Welcome to the Cinco de Mayo edition of my monthly rant which focuses on four elements:
I) the self-described Western Chauvinist Proud Boys, the “militia group with the most specific premeditated plan to attack the Capitol” on January 6, 2021, who I've referred to as the ‘Pueri Superbi’, the group’s name in Latin
II) the tragic and petra genetrix-like emergence of fascism from the history and culture of “the West” along with its dangerous modern-day perseverance, which unites all of these elements.
III) the Roman Mithraists who referred to one another as ‘Syndexioi’, as well as their Old World antecedents and etymological analogues.
IV) the MAGA regime which emancipated the Proud Boy rank & file and leadership and still appears headed on a horrible trajectory towards funding the group to the tune of $100 million, potentially turning it into the paramilitary force referred to as “Trump's army”.
Toronto, Tetrads and Taurobolia
Growing up in Toronto I had a friend whose dad produced a kids’ TV show and in 1986 directed a documentary narrated by Vincent Price about how Vlad Tepes and Romanian vampire legends combined to form the historical basis for the Dracula tale. At the time I was mostly familiar with Vincent Price’s Thriller rap and his role as Egghead in the campy Batman series; it would be decades before I saw the original The Fly (1958), Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (1965) and Edward Scissorhands (1990).
I’d been a Fangoria subscriber for years when I was a kid, so the prospect of eventually being able to make a living directing a horror doc seemed pretty cool (I eventually scratched that itch decades later working locations on Silent Hill via a Directors Guild of Canada gig). I asked my friend’s dad what I should study in university to get into directing and in response he suggested the path that he’d taken after moving to Canada from Holland: studying at the University of Toronto's McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology.
At the end of high school I was accepted to UofT, beginning a few days late after completing filming a cross-country documentary project offered funding by Michael Moore who I elevator pitched while ushering at the (now demolished) Uptown Cinema for the Toronto International Film Festival's premiere of Canadian Bacon. At UofT I began hanging out amongst the post-grad students at McLuhan’s old coach house just east of Queen’s Park, auditing courses with Derrick de Kerckhove and the late Perspective Unit director Kim Veltman, catching talks by Howard Rheingold, Joey Skaggs and Stelarc, overseas lectures on their telepresence device (Zoom circa 1991), and using UofT/OISE’s ISDN lines to muck about with early 90’s search engines Ask Jeeves, Yahoo!, Lycos and Webcrawler and the now defunct gopher protocol hierarchical category searches.
I began making primitive websites for friends, associates, a UofT professor, several non-profits and employers using only the Pico text editor and the Lynx web browser. For fun I created a site for an old high school essay on the Mithras cult because nothing on the topic existed on the web back then. The essay was error-laden since I wrote it prior to university library access, so my sources were second-tier and often obsolete, being limited at the time to what I could dig up in public libraries and book stores. The focus was Cumont’s formative but extremely incomplete interpretation of the mysteries with nothing by Beck, Clauss, Vermaseren, Ulansey, Gordon or Panagiotidou.
Ironically, the late great Roger Beck was still a professor emeritus at UofT when I was a student, but on a separate and distant campus, so I wasn't exposed to his teaching or works until years later and we didn't cross paths in person until 2010 at the 20th World Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions. Fortunately my hyperbolic early site is no longer a primary source for Mithras-related information on Wikipedia; it was for years in the early 1990’s, and a copy remains courtesy of Bill Thayer’s University of Chicago history site.
Back to McLuhan, having been inspired by his formative works to dip my toes into various facets of television, feature film and multi-media work, my favourite remains his 1975 Laws of the Media which introduced his groundbreaking tetrad framework of amplification, obsolescence, retrieval and reversal. Not only can McLuhan’s tetrads framework be applied to understand the impact of numerous media and technologies such as social media, augmented reality and generative AI, it can also be used to analyze the current rise of digital populism described as “the new face of politics and political expression”.
Amplified Anti-Antifa Assholery
The U.S. government's impending amplification of the violent authority of the Proud Boys via the group’s inevitably victorious $100 million lawsuit against the Department of Justice is something I regret having to point out. This is a terrible prospect and I hope I’m proven wrong some day, but it really seems like Trump is doing nothing to prevent the economic and political amplification of this dangerous group - rewarding them for their spearheading the January 6th Capitol Riot coup responsible for his return to power - all in coincidence with the rise of the global populist right.
