The demonic Demian

It’s interesting to go back and read books that made an impression on you when you were younger. Demian wasn’t the Hesse novel that made a big impression on me, that was Magister Ludi as the paperback edition I had then called The Glass Bead Game, but it was the first Hesse novel that I read and the one that drew me into becoming a moderately serious Hesse fan.

However, as much as I enjoyed the books, I did not understand the countercultural appeal of Hesse back then. I was too much a child of the 80s to grasp why Demian and Steppenwolf were so significant to the hippies and the other counterculturals who laid the groundwork for today’s SJWs, most of whom wouldn’t know Hermann Hesse from Rudolf Hess.

But I was reading Demian at the gym yesterday, and besides developing a newfound respect for James Franco, who wrote a rather amusing introduction to it, I began to understand both that historic countercultural appeal as well as the depth of literally Satanic evil intrinsic to the quasi-Gnostic philosophy expressed in the book. This passage, in particular, caught my attention:

Then, at that moment, a memory flashed up within me that almost took my breath away: on that ill-starred evening when my misery had begun, that moment with my father when I had, so to speak, seen right through him and his bright clean world and wisdom, and despised them! Yes, I had imagined on my own that I was Cain and bore the mark, and that the mark was not a disgrace but a badge of honor; I had felt that my wicked misdeed made me superior to my father, higher than the good and pious people in his world.

It’s not that I had thought it all through, clearly and analytically, at the time; it was just an emotion flaring up, strange stirrings that hurt me but at the same time filled me with pride. Yet all these ideas were contained in the feeling I’d had.

When I thought about how oddly Demian had spoken of the fearless tribe and the cowards, how strange his interpretation was of the mark on Cain’s forehead, and how marvelously his eyes, his peculiar, grown-up eyes, had lit up when he spoke, the vague thought passed through my mind: This Demian, is he not himself a kind of Cain? Why else would he defend Cain, if he didn’t feel like him? Why does he have such power in his eyes, and why does he speak so scornfully about the “others,” the fearful ones, who after all are actually pious and pleasing to God?

What can be more appealing to young men and women of little accomplishment than the idea that they are the chosen ones, that they are superior by virtue of their weakness and uselessness? What could better suit that collection of worthless parasites than an excuse to take pride in their barbaric rejection of constructive, civilized society? Sinclair’s misdeed was based on pure cowardice, and yet on the basis of nothing more than Demian’s baseless reinterpretation of the Cain story, his multi-faceted cowardice is transformed into heroism, even into a form of demi-godhood!

I didn’t understand this when I was 15. I took the concept of the “fearless ones” at face value, although fortunately I was not foolish enough to take the philosophy behind it seriously. I haven’t finished re-reading the book yet, but what I’m seeing is that Demian represents a proto-SJW perspective, although one that is considerably more educated and self-aware than modern SJWs because it is shaped in reaction to traditional Western culture and is therefore fully aware of what today’s SJWs do not know.

Hesse moved beyond this juvenile, reactionary, and self-deluded gnosticism in both Siddhartha and The Glass Bead Game, but the counterculture never did, not even when it became the popular culture. And if the philosophy is considerably more evil than I recalled, I have to say that the writing is even deeper and more insightful than I remembered.

It’s somewhat remarkable that a man capable of seeing so deeply into his own soul should then go so far afield philosophically, but then, perception is not analysis.

How NOT to do it

In which a pair of morons who offended SJWs and feminists by having sex with women and then writing about it demonstrate that a basic working knowledge of Game is woefully insufficient to deal with an SJW attack:

To Our Asheville Community:

We know many of you are very angry right now. That anger is justified. There is nothing to balm the wound for now, and we recognize that. We validate and affirm your frustration and disappointment. We’ve issued separate individual apologies, and those stand more than ever.

