Max Scheler's 'Ressentiment'

A recommendation from fellow Social Matter regular, Thomas Barghest, I had never heard of Scheler before. He was a German-born author who made huge contributions to the study of phenomenology, and to a lesser extent ethics, who won the praise of Martin Heidegger. Born to  Lutheran father and a Jewish mother, he would come to embrace Roman Catholicism and wrote passionately in its defense. Later, he would move away from Christianity to practice a kind of pantheism. Even in light of this, his earlier works are typically the ones deemed to be of interest.

This book among others was famous for having been on the Nazi government's 'burn list', largely because of its intention to counter many of the philosophical influences of Adolf Hitler. It did not help of course that Scheler had Jewish blood. And yet while I wrote a rather elaborate defense of 'book-burning', I think there was a gem among the various monstrous titles that went up in flames on all those nights in Berlin and Cologne. It is one that is most certainly worth reading if one wants a well-formulated Christian response to the first wave of atheism.

Ressentiment was titled after a concept that was used heavily by Nietzsche in order to criticize Christianity. It is defined as follows:

"Ressentiment is a self-poisoning of the mind which has quite definite causes and consequences. It is a lasting mental attitude, caused by the systematic repression of certain emotions and affects which, as such are normal components of human nature. Their repression leads to the constant tendency to indulge in certain kinds of value delusions and corresponding value judgments. The emotions and affects primarily concerned are revenge, hatred, malice, envy, the impulse to detract, and spite." 

Fun fact: Scheler was a voracious supporter

of the German cause in WWI, though he could not

fight due to an eye condition

Surprisingly, Scheler affirms that this degenerative tendency is very much applicable in contemporary Judaism, but disputes its presence in true Christianity, positing that Neitzsche had confused the slave morality of his day with a historical precedent which was entirely imaginary. In Scheler's view, Christian morality was far from an example of a stoop from weakness in light of oppression and powerlessness, but in fact a stoop from strength. He illustrates this in terms of duty and Godly imitation. As God stoops to man (an infinitely weaker and infirm entity), when we stoop out of love we imitate God, and thus strengthen ourselves. When we teach a child, we become stronger for it. What's more, only those who overflow with an inner calm can minister to the weaker, the poorer, the sinner, in the purest form (these are the saints). 

"We  have  an  urge  to  sacrifice before  we  ever  know  why,  for  what,  and  for  whom!  Jesus‟  view  of nature and life, which sometimes shines through his speeches and parables  in  fragments  and  hidden  allusions,  shows  quite  clearly that  he  understood  this fact.  When  he  tells us not  to  worry  about eating and drinking, it is not because he is indifferent to life and its preservation,  but  because  he  sees  also  a  vital  weakness  in  all “worrying”  about  the  next  day,  in  all  concentra tion  on  one‟s  own physical  well-being.  The  ravens with neither  storehouse nor  barn, the lilies which do not toil and spin and which God still arrays more gloriously than Solomon ( Luke 12:24 and 27)—they are symbols of that  profound  total  impression  he  has  of  life:  all  voluntary concentration on one‟s own bodily wellbeing, all worry and anxiety, hampers rather than furthers the creative force which instinctively and  beneficently  governs  all  life."

Scheler contrasts this perfectly with what he thought Nietzsche was in fact describing: 'altruism'

"But there is a completely different way of stooping to the small, the  lowly,  and  the  common, even  though  it  may  seem  almost  the same. Here love does not spring from an abundance of vital power, from firmness and security. Here it is only a euphemism for  escape, for the inability to “remain at home” with oneself (chez soi). Turning toward others is but the secondary consequence of this urge to flee from oneself. One cannot love anybody without turning away from oneself. However, the crucial question is whether this movement is prompted by the desire to turn toward a positive value, or whether the intention is  a radical escape from oneself. “Love” of the second variety is inspired by self-hatred, by hatred of one‟s own weakness and misery. The mind is always on the point of departing for distant places. Afraid of seeing itself and its inferiority, it is driven  to give itself to the other—not because of his worth, but merely for the sake of  his  “otherness.”  Modern  philosophical  jargon  has  found  a revealing  term  for  this  phenomenon,  one  of  the  many  modern substitutes  for  love:  “altruism.”"

