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One of my earliest memories of the theatre is a Christmas play about Santa Claus teaming up with Batman and Robin to protect Christmas from the Joker. I am near certain that none of the ticket proceeds went to DC, as it was staged in the early 90s in the former Yugoslavia. Even today, we have a cavalier attitude to intellectual property laws, especially the convoluted and unenforceable kind that American and Western European governments pass. Ever since then, I’ve been a Batman fan. And even more than that, a Joker fan.
Batman is a subject of many discussions on the Dissident Right, especially here on Counter-Currents, where we take a close look at the Caped Crusader and his antics in numerous articles and even books. And indeed, vigilantism, as well as vigilante fantasies such as Batman or Death Wish, are symptoms of a decaying society such as the one we currently inhabit. Vigilantism and the will to vigilantism arise when the state has failed in its role as keeper of law and order and has lost control over parts of its territory, as well as supremacy over those who would break the law. At the same time, the state tyrannizes the law-abiding citizen out of weakness, greed or outright collusion with the criminals. We call this sorry state of affairs anarcho-tyranny. Vigilante fantasies are a balm for the law-abiding citizen or the would-be lawman who find themselves powerless to fight either the anarchy or the tyranny.
The mirror image of Batman is the Joker. Where Batman seeks to harness the darkness in order to impose order, i.e. serve good, the Joker seeks to harness the light, the comical and the silly, in order to wreak havoc, unleash chaos and destroy the illusion of order. The Joker is the one who will quite rudely remind us that civilized life is, as per Joseph Conrad, a dangerous walk on a thin crust of barely cooled lava which at any point might break and let the unwary sink into fiery depths. The Joker is a societal gadfly, a psychotic Socrates armed with lethal gag guns and 10,000-volt joy buzzers. He is the man who will tell you that “life is but a dream” in your darkest hour. The best you can really do is laugh. There is something eerily Nietzschean about this merry acceptance of chaos and birthing of a new morality, which is governed not by good and evil, but by boring and fun.
Modern cinema gives us three Jokers worth thinking about: Jack Nicholson’s gangster-turned-gagster, Heath Ledger’s nameless lord of giggling terror, and Joaquin Phoenix’s gutter clown. All three have been discussed. All three have been analyzed as characters. But I’d like to think about them as mirror images of the man in Death Wish, who sees himself as either a law-abiding citizen craving the return of order, or the would-be lawman who cannot find his place in the current law enforcement environment and realize his true destiny. As in real life, the mirror can tell us a lot about what we really are, and it’s important to remember that there is such a thing as a face of a thug — indistinguishable from the face of a cop. Physiognomy is real, and oftentimes, a cop is psychologically just a gangster employed by the gang in blue, or as anarchists are fond of saying, the state is a gang of thieves writ large (and the converse is true as well).
In the 1989 Batman directed by Tim Burton, Jack Nicholson portrays Jack Napier, the second-in-command of Gotham’s crime boss Carl Grissom. He is cuckolding his boss with a floozy, the kind that goes after high-ranking mobsters. The boss responds by setting him up to be killed by a crooked cop, but Batman foils the assassination, leading to the death of the cop at the hands of Napier and the disfigurement of Napier in a vat of acid, leading to nerve damage which causes a permanent grin and complete bleaching of his skin. Upon seeing his new face, Napier completely loses his mind, assassinates his treacherous boss, and embraces the new identity of the Joker, rebranding himself as an artist and considering his crimes conceptual works of art. The aesthete in me definitely picks the Nicholson Joker as his favorite, given that I, too, am given to respecting art done for art’s sake, no matter how much it offends the sensibilities of polite society. The Joker’s art doesn’t just offend — he uses men and women as material, transforming them in order to create, but the goal isn’t death. The death and destruction wrought are mere Bob Rossian “happy accidents,” the goal being art and through it, beautification of the artist.
Did somebody say “the beautification of the artist?” Sounds awfully narcissistic. And indeed, if the Joker as a character were to be realistically constructed, he would be a consummate malignant narcissist whose loss of identity (and literal loss of face) would result in the mother of all narcissistic rages, followed by a consolidation of an omnipotent and omnipresent false self. And what better way to become omnipresent and omnipotent than to transcend human identity and become a concept — comedy incarnate. Indeed, “Jack is dead, my friend. You can call me Joker. And as you can see, I’m a lot happier.”
