Climb Aboard Kiddies!

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.  My basic themes are: 

1. Roman Mithraists who referred to one another as ‘syndexioi’

2. 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 has emancipated both the Proud Boy rank & file and leadership and (someone please prove me wrong about this) will begin 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

So… yeah!  Quite the month it’s been.  This past month, my readings have been a bit light on the Mithraic content due to geopolitical events. I did come across something that I thought was pretty interesting called Mithra-ndir: Gandalf and the Roman cult of Mithras, which was a 2021 analysis of syndexioi symbolism in J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and other works. The Game of Thrones series always struck me as sharing a lot of Mithraic imagery in terms of the Ostia ladder symbol of initiatory grades, and of course George R. R. Martin was highly influenced by Tolkien, but on the flip side they are both part of the Western fantasy canon which derives from some pretty ancient roots that largely precede and circumvent Rome altogether. There’s some general Roman history/religion content just one paragraph below that fits my general thesis, but you’ll have to wait another month for more Mithras-centred content. Still, there’s no need to "gird yourself" as the old Papyrus Berolinensis catechism goes; here’s what I have for now:

According to a report by the University of Maryland’s Michael Jensen, research director for the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), military service has been found to be the single strongest individual predictor of becoming a ‘mass casualty offender,’ far outpacing mental health issues, according to a separate study of extremist mass casualty violence by the researchers. This ties into the anecdotes of white supremacist extremists in the armed forces footnote of my piece (individual hyperlinks were removed by the mithraeum.eu footnote formatting style, but my alternate PDF version includes all hyperlinks) as well as the New Orleans and Las Vegas attacks at the start of the month.  I guess that, contrary to what I wrote, anecdotes are not data… until they are data.

The highly recommended Hooked on Classics: The Far Right’s Appropriation of Ancient Greece and Rome, a chapter in Ashton Kingdon’s book ‘The World White Web: Uncovering the Hidden Meanings of Online Far-Right Propaganda’, focuses on “understanding how and why the far right utilise Greco-Roman symbolism in their propaganda” and “the ways in which the classical Greek city-states of Sparta and Athens, and the Roman Empire have been utilised to provide support for racialised, xenophobic, and Islamophobic narratives”.

Kingdon’s comprehensive research cites (future Secretary of Tiki Torches in the Trump regime) Richard Spencer‘s attempted “reconstitution of the Roman Empire” featuring white nationalists marching behind images of Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius, Elon Musk depicting himself as a Roman dictator on X (her book was completed prior to Musk’s more recently performance of the Roman salute), Mussolini’s use of the fascio, and - on flags of Rome’s derivative fascist powers and modern nation-states - the appearance of the Aquila: Jupiter’s sacred eagle, likely appropriated from Egypt’s tutelary Horus-falcon.  There’s also the misuse of SPQR (Senatus Populusque Romanus) in far-right imagery despite its inclusive intent and origin in the civic (and not military) sphere.

She points out how historical references to a patriarchal and militarily expansionist Rome was used as a “civilizing” moral justification for imperialism and in order to justify slavery, anti-abolitionism and white supremacy, and refers to Madison Grant’s ‘The Passing of the Great Race’ 1916 comparison between rising African-American birthrates and the ‘declining days of the Roman Republic’ despite the incorrectly alleged whiteness of Rome itself.

There’s the Identitarian Movement’s use of Roman symbolism in its social media propaganda including the the Colosseum, Constantine Arch and the Titus Arch (which specifically carries a significantly antisemitic weight), and the Gab, 4/8chan and Telegram fashwave fixation on the whiteness of Roman marble relics that conveniently ignores how the originals were painted in “a variety of skin tones that reflect a multi-racial society” reflecting genomes proven to be of “highly diverse ancestries, including those from the Near East, Europe, and North Africa”.  In short, in this chapter Kingdon examines ‘Western Civilisation’ as a dog whistle for ‘White Civilisation’ by white supremacists.

Trump, who still refuses to rule out the use of force to take Panama and Greenland has in one of his first acts of office pardoned the January 6 putschists, something which I discussed in detail in my piece (just call me “Cassandra”).  Andrea Stroppa - who is credited with connecting Musk with Giorgia Meloni - posted the clip of Musk's inauguration day fascist salute with the caption: "Roman Empire is back starting from Roman salute".  Oregon Proud Boys fantasized that they'd get “deputized as ICE under Trump’s second term” to assist his deportation plan.  The Department of Justice deleted its Capitol riot investigations webpage.  So far the Proud Boys, Oath Keeper & QAnon-ist putsch shenanigan reports remain on the January 6th Commission website, but I wouldn't count on them remaining for long, so archive what you can if you have the time and resources to do so as the Trump regime has already begun scrubbing history from the public domain.

The source of my comment last month that “Active Clubs are the group that Proud Boys want to be” is a quote by Jon Lewis from the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, who in a Rolling Stone interview said that Active Clubs are "who the Proud Boys thought they were. They're who the Proud Boys want to be”.  I seriously doubt that he reads this, but if so, my apologies and hats off to Mr. Lewis - a more significant researcher than me - if I unintentionally used his words without proper attribution.  Sometimes you learn important facts or read useful commentary but forget where you got it from.  

Nicholas Grossman's article The January 6 Attackers Won made a similar argument to my December 1, 2024 suggestion that “that the coup was not just an attempt but a resounding success”.  Grossman's piece appeared about a month after mine, though I'm not suggesting he reads my stuff (who does?) or got the idea from me.  Still, I agree with his take that “the insurrectionists failed in the moment, but they set off a series of events that transformed US Constitutional democracy by upending the core principle that no one is above the law”.

Finally, in his piece Donald Trump Is Building a New Army of Foot Soldiers, long-time far-right researcher Spencer Sunshine argued that, although their chapters are currently scattered and “lack cohesion and focus”, the “pardons for the leaders of violent groups, such as the Proud Boys’ Tarrio [though being a federal informant he faces an uphill battle] will undoubtedly result in their groups’ revival”.  He also points to the revival of the militia movement who have offered to help with the deportation of migrants, and to the success of overt white supremacist groups including the Active Club network, the Blood Tribe and Patriot Front.  White power groups such as this, according to the SPLC’s Cassie Miller and Hannah Gais, “see promise in the litany of reactionary causes that the pro-Trump Republican Party has embraced and have aligned their activism with the mainstream right’s parade of grievances against immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, Black people, and other racial or religious minorities”.

Quite the mess!  

‘Til next time readers, take care of yourselves and of one another.  I leave you with a little levity, the not super-accurate but still funny in a creepy sort-of way AI-generated images from my last month’s post, jokingly imagining the “What If?” scenario had the “QAnon Shaman” not actually been Jacob Chansley, but rather, Jamiroquoi.