SOFT ICONOCLASM

The entirety of the para-cinematic network, that is, the public, the industry, DVD’s, amateur filmmaking software, academic & pop criticism, youtube and television, etc… is actively engaged in the practice of image-demystification – in latourian terminology, these elemental forces are working hard and overtime at denying that the fetish object they do/don’t worship, is in fact, a god. The god of cinema once had only two places to hide – in the material of the celluloid made of images that, themselves, remembered prior images, or in the mis-memory or dream of the audience. This Bergsonian metaphysic of the mnemonic (the image-remembrance) gave the cinema much of its power. Now, with its oneiric qualities outsourced and diluted to the ends of the electronic earth, can any art survive such a ruthless demystification?

THE KNIGHTS TEMPLAR VERSUS THE MATRIARCHY

“I do not approve of the super-liberal, matriarchal upbringing as it completely lacked discipline and has contributed to feminising me to a certain degree."

– Andrew Berwick, Knight Templar, Crusader, and eternal guest of his mother.

In Klossowski’s The Baphomet, the ghost consciousness of the Templars along with their Grand Master, Friedrich Nietzsche, ritually perform the transgressive dionysian acts for which they were burned at the stake, including the worship of an idol, Baphomet (a fantastical corruption of the name Mohammed)

European handwringing and fatalism about Islamic non-assimilation has a fundamental(ist) blind spot. The openness of society has evolved way beyond state sponsored multi-culturalism into elective tribalism. That is, that ALL people, not just radicalized and alienated Jihadists, can now live lives only nominally bound to society and derive much of the pleasure and meaning in them through a dedicated psychotic or resistant non-engagement with a socialized reality, which is inevitably unsatisfying and restrictive. The networked psychosis. And who better to illustrate the concept of elective tribalism, but our ultimate Facebook friend, Anders Breivik. Where we normally think of the psychotic as someone who is completely isolated in his mental terrain, the proverbial loner, it’s now clear that the internet facilitates a colonization of a variety of network actors into the fantasy life isolated from social reality; it’s interactivity is soothing. Breivik becomes the mirror image of the Jihadist sleeper agent – mimetic desire truly fills his life with meaning, and he carries out the terrorist act, unconsciously, in the name of his double, the emasculated Muslim male of dubious status, who must prove his potency though action.  As with any true mimetic act, he must be completely unaware of the source of his desire.

Breivik's thought betrays an analogy between his monocultural nationalism and his veneration of a certain type of "warrior" masculinity, an analogy that revolves – as his manifesto's title implies – around the ideal of masculine independence. The "feminisation" of the European male corresponds to the "feminisation" of Europe itself. Our cultural purity is threatened by invasion from outside. Once proud, virile, and impregnable, Europe has been turned – Breivik suggests in Section 2.89 – into a woman, one who has submitted to rape rather than "risk serious injuries while resisting".

Breivik: I was out with Peter and Didrik today. We had some drinks at Peter’s bachelor pad near Bogstadveien, probably the most prestigious place to live for bachelors in Oslo and not far from where I used to live when I was still in the "game". We then went on to a nearby restaurant, had an incredible meal, drank some more and met Peter’s girlfriend and her friends. We had a few beers and talked, very cosy<3 I remember telling Christine about my career as a writer, telling her that I wasn't planning on actually selling the book but rather to distribute it freely in order to more efficiently propagate our cause to a broader audience (they were all cultural conservative btw). Christine told me that she believed I was driven by idealism, which is of course true, but that I actually lived my dream. While I didn't want to start to argue that particular factor, as I don't like appearing like a pooper or to risk blowing my cover, it got me thinking. Are, we, the reactionary revolutionary conservatives really living our dream or are we making a sacrifice? To be honest, if I felt that other people could do my job I would not do what I do, that I can guarantee you. I don't want to do what I do, I would rather focus on starting a family and focus on my career again. But I can't do that as long as I feel like a person caught in a burning spaceship with nowhere to go. If you see the ship is burning you don't ignore it and start cooking noodles do you? You put out the fire even if it endangers your life. You don't enjoy putting out the fire but it is your duty to yourself and your fellow crewmen. And let's say your crewmen have been infected with a rare virus that shuts down their rational senses and they try to stop you from putting out the fire. You can't really allow yourself to be stopped by any of them as it will lead to your collective death. You will do anything to put out that fire despite of the fact that they are trying to stop you. Anything else would be illogical.