There can be nothing outside of the narcissist’s boundless self, so Joker Jokerizes the population of Gotham using poisons, gasses and lethal combinations of cosmetics, which then forces the news anchors to reveal their own ugliness through the inability to use cosmetics. Art, outsider art, has exposed the ugly face of the prevailing order.
The aesthetic of the Joker presents itself readily to a narcissist. His signature color is purple — the color worn by Roman emperors. His face is instantly recognizable; there is no way to mistake him for anyone else. And through his criminal actions, he is everywhere; on every magazine and every newspaper column. And his position at the top of Gotham’s criminal hierarchy ensures a steady supply of underlings to push around and dispose of at will. And that laugh is something that’ll haunt lesser men even in their uninspired dreams.
In this mirror, we see the dark demons of the vigilante or wannabe vigilante. He can never be sure if his drives are a genuine desire for justice or his own hubris. Further, the fact that he is not a part of the corrupt but nevertheless ruling order indicates to us that this is a man who doesn’t do as he is told. Could it be that he is obstinate and unyielding not due to his own inner sense of right and wrong, but merely because of narcissism or antisocial tendencies? We certainly have no shortage of narcissistic or antisocial personalities here on the Dissident Right, who are — for the time being — our comrades in the struggle against the corrupt prevailing order. But how long can we rely on them, and more importantly, is our own struggle based on such vain glories rather than a sense of right and wrong? Even if you are true, you must search yourself and answer this question, but search yourself with a critical eye. Egotism can be a powerful motivator, but is it welcome in an organized and necessarily hierarchical movement which sometimes must act without the full consent of all members? Are you ready to subsume yourself to a greater will, for a noble, larger cause?
If you thought Jack Napier was bad, wait till you get a load of Heath Ledger’s Joker, from Christopher Nolan’s 2008 The Dark Knight Rises.
This Socratic Joker doesn’t quite shock by creating transgressive art or by imposing his own untrammeled ego on the world, but by poking directly at the lava crust on which civilized society stands. The central premise of Joker’s position is that normal people, even ostensibly good people, turn into monsters when given the right incentive. This is, of course, also the premise of The Killing Joke, one of the best Batman comics out there. But unlike the comic book Joker, who follows a methodical path to driving Commissioner Gordon insane, in the Nolan film it is taken to a whole new level, where the Joker pushes forth his thesis by starting random acts of chaos, allying himself with the mob against the Batman, planting bombs around the city, manipulating the police and Batman, and allowing himself to be captured. Being a pure avatar of chaos, he has no coherent plans. He is by his own admission, “just a dog chasing cars — I wouldn’t know what to do with one if I caught it.” The introduction of this chaotic persona into the city of Gotham aspiring to order is all it takes. Why so serious? Don’t you understand, silly rabbits, that life is but a dream, that you’re all insane rodents in a cruelly designed maze? Poke, poke, poke.
In the end, Joker’s thesis defeats Batman’s antithesis, even though Batman defeats Joker — Batman is forced to become monstrous. He lies about the true nature of Harvey Dent in order to fully empower the Gotham police to crack down on crime. This functions as a nice jab against the hypocrisy of a bourgeois liberal society which depends on the very fascist military and police in order to survive when faced with the chaos of criminality and insanity. This spiritual and metaphysical defeat of Batman is apparent in the sequel, where he and his Gotham are easy pickings for Bane and his organization. Even after the defeat of Bane and the League of Shadows, Batman must die, even if Bruce Wayne survives.
Tellingly, Ledger’s Joker is even less human than Nicholson’s Joker, who retained some traces of Jack Napier in the wake of his plunge into the chemical vat. Whatever made him doesn’t matter. He accepts it, just as Nietzsche’s Ubermensch accepts all that led to his creation, laughing at such inane concepts as “good” and “evil.” Much like the dog chasing cars, he is a force of pure chaos, acting and reacting on instinct, in contrast to the civilized man who is self-aware and reflective.
