Gay Rappers of the Illuminati Redux

My response to a critic and an illustration of current trends.

Three days ago, I wrote an essay in response to the election- my attempt to elucidate certain trends I saw manifesting by referencing myth and political theory. My thesis was a bit bold and perhaps speculative, but I was very pleased at the overall response. I am grateful to those of you who read it, shared it, and commented on it. But regarding the latter, there was one respondent whose take on it was a bit odd.

The author is one

Peter Schwartz

, who has saved me the trouble of recounting his BPDpoasting by writing his own account where he summarizes the whole cringe saga. Purely as a result of the above link it will become his most popular post. For those of you not inclined to read it, the story in brief is that he came to my page to call me Hitler and pronounce as follows:

Wow. This is hilariously idiotic. You are one fucked-up, attention-seeking, narcissistic angry dude. Congratulations! You must have had one gigantic orgasm writing this. I mean ... vergeltungsreich? You certainly wear your fascism proudly and openly. Yeah, Tolkien and you are like peas in a pod. In fact the whole gang of you are openly fascistic. One giant circle jerk. Sheesh. And I see Adrian Vermeule is a fan. That's a reveal.

Apparently it’s enough to use a (self-generated) phrase in German to be labeled a fascist. Notice that Tolkien and I are here “peas in a pod” and somehow the always kind Dr.

Adrian Vermeule

is involved (?). I take it that Mr. Schwartz thinks I’m a Catholic, (Orthodox) but as we’ll see, both the unthinking assumptions and the monomania relative to the Church of Rome are important aspects of his worldview. My response was to politely ignore his odd sexual references and try to peer through his clouded mind to the sunshine I just know is out there. Me:

So what you’re saying is, I write like Tolkien? Thank you!

This angered him.

I'm of course not saying you write like Tolkien. I'm saying you and Tolkien could not be more different.

A minute ago we were “peas in a pod.” Trends in literary criticism change quickly these days. At any rate, I said nothing else, but my silence only seemed to spur him on to new depths of scorned rage. After restacking chopped misquotes of my work in a vain effort to make my prose look as bad as his, he announced that I was to be the focus of some new research project. I suppose I should be flattered that like my erstwhile fellow pea Tolkien I’m now the subject of scholarly inquiry; surely an Amazon series is in the works. But for all that I started to wonder if I’d stood him up for prom at some point. I thought about comparing it to Fatal Attraction, but the younger crowd might miss the reference. As this is a family publication, and I am a gentleman, I prefer not to swear, so I’ll outsource a better comparison to the great Tommy Sotomayor:

And that was where I was prepared to leave it before it occurred to me that there was a larger point to be made from this. Normally, I don’t mention the people who write unhinged reactions to my work, as there’s not much to do beyond trolling them until they block me. I’ve had my share, as does anyone who’s been here for a while. But this man happens to illustrate a trend that I see unfolding in the new world of media and intellectual life, and thus, the fit subject for an essay on that subject. But first, a bit of background.

Per his biography, Mr. Schwartz states that he is from Princeton, NJ (median household income $176,000). He attended Swathmore- a rich-kid college- and then earned a PhD in Political Science at Berkeley. Despite this origin story, he has previously described himself as a “failed academic” before just recently updating his bio. All resources possible dedicated to the mission and here he is on Substack. Again, I like to keep things family-friendly in my prose, so I’ll let Richie from A History of Violence ask the question his career is begging:

The answer is fairly simple. Mr. (apologies, Dr.) Schwartz is simply a purebred, lab-grown strain of bugman, with nothing else going for him that the system might find interesting. He seems to have absorbed, without the least reflection or critical thought, the notion that there are certain good forces in the universe (those tending to reinforce liberalism) and certain other evil forces opposed (racism, Nazis, racist Nazis, MAGA, etc.) and that the job of an academic was to pick one of the latter and declaim on its malign influence at conferences and seminars until he was duly rewarded with a tenured position. That much wasn’t really poor planning; the flaw in the strategy was that there are a thousand other more diverse and equitable people all contending for the same shrinking pool of sinecures. “Schwartz” just isn’t going to cut it atop a resume. It’s too ambiguous- Jewish enough to angry up the Hamas-fandom and German enough for fascism to be assumed, as established.

