“Those who talk too much about race no longer have it in them.”

—Oswald Spengler

Recently I spent a good deal of time re-reading the great Oswald Spengler: for general enlightenment, but also with an eye to criticizing his teachings about race, which seemed at first reading confused, bizarre, and dangerous. Much to my surprise, however, I have come to see much sense and truth in Spengler’s views.

Biological Race

Although Spengler speaks dismissively of Darwinism, he does not deny that race is a biological phenomenon. For Spengler, races are extended families, people who share the same “blood” (i.e., genes). Spengler even speaks of a race as a vast collective body of individuals through which the same genes circulate.

But Spengler denies that biology is all there is to race. Race, it turns out, has both psychological and cultural aspects as well.

Like Darwinists, Spengler believes that biological races are mutable. They change over time. According to Spengler, the principal force that shapes races is “landscape,” i.e., environment. This is consistent with the biological view that a distinct race emerges when a human population is isolated and subjected to unique environmental conditions. These conditions select for certain genetic variations. These variations then spread throughout the entire population through inbreeding. (If there are barriers to breeding between different parts of the population, then multiple new races or subraces will emerge.)

Where Spengler departs from sound biology is his belief that landscape can shape a population independent of genetic change, and that different races, when placed in the same landscape, will converge in their traits without genetic blending. Spengler even refers to Franz Boas’s false and probably fraudulent claims that in America, the offspring of different European racial stocks had convergent biological traits that were products of environment alone. But none of Spengler’s conclusions about race depend on these false assumptions, which can be excised without changing his overall viewpoint.

Psychological Race

What is “psychological” race? Spengler often speaks of “having race” and being “of race.” But having race is not merely having certain genes. It is a matter of having a certain feeling: a primitive, vital urge to propagate oneself. It is the drive to immortalize oneself through one’s progeny. In The Hour of Decision, Spengler writes:

A woman of race does not desire to be a “companion” or a “lover,” but amother; and not the mother of one child, to serve as a toy and distraction, but of many: the instinct of a strong race speaks in the pride that large families inspire, in the feeling that barrenness is the hardest curse that can befall a woman and through her the race. Out of this instinct arises the primitive jealousy which leads one woman to take away from another the man whom she covets as the father of her children. The more intellectual jealousy of the great cities . . . betrays the waning of the race urge to permanence; and that instinct for permanence cannot be reawakened by speeches and writing. . . . A man wants stout sons who will perpetuate his name and his deeds beyond his death into the future and enhance them, just as he has done himself through feeling himself heir to the calling and works of his ancestors. That is the Nordic idea of immortality. These peoples have known no other and desired none. It is the source of that tremendous yearning for fame, the wish to live on among posterity through one’s work, to see one’s name perpetuated on monuments or at the least held in honourable memory. (Oswald Spengler, The Hour of Decision, Part One: Germany and World-Historical Evolution, trans. Charles Francis Atkinson [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1934], 220–21)

This feeling of race is not “racial consciousness,” i.e., awareness of belonging to a certain race. The feeling of race is forward-looking. Racial consciousness is backwards-looking. The feeling of race impels us to create new life. Racial consciousness is merely awareness of life that has already been created, the life handed down to us. The feeling of race is the stirring of the same creative force in ourselves.

Race and Culture

How, then, is race also “cultural”? If a race is a collective body that exists and propagates itself through individual bodies, a culture is a collective mind that exists in and through individual minds, propagating itself by means of language.

Race shapes and limits culture. But once culture arises, it turns back on and reshapes its racial substratum in the light of ideas that are not dictated by biology. These ideas include conceptions of beauty and fitness that guide mate selection, myths and religious beliefs that regulate sexual behavior, moral ideals that promote the propagation of certain types, etc.

Cultural selection may be eugenic, dysgenic, or both, but if exercised over a long enough period of time, it can produce human populations as varied as different breeds of dog.

Race Change

Spengler puts great stock in the mutability of races.

He denies what might be called “race Platonism,” namely the idea that races are immutable kinds that are more or less well-instantiated by particular individuals. For Spengler, a race is just a collection of individuals with common blood. If a race can be likened to a collective organism, this organism does not exist over and above its individual members. Instead it exists only in and through them.

Spengler also denies what can be called “race Traditionalism,” the idea that in the distant past, a godlike super-race existed, which has since declined because of miscegenation with inferior races or spiritual transgressions or both.

Race Platonism sees every concrete, living organism as an imperfect reflection of its ideal archetype. Race Traditionalism sees all change as degeneration. Both views see change as metaphysically inferior to timeless perfection, and the Traditionalists think that as time rolls on, things usually go from bad to worse.

But if race Platonism and race Traditionalism are false, then change is notnecessarily a bad thing. Life is constant change, and stasis—even frozen perfection—is death.