The second mirror presents us with the shadow of the vigilante as someone who likewise pokes at the edifice of society until it reacts. The very presence and effectiveness of a vigilante lead the populace to ask: “if this guy can do it, why can’t the cops do it?” And in good time, “why not me?” But “why not me” has a very good answer — because you can’t hack it. This question is very rudely answered by Batman in the beginning of the Nolan film, when he kicks the crap out of an obese Batman impersonator acting as a wannabe vigilante. Most people aren’t cut out for vigilantism and moral crusades against anarchy, tyranny or anarcho-tyranny.
Indeed, just as by physiognomy alone we cannot reliably tell the difference between a policeman and a thug, so it is that the neurotype of the vigilante is eerily similar to that of the chaotic criminal who only wants to see the world burn. So-called accelerationists in the Dissident Right would very much want to see the present order burn, as would I and any other sensible person. The difference is that I am more worried than them about the well-being of the innocent who’d be destroyed as the old order burns. Batman is always only one misstep, one momentary lapse of discipline from becoming Joker. As we know from The Killing Joke, not Gordon but Batman snaps and becomes monstrous. In the Nolan film, both Harvey Dent and Batman — and even the venerable Lucius Fox — are forced to become monsters.
To be a dissident rightist is to walk on the bleeding edge of sanity as we go against all we know, all that our family members and friends hold dear, as we dare doubt the religion of our tribe. No wonder many fall off the edge. Such content that can hold our boys grounded in reality, or “based,” so to speak, is invaluable.
Which brings us to our third Joker, Joaquin Phoenix’s contemptible, physically repulsive stick insect of a man. Trevor Lynch hated the film. Stefan Molyneux called it a disgusting spectacle of nothing but pain. Devon Stack called it a hack copy of Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy. Nick Fuentes wasn’t so giddy about it that he started “schmooding” in his Dlive streams. A lot of people I respected had divided opinions about it. And I realized before even seeing the film that they were all right, in the sense that they were all reacting, in their own various ways, to the same thing: the mirror image of a vigilante as a chain-smoking, mentally ill loser.
Even in a film without Batman, the funhouse mirror reflects back at us the existential fear that yes, the man who dresses up as a flying nocturnal mammal and jumps on rooftops at night might indeed be insane. To be Batman is to doubt one’s sanity every day. Because he cannot, unlike the Joker, embrace his insanity, Batman’s always on the precipice thereof — and not on the precipice of Nicholson-Joker insanity which includes running the city as a personal art project, or Ledger-Joker insanity which includes terrorizing the city into barbarism — but on Phoenix-Joker insanity, which mostly consists of having laughing ticks and being robbed on the subway. The vigilante fears, always, that he is not quite the prince of dark justice he imagines himself to be, but indeed, just another loser unable to adjust to modernity.
What if you really are the Joker of the 2019 Joker? Is your revolt really just atavistic scratching at structures you cannot even comprehend? Are you, in keeping with the mirror as a motif, just a right-wing mirror image of the pathetic antifa thug, noodle-armed and orbiting an average woman? Are you just mentally ill, substituting paranoia and cluster-B personality disorders for leftist schizophrenia and body-dysmorphia? Are you a loser who is about as deserving to participate in the modern world as the illiterate Mexican or Arab peasant who is coming to replace you?
You tried your hand at politics in 2016. You memed Donald Trump into the presidency. Now he has abandoned you and your ideology and endorses Charlie Kirk. Just like your father, he looks disapprovingly on your “wignat” antics. You can’t even punish him by withdrawing your support — he has too many MAGApede boomers in his pocket, and if he doesn’t win, the Democrat who does will probably pass a law mandating you chop your dick off. So why not take the black pill? Why not descend into despair, and then start fedposting and then. . . well, I don’t think I have to say it.
Scary, huh? You know what’s even scarier? There’s sufficient circumstantial evidence for that eerie yarn I just spun for you to push you over the edge. This is why the stick-insect of a man repulses and attracts the big heads of our movement. His disgusting nature repulses the older men, who prefer to think of themselves as accomplished and in control. His ultimate subversion and victory over the prevailing order inspires the young ones, many of whom have internalized — at least subconsciously — part of the story of abandonment I just told you.
