Here's the thing. A lot of important Guelph issues are really complex. And to understand them we need more than "sound bites" and knee-jerk ideology. The Guelph Back-Grounder is a place where people can read the background information that explains why things are the way they are, and, the complex issues that people have to negotiate if they want to make Guelph a better city. No anger, just the facts.
One of Kelly’s contacts in Washington was a reporter named
Silver O’Reilly who worked for one of the big legacy media
companies. He was often frustrated by the editorial control that kept
him from writing deep digs on important issues and instead kept him
running from one puff piece story to another. What they wanted were
quotes from important people instead of facts. And when he did put
some relevant background in a story, like as not it got edited out
because of the need for “balance and objectivity”.
O’Reilly had been so angry about what mainstream journalism has
become that he was on the verge of quitting when an individual
approached him and suggested that what he wanted to do was really
important. The suggestion was made that he keep his current job but
change who he was actually working for. He would still write the slop
he was told to, but when he heard something important---but which his
editors wouldn’t allow in a story---he should hand it on to another
organization. Silver didn’t really know what the group was, but
he’d been really impressed by the representative from the unknown
group, who’d assured him that they didn’t want anything that
wouldn’t be in a good newspaper---if management put the public
interest ahead of spurious professional ethics and the financial
“bottom line”. The guy who’d contacted O’Reilly had been very
upfront that there was a practical need for secrecy, so he just
accepted that sometimes it is better not to know who you are doing
things for.
When the Washington stand-off began, Silver called-up some
contacts within the Pentagon who’d told him that the Joint Chiefs
had beefed-up the security details around the President to augment
the Secret Service. This was highly unconventional---possibly it was
even unconstitutional. But they’d explained to the President that
he wasn’t just an elected official, he was the Commander-in-Chief,
and the military felt responsible for his well-being. Since this was
exactly the sort of “ego-stroking” that President Norbert Blunt
liked, he told his staff and the regular Secret Service body
guards that this was a good idea. At that point, they accepted the
new people. (“Pum’kin-head” didn’t promote people who
contradicted his brilliant notions.)
The reporter’s contact had also told him that Delta Force
commandos had been brought in to get the hostages out of the Congress
building. They had some ideas, but were concerned that it couldn’t
be done without some significant casualties. As usual, they prepared
for action but hoped that the confrontation could be dealt with
through negotiation instead of force. Because all of this info was
given as “off-the-record background”, it didn’t make it into
the news. But that didn’t mean it didn’t end up on Kelly’s
computer screen.
That in turn got handed on to the people who wrote the contingency
plans that got sent off to the relevant experts in the Elder’s
organization. To a large extent that was why their people were ready
when the citizenry watched in horror as the Speaker of the House was
dragged outside and hung from the gallows that had been used earlier
to lynch the Vice President.
When that happened everyone of the occupiers that was outside the
building or visible through a window was shot with a high-velocity
sniper round. Only seconds later, all power went off in the Capital
building, and various outside doors, windows and ceilings had holes
blown open. At that point, a dense, heavy, white gas was pumped into
the building and assailants in masks burst in. Almost immediately,
everyone in the building keeled over onto the floor, in their chairs,
or anywhere else they found themselves. Anyone who had a weapon, a
“Put America Back On Top” (PABOT) hat, a Confederate flag, a
swastika or, who for one reason or another obviously didn’t belong
in the building, got “finished off” by pistol-wielding soldiers
to ensure that he or she never woke up. Even before this had been
finished, another, larger group of soldiers started dragging out the
people who did seem to belong in the building.
When this began, O’Reilly was making his way to a large group of
paramedics who suddenly arrived and who were trying to get through
the barricades surrounding the Capitol building. They were having
some trouble getting through because the police in charge of security
hadn’t been given authorization to let them. After about a minute,
a buzz occurred on the police radios, and they immediately opened-up
a route for the paramedics to get through.
Silver recognized a woman with a “media spokesperson” badge in
this new group and asked her what was going on. He got a curt
recognition and a quick ‘follow me’ hand signal. They found a
quiet place next to a wall and she quickly informed him that if he
was willing to be embargoed for an hour, she would give him some
information about was going on. He quickly agreed, and she reached
into a courier bag she was holding and gave him a detailed press
briefing. “These will soon be emailed to news rooms and reporters
all over the country. They explain that right now Delta Force has
breached the Capitol building and has filled it with a gas made from
carfentanil. They are busy neutralizing the insurgents and will soon
drag out the hostages so the paramedics you see here will be able to
start administering Narcan before they get taken off to medical
facilities.” She pointed to the crowd of reporters, camera men,
etc, surrounding the building. “As you can see, the police are
already moving people away from the barricades to open up space for
ambulances.” At that point, she told Silver that that was all he
was going to get right now from her, and she had other things to do.
She told him to get off to the newly-placed barricades. The papers
she’d given him would have contact information he could use later
on.
He was happy to comply, as he needed to connect with the editor at
the paper so they could prepare what was obviously going to be the
front page story. More importantly, he needed to send something to
his mysterious contact.
&&&&
Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!
In my last post on the subject of the baleful influence of William Luther Pierce on society, I talked about Timothy McVeigh's gun fetish and introduced the idea that it makes sense to think of white nationalism more as a religious cult than a political movement. With that in mind, I discussed the first of my three streams of racist spirituality: Christian Identity. In this article, I want to talk about the other two: Odinism and Cosmotheism. Pierce is directly involved in the last of these, and indirectly in that he pioneered the use of fantasy novels to spread the message of hate.
Before I start that, however, one thing I want to point out is that there are two streams of Odinism, the white nationalist one, and, the other decidedly non-racist one. So when someone says that they follow the ancient pagan tradition of the North, don't automatically lump them in with the goofs that I'm talking about here.
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The best introduction to both Odinism and Cosmotheism that I could find was a weird novel titled Hear the Cradle Song, which was published under the name O. T. Gunnarsson. The author's name is probably false, as the only thing I could find about him was an interview on Gab where only the back of his head is shown. In it, he says that he has a profession and that he would probably lose it if people found out that he'd written this book.
The plot of Cradle Song involves various bands of white people trying to survive in a future dystopic California where centralized government has failed because of a combination of liberal idiocy and the perfidious behaviour of non-whites.
The black population has separated itself off into their own geographic community, and the book has nothing much to say about them. The Asian community has gone through some internal power struggles that resulted in a take-over by an organized crime group has created an ethno-state titled "New China". Hispanics have similarly created "Aztlan" which is controlled by a "Generalissimo" who used to be a university professor. There are also pockets where white people still exist, the two major ones being Orange County and Hollywood.
When the plot begins, the people of Orange County have been given an ultimatum from the leaders of New China: they have five days to leave after which they will be invaded and anyone left will be killed. With this in mind, the residents decide their only option is to go to the Hollywood enclave, which is called "White One". The problem is that the only way to get there is through Aztlan. And, as it turns out, the Hispanics kill every white they find trying to travel through their territory.
