Nick Fuentes is no genius. His blatant antisemitism, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, Anti-Protestantism (or, any religion that is not Pre-Vatican II Catholic), and xenophobia aside, the other underlying parts of Nick’s core thesis regarding the state of society is not original and even the most politically uniformed person (which is not a sleight by me) already knows what Nick is saying.
That being how society made promises by selling a system (college, houses, constant growth, etc.), yet, that system inevitably consumed and destroyed itself, thus making previous promises and dreams, e.g., the American Dream, more difficult to achieve, despite the seeming ease of making money (e.g., paid partnerships and income from Google’s algorithm).
Nick is essentially pent up white entitlement dealing with the existential malaise of the theorized fall of the American Empire. The only currency he has is cruelty and being a snarky troll.
Nick is just a basic person with eyes and ears who is a byproduct of the economic and political malaise which arose out of the 2008 Financial Crisis and the nearly decade long Global Recession which overlapped and extended from the underlying reasons of what caused 2008. For example, in the USA we had the real-estate crash whereas in Europe you had the Greece sovereign debt crisis and other crashes in Ireland, Spain, Iceland, etc.
This era gave us Occupy (which foreshadowed Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and even Zohan Mandami) but also Tea Party (which laid the seeds of MAGA, Qanon, January 6th, the Obama Birther Conspiracy Theory, Project 2025).
It’s not brain science.
This is why Tucker Carlson is being disingenuous when he claims to not agree with Nick despite both men being racist. Tucker is just snooty about his and yet is seen by Zoomer conservatives are being something akin to a “plant”, i.e., Tucker says the right populist things but still is seen as proxy of the status quo.
However, Nick brings nothing ground breaking to the table as far as his analysis of economics, culture, etc.
It does not take an advanced degree to understand that capitalism sent jobs overseas. It is not a secret anymore that de-industrializatiion hit the white (and, yes, black) working classes of the USA, England, etc. Nick and people like JD Vance (a Catholic convert who bridges the “Trad Bro” community with the “Tech Bro” oligarchs) essentially plagiarized or co-opted Left Wing structural analysis of the ills of capitalism, but both Fuentes and Vance twisted it to appeal to regressive borderline fascist sensibilities and tactics. The same way how the German Right on the 1930s usurped popular Left Wing sensibilities to grow the Far Right.
The only thing Nick brought to Tucker was broadcasting and legitimizing Nazism, no matter how much Tucker denies it. Urchins like Nick Fuentes are essentially the street thugs protecting the elitist racism and WASP nostalgic snobbery of Tucker’s world.
Basically Tucker is just the older, wealthier and more spoiled version of Nick Fuentes, yet, since Tucker is from a “Ralph Lauren, Conde Nast, cardigan wearing, row crew affiliating, late 80s to early 90s Ivy League-esque” world, Tucker simply refrains from publicly being Far Right because in these elite circles such behavior is seen as proletarian and not of “refined”, “established” men of the “classical liberal” tradition.
Tucker agrees with Nick but has to appear to have slight disgust only to save face and disgust is simply a characteristic of the upper bourgeoisie class. Tucker is like powdered wig landowner covering his mouth with a scarf as he strolls through the muck of the everyday person.
Contradictions and irregularities are in part an element of the exclusivity of the rich, because not making sense enables this class to gatekeep, raise the bar, and appear aloof with their tastes which of course the peasants can’t understand.
Tucker Carlson literally could have invited any Joe Smoe to talk because as stated, Nick is not original.
Let me quickly distill Nick’s overrated analysis.
In 2008, the banks crashed the economy and unemployment rose. The US was already fighting an expensive forever war in the Middle East which was funded on US debt considering the Bush Administration cut taxes. The US domestically had already been suffering from unique drug pandemics in the early 2000s such as the rural meth crisis, but by the time of 2008 Crash, the seeds of the opiod epidemic was already established.
When you mix economic crashes, wars, veterans, drugs, etc., you get crime, political unrest and more extremes, but also increased cop altercations because of crime, evictions, for-profit prisons, etc.
Many cop altercations, notably as cell phone camera technology improved, were across racial lines. Protesting against police thus became ripe for exploitation by racist who wanted the civil unrest to appear inherently anti-white (which they veiled under milqtoast calls for Law & Order), so alienated people who felt silenced by society would normalize White Identity politics. White supremacists co-opted Left Wing anti-colonialist frameworks to argue that white people deserved the same sort of special treatments, preservationist policies.
The people promoting this purposely omitted or failed to grasp that minorities were given a sort of unspoken ability to have racial solidarity because past oppression of minorities under white supremacy created the need for the empowerment of minorities to heal and make up for generations of lost opportunities.
White people within the USA have never been and will never be as oppressed as BIPOC people, and even if there were industries that exploited and/or trafficked white people (i.e., indentured servitude), thr scope snd scale will never match black chattel slavery, Indigenous genocide, Jim Crow, the KKK literally running governments, etc.
Sorry to all white supremacists. You’re not oppressed.
White Identity politics which steals Left Wing frameworks is ironic since most of time there is an innate sense and calling for supremacy.
It is funny to me that so many white racists are fearful of being minorities (which is a theory not necessarily a reality) but they expect minorities to be happy in staying minorities. So are racists admitting that being a minority sucks? So…why are they suprised minorities resist or call out their treatment by the majority (notably from a historic perspective).
Even if this isn’t the case entirely, White Identity politics erases and downplays the effects of past racial abuses on current material conditions of minorities.
More irony added, is that the more racist white people are, the more self-awareness and determination that minorities feels as they realize assimilating will never be good enough.
But, back to how the world evolved into what it is, many war veterans became cops in a tumultuous America, thus asethically linking these two careers more so, which enabled further politicization of them, which conservatives capitalized on due to their ability to appeal to patriotism and law & order, while dismissing concerns of police brutality, systemic racism, the blowback of imperialist adventures, etc.
Because of the crash, the rich got richer, and Big Tech took off as being the catalyst of the new emergent economy. The old industrial DOW Jones was now in the backseat towards the hype fueled Tech Sector of indexes like NASDAQ.
Near zero rates enabled those who in part caused the crisis to get cheap loans to buy competitors, bloat their stocks, etc., indifferent to the natural inflation the “Free Money” era created. Capitalism’s propensity to boom and bust, and to seek new paradigms to justify its continued and unfettered existence, creates irregularities between real life and market perception. The crash essentially burned a forest in which society was living off of and got comfortable with, but those who burned it got rewarded and society had to do the slow and painful migration towards new forests (paradigms, systems).
This era gave us the “gig economy”, “porn hubs”, data brokerages, etc., because the physical world was becoming for technological and digital based, yet the efficiency that capitalism creates such as saving on labor, means people struggle to find jobs and the economy itself becomes more reliant on asset investing rather than real production of tangible items. Further, as the developing world becomes more advanced due to capitalism, the more conflict over resources arises, and the utopian ideals of free markets takes a backseat to human barbarism, amoral realpolitik, etc.
The reliance on asset investing, bolstered by cheap money and interests, boats assets thus making homes and stocks pricy while the currency itself fluctuates in its purchasing power.
The general population found themselves in a sort of Japanese Lost Decade situation where it seemed the rich only got richer, previous ideas of college became criticized, homes became unaffordable by the time Millennials and Zoomers had enough capital to put down payments down, and socially the public spent more time in online spaces which in itself can create nihilism from the all the drama, tension, fighting, desensitizing media, competitive online dating, trolls, misinformation and depressing news one is inundated with.
Nick is simply a byproduct of this. He was one of the “basement dwellers”. The revolt of supposed losers against the elites.
Yet, Nick has to grow up. He himself is nostalgic over the Pepe The Frog era of pre-2016 which gave rise to the Charlottesville Riots in which he participated in. The Pepe The Frog era was a counter culture movement of cynical, lonely, Sound Cloud ethereal music listening young people who felt alienated but many saw liberalism (Lean In feminist capitalism, criticism of white male privilege, etc.) as the new establishment and thus went into Right Wing ideology which can first start with YouTuber content creators such as Sargon of Akaad or Jordan B. Peterson but then bleeds into fascist online spaces.
Many Zoomers don’t remember the education of Martin Luther King post-racial education of older Millennials and Gen X (though this post racial education was largely a shallow attempt at solving the residuals of systemic oppression).
Many Zoomers and younger Millennials are Nick’s target audience so all they see is the perceived failure of liberalism and thus are being sold a vision of the past that wasn’t entirely true and ironically by people such as Nick who weren’t around in such past times.
But, regardless, 2008 and all the strife and struggles, did advance the world but interstingly it also unleashed an antiquated and potentially violent force of Right Wing reactionaries. I was born in 1987 and the future I saw as a kid was of post-racial harmony, high technology, egalitarianism, but what I am seeing is the forewarning of postmodernism writers.
That being a world of recycled fashion and anachronism, Zoomer racists who lack an understanding of how much progress was made yet live in online spaces litered with undicpherable memes/intertwined irony and nonsense, and Seig Heil flashing oligarchs like Elon Musk or Kingmaker oligarchs like Peter Thiel (who grew up in a Nazi enclave in Namibia).
Nick isn’t original. We know how he formed so the question is if society has the guts to course correct and send people like him back to the basement. Not only that but having a genuine de-radicalization effort of his influence networks, which can only be done by honesty addressing the concerns of the lost and alienated.
Further, the political left needs more representation in spaces where younger people were recruited into Right Wing ideology, and this means the Left needs to lower its eyebrows and ease up on seeming pretenious or overly Enlightened.
Also, mainsteam outlets and news need full time staff covering online spaces otherwise we risk the rise of more Tyler Robinson situations, in which authorities and elders are utterly lost in understanding modern culture and its ever complex layers and semiotics.
The elites, social programmers, cultural engineers, think tanks, etc., need to understand people are not stupid and being more hyper-aware than ever, people can smell inauthenticity, hunt down and expose “industry plants”, etc., a mile away.
Disclaimer: I enjoy Tim Dillon. I think he’s pretty level-headed and fair in his analysis of politics.
Wow. This post was originally dedicated towards talking about my criticism of Dave Smith but now has evolved into comedians in general.
If this were a book idea, I would call it “Comedians of the bourgeoise & the Jesters Who Hold Court: How Anti-progressivism in comedy supports classical liberal elitism, conservatism and fascism” by Quinton Mitchell.
But I am a busy working-class person, with not much time to do a book now, but for keepers, I am copyrighting that title, just for proof for later if I ever get to it.
This post and idea of a book comes from what I observe with comedians as they rally against “wokeness” (which has some merit), but often ends up eradicating underlying progressive sentiments, and inadvertently or purposefully ends up supporting the conservative status quo.
Comedians, who also moonlight as podcasters, did have some sway on the 2024 US Presidential election. The scope is of course debatable, but to say they had no influence seem flat out false to me. Joe Rogan for example is now under Spotify, which has a net worth of $134 Billion dollars, so of course he, his guests, and others like him have some level of influence.
Sure, comedians/podcasters can dismiss this allegation of helping Trump win, and by dismissing people who allege this it makes it seems like those accusing comedians are just further proof of being “out of touch” or “suffering from the woke mind virus”, yet comedians are also lavishing in the attention that they possibly DID have impact.
What I just said here reminds me of the recent Tim Dillion interview on CNN with Elle Reeve. First off, I don’t hate Tim Dillon, and, I think he has a fair approach to analyzing both sides of the political spectrum, but he does like the finer things in life, often talking with a slight sense of Gatsby-like outsider-peeking-into-the-rich analysis with his stories centering around the “WASP-ey” nature of the Hamptons as juxtaposed against the out-of-touch “white” privilege and dramatics of blue collar Long Island.
Dillon reminds of the something akin to the punk-of-the-elite class-which-therefore-makes-you-not-punk mantra of Brett Easton Ellis (a MAGA supporter), but Dillon is nowhere nearly as elitist and nostalgic as Brett East Ellis in my opinion. Dillon and I are Millennials more impacted in our developmental years by turn of the Millenium events (e.g., 9/11, War on Terrorism, The Great Recessions, etc.), whereas Ellis is true Gen-Xer who was raised in a time of “America not questioning” itself commercialism of the 1980s and 90s. If anything, Dillon still believes in some sort of grassroots hope without being fully nihilistic towards progressive sentimentality, despite his sometimes-dystopian analysis of life under late-stage capitalism. Dillon actually has self-awareness unlike many other Rogan-sphere comedians. I think Dillon stands on his own and I feel bad even linking him to Rogan.
Dillon also seems to be trying to hold court with those in political power such as with RFK, Jr., and his wife, and did have a slightly smug dismissiveness about the allegation that comedians helped Trump win in the interview I referenced on CNN.
Whether Dillon wants to admit or not, I think he – and by extension his comedian “Rogan-sphere” buddies – saw this CNN interview as a crowing-achievement, because A) it must have been personally surreal for himself to be thought off as a serious person to “the establishment”, which lays the impetus for more comedic inspiration for himself going forward because the whole event can thread upon irony and ridiculousness, and B) it gives him a consciousness-like, Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club “Project Mayhem” sense of glee, knowing that he and his comedy buddies are in part sticking it, or capable of sticking it to “the man”.
For example, Dave Smith in a YouTube video titled his video “Tim Dillion Embarrasses CNN” which goes to show how they see the establishment, but for Dave Smith specifically, is his wrath is dedicated more so towards the current “liberal” (i.e., Left Wing) establishment, and I say this because Smith and many other “free speech” comedians, seem to not be attacking the Donald Trump Administration as much as they could, except for maybe on America’s support for Israel in the Gaza War, but this to me is more so a trendy thing to do for them to gain sympathy and appropriate leftist positions (e.g., Theo Von crying about Gaza on his podcast, just to go to dinner with Jared and Ivanka Kushner, where both of them fund Israeli settlements on contested Palestinian lands).
Did he Dave, did he really? And if so, what are you so excited about that, when we have a literal fascist regime in the Trump Administration in power right now?
But, don’t get me wrong. CNN should BE CALLED OUT. CNN can be very embarrassing, considering by proxy it is seen as a type of “left wing” news outlet, but the issue to me is that comedians often in this lingering anti-woke regime, forget to call out the absurdity one can see daily in the conservative media. Tim Dillon, Andrew Schulz, etc., calling out CNN is not bad, and could be coming from a place of wanting them to do better, but even if that we the case, the fact remains that the “focus” is still on what we consider to be Left Wing. I think this is important to call out because not focusing on the conservatives gives them a sort of pass. As a result, I think a lot of people feel they are in this suspended animation of absurdity. Trump’s lies, cruelty, and truth bending seems untouchable while we all still unnecessarily debate the philosophy of “wokeness”. Who cares anymore. The constant attacks on wokeness are really a form of kicking people while they are down.
My observation is that comedians found the Left Wing to be easier targets, but now with Trump in power, doing all sorts of ridiculous things, it seems that many “anti-woke” comedians all of a sudden have “writers block”.
Trump is literally (1) claiming white South African farmers are going through genocide – which is a popular white supremacists’ myth – to distract from the point that his administration is funding the actual ethnic cleansing of Gaza, (2) Trump is hosting Trump meme-coin events, thus selling his title as President and pimping out of the Oval Office, (3) the Jeffrey Epstein Files, which people in the heyday of Qanon lunacy used to attack the political-left – largely because of Bill Clinton’s relationship with Epstein, despite Trump knowing Epstein too- are still not…public despite a disastrous attempt at doing a “public unveiling” featuring stochastic terrorists like Chaya Raichik of Libs of Tik Tok, etc. (4) Trump literally has “slave patrols” chasing down migrants, and whether we agree to disagree about the legality of their status (e.g., yes, coming to the US without permission or claiming asylum is a crime), we should hopefully be able to agree that the heavy-handed “Gestapo” like strategies of detaining people – many of whom are hardworking, tax paying and law abiding – is excessive force, and ironically obfuscates from the fact that capitalism benefits from often low-wage labor.
Or let’s go simpler…with that being that eggs are still high (as if it’s not a joke already that Presidents can’t control egg prices, and the fact that eggs spiked in prices due to an Avian Bird Flu pandemic).
Switching from Dillon to Smtih, I believe that Dave Smith is nothing more than MTV generation Republican who uses libertarianism to sound counter to narratives of power, but the underlying ideology of libertarianism naturally supports the elite status-quo which causes the wars he claims to be about. Since the Fall of the Berlin Wall, Smith can’t honestly say that Communism has caused any wars. What is causing them is the territorial and self-preservationist natures of nation-states, often ruled by an elite class of wealth people – getting into hot wars or cold wars over influence, resources, etc.
But comedy’s current overemphasis on wokeness forgets that wokeness is really a strategy of progressive ideology but not progressivism overall.
