As the West disintegrates, its frenzy of self-affirmation becomes more grandiose and grotesque. Our elites, the manufacturers of what passes for culture, arrange mass rites that attest to their greatness and benevolence. The people stand in awe, and just as critically, they are entertained. Nowhere in the United States is this more evident than at the Super Bowl.

The Super Bowl is not simply a profit bonanza for casinos and network television or mere proletarian distraction; it embodies a potent means of social control. Played in the first week of February, the National Football League’s championship game sets the tone for advertising and entertainment in the coming year. It is also a useful platform to propagandize and condition a population of 300 million. America clearly enjoys its indoctrination, as all too many revel in this spectacle’s base nature. People who have not the slightest interest in football will excitedly gather around billboard-sized TV screens to watch the unveiling of a new commercial for erectile dysfunction pills.

The Pentagon has begun field testing for a new and devastating experimental weapon still shrouded under a cloak of secrecy. A spin-off of anti-gravity technologies, the highly anticipated platform operates on the latest developments in the realm of “anti-logic”. Its use will enable our information warriors to defy reason and intellect, paralyzing an opponent with unrelenting streams of contradiction as well as sheer nonsense.

DOD’s anti-logic weapon underwent its first trial run this summer, as it was rushed into action amidst the Koran-burning controversy. An obscure Florida pastor’s plan to barbecue the Muslim holy book on September 11^th was foiled, one suspects, largely due to the intervention of General David Petraeus, commander of U.S. and Coalition forces in Afghanistan. Deploying the anti-logic technology, Petraeus spoke against such an act, since it would “endanger troops” in his theater of responsibility. While the wisdom of the pastor’s step was very doubtful, Petraeus in his victory managed to obliterate truth and standards of reason. After all, the actual threat to U.S. troops stems not from a small Florida church’s play at publicity, but from occupying Afghanistan.

In the Postmodern Empire, news serves not so much to inform, but to blind, distract and intimidate. Our much-celebrated information age is defined by an incoherence that permeates society. Welcome to Absurdistan.

 

I was unaware of Laura Schlessinger's existence until just recently, when she surfaced in the news in connection with a recent edition of her radio show. It seems an Afro-American caller, seeking advise with her mixed marriage, was offended because she had to hear Schlessinger use the word 'nigger' while the latter commented on the language often found in Afro-American television shows. Of course, the incident is being tediously reported as a "racist outburst," and Schlessinger, who is product of a mixed Jewish/Italian marriage, has since apologised for using the vocable, claiming to have felt mortified by what she now views as an erroneously articulated point of philosophy. Having listened to the audio, however, I find the apology (as I usually do with these types of incident) both amusing and contemnible. During the offending segment Schlessinger is undoubtedly arrogant and obnoxious, showing a proclivity, more appropriate for an opinionated comedian than for a marriage advisor, to interrupt abrasively and talk over her caller. But the points she makes are true.

Firstly, Afro-Americans are indeed over-sensitive and they have indeed been agitated by a smattering of race hate organisations. Everyone with sense knows this. And, certainly, the Afro-American with the chip on the shoulder, ready to take offence and detonate with aggrieved racial rhetoric at the slightest perceived infraction has become a subject of mockery, indeed a cliché, on this side of the Atlantic. (Having said this, Afro-Caribbean and other dark-skinned citizens here are rapidly learning from their North American muses.)

I'm not a frequent reader of graphic novels, but I admire the artwork and have found that the writing is often better and the themes are more complex than many would expect. I came across the Northlanders series recently while browsing at the bookstore and I figured I'd pick one up for some light reading.

In Sven the Returned, Northlander Sven of Orkney returns to the settlement where he grew up, to claim his inheritance.  He is a mercenary wanderer who was cast out by his mother for questioning the Traditional ways of his people as a boy. Having lived a "modern" and wordly life, and having learned the ways of other peoples and sampled their vices and tactics a la carte, he no longer considers himself a Norseman. However, he ends up siding with his people against enemy invaders, and winds up with a more ambiguous, complicated sense of his own identity.

There is debate and discussion throughout concerning honor, the life of a warrior, a man's relationship to his people, and Norse mythology. Tradition is not always portrayed in a positive light. The artwork is dynamic and evocative, often with a gray palette that gives the story a cold, brooding feel. Excellent battle scenes.

