The Golden One - Mike From Imperium Press & Big Dave Martel. Red-Pill Journeys, Atheism, Libertarianism, Paganism

00:00:00.000 All right, we're back. The greatest interview series. Now, perhaps you think I sound a bit

00:00:06.920 strange and that's because I've been mugged. The forces of chaos, they knew that we're going to do

00:00:12.020 this interview. So Nurgle, he struck me down yet again with a sickness. So yeah, that's why I sound

00:00:18.080 a bit under the weather, but I'll try to be a good interview host nonetheless. So with me,

00:00:24.160 I have two fine gentlemen of high culture to cultured dads. So without further ado,

00:00:32.440 I would like to introduce Mike Maxwell from Imperium Press and big Dave Martell from the

00:00:38.820 Bissarchives. Welcome, fine gentlemen to the channel. I love it. Thank you so much for having us.

00:00:47.600 Yeah, yeah. It's my pleasure. And of course, when I've been on Dave's channel,

00:00:53.140 you always give me such a nice introduction. I wish I could replicate with this great and

00:00:59.720 glorious intros. But yeah, anyway, it's good to have you both here. So yeah, to start off,

00:01:06.240 I thought to ask you both, I can start with Mike from Imperium Press. To just introduce yourself

00:01:11.900 briefly for anyone who might be unfamiliar with you or Imperium Press. Right. Yes. Well,

00:01:19.800 thank you very much for having me. My name is Mike Maxwell. I am the Rex Sacrorum editor-in-chief,

00:01:28.100 main man behind Imperium Press. For anybody who's not familiar with that, we are a publisher of classics

00:01:36.480 with a bit of a traditionalist or you might say right-wing bent. Really what Imperium Press is,

00:01:44.060 it's a publishing company that's meant to reclaim the Western canon and to frame it in a way that's

00:01:51.420 sympathetic to its aims and the content there. There's so many publishers out there, even of classics,

00:01:57.520 that are hostile to the Western canon, and we are not. And we are probably the premier publisher in the

00:02:04.200 world that is framed along those lines, the premier classics publisher in the world. There's some

00:02:12.040 excellent other publishers as well. So that's Imperium Press. I am one half of Culture Dads,

00:02:17.720 along with my boy Big Dave, who's here. This is a podcast that we do that is somewhat related to

00:02:25.960 Imperium Press. And it's been going for, geez, a couple of years now. And I think we're the best

00:02:34.100 podcast due in the game, if I may be so humble about it. But yeah, it's been really good to do that

00:02:41.760 for a couple of years. And yeah, I've got a number of other projects as well. But those are my main gigs.

00:02:50.160 Hell yeah.

00:02:50.600 All right. Awesome. And I might add that you are doing a terrific job with Imperium Press. I've read

00:02:55.380 a few of the books. And yeah, this is something as a connoisseur of books that you can definitely,

00:03:03.500 you can sense the publisher, you know, with a foreword and footnotes and everything like that,

00:03:10.240 that, as you say, many of them, they are quite hostile to the material itself. And you notice

00:03:17.320 that if you read normie stuff. So it's definitely a great service to our cultural heritage that you

00:03:24.660 publish these things. So the Poetic Edda, I read a while back, your edition, great stuff.

00:03:30.340 And then also commentary on it. I published a book review a few months ago. So definitely do check it

00:03:37.440 out if you're out for edition of these classics that you can trust and you can trust to not,

00:03:44.680 you know, infuse it with various, you know, woke, woke things to put it simply. So yeah,

00:03:52.060 definitely great, great stuff. And yeah, Big Dave, introduce yourself.

00:03:58.800 Yeah, I'm Big Dave Martell. I've been in the circuit for too many years. You've probably seen

00:04:05.000 me on various different shows and podcasts and live streams and so on and so forth. I am the

00:04:10.100 editor in chief of the Bizarre Cive's Weird Tales of Monsters, Magic and Machines, which is a based

00:04:15.440 pulp fiction publisher that publishes up and coming underground authors and classic reprints

00:04:22.940 in their traditions of sword and sorcery, cosmic horror and science fiction. Really great stuff.

