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Conservatism Heinrich Himmler Homosexuality Kali Yuga Real men

Lefty River

Or:

On the Supreme Court & homo marriage


This is my response to Mr. Deutsch’s comment in the previous post:

Yes: at midnight I glanced thru it and the one that Matt Parrott wrote on Sebastian Ronin, and also Andrew Hamilton’s take on the Nazi film “Victory of Faith,” so I didn’t pay special attention to Greg Johnson’s article on homo marriage. He doesn’t want to say that the Supreme Court decision is a marker of how corrupt, evil and degenerate Western culture has become. He even uses Newspeak words like “gay” that I would never dare to use.

Let me put it this way:

Since the 1960s the whole Western culture, and I mean the whole Western culture including so-called conservatives, started to shift to the Left.

lefty river

Imagine a river that took a very wrong turn to the Left. Those who fancy themselves “white nationalists” are deceiving themselves, for in some way or other they are navigating that river too.

In the previous entry that features the painting about the Horatii family I stated that I would like to be a revolutionary, and that most “white nationalists” are mere reactionaries. But sometimes they’re not even genuine reactionaries who want to change the course of the river toward the Right: they simply navigate the Lefty River as many other liberals and conservatives do.

I even stopped listening to Harold Covington’s revolutionary radio shows when he introduced two women as co-speakers. You can imagine how diluted Hitler’s voice would have appeared in the 1930s had he added the voices of women during his inflammatory speeches… In other words, nowadays even revolutionaries are, in some ways, navigating that Lefty River.

To be perfectly honest, I feel uncomfortable with the female voices in the “white nationalist” blogosphere. There are some subjects (cf. the entry “Lycanthropy” in this blog) about which you cannot speak out with brutal honesty if a cute Little Red Riding Hood, however intelligent or committed to the 14 words, is present. I actually believe that a genuine white or ethno-nationalist movement should be a Boys only Club, with Little Reds in a completely separate location, as in National Socialist Germany.

Going back to Greg Johnson’s article on the recent Supreme Court ruling. I don’t see it as a specific Johnson problem. I see the big picture from above, like a pic on the river taken from the air. What Johnson did is fairly common in the “white nationalist” movement. In this Lefty River that every nationalist navigates in some ways, may I remind you that Robert Stark and Tom Sunic didn’t ask tough questions to James O’Meara during their respective interviews of this homosexualist.

No, you cannot deliver a speech like the one that Himmler delivered about faggotry if Little Reds or non-Lycanthrope males are present. Their Aryan female pity completely overwhelms their sense of morality and not even “nationalists” would tolerate sending the fags to the concentration camps. In our Empire of Yin, as Takuan Seiyo called today’s West, even pro-white activists—think of the site Alternative Right—have become so feminized, that their sense of pity is undistinguishable from that of our Fair Ladies. Compared to Commander Rockwell all of them are, in one way or another, navigating the Lefty River, increasingly distancing themselves from the Yang side of the Aryan psyche.

That’s why, as implied in my previous entries, our only hope is the convergence of currency and energy catastrophes that will wipe out both the current anti-white System and the feminized males in the movement.

My pedagogy is hard. What is weak must be hammered away. In my fortresses of the Teutonic Order a young generation will grow up before which the world will tremble. I want the young to be violent, domineering, undismayed, cruel. The young must be all these things. They must be able to bear pain. There must be nothing weak or gentle about them. The free, splendid beast of prey must once again flash from their eyes. I want my young people strong and beautiful.

That way I can create something new.

—H.V.

Categories
Audios Chris Martenson Energy / peak oil

Martenson interview

Nationalists don’t want to do their homework and research peak oil objectively, for example, how Chris Martenson answers to the abiotic theories of oil:

http://youtu.be/cFO03LQ_FMM

Instead of debating here on WDH, nationalists are beginning to discuss the subject of my previous posts at Occidental Dissent, where Sebastian Ronin is dismissed by one of them as “a deracinated conspiracy doomer” and others are posting comments like: “I am increasingly skeptical in light of rising oil production due to fracking,” and also “I told you so. Technology. Never leave it out of your equations on predicting the future. There will be no ‘energy devolution.’”

There will be no energy devolution—a flat statement that ignores that mere tech cannot create energy out of thin air!

There’s nothing to do with those who don’t want to do their homework. It reminds me somewhat my experience with the counter-jihad gentiles that didn’t want to read literature on the Jewish problem, not even literature written by well-respected academic Jews!

I am afraid that those who, like Ronin and I, want to show the pro-white movement that energy devolution will tremendously impact racial politics, will be talking to a different audience.

Categories
Axiology Energy / peak oil Eschatology Real men Turner Diaries (novel)

Ostriches

In Sebastian Ronin’s recent retort to some comments by Matt Parrott here at WDH, this paragraph caught my attention:

Nothing is “free”, not even “virtually free”, especially not energy. No one, absolutely no one, gets to dodge the bullet of Post-Peak Oil energy devolution. A global civilization, to which Murka is the metaphorical Rome, collapses; it comes to an end… In historically relative terms, the current century will make the Black Death seem like a nose bleed.

