Stop checking him out (BAP)
The radical Right in the United States is discussed far more than it is understood. Anyone to the Right of the Republican Party is generally assumed to be a skinhead, redneck, or Nazi Germany-revivalist. To those who have studied the far-Right, however, the picture appears far more complex. A recent book, A World After Liberalism: Philosophers of the Radical Right, by Matthew Rose offers serious profiles of several 20th century radical-Right intellectuals, including Oswald Spengler, Alain de Benoist, and Samuel Francis.
“The radical right is the true ‘other’ in our culture. Unlike the radical left, its authors are not found in university curricula, and sometimes not even in university libraries,” writes Rose, a scholar of modern religious thought. “We picture them in cabins in Idaho broadcasting over shortwave radio, not as scholars or artists who can read Sanskrit.” But this is a false image. Whether one supports or loathes their ideas, many such thinkers are indeed deeply erudite, devoting their lives to studying the human condition as they see it.
Reading A World After Liberalism, another radical-Right thinker came to my mind, a contemporary figure marginal to the public yet boasting a devoted following online: the pseudonymous online poster and author “Bronze Age Pervert”. Known as BAP for short, he has built a committed fan base of young men — including junior staffers in the Trump White House — and drawn the attention of some iconoclastic conservative intellectuals.
After reading Rose’s book, I decided to finally pick up Bronze Age Mindset, BAP’s self-published manifesto from 2018. I wanted to get a sense of the prospects of the radical Right in its fight with liberalism today. But on a personal note, I also wanted to see what it was that so many people, including young men of colour I know, find so radicalising about the book.
At its core, Bronze Age Mindset is about the promotion of masculine strength and virtue as a means of bringing about political change. The world at present, according to its author, is sunk in a form of decentralised tyranny, ruled over by “bugmen” (a rough approximation of the Nietzschean “Last Man”) as well as matriarchal tyrants empowered by feminism and democracy. Beauty has been effaced from human society and the natural world is being despoiled.
The hypocritical supporter of liberalism, a physical weakling with a bad conscience, “pretends to be motivated by compassion, but is instead motivated by a titanic hatred of the well-turned out and beautiful”. In a style influenced by the norms of online debate, BAP punctuates each of his philosophical arguments with insults, blaming “obese high-fructose-corn-syrup-guzzling beasts” for suppressing masculine energy and acting as bad stewards of Earth’s natural treasures.
In the classical world, of which BAP is enamoured, he argues that a strong man could live to his full demonic potential. But under our modern Leviathan, no such greatness is possible. The liberal order suppresses the masculine will to power, using the dead weight of democracy to crush the true male elite of every Western society. In this degradation of strong men lies the degradation of society as whole. Over time, the entire culture of a liberal society becomes a gigantic monument to slave morality, exalting weakness and infirmity as its highest values. Falling deeper and deeper into decay, liberal civilisation simply lies prone for an external force to eventually deliver it the coup de grâce.
Bronze Age Mindset is funny and even surprisingly sentimental at times. In one memorably zany passage, it asks the reader to imagine a version of Mitt Romney “capable of acting like he looks” — one who becomes a piratical man of adventure who attempts to engineer a coup in the United States, sleeps with Vladimir Putin’s wife, and then dies fighting the US empire alongside wild tribesmen in Afghanistan. The thought-experiment is intended to make a serious point about a connection between physical ability and the will to power that has been lost in the modern world.
The book alternates between extreme disdain for people of other cultures and races and sympathy or even admiration for them; what’s constant is his extreme anti-feminism, which I suspect explains much of his appeal to young men. This is a book avowedly written by and for men, aimed at calling them to a particular conception of themselves and their role in the world. From an intellectual standpoint, simply accusing his work of being racist or misogynist does no good, even if those terms would probably stick in a public debate, because BAP self-consciously writes from the pre-liberal perspective of classical civilisation, where such terms had no meaning.
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SubscribeHealthy masculinity is timeless. All it takes is eating healthy, exercising and staying true to a set of values that resonate correctly with a reality that transcends our petty times. Just because strong men may no longer be in charge is no excuse to sit back and be complacent. The West has become craven and cowardly. We have weak leaders who cower before the most offended rather than let themselves be influenced by the most reasonable. Our institutions have become extractive and iatrogenic in that they are turning against the very people they were meant to serve. The West is rapidly becoming incompetent and evil. But like all such regimes, built on corruption and propaganda, it will eventually collapse under the weight of its own internal inconsistencies. Millions of men are waiting patiently in the sidelines for the whole crumbling edifice to come tumbling down.
“We have weak leaders who cower before the most offended rather than let themselves be influenced by the most reasonable.”
Excellent comment.
I can agree with a lot of that BUT “Millions of men are waiting patiently in the sidelines for the whole crumbling edifice to come tumbling down.” I am sure that real men, the sort who would not be complacent etc, would not just wait patiently but rather would take to the fight with determination and make it happen. We are definitely in the time of bad times and just need the ‘strong’ men to bring about the good times again.
