It was my eldest daughter who informed me a few days ago that Facebook was MySpace for the elites.  My only on-line social networking group is MeetUp, which is for people who desire to meet with others in (horrors) the real world.  I joined the local Ron Paul MeetUp group to help in the campaign.  I understand there are more than 1200 such groups nationwide.  But as far as Facebook is concerned, I think I’ll wait for that Erik Ritter von Kuehnelt-Leddihn fan club.  Make haste, Mr. Purcell.

I shall check it out immediately.

At 34 years of age, i find I have zero prospect of marriage because what passes for women in the modern age holds zero appeal for me. I refuse to court atheists or agnostics, crossdressers (those women who wear trousers of any kind), sociopaths ("pro-choice"), women with “attitude” (that universal flip, nasty outlook that modern people get with their television-issued personalities), the baldly ignorant, the NeoCon, or those with penis envy (feminists). That would be a nigh impossible assignment anywhere, real women having been essentially brought to the brink of extinction by television and all, but here in Northern California it’s really impossible.

But who knows? Maybe on Facebook I shall find a Carlist intellectual who is also a Victorian lady. And preferably one who isn’t a total bowser.

I didn’t notice the name of Thomas Molnar.....

@Nergol:
There are some very fine Carlist ladies still in Spain;
the Carlists there are more or less united back under
the umbrella of the CTC {Comunion Tradicionalista Carlista),
although the tiny leftist grouping (Partido Carlista, of Don Carlos Hugo))
should not be confused with the traditionalists. There
is also a separate group supporting Don Sixto de Borbon-parma.

Web addresses are: http://www.ctcarlista.org (for the CTC)
carlismo.es (for the Sixtinos)

Back in 1986 the disparate traditionalist Carlist grops
came together under the CTC group; they take no issue
on who is the rightful king of Spain, but do support
traditionalist and Catholic causes. The websites offer
some good photos and other items.

These people are of course not conservatives in any sense of the term—emphasis added

Amen! (to Purcell’s paragraph preceding).

Glad the Royalists have a forum in the sun.

Does Facebook have a forum in the sun for followers of Catholic Social Teaching (a.k.a. “Christian Democrats")?

As part of that “young facebook right”, as Frank already knows, I do have a few things to add to the discussion.

Facebook really was the domain of the elite before… only elite colleges (Ivies, Duke, upper-crust lib arts schools, etc.) had access. Even someone at a fly-over country lib arts school (which I was at first) had no chance when facebook first launched. I later attended a regional state university (to avoid the constant campus ideological campaigns at my prior school), where facebook access came only a short year or so before it opened up to nearly everyone.

As such, there are still some remnants of that origin on facebook. There are a lot of groups that represent the obscurantist humor of well-read young people (the pro-Stuart group I’m a member of would be an example, judging by most of its posts) though which jokes are funny changes a bit across the ideological spectrum. What facebook does show is the groundswell of support for traditional religion and beliefs among people in the 18-30 set, a broader trend foreseen in a small group of late-baby boomers and gen-xers only now realized. (For demographic data on that group, see “The New Faithful” by Colleen Carrol.) Facebook reinforces those trends by supporting those people through either obvious groups to groups based around a shared sense of humor and identity.

I have no intention of joining Facebook.

That also goes for a Facebook with a fan club for the Knight of Lans, although that admittedly would be a great cause.

thanks! great piece.

Mr. Codreanu’s emphasis on religion would seem to disqualify him as a simon-pure Fascist.

Great idea. How about a fan club for the late Willmoore Kendall, conservative political theorist, CIA agent, and Christian populist?  As one of the first critics of “National Review” (which he helped to found), he was also one of the critics of neo-conservatives long before that term was even coined.