The New Face of Digital Populism study by Jamie Bartlett, Jonathan Birdwell and Mark Littler examined the Bloc Identitaire, British National Party, CasaPound, Danish People’s Party, Die Freiheit, English Defence League, Austrian Freedom Party, Norwegian Progress Party, Front National, Lega Nord, Dutch Freedom Party, True Finns, Sweden Democrats and Flemish Interest right-wing populist parties and movements dominated by young, critical, un(der)employed, nationally pessimistic men opposed to immigration and the rights of minorities. The power and influence of these digital populist groups has skyrocketed through their social media recruitment and organising, just as social movements located on the political left like Occupy and Black Lives Matter briefly garnered massive global followings on Twitter (now X) and Facebook respectively.
Enrique Tarrio, leader of the U.S.-based digital populist Proud Boys, advocated giving “avid knitter” Harmeet Dhillon a fair shot should she move up within the Justice Department into a more powerful role in hopes that this facilitates his group cashing in on their $100 million lawsuit. Dhillon was the former co-chair of Women for Trump and unsuccessfully sued Portland’s Rose City Antifa on behalf of right-wing journalist and anti-antifa advocate Andy Ngo. Regardless of who gets the new Attorney General role once Todd Blanche completes his acting role, I'm still not sure what form things will eventually take for Tarrio if and when his group hits the jackpot; that's a lot of cheddar for a rat and his sinking ship followers. I can foresee three likely outcomes.
The most benign result would be that - acting in accordance with their underlying lack of self-esteem and ingrained sense of victimhood - the Proud Boys “men’s drinking group” simply snorts their newfound profit and meets a pathetic and self-inflicted demise from cardiovascular and pulmonary damage. Sad as that would be for them as individuals, a worse outcome for the United States as a whole would be for the group to use its new wealth as a springboard to power as costumed MAGA Sturmabteilung paramilitary ultras. An even worse case scenario would be that Proud Boy members use their winnings to fund their own senatorial or gubernatorial campaigns as a horde of future regime leaders, something Tarrio hinted at recently. Despite the spat over the Iran conflict, their relationship with MAGA remains symbiotic. Trump’s return to power was predicated upon the Proud Boys’ January 6 Capitol coup, with the Proud Boys reciprocally freed from prison and pardoned of criminal charges for their efforts and soon to be financially rewarded by the Trump regime.
Obsolescent Obfuscation of Owens and Other Oppressors
McLuhan’s tetrad framework, when applied to digital populism, also suggests the obsolescence of electoral democracy via the folksy and vernacular social media populist messaging of agitators like Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, Richard Spencer, David Duke, and Steve Bannon utilizing social media platforms such as Elon Musk’s X, Trump’s Truth Social and Pavel Durov’s Telegram. Shredding the Voting Rights Act is really just an opening salvo for the current regime which relies on the support of these rancorous oppressors.
Faith Agostinone-Wilson’s Fascism and Right-Wing Populism: Similarities, Differences and New Organizational Forms points out how 3.3 billion people on earth are currently subjected to autocratic rule; this was published in January 2020, so that number’s likely much higher now, though of course not all autocracy is of the fascist variety. Similarities between fascism and authoritarian populism include “conservative enabling, enforcement of capitalism, rationalizing violence, rejection of liberalism, enforcement of masculinity, and rampant corruption”. Both hate electoral democracy, though they often utilize it initially as a means to an end, and there are a few key differences between the two ideologies.
Digital populists agitate for the restoration of a mythical Leave it to Beaver past by setting up the mythical category of “the people” against “the elite”, the latter referring to an ethnic minority boogeyman rather than the tangibly measurable - whether by tax returns or numbered overseas tax-shelter accounts - wealthiest members of society or the owners of land, resources or production networks. In other words, there’s no need for jackboots when you claim to represent the grassroots, at least not at first. Since populists claim “the people’s” support they are eternally suspicious of dissenters, who are seen as less than human and therefore easily repressed in an authoritarian manner, which is where the fascism comes in.
Retrieval, Reciprocity and Rewards for Roman Reenactors
McLuhan’s tetrad framework also suggests the retrieval of something in order to explain digital populism. I’ve argued that the Proud Boys / MAGA initiatory hierarchy runs parallel to the historic framework of the Roman Mithraic cult who utilized a similar symbol-laden initiatory system. As a point of comparison, why did I choose an obscure mystery religion that fell out of practice one and a half millennia ago, as opposed to some contemporary form of monotheistic or secular tradition?
