A Fool and His Money Are Soon Parted

In this strange new alliance between Washington and Moscow in which both respective parties claims the title of New Rome, here are more addenda to Mithraism As Proud Boy Prototype: Underground Clubs of the Syndexioi and Pueri Superbi based on items I’ve read this past month, covering the following four themes: 

1) the Roman Mithraists who referred to one another as ‘syndexioi’, as well as Mithraic antecedents and affiliated tendencies in both Europe and Asia 

2) the self-described Western Chauvinist Proud Boys who I've referred to in Latin - the language of the Roman Empire that defined the West - as ‘Pueri Superbi’

3) the MAGA regime which emancipated both the Proud Boy rank & file and leadership and appears to be molding the group into the paramilitary force referred to as “Trump's army”

4) the West’s disturbing historical and cultural connections to fascism, which ties all this together

The Toronto Tauroctony

Every once in a while I like to visit the Royal Ontario Museum’s “Toronto Tauroctony”, and I haven’t been there since early July 2023 (museum admission is free on Canada Day).  This particular fresco is unique in that the torch of Cautopates was restored incorrectly and points up when it should be pointing down, and was famously “acquired” (i.e.: legally stolen) from Ostia by the ROM through a donation of the late great Toronto developer Simeon Janes.  I was at the ROM for their Auschwitz exhibit; my grandparents lived through that and lost much of their family so I feel that at the very least I owe it to them to periodically witness documentation of what they endured and as a reminder of what forces must be prevented from arising once more.  I hadn’t visited jolly old Mithras in about a year and a half, so I dragged my eldest along for a gander and a brief explanatory rant, hopefully I wasn’t too boring or repetitive.  They’re renovating around the dinosaur exhibit and you have to squeeze through a fairly narrow corridor around the Rome exhibit to get to it, and it’s still close to the washroom which is arguably sacrilegious but was admittedly a great relief to my bladder now that I am well into middle age.

Mardi Gras & Mithras 

I came very close to accepting an offer to join a classmate in hitchhiking down to New Orleans in time for Mardi Gras in late February 1992.  In retrospect I’m glad that I didn’t because I really did need to finish off high school and may never have returned had I left, but I’m sure that I missed a good time, and I missed seeing the city pre-Hurricane Katrina, which I suppose I will never get the chance to do now.  Still, I have one more reason to do a future visit, because this month I read about New Orleans’ High Priests of Mithras Ball, held annually since 1897, in which they “pay annual tribute to the god of the sun, in Persian mythology”.  This is not to suggest that there’s anything actually Mithraic going on down there; presumably they needed something epic-sounding and historic so they simply appropriated the name, just like Krewe of Bacchus.  I’m more inclined now to go down for their Jazz Festival instead, but can’t see crossing the border until there’s a regime change; there are a quite few regional jazz festivals to partake in until then.

The Sacred “When”: Time in the Palazzo Barberini Mithraeum

Meghan Doyle’s excellent piece applies a Foucaultian framework to Mithraea, quoting Foucault’s 1986 piece Of Other Spaces that “the principles of heterotopia apply to those marginal spaces inhabited by society members who are either “in a state of crisis”—that is, temporarily removed from the mainstream due to circumstance—or “whose behavior is deviant in relation to the required mean or norm…””  This phrasing reminded of the Pueri Superbi (Proud Boys), especially at the January 6, 2021 coup event, since they too would happily admit to behaving as if in a state of crisis and quite removed from the mainstream while rioting around and in the Capitol.  Political demonstrations, rallies and uprisings broadly speaking have been described by George Katsiaficas (a real mensch who once bought me a cheeseburger when I was broke and travelling abroad) as The Eros Effect: motivated by a strong feeling of “revolutionary love” or social cohesion.  Though he’s a Marcuse-influenced leftist, his theory could just as well be applied to uprisings on the political right in which no doubt a distinct version of comeradery is also experienced (even if the intended social outcome is anything but egalitarian); the right selectively appropriates Gramsci, so why not Katsiaficas?