We’ve said terrible and demeaning things – things that belie unhealthy thought patterns that do not contribute to a stable and equal society. Things our mothers and sisters had to hear. We cannot and will not excuse these things. We grieve for the systematic and ongoing actions we’ve taken. We apologize to the women in our lives and the greater community for the harm we’ve caused, and the potential danger we’ve put them in with our attitudes and beliefs.

We opened Sunday in order to have conversations with some of our regular customers, and to give an opportunity for folks to chat if they wished. A few did just that, and we’re grateful for your thoughts and feelings. We’re humbled by and undeserving of the grace displayed by so many in the face of our actions.

We’re going to close for the next couple days so we can have some room for introspection. We want to allow ourselves to be accountable to our friends, family, employees, clergy, and counselors for our actions, and give ourselves room to be silent and reflect. These attitudes were not grown in a day, and they will not be destroyed in a day. We want to humbly commit to that process. We’re not good people, but we want to be.

We’re going to donate all our business profits through the end of the year to Our Voice. Many of you in the community have great regard for this organization, and their work is of immense importance. We know this is but a step, but it’s something to which we can commit. Our employees who have lost their jobs due to our behavior will be given severance to help as they transition.

With deep regret,

Jared & Jacob

One guess how their craven apology went over. One guess what the inevitable response to their belly-crawling and backtracking and introspection and offering of tribute was. If you’ve read SJWs Always Lie, you know what comes next:

A local business support group has asked that Waking Life Espresso return a loan intended to support a second location as anger mounted Monday over anonymous Internet media posts in which the coffee shop owners boasted of sexual conquests.

That request from Mountain BizWorks came the same day another nonprofit, Our VOICE, said it would reject any donations given to it by Waking Life.

What utter morons. This is precisely why you do NOT publicly apologize. You do not EVER apologize when faced with an SJW attack. No exceptions. None.

What total fucking cowards. Those women who were upset about their sex lives being discussed and rated were only angry before, they are probably writhing in shame and disgust now.

Back From the Dead on Amazon

The Stars Came Back Book One: Back From the Dead by Rolf Nelson is now available on Amazon and at Castalia House for $4.99.

Helton Strom is just a guy between contracts when he runs afoul of both
planetary officialdom and space pirates. He is left with nothing but the
clothes on his back, and not even a citizenship to his name. Is the
ancient, broken-down military surplus starship and the young lady living
aboard it the key to a bright future, or will his repairs and new
mercenary friends reawaken the demons lurking in the ship’s murky and
lethal past?

Back From the Dead is the first book in The Stars Came Back series.
It is a space western, the story of regular folks just trying stay
alive, seeking work to earn money for repairs to get to the next job,
with no shortage of action and adventure along the way. It is military
sci-fi, featuring a company of mercenaries, spaceship combat, mortar and
rifle combat, spear-and-shield battle, and post-traumatic stress
disorder. And it is a philosophical investigation, pondering everything
from the lessons of Achilles to how one stops a bar fight with earplugs.

If you have already read it, I hope you will consider reviewing it on Amazon.

No place for SJWs

Leo Grin demonstrates the correct way to deal with SJW entryists in proper Cimmerian fashion:

Gentlemen: it’s our duty to report that Barbara Barrett, erstwhile Cimmerian blogger, has been caught engaging in Orwellian “social justice” bully behaviors against REH fans.

An increasingly fervent proponent of feminist thought-policing and Codes of Conduct since entering this overwhelmingly male and non-ideological field several years ago, Barrett has recently weaponized her rhetoric in an attempted ISOLATION and DISQUALIFICATION of the most revered Sword-and-Sorcery expert in pulp fandom: former Official Editor of REHupa Morgan Holmes. His crime? Associating with Hugo-nominated fantasy author and longtime social justice critic Vox Day, thus violating Barrett’s cultish SJW narrative.

Unleashing a coordinated assault against Holmes and Day in not one but two separate print a.p.a.s — REHupa (The Robert E. Howard United Press Association) and PEAPS (The Pulp Era Amateur Press Society) — Barrett followed the SJW ATTACK SEQUENCE to the letter:

    Step #1 — Locate or Create Violation of the Narrative: ENACTED
    Step #2 — Point-and-Shriek: ENACTED
    Step #3 — Isolate and Swarm: ATTEMPTED (inexplicably the requisite mob of weak men needed to support her strong feminism has failed to materialize).