In Spengler’s view, a race just is a constantly changing group of individuals who share the same genetic traits at any given point in time. But these traits are not timeless and permanent either. (That would be just a sneaky, immanent form of Platonism, i.e., Aristotelianism.) Genetic traits also change over time. This means that if we go far enough back in our family trees, we will find people quite unlike ourselves.

The unity of a race, therefore, is ultimately not defined by the persistence of something that remains unchanged in time, but merely the continuity of an ever-changing process, one of the strands of the ever-changing process that is nature itself.  

Race Preservation?

What is race preservation? Most race preservationists will answer that it consists of maintaining a certain set of genes. This is, for instance, the core of Frank Salter’s concept of Ethnic Genetic Interests.

But if Spengler’s view of race is correct, then this is tantamount to the demand that time stop. It is tantamount to taking a snapshot of a moving process and demanding that no further change take place.

Yet if a race is a constantly changing collective organism, then the demand to “preserve” it at a certain arbitrarily chosen moment is actually the demand to kill it. It is analogous to “preserving” a bird at the height of its beauty—by shooting it and taking it to the taxidermist.

Every generation of a race is shaped in part by the conscious and unconscious choices of its forbears. Each new generation will be slightly different, and when we compare our remote ancestors and our remote descendants, they will hardly resemble one another.

At one end of the family tree, there will be the ape-like primitives of 2001: A Space Odyssey. At the other end, there might be something like the macro-cephalic, telepathic “butt heads” of the original Star Trek series. But they will still be “one” race, one extended family.

Allowing that story to unfold is the only genuine form of race preservation that is possible.

The false race preservationist, however, decides that his generation—or some previous generation—is the “right” generation to preserve. Then he seeks to hold onto—or “get back” to—a particular genetic snapshot or cross-section of the race’s life.

All generations before that point were not just shaped by previous generations, they also shaped subsequent generations. But the race preservationist decides that from a certain point on, every generation will be made by previous generations. But they will not be allowed to make future generations in their turn. They will no longer be agents of change, but merely agents of preservation.

Who are they to change anything?

Racial Purism as Decadence

Spengler regards such a mindset as decadent. Consider the following passage from The Hour of Decision:

In speaking of race, it is not intended in the sense in which it is the fashion among anti-Semites in Europe and America to use it today: Darwinistically, materially. Race purity is a grotesque word in view of the fact that for centuries all stocks and species have been mixed, and that warlike—that is, healthy—generations with a future before them have from time immemorial always welcomed a stranger into the family if he had “race,” to whatever race it was he belonged. Those who talk too much about race no longer have it in them. What is needed is not a pure race, but a strong one, which has a nation within it.

This manifests itself above all in self-evident elemental fecundity, in an abundance of children, which historical life can consume without ever exhausting the supply. God is, in the familiar words of Frederick the Great, always on the side of the big battalions, and now if ever this shows itself. The millions who fell in the World War were the pick of all the white world had in the way of race, but the test of race is the speed with which it can replace itself. A Russian once said to me: “The Russian woman will make good in ten years what we sacrificed in the Revolution.” That is the right instinct. Such races are irresistible. (The Hour of Decision, 219–20)

Following Nietzsche, Spengler holds that positive values and a healthy culture are the products of “ascending life.” Negative values and a decadent culture are products of declining life.

Ascending life is active, conscious of what it can do, of its power to change the future. Declining life is passive, conscious of what has been done to it and cannot be undone.

Ascending life is vital and life-giving. Declining life is devitalized and devitalizing.

Ascending life is forward-looking and hopeful; it creates and embraces change; it pursues gain rather than avoids loss; it is motivated by love and passion, not fear; it is warlike, willing to risk life for higher gains.

Declining life is backwards-looking, fearful of the future, fearful of change, fearful of loss, fearful of risk and conflict, conservative, stinking of senility, hemmed by shrinking horizons, chilled by looming death.

Ascending life is aware of the past, but selectively so: it remembers what is empowering and forgets what is not. When the past becomes restrictive, it sloughs it off like a snake discards an old skin.

Declining life is less selective. It has a long memory, brooding over old mistakes and picking at old wounds. Declining life is defined by the past, which it carries as an ever-growing burden, like a snail adding to its lifeless shell even as its living substance wanes, until finally it is crushed under the dead weight.

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According to Spengler, when the healthy man thinks of race, he is less concerned with the race we have been than the race we will become. He may feel grateful to his ancestors for the positive gifts—the strengths—they have bequeathed him. He gives no thought to their mistakes and imperfections, even those that mark him. It is enough to be aware that they were not perfect, that there is room for improvement. And a healthy man thinks that he can make improvements. He thinks that he can bequeath more to his progeny than his ancestors bequeathed to him.

Thus the healthy man “of race” is not concerned with racial purity—defined as the preservation of a certain set of gene frequencies, whether his own or his ancestors’. He is pleased with the good traits he has received, and he would like to pass them on. But, as Spengler says, he is more concerned with strong sons than pure ones, and he would not hesitate to breed with an outsider if he thought this would improve his progeny.