Geometry of a Mithras Slab: Philosophical Consequences

Another fascinating piece I read this month in the European Journal of Theology and Philosophy was Dominique J. Persoons discussion of Merckelbach’s view that Mithraism is actually “Platonism in Persian dress”, pointing to Greek notions of reincarnation and the chariot analogy, and gets very deep into the astrological symbolism of the cult.  I must admit here that I'm not terribly well versed in the minutiae of astrology.  I'm just not a fan, so studying it is a bit like watching pro-golf (another thing I'm not personally into, but hey, chacun à son goût).  I find astronomy interesting, and that wouldn't exist without millennia of research into astrology, just as chemistry couldn't exist without ancient alchemy, feature films without classical tragedy-comedies, nor modern video games without Pong.

Obviously, I concede that it plays a central symbolic role in Mithraic symbology in terms of providing the perception of salvation to its adherents.  For example, Persoons describes how “descending souls are symbolized by the Moon, Hesperus (evening god), and the bull that descends to Earth. “Umbra” means the souls left on Earth waiting for reincarnation, meaning “shadow” in Latin. This is the dark side of the picture. The descending souls are under the influence of the bull on the right. Rising souls are probably represented by the rising chariot of the Sun. The [diagrammatic] blue line represents the descending souls, and the [diagrammatic] yellow line represents the ascending souls joining the Sun. These two axes form the basis of the belief in Mithras.”  It’s a good thing I’m not a professional astrologer; I’d be unemployed.

The article describes the twelve-step journey of the soul found in Mithraea, which in the case of the Syndexioi is a process of the soul either descending via reincarnation or resurrection, both literally and metaphorically following the path through the twelve astrological houses and the seven classical heavenly bodies.  This 12-step path is compared to the Orthodox Christian “Office of the 12 Gospels” at Easter, and Persoon argues that the ““Stations of the Cross” first appeared in Jerusalem in the 4th century A.D. when Mithraism began to decline”.  While she didn't suggest this, for me the symbolism of this twelve-step symbolism paralleled the modern twelve-step method of church-sponsored abstinence programs that I imagine many Proud Boys have or will take part in should they eventually choose to extricate themselves from Gavin McInnes’ drinking club, detoxing literally from the social pressure to consume toxic alcohol as an entry price for social belonging, or from an ideology replete with toxic masculinity and fascism.

If the purpose of this blog is to illustrate connections between the spiritual aims of the Syndexioi (Mithraists) and the political aims of the Pueri Superbi (Proud Boys), one connection that jumps out here is the overwhelming degree of support Trump receives from evangelical Christians, and many statements from Proud Boy founder Gavin McInnes in support of traditional Catholicism.  While these two tendencies have been in conflict historically, and remain in conflict in many other parts of the world, in the United States they have agreed to a hudna for the greater shared goal of right-wing political gains, as was the case with the Catholic-Protestant alliance within Phyllis Schlafly’s anti-feminist lobby group Eagle Forum and her lobby work in opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment.

Let me be completely transparent with my secular humanist bias: while anyone should be free to practice or believe whatever suits them, as far as I’m concerned Jesus isn't returning, there's no such thing as a soul, resurrection, reincarnation or afterlife, and anyone channelling that promise is a grifter, whether they realize it or not.  They may be grifting purely on a financial level, or they may be extending that financial grift to a political level in order to extract both money and power.  The goal is to get you to either vote for a social conservative, faith-based or faith-affiliated party, engage in extra parliamentary activism, and hand over your money as a signifier of your devotion.  In the case of the Proud Boys, that’s meant marching on and seizing the Capitol, but has also included local activities such as picketing hospitals and clinics that provide services for trans kids, picketing public libraries and schools that offer books featuring diverse of gender roles, harassing parents at PTA meetings or councillors at town hall meetings.  

