Now this new liberalism, this new blood-libel is harsher, and harder to escape than bigotry. Slavs shall never be respected—but we don’t actually want your respect if it amounts to clearing way of your past. Do you doubt us as men? Do you think we, who suffer a few ethnic cleansings, a few times each five decades, are that weak? We, who could have committed genocide on the Germans after the Great Patriotic War and be fully justified by this warped logic, extolling to the world our own suffering?
Yet greatness is found in a wound that heals, and sickness in a wound that festers if it is constantly picked. And so we have almost forgotten Germans and Germany and don’t really care about it, only as a place we go to do labor. And if it is moaning and grumbling, it doesn’t reach the law, doesn’t alter society, and doesn’t make me less eager to read Fichte. We would regard it as our own sickness. Yet you regard it as your own progress—as such you are becoming much more similar to commissars and inquisitors than are comfortable to think, but then you ban this discussion telling people it will lead to “consequences.” Well, consequences they may be, and death they may be, and even ethnic cleansing they may be, but what they are not is your sole and absolute jurisdiction, even if you claim you are doing it for the good of all of us.
And so, I remind the reader once more of Milton, and these following words:
Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather; that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary. That virtue therefore which is but a youngling in the contemplation of evil, and knows not the utmost that vice promises to her followers, and rejects it, is but a blank virtue, not a pure; her whiteness is but an excremental whiteness.
Therefore we converse of blank virtues, of non-virtues. But of the harm that may result of such blank kindness we must speak now, not only for our liberals, but also for our conservatives and every thinking man. First, it is feared that the excesses of ethnic slurs in print, in speech, in behavior, shall lead to more, and therefore escalate to a point of open war. However, I claim that only when people are honest to hate can they love, and only when they are forced to love when there is hate do they viciously lash out. Certainly, Eastern Europe is full of ethnic curses but is also filled with a kind of divine compassion rarely found anywhere else, a complete and total self-sacrifice for your brother, your fellow man, that still partially endures and it is precisely in the wicked sometimes where it is most manifested. For the wicked are mere fools, their idiocy is of a lesser rank—but their spirit can be uplifted and it is never through secular acolytes of this or that fashion like Marxism-Leninism, scientific atheism, or even national chest-thumping, but through communalism, that is to say the ease of others to tolerate their stupidity until they are forced to either go upwards or downwards, to full men or half-men. And Yugoslavia was such a nation where everyone was forced, by law, by decree, to love each other—and it exploded in war, because the son inherits the sins of the father, and also because the types of teachers they got were completely wrong for the occasion. AS they are now.
And in order for everyone to love each other, many people had to be removed. First it was the collaborationists, then it was the royalists, then it was the Marxist-Leninists, then it was large peasants, then it was industry moguls, then it was print, and school, and any other organization where the people were in fact too free, so free it might jeopardize the reality of society. These are precisely the consequences the modern liberals fear, fears justified, but consequences often surpassing even a filthy, vulgar debate of idiots. For these causes, and not for tyranny, was OZNA with the famous saying of “OZNA sve dozna”—OZNA hears everything. The same with ÁVH, Stasi, KGB, and so on. This infection then must conceal hatreds only inflaming them, prolonging them, and making them a permanent obsession as it occurred in Eastern Europe. For the law DID concern itself with trifles and the result was tragic.
But on the other side of that infection which is from political controversies concerning equality is the notion that it is better to shun all literature, all topics of difficult subjects since they will naturally lead over time directly to despotism or ethnic bigotry: and yet such matters must not be our only measurement of a worth of society. Certainly, a non-Muslim can never have the same rights as a Muslim in the Arabic world, but this doesn’t make it any less reputable, nor does it make the whole of Islamic jurisprudence a priori immoral or invalid. However, these matters are simply a degree of differentiation between a believer and a non-believer, a member of the “ummah,” the Islamic community itself, and allowing a non-believer into the ummah would in fact abolish the community itself, in the same way if we seek to assist women and start letting men in on the notion that it is not egalitarian we would be defeating the original purpose. There is however, shaʻb, which is a nation, an ethnic community that can be different from the ummah but still coexist. Neither sides have to be equal, yet they are, because their equality is not mere credentialism, mere legalism, but communalism, the Nomocanon of their society.