Why most Murkan White Nationalists cannot see, will not see, or refuse to see how this most devastating of historical events will impact racial politics is simply mind-boggling. Wait! No, it’s not all that mind-boggling at all, but that is another matter, another day.

The reason why most white nationalists don’t want to look at the evidence of both, the coming collapse of the dollar and the apocalyptic energy devolution is easily explained when considering several posts in this blog where I have said that, unlike William Pierce, today’s nationalists still subscribe Christian axiology, even those who claim to be anti-Christian. See for example my extremely provocative entries, “Dies Irae” and its postscript “The depth of evil” linked at the sidebar.

Moderately edited, I would like to repost below a substantial part of what I said in an entry of almost a year ago, “On ostriches and real men”:

I must take issue with Greg Johnson’s “We believe that it can be achieved by peaceful territorial divisions and population transfers.” Besides the fact that lots of Jews were very probably murdered in the Second World War the following is what, like the ostriches, most nationalists are still unwilling to see:

1. The dollar will crash soon

2. With all probability the crash will cause high-rocketing unemployment, riots, and looting in the largest western cities

3. Unlike New Orleans after Katrina, the bullet won’t be dodged after the crash. On the contrary: racial tension in ethnically “enriched” cities will escalate throughout the West, insofar as presently all western currencies are fiat currencies

4. Later these socio-political crises will converge with a peak-oil devolution that, by the end of the century, will kill the surplus of worldwide population created as a result of quixotic Christian ethics (as Søren Renner put it, “Billions will die—we will win!”)

White nationalists’ reactionary, non-revolutionary stance hides the head in the sand. In the coming tribulation very few will care about “totalitarianism, imperialism or genocide” as Greg Johnson, editor-in-chief of Counter-Currents Publishing, cares. With all probability, during the convergence of catastrophes nationalists will be ruthless survivors á la Turner Diaries committed to the fourteen words and no more to Christian ethics. As I put it elsewhere, “the future belongs to the bloodthirsty, not to the Alt Righters.”

Granted: Johnson’s piece is otherwise excellent, a must-read for conservative nationalists who are still struggling with guilt and anti-white sentiments inculcated by the tribe. But unlike Johnson and the other ostriches I agree with Mark that the situation for whites is so dire that, with the help of Mother Nature, only a scorched-Earth policy has any chance of success.

Even those nationalists who very strongly disagree with me on moral grounds, like Franklin Ryckaert, ought to open their minds. You must open your minds about the coming collapse of the dollar and the subsequent energy devolution. Pull your heads off the sand! The convergence of catastrophes will mark “the metamorphic rebirth of Europe or its disappearance and transformation into a cosmopolitan and sterile Luna Park.”

The blogger whose “Red Giant” article is linked above in my words about quixotic Christian ethics once said that the white nationalist movement “is weak.” With the exception of William Pierce’s legacy I tend to agree with that statement. Virtually all of them are like the tender-hearted women who lie weeping and mourning, awaiting the results of the coming bloodshedding in Jacques-Louis David’s Oath of the Horatii:

We on the other hand are like the three brothers expressing loyalty and solidarity with their father and willing to sacrifice our lives, and billions of other lives if necessary, to fulfill the fourteen words.

Categories
Friedrich Nietzsche Richard Wagner Stefan Zweig

Passion for sincerity

der_kampf_mit_dem_daemon

Early in his career Nietzsche had planned to write a work entitled Passio nuovo, or the Passion for Sincerity. The book was never written; but, what was perhaps better, it was lived in Nietzsche’s own person. For throughout the philosopher’s years of growth and change, a fanatical passion for truthfulness remained as the primitive and fecundating element of all he undertook. For such reasons the sincerity of a man like Nietzsche has nothing akin to the trite honesty of a carefully trained gentleman. His love of truth is a flame, a demon of veracity, a demon of lucidity, is a hunting beast ever on the prow.

Such an attitude of mind accounts for Nietzsche’s detestation of those who, through slackness or cowardice in the realm of thought, neglect the sacred task of straightforwardness; hence his anger against Kant, because that philosopher, while turning his blind eye to the postern, allowed the concept of the godhead to slip back into his system. Lacking sincerity, we cannot hope to attain to knowledge; lacking resoluteness, we cannot hope to be sincere. “I become blind from the moment when I cease to be sincere. If I wish to know, I must be sincere, that is to say, I must be hard, severe, narrow-minded, cruel, inexorable.”

Like all fanatics, he sacrificed even those he loved (as in the case of Richard Wagner, whose friendship had been for Nietzsche one of the most hallowed). He allowed himself to become penurious, solitary, detested, an anchorite and miserable, solely with a view to remaining true to himself, in order to fulfill his mission as apostle of sincerity. This passion for sincerity became, as time elapsed, a monomania in which the good things of life were absorbed.

