Might Is Right

by Ragnar Redbeard

  Society may be defined as an agglomeration of carnivorous and herbivorous animals, seeking their natural prey and browsing along on whatever nutriment they pick-up. It is nothing more than a ‘herd’ of two legged cattle and there’s nothing supernaturally divine about a herd. Indeed the word herd always suggests Gadara. Human swarms have been integrated and disintegrated ten thousand times ten thousand by the centrifugal and centripetal energy of individuals.

  Societies have risen and Societies have fallen; but man, the Unit — the germ-plasm — persists; with the rising of the sun, and the fall of the tides. Man is not only the ‘clay,’ but also the ‘potter’ — the paramount determinant. His fate is in his own hands absolutely, within the length of his tether.

  “To the Strong all laws are cobwebs” (Solon) and when Society becomes irksome to the Strong they may dissolve it; nay it is their positive duty to dissolve it; otherwise it becomes their master and consequently their enemy and oppressor. “Society in danger” therefore is merely the hysteria of the megalomaniac.

  Society (in some shape) must exist, as long as there are two human beings left alive; for companionship is as natural to the homo, as swarming is to the bee. When however the word “Society” develops into a synonym for socialistic restraint, then it becomes a menace to the Evolution of the Type and ought to be broken up accordingly — without over much ceremony. Friendship is necessary and ennobling, but impersonal despotism is destructive of all dignity and manly virtue.

  The real danger is, that innocent and natural combinations for mutual pleasure, comradeship, profit, and defence, may transform themselves gradually into organized majority-box tyrannies — enslaving institutionalisms of the most dictatorial and obnoxious character. When Society is thus transfigured into a vast blackmailing corporation the lives and property of its component units are absolutely at its mercy, and it therefore ought to be disintegrated, consciously, deliberately, pitilessly, and at whatever cost. Freedom cannot be bought too dear, for life without liberty is pandemonium.

  Government and Society are two distinct entities, and care must be taken not to confound them. Society is the growth of mutual tolerance, friendship, and physical obligation; but ‘government’ arises from physical force applied by the Strong to the control and exploitation of vanquished foes. The sanction of government, is the same that holds good throughout the whole zoological and heliocentric scale — the sanction of material might. That ‘sanction’ should always be under test; because the most abject weakling may brandish a sword; but we do not know he is a weakling until another sword in the grip of a Man is pointed at his throat.

  Beowolf, a Saxon song-master, apostrophising “the Sword,” voices this primeval Organon as it was instinctively understood by our ancestors.

  “The war-thing! the comrade! father of honor, and giver of kingship! the fame-smith! — the songmaster! Clear singing! clean slicing! sweet spoken! soft finishing! making death beautiful — life but a coin — to be staked in the pastime; whose playing is more than transfer of being. Arch-anarch! chief builder! prince and evangelist! I am the will of God! I am the sword!”

  It is only in ages saturated in atmospheres of brain-wrecking artificialism — in consumptive communities steeped to the very lips in elemental error — that senile, degrading, anthropomorphic myths and manias are substituted for hard, bitter Common-Sense. (All great truths are “hard” and “bitter,” but Lies, to the morbidly inclined, are sweeter than wild honey.)

  One by one we abandon Realisms — to follow fata morganas. We are mortgaging our destiny to the Pawnbrokers of Decadence. Behold! — the legerdemain of the Orient demonetizes the Manhood of the West!

  We fight like women, and feel as much,

  The thoughts of our heart we guard —

  Where scarcely the scorn of a god could touch,

  The sneer of a fool hits hard,

  The treacherous tongue and the cowardly pen,

  The weapons of curs decide —

  They faced each other and fought like men;

  In the days when the world was wide.”[21]

  And yet the world is beautiful — as beautiful as a blushing maiden dreaming of her first lover. “Fair laughs the morn and soft the breezes blow” and men only await Captaining to — capture and possess.

