It’s Trad, Dad!

3,064 words

Rachel Haywire
The New Reaction
Foreword by Mark Dyal
London: Arktos, 2015

Middleman sees straight ahead
And never crosses borders
Never understood the artist
Or the lazy workers

The world needs steady men like me
To give and take the orders
Give and take the orders
Give and take the orders
— Gentle Giant, “Mister Class and Quality”

Hey there, all you hep cats and catesses, all you dudes and dudettes! Focus your audio and interview your brains with this chick’s opus! She’s not copping a bit to score the big tickle or slated for crashville, babies! She’s got claws sharp, and throws babies off the balcony!

Ok, I’ll stop now. Sorry for drifting into the kind of arch, outdated (in 1976!) beatnik slang (cribbed no doubt from a Lord Buckley LP) that my old mentor, Prof. Deck, used to fall into when self-consciously mocking his own attempts to “relate” to a roomful of bored Intro Philosophy students.

Constant Readers will know that I like to affect the status of being au courante with the cutting edge among the cyber shamans, from old school types like the Wilsons (Robert Anton and Peter Lamborn), Timothy Leary and Terrence MacKenna, to young Turks like Douglas Coupland and Erik Davis. But this Haywire chick has thrown me for a loop.

Maybe I’m just getting old. Or perhaps it’s one of those gender things (although Mark Dyal, in his Foreword, seems to “get it.”) I kinda feel like William Burroughs meeting Patti Smith.[1]

Let’s start again.

Veteran of many scenes of cyberpunkery, Rachel Haywire was enough of an outsider to notice something that seems to have escaped the attention of most everyone, Left and Right. When the Establishment “fell” to the “tenured radicals,” and the “commanding heights of the culture” were overrun, the results were not at all like the Wild in the Streets fantasies of the oldsters.

In fact, nothing fundamentally had changed. There were still Masters and Servants,[2] the 1% and the, say, 98% (I’ll get back to that missing 1% in a moment). The servants just had new marching orders, new lines to mumble or shout.[3] The principal who enforced dress codes and haircuts was now enforcing speech and conduct codes; instead of searching out pot in your locker he (or, more likely, she) is searching your Facebook page for cisgender privilege.[4]

Guys like this smug little shit, who proves that neither law school nor the Navy requires any discipline at all.[5]

In fact, in terms of Animal House, Dean Wormer and Mayor DePasto are still running things, Marmalard and Neidermeyer are still doing his dirty work, and that missing extra 1%, that’s Delta House, where there’s an occasional toga party.

[These guys don’t] care about gay rights, gay marriage, or gay anything. [They] care about fitting in.[6]

But when Ms. Haywire’s nomadic wandering[7] in search of free expression took her, as have many before her, from the Left all the way through to the other side (“From the farthest Left to the farthest Right, the point here is intellectual exploration”) she found just another “smelly little orthodoxy” (Orwell). While the Left enforced conformity in the name of “The People” or “the Oppressed,” the Right rules in the name of values supposedly forged in blood and fire, by heroes as various as Jesus to Nietzsche to John Galt, but now all reduced to bourgeois conformity.

So far, Ms. Haywire might easily fit, typologically speaking, might fit among such “National Bolsheviks” like Strasser and Röhm, who thought that the “European Revolution of 1933” (Yockey) still had a ways to go; or such figures of the German Conservative Revolution who stood apart from such mass movements, like Spengler or the self-styled ‘anarch’ Ernst Jünger.

Hitler always had one trump card to throw down in response: he had actually put together a party and won power. The post-’68 Right, however, with typical perversity[8] has been all too happy stewing in their sense of oppression by those imaginary hippies to recognize or take advantage of this opportunity to join with the extreme Left and outflank the New Establishment.

Here is where an ultra-Leftist cum ultra-Rightist like Ms. Haywire can still demand attention; what does she know that we don’t?

She’s happy to oblige. After narrating her journey to the Right — “How I Left the Left”[9] — and providing some “Antisocial Commentary” — Ms. Haywire gives us some “Strategies for Counter-Revolution.” She knows, unlike so many on the Right, that while you become a successful movement by becoming a mass movement, you don’t become a mass movement by making everyone think like you (more conformity!). You don’t convert one hundred million to the Right but make the Right hip enough for 100 million to want to be associated with it.