In service to her hoary “racism! sexism! homophobia!” attacks, Barrett fell back numerous times on the Three Rules of SJW:

    RULE #1: SJWs ALWAYS LIE
    RULE #2: SJWs ALWAYS DOUBLE DOWN
    RULE #3: SJWs ALWAYS PROJECT

Her goal with all of this is clear: ruin the reputations and livelihoods of two men, put the fear of suffering the same fate into everyone else, and then shame that cowed group of non-ideological male fans into establishing a fem-friendly code of conduct that would facilitate her becoming The Elderly Nazi Den Mother of REH Fandom, allowing her to ban WRONGFUN and BADTHINK wherever she might find it.

The Cimmerian Blog has been defunct for half a decade, but now that one of our former bloggers has been exposed as an SJW, we feel impelled to rise from our slumber to declare that we stand 100% against SJWs and their travelling freakshow of interlocking fetishes and predatory abuses.

As a now-confirmed SJW, Barbara Barrett is hereby EXPELLED from this blog. We have struck her prose from every post, and her face from every picture. Let her name be unheard and unspoken among us, erased from the memory of our august fellowship, for all time. So let it be written. So let it be done.

We publicly express our support, unequivocally and without reservation, for Sword-and-Sorcery expert Morgan Holmes, as well as for fantasy author Vox Day. Both are great and good friends of REH fandom, and of liberty.

Or to put it another way:

It’s worth noting that this unequivocal approach has the distinct benefit of smoking out other SJWs who are just as inclined to thought policing but are not quite as open or aggressive about it. Although it is a bit ironic to have someone who cries about having been attacked for his support of Scottish independence being afraid of being attacked for being somehow associated, however remotely, with someone who supports Scottish independence.

Of course, as with every other SJW, it’s all about the Narrative.

Mailvox: how SJWs metastasize

An individual familiar with the con scene explains how SJW entryism metastasizes once they take control of an organization and start using it as a vehicle to spread their thought control elsewhere.

Greetings from Minnesota. I recently read SJWs Always Lie, and I noted in particular the parts about entryism and the way Codes of Conduct are weaponized to cull enemies from organizations because it parallels my own experience with the local fan con scene.

The big fan con, locally, remains CONvergence (“CVG”). Damn near all of the other local fan cons follow its lead and participate in an association with the defacto parent org, the Geek Partnership Society. When this organizational realignment occurred there also came the inclusion of the current Code of Conduct (masked as a simple “Harassment” statement), pushes for Costumes Are Not Consent as another fork in the process, and the inclusion of the Atheism Plus crowd via con-within-a-con Skepticon (Rebecca Watson, Amanda Marcotte, and P.Z. Myers are much loved by the ruling clique here.) as a recurring element. I wondered what the hell was going on.

Well, one of the former CVG con com members is a man by the name of Michael Lee who has recently organized a convention specific to organizers of fan con: JOFCon MSP. This con has an explicit Code of Conduct, and I note that this code makes explicit in writing what is in actual practice at CONvergence regarding how its harassment policy is intended to work.

Furthermore, this is a con catering to the “Secret Masters of Fandom” clique, and many of the current and former CVG con-com members who will attend JOFCon MSP adhere to the SMOFs in large part due to the Torlock crowd being long-time regulars at CVG . The Former Guests of Honor, Visiting Authors, and Attending Professions are listed and I’m sure you’d recognize many of those listed. Yes, this meant any “acceptable” talk of Sad Puppies or Gamergate was NOT in support.

I offer my above-linked examples as real-world cases worthy of study, as both CVG (in its current status as Local Con of Cons, and therefore a significant point in the con-centric travelling circus that many authors and artists run to earn their living) and this JOFCon seem to possess more influence than they seem. WorldCon is not the only example of SJWs using leverage to fuck up the greater culture; I suspect that they’re using the entire con scene to engineer their poison into the culture.

