Beasts of Norway: Breivik and Vikernes

Since the 1990s, Norway's best-known export has been its Black Metal. When it originally erupted as a phenomenon during the early part of the decade, particularly following a series of murders and church arsons perpetrated by members of the Black Metal scene in that country, many in less Septentrional latitudes turned their eyes toward Norway for the first time. Some wondered what it was about that seemingly peaceful, beautiful, and sparsely populated country on the fringes of Europe that caused youths there develop such extremist attitudes. In Lords of Chaos, Michael Moynihan and Didrik Søderlind interpreted events from a Jungian perspective.

Now, some eighteen years later, Norway is back on the public consciousness, once again because of the violent and murderous acts committed by one of its citizens. This, some two years after one Varg Vikernes, a musician linked to the Black Metal scene, a well-known proponent of racial nationalism within the latter, and for a long time Norway's public enemy number one, was finally released from prison, where he spent fifteen years. Anders Breivik has now come to succeed him in the throne of infamy.

Some may want to liken the two because they both desired, at the time, to provoke extreme reactions through extreme acts. Because both appear European racial nationalists. And because they also reject the status quo in a manner that is somewhat analogous, in as much as there is an antagonism toward two movements that are universalist and egalitarian, and which, from a pagan perspective, are linked, one being a secular version of the other. Vikernes rejects Christianity; Breivik rejects multiculturalism, particularly because of Islam. Predictably, their names have appeared in juxtaposition all over the internet.

Yet Vikernes is a pagan, whereas Breivik is a Christian. Thus, ideologically, for Vikernes, who sees both Christianity and multiculturalism as having Jewish origins and serving Jewish interests, Breivik remains trapped inside a closed universe, whose laws were formulated by movements that originated in the Eastern mind.

Not surprisingly, Vikernes' criticism of Breivik parallel key observations made by Kevin MacDonald. The latter has described Breivik as 'a Geert Wilders-type of cultural conservative, very opposed to ethnocentrism as a strategy, very positive about the Vienna School, staunchly pro-Israel (which he sees as beset by militant Islam), and very hostile toward Islam—what in the U.S. is called a neoconservative.' MacDonald has further noted that Breivik 'ignores the role of Jewish intellectual elites in pathologizing expressions of ethnocentrism by Europeans since WWII (particularly the Frankfurt School) and in combating the scientific basis of the legitimacy of racial/ethnic interests (Boasian anthropology).'

Vikernes finds Breivik's blindness to the Jewish role in political, cultural, and demographic developments in Europe over the past century more than a little curious. Deeming Breivik's acts as contemptible and wholly counter-productive, and noting his status as a Freemason (which both he and Greg Johnson see as a globalist Jewish tentacle), Vikernes speculates whether Breivik is not more than an unwitting agent. I do not favour a conspiratological interpretation.

Although both 'beasts' recognise that European man and civilisation are threatened by outside forces, that the threat is significant, and that action is needed, the enemy is mutually exclusive. For Vikernes, the enemy is the Jews, Christianity being a subversive force created by them, and Islam an imperialistic useful idiot in the conflict of civilisations. For Breivik the enemy is Islam, Jews and Christianity being allies—and in the latter case, at the core—of Europe. Breivik does not conceive the Knights Templars as a Gnostic ariosophical order of sacred warriors, like Miguel Serrano, founded on alchemical principles, but as religious warriors in a geopolitical conflict between Christian Europe and the Islamic East. Also, while both recognise the biological nature of the crisis, for Vikernes the problem is fundamentally spiritual, while for Breivik it seems to be geopolitical. For the musician the struggle is an inner one, while for the Freemason it is an outer one, and this is reflected in the megalomaniacal aspects of the latter's narrative.