00:04:30.260 The Bizarre Cive's dot com. You can go check it out. Buy books over there. Follow us on Twitter

00:04:34.040 and Telegram at the Bizarre Cive's. As Mr. Mike just said, I'm one half of the Culture Dads podcast,

00:04:41.060 which is a podcast where two based publishing dads do deep dives into retro and pop culture

00:04:47.000 for folkish and dissident minds. You can go check that out over at Culture Dads. That's

00:04:52.040 culture with a K. Culture Dads dot com and get signed up. It's behind a paywall. It's premium

00:04:56.940 content, but it's lots of great stuff. You get over there, you get signed up there. You get

00:05:01.620 Imperium Press hardback books and Culture Dads every single week. We've been doing it for a couple

00:05:06.600 years. We've done so many great episodes. I've had so much fun with it. It's great stuff. I've also

00:05:11.440 been, I was the host for The Bog. Some folks might be familiar with that, which is coming

00:05:16.860 back with Heartfire Radio, which we're going to talk about in a few minutes. But yeah,

00:05:20.960 that's me. I'm a writer. I'm a poet. I'm a podcaster. I'm a freaking tabletop game designer.

00:05:28.680 I do a little bit of music, a little bit of voice acting. I do a little bit of everything

00:05:32.100 and I'm very active in my faith community. You can tell Dave is the guy that does the

00:05:37.360 plugs for our podcast. Yeah, the master of plugs. Yeah. As I said a few minutes ago, I wish

00:05:45.480 I could have given you such a great introduction that you always give me. But yeah, great stuff.

00:05:50.800 Do check it out. And yeah, we'll get into the weird tales of monstrous magic in machines later

00:05:58.180 on perhaps because as you all know, I'm an enthusiast of Warhammer and Horace Heresy and

00:06:03.440 stuff like that. And as we know, they have the Black Library and Games Workshop. They've decided

00:06:09.420 to swing a bit to the left, so to speak. So that, of course, gives us an opening on our side to

00:06:15.020 perhaps present culture of our own to fill the gap for those who are, yeah, who like this type of

00:06:23.660 things, which I do, by the way. I think science fiction is a great medium to explore various ideas.

00:06:30.360 Perhaps one day I will get to write something myself. I'm not going to say too much now,

00:06:34.540 but yeah, we'll get back into it in a little while. So that's a good introduction of both.

00:06:40.960 Now I want to get into the juicy stuff and the juicy stuff, at least for me, I'm always interested

00:06:47.000 in the personal stories, the personal stories of how you came to be in this very conversation on this

00:06:55.040 fine day. So we can start with Mike, Imperium Press. What was your enlightening, your awakening,

00:07:03.940 your red-pilling process? How did it begin and how did it look?

00:07:08.920 Well, it's interesting. I've answered this question many times, and each time I do,

00:07:13.120 I seem to push it further back. Like it started when I read my first book of myths and legends

00:07:19.080 when I was four years old, or maybe it was when I was a teenager and I read Darwin for the first time

00:07:24.400 and so on and so forth. But the proximate answer, I would say, is that I was a libertarian for many

00:07:29.940 years. And libertarianism is like a lot of guys will gainsay it in our thing as not sufficiently

00:07:37.440 red-pilled or whatever. But I do have some respect for it. And I don't want to, I don't want to,

00:07:44.080 you know, gainsay it or come across hostile or whatever. But it is kind of like baby's first,

00:07:49.240 counterculture or like anti-regime ideology or whatever, right? And there's a lot of truth

00:07:58.180 behind it. But I found, because I took it very seriously and I spent a lot of time in online

00:08:04.080 forums trying to defend it, the long and short of it is I found that ultimately I could not defend it.

