josef k

you might find it sympathetic. It is informed by hIs experience of his own version of the blogosphere getting pulled to the far right, becoming virulently anti Semitic, holocaust deniers, fascists (openly declared, self identified fascists) etc. He's trying to make a case for a kind of left mysticism essentially. A stance which allows for magic and the imagination without becoming authoritarian or 'traditionalist' in the Evola way.

I think that's possible too but not many people agree with me. Beyond Blake there aren't a huge number of examples.

The piece was written in 2014. He's read Evola, Guenon, etc extensively, finds it useful, often quotes it to me. I like him, he's my friend, and I admire him. He's helped me and inspired me. I don't think he or I are calling you a fascist. Specially given he's never heard of you.

Burroughs to a degree. I love Burroughs obviously, he's a master, but there's uh, troubling aspects.

luka said:

The piece was written in 2014. He's read Evola, Guenon, etc extensively, finds it useful, often quotes it to me. I like him, he's my friend, and I admire him. He's helped me and inspired me. I don't think he or I are calling you a fascist. Specially given he's never heard of you.

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I've read them too. I am not suggesting he is calling me a fascist, for goodness sake. I'm simply saying that if you say that anyone saying they are 'beyond left or right' inevitably swigs right, then it implies the only other option is to remain on the 'left' with all the paranoids, the denouncers, the anxiety and the bullying and I'm not into that. I'll read the piece properly though and come up with something more considered later hopefully - I am very up for and into the idea of left mysticism - it tallies with *some* experiences I've had, or aspects of them at least. But it might have to be a left that looks very, very different from the kind that is currently going mad denouncing me and trying to lose me work.

My starting point would be that any attempt to exit the vampire castle, if we're going to call it that, which emboldens racists, mysoginists, hate-mongers of all stripes, is a non-starter. This is what I disagree with vim about. (I think Vimothy is saying that any attempt to exit necessarily emboldens racists, mysoginists, hate mongers of all stripes, and that this can't be helped) Crowds with pitchforks, i think we all agree, are A Bad Thing. I agree with Eden in as much as I consider those crowds and those pitchforks to be endemic to Twitter, the art world, and, perhaps to a lesser degree, academia, and virtually non existent outside of those spheres. I'm not inclined to conflate the worlds of art, university and social media with the entirety of reality. My own life is not impinged on by this stuff in the slightest. At least not until Vimothy insists I start thinking about it. I don't know a single person with a pitchfork. I dont know a single person who issues denunciations. Most people don't care.

Vimothy did promise last night that he will defend me when it is my turn to be denounced though. That was sweet of him.

Nina, I didn't know anything about you until I just looked you up, so bits of the conversation above were a bit confusing. Now, thanks to the internet, less so.

(1) People trying to get you to lose your main job must be really stressful and horrible, and I sympathise on that score.

(2) Your disingenuous response to the whole thing is bizarre. You know that the two people with you in that video, who you seem to broadly agree with on most things, are controversial for good reason. One for defending the 'right' of a space to put on far-right speakers, and one for saying needlessly provocative things in the manner of a 13 year old who craves attention.

What did you expect, not to be criticised?

(3) You seem to have a lot of ideas that are very close to the 'men's rights' schtick. "We can see society as being really anti-men in many, many ways" is a particular low point in that video - whether it's you or Jordan Peterson saying it doesn't really matter. For the examples you give, then the dominant axes of discrimination are race and class rather than maleness. Acknowledging that men have in some senses constructed a prison of expectations for themselves and other men, for example (while also acknowledging that the prison of expectations they have created for women is much worse), would avoid the bizarre implication that society had somehow been created independently of men and was now returning to victimise them.

Dunno about this 'prison of expectations' but the prison of prison that men have constructed for other men is a pretty good place to start if you're taking about big gender inequalities.

So it's clear that it's men themselves who create the gender inequality with which you've chosen to start. So...who's gonna change that, then? Why might men be in the majority in prison? And why might working class men and non-white men be disproportionately represented? The presentation of men as a monolithic category is also unhelpful.

baboon2004 said:

Why might men be in the majority in prison?

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Well they commit more crime than women but are disproportionately jailed even if you take that into account. The criminal justice system treats men much more harshly than women for nearly all types of crime.

baboon2004 said:

The presentation of men as a monolithic category is also unhelpful.