In fact, the only survivors of this migration are a half-dozen people who get rescued by a plucky band of white nationalist guerrillas led by a charismatic figure with the name Styrbjorn Taggesson. It is through Taggesson and his band that the ideals and practice of Odinism are explained to the reader.
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Before I get into that, I want to take a bit of a digression into literary criticism. The thing to remember about reading a novel like Cradle Song is that the author has used the "worldbuilding" technique to make the ideas he is trying to push more plausible. Racism makes sense in Cradle Song. That's because the Asians, Hispanics, and, Jews are written to conform to the stereotypes that Gunnarsson projects onto them.
Worldbuilding is the creation of an alternative universe with it's own culture, laws,
Public domain c/o Wikimedia
scientific facts, history, etc, that allows an author to draw the reader in and "suspend their disbelief". This is how Tolkien got people to believe in hobbits, magic rings, dwarves, dragons, and so on. It's also how people watching The Wizard of Oz ended up caring about Dorothy, the Munchkins, flying monkeys, the cowardly lion, etc.
This is what makes the novel format so useful as a propaganda system for white supremacy. It means that anyone who reads the book and might have some sympathy for the message it is promoting will only have his or her predisposition intensified. (And, of course, most sensible people will never read the book in the first place.)
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I put a lot of work into these articles, and I can use the extra money. (That's why I started the Google Ads feature again---if you were wondering.) So if you can afford it, why not subscribe? Pay Pal and Patreon make it easy to do.
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Anyway, it is through Taggesson and his followers that the refugees from Orange County find out about Odinism.
"What's the way he [Taggesson] follows?" Oliver asked in an over-enthused manner.
"It's the approach to life that our pre-Christian ancestors used back in pagan Europe," Saxena replied, noticing the surprise and shock in the faces of Curtis and Finley.
Hear the Cradle Song, O. T. Gunnarson, p-92
Oliver---one of the refugees---comments that he had heard that the ancient Nordic pagans practised human sacrifice. Saxena---one of Taggesson's berserkers---says that to their way of thinking this is an overly-literal misread of a key metaphor of Odinism.
"The prime message of Odin is to become, to progress into greater and greater states of existence through the use of your own will which is focused and under your conscious control. In order to become, to get to a new state of being from where are now, you have to sacrifice. There is no way around it."
"So you kill people and dedicate them to Odin in exchange for him granting you more power and a better life!" Curtis exclaimed as Finley's eyes opened wider an his stare became more pronounced.
"In a manner of speaking, yes we do. The people we kill and sacrifice for more power, knowledge, and better conditions in life are our own, individual selves," Saxena replied as he sat up and readied himself for launching into a detailed explanation. "in order to become you have to leave behind what you are now, at this instant. In other words, you have to die as what you are and then transform into something greater. A man who follows Odin does not just grow in skills and abilities and knowledge in a casual, random manner, he becomes greater and greater by using his will and consciously directing himself into new states of being. In other words, you could say that in a symbolic sense, the average person only dies now and then, and evolves into a greater condition of being but a follower of Odin will-fully kills himself, he sacrifices what he is, to develop and evolve into a condition far greater. He is always pushing forward and trying to become more powerful in any number of ways."
Gunnarsson, pp-92-93
For some people, this is something of a seductive message but it fails in two ways.
First of all, there's that emphasis upon "will". Most spiritual traditions don't talk about someone "willing" to do something, instead they generally talk about submission to some sort of external authority. This can be pretty lame, as when it talks about divine revelation as defined by the ecclesiastic hierarchy. But it can also mean submission to other things, such as "the Christ within" (something like your moral intuition), the Dharma (something like a combination of cultural wisdom and moral intuition), or, even just the discovered laws of science. The point is that none of these are about starting off with a firm belief about how the universe works and forcing yourself to get better at living in tune with that preconceived notion. Instead there is generally some sort of humility about separating out what is true and false, and accepting the former and discarding the latter. There's a name for using your willpower to support your already existing beliefs: motivated reasoning---it's generally considered a bad thing.
The second issue that pops up is a concrete, specific example of what I am talking about in the previous paragraph. I would suggest that one of the things that Saxena and Taggesson should "sacrifice to Odin" is their racism. Human beings generally progress beyond thinking people with other skin colours are subhuman by making the effort to get to know some of them. When they do, they realize all the races of people are pretty much the same. There are differences of culture, but those are accidents of geography and birth, not genetic make up.
In a novel where worldbuilding has actually created characters who epitomize the racist caricatures that white nationalists talk about, this cognitive dissonance between what people of colour are supposed to be like, and what they really are, never arises. This is the key value of spreading propaganda through novels---which is why Pierce's efforts were so successful that others like Gunnarsson and Covington (the Christian Identity author mentioned in the last post) copied his example and wrote their own white nationalist novels.
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When Taggesson and the refugees from Orange county get to White One, things heat up pretty dramatically. That's because they are soon joined by another organization: the extremely well-trained and disciplined Aryan United Front (AUF). This organization has intelligence that says that White One is soon going to be assaulted and annexed by the Aztlan army, which plans on killing off everyone in it.
The introduction of the AUF is another example of literary worldbuilding in the support of racist propaganda. That's because of a key problem in white nationalism---something that people like Pierce, Covington, and, Gunnarsson agree upon: a great many white supremacists are dumb as fence posts.
While the AUF continued to quietly build its membership and develop its strategy almost totally ignored by the controlled media and government secret police, the Ku Klux Klan, Identity Christian churches, Skin Head cliques, and various other manifestations of white discontent with a multiracial society all containing crack-pots, deviants, unthinking true believers, and run-of-the-mill buffoons, were crushed and destroyed. In the pro-white/pro-Israel and New World Order arena of conflict it was survival of the fittest, and the fittest had definitely turned out to be the AUF.
Gunnarsson, p-120
Gunnarsson doesn't try to explain how the AUF has managed to survive and thrive, he simply says that it did and out-competed all the other groups. (That's the value of worldbuilding.)
Moreover, he says that the AUF had simply given up on trying to convert outsiders to their cause.
While other organizations had been desperately working to convince the White race of its peril and responsibilities, the AUF had taken another path. After serious consideration its leadership concluded that the majority of people which comprised the White race at the time just prior to the real chaos were no better than a herd of cattle or sheep, creatures incapable of real thought and significant action or reaction. The High Command deemed the throngs of bumpkins, yokels, educated idiots, and spineless whiners and flatterers to be unreachable and worthless in any sort of action against the forces of decay in the West. The existing crowd was good for only one thing---breeding material. They could and would produce children and if those children had a safe, clean territory in which to live and grow, as well as a sound education, the West could be saved.
Gunnarsson, p-121
This again raises the question of how a group can grow to any size without doing outreach to the general public or catching the eye of counter-terrorist police agencies. Again---worldbuilding.
