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Traditionalism & Twentieth Century Legends (A speculative piece for debate and discussion), by Tim Pendry
Politics over the last hundred years has been highly resistant to mythic or legendary considerations.
Legend may be used tactically for propaganda in a crisis or enter into the perceived history of a nation but, despite the influence of legend on nineteenth century romantic nationalism, most modern politicians most of the time like to avoid irrationalism.
Similarly the distinction between mythic and legendary narratives allows us to place to one side faith-based political ideology – notably that of the Shi’a but also the now much reduced, except in the backwoods of America, biblical fundamentalist narratives about race and providence.
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Posted in Mytho-Poesis
Traditionalism & Twentieth Century Legends (A speculative piece for
debate and discussion), by Tim Pendry
Politics
over the last hundred years has been highly resistant to mythic or legendary
considerations.
Legend may be used tactically for
propaganda in a crisis or enter into the perceived history of a nation but,
despite the influence of legend on nineteenth century romantic nationalism,
most modern politicians most of the time like to avoid irrationalism.
Similarly the distinction between
mythic and legendary narratives allows us to place to one side faith-based
political ideology – notably that of the Shi’a but also the now much reduced,
except in the backwoods of America, biblical fundamentalist narratives about
race and providence.
The
Modern Weaknesses of Legend
A legend is something based not on
the will of God or God’s intervention in the world but on re-interpreting what
men have actually done. It also has to stand a certain reasonable time.
The attempt at promoting the legends
of JFK and Camelot and of Churchill’s wartime record eventually fall into the
hands of historians and soon cease to drive political decision-making – or, at
least, they are eventually restricted to the mobilisation of factions or
parties rather than whole communities and they start to die with the
generations involved.
Similarly the classical legends of
Greece and Rome may be embedded deep within Western culture and are often used
rhetorically but they cannot reasonably be said to be at the heart of modern
Western political theory or practice. The exploits of Theseus and Heracles or
of Horatio at the Bridge have ceased even being imperial exemplars.
The
Modern World and ‘Noble Lies’
The modern world might be regarded as
rational with irrational characteristics whereas legends are ‘noble lies’,
redrafts of history to instill exemplary values for largely conservative
purposes. So, the remnants of legendism in the last century are intriguing for
signs of where irrationalism may re-emerge as the basis for a trans-valuation
of values in politics.
In this context, we might draw a
distinction between cultures where an otherwise long-since dead culture lives
in the minds and values of the population and those where an event in the
recent past has the potential to be recast in legendary terms.
We might also note that legend
becomes distanced from politics with lessening vulnerability. Romantic
nationalism owes a great deal to legends and romantic nationalism tends to
appear strongest when a nation is submerged within an empire or under direct
and immediate threat. Otherwise, quotidien money-making shifts legend to the
entertainment sector.
This is why the most ambivalent
attitudes to legend lie in nations that once relied on legend for their sense
of continued existence but which now have developed into relatively wealthy
late capitalist economies where legend becomes the staple of the tourist and
arts industries.
Israel
and Its Shadow
Perhaps the oddest example may be
Jewish culture which has found legendism to cut both ways. The ‘blood libel’
guilt is no longer present in our culture but the awareness of it has created a
sort of contra-legend about the ‘normality’ of anti-semitism.
The legend that the founder of the
Rothschild dynasty was given an inexhaustible barrel of oil by Elijah for a
good deed in the eighteenth century is fraught with worrying potential in the
current climate.
Legendism has a long history in
Jewish culture from biblical through rabbinical and hasidic cultures to modern
Zionism. The living construction of legends in modern Israel and in the
diaspora for contemporary purposes (no doubt mimicked in the Arab world) is a
live political issue. Its deepest and darkest enemy, national-socialism
in Germany, was highly mythologised and, like Jewish culture, interested in
adopting legend for nationalist purposes. This partly mythic, partly occult
culture descended into bloody mayhem under such conditions that it seems
unlikely that it will ever recover to political importance.
Nevertheless, the Nazi mythos has to
be noted as a continued inspiration for the marginalised Radical Right across
the West and beyond. Its modern absurdities have moved on from Wotanism and
from myths of an Aryan Atlantis to the contemporary mythos surrounding UFOs.
Declining
Western States
Three ‘cases’ to watch will be Eire
as its ‘Celtic Tiger’ dream implodes, Spain – and Japan as its economic status
begins to sink relative (though only relative) to that of China. A fourth may
be (strangely) the most advanced of all – the US as it comes to terms with its
own equally relative decline.
Traditional legends were still being
created about Eamonn de Valera within the last hundred years but it seems
unthinkable that such thinking can be recreated now, except that there remains
a residual belief in the power of the land, national destiny and spirits that
might be re-encoded into politics under extreme pressure in both Eire and
Cymru.
In the Irish case, the discrediting
of the Catholic Church, as wave after wave of scandals related to past abuse of
the vulnerable, leaves a cultural vaccuum that might not be filled with
European liberalism if the island receives another sharp shock to its economic
viability.
Spain is interesting because the
Legend of El Cid was played to great political effect by both the republicans
and nationalists in the Civil War.
Franco not only built an imposing new
tomb for the legendary hero in Burgos Cathedral but organised national
celebrations in 1943 both for the 900th anniversary of his birth and 1,000
years of Castilian independence.
In Japan, the cult of the samurai,
much of it quite recent in origin but with more ancient legendary roots,
maintains a powerful role in modern Japanese history, reaching its post war
epitome in Yukio Mishima’s attempted coup in the 1960s, but this too has
diverted itself into manga and anime and thence into the global games industry.
