Peak Fascism
Hitler the brain-mole looks out of my eyes
Goering boils ingots of gold in my bowels - Leonard Cohen
You can find Nazis in the most unexpected places, and without looking too hard for them. In your own head and belly, for instance, as Leonard Cohen evoked in his early poem, Hitler the brain-mole ("My Adam's Apple bulges with the whole head of Goebbels"). They'll catch you unaware, if you're on the look out only for the corrupted Swastika, the black leather greatcoats and the twin lightning bolts of the SS. Because Nazis have another face.
They are also, like every advocate of extremism, idealists. And a significant portion of Nazi idealism is devoted to back-to-the-land fantasies and a return to folkish custom. A contemporary example is Satanic fascist Stephen Cox's "Arktion Federation" and his "Jarls of Baelder," which we discussed here.
This from the description of Cox's "awakening":
His simple, disciplined yet healthy and loving upbringing, together with the long childhood walks with his parents, and heroic, traditional and and [sic] adventurous games with neighbourhood friends in the farms, meadows and woods of the Cotswold hills of Gloucestershire and the [sic] also of the Somerset coast gave him the foundation for his intense love of landscape and Nature. This led him in time to a firm conviction born of experience, practice and historical perspective that if homo sapiens is [sic] to survive and evolve and in time become "god-like" then he must strive to now make himself a true husbandmann [sic] of his planet and a steadfast guardian and defender and friend of all creatures, animals, flora and fauna.
Mother Nature and wondrouis [sic] diversity of landscapes of regions of what her [sic] calls "Starship Earth" might be said to be be his first and primal teacher: and those few people who had an influence on him as a boy and youth have likewise had a deep love and dynamic relationship with Her.
This is idealized eco-fascism. It's conservation of a sort, and the sort is devoted to Nazi mythology. It can be a seductive mix to those who see the Earth's peril, but don't see the will to do something about it. Noam Chomsky thinks so. He's already been seduced by it:
Suppose it was discovered tomorrow that the greenhouse effects has been way understimated, and that the catastrophic effects are actually going to set in 10 years from now, and not 100 years from now or something.
Well, given the state of the popular movements we have today, we'd probably have a fascist takeover - with everybody agreeing to it, because that would be the only method for survival that anyone could think of. I'd even agree to it, because there's just no other alternatives right now.
Compounding the crisis, and further justifying a fascist takeover - you know, the one that's already happened - is Peak Oil. This isn't the place to argue the reality or fiction of the peak oil event. I've written elsewhere that I consider it to be both. The world will run out of petroleum and natural gas, and the masses will be denied cheap energy. Yet the exotic alternative of anti-gravitic propulsion apparently already exists, deep in the black budget of Defense establishments, and does not appear to intended for the benefit of the bulk of humanity, at least as presently constituted. But that's beside the point of this post, which is Richard Heinberg's brain-mole.
There's a fascinating thread on the RI discussion board - and all credit to "proldic" for launching it and to "veritas" for running with it - detailing how the author of The Party's Over and PowerDown is, at the very least, leaving himself open to infection by idealized fascism and Nazi mythology.
For instance, Heinberg approvingly quotes Virginia Abernathy, a Vanderbilt professor, proponent of eugenics and self-avowed "separationist." ("I would say that like many other people in most ethnic groups, I like to be with my own kind. So it would be accurate to say of me and many others, that I?m a separatist.") Heinberg says that America's Left academics are generally avoiding "ecological politics, a politics of reality." Abernathy, however, is someone who is "aware of the issues" as Heinberg understands them.
It gets weirder, and goes deeper.
In his essay "Back to Paradise," published in New Dawn, Heinberg writes about the myths of a lost Golden Age - about Tibet's legendary Shambhala, which obsessed Himmler's Ahnenerbe. (The Nazis sponsored a dozen expeditions to Tibet in attempts to uncover and exploit its occultic lore.) Veritas quotes Gerry Forster on the power and meaning of the myths of Shambhala:
From some of the accounts available, Shambhala appears to have been a centre of spiritual enlightenment, very reminiscent of James Hilton?s ?Shangri-La?, but others say that it was a centre of occult power and arcane teaching. Its leader was thought variously to be either an evil, tyrannical Sorcerer-King or a God-like ?Lord of The World?. We seem to be left with a choice as to which story we prefer to follow, and evidently which Path one desires to follow, too. The evil Left, or the good Right!
