The Nature of Terrible Sacrifice: Gladio & The Grey Wolves

Roger Griffin discusses the Grey Wolves in The Nature of Fascism. I've started reading about their infiltration of Turkish migrant communities, and wonder about possible bearing on Turkey's accession to EU membership. The question is complicated by the parallel [sic] existence of Gladio as a secretive NATO sponsored network of "stay behind" armies, utilizing a "strategy of tension". Mhuthnance, given your expertise on paramilitary groups, you'll be interested, without of course succumbing to conspiracy theorizing, as the Wiki link cites usage of a comparable strategy in relation to the Oklahoma City Bombing in its footnotes (be sure to read as well the separate entry on The Grey Wolves).

Anton did not pick up on any parallels in his article on martial industrial music and the fatalistic sense of neofascists living in the interregnum, so I can only speculate about the extent to which their networks have taken inspiration from actual paramilitary cells (this heavily qualifies any sense of living in an interregnum as Gladio have apparently been quite active, even if stopped short from full realisation of the new fascist order martial industrialists/traditionalists like to fantasise about). Note too that said article failed to mention the controversy surrounding publication of the Battlenoises! book (which lead to its withdrawal from publication)- its inclusion could have better demonstrated the scene's internal divisions, rather than relying on close readings of lyrics and album artwork alone. Of course, there's already a group of noise musicians calling themselves The Grey Wolves (and they do use some irony in their work), so how long can it be until some other martial industrialist/noise/neofolk/black metal artist(s) decides to name themselves Gladio?

This is not a trivial question, if we appreciate how the politics of representation can legitimate something that is very dangerous, be it intentional or not.

Another question to ponder: was a similar "strategy of tension" in operation in post World War 2 Japan? I don't know, so I think further investigation is warranted. I do know though that the ongoing existence of Gladio remains hotly contested, while the Grey Wolves maintain an active presence in Turkey (and possibly amongst the Turkish diaspora as well).

Given this blog's interest in the cultural significance of Nature, I should also note here the symbolic role of the wolf as an ancient European symbol of loyalty and protection and religious veneration: the legendary founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus were supposed to have been rescued and suckled by a she Wolf. Respect for the Wolf is firmly enshrined in the European 'tradition' (or rather, at least for European traditionalists). Hitler, for example, drew on this legacy, referring to himself as Herr Wolf, and his Eastern Front military HQ was called Wolfsschanze ("Wolf's Lair").

You might also recall that the Blood Axis album, Blot: Sacrifice in Sweden, is replete with the sounds of howling wolves to connote its traditionalist 'pagan' atmospherics of the communal feasts (the 'blots'), where participants would be sprinkled with the blood of the sacrifice (usually consisting of cattle, as human sacrifice was a comparative rarity). Adam of Bremen gives a graphic description of one such mass human sacrifice, which is quoted at length here (see page 129) by Daniel Bray in an academic article that further attempts to explain sacrificial ideology. This is precisely the kind of ideology one would expect radical traditionalists- from paramilitaries to martial industrialists/neofolk enthusiasts- to subscribe to, insofar as they believe that present conditions oblige them to operate as clandestine, warrior-like "lone wolves". Indeed, the opening track prominently features a radio broadcast by Black Shirt leader Oswald Mosley extolling the sacrifices required to ensure "a spiritual revolution of our people".

To be sure, there can be considerable variation in the means chosen to respond to individual circumstances (i.e. what a sacrifice may consist of), but this should not cause us to lose sight of the commonalities. Updating Bray, it could even be said that the thoughts and actions of radical traditionalists can each in their own way be understood as "not so much about the purpose of the ritual, as [they are] about a ritual to crystallise the operant's purpose and to make that purpose effectual in the world". Tradition evolves along with everything else in the world, and this remains the paradox that traditionalism continues to wrestle with, sometimes violently so. No amount of pre-Darwinian privileging of animal kinship, be it wolves or anything else, can overcome this basic fact.

