On sitting, fascism, and something really cool

some miscellaneous things for you.

As I mentioned in an earlier dispatch, I’m currently working on a rather emotional essay. It’s quite a personal one, so it’s taking some time. To give you a brief preview, it’s about the most important day of my life, which occurred exactly two years ago on the 10th of December. On that shivering morning, a few hours before dawn, I trudged a few kilometres from my home through a cold drizzle, everything I owned in a massive rucksack on my back.

I was fleeing an abusive marriage, running away from 18 months of manipulation, screaming, and physical violence, as well as all the self-doubt and diminished sense of self that comes along with such things.

That’s just the background of the essay, which is actually about what I’ve come to understand about the way the woke work, especially through ressentiment and abuse of our natural desire to care for others and not cause unnecessary harm.

I hope to have the essay done by Friday, but if not it will arrive soon thereafter.

In the meantime, there are lots of other things on my mind that I thought I’d write about in short form here.

What’s Fascist, Really?

I recently made amends with a person I deeply admired but from whom I’d become quite estranged. Long story as to what had happened, but much of it was my fault and it had a lot to do with the way I used to think about politics.

It was he who made the overture, for which I am deeply grateful. I learned from him with horror that he’s fallen victim several times to the new ‘satanic panic’ in the US, or what we usually just call Antifa. And like so many others, the guy’s so far from being fascist that it almost seems like a joke anyone could have labeled him as such. Yet all it takes is a few recently-created anonymous Twitter accounts with only a handful of (likely also fake) followers posting unfounded accusations, and suddenly all the ‘good people’ are helping spread the revelation and there’s no way for anyone to stop it.

Fortunately, we survive these things. I’ve been smeared many times myself, including in a recent conspiratorial essay that lumps me in with a star-studded roster of “third positionist” (meaning Strasserite or “left-Nazi”) traitors including Glenn Greenwald, Angie Speaks, and all the writers at The Greyzone.

The whole matter of “third positionism” is an amusing one. It’s only the most dogmatic of Antifa sorts who even believes such a thing exists now (the primary inquisitor throwing around the label is Alexander Reid Ross), but it’s worth at least explaining what they think is happening. They believe there are former leftists who have embraced fascist ideologies (thus “third” position, the other two being fascist or leftist with no other options between them).

Basically, any leftist who even critiques let alone rejects the current woke identity politics model has gone over to the fascist side. There is absolutely no room for nuance or complication in any leftist politics, and anyone who still insists such a thing is possible just needs to be stripped and searched and you’re certain to find their witchmark.

One example of this is the Marxist feminist Silvia Federici, who in her book Beyond the Periphery of the Skin argues that trans people need a stronger critique of capitalist medicalization of the body. Elsewhere in the book she repeatedly affirms the need for a leftism that protects trans people, but that one critique, according to this narrative, suffices to make her not just a “TERF” but also an ally to fascist thugs. Of course, since she often speaks alongside black Marxist Angela Davis at conferences in South America, Davis now also is suspect.

Yeah. This is how ridiculous it has gotten: two Marxist women who have actually spent their lives trying to build a leftist movement that can fight authoritarian control of the bodies of black people and of women can be accused by anonymous white male urban hipsters of being fascist and suddenly everyone is rushing to denounce those women as well.

But see, that’s the important part. Most of the Antifa ideologues are white and male (though they might throw in a non-binary “coming out” just for woke points). This is a feature of the woke ideology: in order to not be seen as the oppressor class, such dudes need to position themselves as paladin crusaders for the oppressed classes, and they’re doing a bang up job of convincing people they’re heroes while destroying anything remaining of the left.

The other result of all this is that fascist means whatever they say it means, which is anything that complicates their own view of the world. The friend whom I mentioned? He complicates stuff for people, and has a much more internationalist way of understanding certain historical forces than others do. Thus, he was attacked, and it’s tragic.

But as I said, we survive these things. Since starting From The Forests of Arduinna, this is the thing I’ve learned most: more and more people are tired of all this and are looking for non-ideological perspectives to make sense of what’s happening in the world. So he’ll be okay, and I think we all will be, too.

“The Slave Body”

One of my favourite writers in all the world is also a friend of mine, Peter Grey. He wrote an essay a few years back which really started me thinking more about the body not as something I have but something I am.

That essay, “Forging the Body of the Witch¹”, is written more for an occult audience than a general one, but even if you’re not into esoteric things you might find it useful. The chapter in my book Being Pagan, called “Being Body,” was heavily inspired by his work and is written for a more general audience.

There is a line in the essay that got lots of woke people super angry at him. He said, “the sitting body is the slave body.”

I never really understood that line either until quite recently. I mentioned in an earlier dispatch that I’ve started a new training regimen, now four days a week. It’s a split body program, meaning on Mondays and Thursdays I do upper body work and Tuesdays and Fridays I do lower body work.

I’d asked my trainer to create this program for me because of a peculiar thing I’d noticed on my previous three day per week program (which was the same routine each time). My arms, chest, shoulders, and upper back would all recover quite quickly, but I always felt too exhausted from lower body exercises to really keep to that schedule (it would often only be two days a week instead).

The problem, it turned out, was that though some parts of my legs were really powerful, my lower back, hips, and lower abs were all pretty typical of humans in industrial society: weak, inflexible, and easily tired.

That’s “the sitting body,” by the way. When you sit, the same muscles are contracted for hours on end while others are over-extended for the same period. Your hips start to lock because of the downward pressure of your torso, and the muscles you use to open and close your legs atrophy.

Do this for 8 hours a day over decades and, well, you can probably understand what happens. Your body—which is you—becomes molded and shaped by the same passive activity and stops being able to do other things. Of course, we are usually sitting because we are working at computers or otherwise staring at screens, being in essence slaves to passivity.

The first few sessions of my lower body workouts led to tears. Not at the gym, mind you, but afterwards. I wanted to cry a lot, but not really from pain. I don’t know precisely what was happening, but in many Eastern body traditions they talk about emotions being stored in the hips and I’m pretty sure that’s what happened. Using all those muscles in ways they rarely get used (squats and deadlifts, particularly, but also some of the crazy stuff I now have to do on a pilates ball) brings all that stuff up again, decades worth of sadness and fear and lack of self-confidence re-entering your consciousness so it can finally be released.

Also, my ass looks great now.

Something really damn cool

Rúnahild, one of my favorite musicians in all the world, who is really an amazing person and deeply inspiring, was kind enough to let me use one of her songs for a promotional video for my book. The song itself is deeply meaningful to me: I had discovered it just before leaving my abusive marriage and listened to it on repeat on that aforementioned walk to the bus station.

Anyway, you all get to be the first to see this. It’s a three-minute publicity video for my new book, Being Pagan.

Let me know what you think! And please consider sharing the video on social media. And also go check out her music. :)

1. No longer available online, but published in The Brazen Vessel by Alkistis Dimech and Peter Grey