But sacrificing yourself for others who probably detest you for it doesn't necessarily have to be a miserable experience. After all, we have the truth and logic on our side and we will learn to find rewards and comfort in our actions. After all, sometimes being uncompassionate is the most compassionate thing you can do.

Anyway, back to email farming on Facebook, aaaaarrrrggh:/ It's driving me nuts, lol. I'm currently working on French leads/FB groups. An extremely tedious and boring task - preparing quality contacts from scouring patriotic Facebook groups and sending out 100 select invitations per day (from 2 FB accounts). I've been doing this for 60 days straight now, 3-4 hours per day. FB networking isn't all that bad though as you do meet a lot of interesting, like minded people. This is the main reason why my book has been delayed. I just feel that I must send my book to at least 10 000 primary nationalists in the European world and I'm currently at 6000 email addresses. Good vocal trance music makes this task a lot less boring;). My funds are depleting gradually though; currently at 50 000 Euro + 30 000 Euro in credit limits (12 credit cards ftw), which will force me into the next phase of the operation soon. A usual day for me involves email farming, writing, sharing "moderate" resources from my book on debate groups to coach fellow cultural conservatives, smoking, eating chocolate lol, taking a daily 1 hour walk/motivational meditation and doing some occasional battlegrounds in WoW on my badass Horde resto druid. I just completed Dragon Age Origins not long ago. A brilliant game!:D It's important to have fun a few hours every day. I regret to admit that I've become a notorious downloader of pirated movies, series and games etc. but have noticed that an increasing number of sites have been closed down lately. Stealing is bad, I admit, but then again, when you have devoted your entire life to a good cause you can allow yourself some naughtiness especially if it can contribute to conserve your funds, cough;). Yes, yes, no ones perfect:P

Breivik, following the logic of the mediatic sphere to the letter, sees his terrorist acts as the essential marketing step in getting his manifesto (that is, his ego) out – he speaks of sacrifice or martyrdom – he wants to be the sacrificial victim that will restore the senses of his stupefied fellow passengers on the burning spaceship, but this is a martyrdom operation as masochist performance art. He wants to be Jan Palach, the immolating Czech national hero of resistance. It is only this, or Islamic re-colonization, that will confirm the fundamental reality of the networked psychosis. But the weak, feminized Norwegian state won’t ever punish him sufficiently. It can only love him to death and wave flowers. 

Favorite Cologne: Chanel Platinum Egoiste

 

FAUX PROLETARIANS OF THE WORLD UNITE!

As with most things, Pappy did it first. But let's note that his sartorial sensibility was impeccable. He was a genius with clothes, particularly his own. And a complete varietist when it came to headgear. Beret, Cowboy Hat, Fedora, Overseas Cap, Admiral's Visor hat, and of course, the baseball cap. But Bull Feeney was, perhaps, an authentic proletarian, and a jock at Portland High to boot. Esquire Man avant la lettre. What today's fashionable gringo movie director (with the notable and admirable exception of Peter Bogdanovich) says with a melancholic affectation of casualness, is: "I wish I made as much money this fiscal year as a baseball player does." And: "I'm exactly like you, dear comic-conista denizen, except I live in Malibu. Yeah, sure, come over -- anytime."

IMAMURA/PECKINPAH

Stills, those interlopers in the cinema, break up not just the flow of time, but the "natural" linkage of sound and image, and shock us into a parallel diegesis, and --- as a bonus, the gap, the ellipsis goes straight into our dreams. Our dreams are this cutting room killing floor.