00:08:11.680 There were some principles behind libertarianism that just really didn't actually hold up.

00:08:17.740 In particular, you know, to do with ideas of property, what property is, where it comes from,

00:08:23.640 and who says what, like who owns what. Like if you try to really dig down into the fundamental,

00:08:30.300 into the fundaments of those questions, you find that libertarianism starts to not really come up

00:08:35.580 with any satisfactory answers. So for a little while, you know, I tried to be as intellectually

00:08:41.880 honest as I can. And I just found that I couldn't, I could no longer maintain it. So I was a little bit

00:08:47.660 homeless for a while, drifting ideologically, not really certain where I would land. And I came across

00:08:53.960 the writings of a gentleman that everybody knows, or many people know now by the name of Mencius Moldbug.

00:09:01.380 So I kind of got into the post-libertarian side of things into neo-reaction. And neo-reaction is very

00:09:09.860 interesting because basically what it does is it takes a very scientific look at social systems,

00:09:17.780 at what you might call social technology, things like traditions or culture, religion, and things like

00:09:26.780 that. And it tries to look at it kind of the way that an engineer would look at things in a very

00:09:32.340 hard-nosed and square-headed kind of way, very rationalistic way. But it does so in a very,

00:09:38.320 very honest way. And it essentially, the answer that it comes up with is that the oldest technology

00:09:43.120 is the most durable. And this includes things like religion. It includes things like patriarchy.

00:09:48.620 It includes things like ethnocentrism and so on and so forth. Like all the things that you're not

00:09:54.420 allowed, basically not allowed to like today. It sort of, it sort of realizes that these things

00:10:00.400 pass what you might call the Lindy test, right? Like, you know, for anybody who's familiar with

00:10:05.880 that, all these things that the liberal machine says that you're not allowed to stand behind is

00:10:12.940 basically what kind of holds up everything in our world. So that was kind of like my political red

00:10:19.480 pill. And I would say there's a parallel line as well with my religious journey as well, which when

00:10:28.660 I was a kid, as I alluded to before, I got very, very hooked onto like myths and legends when I was

00:10:34.620 quite young throughout high school. And, you know, as an adolescent, as many Gen Xers or people growing up

00:10:42.480 in the 90s did, I became like a very hardcore atheist. But I had an experience when I was in my

00:10:49.400 early 20s, I basically got hooked up with a scene of hippies of all things, one of whom really sort of

00:10:56.660 turned me on to esotericism and things like Kabbalah and whatnot. And this actually got me very interested

00:11:03.740 in the Bible. So I read the Bible back to front a few times, because, you know, if you're going to get

00:11:10.940 into that sort of thing, you kind of need to know the exoteric stuff, you need to know the meat and

00:11:14.820 potatoes, you need to know the basics. So I thought I'd get all that stuff under my belt. But, you know,

00:11:19.840 for reasons that we can go into, if you like, I just didn't find that it was for me, it didn't speak

00:11:27.100 to me, I didn't feel like it was like what was in that, those stories was about me, or about my folk.

00:11:33.640 And so I was, again, sort of drifting for a little while. And of all things, I sort of came,

00:11:39.960 I came to Taoism, something that very, very few people in our thing actually get behind. And Taoism still

00:11:47.540 has a special place in my heart. Taoism matches up very well with libertarianism. Those two kind of dovetailed

00:11:53.580 for me. But it also felt very alien. It felt like it wasn't my thing. And, you know, being sort of growing up

00:12:03.240 steeped in mythology and traditional stories and everything, my parents were really cool about introducing me to

00:12:09.280 that stuff. I was just kind of craving something that was, to use a phrase from Stephen McNall,

00:12:14.080 drinking from my own well, you know, taking what's coming from my own people. And I kind of felt like

00:12:22.200 I wasn't able to do that because it couldn't be reconstructed, or perhaps like, you know, too much

00:12:28.660 had been lost. And then in my political journey, getting into things like the counter-enlightenment,

00:12:35.240 I came up upon a book that we have subsequently published, which is called The Ancient City.