I have in few places read this analysis written so well, as it perfectly links in with Bonald's excellent reflections on the reflexive Liberal 'Love of the Other'. There is more intricacy to Scheler's critique, but they are better left to the book itself.

my privilege seems to have knocked you over

allow me to help you up

Another astonishing aspect of this book is the Reactionary subtext. Scheler identifies ressentiment as the root emotional cause of the French Revolution, capturing a psychological facet of the Enlightenment that may have been overlooked by other writers. He makes the observation that those who know their place to do experience ressentiment when negative things happen to them, but rather see these as a natural result of their station. 

"The medieval peasant prior  to  the  13th  century  does  not  compare  himself  to  the  feudal 

lord,  nor  does  the  artisan  compare  himself  to  the  knight.  The peasant  may  make  comparisons  with  respect  to  the  richer  more respected peasant, and in the same way everyone confines himself to  his  own  sphere.  Each  group  had  its  exclusive  task  in  life,  its objective unity of purpose [...] A slave who has a slavish nature and accepts his status does not desire revenge when he  is injured by his master;  nor  does  a  servile  servant  who  is  reprimanded  or  a  child that  is  slapped.  Conversely,  feelings  of  revenge  are  favored  by strong  pretensions  which  remain  concealed,  or  by  great  pride coupled  with  an  inadequate  social  position.  There  follows  the important  sociological  law  that  this  psychological  dynamite  will spread with the discrepancy between the political, constitutional, or traditional  status  of  a  group  and  its  factual  power.  It  is  the difference  between  these  two  factors  which  is  decisive,  not  one  of them alone.  Social  ressentiment,  at  least,  would  be  slight  in  a democracy  which  is  not  only  political,  but  also  social  and  tends toward equality of property. But the same would be the case—and was the case—in a caste society such as that of India, or in a society with  sharply  divided  classes."

Thus Scheler correctly asserts that while wealth redistribution can minimize ressentiment, hierarchy does the job as well. The problem is the middle ground in which people believe redistribution is just, and yet redistribution does not occur. With hindsight on the equality experiment of Communism, we can probably now close the book on the first strategy against ressentiment, as it seems to be mythological. The latter however has a logn track record, and what's more, is in keeping with the natural divisions among a people, between higher and lower.

didn't really work

The copy of Ressentiment that I had was a library copy that was either sold or stolen before being sold to me. Regardless, it is a book with no visible flaws in the translation, and contains an introduction to Scheler by Lewis A. Coser and William W. Holdheim who clear up some issues regarding the translation itself. Footnotes are scattered throughout, though having to constantly turn to the informative  Notes section has reinforced my appreciation for Evolian footnote practices. It is far better to have additional optional information on the same page in my opinion.

All in all, I am glad that Barghest recommended this to me, and I in turn recommend you give it a look. It's only 174 pages, and I read the entire thing on a bus journey with minimal re-reading. Scheler's structure is very straightforward, even if some further chapter divisions might have worked in the book's favor. I will definitely be mining this one for years to come.

(Joined Adam Wallace and co for another Plebeian Podcast where we discussed a lot of stuff pertaining to the personal vs. the ideological. Also was invited as the first guest on a brand new podcast by P.T. Carlo as a companion to his new website 'Thermidor Mag' which you can find a link to on the right. We talked Trump and Geopolitics in the year of the fire monkey. Apologies that it starts somewhat abruptly. Carlo was getting to grips with the tech)

Urgency Vs. Centrality

It's not as if the question of where HBD and racial issues factor into Reactionary thought had only just arisen in the last couple of months, but certainly in the wake of Trump's victory and the subsequent events within the AltRight and outside of it, there is something of a compelling case to be made that we should shine a light on any areas of vagueness.