I don’t think there has been a better time to be a man, so I think these poor young men who follow these far right fantasists have given in to the propaganda being spewed at them.
I always tell young men to consider this:
1. Very few women actually want to sleep with a woke, overweight man who can’t change a car tyre. Work at being physically strong, good at what you do, and comfortable in yourself, and you will have no problem attracting women.
2. No men in our time (in western societies) have to take a bullet in the head for their country. I am the first male in 6 generations of my family that was not forced, on finishing school, to sign up to the army and be wounded, killed or traumatised.
In other words, we have the best of both worlds, while we are told that we have the worst.
Women, these days, in contrast:
1.. Pressure themselves to be breadwinners but also compete with each other on the old traditional fronts of beauty and child rearing, working themselves into a hot mess.
2.. Are more financially empowered, but won’t date “down” (on the whole), so have fewer partners available to them
3.. Leave having children until their 30s, when their sexual market negotiating power is far reduced compared to their 20s.
4.. As a result of the above, often raise kids on their own in their 30s without any additional emotional or financial support, and thereafter feel they are both failing as mothers and as professionals (which, owing to the tradeoffs they have to make, is often the case).
The above reality is perfectly played out with modern feminism’s contradictions. On the one hand the theory demands that women be free of the constraints of the patriarchy, while at the same time demanding that the establishment (ie the patriarchy) protect women from predatory men. At the heart of this is a fantasy of being rescued by a strong entity. It is, in many ways, entirely Victorian.
The more things change, the more they remain the same.
I beg to differ and believe that “ there has been a better time to be a man”, or for that matter to be a woman: The Pax Romana.
From the moment one’s feet touched the underfloor heating in the morning to the end of the evening’s Bacchanalian entertainment one basked in the security of a world that rejoiced in the ‘mission statement’ “ to humble the mighty and protect the weak”*.
To fill the day there were a plethora of distractions on offer. The Theatre, for hours of Greek tragedy or worse. The Odion for Musical recitals or perhaps Poetry reading. The Amphitheater for carefully choreographed Blood sports and the Circus for Chariot Racing on an simply epic scale**. All this off course accompanied by a visit to the magnificent Baths that were ubiquitous in every city.
As night fell and one gazed over the ‘wine dark sea’, one happy reveller has left us his verdict “Occ est vivere!”-that is to live!
(*So Virgil tells us.)
(** Formula I with perhaps 30% fatalities.)
Only if you were wealthy, and the baths, except the hot spring ones wherein the water was continually changed, were fizzing with bacteria.
“Only if you were wealthy”…Yes the dreaded middle class or bourgeoisie! Perhaps 20%-25% of the population. In fact a Roman ‘invention’ and a vast improvement on what had gone before, and what would follow for centuries.
As to the baths, most were designed on a free flow system, as perfectly described and illustrated by the late Peter Connolly FSA in his seminal work on Pompeii. Off course there were some static- stagnant individual baths*, and people were aware of some of
the ‘hazards’ of bathing, but life was short and as they said:
“venari,lavari,ludere,ridere, occ est vivere!” – to hunt, to bathe, to play, to laugh, that is to LIVE!
Incidentally it wasn’t too bad being a slave, particularly if you were fortunate enough to belong to a Roman citizen. Far better in fact than being one in say Alabama in the 1850’s, trying to avoid the rhinoceros hide whip of an over enthusiastic overseer.
(*Recently described with some relish by Mary Beard (Cantab.)
It depended where you were, but surprisingly, the famed Roman cleanliness was a bit of an illusion:
To be frank it was more about pleasure than public health, although I doubt anyone was ‘cleaner’ until the modern era.*
As to the state of their bowels, that had probably more to do with their diet than anything else.
Your description would also fit the UK
perfectly from day 1 until 1960 at best.
Incidentally what is the source of your quote?
(* Presumably the provision of fresh water by Aqueduct didn’t count?)
I very much enjoyed your rendition of Roman life, and it does indeed seem worth experiencing.
Nah. The Etruscans appear to have had a lot more fun.
Really, can you source that? Most of what we know about them seems to be based on their spectacular tombs.
Just look at their art. Life was a party!
Without wishing to diminish the Etruscan achievement, much of it surely was inspired by the Greeks?
Additionally whist one might award the Etruscans with a ‘silver’ for partying, the ‘gold’ must go to Rome.
Awww…you guys. This erudite and utterly irrelevant discussion is exactly why I love the comment section of UnHerd. Priceless!
Apologies for that, but I’m afraid the urge to hurtle ‘off piste’ is irresistible.
Off piste is good…
Off piste is GREAT!