In Roman times, the same attitude of religious obedience meant blindly serving the Empire through invasions in all directions from the Iberian homeland.  Though Rome was predominantly non-Christian until the trajectory of Emperors Constantine, Theodosius I and Valentinian II and the Edicts of Milan and Thessalonica and the Nicene Creed, the same premise of a non-corporeal soul and its eternal salvation was an effective salve the contradiction of prerequisite violent death in battle.  The physical, psychological and emotional suffering in war is tremendous for civilians and combatants on both sides.  

Rape, dismemberment, captivity, torture, trauma, child soldiers, PTSD: all the worst tropes we can envision in an afterworldly “hell” are intrinsic characteristics of war.  It's also intertwined with our definition of honour, loyalty and civilization, “a continuation of politics by other means” if you believe Von Clausewitz, and arguably a rational response to injustice, so not the easiest thing to strike from our culture.  Though not all Syndexioi / Mithraists were soldiers - some were merchants and others were slaves - military members constituted the group's core membership, defined its symbolism - in particular the god’s epithets and the group’s third initiatory grade of miles - and played a significant role in the spread of the faith as Roman borders expanded.  Our culture is largely a remix of ancient Rome’s; present-day and future generations are destined to repeat Rome’s violent behaviour if we’re not careful about buying into illusory ancient narratives demanding sacrifice and promising salvation.

How to Talk to Your Son about Fascism

Dr. Craig Johnson’s latest book, which I imagine would be of practical use in these troubling times, features ten distinct mentions of the Pueri Superbi (Proud Boys).  It describes how they recruit fairly young, similar to other all-male far-right groups such as the Groypers and Patriot Front (though not as young as National Action, Atomwaffen Division and derivative groups), and in contrast to the Three Percenters and Oath Keepers which recruit older men from veterans’ groups.  Johnson - host of the weekly news and history show Fifteen Minutes of Fascism - discussed Proud Boy founder Gavin McInnes’ musing that men “shouldn’t need to rely on others being proud of them; that they should be proud of themselves just for being men”; while pride in one’s self is not inherently a bad intention, it does contradict McInnes’ stated adherence to Catholicism which views pride as one of the seven deadly sins.

Johnson explains the history of the Proud Boys’ founding, their work running security for right-wing politicians and advocates like Ann Coulter, the violent fistfights they’ve gotten into, their marches and rallies, violently opposing drag shows, supported by Portland police Lieutenant Jeff Niiya and D.C. Lieutenant Shane Lamond, their instrumental role in the January 6, 2021 coup, and the subsequent replacement in the news limelight by groups like Patriot Front.  He describes the problem of how so many young men are without positive role models as partners, fathers, friends or community members, and “instead the models they have for masculinity are increasingly harsh and even violent, directly tied to the resurgence of the right-wing”.  

The book primarily focuses on preventative education for and counter-indoctrination of young men, since most fascists are men, fascist parties were “almost all founded and led by men” though they also had subordinate “female auxiliary” groups, and because fascists claim to fight against “outside forces” making society “weak and effeminate” invoking the “hard times create strong men” trope alluding to the fall of the Roman Empire yet originating in a modern apocalyptic novel by G. Michael Hopf.  Johnson makes the important point that the modern tendency to frame political violence as a form of mental illness “completely removes it from any political or international context that the perpetrator might have intended or imagined for his violence”, arguing instead of understanding misogyny and fascism as “a coherent belief system that needs to be met head-on”.  He does an effective job analyzing how Proud Boys and Active Clubs mask their right-wing politics as “supposedly being organized for the purposes of socializing as physically active men”, making fascism appealing to those whose “bodies and brains are already primed for this behaviour”.

