Welcome to the First Contact Day edition of Pueri Superbi, a more-or-less monthly rant on the following four topics: 

I) the Roman Mithraists who referred to one another as ‘Syndexioi’, as well as their Old World antecedents and etymological analogues.

II) 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 

III) 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 and turning it into the paramilitary force referred to as “Trump's army”

IV) 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.

Paper Moon, Paper Tiger

It's a strange coincidence that the bombing campaign against what was once called Persia has coincided with the Artemis II lunar mission, given that in the Mithraic initiatory system the 5th grade of Perses was associated with the moon.  Obviously this is only the sort of thing one would care about if one followed both space exploration and Roman religion, specifically of the Mithraic variety, making it a pretty niche coincidence.  I’m not suggesting any sort of coordination between the U.S. military and NASA; the latter began planning the Artemis mission decades ago, while Trump acts on matters of war through an instinctive “in my bones” feeling.  Many astronauts have prior air force experience, but they're not the ones calling the shots of F-15s, F-35s and A-10s over Tehran.  

While the name of Iran’s Mehr News agency may suggest an etymological link to the Persian forerunner of Mithras, unlike Mihr - the Armenian precursor of Mithras - Mehr ironically refers only to the term friendship in New Persian despite the news agency’s long-standing unfriendly practice of platforming Holocaust denialists, and despite a regime which shot and killed thousands of its own citizens engaged in peaceful protest and hung a 19 year-old member of its national wrestling team; not very friendly.

“Caesar as Bull” is Bull

I recently came across an interesting theory suggesting that the Mithraic tauroctony is in fact a symbol of the commemoration of the assassination of dictator perpetuo Gaius Julius Caesar.  The idea is that the bull symbolized Caesar since his hometown of Suburra meant “bull”, since Caesar claimed descent from Venus for whom the bull was a symbol, and since Caesar's favourite legion was Legio X which also used the bull as a mascot.  The mortal wound to Caesar was between the shoulder blades, just the spot where Mithras stabs the bull.  

It’s certainly an intriguing idea: Marcus Junius Brutus as scorpius, Publius Servilius Casca Longus as serpentis, and Gaius Cassius Longinus as canem, perhaps no more far-fetched than many other theories relying on the centrality of the hypercosmic sun, the constellation Perseus, the constellation Orion, the Amanita muscaria, a meteorite, Josephus Flavius, the swastika, “a mythological projection of repression” or even the initiatory climax of “becoming-one-with-god”; I disagree with over-reliance on any of these premises as interesting as they may be, but chacun à son goût for those who find any or all of these frameworks to be useful.  Still, I call bullshit on this “Caesar is the Bull” theory despite its liberatory “kill the dictator” symbolism because it comes from a source that I won’t link here (not wanting to give them publicity) connected to the paranoid and antisemitic conspiracy theories of the Lyndon Larouche cult.  Call this an ad hominem attack if you will; either way, it's hard for me to imagine Servilius Casca as Mithras.

Bondi: Fired-Not-Fired

Pam Bondi has been given the boot by Trump, likely for insufficiently prosecuting Trump's foes or perhaps simply for being insufficiently white and male.  She’ll be given a cushy private sector job, just as the similarly recently-axed Kristi Noem - wife of cross-dresser Byron Noem (no objection; it’s just ironic when social conservatives who’d otherwise condemn people for such actions get caught doing it) - was made Special Envoy for Shield of the Americas which recently gathered at Trump National Doral Miami featuring a meetup between Marco Rubio and Enrique Tarrio.  Both the Secretary of State, who is polling second for 2028 Republican presidential candidate, and the Proud Boys former chairman / current leader are Cuban-American and appeared to get on swimmingly.