I’m telling others sympathetic to the anti-SJW push across all fandoms that attend conventions to check their materials for similar signs of entryism and reconsider the state of organizational integrity for that convention. I would advise professionals to do likewise for conferences related to their interests. Given the alternatives now available, it may be possible to render those too far gone totally irrelevant while others can be reconquered and then purged of the cultists.

Keep this in mind if you are feeling any qualms of conscience about jettisoning an SJW from your club or organization because “he hasn’t done anything yet”. Don’t look at them as individuals because they don’t operate as individuals and they certainly don’t think for themselves; they are merely an invasive tendril of the SJW hive mind that is attempting to force its way into your area of responsibility.

If you don’t force them out, if you don’t keep them out, they will eventually take you out and take it over. Don’t think you, your organization, or your purpose is too valuable or important, the Narrative ALWAYS comes first and foremost for SJWs.

And if the SJWs are already running the show, leave. Stop supporting it. If you can summon the manpower to take it back, then do so, but if you can’t, set up your own show in direct competition with it and run them out that way.

NYT cheers Muslim rule in America

Of course, the U.S. may already have a Muslim president, what with Obama talking about his Muslim faith and all. But the U.S. already faces significant future challenges with the post-1965 invasions; the new Muslim and Asian invasions only adds a violent complication to the inevitable collapse and civil war:

The Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson is drawing criticism over the bigoted comments he has been making recently about Muslims. It is well deserved, and is not a matter of “P.C. culture,” as Mr. Carson has claimed. Nor does Mr. Carson represent some minor fringe element in the Republican Party.

This latest sordid mess to arise from the G.O.P. nomination contest touches on bedrock American values, constitutional principles and American history. It reflects a pernicious habit among the leaders of the Republican Party to play with fire by pandering to an angry, disaffected and heavily white base by demonizing selected minorities. Muslims are just the current target.

Mr. Carson declared Sunday on ”Meet the Press” that Muslims are unfit to run for president because a president’s faith should be “consistent with the Constitution.” Later, he told the newspaper The Hill that Islamic Shariah law isn’t consistent with the Constitution because “Muslims feel that their religion is very much a part of your public life and what you do as a public official, and that’s inconsistent with our principles and our Constitution.”

Leave aside for a moment the unintentionally funny spectacle of a member of the current Republican Party declaring that religion should be kept out of public life, and that Mr. Carson, as an African-American, is a member of a much belittled minority. The freedom of religion embedded in the First Amendment rules out the very idea of a religious test for public office, as John F. Kennedy so eloquently argued and then proved by becoming the first Catholic president.

As for Shariah law, Catholicism has canon law and Judaism has the Halakha and nobody is painting them as threats to the republic — at least not this year…. Anti-Muslim sentiment is playing out in the refugee crisis caused by hundreds of thousands of people, mostly Muslims, fleeing wars in the Middle East. The United States recently agreed to take an additional 30,000 refugees per year by 2017, but some conservatives are objecting, claiming they will provide a recruiting pool for radicals. Closing the country’s doors to Muslims would buy into Mr. Carson and Mr. Trump’s vilification and dishonor the thousands of Muslims who have joined Irish, Italians, Germans, French, Jews, Russians, Latinos, Africans and many others in becoming honorable citizens and perhaps, one day, president.

Never mind that those Irish, Italians, Germans, French, Jews, Russians, Latinos, and Africans have already completely destroyed what was once a predominantly English nation with English values. None – none – of the other immigrants ever fully grasped the English concept of limited government, which is why they transformed what had been a voluntary association into an empire held together by force in 1860.

What is happening in the EU is what has already happened in the USA, it’s just that the changes are too large scale for most people to understand what has taken place. Like the EU, the United States was a diverse empire of different nations that were nevertheless sufficiently similar to function as a single political entity. The one exception were the blacks, but they were too few and too inept to blow things up.