As for the unwashed masses, it is easy to get them to switch sides. All you need is charisma and intelligence. Confine the United States of Social Causes to a small area of irrelevance.

Along with such bite-sized bits of advice as “Twist and turn their catchphrases around,” “Rewrite the narrative. Downplay the achievements of PC culture” and “Blame the White man for hating the White man,” she makes the forceful point that in order to “Become the elite” the Right needs to stop “suck[ing] at capitalism and web design.”

Many on the Right might bristle at her suggestion that they need to admit and embrace their Inner Jew:

Don’t be afraid of looking Jewish. Sell, sell, sell![10]

Here, if not before, one senses that Ms. Haywire, who in version 1.0 is a Tribeswoman in good standing, [11] is all too typically overplaying her ethnic hand. [12]

But this is essentially the same advice I’ve been handing out for years now, though as always, here the Semite offers the cure for the disease he causes himself (talk about salesmanship!)  I would actually locate the problem as the Inner Jew himself: the “No Homo” mentality shared by the rabbis, the neocons and the rappers, which prevents the Right from benefiting, as the Left does, from the cultural skills of the homosexual. How else can the Right become fabulous?[13] Stop bitching about top corporations being run by transsexuals and ask yourself: where are the Cardinal Spellmans we need today?

In all this, Ms. Haywire continues to make the same core point: the Right talks about the Will to Power, but won’t exercise it. The Right refuses to admit that, if ever given the chance, they’d do exactly what the Left does: impose its Will on the culture.[14]

Part Four takes a turn into Transhumanism. For Ms. Haywire, Hitler was fag. No, I don’t mean that way; I mean, timid and ineffectual.[15] Why waste time genetically selecting for nonsense like eye and hair color when you can select out the 98%, the slave-minded,[16] and the 1% too, the phony elite that, as Hegel pointed out,[17] only get their identity from being “masters” of the “slaves.” Say goodbye to Homo Sap, say hello to Haywire’s Homo Futura.[18]

The remaining 1%, you know, us,[19] the ones Ms. Haywire designates with Evola’s “aristocrats of the spirit,” can form a new nation of nations, millions of micro-nations and millions of borders. True borders, for — agreeing again with Evola and Spengler as well, “open borders” and “multiculturalism” are a threat only to the weak.

Multiculturalism is not a problem because it imports unfamiliar customs and traditions into dying breeds which need resurrection. Multiculturalism is a problem because most people are too obedient to develop their own heritage, their own cultures, or their own identities. They allow other cultures to define them because they themselves are the lower race.[20]

This kind of micro-monarchism (“The anarchist is a tyrant without a throne “) is a natural cyber-development of Stirner’s anarcho-individualism, for as P. L. Wilson, in the guise of Hakim Bey, told us, in our dreams there is only anarchy or monarchy, never democracy (to say nothing of “social justice”).[21]

She calls it “National Futurism.”

I just call it Trad. The title up there references, of course, the 1962 British flick, and one thing that makes it still worth viewing today is, apart from being directed by Richard Lester, that unlike the American rock ‘n’ roll films that are unwatchable today, there was a remarkable musical ferment sweeping Britain at the time, so we are treated to Folk, Dixieland (or “trad”) Jazz, R&B as well as Rock & Roll. Whatever your taste, there seemed to be a protest music available, even if they were mutually hostile.[22]

Just a year later, Lester would direct A Hard Day’s Night, and the Establishment would dub the future Sir Paul as the Acceptable Voice of the Young (with the Stones as the Loyal Opposition), and as the official soundtrack for Swinging London™, eventually to receive an OBE for “services to the British export sector.”

Imagine, by contrast, a real “land fit for heroes,”[23] a nation of individuals, a nation of nations,[24] each as free-spirited as a Nietzsche or a Stirner, or our forefathers, the Sons of Liberty,[25] and talented enough to have their own music, and confident enough to borrow freely form everyone.

A nation where we can “develop [our] own heritage, [our] own cultures, or [our] own identities;” or as I’ve said before, “Stop complaining, turn off the MSM, and make your own damn culture!”[26]

Now, at a bare 57 or so pages, you might think this is a “quick read” but you’d be wrong. The prose is as condensed as the early Wittgenstein or the later Beckett, but formulated for the age of Blog or Twitter, and like those old guys, filled with bright ideas that force you to stop and think for bit.

