Amos's River of Justice

Category: Mythology and Religion

Tracing mythological meanings of events and ideologies in the United States and the World

  • Neo-Gnostic Myth in American Politics

    I may have found the book behind the 2016 attack on progressivism. It’s Guido Giacomo Preparata’s The Ideology of Tyranny: The Use of Neo-Gnostic Myth in American Politics. 1 It explains the outrageous backlash that brought us Donald Trump as well as the behavior of the Democrats. But there are a few gaps in the narrative.

    The Unspoken Fear of the American Establishment

    It doesn’t explain the timing of Donald Trump’s attack on the ‘Democrat’ Party or his lack of attention on the progressive movement.

    You will recall that it was the Democrats who fought Sanders most ferociously in the 2015-16 Democratic primary. The Party was not facing much criticism before that. In retrospect, this was probably due to the fact that Donald Trump was not a serious contender for power until after the rise of Bernie Sanders.

    During the general election he never focused on the progressive movement. He merely pranced around acting like Bernie while pretending not to notice him.

    The strangeness continues today. The Democrats don’t mention progressives except to burn them in effigy whenever they see fit. And all the while, Trump’s ire is focused solidly on the Democrats.

    Preparata’s Attack is Really Aimed at Liberalism

    Preparata’s description of the Democratic Party is accurate from a progressive point of view. However, it’s revealing that his views seem to have become a textbook for the radical right. You would think the Right would want to keep the Democratic establishment in place. One of the Party’s goals after all, according to Preparata, was to squash resistance to the Right while giving lip service to the poor and working class. But of course Donald Trump’s Right is another matter. It seems Preparata’s (and Trump’s) attack is really aimed at Liberalism.

    Preparata’s Trigger Words

    All of the trigger words that send the opposition into a rage are in this book: diversity, political correctness, feminism, academia. These words have become bogeymen in their own right, perhaps because Preparata traces them to occult beliefs. And while he insists that both parties are to blame, his focus gradually becomes clear. Liberalism in general is not worth saving. And the majority of the blame for this state of affairs goes to the Democratic Party.

    Why Do They Ignore Progressives?

    When I think of the hopeful days after we first discovered Bernie Sanders and Pope Francis I could cry. We represented the one new and living thing that happened in my lifetime and the establishment squashed it without batting an eye. And make no mistake, the progressive movement was the target of both parties.

    What Exactly are we Fighting?

    Much of the establishment’s behavior during those years fits Preparata’s scenario. Both parties colluded to keep Bernie out of the White House. His description of the Democrats is also accurate. They seem comically incapable of mounting a resistance to Trump. But what exactly are we fighting?

    If everything Preparata says is correct, there is no happy ending to the process Donald Trump has initiated. His reign has no redeeming qualities.

    The Curious Case of the Epstein Files

    The MAGA Movement clearly believes pedophiles operate within the Democratic Party. Preparata’s book might be the source of this belief. However, the Trump Administration’s refusal to release the Epstein files does not fit Preparata’s scenario. What can explain this?

    The ‘Democrat’ Party’s Genealogy According to Preparata

    Preparata traces the Democratic Party’s inability to resist authoritarians to Michel Faucault. And Faucault’s inspiration was Georges Bataille. For his part, Bataille was fascinated by violent pre-Christian orgiastic cults and wanted to infiltrate the collective mind of bourgeois society in order to confuse and redirect it.

    The final objective being that of disabusing the potential convert by reconciling him or her to the spontaneous brutality of life and nature. Finally, Bataille’s social dream was to see men, after they have undergone this kind of initiation, create communities that would celebrate the mystery of collective life much in the fashion of the ancient orgiastic cults, which fascinated him so deeply. (Preparata, p. 9)

    From Bataille to Foucault: the Politics of Diversity

    This project never took off in Bataille’s time, but it is influential today. Preparata argues that Foucault later became part of this movement and made it more respectable. Among other things, his efforts led to a division of the population into identities that were never meant to be reconciled.

    Thus, with uncommon disingenuousness, feminism, homo-sexuality, and nonwhite ethnicity have been granted by the white establishment peer status in the grand arena of public discourse–through, for example, proclamations, exclusive legislation such as Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action, and ad hoc academic departments. (Preparata p. 10)

    I assume this argument is the inspiration behind MAGA’s rhetoric. But if we follow Preparata’s logic, it’s strange how useful the concept has been to Trump. It’s like a script for Trump’s authoritarianism, which Preparata claims to reject.

    Michel Foucault

    According to Preparata, the politics of diversity is an academic treatment of Foucault’s Power/Knowledge. Power/Knowledge is a re-elaboration of a creed invented by Bataille in the prewar era. This relationship of ideas gives Preparata leeway to focus solely on Bataille’s vision. In fact, he carries on as if Foucault is Bataille.

    Taking Preparata’s Word For It

    Perhaps the two men really are interchangeable. Most of us are not familiar enough with either one of them to say for sure. But it’s important to keep in mind that we are now talking about Bataille and not Faucault. And it’s not quite that simple. We are also talking about Bataille’s interpretation of James George Frazer’s The Golden Bough, all of which, we mustn’t forget, has been kept alive in the ideas of Faucault.

    We will have to take Preparata’s word that these connections are real and that they support the picture he is presenting. In the process, we should take advantage of any clues he provides. For example, Preparata uses the word ‘polarities’. This concept is important to the radical right-wing.

    Polarities

    According to Preparata, sacredness, like Kali, might have two faces (or polarities)–a clean countenance and a foul underside. The two faces are divided by the barrier of the taboo, which is periodically broken during the saturnalia. Taboo was also broken in cyclical wars.

    “Sacred filth” is, say, menstrual blood, which has filled men with dread for a long time and given rise as a result to a variety of prohibitions (taboos) affecting pubescent females. (Preparata p. 17)

    Was Epstein the Head of a New Religion?

    Frazer claimed that modern civilizations have not given up these rites because they satisfy their archaic craving for scapegoating and solemn murder by executing criminals…

    Apparently holiness, magical virtue, taboo, or whatever we may call that mysterious quality which is supposed to pervade sacred or tabooed persons, is conceived by the primitive philosopher as a physical substance or fluid, with which the sacred man is charged just as Leyden jar is charged with electricity: and exactly as the electricity in the jar can be discharged by contact with a good conductor, so the holiness or magical virtue in a man can be discharged and drained away by contact with the earth, which on this theory serves as an excellent conductor for the magical fluid.2

    From this, Bataille derived imagery that would become a type of theology–“a theology contemplating the clustering of a congregation around a sacred core by means of a peculiar bonding energy.” 3

    Foucault used this conception in his work, Power/Knowledge.