For Spengler, a concern with racial purity is a sign of racial decadence, of a lack of racial vitality. The racial purist looks to the past, not the future, because he does not have the vitality in him necessary to create a future. He is defined by the past and feels that he does not have the power or the right to change it, only to repeat it (or talk about repeating it, and urge others to repeat it).

As Spengler writes, “Those who talk too much about race no longer have it in them.” This means that the people who talk the most about reproduction do it the least. And, Spengler might add, that is a good thing. Let the sapless branches rattle in the wind all they want, as long as they spare us their shriveled fruit.

White Nationalism: A Degenerate Movement?

Racial purists often claim that their intellectual opposition to miscegenation is merely a healthy “instinct.” They also claim that there is something biologically sick about the instincts of miscegenators.

Spengler thinks that the exact opposite is true. He would predict that those who intellectually oppose miscegenation and advocate racial purity and preservation would be, on average, less virile, less fecund, and less mentally and physically healthy than the average person, including the average miscegenator.

Based on ten years of experience in the American White nationalist movement, I have to say that Spengler’s prediction is absolutely correct. White nationalism in America is an overwhelmingly degenerate movement, and I do not exempt myself from this judgment.

But what does this mean, exactly? It means merely that, from the point of view of biological vitality, a White man who preaches racial purity but has no children is less healthy than a White man who chooses to have children with a non-White woman.

It does not mean that the White nationalist is wrong in his convictions about biology and politics. It does not mean that, from a eugenic point of view, Whites have anything to gain from mixing with other races. (As a matter of fact, I think we do not.)

Decadent people can be right, and healthy people can be wrong.

But there is a lot more to politics than simply being right.

And from the point of view of practical politics, we White nationalists need to take a good hard look at ourselves. Can such a degenerate movement win?

Should it win? For the sake of all that is holy, shouldn’t we want to keep nostalgia-addled kooks away from any power over the future of life, lest they murder and mummify the race in their quest to preserve its purity?

Vitalizing White Nationalism?

What would a vital White nationalism look like?

This is where Spengler’s views of how culture shapes race come in. I also take inspiration from Michael O’Meara’s essays on myth and politics in his Toward the White Republic and Alex Kurtagić’s “Learning from the Right” and related essays.

White nationalists love sobering facts, so let’s begin with one. The White nationalist movement, which seeks the salvation of nature’s fairest and most talented race, is less capable of motivating real world activity than Star Trek, a silly but entertaining set of movies and TV shows about multiracial and miscegenating liberals who live in Tupperware, dress in pajamas, and fly around the galaxy preaching high-minded, hypocritical twaddle about tolerance and pluralism and diversity.

Even if we correct for the differences in the size of audiences, Trekkies accomplish more in the real world than an equal number of White nationalists.

Why is that? It has nothing to do with idealism. Both movements are highly idealistic. It has everything to do with animal vitality. For all its silliness, there is something about Star Trek that motivates human action and creativity—that taps into pure animal vitality—better than White nationalism.

Present-day White nationalism is conservative: backward looking, devitalized, decadent, and gloomy. Star Trek is progressive: forward-looking, optimistic, and hopeful. (Nauseatingly so.)

With this in mind, ask yourself who is more likely to preserve the White race: (1) the present White nationalist movement, or (2) a group of kooks who, taking Tolkien as their bible, decide that through eugenics, they are going to mold every successive generation of their progeny closer to the archetype of the elves: the fairest and wisest race?

The elves have it. Why? Because, kooky though it may be, creating a race of elves far better captures the imagination and mobilizes human vitality than dark predictions about the rising tide of color.

A vital White nationalist movement would be a utopian, progressivist, eugenicist mythical-cultural phenomenon. It would not be founded on empirical studies of how race influences culture. It would not propagate itself through academic conferences and policy studies. It would be founded on a grand culture-creating, race-shaping myth, propagated through art and religion, that enthralls and mobilizes a whole people. (No, I don’t have one handy.)

It would be less concerned about the race we were or the race we are than about the race we can become. It would not brood over whether the Finns or Armenians or Sicilians are White enough. It would not obsess over the odd Jew or Amerindian in someone’s ancestry, as long as he or she makes a net contribution to the coming race. (No, this is not special pleading on my part.) Besides, eventually, we will be able to just edit out undesirable genetic code, although I hope we will be more concerned with the perfections we can write in.

Most importantly, a vital White nationalist movement should require its leaders to lead by example, by marrying wisely and fruitfully. No, the movement should not and cannot turn away talented people who have the misfortune of being unwilling or unable to reproduce. But the movement should definitely have a hierarchy, and anyone who wants to rise to the top needs to do more than talk about a future for White children. He needs to contribute White children to the future.

This article is also posted at Counter-Currents.com with a section for readers’ comments.

Greg Johnson is the Editor-in-Chief of Counter-Currents Publishing, Ltd. He can be reached at editor@counter-currents.com.