Presumably you would, as I would, take exception to the assertion that “Rome stumbled onwards for hundreds of years after Nero.” Rome increased in power after Nero, with the “Five Good Emperors” particularly responsible for its expansion; indeed, the word “good” in that context is not a reflection on their morals as much as on their effectiveness.
You have a point. On the other hand, this does not exactly bode well for men either.
It’s true that today, we have more freedoms and choices than we have ever had. But at the same time, the very basics are failing us. True, the situation you describe for women is disadvantageous to the maximum, that is IF the propaganda of feminism is adhered to. But it has ripple effects on the world of men as well.
Women don’t date down, which means they will forever chase men they can never have, in other words the upper 5-10%. At the same time, if a man has not won the genetic lottery, he would have to be extraordinarily successful to be attractive to women and land in this category. Think of short men or bald men – even with proper exercise and success, they will never be seen as attractive by most women.
Women may put off having children until their 30s, meaning that the average man will have to select from this age bracket, which is vastly made up of females who spent their 20s damaging themselves emotionally, up to the point where they hate men, and/or see them as an ATM. Yes, they will play faithful, but the guy has to watch out for holes poked into rubber…
A young man who has his career set might ask himself what he’s gonna do now: “get ripped” and sleep with women as a distraction, or “get rich” and finance children with a woman who wouldn’t have cared about him in her best years. Both don’t seem exceedingly attractive in the long term.
I agree.
Hayden Eastwood’s post was interesting, not least for offering a contrarian perspective on the relative advantages of being either a man or woman in the West today.
However, I feel that your response emphasises the point that, even if (some) modern women are bringing unhappiness on themselves, they are also thereby bringing their unhappiness on men, and indeed society in general.
Hayden – I always look forward to your intelligent, cogent posts! The evolution of neo-feminism in the woke era seems to me to be primarily about replacing patriarchy with matriarchy, not equality. The increasing tendency to denigrate and marginalise men (e.g. ‘toxic masculinity’, etc.) in western democracies may have unforeseen ramifications in the long term. Thankfully, I will (hopefully) not live long enough to suffer the consequences.
I’m very confused about your timeline.
For clarification are we 1) a hot mess from child rearing and “beauty” before or after 3) we have reduced our sexual market value and had children in our 30s or are we 4) rearing them alone because we didn’t 2) date down soon enough while we were hot messing “beauty” competitions with each other? Do explain.
And if we didn’t date down but then we are reduced to dating down once we are past it and then raising kids alone is that because the dating down wasn’t a good idea after all? Or is it just because we are no longer sexy and a hot mess?
Back to the good old days eh? Girls should be married off to older men straight out of school. When they are most sexually attractive to men.
You are wrong on multiple points.
There will always be women who will be pressured by capitalism to work. The capitalistic system is built upon inequality. If women went back to home, it will not improve the situation. Remember, that men will need resources to marry, and women will always prefer men with more resources.
There is no time period in history where women dated/married down in general terms. The majority of ancient human societies are speculated to perform polygyny.
You have never experienced how it’s like living in cultures where arranged marriages are still common. In these cultures, women are getting married much later these days. As long as a guy is wealthy, he’ll be able to get almost any woman. However, that’s a small minority of men. A heavy emphasis is put on family reputation, wealth and caste which often leads to people marrying late.
Women in both arranged marriage and western cultures will find it hard to marry men in their 20s. It’s because most men are trying to establish themselves during this period, with no guarantee that they will have enough resources by their 30s to marry a woman in her 20s.
You calling establishment patriarchal is the most ludicrous of all your assertions. If it was truly patriarchal, it won’t protect women from predatory men, who are statistically speaking, most likely to be their intimate partners than random strange men, because it won’t recognise marital rape. A truly patriarchal establishment will grant lower sentences to men who will murder their female relatives in heat of passion or in the name of honour, or it might even absolve them of committing these crimes.
“The Roman father was a powerful type, because he possessed almost unlimited powers within the family, according to later Roman law. He had the power of life and death over his children, meaning that at birth he could choose to raise them or kill them, and later he could punish them by execution.”
It’s not just the women who are dependent on state for protection. State protects all of its citizens from different vices. It punishes murderers, pedophiles and fraudsters.
The establishment definitely relies on men to enforce a set of moral codes on masses. It requires masculinity. But I’ll identify this masculinity as healthy, which fights toxic masculinity by punishing rapists, murderers and pedophiles.
I picked up the Bronze Age Mindset book without expecting anything, having been drawn to it by mere curiosity. It turned out to be a mixture of comedy, mindf*ck and absolute philosophical genius. Basic truths of humanity, life and I daresay even the universe are packaged into outrageously funny acronyms and made-up terms, that weirdly make instinctive sense at the moment one reads them for the very first time.