I argue - as so many others before me have argued - that the nexus of the Proud Boys and MAGA is a contemporary manifestation of American neo-fascism. Martinique poet-politician Aimé Césaire and his fans explained long ago how domestic fascist ultranationalism, concentration camp extermination (I recently completed Andrea Pitzer’s comprehensive One Long Night study on the history of concentration camps) and genocide could not have existed without first being implemented abroad through the colonial actions of Germany against the Nama and Herero peoples in South West Africa, and the colonial actions of Italy against Libya and the Horn of Africa. However, understanding the roots of fascism requires going back much earlier.
Contemporary neo-fascism and classical 1930’s fascism are both ideologically and aesthetically inspired by imperial Rome; the conquerors of the ancient Apennine Peninsula reached the pinnacle of colonialism and as a result much of western culture is still quite derivative of what they created. One contemporary example, the panem et circenses spectacle of gladiatorial battles planned for June 14th at a colosseum-like structure constructed at Trump’s White House is so ridiculous, and so quintessentially Roman Empire that I’d no longer be surprised if Trump were to start dressing in a toga and begin installing a mithraeum beneath the East Wing that he so recently flattened. Of course, he limits his wardrobe to golf attire, dress shirts, suits and formalwear and what’s actually being built there is more PEOC than Ostioc.
Though the ancient Romans weren't the world's only colonialists and imperialists, they were some of its most brutally successful, inspiring fascists and Nazis over a millennia later. As a result, a significant chunk of our planet still uses their alphabet and speaks Latin-derived languages today. The popularity of Roman Catholicism and its various schisms and offshoots remain paramount, though the West’s surface layer Christianity obscures many submerged but residual and persistent polytheistic practices. Classical Roman architecture still exemplifies stature and reverence for centres of finance, governance and Catholic faith, Roman law remains formative in much of the world and jurists remain a professional class due to Roman influence. Mithraic rites were exceedingly popular with frontier soldiers, binding the Roman empire together and offering soldiers the motivation to die in battle and expand their empire.
There were other Roman military divinities like Mars and Jupiter’s aquila, and under present-day Christianity the prospect of dying under the influence of St. Michael still rallies the troops. Still, only the Roman Mithras-worshipping Syndexioi developed such a sophisticated system of initiatory rites effective enough for an empire that would expand into so much of the Old World. Mithraic worship was an ideological technology: an innovative system applying initiatory techniques promising salvation in order to justify and extend the capabilities and territory of the Roman empire, just as Christianity and Islam would later play expansionist roles, together claiming 55% of the Earth’s population as adherents.
According to Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke’s Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity, Mithras was of interest to murderous neo-Nazi group The Order’s David Lane of the 14 words notoriety (p.271), and Mithras was prominently featured in the works of esoteric Überfascists Julius Evola and Miguel Serrano (p.138,139). Mithras also appeared in the antisemitic and Hyperborea-infatuated sci-fi novel Götzen gegen Thule (1971) written by Wilhelm Landig (1909-1997) the pan-German nationalist designer, former Waffen-SS member, Austrian representative of the fascist international European Social Movement and founder of the World Anti-Communist League.
Mithras was also of interest to the Oregon-based industrial musician Michael Moynihan (Goodrick-Clarke, p.208). Along with Boyd Rice, Adam Parfrey and Nicholas Shreck, Moynihan was part of the Abraxas Foundation fascist think tank that published and promoted James Mason’s Siege. Mason's newsletter advocating neo-Nazi violence inspired the accelerationist National Socialist Order / Atomwaffen Division responsible for five U.S. murders and extensive violence abroad, with several founding members now imprisoned or dead. The group’s efforts persist under the influence of Colorado-based Ryan Hatfield’s American Futurist group, and continue to inspire young mentally unstable white men seeking justification to take out their own self-loathing on visible minorities, immigrants and refugees.
However, the deity Mithras isn’t only relevant to members of the far right. As one example, there's a type of transcatheter repair surgery trial called MITHRAS (Closure of Iatrogenic Atrial Septal Defects Following Transcatheter Mitral Valve Repair) for the mitral or bicuspid valve: a critical structure on the left side of the heart that separates the left atrium from the left ventricle which acts as a gatekeeper, preventing blood from moving backward when it’s closed. The valve’s name comes from its similarity in shape to a Μίτρα (mitre): the bishop’s headdress, which means armour (of God) in Greek. Ironically, the head bishop is the Pope, who issues Bulls (public decrees, named after the bulla or round metallic seal), and the etymologically unrelated but identical-sounding bull male bovine is a central Mithraic icon. The mitre may derive from the tiara, which in turn may derive from the Phrygian cap, which is also a central Mithraic icon. That said, sometimes a hat is just a hat; we all need to stay warm and/or keep the sun off sometimes.
Reversing Rights and Reason
Finally, McLuhan’s tetrad framework suggests the reversal of hard fought for civil rights policies such as the aforementioned Voting Rights Act by the Trump presidency in order to curtail democratic electoral representation. According to the NAACP the Voting Rights Act was “one of the hardest-fought safeguards for Black Americans and other minority groups as it relates to voting”. Designed to prevent racial discrimination in an election and “born of the literal blood of Union soldiers and civil rights marchers” to usher in “the ideals of democracy and racial equality” it has now been officially gutted, thereby disenfranchising Democrat-supporting Black voters for the foreseeable future and creating a ridiculous Gerrymandered race to the bottom.
It's with good reason that Trump got dissed by the Artemis II mission astronauts who gave him the silent treatment. He had the audacity to cut out on the US-Iranian ceasefire negotiations in Pakistan attempting to quell a war spurred on by Pete Hegseth’s Gospel of Carnage and fake biblical quoting from Pulp Fiction in order to watch a UFC match. Perhaps he was thinking ahead to June 14th, but it made me think that maybe the best suited 2028 Republican candidate (assuming Trump actually agrees to vacate the post, which is still anyone’s call) is actually neither Vance nor Rubio but an actual MMA fighter, and I do not mean Joe Rogan who retired long ago.
Trump’s bizarre April 7th statement that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again” is not the sort of thing a president should ever utter, let alone a person who wants to be perceived as sane. It sounds like the sort of thing that a sociopathic child would say holding a magnifying glass up to an ant hill. I have zero love for the Iranian regime that orchestrated the Buenos Aires Jewish community centre bombing that killed 85 people and made use of Hamas as a proxy, but to suggest that the entire Iranian civilization should be wiped out is simply insane; he'd risk trial at The Hague had the U.S. actually ratified the Rome Statute.
Trump's criticisms of the Pope have been compared to those of Hitler and Mussolini, neither of whom went so far as having “attacked the Pope so directly and publicly” (and I’m no fan of the Pope, much preferring the concept of a Mome, though I'll admit that each new Pope is a slight improvement over the previous one). Trump subsequently posted a picture of himself as Jesus on Truth Social, thereby showing how the term “Trump Derangement Syndrome" actually refers to his own megalomaniacal delusions, and prompting Tucker Carlson to publicly wonder if he's the Antichrist. Trump’s anti-Mexican and anti-abortion rhetoric and policies rival those of Robert J. Mathews, leader of the neo-Nazi terrorist group The Order / Silent Brotherhood, famous for his statement: “while we allow Mexicans by the legions to invade our soil, we murder babies in equal numbers”.
Trump misrepresented the January 6 Capitol putsch as having been organized by the far left while simultaneously erasing the putschists seditious conspiracy convictions and declaring the deadly 2017 Unite the Right white supremacist gathering to have been organized by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the same group that Kash Patel’s FBI and Todd Blanche’s Department of Justice are currently attempting to indict. Trump-appointed senior counterterrorism director Sebastian Gorka, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security Thomas G. DiNanno and F.B.I. operations director for national security Michael Glasheen have also been working overtime trying to make antifa into a bogeyman. You can no longer discuss antifascism on Facebook - not that I use that platform myself - while making “references to historical or recent incidents of violence”. This is despite far-left rates of deadly violence consistently tracking far below the deadly violence rates of the far-right and Islamists (IRGC sleeper cells, anyone?) and questionable categorical framing by some anti-extremism researchers who situate environmental extremism within the political left and who sever the categories of conspiracism and ethnonationalism from the political right.
Potential presidential successor J. D. Vance will be no improvement. On X he follows a variety of fascists, antisemites, sex traffickers and rape advocates like Curtis Yarvin, Andrew Tate, Costin Alamariu (alias ‘Bronze Age Pervert’), Charles Cornish-Dale (alias ‘Raw Egg Nationalist’), Jordan Lasker (alias ‘Crémieux’), FischerKing, HowlingMutant, Second City Bureaucrat, Jonathan Keeperman (alias ‘Lomez’), Rogue Scholar Press and Alexander Norden (alias ‘HowlingMutant’). Vance unsuccessfully stumped for Orban en route to failed Iranian cease-fire talks in Pakistan. While in correspondence with Putin, Orban had offered to act as a 'mouse' aiding the Russian ‘lion’, but it was all for naught. Orban’s finally done, just like the other major Trump allies Bolsonaro and Duterte. Who else will be next?
Thanks again for reading. Enjoy the nice weather, “touch some grass” as they say, and perhaps I will see you again some time in June.