Quelle Surprise

Joe Biggs, the January 6, 2021 Capitol coup Proud Boys leader pardoned by Trump, has officially embraced antisemitism.  This is no surprise and there’s not much more to say about that given Proud Boy founder’s overt evident antisemitism.  Still, the jury’s still out in terms of how the Trump regime will make use of paramilitary forces, or what one CIA Africa analyst refers to simply as “guys”, akin to Russian mercs or Sudan’s janjaweed, and if - as I have suggested - the Proud Boys become cemented as the MAGA brownshirts, this does not bode well for the American Jewish community who’ve already been on the incremental receiving end of racist threats and violence for the past several years, and neither philosemitism nor being used as a cudgel are solutions.  In order to avoid this, it will likely require individualized re-incrimination on domestic violence and gun charges and the like for Proud Boys to result in the re-incarceration of their membership.  More pessimistically, it’s likely that membership schisms (national vs autonomous chapters) and the drift into even more extreme groups is what might finally do in the organization assuming they do not get absorbed into the regime as a paramilitary; not quite a win either way.

Proud Boy Consultant to the Regime

Despite my previously suggestion that the Proud Boys will “present themselves as auxiliaries to state power to fulfil a distinctively American paramilitary variation on Mussolini’s fascist Squadristi or of Hitler’s Sturmabteilung before initiating a retributional dictatorship”, not everyone has to be a bootboy, and there’s more than one way to play a role in an authoritarian regime.  Consulting is one alternative option, though it does strike me as somehow uncharacteristic for the Proud Boys who tend to laud street action.  In any case, money talks, Proud Boy Graham Jorgensen was paid over $11,000 in consulting fees by Joe Kent, member of Pete Hegseth’s March 24th Signal chat planning the bombing of Yemen over which much ink (or many a pixel) has been spilled (or displayed).  My prediction is that Jorgensen, Kent, Hegseth, Miller, and Vance will experience zero repercussions for this act of recklessness, or at least not under the present regime.  Though I’m no fan of Hillary Clinton, it’s ridiculous how much slack she received for her email impropriety while these clowns will in all likelihood get off scot-free.

Projection 2015

Trump’s 2015 Presidential campaign announcement promised to prosecute certain people.  He stated: “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”  Yet the January 6 defendants freed by Trump had past convictions for rape, manslaughter, domestic violence and drug trafficking.  The one thing that the January 6 defendants were not is Mexican.

Policing White Supremacy: The Enemy Within

I caught an online panel discussion for this latest book featuring a panel discussion with Mike German and two members of the Cato Institute.  The author is ex-FBI and now a Brennan Center for Justice fellow, and of the other two panellists one was ex-CIA and the other is a lawyer, so one could well imagine the discussion trajectory.  There was a general theme of concern for government overreach which I share and seems very prescient in modern America, and some discussion of what constitutes terrorism and the difference between property damage and violence against people.  The Proud Boys were a topic of discussion both in terms of their involvement in the January 6, 2021 Capitol coup and Trump’s recent pardon of the putschists, with the panel discussion framed as being “about police and the role that they play in our society and how this entire issue of the infiltration of police by elements like the Proud Boys, Ku Klux Klan, even other neo-Nazi type elements impacts American policing”.  Within the context of the prescient discussion over whether property damage targeting Elon Musk’s Tesla company could legitimately be deemed “terrorism”, German also made the point that “when it’s white supremacists committing a crime, almost immediately they’ll say this is a lone wolf, this is a one-off, this isn’t connected to anything else”, despite the police and current U.S. government not offering the same benefit of doubt to anti-fascists, anarchists, environmentalists or Black Lives Matter activists.

Though the infiltration work Mike German was involved in was with neo-Nazi skinhead groups even further to the right than the Proud Boys, there was some interesting discussion based on his observation of white supremacist infiltration of the police force and conversely of rank and file police officer sympathy for or inaction against white supremacists.  German stated that “in the mid-90’s I worked what we then called anti-government militias. Now you can’t really call them that because they’re so incorporated with the government that I call them far-right militias.”  This framing could apply to the broader category of the 2021 Capitol coup participants (primarily the Proud Boys’ collaborators the Oath Keepers) and also gets at the flexibility of the Proud Boys in terms of where and when to act in opposition to the police department and government and when to collaborate with them.