The argument I want to put across is that many on the radical right have unintentionally hampered their own success by treating the racial question in a way that is inappropriate  due to a confusion between urgency and centrality. They have correctly adopted the assumption that the speed of demographic change in most Occidental countries, especially when weighted to take into account aging populations, makes it the most pressing issue of our time. It is not merely statistics that tell this tale, but also the daily news. The torture suffered by a mentally handicapped white teen at the hands of a band of savage animals in Chicago is just the latest escalation of affairs in America for example. However, the response to this urgency often falls into the short-sighted, shallow view of 'Alt-Leftism', something sadly promoted by even a few supposedly trusted outlets.  This view typically boils all problems down to the point of urgency. If a problem does not seem, on the surface, to be urgent, then it is dismissed as not worth addressing with any formal political critique. Thus, when used in the racial paradigm, all problems facing society are placed squarely on the shoulder of the racial question and the solution is simply 'A Nice White Country'. If we were all 'white', then what other niggling problems we had could be worked through in a peacable manner. Necessarily attached to this view is that problems have their root in mass migration, which begins around the middle of the last century for most places (part of the reason Paleoconservatism falls into this trap).

A percular expression of this view can be found in the desire to alter the overton window so that all political actors are 'racially consciouss', regardless of party affiliation. If they are at least able to fill this criteria, then the conditions for a positive state of affairs are present.

I agree these scumbags should get death

but they are animals in a cage that was designed by others

Now, imagine for a moment that your daughter begins to take narcotics, and becomes addicted to routinely poisoning herself to the detriment of all those around her. And let us also suppose that this sudden change in your daughter had been brought on by her hanging around with a new group of friends; shifty, dirty types. The urgency in this scenario is represented by the drug addiction, while the centrality is located in the group of degenerate peers. The peers aren't killing your daughter, the drugs are, and yet the line of causality is clear, and one should safely assume that even if you did manage to solve the drug problem, the nightmare would likely recur until the root cause was removed from the equation. Notice here that I am proposing no order by which the problems be addressed. That would depend on your discretion, and the resources you had at your disposal. Anyone can see that it would be ill-advised to think that just getting your daughter to a rehab clinic would ultimately fix the situation.

you knew this crew was trouble

A one thing leads to another implication can of course be taken too far, which is why one has to provide strong evidence as to how a set of principles being completely overturned (typically with violent implications) can correlate precisely with the rise of some negative phenomena. I do not believe this can be done with the era of mass migration. Not only is there lacking a positive case for revolutionary change during this period (either in the spheres of religion or core political dogma), but there is an abundance of ties between a general trend of Enlightenment emancipation. While Feudal structures in Europe had begun to decay in the 1500s particularly for economic reasons, its remnant was formally abolished in England in 1574 and Russia in 1861. There had been 'peasant revolts' throughout history, but during this period their gains were made permanent, and were not hemmed in by the next effective ruler. It is in this period that we judge the faultline between Modernity and Tradition to fall (though this is disputed, even among the leading scholars). It matters not of course, since the abolition of serfdom rarely took such ideologically-driven forms as later emancipations. Democracy, the granting of franchise to non-landed gentlemen, the informal abolition of Patriarchy, and the abolition of not just chattel slavery but all forms of slavery; these can be seen as precursors to a world in which the situational value and place of man transcends race entirely. It is a natural outworking, as is its younger brother, the emancipation of deviants.

If these streams feed into one another, then it is not enough to say that you declare one iteration of this general principle to be evil, and the others preceding it to be virtuous. The latter cry for the former! (and before anyone says it, no, this is not an argument for chattel slavery). All of these emancipations from restriction, including the restrictions placed upon us by national borders and inborn kin preference, derive from the same underlying belief in egalitarianism and a leveling of positive and negative aspects of man. If one man is retarded and the other a genius, who is to say who would better lead? If one class is black and the other white, who is to say which will more capably solve a complex math problem? If one man is a man, and the other is in fact a woman, who is to say which will make a superior father?

you'll make a terrific.... ummm... what are you again?