About the Medium

Graphic novels hold a lot of potential, in terms of keeping Western Traditions and heroic stories in the minds of men. The systems of patronage that made possible the levels of creative virtuosity necessary to produce the magnificent triumphs of Western art found in the epic symphony or the master oil painting are no longer around. But there's something accessible about the storytelling in graphic novels that's well suited to bringing the heroic tale alive. And not everyone is an egghead or a philosopher; a lot of average guys just want to relax with a good story that can capture the imagination and deliver some sort of satisfying takeaway.

Frank Miller's 300 is a perfect example of how a tale as seemingly obscure as the battle of Thermopylae can be translated into the sort of compelling entertainment that turned "THIS... IS... SPARTA!" into a ubiquitous meme. When I spoke to a classroom of male students about masculinity recently -- they wanted to talk about the Spartans. That's a powerful influence and it's worth thinking about how to use it. Fantasies about perfect equality are for the Left. Realists on the Right  accept the fact that all men aren't born with the same talents, aptitudes or temperaments, and that any dramatic cultural shift is going to find some way to enlist the males with an IQ falling in the 105-115 range. You have to give them Something to Dream, too.  Promote the same values and ideas, but make them accessible and appealing to that key demographic. The good thing about ideas like honor and integrity and heroism and standing up for your tribe is that they translate -- they make sense to men and have their own natural appeal.

There are so many stories, so much history, so many Western legends and moving heroic myths to be told and retold. As a lighter end of Virtus, I'm going to explore and briefly review what's out there already in the world of graphic novels and comic books along these lines.

If any readers have recommendations, I welcome them.

One of the less helpful features of the radical Right is its propensity to spend a great deal of time and effort analysing and complaining abou is wrong with modern culture, and a lot less time actually producing an alternative to this culture. For the most part, the nearest it ever gets to producing said alternative is generating endless suggestions of what needs to be done, without actually doing any of it. Worse still, most of the suggestions are not even actionable in the short to medium term because they involve the creation of vast operations, necessitating large and sustained investment, abundant personnel, established networks, and extensive infrastructure - all this within a community that struggles to raise even measly sums of a few tens of thousands of dollars. Sometimes I wonder if the people making these suggestions are serious about achieving change and do not just seek emotional relief.

Perhaps the tendency to make impractical suggestions stems from the tendency among elitists to think on a macro scale, a trait which I believe results from an inborn desire for order. This would explain the abundance of conspiracy theory buffs within the radical Right: what is a conspiracy theory if not a narrative, an ordered exposition, that efficiently explains a mass of otherwise confusing data and events?

In a satirical blog  about pop culture, I recently presented two sets of photographs: one of ageing mainstream musicians, whom I described as the past, and another of young underground musicians, whom I described as the future. Using a standard tabloid technique, I mischievously chose unflattering images for the first set of musicians, and proceeded to dismiss the latter as a freak show as well as a negative cultural influence. Unfortunately, some interpreted this (rather superficially) as simply a derogation of Elton John, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Bono, and Bob Geldof's looks and musical talent, ignoring the fact that the title of the blog referred explicitly to culture, and the blog itself made no mention of music.

My original aim had been to do a series, where I juxtaposed representatives of the egalitarian against representatives of the inegalitarian camp, taken from the fields of philosophy, politics, journalism, art, literature, psychology, anthropology, and more, always accompanied by a few satirical comments at the enemy's expense. There is no doubt that there was an element of playground malice in this exercise. Yet, the latter had a serious purpose: the enemy routinely engages in self-serving, derogatory, and cartoonish misrepresentations of the intellectuals, artists, and scientists whom they do not like, whom they would like to keep beyond the pale, and whom they would like the apolitical and the miseducated to avoid and dismiss in advance. The message I wanted to convey was that we know how to do it too, and are quite prepared to give them a taste of their own medicine (in fact, in December last year I wrote an article  for The Occidental Observer where I did some post-imperial deconstructing, in response to the White-bashing discourse that permeates the field of postcolonial studies). I think this is important because one of the reasons European descended peoples have come to find themselves in retreat, on the losing side of every significant battle in the cultural war for the better part of a century now, is that the Left has not been met with an effective response - in fact, even so-called "conservatives", who were supposed to have been on the side of European man, have proven - at best - craven, weak, flaccid, myopic, selfishly motivated, and far too willing to compromise, pull back, surrender, and apologise in order to avoid trouble.