You want to give yourself a good, godly fright? Wait until 03:45 in the morning and look at yourself in the mirror, illuminated only by a candle. Then smile. If you’re alone in the house, start laughing, and then continue laughing despite yourself. Bear in mind that some people believe that looking at yourself in a dimly-lit mirror will summon demonic entities. I’ve yet to test this hypothesis.
When we look at the Joker, we are looking in a dimly lit funhouse mirror. The demonic entities we summon are our own darkness, our own capacity for chaos and evil. Jung was right when he claimed that the roots of the human soul reach all the way to the bottom of Hell. Whether as narcissist, chaos vector, or pathetic loser, the Joker unleashes demons we’d rather keep well-buried, preferably chewed at by the three heads of Satan himself.
The Joker of my childhood Christmas play threatened to ruin Christmas by switching off the city’s power supply through a light switch sewn into his pink jacket. Children are instinctively afraid of the dark and the monsters it may contain. Batman is, at his core, a frightened child cowering before the darkness. But adults are afraid of the dark because they know exactly what is concealed by it. To be an adult is to understand that one is a monster struggling to escape the constraints of society; that darkness is a temptation to let the monster run free upon the world.
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16 comments
God, the author seems so high iq I can’t even place him societally. He crosses so many vocabulary and conceptual realms. Very dazzling!
I love this younger cadre of writers.
One of your better entries, Mr. Jeelvy. Thanks much!
Batman is, at his core, a frightened child cowering before the darkness.
I’m not sure what to make of this claim.
Batman is the man who overcame his childhood traumas.
To do so, he crossed the Abyss between civilization and barbarism and became the transgressor who transgresses against transgressors.
He is and Ubermensch who has left ‘humanity’ behind.
Bruce Wayne is the mask of Batman, not the other way around.
Is he? Or is he a nutcase dressing in an animal costume?
One man’s ‘nutcase’ is another man’s Ubermensch?
“Oh, but you can’t help that,” said the Cat. “We’re all mad here.”
What an honor to have a writer of this caliber on our side.
Of all the above Jokers, the Phoenix one is the most disturbing of all; this is a man who allowed life to run roughshod over him, that was too demoralized and downtrodden to say “stop” until he snapped.
He didn’t suffer some freak industrial accident or had a sketchy backstory. Unlike Ledger’s Joker, we all know how this one got his “scars”. He is 100% a product of modernity, hostile mass immigration, societal aloofness and generational despair that the average guy knows only too well.
He is the mirror in all its reflective horror.
I’m going to flip this incitement to destructive introspection on its head: Do you have the victimhood mentality of a typical Negro? Do you believe, in your heart of hearts, that the White Race has degenerated because “The Jews made us do it” or “The Corporations made us do it” or “(External Environmental Reason) made us do it”?
If you have the mentality of victimhood and absolve yourself of individual responsibility and agency, then get rid of it. If you don’t have a victimhood mentality and are willing to own up to your actions and beliefs, then congratulations, you’re closer to becoming the Ubermensch than every Dissident Right member who has a Leftist or Traditionalist worldview, both of which are mirror images of each other, both of which are spiritually bankrupt.
And now, for the Conservative take on human nature, as quoted derisively by Leftist Richard Brody of the Nee Yawka:
“Yet what’s chilling about “Incredibles 2” isn’t its smug self-promotion; it’s the superhero essentialism—the vision of born leaders with an unimpeachable moral compass to whom all right-thinking people should swear allegiance and invest confidence—that Bird proclaims through his ever more impressive C.G.I. craft. With Bird’s films as, so often, with Pixar over all, the medium really is the message: the power of total aesthetic control is also the power of total doctrinal control.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/review-the-authoritarian-populism-of-incredibles-2
Bruce Wayne is that superhero. Sure, he has moments of self-doubt, moments where he thinks he can’t do it. In the Nolan trilogy, he even becomes a recluse for 8 years because he lost the woman he was in love with. Sometimes, life throws curveballs at you. Sometimes it even breaks your back. But through it all, Bruce never loses his moral compass, his internal drive to do the next right thing.