Apparently there were two factions (as in Hyperborea), one of which followed the Golden Sun, and the other the Black Sun. (The ?Black Sun?, incidentally, was as prominent an emblem of the Nazi mythos as was the Swastika!) According to Jean-Claude Frére, author of ?Nazisme et Sociétiés Secretès?, the people of Hyperborea, after migrating to the Gobi Desert over 6000 years ago, founded a new centre, which they named Agartha. It became a great centre of world learning, and people flocked there from all over the world to enjoy its culture and civilization.
However, a huge catastrophe supervened, and the earth?s surface was devastated, but the realm of Agartha somehow survived, under the earth. The legend continues to relate that, as with the original Hyperboreans, the Aryans now split into two factions: one group heading north-west, hoping to return to their lost Hyperborea, and the second going south, where they founded a new secret centre under the Himalayas.
Jean-Claude Frére concludes: The sons of the Outer Intellegences split into two groups, one following the ?Right Hand Path? under the ?Wheel of The Golden Sun?, the other the ?Left Hand Path? under the ?Wheel of the Black Sun?. The first preserved the centre of Agartha, that undefined place of contemplation, of the Good, and of the Vril force. The second supposedly created a new place of initiation at Shambhala, the city of violence in command of the elements and human masses, hastening the arrival of the ?charnel-house of time.?
One devoted reader of New Dawn is Alexander Dugin, a Russian political theorist who calls it "one of the best sources of realistic information on the state of things in our world." Heinberg writes that Dugin is a thinker whose "ideas cannot help but resonate" in Russia.
Dugin's ideas spring from a mythos of occult Nazism:
Who we are, actually? Whose threatening face is appearing clearer day by day behind the paradoxical radical political current with the frightening name "national-bolshevism"?
The mankind has always had two types of spirituality, two paths ? "Right Hand Path" and "Left Hand Path". The first one is characterized by the positive attitude to the surrounding world; the world is seen as harmony, equilibrium, good, peace.... The second path, the "Left Hand Path", sees all in an inverted perspective. Not dairy tranquility, but black suffering; not silent calm, but torturous, fiery drama of splitted life. This is "A Path of Wine". It is destructive, terrible, anger and violence reigns there. For the one who is going by this path all reality is perceived as hell, as the ontological exile, as torture, as immersion into the heart of some inconceivable catastrophe originating from the heights of space. If in the first path everything seems as good, in the second ? as evil. This path is monstrously difficult, but only this path is true. It is easy to stumble on it, and it is even easier to parish. It guarantees nothing. It tempts nobody. But only this path is the true one. Who follows it ? will find glory and immortality. Who will withstand ? will conquer, will receive the award, which is higher than life.
The one going by the "Left Hand Path" knows, that one day the imprisonment will be over. The prison of substance will collapse, having transformed into a celestial city. The chain of the initiated passionately prepares a desired moment, the moment of the End, triumph of total liberation.
You'll find more examples on the thread. Veritas's summation:
Can you not see? Richard preaches the end of the West. Richard praises Eurasianism. Richard praises Dugin. Richard speaks of mythical land of the Golden Age in the North. Shambala. Hyperborea. Thule. Why is this hard? Why is this not clear?
Eurasianism is rightwing nationalist movement based on myth of an Aryan Golden Age. Thule. Hyperborea. Shambala. Richard writes for New Dawn Magazine. Many articles for them. He links to them. He is not ASHAMED. It is not an ACCIDENT.
Richard writes of the decline of the West because he desires it. It is time for the Eurasian ascension.
Apocalypse is his Messiah.
Heinberg has influence, but he's just a prophet of his Messiah; he can't hasten its advent. But co-religionists like Maurice Strong are in position to do more than rend their garments.