A thorough analysis of the recent Atzmon et al. data, particularly the data most relevant to genetic interests (i.e., gene sharing, the IBD findings),  clearly shows that Jews, while genetically close to Europeans, form their own cluster in between Europeans and Middle Easterners, and are more similar to each other than they are to Europeans.  However, a controversy has erupted as to what these findings may mean with respect to the genetic interests of Jews.  How can this issue be more properly addressed?  Here I start such a discussion.  Note that this is obviously not meant to be a comprehensive analysis; it is merely one example of how such a discussion could begin, provided we assume that those discussing this issue actually want to achieve a reasonable analysis, rather than using “Jewish EGI” in a purely instrumental fashion for political propaganda purposes.

Note as well that this analysis can in no way be considered “anti-Semitic,” as the entire point of this exercise is to determine what an optimal strategy would be for Jewish survival as a unique people – in other words, “is it good for the Jews?”

RESOLVED: By promoting mass non-white immigration into the USA and other Western nations, Jews are damaging their own ethnic genetic interests and are hence behaving maladaptively.

Argument: Mass migration of non-whites brings in peoples, who are, for the most part, genetically distant from Jews, directly displacing Jews and harming their EGI.  Since Jews are relatively genetically close to Europeans, and since there are large numbers of European-descended people in the USA, race replacement immigration into America also harms Jewish EGI, by replacing those more similar to Jews (i.e., Euro-Americans) with those genetically more distant to Jews (i.e., non-Whites).

Counter-Argument: Jews are a distinct people from Europeans, and are not really assimilating into Euro-America (see below), and therefore have to be considered separately from Euro-Americans with respect to their direct EGI. Jews make up a very small percentage of America’s population — they are far from directly influencing American carrying capacity with their own numbers. Hence, changes in the demographic composition of the greater American population will not result in displacement of Jews – they’ll always be a small proportion of the population one way or another.  Therefore, the only real possible harm to Jewish EGI comes from the indirect effect of immigration on Euro-Americans, who are genetically closer to Jews than are most non-Whites.

However, Atzmon’s findings show that Jewish groups cluster together and are characterized by a very high degree of gene sharing.  This means Jewish populations have a very marked degree of genetic interests in other Jewish populations, in contrast to their genetic interests in Europeans.  Further, even though there are many more Europeans worldwide than there are Jews, the much weaker Jewish gene sharing with Europeans means that Jewish genetic interests may be overwhelmingly concentrated in their very close gene-sharing relations that Jews group have with their small number of co-ethnics. In this sense, if an action can boost the probability of Jewish group survival, then this action can be adaptive even if it harms the interests of the more numerous Europeans, with whom Jewish populations have a more diluted and attenuated genetic relationship.

In On Genetic Interests, Salter defines four basic ethnic strategies (or lack of a strategy): first, majorities defending their ethnic interests in an ethnic state; second, majorities living in multiculturalism and not defending group interests; third, minorities that assimilate into the majority; and fourth, endogamous strategizing minorities that do not assimilate and preserve themselves as a separate unique ethny. Given that Jews perceive themselves, and are, a unique people, and have traditionally avoided assimilation, it seems that they do/should follow the last strategy, which typically is observed among Diaspora peoples (e.g., Jews, Gypsies, Parsis, etc. — people living in host nations).

If so, the presence of a biologically and culturally homogenous host nation can be perceived as a threat to such an unassimilating minority, if for no other reasons than that (1) there will always be assimilatory pressures in a majority-centered state; (2) in a majority ethnic state, the interests of the majority will be given precedence over that of minorities; and (3) naturally, whenever two distinct groups share the same territory without assimilation, overall differences of interests will always crop up.

Therefore, it would be in the interests of an unassimilating Diaspora-type minority to oppose majority ethnocentrism and the formation of an ethnic state and, instead, favor a minority rights-focused multicultural model in which mobilized minorities are favored over atomized majority members who do not defend specific group interests Further, diluting the biological and cultural preeminence of the majority through mass alien immigration can also be seen as a useful strategy for a Diaspora minority.

Whatever loss of genetic interests that may occur because the minority is relatively genetically close to the dispossessed majority, will be counter-balanced by gains that accrue to that minority by following the anti-majority strategy.  Again, these gains, causing a net positive advancement of genetic interests, are predicated on the facts that (1) the minority is genetically integrated and different from the majority, and (2) the minority is not fully assimilating. After all, even if the genetic distinctions are negligible, minority losses from majority displacement will be large; if assimilation is occurring, then the minority will share the fate of the majority they are melding into, a fate that is obviously maladaptive.

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Argument: First, Jews are assimilating, as intermarriage rates show; therefore, shouldn’t they have interests that coincide with non-Jewish White Americans? A future non-White America may be less accommodating to Jewish interests than are White Americans.  Racial conflict may result in serious anti-Semitism; growing numbers of non-Whites would feel no attachments to Jews or to Israel, and may well just consider Jews to be another variety of hated White.