This slippery bastardization of belief in a salvific grace offered to all is precisely the heresy of our time. And not unexpectedly, it is not just Christianity which it has managed to bastardize for its own purposes, for there are members of all religions who will justify the 'mother religion' of Liberalism using holy texts if it so suits them. Feminist pagans, gay Buddhists, etc. are not hard to find, however these religious practices are a minority in the West.

Call it the 'EQ' (Enlightenment Question), or the 'MQ' (Modernity Question), but whatever its name, this is the central question posed by the Crisis of the Modern World, and from these questions all others that we find ourselves intently focused on are emenating forth at varying speeds, rippling out from a crack in time.

Not only is making this the central question a logically sound move, but also from a tactical standpoint it makes sense. In no way do I advocate hiding our views on race, but when these views are ensconced within a broader outlook they tend not to trigger the most overtly hostile reaction from the enemy who has been conditioned to respond to racial dissent with greater ferocity than all other forms of dissent. I think this was partly responsible for the gut-punching trial that my friend Millennial Woes has been going through due to the despicable antics of antifa faggots and failed journalists. Woes has a particular style of discourse, and I believe this was the reason that his channel became arguably the second largest AltRight outlet on Youtube, even though his meteoric rise certainly coincided with a turn towards a laser-focus on questions of race. The frankness with which he is willing to treat subjects as diverse as monarchy, culture, sex relations, and perhaps my favorite, the various types of Liberal one encounters, make him incredibly easy to listen to. But even if one were to approach from a leftist background, I don't think his earlier videos (which weren't shy about the racial question either) appear as incendiary as later ones, where the specter of some of the long-standing problems of the AltRight looms large (some of these Woes acknowledged I, II, III).

There is an argument that we shouldn't care how we are perceived, and it is certainly one that some have embraced. Although I would say that the tragic situation of Millennial Woes stands as a warning not to be too comfortable with such a stance, acknowledging of course that there was a host of other factors which led up to the present condition. It is good that we have particularists who focus on one issue and become very familiar with it. Steve Sailer is much celebrated for his work on HBD, but because of its very scientific nature, it is less of an ideological consideration and more of a tool offered up by Sailer for our usage within our broader theory. It is to bolster our already existing arguments, the groundwork of which I laid out above.

While race is an urgent question, and one whose potential for 'redpilling' normies who can see its terrible truth with their own eyes somewhat justifies a pole position, it cannot be central to our worldview, any more than a very coherent argument as to why men with 'no skin in the game' ought not be allowed to vote can be. The solution to putting a permanent end to the racial anarchy we live in is to be found through a purer, older understanding of the world and man's relationship to it. While this might not factor in when drawing up a recruitment list for your deportation force, it is what you need to ensure that such activities are grounded in intelligible and moral premises rather than simple emotion, understandable as it may be in light of what is going on around us.

(I formally encourage all of my viewers to help Woes in whatever ways their means allow, and I endorse any and all measures taken to bring his attackers to justice. Adam Wallace had some thoughts on the incident here, and BlackPigeonSpeaks also did a very good summary)

The World is Reborn in Bethlehem

I certainly have been neglectful this past year, especially in the latter few months, being unable to keep up with all the goings-on in the sphere. Unfortunate amounts of work have prevented me from being as engaged as I otherwise would have liked to be, and for that I apologize. When the current period of unrest is over, things will hopefully return to normal.