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However they came into being---like Taggesson's crew---the AUF are a collection of super-men who together fight like an oiled machine. And when the Odinists meet with the AUF, both groups quickly size each other up, decide that they like what they see, and join forces. Together, they quickly roll-over White One's pathetic defence force. Then they immediately pivot and annihilate Aztlan's army in a heroic battle.
Then it's time to murder off the gays and lesbians, kill the Jewish leaders, and, exile all the mixed-race couples, people with mixed race parentage, and, the remainder of the Jews.
Next on the dance card is indoctrinating the left-over "breeding stock". A mandatory public meeting is held and the "chairman" of the UAF starts letting the people of White One in on what the new bosses believe.
It starts with a little push back by one of those liberal snow flakes---.
"I think anyone can dream up any interpretation about anything! And I just don't believe that the Jewish people have been deliberately working to destroy anything! Hell, I've got plenty of friends that are Jewish and they've never done anything or said anything to put them into your category of 'race destroyers' in my view!" One man had stood up and challenged the chairman on the information and accusations he had just levelled at the Jews and there was a lot of mumbling from others in the huge audience in agreement.
"Sir, I really don't care if you believe or disbelieve what's been presented to you tonight, but I'm going to lay some absolutely rock solid facts out for you and everyone else here because I think that these facts are something that you've all been kept in the dark over ever since you were children," Ivor replied in a forceful tone and the man who had stood up and yelled his question now sat down, then the audience became silent.
Gunnarson, pp-375-376
This token opposition to indoctrination doesn't really hold much water, because the novel has shown how the local Jewish elite had manipulated and controlled the others in White One in order exploit them. When faced with immanent invasion by the Hispanics, this cabal's prepared response was to have been to release a stolen bio-weapon that would have killed every human being on the earth. (This was prevented by a series of happenstances---divine intervention by Odin, perhaps??) Yet another example of the value of worldbuilding with regard to propaganda.
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So what are these "rock solid facts" that the UAF has built it's worldview around? Here are two:
"This brings us to point number eight which is that evolutionary units, or races if you like that term, developed distinct societies and cultures. Societies are nothing more than breeding communities and, unless they possess enmity which is prejudice and aggressiveness toward non-related outsiders, and protect their offspring, the society, the breeding community, dies. Societies are not around to cater to the whims of degenerates or coddle disruptive criminal elements or provide sustenance for those competing races--they are for the safety and welfare of the children of the race that founds them.
Alright, now here's number nine, the evolutionary process causes enmity which is ferocity, competitiveness, deceit, anger and hate, to exist as a deep-felt compulsion in races toward foreign elements because such feelings keep gene pools apart as well as pure and distinct, and this enables them to proceed with their unique destinies. But the evolutionary process also causes something else in races and that is amity. Amity is friendliness, goodwill, self-sacrifice, love, and cooperation. And these feelings exist between members of a race to insure that like breeds with like and that expansion, which insures a race's survival, takes place.
Gunnarson, pp-379-380
Why does he hate other races? According to Chairman Ivor, it's simply an instinct that Darwinian evolution has built right into us. So the AUF believes that racism is a basic instinct in the human being. The Odinists believe much the same thing, but they have a more poetic way of describing it. As Styrbjorn Taggesson explains it, at birth every child is visited by one of the Norse Gods: Odin, Thor, Freyr, etc. They recite a poem (ie: the "Cradle Song" from the book's title) over the child that sets out their destiny from birth to death. The child hears it, but then forgets. Either way, people are just racist---whether it's because of what's in our DNA or it's because a god whispered it in your ear when you were a baby. We support racism because---well, because people are racist and that is that!
The thing about this explanation is that it's plausibility depends on the willingness of the reader to accept that they are inherently racist. It's a perfect prescription for accentuating a preconceived notion plus an excuse for refusing to look deeply into their beliefs to see if they should be changed. Again, it's a brilliant piece of propaganda aimed a recruiting anyone who is already prejudiced. But if you aren't predisposed to be a racist---it's not much of an argument at all. (Surprise! Surprise! Racism doesn't make any sense!)
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This brings me back to William Luther Pierce. He specifically created his own type of racist spirituality, and it's very much like the beliefs of the AUF. The name says it all---"cosmotheism" means "universe/god". The idea is whatever the laws of the universe---such as Darwinian evolution---gives us, is God's will.
Pierce was a great orator, and the clip I've posted above is just a sample of his rhetoric supported by first-rate production values. His ideas aren't useful and/or true---but I suspect they would be tremendously attractive to a naive man like Timothy McVeigh. Think about that when you watch this small segment from a much longer, three part series.
I'm willing to entertain the notion that there is something of an instinct towards tribalism in the human race. But I would posit that this is more than over-balanced by humanity's tremendous plasticity when it comes to culture. If children are predestined for anything at all, it is to learn. That's how they are able to pick up languages pretty much by osmosis. And they learn much, much, more than just that. If they are taught to be racists, then they will probably have a bit of that in them later on in life. But if the opposite is true, then racism will die out. And, I would argue the obvious decline of racism by age cohort is pretty much irrefutable evidence of this fact. Young people today are much, much less racist than their parents, grandparents, and, great grandparents.
The best visual indicator of this decline that I could find is this graph from the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the U. of Chicago. I found it cited in an article titled The Social Construction of Racism in the United States. As you can see, it shows a marked decline in the racist views of Americans about probably one of America's traditionally most volatile issues: "race mixing".
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I'm not going to go into too much detail about why I think it's important to understand white nationalists, even though their numbers are probably in decline. That's for the next article in this series.
But I would point out that there are some significant groups that seem to be singing from the songbooks I've mentioned above. One of the more visible anti-immigrant groups that has arisen in Canada over the last decade is the Soldiers of Odin. The group first arose in Finland but has spread across the world.
Part of the "brand" of the group seems to be to portray themselves not as being white nationalists, but rather a "community support group" that is concerned about "illegal immigration". In Canada, it has developed some visibility through street patrols, food drives, and, needle clean-ups where IV drug users hang out. It seems to me that this is an attempt to build a disciplined organization "under the radar". This sounds somewhat like how Gunnarsson describes both the AUF and Odinism in Cradle Song.
Another example of Odinism is the Wotansvolk ("people of Odin" in German) movement that was started in 1995 and seems to have been successfully spread within US prisons through White Aryan gangs and has now moved into the outside world. (Islamist terrorists also recruit within prisons.) One of it's appeal seems to have been being associated with the "The Order", a right-wing group of terrorists who seem to have been inspired by The Turner Diaries. (Among other things, the people controlling Turner's racist revolution are a secret society called "The Order".)
Yet another element that has resonances with the ideas of NAZI Spirituality are "The Three Percenters". The group gets it's name from the belief that only three percent of Americans supported the revolution for independence. The implication being that taking over the government only requires a sufficiently-motivated tiny minority. Again this seems to be a group working from Gunnarsson's Aryan United Front playbook: keep a low profile and build the organization. They appear to have dissolved after the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capital building, but I suspect that this is just a strategic move to attempt to protect the organization and its members from debilitating lawsuits.
Official Flag of the three percenters.
