Another reminder of the ubiquity of heroism in our psychology is the archetypal “hero’s journey”. Joseph Campbell famously described heroic blueprints shared by disparate mythologies, recurring in folk sagas, novels and movies (directly inspiring George Lucas in the creation of Star Wars). This universal narrative involves leaving our safety zone, traveling to our inner depths, facing danger, conquering evil, and returning in a transformed state of being.
Hitler galvanized people—albeit around a stupid plan involving killing everyone on the way down to the Black Sea so as to fill the area with racially pure Germans who would go back to working as farmers, have lots of blond children and driving down a giant autobahn to Crimea to go on summer vacation in extremely repetitive concrete blocks by the beach. Regardless of the apparent stupidity and absurdity of the plan, which was only thinly disguised and was in actuality supported by many Germans, there was something there that modern life otherwise never offers us: an epic, heroic struggle with no irony, no distance, no second thought, no excuses made. What does it matter, then, if the aim itself is entirely preposterous?
Fascism was and remains a feverish boy room fantasy. But psychologically, for all its immature lies and manipulations, it honored the fact that a part of us is always susceptible to such a dreamy will for greatness. We cannot truly “grow out of it”; only deny it. The world is not enough.
As lack of meaning and lacking sense of strength and vitality take hold in many young men, and some women, in our days, they turn again to these themes. From their imprisoned anguish grows new streams of fascism. Some few join overtly fascist movements, others nationalist and radical-conservative ones and “Indo-European identitarianism”, and yet others find more innocent ways of reenacting aspects of these: pick-up artist “gaming” (social power games to get women), BDSM tantra workshops, violent porn, some of the authoritarian undercurrents of the men’s movement, anti-feminism, anti-modern anti-“decadent” art sentiments, variations of theories about “the fall of the West” and other ideas about cyclical civilizational patterns where you need to rescue “civilization” by becoming more manly (again, a theme shared with the proto- and pre-fascists at the turn of the 20th century, with Oswald Spengler and others).
Not all of these things are all bad or all fascist. The men’s movement and learning good dating skills particularly have potentials for creating productive results, and some aspects of these blend into political metamodernism. Viewed as a whole, these partly interrelated phenomena do however reflect the staying power of fascism and the masculine and boyish qualities it embodies. Most of it is relatively subtle and hidden from public view, but the psychological forces brewing are strong.
These tendencies work their way through the collective psyche and slowly prepare the ground for demands of a new “Revolution von rechts ”; the sentiment that decadence has gone too far grows, “the West” or “civilization” or “the phallic order” or “the logos” are in danger, and this “necessitates” some “decisive masculine action” to “save” your favorite unit of identification (the West, this or that country, etc.).
Ah, a new brotherhood of Greek hoplites, free-roaming muscular heroes, always preparing for war! The women want it too, the fascist mind murmurs; they only came up with their angry feminism because they’re subconsciously enraged with the too weakly and nerdy men of late modern society.
In short: Fascism stirs, sprung from cages—at a new and higher, more abstracted and yet more demonic level.
If you look at more overtly fascist thinkers such as representatives of the Nouvelle Droite , (the New Right) and more recently the Alt-Right (the Alternative Right), these enjoy the masculine anti-democratic qualities more unabashedly: bloggers, YouTubers and rightwing online media all base their ideas on Julius Evola’s esoteric fascism, Tomislav Sunić presents his theses in a book smugly titled Against Democracy and Equality (1990), and US Alt-Right leader Richard Spencer performs fiery speeches about ethno-nationalism. There’s that demonic quality again—it is shared to some extent by the online movement of the so-called “Dark Enlightenment” (a brand of anti-pomo anti-feminism mixed with different wild reactionary suggestions) and social media figures like Milo Yiannopoulos who criticize political correctness and leftwing “social justice warriors” and ridicule vegan “soy boys”. Then there are radicals such as the pseudonym Bronze Age Pervert, flaunting more overt fascism, mixed with a kind of extreme, ironic humor. And there is Curt Doolittle’s propertarianism, attracting many young men through the internet. There’s even a “meta-right”, whose members seem keen on learning from political metamodernism.
These wider tendencies create a vast network of strange bedfellows. Time and again, the different positions deny to be in league with each other but end up feeding the same underlying currents. Trump’s populism doesn’t like Richard Spencer’s Alt-Right, but the latter likes the former and claims to have influenced him. Jordan Peterson, the Jungian psychologist who calls himself a “classical liberal”, talks approvingly about posh brit Milo Yiannopoulos, who in turn loves Trump, who in turn was put in office with the help of Russian online troll factories, who spread anti-feminist ideas, which are recycled by the men’s movement and the loosely related BDSM tantra workshops (including some rather nasty sex cults, such as The New Tantra).
The Russian online trolls spread ideas about the fall of the West and the “Fourth Theory” ideas of Putin’s chief philosopher Aleksandr Dugin, who claims not to be fascist but is part of a Russian machinery that supports radical nationalist parties across Europe, the leaders of which read up on the power-grabbing theories of Carl Schmitt and others who inspired the 20th century fascists, and thus they gain edge on the conventional politicians who only do law, economics and boring conventional political science. I have been invited to such Kremlin-paid meetings myself (to unite “alternative” European politics).