This idea that “anyone” can snap and become crazy like the Joker is a load of Leftist horse crap. There are naturally born Good people and naturally born Bad people, and if we take all those studies about genetics – such as the Minnesota Twins study from 1991 – to their logical end, the conclusion is obvious: People are born Good or Evil. In extreme cases, their environment might suppress the good or hold back the bad, but in the end, people like Jack Napier and Arthur Fleck do what they do because it was in their nature – it was in their BLOOD – to do it.
Conversely, people like Bruce Wayne, the Incredibles family, Ethan Hunt from the last three Mission Impossible movies, and Captain America from the MCU all have an unimpeachable moral compass that is their guiding star. This doesn’t mean they can’t or won’t make mistakes – hell, it was Cap’s short sighted desire to save Vision that resulted in an idiotic battle strategy that allowed Thanos to win the Infinity War – but it does mean they won’t ever – EVER – descend into madness like the Joker, or betray everything they stand for. It means they won’t ever truly snap.
“But you can count on me anyway!”-Elastigirl
“I’m supposed to, aren’t I? Because you have some strange abilities and a shiny costume, the rest of us are supposed to put our lives into your gloved hands.”-Evelyn Jeelvy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OU5s9PNpwHg
Sorry, but those of us who know what life can be like for the White Race aren’t going to lose faith in that vision just because Dissident Right political apparatchiks who model themselves after Tywin effing Lannister from Game of Thrones want to live in an “intriguing” and “interesting” world. That vision, summarized by Brody
“Incredibles 2” invokes a political world in nonpolitical ways; it’s a vision of apolitical, quasi-unanimously acclaimed virtues that are assured by the supreme powers of innate and doubt-free strongmen and strongwomen who intervene only in emergencies. It’s a nostalgic vision of total power of a local minimum that echoes sickeningly with the nostalgic pathologies of the current day, nowhere more than in Win’s enthusiastic declaration of his plan to “make superheroes legal again.” In such moments, “Incredibles 2” stakes an unintended claim to being the most terrifying movie of the season.”
To paraphrase Tony Stark, the point of politics – the point of fighting – is to end the fight so we can go home.
Sure, our fate is written before we’re even born, but are you the hero or the villain? And how would you know the difference?
I’m certain you’d want a very clear friend-enemy distinction so you can get with your friends and punch out the enemies – this is why things like LoTR, Doom and the Avengers films have so much appeal – it’s refreshing to have clearly drawn distinctions between good and evil. In reality, the line is blurred, not quite clear, and of doubtful existence from various perspectives. More likely, both sides are uneasy coalitions of diverse neurotypes. Please refer to my essay on for a deeper address of these concerns.
Now, for the problem of external locus of control – it cannot be solved. This is for the simple reason that control is truly, at least in overwhelming part, external. A pernicious rhetorician can bury you in examples of essential things which are completely out of your control and smother the thumotic anthem of “I am the master of my faith”, which I admit animates even me. The only functional solution of the problem of external locus control I know of is religious faith, which places control in the hands of a benevolent deity. Your fate is not quite your own (hence men are born good or evil), but it is in the hands of someone extremely powerful, omnipotent even, who has your best interests at heart and kinda looks like your father.
The part about snapping runs contrary to my experience with heroic men. They do snap, lose faith and crash in a neurotic heap when extremely powerful external forces exact catastrophic damage on them. The hero archetype is an abstraction of real-life heroes, and as such will not (or should not) snap, but real life heroes, being real life men, can snap, lose faith and fail, catastrophically. The Killing Joke might have been a portent of civilizational death, as a heroic vigilante does indeed snap and violate his moral code, becoming monstrous.
You mention Tywin Lannister and he’s a good example of someone who has transcended good and evil. There’s an aspect of the right wing which I hate, and is probably a legacy of bourgeois conservatism, of holding on to the norms of the old world, claiming that those who abandon them are the left, or the enemy, even as that old world dies irrevocably, and to keep holding on to its norms is to die with it. New norms, new moralities have to be forged, and they will be forged by trial and error, and this trial and error is necessarily messy, sometimes bloody and inevitably offensive to bourgeois sensibilities. Or as I put it far more poetically on twitter, these bougies would prefer to turn up their noses at the things they consider shit rather than embrace the pig mindset and revel in the manure of the new world.