Counter-Argument: Intermarriage rates are likely over-estimated, and in any case, are 1.5-2 fold lower than they should be, given population proportions, if genuine assimilation was occurring.  Further, there are solid anti-assimilation elements in the Jewish population, and the more ethnocentric elements have the highest birthrates.  There’s no evidence that the separate Diaspora strategy is being fully abandoned.  More importantly, this confuses prescriptive and descriptive arguments.  If Jews are a distinct people and perceive themselves as such, and if they are not already predominantly assimilated (albeit these are descriptive arguments they may be controversial), then, prescriptively, they should eschew intermarriage and follow a separatist model.

In addition, Jews have shown the ability to make alliances with non-Whites against Whites (e.g., the Civil Rights movement) and are now attempting to make alliances with Hispanics within the USA and with East and South Asians globally. By portraying themselves as a distinct, persecuted minority in solidarity with the non-West, Jews may survive and thrive in a post-Western, post-White world and in American in particular.  They are already strategizing to ditch the West once the White race collapses.

Argument: But, the Jewish alliance with Blacks has essentially fallen apart, and Blacks are among the most anti-Jewish of Americans.  As long as Israel exists, Muslims are expected to be hostile to Jews.  Jews may broker some sort of quid pro quo arrangement with Hispanics (i.e., Jewish support for immigration and amnesty in exchange for Hispanic support for Israel), but for how long willAmerica’s growing Hispanic population tolerate Jewish oversight of their politics?  Won’t they rebel, just like the Blacks?  And why should Asians tolerate Jewish competitors, except as part of a temporary alliance of convenience against Whites?

Despite all the “persecutions” of history, the only place Jews have prospered has been the West.  Therefore, I argue that long term preservation of Jewish EGI requires Jews to drop their historical grudges against the West and to move away from fears of “white goy persecutors” and instead attempt to make a deal with Europeans that would safeguard the existence of both peoples.

Counter-Argument: But, why would the Europeans trust Jews (and vice versa) after all that has happened, and with a growing knowledge of the Jewish role in Civil Rights, mass migration and multiculturalism?

[Debate Continues…]

Obviously, reasonable arguments can be made to support either contention: that Jews are acting adaptively or acting maladaptively in pursuit of their EGI in the context of their “progressive activism.”

Hopefully, the issue will be taken seriously.  All peoples have preservationist rights; even groups that have heretofore wished to deny preservationism to others may become convinced of the legitimacy of Salter’s “universal nationalism” if they realize their own long term group survival depends upon it. Therefore, it seems reasonable that we keep an open mind in the event that Jews rationally conclude that their optimal interests are best served by preserving the European peoples.

As I’ll be working on a conceptual genetics project that hopefully will positively impact racial nationalism, I’ll leave the “finish” of this “argument/counter-argument” to the insightful and thoughtful commentariat here, and focus on that project.

Ted Sallis (email him) writes on scientific issues.

Put on your flak jacket. Make sure your seat belt is fastened. Pull down your goggles. And don’t forget your earplugs.

Take a deep breath and steady yourself! Ready? Okay, were going to the movies.

First Stop, 2012

No need to worry about the future, because there isn’t any.

The end is near; the end is here, and it’s not a pretty sight. Dad, reconstituted loser dad, zips along at breakneck speed, saving the family as the freeway buckles beneath them in LA. But it ain’t just California that’s falling off and caving in. It’s the whole planet. Holy Mother Earth is a goner due to some strange of combination global warming, and magnetic pole shift.

Of course, the trend starts in California. All trends start in California. But the idea is to get to Shangri-La or Tibet, in order to be saved! We’ve heard this before. That’s good news for Buddhists, but what about the rest of us? Sad to say most of us don’t get saved. But President Morgan Freeman — St. Morgan (aka America’s Spiritual Presence-in-Chief) for most of us — elects to stay with the un-elect and disappears with the rest of us, under the USS John F. Kennedy aircraft carrier as it flattens what’s left of Washington DC. The image of the wise, altruistic Black president who, as a member of the elite could have saved himself but goes down with the ship is one of the most striking images of the film.

Warning: This movie is profoundly exhausting. So you may just want to double up on the vitamins before you go see 2012.

The political messages are interesting. We are led by a saintly Black president to our inevitable demise. The two structures that you see toppled completely are the U.S. Congress and St. Peter’s in Rome. The United States of America and the Catholic Church have got to go?

The Chinese are the ones that provide the technology to save just those Chosen Few, including a few White people.

The movie is pitched to White people, with the main characters, played by John Cusack and Amanda Peet, and their family life providing most of the human element of the story. But the Whites are living in a world where Indian scientists discovered the problem, the Chinese have the technology to escape the disaster, and there’s a Black president of the United States. Although they have a central place in whatever emotional pull the story has, in the big picture, they are bit players.