At the very basis lies, as the author of this article fittingly describes, the premise that strength, beauty and valor decrease in a society along with it’s masculinity, roughness and raw power. And that makes immediate, intuitive sense. Think about it: just a few hundred years ago, people would have duelled you to the death, had you just fleetingly insulted them. Nowadays verbal insults are seen as violence and must be punished by the government, because people are (supposedly) too weak to either fight back or even just shrug and take the insult.
It’s very clear that this is indeed a decay of masculinity, is it not? And don’t misunderstand: in this picture, it’s not like the opposite of masculinity is femininity, and a lack of masculinity automatically means a surplus of femininity. No, it’s much deeper than that. We are synonymously seeing a lack of real care for humanity (aside from political interests), a clear decrease in social cohesion, a complete loss of a sense of beauty. All of these are predominantly feminine virtues, as are humbleness, tenderness and vulnerability. The average “modern person” is loud, arrogant, selfish and vain, but ultimately hollow, without true meaning or lasting connections. They (we) lack both masculine and feminine virtues.
Bronze Age Mindset describes a real problem by using factual arguments, just expressed in a way that is humorous, entertaining and easy to read. It makes bold claims, but without expecting anything from the reader. Clearly, it’s written from a male perspective, and clearly, we would profit from a similar type of book written from a female perspective, which could be just as productive. Maybe such a book already exists and I just haven’t heard of it.
~~~~
I would like to add that the author is likely wrong about one thing: that technology is the great leveller. It is not. Yes, we have progressed very far from cave-dwelling proto-humans. But the more complicated a system becomes, the more easily it will break down. The gruesomely-named Reaper drone, that kills on pressing a button, requires an infinite amount of complicated technojunk, which is based on Physics, which in turn is based on Maths. If we make Maths racist, do you honestly think we will still be able to operate a Reaper drone? A more realistic outlook of the future is: a primitive race of humans, surviving amongst vast piles of scrap metal.
I love this comment, and on your recommendation will read Bronze Age Mindset (when I’m done re-reading the Flashman series). If you publish a book, I’ll read yours, too!
I do recommend the book, and in the same vein I would also recommend the slightly more dated works Principia Discordia and the Book of the Subgenius. These works are best kept for in-between entertainment and small, controlled doses of constructive madness.
Also, your kind words are appreciated.
I shall probably read the book myself… but you comment about the premise that strength, beauty and valour decrease in a society along with it’s masculinity, roughness and raw power made me think about the Hero’s Journey. The idea that a hero awakes to his (or her) problems, undertakes various tasks and ordeals, and returns to the community bearing a gift or the benefit of his (or hers, less often) enlightenment.
You don’t get to hear of heroes very much nowadays. Promising individuals are often pulled down by the jealous pack. We expect to find feet of clay.
Very fitting remark. The hero’s journey, I would argue, is necessary for the individual to find out who they are, nurture their inner strength and grow into the best version of themselves. However, nowadays there is so little risk involved with everything, and children tend to be spoiled and overprotected. They never really get the chance to risk things, be responsible for themselves and develop true inner strength. Instead, they are released into the world late as young adults, believing that everything revolves around them (because it always did), and that people will give them everything they could want for free (because that’s how it always was) and the most important thing is being liked (mostly online).
Alas, if there is no heroes journey, there is also no gift for the community.
Wonderfully put! And so true – strength, understanding, perspective, responsibility, all spring out of an experience of difficulty, compromise and the need to strive. This is equally true for men and women. Blaming the ‘other’ and demanding one’s ‘rights’ will always, always lead to the erosion of one’s own foundations. And heroism has to be built on strong foundations. The word hero, along with ‘tragedy’, ‘suffering’, ‘victim’, even ’empathy’ have become so degraded as to be mere flotsam on the froth of modern culture.
As for technology – rubbish in, rubbish out – and wait and see what happens as the last generation of real bottom-up engineers finally retires and dies off……
This is one of the most interesting essays I’ve read on Unherd.
The key seems to be this sentence: “Trapped in its nostalgia for the “Bronze Age”, the book fails to take into account the most important variable driving human affairs: technology.”
If technology is allowed to develop on its current course, fed by globalization and almost unlimited resources, the kind of men BAP envisages are probably doomed to irrelevance.
But will technology continue to develop? I was fascinated by the 2021 Texas power crisis when, during the winter, poorly maintained and modernized power grids failed in Texas and it was impossible to import electricity from other states because Texas had opted out of the state consortium that existed to provide that service. Many Texans went days with no electricity and they had no idea how to look after themselves. They were far removed from the tough, resilient Bronze Age warriors envisaged by BAP, but I suspect their survival skills were on par with those of most people in the developed world.
What happens if parts of our basic energy infrastructure fail? Is it inconceivable that cyberterrorists disable large parts of US (or Chinese or Russian) infrastructure for significant periods of time?
What if globalization falters to the point that key technology enablers, such as microchips or rare earth elements, are no longer abundantly available? Is technological development truly a given?