In “John Galt is Homeless,” she asks us to reflect on how the “hard-nosed” strategy of “rugged individualism” and selfishness is actually self-defeating in today’s cooperative workplace, where no one wants to hire or work with such asshats. Is Randianism a clever strategy by you know Who to marginalize the Right by keeping them unemployed?[27]

You might, however, be advised to save the opening chapter for later; here terse becomes deliberately poetic and allusive, a sort of overture in the spirit of the Blazes Boylan section of Ulysses, and it will make more (any) sense after the more prosaic parts.

Whether or not there’s a plausible way to present Haywire as an “Evolian” is not a question that interests me; allusions to “riding the tiger,” “aristocrats of the soul” and “ruins” only shows access to a Wikipedia bibliography. (One commenter on an article at Attack the System says bluntly, “Evola would hate you”[28]).

But we must remember that Evola was not always an Evolian himself. In his autobiography,[29] Evola identifies Oscar Wilde as his teen idol, along with Nietzsche; later, he fell under the spell of Tristan Tzara and became a Dada poet, then a Futurist painter.[30] The common denominator of all his varied guises: hatred of the bourgeoisie, the (admittedly slightly more than) 1%.[31]

Burroughs was as much a misogynist as Evola, but could be charmed by Patti Smith and Anne Waldman. For his part, Evola writes of the “anarchist of the right”[32] who,

. . . unlike other anarchists, rejects certain things not for the mere sake of rejection, but because he cherishes values that are not found in the present order, because he rejects the bourgeois world, and aspires to a superior freedom conjoined with a more rigorous discipline.

Evola, who tried to influence the younger generation (and was tried by the Italians for “corrupting the youth”) and wrote with understanding if not approval of Kerouac and Ginsberg, of “Teddy Boys” and “Angry Young Men” and, yes, even “beat girls,” might give up a smile.

Or must we imagine him leaning out of his wheelchair, shaking his fist out the window of his Rome apartment and shouting down, as Sal Mineo zips by on his Vespa, “Damn you kids, get off my lawn!”

Now, get out there and sell! Wait, I mean, impose your Will!

Notes 

[1] “When Patti Rocked,” by William S. Burroughs, Spin, April 1988; here.

[2] As Mark Dyal says in his Foreword, “The weaklings, the slaves, feature prominently in Haywire’s essays, but not because she sees them in-themselves as the enemy; they are, instead, the embodiment of the forces required for the administration of liberal governance: law, order, progress, enlightenment, and civilization.”

[3] “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” Sorry, that’s me again; Ms. Haywire would never reach for such a cliché reference. I promise it won’t happen again.

[4] “And there, ladies and gentlemen, is your soaring wage growth: all of it going straight into the pockets of those lucky 20% of America’s workers who are there to give orders, to wear business suits, and to sound important.” “The Mystery Of America’s Missing Wage Growth Has Been Solved,” Zerohedge, here.

[5] “On May 2013, Biden was selected as a direct commission officer in the U.S. Naval Reserve, a program that allows civilians with no prior service to receive a limited duty officer’s commission after attending a two-week class covering topics such as military history, etiquette, and drill and ceremony, in lieu of boot camp. Because Biden was past the cut-off age for the program he needed a waiver. Biden received a second waiver because of a past drug-related incident. One month after commissioning, Biden tested positive for cocaine use and was discharged from the Navy reserve in February 2014.” — Wikipedia.

[6] In American Psycho, Patrick Bateman goes to his inane job because “I want to fit in.”

[7] See my review of Erik Davis’ Nomad Codes here; the notion of “drift” or “wandering” has been heavily used by Peter Lamborn Wilson and, as Mark Dyal points out in his Foreword, Deleuze and Guattari,.

[8] Diagnosed by Sam Francis in his Beautiful Losers: Essays on the Failure of American Conservatism (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1994).

[9] Alan Watts liked to ask, as an example of how bourgeois conformity rules our thoughts, what the opposite of “left” is. The answer, he would say with a sly grin, is  . . . “taken.”