    1. Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2007. ↩︎
    2. See Berube, Radical Reformers, p. 24.) ↩︎
    3. Kepel, A l’ouest d’Allah, p. 76. ↩︎

  • Project 2025, Opus Dei and the Mormons

    I’ve been re-reading an article from my files about the Mormon Mafia and the JFK assassination by John F. Sweeney. I haven’t written about Sweeney’s paper and I don’t intend to write about it today. It is quite damning and I don’t want more trouble in my life than I’ve already had. Another reason I haven’t written about it is the hundreds of JFK assassination theories that already exist. This article is about a book cited by Sweeney, The Cleansing of America1 by Willard Cleon Skousen. My question is whether we should be connecting Project 2025, Opus Dei & and Mormons?

    Project 2025, Opus Dei & the Mormons
    Conspiracies

    If you like to research the books you read, as I do, Cleon Skousen’s book is on another level of believability. It does not depend on sources. In fact, it doesn’t depend on reality at all. Skousen claims to know God’s plan for the United States and the World. And as we all know too well, such beliefs are the political currency of our time.

    Cleon Skousen Left Instructions For Future Publication of His Book

    The Preface tells us this book represents years of writing and speaking about prophecy and the latter days relative to the United States. Skousen told his family that he wrote it for them, but he didn’t feel comfortable going public with it until the time was right. He left instructions for future publication and included the assurance that his family would know when the time was right. It would be a chaotic time, he said. Abandonment of the constitution would be among the many horrors. (Apparently the time was right in 2010.)

    He says The Restoration of the Gospel is What Peter Had in Mind When He Talked About ‘The Restitution of All Things’

    According to the Introduction, this book is a sequel to The Majesty of God’s Law, which Skousen says relied ‘almost entirely on the Bible and standard secular sources’. However, for this prophecy concerning the last days in America he had to use the marvelous works of the Restoration (The Book of Mormon). Skousen believes the Restoration of the Mormon Church was what Peter had in mind when he talked about ‘the restitution of all things’.

    Summary of the Introduction

    The central theme of The Cleansing of America is the preparation of America for six major purposes:

    • The restoration of the Constitution
    • The adoption of God’s law
    • The introduction of a Zion society under the Law of Consecration with individual stewardships.
    • The great last gathering of Israel
    • The coming of the ten tribes
    • The building of the New Jerusalem
    Chapter 1: The Divine Destiny of America

    In chapter one we learn that the end goal is the ‘divine destiny of America’. But first, nine things must happen:

    • The message of the restored gospel must flood the earth in order to search out the remnants of Israel and prepare them for the great last gathering. This has increased since 1989 because the world has opened up.
    • But first we must cleanse America. The near future will see the fulfillment of the time of the gentiles in America. At that time, the wickedness of the gentiles will have so thoroughly sinned against the gospel and desecrated the land that it will go beyond the further endurance of God.
    • The Lord says the means of this cleansing will be a desolating scourge, which will eliminate the elements of wickedness among the gentiles as well as the members of the church.
    • Members of the church worldwide will flee to a cleansed America before it is too late. A military world dictatorship will draft others into service unless they flee to America first.
    • (The dictators? The Church leadership?) will seal off the Western hemisphere to avoid attacks from outside. The roaring seas will prevent anyone from reaching America either by sea or by air.
    • The scripture says at that time America will be the only place on the face of the earth where there will be peace. This will allow the people organization of the people according to God’s law. Zion’s cities will be built up to provide freedom, peace and prosperity for the inhabitants of all faiths and the new Jerusalem will be set up as the capitol to govern the entire land.
    • After the Battle of Armageddon, Jesus will appear to the Jews and the leaders of the military dictatorship will be wiped out. (Apparently, the military dictators are the bad guys. The text never says who is accomplishing the cleansing and the sealing up.) With only a sixth of the army surviving, the battered remnants will flee back to their homes. America will no longer need to be sealed off. Thereafter, the New Jerusalem in America will be the Zion from which shall go forth the law with the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
    • After the fall of Gog and Magog, following the Battle of Armageddon, the remnants of the remaining nations will be fighting and quarreling among themselves. Meanwhile, the ten tribes will make their miraculous journey to the temples in America. Twelve thousand will be chosen from each of the tribes. These 144,000 will go out among the nations to warn them for the last time. Those who reject their message will be sealed up to destruction at the time of Christ’s second coming.
    • And just before the second coming there will be many gigantic changes on the surface of the earth. The continents and island will become one land. The mountains will be lowered, the seas will be forced back to the poles, and the earth will be restored to its paradisiacle glory just as it was before the Fall.

    According to Skousen, the Lord has said that all of these things must occur before the ushering in of the millennium. So, where we are now on this continuum?

    The Signs of the Times (According to Skousen)

    “The hedonistic disintegration of the culture in recent years is virtually unbelievable. All the elements of rot and corruption which have destroyed three previous civilizations on this continent are now spreading the same poisonous decadence on every level of American society. Who would ever have guessed that America would outlaw Bible reading, prayer, or the ten commandments in public schools? Or legalize the abortion of 40 million American babies in a single generation…or tolerate a flood of murders, robberies, violent assaults and rapes exceeding that of any other nation in the world? …[W]ho would have thought that with the hundreds of millions spent to build prisons, the most dangerous types of criminals would be turned loose on the streets because officials claimed they had no room to hold them? Or… the filth pouring out in books, magazines, television and motion pictures? [Who woud have believed] the thousands of children being sexually abused, even by their own parents? Or the legalizing of sodomy as an optionally judicially protected lifestyle and calling it part of the new morality?” (Skousen, Chapter 1)

    Skousen then informs the reader that many prophets have predicted doom for this nation. They say the only way to avoid destruction is if the entire people repents. However, not one of the prophets, including Maroni, the last prophet of the Nephites, believed repentence would take place.

    The Importance of Civilizational Decline in Right-Wing Scenarios

    I explained in a previous article the importance of civilizational decline in right-wing scenarios. Here Skousen spins his own version of certain doom for the United States. His warning to the gentiles, those who are strangers to the law of God: if they fail to repent the sword of the justice of God will come upon them.

    Giving Goodness a Bad Name

    It’s a terrible thing to hold someone’s religious beliefs up to ridicule. But if those beliefs result in judging and physically destroying entire nations, they mock the patience and good will the American people have shown to the Mormons.

    No doubt as members of the human race we all have much to repent for, the Mormons Church included. I’m not thinking so much of church members who have strayed. I’m thinking of the church’s leadership. One wonders if Skousen’s prophecy of a scourge was behind Donald Trump’s failure to act during the Covid crisis. And perhaps the South African refugees are members of the church and they are fleeing to America before it is sealed off? Finally, could the imprisoning of immigrants have something to do with building a Zion society?