Catastrophes happen, whether electromagnetic pulses from solar flares, or viruses with the transmissibility of omicron and the lethality of Ebola. Then we’ll discover if BAP and his colleagues are as tough as they think they are.
Well said, those thousands of satellites that circle our earth are a disaster waiting to happen.
Aptly put. The whole “green” campaign, paired with the aftereffects of the “pandemic” campaign, is going to lead to a general lack of resources and sparseness of energy, sooner rather than later. Big government is finished if we can’t guarantee the power grid. Trends like local production & consumption will once again lead to stronger cohesion within smaller units of society. Currency is another huge issue. We have many challenges to face that simply can’t be solved with technology, especially if Math is racist.
Many men today can’t even change a lightbulb, unclog a toilet or lop off a dead branch from a tree. Just walk through a Wal-Mart anywhere in the U.S. and see what men have become.
It’s no wonder that movies are filled with manly men, doing manly things. Who would go watch a movie about an obnoxious, obese, chalky wanker sitting on a couch?
‘BAP punctuates each of his philosophical arguments with insults, blaming “obese high-fructose-corn-syrup-guzzling beasts” for suppressing masculine energy and acting as bad stewards of Earth’s natural treasures.’
This certainly resonated.
This is more observation than insult.
True! Well…. maybe both.
I did find this funny. Though I feel compelled to point out that you can be beautiful at any level of high fructose ingestion.
Maybe some beauty will show through, but health is destroyed.
The writer next needs to get into ‘The Fourth Turning’ theory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generational_theory
Howe was on Wealthion, which I watch, but have not got much time for this stuff and skipped this video, but it is a big thing now days amongst the Perma-Bears expecting the market collapse – but it would fit in very well with BAP I suppose. (Wealthion and Howe and the 4th turning)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8Ndnpfw69w
““The radical right is the true ‘other’ in our culture. Unlike the radical left, its authors are not found in university curricula, and sometimes not even in university libraries,” writes Rose, a scholar of modern religious thought. “We picture them in cabins in Idaho broadcasting over shortwave radio, not as scholars or artists who can read Sanskrit.” But this is a false image. Whether one supports or loathes their ideas, many such thinkers are indeed deeply erudite, devoting their lives to studying the human condition as they see it.”
Haha, I’ve been all over North Idaho and Montana working in the remote parts, and there is a kind there – not too intellectual, but smart, and not looking to export their politics, but just living back in the woods – But some of us on the Center Right have spent our lives studying the human condition – and end up finding we are correct, the more we look at the historical and modern human situation.
But does technology make masculinity obsolete? I worry it may to a degree – the modern males are pretty wimpy, and society is making them more so… which is a bad thing. If women were losing their feminine quality I would think it terrible, so are women losing it too?
The poster J Bryant points out how the next conflict may not be an international shooting war, but a war of disrupting the other’s utilities which maintain our complex economy. The grid, the pipelines, the transport computers of the truckers, freight, trains, airplanes, internet…. the energy and food supply and everything is so completely fragile. Maybe the future is headed to chaos. My guess is if Biden goes too Corn-Pop on Putin over Ukraine we will find out just how vulnerable the grid is.
Yes, women are losing their feminine virtues as well. They are now posing as men, missing the best of either world.
We as a society have lost both masculine and feminine virtues. It’s a structural problem, decay, rot – that which appears in so many fables, fairytales, movies, video games…
…an East Asian perspective might be that the chaos is because the forces of Yin are currently ascendent. And it’s a paradox of the interplay of the masculine and feminine that, each achieves the opposite of what it strives for.
Since the dawn all wars have been about utilities. Even the ones you don`t think have been, when you scratch deep enough you will most likely find they were
That energy and food supplies now seem so fragile is but a reminder that we, those of us inhabiting the economically and technologically strong countries, are but a poor decision away from a return to the realities that faced our ancestors (and indeed face many a few billion souls less well heeled today).
All a reminder of how quickly we could return to the hard basic primeval struggles to live, a place where men have to be men and women need to be women, all as a prerequisite just to survive…ha ha.
I’ve been a man of the right since before I could vote. I’m 71. I don’t recognize the American right that I knew and know in anything in this article or most other articles on the subject from European leftist pseudo intellectuals. But then, from what little I know about the European right, the American right is quite different, which what may be the reason Europeans can’t figure out what’s with the American right.
Unlike the European right, the American right contains a dominant segment of libertarian thought. We prefer less government regulation, consistently, from Reagan to Trump. The Republican leaders who tend to like more regulation, for example the Bush family, receive far less support from the right because of it. The American right wants lower taxes, a smaller federal government, and more entreprenurial business environment.
The American left wants as much identity voting as possible. I suspect this is because no matter how bad the government is, your identity never changes. So even if the governance is terrible, you will vote for it because your identity tells you to.