[10] As they used to say on Wall Street, “Dress British, think Yiddish.” While originally intended as Ms. Haywire does, it now of course has taken on the opposite meaning: Jews in WASP clothing.

[11] “My father was a prosecutor for the state of Miami who passed away when I was 18. My mother was a posh social hacker who worked her way into the Jewish MENSA crowd. I always thought Jewish people were too intelligent to be into Creationism.” “Extreme Futurist Fest” in Los Angeles: Interview With Creator Rachel Haywire by Hank Pellissier.

[12] Quinlan to Vargas: “You people are touchy. It’s only human you’d want to come to the defense of your fellow countryman. Go right ahead and say anything you want to.  Folks’ll bear your natural prejudice in mind.”  — Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958).

[13] See the various essays collected in The Homo and the Negro (San Francisco: Counter-Currents, 2012).

[14] “Wouldn’t you?” — William S. Burroughs.

[15] As McManus lines up his complex sniper shot in The Usual Suspects he mutters, “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 . . . Oswald was a fag.” For the real queers behind the assassination, see Oliver Stone’s JFK or my ruminations here and here.

[16] “Now, this is exactly what I’m talking about, the slave mind. This brother and l had the slave mind. . . . We even went to prison together. Don’t be surprised. Some of you are still in prisons of your mind.” Malcolm X (Spike Lee, 1992).

[17] Discussed many times on Counter-Currents, here.

[18] “Got to make way for the homo superior,” as Bowie sang. Sorry, I did it again. I promise no more trips down memory lane. Or Penny Lane. Damn!

[19] More beatniks and Angry Young [Wo]men: “The implications were inescapable, Colin [Wilson] said. The effective political power ought to be in the hands of the five per cent minority who were equipped to use it . . .” Stuart Holroyd: Contraries: A Personal Progression (London: The Bodley Head, 1975); quoted here and discussed by Margot Metroland here.

[20] A commenter at TakiMag notes that the PC pets are the ultimate losers: “Minorities in other countries that outperformed the locals were similarly discriminated against, and still came out ahead. A key factor is to avoid the victim mentality. All these chumps whining and flailing over words spoken in private are embracing victimhood, and it just makes them soft and incapable of functioning in the face of reality. No sweat off my back.”

[21] “IN SLEEP WE DREAM of only two forms of government — anarchy a monarchy. . . . A democratic dream? a socialist dream? Impossible.” T. A. Z. The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism; available everywhere, such as here.

[22] Perhaps this explains the odd appeal of The Wild Wild World of Batwoman, a “period vampire-superhero-crimefighter-beach-movie farce,” and one of the films I comment on here.

[23] “The resounding promise of the Lloyd George Coalition after the armistice was to make Britain a land “fit for heroes to live in,” discussed here. Needless to say, a bitterly ironic trope during the “Angry Young Man” era.

[24] “Every man a king, every child and dog a slave” – motto of the Church of the Subgenius. See the Ealing Studios comedy Passport to Pimlico, or really just about any Ealing studios film.

[25] “Libertines all, lusting for life and liberty,” according to the filmstrip “Ben Franklin, Hero or Hophead?” on the Firesign Theater’s Everything You Know Is Wrong!” (Columbia, 1974).

[26] “Allen Dulles’ Lonely Hearts Club Band: The CIA & the Construction of the Sixties Counter-Culture,” here.

[27] For congruent thoughts, from the opposite direction, consider “Career Advice for Young White Men” by Patrick Le Brun, here.

[28] “Tommy, Mother Teresa called; she hates you.” — MST3k short, “Cheating,” from Episode 515, The Wild Wild World of Batwoman.

[29] The Path of Cinnabar (London: Arktos, 2009).

[30] Mark Dyal begins his Foreword with a quote from Marinetti.

[31] Evola was as proud of never taking a paycheck as any trustafarian slacker, and refused to take his engineering finals so as to be spared the “shame” of a degree. On the other hand, unlike today’s permanent students, he considered “professors” to be the epitome of bourgeois philistinism.

[32] Op. cit., p. 239; available online at “An ‘Anarchist of the Right’ Views Original Beats & Hippies as more Revolutionary than Ideological & Political ‘Ordine Nuovo’ Youths with Bourgeois Everyday Life,” here.