    This may sound farfetched, but what else can explain the unflinching cruelty of the current administration?

    1. The Cleansing of America, W. Cleon Skousen, Valor Publishing Group, April 2, 2010. ↩︎

  • Guard Against Spiritual Contagion

    Guard Against Spiritual Contagion

    Diego Fares SJ wrote an article in 2018 about ‘the spirit of fierceness‘. He said this spirit pervades all of human history. It has a certain dynamic–opposition against ‘the other’. I think Fares’s article is important because it provides tools to help us guard against spiritual contagion.

    (more…)

  • Misogyny is Part of a Complex Ideology

    Often misogyny is part of a complex ideology. But it’s not clear which came first–the misogyny or the supporting ideology. For committed misogynists, hatred is a preference. Francis Parker Yockey and Baron Julius Evola were both misogynists. Kevin Coogan attributes this in large part to occult influences. The most prominent source of far right occult beliefs in the postwar period was Theosophy.

    Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

    Among Yockey’s possessions when the FBI arrested him was a citation for the June 1937 issue of The Theosophical Forum, an American journal of the Theosophy Society. The Russian-born mystic, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky founded the Theosophical society in New York City in 1875. In 1888, she published her book, The Secret Doctrine. Blavatsky’s doctrine basically turned the evolutionary worldview on its head. However, she had no intention of replacing evolution with biblical creationism. Her work resulted in countless forms and expressions of mischief.

    Root Races

    According to Blavatsky, the world has seen the rise and fall of seven “Root Races”. This rise and fall has taken place many times over. Now (in Blavatsky’s time) the Aryan, or fifth Root Race, dominates the world. However, the Aryans are at the end of a karmic cycle.

    Blavatsky taught that the Kali-Yuga was a time of great destruction. But its end was coming. This meant the beginning of the new Sixth Root Race. And the Sixth Root Race would begin the ascendancy of man toward the highest, Seventh Root Race of god-men.

    Curiously, Blavatsky’s Root Races were not biological entities. They were psychic entities. But in spite of this, her arguments were very influential for the racist right in both Germany and Austria. They ‘proved’ the Aryans were distant spiritual descendants of the highest root race, descended from the degenerate Atlantean tribes who themselves descended from the original god-men.

    Traditionalism vs Evolutionism

    The subterranean world of the high occult enveloped Yockey. Thanks to his occult interests, he saw himself as part of an underground elite, a secret new race of god-men. He wrote extensively about polarity and he developed sado-masochistic inclinations. To understand him, it is necessary to examine the writings of Julius Evola, the most important and most influential fascist high-occultist in postwar Europe.

    In his book, Revolt Against the Modern World. Evola argued that every epoch has its own myth. Democratic evolutionism is the Kali-Yuga’s myth. The myth of the new age, however, will be the Traditional worldview.

    Tradition teaches that mankind did not come from lower forms. It has higher origins. The lower represents a degeneration from the higher. Like Blavatsky, Evola claimed that today’s Aryans are the spiritual descendants of the highest root race. This highest root race was a ‘divine’ race. But it mixed its seed with the inferior human race, and so it is no longer with us.1

    Tradition, in more recent eras, developed a variety of myths referring to races as bearers of civilization and to the struggles between divine races and animal, cyclopic, or demonic races. They are the Aesir against the Elementarwesen; the Olympians and the heroes against giants and monsters of the darkness, the water, and the earth. They are the Aryan deva fighting against the asura, the enemies of the divine heroes; they are the Incas, the dominators who impose their solar laws on the aborigines who worshipped ‘Mother Earth’.

    Julius Evola, as quoted by Kevin Coogan p. 304

    As mentioned in a previous article, Evola was an early critic of Yockey’s Imperium. However, he merely thought Yockey was unrealistic about the timeframe of the fascist takeover. Evola and Yockey agreed on their basic ideology.

    René Guénon

    René Guénon was also an important figure in the European occult underground. Evola and Guénon had a disagreement about man’s relationship to the gods, however Guénon’s Traditionalism remained important within the European far right. And although Guénon eventually converted to Islam, he remained close to ‘traditionalist’ elements of the Catholic Church.

    Guénon taught that the modern age’s interest in democracy, mass culture, and materialism are all manifestations of the Kali-Yuga. The Kali-Yuga has infected thinking to the point where Western philosophy is purely human in character. Now philosophy is merely part of the rational order, which is inferior.

    The ideal order is a sort of genuine supra-rational and non-human traditional wisdom. Humans can’t achieve this kind of wisdom because ‘Truth’ is not a product of the human mind. It exists independently of ourselves. All we can do is apprehend it (Coogan, p. 294).

    Evola embraced this argument completely. He shared Guénon’s hatred of ‘mere human logos’. He believed that all the Renaissance had accomplished was to usher in the exaltation of the individual. Greece’s true zenith was not in the time of Socrates. It was during the mythical Heroic Age of Heracles.

    Traditionalism and the Un-human Ideal

    A human-like ‘personal God’ did not rule Evola’s universe. It was ruled by a numen. He defined a numen as an immutable naked force, an essence free of passion and change, one which creates distance with regard to everything which is merely human, a solar realm of Olympic peace and light, of divine regality. Borrowing from Guénon, he claimed this vision of pure being, the Hindu Satya-Yuga, corresponded in the West to Hesiod’s Golden Age.

    Like Spengler, he believed fascism was valuable only because it would bring on the dissolution of the old world in the Kali-Yuga. The old world’s destruction was necessary in order for the new age to arise. For Evola, fascism was merely a political form of Dada.

    Coogan on The Hermetic Tradition

    To help his readers understand Evola’s argument about God, Coogan examines Evola’s 1931 book The Hermetic Tradition. He reports that when Avaloka, a journal devoted to Hermetic thought, published a review from a section of Evola’s book, The Tree, the Serpent, and the Titan, the journal’s editor, Arthur Versluis, warned his readers that there is something Promethean, if not Luciferian, in Evola’s perspective. Coogan agrees (Coogan p. 296).

    The World Tree

    According to Evola’s ideology, the tree is an axis mundi joining two worlds: the solar world of immortality and timeless knowledge (Being) and the telluric world of Mother Earth (Becoming). This view associates Becoming with women, earth, and chaos symbols like dragons.

    In his book, Evola examines the dual symbolism of the Tree, namely its identification with notions of immortality and supernatural knowledge as well as its association with fatal and destructive forces like dragons, serpents, and demons. But of course Evola is talking about the World Tree. Coogan identifies three famous trees representing universal force. They are the Tree of the World, and the two biblical trees: the tree of life and the tree of knowledge. Each of them symbolizes the universal force linked to supernatural knowledge, immortality, and the power of domination. This universal force has a feminine nature.