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That's enough for this article. As I write this article, I'm suffering the effects of my third dose---which I am happy to have received. Buckle down, follow the lead of our great local Health Officer, and hopefully this will be the last wave before we enter "the new normal". Try to be nice to each other, we're all a bit frazzled.
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Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!
I had put about a week's worth of work on a post and it evaporated right in front of my eyes because of some sort of electronic fart on the Blogger server. Oh, well. I am in the midst of resurrecting it but I see this as an omen that suggests I take some time off during the holiday season.
I left off my last post on William Luther Pierce by mentioning that Timothy McVeigh said he was motivated more by concern about gun issues than that of racism. I want to zero in on this issue, because from my read of the literature, it strikes me that McVeigh was suffering from a poorly thought-out understanding of "freedom" plus a gun fetish.
Here's a short clip from an interview with Ed Bradley from the show 60 Minutes.
Notice how his interaction with Ted Kaczynski led him to repudiate the categories of "left" versus "right". Instead, he finds connection with the uni-bomber by saying that they both are in favour of being allowed the freedom to live their lives "as they see fit".
The problem with this worldview is that it falls prey to old adage that "your freedom to swing your fist ends at someone else's nose". Different freedom's are at odds with one another. Without some sort of social constraint, freedom becomes license and society becomes chaos. And in a very real sense, if everyone who exists just lives their own life "as they see fit", everyone is constrained by the need to constantly "look over their shoulder" out of fear of what someone else might be doing.
I'm not necessarily thinking about something like the dystopian societies depicted in movies like Escape From New Yorkor Mad Max. Even if everyone follows the rules of traditional civility, things can turn sideways very fast if everyone were really allowed to "do your own thing". For example, I once heard a complaint by a "back to the land" type who was bitter because he wasn't allowed to put a dam on his property to run a water turbine "off the grid" electricity.
I wasn't privy to the details of the situation, but a dam can have catastrophic impact on things like a species of fish's ability to migrate upstream in order to spawn. It can also impact the water quality downstream by slowing the rate of flow. It can also cause problems for farmers that depend on a certain flow of water to irrigate their fields. Perhaps a wetland downstream would no longer flood in the spring, which means it will dry up in the summer. That would cause problems for migrating water fowl. It could also cause some people's wells to dry up because the ground water wasn't being recharged anymore by the now dried-up swamp. And, a poorly designed "do it yourself" dam might fail during spring run-off or torrential rains, spreading at best a wall of spawning-bed-destroying mud downstream---or at worst a house destroying flood. All of the above scenarios have taken place in the past with various "do it yourself dams", which is why governments have regulations concerning them. (There's that swung fist hitting someone else's nose---.)
The important issue that people like Kaczynski and McVeigh don't understand (probably more accurately: "refuse to admit") is that the world is a complex, interdependent web. Individuals simply cannot live their lives "the way they see fit" without running the risk of dramatically interfering in the lives of other people. It might be that this problem is greatly accelerated by the huge increases in human population that the world has recently seen---but the only solutions that I can think of that would deal with that particular problem would dramatically intrude on people's ability to have as many children "as they see fit". And I suspect both McVeigh and Kaczynski have issues with them too.
And, of course, this is all just a festival of bullshit
anyway. All the people killed by the two of them weren't consulted about whether being blown up was the life that they "saw fit to live". The sort of "freedom" that McVeigh has built his worldview around is actually rather childish and solipsistic. Ultimately, only one person in any given society can have complete freedom to live "as he sees fit" (ie: an absolute dictator). That's because everyone else would have to end up "working around" and accommodating whatever he (probably a he) wants to do. (More about this later.)
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I've worked a lot on these articles. That involves reading several absolutely dreadful books from cover to cover, plus a lot of time wading through academic articles, FBI bulletins, and so on. It's work that I take on gladly because I think it serves a useful purpose. And that purpose is served by letting anyone read them even if they cannot afford to support me financially. But if you can afford it, why not sign up for a subscription? Pay Pal and Patreon make it easy to do.
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Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.
The other thing to understand about McVeigh's worldview is that his ideal of "freedom" was dramatically influenced by his gun fetish.
To understand this point, I'm going to have to take a bit of side excursion into the real world of sexual fetishes. For those of you have been living under a rock for most of your lives, a sexual fetish is when someone associates something that objectively has nothing to do with sex with it to the point where seeing---or even just thinking about it---it makes them aroused. If memory serves, I first recall hearing about the idea in a movie where a psychiatrist explains to a detective that a serial killer he's trying to catch seems to have a "shoe fetish" because he only attacks women wearing stiletto heels and always takes one of them away with him as a "trophy".
Moreover, the term "fetish" originally comes from anthropology where it refers to objects that become imbued with meaning beyond their own particular utility. In our society, for example, Catholic relics are a type of fetish that are purported to have the power to heal the sick.
In the same way, I would suggest that guns have become a similar fetish for many people who have built their entire worldview around the word "freedom".
Lest people think this so far-fetched that it should be dismissed out of hand, I'd like them to consider the case of Sean Moon and the Rod of Iron Ministries. He is the son of the late Sun Myung Moon who was the head of the notorious cult known as the "Moonies" (or the Unification Church). This spin-off cult has explicitly built itself around a gun fetish to the point where the leader wears a gold-plated bullet crown and carries a gold-plated AR-15 rifle. Moreover, ordinary members carry weapons as part of religious services---including marriages. ("With these assault rifles I take you as my lawfully wedded wife. To have and to hold, to kill Commies with, and, to stand at the ramparts with defending Donald Trump, until the libruls pry them from our cold, dead, hands.")
Sean Moon in full church regalia, image from Washington Post article Locked and Loaded for God. Used under the Fair Dealing provision of Copyright law.
The "Rod of Iron" that the denomination is named after comes from the King James translation of the Second Psalm:
Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?
2 The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying,
3 Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.
4 He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.
5 Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure.
6 Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion.
7 I will declare the decree: the LORD hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee.
8 Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.
9 Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel.
10 Be wise now therefore, O ye kings: be instructed, ye judges of the earth.
11 Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling.
12 Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.
The idea is that in the modern world, the equivalent of a "rod of iron" would be the ArmaLite rifle.
Who cares what the Moonies believe? Well, maybe the Alt Right does---check out the following Vice Media clip from YouTube.
I raise the issue of gun fetishes as a way of warming up readers to an issue that I was surprised to find while researching these articles. That is, it makes a lot more sense to see the rise of White Nationalism as being about religious cults rather than politics.
I first got an inkling of this when I read Pierce's second book, Hunter. The plot of this book involves a fellow named Oscar Yeager who has taken it upon himself to murder interracial couples. (Everyone needs a hobby, I suppose.) After a while he and his girlfriend meet a couple that they hit it off with. One day after supper and over coffee their new friends start talking about the Jewish conspiracy that is ruining everyone's life. They also ask Oscar and his girl if they'd like to come to one of the meetings of the group they both belong to. After some interesting discussions over coffee and pound cake---one thing leads to another, and Yeager blows up a up a church full of politicians and clergy who think racism is a bad thing.