Time will tell if or how this changes the $100 million Proud Boys lawsuit against the Department of Justice with Todd Blanche now filling in for Bondi as acting Attorney General.  However, in further Proud Boys / Pueri Superbi legal news, member A.J. Fischer is a now a lead plaintiff in a new class action lawsuit against the Capitol police which claims that the “indiscriminate” use of force repelling the January 6 coup caused physical and emotional injuries to the putschists.  The lawsuit identifies Proud Boys Dominic Pezzola and Christopher Worell as eligible to join the class.

Kent: Also Not Fired

Trump may have brought the war home by allowing foreign war tactics to be used by ICE agents against American citizens, but as far as the current overseas war fares, the individual responsible for circumventing blowback and sleeper cell activity as a result of the Iran war - National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent - has up and left.  This is actually fine; better that he’s gone in my opinion.  Senator Mitch McConnell called Kent out on the manner of his resignation; Kent’s late wife was blown up by an ISIS suicide bomber in a restaurant frequented by Americans in the north of Syria, but he blamed it on Israel.  This would be quite the stretch from someone who hadn’t said "I love what you’re doing” to neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes like Joe Kent did.  He also suggested that the U.S. was not threatened by Iran, which is his prerogative, but not very hard to disprove.  

I mentioned last year that Kent paid Proud Boy Graham Jorgensen over $11,000 in consulting fees for his run for office.  Kent was also a member of Pete Hegseth’s infamous March 24th 2024 Signal chat planning the bombing of Yemen.  I also mentioned on August 1, 2025 that Kent was a far-right conspiracy theorist who had claimed that the COVID vaccine was "an experimental gene therapy", who stated that Anthony Fauci should face murder charges, who believes that the 2020 election was stolen, who called the January 6, 2021 putschists “political prisoners”, and who believes that federal agents instigated January 6th.

While the U.S. has had a beef with Iran going back to the 1979 hostage crisis, Trump’s still debating whether to put boots on the ground, having already sent marines on amphibious assault ship the USS Boxer and others and sending 82nd Airborne Division troops likely in order to seize Kharg Island, with Iran now threatening to target “parks, recreational areas and tourist destinations”; making it a risky time for Easter holiday visits to Disneyworld or Miami Beach.  Evangelical Christian commanders have told their troops that “Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth”, so that should move things along nicely.  On Truth Social Trump didn’t succumb to standard diplomatic subtleties when he exhorted “open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”  

The Antifa Boogie

While perceived “Antifa Cell Members” (in reality: overly zealous anti-ICE protestors) have been arrested and swiftly convicted in Texas, in Bavaria an AfD member set fire to his own car and subsequently blamed it on antifa.  Both American and German cases show how the use of “antifa” as a boogeyman has expanded into opposing critiques of MAGA, ICE, crackdowns against migrants, Christianity and capitalism.  Participants in the informal, amorphous and voluntary / unpaid network of antifascists may personally disagree with some or all of those issues to varying degrees, but their actual labour entails the tracking of and opposition to violent neo-Nazi and neo-fascist groups such as Ian Stuart Donaldson’s Blood & Honour, Rinaldo Nazzaro’s The Base, Brandon Russell’s Atomwaffen Division, Christopher Pohlhaus’ Blood Tribe, Thomas Rousseau’s Patriot Front, Rob Rundo‘s Active Clubs, Nick Fuentes' America First / Groypers and Enrique Tarrio’s Proud Boys.

Fascism is steamrolling along in America and abroad.  As efforts are underway to undo the 14th Amendment, and due to the machinations of Miller and Musk the vast majority (1,648 out of 1,651) of “refugees” that the U.S. now admits are white South Africans.  Meanwhile overseas, it has emerged that Trump’s staunch ally Victor Orban, the inspiration for much of Project 2025, considered a Russian-orchestrated fake assassination attempt in order to increase his electoral success.  Such last minute desperation won’t save him from democratic defeat; hopefully Orban’s electoral demise will be a harbinger of things to come domestically.

Thanks once again for reading.  Live long and prosper 🖖 and see you in a month or so.