A good meatspace friend of mine has started a blog called Castle Saint John. I highly recommend you guys check it out. It’s definitely still in the early stages but I am confident that ‘thebaron73’ will turn out to make a valuable contribution to the reactionary blogosphere. I am especially looking forward to reactionary works on masculinity that dont necessarily result from an attempt to baptise PUA techniques and insights, however valuable those might be.
Recently, Coronation Street star Michael Le Vell (whom I had not previously heard of) was accused, and subsequently cleared, of several charges of child sexual abuse, including rape and indecent assault. According to the accuser, who could not be named, Mr Le Vell raped her several times over nine years, starting when she was six. I did not follow the case while it was in progress (in fact, I hadn’t heard of it till it was over), but I’ve reviewed several news reports now and consider myself reasonably well-informed on the basic facts.
After hearing claims that Mr Le Vell had raped her ‘while she clutched a teddy bear’ and ‘held another teddy bear over her mouth’, and that he had told her during the rape that he was ‘going to get the evil out’ and that if she told anyone about it ‘you’ll die and the evil will come over you’, the jury decided that the accuser’s testimony was inconsistent. Additionally, it appears that there were no other witnesses, there was no DNA evidence, and the victim had not sustained any injuries (unusual in a child rape). In short, in the jury’s opinion, and mine, the alleged rape did not take place.
That wasn’t the first concern on the minds of Twitter feminists, however:
A Twitter user named @RadicalRosa, who has since been suspended, claimed that men rape women ‘every day in an abstract sense’ and therefore that Le Vell should go to jail whether he in fact raped his accuser or not. She was the most dramatic (probably why she was suspended), but the Feminist Twitter Brigade in general was quite active. Here are some highlights:
As you can see, a whole hashtag, ‘#ibelieveher’, was created for this idiocy.
I’m not really sure what I am supposed to say to this, to be honest. I would have been against feminism in any time; I agree with Queen Victoria (hat tip to Anarcho-Papist) that ‘a good whipping’ would probably do some good. But modern feminism is simply absurd, in a way previous ‘waves’ were not; at least, they didn’t show it as clearly.
Rejecting the presumption of innocence. This is Trayvon Martin all over again. It is becoming increasingly clear that in a progressive utopia, the outcome of court cases would be decided based on group identity, not evidence, and the goal would not be to protect the innocent or punish the guilty, but to ‘stick it to the man’. This kind of mob justice is truly a frightening prospect. And if we are not already at the point where it will be enforced, we will be soon.
Needless to say, I do not ‘#believeher’.
It is generally believed in the reactosphere, largely under the influence of Moldbug, that progressivism is a religion. Certainly there is ample basis for this claim. Progressivism indeed seems to have its unquestionable dogmas, its priests, its sacraments, and its empirically untestable metaphysical assumptions. However, I contend that there is a subtle distinction at play here, which the nonreligious are likely to overlook. That is the distinction between religion and witchcraft.
What, precisely, is the distinction between magic and witchcraft? It is this: the religionist deals with the supernatural as something above himself, something superior to himself, and something which he must submit to. Whether it is a Christian who believes he must obey God, or a Buddhist who believes that he must follow the teachings of the Buddha to escape the cycle of reincarnation, the religionist sees reality on the supernatural level as ironclad, and he has no choice but to obey. The witch, on the other hand, is concerned with manipulating reality. C.S. Lewis said in The Magician’s Nephew that witches ‘are not interested in people or things unless they can use them; they are terribly practical.’ Witches see the supernatural realm as something that can be manipulated, controlled, bent to their will. Words in particular take on, in the witch’s world, an immense significance, as they can, according to the witch’s worldview, reshape reality itself. The witch is essentially a reverser of hierarchy.
How does this compare to progressives? Well, first of all, to understand what I am about to say, you should be familiar with Moldbug’s work in Why Do Atheists Believe in Religion? You should then note that whether a person claims a particular word has a particular power ‘because it’s magic’ or ‘because it reinforces institutional racism and white privilege’ is utterly irrelevant to those of us who believe neither in magic nor in institutional racism, nor in white privilege. It amounts to the same thing; for reasons that are apparently irreducible and have no discernible relationship to physical reality, a particular word is claimed to create harmful effects in the real world. For the witches, it’s a spell; for progressives, it’s ‘nigger’ for example. I must be prevented from saying ‘nigger’ for the same reason that I must be prevented from putting a curse on their crops; because these words have power.
C.S. Lewis turns out to be helpful here again. In The Screwtape Letters he writes:
I have great hopes that we shall learn in due time how to emotionalise and mythologise their science to such an extent that what is, in effect, a belief in us (though not under that name) will creep in while the human mind remains closed to belief in the Enemy. The ‘Life Force’, the worship of sex, and some aspects of Psychoanalysis, may here prove useful. If once we can produce our perfect work—the Materialist Magician, the man, not using, but veritably worshipping, what he vaguely calls ‘Forces’ while denying the existence of ‘spirits’—then the end of the war will be in sight.