@Nicholas Jeelvy:
I’m going to address what you said about Tywin Lannister in a separate comment. My reply to your main points goes here
Admittedly, this is where the WN Christians have a point: We need some sort of universal standard/moral code to judge absolute Right from absolute Wrong, as argued in a five part series put forth by the Faith & Heritage webzine in August 2013. The Bible, or perhaps a return to some specific old Pagan code, would provide that universal system of absolutes, by which we could judge and determine who is a hero and who is a villain.
The problem is, there is no religion that is universally accepted among the White Race, and thus, there is no universal standard written in stone or manuscript that we can appeal to. We could quote the Bible all long day at each other, but that book holds no relevance over those who don’t believe it. So, in the absence of a universal standard, here’s what we can use to determine whether we are heroes or villains. Ironically, Paul of Tarsus was the one who saw this trait in us 2000 years ago:
“All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law. 13 For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous. 14 Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. 15 They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.”-Romans 2:12-16
I think history bears witness to what Paul says here. We Whites/Gentiles already know what’s good and what’s evil, because it’s written in our hearts. We don’t need a universal, written standard for good and evil, like the one Martin Luther gave us during the Protestant Reformation, because we already know it instinctively. That’s why I condemned you for inciting us to doubt ourselves, because it’s only through self-doubt and confusion that we forget what’s good and evil, thus causing us to question whether we really are heroes or not.
As Greg Johnson said recently on this site, in their hearts, White people know we are right. That’s what we have to appeal to.
I’m assuming this was the essay you linked to from January about Trump and that stupid Gun Rights march. The context of that article was strictly political winning and political losing, which is a surface issue. Here, we are discussing issues of the heart. We’re discussing how people are hardwired and whether “everyone” is capable of evil or not. I don’t think your article, although I agreed with its premise, is pertinent to this discussion. And, to be clear, I did read it at the time it was published.
As for the line being blurred, it’s certainly true that people in the real world are grayer in their motives compared to what you see in a superhero movie, but luckily for us, there’s a solution for that too: We should take up the challenge MLK used to con White America and truly judge other Whites by the content of their character. We shouldn’t operate on flimsy sentiments such as “all of them are capable of good” or “all of them are capable of evil.” People are NOT playdough. Their actions and words reflect their inner character. Our job is to judge them accordingly and determine whether they are a friend or a foe. It’s not easy, but it must be done.
I disagree. There’s a simple standard we can use here: The closer something is to our personal sphere of influence – or, put it another way, the smaller and more mundane something is in scope – the more likely we are to be able to control it. Conversely, the farther away from our sphere of influence, the bigger in scope something is, the less likely we are able to do anything about it.
For example, there’s nothing a single individual can do about something as big as climate change, which is global in scope. Entire nation states composed of different races would have to cooperate in unison to even make a dent on the global temperature. Thus, a single individual who drives a hybrid car or uses environmentally friendly appliances is changing absolutely nothing in the long run. He’s just making himself feel good.
By contrast, something as simple as filling out a good resume and applying for a job is perfectly within our realm of control, and thus, there is no excuse for young people who refuse to do it and then turn around and vote for communist politicians like Bernie. The things we can control are the things we should be held responsible for, not society. And the things we can’t control, such as the global climate, are things we should never be shamed for.
Now, here’s how this all applies to our debate about Genetics vs. Environmental conditioning: How Batman reacts to the Joker is entirely up to him. It’s his job, it’s his duty, not to give in to despair. And that’s where genetics comes in: Some men, due to their genes alone, have more or less impulse control than others. Batman, in Killing Joke, failed to display proper impulse control.
Alan Moore would have us believe that this is proof that even our beloved heroes can snap. But that’s BS. Bruce Wayne, by nature, is hot-headed compared to other superheroes like Clark Kent and Diana Prince, who are more even headed. In the MCU, Tony Stark and (obviously) Bruce Banner are the hot heads who need to check their impulse to overreact to scary situations. It’s not a matter of “everyone is capable of snapping,” which is crap, it’s a matter of some people having greater control of their emotions, sentiments, physical urges, etc than others.