Thus, Vikernes' violence, where it went beyond his disagreements with Øystein Aarseth, was what Jean Baudrillard called a 'symbolic challenge', which took the shape of arson attacks against emblems, or outposts, of Christianity in Northern Europe. However, the arsoned churches were empty, and Christianity long moribund; his only victim was a fellow musician, personally known to him, and the murder had nothing to do with religion, but with personal and business matters. Breivik's violence, in turn, was directed at a mass of individuals, personally unknown to him, who comprised a political class of fellow countrymen whom he deemed agents of destruction. Vikernes attacked the symbol of a religion, but not its adherents; whereas Breivik attacked the adherents of a religion (Cultural Marxists / multiculturalists / suicidal humanists), rather than the symbol. It may be that the secular religion has no recognisable, unambiguous, iconic symbol; but the same way that for Osama bin Laden the twin towers at the World Trade Centre in New York represented a symbol of American power, and attacked them accordingly, Breivik could have attacked the symbol of Islam by, for example, drawing a cartoon opinining on Mohammed. I am not being entirely serious, of course, but, all the same, we saw some years ago how the peaceful act of an artist in Denmark who did just that came to represent a powerful symbolic challenge, although in that case it lacked direction and was therefore not successful. But a symbolic challenge to Islam may have triggered an over-reaction among Muslims in Europe that could have created some difficulties for the cultural Marxists, multiculturalists, and 'suicidal humanists'. Then again, previous Muslim violence in Europe has had no fundamental effect on government policy with regards to immigration and Muslims already settled in the continent; Cultural Marxists and multiculturalists, although nervous at the unstable and unpredictable effects of their social experiment, remain in power.

To my mind, Vikernes' symbolic challenge was in many ways preposterous, but in others less so. Evolutionism, scientism, economism, and their parent, materialism, had already dealt Christianity a decisive blow a long time before Vikernes came along. Thus the act ended up a youthful felony, Quixotically philosophised after the fact. Yet, in the long run, because it created curiosity and fascination with Black Metal among music fans, and because Black Metal was able stir powerful dark emotions while also providing an alternative traditionalist, elitist, mystical narrative that was appealing amid the failures of secular modernity, it served as a springboard for a vibrant subculture, which, although revolving around music, woved together traditional folk culture and a pre-existing völkischideology, linked by a golden thread to multiple contemporary expressions of the anti-liberal current. What is more, Vikernes himself has created work of lasting value, with eight albums released to date, and his music remains popular. Throught it, and by virtue of the natural interest in, identification, and empathy it elicits among music fans with its creator, Vikernes remains influencial, directly or indirectly, and the values and ideals encoded in his music and expressed in his writing, even if the latter is read with some degree or real or pretended ironic detachment, will be partially or wholly absorbed and internalised by many, already made receptive by the psychological states induced by the music. The transformation is diffuse, gradual, irrational, largely unconscious, and not attributable to a single factor or agent. The enemy camp knows this well, and use the education system, legislation, and the mass media of news and entertainment to push in the opposite (their) direction, to effect an inverse transformation.

By contrast, I believe Breivik's legacy will be entirely negative. Sympathy with the victims and a desire by establishment politicians to demonstrate ideological purity, combined with the culturally antithetical nature of much of Breivik's worldview, will serve as justification for a) a strengthening of the grip of PC Stalinism, b) further displays of anti-racist 'virtue', c) further gestures of appeasement and accommodation toward Islam, and d) hesitation among those concerned for the future of Europe in identifying publicly with racial nationalist ideas. Furthermore, I doubt Breivik will influence anyone with his mammonth 1516-page manifesto (which but a handful will actually read), particularly given the deep and irreconciliable contradictions in his ideology, the underlying silliness, and the fact that the latter is defined by a negative conception. As evident from his video, it is mostly about the enemy, Europe (biologically and geopolitically conceived) being important only in as much as it is threatened. This contrasts with Vikernes' ideology, which, although initially elaborated on the basis of a dislike for Christianity and what he perceived as its universalist-egalitarian-unmartial values, grew to be about Europe (biologically and spiritually conceived), Jews, Islam, and Cultural Marxists being important in as much as they threaten Europe. Thus, Breivik is—as he described himself—conservative (the negation of the new), and his talk of rebirth involves restoration; Vikernes is traditional (affirmation of the old), and any talk of rebirth involves regeneration or renewal. Affirmation is always more appealing than negation.

In any event, neither will start a revolution. In my novel, Mister, I mention Vikernes' early link to the Norwegian Heathen Front, which in my dystopian future has become active as a political party. However, in the novel Vikernes has become a recluse, and, although do not say so, I imagined him living a quiet life, on a farm, lost in the landscape. Breivik, a regressive recycler, deceived and deceptive on more than one level, having created nothing of value, and having sown senseless death and lent his face to the discrediting of his cause, will end his days in a prison cell, labelled a 'Right-wing extremist', but in reality an agent and catalyst of involution, a slave of the Demiurge, if you prefer, and metaphysically a minion, or tool, of the forces of darkness in the occult war. His personal history suggests he may have ended up an agent of the forces of decay because he is its product, and therefore an insider, as opposed to an outsider—emblematic of the problem and not, as he seemed to believe, the solution.

