Happy May Day and Belated Blessed Be to Beltane Bacchanalians

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. I’ve always been fascinated by how counter-extremism author Talia Lavin was able to juxtapose the white supremacy focus of her writing with something much less sensationalised: namely the history of various types of sandwiches.  Though I'm much more of a novice/hobbyist, I do something kinda similar, but in my case it’s combining ancient history with modern politics, more specifically focusing on the following four topics:

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

Okay, here we go for May:

Mithraic Archaeological Discoveries

Near Rome’s northern Pannonian frontier, another Mithras sanctuary was recently unearthed in Budapest featuring a lead votive depicting figures wearing Phrygian caps. Meanwhile near Rome's southeastern frontier, some lion-headed handles from a Roman tomb were recently found south of Khirbat Ibreika - located in the West Bank, south of Jerusalem and west of the Dead Sea - which Israel Antiquities Authority archaeologists Elie Haddad and Elisheva Zwiebel theorized may have been related to the leontocephaline figure and therefore to Mithraic ritual activity¹ .

More Mardi Gras News from the Mithras Krews

It looks like the Mithras Krew gave out these these cool party favours back in the day.

Seven Grades One Pun?

I’m not sure why this never caught my eye before, but I just noticed the pun of the sacrificial patera dish being one of the three symbols of the pater grade.  I wonder if there are any others that I’ve missed…

Solar Power by Sol Invictus

Unrelated to this project, I was looking into local Ontario companies who do solar panel installations, and found the aptly-named Mitrex, which even has an aptly-named chatbot called MithraGPT on its site.

Speaking of Efforts to Reduce Carbon Dioxide Emissions

The Proud Boys have been playing a role in Tesla dealership defence, which makes sense given that Elon Musk has been paying people to do this, and given his adoption of the MAGA ethos with which the Pueri Superbi are intimately intertwined.  I have to admit that I think there’s something cool about the Cybertruck in a zombie apocalypse sense, but I would never buy a product that Musk has anything to do with, even if I had the money to do so, which I don’t.

Now Now Play Nice

There seems to be a rift developing between Proud Boys and QAnon, according to online comments by Enrique Tarrio.  Here’s hoping it comes to blows because fuck both sides: each spreads dangerous disinformation and maintains persistent antisemitic tendencies.  They used to be close enough buddies to have collaborated at the Capitol on January 6th, but as that event fades into the past they seem to be going separate ways, even though Enrique Tarrio did publicly claim that he was Q, which would contradict the more popular theory that - at least to a partial degree - it was 8kun’s Ron Watkins .

One Proud Boy to the Pokey, One Proud Boy to the FCC

While the Wilmington, Ohio Proud Boy John Workman was arrested on April 15th for “inducing panic after bringing a firearm to his previous place of employment”, Gavin Wax, the New York Young Republican Club president and author of the 2018 column “We Are All Proud Boys Now” demonizing “Antifa” and the “leftist terrorist” strawman and defending Proud Boy founder Gavin McInnes, has landed a role in the Trump administration as chief of staff and advisor to Federal Communications Commissioner Nathan Simington.

START Again

I've been rereading the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland’s Profiles of Individual Radicalization in the United States, which states that “from 1990-2022, 170 individuals with United States military backgrounds plotted 144 unique mass casualty terrorist attacks in the United States. 3 These subjects represent approximately 25% of all individuals who plotted mass casualty extremist crimes during this period.”   In other words, having a military background is the strongest indicator of becoming a mass casualty offender.  Although this fits in as one more point for the examination of the role of extremism in the armed forces footnote of my piece, there's also a circular logic to the study: of course someone trained to use a weapon, to implement military strategy, and to plan and execute a mission would also make a more effective mass shooter, even though obviously most soldiers don’t become mass shooters.  What else would: a pro bowler?  The important point however is - according to the study - that military background is more distinguishing than mental health concerns, being part of an isolated clique, history as a lone offender, pre-radicalization criminal history or age.

Conspiracy Theories for the Wynn

Natalie Wynn’s CONSPIRACY episode of the always excellent ContraPoints discusses links between conspiracy theorists and populists, such as the January 6th Capitol storming by 10,000 self-described patriots “aiming to violently overturn the results of the 2020 election because of conspiracy theories spread by Trump”.  She points out how when former national security advisor Michael Flynn used the “Stop the Steal” conspiracy theory asking Trump to suspend the Constitution and declare martial law, these demands were “exactly the things conspiracy theorists have been worried about for decades, but when it actually happened in front of their eyes, they didn't notice because the conspiracy theory was the propaganda.”

Wynn explains the origins of Proud Boy fellow travellers QAnon, defining it succinctly as “an online messianic conspiracy cult whose core belief was that the world is ruled by a global elite of satanic sex trafficking cannibals from whom The Children would be saved by reality-TV-star-turned-President Donald Trump, whose sacred mission was to declare martial law, end the adrenochrome harvest, and purge the Deep State pedovore cabal in a wave of mass executions called "The Storm."  This he would accomplish with the help of military intelligence insiders known as Q, who only communicated with the public via cryptic messages on a seedy racist image board called eight 8Kun, operated by a father-son team of American pornographers out of a hog farm in the Philippines.”

Wynn also explains apophenia: “the tendency to perceive meaningful connections between unrelated things” suggesting that “our brains default to apophenia whenever we have no better methods of analysis,”  and “not only do we recognize patterns where there aren't any, but also our preconceived biases influence the type of patterns that we recognize.”  

I discussed apophenia in my last post, alluding how easy it is to get carried away when comparing narratives and symbolism.  The best countermeasures are humility and honesty; theories should be falsifiable and be expanded and corrected with new data.  I genuinely hope that my thesis - that both the Roman Mithraists and the Proud Boys are part of a shared cultural continuum which includes fascism - is incorrect, and would be greatly relieved if this were not the case.

Mad King MAGA

Donald Trump wiped out $10 trillion in wealth in 3 days.  He acts like a Mad King, with followers wearing golden lapel pins of his head, wanting to deport homegrown dissidents next, and despite an approval rating below 50% in every swing state he won in November he shows how the powerful write the rules.  It’s akin to the pirate's retort to Alexander the Great: “because I do it with a small boat, I am called a pirate and a thief, you with a great navy, molest the world and are called an emperor” and Karl Rove‘s reality-based community: “when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

As Bernie Sanders wrote: “It only took 100 days for you to convince Canadians that the far right has no place in government.  Americans will say the same in our next election.”  That of course assumes that there is a next election, but here's hoping.

1  I know this will sound pissy, but page 171 of their journal article misspells Kronos as Kornos. That’s not a Titan one should piss off given that his Holy Day was Saturn-Day (יום שבתאי), suggesting a parallel to a deity much-revered in contemporary monotheistic & henotheistic circles.