Fæder

Notes on Patriarchy 2

The Book of Sirach, written in a spiral

Amidst ongoings at “The Event”, a gathering of reactionaries and traditionalists in late August, I noted some interesting behavior of the various men who had paid to be there. I would say about five percent were somewhere on the spectrum, fifteen percent had some very promising characteristics, ten percent were the actual speakers, and seventy percent were just there to listen. Now, the handful of spectrumites were quite amusing. They would stand in the corner of the room, motionless, robotic. Perhaps even something akin to a right wing NPC. It was also rather amusing to notice whenever internet celebrities like Sargon waded to the bar, a host of such specrumites would gather ‘round him until he had his fill of it and cut away, to which they would return to their eternal statue-like pause. I pitied them a bit and tried interacting with them, and sometimes grabbing two of them and introducing them to each other so that, perchance, something of a friendship may be a good take away for them. I didn’t stay long in such arrangements I made, but I am glad I took on the patriarchal role of bond-maker between young men with otherwise no clear idea where they were, or what they were doing.

Now, for the fifteen percenters - suit wearing gentlemen with orator voices and a host of history and philosophical knowledge - there was a different dynamic that I found incredible. Many of these youths were eager to be revolutionaries and do something. I am reminded of Tolkien’s description of Éomer after his father’s death, when all hope seemed lost and he committed his mind body and soul to fight to the death:

Out of doubt, out of dark to the day's rising
I came singing in the sun, sword unsheathing.
To hope's end I rode and to heart's breaking:
Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red nightfall!

These staves he spoke, yet he laughed as he said them. For once more lust of battle was on him; and he was still unscathed, and he was young, and he was king: the lord of a fell people. And lo! even as he laughed at despair he looked out again on the black ships, and he lifted up his sword to defy them.

Indeed these fifteen percenters were unscathed, they were young, and they were - even if in their own minds - kings.

That’s great potential, but also plenty of room for travesty. After all, if even one of these people takes a wrong turn to become an Anglohadist, the rest would suffer irreparable breaking of trust and hope and likely return to their pod-lives with set careers and no hope for happiness or meaning. A father is needed for them too, though one of higher caliber than I can offer.

Through The Event, many showed promising capacity to father these young men. I enjoyed watching Carl Benjamin outright bully them out of infantile delusions of revolution by pointing out they had no revolutionaries and they certainly were not going to be them. I also enjoyed Mark’s directing of positive vision in a local sense, by serving your local community and being a father figure to the broken families which now constitute the majority of our civilization. And of course, Academic Agent’s advocation for becoming a Vanguard Elite for some unknown persona of history to come from the sea of gentiles. I rather like Vanguardism but this idea of being a floating collective brain for a revolution you do not start but hope manifests itself is a bit detached from reality. There is a chance the Caesar never comes. That his legions never cross the Rubicon. Or that he simply finds you wanting and not worthy to serve his new regime. That all your investment into being a hidden elite that will come out of the shadows when a Man of History reveals himself may come to naught. There is simply a chance the Lord God Almighty determines your civilization isn’t worth saving, and instead he sends Attila, or Khan, to slaughters you all. Elites, degenerates, and all. In fact, I rather suspect that is our fate.

For that reason I did find Mark and Carl’s direction better, if only to the ends that it will result in that Man of History, rather than waiting for one to self-manifest. Listening to these views - while many felt cheerful, I actually felt a bit depressed. I believe what I witnessed amounts to a fatherless conservatism. And I believe I can sum up many of the speeches with the following parable:

The Conservative lives his way into victory, the Progressive hurts himself into victory.

The fact is: if a child has nothing they want to conserve, they won’t become a conservative. Strip a child of a functioning family, of loyal friends, of meaningful roles - of any purpose at all - and that child will no longer see anything left to conserve. That child will want to progress - progress to anything else that isn’t the hell he dwells in. However, give a child these things - even some or partial of these things - and that child will develop a sense of ownership of what they have. That child will want to preserve it. And you will make a conservative out of him. But, who is bringing up such children? Do you really think you can send your children to education or clubs, who have as a manifestic goal the destruction of all you value, and expect to produce someone who wants to conserve what they were taught to hate?

Of course, I am also using words from a relic era of politics here. We may begin dropping the phrase Conservative for Traditionalist, or perhaps even Preservationist when our culture becomes a minority in our own homelands.

And so I am left depressed by The Event. Without a patriarch, what will become of these Fifteen Percenters? Like Progressives, they have nothing left in the current culture that they want to conserve. Like progressives, they want to burn down all the institutions. What meaningfully differentiates them from a progressive? Such fatherless youths can only be used and discarded by someone else.

And who will be their Father? Who will take their physical life, their spiritual life, and any other parts of their life in the depths unknown of consciousness, and bear them as sons of a new dawn? I recall specifically when Carl essentially bullied one lad barely into his twenties who is known among our circles, and who after The Event started joking how we can get rid of Carl. His protestation was akin to a Son who knew his Father spoke correctly, but didn’t like it. Yet Carl can’t be the Patriarch. Nor can anyone at the Event. Yet without a patriarch, they are essentially progressives in a different direction. We are waiting for our Patriarch, and most imagine he will be some lofty military man with a large part of the population behind him. How reminiscent of the delusional zealots Christ encountered in First Century Palestine, awaiting a military savior against Rome. And Christ’s command? Consider the Lilies...

It’s worth considering. How well dressed the Lord makes them while we pray for military might. The Lord still has time to make art - and even temporary art - while we beg for some lofty permanent intervention from our creator. When Jews awaited salvation from Babylon, God instead ordered them to build a garden in Babylon - In Babylon, the city of gardens. A place to consider the lilies while their world died around them. We will have to plant a Garden in Babylon today. We will have to embrace becoming but one garden among many. If you have faith in your garden being better than everyone else’s, why would you fear the opportunity to prove it?

We will have to foster Men of History for ourselves. We have to recognize that we won’t receive a Patriarch, we will make Patriarchs for our children with God’s promises. Take ownership where our own parents failed to. Tolerate fewer weeds, and work the soil a bit more.

Because we know Babylon is burning. There’s no reason to wait for the Ashes. They are already falling from above. Our own Dark Manna.