    Misogyny is based on a complex ideology
    The Idea of a Danger. Credit: George Cotayo
    A Danger or a Promise?

    These trees also contain the idea of a danger. On the one hand, the tree symbolizes a temptation which brings ruin and damnation upon the one who succumbs to it. But it is also the object of conquest which transforms he who dares to undertake it into a God. It might even transfer the attributes of divinity and immortality from one race of beings to another.

    Adam tried to eat from the Tree of Knowledge and become godlike. He failed. But according to some legends, others have succeeded. These include the Hindu god Indra, Odin, Mithras, and Heracles. The legends tell us

    …of an undertaking which involved risk and a fundamental uncertainty. In Hesiod’s Theogony, and typically in the legend of the king of the Woods, Gods or exceptional men are seen as taking possession of power which can pass, along with the attributes of divinity, to whoever knows how to seize it…But among those who make the attempt, some force a way and triumph, and others fall, paying for their daring, experiencing the fatal effects of that same [primordial female] power.

    Julius Evola, as quoted by Coogan, p. 297

    Coogan objects to Evola’s presentation of this drama. He thinks the real question is whether man should even attempt to rival the gods. In mythology there are only two answers to this question, and they are in opposition to each other. They are the ‘magico-heroic’ answer and the religious answer.

    According to the magico-heroic view, he who attempts to become one with the gods but fails, is simply a being whose fortitude and good fortune were not equal to his daring. In the religious interpretation, however, such misfortune is changed to guilt, the heroic attempt [is changed] to a sacrilegious and cursed act not because of its failure, but in itself.

    Coogan, p. 297

    Adam

    Misogyny is Part of a Complex Ideology
    What happened to Adam is the only thing that could have happened to him. Credit: Grafissimo

    Coogan argues that what happens to Adam is the only thing that could have happened to him. Adam becomes one who has sinned. He has no alternative, therefore, but to seek expiation, and above all to renounce the wish which led him to that undertaking. The idea that the conquered can still think of reconquest, or intend to hold firm to the dignity which his act has earned him, appears from the religious perspective as ‘the most reprehensible Luciferism’ (Coogan p. 298). Yet, the heroic viewpoint persists.

    Hermes

    The Hermetic tradition represents the heroic viewpoint. Hermes is not only the messenger of the Gods; he is also one who succeeds. He takes from Zeus his scepter, from Venus her belt, and from Vulcan, the tools of his allegorical craft. In Egyptian tradition, Hermes became Hermes Trismegistus. He is the figure of one of the Kings and masters of the primordial age who gave man the principles of a higher civilization.

    The Fallen Angels

    Fallen Angels
    From Their Union Sprang the Nephilim or Watchers. Credit: francescoch

    We also have the account of fallen angels in the Book of Enoch. Coogan argues that it wasn’t merely their desire for the women that caused their downfall. There is power in woman’s relationship with the Tree, and power is what the angels were really after. When the angels became united to power, they fell and came to earth. They alighted on a high place of the earth (Mount Hermon), and from their union with the women sprang the Nephilim or Watchers. The Watchers teach the Royal Hermetic Art by which man can control the Gods.

    Evola updated and reissued The Hermetic Tradition in 1948. This was three years after the defeat of the ‘Heroes’ in World War II. For Evola, losing the war was not a metaphysical punishment. It was a simple defeat. He never stopped pursuing the quest for power/knowledge, for immortality, for domination over the Tree/Female. The Hermetic Tradition is a vision of a new race of men/gods.

    What Guénon and Evola Had in Common

    According to Coogan, Guénon was different than Evola. He thought Catholicism was the only tradition that could provide the ruling mythos for Europe (p. 300). But I think Coogan gives Guénon too much credit. In Guenon’s scheme, the elite will rule the world using primordial teachings found in several distinct traditions. But that is a discussion for another time.

    1. Kevin Coogan, Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International, Autonomedia, Brooklyn, New York, 1999, pp. 291-292 ↩︎

  • European and American Fascism Are Connected

    Where did Christian nationalism come from? What’s so special about Carthage? Both of these concepts have echoes in the European Right. In other words, European and American Fascism are Connected.

    The Christian Nationalist Party

    Francis Parker Yockey and two associates launched the European Liberation Front (ELF) sometime in late 1948 or early spring 1949. His associates were John Anthony Gannon and Guy Chesham. ELF’s manifesto was The Proclamation of London. ‘Even at its height, the ELF only had about 150 supporters. Its main task seems to have been the production of anti-American neutralist propaganda.’1 (p. 175)

    In either late 1949 or early 1950 Yockey returned to America hoping to find poitical and financial supprt for the ELF from the Christian Nationalist Crusade (CNC), the largest American far-right group in the immediate postwar period. The group’s founder, the Reverend Gerald L. K. Smith, was a flamboyant demogogue and fanatical anti-Semite who began his career as an advisor to Louisiana Govrnor Huey Long, After Long’s assassintation, Smith helped co-found the Union Party with Father Coughlin and Doctor Francis Townsend. Smith lived in Detroit during World War II and enjoyed the patronage of Henry Ford. In 1947 he created the Christian Nationalist Crusade/Christian Nationalist Party as the postwar continuation of his America First Party.

    Kevin Coogan p. 220

    The St. Louis Police Department gave the FBI a memorandum about this meeting. Yockey gave a speech under his pen name of Ulick Varange. The subject was the underground working of the party in France, Germany, England, and Belgium.

    All remarks at meeting were directed against the Communitst, Jews, Negroes, and Republican and Democratic Parties…VARANGE stated that he attended the trials at Nuremberg and other places and spoke of the unfairness of the trials and the importance of the testimony of the Jews. He also stated that we will have a Nuremberg trial in this country some day…

    St Louis Police Department memorandum, as reported by Coogan, p. 221

    Beyond Right and Left

    In the last article, Marco Tarchi said Tolkien, the fantastic, the saga, had made a ‘group-mind’ possible. This quote is from his programmatic Beyond Right and Left. (By beyond, he means the conventional definitions of these two positions.)

    There is a recent American book arguing the same thing. It’s author, Verlan Lewis is currently making the rounds in the United States. Several YouTube channels have interviewed him. In this one, the hosts seem a little uncomfortable with Verlan’s arguments. They may not have been aware of its echo in the European Ultra Right.

