awaits a great host of heroes and scholars and poets and sages and men of faith. I say awaits because the hour is here when we can call upon them all again and- once more- revive the culture of the West as our ancestors did, not to recreate Boomerdom, but a vision born of tradition wedded to modernity, transcendent and ennobling. Or you can spend the next ten years hoping for a bit part next to a trans James Bond of color; maybe they’ll give it to you if you’re mad enough. The choice is yours.

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We live in a time when a once level-headed anti-populist politician such as JD Vance has increasingly adopted the language of white nationalism, signing on to the Great Replacement theory that nefarious forces, often coded as Jewish, are bringing in immigrants to replace “white” Americans, attacking “multiculturalism” and aligning himself with Christian theocratic nationalism. That his wife Usha is from India is inconvenient to this shift, of course. The shameful Great Replacement theory now embraced by Vance was invented by a French Nazi who considered all Americans “Negroes.”

There is a lot to unpack here. JD Vance is evil for supporting ideas that he doesn’t actually support and a hypocrite for failing to live up to the dictates of an ideology to which he doesn’t subscribe by being down with the brown. In addition to being a white nationalist, he’s apparently also a Christian nationalist, which would ostensibly be a major logical inconsistency in Cole’s argument. But of course all of this is simply a string of assertions rather than an argument as such- Cole simply lists a pair of things that good folks like him are supposed to hate and oppose, and signals said hatred and opposition. As a critique, it’s vacuous, tendentious, and silly, and thus naturally places him within the safe confines of leftist respectability, from which he dares not stray.

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Note that the “Great Replacement theory” that Vance has supposedly “embraced” is understood to be wrong because of its association with a French Nazi, not because it’s inaccurate as such. In the link he calls it a “Nazi idea” and asserts that the Allies won because they were multicultural- as though the Axis didn’t have a major non-white component as well as Muslim soldiers, including allies like the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, one of the godfathers of the Palestinian nationalism Cole champions. If an idea becomes true or false by virtue of the character of the person who holds it, what does that then say about the latter? Is environmentalism a Nazi idea? Animal rights? Highways? Drinking warm beer (put a maybe on that one)? Rene Binet didn’t invent the idea of noticing and objecting to one people being systematically replaced in their homeland by another; he simply coined a useful shorthand term to describe a particular manifestation of the phenomenon, one which differs in its modern usage from his own. Cole very obviously thinks there is a generations-long Great Replacement happening in Palestine, which is certainly arguably true. Why does he think it strange that people might conceive of the same thing happening elsewhere?

The answer is apparent in the main thrust of this essay. Cole is here to inform his readership of something that literally none of them don’t already believe. Whiteness is a social construct, and is … wait for it … bad:

Whiteness is a term with a checkered history. As a historian, I would argue that it is an objectively meaningless construct. It is only meaningful, like any political identity, in a carefully crafted context and through various sleights of hand. I have pointed out that Benjamin Franklin only considered the English white, dismissing Swedes as “tawny” and Germans as “swarthy.” In the twentieth century, working-class Italians, Greeks and Irish were gradually admitted to “whiteness,” which had in the nineteenth century been associated with Protestantism, middle and upper class status, and northern European origins. That is, whiteness in America was always mostly about class and religion and unfree antecedents rather than about skin color.

Here “whiteness” is meaningless, a signifier of power relations in an oppressive society, an ever-evolving marker of caste status. It is, in any case, a “political identity,” for which biological skin color is relatively unimportant; you can have a pale complexion but still not be “white” as such. It’s a trick the ruling class pulls on people, a “sleight of hand,” divorced from any objective reality or significance.

This is Gay Race Communism 101, the fusion of various strains of Critical Theory. Whiteness is a type of moral evil, an instrument of false consciousness, one’s awareness of which marks one as truly Woke, in the earnest sense. To realize a more just society, whiteness must be deconstructed, destroyed. To the adherents of this particular religious sensibility, it represents the cringe equivalent of original sin. Unlike with Christian anthropology, however, there is no redemption to be had. Whiteness may be false, but there is no truth one can accept that will liberate one from it. You cannot simply decide to abandon it. The People Who Believe Themselves to Be White cannot choose to believe otherwise. They are stained, cursed, and destined for destruction in the coming revolution.

This leads to some interesting logical hurdles in combating white nationalism. Having established that whiteness is a weightless phantasm brought into being by a capitalist conspiracy in order to scare people like some Scooby Doo villain, he seeks to remove its mask by undermining any semblance of legitimacy for white nationalism by demonstrating the following:

One of the symbols of whiteness for Americans constructing a white identity is Europeanness, especially northern Europeanness. It should be remembered that Adolf Hitler initially rebuffed Benito Mussolini’s offer of an alliance because he did not consider Italians white, and kept hoping that instead he could conclude an alliance with Britain.

The bad news for white nationalism is that Europe’s genetic history has revealed that Europeans were mostly dark-skinned until the first millennium BC, and even then whiteness advanced slowly.

Putting aside the tendentious nature of these studies and the weasel phrase “dark-skinned” (As compared to what? Did they look like George Hamilton or Wesley Snipes?), notice what he is arguing here. On the one hand, being “white” is a purely modern political category with no meaningful connection to biological characteristics, and on the other you can prove whether someone is white or not using basic genetic analysis. Whiteness isn’t real and also it can be empirically quantified. “Whiteness” is a purely modern construct, and yet we can somehow speak of the relative levels of whiteness possessed by people circa 1,000 BC. Also, there’s a mention of Hitler for no real reason in describing whiteness as an American phenomenon. Presumably leftist outlets pay $.10 per word, but $.25 for “Hitler” in particular. Or perhaps Cole thinks Hitler was some kind of white nationalist, despite that being especially historically dubious, given his unholy war against the Slavs as part a broader hateful, idiotic campaign that did more to kill white people and discredit rightism than all the Sorosbucks on earth.