Bandits
The fourth case, the United States,
brings us to a theme that is more germane to outlier and semi-developed
cultures – banditry. Much of American legend is now made redundant out of
regard for the American Indian (General Custer) or because an age of resource
exploitation (Paul Bunyan) has passed on.
But the country of Jesse James and a
tradition of murderous robbery from the American Civil War through to Dillinger
have also created the standard ‘Robin Hood’ myth that we see in all frontier
societies. But where the frontier has closed, the legend may well live on
against presumed rapacious bankers if we do not see an economic upturn soon.
In the Balkans and the Turkic area,
bandits and outlaws can still be politically relevant. The myth of the bandit
became inspirational in the partisan ballads of the last century in Albania,
Yugoslavia and Bulgaria (and elsewhere) while Kuroghli is the Turkic Robin
Hood, a romantic, noble and generous rebel, challenging all authority.
Kuroghli, a seventeenth century
brigand, remains a ‘living’ legend, protector of the poor and enemy of the
rich, available as an Islamist iconic figure, given the claims that he has the
special protection of the Islamic pre-Mohammedan culture hero of Khidr or that
he is the reincarnation of the significant Shia figure Ali, son-in-law to the
Prophet.
The
Caucasus
There are two nations (Armenia and
Georgia) and many ethnic groups in the Caucasus with a strong sense of their
own heroic past, mostly of resistance to authority derived from larger powers.
This has expressed itself both as legends of banditry in the pre-revolutionary
Soviet cause and as anti-Soviet rising after the Revolution.
In Armenia, the saga of King Arshak
II has been central to the story of struggle for freedom. It was a factor in
the exile and death of the poet Osip Mandelstam in 1938 after he published a
symbolic treatment in which the oppressor King Shapur was too easily seen as
Josef Stalin, an association implied more than once in his poetry.
Stalin was a Georgian but the nationalist
poet whose work he admired, Mikheil Javakhishvili, nevertheless died at the
hands of the NKVD despite Stalin’s appreciation of his novel about the romantic
legendary early nineteenth century bandit Arsena.
On the other side of the coin,
perhaps fortunate to die in Tiflis in an accident in 1921 before Stalin started
cleaning up behind him, was the revolutionary bandit Kamo (Ter Petrossian) who
raised funds for Lenin in much the same way and not long after Stalin was doing
the same in Georgia – through organised crime as a bank robber.
The link between American resentments
of bankers and our Caucasian revolutionaries is simply that crime becomes a
political issue where the population no longer trust the State and where
warlordism becomes an alternative to democracy. The alleged individualism and
manliness of the cowboy offers another legendary model for libertarian
resistance to the State.
It may seem extreme to suggest that
the US is at risk from such a scenario but its legends of approval for free-booting
criminals, maintained through its popular culture, show that the extension of
the current chaos in Northern Mexico into the South West of the United States
may well rely on a ‘legendary attitude’ hidden within American values.
Asian
and African Models
In Iran, the Shahname or ‘The Book of
Kings’ remains a live legendary text for many Iranians who oppose the dominance
of the Shia theocracy. This is not an immediate issue but, as we have been
seeing in the Arab Spring, it is not to be assumed that democratic liberals
will be the beneficiaries of revolutionary changes.
A cult of Genghiz Khan was tolerated
and even supported in Chinese Inner Mongolia to placate Mongol nationalism. A
cult centre with battle standards was permitted on the steppes.
But in the old pro-Soviet Mongolian
People’s Republic took the opposite view, termed Genghiz Khan to have been a
destructive tyrant (somewhat cheeky given the dominance of Stalin), seeking to
suppress his cult at every opportunity.
In Africa, both the Zulus and the Afrikaners,
who might yet combine politically in mutual defence against the poor and black
urban majority, share opposite sides of the same historic event that has
achieved legendary status to both peoples – the Battle of Blood River (1838)
when General Pretorius defeated Dinganam, heir to Chaka’s Zulu Empire.
The
Americas and Pacific
We noted above the risks of warlord
chaos spilling over into the South West of US and the drugs community is one of
the few zones where legendary figures and tropes are being created in the
contemporary world (outside the capitalist-financed media).
This directs our attention to Mexico
and other parts of Middle America where Indian resistance has always had a
legendary aspect, ranging from ‘Aztec nationalism’ through the legendary
appropriation of European themes (the Virgin of Gaudelupe) to support legends
of victory over and resistance to predatory tribes backed by the invaders.
Lower register forms of Aztlan
nationalism extend into Chicano territory within South West Mexico and there
are some reports of it appearing within the ranks of the crime lords whose
bloodthirstiness may be seen within a longer traditionalist framework of hatred
towards the gringos – and may yet be turned on the gringos more directly.
Finally, a very different sort of
legend, the cargo cult, offers a form of resistance through emulation and
manipulation in the Pacific that may well throw up the odd cult leader but the
type hero of both the Aborigines and working-class whites is – yes, you guessed
it – the bandit.
White Australians have a slew of
legends of courageous legendary resistance to authority encompassing Ned Kelly,
the Eureka Stockade and the historical events surrounding Gallipoli but it is
the aborigines who can call on genuinely ambiguous criminals who were also cast
as freedom fighters, men such as Tucklar, Yagan and Pigeon.
It may be that Australia represents
the last country in the world whose entire political culture is built on
the sustained triumph of legend over historical reality. It may only be the
undoubted dominance of the incomers over the indigenes that ensures that it is
does not become a brutal clash of banditries – New Zealanders may not prove so
lucky.
Lost
Leaders
The disappearance of Subhas Chandra
Bose, leader of the anti-imperialist Indian National Army is an unresolved
issue. He boarded a Japanese plane for an unknown destination and was never
seen again. (The analogy with the disappearance of various Nazi leaders is
noted, notably Hitler himself).