In the US, the National Rifle Association is propped up by the Russian government and supports Trump, while arming a population of mostly white reactionary males who feel Western civilization is being lost. And Steven Bannon buys Facebook data and conspires with the company Cambridge Analytica to win the culture wars in a neo-conservative direction through targeted manipulations of public opinion.
Phew. Strange bedfellows, indeed.
I’m not saying all of these should be reduced to one another. Getting a good whipping at a BDSM retreat doesn’t make you a fascist, nor is Peterson a Trump fan (but would have voted for him), and Trump is not a Russian neo-fascist, etc. And not all of them are all wrong or crazy. The point is merely that the same underlying fascist impulse is there.
These are the dark tunnels beneath Metropolis Modernity that I was talking about. They all connect.
People who don’t know the fascist catacombs can sometimes end up in arguments about masculinity or being against politically correct intersectional feminism, or criticizing some aspects of Islam, and find a flattering and surprising surge of support and enthusiasm from people they normally wouldn’t associate with. Some of them understand they’re getting a little demonic boost from the underworld, but many remain genuinely naive to what’s going on. The atheist philosopher Sam Harris—who is a fierce critic of Islam—was earnestly surprised that so many of his followers were devoted Trump fans and vehemently resisted him when he sided with Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.
What, then, does any of this have to do with political metamodernism? Here it is: Political metamodernism shares a part of that same demonic quality, which comes from owning the unapologetic striving to take the hero’s journey .
This one goes out especially to all the nice guys out there who have had this inner split about Hanzi and metamodernism from the start. The nice guys (it’s usually men) get something dark in their eyes and they s
ay:
“You are saying all of these progressive, sensitive things about a ‘listening society’ and the value of hard inner work, but you keep acting slightly evil, and you keep talking about gaining power. There is a performative contradiction here: The theorists we are looking for should be calm, kind and wise—free from worldly desires and strivings—but you are presenting a sneaky and aloof persona. What you are saying is interesting and rings somewhat true; yet there is something lacking , perhaps not as much in your theories as in you, Hanzi, as a person. It makes me, the pensive idealistic guy, suspicious and it leaves me with a subtle uneasy sense that there is something… demonic going on. It seems you can reach higher truths than you quite should, and you seem to be too immature to use them responsibly; you seem to be using philosophical and spiritual insight for power. For my part, I will learn a thing or two from you, but then I will return to the safe, pure, goodhearted, simple and humble path for developing society.”
And I guess that right there is the ultimate litmus test for the metamodern mind. The metamodern mind sees that all nodes in the great weave of life long for power, for expansion, for fuller expression. And it sees that competition—just as love and trade—is an irremovable element of social reality itself.
So, hey there Nice Guy. Yes you. You know I am talking to you. Do you know who actually whispered the above words in your ear? It wasn’t your conscience, not your inner angel.
It was the green little devil, a sly smirk nudging his thin lips again. Your green little devil is prepared to use morality and claims of moral purity for the legitimization of your own will to power at the expense of others, and at the expense of truthfulness.
The reason you get this “dark ominous sense” when reading Hanzi isn’t that you’re good and I’m evil. That was what you believed, wasn’t it? It’s that I own my green little devil and have it tamed, but yours is sneaking about and lying to you and controlling you. Your conscience lied to you. You were caught by the devil’s lasso.
The dark ominous feeling you get when you see me prancing around is not a reflection of your kind, critical mind resisting the sell-out to power that I represent. It is a reflection of your own disowned green little devil, of your disowned will to power, and the resentment you feel when someone else expresses so clearly and straightforwardly what you have hidden away from view. You’re the sell-out, not me.
How do I know that? I know it simply because I understand that power and freedom are sisters; creation is power. So any time you want to change or create anything, you must have a will to power, and any time you make a power claim, there will be adversaries who have different ideas, ideals and interests, and thus you have to own up to that adversity and you have to try to win. And without a wish to change or create anything, you can have no morality; no wish to strive for the good. Hence: pure morality requires a pure will to power . Your denied will to power is immoral, and that’s what you feel reflected in yourself when you watch me unfold without apology.
You can wait around for another hundred years if you like—but Yoda isn’t coming. There won’t be another “pure” path of only kindness and wisdom under a pure and kind teacher and leader. And no, you won’t become that person yourself when you’re older. That’s your green little devil talking: your disowned longing for greatness. There isn’t a pure path in which you don’t have to relate to the demonic quality of creation and change. Moral purity, calm wisdom, humility—that’s the lie, that’s “the liberal innocent”.