Nietzsche practised philosophy as a fine art; and, as an artist, he was not concerned with results, with definitive things, with cold calculations. What he sought was style, “morality in the grand style,” and as an artist he experienced and enjoyed the pleasures of unexpected inspiration. It may be a mistake to apply the word philosopher to such a man, for a philosopher is “the lover of wisdom.”

Passion can never be wise. More appropriate to him would be the appellation, “philaleth,” a passionate lover of Aletheia, of truth, of the virginal and cruelly seductive goddess who never tires of luring her admirers into an unending chase, and finally remains inaccessible behind her tattered veils. Nietzsche, as the slave and servant of the daimon, sought excitement and movement pushed to an extreme. Such a fight for the inaccessible has a heroic quality, and heroism almost invariably ends in the destruction of the hero.

Excessive claims for truth come into conflict with mundane affairs, for truth is implacable and dangerous. In the end, so fanatical an urge for truth kills itself. Life is, fundamentally, a perpetual compromise. How well Goethe, in whose character the essence of nature was so exquisitely poised, recognized this fact and applied it to all his understandings! If nature is to keep its balance, its needs, just as mankind needs, to take up an average position, to yield when necessary, to concede points, to form pacts.

He who presumes the right of non-participation, who refuses to compromise with the world around him, who breaks off relationships and conventions which have been slowly built up in the course of many centuries, becomes unnatural and anthropomorphic in his demands, and enters into opposition against society and against nature. The more such an individual “aspires to attain absolute integrity,” the more hostile are the forces of his epoch. If, like Hölderlin, he persists in an endeavor to give a purely poetical twist to an essentially prosaic existence, or if, following Nietzsche’s example, he aims at penetrating into the infinitude of terrestrial vicissitudes, in either case such an unwise desire constitutes a revolt against the customs and rules of society, separates the presumptuous being from his fellow-mortals, and condemns him to perpetual warfare which, splendid though it may be, is foredoomed to failure.

What Nietzsche named the “tragic mentality,” the resolve to probe any and every feeling to the uttermost, transcends spirit and invades the realm of fate, thereby creating tragedy. He who wishes to impose one single law upon life, who hopes, amid the chaos of passions, to make one passion (his own peculiar passion) supreme, becomes a solitary and in isolation suffers annihilation.

Nietzsche recognized the peril. But, as a hero in the realm of thought, he loved life precisely because it was dangerous and annihilated his personal existence. “Build your cities on the flanks of Vesuvius!” he exclaimed, addressing the philosophers in the endeavour to goad them into a more lofty consciousness of destiny; for the only measure of grandeur is, according to Nietzsche, “the degree of danger at which a man lives in relation to himself.” He only who takes his all upon the hazard has the possibility of winning the infinite; he only who risks his life is capable of endowing his earthly span with everlasting value. “Fiat veritas, pereat vita”; what does it matter if life be sacrificed so long as truth is realized? Passion is greater than existence, the meaning of life is of more worth than life itself.

The last few steps he took into this sphere were the most unforgettable and the most impressive in the gamut of his destiny. Never before had his mind been more lucid, his soul more impassioned, his words more tipped with joyful music, than when he hurled himself in full consciousness and wholeheartedly from the altitudes of life into the abyss of annihilation.

Categories
Miscellany

Weigel on the Ronin controversy

My Full Support for the RPN [Renaissance Party of North America], by Erick Weigel, Co-Chair, RPN (USA) Steering Committee

RPN-SA-Protest

I am not interested in getting into an online pissing match with anyone, but since I have a stake and role in the future and successful development of the Renaissance Party of North America (USA) as one of two Co-Chairs of the RPN (USA) Steering Committee, I will make some statements.

All of the concerns put forth in the recent criticisms of Sebastian E. Ronin and the RPN can be alleviated by simply reviewing the Renaissance Vanguard website and the Renaissance Party of North America website. The Three Pillars (Peak Oil, Secession, Ethno Nationalism), the Ten Principles of Ethno Nationalism, the RPN Constitution, and the RPN Policy Positions in particular, will address all concerns and criticisms. All of them:  Ethno Nationalism, Peak Oil, race, religion, left/right or otherwise, White Nationalism and so on.

Read it there. Either you get it, or you don’t (or won’t). Either you jump onto the program, or you don’t.

Regarding Ethno Nationalism:

The Renaissance Vanguard and the RPN have reached out to nearly every potentially friendly North Amerikan White Nationalist personality and organization at one point or another over the last three years regarding mission, policies, and positions. The concept of Ethno Nationalism has always been met with a degree of contempt and/or ridicule by most Amerikan White Nationalists, up to and including a total black-balling by the WN community of the RV [Renaissance Vanguard] and the RPN.

That is until recently. Now it is the “new thing” among the so-called elite of Our Cause, several being those who have ridiculed, that we are all supposed to rally behind as the next great concept to save our race (and get page hits).