The story of Bose suggests the many
lost leaders who have disappeared. Many of them are still believed (not by
modern men but as mythic ideas) to be ready to return when a nation is
troubled. Their spirit may be seen as recoverable on the traditionalist Right.
Amongst these are King Arthur,
Charlemagne, Owen Glendwyr, Robert the Bruce, Frederick Barbarossa, Siegfried,
Sir Francis Drake, King Sebastian of Portugal and Tsar Alexander I. The Romanov
blood line was once believed to have survived in at least the genes of Princess
Anastasia.
There are also the tales of the
flying Dutchman and of the wandering Jew – who was seen in Salt Lake City in
1868, in Glamorgan in the early last century and said to have been a New York stockbroker
in the 1940s. Not politically important perhaps but implying mysteries that
continue to fascinate the media, the public and the internet.
Concluding
Thoughts
Nor should we forget the magicians –
there may be Rasputins yet to come at the courts of declining dictators and
dynasts … nor the Freemasons.
We have not even touched the surface
of legends of secret societies, Illuminati and other groupings seen as either
agent of light or sinister manipulators in the contemporary legends of men
under stress.
All in all, legendary tales and their
role as irrationalism in politics may not have disappeared quite so much as we
may believe. A ‘legendary attitude’ (acceptance of crime lords or a call for
the spirit of lost leaders) may reappear and some nations (Japan, Mongolia,
Mexico, Eire and Spain) may be susceptible under pressure.
Any real resurgence of traditionalist
irrationalism is unlikely, partly because the world is interconnected enough
that no leader of such a revolt can be wholly isolated from reality or get away
with excessive departure from the facts – faith-based mythic irrationalism is a
far greater danger.
But a legend-based mobilisation of a
population, handled with skill by an ambitious politician, prepared to develop
an educated post-modern appropriation of its imagery, is more than possible in
times of extreme stress.
-
Tim
Pendry, has been cited as an ‘astute observer’ in the British Journal of
Politics and International Relations [BJPIR 2006 Vol.8 234]. His
experience has included senior communications advice in some of the most
significant takeovers & mergers in British corporate history as well as an
advisory role during the Russian Mass Privatisation programme.
Since
the mid-1990s, he has dealt with reputational issues arising out of private
sector collateral damage during the ‘war on terror’. He has supported a
variety of inter-faith and public policy initiatives and writes frequently on
political and cultural matters.
He was a Founding Director of the
British-Syrian Society, is a former Director of the Middle East Association,
and currently acts as a non-Executive Director of the online investigative
journalism websiteExaro.
15,257 views
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More than half a century after the defeat of Nazism and fascism, the far right is again challenging the liberal order of Western democracies. Radical movements are feeding on anxiety about economic globalization, affirmative action, and third-world immigration, flashpoint issues to many traditional groups in multicultural societies. A curious mixture of Aristocratic pagani...
| Title | : | Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism, and the Politics of Identity |
| Author | : | Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke |
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| Genres | : | History, Politics, Occult, Non Fiction, Culture, Sociology |
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| Number of Pages | : | 371 pages |
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- The death of Nicholas Goodrick-Clark last year (2012) deprived us of an important historian of political irrationalism.Unlike many others in the field, he neither accepted irrational claims as anything other than fictions nor allowed himself the luxury of huffing and puffing about their presumed evi...
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Traditionalism & Twentieth Century Legends, By Tim Pendry
Politics over the last hundred years has been highly resistant to mythic or legendary considerations.
Legend may be used tactically for propaganda in a crisis or enter into the perceived history of a nation but, despite the influence of legend on nineteenth century romantic nationalism, most modern politicians most of the time like to avoid irrationalism.
Similarly the distinction between mythic and legendary narratives allows us to place to one side faith-based political ideology – notably that of the Shi’a but also the now much reduced, except in the backwoods of America, biblical fundamentalist narratives about race and providence.
The Modern Weaknesses of Legend
A legend is something based not on the will of God or God’s intervention in the world but on re-interpreting what men have actually done. It also has to stand a certain reasonable time.
The attempt at promoting the legends of JFK and Camelot and of Churchill’s wartime record eventually fall into the hands of historians and soon cease to drive political decision-making – or, at least, they are eventually restricted to the mobilisation of factions or parties rather than whole communities and they start to die with the generations involved.
Similarly the classical legends of Greece and Rome may be embedded deep within Western culture and are often used rhetorically but they cannot reasonably be said to be at the heart of modern Western political theory or practice. The exploits of Theseus and Heracles or of Horatio at the Bridge have ceased even being imperial exemplars.
The Modern World and ‘Noble Lies’
The modern world might be regarded as rational with irrational characteristics whereas legends are ‘noble lies’, redrafts of history to instill exemplary values for largely conservative purposes. So, the remnants of legendism in the last century are intriguing for signs of where irrationalism may re-emerge as the basis for a trans-valuation of values in politics.
In this context, we might draw a distinction between cultures where an otherwise long-since dead culture lives in the minds and values of the population and those where an event in the recent past has the potential to be recast in legendary terms.
We might also note that legend becomes distanced from politics with lessening vulnerability. Romantic nationalism owes a great deal to legends and romantic nationalism tends to appear strongest when a nation is submerged within an empire or under direct and immediate threat. Otherwise, quotidien money-making shifts legend to the entertainment sector.
This is why the most ambivalent attitudes to legend lie in nations that once relied on legend for their sense of continued existence but which now have developed into relatively wealthy late capitalist economies where legend becomes the staple of the tourist and arts industries.
Israel and Its Shadow
Perhaps the oddest example may be Jewish culture which has found legendism to cut both ways. The ‘blood libel’ guilt is no longer present in our culture but the awareness of it has created a sort of contra-legend about the ‘normality’ of anti-semitism.