The Materialist Magician. C.S. Lewis predicted him, and now he is here. Lewis has his Materialist Magicians ‘not using, but veritably worshipping’ these ‘Forces’. This may be a mistake, and yet perhaps not. Certainly it seems that progressives believe in ‘forces’ that can be used; ‘forces’ like ‘white privilege’. And yet, these ‘forces’ always seem to be in the hands of the enemy. The forces on the progressives’ ‘good side’, forces such as ‘equality’ and ‘human rights’ are not used, but worshipped. What the progressive attempts to do is clear out the black magic of privilege blocking the god of Equality from imposing his will.
You see, the progressive’s magic (the magic of ‘gender-neutral language’, for example), is really quite weak, at least in his own mind. If there exists anywhere one dark wizard speaking the way normal human beings speak, maintaining the old spells, Equality will not be able to prevail. Reality must be reshaped with a new language, but everyone must participate.
Thus Lewis was partially right; some forces are indeed worshipped and ascribed supernatural significance, despite their being no empirical evidence that they are even real, while at the same time superstitious beliefs about the power of certain groups and their words recall the witch’s attempts to control reality with language.
This is why language is so important. We cannot allow ourselves to fall into the trap of attempting to express our ideas in their terms. Their whole lexicon is perfectly fitted to impede the understanding of reality and the communication of sound thought, because its purpose is not to describe, but to alter reality. You must not ask your doctor what your baby’s ‘gender’ is to be, because ‘gender’ is not simply a collection of sounds that has taken on the meaning previously assigned to the word ‘sex’; rather, ‘gender’, as applied to living things, is an inherently liberal concept, created to drive a wedge between unchosen biological reality and personal identity, the latter of which, according to the liberal, must be freely chosen by the individual.
‘Gender’ and words like it are a spell. Dont cast the spell. Cast the counterspell. Use real language. If you speak Newspeak, you will develop a Newspeak weltanschauung. There is no way around it. But the liberal magic is weak. They cant rest easy as long as there are a few people speaking in a religious way; naming, describing, and submitting to reality as it presents itself.
Dear Reader,
This blog has been inactive for almost a month. I have some excuse, as I was in Europe for two weeks of that. I have no good excuse for not posting in the last two weeks, though, and that is a situation I intend to rectify, starting today and continuing, I think, with a later post comparing Islam and Protestantism.
Today, however, I’d like to talk about Pope Francis. After his Angelus yesterday, the Holy Father had this to say:
Vorrei rivolgere un saluto ai musulmani del mondo intero, nostri fratelli, che da poco hanno celebrato la conclusione del mese di Ramadan, dedicato in modo particolare al digiuno, alla preghiera e all’elemosina. Come ho scritto nel mio Messaggio per questa circostanza, auguro che cristiani e musulmani si impegnino per promuovere il reciproco rispetto, specialmente attraverso l’educazione delle nuove generazioni.
Interestingly, I was not able to find this document in English, so I have taken the liberty of translating the text myself. Hopefully my Italian is up to snuff, as I am reasonably confident that it is.
I would like to send a greeting to the Muslims of the whole world, our brothers, who recently celebrated the conclusion of the month of Ramadan, dedicated particularly to fasting, prayer, and almsgiving. As I wrote in my Message for the Present Circumstance, I hope that Christians and Muslims commit to promoting mutual respect, especially through the education of new generations. (Emphasis mine)
This is a deeply disturbing statement, but sadly unsurprising coming from Pope Francis. This is the same Pope who said that ‘because of our common roots’ ‘a true Christian cannot be anti-Semitic’.
There is simply no excuse for the head of the world’s largest Christian Church to be addressing followers of any religion that denies the Triune God and Our Lord Jesus Christ as ‘brothers’, but to do it to followers of the religion currently leading the pack as the foremost persecutors of Christians should be unimaginable.
If I receive the Holy Eucharist from a bishop who is out of communion with my own, I place myself in communion with him and break communion with my bishop. It seems to me obvious that likewise, if Pope Francis wishes to be the ‘brother’ of the world’s Moslems he must surrender any claim to the brotherhood of the world’s Christians.
The Ummah is the premier existential enemy of Christendom, at least if we exclude those domains that claim to be non-religious. All over the Arab world, we have seen in recent years a resurgence of Islam as a political ideology, even more than before, and the result has been the death of countless Christians.
The Pope of Alexandria may have to appease Moslems to keep his flock from being burned alive; the Pope of Rome has no such excuse.
If the Mahometans are Pope Francis’s brothers, then with respect, he is not mine.
| Dear reader,
This is my first attempt to post by email at the Avenging Red Hand. Somebody needs to poke me to get me to keep reading Locke before I leave for Europe. It’s a slog, but he needs to be refuted. On another note, I’m in Indiana, waiting to depart for Europe on Tuesday. Today I attended the Divine Liturgy at the Greek Orthodox Church of the Holy Trinity in Carmel. I did not know before I went that today is the Sunday of the Holy Fathers of the Fourth Ecumenical Council. Blessed feast to all. Fr. Nabil gave a good sermon, mourning the schism but emphasizing the need to cling fast to the Faith in all its details. I wonder how the Copts and Ethiopians at my home parish felt. I don’t have all that much of substance for you today, I fear, except my well wishes on this feast and the assurance that I am still progressing, even if slowly, on the great work of refuting Locke that I have set before myself. Keep the Faith, everyone, and God Bless. –The Avenging Red Hand Sent from Yahoo! Mail for iPad |
I just bought this at church after Liturgy. My monarchist friends should appreciate it, especially the Orthodox ones:
