Boomer Barbarism

 

Yesterday I finished Viking Age Barbarian’s Ragnaroking! Ragnarök, Collapse, Odinism, and Mathematics, published this year by Manticore Press – and not since reading the tedious Nicolae Ceausescu: The Man, His Ideas, and His Socialist Achievements, have I felt so abused and enervated in dragging myself across the finish line of the last page of a book. At 150 pages Ragnaroking! would have stood as a decent if unremarkable work of pagan polemics and prepper literature, but padded to 223 with some boringly bundled blog posts covering arcane controversies in arithmetical theory and physics, the book comes across as an awkwardly stitched-together Frankenstein’s monster. 

Ragnaroking! is divided into three sections, the first of which is “Against Christianity”. Feeling a bit like something left over from the heyday of Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, it consists of a series of not-particularly-interesting criticisms of Christianity, with VAB (rightly, in my view) rejecting the notion that the faith might serve as a useful vehicle for white nationalism. He is, however, curiously forgiving and even admiring of Judaism, devoting space to clerical child abuse scandals but having nothing to say about rabbis’ similar proclivities. “And, I do not have the hatred for the Old Testament that some atheists/closet anti-Semites seem to have, for like Nietzsche I see this grand book as far superior as a warrior theology to the anaemic, puny, New Testament,” he writes:

The Old Testament, as literature rises to heights of excellence that the New Testament never reaches, and certainly deserves respect, in my opinion. The stories of the survivalist Noah (Genesis 5-9) and Samson (Judges 13-16), are truly epic tales. In general, I agree with Nietzsche, that Judaism is a far superior religion to Christianity, in any of its forms. But, respect aside, it is not my religion.

More engaging are VAB’s counterings of the ancient-Greeks-were-gay meme and the proliferation of modern misrepresentations of Vikings as a multicultural phenomenon. The book’s second section, “Barbarianism”, considers such questions as, for instance, “Were the Vikings Politically Correct?”, and advocates for Ragnar Redbeard’s Might Is Right philosophy. The “Barbarianism” portion of Ragnaroking! also features VAB’s generous thoughts on priorities in a shit-hits-the-fan scenario, his assessments of different types of weapons and fighting styles, as well as dietary tips and extensive reading recommendations.

He takes for granted that the converging and compounding cultural-political, economic, and environmental catastrophes facing western civilization will precipitate its total collapse, and he takes a condescending view of skeptics of anthropogenic climate change narratives, disparaging them as “the low IQ”. Capitalists “oppose climate change mitigation because it is bad for business,” VAB insists, apparently unaware that big business interests like Enron were responsible for creating global warming hysteria in the first place. (Those interested in more recent “green” schemes can consult Cory Morningstar’s research in The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg.) The possibility of a dystopian future in which decultured, racially indistinct humanoids eternally shop for plastic snacks at Walmart and get into unending series of WorldStar scuffles in the parking lot appears not to have occurred to him. Consequently, VAB is at pains to prepare the reader for a post-apocalyptic tomorrow of ruined infrastructure and anarchy, roving Road Warrior caravans, axe duels, and crossbow mastery of the coming wastelands.

Bearing this in mind, men will need to be in peak physical condition, for which purpose he recommends moving “to a ‘testosterone-increasing’ diet […] moving right away from a grain-based diet, as depicted in the food pyramid, and consuming high-quality protein from meats, carbs from anti-oxidant-rich vegetables and fruits, and correct levels of fats.” He advises men to “completely abandon the consumption of alcohol, all recreational drugs, cigarettes and other racial poisons.” VAB does, however, furnish his readers with loopholes to get out of the teetotaler rule – like watching Lou Ferrigno movies. Get a load of this Boomer-posting:

[…] a social theory of justice will not capture cases where people fall through the cracks of its structure and do not obtain justice, but where there is a moral legitimacy for revenge. Even mundane mortals must experience this when viewing revenge flicks like Death Wish (2018), where Dr Paul Kersey turns into a vigilante because the criminal justice system is too overloaded to deliver justice in the case of the murder of his wife, and attempted murder of his daughter. There is a scene from another great revenge flick, Instant Death (2017) with Big Lou, someone I have always liked more than Arnie, whose screen daughter, after brutal dual-fucking, gets one of the worst beatings dished out short of death, with eyes stabbed. This low budget indie movie is worth looking at one rainy Saturday night, while you caress your AR 15 and its family of puppies, tipping down a beer and chewing beef jerky. So what if the movie is full of flaws; what isn’t?

Anyway, in short, it has been argued that modern legal system[s] arose to deal with the social problem of blood feuds and the quest for revenge. This seems to me to be yet another flaw of civilization, attempting to chain a legitimate human emotion that should never be imprisoned, for the sake of economics and fucking trade.

We therefore need this: Fuck Civilization, Hard/Revenge: Nothing is Sweeter, with capitals added for emphasis, put on T-shirts.

Another exception to the no-drinking rule is the study of number theory, which, VAB seems to suggest, may be enhanced by drinking to excess:

My conceptual rampage today will involve attacking a fundamental elementary mathematical principle, so grab a beer, or eight, and sit down for another arousing read. The blood of mathematics will be splattered everywhere. Barbarians, all enjoy!

Unfortunately, the book’s third section, “Fucking Mathematics”, falls far short of justifying the author’s obvious pride, at least in terms of reader engagement. Sifting through the indigestible last fifty pages or so of Ragnaroking! is about as stimulating as struggling through some college math textbook, with the difference that VAB has peppered his lessons with words like “fuck” to make it all seem hip and tough. Here is a typical passage:

Then consider proposition P(k+1), that proposition k+1, is not equal to 0. Yet this follows from P(k), as if it is not the case that k = 0, then from P(1), P(k+1) is not equal to 0 either. Hence, the proposition is true by the principle of mathematical induction. It follows then that ~ (1 = 0).

Yet, the proof is logically circular, as many such proofs are. Worse, the conclusion alleges the absolute consistency of arithmetic, ~ (1 = 0), which is in direct conflict with the big dick theorem of Gödel, that the consistency of arithmetic is not provable in arithmetic. Hence, a contradiction.

I hope my readers are enjoying my articles as much as I dislike writing them. My goal is the noble one of dipping the academically sacred into the profanity of liquefied shit.

VAB’s big, brash, in-your-face style gets annoying, particularly because he more often than not mistakes vulgarity for wit, as when he boasts of his intention to “open my cloaca and let fly at the mathematicians and physicists, whom I have a pathological hatred for. Stuck up geek cock-suckers, I say.” The “Fucking Mathematics” portion of Ragnaroking! should have been omitted altogether, firstly because it is so horribly stupefying, but also because the author has made little or no attempt to demonstrate how any of this material is relevant to the barbarian ethos, Odinism, or anything else that might be of interest to aficionados of pagan lore or survivalist literature. If nothing else, however, VAB’s citations may provide his readers with suggestions for more worthwhile reading.  

Rainer Chlodwig von K.

Rainer is the author of Drugs, Jungles, and Jingoism.