Now, there are other plums the system will toss its surplus pseudo-elites. After all, you can’t have them out there Turchining up chaos. So it seems he’s written for the Nation and worked for Microsoft (commieflexible?) among other outlets. Naturally, one would assume, given his academic training and a resume that includes The New Republic, that he would be a competent writer able to attract an audience by thoughtfully expounding ideas through clear and engaging prose. So, on his own and without the backing of those legacy outlets and institutional money, he must be doing pretty well on Substack. Let’s check it out:

Wow, 136 subscribers? Well, maybe he hasn’t been at this for that long; we all have to start somewhere and-

Oh, he’s been at this for years. Well . . . maybe he just doesn’t post that often. That Wikidworld project looks pretty involved, perhaps he just hasn’t devoted the amount of time to it-

Alright . . . well . . . maybe he doesn’t have the biggest fanbase after several hundred posts, but perhaps they’re especially engaged and supportive of his work? Let’s see those numbers:

The one like is from an account that subscribes to exactly one publication- guess which? It’s either a bot, his girlfriend, or more likely both. Sadly, this person could not be bothered to restack the post despite existing solely to subscribe to him; Dr. Schwartz did that himself. I have not yet looked at the six notifications seen on the left, but I can presume that they represent more interest in just my latest post than this entire Wikidworld/Catholicpunk project has gotten in the whole of its existence. By way of experiment, take a break from reading this and look at your “Coming Soon” post they automatically insert when you create an account on Substack. There are probably at least two people who have accidently liked it.

But to be fair, popularity is not the best metric. There are people with far more followers and readers than me who are idiots, after all, and surely better writers than me with fewer. Van Gogh wasn’t appreciated in his lifetime; perhaps Dr. Schwartz just hasn’t hit his stride yet. You can pick any one of his essays and decide for yourself. For my part, they remind me a good bit of something I encountered years ago when doing research for a mythology class I was teaching to highschoolers. I was trying to find examples of the internet as a mythogenic space when I happened upon a YouTube video called “Gay Rappers of the Illuminati.” It was 42 minutes long, professionally edited complete with soundtrack, and its thesis was that all rappers were part of a satanic cult in which they had to have gay sex with producers to secure record deals. Most of the narration was along the theme of, “look at 50 Cent with his shirt off . . . all sweaty with his muscles out . . . he’s gay!” What was more surprising than the subtext, however, was that the video I watched was number 94 in the series! Yes, 94 videos, representing what had to have been hundreds of hours of work, all beating the viewer over the head with the same repetitive theme. The main difference between this series and Wikidworld/Catholicpunk is that, with the recent P. Diddy revelations, the former is a bit more plausible than the notion that traditionalist Catholics are somehow taking over America. It’s also less gay.

The series mysteriously disappeared, either because of the creator’s liberties in describing popular entertainers as gay, satanic pedophiles or because he was thiiiiiiis close to the truth. I’ll let you decide (no I won’t; he was nuts). The image is from a Rolling Stone article.

Schwartz’s prose is leaden contemporary academese, replete with references to his feelings, (“By going hard, I don’t mean channeling my anger and distress into attacking and judging others”- you called me Goebbels), misplaced imagery, (“There is another angle to this liberal miasma about the role in contemporary politics of conservative Catholic idea”- that’s not really what ‘miasma’ means) and above all the monomaniacal fixation on some challenge to liberalism as the real crisis of our time. His analyses of contemporary events and figures are hindered by the poverty of an imagination devoid of anything beyond the narrow reading required for his training. The Evola-quoting, polo-shirt-collar-popping Steve Bannon, veteran of the Navy and Goldman Sachs, is the face of Catholic and punk?! Apart from such miscues there’s nothing new in what he writes, just standard boilerplate Whig progressivism of a type you’ll get in any basic textbooks. Did you know that the execution of Charles I was a milestone in the evolution of liberalism?!

And that is the reason no one reads his stuff. It’s not that it’s wrong per se, but that it reflects the mindset of conformity, careerism, and wholly unimaginative cycling of ideas among a shrinking pool of expensively-trained hacks who desperately want to be paid to mindlessly repeat the things they were taught to say for the rest of their lives. Like any bottom-feeding invertebrate, Dr. Schwartz’s life goal is to root himself to something sturdy in order to feed on what drifts by. He’s unfortunately ended up in the wrong place for that.

You should realize, Dr. Schwartz, that that world is in the past. Substack and outlets like it are the future. I’m a schoolteacher. I write not even under an assumed name, but a mere title. Because you show no evidence of having read anything outside of your narrow specialization you totally missed the reference to the Great Haunted Library of Celaeno, which is fitting since August Derleth never went to college [correction: BA from U. of Wisconsin- following point still stands], yet could both read and write circles around you and your pampered ilk (He was also a Catholic). I’ve written half of my essays on my phone at night after 10 hours of work, much as Derleth penned fiction after shifts in the cannery. I started with nothing, not a single subscriber, no backing and no imported email list. Berkeley would laugh me out of their admissions office. But they sent the winner of their highest achievement to Substack, and he couldn’t hack it, and I could. What do you think that says about you, about the people like you? What do you think that means for the future? How long do you think people will keep deferring to the title of PhD? How long before they realize that any institution that selects for people like you is doomed to drown in its own irrelevance. As I noted in the essay you couldn’t grasp, a new age is dawning, a reinvigoration of traditional manhood and mythic forms. God willing I will be a part of it.

August Derleth would have been perfect for Substack. May his like come again.

You are welcome for the attention this post will bring you. In all kindness, I suggest you make some good use of it.