From my observations this recent jumping onto the Ethno Nationalist bandwagon by White Nationalists is either one of two things.  It is either that there has been suppression of egos coupled with a very uncanny instance of synchronicity where everyone concerned had a moment of clarity on the subject…or…they finally realized that Mr. Ronin may be onto something and feel they can run with it as their own.

The former is quite unlikely. So that leaves a greater possibility of the latter. Naturally, one would take extreme offense to such blatant attempts to re-package and peddle their position as belonging to one of our own WN “great thinkers.”

Would it not be more honourable and respectful to simply give credit where credit is due? I mean so many personalities and activities are cross-promoted in certain circles, why not in this case? It comes down to egg on the face, personality conflicts, online pissing matches, and that most arrogant and suicidal of Amerikan cultural poisons, imperialist exceptionalism.

Regarding left/right/libertarian or whatever:

None of that matters. It’s all bullshit. The tags of leftist, ring-winger, liberal, and conservative no longer hold any meaning. They are all potentially, i.e. more than likely, the problem.

“No enemies on the Right” as adopted by the New Orleans Protocol no longer applies, as pointed out by Mr. Ronin, because the Right is every bit of an enemy as the Left. Over the years I have met people that have come to Our Cause from all over the political map. Some of the most ardent have been former “lefties” (or worse).

The RV appeals to all factions at a point of overlap. This is the gist of our philosophical Vesica Piscis. We don’t want everyone, just the ones in each sphere that “get it.”

Regarding Heathens and Christians:

This fight has been a long standing one. It has nothing to do with peak oil, Ethno Nationalism, RV, the RPN, or Sebastian Ronin. Unless, of course, pointing out some really poorly thought out public statements by certain people is considered instigating.

Actually, some of these poorly thought out public statements re-opened the Pandora’s Box of religion once again, just when it was quietly drifting towards a non-issue.

It just so happens that most RV participants have a non-Christian view of things. The only people that it seems to bother are the Christian zealots who insist that faith (theirs, of course) be a firm basis for any organizational statement of principles.

In conclusion, I would simply like to make it public that Mr. Ronin has my full support in the ongoing attempts at character assassination and theft of ideological breakthroughs tossed in his direction by cowardly and unprincipled detractors. No one stuck a gun to my head to force me to come over to the RPN from the American Third Position for which I was Northeast Regional Director. I came over of my own free will, as will others in time. I came over because I am convinced, as has been pointed out by Mr. Ronin, that the RPN is the future.

Categories
Helmut Stellrecht Hitler Youth

“Duty”

hj4


From Faith and Action (1938) by Helmut Stellrecht for the Hitler Youth:


Duty is a hard word as long as one has not done it. Duty is a pleasant word as soon as one has done it.

§ Duty is the “you should” that you feel inside. Duty is that which family, people and the state demand of you. Doing one’s duty does not mean being controlled by the reins that rule a horse, but rather doing one’s duty means that one does it with joy, no matter how hard.

§ The fatherland grew from the duty done by our fathers and forefathers. From the duty we all do grows the present state and the future both of the individual and the whole.

§ Duty can also mean sacrifice, the sacrifice of one’s own life. Your people can demand of you what it has given you. But what does demand mean? The state, the fatherland dwell in your own breast. You demand it of yourself, and the path of highest duty is the way of greatest happiness, even if it leads to your death.

§ Justice comes from fulfilled duty. There is no other justice in the National Socialist state, just as there is no pay without labor. The greater the duty, the greater the justice. He who does the most for Germany has the greatest right to guide Germany and determine its fate. He is the Führer of the Reich, and others follow him according to the duty they have fulfilled.

§ A worker on the street can stand higher in the ranks than a government minister if he has better done his duty.

§ Fulfilling one’s duty to the utmost is required of each of us. Who will wait until the demand comes, until it is required? He who does his duty of his own free will, he is a free man and not a slave.

Categories
Homosexuality Julian (novel)

JVLIAN excerpts – X

“Why were you so ungrateful to our gods
as to desert them for the Jews?”

—Julian, addressing the Christians

Julian

Priscus: I can. And you certainly can! After all, you were living in Antioch while that little beast was Caesar.

Curiously enough, Julian almost never mentioned Gallus to me, or to anyone. I have always had a theory—somewhat borne out by the memoir—that Julian was unnaturally attracted to his brother. He continually refers to his beauty. He also tends to write of him in that hurt tone one uses to describe a lover who has been cold. Julian professes to find mysterious what everyone else found only too obvious: Gallus’ cruelty. Julian was naïve, as I find myself continually observing (if I repeat myself, do forgive me and blame it on our age).

Libanius. Yes, I do know. At the beginning, we all had great hopes for Gallus. I recall vividly Gallus’s first appearance before the senate of Antioch. How hopeful we were! He was indeed as handsome as men say, though that day he was suffering from a heat rash, as fair people sometimes do in our sultry climate. But despite a mottled face, he carried himself well. He looked as one born to rule. He made us a most graceful speech. Afterwards, I was presented to him by my old friend Bishop Meletius.