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Agreed. The class of (mostly) men who make this country's laws doesn't intersect with the class of (overwhelmingly) men who fill its prisons, obviously. Hence the 'men/other men' distinction in my last post.

Nina said:

As far as I know, Evola actually successfuly sued someone for calling him a fasicst during his lifetime.

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There must be better ways of determining whether or not someone is a fascist than libel laws, or weird anonymous blogs with no evidence.

I knew people in the 90s who really rated Evola's writings on yoga, but they were pretty clear he was a fascist as well - and I think it's undeniable that he's one of the major influences for esoteric fascists.

It seems pretty clear to me that Evola was sexist, racist, conservative, and elitist. His differences with Hitler and Mussolini seem more sectarian ideological disputes between people on the same side than denunciations. For example he was hugely anti-semitic but thought that the Nazis fetishised anti-semitism too much.

Evola was arrested a few years after World War 2 on charges of inspiring a clandestine fascist organisation. He was acquitted of that charge, but his defence statement includes this:

I have defended, and I still defend, “fascist ideas,” not inasmuch as they are “fascist” but in the measure that they revive ideas superior and anterior to Fascism. As such they belong to the heritage of the hierarchical, aristocratic, and traditional conception of the State, a conception having a universal character and maintained in Europe up to the French Revolution. In fact, the position that I have defended and continue to defend, as an independent man—because I have never been enrolled in any party, not in the PNF [Partito Nazionale Fascista], the PRF [Partito Repubblicano Fascista], or the MSI—should not be called “fascist” but traditional and counterrevolutionary.

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If there is a different legal case to this one then I would be interesting in knowing about it. Even supposing he had won a libel case, it's entirely possible that this was just covering his arse in the period after the war.

I think his ideas and followers speak for themselves. If there is a truly anti-fascist reading of Evola then that would surprise me.

https://babe.net/2018/05/17/justin-murphy-hot-take-abortion-57232

What’s truly pathetic is that this edgelord take on necrophilia was already resolved decades ago when Stewart Home produced his “necro cards” as a spoof on organ donor cards - consenting to having your body used by necrophiliacs after your death.

john eden said:

https://babe.net/2018/05/17/justin-murphy-hot-take-abortion-57232

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Did you expect the sort of magnitude of response that you ended up getting?

No, of course not. Unless you're some sort of provocateur, you'd never really expect that to happen.

You wouldn't consider yourself a provocateur?

No. Not at all.

So you didn't think that comparing getting an abortion to necrophilia was going to be a provocative opinion?

No.

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the great intellectual cop out: "it was just a thought experiment". good to know enlightened academics can be juvenile trolls just like anyone else...albeit in "elevated" form.

Going back to the "open letter" it seems to veer wildly between different levels - for instance it accuses them of "quoting GK Chesterton uncritically" which isn't that bad (he was a complex character) is it? And

Miller and Power respond to a livestream comment by making the Grey Wolves hand gesture (middle two fingers and thumb together with index and little fingers stretched out). This is the salutation gesture of the Grey Wolves, an ultra-nationalist pan-Turkic organisation that has been described as a 'death squad' for its political executions of leftists in 1970s Turkey. It is often described as neo-Nazi and has been known to parade Nazi flags with Turkish phrases on them at demonstrations. The Austrian government proscribed the hand gesture in February 2019 as a neo-Nazi hate symbol, and the German government is currently attempting to follow suit. The Grey Wolves and their supporter networks are known by anti-fascists to have bases in community centres and businesses in North London, as well as links to British Nationalist neo-Nazis.

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I haven't seen the video but is there any truth whatsoever in this? I find it hard to believe.

No it's ridiculous. Hysterical. Nonsensical. Mental illness.

Im starting to really hate this thread though.

Yeah you can get John Eden to tut and fret like a disappointed dad and get hysterical denunciations from the mentally ill fringes but so what? It just makes everyone more unhappy than they already are. Its depressing, nasty, cheap

So many better ways to have fun.

Nothing to be gained. You can't win.

luka said:

So many better ways to have fun.

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agree...except if one is a trollish attention seeker, in which case it's the primary way to have fun.