Above: A scientific reconstruction of the son of a Yamnaya conqueror and his Neolithic concubine, circa 3,000 BC.

None of what Cole describes would invalidate white nationalism such as it exists as a contemporary phenomenon, since by his own admission it is intrinsically such in any case. In other words, even if you could demonstrate the supposed truth of evolutionary science to such a degree that even the most demented Substack wingnat was defeated by facts and logic and conceded that Europeans were once Vikangs and sheeit, what matters is now. Everyone knows what a white person is today, an identity helpfully reinforced by an army of race commissars equipped by modern leftist campus pseudo-philosophy to identify it to an exacting standard. Sure, I’m white because of my ancestors, but also because I know that if I check the wrong box it could mean the difference between getting admitted to school, getting a job, getting promoted, or a host of other things.

And if white nationalism is discredited because the remote ancestors of Europeans came from somewhere else and looked different, so too is any other form. Palestinians aren’t real because at one point the original inhabitants of the land came over from Africa and because their more immediate ancestors were Phoenicians and Philistines and Aramaeans and Arabs and Jews and Turks and the odd crusader. If you rule out the idea of identity as an emergent phenomenon, or accept that but qualify it by saying national identity is a ‘meaningless slight of hand’ then anything other than Great Rift Valley revanchism is nothing more than a long con. Being Black with that capital letter is just as much the product of an oppressive system as lowly, lowercase white.

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For my part, I find this sort of discourse silly and tiresome on all counts, largely for the incoherence I noted. And by this discourse, I mean both the idea of white nationalism and its nonsense critiques. Identity is a complex and often fluid thing, no less real for its complexities, and the conversation around white nationalism- pro and con- largely centers on reductive and ahistorical takes whereby people talk past each other and nothing meaningful is ever resolved. Prof. Cole’s sludgeworthy offering notwithstanding, white nationalism is a flimsy construct, one which I feel is ultimately a weak reed for the right to lean on.

A nation is, ostensibly, an organic sense of community felt by people who share a common biological heritage, but also a history, language, culture, and connection to a place. One or so of these elements might be missing, but in general any group one might regard as a nation has them. I say “ostensibly” organic, because many of the extant nations of modernity are largely or wholly the conscious constructs of centralizing liberal states, and owe their identity not to traditional processes, but force and propaganda. The notion of being “French” or “German” meant something different than it did in the Middle Ages than now, and Burgundians and Frisians would marvel that their descendants thought of themselves as part of some continuity with neighbors that to them were quite foreign.

It is for this reason that I don’t especially value nationalism as an expression of rightist politics; in its contemporary form it is fundamentally, inherently liberal, and the rise of nationalism did much to undermine the real organic bonds of monarchy and aristocracy that characterize an authentic traditional society. That said, white nationalism is a step worse problematically. One could argue that whatever they once were, there are people now who speak French, regard themselves as both culturally Catholic and the heirs to the Revolution, and share the other commonalities I noted. But this is simply not true of white people. Certainly, we share- broadly- genetic commonalities. But what is the white language? What is white culture? What is our religion? What is our shared history? If it is the things we hold together that bind us, what must it mean that we have historically arranged ourselves according to the things that divide us?

Now, one might object to what I say with some theoretical conjectures about white unity emerging from the internet, that our real religion is some pagan “tradition” that is actually a wholesale reconstruction/invention, etc. Perhaps. But even if some white nation were to come into being, it would necessarily come at the expense of subsidiary uniqueness. Dissolving all of the various peoples of European descent into a solvent of whiteness, one that simply mirrors the leftist construct of the same, would mean abandoning all the particular and interesting things about Scots and Frenchmen and Spaniards and Italians and so forth. It would be an even more artificial phenomenon than the 19th century liberal movements, because- given the distances of scale involved in communication and unification- as a mass phenomenon it would be internet-centric rather than the result of personal interrelationships. It would therefore also be fragile, and when whatever binding forces were dissolved or lost influence, the shared identity would in turn collapse, and diversity would again ensue, this time unmitigated by any organic connection to what was.

What, then, do I propose instead? Something more nuanced, but at the same time simpler and more traditional. The historic peoples of Europe inhabited multiple identities at once. Culturally they belonged to small and mostly homogeneous groups that were profoundly local. Politically they were bound by shared allegiance to particular rulers, from dynasties that would change borders every generation. Religiously they were part of a greater Christendom, a transcendent kingdom not of this world.

Culturally speaking, our societies are collapsing into decadence and repetition, the product of the exhaustion of neoliberalism feeding off an inheritance to which it is incapable of contributing. Politically, we are increasingly divided. Common Good Constitutionalism is wonderful, but presupposes a shared notion of social telos, one which a great many of us no longer have. I share a country with people who would drive me from public life, disarm me, flood my town with foreigners, and happily see them kill me. The religious problem is self evident.

To fix culture is the work of many, and my main focus here. But whatever happens will be local, organic, and real-world before anything else. As a monarchist, I look to the resumption of reciprocal loyalty as the defining political characteristic, and I believe the reemergence of such to be far more likely; the decline of liberalism means the decline of modern nationalism. And I think the suffering of our age will result in a religious revival, of a traditional kind, and I think the outlines are already manifest.

The future of the white man will be much like that of everyone else, a return to more natural relations within spheres of identity. To resist the Great Replacement through white nationalism is to cure a migraine through decapitation. We can resist as Hungarians and Poles; we can resist as Mississippians and Ohioans (but probably not Minnesotans). We can resist as Christians. We can retain all of our identities. And the whole world will be the better for it.

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