Wokeness in a very simplified definition could be explained as: (1) employing a combination of intersectional thinking which is an analysis of power along the intersections of various identities, (2) having an intolerance towards intolerance – which seems counterintuitive, but intolerance towards bigotry is an effective weapon against the status quo who wield both capital and state-violence, and (3), and has philosophical roots in Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, the works of Herbert Marcuse such as One Dimensional Man or Eros and Civilization, with the latter analyzing the subversive nature of capitalism and convenience via socialization, control, etc.
This is very gross over-simplification, but I think these are three core tenants. I didn’t list Marxism because wokeness despite being left-wing oriented in how we understand it in contemporary society, can be distained by people in the Far Left (i.e., those who feel identarian politics erodes class solidarity and, if anything is a weapon employed by liberals to balkanize class solidary) or by the Center-Left (who often see wokeness as counter to the “do what thy wilt” nature of liberalism, often focusing on free speech debates). But wokeness can be defended by from people within both camps. So wokeness is not inherently “communist”. It is really a worldview, framework, strategy, style, mantra, sentiment, etc., rather than an ideology. To be honest, you can allege that many people on the political right are “woke”, and these people are conservatives who simply complain or call-out the actions of the status quo, but don’t actually want it to go away.
Libertarians are effectively…woke conservatives. They’ll talk about “CIA, Operation Gladio conspiracies” here and there, they may smoke marijuana, they may sprinkle in Anti-George Bush and Dick Cheney throwbacks, and maybe, just maybe, might criticize police for excessive force (despite them liking cops as being defenders of property rights), but at the end of the day, they are…conservatives, and Republicans.
But regardless, even if there were flaws in the strategy of wokeness, it doesn’t mean progressive ideology is bad, but the goal of these comedians is to make it seems they are one in the same.
What these comedians are doing, is no different than what conservatives such as Jordan Peterson attempted to do by liking progressivism with “postmodern Neo Marxism”.
Jordan Peterson lazily (and with the help of meatheads like Joe Rogan), pitched the very Nazi-like idea that progressivism was explicitly “postmodernism” in nature, or as he put it “Postmodern Neo-Marxism”. This insinuates that the wants and needs of groups outside of “in-group”-oriented hierarchies as somehow espousing a dangerous “dada” nonsense.
Feminism, LBGTQ, diversity, environmentalism, etc., based on Jordan Peterson’s biased explanation of postmodernism (amplified by Joe Rogan’s platform to millions of listeners), means that these groups and the wants of these groups are unnatural, relativistic, and possibly even a “Jewish” subversion (with the latter being allegations espoused by the Nazis, American Paleoconservatives such as Pat Buchanan, and the more recent Alt-Right).
To go a little off course, but when thinkers like Peterson revive old tropes of “Cultural Marxism”, which always morphs into the horrid nature of antisemitism which I consider to be Jew hatred and blaming of Jewish people, but not a criticism of the state of Israel. By Peterson opening up the Cultural Marxist pandora’s box, he, even as a Pro-Israel, Christian-adjacent classical liberal (conservative), is able to help the State of Israel, because the antisemtiism they helped unleashed, helps Zionists organizations clamp down on free speech and criticiams against their colonial conquests against Palestinians. It is a very sinister strategy where you (1) promote antimsetimic tropes to help reinvigorate white supremacy though pulling Center Right politics more Far Right, and this Right Wing sphere includes the Evangelical Christiains who want Israel restored for their own religious propgheic reasons, but also, (2) promoting antimsetimsim allows Pro-Israeli groups, companies, think-tanks, etc., clamp down on speech agaisnst ISarel by alleging its antimsemitic. This also allows these Zionist groups to have more of a disporortionate effect on American life such as schools being threatened with defunding if they don’t support Israel, people being fired from jobs, or companies not getting state grants or contracts if htey don’t pledge to Pro-Isreal Anti-Boycott, Divest, and Sanction (BDS) laws.
Truly, an evil double whamy, entrendre, what have you, we live under.
But back on course, from Dave Smith, Bill Maher, Tony Hinchcliffe, Joe Rogan, Andrew Schulz, Tim Dillon, etc., are “defenders of classical liberal” traditions such as individualism and free speech, yet classical liberalism has been fully assimilated into the existing capitalist structure, thus naturally creating classism, imperialism, wars, etc., despite these comedian’s beliefs that they are countering state power with free speech.
As a result, I consider comedians like this to be Jesters of the Courts of Kings. Court Jesters could be an esteem tradition in the barbaric Dark and Middle Ages if a person was good enough. Not wanting to back to poverty, or get their heads chopped off, they would pander to the rich while at court, helping to justify the system as is, which was a feudalist system where elites were ordained by God to bind people to the land in exchange for “protection”, but a protection ironically from those elites themselves who had the power (with the exception lords may protecting serfs from highway bandits, when they weren’t acting in the capacity of robber barons I suppose).
These comedians’ free speech advocacy, which often centers around making fun progressives who are critical of existing hierarchies, is in a “snake that eats its own tail” feedback loop., because their comedy ends up supporting those at the top, while dismissing the grievances of those at the bottom, and when they do reach down to elevate the grievances of those at the bottom, it is often those at the bottom who still stuck in mental control that favors the rich, conservatism, etc.
Bill Burr is the most famous comedian who taps into true grassroots, blue collar, unintellectual progressive sentiments, which is why conservatives were so terrified of him. He is not only a white, straight guy from a culture ingrained in American lore as being romantically blue collar (i.e., the Irish), but uses his positions in these “privileged intersectional” boxes to call out the conservative status quo. Bill Burr threatens the status quo, no different than how when Republicans lost their minds over “White guys for Harris” during Kamal Harris’ run. The status quo knows that straight, white men are the buffer demographic needed at keeping things essentially the same for a very few amounts of people.
Yet, these comedians I am referring to will obfuscate from the fact that they are doing anything wrong by alleging that grassroots (and often monetarily broke) progressives are the “real elitists” as a means of pitting them against the everyday moderates and conservatives who are still largely living in their own denialism about how the capitalist system is exploiting them.
Comedians therefore can be weapons to help divide the proletariat working classes, so they never develop enough class consciousness to overpower the manager, owner, corporate, and elite classes.
Therefore, these comedians are…jesters holding court. Having made some money off Netflix who took risks on their careers by releasing their so-so comedy specials, but also having made money off pall-wall Patreon accounts or from the YouTube Google Paid Partnership Program algorithm, many of these comedians, who were once average joes, are in the upper middle class to lower rich brackets, and they don’t want to go back to where they came from. So, it seems the more they make it to the top, and I often saw this in Andrew Schulz, is that end up in this increasingly isolated “HBO Entourage” fantasy, where they are now the cool kids, and if they say anything ridiculous which gets criticism, then it is some people hating on them (literally, “They hate us, cuz they ain’t us” saying).
They get close to power, hoping to be let just a bit further into some secretive enclave, that they kind of sell out, but to distract from that fact, they simply base their entire comedic identity around pointing out what they see as “Left Wing hypocrisy).
On Dave Smith’s beliefs, which to me is a good start at calling out what I consider to be this “classical liberal apologia within comedy (which always ends up supporting the status quo), is that Smith calls himself a libertarian, but he that he defines himself as this because “the state represents violence”, which to me is a corny co-opt because one could in reverse provide a counter by stating “uncontrolled humans are innately violent” and stronger people or groups of people will target weaker people.
Also, I am not a pacifist. I aspire to be, but I am not one because peace isn’t something that naturally exists in nature, notably human nature, so taking the high moral ground of calling oneself a pacifist is nice, but in reality, has no substance. If anything – for better or worse – the freedoms of people are in protected by the possibly of violence. Pacifism though a something to aspire to, isn’t how the world is, and if the Dove Left or Libertarians got their way, they would likely create such as power vacuum that things would more violent sooner than later. A problem, with Libertarians and the Dove Left, is that they naturally assume that the United States is to blame for everything, and this often morphs into “Far out Man” “Blame the CIA” for everything arguments as if everyone other nation on earth doesn’t have their own self-preservationist attitude and realpolitik.
Government as a concept is not bad, and yes, government does have a monopoly on state-violence, so we as individual people aren’t exercising vigilante violence, based on our own subjective belief systems.
One could argue (and I admit that am oversimplifying things here for the sake of brevity) that government is one of the oldest human concepts we have as a species, in which humans ceded their personal freedoms to create a truce that was held firm by some sort of higher force needed for the arbitration of issues. Other species have something we could make the comparison to as a government, i.e., a social system of rules and truces that governs behavior.
From elder members of tribes to Kings, to elected representative bodies, we have had some level of government, because government essentially represents consensus, a body to establish truces, and an organ to uphold standards.
Sure, governments being comprised of people can be corrupted, but if anything, that’s a people problem, and not a problem with the concept of government.
Further, Dave Smith’s libertarianism provides him an easy way to win arguments by taking a non-interventionist and pacifist approach, notably by calling out the State of Israel in its treatment of the Gaza Strip in which the IDF is treating the entire area and its peoples as supporters of Hamas. Yet even though what the IDF is doing is unfortunate and is a clear example of what colonialism looks like, and sure, the United States helping Ukraine defend itself against Russia is not out of kindness but rather helping to sustain American hegemony, still, Dave Smith’s libertarianism doesn’t counter state-power, but rather enables the forces of wealth disparity via classism, that eventually hijacks governments to create the wars — often for conquests, market domination, and resource extraction – he claims to be against.
His libertarian ideals emphasize private property rights, which therefore evolves into a society of wealth-disparity since some will always own more than others and eventually monopolize markets and use government to help protect those monopolies.
Libertarianism is essentially capitalism, and capitalism, imperialism, etc., have been the impetus for wars of conquests, resource extraction, slavery, human trafficking, etc. Capitalism does not admit it does these things, because it’s not an actual person, but an idea, but the people implementing and advocating for the idea of capitalism often obfuscate from the negative externalities of capitalism, rather instead giving a “rising tides lifts all boats” Milton Friedman-like cop out.
Dave Smith is also on this bandwagon on anti-wokeness (which has made comedy predictable) and seems to employ what a lot of other current comedians are doing, which is what I call “Gotcha, see, you’re a hypocrite” angel to comedy, notably targeted at Liberals (who do corny things such as performative Civil Rights while continuing to support economic systems, that their conservative opposition benefits from), and the political-left. For example, there is a trend of calling out liberal elites (i.e., your Center Leftists, modernist liberals, etc., who compromise with the political-Right in order to prevent socialist economics undermining private property rights that disproportionately benefits the wealthy) and the Left (i.e., those critical and sometimes fully opposed to liberal economics, i.e., capitalism).
So not only does he have a political ideology that favors the rich naturally, but he also basis a lot of his comedy on calling out the hypocrisy of the only counter to conservatism, where conservatism is unapologetic in its belief in free-markets, hierarchies, etc. Sure, call out hypocrisy, but I don’t think that’s what he’s fighting, but rather he’s fighting for the preservation of the economic system as is, which means there’ nothing really revolutionary about his beliefs at all. Just because you get rid of government doesn’t mean that the majority of people’s lives will get better. If anything, it may get worse. Libertarians are at this point a weaponized ideology of think-tanks and organizations who provide intellectual top cover for elitism and wealth disparity. People like Reagan and Nixon called themselves libertarians to my knowledge because it was the fashionable thing to be in post-WWII America as it became more popular to rally against New Deal Era social programs.
How it is punk to be a libertarian, when people like Reagan would call themselves that? Libertarianism is nothing more than an ideology of apologia for private property which naturally favors the elites, business and mercantile classes. It is the higher-brow, bow-tie Ivy League variant of anarcho-capitalism.
Also, why is libertarianism also the preferred ideology of racial (notably white) supremacy and separatism? Because it provides intellectual layering of people’s internal desires and fears, which is anchored in racism, sexism, etc. Better put many conservatives aren’t libertarian because of the high-brow, debate-club talking points they say, but often it is about maintaining a hierarchy based on race, gender, sex, etc., and they see government regulation and interventionism as counter to their wants. But libertarianism provides a “high horse” position by alleging it is simply about maintaining freedom. Sure, it may be maintaining freedom but maintaining freedom and being a humanist are two different things.
Sure, Dave will probably allege that he is a purist when it comes to his beliefs and that his beliefs have been invaded and ruined by others, but even that would be a cop out.
Generation X and Elder Millennial Libertarians in my view, coming from a person in my late thirties, are what I MTV-generation Republicans. They were raised on Reaganomics and Clinton Neo-Liberalism, but to save face when George Bush Neocons started ruining the planet (destabilizing the Middle East and helping cause a decade long Global Recession), they distanced themselves from standard Republicanism and called themselves libertarians because it was cool to do so. The Tea Party movement and the presidential campaigning of Ron Paul also led a lot of people into libertarian ideals. Paul often seemed like the rational one in a room because he was anti-war but also anti-regulation, yet the flaw still remains…. with that being that power can accrue in the hands of a few even if you get rid of government, and nothing may change for the better, and may get worse, because there’s no government recourse to challenge those with dipropionate power.
Many of these Libertarians were also raised with a pre-existing libertarianism from the mid-20th century hovering the background which included the thoughts of Murry Rothbard-inspired extremism (who was a Jewish man who had odd links to white supremacists), a Milton Friedman and Thomas Sowell intellectualism of the 60s and 70s, and also a good dose of American Southern-oriented “State’s Rights” Jeffersonians (i.e., often Southern libertarians who used Thomas Jefferson as the basis for their ideological stances on segregation, states’ rights, etc.).
Figures such as MTV’s Kurt Loder was an example of the “hip libertarianism”. Don’t get me wrong. Kurt Loder who I grew up watching as the “smart guy” on MTV who gave it an air of journalistic integrity, seemed like a nice guy and I want to say him beliegn a libertarian in his heart was coming from a good place, however, I would argue the idealism of libertarianism, simply ends up supporting the status quo as is.
I suspect Loder’s libertarianism was based on the Baby Boomer rejection of the stuffiness of suburban conveniences, which later found existential catharsis is the lyrics of Lou Reed and Velvet Underground during the emergent punk scene, post the failure of the hippie movement, with bands like The Stooges, Television, those of NYC CBGBs, etc. Essentially, libertarianism of Loder’s day could be seen as punk, but really it wasn’t. It felt punk maybe, but how punk could it really have been if Milton Friedman of the University of Chicago was winning a Nobel Prize for basically promoting “Greed is Good” during the same late 1960s to early 1980s timeframe. The wish fulfilment of Milton was the Reagan 1980s.
Loder helped inspire Fox New’s host, Kennedy.
Kennedy therefore leads us to “Republican Comedy” shows such as Red Eye and Gutfeld!
Greg Gutfeld of course calls himself a libertarian too…
Dave Smith has of course been a panelist on Gutfeld’s shows.
The truth of the matter the older I get and the more I get tired of analyzing the system is that liberals and conservatives are the same, and both are the biggest hinderances towards a true progressive future, which I feel can only happen underneath some sort of true Left-Wing ideology.
To me, conservatives are simply “classical liberals”, where what we call liberals in contemporary speech are “modernist liberals”. Both are liberals in that they have a core philosophy centering around private property, markets, individualism, and the “Devine Rights of Man” (inalienable rights), but classical liberals (conservatives) inspired by people such as Edmund Burke still favor classes, traditional, religion, etc., and feel that human nature itself (the invisible hand, i.e., human chaos) will somehow solves things, whereas modernist liberals (liberals in our modern day lexicon) inspired by Oliver Wendell Holme’s “living interpretation of the US constitution”, and the philosophical school of Pragmatism led by figures such John Dewey, have a hands-on (real hand versus the invisible hand) approach. Science, managerialism, psychology, etc., are more so utilized by modernist liberals in applying classical liberal presuppositions.
Yet, both are liberals based on that classical core tenant of beliefs.
My belief is that only true Leftist ideology can reform society at this point because liberalism, and notably neoliberalism has reached its inevitable conclusion, which is corporations replacing the state that represents all peoples in theory such as through privatization of services, and the fact that wealth is already so much in the hands of a few people (the game has been won) that economic mobility for the vast majority of people is either impossible, going to get much harder, or will only be sustained by those in power manipulating from behind the scenes to prop up a system that requires belief in them still holding onto power. For example, as technology and AI literally gloats about replacing people’s jobs, the fact still remains that people still need to pay bills and rents since even living is a for-profit enterprise under capitalism. Captialism running out of things to do, so can only recycle itself to stay relevant (for example, promoting anachronistic fashions to keep consumers interested), promote forced-obsolesce (ensuring things break more easily so you have to keep buying that thing, i.e., reducing quality), promoting subscriptions to unlock extra features in products people already paid for, etc. This is why Universal Basic Income is gaining traction. It is not about creating a post-capitalist utopian state, but rather maintaining the hierarchy as is, but why an agreed upon amount of state generated “play money” to keep propping up belief in the current Monopoly Game we are enslaved to. Liberalism like Marxism are both idealistic utopian ideal, even though Orthodox Marxist won’t admit it because they consider themselves as “true realists” because of dialectical-Materialism, etc.
