by Neil Vodavzny

We are told by no less an authority than Jeremy Warner, the Telegraph’s business editor, that:

New technologies will spawn new jobs in new industries that will be far more rewarding than those they displace

They’ve been telling us that since the Luddites were displaced from their spinning-jennies. By relating this mantra to the Mad Max franchise – and specifically Beyond Thunderdome (1985) – I will endeavour to show that the machine-age generates conspiracies by virtue of the fact that it displaces peoples into a no-man’s land. The habit of the mind is to plant seeds of doubt to occupy the negative space.

This has already partially been approached in “Mythical Action” (and sequels). That is to say, myths are predicated on action which is antagonistic, involving predator-prey relationships, harvests, seasons. A world without action (in that sense) has no myths and therefore in the mythical sense doesn’t exist.

However, myths belong in a fantasy-world, which is why I’ve argued that superheroes are more real than reality in that sense. They have the moral authority notoriously absent in conflicts of unfathomable motivations where the action we see are not morally comprehensible in the sense of good versus evil, fidel versus infidel. A lot of this is down to social capitalist ideology crawling like an omnivorous slug round the planet, leaving a trail of destruction wherever it roams. Meaning, the global money-machine that tramples traditions, and I suppose doesn’t generally benefit living systems, as opposed to monetary systems. How can the moneys invested in such a desolate cause be put to any moral use?

This paradox is indirectly the subject of the third instalment of Mad Max – second only to Planet of the Apes (1968) in the sci-fi allegory stakes - set in a de-fosilised steam-punk dystopia where machines have run silent since the last saurian carbon-reserve was consumed. Exactly what powers the renegades’ gambling-den of Barter-Town is succinctly put by Tina Turner’s Auntie Entity:
“You know how to shovel pigshit, don’t you?”

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There is a common perception among participants in the thread wars at the Daily Telegraph that an era of some fairly rich pickings is at an end.  The editorial line is moving inexorably leftward.  The moderation is becoming obsessive and has nothing whatsoever to do with house rules any more.  Genuinely right of centre bloggers are leaving.  Absurdly leftist academics and outright anti-racists are being provided with platforms.

To add insult to injury, the blogs editor himself has vented his scorn at his own readers not once, but twice in the space of 24 hours.

A number of things could be going on.  For one, there is a new American boss who is expected to deliver some exciting and hitherto undreamt of digital future to the Telegraph Media Group.  And that is notwithstanding the fact that the Telegraph, probably alone among nationals in Britain, delivers a healthy £60 million profit, mainly from its print titles.  Apparently, Jason Seiken is very keen on bottom-up revolutions – meaning it’s the troops who have to come up with creative suggestions for their own areas of activity.  Whether the collective stampede to the left is a nervy reaction to that one cannot say.  I guess it is more likely than a top-down directive to take the paper to the left, given Seiken’s dislike for that kind of management.

On that basis, Damian Thompson’s truly pathetic mimicry of the lower end of UKIPer commentary does not bode well for his understanding of what the word “creative” might mean.  It was Thompson who invited the Hope Not Hate sympathiser Matthew Goodwin and his pal from Manchester, Robert Ford, to begin a blog titled UkipWatch.  Two more petty academics have now joined Ford in a polling blog, evidently for the run-in to the May elections.

These creatures aside, the rest of the writing slate is looking markedly unTelegraph-like.  Liberal leftists and outright socialists now jostle with goody two-shoes Tory boys.  Readers are expected to regard Douglas Carswell and Daniel Hannan as anti-Establishment figures.  It’s all a long way from the promise exhibited by Ed West a couple of years ago, and by Delingpole til the present, of course

Added to this, the switch to the full DISQUS format has entailed more intrusive word-blocking.  The moderation has become very tetchy (with some hyper-sensitive protection of the Chosen by, I think, one moderator – a single frank sentence will earn you a ban).  I have the feeling that a fair number of nationalists working the DT threads have given up already, and repaired to less problematic sites.  There is quite a bit of talk among anti-AGW types today on the final Delingpole thread of giving up on the DT and leaving it to its two AGW fanatics, Geoffrey Lean and Jenny Jones.