The legend that the founder of the Rothschild dynasty was given an inexhaustible barrel of oil by Elijah for a good deed in the eighteenth century is fraught with worrying potential in the current climate.
Legendism has a long history in Jewish culture from biblical through rabbinical and hasidic cultures to modern Zionism. The living construction of legends in modern Israel and in the diaspora for contemporary purposes (no doubt mimicked in the Arab world) is a live political issue. Its deepest and darkest enemy, national-socialism in Germany, was highly mythologised and, like Jewish culture, interested in adopting legend for nationalist purposes. This partly mythic, partly occult culture descended into bloody mayhem under such conditions that it seems unlikely that it will ever recover to political importance.
Nevertheless, the Nazi mythos has to be noted as a continued inspiration for the marginalised Radical Right across the West and beyond. Its modern absurdities have moved on from Wotanism and from myths of an Aryan Atlantis to the contemporary mythos surrounding UFOs.
Declining Western States
Three ‘cases’ to watch will be Eire as its ‘Celtic Tiger’ dream implodes, Spain – and Japan as its economic status begins to sink relative (though only relative) to that of China. A fourth may be (strangely) the most advanced of all – the US as it comes to terms with its own equally relative decline.
Traditional legends were still being created about Eamonn de Valera within the last hundred years but it seems unthinkable that such thinking can be recreated now, except that there remains a residual belief in the power of the land, national destiny and spirits that might be re-encoded into politics under extreme pressure in both Eire and Cymru.
In the Irish case, the discrediting of the Catholic Church, as wave after wave of scandals related to past abuse of the vulnerable, leaves a cultural vaccuum that might not be filled with European liberalism if the island receives another sharp shock to its economic viability.
Spain is interesting because the Legend of El Cid was played to great political effect by both the republicans and nationalists in the Civil War.
Franco not only built an imposing new tomb for the legendary hero in Burgos Cathedral but organised national celebrations in 1943 both for the 900th anniversary of his birth and 1,000 years of Castilian independence.
In Japan, the cult of the samurai, much of it quite recent in origin but with more ancient legendary roots, maintains a powerful role in modern Japanese history, reaching its post war epitome in Yukio Mishima’s attempted coup in the 1960s, but this too has diverted itself into manga and anime and thence into the global games industry.
Bandits
The fourth case, the United States, brings us to a theme that is more germane to outlier and semi-developed cultures – banditry. Much of American legend is now made redundant out of regard for the American Indian (General Custer) or because an age of resource exploitation (Paul Bunyan) has passed on.
But the country of Jesse James and a tradition of murderous robbery from the American Civil War through to Dillinger have also created the standard ‘Robin Hood’ myth that we see in all frontier societies. But where the frontier has closed, the legend may well live on against presumed rapacious bankers if we do not see an economic upturn soon.
In the Balkans and the Turkic area, bandits and outlaws can still be politically relevant. The myth of the bandit became inspirational in the partisan ballads of the last century in Albania, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria (and elsewhere) while Kuroghli is the Turkic Robin Hood, a romantic, noble and generous rebel, challenging all authority.
Kuroghli, a seventeenth century brigand, remains a ‘living’ legend, protector of the poor and enemy of the rich, available as an Islamist iconic figure, given the claims that he has the special protection of the Islamic pre-Mohammedan culture hero of Khidr or that he is the reincarnation of the significant Shia figure Ali, son-in-law to the Prophet.
The Caucasus
There are two nations (Armenia and Georgia) and many ethnic groups in the Caucasus with a strong sense of their own heroic past, mostly of resistance to authority derived from larger powers. This has expressed itself both as legends of banditry in the pre-revolutionary Soviet cause and as anti-Soviet rising after the Revolution.
In Armenia, the saga of King Arshak II has been central to the story of struggle for freedom. It was a factor in the exile and death of the poet Osip Mandelstam in 1938 after he published a symbolic treatment in which the oppressor King Shapur was too easily seen as Josef Stalin, an association implied more than once in his poetry.
Stalin was a Georgian but the nationalist poet whose work he admired, Mikheil Javakhishvili, nevertheless died at the hands of the NKVD despite Stalin’s appreciation of his novel about the romantic legendary early nineteenth century bandit Arsena.
On the other side of the coin, perhaps fortunate to die in Tiflis in an accident in 1921 before Stalin started cleaning up behind him, was the revolutionary bandit Kamo (Ter Petrossian) who raised funds for Lenin in much the same way and not long after Stalin was doing the same in Georgia – through organised crime as a bank robber.
The link between American resentments of bankers and our Caucasian revolutionaries is simply that crime becomes a political issue where the population no longer trust the State and where warlordism becomes an alternative to democracy. The alleged individualism and manliness of the cowboy offers another legendary model for libertarian resistance to the State.
It may seem extreme to suggest that the US is at risk from such a scenario but its legends of approval for free-booting criminals, maintained through its popular culture, show that the extension of the current chaos in Northern Mexico into the South West of the United States may well rely on a ‘legendary attitude’ hidden within American values.
Asian and African Models
In Iran, the Shahname or ‘The Book of Kings’ remains a live legendary text for many Iranians who oppose the dominance of the Shia theocracy. This is not an immediate issue but, as we have been seeing in the Arab Spring, it is not to be assumed that democratic liberals will be the beneficiaries of revolutionary changes.
A cult of Genghiz Khan was tolerated and even supported in Chinese Inner Mongolia to placate Mongol nationalism. A cult centre with battle standards was permitted on the steppes.