This said, it is with great hope for the new year, there could not be a better way to ring it in than with some thinking on Christ's birth, which is celebrated as per the Julian Calender tomorrow. Being a rather bad Orthodox Christian, and certainly no theologian, I feel somewhat out of my depth delving into such a topic, but then perhaps this can be excused if one approaches the writing of an essay with the innocent curiosity of a child, rather than the scruples of a master. This is at least, what the holy day has come to mean for me. Thanks to Kristor at The Orthosphere for making space for it:

https://orthosphere.wordpress.com/2017/01/06/the-world-is-reborn-in-bethlehem/

What's more, another treat is my rather short-notice appearance on Descending the Tower, where I joined Nick B. Steves, Anthony DeMarco, E. Antony Gray, Harold Lee, Jean-Luc Deaux, One Irradiated Watson, and William Scott for a jam-packed year in review. Well done to the DeMarco in particular for his well-constructed round-up of events. 

http://www.socialmatter.net/2017/01/05/descending-tower-11/

Millenniyule

What a year it has been. I've never experienced one pass so quickly before my eyes, and indeed with such quakes and unexpected events, both in terms of the macrocosmic world of politics and international intrigue, but also among this 'community' of the like-minded.

I joined the now slightly world famous Millennial Woes for 2 remarkable hangouts, off the back of his Dangerous Haggis Tour of America. The first was largely focused on the Trump phenomena, the situation in contemporary Europe with regards to this sea change, and forcasting the future.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExBcjZS_ChI

In the second hangout, we were joined by Adam Wallace, and conversation turned to the familiar topic of the inner constitution of European men, the problems we face surrounding externalizing our flaws, and what will be required in the future.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_YMaX_qGL4

After these were finished, me and Adam migrated over to the Plebian Podcast with a few of the usual suspects, and had what I think is most certainly among our best efforts. Piggy-backing off the previous discussions, this could be seen as an addendum, and hits on a lot of other important points as well as some tidbits from a year-in review.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwm4yG9tP-U

Apologies if content seems sparse right now. There's some instability in my personal life right now, so I am pretty busy. Nevertheless there will be an article next week for sure. Happy new year to all my followers, and a huge thank you to Millennial Woes, who is solely responsible for my Youtube channel crossing the 500 subscriber threshold before 2017.

And on we go.

Through The Eye Of The Nadir

Perhaps it is best to round off another year with something of a sobering contemplation, not a black pill, but the transposition of a theoretical framework and an experiential realization. For a long time, possibly since I began this journey in 2014, I had never held the level of confidence in schemes that some others had. It didn't matter whether it was proposals to infiltrate and take command of the current state apparatus, or relief expressed at the emergence of so-called 'white identity politics' in the era of Donald Trump, I was never convinced these things would solve our problems because the Spenglerian pessimist inside me was tugging at my sleeve, saying: "the deckboards beneath us are creaking and splitting, even as we perform the most spectacular symphony for the sinking ship."

Imagine being locked inside a cell, within a prison thats structure was ready to collapse from age and neglect. You could throw yourself against the wall and perhaps bring it down faster, or maybe there exists some part of the cell in which you would stand less chance of being crushed by debris, but in the end you have only the knowledge of yourself and the four walls within which you reside. You have not a clue what is above the room, and no instincts whatsoever for the infinite geometry of the bulding's implosion. Sooner or later, come hell or high water, no amount of planning will prepare you. Science, reason, argumentation, analysis... at the point of collapse it breaks down and becomes unintelligable. You step into an abyss, trust yourself to it or fear it, the abyss does not care. Then the moment passes, and you are either alive or dead with no idea how you came to be in such a state, you wake up in another world much different from the four walls you knew.

All of that might seem pretentious or overly poetic, but I'm driving at a very real point here. We are all in the grip of something larger than ourselves yet in terminal decline, a behemoth the likes of which is absent from all known history. It is the sheer size of this behemoth which advised NeoReaction's passivist strategy, accepting that most forms of activism as we know them would only ever be tolerated by the Cathedral if they were of mere illusory significance. Does the unexpected campaign of Donald Trump debunk this? Not really, since as I have said on more than one occasion, the Donald is no savior, but instead a useful political actor. We remain unimpressed by demotism, and Nick Land was correct to say the following:

"Even if explicit anti-politics remains a minority posture, the long-dominant demotic calculus of political possibility is consistently subverted — coring out the demographic constituencies from which ‘mobilization’ might be expected. There is no remotely coherent reactionary class, race, or creed — it painstakingly explains — from which a tide-reversing mass politics could be constructed. In this respect, even the mildest versions of neoreactionary analysis are profoundly politically disillusioning."