It may be that we are victims of our own success, and the shift leftward represents an angry turn against discourse the liberal mind simply cannot deal with.  I guess we must have seriously pissed off a lot of people who thought they had control of the ideology, and would never be challenged.  How much we have changed reader perceptions I cannot begin to say.  Probably very little.  There is an argument that newspaper threads are not as useful as propaganda tools as we might like to think.  At the same time, we don’t have anything else.

So what to do?  Well, carry on for the present.  But keep a watching brief on the unfolding hostility of the DT editors and mods.  The story might change after the elections, if UKIP don’t do well as expected.  If they do, of course, we can expect the panic at Central Office to reach down into the house magazine, and life to remain difficult for the foreseeable future.

by Neil Vodavzny

The costume I wear is so mythic it belongs to every culture of a warrior society ... It’s like, is this an animal or a man?
Raul Trujillo, Zero Wolf

I’m replying to comments indirectly as there’s a lot of ground to cover, some of it left-field (my favourite). It is remarkable the number of similarities between Apocalypto (Gibson) – set in a re-imagined Mayan kingdom at the time of the Conquistadors – and the original Conan film of 1980 (Milius), based on Robert E Howard’s prehistoric Hyborian age of bejewelled kingdoms and barbarians.

Apart from the visual resemblances which I’ll get to, they are worlds of spirits and living gods. Over the course of Apocalypto, Jaguar Paw becomes imbued with the spirits of the jungle, enduring swamps and racing through greenery, his naked skin changing colour accordingly, using mud, hornets’ nests, poison toads, blow-darts as weapons to defeat Zero Wolf and his henchmen. He calls on the forest to give him strength, which it does.

Conan may be of a less superstitious bent, but when the ‘living god of Set’, Thoth Amon, tells him, “I am your father, you are nothing without me”, his resolve is almost fatally compromised. Milius’s theme is that his belief in the power of his sword-arm is stronger than the superstitions of Set-worshippers, but without his belief he is still nothing.

Both heroes are primeval, in living close to nature and relying on their wits. In other words, they are savagery personified, highly intelligent and resourceful, almost the Superman of Nietzsche’s poem, physically and mentally coordinated with surroundings, mind attuned to a pitch of keenness unknown to modern Man.

You really have to have read Howard to get a sense of the zest. These men are the best that nature has to offer, irrespective of race or creed. They are warriors born, and you get the same feeling from Braveheart and Spartan epic 300.

All of these societies, of whatever era, are tiered. So you have peasants living with the land, aristocracy or Squires (landowners), kings or rulers. This is very apparent in the look of both films, obviously with hamlets and hovels dotting the landscape. The journey through ford and forest to the great Mayan city is a ferocious contrast, a pell-mell fandango of fantastical body-ornament, dancers, drummers and pitiless crowds, through which the hapless sacrifices are led up the steps of a giant pyramid to where the demi-god sits, where their living hearts are dutifully torn out by the high-priest of Kukulcan.

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Along with White Leftism, The White Class and other useful theoretical tools that Jews abuse and obfuscate as they direct White identity into the foibles of the Right.

This discussion will have a fringe benefit of provoking and flushing-out those who are not truly concerned with our people.

Social Constructionism is a European, anti-Cartesian discipline: When conducted properly, Not Jewish

This essay is to be something of a summing-up and clarification:

“You alone are uncontingent my friend. I would counsel epistemic humility” 
- DanielA

Say what?