Vikernes' articles and essays can be found here; Breivik's 1516-page manifesto, 2083: A European Declaration of Independence, here.

Miguel Ezquerra's Berlin, A Vida o Muerte

 

 

First published on Wermod and Wermod: http://www.wermodandwermod.com/newsitems/news270720110221.html

This book was donated by a supporter of the Miguel Serrano translation project, into whose Amazon list I had added it on account of Don Miguel making reference to it—albeit briefly—in The Golden Thread.


Miguel Ezquerra was a Spanish Falangist and soldier, who fought in the Spanish Civil War and as a volunteer in World War II, first as a member of the Blue Division (known as Division Azul, or Division Española de Voluntarios in Spain, and 250. Infanterie-Division in Germany) and subsequently in the Waffen SS.

His only book, Berlin, A Vida o Muerte (loosely, Berlin, At Any Cost), is an autobiographical account of his experiences during the final months of World War II.

General Franco did not take sides during that war, but allowed volunteers to join on the German side. The Blue Division, a unit of Spanish volunteers that served in the Wehrmacht, was active between 1941 and 1943. Eventually, pressured by the Alliess, conservative Spaniards, and the Catholic Church, Franco ordered the solders to return to Spain, and were repatriated in 1944.

Some refused to return and remained in Germany (Ezquerra calls them ‘despistados’, or ‘absent-minded’), where they either worked or were absorbed into other German units. Among those who were repatriated, some slipped through the Franco-Spanish border and joined the Germans again as volunteers. Ezquerra was one from the latter group.

The book begins with a laconic 600-word prologue, where Ezquerra summarises his life up until 1943. We learn that after being demobilised following the end of the Spanish Civil War, he worked as a teacher for a while before enlisting in the Blue Division, where, according to his account, he reached the rank of Captain.

‘The Fatherland suffocated me,’ he says in Chapter I; there were many things he was unhappy with and he desired to join the struggle for European civilisation, which for him meant fighting with the Germans against the Soviet communism.

Together with a few comrades, Ezquerra successfully crosses the French fronteer, then closed, and reports to the German authorities as a volunteer. He is soon back in the German army, where his rank is recognised.

What follows are a series of adventures. While they welcome Ezquerra and holding him in high regard on account of his behaviour in previous combat missions, the Germans do not initially deploy him on the front, as is his wish. He does, however, encounter a number of fellow Spaniards, then and throughout the book, many of whom had been in the Blue Division with him.

In the early stages he spends much time in France, employed in German counterintelligence, consorting with all manner of shady characters in the seedy underworld of occupied France. He reports that the resistance movement, celebrated after the war, was invisible in 1944; that, in fact, the French gave the Germans no trouble.

Eventually, he is given combat assignments, one of which is in Normandy, shortly after the Allied landing. Ezquerra tells how he and his men got behind enemy lines in the Battle of the Bulge and blew up a munitions depot, capturing 300 Americans.

As the Germans prove unable to contain the Allied tide, Ezquerra eventually finds himself having to evacuate France and catch up with the Germans, who had already left. The ‘resistance movement’ surfaces only then—except Ezquerra depicts it as comprising individual cowards who, having lived peacefully and profitably under the occupation, remembered their courage and reinvented themselves as heroes of the resistance—after it was safe to do so.

Once in Germany, life picks up the pace, and Ezquerra is now near the epicentre of events. Promoted for the second time in his narrative, Ezquerra is finally given a unit with his name, and assigned a nearly impossible mission defending the Reich’s chancellery, which by this time is being encroached upon by the vastly superior Russian forces. The mission is accomplished, but Ezquerra is, in the end, the last man standing. All that remains afterwards are ruins.

With Hitler dead, and the war visibly lost, Ezquerra drinks with a fellow officer until captured by the Russians. Other prisoners are rounded up and either deceived and killed or marched Eastwards, evidently destined to the gulags, although these are not mentioned.

Ezquerra decides at this point never to reach Russia—either to die or return to Spain. His escape and tense efforts to achieve the latter objective occupy the final portion of the book. And of course, we see, as we saw earlier, how Spanish communists, peppered throughout Europe, organised chekas at the end of the war and began maltreating their vanquished enemies.

The story is gripping, a potent cocktail of horror, harshness, and fanatical will, told with a dry, rock-hard laconicism and crammed with feats of nearly insane courage.

As a story, it is first rate. It reads almost like a novel, despite its literary minimalism.

As a biographical account, some have found it lacking at times, afflicted by the author’s apparent vanity and self-serving embellishments.