Key word: Extreme. We know that if a child is severely malnourished growing up, he will not reach his maximum physical potential. His height will top out at a shorter level than it otherwise would have if he grew up with proper levels of nutrition. Thus, I’m not saying that environment or conditioning doesn’t matter. I’m saying it’s subordinate, and in some cases, effectively insignificant, compared to the power of genetics. Impulse control falls within that realm, as established by multiple scientists and geneticists dismissed as “pseudoscientific racists” by the lugenpresse.
The lesson from Killing Joke is that Bruce Wayne lacks the internal strength to stare into the abyss without the abyss starring back. The lesson is that men like him need to know when to quit and stop fighting monsters.
In re: Tywin Lannister, there are two facts about him that should make it clear why White Nationalists should never model themselves after him:
1. Tywin sees everyone as a potential enemy and either lacks the courage or the will to make distinctions between harmless people and harmful people.
Let’s go through the eight other major families one at a time and see if they are a threat to Tywin’s power and prestige:
Stark: They are the wardens of the North and follow a code of honor. Ned Stark has absolutely no ambitions on Kings Landing, or anywhere else in the South. He only gets on the Lannisters bad side when his son gets pushed out of a window because Jamie and Cersi get caught in a filthy act of degeneracy. There was peace between the Starks and Lannisters until that point. House Stark is no threat.
Tully and Arryn:They stick to their own castles and pretty much never bother anyone. I haven’t read the books, but their only significance in the show is the strategic marriages they make to secure their own positions, most notably, Caitlyn Tully marrying Ned Stark.
Jon Arryn is the first to learn of Jamie and Cersi’s incestuous relationship, which is why they arranged to have him killed, which along with Bran being pushed from the tower, was the catalyst that sparked the War of the Five Kings, a war that Tywin could have prevented at any time if he simply held his own wretched children – and specifically, his vile whore of a daughter – accountable. But nope. George R.R. Martin, being the leftist atheist he is, needed to make a demonic mockery of the chivalrous value of “family first,” so we got what we got.
Tyrell: By far the most liberal and most naive of the bunch. Margery is happy to marry anyone who would make her a queen, but otherwise concerns herself with her own Bernie agenda. Loras is MILO. Olenna is the brains of the family, and she doesn’t turn on the Lannisters until she discovers Joffrey’s true nature and arranges to have him killed. House Tyrell poses no threat.
Martell: Oberyn had a grudge against Tywin in Season 4 for something I can’t remember, but otherwise, the Martell’s hang around in Dorne all day drinking wine and engaging in debauchery. Again, no threat.
That leaves us with three families who do indeed have ambitions that threaten Tywin’s position:
-The Targaryens, who have all but been exterminated, and the last of whom is being monitored far away on the other side of an ocean by Jorah Mormont
-The Greyjoy’s, who serve as lousy versions of Vikings in the show, and whose patriarch, Balon Greyjoy, is about as execrable and unlikable as Tywin
-The Baratheons, who Tywin already has contained and placated through the marriage of Cersi to King Robert, which only comes undone because Cersi’s degeneracy inevitably comes back to haunt her.
Tywin treats everyone as an equally potential threat, when in fact, there are only three houses plausibly “out to get him,” and two of them have already been destroyed/contained. It’s the Greyjoy’s he should have focused his concerns on, not petty matters such as whether the Tyrell’s are “plotting” to marry Sansa Stark to Loras, thus increasing their own relative power. The Lannister family is already untouchable. There’s even a fan theory regarding Tyrion’s phony trial stating that Tywin was ultimately going to let Tyrion go so as to send the implicit message to the lords and people of Westeros that House Lannister is effectively “Above the Law.”
But as if it wasn’t bad enough that Tywin treated everyone outside his family like trash, this could at least be justified if he showed magnanimity and love towards his own family. “Screw everyone who isn’t us,” right? Instead, we get…
2. Tywin treats his own children with contempt and hate, which seals his own fate at the hands of Tyrion
One of the precious few times the watcher feels bad for Cersi are when her father is lording it over her over petty reasons, most notably, when he orders her to “marry again and breed” in Season 3. The things Tywin should hold Cersi accountable for, he doesn’t, and the things he should leave alone, he obsesses over. Tywin’s basic approach to family life is that of a controlling, obsessive Jew, not a carefree, loving Aryan. This alone makes him an unworthy model to follow, and it results in his much deserved assassination.