Seeing, therefore, that there are degrees of differentiation which are all under communality, following into the jurisdictional spirit of the communal, instead of merely the individual, we must also admit that the communal spirit also seeks to cleanse itself of unnecessary burden: however, under no circumstances should we lead ourselves in blind faith that to banish an individual from a community is to solve the problem. For the individuals banished from a community shall naturally come to a kind of a Nomocanon of their own, a kind of a learned, shared comprehension of themselves. This hardens the hearts, producing completely the different outcome than intended—if some English adolescent is publishing nonsense online about Slavs, Jews, Africans, etc., the first invocation of the law is the communal setting of his background, his family, his friends, his heritage, his decency, or to excuse it under his youth, not to invoke the law, for if the law is invoked, what was a young idiot will become an adult revolutionary. The only way, I believe it possible, to reintroduce people to society is to invoke the community. But if a man is to be held responsible for the naivety of his youth, or the sudden outburst of rage, of the inability to reason with a chaotic world that frightens him, then certainly it was philosophers first that failed him not otherwise for the duty of the philosopher is to uplift and of the student to be uplifted. And we have reached such a strange state of affairs that philosophers are uplifted by invoking condemnation of foreigners on their kin, and the more they prove they are impartial to their blood and race, the more philosophical they are. This strange argument might as well imply that a lesser nation should invade a larger one, knowing its biggest defendants shall be the thinkers of the opposing nation. And in legal terms, it leads to many nations not even having control of their own borders, who goes in and out, which naturally burdens the entire State with expenses, leads to strife, crime, hatred, etc.
It is alleged next that we must not expose the youth to propaganda without supervision, and even go so far as to supervise ourselves to an extreme measure of caution. To both objections, I respond that the youths today recognizes even liberal propaganda as such and mock it openly which is then regarded as bigotry instead of impressionable youths mocking sacred cows as they often do, and second that this introduces a kind of paranoia into society which reduces society in general to ethnic, cultural, political alliances of constantly shifting realities so fast that a man which was yesterday an ally is today a vicious foe, even more so since the differentiation in belief could be rather small. So, we see in the name of defense of minorities, of battles against intolerance an absolute destruction of communal nature of society so that either someone’s particular quality can rise, or of some minority’s communal quality. This frustrates and annoys the common man of any society, who is now simultaneously a despot in theory, and a foe in practice, a foe that must be defeated through voting, education, until it reaches the natural state of subjugated brainwashing, as we see is already beginning to occur in the United States.
It was the notion I began with that excessive individual liberties and their protection goes into clientelism, which has none of the good qualities such as great public works of art and endowments, protection of the poor, the abandoned, but only the bad ones, the nepotism, the differentiation between the high and low, the mockery of the client towards the average citizen. In Eastern Europe, clientelism is political in a much tamer sense—mere corruption of bribes and sinecures. However, in England, the clientelism is becoming the law of the law under various shiny displays of diversity, multiculturalism, tolerance, democracy, etc., etc., etc. It is not the law of the land—since nobody asked for it and there was no plebiscite—but the law OF the law, the possible moral intent of the law itself. So even if the law is good, is proper and measured, society is losing access to freedom. Because the law of the law is a different beast than before.
As such, we come to an absurd conclusion that a foreigner interested in English culture is by reading Thomas Carlyle perhaps a racist or even an English cultural supremacist, that by reading H.P. Lovecraft he is collaborating with the sins of an American dead for a century. If we think to regulate thought itself then, we must regulate all personal pleasures as well and we must fully admit the accusations levied at us—that we are prejudiced, bigoted, etc.—for the prelate, the activist, comes from a position hitherto unknown to philosophy before. There must be for any book written concerning minorities a precise amount of that background, and of every cultural group their type, to monitor and influence the work itself or edit it freely, according to their free will but not yours, since your free will is a violation of their existence. Next, experiences unknown to you, cannot be experienced by your mind as accurate if they come from a source unlike what the topic is about— therefore, we should consign ourselves as men, to read only of men and of men of our type only. The women shall read only women, and man’s literature (since it is now men’s, not humanity’s) shall forever be alien to them as a reality, even as a possibility. Then naturally, ought to come the ethnic groups, who all must admit that to write a book about others without their involvement is discrimination and we should ignore any work concerning itself with anything foreign as bigotry.
So, in a manner, I am being bigoted at this moment since there is no sound argument to be made a Slav can ever comprehend John Milton. In fact, the language itself—English—is de facto a mockery of English, since it is abused by a complete stranger. How could I ever understand the nuances of English culture? And how could an Englishman ever understand my own? And perhaps this is not English at all in the end, but a de facto colonization of England if we go far enough, a literary colonization by a tyrant imposing itself, or John Milton himself is bigoted since he certainly would not consider me his equal in his time.
Naturally, I am making a mockery of philosophy itself, reductio ad absurdum not because my points are invalid but because I am a Slav. Therefore, if we are to be led by that assumption, that I am my own peculiarity, a minority, does this mean I have simply approached ethnic philosophy? For if I can’t comprehend Milton, is the comprehension emanating out of me then my own reality? And if it is thus, this Archimedean contraption which would drive even Bertrand Russell furious cannot be logically disposed—since we are talking of a possibility that logic itself is in the end a kind of bigotry. I believe I have made my point clear how nonsensical it all is.