During the next few years the misdeeds of the couple were beyond anything since Caligula. Gallus sent his own guards into the senate chamber, arrested the leading senators and condemned them to death.


The Memoir of Julian Augustus

In the autumn of 353, Gallus made a state visit to Pergamon. It was the first time we had met since we were boys at Macellum. I stood with the town prefect and the local dignitaries in front of the senate house and watched Gallus receive the homage of the city.

During the five years since we had seen one another, I had become a man with a full beard. But Gallus had remained exactly as he was, the beautiful youth whom all admired. I confess that I had a return of the old emotion when he embraced me formally and I looked once again into those familiar blue eyes. What was the old emotion? A loss of will, I should say. Whatever he wanted me to do I would do. Gallus, by existing, robbed me of strength.

“Constantia wants to know you. She talks of you often. But of course she couldn’t come here. One of us must always be at Antioch. Spies. Traitors. No one is honest. Do you realize that? No one. You can never trust anyone, not even your own flesh and blood.”

I tried to protest loyalty at this point. But Gallus ignored me. “All men are evil. I found that out early. They are born in sin, live in sin, die in sin. Only God can save us. I pray that he will save me.” Gallus made the sign of a cross on his bare chest. “But it is a fine thing in an evil world to be Caesar.”

I must say I was stunned by this particular self-estimate. But my face showed only respectful interest.

“I build churches. I establish religious orders. I stamp out heresy whenever I find it. I am an active agent for good. I must be. It is what I was born for. Do you have girls in you household?”

“One.” My voice broke nervously.

“One!” he shook his head wonderingly. “And your friend? The one you live with?”

“Oribasius.”

“Is he your lover?”

“No!”

“I wondered. It’s perfectly all right. You’re not Hadrian. What you do doesn’t matter. Though if you like boys, I suggest you keep to slaves. It’s politically dangerous to have anything to do with a man of your own class.”

“I am not interested…” I began, but he continued right through me.

“Slaves are always best. Particularly stableboys and grooms.” The blue eyes flashed suddenly.

The rest of the story is well known. Gallus and his “jailers” took the overland route through Illyria. All troops were moved from the garrisons along the route, and Gallus could call on no one to support him. At Hadrianopolis, the Theban legions were indeed waiting, but Gallus was not allowed to see them. He was now a prisoner in all but name. Then in Austria, he was arrested by the infamous Count Barbatio, who had been until recently the commander of his own guard. Gallus was imprisoned at Histria; here his trial was held. The Grand Chamberlain Eusebius presided.

Gallus was indicted for all the crimes which had taken place in Syria during the four years of his reign. Most of the charges against him were absurd and the trial itself was a farce, but Constantius enjoyed the show of legality almost as much as he disliked the idea of justice. Gallus’s only defense was to blame his wife for everything. This was unworthy of him; but then there was nothing that he could say or do which would save him. Also, by accusing Constantius’s sister of a thousand crimes (she was guilty of many more), Gallus was able to strike one last blow at his implacable enemy. Furious at the form the defense took, Constantius ordered Gallus executed.

My brother’s head was cut off early in the evening of 9 December 354. His arms were bound behind him as though he were a common criminal. He made no last statement. Or if he did, it has been suppressed. He was twenty-eight when he died. They say that in the last days he suffered terribly from bad dreams. Of the men of the imperial family, only Constantius and I were left.

On 1 January 355 a warrant was issued for my arrest. But by then I had joined a religious order at Nicomedia. I am sure that at first none of the monks knew who I was, for I had come to them with head shaved and I looked like any other novice. Oribasius also protected me. When the imperial messenger arrived at Pergamon to arrest me, Oribasius said that I had gone to Constantinople.

I was a monk for six weeks. I found the life surprisingly pleasant. I enjoyed the austerity and the mild physical labor. The monks themselves were not very inspiring. I suppose some must have had the religious sense but the majority were simply vagrants who had tired of the road and its discomforts. They treated the monastery as though it were some sort of hotel rather than a place to serve the One God. Yet they were easy to get along with, and had it not been for the Galilean rituals I could have been quite happy.

As we were leaving Nicomedia, I noticed a head on a pike. I hardly glanced at it, since there is almost always the head of some felon or other on display at the main gate of every town.

“I am sorry,” said Victor suddenly. “But we were ordered to use this gate.”

“Sorry for what?”

“To lead you past your brother’s head.”

“Gallus?” I turned clear around in my saddle and looked again at the head. The face had been so mutilated that the features were unrecognizable, but there was no mistaking the blond hair, mattered it was with dirt and blood.

“The Emperor has had it displayed in every city in the East.”

I shut my eyes, on the verge of nausea.