But liberalism like Marxism posits itself on a belief that their specific idea will lead to a utopian version of the future, where Marxist believe in a collective of the proletariat will get us there, whereas liberals believe that individual will get us there.
The same fallacy that Communists argued when by claiming the state would wither away after the “dictatorship of the proletariat” took over to implement a “classless, cashless, stateless society”, can too be found in capitalism (liberalism) where this fallacy somehow believes that rich people winning the game of capitalism will…somehow give up their wealth for a utopian future for everyone, or, I guess the masses will be better off peasants than previous era of peasants if only a few winners of capitalism stay in power?
If you step back, you notice that the Far Right and Liberals both agree on destroying the only reformist ideology which can be found the Left.
From anti-woke comedians to the liberalism of Cenk Uygur Young Turks or steamers such as Destiny, to the Far Right from literal Neo Nazis to the general and Right Wing with figures such as Ben Shapiro, Jillian Michaels, to think tanks, to bot armies, to God knows what else… is that there is a war against the Left.
I call it full spectrum cross-divisional (both left and right) liberal warfare against the progressive Left.
Was wokeness annoying?
Sure.
But I felt I grew as a better person because of it.
A lot of people hung up on wokeness as the culprit of the world’s problems are those who never cared to really care about what woke progressivism stood for or was trying to do, but tapped into their own sense of victimhood by alleging they got cancelled by the “woke mob”.
Like I can’t imagine being a main in 2025 who still angry and afraid or triggered by feminism, even if an individual triggers you. I say this because even though individuals in the left may be very annoying, rude, hypocrites, themselves…so what? That’s a “them” problem, so I am not going to throw feminism, or LGBTQ, or fellow Black consciousness thinkers under the bus because I get their goal. My support for progressivism is not based on transactional relationships but rather a belief in the transformational nature of it. It’s simply the right thing to do, and yes, I am making a firm objective truth claim on what is right and wrong.
For example, it is the right thing to support women in supporting women, and I have to accept that it may not include me, and if anything, always may be mistrustful of me as a man. It is what it is. Patriarchy has given them every reason to feel a certain way. It sucks. Sure, there will be bridges between us possibly, but maybe me being supportive of their self-determination is the simply the only thing I can do? It doesn’t mean my life is over, especially on matters where emotions may be involved. Sure, if I am accosted by a person on a person-to-person basis, then yes, I will defend myself, but I am not simply going to throw feminism under the bus as being the root scourge of modern problems. I apply the rhetoric to other things to.
The goal of conservatism is to make it seem that what is now is natural and not a construction. It’s easier to be a conservative. It’s safer. It’s tempting as a result. Maybe the Left needs to realize that people have a propensity for simple thinking and easy living, and, yes, we have natural insecurities which sometimes intersectional conflict brings out to people’s dismay? The Left is not perfect, but still there are the only force that can reform their current neoliberal globalist regime we labor under.
A part of me thinks that we weren’t woke enough, if the result was Trump or JD Vance.
Regardless, for example, I admit there was a time where I thought this woke ideology was explicitly Communists, but then I grew out of that because it’s not about the strategy but the underlying sentiment that underrides that strategy. And even if were Communists…so what? Communism has an analytical tool against capitalism is not the same as living under a totalitarian communist regime.
I don’t see the woke era as a bad thing but rather something that push conversations forward, however, a society as a tolerance point, and those who espouse woke ideology (though I support them) should respect that. Wokeness was most so about pushing conversations forwards on the hopes of achieving materialist gains. Sure, we’ve talked a lot, but we still don’t have…. Medicare for All, legalized weed, a fair immigration system, and if anything, rights have been LOST.
Identity politics is not bad, but it’s how much we focus on it. The Left can have both class solidarity while also factoring in intersectionality, but to me it’s how much emphasis at the forefront do we put on identity. Identity is easy to me. Talking about it, analyzing it, etc., is easy, cheap, and often can lead to nothing beside maybe Behavorial modifications to how we treat each other, but often talking on identity all day everyday does nothing but create a few hyper-successful voices who become the leaders of their tribal groups, but nothing is actually changing. If anything, fatigue kicks in, and those who wanted a better world, drop the Left, and go back…to suburbia or the system as is.
It happened in the 70s and 80s after Civil Rights and is a happening again, and this attack on wokeness is a sign of that. Liberalism coopted and destroyed anything revolutionary, and created a newer type of inclusive liberalism. A new update to its software, rather than anything in the underlying code structurally being changed.
This is something the left needs to work out, but you better believe it that the opposition will do as much as it can to promote disunity.
But as I end this, Andrew Schulz, another comedian, interviewed Bernie Sanders. This may seem random, but Andrew has said certain controversial things to some that have gotten him into “hot water” as far as Twitter goes, but Bernie is slightly disappointing fashion was pushing this “wokeness as a problem” trope, to the glee of Schulz and his friends.
I feel Bernie did this being an old guy and little out of touch about the deeper nuances of online conversations and controversies, but I also think that Bernie is unfortunately adopting a liberal and Right-Wing framing of wokeness, as it being some “ridiculous” strategy. And, sure, as I’ve admitted, wokeness was not perfect, but in the case of Schulz is that Schulz was really wanting top-cover for anything he may have said that pissed people off. By getting Bernie to agree with him to varying degrees, it somehow alleviated Schulz from anything he said, because both he and Bernie pushed the ideas that “woke” type of Left are more problematic than good.
Me hearing Bernie on Andrew Schulz’s Flagrant 2 Podcast, to me means we need younger blood and this why Alexandia Ocasio Cortez is so important and why the system fears her. She would have pushed a bit more than what Bernie was capable of doing.
I truly think the system is afraid of AOC and if these comedians are truly free speech, I think Joe Rogan, Andrew Schulz, Theo Von, etc., should host her.
Dave Smith is nonsense to me. I’m writing a longer piece on him and other comedians so treat this like an introduction briefing.
Dave Smith comes off as some anti-war, anti-Zionist intellectual and gets a lot of attention out talking everyone he debates but his underlying philosophy is conservative and I would argue regressive.
I’m not sure if he is a committed idealist with a penchant for stubbornness or a disingenuous person who uses libertarian ideals to sound autuer and above politics, but his politics have always been those of the status quo. Literally.
In this video, he commends Milton Friedman for having sound economics. Really?
“Milton – Greed is Good – Friedman” has sound economics?
The same Milton Friedman, who was heavily tied to the CIAs Neoliberalism, with figures such as the Chicago Boys from Chile, who designed Augusto Pinochet’s economy, while Augusto Pinochet and other Latin American leaders (often harboring Nazis like Klaus Barbie) were waging purges across the South American continent?
That’s your scion Dave?
Libertarians are liberals and liberals emphasizing private property, thus are capitalists, and capitalists always take over and hijack governments, and use government to insure their losses, steer investments their way, and use the military-intelligence apparatus to expand imperialism for market domination.
The “New World Order” has always been the full dominance of capitalism across the globe (despite controlled conspiracy theories alleging the NWO is leftist).
The NWO is a full spectrum agenda including the promulgation of Libertarian ideas thru billionare funded think-tanks (e.g., the CATO Institute, Heritage Foundation, Atlas Network, etc. — who have advanced away from paid intellectuals like Friedman and Sowell, towards podcasters and New Media).
Also, the NWO uses borderless multi-national corporations, regime change, etc. When the capitalist class pushes a society to its brink and near logical conclusions, with that being a land of deep wealth disparity, manufactured “buy the dip” booms-and-busts, de-industrial wastelands, and an economy more dependent upon asset investing (bloated stocks and real estate) rather than manufacturing (where the slivers of remaining manufacturing have been automated), then the elite class (who funds Libertarian movements) drifts towards fascism.
They do this because they know the system is reaching a conclusion but need a nationalistic, militaristic, & nostalgic regime to distract from the fact, so they can extract more wealth while the current version of this game is still around.
Libertarians are in feed back loop, and is equally as idealist as what they claim Communists to be. In other words, regardless of any facts countering to their ideas, they’ll still push forward with a worship of the idea regardless.
Dave Smith is not a revolutionary. And, I’m never going to listen to his comedy to know if he’s funny or not. But, if his political beliefs are anything like his comedy, I suppose I’ll be laughing at him and not with him.
Sure, he’ll go against the “boogeyman CIA” or take the high horse pacifist position – as if peace in natural anyways – but, his libertarian ideals will A) always lead towards a totalitarianism of capital over democracy and is (B) an ideology that comes from elites.
Murray Rothbard, Reagan Milton Friedman are the exact opposite of “anti establishment”.
If anything Libertarianism is just a veiled type of Straussian elitistism, and by that, I am talking about the Rockefeller Foundation funded thinker Leo Strauss of the New School and gee-go-figure, the University of Chicago, who not only hated modernity, but wanted a Plato based Republic, which of course is ruled by “Philosopher Kings”, which in reality ends up being Tech Bros, the old gentry class, billionaires, etc.
There’s no suprise that libertarian movements have often expressed themselves or have found solace in right-wing, often racist, traditionalist, and hierarchical movements, since patriarchy, racism, etc., are effective buffers for protecting the capitalist class.
I don’t trust Dave.
I’m not sure if he’s controlled opposition or just a clown.
His libertarianism is nothing more than Generation X MTV Republicanism in the vein of Kurt Loder or Fox New host, Kennedy. To no suprise at all he’s friends with Fox News figures such as Greg Gutfeld.
Being a Black American, I noticed that a lot of the more vocal, fiery, and/or analytical voices within Black Liberation politics often attempt to be at odds with “Western philosophy”, yet, they are indelibly… Western through and through.
Most Black Liberation Politics centers around Continental Leftist and or liberal (in the classical sense onwards) types of ideology centering around concepts such as deconstruction, post-structuralism, Critical Theory, existentialism to many extents, anti-colonialism, post-colonialism, and some degree postmodernism (e.g., hip hop as a late stage capitalist form of music that blurs high art with low art, pastiche, hyper capitalism, the subjectivity of morality, pop culture, etc.).
But, for those within Black Liberation politics, stretching from the Ivory Tower college seminars with the stereotypical dred-locked wise sage professor, to YouTube video essayists with their evermore ridiculous thumbnails to attract eyeballs (yes, I am talking about “Foreign Man in a Foreign Land”, etc.), and all the way to fringe cults pushing antediluvian Black Supremacist origin stories (even throw in a few UFOs or mad scientists, e.g., The Nation of Islam, Nuwabians, Hoteps, etc.), what I notice is…. there is no real black philosophy.
Rather, we what we have is blackness expressed through Western philosophy.
What I’m saying is….is that most of the Black Nationalist or liberation types who are quick to call another person’s “blackness” into question, even going so far as using white supremacist Antebellum slavery monikers towards each other, i.e., house slave, house negro, coon, Uncle Tom, the N-word, etc., but these Black Nationalist and liberation types are….living in the “House”, i.e., the house is the Western civilization including its philosophy.
So, to appear to be at odds with the West, when in essence we are products of the West, including using its language, didactic, etc., is ironic. In other words, don’t pretend that you’re higher or holier or more “organic” simply because you push pro-blackness when we are all living collectively under the roof of the house. The only way to truly alleviate this dilemma is to…leave the West.
Full unplug form the West or rather attempt at establishing a coherent “Black Philosophy” or “Southern Philosophy” that with academic rigor pools various indigenous African philosophies under one umbrella. No conspiracy theory, no anti-white girl paranoid black female nonsense, no toxic masculinity, but literal hitting the books and creating a framework that spans ethics, logic, etc.
I say Southern philosophy because we obviously know that Eastern typically represents Asian and/or Indian Subcontinent frameworks spanning Hinduism, Daoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, etc., whereas Western philosophy touches upon everything from the Sages, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, Continentals vs Analytics, etc. In other words, we live under a global “Eurasianist” viewpoint, which isn’t bad necessarily, but the problem is that it excludes the philosophical frameworks of other parts of planet, so we can’t have a truly united human specifies until we include other frameworks or test them at least.
My call, yes, Quinton Mitchell is saying, that there should be a Southern Philosophy that emphasis the major categories of philosophy such as Ethics, Metaphysics, Epistemology, Logic, and Aesthetics. This could be done my using game theory, Artificial Intelligence, computer regressions, etc.
About the author: I have a Bachelors in Business Administration, an additional Associates of Applied Science degree with Contracts Management, and a Master of Science degree in Management with an Operations Management focus. I am honorably discharged veteran of the United States Air Force and veteran of AmeriCorps. I current work in corporate America.
Basic Summary and theory by Quinton Mitchell: There is no distinction between the “House Slave” and “Field Slave” because ultimately the House is “Western Civilization”, so for people who call black Western peoples as being “House Slaves” – often as a means of calling their blackness or lived-existences into question, i.e., shaming, de-legitimizing, etc. – this is actually ironic because even for those who espouse an often Leftist or Marxist, or “woke”, or de-colonial/post-colonial sentiment (e.g. black separatism, black nationalism, black supremacy, etc.) they too are a part of the Western framework (the House). Think about that… Marxism even as a combative ideology to capitalism/imperialism/colonialism IS STILL a Western framework of analysis. If anything those who consider themselves “Field Slaves”, insinuating to themselves as if they are more authentic because they claim to reject the “House”, are disingenuous because they have the decision to fully be unprogrammed from the West but choose not to (often because of comfort), and often come up with an excuse/gas-light to not deprogram (e.g., de-colonize and expatriate back to Africa). At least, those considered “House Slaves” are attempting to carve their own space (room), e.g., the black bourgeoise, within the House (Western Civilization), rather than constantly criticizing the “House” while still technically living in it such as the alleged field-slave. Adding more irony, many of the “field slaves” want what they consider to be the lifestyle that the “house slaves” to be, so in many cases this shaming tactic of “field slaves” (e.g., the urban and rural poor) is jealousy, resentment, taking out their trauma on those who may have had slightly more stable upbringings, etc. The “Field Slave”, i.e., the supposed “that nigga”, the “real nigga”, i.e., the black equivalent of a “chad” (Alpha Male) or self-ascribed unapologetic black person, is…speaking Western languages, using Western philosophy, didactic, has a Western spiritualism, etc. If anything the goal of the Field Slave, i.e., the “woke nigga” within the context of how its used in black cultural discourse, is not to really… achieve what it is they claim to want achieved, logically that is. The logical conclusion of all de-colonial thought is to expatriate, unless the goal is to maybe have some sort of incubation period without outside influences, but on the future goal of re-integrating within the larger multi-cultural society. If this logical conclusion is not followed all we end up with is a sort of “perpetual, spiritual, never-ending struggle”, because people never realize the solution is to de-program if they truly have an issue or see no reconciliation with the “program” (the West). To further add irony, this “perpetual, spiritual, never-ending struggle” becomes something equivalent to “intellectual masturbation”, because it’s not really achieving anything (just as the act of having physical intimacy, i.e., doing something in the real world), but rather is pretending to do something while tricking brain into thinking that it’s achieving something real, e.g., black intellectual talks a lot, but don’t do a lot, but the ultimate “do” is to “de-colonize”, i.e., put your money where your mouth is rather than being in perpetual “thinking” “analyzing” “deconstruction”, etc. The black intellectual notably of the Left, often leaves people with no “solutions” and still while profiting within a capitalist structure (if we are to agree capitalism is bad) say statements such as “there’s no ethical consumption in capitalism”, i.e., this is the best I can do, I can’t change anything, but I’m still going to get my money. Yet, even if giving a solution, the logical conclusion still remains which is to fully de-program.
Foreword #1 - The World is More Segregated Than I’ve seen in a While… Unfortunately… I blame the Far Left and Far Right
The Far Left and Far Right, who both have gripes with “Liberalism”, i.e., Democracy, Republicanism, the notion of individualism, etc., are sort of the same on race but from different directions. Yet, liberals, which includes was consider to be conservatives, are not off the hook either. Where as the Far Right fascist wishes to have racial segregation by positing a sense of racial hierarchy. The Far Left, often Communists, incidentally pushes racial segregation by position de-colonial self-determinism, which is basically, leaving races to purse their own paths. Yet, the liberal in the middle, often has an idea of commodifying race which by proxy creates its own unique segregation that can be profited off of.
Regardless, things are bad. Umar Johnson and Nick Fuentes are essentially the same but just different races. The Nation of Islam in the internet age is able to spread is ideologies under the guise of Pan Africanism so you get their borderline Nazi ideology spreading not only through the “Black West” but also the Caribbean, Africa, etc.
In the wake of Black Lives Matters, there’s been a split between African American and Asian American communities which is in part being addressed by the Stop Asian Hate movement, where many urban Asians see themselves under threat from “unaccountable black violence”. The BLM movement despite its noble intentions of humanizing black bodies, was always going to be scapegoated and gas-lit by white or other supremacists who have always had issues with black people.
Anyways, it seems like this segregationist movement that is on the rise because of Far Left Communist, Woke or “Clinical Gaze” Liberals, and Far Right Racist is…planned. As the world becomes more globalized, many the powers at be need to keep “groups in their zoo cages”. Racial segregation has always been an easy way to control the population.
Foreword #2 – Slight Problem with White Liberals: First off, separate from the core purpose of this post, I want to say that white liberals are sort of annoying, though I find Black Leftist living/benefitting under capitalism, especially those I would consider to be separatist, nationalist, “racial gatekeepers”, etc., to be equally if not more annoying. But relating back to white liberals, I only say this not because they are bad because, in theory, they are allies despite what old snippets of Malcolm X warning black people about white liberals being recycled in the ether of the internet is saying. Yet white liberals (allies) have a bad habit of being supportive of very problematic black ideas largely because they feel they can’t say anything for fear of pushing the “white savior” mentality.
White liberals, despite mostly good intentions, seem to be obsessed with finding the “blackest of black people” – a type of philosopher stone journey for “raw”, “tough”, “Mandingo”, “mama-san”, blackness – because they feel frustrated not being able to fully understand – at least from their perspective – the black experience.
As a result, white liberals end up elevating radical black voices where some are very inquisitive/helpful, but many are actually problematic and self-serving, i.e., grifters. For example, figures that are sexist, patriarchal, or, even woke – where woke to me is first off a subjective term, but how it has morphed in the public lexicon simply means “annoyingly aware to the point of deconstructing reality and slipping into New Age, i.e., “Far Out”, Neoplatonic, esoteric, quasi-Occultic nonsense“, which ironically can lead to cult-like thinking, and arguably in my opinion is a way of inadvertently controlling the public since the “proletariat” is riddled with relativism, thus unable to coordinate, act, plan, and execute).
Woke objectively is not bad. It’s really something akin to barbershop quasi conspiracy and intellectual fact rapping associated with black or BIPOC people as a means of inserting our roles, history, and contributions within the larger superstructures of society (e.g., the field of history itself), but the fringe of wokeness is pure post-truth relativism, paranoia, and conspiracy theory, which feeds back to tropes such as “woogedy boogedy“, i.e., black people stereotyped as overly superstitious and afraid.
White liberal support, though appreciated (and, I sincerely mean that, for example with white liberal support of global protests in support of Black Lives Matters calling out police injustices), often “pornifies”, “fetishizes”, etc., the black experience with a sort of “clinical gaze”, yet, many are just being played ironically by bad-faith black activists who simply want unaccountable power, i.e., a sort of racial cuck-holding, not only over other black people (by playing the “gate keeping and cultural-purity testing game” which i will speak about below) but also others in general. Yet, this behavior that I am criticizing can be done by anyone of any group (and, if anything is the just the dark-side of intersectionality – which in and of itself can be a helpful tool for analysis if used properly). So I’m not trying to insinuate that “white liberals” or even black activists are bad, but rather in many instances, the relationship can come off as mutually exploitative, and often defeatist since many opposing voices within black political discourse are cancelled for appearing not to be “black enough” from this black fetishized aesthetic of the “Black, Marxist, revolutionary, de-colonial” radical.
Foreword #3 – The Dark Wokeness of Umar Johnson, Rizza Islam, and Black Cults
For example, there’s so many “sinister woke” figures nowadays. Nation of Islam with Rizza Islam, followers of Umar Johnson who I call “Umarites”, Hoteps, Moors (Moorish Science Temple), Carbon Nation Cult, Nuwabians, Black Hebrew Israelites, The Nation of Yaweh, the Black Aboriginals (i.e., the fringe ideology that Black Americans are indigenous to the USA and not from Africa), and Naturopathic Con-spiritualist thinkers such as Yahki Rapha Elohim, etc. We can even include Kanye “Ye” in this.
Black people seem more conspiratorial in nature because we’ve had our roots stripped so there’s a deep rooted insecurity when constantly reminded by Western Civilization that we are “lesser”, rather than our African roots being fully included in the West. You add the legacy of segregation where people are left in “echo chambers”, the legacy of mass incarceration (often where Muslim conversion happens), etc.
Yet, instead of intensive, mainline research and anthropology it seems many use “dues ex machina” to fill in the gaps. For example, there’s a movement now saying that Black Americans are indigenous Native Americans, yet, this seems like fringe black though similar to the white supremacist “Vineland movement”, where they believe they as a Germanic peoples are entitled to the Americas because of Vikings settling parts of Eastern Canada.
Umar Johnson, who really doesn’t say anything original but his oration skills mixed with his ability of rapping off facts has elevated him as an important voice in black culture, despite his racial segregation ideas, sexism, and patriarchal tendencies that are often in alignment with the Manosphere (Kevin Samuels, The Fresh & Fit Podcast, etc.) which is prevalent online (e.g., such as his stance of patriarchal polygamy, yet, denouncing feminism and those on the LGBTQ spectrum, or even denouncing those not physically seen as black enough, i.e., dark enough, i.e. spreading colorist ideas but in an inverted way to support black supremacy as opposed to whiteness as purity in favor of white supremacy).
There’s also Rizza Islam of the black supremacist group and cult, the Nation of Islam, who has in my opinion as a person who spends a lot of time online, is simply appropriating conspiracies from other online conspiracy theorists but packaging them for the black community (for example, Rizza Islam’s discussions on transhumanism are no different than Jay Dyer, a white Eastern Orthodox YouTube conspiracy theorist who often spreads anti-West and pro-Kremlin adjacent conspiracies who has links to the MAGA movement via his relationship to Alex Jones). Let’s not forget other black cults such as Nuwabians, Carbon Nation, Black Hebrew Israelites with Brother Nathaneyl, and the child abuse case of Mother Anna in North Florida (who was later arrested in the Metro Atlanta Area), etc.
Main Paper/Post
You often hear in the political Left people say that race is social construct, and by Political Left I mean Socialists (a spectrum of ideologies), Communists – a type of socialism with specific criteria (often under a Marxist ideology which seeks to have a cashless, classless, stateless world by way of a centralized dictatorship of proletariat, i.e., working class), and to some extent Left Liberal (i.e., a progressive who isn’t socialist or Communist but still has liberal principles, and by liberal I mean deriving from the “classical sense” of liberalism to the early modernist definition of liberalism, i.e., believing in private property, separation of church and state, taxes on the rich, etc. We can even throw in some “Centrists” (who have learned to accept or at least tolerate this stance from the Left).
Yet, even though the Left says that race is a social construct, often as a means of challenging and deconstructing the manufactured social systems within colonial/post-colonial nations which are synonymous with the word “Imperialist” (e.g., capitalist, elite, bourgeoisie), it seems that the Left ironically is…race obsessed.
And race obsessed to the point of being a type of inverted version of the “race realism” and “segregation” notable within the Political Right. For example, what the Left ends up pushing self-determination, which is great, but often that self-determination is fueled by a type of race-based (arguably dialectical) anger towards whom a particular group sees as the responsible for their current and/or past treatment.
Adding to this, you get “gatekeeping” of culture where race and culture are often seen as intrinsic, rather than culture being what I call an “ontological construct nuanced by historicity” (i.e., ideas that just so happen to solidify over time and space, often as a people “anthropologically” interact with their environment and where such as ideas or expressions of ideas, e.g., art, are eventually seen as natural when in fact they are mental and social constructions in and of themselves.
As a result of seeing everything in culture as racial in nature – even though the Left refutes race existing in nature – what we end up with is…”purity testing”, which could be re-named “cultural eugenics”, which of course if…eugenics, i.e., the appraisal of purity based on often made-up ideas.
Ironically, for black people in contemporary Left-Wing politics, there’s something disingenuous about this because many people are accepting of the fact that race is a social construct, but many black people under the notion of self-determination are doubling down in their belief of race. Sure, it could be argued that we as black people just simply need our time to ourselves to peacefully process our existences within Western civilization that fell upon us (e.g., creating stable systems that do not “otherize” black peoples).
Yet, black people are more so protected – relatively speaking – compared to the past because of this idea of race as a construct being accepted by “non-blacks”, yet, with black people doubling down in racial consciousness, often where certain actors are not only gate-keeping but perpetuating a typical of “cultural eugenics test” on “outsiders” and “insiders” (i.e., “you’re not black enough” types), this all makes people fall in alignment with a culture (black culture) that ironically was produced by the same white supremacist system we as black people claim to want to transcend above.
Does that make sense? To restate, the political-left says that race doesn’t exist, often as a means of challenging white supremacy/colonialism and by default uplifting black/”BIPOC” peoples, yet, black peoples while using this notion to their benefit in one hand are double-downing in the other hand into a strict adherence to the concept of “blackness”, where such as blackness is ironically a byproduct of white supremacy, where blackness was designed to be the manufactured dialectic to whiteness (AAVE, i.e., African American Vernacular English, i.e., Ebonics vs King’s English, sagging vs wearing your pants up, fluidity vs rigidity, spicy vs bland, etc., etc.) . In other words, black people doubling down on racial purity/separatism are actually giving the white supremacists what they want because the white supremacist wanted black people to be segregated whether white supremacy (Right Wing) did it or black people did it themselves (via Left Wing ideology or even Right-Wing ideology, it doesn’t matter).
Sure, even though we as black people “claimed this culture from our manufactured situation of oppression for ourselves and turned it into empowerment” such as calling ourselves Niggers (niggas) and being polar opposites to what we consider to be “white”, the truth remains that what we are now empowered in what was and still is highly influenced by white supremacy.
In other words, black people will never be “free” unless we totally remove ourselves from this trajectory regardless of if we take it for ourselves. Better put, no matter how black you think you’re acting, you actually acting in many ways what were simply designed to be opposite. In other words, black simply means opposite of white. Just the way I am sure our Founding “Fathers” wanted the colonial caste system to be. To reiterate, acting “black” doesn’t mean “free”, but just opposite, but black to me is not a monolith, yet many black people have a hard time processing away from the monolithic viewpoint of blackness they too were indoctrinated with.
Most Black Americans, including those who claim to be woke, “down”, “bought it, bought it”, etc., aren’t really willing to fully be “unprogrammed”, i.e., leave Western Civilization. Nothing is stopping black people from going back to Africa, taking their US currency, and totally forgetting about all the trauma we seem to be obsessed with reminding ourselves about. But the truth is, most don’t want to leave and will always come up with a “saving face excuse”, such as “We’re still waiting on reparations”, as if reparations – especially in the form of controversial cash payments (only controversial because many people in the US now are not descended from the situations that created black oppression such as slavery) will ever happen. For certain extreme Pro-Black voices, they still desire their capitalist food, TV, sweatshop shoes, etc. So, if anything, most extreme Pro-Black types are not only disingenuous but are really just…talking but talking as a means of pushing what I talked about which is purity testing (cultural eugenics). They want to be rewarded and idolized for saying the most woke things to establish themselves atop a cultural hierarchy. Better put, the extreme Pro-Black woke talker is actually just using culture as a currency in a social hierarchy where performance, words, and aesthetics are more valuable than the actual construction of physical infrastructure, let alone advanced infrastructure. It’s easy to be Pro Black and segregationist and open a food stand, barber business or print T-shirts than it is to build…computers, rockets, etc. If anything, our obsession with race has resulted in a type of intellectual laziness were analyzing culture, qualitative studies, liberal arts, etc., takes precedence over hard to learn sciences such as math, engineering, etc. Instead of the hard things we are content with talking, “preach!”, “oh! snap!”, “he ain’t wrong!” intellectual “rap battles” which at this point have slipped beyond tolerable wokeness and instead have gone into literal La-La land of Ancient Alien, Neoplatonic, Occultic and Antediluvian conspiracy theories (with personalities like Kanye West as the extreme avatar this madness) .
Western Civilization colonized the entire planet. So be it. Who cares? Because Western Civilization doesn’t necessarily mean “white” because a civilization is simply the accrual of ideas that have embedded themselves into systems. Yet, ideas that created Western Civilization, despite being mostly “brewed” in Europe, since Europe offered the best real estate to do so (e.g., a temperate, seasonal area with access to fresh water and ocean access, without major viruses and predators as that of Africa), were derived from “ideas” from all over, be it Muslim math which played a big role in navigation technology, being awe inspired by the Egyptians, philosophy from the ancient Iranians, and let’s not forget that the oldest human activity is from Africa.
But, still there’s black nationalist, Pan Africans, etc., who want to be in the United States yet are continuing to use the antiquated tropes and manufactured dramas of “house niggas” vs “field niggas” as a means of analysis, which just further proves how black minds seem to have the inability to escape dialectical (us. vs them, either/or, Ying Yang) thinking, and if so, they go totally far into the deep end of conspiracy theory.
The irony of Black Extremists or woke types such tropes such as House Nigga or Field Nigga is sadly comical in a nihilistic sense because…we’re all in the house. The house is Western civilization.
For a people birthed from dialectics and who seem to not be able get over dialectical thinking, i.e., white vs black, house nigga vs field nigga, the only solution is dialectics, which is to assimilate or at least be more tolerable to the fact we are now a Western people or to…leave, seriously, go back to Africa. Man or woman up and go back if you give up on the West or the United States. Because, if this does not happen, blackness will forever be an Escher Maze
Black people’s inability to provide acceptance amongst themselves and accept differences will result in a brain drain as black people who climb the ladder will blend with others as they find themselves shamed by their own people but relate to others because they have expanded tastes or see that there’s a larger world outside the constraints of black culture, but also we will have a smaller more radical group of black people where black people will likely be fourth in place as Hispanics and Asians move in and outperform black Americans.
Referencing the film Fight Club is quasi-cringey because it represents every angry, in your twenties, posters on the wall without a frame, cliff-note Bukowski, jaded, wannabe Nietzschean “edge lord” that most of us, especially men, have dealt with.
But almost in my forties, over most things, and arguably…content mostly, etc., I do admit I daydream about how Edward Norton saw the banking buildings at the end of the film go down in rubble, but instead of banks, I envision social media companies. Seeing all the symbols come crashing down to Earth. The blue bird of Twitter, well – now the way too bright X shinning down in San Franscisco as drug addicts hiss in piss filled streets being bought up by hedge funds like BlackRock or Vanguard. The F of Facebook. The almost Hello Kitty looking camera symbol of Instagram. This, that, whatever. Yet, before I get flagged, I just want to say I’m not really serious – at least about any violence or destruction, though a world without social media, at least as it is now, would be much better, healthier, etc.
But I don’t hate Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, etc., though, yes, Elon is lame, but when I think of a person like Mark or Jack, I see optimists who had a dream they couldn’t’ control and still can’t control but can’t admit they don’t have control because they’re in charge of capitalist enterprises bent on profits. In other words, Mark, etc., signed out and could care less if the world burns. This adds on more to the irony. Analogous to demi-gods they created a universe but are letting it crumble because they didn’t comprehend the sheer power.
Books aren’t dead but they very well may be dead. To read means to sign out, and to feel catharsis must now be shared instead of silently appreciated by oneself. Basic cable, though organized and safe, doesn’t stimulate us as much as streaming where we can customize our experiences. Social media reigns supreme but still it’s…inhuman. Maybe it’s too convenient? With such an easy way of getting information, maybe it’s making us dumber, yet living in a world that requires us to keep track of the ever-growing interconnectivity of things, that is why people are…depressed? Stupidity mixed with complexity creates a dialectical tension that leads to hopelessness as one realizes they become masters-of-none, just repositories of trivial information.
At least, you get off with porn, though sure, many will say that too is bad, yet at least you get a spike of some naturally occurring chemicals in your body.
With basic social media…what is it even really for? To feel bad? To flex wealth? To juxtapose our romantic relationships against that of others to remind us that we should be happy where we are rather than being “single” or with someone else? To pretend to be a wise sage even though deep down instead you’re just speaking to yourself but through others without the fear of having to actually deal with…people? Are we just projecting our fears out onto the electric ether just like how a child who sees a scary movie will tell his or her friends about it, so they too are afraid but in that collective fear comes comfort, solace?
I think a healthy New Years resolution would be to spend less time on social media. And I get that is hard because in many ways we have “social media friends”, i.e., people we’ve met online who we’ve vetted who are people we consider to be on friendly terms with though you may not have ever physically have met the person. People who know you exist and are a person with a life in a world that may not see that. There are also legitimate close ties with people in your actual personal lives (friends, family, co-workers, business connections, etc.). Yet, the good parts aside, the truth is social media has destroyed the planet.
As with most tools, humans get utility out of it, but most tools become corrupted because of our innate nature as self-serving, self-preserving, aggressive yet passive-aggressive creatures. Instead of saying hello, we spy and snoop. Instead of trying to find common ground, we instead agitate an already agitated public. Instead of pursing our dreams in the real world, we scroll.
We don’t even need to fear Artificial Intelligence because we as humans have a good enough job at driving ourselves crazy, making alternative universes, pushing a culture of solipsistic post-truths, etc.
It will take us as a society to teach the social media companies a lesson by not spending so much on time so they can’t mine our data, etc.
Social media is a postmodern cesspool of racial tension against all groups, conspiracy theories (spanning the Great Replacement Theory, the New World Order, Blood Libel by Jews, a belief we are being turned gay, etc.), racial conspiracy theories, antisemitism, misogyny, sovereign citizens, Qanon, Manosphere & Men’s Rights shaming videos that feed the insatiable appetites of Incels across the blob of angry men who LARP (live action role play) in video games about killing people or dying honorably in battle. Men who struggle with women and publicly commit to “no fapping” (masturbating) as a means of tapping into their inner Marcus Aurelius but taking out their sexual repression on women by providing “fatherly words of wisdom” to women who they think have no minds of their own. How many Pakistanis, Saudis, or other horny Middle Eastern men using VPNs to access Western porn/women are the ones actually crying about their alleged addictions?
Let’s not forget the Instagram “thirst trap” models of large squat sculpted buttocks, sultry MILFs, what have you, but also…bot accounts, covert government operations both foreign and domestic, etc. Or wait, the annoying street interviewers attempting to make people seem stupid or lost for whatever agenda they are really about, such as “drinking liberal snowflake tears.”
You never know if its Iranian intelligence firms with bot armies infiltrating black “woke” Marxist liberation sites to stoke anti-whitey sentiments because Iran knows they have a backdoor plug into the Black American community via Muslim adjacent hate groups such as the Nation of Islam with figures such as Rizza Islam.
You never know if Israel Unit 8200 bot accounts ran by drafted Israeli teens are stoking racial division to keep the eyes away from Israel and that it’s not Jews behind the scenes but rather hordes of Muslim refugees flooding Europe who will topple the West.
You never know if Russian bot accounts are stoking unrest by infiltrating American Conservative politics as a means of depicting the West as a “corrupt, amoral, Sodom and Gomorrah” so more and more paranoid white Americans and Europeans see Putin as “big daddy savior” of Christendom.
You never know if what you’re seeing is being ran by a legitimate cult who are pushing every New Age conspiracy theory that intends to unravel our linear view of history apart. You never know if hate groups like the Aryan Brotherhood, or any other aspiring group are behind many accounts. You never know if it’s the CIA, FBI, DEA, ATF, local police, MI5/6, Mossad, etc.
We are literally living in a William Gibson Neuromancer nightmare, and we all know it, but we don’t know how to express it because outside of social media, in perfect American fashion for example, we’ve all been trained to be self-serving individuals. Despite out own quiet desperations and ennui, if we see such melancholy elsewhere, we are now trained to simple walk over the dying bodies of others, because we are too busy “manifesting” our own happy little worlds. Any whiff of negativity could lead to the dreaded…unfollow.
It is everything that Philip K Dick lost his mind over.
Social Media is arguably MK Ultra 2.0. A brainwashing tool for various parties, some in unison, and some in opposition, who fart out toxicity to scramble the general public’s brain.
I’ve literally been seeing people get murdered on social media. Seeing the N word is just commonplace now and even if reported, sites like Instagram do nothing. Nudity is even acceptable.
The thing is…it’s all insanity. It’s to the point where I make it a hobby to block accounts. I’ll literally try to block 50 a day because many are just replica accounts, often pushing Right Wing social conditioning that mixes a denunciation of progressive politics with a worship of capitalist greed, misogyny, Abrahamic religion, doomsday Revelation fears, etc. It’s as if the Koch Brother Foundation along with the John Birch Society wrote a blank check and gave it to a bunch of Young Republican college kids and shills like Charley Kirk to fart out as many bot accounts as they can as a means of pulling the youth to the far right, just because rich people or aspiring rich people want a tax break.
Social media is a joke
Deconstructed to an animal impulse the only thing on social media that makes me somewhat happy is a combination of food porn, glamour shots of retro porn actresses from the 90s to 80s, history stuff, and models in yoga pants.
Sex, food, daydreams
The only way to really fix social media is to (1) Dox everyone, i.e., make it some everyone’s real first name, age, and country of origin is on their profile because this will expose the armies of chaos agents stoking tension. Imagine if that Right Wing Anti-SJW account is owned by Boris in some oblast in Russia or Ahmed as the IT guy working with the Iranian Revolutionary guard or a Jewish kid with braces doing a high school project funded by the IDF. (2) Limit the number of accounts a person can have/hunt down replica accounts and limiting how many times a specific video can be uploaded or using digital forensics of some sort to post the date that photos or videos were taken in order to add context to conversations. For example, a racist account intent of shaming black people will upload frequent videos of black crime or racial tension when certain videos may be very old, but pretending they are new helps to feed the current narrative that black people are these “ungrateful criminals” intent on “killing the white man”. (3) More culturally sensitive content moderators because an Indian person in a cubical may not get certain American nuances or vice versa. (4) An active campaign to fight conspiracy theories by having users list sources. (5) Partnerships with sites such as Ground News to help show the political biases of articles (6) continued parental controls
Social media is too cerebral.
It reveals everything ugly about us without any way of making us better. Even most self-help just serve to reduce one into a consumerist bot.
But I saw some good food and yes, some great feminine, squat-sculpted powerful buttocks in an array of multi-colored synthetic material leggings. At least I am honest.
I was a huge Highlander fan as a kid. I have mixed emotions about a remake of the classic film. The magic of Highlander was that it was a film of open ideas. It was a B movie. There was freedom in the story line and direction. It channeled a street level energy, but also touched into something romantic about our human condition. The main character was cast as an effective no-name actor, which was great because it wasn’t a Hollywood decision. The magic of Highlander was that it was a student project effectively. It was an example of well-done DIY movie. We also have to realize the film was made in a time when a deadly diseases was sweeping the planet, there was a sense of lawlessness, etc., so it really touched people in many ways. So, what will a Highlander remake tap into? But, I do think a Highlander film could be great, if done correctly and if it retains an aura of indie film rather than explicitly going the route of Big budget Hollywood film, though it will need the best special effects. There’s plenty of studios who could a good job such as Annapurna Studios or A24, etc.
Highlander is Neoplatonism in that immortals are “pieces of essence” from a larger source, i.e., the ominous higher being or source known as The One or a Demiurge. By fighting in combat this insinuates a Darwinist “strongest survives” mentality, and the last one standing thus touches transcendence or “the next level”. The fact that combat is the underlying basis insinuates a Darwinist struggle of fitness and natural selection, yet the fact that only one immortal can truly stand in the end for The Game to be over, insinuates that Immortals are possessing an essence of larger otherworldly source of power. A larger force from another dimension “broke itself” apart or was “destroyed” and inhabits a few select humans over the course of time, and by consolidating itself without our dimension the last immortal who stands is effectively The One. The fact that humans on Earth are chosen, insinuates that Humans are a special species, having evolved through the game of evolution, through time, various struggles, pain, violence, near extinctions, admixtures, refinements, etc. Humans are the worthy in that they not only are the dominant species able to make free-willed decisions, but have the aptitude and consciousness of awareness, where conscious awareness is needed to understand the stakes of The Game. The Game would be useless if any other animal were involved. Humans are the chosen animals who can comprehend metaphysical possibilities, existentialism, asking their purpose within the universe, creators who make things within their own image, etc.
In The Game there are rules. 1) Only one on one combat. I think this is because it permits for a clean transfer of power from person to person, 2) Only use bladed weapons. I think this is because when an Immortal takes the head of their opponent, the power transfer, known as The Quickening, comes with the presence of electricity, meaning bladed weapons help conduct and transfer the power from The Source, 3) No fighting on Holy Ground which I’ll give theory to below, 4) Immortals can’t have children, which I think is because there’s no point, in that mortals spread their genes to live “forever” whereas immortals simply live forever carrying their own genes through time, 5) There can be only one remaining in the end, 6) There’s only so many immortals that will ever exists, in theory, and immortals can come in all ages, races, genders, etc., and 7) Mortals must die before being resurrected as an Immortal.
If we were to apply natural sciences to immortals in the Highlander series, then immortals are the a sort of biological necessity, possibly for an array of reasons, e.g., immortals must exists for the survival of the species in that they can A) have a volume of knowledge from their lived experiences to quickly help the species continue on its path of evolution without going all the way back to square zero in the case of catastrophe, and B) the fact that an assumed benefit of winning The Prize is having the ability to have children, meaning that the surviving immortal will not only have a plethora of information gained from their lifetime but also be the most genetically fit individual to help benefit the species in that their genetics span various epochs of human existence, struggle, fitness, adaptation, and development.
The fact that Immortals cannot fight on Holy Ground insinuates an otherworldly source in that the essence is “fractured” amongst immortals, meaning that religions, regardless of their diversity, all have a common source, with that source likely being humankind’s understanding of natural law (physical) but also the possibility of the metaphysical, i.e., things that humans cannot comprehend but can possibly exists. What we consider to be belief, religions, etc., is all just an interpretation of our purpose in the world, yet that interpretation is based off the fact that a higher level of existence does exists, thus Holy Ground is sacred in that these sites are the closest sort of “communication centers” or “portals” to a higher reality. Fighting on Holy Ground is like itching a rash on The One. It is too close to home. Holy Ground sites are where dimensions crisscross and create “portals” between each other. Therefore, violent events occur when Immortals fight on Holy Ground in that it creates an anomaly in physics or space-time. For example, Mount Vesuvius is recorded in Highlander cannon has erupting when two immortals fought on an ancient Holy site. To reconcile religion with biology or evolutionary biology, when humans have faith, they connect to a higher source. For example, when humans observe electrons, they notice that electrons mysteriously disappear. Belief might possibly have the ability to shape realities in ways we cannot understand based on science, yet quantum mechanics and quantum computers might pose insight.
When immortals beat another immortal in combat, they gain their essence and power, but this transfer of power called The Quickening, is typically defined by the presence of electricity, lightning, etc. Electricity is a form of energy resulting from the existence of charged particles (such as electrons or protons), either statically as an accumulation of charge or dynamically as a current.
So, if the source of Immortals comes from The One, when immortals kill each other, they consolidate power. In other words, The One, is a source of power, manifesting itself as a being, likely from another dimension, i.e., the Fourth or Fifth dimension, but within the human dimension, i.e., the third dimension, its presence is felt through electricity and consolidates as immortals consolidate power through combat. Immortals are like organic transceivers of otherworldly information which in our universe manifests itself a phenomenon from subatomic particles, i.e., such electricity from electrons.
The One has some sort of nature that it can only manifest itself in shards or pieces but to consolidate it must consolidate through what we deem as combat or fitness or struggle or tension. The One had to breakdown to communicate or relate to our dimension, but since the lower dimension, i.e., us in the 3rd will eventually strive to reach a higher one, similarly to a higher dimension will try to understand a lower one. Thus, the struggle of Immortals is a necessity.
Immortals are transceivers of information from a higher dimension manifesting within our dimension, hence, therefore immortals can sense one another, i.e., there is a natural magnetism between them all.
The importance of the head to an immortal is that it is what we consider to be the highest charka, i.e., it is where all the energy is conducted from, or rather where power plant of the human body is operated from. By taking the head it thus severs the operation of the human’s biochemistry and physiology, and the essence of The One inhabiting an immortal is transferred to the Immortal that is nearest.
Immortals as I have read elsewhere are effectively biological batteries and avatars holding a power from another dimension that is on the quests to consolidate itself within our dimension. This higher power seems to be morally ambiguous in that Immortals come in all forms of morals, i.e., some are good, some are evil, etc. The One is playing a game even if it does not realize that from its own dimension, but it plays itself out as such within our dimension. Its only goal is crossing dimensions and Immortals are the “building blocks” helping it manifest itself within our reality.
Think about us within the 3rd dimension and drawing a picture, i.e., a two-dimensional figure. Imagine if we had the ability to go into that picture and let us say that picture or pictures had an existence of their own. Our 3rd dimensional existence would be omnipotent and overpowering to the 2nd dimension, so in Highlander, it is the same thing, but we are in the 3rd and The One comes from a higher dimension. Yet, even if we could go into a second dimension, the same rules of physics we are used to within the third, i.e., up, down, left, right, space, volume, etc., would not work for us, so we must operate based on the physics of the dimension we are in.
The fact that Immortals cannot have children is because they do live forever, thus there is no point in having children if you cannot die thus there is no reason to spread ones’ genetics. The game of mortals and that of immortals are different. Immortality to a mortal is procreation, whereas immortality for an immortal is surviving in its most distilled form natural selection without the excess of needing to breed. Immortals are consequences of evolution, yet there is manipulation from this higher source. Immortals must exist. #highlander #higherlandermovie #highlanderfan #sciencefiction #fantheory #theory #fantasy
Kanye will forever be important despite his recent turns. I would fall asleep at night as a bored black teen in suburbia listening to the music of Drive Slow or Late on Late Registration.
Note: I am using Kanye and Ye interchangeably.
I’ll get to the point. After Kanye’s Golden Era with College Dropout, Late Registration (his magnum opus in my opinion), and Graduation to My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, he went through a lot. His mom died and this is similar to the character of Pink played by Bob Geldof in Pink Floyd’s musical The Wall. Even though Pink’s mother isn’t shown as passing away, the maternal bond is central to both characters. Yet, Pink and Kanye both came to rely on their mothers though Pink’s mother was suffocating, whereas Kanye’s mother was his anchor. This maternal bond (I won’t go all Freudian because I don’t feel well read enough into Freud to say it) was central to both people. Further, Kanye has a had problems with women though in more recent music he’s challenged his notions such as those found in hisanalysis of the Madonna Whore Complexin the song Violent Crimes on the ye album. This exploration reminds me of the ill-fated philosopher Otto Weininger who wrote the book Sex and Character, but as a Jewish man who aspired to fit into what he saw as Aryan ideals, he later committed suicide. This struggle about identity is similar to me to what is going on with Kanye.
This is similar to the character of Pink in The Wall with Pink as having a rocky relationship with his wife since he’s a traveling rock-and-roll musician. Pink has issues regarding fear of loss, control, etc., and can be heard in the lyrics of the song Don’t Leave Me Now, which says, “I need you to put through the shredder in front of our friends, oh baby, don’t leave me now”, “How could you go? When you know how I need you…to beat up on a pulp on Saturday night, oh babe…don’t leave me now”. The lyrics depicts a man who blames his spouse for his behavior/internalized trauma and cannot operate without having someone to coddle his bad decisions and take his abusive behavior. I’m not insinuating this is Kanye, yet still male and female relationships (or any type) can be rocky and at times have an unhealthy level of dependency going both ways where love and abuse (or the ability to tolerate said abuse) are seen as the same. Negative behaviors can exacerbate as people push limits, essentially to see if the other stays around. Kanye’s relationship with sexual feminist icon Amber Rose (who later made a pivot to the Right Wing populism of the MAGA movement of Trump) seems similar to that of Pink’s character to his estranged wife, especially since Amber Rose left him for another rapper in an industry where masculine posturing and ego are everything, and she sexually doxed him by revealing alleged aspects of their private sex life to the world.
The Phallus and Vagina
Pink in the film after hearing of the infidelity of his wife in between the songs The Happiest Days of Our Lives, Young Lust, and One of My Turns, goes on a psychotic breakdown and endangers a groupie.
Further, Pink’s father dies in WW2 at the Battle of Anzio and Kanye’s father was estranged from him.
In addition, after Pink’s mental condition finally collapses after the song Comfortably Numb, he starts fantasies of fascism as a type of subconscious defense mechanism to protect his deep-rooted vulnerabilities and lack of stability. He equates his lack of stability to the need to cleanse society of minorities, gays, “people with spots”, and other ramblings. He even screams to the entire crowd of his fantasy fascist supporters that he’d wish they’d all be shot. A man with deep rooted issues but he’s human.
Kanye’s was playing with fascism which is common in the arts such as some of the works of David Bowie, Marilyn Manson, Ramstein, Nine Inch Nails, etc. However, facsism for Kanye is not for motif or to be ironic it seems, but seems to be a literal coping mechanism for this mental state simliar to Pink in The Wall.