And now we must go back to Milton:
Banish all objects of lust, shut up all youth into the severest discipline that can be exercised in any hermitage, ye cannot make them chaste, that came not thither so: such great care and wisdom is required to the right managing of this point. Suppose we could expel sin by this means; look how much we thus expel of sin, so much we expel of virtue: for the matter of them both is the same; remove that, and ye remove them both alike.
As such, the expelling of sin also means the strangulation of virtue, for if there is no sin no virtue shall be reckoned. For what means do the liberals seek to achieve our brotherhood if they themselves grow dissatisfied by the outcomes constantly emerging? Simply the next in line shall hate the one before, and the pettiness of humanity shall grow to such insufferable proportions every adult man and woman will need a handler, until even books become nothing but heavily redacted offenses against decency. And the laws shall go into hands of petty tyrants who take the offenses levied against others as their own prosecution, as their own invocation to judge until everyone is free on paper, even freer than we are today but feels incredibly frustrated and paranoid of even the smallest slight. It cannot be denied that he whom we decree as judges and juries of all society need be above all equality, to be precisely superior to the masses but if the judges themselves are a priori invalid judges due to some peculiarity of theirs, then the law itself is inapplicable in any circumstances. A black man can’t be judged by a white judge. A Turk can never judge a Slav—who knows what is in his head? And as a Turk, he can not comprehend, as an entity, perhaps even a Turkish entity, the meaning of Slavic justice. Therefore, inter-ethnic justice is injustice. And so, we are back to the silliest tribalism’s and sectarianism, of a totemic heathenism which would be amusing if it was not so vicious.
I lastly proceed to no good it can do to me, as a foreigner of a lesser rank, of a smaller nation, to imply that I am a domesticated chicken, goat, or an innocent lamb of my own peculiarities like my poverty, my ethnic background, my culture, to such a point my liberties must be decreed according to the degree of injury I have suffered in life. For then I can not overcome my poverty as it becomes singed into my very flesh as my poverty is my lived experience which needs others to be removed, it is a spiritual poverty different than mere lack of wealth—a permanent reduction into a peculiarity, that is naturally more bigoted against a smaller peculiarity ad infinitum.
And so, Milton’s warning echoes in my mind:
And in their name I shall for neither friend nor foe conceal what the general murmur is; that if it come to inquisitioning again and licensing, and that we are so timorous of ourselves, and so suspicious of all men, as to fear each book and the shaking of every leaf, before we know what the contents are; if some who but of late were little better than silenced from preaching shall come now to silence us from reading, except what they please, it cannot be guessed what is intended by some but a second tyranny over learning: and will soon put it out of controversy, that Bishops and Presbyters are the same to us, both name and thing.
Even if this tyranny is to be sang on the rooftops of England, I would still call it the way Milton did, and call the shaking of the leaf very democratic, very humane and egalitarian which means—childlike, infantile, idiotic. And my biggest fear of all is not of tyranny, which I fear little, but of such a serfdom where even I, a foreigner, must dabble in these foreign occult arts of accusations and wailing until even my nation is reduced to a mumbling mess of prelates, prelates who have all the good of the world on their minds and accusations on their lips.
But above all I fear that they may be right and that it is best to abandon these foolish thoughts all together for equality has been achieved, all problems have been solved, and what my nation achieved is all it ever did, and whatever I will amount to shall only be to the level a foreigner lets me claim, claiming my equality as his holy metric while I gaze longingly at his poems, his culture, his traditions, knowing I shall never dare to utter a Zaporozhian response. Great things then can’t be surpassed or even understood—they are theirs, whomever they are, until the end of time, not even to be comprehended.
Then, I rather choose all serfdom. For otherwise, their greatness rises while I am reduced to a thing to be aided to live, so what difference would less or more right even make? For now we have people making excuses for all of our failures until the end of time. I am certain that Americans, who are the inventors of all this idolatry, their secular Puritanism, will go around the world wagging their finger about injustice without ever contemplating who proclaimed them the judge and jury of the entire planet. And this will occur in the shadow of their own decay, for they can never again be made whole and they proclaim this as the purpose of society. Maybe theirs. But the world has its own times, and those willing to rise upwards must admit they wish to replace those above and the time might come when we shall welcome them with open arms. And I am certain they will be shocked and outraged we reject their liberties for “tyranny” without understanding that freedom is not just about what for but also from whom. One nation’s liberty can also be another nation’s chains.
TO JOHN MILTON
A PAMPHLET OF A LESSER RANK
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Edward Goodwin Moorcraft is a young man who likes to read simple horror stories and write them.