    Richard Mellon Scaife and The League to Save Carthage

    In the foyer of Richard Mellon Scaife’s Pittsburg mansion stood a brass elephant on a mahogany stand. Visitors might have thought it was the mascot of the Republican Party. This would have made sense because Mellon’s forbearers had been a financial mainstay of the Republican Party for a century. They were founders of Mellon banking, Alcoa Aluminum and the Gulf Oil Empire. But this elephant was actually paying homage to Hannibal, the fabled military strategist. Hannibal had scaled the Alps on elephant back to launch a surprise attack on the Roman Empire. This homage to Hannibal served as inspiration for a private organization that Scaife founded in 1964.

    In his 2009 unpublished memoire, Scaife claimed to describe a ‘richly conservative life’. He likened his secret organization of wealthy men to the Romans who failed to prevent the fall of Carthage. He called them the League to Save Carthage. They waged a strategic war of ideas aimed at sacking American politics. According to Jane Mayer, Scaife’s memoire serves as a secret tell-all about the building of the modern conservative movement.2

    In his memoire, Scaife estimated that in a period of fifty years he had spent a billion dollars on philanthropy. Over $600 million of that had gone into influencing American public affairs.

    Bachofen Claimed Rome’s Destruction of Dido’s Carthage was a Spiritual Struggle

    Chapter 32 of Coogan’s book covers Evola’s Revolt Against the Modern World. In this chapter, Evola describes a strong emphasis on the masculine, as opposed to the feminine. Coogan cites Evola’s use of Johann Jakob Bachofen’s justification for this view in The Myth of Tanaquil (Die Sage von Tanaquil).

    Rome’s central idea…the idea underlying its historical state and its law, is wholly independent of matter, it is an eminently ethical achievement, the most spiritual of antiquity’s bequests to the ensuing age. And here again it is clear that our Western life truly begins with Rome. Rome is the idea through which European mankind prepared to set its own imprint on the entire globe, namely the idea that no material law but only the free activity of the spirit determines the destinies of peoples.

    Campbell, introduction to Myth, Religion and Mother Right p. 1, (as quoted by Coogan p. 307)

    Bachofen has had a covert influence on both the Left and the Right. He was a great influence on Julius Evola. Thanks to Bachofen, Carthage has become a central idea for the Ultra Right.

    ‘Marx and Engels praised Bachofen’s concept of primitive communism in early societies. Evola, however, emphasized the Bachofen who believed that the transition of human society from matriarchy to patriarchy was the crucial moment in the evolution of human freedom.’3

    ‘Bachofen believed that Rome’s destruction of Dido’s Carthage was a spiritual struggle. It was a clash primarily of Grundanschauungen, spiritual ideals, and not of merely economic and political interests’ (Coogan p. 308). Integral to this argument was Bachofen’s claim about Christianity and other Oriental cults of late Imperial Rome. He claimed they were not merely foreign incursions:

    ‘On the contrary, [they] marked the re-emergence of an attitude to nature, history, and the state that had always been there but that Rome had tried to suppress’– namely its underlying matriarchy.

    Grossman, Basle and Bachofen, p. 175 (As quoted by Coogan, p. 308)

    Along the same lines, Evola argued that Heracles was the West’s first great mythic hero. Heracles dominated the Tree/Female life force principle by obtaining ‘Hebe, everlasting youth. By contrast, Dionysus stood for a ‘Chthonic-Poseidon from of manhood (Coogan, p. 306).

    Ultra Right Influence All Over the World

    In 1951, Francis Parker Yockey attended the MIF’s Naples meeting. (MIF, was the MSI’s women’s division, the Movimento Italiano Femminile. MSI was the largest and best-organized fascist movement in postwar Europe.) Yockey joined the MSI hardliners. This faction was opposed to turning the group into a purely parliamentary organization. This was part of the war between the ‘left’ and ‘right’ wings of Italian fascism.

    During this time, an anti-Semitic group published a weekly called Asso di Bastoni (The Ace of Spades) (Coogan p.211). According to Coogan, Asso Di Bastoni was an excellent example of Italian ‘universal fascism’. On June 1, 1951 it boasted of Ultra Right Influence all over the world:

    ‘There is no place in the world where a fascist movement has not developed..From the ices of the island of Olafur Thors, head of the ‘National Front’, to the Tierra del Fuego, where Peron commanded, to the islands of the Persian Gulf where a section of the MSI exists…to the rice plantations of nationalist Thailand of the ex-collaborationist Luang Pibul Songgram, from the land of the Pharaohs and of the Pyramids where the dictator Nasser is developing his doctrine of the nationalist and authoritarian corporatism to the state of Azerbaijan where the memory of the deeds of Fatalibayli Dudanginsky are still remembered, to the Balkans with the Ustaches and the Iron Guards, and to the Mountains of the Phalange, from the English castles of Sir Oswald Mosley to the Russian steppes of Vlassov and to the Black Forest of the steel Helmets’ and of the Werewolves, from Budapest on the Danube with the ‘Croci Frecciate’  to the islands of Indonesia of the ex-collaborationist Sockharno, from the slopes of Fujiama, the sacred mountain of the Japanese, where the nationalist sect of the Black Dragon of Ichiro Midori is working, to the Indies where the faithful followers of Chandra Bose meet, from the Ireland of the Blue Shirts to Tunis of ex-collaborationists Habib Burghiba, from the Parisian Montmartre with the young cohorts of Doriot and the journalists of Rivarol to the fertile plains of Wang-Ching-Wei’s China, from the deserts of the Middle East of Daoud Monchi Zadegh and of the grand Mufti to the quiet and limpid waters of the Swiss lakes of Amaudruz, from the Norwegian fjords of Hamsun and Per Enghdal and Sven Hedin’s Stockholm to the Lisbon of the ‘Portuguese Legion’ the Slovakia of Tiso and Cernak and the Bolivia of Paz Estenssoro, from Mannerheim’s Finland to the islands of the West Indies where nationalist and phalangist movements are active in black shirts to Israel and the extreme rightist party ‘Herut’, everywhere, in every place and country of the world, the fascist approach has found and finds fanatic supporters.

    Coogan p. 217
    1. Kevin Coogan, Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International, Autonomedia, Brooklyn, NY 1999 ↩︎
    2. Jane Mayer. Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires behind the Rise of the Radical Right. Narrated by Laurel Lefkow, Audible, Chapter 2. ↩︎
    3. Coogan. p 307) ↩︎

  • The Foundation of American Civil Religion

    Richard J. Bishirjain has argued that a deformation of history has the ability to destroy historical consciousness and replace it with a derivative, pseudo-interpretation. Unfortunately, a deformation of history has already occurred in the United States. This deformed historical consciousness is the foundation of American civil religion.