And there won’t be many Whites around in the future. Sub-Saharan Africa is the only land mass remaining after the disaster, and it is the destination for the arks after things settle down. Now I don’t know if this is a reference to the Garden of Eden theme, or Africa as the birthplace of the human race, or simply that the Chinese are doing a lot of investing in the resources of Africa.

But the world will re-start in Africa, so that Africans will constitute the vast majority of all humans. Presumably they will all be like President Morgan Freeman — fonts of wisdom and paragons of altruism and morality. The world will surely be a much better place than it is now.

Legion

Children, listen to me, I will teach you the fear of the Lord.

Psalm 23

So opens the film, Legion.

The rain is beating against the gray earth. A mad dog is barking as he descends. And who is he that descends?

The one who kills two cops and behind whom the lights turn off as he pulls off into the darkness.

He is the Archangel Michael, but not as we commonly understand him.

The angel is confronted by another angel, or is it in a demon? Or is it Satan?

A scene opens up with the usual horrifying physical brutality. He cuts off his wings.

Is he getting settled in? So far, the movie reminds me of Blade Runner.

He has come to the America of now, ghetto Blacks and uneducated, poor and demoralized Whites.

Meanwhile back at the diner, appropriately named Paradise Falls, the place is full of the fallen. Mother Mary who is with child is a slutty waitress. Her boyfriend wannabe is needy and weak. The sweet little old lady turns out to be a foul mouthed evil spirit, who crawls on the ceiling and is difficult to kill.

The lost-souls-gathered-together-in-the-diner is an old theme reworked with what are now getting to be popular clichés of the various types of lost American souls.

And Mary is a whore, of course.

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“‘And why is God angry with his children?’ I used to ask my mother as she was tucking me into bed” says Charlie, the mother of the child to be. “I don’t know, I guess He just got tired of the bullshit.”

Michael the Archangel is fallen. He has come to earth, disobeying God’s last command, which is to ‘off’ the rest of us, because “He just got tired of the bullshit.” God’s had it so he’s doing us in.

So Michael has taken it upon himself to save humanity, and he does so by issuing some serious, high-tech weaponry to the people in the diner. He does this so that they can fend off God’s hordes of angels, as they come to finish off mankind.

Lots of hordes and lots of blood, all to the tune of drones, clanging metal and the deep throb of the musical score. Later “Mary” and “Joseph” escape in a SUV loaded down with quite a cache of weaponry. That leaves the Archangel Michael and the Archangel Gabriel to duke it out down here on earth. More heavy metal and more blood.

I won’t say anymore, in case you see it.

A major theme is a clever marriage of the Apocalypse and the Nativity stories. A lot of things are being turned on their head. The first assault is by an ice cream man. The ice cream man cometh? The Angels inhabit the bodies of wasted humans, much in the way aliens have been doing lately.

The only good angel is a fallen angel, who wants to save mankind from the wrath of God. So there’s a lot of re-spinning of old tales.

The babe has not come to save mankind, but rather, mankind will be safe as long as the child is alive. You could take that to mean simply that as long as we keep having kids, we’ll keep surviving — definitely a good message. The Archangel Gabriel was the messenger of God, who came to tell the Virgin that she was with child. This time he’s come to kill the kid, not too angelic, at least by traditional standards.

Let’s say, on a positive note, that Nativity trumps Apocalypse. And in these oh-so-apocalyptic times, that is good news indeed. But what is the message of this movie exactly? Is it Christian? If it is, it’s a twisted kind of Christianity.

There’s a re-working of an old theme with Michael and Gabriel locked in an immortal combat. The two archangels that have come down to earth are very earth-like. They fight it out like a couple of motorcycle gang leaders in a bar in the Mojave Desert, somewhere on the edge. Even the weaponry used is brutal. The mace-like thing wielded by Gabriel is straight out of the Middle Ages or Mad Max. And it’s interesting to note that it is presented as good fighting good, and not as good fighting evil because we normally associate any angel with good. I don’t really know what it means, and if it’s part of the subtle subtext, or what.

The fallen Angel, Michael, is not evil. He is not satanic. He helps mankind. He is even willing to sacrifice his life to save mankind. So he’s a kind of Christ figure. It is Gabriel, the messenger of God, who is evil and cruel and uncaring. And it is Gabriel, who is doing the work of God, which would then make God evil.  So it does becomes a battle between good and evil in a twisted way.

So here is the Nativity story, resurrected to give God a bad name. Apocalypse is undone, and the angels who return are demons, and not saviors of mankind. So there you go, the updated hip, Twisted Sister version. Strange tales in strange times.

Chics only: Michael is appealing, and I don’t mean just in a spiritual way.

Warning: This movie is not recommended for pregnant women.

Eli’s coming, hide your heart, dear.

Yeah, though I walk in the Valley of the shadow of death

I will fear no evil

The end has come and gone, and we are 30 years past the “flash.” Yes, it’s yet another apocalyptic movie. This one called the Book of Eli.