There's a lot of other stuff that happens too, including a rogue FBI agent who blackmails the "hero" into being his own personal assassin. But what's of interest to this article involves one of Oscar's new friends who is really good at playing the part of a television evangelist. Yeager convinces the group to get the guy a slot on TV so they can raise lots of money from the rubes and subtly start to slip them the message that maybe there's something a bit "off" about non-whites and maybe, just maybe we should do something about them. This meets with resounding success and lots more violent racist fun ensues, and I can't tell you any more without barfing all over my keyboard---.
&&&&
The point I want to raise is that the use of religion to promote racism is something that keeps re-occurring in white nationalist literature. From my reading of academic papers on the subject (there are a few), it seems that there are three different streams to this sewer:
I identified William Luther Pierce as the grand-daddy of all this nonsense. That's because his book The Turner Diaries was so successful in selling his vision of the world, that he's been copied by two other streams---which also have authors who've written their own novels promoting this particular vision. In the following, I'll do a quick intro to each and show how they've used the "Pierce method" to build their groups.
&&&&
Christian Identity
This is a strain of evangelical Christianity that believes that the "ten lost tribes" of the Old Testament were not Semites, but actually Aryans. They migrated North and became the founders of the Scandinavian, German, and, Anglo-Saxon nations. In this worldview the covenant between God and the tribes of Israel was between the people of Northern Europe, not the Jews of the middle-East.
Yeah, that's right---a swastika on the cross.
What we call "Jews" today are in fact an evil racial subgroup that resulted from Eve having sex with the serpent in the Garden of Eden. The result of this was Cain, who murdered his brother Abel---who then went on to father the Jewish race. (This is called the "serpent seed" doctrine.)
This particular style of religion was promoted by a Harold Covington. He wrote a series of novels promoting it:
Hill of the Ravens, 2003
A Distant Thunder, 2004
A Mighty Fortress, 2005
The Brigade, 2008
Freedom's Sons, 2013
According to what I've read, this isn't a particular denomination of Christians so much as a body of beliefs that people who call themselves evangelical Christians would hold onto either as individuals or an unofficial subgroup---in or outside of a denomination---who believe racism is more important than the teachings of the Gospels.
Probably the best way to understand this sort of thing is to see it as a phenomenon that comes under the heading of the post-Christian church. That is the idea that many modern Christian beliefs---as expressed by the behaviour of the parishioners as opposed to the stated creed of the institution---have very little to do with the core teachings of Christ. The best explanation of this situation comes from Beau of the Fifth Column. (This guy is really worth listening to and I highly recommend subscribing to his YouTube channel.)
Lest you ask why Harold Covington is important, I might want to point you towards this Guardian article that suggests that Dylan Roof was at least partially inspired by his writings. If you don't remember, Roof massacred nine black people at a prayer meeting at a predominately black church in Charleston South Carolina in 2015.
&&&&
I have more to say, but I think the above is enough to digest for one week.
Here we are again. The omicron variant is raging through the community and all we can do is try to slow down the spread and hope that the vaccines keep us out of the hospital. It certainly looks like a lot of folks are going to get sick before this is over. Just remember that pandemics always end, and no matter how awful all of this is, it's not like the Black Death. So be nice to each other and do what the experts tell us to do.
&&&&
Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!
Kelly wasn’t happy about what he was hearing from his sources.
It appeared that President Blunt was doing everything he could to
hamstring the police in their attempts to deal with the mob in the
Capital Building and the militia groups creating chaos across the
country. Luckily, his powers were limited at the state and municipal
level. Democratic and the odd rational Republican state governments
were letting their police forces deal with the problems. Places like
Missouri, Florida, and, Texas were not doing so well, however. Their
relaxed gun laws and culture of “freedom poisoning” were making
it hard for police to identify and round up the groups and
individuals who were bent on bringing down law and order. In a
growing number of states there had been attempts to attack elected
officials. There had been several close calls and one fatality---in
Michigan the governor had been shot dead during a botched kidnapping.
The worst problem was in the District of Columbia. Some unknown
official had repeatedly stonewalled any attempt to call out the
National Guard until the Governor of Virginia had had to break the
rules and call up the General in charge personally to tell him to get
his troops on site no matter what he was being told by the official
chain of command. He was hesitant at first, but eventually relented
and brought in his people. They were able to contain things in the
Capitol Building, but were no help with the hostage situation.
One message Kelly received said that the Joint Chiefs of Staff
were in secret meetings. Even more disconcerting, he heard that elite
forces had been dispatched to augment the Secret Service protection
for both the President and President Elect. In a hardly surprising
development, a very secret connection told him that Delta Force units
had been deployed in the D.C. area. He strongly suspected that they
were getting ready to act. Things had gone really bad already, and,
the stand-off was encouraging problems around the country. They
needed to act fast or else things would probably go South real quick.
Kelly was concerned about this. He knew that this sort of hostage
situation was hard to resolve without a lot of deaths. And the
hostages and kidnappers both would become martyrs to whatever faction
they represented. Moreover, he suspected that the Commander in Chief
would forbid any action aimed at resolving the situation. President
Blunt probably felt he had nothing but good to come from the
situation and his interests lay in stringing-out the whole situation
as long as possible.
Hughson wouldn’t have long to wait before his fears began to
materialize---.
&&&&
Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!
I've been spending the last couple weeks deep diving in the intellectual equivalent of a sewage lagoon. To be specific, I've been researching the philosophy of William Luther Pierce. I hope you've never heard of him before, because if you have, there's a very good chance that you are a white nationalist. (That's a fancy term for "racist".)
William Luther Pierce, grand-daddy of the Alt-Right, image c/o Wikimedia Commons. Copyleft, public domain by Robert Hartnell.
Pierce was not your average racist. He was a very smart man. In fact, he was an actual scientist. He had a Phd in physics, had worked at Los Alamos, was an Assistant Professor at the University of Oregon, and ended up doing advanced materials research for Pratt and Whitney's aerospace division. His first love above all else, however, was to toil in the fields of hate.
Official logo of the National Alliance.
He was comparatively successful in this work. The group he founded, the National Alliance, peaked under Pierce's leadership with 2,500 members and an annual income of about $1 million. (That's very good for a racist group.) Since his death, fortunately, the group has been subject to infighting and both membership and income have collapsed.
But what Pierce is really known for are two novels he published---under the pseudonym "Andrew Macdonald"---that have served as "handbooks" for racist activity. The first of these, The Turner Diaries, serves the purpose of identifying a "plausible" road map that white nationalists could follow to take over first the government of the USA, and then the world while exterminating all non-whites.