But in the old pro-Soviet Mongolian People’s Republic took the opposite view, termed Genghiz Khan to have been a destructive tyrant (somewhat cheeky given the dominance of Stalin), seeking to suppress his cult at every opportunity.
In Africa, both the Zulus and the Afrikaners, who might yet combine politically in mutual defence against the poor and black urban majority, share opposite sides of the same historic event that has achieved legendary status to both peoples – the Battle of Blood River (1838) when General Pretorius defeated Dinganam, heir to Chaka’s Zulu Empire.
The Americas and Pacific
We noted above the risks of warlord chaos spilling over into the South West of US and the drugs community is one of the few zones where legendary figures and tropes are being created in the contemporary world (outside the capitalist-financed media).
This directs our attention to Mexico and other parts of Middle America where Indian resistance has always had a legendary aspect, ranging from ‘Aztec nationalism’ through the legendary appropriation of European themes (the Virgin of Gaudelupe) to support legends of victory over and resistance to predatory tribes backed by the invaders.
Lower register forms of Aztlan nationalism extend into Chicano territory within South West Mexico and there are some reports of it appearing within the ranks of the crime lords whose bloodthirstiness may be seen within a longer traditionalist framework of hatred towards the gringos – and may yet be turned on the gringos more directly.
Finally, a very different sort of legend, the cargo cult, offers a form of resistance through emulation and manipulation in the Pacific that may well throw up the odd cult leader but the type hero of both the Aborigines and working-class whites is – yes, you guessed it – the bandit.
White Australians have a slew of legends of courageous legendary resistance to authority encompassing Ned Kelly, the Eureka Stockade and the historical events surrounding Gallipoli but it is the aborigines who can call on genuinely ambiguous criminals who were also cast as freedom fighters, men such as Tucklar, Yagan and Pigeon.
It may be that Australia represents the last country in the world whose entire political culture is built on the sustained triumph of legend over historical reality. It may only be the undoubted dominance of the incomers over the indigenes that ensures that it is does not become a brutal clash of banditries – New Zealanders may not prove so lucky.
Lost Leaders
The disappearance of Subhas Chandra Bose, leader of the anti-imperialist Indian National Army is an unresolved issue. He boarded a Japanese plane for an unknown destination and was never seen again. (The analogy with the disappearance of various Nazi leaders is noted, notably Hitler himself).
The story of Bose suggests the many lost leaders who have disappeared. Many of them are still believed (not by modern men but as mythic ideas) to be ready to return when a nation is troubled. Their spirit may be seen as recoverable on the traditionalist Right.
Amongst these are King Arthur, Charlemagne, Owen Glendwyr, Robert the Bruce, Frederick Barbarossa, Siegfried, Sir Francis Drake, King Sebastian of Portugal and Tsar Alexander I. The Romanov blood line was once believed to have survived in at least the genes of Princess Anastasia.
There are also the tales of the flying Dutchman and of the wandering Jew – who was seen in Salt Lake City in 1868, in Glamorgan in the early last century and said to have been a New York stockbroker in the 1940s. Not politically important perhaps but implying mysteries that continue to fascinate the media, the public and the internet.
Concluding Thoughts
Nor should we forget the magicians – there may be Rasputins yet to come at the courts of declining dictators and dynasts … nor the Freemasons.
We have not even touched the surface of legends of secret societies, Illuminati and other groupings seen as either agent of light or sinister manipulators in the contemporary legends of men under stress.
All in all, legendary tales and their role as irrationalism in politics may not have disappeared quite so much as we may believe. A ‘legendary attitude’ (acceptance of crime lords or a call for the spirit of lost leaders) may reappear and some nations (Japan, Mongolia, Mexico, Eire and Spain) may be susceptible under pressure.
Any real resurgence of traditionalist irrationalism is unlikely, partly because the world is interconnected enough that no leader of such a revolt can be wholly isolated from reality or get away with excessive departure from the facts – faith-based mythic irrationalism is a far greater danger.
But a legend-based mobilisation of a population, handled with skill by an ambitious politician, prepared to develop an educated post-modern appropriation of its imagery, is more than possible in times of extreme stress.
Tim Pendry, has been cited as an ‘astute observer’ in the British Journal of Politics and International Relations [BJPIR 2006 Vol.8 234]. His experience has included senior communications advice in some of the most significant takeovers & mergers in British corporate history as well as an advisory role during the Russian Mass Privatisation programme.
Since the mid-1990s, he has dealt with reputational issues arising out of private sector collateral damage during the ‘war on terror’. He has supported a variety of inter-faith and public policy initiatives and writes frequently on political and cultural matters.
He was a Founding Director of the British-Syrian Society, is a former Director of the Middle East Association, and currently acts as a non-Executive Director of the online investigative journalism website Exaro.
TIM PENDRY'S FACEBOOK Page
Tim Pendry's Facebook confirms he was at:
http://www.wherevent.com/detail/Treadwell-s-Books-Kenneth-Anger-s-OccultismThis was 'Kenneth Angers Occultism' at
33 Store Street, London
On 24 July 2013 for an 'Event'...
Description
To book a space for this lecture please give us a clal on 0207 419 8507
Judith Noble (Arts University College, Bournemouth)
Kenneth Anger is a legend of avant-garde film and a key figure in the counterculture and the late 1960s occult revival. Tonight, a leading expert on esotericism and film considers the way in which Anger created and deployed a unique cinematic occult system in his films, which function as magical rituals for their audiences as well as for their maker. Anger’s magical system, iconography and film making methods are unpacked with clarity of depth and understanding. Judith Noble has a lifelong career in film and media, and decades of study of western esoteric ideas. She now lectures at the Arts University, Bournemouth.