Eli, played by Denzel Washington, walks the path. He walks the path through the world after the war, after the flash, after the great hole was made in the sky and the sun poured in, not like honey this time, but dispensing death. Everybody now wears shades, because the sun blinds.

It seems the ozone layer is completely gone. So Eli walks across the vast expanse of what was once America the beautiful. Let’s do that programming thing. We know we are to be nuked; we know we are to be wiped out.  We know because they keep telling us.

Abandon all hope ye who enter the Cineplex.

His first encounter is with a gang of thugs using a woman for bait, thrown out into the desert sun to lure in the unsuspecting. The hero, Eli, a kind of Black Jesus figure, is set upon by a gang of brutal, stupid, sub-humans, who just all happen to be White men. But he is protected by the Lord, or else he is just one hell of a shot, because he nails every single one of them.

Now this post Apocalyptic world makes Mad Max look upbeat, by comparison. Cannibalism is now the norm.

Eli, makes his way to a town run by an evil character played by Gary Oldman. Carnegie rules his town by stealth. He knows where the water is and he’s not telling. No, because he uses his control over resources to control the people. Cold and calculating Carnegie, the smarmy snake oil salesman is evil personified. And interestingly enough, he is a sickly, and pockmarked White man. The very name Carnegie suggests power and its abuses. And in keeping with the evil White man stereotype, he abuses his woman and sends her daughter out to whore. He is obsessed with getting a certain book.

Now the Bible is the good book, and it is carried by the good Black man, Eli. Carnegie wants it because it can hypnotize, and he can control people through its words. His attack animals are physically repulsive, violent, stupid and to a man, White.

The hero, Eli, has been walking for 30 years on the earth; the same number of years as Jesus Christ walked on the earth before his crucifixion. And sure enough, Eli will be crucified. Or rather, set upon by this gang of White brutes and shot as he attempts to continue his walk westward, guided only by the voices in his head and accompanied by Solara, the innocent girl who must escape the brutes.

The color tone is sepia and the sound, a high frequency screech and howling winds. But then, this is the Valley of the Shadow of Death.

Eli and the poor little White girl, who has run away to avoid being trashed by her daddy and thrown to the mob, even though he isn’t her daddy, set off on the journey to the appointed place. And then there’s a funny interlude.

Standing alone on the desert flat is a rundown old frame board farmhouse. The paint’s peeled off long ago. It is the very heart and soul of dereliction. The two head for it. They walk up on the porch, knock twice and immediately fall into a trap door.

An old couple have somehow survived these many years and serve them tea in china cups. She winds up their old Victrola. Mind you, the “flash” took place in the time of the MP3, but nonetheless this genteel old lady cranks up the Victrola before cannibalizing the guests. But hell, you know, they’re White folks!

But just in the nick of time the bad guys show up and old Carnegie wants to reclaim his daughter from her Black protector for his evil henchmen. But most of all he wants The Book.

There is a western style shootout with heavy artillery, and Eli gets shot, and surrenders the Bible, but they continue on. He bandages himself up. Now he’s got a hole in his chest the size of a golf ball, but God is great, what can I say?

They make it to the end, they make it to Alcatraz, now a library, and Eli dictates the book. It is at this point, you realize he has walked through the Valley of the Shadow of Death without the benefit of sight.

The only good characters in the book besides, the child in Banana Republic wear are Eli and her mother, who are both blind. Blind to the evil around them?

And you have to understand that the evil Carnegie, the snake oil salesmen, only wants the Bible so that he can hypnotize the mob and use them to his evil ends.

The final scene of the movie is of The Book. You see it on a bookshelf with the words, King James Bible, on the spine. And next to it, is a book with the word Tanakh, that is Hebrew for the Old Testament, on its spine.

Denzel Washington wrote the movie with Joel Silver, a Jewish screenwriter and producer. Once again we are treated to a favorite theme: A noble Black man will lead us out of the darkness of the White man with the words of God’s Chosen People. Jews and Blacks working together to destroy evil White men in the interests of producing a morally uplifting civilization.

Afterthoughts

The themes of these movies are relentlessly morose. All the imagery is bleak. And in two of the movies, the optimistic message of Christianity is turned upside down and served up as prophecy of doom. In the Book of Eli, doom is the desert that the world has become. In Legion the scenes of the shootout at the bar are relentlessly gory. The story itself is a sick twist on the Nativity. It features archangels brutalizing each other with maces. This movie starts out on a cold, rainy, bleak night with a mad barking dog trapped behind a chain-link fence. Then there’s the depiction of America as a nation of ghettos and diners, or even worse, a desert full of cannibals.

And the funny thing is that America is becoming like this. The degradation of the society is an ongoing project. This is what people spend their time doing. They go to these insane, hyperventilated, over-the-top sci-fi slug-fests called entertainment.

And all this stuff gets poured into our minds day in and day out.