I believe a part of Ye’s leaning towards fascism and antisemitism is the anger felt by a black man within Western Civilization as he juggles with the old question of “to be or not to be?”, i.e., to be a champion of our Western home or to stand at odds with it (e.g., the anti-colonial, Pan African sentiment) due to its history of systemic abuses which played a role in effectively…creating us as black people as a construct.
Pink Floyd isn’t racist or fascist and their depiction of fascism in the film was a criticism of it.
The film came out during the Margaret Thatcher years which was full of right-wing “Oi Oi” hate groups associated with the National Front and the conservative Tories in power. This is very similar to the far-right peripheries of the Trump Administration’s grassroots right-wing populism with groups such as Proud Boys.
Kanye’s play with fascism could be seen as being ironic with his lyrics in Black Skinhead which is really Kanye appropriating the hyper-masculinity of the far-right for his own purposes to scare the actual fascists. However, this doesn’t seem to be the case based on his insane antisemitic rantings. Yet, black people have appropriate white supremacist tropes and language as a means of “re-defining” certain terms, such as the N word. If the N word is acceptable, then to Kanye then maybe a black person with a Confederate Flag or worst isn’t that bad. It begs the question. For real. If you ask the black people who use the N word about why the use it, they will come up with some reason about endearment, or being rebellious, etc., but this sort of oddities seems to be what Ye was originally challenging, even though any noble attempt at challenging the status quo, was tarnished by his real mental health and personal issues, which of course coincides with his antisemitism (which seems to have started in 2016).
In one hard, Ye playing with fascism could be seen as ironic way of defending himself against it, yet, playing with irony is sometimes…simply irresponsible. Not all art needs to be ironic. Irony doesn’t necessary insinuate depth, but rather it can do more harm than good by blurring the moral lines of what we consider right versus wrong or social versus anti-social.
Pink in his delusion after his mental breakdown in Pink Floyd’s The Wall “It’s my flag now!” said Kanye West on Los Angeles 97.1 AMP Radio on Monday. Kanye West leaving his house after taking a private boxing class to stay in shape. He is wearing a green jacket with Confederate flag on a sleeve, hoody, and What Would Jesus Do? (WWJD) Bracelet. Saturday, November 2, 2013. Juliano/x17online.com EXCLUSIVE
Kanye was one of my idols and I still support the guy. He’s a black man fighting for freedom and not just freedom from the perspective of black liberation but total “ubermench”. Yet, like Nietzsche…Ye went insane.
Yet, there’s a profundity to Kanye, his older version (not his antisemitic new version) that most might not get. His descent is essentially a waste. A waste brought on by pride.
In Greek philosophy there was a man by the name of Diogenes the Cynic who was known for living an eclectic lifestyle, having sharp cynical wit, and living a life as a homeless beggar to show the uselessness of certain aspects of society.
Anyways, Kanye instead of entirely rapping about the grassroots realism that many African Americans face such as murder, misogyny, bravado and nihilism, Kanye analyzed not only that but the silent lives of the black middle class, but he leap-frogged backwards by borrowing from Ray Charles, chain-gang hymns, the Harlem Renaissance, gospel, etc.
Kanye am existential meteorite of hyper-aware blackness that analyzed it from all angles. Kanye can vacillate between bourgeoisie and proletariat, between “house slave” and “field slave”, but instead of picking either/or (shout out to Soren Kierkegaard) he wavers above both and creates music full of pop cultural references which spans foreign film such as the works of Michelangelo Antonioni, classical musical scores, political commentary, high art, low art, fashion, etc.
Let’s be honest, hip hop changed after Kanye, and some might say for the best, yet, for a genre still dominated by black artists, he did open the window to express yourself in ways that were more experimental, existential, etc. Being black I do know that the community is highly social, i.e., we typically tend to be a monoculture – often pushing out black subcultures in exchange for what is simply the most popular at a given time, and it typically takes martyrs to take the heat to shift sentiments.
I truly feel that Ye opened more doors for many black people that they realize, even though Ye wasn’t orignal. There are plently of out-of-the-box thinkers in the black community or black people who have always “beat to their own drum” or style, but it often takes celebrities to create tectonic shifts unfortunately. For example, I grew up Akira, weird Blockbuster movies by David Lynch, listing to The Cure, etc., so Kanye when he first came out was more of a…friend. It wasn’t that he was original to me but rather I had someone to look up to who was still black and a part of the “culture” but also…our own thing. Tupac, Biggie, etc., never made me feel that way because I didn’t grow up in a destitute dire situation. I had two black parents, a home, was told to go to college and stay out of trouble, etc. My parents wanting to protect their kids from the temptations and violence that were sweeping the black community in the late 80s is a reason we migrated into suburban America like many other black people. So, what about our experiences, our stories? Kanye, Ye, whatever, revealed a blackness that was always there but often unseen to others, including black people.
Kanye’s vast array of samples and influences spanning true hip hop to Duran Duran, the film Juice with Tupac and Omar Epps, the film Welcome to America with Eddie Murphy, Bloods versus Crypts, the ability to not get a taxi as night, Richard Pryor to Bill Cosby in the 80s, to Michael Jackson to Fellini films to surreal anime, etc., in my opinion will always set him above and a part from other rappers, except for the Wu Tang Clan with people such as Ghostface Killah in my opinion.
I’m sorry but most rappers in the day didn’t take it to such levels. Essentially, Ye became the Picasso of Hip Hop, which is interesting considering Picasso did play with fascism himself as well, and was later known as being abusive to women.
Before Kanye’s fall, I use to call him the “modern day Gatsby, the hip hop Bukowski”.
I can relate to Kayne because as an African American my interests are vast. I can also empathize before judging. It wasn’t easy to simply “be like everyone else”. To white people or others, black culture is a form of punk, but when you’re black it’s just…life, so when African Americans think outside the box I always support those people and find it honorable, because equality isn’t merely a matter of nationalism or economic empowerment, but it’s a matter of representation in various fields, while also showing the world the diversity of talents and the depths of your comprehension skills.
However, Ye is…sort of dead to me now.
His antisemitism, hatred, erratic behavior are…simply unacceptable. He isn’t making any valid analysis about the state of Palestinians or critiquing colonialism, but rather he’s spreading Nazism via a black body.
I see a black man who stared at the sun of Western Civilization too much and it burned him. It broke his brain. And it is disappointing because I didn’t want his wings to melt because maybe I saw a piece of Kayne in me.
But, until Ye gets himself help, he’s nothing to me.
At this point it seems more performative than real, considering he is still able to maintain his personal finances. It is not like he is some homeless person who needs help. He has all the means to get help.
“Active or self-directed evolution, then – holistic, anthropocentric, and teleologically determined effort – are some of the terms that scholars have applied to most Russian Cosmist” (Young, p. 9)
Cover Art from A Natural Death by Horse the Band
Before I begin, I want to say that this analysis of Horse the Band isn’t to insinuate they have any connections to the right-wing. I think they’re simply storytelling and telling a story as if where a bad guys vs good guy epic. Horse the Band is an American metalcore band from Orange County, California, that became known for their 8-bit video-game influenced sounds which labeled them as Nintendocore. In personal opinion, I would call them Avant-Garde metal employing postmodern themes, such as transhumanism, simulation and simulacrum, 80s cyber and Cold War pastiche akin to the visions of William Gibson’s Neuromancer, merging high art with low art, and digitization, with the electronic synth elements serving as a device to suggest the informational overload of contemporary life.
The lead singer for Horse the Band with a Behemoth shirt at Warped Tour. Behemoth is a Polish extreme metal band. Relating to geopolitics, Poland and Russia have a traditional feud with one being Catholic and the other being Orthodox. However, you can see the image of the double headed eagle but also the Chaos Magick symbol. I’m not saying Horse the Band is Alt-Right, yet, their album A Natural Death has songs such as Hyperborea and Face of Bear which relates to Russia. Hyperboreans are a sub-sect of Russian Cosmism and in Young’s (2012) book, The Russian Cosmists, the word Arktos is referenced. Arktos is also the name of Arktos Publishing, once edited by Jordan Jorjani of the Alt-Right. Jorjani can be seen online commentating on New Thinking Allowed with Jeffrey Misholve. Mishlove is a Paranormal researcher from UC Berkeley. Finished reading this. A great book. This paper isn’t to indict the Russian Cosmist movement as a whole, but there are some elements within this frame of thought that relates to some current regressive ideologies, especially those relating to Aleksandr Dugin but also Transhumanism – both Western and Eastern – as a whole.
The band does a good job of analyzing the informational overload of postmodernity, where this era is defined largely by the domination of images or symbols which creates a self-destroying and self-replicating chaotic reality. In such a state of reality it’s hard to distinguish truth (fake from real; organic from synthetic), thus bringing upon existential (nihilistic) questions of being. Horse the Band doesn’t seem to be perpetuating a sense of cosmic dread through postmodern means with ill-intent, but rather they’re musing, feeling and thinking with music to attempt to answer the old philosophical question of, “What is the meaning of life”. But they’re also just having fun.
Their album, A Natural Death, in my opinion is their magnum opus, despite, their follow-up album, Desperate Living – which is good – getting higher rankings from music critics. Math metal is arguably seen as a type of nerdy aggressive male space and I think the bands on stage antics and style has relegated them from larger audiences. It is a type of Revenge of the Nerds, Reed College weirdo or M.I.T style of metal, thus engendering possible accusations of being for suburban, garage conspiring, computer hackers in some rainy Tech corridor such as Portland or Seattle, yet, their demeanor seems ironic, self-aware and assured, and artful. This relates to the underlying theme of artistic movements such as Dada. Essentially, they act quirky as to challenge audiences or listeners not to take life too seriously, i.e., to destabilize metanarratives, which is the key tenant of postmodernism.
Postmodernism sought to challenge the stiff and empirical mindedness of Modernism of the early twentieth century. Modernism posited a belief in structuralism, the ability to know truth, behavior sciences, and made bold objective truth claims such as science will liberate humanity, or skyscraper urbanism will be the future utopia. Yet, these claims were challenged harshly after WW2 since objective truth claims were blamed for the deaths of millions of humans and all in the name of “progress”. Speaking to the Dada art movement of early twentieth-century Europe, alongside other schools such as Italian Futurism or German Bauhaus, Horse the Band’s, A Natural Death, seems in alignment with Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Metropolis shows a future advanced urban society based on Modernist and Futurist themes, yet, the film could be argued as one of the earliest warnings of transhumanism and the film is known for its famous female Satanic robot. The fact that Fritz Lang chose a female robot seems interesting. Feminism is often at the forefront of globalist movements such as the Green Movement, or, there’s the banner call of the Future is Female. But, that future also possibly holds transhumanism. Transhumanism seems to be cross-juncture between feminism (particularly with its focus on gender as being a spectrum, not a biological axiom), the New Age movement, the Green movement, globalism, AI and IoT (Information of Things), and transgenderism, etc.
Essentially, transhumanism is related to all these topics, in that it represents a type of “inevitable progress”, and the female form of Fritz Lang’s robot and the real movement of the Future is Female – in a future that will be globally integrated with IoT – indicates the symbolic importance of femininity within this paradigm shift. In other words, femininity as presented and argued within the larger sociopolitical debate makes it synonymous with shifting, merging, androgyny, the evolutionary notion of progress, or, in alchemy language…it’s a malleable “substance”. The female form is also the window into life, so femininity has an esoteric element involving shifting, birth, renewal, etc.
The female robot from Metropolis by Fritz LangA statue of Hermaphroditus, the child of Hermes and Aphrodite. The merging of male and female thus has roots in an ancient esoteric tradition. With such traditions influencing technocracy as well, it does seem that the Trans movement isn’t simply for protecting the rights of marginalized group of people but rather promoting a lifestyle conducive to the upcoming technocratic global future.
A Natural Death seems to be a concept album with a linear but fuzzy storyline. It seems to involve a main female and male character through three linear storylines but all are related and the concept of time travel comes into play. One story arch deals with the violence of the American Frontier with songs such as Murder, Broken Trail, Crickets, and Rotting Horse. Another is set in the modern day such as in New York City, a club as insinuated in Sex Raptor, an occult sex ritual as insinuated in his Purple Majesty, and the Beach which seems to be the scene of a goodbye between the main male and female protagonists. The other story arch deals with the ancient past in Hyperborea or a land under threat from Hyperborea, but towards the end of the album we’re in a space travel setting akin to 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Films or books that come to mind that might have been inspirations are (1) Eyes Wide Shut, (2) 2001: A Space Odyssey, (3) Conan the Barbarian by Robert E. Howard, but also HP Lovecraft, (4) The Legend of Zelda and Mario Bros., (5) the American West, (5) the comic hero, Red Tornado – further the albums transhumanist elements, (6) and Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series where a Wild West character is central to the plot involving a tower that serves as the bridge between different realities and worlds.
The songs relating to this paper are Hyperborea, Murder, The Startling Secret of Super Sapphire, Face of Bear, New York City, His Purple Majesty, The Red Tornado, Rotting Horse, and I think we are both suffering from the same crushing metaphysical crisis. Other songs could be inserted to help construct a larger storyline, yet this paper is about the Russian, transhumanist, and/or esoteric underpinnings which reflect themselves, oddly, within real-life scientific advancement, geopolitics etc.
1. Hyperborea (which I’ll argue as being related to the Hyperborean mythos of Russian Cosmism later in this paper). Yet, within the narration and plot of the album, the song depicts a type of unnatural winter storm roll in with the lyric, “Numbness swept down from the east.”, i.e., Numbness swept down from Russia. There seems to be the first appearance of the female main character of the overall album’s plot but based in a past life or past representation. The concept of time-travel will appear later in the album, so this reference along with others from other lyrics seems to shed light that this album is largely a romantic adventure, similar to Link with Princess Zelda. “She sulks from silver towers, she could save a life.”. Towers, princesses, Princess Zelda, and Hyperborea possibly being similar to Hyrule from the game’s franchise. Yet, the male lead character in this harsh wilderness, while making references to a female in a tower (a princess or maiden), also has to tap into something equivalent to Conan the Barbarian’s Riddle of Steel. Don’t trust man, don’t trust girl, don’t trust animals, trust in steel.
A scene from Zelda Breath of the Wind which comes to mind when reading the lyrics of HyperboreaA scene from Conan the Barbarian, where a young Conan first learns of the Riddle of Steel
There seems to be antagonist, briefly referenced in the opening song with the lyric, “He says he hates us and he’s afraid to try–and I know why.” but this same character might be manifesting himself later on as the “Purple Majesty” who seems to have a type of mental grip on the female. The albums deals with notions of time-travel, reincarnation, eternal recurrence, deja vu, or even possibly, parallel universes. The album involves a romantic relationship between a male protagonist with a female who first appears, as insinuated in the first song, with being a princess in a tower, but in the modern day this female character gets involved with “His Purple Majesty” in a sex ritual, yet, both are reunited towards the end on a cosmic journey towards transcendence. The album deals with love and death, and the male character is first heard has having to tap into his inner strength with the lyric “trust in steel”, yet, he seems to be bouncing back and forth in between time, thus comes in the transhumanist, postmodern, digital effects and themes.