  MANHOOD IS DEMONETIZED

  This little pamphlet has been issued not for private profit, but to assist in uprooting the alien and pernicious Ideals that have been for long centuries corrupting the blood and corroding the brain of Europe and America. Conventional moral dogmas and political standards-of-value are, like wooden idols, the work of men’s hands. They have no real basis in nature nor have they any supernatural sanction. Every one of them has been carved out of a wormeaten lie, a brazen assumption or a madman’s dream. They are impositions most insolent. Why should we bow down even in formal adulation before imbecile and unnatural principles invented thousands of years ago for the enslavement of oriental decadents? Have we not given lip-service long enough to false heroisms, and fool evangels? Why feign the possession of slave virtues?

  Why continue to glorify untruths that we know to be untruths? Why should men of sterling worth obey any other man’s ‘thou shalt’?

  Let us return to Nature for our moral standards!

  Let us search our own hearts and brains for the true meaning of Right and Wrong.

  We are living and dying (mostly dying) in a poisonous environment of deep seated moral dementia, social disease and political illusions.

  The ‘Righteous and the Just’! hypocrites! deceivers! Enemies of all that is noble, courageous and manly!

  Destroyers of self-assertiveness! Annihilators of heroism! Would that I had a legion of demons to wring their necks.

  A crucified Jew slave (terrorized under Authority) is set up as a god, as a standard of measurement for all mankind. That is why personal valor and nobility of thought are at such a tremendous discount.

  Christendom is in bondage! Manhood is demonetized! Our race is betrayed!

  CHAPTER VI: LOVE, AND WOMEN, AND WAR

  The best fighters are the best race-producers. This is the verdict of Biology and the instinctive belief of the whole Feminine world in general.

  In the molding of Organic Nature into all its diverse forms, Love and War (with their attendant penalties and correlated consequences) are the two most potent factors. Battle is the furnace-alembic that has been consciously provided for chemically separating the animate Refuse from the Gold. Sexual desire is the amalgam that thereafter unites the golden particles, perpetuating for ages and ages the selected qualities — of physical beauty, vigor, bravery, endurance — or vice-versa. “I am convinced (writes Darwin) that natural selection has been the main, but not the exclusive means of modification.”

  The same thought has been gemmed in a more sentimental but equally suggestive setting, by Dryden: —

  “Happy, happy, happy pair,

  None but the brave,

  None but the brave,

  None but the brave deserve the fair.”

  Heraclitus condensed it into the terser dictum ‘strife is the parent of things.’ Even Solomon (the hoary old kingling) chanted it in characteristic Oriental strophes: “Love is stronger than death, the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the flood drown it — jealousy is as cruel as the grave .”

  Fighting is the method whereby the most fitted to propagate conclusively prove the fact. Animals, plants, birds, reptiles, and fishes, all exist in surroundings of unending sex-rivalry and warfare — so do men. Organic life is one ceaseless round of Love and War. Sexualism and slaughter go hand in hand.

  Bacteria butchers bacteria — germ wars with germ — shark eats the shark — tigers struggle with tigers — the lion rends lion — eagle kills eagle, and man fights man, for the favor of the female — or the plunder of the vanquished. “Peace on earth and mercy mild” is mere lunacy-babblement. Even sheep the most
“Christly” of animals wage tremendous duels — in due season.

  There is no other earthly passion so fiercely, savagely, egotistic, as sexual desire and it is the physical basis of all human “Love” — even the most ethereal and romantic. Everywhere ‘the season of love, is the season of battle,’ and when the fires of sexualism burn low in nations or men, they are as unfit for freedom, as they are unfit to reproduce their kind.

  Topinard explains how sexualism operates among Vertebrates of the deep: “The male Artocephali (sea-bear) arrive at the Falkland Islands in November, and scatter out along the beach. In December the females arrive, and immediately violent battles are being fought in all directions for their possession. Family life follows exactly as among humans. If the females behave badly, the male chastises them: they crouch as his feet, seem to beg his pardon, and shed copious tears. At times the male and female weep together.”