It is as part of identity voting that the American left developed Critical Racist Theory. CRT says that terms like “colorblind” and “meritocracy” are terms of white supremacy. By promoting a racial spoils system, the left hopes to bind racial groups to its cause by patronage.
The right counters with the argument that all men are created equal, and are, as individuals, equal before the law. This was the argument that Dr. Martin Luther King made, based on the Declaration of Independence.
The American right sees individuals, rather than groups, having rights. These rights are guaranteed by the Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights, and by the rule of law. The American right wants government by the consent of the governed. The left wants government by leftist “experts,” who follow The Science (TM), which says whatever is convenient at the moment. The left tends to govern by regulation and decree far more than the American right.
Government by “experts” is unpopular with the lower classes, which is why the American right has attracted more and more support from lower class workers. “Experts” are out of touch with real people. While “experts” claim to know what’s good for folks better than they do for themselves, it’s patently not true.
Totally agree. As Robert Nozick espoused on 1974, any state larger than a minimal state infringes the rights of individuals. When you get groups of people arranged around identity politics, you get what Carl Jung observed to be the main endeavour of all totalitarian States: to undermine personal relationships through fear and mistrust, the result being an atomized mass in which the human psyche is completely stifled. This is no longer the USSR as he wrote in the 50s but the ‘liberal’ west!
This article is far more interesting than its title, which promised another boring article on a “far right” that is vastly outnumbered by its far left commentators.
A recommended read. I don’t have any answers.
I will note in response to Hayden Eastwood below, that technology has made flat tyres increasingly unlikely. I haven’t changed one for ages.
As someone who lurks in, and rather appreciates, Radical Right circles, I have… confusing thoughts on Bronze Age Pervert. For one, his claim that much of the damage occuring today is due to a smothering matriachy / women. There’s some power to this claim, with figures such as Hillary Clinton, ‘girlboss feminism’, etc brining much toxicity to our world. But these women represent a small percentage of their gender, and this claim is made ludicrous when you recall the powerful men who supported such women, and were weak enough to go along. This is the crux of the Karen issue. Who do we loathe more? The Karen who insists everyone wears a mask, bleeps on about the ‘new normal’ and adopts puritan-like insanity on freedom of speech? Or, the Boris Johnsons, the Barack Obamas, the WEF investment bankers who do nothing, or even endorse such Karen-like behaviour?
Bronze Age Pervet is misleading his audience when he attributes weakness to women, or certain races. I don’t agree with the conflation between masculinity and power, before the former does not guarantee the latter.
Secondly, BAP gets it wrong in his nostalgia. Feminism, the Enlightenment, Civil Rights did not come out of nowhere. You can’t ‘RETVRN’ to Medieval London, because it will always morph into Modern London. I may begrude medieval historians who morph the Middle Ages into a proto-Reformation era. But they do have a point in that the seeds of Martin Luther were planted centuries in advance. The answer is not ‘retvrn’ but revolution; using the past to build something new, which is what Napoleon attempted to do.
That said, the strongest point BAP makes is stressing the harm of weakness. He is absolutely correct to point out our ongoing spirituality crisis and atomisation. But his solution and diagnosis of the problem is unsatisfying.
In my view BAP is little more than Evola diluted and sanitised for a modern audience. The latter had far more substance, and was far more willing to venture into the arcane and criticise aspects of the right he disagreed with.
I sometimes wonder how much more sexually satisfied & at ease people might be if Evola was widely read. (Though there’s much nonsense in his work, IMO)
Murtaza Hussain claims: ‘the link between physical prowess and the ability to exercise power has been severed.’ However, I suggest that any society defending itself militarily will run out of Reaper drones, bombs and bullets, long before it runs out of adversaries.
Furthermore, I suspect we continuously underestimate the fragility of the modern status quo. There’s an adage in the emergency planning world: ‘We’re only ever three meals from anarchy.’ That is, it takes only three missed meals for modern society to collapse.
I fear that any world view that sees brawn as obsolete is deceiving itself.
As worrying is the attraction of an old-fashioned major war to fit young men of the type you describe. There were no Incels in the Red Army as they swept across Eastern Europe.
Exactly this – civilisation is fragile. It starts crumbling once we give up on education and render ourselves unable to pass on knowledge to future generations. We are three meals from anarchy and three generations from the Stone Age. I find the celebration of ignorance as ‘authenticity’ one of the more depressing aspects of contemporary society, because it result in people who are not only ignorant but proud of it.
A lot of very thick people who have no grasp of logic seem to be able to present themselves as experts in contemporary woke culture. They play to the gallery of those who want to solve historical wrongs by messing up everything for those who apparently abuse their power. I didn’t choose to be a white bloke but I’m certainly not skulking around apologising for it. ‘Lived experience’ is the biggest intellectual hoax of the 21st century!
This is of course all just Nietzsche for the 21c.
BAP is obviously right in some way though, the pathetic elements of the last 60 years of modernity are contemptible and especially as manifest in under 40s overall, whether they willed it or not:
the disregard for intellectual and spiritual concentration and vigour,
the distractions of endless technologies and a scientist philosophy of world,
extreme feminism entering every sphere of life (e.g. “women are the future i.e. men are the past”),
general physical atrophy affecting health, reproduction and capacity
passive aggressiveness,
dependence on the state,
cotowing to authority en masse,
social activ-isms turned to default religions,
low birth rates,
low marriage and young pro life family uptake,
lack of cohesive value structure per Western nation,
Lack of nationalism in it’s non-fascist form, i.e. lack of a non-multicultural assimilation based nationality (think U.S.A as a kind of example of the best achieved in this respect) and unity based on shared values, not the current agglomeration of value structures such as in the UK i.e. of segregation and glorification of it as diversity as social fabrics crumble.
Outsourcing manufacturing and craft to developing countries,
Productivity overall is down in all Western nations despite reliant efficient technologies
Stagnation of the arts, music and culture
…. And more of course
So what’s been good?
Less death,
Less dependence on genetic fitness
More access to information and resources
Decreased incidence of all out war and carnage
More opportunities for women and minorities
More international relations, i.e. interdependence of nations, peoples and families, tying people to the propagation of peace over war
Science as tool for knowledge production and overall suffering reduction
… Etc.
The point is you can’t have it all but these outcomes in one, but they are not necessarily one or the other, it’s about value systems, which is what Nietzsche was basically talking about. What values should you hold to create a flourishing exciting but mostly peaceful society? Clearly a mix of traditional and modern liberal ones. The problem is we have no unified value system to complete that mix, because of the excessive multiculturalism we have espoused. Again a little bit of pro multiculturalism is fine, because it can lead to the assimilation of new values necessary to make a novel and unified society, but now we are faced with a society that doesn’t want to come together but wants to skip that hard step of integration and instead worship science, materialism, liberalism and diversity as it’s saviour. That won’t work, there has to be a kind of unity otherwise things cannot be grown efficiently, life might appear on the march and ordered for flourishing but it doesn’t explode like flora, it just knots itself in an endless kind of weed that can’t express itself and subsequently is subdued by itself.
That’s one of the fundamental flaws of modernity: true expression has become near impossible because the apparently limitlessness of such an endless and diverse culture offers little of real constraints to the imagination, and such a state of affairs is the death of creative ability, whether in art, social organisation or value creation.
In these discussions about the right, I’m surprised Ayn Rand never gets a mention. It’s a long time since I read it, but, from memory, Atlas Shrugged describes a society where the doers – the entrepreneurs, the engineers and the scientists, withdraw from society and leave the diversity officers, humanities professor’s and AOCs to get on with it.
It seems to me some toned down version of that would actually be a viable political project. It may even be happening as business flees to red states.
I suspect BAP bears as much physical resemblance to a Spartan warrior as AH did to the idealised A r y a n. It’s to be hoped he isn’t as successful in enacting his fantasies.
She’s not mentioned partly because she was a scarcely literate hypocrite who ended up on benefits.
And partly already given hyper individualism a try and it’s left us in the mess we are in.
A fascinating article and lots of food for thought. Whilst I haven’t read Bronze Age Mindset, I thought it was interesting that Murtaza Hussain’s analysis of the ability to exercise power today points to using drones and automated warfare. For me, real moral and physical courage and strength akin to that of the classical age is to be found in standing up to oppressive group-think and using reason to achieve that. The leaders of the future will grapple with cancel culture’s authoritarianism and that will take a lot of actual balls to deal with the pile-ons from so-called liberals who want dissent violently quashed.
I feel like this is a very fair analysis of the far right in this day and age, masculinity has been suppressed in every form we have people who truly believe it’s best to go is back to the bronze age..
However the one place I’d have to disagree with this article is on technology. I would content that technology does not march on by itself, it is the collective effort of thousands of individuals who make things better and find new ways to do things. Technology is not some alien force which we bow to, technology is a tool WE invent to benefit our lives. There is a place for both masculinity and technology but we must decide for ourselves what is it exactly we want this technology to do? Do we want it to replace us or do we want it to help us.
I think we can only see the existence of such writers and their followers as a symptom of malaise rather than any kind of way out of it. And they might well have found themselves as ill-fitted to the (real) Bronze Age as they seem to be to the modern world.
They seem to imagine themselves as misplaced aristocrats, who in a sane world would rule and dominate. But how much of that is narcissistic self-flattery?
Like some of the anti feminist YouTubers, they can be funny, and useful in that they say what the rest of us are scared to – but for serious proposals for a better future? Not so much!