Land paints the rather amusing image of the Reactionary as the whispering voice into the ear of the Modernist; "despair" it whispers, informing the Liberal that his utopia will never happen, that he is already a failure. Despair is most certainly assured for the Liberal on the level of his theoretical apprehensions. His 'ideas' if they can be called that are at odds with the omnipotent power of the living God, of the laws written upon His creation in permanent ink. But beyond utopian theory, there is a less guarded aspect of the Liberal which is his deep-seated hatred of Tradition, of rootedness, of anything not bound up in his humanistic and ultimately nihilistic vision of the world in which he is the author of value. His misguided constructive impulse is more than matched by his almost perfectly guided destructive impulse.

despair indeed

So in light of this, what would the Reactionary whisper concerning the hell which the designs of the Liberal will unleash upon humanity within our lifetimes most certainly? He would say "Because of what you have done, our peoples may perish and what remains of our beautiful history consigned to the flames... but at the same time this all may not come to pass... and you have no control over the outcome."

As one steps into the abyss, his shackles dissolve and he finds himself unbound in an instant. In that moment, passivism will cease to hold. We will be left with the measure of ourselves as our judge and jury. Success and indeed survival will depend upon the inner domination of but a few, the great men of history, around which legends are weaved. These great men are not among us in plain sight, they are not men of letters and contemplation, but men of action, a different caste altogether. Perhaps they have read these works from the very beginning, but perhaps they will only read them a week before the weathered walls of our people's prison cave in.

Don't you see? The bourgeois cosmopolitan masses, the scoundrels and traitors, the indifferent and the comfortable; through the eye of the nadir none of them will matter! Many will run as far as their legs and wallets can carry them at the first sign of real trouble, others will curl up and rot like useless appendages, while still more will beg and plead for even the most meager shelter, abandoning all preconceptions in a desperate bid for their selfish genes. The sniveling refuse of Babbitt...

cancers gotta stick together

In an abyssal chaos, that which Modernity will consign us all to, history is made by valorous deeds, by warrior saints, by those who truly know themselves. The human element once again triumphs over the mechanical element, the organic over the artificial. Does this promise us victory? No. Our liberation could come at the same moment as our erasure, via many mechanisms. Being plunged into water can be a baptism or a drowning. We can all do our part (given our innate talents), to make the former more likely, but recognize that there will be a moment of uncertainty, obscurity, and dare I say faith.

Even those who have accepted this in theory, including myself, shrink from it in our guts. We see some glimmer of hope, some illusory glare from a rock face and think that there is an exit from the cave behind us; we can claw our way back, it isn't too late! There is no going back. History is passed. The future lies beyond, and you must trust yourself to part of the passage where not a single point of light touches you.

Oh, if only our problems were all political, but they are not. Their root lies in the very essence of the Modern World. Whether it is apathy or malice that grips the soul of the man who says "my country belongs to any man on earth as much as it does to me", this matters not. Both are just flavors of decay. Metternich knew in his day that once man had accepted the anti-hierarchical principle, he would not be made to part with it by articulate scholars. He would need to have it torn from his hands. We will not experience the pleasantries of a quiet old age, this I guarantee.

My suspicion is that part of this journey is accepting decline for the inevitability that it is, not simply a theory of what might be. It's a solemn conclusion for sure, that Modern man will not get it until he is made to get it, and I fear that wake-up call rings for all of us. Where to find encouragement for the road to the next zenith? That cliché rhetorical question: if God is with us, who will stand against us? 'The World', you may respond. Fine. Then the world will be drowned in the primordial sea from whence it arose, but with a prayer on our lips we must demand of ourselves that when the tides recede, our people will come reeling to the shore.