Price: £7
Time: 7.15 for 7.20 start
Judith Noble (Arts University College, Bournemouth)
Kenneth Anger is a legend of avant-garde film and a key figure in the counterculture and the late 1960s occult revival. Tonight, a leading expert on esotericism and film considers the way in which Anger created and deployed a unique cinematic occult system in his films, which function as magical rituals for their audiences as well as for their maker. Anger’s magical system, iconography and film making methods are unpacked with clarity of depth and understanding. Judith Noble has a lifelong career in film and media, and decades of study of western esoteric ideas. She now lectures at the Arts University, Bournemouth.
Price: £7
Time: 7.15 for 7.20 start
Read more at http://www.wherevent.com/detail/Treadwell-s-Books-Kenneth-Anger-s-Occultism#uW6F3afTbD4XeLOM.99
OTHER ATTENDEES included:
'Livia Filotico' or 'Cicily Suarez'
'Paganarchy Press'
'Jason Palmer 1971'
Videos Tim Pendry likes
The Best has been saved to be the Last Link:
Yes Tim Pendry attacked 9/11 'Conspiracy Theories':
9/11 CultWatch
A blog dedicated to exposing some of the more ludicrous theories concerning 9/11, and discussing the people responsible for such nonsense. With occasional forays into 7/7 'truth' and similar curious beasts.
http://paulstott.typepad.com/911cultwatch/2009/07/on-conspiracy-theory-a-debate-with-tim-pendry.html
July 12, 2009
Whilst Pendry notes the commercial and cultural base of conspiracy theory, he does not stress the rich tapestry nor range of theories that are out there. Black America for example, often has very different conspiracy theories to white America.
https://web.archive.org/web/20080509195822/http://asithappens.tppr.info/journal/category/wild-cards
ENTRIES IN WILD CARDS (4)
The Esoteric and Liberal Conservatism
Wednesday 30 January 2008 at 11:42
'Occult' themes are central to much popular entertainment - from the back story of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and comic book adaptations such as Hellboy through to the Goth sub-culture and the imagery in pop videos, largely harmless and fun.
But behind the stylistic use of such material to express a dash of the controlled forbidden in the search for entertainment lies a more serious revival of intellectual interest in the non-rational, the 'hidden' and the liminal and in imagination and subjectivity as guides to life.
Much of this is playful. Some of it has been rediscovered through the workings of the new technologies (an old theme of ours). It has developed, as esoteric studies, into respectable academic communities in Exeter and in theNetherlands.
Why The Occult Now?
This rediscovery of what previous generations would find laughable or even dangerous and demonic needs some consideration as a cultural phenomenon. The subject is far too big for a single posting but some commentary may be useful.
The first observation is that it is an attempt to re-instil some semblance of meaning in the wake of the philosophical destruction of nearly all forms of traditional essentialism and as a means of dealing with the challenge of nihilism in relativism and post-modernism.
The second observation is that it appears to be emerging as a form of psychology. An individual can construct an identity, or perhaps makes more coherent their multiple identities, by creating a bespoke essentialism suitable for themselvesexistentially. It also has the advantage of not requiring the expense of a therapist or the authority of a priest in times of trouble.
In the past, there were formal structures of learning that built up a religious or even esoteric ideology into which one was apprenticed (much as the great religions do today within stable family and community structures).
Today, the psychological or subjective truth (in the eyes of a good proportion of humanity) that there is actually something ineffable out there requires individuals to make choices themselves about how to respond to that alternative 'reality'.
A science of non-science (or non-sense as the determined rearguard of the Enlightenment and probably Professor Dawkins would have it) has had to emerge as an exploration of 'that of which nothing may be said' (to paraphrase Wittgenstein).
It is required because many people cannot find value in taking the nihilistic or materialistic paths pointed out by any cold and calculated assessment of our position in the world [Heidegger's 'dasein'].
If we do not start out with conventional faith or are constitutionally disinterested in the big questions, then we are soon faced with that 'abyss' first drawn to our attention by Kierkegaard, knowing that one is alone in marching through the wood to the final clearing of death [Heidegger. again].
Best not to think on this or to make the thinking one does work for one's survival and pleasure in the world. Best, above all, not to take it for granted that there is no meaning and create one's own meaning through the exploration of what is before us ...
The sense of something 'hidden' behind the veil (the real sense of 'occult') is no more than a rejection of a nihilism that states that there is (not may be) nothing behind that veil - or that whatever it is behind that veil can be understood wholly in terms of a leap of faith into some grand narrative dictated solely by the community at large.
The consequence is a culture of questing and search that pefectly fits our existentialist times and which fills a gap for many left behind by mechanistic, rationalist and materialist world-views and by the inadequacy of faith-based alternatives.
The New Religions
I am making this more intellectual than it is. The new non-rationalism is not interested in understanding the phenomenon so much as existing within it.
And for every intense searcher after deeper truths, there are hundreds who just emotionally or playfully or religiously grab hold of the 'memes' of the occult side and enter into the new religions that exist half-way between intellectual occultism and older faith-based cultures.
These new faiths are growing quite fast amongst teenagers and socially marginalised groups but also amongst some solid stable ordinary folk who find they say something important about how life might be lived.
We must not overplay their size or importance but the fear of ridicule and a certain paranoia about public reaction has meant that the extent of formal or informal esoteric and neo-pagan belief in Western society is probably significantly underestimated. People are still reluctant to 'come out' about an often misunderstood set of views about the world.
One starting point for anyone who might share this interest is Ronald Hutton'sThe Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft (Oxford University Press, 1999). It cannot be recommended enough.
A surprising result of the book - which made it clear that claims of an ancient origin to the new religions (with the exception of induction by consent into traditional shamanism) were just so much bunkum - is the degree to which Wiccans in particular have taken Hutton to their heart.