This was an illuminating post for me who have not ventured into these sections of the noosphere, and I thank Mr. Purcell for it.
However,while it could be debated whether they are “conservative”, it should be made clear that Coomaraswasmy, Guenon, Schuon, and Nasr are in no sense Fascists when that elastic term in which Mr. Cundiff takes so much reactive delight, is limited to its proper meaning.
Thomas Fleming, commenting on a recent post at Chronicles, did a good job of defining this term:

“If we can accomplish anything with our discussions, one first order of business should be to recover the use of our language, and that includes the meaning of words like “fascist.” Strictly speaking, fascist refers to the national-socialist (but not racist or anti-Semitic) policies advocated by the architects and ideologues of the Fascist Party in Italy, but there were other fascist or quasi-fascist movements at the time. To make a long story short, fascists join nationalists in exalting the nation and national unity, and, while they sometimes tip their hate politely in the direction of the Church as the repository of tradition, they are opposed to any social role for the Church. They are equally suspicious of monarchy, though they may support a king who is the symbol of national unity, and, although fascisim tends to be a petty bourgeois movement, it has included members of the aristocracy and in Italy at least many Jews. Fascists believe very much in economic and social planning, and although their language sometimes sounds corporatist in the old sense, they have more in common with Swedish socialism.” (http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/?p=439#more-439)

I would like to know more about Mr. Codreanu as he seems
to be a novelist’s dream come true.

I mean, he was a Romanian, he got his marching orders
from the Archangel Michael (the last one before him was
one French shepherdess from Domremy, I think), his
followers carried vials with their native soil and
drank each other’s blood in arcane rituals…

Can you say Nosferatu, boys and girls?

abello misquotes me.  I have always distinguished between Fascism and extremist nationalism, following John Lukacs, using the “Fascism” only for Mussolini’s movement and its supporters both in other countries and also among certain Catholics ("clerical Fascists” in Sturzo’s phrase). I also follow Lukacs is distinguishing between nationalism and patriotism.

And Fascism and nationalism have nothing to do with Tory Conservatism ("real conservatism")

Kyle points out an important thing here:  traditional religion has made a strong comeback among the young, but religious tradition informed with intellectual sophistication and high culture.  Not just the Campus Crusade for Christ; in fact most of their leadership converted to Eastern Orthodoxy.  I for one never hoped to see this in America.

I asked a friend teaching at a high end Catholic prvate school
how folks were taking the Ratzinger election.  He said a few of the older staff were unhappy, but not the younger ones.

And the conservative movement is so much more diverse than in my day, when, I am sorry to say, it was more of a gut reaction against the civil rights and peace movements and the sexual and cultural revolutions…

And I agree that it may be seriously unfair to Il Duce to call Codreanu a Fascist.  But it would be good to have a general term for what he represents, as it seems to be making something of a comeback, at least in Europe, if not among some visitors to this site.

By the way, I now see that FB even has a Carlist group.

Well, now I certainly know why we repeat history.

And to tell the truth, this thread is re-dated and I read it some time back.

What gives?

Constrained as I am by the need to produce legal work for the ever more impatient clients, I have not had a chance to read my copy of Codreanu’s “For My Legionaries”, but the desultory net looking I have done suggests that the Legion of the Archangel Michael (the “Iron Guard"), whatever its other defects, at least had a more explicitly religious (Orthodox) association than most other 1930’s style Right movements (I hesitate to call the IG “fascists”). An interesting anecdote about this is as follows:
As a Roman who likes to ecumenize to the right (per F. Wilhelmsen), I subscribe to a very interesting Orthodox publication called “The Orthodox Word”, coming from the St. Herman Brotherhood in Platina, California. One of their past issues had a very edifying account of an Iron Guard member who was arrested and imprisoned by the Antonescu regime, along with other Iron Guard members, and then kept imprisoned by the Communists until his death from tuberculosis in the early 1950’s. In both cases the incarceration was motivated by purely political considerations. While in prison this young man spent his time doing acts of Christian charity and witnessing to his faith to the others, many of whom were atheists. His life ended, it was written, when he gave the TB medicine he had received from his family to (the later to become famous) Pastor Richard Wurmbrand.

Mr. Cundiff, I didn’t misquote you because I didn’t even quote you. Moreover I didn’t even misrepresent you in my reference to your reactive and sloppy use of the term “Fascist.” (Anyone who wants to verify this can read the thread on Paul Gottfried’s post on Maurras and the NeoCons http://www.takimag.com/site/article/leo_strauss_the_neocons_and_charles_maurras/)
I am glad to hear that you use “Fascism” “...only for Mussolini’s movement and its supporters both in other countries and also among certain Catholics ("clerical Fascists” in Sturzo’s phrase).”
I do not want to defend Fascism or Fascists, nor do I want to engage in more sterile and ideologically fueled argumentation on the subject, but I do want to defend the proper use of language and the place of true authority in any restoration of order and freedom in politics.
In any case my main point was to clarify what Mr. Purcell had written regarding Guenon, Schuon, Coomaraswamy, and Nasr. They are not Fascists.