The many men, so beautiful!
And they all dead did lie:
And a thousand thousand slimy things
Lived on; and so did I.

- S.T. Coleridge ' The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'

The Russian Moment

Once again it is my honor to be published by the esteemed Katehon think tank. This is more than a summary of the past month's events as they pertain to Russia, but also a broadside directive on how Russia should move strategically to advance the goal of ensuring its security vis-a-vis Europe. This requires an embrace of the role of standard-bearer for the Traditional outlook, without coyness or obfuscation. The greatest threat to the Russian people remains the existence of Liberalism, and not in fact military manoeuvres along its borders. An axis of illiberalism has to emerge now, as the opponent is weakened. Russia can find itself at the head of this axis, but getting there will be no easy feat, and is something that could be very easily squandered if it fails to realize the coming paradigmatic shift in Europe, prompted by factors economic, political, and demographic.

http://katehon.com/article/russian-moment

A couple of things to link to. Two further episodes of the Plebian podcast somewhat focused on current events:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqYE9o4pCoE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OY_ARH26Zpo

And also, Reactionary Ian had another hangout which I briefly dropped in on

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1N2ldrV4t0

Apologies to people if I seem to be out of things at the moment. Wagecucking taking its toll around the holidays, as well as other studies. Things will hopefully pick up come January, but for now I'll be a little low-key. Yes, I am aware of the backlog of ask.fm questions. I will get around to these, it's just some of them require reading links, and I haven't found the time yet. Have patience.

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu - The Beginnings of Legionary Life (Video)

I commemorated this day, the 30th of November, last year with an article for Social Matter on the political ideas of the Romanian martyr for Orthodoxy and Reaction, Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, and am glad to be able to once again mark the occasion with some content that I hope will be of interest to my readers.

Codreanu, much like the martyrs of the French Vendée, has something to teach us. A true exemplar of man's quest to stand for that which is above him rather than below him, the answer to a sacred call of duty, the defense of Tradition, prospering none from such an effort and receiving in the line of duty only death. As Reactionaries we are spoiled for choice from a plain of the finest minds in the last three hundred years to furnish our positions and offer a path of self-understanding, but we are often struck by how underprivileged we are for warriors, for heroes, for men of true greatness. Codreanu is perhaps the finest example of such a man, who believed principally in the resurrection of Romania along the guide-path of spiritual awakening and national catharsis.

Hated and despised by those who felt history outdated rather than eternal in its presence, with a soul of rock he proclaimed that justice would come. Sad as it was that it was not achieved in his lifetime, and indeed may not be within ours, his grave bears witness to nothing more and nothing less than a warrior of Tradition.

On this day in history we remember those Christians who gave their lives for our holy cause, executed under cover of darkness and in cold blood by vampiric murderers who will never be honored. Their names:

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu

Nicolae Constantinescu, Ion Caranica, Doru Belimace

Ion Caratănase, Iosif Bozântan, Ştefan Curcă, Ion Pele, Grigore Ion State,

Ion Atanasiu, Gavrilă Bogdan,Radu Vlad, Ştefan Georgescu, Ion Trandafir

With all of this said, it is my pleasure to provide a reading from Codreanu's book 'For My Legionaries', in which he describes the foundation upon which he built the Legion of the Archnagel Michael.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVw4L_TQn3Y

In addition, I did an extended interview on the Legion with Teleolojic Folkways over at his Youtube channel, discussing the entire history of Codreanu and the Legion, branching off into analysis of the time period and of some of Codreanu's political views. Highly recommend checking this out, William is an excellent host:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiHWNfbI2lo

Thank you to everyone who has subscribed to my channel over the past few months. Apologies that my videos take so long to put out, but the hope is that the quality makes up for it.