The influx of Hispanics, Africans, and Asians guaranteed the end of the United States just as the influx of Africans and Middle Easterners guarantees the end of the European Union. What is happening in the EU is a magnified version of what has already happened in the USA, because the space is smaller, nationalism is stronger, the populations are more homogenous, and the speed of the invasion is greater. But it’s the same thing in both cases, and the same end result is inevitable.

Diversity+Proximity=War. For all the protests of the New York Times, the Republicans aren’t going anywhere nearly far enough.

SJWs invade Cimmeria

As it has been said, SJWs always lie. Yet another example, this one from the world of Robert E. Howard scholarship:

At one time the Cimmerian Blog was the cream of the crop for online Robert E. Howard scholarship and I was very proud to be a contributor there in 2009-2010. Since closing down that year the blog has remained online as an archive of scholarship, hosted by the owner Leo Grin.

This weekend I learned that owner had posted a political rant attacking one of the other bloggers, Barbara Barrett, and endorsing controversial science ficiton writer Theodore Beale (a.k.a. Vox Day) founder of the Rabid Puppies group that tried to hijack the Hugo Awards this year. The wording of his rant in the first person plural makes it sound as though all of the other bloggers endorsed this action as well as the ideology of Vox Day. This is not the case at all.

I was not consulted about this and I do not in anyway endorse Leo Grin’s comments or the beliefs of Vox Day and the Rabid Puppies. I have asked that my name, image, and posts be removed from the site and Leo has complied. I will likely be reposting some of my less-dated material here as time permits in the weeks to come. I am very saddened that this had to happen and that what was once a great REH blog has been tarnished by such divisive politicization.

That said. there are amazing things happening in Howard fandom and scholarship now and coming in the future. We will not let this petty nonsense get in the way of that great work.

Allow me to translate: “petty nonsense” means someone dared to disagree with an SJW. “Divisive politicization” means that an SJW attempt to take over the organization was resisted.

SJWs can’t easily operate out in the open before they’ve seized effective control. That’s why they will cooperate and play along right up until the moment that it becomes clear that their entryism is futile. Then they’ll make it clear that their allegiance is to the Narrative, not to the organization or its objectives.

It’s all right there in the book. Their playbook never changes much. So learn it and learn how to deal with it, because sooner or later, it will affect you directly.

More lessons in rhetoric

Chublie Martin is now into his fourth day of demonstrating that he doesn’t care and he totally isn’t triggered at all:

Charlie Martin
The funniest part of this is you *still* haven’t thought of anything more creative than fat jokes.

Vox Day
It’s funny because you’re fat. And because you’re STILL crying into your gallon tub of Blue Bunny.

Thales
Watching @voxday tear down rhetoric speakers is like watching a Kung Fu master fight an overweight couch potato. Literally, in this case.

A Street in Texas
quit. Vox is dominating this thread 64RT/127FAV to 2/3

Charlie Martin
Go home. You’re not big enough to ride this ride.

Minion 278
what is the minimum weight limit, 350lbs?

Vox Day
Chublie, ARETHA FRANKLIN isn’t big enough to ride you.

Charlie Martin
Oh, don’t forget small penis.

Charlie Martin
You could say I have a big nose.

Charlie Martin
You could say I dress funny.

Charlie Martin
You could say I don’t speak Telegu.

Charlie Martin
You could make fun of my beard.

Charlie Martin
Mom was Jewish, you could call me a kike.

Charlie Martin
Look, I’ll give you some help: racial slurs. You could call me a Muslim,

Charlie Martin
I mean, OMG he might make another fat joke.

Vox Day
We didn’t make any fat jokes, Chublie. Your mother did.

For some reason, those losing a rhetorical battle often resort to the fighting withdrawal of the overwhelmed loser: “real original”. But not only will you search Aristotle in vain for any reference to originality, you will learn that a) truth and b) repetition are among the most potent rhetorical tactics.