The book's plot follows the journal entries of Earl Turner who is part of a small group of white nationalists ("The Organization"), who have initiated a violent insurrection against the government of the USA. It is led by a small, self-selected, secret cabal known as "The Order" (which the "hero" is asked to join). They are able to undermine the functioning of the American government and economy (called "The System") through the strategic use of terrorism. The chaos that results from this struggle "politicizes" a relatively small, but still influential fraction of the white population into supporting their cause. This extends to the military, which splits on broadly racial lines. This allows the white nationalists to seize an air force base in California, which gives them access to nuclear weapons and intercontinental nuclear-tipped missiles.
Control of the nuclear base allows the Organization to establish an enclave in California. They cement their control over this racist's paradise by holding a special "day of the noose". This is when their authority is displayed through the Organization lynching huge numbers of "race traitors"---at least one in every neighbourhood across the state. Names of individuals are placed on a list for actions as minor as a white woman going on a date with a black man, or, as major as being a judge who sentenced white supremacists to prison. (Pierce makes sure the reader sees that the point isn't to punish "criminals", instead it's a show of force. Indeed, he has Turner freely admit that who does or doesn't get on the list is somewhat arbitrary.) The end result is that from just about every part of the state it is easy to see bodies hanging from lamp posts. This cows the majority of citizens into passivity, which allows the Order to effectively become the leaders of the state.
Meanwhile in the rest of America, the System manages to quell military mutinies by Organization supporters, which the Order believes means that the Californian enclave will eventually be invaded and destroyed. In order to stop this from happening, they launch their stolen ICBMs against the Soviet Union in order to initiate a nuclear war between the two super powers. When the System realizes this has happened, it then launches its own nuclear assets against the Soviets too. (The hope is that by doing this they lessen the ability of the Soviets to retaliate.) The USSR fires back, inflicting severe---yet not quite apocalyptic---damage on the US. The damage is enough, however, for the System to be so weakened that the Organization is eventually able to seize control of the rest of the country. This only happens, however, after Earl Turner flies a stolen small plane carrying an atomic bomb into the Pentagon---which effectively decapitates what is left of the System.
In an epilogue, the book informs the reader that once the new regime was firmly entrenched, it murdered all non-whites and supporters of non-whites in North America and Europe. In addition, it used the remaining nuclear weaponry in it's arsenal to totally wipe out Israel and other pockets of remaining Jewish society. (Toronto is vaporized because it had "too many Jews"---refugees from the US.) Eventually, China attempts to fill the gap left by the Soviet Union, so the USA annihilates the entire population of Asia using atomic, chemical, and, biological weapons. (At the end of the book, most of Asia is known as "the Great Eastern Waste".) After this, the last major campaign alluded to is a genocidal attack on Africa which essential wipes out the last major centre of non-white population on the planet.
In the very last pages of the book, the "Order" is described as finally able to spread it's "benevolent rule" across the entire earth.
&&&&
I don't think the importance of this book to white nationalism can be over-stated. That's because if people are going to devote their lives to the cause of racist idiocy there needs to be some sort of articulation of what a white supremacist society would look like plus some sort of remotely plausible way to get from where we are now to where they eventually want to be. (This is true of all political movements, bye-the-way.)
This is important because there really are some very significant roadblocks on the way to an American Fourth Reich.
First of all, the number of real, self-described, violence-prone racists in America is small and getting smaller, one funeral at a time. (Young people, in general, simply do not buy into racism.)
Secondly, contrary to what racists believe, racial stereotypes are not true. That means blacks are smarter than they are expected to be, and, Jewish people cannot always be easily bought off if enough money is waved in their faces.
Third, large numbers of the self-described "vanguard of the master race" are dumb as fence-posts. Moreover, trying to organize them into an effective organization seems to usually be like herding cats.
The weak, ineffectual "snowflakes" that support liberal social policies are often far from passive and often have much harder spines than the purported "super men" who oppose them believe.
Finally, contrary to what white nationalists tell each other, America really isn't becoming a sort of dysfunctional Hell-hole. Instead, it's just changing---in some ways for the worse, it's true, but in other ways for the better. That's just like all nations in human history and around the world.
The Organization creates a significant fighting force in The Turner Diaries by playing to two fears that loom large in the rightward fringes of the American psyche: gun confiscation and urban crime. When the novel begins American inner cities are melting into violent puddles of goo as criminal justice reforms consistently tie the hands of police and allow gangs of black thugs near impunity to rape white women and rob white businesses. (This is a profoundly racist book and it's description of both blacks and Jews would be laughable if the results of this propaganda weren't so horrible.) At the same time, new gun laws result in confiscation of all weaponry from the white population. These new rules are enforced by a specially created new police force that deputizes black thugs to break into people's homes without warning to search for illegal weaponry (think violent slobs with clubs). We are introduced to Earl Turner when he and a small group of friends are forced to go "underground" by their determination to not give up their weapons.
A key point to understand is that even in the bizarro, fever-dream America that forms the backdrop for Pierce's book, support for the Organization is very small. That's not because he believes there is very little racism in American society, but because he believes most of it is latent. That's because the average citizen has been lulled into complacency by a good-paying job, a full refrigerator, and, the television. (After all, the book was first published in 1978---hardly halcyon days, as I recall, but still good enough for lots of---especially middle-class---white men.) The operating assumption of the book is that as the economic plight of ordinary people (ie: white men, or, as Trump would say "real Americans") declines, the more willing they are to support the vision promoted by Pierce, the Order, the Organization, and, Earl Turner.
To this end, the Organization embarks on bold attacks on both the government and the economy. Earl Turner is intimately involved in three "keystone" events in this campaign:
the destruction of a nuclear power plant in Michigan using a "dirty bomb" that spreads radioactive material all over the site---rendering it useless
exploding a huge truck bomb at the headquarters of the FBI (this event seems to have been copied by Timothy McVeigh when he blew up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building---more about this later)
the creation of high-quality, high-production counterfeiting to both finance the Organization and to create inflation
The economic sabotage (like the destruction of power plants) reduces the efficiency of the American economy, which results in hardship. In addition, attacks on the government result in more and more restrictive laws and onerous regulation. A curfew is imposed, people are routinely stopped at road blocks, have to show papers, new "irregular" police agencies are given the power to search without warrants and torture suspects. All of these progressively erode what support the populace may have once had for the status quo.
As pressure increases, most people direct their anger towards the Organization, but a trickle of new supporters are drawn in---which allows it to dramatically expand it's reach. And the expanded membership allows for more spectacular acts of sabotage, which builds the Organization even further. Eventually, they are able to seize control of California---and a stockpile of nuclear weapons. And this is what allows the Order to initiate it's strategic move that results in control of the USA and eventually the world.
In effect, this is a fever dream of how a very small number of people can take over the most powerful nation in the world---and the majority of citizens can't do anything about it. It is the victory of the gun over the ballot box.
&&&&
I hope that it's obvious how much work I've been putting into these articles. I write and publish them because I think it's really important for citizens to have some idea of the "big picture" and "long term trends" that exist behind the day-to-day events that the mainstream news tells us about. If you think that this is as important as I do, and you can afford it, why not subscribe? I can use the money, and Patreon and Pay Pal make it easy to send as little or as much as you'd like.