Misanthropy

Yours truly posted a response over on the Traditionalists blog that expanded on some of the themes I talked about in "Loneliness as a Way of Life". My intention was, notwithstanding some typos in my transcription of Ferarra's text, to highlight traditionalism- and by extension neofolk and martial industrial subcultures- as examples of the neoconservative critique of postmodernism. It's one thing then to put the cart before the horse by arguing they are "fascist", but quite another to specify causation and the broader continuum on which its byproducts coexist. I prefer to speak in terms of things being inseparable from but irreducible to something else. It's for this reason that I'll be quoting a piece on "the new misanthropy" in relation to the thesis of "the new naturalism" (the latter was itself the subject of an earlier post).

Sure, it'd be very easy to visit the traditionalists blog and follow the links in the comments thread to Lord Bassington Hound's blog, pausing briefly to marvel at how he co-wrote the infamous study of the black metal scene, Lords of Chaos, with Michael "Blood Axis" Moynihan (an explanation of the programmatic biological conception behind Blood Axis can be found here), only to then worry at the extent to which he appears to trivialise the historical legacy of fascism by treating it as a fashion statement. Provocative as such artistic transgressions may be, they really pale into insignificance in light of the broader public assent associated with the "new naturalism" and "new misanthropy" alike (to be sure, Moynihan has logically gravitated toward Mr Linkola, but as yet there is little evidence of the latter's ideas gaining much purchase outside of his native Norway. Of course, this could change in the future with additional English translations, along with more general societal pessimism about human progress).

I already had an intuitive understanding of the biological ramifications of traditionalism after the reaction on another blog to my earlier post "Colin Wilson neofascist". The man described my post as "shite" for daring to denigrate his hero, and looking around that blog I found much evidence of the traditionalism in question: the misanthropic hatred of a "mass", psychological solutions for social problems predicated on principles of the innate superiority of gifted individuals, the search for a "perennial philosophy" based in Nature. I stopped to chuckle at the design of the blog, which prominently featured a naked, muscular man, with some sort of ornate staff in his right hand. His head resembled the sun (an image of Nature's perennial wisdom, forever burning brightly).

I've regretted ever since that I didn't bookmark that site as I'm sure it would have kept me entertained for years. Anyway, what of this "new misanthropy" then? Furedi offers a succinct appraisal:

"If anything, today's neo-Malthusian thinking is far more dismal and misanthropic than the original thing. For all his intellectual pessimism and lack of imagination, Thomas Malthus believed in humanity far more than his contemporary followers do. He argued, in his book On The Principle of Population, that although 'our future prospects respecting the mitigation of the evils arising from the principle of population may not be so bright as we could wish…they are far from being entirely disheartening, and by no means preclude that gradual and progressive improvement in human society, which before the late wild speculations on this subject, was the object of rational expectation' (10). Malthus' reservations about the human potential were influenced by a hostility to the optimistic humanism of his intellectual opponents, including Condorcet and Godwin. Nevertheless, despite his pessimistic account of population growth, he said 'it is hoped that the general result of the inquiry is not such as not to make us give up the improvement of human society in despair' (11).

Over the past two centuries, Malthus' followers often disparaged people who came from the 'wrong classes' or the 'wrong races' - but despite their prejudices they affirmed the special status of the human species. In some instances, such as the eugenic movement, rabid prejudice against so-called racial inferiors combined with a belief in human progress (12). Today's neo-Malthusians share the old prejudices, but in addition they harbour a powerful sense of loathing against the human species itself."

Furedi situates his discussion with reference to the "human impact" decried by certain segments of the contemporary environmental movement. Indeed, if you substitute "environment" for "religious calling" in my Ferrara quotation, then you can see that Furedi is pretty much saying the same thing about the- well, basically speaking- conservative character of the conservation movement. If the traditionalist music scene has any real collective sense of surviving in the hostile conditions of the interregnum, we can only guess what form their consecrating action might take in response. I'm just hoping that these perspectives never attain critical mass, or we will be living in truly dismal times.