Interestingly, some random facts found online, Robert E. Howard, the author of Conan, had Hyperborea as the land northeast of Conan’s home of Cimmeria. Howard was also a contemporary to HP Lovecraft who incorporated some elements of that into his Chutulu mythos. Friedrich Nietzsche referred to those who followed his philosophy as “Hyperboreans” in The Antichrist, where he states, ““Let us face ourselves. We are Hyperboreans” (Goodreads, n.d.). The Cimmerians were a real Indo-European group, likely from the Steppes, who lived in near the Caucus bridgeway near Armenia (the strip of land South of Russia to Northern Iran and Northeast Turkey) and were related by proxy to the Scythian tribe, and later migrated into Europe in lands know considered Slavic but with traces in Celtic and Germanic
Hyperboreans, an offshoot of the Russian Cosmist school, being described in The Russian Cosmists by George Young (2012)
2. Murder seems to fast forward in time to the American frontier during an Indian raid on white settlers.
I cut open the white man And take from his woman too If it were up to me, all the white faces would bleed Bleed and bleed and bleed, it’s truth
Murder, it’s murder Murder, it’s murder
Empty plains echo with empty screams There’s a wagon on the highland A father and his girl, both are heading south I tie the boy and the horses
Then you use the skills of the wolf I don’t use a bullet Get close enough, I can use my knife My knife
I cut open the white man And take from his woman too If it were up to me, all the white faces would bleed Red’s a better color, it’s truth
Let the blood out, let it flow Cut the blood out, let it flow Kill the blood out, let if flow Like a river let it flow
Let it flow like a river Let it flow like a river Let if flow like a river into the sea
3. The Startling Secrets of Super Sapphire which has an almost eighteenth-century American East coast, Atlantic, and Gothic nature to it, similar to the stories of HP Lovecraft which are abound with Mayflower East Coast characters found in situations of cosmic dread. Lovecraft is credited with the founding of cosmic horror where older themes of ghouls and ghosts are replaced by physical yet beyond comprehension creatures such as aliens. Lovecraft was a cosmicist, not be confuse with cosmist, and this view held that humans are insignificant to the cosmos and there’s forces in the cosmos beyond human reason such as inter-dimensional beings. Though Lovecraft popularized science-horror or cosmic-horror, writers such as Mary Shelley with Frankenstein used natural sciences as a device within horror before Lovecraft. The song seems to depict a character, whom I consider to be a Captain Ahab figure or Old China Trade Opium Merchant from the Port of Salem (Skull and Bones connection with the Russell and Forbes families), who comes across a sacred artifact (Sacred Sapphire), only to be come possessed by it. “The sapphire is the birthstone of the month of September. The name sapphire is derived from the Latin word “saphirus” and the Greek word “sapheiros,” both meaning blue. Some believe that the name sapphire is derived from its association with the planet Saturn. The name can be roughly translated to mean “dear to the planet Saturn” in many different languages” (Jewels for Me.com, n.d.). Saturn as a planet plays a role in cosmology. The halo is obvious with its significance in culture (angelic halos, wedding bands, etc.), but to many Saturn seems to represent the “Morning Star”, i.e., Lucifer or Moloch. Saturn’s mysterious black hexagon pattern at its northern pole has also sparked many comparisons with religious objects such as the Jewish Tefillin, the six sides and six triangles of the Start of David (which is up for debate it seems but there is the quote of Amos 5:25-5:27), and the Islamic Ka’bah . Yet, Saturn when connected to Saturn Day is reflected in Roman culture, thus our modern culture, yet, it’s also reflected in Hebrew such as Shabbatai שבתאי, meaning restful one, which corresponds to the Jewish Sabbath. When Rome conquered Greece, Saturn became synonymous with Chronos, thus being attributed to Chronos’ power of time, and this time attribute is also found in the Hebrew notion of Saturn. Horse the Band’s album as seen in the song “I think we’re both suffering from the same metaphysical crisis” speaks of time-travel, event horizons, etc.
NASA JPL Caltech Space Science Institute Photo of Saturn’s Hexagon
4. Face of Bear (the national animal of Russia)
Winters coming days die short at the end of autumns reign hunger becomes ravenous hibernation never waits soon the silent slumber for now October’s feast fearless and graceful crashing through dead leaves
DON’T FEED THE BEARS OR THE BEARS WILL FEED ON YOU
all the forest fauna frozen feeling fear flinching at the moment face to face with face of bear all the forest creatures vanish from sight their betters come with hungers that cannot be denied
A few lines downs…
DON’T FEED THE BEARS OR THE BEARS WILL FEED ON YOU
I’ll die with the honor i choose I’ll fight face of bear and lose
FACE TO FACE WITH FACE OF BEAR (x6)
5. New York City. Puts a romantic plot within the storyline between a male and female character. In other song, title, The Beach, we hear a female character crying. Yet, there seems to be a reunion within New York City based on the lyrics:
We embrace in the heart of our city On wet broken sidewalks we’re free
Further, the song seems to insinuate that Horse the Band is actually coming from a pro-Western viewpoint despite the Russian references. Towards the end of the song accompanying the lyric, “We embrace in the heart of our city. On wet broken sidewalks we’re free”, there’s effects of fireworks. Fireworks are a hallmark of American Independence and freedom. If the plot structure is truly a series of interlocking storylines of the same characters through time and space, it seems that narrator in Hyperborea is actually warning of Hyperborea and the antagonist within this song, in my opinion, might later on manifest himself as the “Purple Majesty”.
6. His Purple Majesty There seems to be something awkwardly Lolita and Crowley Sex Magick about this. There’s a lyric by a female character who states, “I’ll do anything you say”, with a coyness about it. The color purple appears a lot within Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, and the ceremony master is wearing a purple robe. According to the Museum of Fine Arts Boston in a , during an event titled: Color Tells A Story, it was stated, “This somber palette gives way to a rainbow of neon lights as Bill’s night careens out of control, with glimpses of violet and royal purple cropping up at the most perilous moments.” The color purple represents royalty, thus the word majesty makes sense, but it also represents sexuality, magic, you could even throw “Sex Magick” in there, eroticism, mystery, etc. Going over the lyrics again the song seems to depict a ceremonial sex scene. “But she wanted. But she needed. Perfect sex in purple robes. He said, ‘Hold my hand while I touch you’, he said, ‘it will feel better that way’. She said, ‘I’ll do anything you say.'” But, later, it’s said, “she let him INSIDE even though it feels WRONG. It was all the symptoms of love but bleeding a black horror, a horror”. So… How does the Crowleyian Sex Magick of his Purple Majesty relate to Russia, let alone transhumanism? Well, one of the Russian Cosmist was Konstantin Edouardovich Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935) and a young Jack Parsons had correspondence with him and Werner Von Braun to ask for advice for his early rocket science curiosities. Parsons is known for being into the Occult and became involved with the Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.) of Aleister Crowley. Sex Magick was a practice and Parson’s engaged in orgies with wife. Parsons was friends with L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, and was associated with the science-fiction writer’s guild, Mañana Literary Society, where Robert Heinlein – the author of Starship Troopers – was also a member. In Heinlein’s Starship Troopers a future alliance called the Russo-Anglo-American Alliance is formed. So, from Horse the Band’s Russian references, particularly through this song “His Purple Majesty”, we first come to Crowley Sex Magick before coming to Crowley himself, Jack Parsons, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Russian Cosmism which is transhumanism, and also Robert Heinlein who speaks of the Russo-Anglo-American Alliance.
A photo of Bella Heathcote playing Susan Parsons at a Crowley ritual. All rights of this photo are reserved to CBS and CBS All Access. Sharing of this photo is for educational purposes only. A scene from Eyes Wide Shut by Kubrick
7. Red Tornado, is based on the DC Comic book hero. This song firmly links the album to transhumanism, considering Red Tornado is an android. Here are some of the lyrics:
Circuitry and sympathy Are two different things But they come together In a robot who dreams Round and round And round he goes
Later in the song:
His emotions spin at destructive speeds That he needs to control The cumulonimbus inside the machine He’s half robot and half tornado So sad the cyborg cyclone seems Drifting through the sky A willful wisp of machinery Not born but devised Still the cyborg cyclone cries Coolant drips from his eyes Plastic hands on his heart That slowly… Tear him apart
Oddly, my theory, is this album channels the esoteric and technocratic struggle between East and West. It peels away the normal surface to reveal the seedlings of pseudo-science, mad scientists, and occultists who influence “above-ground” political discourse and technological development. The Western form of Technocracy as an application could be best understood through Zbigniew Brzezinski, with this book titled: Between Two Ages America’s Role in the Technocractic Future. A few quotes from this book are listed below.
“The technotronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values. Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about the citizen. These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities.” (Goodreads.com, n.d.)
“In the technotronic society the trend would seem to be towards the aggregation of the individual support of millions of uncoordinated citizens, easily within the reach of magnetic and attractive personalities exploiting the latest communications techniques to manipulate emotions and control reason.” (Goodreads.com, n.d.)
Zbigniew Brzezinski receiving a medal from Jimmy Carter
This might sound odd, but it’s no oddity that John Dee, the minister to Queen Elizabeth, coined the term British Empire and he himself was a magus that practiced Hermeticism and alchemy. Whether it’s the British Empire, Russian Empire, or American Empire, besides or underneath pragmatic or realist policy is a supplemental esoteric ideology (example, Masonry in regards to British Imperialism or American Manifest Destiny; Masonry or Russian Cosmism under pre-Revolutionary Russian conquests, post-Revolutionary Communism, or post-Communist State Oligarchy & Ethnic Nationalism, i.e, Aleksandr Dugin, the Hyperboreans.
John Dee was an Occultist who first coined the term, British Empire
The album on purpose or by accident, though seemingly without any nefarious intent, touches on the current Russia versus USA geopolitical struggle (psychological operations included) involving characters such as Aleksandr Dugin with his concept of Chaos Magick and his Eurasianist ideology, Lev Gumilev’s Neo-Eurasianism, and Valery Dumin’s Hyperborean neo-paganism. All three of the men were analyzed in the book, The Russian Cosmists, by George M. Young (2012), a professor from the University of New England.
The album seems to be a clash of both East versus West and touches upon science, Gnosticism, and esoteric thought. The tension and aggression in the album through the guttural death growls meshed with melodic instrumental solos and computer effects depicts a type of “Chaos Magick War” of factions of both East and West that are warring with each other, thus revealing a deeper, ancient, eternally reoccurring, and more sinister end-game. Yet, this end-game outside of the view of the public is arguably rigged, i.e., a Manichean Dialectic. I say rigged because there is proof of transfer of information between both East and West during the Cold such as now revealed Esalen Institute exchanges as talked about in Atlas Obscura’s piece titled, How a Fame New Age Retreat Center Helped End the Cold War, by Sarakh Laskow (2015). Even the US establishment such as the Rockefeller Dynasty (who gave seed money to both Apple and Intel via Laurence Rockefeller of Venrock Capital) spoke briefly of merging with Russia. Ivy Lee (uncle of author, William S. Burroughs), was a founding member of the Council of Foreign Relations and the Rockefeller’s media fixer. Lee favored peaceful relations with Russia which he wrote in Present-Day Russia (1928), page 214, published by Macmillan & Co., which is archived at sources such Foreign Policy magazine which was reviewed by William L. Langer, but also the University of Chicago Press Journal which is referenced in Schuman (1929) in American Journal of Sociology 35, no. 1 (Jul., 1929): 144-145.
Further, David Rockefeller opened one of the first Western bankers in Russia during the Cold War. According to JP Morgan Chase & Co. (2017), “In the 1970s, Chase added nearly 40 new branches, representative offices, affiliates, subsidiaries and joint ventures outside the United States, including two historic firsts in 1973: Chase opened a representative office in Moscow, the first presence for a U.S. bank in the Soviet Union since the 1920s” (p. 13). Further, JP Morgan Chase & Co. (2017), “In 1973, Chase Manhattan Bank Chairman David Rockefeller visited China and met with Chinese Prime Minister Chou En-Lai. Chase became the first U.S. correspondent to the Bank of China since the 1949 Chinese Revolution.” (p. 13).
The concept of “from chaos comes rebirth” is symbolic of the phoenix symbol which is often associated with Dugin’s Fourth Political Theory, but is also symbolic to the regalia of the color purple (remember the song: His Purple Majesty) which according to legend was used the Phoenicians, i.e., where the word Phoenix has possible etymological origins here. The Phoenicians were a Canaanite peoples from the Levant region near modern Lebanon, Syria and Israel, who worshipped Baal. Baal was a deity equivalent to Zeus in Greece, who controlled weather, and was represented by a Bull which signified fertility and strength. This figure seems to be the same or related to the concept of Moloch, the deity known for child sacrifice. A rendition of this Baal figure was worshiped by the ancient Hebrews as Baʿal Berith and/or El Berith, when the Jews had broken their covenant with God during the times before the ascension of Gideon. Baal thus seems to have fallen out of favor and was assigned to the role of Beelzebub.
In my novice research into Russian Cosmism and the Occultist underpinnings of Transhumanism, this album, A Natural Death, seems very on point. By Transhumanism, and one could argue transgenderism, I’m talking about alchemical-materialist-evolution based in part on the Neoplatonic notion of The One, which relates to Darwin’s Theory of Evolution which posits that all life evolved from a singular primordial source. Neoplatonism and Darwinism, though seemingly from different fields of study, e.g., metaphysics versus natural biology, yet both posit that all life came from a single source. I personally believe in evolution of some sort, but that’s not important. Darwinism sees evolution as a sign of strength and vigor required for survival, whereas Neoplatonism seems to argue that merging concepts is a way to return to the source or The One. Thus, these two ideologies are related and support each other. It could be argued that Darwin himself was an Occultist and Neoplatonist. Merging is fitness if we were to say Neoplatonic Darwinism. This is the underlying logic of transhumanism, and arguably the prepping for transhumanism with transgenderism, and it is seen as the next evolutionary step, i.e., involving the alchemical merging and manipulation of matter. From a Neoplatonic viewpoint, this seems to be the reason why Occult movements tend to focus on the dark arts or dark fashion. To them, they see what we consider evil as not being evil since its an emanation of the one, or natural doesn’t create morality, so by performing black ceremonial magic, they are in effect merging reality as they see it.
On the album there are the songs such as Hyperborea and Face of Bear, where Hyperborea relates to the Russian esoteric movement that believes Russia is the ancient mystical source of humanity, while Face of Bear relates to the national animal and symbol of Russia. With Horse the Band being called Nintendocore, the two main franchise games of Nintendo that comes to mind is Mario but also Zelda. Zelda seems important to the paper because the fictional land of Hyrule seems loosely based on a Hyperborean concept, with the Zelda franchise taking place in a European medieval setting that blends Celtic, Nordic, possible Slavic, and Anglo-Saxon Germanic elements. The Zelda franchise had the famous game, Ocarina of Time, which involves the main character Link, using a magical musical instrument to go back and forth in between time in order to awaken the Seven Sages, so the villain of the game, Ganandorf, can’t obtain the sacred Tri-Force. The lyric by Horse the Band in the second to last song on the album states, “Initiate! Instruments set to yesterday. At the Speed of Light, across empty plains of time”. Also, within Ocarina of Time, the concept of the Seven Sages seems to relate to the Seven Sages of actual Classical Antiquity which included Thales. Within the Zelda universe, especially relating to Ocarina of Time, the elemental properties of the Tri-Force itself seems to be the equivalent to the Greek concept of the arche, which were the elemental constructs the Classical thinkers used to determine the origin of matter, reality, etc. For example, Thales’ arche was water whereas for Anaximander, apeiron was the arche, which was a concept outside of matter, like the concept of ether.
The finale end song (it’s the second to last on the album) of “I think were both suffering from the same crushing metaphysical crisis” reminds me of 2001 A Space Odyssey with concepts such as transhumanist evolution through metaphysics or theoretical physics, with the main character evolving into a new form of being (the Star Child) and connecting back to a higher source, i.e., the One, or The Grand Architect of Grand Masonry.
A scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey before transfiguration into the Star Child
The song starts off with “Dilation of chronal aperture in 3 2 1”, with the narrator sounding like a NASA rocket launch conductor. Chronal indicates time, whereas aperture is a window in which lights passes, such as a space through which light passes in an optical or photographic instrument, especially the variable opening by which light enters a camera. Paez (2019) states, “It is commonly accepted in energy medicine circles that a “healthy” chakra has a clockwise spin, it’s aperture is opened to the appropriate amount and has no energetic cords or other imbalances interfering with its function. The health of chakras can be controlled and improved through mental as well as physical means.” So, there seems to be an obvious Hindu Aryan mysticism via references to yogic practices of India.
Dilation of chronal aperture in 3 2 1
Activate! Initiate instruments set to yesterday! At the speed light across empty plains of time On a ship of jewels and gold All of time unfolds
A seven click blip For a fifteen-eon trip Crafting déjà vu Event horizon boom Days resind and lapse Birth after death Tomorrow is the past Event horizon boom Cities shrink and fade into the ice age Dinosaurs now new Event horizon boom
Time is broken!
How small we compared to space and time? (played in reverse) Time after time Time after time Time after time
All these machines that dream Make me want to scream There’s no bears or wild things The future not what it seems Causality denied All of time is now mine The crisis we both share Is you are me when I was there
Time after time It’s almost time Time to say goodbye At the end of time.
The song depicts a journey through space-time where the travelers – assuming a male and female (the songs Beach and His Purple Majesty involves a female character) – are experiencing déjà vu, but on the journey after seeing the future, it seems that Artificial Intelligence (the lyric: All these machines that dream, make me want to scream) have replaced all organic life (there’s no bears or wild things, the future not what it seems). Out of all the animals that are not there, the band singles out bear, which was stated previously is the animal of Russia. So, in theory, are they really saying, Russia is no longer there? The journey seems to go to the outer edges of the known the universe or towards a black hole since the term, Event Horizon, is mentioned twice. The event horizon is the boundary defining the region of space around a black hole from which nothing (not even light) can escape (Swinburne University of Technology, n.d.). It also can be used as the very outer edge of known space, indicating an expanding universe.