OK, it happens that I have to hand here at the office (you never known when it might come in handy) a copy of Erik v. Kuehnelt Leddihn’s “Leftism” (1974 edition), where he says the following, at p.159:

“Fascism also had a Maurrasian side insofar as it said “yes” to the Catholic Faith as a “national religion” and this attitude had a Machiavellian, a pragmatic basis.  In this and other respects fascism differed strongly from Spanish falangism and the Rumanian rather spiritual even if savage Iron Guard ideology [21]”. One must always read EVK’s endnotes, and so turning to the note given, we find, in part as follows (after references to works on the Falange):  “The Rumanian Iron Guard, on the other side, had an essentially religious basis. Its strong anti-Judaism had no racist foundation. An authoritative work on this interesting, partly even fantastic movement, has not yet been written. (Most of the sources could be found only east of the Iron Curtain, though much has been destroyed.) Due to its strongly religious (Eastern Church) outlook, the strain of idealism was stronger then in the other totalitarian movements. Sternly repressed by Carol II, it had many martyrs, but it also produced a brutality all its own.”

I do not understand the Iron Guard.  As much as I normally defer to K-L, it would seem that their hatred of Jews, extreme even by Nazi standards, was not limited to those who, by professing the Jewish religion, denied the Lordship of Christ.  Many of the rank and file were true Orthodox Christians, and some became Christian martyrs.  But the movement included some whose spirituality was primarily esoteric or even occult, who supported the Orthodox Church as the closest the ignorant could come to the sublime realization.  Neocons, if you will.

<<[The Iron Guard] included some whose spirituality was primarily esoteric or even occult, who supported the Orthodox Church as the closest the ignorant could come to the sublime realization.  Neocons, if you will.>>

Mr Purcell, interesting comment, but I must disagree, if only slightly.

To take an occult Catholic religion with which I am at least somewhat familiar, the worship of “Santa Muerte”, it seems not to interfere with the cultural Catholicism of the people, as opposed to the interference of cultural conservatism that the neoconservative movement produces.

My point is occultic religious practices don’t seem to, in my experience, at least, have the same kind of detrimental effect on the dominant “host culture”, if you will, that the occultic neoconservative movement does on it’s truly conservative “host culture”.  Perhaps it is that the practitioners of the occultic religious traditions do so in private, whereas the neoconservatives, being part of The Revolution, insist on spreading their “errors” into the “host community”.

Santamuertism is not the sort of thing I am talking about.  Perhaps the much abused idea of Gnosticism is close to what I am talking about — the idea that Christianity has a real, esoteric, meaning that only the elite fully know, which justifies them in interpreting the religion of the masses to suit their agenda.  Folks like this don’t admit to their belief that the Creed is a damned lie, but make a continual propaganda that true Christianity consists in, or at least implies, in the Iron Guard case, extermination of the Jews, or, in the neocon case, enslavement or extermination of the Gentile population of Greater Israel.  Or gay liberation or white supremacy.

Aha, I understand Mr Purcell.  This goes back the discussion of the gnostic aspects of neoconservativism...In regards to your essay on “Facebook”, it seems that this kind of rather impersonal way of connecting would allow someone to interpret something like The Iron Guard as an authentic Orthodox Christian group, all while the leadership of that group know the true, “secret” meaning of the group, and control what it can of people’s lives?  That is, does the internet provide an even greater outlet to manipulative people such as Charles Manson, albeit without, perhaps, as spectacular results?  Is the internet, and it’s great fruits such as “Facebook” thoroughly gnostic?

No, I don’t think so.  In the groups I am thinking of there is propaganda and recruiting (or pre-recruiting) in public or semi-public, but the secret teaching is only given out as the candidate proves himself worthy of it.  FB,Meetup, MySpace and so on are good ways for people with unusual affinities to find each other, but would be of very limited use to any group which must conceal its true beliefs and agenda.