Another part of the problem of course, which I touched on briefly in my "Heathen Harvests" post, is the sense of living in a post-socialist world. Among traditionalists, this seems to have coalesced into a world view which is presumptively asocial, at least outside of the sense of trust (or "social capital") to be gained from membership in their subcultural networks (sometimes in addition to the intimacy [sic] with strangers familiar from the more traditional bastions of the masculine, bohemian demimonde: i.e. the pub, the brothel, and the racetrack). I understand these networks then as compensating for the intensification of individual experience associated with being a freelance cultural worker (or "artist" if you prefer), who by definition subsists without the collegiality found in other workplaces, where membership of a union remains an option. As per "Heathen Harvests", consider Boyd Rice as an example. He didn't receive any remuneration for the design consultancy work he did on a Tiki Bar. Given the informal nature of the contract, Rice resolved not to pursue official legal arbitration. Instead, he and some associates simply showed up in the middle of the night and dismantled the bar. After that, Boyd could return to his support networks on the avant garde scene, which presuppose the recognition of individual charisma, and have at various times been a mixture of Satanic Nazism and Ragnar Redbeard's [sic] social Darwinism ("Might Is Right!").

I've seen this kind of thing happen firsthand, so I know Boyd Rice is not just an isolated case. I'll never forget the folks who had completed album artwork for small labels, who suffered the same fate. I remember another incident when some people I knew had just finished their set in a small electronic music festival, and the guy running the gig fronted them: "ok then, let's see what I owe you". He just rooted around in his wallet, and produced a small handful of crumpled notes, "thanks guys", leaving the band to distribute among themselves the appearance fee he had spontaneously calculated on the spot. So when you experience this kind of precarity on a regular basis, it's very easy to overcompensate by channelling ressentiment into a misanthropic "outsider" worldview, in tandem with more "esoteric" sources of personal or communitarian validation. This can mean "turning inward", and it follows that the guys I knew in the aforementioned group worshipped Colin Wilson, while another was the self-proclaimed anarchist who featured in my post "The Quiet Men".

Still not convinced? Just check out this guy for another local example. It seems like he's spent a lot of time beavering away for small publishers, and is obviously resentful of the advent of "mass" blogging. Never mind that, judging by what I see on his website, it is hard to fathom his personal sense of superiority that the majority of humanity is comprised of what he disparagingly refers to as "sheeple". Note too that his Misanthrope Magazine fittingly published a fatuous interview with none other than Boyd Rice in the inaugural issue.

I suspect the same holds true to some extent for the "scenius" [sic] of the so-called "England's Hidden Reverse", where "chaos magic" and other traditionalist conventions are much in evidence. Anyway, I haven't said so much here about the specifics of Furedi's argument, as I think it's already pretty obvious how it links to the thesis of "the new naturalism": i.e. the degradation of humanity, with few prospects for redemption. I've spent more time talking about the musical subcultures. However, I can extrapolate from Furedi's following statement some implicit linkages, "More recently, apocalyptic ideas once rooted in magic and theology have been recast as allegedly scientific statements about human destructiveness and irresponsibility". No doubt "apocalyptic [neo] folk" musicians such as Ian Read from Fire + Ice or David Tibet from Current 93 would claim some personal acquaintance with these ideas in their original context, even though the former is willing to make a minor concession, when asked if he is still against the modern world, "I am a traditionalist, but I am very happy with the fact there is a modern stomatology for instance".

I couldn't resist closing this out by posting a David E Williams song. Williams follows the conventions pretty closely. I understand that, in addition to his musical activities, he's the proprietor of an occult bookstore. His misanthropic proclivities have garnered some acclaim on the underground scene. Notice in the clip how they find expression through his disdain for "mass" tourism, which he crudely equates to femininity and the sociality of primates.