&&&&
I mentioned in passing that there are so many similarities between Timothy McVeigh's attack on the Alfred P. Murrah building and Earl Turner's fictional bombing of the FBI building that it's easy to think that he got the idea from Pierce's book. I thought that this was an interesting avenue to follow, so I went to the trouble of doing some research on the fellow.
Tim, who bought the book by mail order after seeing it advertised in Soldier of Fortune magazine, maintains that it was the book's strong advocacy of gun rights, rather than its racist content, that captured his imagination. He gave the book only to friends who seemed to share his feelings about gun ownership. For him, the selling point of the The Turner Diaries was a question he often saw posed in ads for the book: "What will you do if the government comes for your guns?"
American Terrorist, Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck, p-90
I really have a hard time believing McVeigh when he said he wasn't racist. That's because the racism is so odious and over-the-top in The Turner Diaries. Black people are portrayed as being little more than bestial, and, Jewish folks are depicted as being disgusting, money-grubbing perverts who are unified in a no-holds-barred struggle to undermine American society. I simply cannot believe that anyone except a dyed-in-the-wool racist could read the book without being repelled by it.
Another suggestion that McVeigh had significant sympathies for racists comes from his choice of attire when he bombed the Alfred P. Murrah building. He wore a t-shirt with an image of Abraham Lincoln with the motto Si Semper Tyrannus underneath. ("This is what always happens to tyrants"---what John Wilkes Booth said after assassinating Lincoln.) It seems to me that only a racist wouldn't be repelled by quoting Booth.
I don't know if this is the exact same shirt that McVeigh wore, but you get the idea. (Michel and Herbeck, p-347)
And vile as The Turner Diaries are, McVeigh seems to have always had copies of it around him. He sold copies at gun shows. He was constantly recommending it to friends and fellow soldiers when he was in the army. He even photocopied a section from it and placed it in an envelope with other "inspirational tracts" that he left in his "get away" car so the police clearly understand his motives.
Perhaps most telling, though, was the inclusion of a quote from Earl Turner, the protagonist of The Turner Diaries, whose protest of gun laws and political correctness culminated in the bombing of the FBI headquarters and other government buildings.
"The real value of our attacks today lies in the psychological impact, not in the immediate casualties," Turner writes in his diary. "More important, though, is what we taught the politicians and the bureaucrats. They learned this afternoon that not one of them is beyond our reach. They can huddle behind barbed wire and tanks in the city, and they can hide behind the concrete walls of their country estates, but we can still find them and kill them."
Michel and Herbeck, p-350
Equally suggestive of a hidden racist motivation was a last-minute attempt to contact The National Alliance (the racist organization that Pierce ran up until his death in 2002) in hope of it being willing to hide him after the bombing.
In the final days before leaving the Imperial Motel in Kingman, McVeigh tried calling Richard Coffman, a representative of the National Alliance. If any group might be willing to suggest a place he might seek refuge after the bombing, McVeigh figured, the National Alliance---an organization chaired by the author of The Turner Diaries---would be it.
McVeigh left three messages on Coffman's answering machine. Identifying himself as Tim Tuttle, he said he would be leaving the Kingman area soon. McVeigh knew that he had to play it cautiously in asking for help, though; he didn't want to tip his hand. He'd tell the National Alliance that he was making a "serious request for a safe haven," but would remain vague about why, if he spoke with Coffman. But he never left a number where Coffman could reach him, and ultimately failed to connect with the group.
Michel and Herbeck, p-320
&&&&
Having pointed out why I suspect that McVeigh was more of a racist than he liked to let on, I think it is important to take him at his own word when he said that his primary motivation was his love of guns. I'll have more to say about this---and how it fits into the worldview articulated by Pierce and which has infected the far right---in my next instalment.
In the mean time, get your third vaccine shot and remember that this dumb pandemic will end eventually! Be good to each other---we're all a little frazzled by now.
&&&&
Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!
An hour later the guests showed up for their meal. The bosses had
suggested that it would be a good idea to wheel in a large video
screen so people could watch one of the major news service’s live
coverage from outside the Capitol building.
At this time, Nate’s job was refilling teapots as people emptied
them, and keeping an eye on the fruit salad, muffins, bagels, etc, to
ensure that everyone in the hall had as much to eat as they wanted.
All the other staff had headed out to the kitchen garden for the
morning’s bout of weeding under Hakim’s eye. The chief gardener
usually also gave a little lesson on ecology while he was at it. If
everyone did an hour’s work every morning no one had to kill
themselves doing stoop labour under the hot sun. And Hakim’s talk
gave the weeders something to think about while the were at it.
Nate was coming out of the kitchen with some more smoked splake
when he noticed that everyone had stopped talking and had their eyes
glued on the tv screen. The cameramen had focused their equipment on
a crudely build scaffold which had been built just in front of the
main entrance to the Capital Building. (The police had allowed the
occupiers to put it up because of the hostages they held.) There was
a block and tackle attached to the middle of a crossbeam about ten
feet off the ground. The other end of the tackle went through
propped-open double doors.
Then the commentator was interviewing a security consultant and
asked him what the apparatus was for. He said that he could speculate
but he didn’t know enough to have a useful opinion. At that point
the reporter announced that something was happening at the door and
the feed was going back to it. The camera showed that the ropes were
jerking around, then they tightened up into straight lines. After a
period of time where the rope could be seen to be moving, a man was
shown being dragged out of the doors by a rope tied around his neck.
He was inexorably drawn up until his head was a foot below the block
and tackle. He didn’t kick or struggle, but just hung loosely. The
short grey hair and black suit identified him from a distance as the
Vice President.
The rebels had punished him for overseeing and legitimating the
last presidential election.
At that point the feed went black and a journalist at the central
news studio came on screen. He announced that the authorities had
temporarily cut all the satellite and other feeds from the Capital
region.
The tv was turned off. Barbara and Kelly came out in front of it
to make a couple announcements.
The martial arts teacher spoke first. “Our contacts have told us
that this isn’t a hoax or ‘false flag’ operation---it’s the
real deal. The Vice President was killed by the mob that occupy the
Capital. Odds are that they are going to kill another ‘high value’
hostage soon---perhaps the House Speaker and/or the Senate Majority
Leader. The authorities have temporarily shut down the press feeds to
slow down the spread of information and also to prevent the people
inside the building from hearing about what the authorities plan.
They will bring them back up relatively soon because they need to
control the messaging that is getting out and tamp down the rumours
that come from a news vacuum.”
“That is bad enough, but our Web analysts tell us that hours ago
the alt-right Dark Web exploded into intense activity. It appears
that very worst of the Fascist groups---Atom Waffen, The Order, Three
Percenters, The Base, etc---are mobilizing. This will also mean that
they will be cranking up the second tier groups---like the Boogaloo
and Proud Boys---plus the “useful idiots” like the Q-Anon and
Incels to prime them into becoming more violent. We need to expect
and prepare for some acts of extreme violence aimed at encouraging a
crack-down that will radicalize more people into joining in on their
side.”