    Introduction

    When I first read Bishirjain’s article I accepted everything uncritically. I agree that American Civil Religion causes more problems than it solves. But unfortunately, it is impossible to ignore Bishirjain’s partisan attempts to absolve conservatives from any responsibility. For example, he makes Woodrow Wilson into an intemperate war-monger in World War I, even though Wilson tried to keep the United States out of the War.

    Then why did I choose to present this summary? If nothing else, it’s an example of bygone Conservative rationality. (Bishirjain’s article was published in 1979.) This moral approach would just confuse conservatives in Congress today. But unfortunately, Bishirjain seems to have predicted what has actually happened to conservatism.

    One wonders what the left was doing while conservatism was losing its mind. Progressives would have to be in denial to argue that nothing is wrong with America’s national mythos. My hope is that readers of this article will be able to sift through Bishirjain’s critique of American Civil Religion and formulate critiques of their own–whether of Bishirjain’s views, or Civil Religion itself.

    The Western Experience of History

    Apocalyptic prophets are prominent in American civil religion. But they are nothing new. They were a common feature of the early Christian world as well. However, St. Augustine rejected the claim that the prophecy of the imminence of the millennium would be an actual period of a thousand years in which the saints would rule the kingdom of this world with Christ. He did not believe there was a meaningful theological and philosophical course to the rise and fall of nations. We could use a St. Augustine today.

    If historical consciousness were not such a solid part of Western civilization, the claims of modern-day prophets would not merit a comment. But historical consciousness does shape our understanding of ourselves, our fellow citizens, and the world. In the West, the experience of history involves the mystery of being in which the political community shares. The community’s public myths articulate this mystery. They tell us that the origins of historical political communities are providential; that the community exists under the sovereignty of God and serves some purpose. This shapes our identity as persons, as citizens and as a nation.

    Bishirjain calls this the eschatological dimension of history, and argues that it can’t be avoided or denied. After all, it is found in sacred scripture but also in Greek philosophy. The problem is that if it becomes deformed, it will have personal and civilizational consequences.

    Bishirjian describes the problem as follows:

    If salvation is thought to be intramundane, political life takes on new historical importance as it becomes enveloped in the history of salvation; and politics becomes the field of prophecy.

    Bishirjian p. 33

    To understand how it all went wrong, it’s necessary to talk about what politics is supposed to be. Politics is a science requiring rational judgments made with an awareness of circumstances. Politicians must be able to identify the limits of government and potential abuses of state power. And decision makers must have knowledge of the common good and the ability to protect institutions which limit power. (This concern about limited government is clearly a conservative emphasis. This is unfortunate because his concerns are too important for partisan point-making.)

    Civil Religion Represents a Revolutionary Change in Attitude

    America did not start out as a project of global salvation. This came about because Civil religion in the United States has imposed a revolutionary change in attitude. Before Civil Religion, expectations were of a final end beyond time at the end of history. After Civil Religion, expectations changed into some immanent, this-worldly end, and the hope for the future has become dependent on human action. But not just any humans.

    According to Robert Nisbet, our intellectual class has become a ‘clerisy of power’ imbued with a sense of redemptive passion. Other conservatives have warned about this as well. They include Irving Kristol and Michael Novak. According to Kristol, a special section or class within Western democratic society carries this attitude of mind. Michael Novak speaks of the ‘superculture’ and its commitments to the values of modernity–science, technology, industry. We find an all-encompassing politicization of the mind in place of Pragmatic politics.

    Civil Religion is Blamed on Progressives

    Bishirjian identifies Herbert Croly and Woodrow Wilson as the source of this extreme in American politics. Croly, a progressive, was the first to initiate this superculture. He did this by influencing Teddy Roosevelt and then Woodrow Wilson. Unfortunately, Croly himself, or at least his first 40 years, is a mystery.

    Herbert Croly

    Croly believed secular saints were both possible and necessary. Furthermore, he thought they would be led by a messiah who will reveal the true path. He published his ideas in The Promise of American Life in 1909, and later, a journal, The New Republic.

    Croly believed these secular saints would realize a national purpose in public affairs, embody the nation’s democratic ideal, and bring about a transfiguration. But, so that ‘the American people may believe once again in the promise of American life‘, these saints must formulate and articulate the democratic ideal.

    According to Bishirjain:

    …Croly’s call for secular saints who will conduct us into a condition of reconstituted and tranfigured reality, has less to do with political science than with prophecy, enthusiasm, and magic.

    Bishirjian p. 36

    The concept of a national idea is important to Bishirjain too. But it does not exist independently nor is it working its way in human events towards a logical fulfillment. The national life can expire, change its form, become something altogether different, not by means of the twists and turns of a world spirit, but the the weakening or collapse of civic virtue and political judgement.

    Woodrow Wilson

    Woodrow Wilson’s version of a political religion was that history moves according to a plan in which America plays a major role. And in his view, God shaped and directed America’s role from the beginning. Apparently, Wilson believed himself to be the messiah.

    The politics of Wilson were not ‘mere politics, they were a special capacity to announce the immanence of a new age certified by the political leader who experienced a special revelation…

    Wilson was an idealist in the sense that T. H. Green defined an idealist as one who seeks to ‘enact God in the world’ by the pursuit of ideals not fgiven in experience. Wilson was committed to the ideal of a world absent of war, a world he believed to bwe within the grasp of a civilized world. And America’s entry into World War I was largely motivated by the desire to attain such an ideal. That it was to be accomplished by violence did not dismay Wilson It is important to understand that Wilson’s desire to involve us in World War I was grounded in his will to destroy the system of balance-of-power-politics.

    Bishir]ian pp. 36, 37

    But was Wilson’s entire desire to enter World War I grounded in his will to destroy the system of balance-of-power-politics? This a deduction on Bishirjain’s part. He bases it entirely on Wilson’s lack of selfish interests in the War.

    On the other hand, it seems that Wilson is on record saying that he wanted to destroy the old order of international politics.

    Every true heart in the world, and every enlightened judgment demanded that, as whatever cost of independent action every government that took thought for its people or for justice or for ordered freedom would lend itself to a new purpose and utterly destroy the old order of international politics.

    As quoted by Bishirjian p. 37

    Bishirjian argues that Wilson especially aimed to destroy the government of Kaiser Wilhelm. But this speech was given in 1919, so it couldn’t have been Wilson’s reason for entering the War.

    Another mark against Wilson was his efforts to get the Senate to ratify the Covenant of the League of Nations. Wilson’s ideal was not realistic in Bishirjain’s view. And unfortunately, Wilson’s ‘visionary politics’ has become the ‘hallmark of American politics.