I have nothing against the Cato Institute personally; I have quite a few libertarians in my immediate family and though we disagree we get along fine, and one of my oldest friends is a Cato supporter.  I don’t consider myself to be a libertarian with the exception of supporting the decriminalization of soft recreational drug use and of consensual sex work, both for the purpose of harm reduction and to reduce incarceration rates for victimless crimes. I also share the libertarian disagreement with social conservatism, in particular with regards to women’s right to choose and with people to express their gender or sexuality.  That said, I am a bit concerned about the rather tenacious libertarian to far-right pipeline travelled by Mike Enoch, Stefan Molyneux, Lauren Southern, Chris Cantwell and Richard Spencer, not to mention Murray Rothbard’s strange infatuation with David Duke, and to give them the benefit of the doubt, I believe that the Cato Institute folks likely are concerned about this as well, since it doesn’t benefit their reputation.  

Cato also appears to be going through the trouble of differentiating themselves from the Proud Boys, who according to their founding principles were an alcohol-fuelled populist variation on libertarianism: favouring opposition to welfare and guns for all.  One could get into a never-ending “no true Scotsman” argument about who are the real libertarians and who are merely posers or Libertarians In Name Only (LINOs).  Again, libertarian is not my political identification, so I don’t have a horse in this race, but if I was forced to choose who to have a beer with I’d gladly pick anyone from Cato over a Proud Boy simply because I don’t see them as exhibiting anything close to the same level of misogyny, transphobia or racism.  Classism is another story; advocating for the reduction or cancellation of social assistance isn’t something that I think is a very smart policy economically or ethically, unless perhaps it’s folded into a genuinely well thought out UBI/GAI policy, but that’s a rant for a different occasion.

The Empire Never Ended: A Shout Out (or Just Wishful Thinking)

Moving from right-wing libertarian to social libertarian, a show that I’ve been listening to off and on for several years has three hosts (Boris, Fritz and Rey), one of which gave me a shoutout (er… sort of, I think).  At 26 minutes and 26 seconds into episode 311 of the very thoughtful and humorous show The Empire Never Ended, co-host Boris mentioned Mithraism in the context of explaining the plans of neo-Nazi eugenicist Erik Ahrens of The Human Diversity Foundation to establish “Neo-Byzantium”, a cross between Rob Rundo’s Active Club and Steve Bannon’s defunct Certosa di Trisulti Gladiator School, with a touch of Azov’s Reconquista Club social centre thrown in.  

Boris responded to me back in November 2024 to say he’d read my piece (I’d written first to say I’d named a chapter after the show), so I think this was a reference to it, or a shout out, though I could of course be wrong about this, falling into an apophenic or pareidolic spell.  Speaking of which, the other day I was thinking about how the characters from the Teen Titans cartoon are illustrative of Mithraic symbolism (Raven as Corax, Robin as Nymphus, Cyborg as Miles, Beast Boy as Leo, Batman as Perses, Starfire as Heliodromos, and Trigon as Pater).  Likewise I’ve been thinking a lot about shared symbolism with the Wizard of Oz, Star Wars, Game of Thrones and Sons of Anarchy films and shows, all possible subjects for future posts.  That said, even considering these as topics is probably as good a sign as any that I should take a break from all this, at least for another month.

Correction

My original piece featured a small footnote on Sandra Bernhardt and fedoras in the context of describing the Proud Boy dress code. The Hat Professor argues that this is in fact not the hat’s true origin point; while Bernhardt did act in a production called Fédora, the hat she wore for this play was soft and felted, closer to a Mithraic phrygian cap than to what we might now conceive of as the ideal fedora.  If vowels and syntax and even the very continents drift over time, why not the definition of various types of hats?  I stand corrected, and ta-ta for now.