Certainly, Miguel Ezquerra, known to have been a very colourful character, comes across as a superman in his own account: a singularly brave soldiers, stoic, astute, indifferent to pain, esteemed, feared, and a born fighter and leader—hardest of the hard, but not without humanity. He proves a charismatic character.

Some historians have found difficult to confirm some of the episodes he recounts. Naturally, this may well be because of the chaos of the moment and of the war in general while in its final stages. His promotion to lieutenant-colonel, for example, was given verbally, in the field, and the only evidence appears to be Ezquerra’s own account, where he receives the news with indifference; yet, the promotion takes place just ahead of the final battle for Berlin.

Ezquerra also tells how he was taken to Hitler’s bunker, met the Führer, and was offered by him the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross and German citizenship, the latter of which Ezquerra thanks but declines, stating ‘I will be Spanish for as long as I live’. He subsequently tells that he had strong tea with Goebbels, who commended the bravery of the Spanish volunteers.

Possible historiographical difficulties aside, there is no question Ezquerra was an idealist and an uncommonly brave soldier, that he volunteered thrice to fight for the future of Europe against communism, that he sought action on the front, and that he was eventually in the Waffen SS, at the time the most elite and exclusive armed force in the world. In other words, this was a man who was eager to follow through with an ideal and who put his life on the line, ready to sacrifice it, in a world where most crave peace and comfort and would do anything to avoid even a bit of inconvenience.

The first facet of this book that interested me was its extremism. With an angry title like Berlin, At Any Cost, which one cannot but utter with a gurn and rippling masseters, the idea of fanatical soldiers bent on defending a position to the last, even beyond all hope, is appealing to someone fascinated with extremity and extremes. All the same, the book is not political or philosophical, and, apart from passing comments derisive of communism, any political or philosophical content there may be is implied.

The second facet was the insights the book affords into the author’s psychology, which I found most counter-intuitive where I thought it most closely matched the national temperament in his fatherland, and most instructive whenever he engaged with his compatriots. And their idiosyncracies as Spaniards are not lost on Ezquerra, who was glad to find German officers aware of them, as this awareness paid dividends during combat operations. This was partly the reason why, rather than a heterogeneous force, Einheit Ezquerra, formed at the end of the war, was comprised of Spanish volunteers.

Finally, the third facet was the insights the book provides into the conditions of occupied France, and the situation and behaviour of non-German expatriates involved with or under the aegis of the Axis. Berlin offers a witness’ account, and a perspective, on people and aspects seldom thought about, and perhaps also seldom mentioned, in the history of the occupation and World War II. Certainly the history of the Spanish Waffen SS is little known, as is the fact that they were among the last defenders of Berlin, along with the Germans and the French of the Charlemagne Division.

For a short and Spartan book of 132 pages, there is much for the reader to enjoy.

Ezquerra’s adventures did not end with the war, and he went on to live for another 39 years, a number of them in Brazil, having passed through various Caribbean republics. His post-war life is recounted in an interview granted to the Spanish magazine, Interviu. That, however, is another story . . .

Worse is Worse, Unless There's Better

First published on Alternative Right: http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/district-of-corruption/worse-is-worse-unless-there-s-better/

From time to time I encounter the slogan ‘worse is better’ within dissidents on the Right. To me this has always sounded as a rationalisation, a mantra intended by the user to help him cope with loss, defeat, inaction, and helplessness. The reason is that, for worse to really be better, there would need to be a credible alternative to the existing system already in place, needing only the critical mass that would be made available by a collapsing system. And as at present a genuine alternative exists mostly in theory, and only very incipiently in practice, with credibility outside its cultural ghetto yet to be earned, for as long as that is the case, worse for us can only mean worse.


An iteration of the ‘worse is better’ mantra was recently enunciated in connection with the United States presidential elections of 2012, which the incumbent, Barack Obama, intends to fight against an as yet unspecified Republican candidate. It was argued that, in the light of Obama’s record to date and of precedent established by previous presidential second terms, an Obama win would be immensely beneficial. The assumption is that Obama will further discredit himself with a large-enough majority of voters, and that his discredit will infect the mainstream political establishment, causing voters to seek alternatives outside of this establishment. It was further argued that a Republican win would create the illusion of progress among the ill-informed, while only delaying, and ultimately opening the way, for further evil from the hard Left.

While the latter argument is correct, the former one relies on fallacies.