Of course, this isn’t a fair fight. Not only is Mr. Martin considerably less experienced at dealing with intelligent opponents than I am, his real handicap is socio-sexual. Gammas should never take on Alphas and they should never, ever take on Sigmas. An Alpha will stop beating on the Gamma when he feels that the challenge has been dealt with and his dominant position is secured. A Sigma will stop beating on the Gamma when it stops amusing him.

This can, as we know, take a considerable while.

Mailvox: the power of rhetoric

RM puts SJWs Always Lie into practice:

On Twitter I was able to apply your tactics in realtime against some atheist chick. I demolished pseudo-dialectic with dialectic, and met rhetoric with rhetoric. Additionally, I also worked in the Red Pill, maintained frame and got her hamster working over time by saying her profile pic was one of a 4, and hitting the Wall must drive her to seek male attention. I got six tweets in response for one of mine with her hamster spinning like mad to qualify herself to me.

In the end, she started following my account and asked if I’d follow her and if I wanted to have a conversation with just her since she was shy on Twitter.

I dropped it and walked away at that point, shuddering.

Granted, I have room for improvement. It took me far too long to get her to that point and I replied too often, but the end result was a confirmation of your tactics for logic and your observations concerning socio-sexual interactions.

There is a definite connection between rhetoric and Game that merits further exploration. And on a tangential note, I’ve had some requests for how to respond to common rhetorical attacks. For example, it’s quite common to see atheists use the Old Testament to rhetorically attack Christianity, to which the ideal rhetorical response should be obvious: “You’re attacking the Torah? You’re an anti-semitic Jew-hating Nazi!”

It would be helpful, in this regard, if you would list some of the common rhetorical attacks you’ve observed at school, at work, or online.

The migrant crisis is Greek revenge

Steve Sailer points out that the Greeks warned Germany that they would manufacture a migrant crisis for the EU if they did not get debt relief back in March:

Yes, the Greeks are shoveling the Muslim mob through Greece as fast as possible because they are humanitarians. The Greeks are sending the Muslim masses north toward Germany as a gift to express how grateful Greece is for Germany’s kindness during last summer’s Euro crisis negotiations. The Greeks would love to hang onto all this prime human capital themselves, but they want Germany to benefit from the Merkel Youth as payback for Ms. Merkel’s kindness over the last seven years toward Greece.

It’s the least the Greeks could do for the Germans after all they’ve done for the Greeks.

As the old saying goes, “Never beware of Greeks bearing gifts.”

UPDATE: Oh, wait, it turns out that the Greek government explicitly threatened to unleash Muslim migrants upon Germany if Ms. Merkel’s government insisted upon a hardline in the Euro debt negotiations. From the Daily Express, 3/9/2015:

The rising tensions between Greece and the eurozone came as Panos Kammenos, the Greek defence minister, warned that Europe will be hit with migrants that could include “some jihadists of the Islamic State” if Greece is forced out of the euro.

He said: “If they deal a blow to Greece, then they should know the the migrants will get papers to go to Berlin.

“If Europe leaves us in the crisis, we will flood it with migrants, and it will be even worse for Berlin if in that wave of millions of economic migrants there will be some jihadists of the Islamic State too.”

His comments came shortly after Nikos Kotzias, the Greek foreign minister, warned that “there will be tens of millions of immigrants and thousands of jihadists” if bailout negotiations fail.

In retaliation to Mr Kammenos’ comments, the spokeswoman for EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos assured she had spoken to Greek authorities and had “received assurances from the Ministry of Interior that no measures to open up detention centres have been taken.”

History never “just happens”.  I can’t even imagine how hard Mr. Kammenos must be laughing after reading American columnists writing about how “hospitable” and “humanitarian” the Greeks are in comparison to those terrible, very bad, and quite possibly NAZI Hungarians. Greece doesn’t intend to keep any of the migrants, it is weaponizing them and sending them north as revenge upon the rest of the EU.