WARNING: The video BELOW contains images of sadistic, unjustified domestic violence to domestic Chickens, and to humans too, but in that case it is justified.

PERIPETIAL REPLAY

The textual richness of the “event” which unleashed a veritable ninja-tsunami of sublime racist cliches about The Murdoch’s Guoanbu Controller, Dame Wendi Murdoch (I’m kidding, kidding! Or am I?) needs to be unpacked. Everyone agrees, I think, that its spectacular interest is high. Why?

1. The men of the clan, so focused on projecting their defensive alpha authority in the frontal mode, that is toward the camera, that they are vulnerable to attack from the periphery. This is perhaps a cognitive occupational blindness of media workers, the fatal assumption that the periphery doesn’t exist. Not only does it exist, but that is where things happen. A debordian rule: Always Look Where the Camera is Not.

2. The image-fact that The Murdoch is both in need of defense, and defensible, inevitably humanizes him. That his defender is a Chinese woman is beautifully metaphoric, something that sino-atavists are naturally not taking lightly. A subtle prismatic inflection of the master image, that is, of the Fall of Murdoch, has occurred. If it were a corporate goon slapping aside the intruder – we’d think, sure, business as usual. In that case we could perhaps with justice speak of “ninja reflexes” – but in this case it is a capitalization on an opportunity that always exists in potential, something that people versed in the languages of strategy and power should always be on the lookout for: the convertible event, the event that can be turned or crystallized. That husband and wife should be equals and peers should surprise no one, but in this case, strangely, it does. 

3. The discussion of mediated events inevitably takes on the phenomenology of the sporting event – an idiotic instant replay style of criticism that amounts to a minimal sort of aesthetic appreciation for the beauty of the move, and did it work or was it a noble failure in the accounting. Did it result in a win, etc? Did it lead in a linear way to the next circumstance recorded by the Spectacle? But there are at least Seven Beauties hidden in any mediated event, each more profound and interesting than the efficient discussion. 

BORDER DANCE

The modern operation, according to Latour:

1. Set up a border, with steep & dangerous abysses, fiercely guarded, with flaming swords against impurities.

2. With deliberate schizoid intent, set up an elaborate smuggling network to traffic in the impure, the clandestine.

3. Force everyone to choose freely between being a Border Guard and a Passeur, and then make them forget their assigned role.

THAT FIRE WHICH REFINES THEM

SERGE DANEY: And at some point, I got scared, scared for me, I told myself I was developing a ridiculous sense of superiority in relation to television. TV doesn't care about being superior or inferior to me, I'm not in its world, I only exist because I put myself there by force, I said: "Well, I enlighten myself every day, it amuses me, it amuses people like me." After that... It's not even understood. Beyond that.

REGIS DEBRAY: Which is to say that you can't criticize television –

SERGE DANEY: No.

REGIS DEBRAY: - without criticizing the public it's targeting?

SERGE DANEY: There. I think I'd always doubted, I'd always balked at that because I didn't like it, the idea that you have to criticize the public. But I think that today we have to because of the recent evolution of television.

Who is targeting who? When a mob, with its inevitable ENTHUSEMIASMIC or ideological burden, takes up or seizes -- inhabits -- an IMAGE, rather than a post office or a barricade -- we are dealing with a specific sort of Ellulian crystallization -- a mutual discharge happens -- the Fascist Event is conveyed into its image, which swells and shimmers because it has a material force which cannot be any longer questioned, but at the same time the self-same image becomes more reflexive too, it is no longer "mere image" that is, the image scorned, theoretical, unseen or ideal, but this Latourian hybrid: the lived-in image-crowd, which in turn can be spectacle and attractant, drawing even further discharges into itself.

To refuse to throw oneself under the Juggernaut of Our Noble Whatever is downright prufrockian. And so...