Firstly, it does not necessarily follow that Obama’s discredit will mean also a discredit of the entire mainstream political establishment: when a politician becomes unpopular because he has lost his credibility, he is replaced by one that is more popular. Voters have short memories; they rely on partial, selective, carefully packaged, mediated information; they don’t generally understand information that is nuanced or complex; they are impermeable to inconvenient data, arguments, and conclusions; they have no taste for the disruption and inconvenience implied in fundamental change; and they want so badly to believe that everything will be alright, that they blind themselves to the obvious and continue to support the existing system for as long as they can sustain the illusion of hope—or at least the illusion that things will carry on more or less as they have known them, hopefully getting better in due course. This is normal and natural, particularly since most people alive today in the West have not known a major war, or suffered major disruptions to their lifestyles outside of the relatively mild ones inflicted by the economic cycle.

Secondly, it does not follow that voters’ searching outside of the options sanctioned by the mainstream political establishment will lead to their finding good ones. In the Americas, we have a relatively recent precedent of what happens when, in a two-party democratic system, both parties are discredited after ping-ponging power over successive elections: a third player does indeed come along eventually, but he turns out to be someone like Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez (shown above), a communist dictator who nominally adopts democratic forms, and draws support from an illiterate majority, in order to enjoy the presidential palace for life.


You may want to argue that the United States is not some obscure Latin American country, but rather a First World country and a world superpower. That may still be so, but the fiscal situation is gradually making this illusory, while the demographic situation is increasingly making this subject to chage: Obama may turn out to be the first of many coloured heads of state; Bush may turn out to be one of the last who derived from the founding stock; and there is no guarantee that the United States will not break up into smaller sovereign states further down the line.

Absent a credible alternative, the present system is likely to endure, to continue hanging on to the seats and institutions of power as it further decays and becomes ever more reliant on the life-support of totalitarian methods. Intrinsically weak, the zombie system would eventually crumble, either on its own or through the agency of the same strongman who would have asserted himself in the wake of a spontaneous collapse. Many of the ‘worse-is-better’ camp implicitly assume that this strongman will be one of theirs. Yet, absent a credible movement of Euro regeneration, that strongman is most unlikely to be anything other than inimical. He is likely to be, in fact, a bringer of doom. Worse will be better for him. In Europe, the ‘strongman’ would most likely represent Islam.

Another thing to consider, nearer to home and within recent memory: not long after Tony Blair became British Prime Minister in 1997, a secret conspiracy was hatched inside his government to radically and permanently alter the racial composition of the United Kingdom, to multiculturalise the British isles in order to demoralise the Right and create a permanent block of support for his party. The conspiracy was uncovered in 2009. Back in 2001, before it was, but by which time Labour’s evil was perfectly evident to all but the wilfully ignorant, someone could have argued in favour of supporting a second and even a third Labour term, on the assumption that this would enrage the electorate, discredit the mainstream political parties, and cause voters to look for outsider alternatives. What happened? Labour won a second and third term, Blair and Brown became discredited, and in the 2010 general election, after thirteen miserable years that concluded with a collapsing economy, crippling debt, and a much uglier, dysfunctional, bureaucratic, and closely surveilled nation, Labour still managed to get the largest share of the vote, although not large enough to form a government. Result: a coalition with two nominally opposite but in fundamentally very similar parties, Labour’s opponents on the Right and Labour’s opponents on the Left. The main outsider party, the BNP, did very poorly. And meanwhile, the hapless beneficiaries of Labour's multicultural immigration conspiracy remain, the resulting demographic transformation a permanent legacy and feature—there is not even discussion of a reversal, only efforts to appear to slow down the flow. Worse was not better: it resulted in more of the same, except now in slow motion for a while.

As I have stated on numerous occasions, it does not all have to be this way or end in tragedy. Short of a doomsday asteroid, an apocalyptic virus, or a thermonuclear holocaust, even at this point we are only doomed if we want to. The nut can be cracked. The West can be made again. And it is entirely is up to us whether it is made or unmade, and whether this happens soon, later, or never.

Presidential elections in the United States, and general elections in the rest of the Western world, must be viewed not only in terms of the hypothetical opportunities that they may afford, but also in terms of the strategy and the tactics that they may render optimal for the ensuing period. And as has been amply discussed already, our battlefield for now is the culture, its transformation, not electoral politics, which is the last stage because it presupposes a culturally legitimised ideology. Things may change rapidly, and they did in the former Soviet block, but presently I do not anticipate any cataclysms in 2012; and whether Obama wins or loses, whether he creates opportunities or comes to represent a lost one of us, will depend on us much more than it will depend on him or them.