One starting point for anyone who might share this interest is Ronald Hutton'sThe Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft (Oxford University Press, 1999). It cannot be recommended enough.
A surprising result of the book - which made it clear that claims of an ancient origin to the new religions (with the exception of induction by consent into traditional shamanism) were just so much bunkum - is the degree to which Wiccans in particular have taken Hutton to their heart.
The 'newness' of these faiths, including the consciously reconstructed Heathenism of Asatruar, is fully accepted as a fact in terms of form and origin in order to preserve a 'timeless' content in terms of belief.
Compare the perceptual shift from a scientific world view which had resulted in part from rational debate on the origins of God's Word in the Bible. The debate on 'truth' undermined traditional Christian faith and created the cuddly toothless Anglicanism of today.
Neo-pagans simply say that the origins of their belief system are no less true for having been created (in one case) out of the fertile imagination of a pensioned civil servant. It would be like a Christian saying that he accepts a claim that Jesus' death was faked but that it does not matter because the message is true. This is faith existentially chosen because it represents a deeper inner truth. Tom Cruise might defend his beliefs in similar terms.
For example, Wiccan and pagan forum members on the internet will often be highly critical of attempts to over-estimate the deaths in the 'burning times' (the European witch hunts), of the unwarranted feminist claims of historians like Gimbutas and, above all, of the ridiculous claims of continuity between modern reconstructions and the ancient religions from which they have been reconstructed.
This maturity about facts - far from the caricature of outsiders - positions these religions as intimately linked to modernity. They look less and less like reversions to the traditional as time and study progresses.
This maturity about facts - far from the caricature of outsiders - positions these religions as intimately linked to modernity. They look less and less like reversions to the traditional as time and study progresses.
Even their interest in folk tradition centres on their being grounded in the contemporary community as local healers or as 'earth magicians', although these claims may eventually be legislated out of existence by severely materialist legislators worried about fraudulent claims on an unsuspecting public.
This flexibility of practice is in marked contrast to what happens when authority gets its grubby little paws on paganism to bend it to its own purpose. The fate of Shinto under the Meiji restoration is an object lesson in cynical inauthenticity for the purpose of nation-building with tragic consequences.
The Cultural Avant-Garde
Another contribution in the Hutton tradition of critical analysis of belief - Magia Sexualis: Sex, Magic and Liberation in Modern Esotericism by Hugh Urban of Ohio State University (University of California Press, 2006) is also worth referencing here.
Another contribution in the Hutton tradition of critical analysis of belief - Magia Sexualis: Sex, Magic and Liberation in Modern Esotericism by Hugh Urban of Ohio State University (University of California Press, 2006) is also worth referencing here.
Urban takes the key points in the history of 'sex magick' (not nearly as scandalous today as the nomenclature implies) as separate and successive components of alternative cultural practice. He demonstrates how what was highly transgressive at each stage, fully in defiance of conventional mores, eventually became pulled into the prurient and commercialised mainstream.
A culture of individual resistance to community culture came to shadow each stage of the development of consumer capitalism. With no intention to do so on either side, radical individual liberation and the market converged, becoming the Western society that we live in today. This is, of course, my over simplification - read Urban's book.
But the seven case-types he introduces: the sexual magic of the mixed race American Paschley Randolph in the Post-Bellum era; the discovery of Tantra; the influence of Crowley; the Nietzchean impulse of Julius Evola; the arrival of Wiccan ideas and its links to feminism; the Satanic 'christian heresy' of La Vey; Chaos Magic with its shattering of all points of reference: all these lead (in Urban's analysis) to the 'magical logic of late capitalism'.
From this perspective, we must be entering the 'next stage' and the next stage may be the re-sacralisation and distancing of sexuality in sheer exhaustion at its omnipresence visually as a commercial tool.
But what next politically, if anything - with all barriers down and apparently nowhere further to go. Any belief, any practice seems to be permitted.
The Politics of Non-Rationalism
An odd book, from 'Jonathan Black', the nom de plume of the head of a Random House imprint, gives a sense of some of the change taking place at the macro-cultural level.
The Secret History of the World [Quercus, 2007] could be read as a cynical attempt to capture interest in the occult, as an occult attempt to re-introduce the 'Hidden Masters' to the wider public, as a 'sinister' ideological project to undermine the Enlightenment, as playfulness, as an attempt to rehabilitate imagination and subjectivity as equal to rational thought, as an experiment in creating a 'grand narrative' for the esoteric or as genuine attempt to create an esoteric morality based on 'art' (pp 380-1) - or all or part or something else.
The book claims to tell the history of the world from a non-rational perspective based on the esoteric tradition. To any academic historian or scientist, it is absurd from beginning to end but Black cleverly ensures that we understand that he is not making the same 'truth-claims' as these rational experts. His 'truth-claims' are imaginative but no less 'truth-claims'.
'Jonathan Black' appears traditional and conservative to the point of the dark side - his assessment of the French Revolution is negative, straight out of conspiracy theorist Abbe Barruel, he accepts the story of the American Empire as being Masonic in inspiration and he sees the Illuminati as a real plot, leading to the Terror and much else besides.
'Jonathan Black' appears traditional and conservative to the point of the dark side - his assessment of the French Revolution is negative, straight out of conspiracy theorist Abbe Barruel, he accepts the story of the American Empire as being Masonic in inspiration and he sees the Illuminati as a real plot, leading to the Terror and much else besides.
Yet Hugh Urban, on the other hand, points in the opposite direction - that each stage of the rediscovery of the 'occult' has resulted in increasing radical individualism and liberalism. How can conservative imaginative traditionalism and radical libertarianism and tolerance be squared?