“Your brother had many qualities,” said Victor. “It was a pity.” Ever since, I have respected Victor. In those days when secret agents were everywhere and no man was safe, it took courage to say something good of a man executed for treason.

At Ilios I was taken round by the local bishop. At first my heart sank: a Galilean bishop was the last sort of person who would be interested in showing me the temples of the true gods. But to my surprise, Bishop Pegasius was an ardent Hellenist. In fact, he was the one who was surprised when I asked him if we might visit the temples of Hector and Achilles.

“But of course. Nothing would give me greater pleasure. But I am surprised that you are interested in old monuments.”

“I am a child of Homer.”

“So is every educated man. But we are also Christians. Your piety is well known to us even here.” Then Pelagius proceeded to show me the temples of Athena and Achilles, both in perfect repair. I noted, too, that whenever he passed the image of an old god, he did not hiss and make the sign of the cross the way most Galileans do, fearing contamination.

Two days later, I was visited by the Grand Chamberlain himself. I found it hard to believe that this enchanting creature with his caressing voice and dimpled smile was daily advising the Consistory to execute me. He quite filled the small apartment where I had been confined.

“Oh, you have grown, most noble Julian! In every way!” Delicately Eusebius touched my face. “And your beard is now most philosophic. How Marcus Aurelius would have envied you!” For an instant one fat finger rested, light as a butterfly, on the tip of my beard.

The cutting down of court ceremonies and the removal of the eunuchs was one of the first acts of my reign. It was certainly the most satisfactory.

Categories
Ancient Rome Emperor Julian

Gibbon on Julian – 10

Edward-Gibbon

The History of the Decline and Fall
of the Roman Empire

Chapter XXII: Julian declared emperor

Part IV


The numerous army of spies, of agents, and informers enlisted by Constantius to secure the repose of one man, and to interrupt that of millions, was immediately disbanded by his generous successor. Julian was slow in his suspicions, and gentle in his punishments; and his contempt of treason was the result of judgment, of vanity, and of courage.

Conscious of superior merit, he was persuaded that few among his subjects would dare to meet him in the field, to attempt his life, or even to seat themselves on his vacant throne. The philosopher could excuse the hasty sallies of discontent; and the hero could despise the ambitious projects which surpassed the fortune or the abilities of the rash conspirators.

A citizen of Ancyra had prepared for his own use a purple garment; and this indiscreet action, which, under the reign of Constantius, would have been considered as a capital offence, was reported to Julian by the officious importunity of a private enemy. The monarch, after making some inquiry into the rank and character of his rival, despatched the informer with a present of a pair of purple slippers, to complete the magnificence of his Imperial habit.

A more dangerous conspiracy was formed by ten of the domestic guards, who had resolved to assassinate Julian in the field of exercise near Antioch. Their intemperance revealed their guilt; and they were conducted in chains to the presence of their injured sovereign, who, after a lively representation of the wickedness and folly of their enterprise, instead of a death of torture, which they deserved and expected, pronounced a sentence of exile against the two principal offenders.

The only instance in which Julian seemed to depart from his accustomed clemency, was the execution of a rash youth, who, with a feeble hand, had aspired to seize the reins of empire. But that youth was the son of Marcellus, the general of cavalry, who, in the first campaign of the Gallic war, had deserted the standard of the Cæsar and the republic. Without appearing to indulge his personal resentment, Julian might easily confound the crime of the son and of the father; but he was reconciled by the distress of Marcellus, and the liberality of the emperor endeavored to heal the wound which had been inflicted by the hand of justice.

Julian was not insensible of the advantages of freedom. From his studies he had imbibed the spirit of ancient sages and heroes; his life and fortunes had depended on the caprice of a tyrant; and when he ascended the throne, his pride was sometimes mortified by the reflection, that the slaves who would not dare to censure his defects were not worthy to applaud his virtues. He sincerely abhorred the system of Oriental despotism, which Diocletian, Constantine, and the patient habits of fourscore years, had established in the empire. A motive of superstition prevented the execution of the design, which Julian had frequently meditated, of relieving his head from the weight of a costly diadem; but he absolutely refused the title of Dominus, or Lord, a word which was grown so familiar to the ears of the Romans, that they no longer remembered its servile and humiliating origin.

The office, or rather the name, of consul, was cherished by a prince who contemplated with reverence the ruins of the republic; and the same behavior which had been assumed by the prudence of Augustus was adopted by Julian from choice and inclination. On the calends of January, at break of day, the new consuls, Mamertinus and Nevitta, hastened to the palace to salute the emperor. As soon as he was informed of their approach, he leaped from his throne, eagerly advanced to meet them, and compelled the blushing magistrates to receive the demonstrations of his affected humility. From the palace they proceeded to the senate.