When it comes to the Iron Guard, the one thing glossed over is
how *weird* they were. It would not have surprised me if in
some of their ceremonies they had brought old Vlad Tepes back
complete with black cape and bats. I mean, they were that
far gone.

Trying to tie that weirdness to old Benito seems unfair to poor
Benny. I mean, he had his things, but the Iron Guads made Nazis
look sensible by comparison.

In any case, IMHO most studies of Fascism are flawed in that they
do not look at Ireland, where you could find the Platonic ideal
of the mixture of pure idealism and brutal thuggery. It is curious
how Stanley Payne, for example, lists what he calls characteristcs
of Fascism and then when he goes to Ireland, he just writes one
paragraph on the hapless Blueshirts (the most clueless fascists in
Europe, as they were the least nationalist group against the IRA and
the Fianna Fail), and does not see how all his characteristics
fit Fianna Fail to a T (of course, he may be deceieved by the fact
that de Valera managed to turn a bunch of potential nasty fascists into well behaved
democratic politicians).

It is my belief that if you crossed Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera,
the founder of the Falange, with Norman Bates (of “Psycho” fame),
you might end up with Sean McBride.

Albert;

I understand. Sounds like you’re both more hopeless and drunker than I normally am.

Don’t got a lot of time
Don’t give a damn
Don’t tell me what to do
I am the man

All around you people walkin’
Empty hearts and voices talkin’
Looking for and finding…
Nothin’

I’ve been looking for a genuine lady to marry for as long as I can remember. And it’s been a long time since I accepted that I’ll most likely never find her. Sure, living in the most notoriously liberal place in the entire United States may not help, but neither would living anywhere else, I think - short of converting to Amishism, and I don’t think they really take converts.

I’m not angry though; I don’t want revenge - this world is its own punishment. It’s just sad - and actually, i’fd be funny if it weren’t.

I was Caudillo in the facebook group he mentioned. I’ve since left the group because some people were afraid to talk about the jews and their role in this mess. But I still think the authors summarization of the group is a bit unfair, and he should open his mind to new ideas.

Young people are tired of this modern world. WE have everything, stereos, mp3 players, TV’s, computer, and yet, why do we feel empty inside? Simple, we want to return to our roots, we want to strive for something bigger than us and you baby boomers do everything in your power to make that impossible! We are tired of this sanitized, boring, individualist “que sera sera” society, we want to return to the glory and ways of our ancestors. We do not believe that your power should be measured in the jewish way of “economic class”, where you are judged by economic efficiency, we believe that power should be measured by our own native Aryan way, the spiritual caste, with the merchant caste being nothing but sewer-cleaners! 

The problem with you AMREN types is that you are atheistic and judaic “white nationalists”, you believe that some poorly put together materialist and fluid racial concept is enough to save our race, but it’s not. No money changing ghetto jew is my “brother”, and you try to make this so because he may or may not have a similar skintone. You argue for race in a cold, materialist way, believe in seperation simply because blacks do not get PH.D’s or because mexicans commit crime, but that is not our racial argument. Our racial argument is something spiritual, the genetic memory, the ties that bind us to the soil and allow no jew to be our equal in the eyes of mother nature.

Your race argument is nothing but a joke, a band aid for the real problems. The root problem is not the blacks and browns, it’s the whole unnatural infastructure they have imposed on the restless, conquering Aryan spirt.

I’m sure that if a negro doctor were to get a PH.D tomorrow you would let your daughter marry them over a displaced Aryan Wal-Mart cashier.

Hey Adriana, where did you come up with this lie about blood-drinking rituals? Did you see that in some hymiewood flick?

Fact is, the blood-drinking rituals were most common amongst medieval (and contemporary?) rabbi’s, where the blood of goyish babies was used to leaven the passover bread.

Of course, it’s an “anti-semitic” myth to the historians for dollars, but to make things up about those who struck a blow to world jewry like the Iron Guard and were loved by their own folk for it, is perfectly fine.