Both interpretations could have in common an implicit critique of the collectivist and of the intrusion of the esoteric into political manipulation. While not identical, both interpretations seem to share an 'attitude' that is critical of systems and elites in both the material and 'spiritual' worlds that fail to deliver results specific to their sphere and are supportive of systems and elites that do.
The logic of this is that Governments that govern well, regardless of ideology, and who leave the spiritual world alone are 'good'.
So, we have an essential pragmatism that dislikes grand narratives and ideology and, ironically, reflects Christ's dictum about rendering unto Caesar. It is a position that separates faith and state and is essentially conservative. A good King is better than a corrupt Republic.
However, the denial of the grand narrative (despite Black's attempt to create one) in matters of the spirit and the primacy of personal choice and free association, tolerance for all paths (including entrepreneurial and sexual) and determination on none suggests a radical libertarian perspective in favour of the individual.
Good governance without ideology and respect for the individual sounds remarkably like the social conservatism espoused by David Cameron and, though there is no suggestion of the British Tory Party as an occult organisation alongside the Illuminati and the Templars, there is a convergence between philosophical scepticism as final fruit of the post-modern revolution and the less-ambitious pragmatic 'Burkean' conservatism of the contemporary Conservative Party.
Why Are The Old Guard So Scared?
It is no secret that Cameron has had to ride rough-shod over his authoritarian Right to get to his current position. If Brown's Government had not gone into melt-down in the early Autumn, it is arguable that he might have been facing some much more serious challenges from the Right.
As it is, Cameron's social conservatism and the rise of non-rationalist thinking are also consonant with other cultural changes encouraged by the new technologies and the instinctively sceptical and pragmatic attitudes of the educated elements in the under-35 generations.
This seems to be a zeitgeist thing and we are moving far beyond our original curiosity about esoteric thinking to seeing it as a symptom of a whole series of converging developments that favour social conservatism at the expense of the psychological rigidities of centre-left communitarianism and the Tory Right.
Authoritarian personalities are anxious. This is not good, they say. The British military is worried, no kidding! But their analysis is the opposite of ours and comes from within a state system that is worried because it is simply no longer fit for purpose. They say ...
"An increased trend towards moral relativism and pragmatic values will encourage people to seek the "sanctuary provided by more rigid belief systems, including religious orthodoxy and doctrinaire political ideologies, such as popularism and Marxism".The relativism and pragmatism that unnerves them will lead, they think, to a demand for externally imposed certainties. In their dreams!
"An increased trend towards moral relativism and pragmatic values will encourage people to seek the "sanctuary provided by more rigid belief systems, including religious orthodoxy and doctrinaire political ideologies, such as popularism and Marxism".The relativism and pragmatism that unnerves them will lead, they think, to a demand for externally imposed certainties. In their dreams!
This relativism and pragmatism is likely to result in quite the opposite - a demand for a framework of good governance by all means but also a complete abandonment of any attempt to tell the people what to do and what to believe so long as they obey a law that is minded to liberal values.
Collectivist, faith-based and fascist or authoritarian reactions to liberalism and attempts to reverse the trend are likely (especially on the back of the breakdown in the community that has resulted from state failure) but they will have few resources to reverse the 'hegemony' of a culture of libertarianism.
It is almost as if the military are willing order to return and, fearing a British Mussolini [Nick Griffin] or Stalin [Comrade Brown, perhaps], want us all to accepttheir order instead. Well, British intelligence has not had the best of records and we see no reason to accept this analysis either. The high point of an attempt at statist authoritarian rule ended when John Reid gave up the Home Office.
Good Times Ahead?
In fact, Authority may be very worried about its loss of authority but there is no reason why we should be. So long as authority does not intefere, a degree of self-correction within society is already taking place.
We have been hitting a cultural, economic and social low point across the West and the existing structures are about to be politically punished. But this is a correction and not a collapse.
Now that the dangerous neo-conservative revolution (with its implicit offer of republican order and vertu) has collapsed, there is probably no turning back from this prevailing ideology of personal liberation within a framework of good governance.
Now that the dangerous neo-conservative revolution (with its implicit offer of republican order and vertu) has collapsed, there is probably no turning back from this prevailing ideology of personal liberation within a framework of good governance.
We have been careful not to call these new trends irrational. They should more properly seen as offering alternative rationalities. Even non-rational as a term is unfair. Non-rational thinking is perfectly reasonable [i.e. rational] once you accept the subjective assumptions underpinning it. But non-rational seems to me to be a reasonable concession to the wider world.
In this context, the threat to liberty now comes not from the Right but from radical liberation activists with their own grand narratives (notably the black-consciousness, gay and feminist elements). They feel that the tide is turning from single identity politics towards a society based on fluid and multiple identities. And this offers a profound threat to their political position.
Old Enlightenment liberals can only accept one set of assumptions based on universal rights and fixed identities and resent the idea that there are many alternaive ways of constructing a world view. And so, paradoxically, it is elements within the Enlightenment Left that are buttressing the New Right in a context of an alleged clash of cultures.
One final thought. Urban in his Preface refers to the academic prejudice and fear surounding his taking up (even in an academic and objective way) the subject of 'sex magick' as a topic for serious study. He points out the odd combination in our culture of prurience and sniggering and yet the massive availability of sexual imagery in almost every context.
We might call Western culture adolescent if it was not an insult to teenagers. If the new religions unravel attitudes more suitable to a peasant society before birth control and bring maturity to our civilisation, then this may be no bad thing. It would not be the first time (we think of Jesus) that the margins of an empire have proved its salvation.
www.tppr.co.uk
www.tppr.co.uk
[Some of this material appeared in an April 2007 posting on Gaia.com: New Religions And Our Civilisation]