The emperor, on foot, marched before their litters; and the gazing multitude admired the image of ancient times, or secretly blamed a conduct, which, in their eyes, degraded the majesty of the purple. But the behavior of Julian was uniformly supported. During the games of the Circus, he had, imprudently or designedly, performed the manumission of a slave in the presence of the consul. The moment he was reminded that he had trespassed on the jurisdiction of another magistrate, he condemned himself to pay a fine of ten pounds of gold; and embraced this public occasion of declaring to the world, that he was subject, like the rest of his fellow-citizens, to the laws, and even to the forms, of the republic.

The spirit of his administration, and his regard for the place of his nativity, induced Julian to confer on the senate of Constantinople the same honors, privileges, and authority, which were still enjoyed by the senate of ancient Rome. A legal fiction was introduced, and gradually established, that one half of the national council had migrated into the East; and the despotic successors of Julian, accepting the title of Senators, acknowledged themselves the members of a respectable body, which was permitted to represent the majesty of the Roman name.

From Constantinople, the attention of the monarch was extended to the municipal senates of the provinces. He abolished, by repeated edicts, the unjust and pernicious exemptions which had withdrawn so many idle citizens from the services of their country; and by imposing an equal distribution of public duties, he restored the strength, the splendor, or, according to the glowing expression of Libanius, the soul of the expiring cities of his empire. The venerable age of Greece excited the most tender compassion in the mind of Julian, which kindled into rapture when he recollected the gods, the heroes, and the men superior to heroes and to gods, who have bequeathed to the latest posterity the monuments of their genius, or the example of their virtues. He relieved the distress, and restored the beauty, of the cities of Epirus and Peloponnesus. Athens acknowledged him for her benefactor; Argos, for her deliverer.

The pride of Corinth, again rising from her ruins with the honors of a Roman colony, exacted a tribute from the adjacent republics, for the purpose of defraying the games of the Isthmus, which were celebrated in the amphitheatre with the hunting of bears and panthers. From this tribute the cities of Elis, of Delphi, and of Argos, which had inherited from their remote ancestors the sacred office of perpetuating the Olympic, the Pythian, and the Nemean games, claimed a just exemption. The immunity of Elis and Delphi was respected by the Corinthians; but the poverty of Argos tempted the insolence of oppression; and the feeble complaints of its deputies were silenced by the decree of a provincial magistrate, who seems to have consulted only the interest of the capital in which he resided.

Seven years after this sentence, Julian allowed the cause to be referred to a superior tribunal; and his eloquence was interposed, most probably with success, in the defence of a city, which had been the royal seat of Agamemnon, and had given to Macedonia a race of kings and conquerors. The laborious administration of military and civil affairs, which were multiplied in proportion to the extent of the empire, exercised the abilities of Julian; but he frequently assumed the two characters of Orator and of Judge, which are almost unknown to the modern sovereigns of Europe.

The arts of persuasion, so diligently cultivated by the first Cæsars, were neglected by the military ignorance and Asiatic pride of their successors; and if they condescended to harangue the soldiers, whom they feared, they treated with silent disdain the senators, whom they despised. The assemblies of the senate, which Constantius had avoided, were considered by Julian as the place where he could exhibit, with the most propriety, the maxims of a republican, and the talents of a rhetorician. He alternately practised, as in a school of declamation, the several modes of praise, of censure, of exhortation; and his friend Libanius has remarked, that the study of Homer taught him to imitate the simple, concise style of Menelaus, the copiousness of Nestor, whose words descended like the flakes of a winter’s snow, or the pathetic and forcible eloquence of Ulysses.

The functions of a judge, which are sometimes incompatible with those of a prince, were exercised by Julian, not only as a duty, but as an amusement; and although he might have trusted the integrity and discernment of his Prætorian præfects, he often placed himself by their side on the seat of judgment. The acute penetration of his mind was agreeably occupied in detecting and defeating the chicanery of the advocates, who labored to disguise the truths of facts, and to pervert the sense of the laws. He sometimes forgot the gravity of his station, asked indiscreet or unseasonable questions, and betrayed, by the loudness of his voice, and the agitation of his body, the earnest vehemence with which he maintained his opinion against the judges, the advocates, and their clients.

But his knowledge of his own temper prompted him to encourage, and even to solicit, the reproof of his friends and ministers; and whenever they ventured to oppose the irregular sallies of his passions, the spectators could observe the shame, as well as the gratitude, of their monarch. The decrees of Julian were almost always founded on the principles of justice; and he had the firmness to resist the two most dangerous temptations, which assault the tribunal of a sovereign, under the specious forms of compassion and equity.

He decided the merits of the cause without weighing the circumstances of the parties; and the poor, whom he wished to relieve, were condemned to satisfy the just demands of a wealthy and noble adversary. He carefully distinguished the judge from the legislator; and though he meditated a necessary reformation of the Roman jurisprudence, he pronounced sentence according to the strict and literal interpretation of those laws, which the magistrates were bound to execute, and the subjects to obey. The generality of princes, if they were stripped of their purple, and cast naked into the world, would immediately sink to the lowest rank of society, without a hope of emerging from their obscurity. But the personal merit of Julian was, in some measure, independent of his fortune.