  A geographer and naturalist of world-repute (A. R. Wallace) proclaims a series of similar facts — facts that are not new to observant minds: —

  “Among the higher animals it is a very general fact, that the males fight together for the possession of the females. This leads…to the stronger or better armed males, becoming the parents of the next generation, which inherits the peculiarities of the parents; and thus vigor and offensive weapons are continually increased in the males, resulting in the strength and horns of the bull, the tusks and shield of the boar, the antlers and fleetness of the stag, and the spurs and fighting instinct of the gamecock. But almost all male animals fight together, though not specially armed; even hares, moles, squirrels, and beavers, fight to the death. The same rule applies to all male birds. From this very general phenomenon, there necessarily results a form of natural selection, which increases the vigor and fighting power of the male animal; the weaker being either killed, wounded, or — driven away.” — as among men.

  In his “Descent of man,” (page 564), Darwin makes a similar general statement: — “With social animals, the young males have to pass through many a contest, before they win a female, and the older males have to retain their females by renewed battles. They have also, as in the case of mankind, to defend their females, as well as their young, from enemies of all kinds, and to hunt for their joint subsistence.”

  Among the Vertebrates, the king of the herd (or pack), selects himself by his battle-prowess — upon the same “general principles” that induced Napoleon to place the Iron Crown upon his own brow — with his own hand. All the Regal Houses of the world have been founded by fighting-men, and upheld by — fighting-men; just as in the “brute” creation. The chief recommendation to both animal and human Chieftainship, is fighting capacity. The “common herd” instinctively feels that a good fighter possesses all the requisite virtues of good leadership, and leadership is exactly what they want. By conquest alone can an animal-king be deposed; and his vanquisher is always his successor. As long as his sight, hearing, strength, and courage endures, he is absolute lord, judge, procreator-in-chief — but not one moment longer. ‘The king’s dead, long live the king’ is a biological affirmative.

  This is the Natural Order. The un-natural order is to appoint feeble but eloquent rhetoricians as Chief Magistrates (or constitutional kinglings). This latter plan is adopted only by human swarms in eras of senility and wholesale decadence.

  Politicians are everlastingly “fighting each other (if we believe the sensational headlines of our editorial Daily Liar) but that kind of warfare is a sham intended to deceive. No real “fight” ever takes place between them. What they call ‘fighting’ is gambling with “Ayes” and “Nays;” playing pitch-and-toss for the booty other men win and the harvests other men garner. Hark! do you hear them frothing at the mouth, loudly professing their “divine enthusiasm for Humanity.” For what? In order that they (squalid scoundrels that they are) may sit on the seats of the mighty and steer the nation down to hell while putting money in their purses with taxes and blackmail. Nations have always risen to their highest pitch of fame and prosperity under the guidance of mighty men of valor, self selected: and they’ve sank to the lowest depths of degradation and dishonor under the diabolical domination of elective rhetoricians. (Their ravages are not so obtrusive in America as in Europe, because territory here has been so vast — practically limitless).

  2

  Women instinctively admire soldiers, athletes, king’s nobles, and fighting-men generally, above all other kinds of suitors — and rightly so.

  Nothing so lowers a lover in a virile maiden’s estimation, than for him to be “whipped” in a personal encounter with a rival. Among all classes of females this sentiment persists. The best bid a man can make for the admiration of any woman (even the most pious) is a display of undaunted physical prowess.

  Young women have an instinctive detestation for the “good young man that died” kind of adorer, and they positively abhor the pale coward — even though he be a blood relation. Strength, energy-of-character, ferocity, and courage, she admires in her possible husband, above all other qualities combined. Even to be carried-off by force is not repugnant to her feelings, if the “bold bad man” is in other respects acceptable.

  She pines to be ‘wooed and won’ (or as it were) she likes to feel that she has been mastered, conquered, taken possession of — that the man who has stormed her heart is in all respects, a man among men. This suggestive female idiosyncrasy is rhythmically set forth by an anonymous writer thus: — “Down a winding pathway in a garden old, tripped a beauteous maiden, but her heart was cold. Came a prince to woo her, said he loved her true; maiden said he didn’t, so he ceased to woo. Came a perfumed noble — dropping on one knee; said his love was deeper, than the deepest sea. But the winsome maiden, said his love was dead, and the perfumed noble, accepted what she said. Came a dashing Stranger, took her off by force: said he’d make her love him, and she did — of course.”