    • Wilson wants to defend liberty in general. Bishirjain would prefer that he defend the liberty of the American political community.
    • Our relationship with our friends will be based not on mutual interest, but on their willingness to impose uniquely Anglo-American concepts of civil liberty upon their own societies.
    • It overestimates the capacity of Americans to pay ‘any’ price, ‘any’ hardship, and bear ‘any’ burden. This can foster cynicism and skepticism.
    • The failure of the symbolism of such policies leads to a general revulsion against all politics, and the search for the non-politician, the outsider, the uncorrupted one, to lead the national life. He in turn will reassert the idealism of the ‘true’ American tradition, the pursuit of policies because they are right (to the exclusion of ones in our national interest). And the cycle of ideolgical rejection of political reality begins anew.

    Conclusion

    We have seen some of Bishirjain’s predictions come true, especially the last one. We currently have a non-politician who reasserts the idealism of the ‘true’ American tradition. But it may be a stretch to say it all stems from the Progressive era, especially when you consider subsequent Republican maneuvers. It is possible that the partisan approach limits the effectiveness of his arguments.

    For example, I agree that politics is a science requiring rational judgments made with an awareness of circumstances. The most recent example of that kind of politics was the Progressive platform in the 2016 presidential election. But then Bishirjain also wants limited government and limited state power. These requirements have the ability to completely override rational judgments made with an awareness of circumstances.

    I also appreciate his claim that the national life can expire, change its form, become something altogether different, not by means of the twists and turns of a world spirit, but the the weakening or collapse of civic virtue and political judgement. But when he speaks of defending the liberty of the political community, I wonder which political community he is talking about. Based on actual history, he means the business community, and currently the Democrats are right behind him. Business interests can include weapons manufacturers, and agribusiness. So, whose civic virtue and political judgement are we talking about?

    A clerisy of power is a regrettable development for both parties. And not only because it’s progressive.

  • Is This What Armageddon Looks Like?

    In the Bible, Armageddon is the place where a final battle will be fought between the forces of good and evil. Up until now we have not taken the rantings of the Christian Zionists seriously, but we have been aware of their lust for the final battle. Now they have us questioning ourselves. Are they mad? Or will they be allowed to demonstrate the righteousness of their cause by force? Is this what Armageddon looks like?

    The brutality of the assault on Gaza is something to behold. We’ve all experienced it in one way or another. The entire offensive has been a message to the people of Palestine. But it has been a message to the global population as well.

    This week, Israeli tanks entered the refugee camp at Rafah after the IDF set a large number of refugees on fire. It can be argued that the intentional, public cruelty of this act was meant to taunt the rest of the world. If so, Israel’s message is destructive of human organization on every level. It demands a response.

    A Response to Israel’s Latest Outrage

    Israel’s behavior represents a double threat to humanity. The Israelis’ willingness and ability to ignore public opinion is a threat for global politics. To trample on public opinion in this way signals the death of peaceful settlements everywhere, and it will have unforeseen consequences. But this pales in comparison to the second threat. When a state calmly broadcasts God’s approval for destruction of life and property, and when its powerful secular allies assist in the carnage, it makes a mockery of religion. The fact that Israel has turned democratic politics into a joke is serious enough; Israel’s religious claims threaten religion itself. This is more serious by far because religion anchors a benign, universal human reality.

    Again we question ourselves: do the stories of Old Testament violence represent ancient history, or are they are a recurring part of human reality? Is this drama somehow necessary?

    Personally, I don’t think so. Let’s continue with this line of thought.

    The Discordant Element in Israel’s Campaign

    It is encouraging that there is a major discordant element in Israel’s campaign. The discordant element is that the Israelis and their allies act as if they have nothing to fear, yet they are compelled to broadcast their excuses to the world. Apparently public opinion is democratic. It demands to be assuaged. How strange.

    You could say the strangeness of it demonstrates that political and military might have no relation to religious power. In fact, they contradict one another. For example, why bother with propaganda if God is on your side? Does God need human approval? And if the Israelis and their allies are able to depend on military superiority to prevail over their ‘enemies’, what do they need God for?

    Where is God in This?

    Perhaps God represents permission for military conquest. If so, it’s not exactly God who gives permission, is it? They argue that the Bible ‘, or history, proves’ the Jews have a right to Palestine. And the Holocaust somehow proves it as well. But military superiority is always there in the background. However, leaving aside the biblical and historical claims, military superiority does not really belong to Israel. It is a function of her allies. Her secular allies.

    The Christian Zionists deal with this unfortunate fact as follows. The secular nature of Israel’s western allies is actually important part of the story. They point to King Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenid Empire, who allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple in 538 BC. And they imagine this history will be repeated in our time, with their help. The fact that Cyrus was not Jewish allows Cyrus to be compared to Israel’s secular allies and specifically, to Donald Trump, who is not religious.

    One could ask why Israel needs Trump to be president when anyone in Washington would support Israel just as well. Apparently, it’s the Christian Zionists who ‘need’ Trump. Perhaps they think Trump will bring our secular experiment to an end.

    Question: if this is what Armageddon looks like, why bother?

  • From Lahaina to Biblical Madness in Palestine

    The fire in Lahaina on the Island of Maui was similar in some ways to what we have seen in Gaza, but on a much smaller scale. Was Lahaina a buildup to the genocide in Gaza? In this article I compare the fire in Lahaina to biblical madness in Palestine.

    We’ve almost forgotten Lahaina today because of the carnage taking place in Palestine. But Lahaina’s tragedy is ongoing. I will argue that there are similarities between Lahaina and Gaza.

    After the Lahaina fire, the coyness of city leaders was suspicious. Those who took part in subsequent press conferences seemed almost proud of the insulting and incomplete answers they gave to the press. Housing for the survivors of the Lahaina fire is still in short supply. And many residents are being evicted from the housing they have. Others have already relocated to other states. The callousness of those responsible and the preventable deaths of family members are also comparable to Gaza. Last but not least is the high dollar value of the land involved in the fire. But Gaza has an additional characteristic.

    Likewise, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been flippant and callous in his statements to the press. However, his use of Old Testament references to justify his cruelty sets Gaza apart from Lahaina. Netanyahu’s attitude has been even more smug, conceited, high-handed and pitiless than the leaders of Lahaina.

    Humor and restraint are nowhere to be found in Palestine. The behavior of Israel is heavy-handed, cruel, and ugly. And the suffering and death levied on Gaza’s people is ghastly and final. If those responsible are waiting for congratulations, they’ll wait for eternity.

    Netanyahu’s behavior does not translate as power. Nor is his behavior compatible with religious belief. It merely demonstrates childish, ignorant pride, and delusions of invincibility.

  • The Birth of Aquarius and Human Civilization

    Today people either look forward to the New Age or they fear it.  Religious believers are probably the largest group of people who fear the age of Aquarius.   They may not believe that an age has real influence on the world, but they fear New Age belief systems and alternative lifestyles.