And here’s the bottom line: Your green little devil is transpersonally connected to mine, just as your mind is to mine. We are all nodes in the great web of life; and life pulsates with the will to power. All life literally eats its way through other flows of matter and energy. All events feed on entropy; on decay. A human body consists of organic matter under violent control: killed, chewed, swallowed, digested, broken down and reorganized. This is an indisputable physical fact. Power is transpersonal because all creation is co-creation , and all emergence is relational—and power, ultimately, is the will and capacity to freely create; it is the will of potentials to emerge as actualities.
And herein lies, of course, the deep connection between fascism and Nietzsche’s philosophy. Naturally, Nietzsche was misread and misinterpreted in the crude and anti-intellectual times that followed his death, but this fundamental impulse remains true: an unapologetic affirmation of the will to power, the striving to get past any obstacles of fear, shame, guilt and Sklavenmoral , and to freely express our highest inner expressions: the Übermensch .
Here’s my suggestion—how about we stop trying to exorcise one another’s “egos” and “shadows”, and instead own up to the creative sparks we all share; and then play together as mutually empowering and beautifully imperfect co-creators, to write new values on new tablets?
When you run around trying to reveal, tear down and (let’s admit it) punish the egos and wills to power of others, are you really acting with the purity of intent you’re telling yourself? How many times have you found yourself saying things behind the backs of others, things where you make unqualified psychoanalytical guesses about their dark hidden motives? Do you really think that stuff is coming from a place of moral concern and the purity of your soul? Spanish Inquisition, anyone? Nobody expects it, but it always shows up. The inquisitor always wears a mask, and beneath the mask is—again—the green little devil, your disowned will to power.
Nice Guy. Stop being a hypocritical inquisitor or witch-hunter and admit that you want shitloads of delicious power—and then be kind to people.
We should all try our best to be kindhearted. But there is also Sklavenmoral disguised as niceness, and that’s a problem.
Unapologetically in love with power—and uncompromisingly idealistic. Both and. Right there is an equilibrium from which we can build a very profound sense of interpersonal, or transpersonal, trust. And that’s the space from which metamodern politics can emerge—from the trust that you will use your power kindly and I will use mine kindly, for mutual benefit and mutual goals; in a network of shared will to transpersonal power.
And here is the really cool part. Listen now.
Once you admit you want shitloads of delicious power, that you crave pure co-creation , and you see and accept that same will in all other creatures—a profound sense of equality descends upon your soul; I guess you could say “equanimity” as we mentioned earlier.
At the heart of the will to power rests the most radical egalitarianism and universalism. This is what allows us, among other things, to study stages of adult development in a truly non-judgmental, accepting and non -competitive manner. The competitive element of life becomes purified and falls in its proper place—eternally balanced by love and exchange, solidarity and trade; God doesn’t love one more than another.
So what if Hanzi has come farther than you in terms of philosophical insight, so what if I contain your perspective but you couldn’t have contained or recreated mine? It doesn’t matter; more fundamentally, we are still equals, and in other aspects you are my superior. There’s nothing to it; it just is what it is. Radical egalitarianism. We are all chosen, all sublime, all exquisitely precious.
Seriously, try it. Embrace your inner princely darkness. The green little devil stops whispering at the outer rims of your mind; it goes quiet. Your moral outrage ceases to murmur. Silence is there. And with silence comes clarity. And with clarity comes a more sustainable and authentic goodwill and kindness.
You recognize the simple truth that everybody is just super-vulnerable and utterly pathetic—yes, Hanzi too—and that the dynamics of everyday life force us to pretend to have dignity and to try to look like we know what we’re doing, and that’s why we want power. That’s why you want power, too. We’ll just admit the whole thing, no more obfuscation. From there on we can play together in sincere irony and informed naivety.
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nbsp; The metamodern perspective uses its capacity for perspective taking, its existential insights, and its idealism, to gain power. That’s its demonic quality, and that’s why there must always be a dark and dangerous element to any form of political metamodernism—a Machiavellian element. You cannot get rid of it by “getting over your ego”; you must stay with it, and balance it, and make it transparent and shared. It must always remain dangerous. Energy is movement, and movement is dangerous; all becoming is also destruction. Entropy.
This is where fascism informs political metamodernism; this is the glory of fascism—it honors the will to power, to superiority, to what Socrates called megalothymia . It’s that principle within us that wants more, to be viewed and recognized not only as an equal member of society, but as a majestic and awe-inspiring being. That’s the truth even about Dalai Lama, Eckhart Tolle and Yoda. And centuries of denial and meditation will never efface it: to want anything, is to want power.
Look at your demon. Dance with the devil, lest he’ll make you his bitch.
Grab his fucking gem; it shines not only with an owned-up-to will to power that connects you to the will to power of all others, and thus to the non-local emergence of the universe; it shines with the pristine love of all perspectives.
Fascism lets you play the hero. It honors the principle of megalothymia. Democratic capitalism not so much; you deny your heroism and that of others. Political metamodernism lets you play the hero again, owning that part of yourself and others, just with ironic distance. It’s like grounding an electrical wire. And once that is done, we are free to travel these tunnels without being electrocuted, to think in terms of “political theology” (the discipline that studies the dynamics of how small, determined groups can seize power and constitute themselves as sovereign).
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