Hello Mr. Purcell. I am John Hanley, the guy who founded the group Revolt Against the Modern World (the one you dedicated a good paragraph to there).

while I’d say this wasn’t favorable, I can’t say you weren’t more fair to our group and gave it a bit more justice than I’d expect from any media source. For that I suppose some thanks is in order. My interest in creating the group was creating a sort of study group and keeping in touch with the various peoples who have the same enemy, or at least the same worldview. Though they may be Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, etc, they all share the same disgust with materialism, with the physical and desire something greater. We all agree that society today has lost touch with that, with “the heavens” so to speak. This is obvious from the various social ills, the vapid materialism of the media, the petty party politics of the so called “progressive” nations, the crumbling of the family, and the general decline in cultural achievements in parts of the world where once incredible achievements were made.

The group has been given a bit of a facelift but its spirit remains the same i suppose and although i’ve got my qualms with some of the users, I’m more or less proud of the direction its taking.

We may be a closed group but its only to avoid trolling.
-thanks

Thanks to Mr. Hanly for stopping by and giving us some perspective.  I should have known it was another Irishman, and perhaps I can detect a certain ancestral desire to provoke, which many of you have noticed in my own writing here.

I did not mean my mention to be entirely unfavorable, but some of the figures listed as inspiration back when I wrote this, al-Sini, Savitri Devi Theodore Kaczynski. and Codreanu, seemed questionable.  I have noted that these names, except for Codreanu, have been removed in the last few months, and that these were greatly outnumbered by figures I regard with a more benign gaze.  My point is that the civil discussion of their ideas had no place in mainstream American intellectual life, and it is a very good thing that the internet provides a venue for these voices to enter the conversation.  I trust that the group’s admiration for Codreanu, who has occupied the attention of the comments for a while, is strongly qualified.  Indeed, given the other names mentioned, it must be.

I was happy to find Mr. Hanly’s group on FB.  I kept its name to myself so as not to assist trolls — and the sort of liberal idiot who would demand FB close them down.  I hope he will feel most welcome here, where he and his friends would count as moderate.

I’ll join that Richard Weaver fan club!

Here’s a Facebook group for Weaver:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=8254172385

And now… K-L!

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=16190660166

I’ve discovered a way to save my breath and
valuable time...especially with one or two
commentators who deserve neither...present
company excluded.
With respect to a few comments above,
a point FYI:

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/offbeat/2007/02/do_jews_drink_blood.html

My personal experiences in the past with two Jewish
girlfriends: they have nothing in common with
Vlad Tepes who was Rumanian and not Hungarian but
who lived and “reigned” on Hungarian territory.

It’s IRONY! You’re MISREADING!

Speaking as a graduate of one of them “elite” liberal arts schools: only one commenter has so far realized that a misreading of collegiate irony is at the heart of the article’s argument.

Despite being signed up for a number of silly facebook groups—aka, “Citizens for the Issue of Letters of Marque”—“Root Vegetables are Murder”—I mean my endorsements of these ideas as itself a spectacle, rather than literal policy positions. I’ll concede that, in other times and places, they could be taken literally (say, in the time of corsairs and Jains… no offense to either).

There’s legitimate support for Ron Paul. 80% of Americans think God is required for Biology; a strong minority believe in angels; some people think humanity was bombed onto the planet from interplanetary b-29s.

We have enough silly ideas in the marketplace; let’s not misconstrue jokes to see them where they’re not.

Bill has a good point about collegiate irony, and I hope I haven’t misread too badly.  Some of the rightwing sentiment on FB is akin to that of two fellows in my dorm of a Midwestern Quaker college back in the days.  One kept a picture of Mussolini under his bed, and another had colored in a Fourth Reich on a map of Europe on his wall.  But Evolan traditionalism is not a joke, nor is the cult of Codreanu inside and outside of Rumania.  As for the Jains, who still believe that eating beets is murder, there are probably more of them in the world than there are Presbyterians, and probably thousands on Facebook.  And Ron Paul may have been serious in suggesting letters of marque.  Well, half serious.

As for Transylvania being part of Hungary, Vlad’s choice was between submitting to the King of Hungary or the Sultan of Constantinople, where, if I am not mistaken (somebody help me), he had been tortured as a hostage.