Thus, in background to this essay:

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Continuing our emphasis on myth, here is Tom Sunic speaking at the last London New Right forum last Saturday.  Religions and hoaxes, liberalism, holocaustism, Georges Sorel, gods and Titans ... it’s all there.  He is introduced by Jez Turner.

by Neil Vodavzny

Democracy, as everyone knows, is a Greek invention. Nevertheless, their societies were just as much under the influence of the irrational as was medieval Europe. Signs and portents (check comic-book film 300), Delphic oracles, patron spirits and the gods themselves gazed with disdain on Man’s attempts to establish rational civilization. To counter the Apollonian light was Dionysian superstition and revelry. To the Greeks, pure order and rationality was not in the way of the divine muse. This also was the view of Christendom – until the Enlightenment. So, in fact, all societies bar our own recognize the irrational nature of being.

The more Talking Heads try to rationalise cyber-culture, the more irrational forces accumulate. Conversely, an irrational belief-system may create common-sense, simplified societies that may appear fairly rational (to an alien observer).  See also this:

Si j’ai toujours raison
Tu sais j’ai pas toute ma raison.

Why is this? Partly because information is tending towards the same cyber-flows, whether it’s genetic, global-markets, social-nets, advertising – it’s all information. Reality in essence is antagonistic, so the way to construct a sensible order is to recognize it and make sense of it via poetry and myth (or religion, which is a similar thing).

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by Neil Vodavzny

Old MacDonald’s Microcosmic Milieu, circa 1940s

By dint of a being a long-time comics fan (as well as a failed writer, though I do a fine-line in comics-themed mosaics if anyone’s interested), one gets imbued with the virtues of simplicity, not only in storytelling but more everyday things such as racial stereotyping or, as I prefer to call it, ethnicity, since that can apply to way of life, history, origins..as with Scottish dialect, say.

Even language is simplified if it’s dialect – Moira MacTaggert of X-Men just has to say the odd “och” or “dinna” and the art and story do the rest (past master John Byrne still hasn’t been bettered for taut line-work, by the way – nothing to excess). Actions are simplified, even if words aren’t. If words get complex, it’s often not clear what if any action or event they refer to.

The press are wont to say suchlike as, “There’s been an increase in anti-English racism in Scotland” – what does that mean? Both countries are relatively interbred, so the word race is just a redundant usage by the anti-racism establishment. In this case, anti-English means precisely what it says – mode of speech and possibly of exchange! It’s very clear what that means and anyone with the slightest imagination could conjure-up a mind’s eye picture of the interaction (or headbutt, Jimmy).

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The first chapter of another of my books that will never be written.  A fiction today.  But one hopes that one day the important parts of it will be fact.

Chapter One

“The Court will hear your opening statement if you please, Mr Truscott-Brown,” announced the presiding chief justice in perfectly fluent but by no means native English.  For that was to be the only language spoken in the room during the next three days.  No translators would be whispering into microphones, no one in Court would be hurriedly adjusting his or her earpiece to catch some mangled phrase.  This was an entirely English, or British, affair except that it was taking place at the Hague before one judge from Alsace, another from Heidelberg, and a third from Uppsala, all of whom had forgone the privilege of hearing the proceedings in their native tongue.

“Thank you, your Honour,” came the reply in ringing received pronunciation.  George Truscott-Brown QC OBE, lead advocate for the plaintiff, eternal renegade and inveterate fighter of lost causes, peered over his glasses at the unknown quantity which was the bench.  He steadied himself inwardly and, with a final, ever so slightly uncertain pat of the neat rectangle of papers on the table in front of him, began his work for the day.

“Learned judges will be fully aware that this is a complex and, in some quarters, controversial action which presents a number of tests for the 1948 Convention.  If the plaintiff is successful at this review, a subsequent plenary hearing may set precedent in several areas of high significance for the jurisdiction and practise of the ICC and to future interpretation of Article 2.

“Mindful, therefore, of the profound responsibility which would weigh upon the trial judges, it is our intention, at the kind invitation of the Office of the Prosecutor, to present you with the greatest possible wealth of evidence and legal argument within the time available to us.  It is our firm belief that all of the former will be ruled admissable and the latter applicable, and that your Honours will be led to the only possible conclusion that the Court must grant the Prosecutor leave to investigate the complicity of those individuals named in the Court papers.”

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