  Conquersome personalities by obtaining possession of the best and handsomest females raise up as a rule, conquersome descendents. Hence the origin of Great Races. Second-class males are driven by necessity to mate with second-class females; and in strict sequence third-class males select partners from feminine remainders. (Hence the stereotyped nature of servile Castes).

  Superior males take racially superior women, and inferior males are permitted to duplicate themselves, per media of inferior feminines. Each class reproduces its kind (on average) and if the ordained struggle for earth’s Good-Things is not artificially interfered with, the leading classes are periodically called upon to maintain their pre-eminence at every turn, by Might or be swept away, enslaved, supplanted, expropriated by the braver and bolder Animals.

  Aristocracies have always originated in War. Sham ones grow up (like mushrooms) in times of peace. No “Aristocracy” ought to be allowed to dominate one moment longer, than it is unable to maintain itself, by the edge of the Sword. Again, subordinated classes should not permit themselves to be mastered by Usurpers who cannot fight. It is the Natural Order for first-class men to dominate second-class men and for second-class men to dominate third-class men — but the classes are self-selective; by conflict. Someday inferior breeds will be remorselessly exterminated, as useless and noxious vermin. Behold! I judge the future by the evolutionism of the past.

  Women congregate at athletic sports and gladiatorial contests; impelled by the same universal instinct that induces the lioness to stand expectantly by, while two or more rival males are ripping each other to pieces in a rough-and-tumble — for her possession. The lioness submits, as a matter of choice, to the embraces of the Victor; and in the most fashionable society, the stalwart footballer or the dashing soldier, has practically unlimited selective powers, among the marriageable maidens of his own particular set.

  No nation, no empire, has ever fallen — no race has ever been enslaved, because it delighted in manly sports — in the hunting of boars and lions, and men — in deadly tournaments — in dueling — in prize fighting — in gladiatorial c
ombats — in scenes of “cruelty and blood.” No! not one! (Nature is cruel — a million times more cruel than man ever was). But dozens of ‘civilizations’ have perished shamefully, ignominiously, because of the spreading canker of personal cowardice — gendered by effeminacy, luxury, usury, laboriousness, statecraft, superstition, ‘culture,’ and peace.

  Want of daring — enfeeblement of physique — meanness of mind — fear of danger and dread of death (sure signs of racial deterioration) have never originated with athletic tournaments, nor wars of conquest, nor gladiatorial games. When Clericalism abolished the ‘holmgang,’ the pride of Norland silently waned away: when it abolished the Olympian games Greece rotted into decay; and when it banned gladiatorial contests the Eternal City “had its day.”

  Bull-dog virtues are bound to triumph in the long run and they can only be developed (if developed at all) by daily practice from youth up. Hence the necessity of ‘brutal’ football — ‘brutal’ warfare — ‘brutal’ personal encounters — ‘brutal’ thoughts and ‘brutal’ combinations. (The word ‘brutal’ is written here because it is popularly misunderstood and used as a missile.) The ‘brutal’ races have always been victorious races — the greatest men have always been supremely ‘brutal.’ (Alexander, Sesostris, Cæsar, Titus, Nero, Bonaparte, Cromwell, Grant, Bismarck, Cecil Rhodes.)

  The word ‘brutal’ in real life means the reverse of effeminate. A man is brutal who will not turn the other cheek. What is it that “brutes” do that in nature, is wrong?

  Emerson perceived this pivotal anachronism clearly when he declared: Nature is erect, but man is fallen.’ Christlings are forever using the word ‘brutal’ to terrorize each other but who are they anyhow? Are they not the scum, the dross, and offscourings, and creeping things, of the Aryan migrations — mere shrieking, blubbering, fulminating dwindlings of the very lowest intellectual development? Let Emerson again be put on the witness stand. He may be considered fairly impartial. Hear what he has to say: —