I can get behind the idea that new norms and moralities have to be formed. But I can guarantee you this: They won’t be coming from spiritually Jewish scumbags like Tywin Lannister. We will win by doing it the Aryan way, or we won’t win at all. Nor would we deserve to.
We’re in a hole caused primarily by excessive moralism. The first step would be to stop digging, i. e. shed excess moralism.
That gigantic block of text (wrongly) denouncing a fictional character as a spiritual Jew is a good example of digging further down the hole of excessive moralism.
Apologies for the boomertech, here is the essay on losing by winning which I’d like you to read:
https://counter-currents.com/2020/01/how-to-lose-by-winning/
There seems to be a tendency on the Right to reject any suggestion of construction/conditioning/other ‘external loci of control’ on a psychological and sociological level simply to avoid uncomfortable association with ideas typically associated with leftism, materialism and such. (Ironic particularly with regard to Traditionalists – the first of my few problems with Traditionalism is the ease with which it can be spun by inactives and pessimists into an ontological victimhood status.) It goes without saying that every human has a fundamental potentiality – Jeelvy’s ‘fate’ – written by those external loci which are either uncontrollable or imposed upon us before we are capable of self-awareness and of exercising control over them: genetics, physical and psychological conditioning during the critical development period of childhood, etc. And of course the majority of people will never surpass, or perhaps even recover from, the bad hand dealt them so. But it is the duty and the privilege of the self-aware to rise beyond merely reacting to external circumstances; to identify the degenerations and inadequacies they have been saddled with and to wrestle them as far as possible into submission if not extermination. There must be room for the honest acknowledgement of failure both internal and external in the service of conquering it rather than a sort of dichotomous, fundamentalist ‘Ubermensch/Degenerate’ thinking that excludes the possibility of redemption for those willing to strive for it in spite of their weaknesses.
[Note: apologies for possible incoherence or irrelevance; after a year and a half of lurking I am trying to contribute to interesting discussions. I hope it is worth something.]
I’m glad you’ve jumped into the fray, Lamb. You point out a fundamental truth and a good reason for rejecting pure determinism. Ultimately, the life of an aristocrat of the soul is a life of tension between opposing conceptual poles. The tension between fate and self-ownership is one such tension and from the tensest strings fly the truest arrows.
Thank you for your kind words – I would like to add that in my time on CC I have often found your articles the most incisive and entertaining, and, as one who also seeks a vitalising, meaningfully postmodern solution to the problems of today’s Right, especially inspiring.
I felt compelled to break my silence for this article is of great personal significance to me, psychologically and spiritually. Having been raised in a perfect convergence of poor genetics, relative economic hardship, mediocre and valueless family, liberal education and other such stunting factors, I consider the me of recent years a near-miss with the Arthur Fleck archetype; a passive, self-loathing, xenophillic degenerate whose only redeeming quality was the vague awareness that this perhaps wasn’t how it was supposed to be. Two things occurred at the point of almost reaching that nadir: I became aware, both through material means [discovering the New Right through Bowden] and otherwise, [though I be more pagan in inclination I believe with little doubt that it His Grace at work] of a true sense of destiny and purpose; secondly I realised that I could only become worthy of such a blessing through committing myself to self-possession and mastery over my defective condition. Yes, that tightrope walk between Fate and Will. A year and a half later and I still have so much further to go; I sometimes fall, down and backward towards that pale dreg in the mirror; in recent months I allowed external circumstances to overwhelm and have been reduced to reaction, which I continue to struggle against even as I write this; perhaps, ultimately, I might break upon the cliffs of my limited potential with nothing to show for it.
But that is the risk I and every Man of the Right who hopes to deserve that title must take – to sanctify the sea of our ancestors’ blood spilled that we were free to grow weak – so that we can be worthy of bleeding in our turn, that the men who come after us may outgrow our weakness. To fire our arrows true into the Enemy within and without, that God may enter into the wounds of our sacrifice.
The Lamb turns twenty-one in three months. His life will never again be a comedy; and for that I thank everyone here.
[Note: please excuse the wax for now – the outpouring of long-silent passion.]
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