“I’ve announced this not to cause any more anxiety. Instead, I
want you to know that the Elders are aware of the problem and are
already mobilizing our prepared resources to respond. You will not be
‘kept in the dark and fed manure’, nor will your leaders flail
around like wounded bears. But be aware that the Dominant Paradigm
folks probably will, so be ready when the Old Ones ask for your
help.”
“I’m going to get back to my computer to monitor the
situation. I suggest that everyone go back to the regularly scheduled
programming of the day. It will help both with how you deal with the
‘interesting times’ that are ahead of all of us, and, how our
society as-a-whole responds too. But first of all, Barb is going to
offer some insight about how to deal with the reasonable fears that
all of us are now experiencing.”
She came out in front and spoke calmly and precisely. “This is
probably going to be the beginning of some ‘hard times’ for many
people. You know that, I know that. We are going to have to
double-down on learning to control our thoughts and emotions instead
of letting them control us. And, as you all know, the best way to do
that is through remembering to ‘Hold the onto the One’.”
“The One is huge---it is the entire universe. Not just the
physical reality, but also the laws and processes that organize it.
As such, it is a collection of an infinite number of smaller
Ones---all the different scientific laws and mathematical processes
that govern ever single thing, including us. Learning about the
universal One is about learning how many of the different subsidiary
Ones act both independently and in concert with others. We start this
where we are right now. We gaze intently and dispassionately at both
the world around us and our consciousness within.”
“Holding onto the One, therefore, is the process of reminding
ourselves that we are human beings with a history and agency, a body
and a consciousness, members of a community and individuals, with an
awareness of our own mortality while being able to get glimpses of
the infinite through investigation and reason.”
“The other thing to remember is that the Elders have survived
millennia of crises: wars, natural disasters, plagues, revolutions,
etc. We survive because we have learned the way to flow with things
and ride the waves instead of trying to stand against them by using
brute force. Remember that the present crisis is actually a minor
blip in the grand scheme of things. The real catastrophe we all face
is the Climate Emergency. And the biggest risk we run with this
particular crisis is having the world forget that while we are
dealing with the present mess.”
“Try to remember that the flip side of danger is
opportunity. Things will be moving rapidly over the next few
months. The Old Ones will attempt to chart a course through this
crisis, and we will take whatever opportunities which may arise to
help push the boulder of climate stability as far up the hill as
possible while doing everything else necessary.”
“Now I’d like you all to sit comfortably and take three deep
breaths. Take stock of your thoughts and emotions. Look at them
without judgment or engaging. No matter how important they may seem
right now, most of them are merely epiphenomenon---ghosts created by
our brain to make sense of what our hormones tell us. Take three more
deep breaths. Now go out and spend your day doing whatever your tasks
are as well and as conscientiously as you possibly can. No matter
how awful the news, weeds need to be pulled and food
needs to be cooked!”
&&&&
Furthermore I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!
After the class Nate was feeling that his bones had learned a
great deal.
He walked over to the kitchen to start work. The first job was to
make breakfast for the meditation teacher. She’d been up since
before dawn doing whatever she did then. Now she wanted some strong
coffee with toast and jam. After that, she’d go for her usual long
walk---which was more than anything else an excuse to have her
morning cigarette. He got the espresso machine going and tossed some
bread slices in the toaster. No one else ate the dreadful white bread
that Barbara insisted upon, so they only got one loaf whenever the
deliveries came. But everyone liked her, so the chef made her various
jams from the best fruit that Hakim was able to grow in the kitchen
garden.
When it was all ready, Nate took it over on a tray to the table
where Barb was sitting by herself. She grunted a vague “thanks”
and he left her alone. When the morning program started she was “on”
and in constant demand---so she treasured her morning “alone time”.
People showed their appreciation by leaving her “be” when she
wanted.
Nat’s next task was to help prepare breakfast for the visitors.
He started by getting out the dozen large teapots and charging each
of them with a spoon full of twig tea. When the breakfast group came
in, he’d be able to fill each one from the giant boiling hot water
dispenser just before he took them out.
Next he got his “marching orders”. Renatta Fatima was a
medium-sized, slender woman who wore glasses with giant lenses and
thin, fine hair that hung straight down the side of her head---giving
her something of an owlish look. “This morning I thought we’d
have a bit of a “self-serve”. I’ve made some muffins that are
now in the oven. We can put them out when they are finished. I’d
also like you to get the bagels you baked a couple days ago and put
them out with a few pounds of cream cheese and the smoked splake that
Hakim bought when he visited the First Nation’s community last
week.”
Nate knew what to do. There was a side board where he put out
bowls of cream cheese to warm up and become spreadable. He also put
out wooden platters that had whole, smoked fish on them. There he
also put out some fruit salad that several other members of the
kitchen help had prepared the night before. Finally, he put out four
dozen pre-sliced bagels in a large bowl next to a several four-slice
toasters. The tables already had plates, bowls, knives, forks,
spoons, and, teacups. He wheeled the big ass coffee urn into the
dining room from the kitchen and put it next to the stack of coffee
cups, plugged it in, and, set it to do “it’s thing”.
At that point he got himself a cup of coffee from the staff urn,
made some peanut butter and toast, and plunked down at the table in
the corner of the enormous industrial kitchen. Renatta and the others
were already there. Most had tablets or phones and were reading the
day’s news.
Hakim was scanning something intently on his smart phone. He was a
tall, wiry, very fit-looking middle-aged man with a very thick, long,
bushy beard. “Wow! I can’t believe the news coming out of
Washington. The mob that stormed the Congress and took all those
people hostage has issued a statement through Blabber. The CBC says
they are calling on all the militias in America to mobilize. They
want to stop the “liberal elite” from torturing children to
harvest adrenochrome---whatever that is.”
Olive---who had come in a bit earlier with her two dogs (Karbon
and Nik)---came over with a tray and sat down next to Nat. She’d
been listening as she filled her bowl with oatmeal and poured some
coffee. Like everyone else, she pulled out her phone and stared at it
in disbelief. “On my twitter feed it says that they’ve built some
sort of structure outside and are threatening to ‘get real, real
fast’.”
“Why are the police just letting this happen?”, Nate was amazed
at how quickly things seemed to be spiralling out of control.
Kelly had already been at the table with his breakfast when Nate
sat down. “It’s a difficult situation. There are a lot of
important people secured with zip ties and controlled by crazies who
seem to be bent on killing them if they see any attempt at a rescue.
I’m not sure that any police SWAT team would have much hope of
getting them out without a lot of death and destruction. Even really
good commandos would have a difficult time---and it will take some
time to come up with a plan, and, get them and their gear in place.
I’m sure that that’s all happening, but doing a job like that
right will take long enough to give these freaks some time to do some
bad things.” He scowled and stirred sugar into his coffee. “It’s
not like the movies.”
Nat spoke out loud for everyone there, “I wonder what the big
cheeses are making of all this---?”
&&&&
Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!