Whatever had been his choice of life, by the force of intrepid courage, lively wit, and intense application, he would have obtained, or at least he would have deserved, the highest honors of his profession; and Julian might have raised himself to the rank of minister, or general, of the state in which he was born a private citizen. If the jealous caprice of power had disappointed his expectations, if he had prudently declined the paths of greatness, the employment of the same talents in studious solitude would have placed beyond the reach of kings his present happiness and his immortal fame.

When we inspect, with minute, or perhaps malevolent attention, the portrait of Julian, something seems wanting to the grace and perfection of the whole figure. His genius was less powerful and sublime than that of Cæsar; nor did he possess the consummate prudence of Augustus. The virtues of Trajan appear more steady and natural, and the philosophy of Marcus is more simple and consistent.

Yet Julian sustained adversity with firmness, and prosperity with moderation. After an interval of one hundred and twenty years from the death of Alexander Severus, the Romans beheld an emperor who made no distinction between his duties and his pleasures; who labored to relieve the distress, and to revive the spirit, of his subjects; and who endeavored always to connect authority with merit, and happiness with virtue. Even faction, and religious faction, was constrained to acknowledge the superiority of his genius, in peace a swell as in war, and to confess, with a sigh, that the apostate Julian was a lover of his country, and that he deserved the empire of the world.

Categories
Real men

Tribute to Dominique Venner

by Guillaume Faye

Translated by Greg Johnson

Veneer

Dominique Venner’s suicide on May 21 at Notre Dame: Marine Le Pen bowed to this gesture of awakening consciousness, which may seem surprising, but it is to her credit. A topless representative of Femen, a group of feminist buffoons, tried to smear his memory the next day, mimicking his suicide in the choir of Notre Dame. On her flat chest was painted: “May Fascism rest in Hell.” It is the second time that these naked groupies entered the cathedral with impunity, even though there is security screening at the entrance. AFP journalists were notified in advance to cover this “happening” and are therefore probably complicit.

The Leftist media and politicians (especially the pathetic Harlem Désir) together accused Venner, post mortem, of incitement to violence, of provocation. Spitting toads. Clearly Venner’s Roman gesture, as tragic as history itself, scared these people, who spend their whole lives crawling.

Venner has given his death as an example, not from despair but from hope: the symbolic sacrifice encourages our youth, in the face of the ongoing foundering of European civilization in its bloodlines and its values, to resist and fight at the cost of death, which is the price of war. A war that has begun. Venner wanted us to understand that victory can be achieved in the history of peoples if the fighters are ready to die for their cause. It is for the future generations of resistant and fighting Europeans that Dominique Venner gave his life. He was an “awakener of the people,” in the words of his friend Jean Mabire.

And he killed himself, though he was not a Christian in the ordinary sense, on the central altar of Notre Dame de Paris, that is to say, the heart of one of the busiest sacred and historical places of all Europe. (Europe: Venner’s real, authentic homeland, not the marshmallow sham of the current European Union.) Notre Dame, a place of memory much richer than, for example, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier under the Arc de Triomphe. He wanted to give his sacrifice a special meaning, like the old Roman traditions in which the life of a man, to the end, is devoted to the country he loves and must serve. Like Cato, Venner never compromised on principles. Nor on matters of necessary style—of comportment, writing, and ideas—which have nothing to do with posturing, looks, and pedantry. His sobriety displayed, in essence, the power of his lesson. A distant master, which was not unrelated to the Stoic tradition, a rebel with heart and courage not vanity and imposture, a complete man of action and reflection, he never deviated from his path. One day he told me that you should never waste time criticizing traitors, cowards, self-interested bellwethers; nor, of course, should you forgive them; just ignore them and press on. The silence of contempt.

This is the Dominique Venner who, in 1970, brought me into the Resistance, which I have never denied or left since. He was my recruiting sergeant. His voluntary death — echoing Mishima’s more than Montherlant’s – is a founding act. And it filled me with a joyful sadness, like a flash of lightning. A warrior does not die in bed. The sacrificial death of this man of honor demands that we honor his memory and his work, not to mourn but to fight. But fight for what?

Not just for resistance, but for reconquest. The counter-offensive, in other words. After one of my essays in which I developed this idea, Venner sent me letter of approval in his elegant handwriting. His sacrifice will not be vain or ridiculous. The voluntary death of Dominique Venner is a call to victory.

Categories
Liberalism

Hitch had Jewish ancestry

by Tobias Langdon

Weakness-Upon-the-Goyim

Like his fellow atheist Richard Dawkins, Hitch [Christopher Hitchens] was a devout believer in the Miracle of Human Equality: he was sure that there is only one brain, the Human Brain, and that all human groups have an equal share in it.

Bearing that in mind, please examine this passage from God Is Not Great (2007), Hitch’s best-selling diatribe against religion:

(Read it all at The Occidental Observer)