The author does not endorse the reality of BAP so much as learns from his allegory. And wisely so. It sounds as if it could be a bit pedantic. But giving the benefit of the doubt I can say this ….. Having 4 grown children and a son-in-law, all of whom excel in the academic and technological world, my prayer is that society will stabilize into a healthy feminism and a healthy masculinity. Imagination can help us avert the sad extremes that lead to loneliness. Ayn Rand was just a fantasizer as well. Maybe, in time, BA Mindset will join the ranks of Animal Farm and Atlas Shrugged as cautionary instruction and inspiration.
It’s interesting to me that the word “Trump” appears in so many completely unrelated articles. It’s almost as if a writer has to include the word in order to have anything published.
And given Biden’s stellar performance so far, the US will be begging to have Trump come back and fix their woke/broke society/economy, energy, immigration and inequality issues in 2024
tldr: Nietzsche Nietzsche Nietzsche.
Who died insane & was pretty much an incel. Though I’d agree there’s much truth in his work.
“A married philosopher belongs in comedy.”
It used to be that Hollywood produced this kind of output not long ago. Now that they stopped doing it, there’s a market niche here probably that’s being taken.
Technology has been stagnating since the 1970s. The only development of any import for the past half century is the Internet. I am not sure appealing to technology defeats the premise. If anything technology and its increasing infirmity are aspects of the same decline in societal virility this person is talking about.
I’m not so sure. Back in the early 70s it was still not common to have a phone in the house. And now in a world of 8 billion people approximately 5 billion carry a mobile phone.
The fact that many mobile phones are also a computer, a camera, and bank card suggests that technology has advanced. Whether that is a good thing or not is another issue.
Great and intelligently written article. Criticism of BAP‘s technology/modernism blindness on spot.
Authentic masculinity is manifested in the man who is able to faithfully love one woman and provide for her and her children. The 21-century enhancement of this principle includes the man’s capacity to accept and assist his woman’s multitasking to include sustenance provision.
Also. . .the improvement and education of their children’s minds is also a feature of this 21st century masculizing re-definition. . . as opposed to his supervision of mere physical, athletic and work proficiencies.
Even now, progressives are consciously planning for a future where men’s most basic procreative functions can be made obsolete through genetic engineering.
Scientists also say that we are within 10 years of developing an artificial womb. So by that token both sexes will be “obsolete.” I don’t either will be, though.
Not sure I would call this guy a “thinker.” He seems to have the same knowledge of history that an average Hollywood writer or video game developer has, i.e., the same mentality that produced Braveheart.
differing points of view around a mid point are to be encouraged and attempts at understanding and compromise achieved. Extremes are the dangerous places.
differing points of view around a mid point are to be encouraged and attempts at understanding and compromise achieved. Extremes are the dangerous places.
Good article, though I’d agree with those saying that Tech isn’t necessarily BAP’s achilies heal. Tech has all sorts of vulnerabilities in addition to the arguments others have given, e.g. according to some we’re about due for another big Solar EMP. And even without any major tech outage, BAP types might have succeeded in their Jan 7 coup attempt if only Pence & 4 or 5 key others had chose differently (If it’s true, as various sources claim, that the Donald had clear majority support in the Police.)
For me the big weakness is the Pirate idea. IMO (& I used to mix with loads due to being heavily into boxing & footie until quite recently) most physically powerful Chad / chad lite types are more attracted to opposite archetypes, e.g. Chivalrous knights or other sorts of heroes. Some would rather die than turn into the opposite of their inner image. Also, while there may be exceptions in certain times & places, there generally is probably 100 who’d want a benevolent masculine type leader for every one who dreams of serving a pirate.
and the BAPs had remembered to their bring guns to the “insurrection”!
and the BAPs had remembered to their bring guns to the “insurrection”!
Good article, though I’d agree with those saying that Tech isn’t necessarily BAP’s achilies heal. Tech has all sorts of vulnerabilities in addition to the arguments others have given, e.g. according to some we’re about due for another big Solar EMP. And even without any major tech outage, BAP types might have succeeded in their Jan 7 coup attempt if only Pence & 4 or 5 key others had chose differently (If it’s true, as various sources claim, that the Donald had clear majority support in the Police.)
For me the big weakness is the Pirate idea. IMO (& I used to mix with loads due to being heavily into boxing & footie until quite recently) most physically powerful Chad / chad lite types are more attracted to opposite archetypes, e.g. Chivalrous knights or other sorts of heroes. Some would rather die than turn into the opposite of their inner image. Also, while there may be exceptions in certain times & places, there generally is probably 100 who’d want a benevolent masculine type leader for every one who dreams of serving a pirate.
I can see no particular connection between “the Right”–radical or otherwise–with this quirky fringe philosophy, and Mr. Hussain does not explain why he characterizes it as such. The “far” Right and “far” Left both want to abolish individual freedom and individual rights–they just take different paths to arrive at the same place. BAP could fall into either camp; in fact, it seems to me that the best exemplar of his philosophy today would be Vladimir Putin.