There is no letting up on the violence, but then added to that is this preoccupation with The End.2012 is the Hollywood spin on the Mayan prophecy, and Legion and the Book of Eli Hollywood versions of Revelations. The promotion and cultivation of fear is a Hollywood staple, using a twist on old themes. In 2012 instead of the visitation of death coming from the sky above, it comes from the very earth beneath your feet, which buckles and erupts for the entire length of the movie. And the heroes again, as with Independence Day, are a Black and a Jew — in this case a Black scientist and a presidential adviser, who appears to be Jewish. Together they usher in the New and Better World.  The White suburban dad is, of course, a loser in 2012, but even so he winds up being saved. The War of the Worlds anti-hero and troubled dad, played by Tom Cruise, is another version of the same stock character.

And in the Book of Eli, besides having a Black Christ figure, the Whites in the movie are uniformly subhuman, savage, and beyond salvation. To a man they are absolutely repulsive. No subliminal programming here! Hollywood’s war on the White male continues unabated.

And then there’s the sound. As we know, the soundtrack makes the movie. The dreary beat of the rain and howling dog in Legion and the high-pitched droning and the howling winds keep you on edge throughout the Book of Eli. It’s all hideously abrasive. I know I was being tongue-in-cheek when I wrote the reviews, but I am serious when I say that you walk out of these movies exhausted, drained of all feeling.

I remember going to movies as a kid and walking out, feeling totally exhilarated and just wanting to dance down the street. My spirit was lifted. The joyful mood would last for hours.

Sitting through these movies is exhausting. Even when I am there I don’t want to be there. The sounds are irritating. Most of the imagery is bleak and ugly. It’s hard to believe this is considered entertainment.

And even more unbelievably, Hollywood tries to pass these movies off as Christian movies.

The constant depiction of life as brutal, as an unending struggle is played out again and again. I think of the scenes of these pathetic people reduced to cannibalizing each other in the Book of Eli. All the subliminal programming. What am I saying? The messaging is as subliminal as a ton of bricks.

What is the point of all this?  What is the perpetual pique of the Hollywood moguls really all about?  Rather than dishing out mindless entertainment, they are making movies that that are full of very mindful propaganda and programming.

We are being told time and again that our civilization is a failure and is going to collapse or be destroyed.  We are told that it is time for it to go.  The Mayan Prophecy tells us that it is inevitable.  The movie 2012, tells us the new world begins in Africa.  Legion tells us our world is rotten to the core and not worth saving.  Christianity is presented as being in a state of self-destruction.  The book of Eli describes a world destroyed by technology of the West, which is to say by White people.

Good guys are Black and Indian scientists in 2012, and a Christ-like Black man in the Book of Eli.  The central White guy is an irresponsible, selfish, divorced dad in 2012.  The Whites in Legion are uniformly bad.  The old lady is a monster, the pregnant girl is a slut, and her boyfriend a nerd.  But the book of Eli depicts White men as either evil or subhuman.  It doesn’t get much worse than that!  I am not sure if Hollywood wants to get rid of Whites, and particularly White men, or just relegate them to the bottom of the pile.

What is this sick thing, called entertainment, doing to people? It really is changing the way people are and, I would go so far as to say, turning people into animals, except for the fact that the animals are far better behaved. It certainly seeks to degrade our society and it succeeds.

Anyway, this goes along with my central thesis that there is no reality — only what we see in the movies and on TV. Media is so big and so overwhelming that it really is creating reality. The media is a giant suction device that sucks people in and they become like it.

Think of the changes in society: the crudeness that is the height of cool, and the brutality that people don’t even question anymore.

Hollywood began seriously trashing Christianity several decades ago. But now it seems that a Christianity in tow is a lot more useful.

Legion lectures us that God is finally so fed up with us that he has to destroy his creation, the human race.  Interestingly enough one of the reasons is our ‘racism”.  Not listed as reasons are murder, rape, arson, and robbery.  The subtext would seem to be that Christians never practiced Christianity.  The movie uses the themes of Christianity without really ever endorsing the religion.   The central themes and images of Christianity such as the Archangels and the Virgin Mary are presented in such a degrading manner that the movie cannot be understood to endorse Christianity.

I believe the message is that Christians were never truly Christian.  At the same time the presentation of the themes and imagery of Christianity belittle  the religion.

In the Book of Eli, we are told that it is only Blacks who truly practice Christianity while Whites use it as a means of social control and a way of deceiving and exploiting the common people. The last scene of the bookshelf, with the two books, the King James Bible and the Tanakh side by side, tell us  that Christianity and Judaism are of equal value.

A politically corrected Christianity is now to be tolerated.  Better to lull audiences into thinking that their religion is not just the butt of jokes and has regained some kind of dignity. Better to finish off what is left of our civilization using Christianity as the primrose path.

Penelope Thornton (email her) is a freelance writer and a serious student of the media and its games.