The song Rotting Horse with its drab lowly guitar playing, channels the sullen windswept brutality of the American frontier of the eighteen-hundreds, and this song seems to emulate the Wild West, Cowboys versus Indians, artwork on the album’s cover. Since time travel is a theme here, this period of time could have been just one of the visions or multiple realities the protagonist experienced. The repeating guitar with ominous background effects that seems to encompass both angelic choir organ keys, layered with electronic dissonance, touches upon in my opinion the temporary nature of life and the process of decay.
Russian Cosmism is effectively Russian transhumanism. It’s an umbrella of thinkers so you can’t really insinuate that all the Cosmists believed the same thing, or that they would advocate for how their ideologies have been appropriated over time. Yet, Cosmism is like Transhumanism found in the West, yet, since the West and Russia are culturally different, largely around religion, their independent transhumanist schools have notable differences. The Russian Cosmist branch of Transhumanism was inspired by (1) the introduction of Neoplatonic, Masonic, and Occultist ideas into Russia, (2) the wavering oscillation (depending on which specific Cosmists were referring to) of Traditionalism with modernist ideologies such as Marxism, and (3) from a sense of Russian Orthodox exceptionalism either in a global egalitarian “progressive” fashion or from an ethnocentric nationalism, emboldened by a ‘chip on the shoulder’ attitude towards concepts such as American Exceptionalism. Western Transhumanism, being influenced by Neoplatonism was also influenced by the socio-political and religious realities of Catholicism and Protestantism, whereas Russia was inspired or constrained by the solidarity of Orthodoxy.
It could be argued that after the schism between Catholicism and Protestantism, the West was more inclined to take on the Scientific Revolution (with modernity following), since Protestantism wasn’t purely religious, but was also a response to intellectual, economic, and personal freedoms away from the Holy See. For example, Giordano Bruno was a Dominican Friar who was a philosopher, mathematician, poet, and Hermetic Occultist. He was also a Neoplatonist and intrigued by the works of Pythagoras. His ideas, then heretical, were the possibility of life on other planets and that the universe has no true center. Bruno was later burned at the stake for concepts now considered either cannon or possible. Going back to the intellectual progression during and after the Protestant Reformation, the three concepts of intellectual, economic, and personal liberties were vital in sparking scientific secular innovation within the shift from mercantile capitalism to industrial capitalism.
Book cover with Giordano Bruno. The Book is A Primer to Giordano Bruno: New Age Prophet, Mystic and Heretic (The Essential Giordano Bruno Book 1) by Julia Jones
Transhumanism in the West in my opinion is strongly related to the political systems of Protestant nations, as typified by the British Empire (which included the United States), and these systems are democratic, pluralist (ironically insinuating the philosophical arguments around dualism), individualist, and capitalist models. The philosophical underpinnings of Western Transhumanism is diverse spanning Continental Philosophy of German idealism of Hegel, the Hegelian criticisms of Nietzsche and his resulting extreme existentialism (which thus links to the Darwinist notion of the strongest survives); the French postmodernists which their emphasis on deconstruction, merging concepts for analysis, and analyzing post-capitalist social conditions such as expanding upon Marx’s work on alienation; the Analytical School of Britain with thinkers such as Bertrand Russell or Gilbert Ryle’s critique of Cartesian Dualism; Game Theory and American pragmatism. Continental philosophy serves as the catalyst for deconstruction and merging, whereas American pragmatism and British Imperial Analytics inspired topics such as machine-logic, the Turing Test, and Game Theory. The Occult underpinnings traveling aside these philosophies ranges from Neoplatonism, Kabbalah, Christian Qabbalah, Averroism, Zoroastrianism with concepts such as magi, i.e., magic.
Underneath all these philosophies tracing backwards people at some point would cross upon Plato, and thus the later Plotinus, who is the founder of Neoplatonism and our concept of modern metaphysics, ceremonial magic within the West, etc.
Having read the book by Young (2012), I noticed in the progenitors of the Cosmist school of that concepts such as androgyny and body enhancements appeared more than once. For example, Vladimir Solovyov, in response to the hard technocracy of Cosmist Sergei Fedorov, argued that instead of the physical resurrection of all humans as called for in Fedorov’s “Common Task”, Solovyov instead wanted a spiritual resurrection of Sophic inspiration and syzygic unity, i.e., synergy, between male and female essences. Young (2012), states, “Instead of regulating nature, whether external or internal, Solovyov views the great human task as one of incarnating divine love on a universal scale. In one his major works, The Meaning of Love, he develops the idea of a Christian androgyny that would embrace all humanity” (p. 109, para. 2); “Already within itself physical love bears the death-defeating force, the seeds of life and immortality – our task is to realize in full what now exists only as an ideal in Plato and in potential in our everyday lives. Wholeness, “all-unity”, in love means androgyny.” (Young, p. 103, para. 2); “To them he bequeathed the doctrine of sophiology, the centrality of the eternal feminine in Christian spirituality.”
Pavel Alekandrovich Florensky provided a framework for mathematical theory, semiotics, and linguistics, but also cyborgs to Cosmism, building off the autocratic technocracy of Fedorov, the androgynous sophic synergy of Solovyov, and the sophic infused political-economy of Sergei Bulgakov. Young (2012) states Florensky, ”was another Cosmist who believed that the Communist future could possibly (but not necessarily) lead to a revival of medieval objectivism, collectivism, and constructive vision, and a turning from the illusionary individualism and self-destructive atomization that had characterized prerevolutionary modernity” (p. 124), and, Florensky’s natural inclinations may have led toward a kind of figurative levitation, up and away from everyday earthly realia and into a world of Platonic realiora (Young, p. 125). Relating to back Transhumanism, Florensky speculated on early cybernetics, with Young (2012) stating, “And in a 1919 article titled, “Organoprojection”, Florensky discusses the projection of artificial organs, continuation of our bodies, to extend human capabilities throughout the cosmos. Projected organs and body parts can operate and act on the world beyond the limits of our present physical bodies. “Magic, in the circumstance, could be defined as the art of altering the limit of the body with respect to its customary location” By a continuation of flesh and machinery we can extend our organs to reach as far as we can imagine, and operations now considered magical can become routine” (p. 131-132).
The Neoplatonic concept of “The One” could also be argued as being found Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. As previously mentioned, Tsiolkovsky links to Western Occultism and Technocracy through his correspondence to a young, Jack Parson, the pioneering rocket scientist who was inspired by Aleister Crowley and The Occult. Parson has a crater on the dark side of the moon, which to me reflects a commonality between the two nations who first made it into space, the USSR and the United States. Back to Tsiolkovsky’s relationship to Neoplatonism, Young (2012) states, “An idea at the heart of most of his nontechnical writings is that of the “atom spirit” (atom-dukh) inherent in every particle of matter in the cosmos, recalling Fedorov’s idea that all matter as dust of the ancestors” (p. 151).
Further, later but fellow Cosmist, Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky had a Neoplatonic view of Plotinus and/or a Material Monist perception in the liking of Anaximenes to reality. “Vernadsky rejects any separation of matter from spirit, but defines all present life as “living matter” and holds that all presently nonliving matter shares with all life a fundamental unity that includes the potential to change from inert to living matter and from living matter back to inert, from being presently alive to being alive formerly and once more alive in the future – a twentieth century scientific analog to Pythagorean metempsychosis” (p. 157). Further, “Vernadsky recognized that a unified view of nature, the idea of the interconnectedness of all, has for millennia been at the heart of much religious and philosophical speculation, and so at the deepest level he found no conflict between scientific and spiritual views of the world. He noted that of all the world’s religions he had studied, the one he felt closest would be the ancient Greek hylozoistic pantheism of Thales, Anaximenes, and Heraclitus, which finds life to some degree present in all matter” (p. 157).
To understand the basic theories of Thales, Anaximenes, and Heraclitus, to name a few, I referenced Stanford’s Encyclopedia of Philosophy and Wikipedia, for the sake of time.
Heraclitus (610 BC-546 BC), of the Ionian School, was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher taught by Thales (one of the Seven Sages), known as The Obscure and The Weeping Philosopher, believed in the unity of opposites and analyzed the nature of dialectics. He was committed to a unity of opposites and harmony in the world. He was most famous for his insistence on ever-present change, or flux or becoming.
Anaximenes was of the pre-Socratic Milesian School of philosophy, included Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes. Anaximander was the teacher of both Anaximenes and Pythagoras (yet, Pythagoras had other teachers such as Pherecydes of Syros). Anaximenes practiced Material Monism, which is a Pre-Socratic framework which believes in the physical world and all its objects as being composed of a single element. This concept of Material Monism is related to the idea of Dialectical Monism, which affirms that everything is one but the one is represented by dual manifestations.
Yet, this would also way later inspired Dialectical Materialism of Marxism where everything is comparisons of materialist distinctions such as classes, cultures, genders, etc. Yet, dialectics based in part on the Classical thinkers listed above, way before Marx, would go to inspire the overarching Illuminus thought of Renaissance Europe which thus had an effect on early democratic theories, which then fractured into the dialectic expressions of Libertarian and Marxism. Both Marxism and Libertarian thought (cousin ideologies) are arguably based from the Jacobin schism between Girondins and the radical Montagnard’s of Robespierre, with the both being aligned to Masonry (British Lodges versus the Grand Orient Lodge of France), which itself expresses Monism via the concept of the Grand Architect and Neoplatonic ritualistic ceremony to achieve “levels”. Speaking of levels, this is basic concept in video design.
Anaximenes was the first to state that substances can change form, and he also believed that the universe was in constant motion, insinuating notions of flux or evolution. Pythagoras, is known for many things such as his ideas on mathematics, communalism, asceticism, and mystical symbology such as tetractys which would inspired numerology and cryptography, but also the concept of metempsychosis which is a philosophical term in the Greek language referring to transmigration of the soul, especially its reincarnation after death. In other words, the souls in immortal and transfers to other bodies.
Platonic Realism of Plato is the philosophical position that universals or abstract objects exist objectively and outside of human intelligence. In other words, there are universals such as shapes, forms, numbers, fractals, etc., way beyond human intelligence, and in a way we’re just seeing emanations of these, and matter as we see or can understand it, aren’t the purest forms, and these purest forms are beyond reason to humans.
Later, regarding Plotinus, who’s teacher was Ammonius Saccas (of the Platonic tradition), Plotinus taught that there is a supreme, totally transcendent “One”, containing no division, multiplicity, or distinction; beyond all categories of being and non-being. His “One” “cannot be any existing thing”, nor is it merely the sum of all things (compare the Stoic doctrine of disbelief in non-material existence), but “is prior to all existents”. Plotinus identified his “One” with the concept of ‘Good’ and the principle of ‘Beauty’.
We can see an overarching theme which is the material singularity of all things, dialectics, the merging dialectics as being closer to “The One”, but also progress, flux, transfiguration, metempsychosis, reincarnation. Thus, transhumanism has (1) a current hard science aspect inspired by Darwinist evolution; (2) an esoteric tradition; (3) political support within the Illuminus roots of Libertarians and Marxists, and (4) roots within both Analytical and Continental Philosophy. Interestingly, what happens when you mix Marxism and Libertarian? You get a corporation and they’re pretty good at research and development for products instrumental in Transhumanism. Marxism serves as the social glue of the organizational culture but also its hierarchical structure, though it may imitate diversity, this diversity is often a sign of representing the the diversity of the world it is exploiting. Libertarian is where the profit above all else comes into play, but also corporations like free-trade, i.e., globalism, as it searches for new markets and strives to reduce cost especially that of labor. The fact that Marxist and Libertarians are still arguing despite not realizing their common heritage as a unified liberty movement, is simple willful ignorance solidified by concepts such as race in post-colonial nations, e.g., libertarian movement in the USA is often post-Republican white and morally conservative, which actually defies the principle of respecting others personal liberties, and the notion of free-trade actually encourages immigration. Marxist in post-colonial nations still have an affinity for material fetishism often provided by the corporations they protest.
While reading The Russian Cosmists, relating to Hyperborea it was stated, “Along with Gumilev, another prominent unorthodox scholar with at least some direct connection to the Cosmist movement is Valery Demin, a proponent of a Russian version of the “Arktos” theory designating the Hyperborean extreme north as the original homeland of the Indo-Europeans, and perhaps all other peoples. Demin’s 1997 Moscow University doctoral dissertation was titled “Philosophical Principles of Russian Cosmism,” and he is the author of more than twenty books and one hundred shorter works, including essays in Cosmist collection, about the peoples, legends, history, and prehistory of the far north” (Young, p. 229). Regarding Valery Demin, Young (2012) states, “Basing their theories on the writings of Herodotus, Pliiny, Ptolemy, and other ancient authorities, and supported by modern research including Fedorov’s speculations on the origins of civilization in the Pamir Mountains, and Bal Gannadhar Tilak’s writings on the far norther origins of the Vedas, Demin and the Hyperboreans argue that the arctic, which had a much milder climate some 40,000 years ago, was a kind of northern Shambala, or perhaps a prototype for Plato’s Atlantis; in any case, the original homeland of a happy, healthy people who lived far beyond present lifespans”.
Relating to Horse the Band with their opening song on A Natural Death called Hyperborea the work Arktos is referenced in the book by Young (2012). Looking up Arktos, I come to Arktos Publishing, which is known as the main far-right publisher in contemporary times. Arktos Publishing is known for distributing the Alekansdr Dugin’s The Fourth Political Theory, but its editor was Jason Jorjani. Jorgani was a professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology who was fired for his association with the American Far-Right. His focus of study (his obsession) is that of Iran, which relates back to the Cosmist ideology of Sergi Fedorov, with Young (2012) stating, “The ancient Iranians, to whom Fedorov believes the Slavs are related, were continental rather than insular and peninsular in outland, land tillers rather than land seekers, and in their close relationship to the earth recognized that life is won only by constant struggle against nature. Evil, for the Zendo-Slavic peoples, is not an inescapable condition of existence, as in India, but can be overcome by concerted human effort.”
Russian Neo-Nationalism links to this esoteric Iranian link, with Young (2012) stating, “George Vendasky, for example, sees Russian pre-Christian pagan religion as a development from both Zoroastrianism and Mithraism. And Aleksandr Dugin and other current Russian neo-Eurasianists and neonationalists point to ancient Russia’s religious and cultural kinship with ancient Iran to support their calls for a new Russo-Iranian Eurasian continental alliance to counter NATO power and culture”. (p. 83).
Zoroastrianism was the religion of Iran; Jason Jorjani of the Alt-Right is a scholar of Iran via Arktos Publishing and frequently appears on New Thinking Allowed, a YouTube show, hosted by Jeffrey Mishlove (the only person to get a paranormal doctorate from UC Berkley); Iran is synonymous with the word Aryan and the concept of Aryan links the Eurasian landmass from Europe, Hindu India, the Western Chinese desert and Tibet. This region is considered the Grand Chessboard as stated by Zbigniew Brzezinski, with the USA, Russia, and China vying for supremacy in the resource rich region, thus, this is why esoteric ideology often accompanies militaristic expansionism, e.g., Nazis appropriating the Swastika and sending missions to Tibet, Dugin with his Eurasianism, etc.
Jason Jorjani analyzed by The Intercept
Indo-European studies often correlates to the Alt-Right and past regimes such as the Nazis, but also Cosmist as revealed by Young (20120; Iran is within the grand vision of Aleksandr Dugin’s Eurasianist ambitions; and the band Horse the Band (ironic since the horse was likely first domesticated by peoples of the Steppes) has Russian references in songs such as Face of Bear and Hyperborea, with the later being a real “Grand Origin” movement based on Russian nationalism.
Jay Dyer is often an apologist for Russia. His conspiracy, especially that visible to the public (thus with a larger chance of hits online), often denounces The West. Dyer in my personal opinion represents the post-Republicanism of MAGA America. In essence he is part of the link of Russian psychological warfare into the United States, and he’s a symbol that links Republicans to Russia which is something Dugin wanted. Dyer similar to white supremacist, Lauren Southern, have interview Dugin and helped him get a larger following. It’s also interesting to note that Dyer nor Southern, or any other Alt-Right, or Alt-Right adjacent person within the limelight speaks about Zionism as one of the culprits. MAGA America was not only made possible by the help of Russia but more so from the assistance of Zionism in the USA, Russia, and Israel. Yes, there is a unspoken relationship between the Zionists and the Alt-Right, such as Rebel Media which employed Lauren Southern being owned by Jewish businessman, Ezra Levant.
References
Frederick L. Schuman, “Present-Day Russia. Ivy Lee,” American Journal of Sociology 35, no. 1 (Jul., 1929): 144-145. https://doi.org/10.1086/214937
Mitchell Research Group 