    (more…)

  • Justice of the Rupture

    Lately I’ve been thinking about the temptations of Jesus in the wilderness.  He fasted for 40 days and was hungry, and during this time in the wilderness the devil tempted him three times.  The first temptation had to do with Jesus’s hunger; the second temptation, as I understand it, was connected with the human need for validation in the eyes of other people.  But the third temptation was something else altogether.  Verses 8 and 9 imply that the ‘devil’ has the power to bestow ‘the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them,’ if we will only worship him.  Jesus’s resistance to these temptations represents the justice of the rupture.

    And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.

    But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

    Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple,

    And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.

    Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.

    Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them:

    And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.

    Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. (Matthew 4: 1-10) 

    In recent years I’ve begun to think of the earth as surrounded by a closed system and ruled by a sort of cosmic tyranny, and I imagine at the head of this cosmic order sits the ‘prince of this world.’  You can call him whatever you want–Matthew called him ‘the devil’.  It follows that when Jesus resisted the devil’s temptations, he was waging a cosmic resistance.  According to the article cited below, this cosmic resistance represents the justice of the rupture.  If I understand it correctly, this resistance remains the central drama of mortal life.  It is the fundamental necessity of the entire human race–the only path to freedom.

    I believe that this is what the Christians mean when they say they worship the same god that the Jews worship.  There is a cosmic order that wields power over the Earth and her inhabitants, and there is another power directly opposed to the cosmic order.  (Hopefully it is obvious that I am not talking about Jewish or Christian esotericism and the loosely related secret societies that capitulate to the cosmic order.)

    Unfortunately, the major religions of our day have taken on much of the lore of the cosmic order.  This happened quite early in Christianity’s journey through history.  Also unfortunate is the fact that the so-called Christian ‘reformers’ failed to recognize this problem.  This is doubly unfortunate because it is not only the central problem of religion.  Again, it is the central problem of mortal existence.  The failure to recognize this fact taints everything, including the current political environment.

    J. Leavitt Pearl sees this cosmic resistance in the scripture that tells of Jesus’s baptism.

    John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.  Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey.  He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals.  I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy spirit.”  In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.  And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him.  And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” (Mark 1:4-11, as quoted by J. Leavitt Pearl)

    For Pearl the key phrase is, “He saw the heavens torn apart.”  It is too easy for most of us to pass over this phrase, maybe because it is followed by the dramatic description of the Spirit descending like a dove and a voice coming from heaven and saying to Jesus, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”  But according to Pearl, “The tearing open of the cosmic order is the descent of the True Justice of God, waged against the empires of this world who rule under the banner of ‘order and justice,’ but whose ‘justice’ is always only violence and oppression.”

    Pearl calls the gospel of Mark an apocalyptic text and describes John as an apocalyptic figure, but his focus is on what happened in the heavens.  “…the tearing apart of the heavens is a locus classicus of apocalyptic imagery, found in both…Isaiah 64:1, and…Revelation 6:14.”  (To risk belaboring the point, the heavens of the cosmic order are not exactly friendly to this tearing apart.)

    The heavens of the Biblical world were not only a spiritual domain and the home of God and other spiritual beings, “they were equally the heavens above–the skies, the vault across which the stars moved in their predictable patterns.  Thus, the heavens were the domain of order and regularity, which, despite their extreme complexity, their interpretation could be mastered by a skilled astrologist.”

    When this domain is torn open with Jesus’s baptism, it indicates a “rupture, a radical inbreaking of something genuinely new.  But, this arrival of the new necessarily takes the form of a disruption of the delicate harmony of the cosmos, epitomized by the heavens.”

    Pearl goes on to explain that these two opposing forces–the cosmic order and the order represented by Jesus–represent two kinds of justice: the Justice of the whole and the Justice of the rupture.  To further explain his argument, he cites Slavoj Zizek’s book, The Fragile Absolute, and Zizek’s description of the cosmic order represented by paganism:

    Against the ‘pagan notions of cosmic Justice and Balance,’ wherein ‘an individual is ‘good’ when he acts in accordance with his special place in the social edifice…and Evil occurs when some particular strata or individuals are no longer satisfied with this place, ‘Zizek contrasts Christianity, which ‘asserts as the highest act precisely what pagan wisdom condemns as the source of evil: the gesture of separation, of drawing the line, of clinging to an element that disturbs the balance of the All’ (118-121, as quoted by Pearl)

    (Those who supported the recent insurrection at the Capitol, would like to tell us that theirs is a worthy cause, but this article makes it clear which order they serve.  Pearl tells us that the pagan as described by Zizek is no different from Edmund Burke in his Reflection on the Revolution in France, or white moderates who condemned Martin Luther King Jr.’s tactics as ‘extremist,’ or Fox News pundits who bemoaned the ‘disruption’ of Black Lives Matter protests.  They call these revolutionary tactics ‘evil’ because they disrupt a stable order.)

    Pearl admits that the rupture represents a risk but, alternatively, the path of supposed safety leads to the Justice of the whole, as exemplified by the philosopher Martin Heidegger who interprets ‘justice’ as ‘Compliance–that is harmonization.’  In fact, Heidegger elevates compliance and harmony to ontological principles.  The writings of Heidegger were influential in the rise of Nazism.

    Pearl contrasts Heidegger’s justice with an alternative account of justice, a justice of the rupture.  For this he cites Jacques Derrida, for whom justice is the domain of the future.

    Justice emerges as a call or a demand for responsibility to the Other.  It cannot be calculated or anticipated, because justice, if there is such a thing, is always a risk, as Derrida notes in, “The Force of Law.” (947)

    The prophet Isaiah, (64:1-2), and the Book of Revelation (6:12-15) each describe a similar view of justice as that of Derrida.  It is a justice that casts down the powerful, the oppressors.  It is a justice that destroys the class and caste boundaries that order our world, so that ‘everyone, slave and free’ find themselves on an equal footing.  For John, any social, political, or economic order that is built on oppression, built on the backs of ‘slaves–and human lives’ (Revelation 18:13) is an order that must be torn open.

    (I don’t want to end this article without mentioning Pearl’s examples of the risks involved in the justice of the rupture.  These include the Terror of the French Revolution and the Stalinism that resulted from the October Revolution.  I don’t think any of us are willing to risk such things if we can avoid them, and there are things that must be understood if we want to make these kinds of failure less likely.  The challenge to the cosmic order represented by Jesus’s response to his temptations in the wilderness are central to this understanding.  We must know which order we serve and which order we fight.  Otherwise, failure is almost certain.  The cosmic order stands ever ready to creep in and take over from those who remain unaware.)

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