00:12:42.040 And I read this book. And it was, in a way, it was a spiritual experience just reading it, because

00:12:47.960 I was kind of forced to read it by circumstances. And I got, you know, I basically, I sat down for a

00:12:56.820 good four hours. And I read like the first, however many, 50 to 100 pages or whatever I could get

00:13:02.740 through. And by the time I put it down, I knew something in my gut told me that I had been changed

00:13:07.900 and I had been moved into a different path. So that book just basically kind of gave me license

00:13:13.540 to take paganism seriously and Indo-European reconstruction. And that has basically set me

00:13:21.000 on the path to where I am now with Imperium Press.

00:13:25.240 All right. Awesome. So just to clarify, you are now a pagan, a European pagan.

00:13:32.620 Yes, I am. I'm a Germanic pagan. And I sort of like a lot of my practice is focused on

00:13:39.840 reconstructing as far back as we can for Germanic and Indo-European practices.

00:13:45.180 Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. For the record, for those who don't know, I'm also a Germanic pagan.

00:13:53.040 And of course, I have a certain liking for syncretism. So I have a few Hellenic gods in

00:13:58.560 my pantheon, but the main gods are the Nordic, the Germanic ones. And of course, I have an interest

00:14:04.460 going deeper down to the common Indo-European roots as well. So that's why I sometimes talk about

00:14:10.440 these Indian and Iranian gods as well, because they ultimately came from Europe as well via the

00:14:15.520 accorded ware culture. But yeah, that's a that's a big, a long rabbit hole. So I'm not going to go

00:14:20.120 into it right now. But yeah, thanks, Mike. That was a very nice background story indeed. So we'll get

00:14:27.220 back to the religious stuff in a little while, I suppose. We'll let Big Dave give his

00:14:34.140 enlightenment journey. So yeah, take it away, Dave.

00:14:38.520 Oh, man, I don't. It's hard to pinpoint, right? It's when did it happen? I have a journey that's

00:14:47.000 a little bit similar to Mike's as far as, you know, I went through libertarianism. I had a brief stint

00:14:53.400 as a Fedora Lord atheist. But going all the way back, I have to say that I was I believe that I was

00:15:01.220 sort of, it chose me, this path chose me. It's like the cult of Cthulhu, right? The slumbering

00:15:08.700 one calls to the sensitive few. And I heard it. And I feel like I was maybe, you know, fate has

00:15:15.960 called me here. I don't know. I don't know. I feel like I've always been this. But if I have to trace

00:15:22.560 a lineage to kind of my, my journey, it starts when I'm a little kid. When I was a little, so

00:15:29.720 my father's, so my, my paternal grandfather was Pennsylvania Dutch. And he was a, he was actually

00:15:37.500 an engineer. He's the son of coal miners, has a part of the old blood American lineage. It was some

00:15:44.400 of the first German settlers. They landed in 1689, been here in Pennsylvania for a long time,

00:15:50.460 fought in every war. But he was an engineer. He was a very pious man. He was church of the

00:15:57.400 brethren, but he was a very, very kind of inquisitive mind, very brilliant man, brilliant,

00:16:05.180 brilliant man. But he always was really big into getting to teaching how to question things and

00:16:12.480 understand things. He was a very learned man. He is, he was what you could call like your typical

00:16:17.500 Yeoman farmer. He was, he was, you know, he went to, he went to college and everything like that,

00:16:25.180 but he was also an autodidact. He was kind of a polymath in these things. And then on my mother's

00:16:31.140 side, my maternal grandfather was a Italian Catholic. He came over from Calabria, Italy when he was a

00:16:38.660 little, when he was a little kid. And he was some, somewhat similar. He was a very, very pious,

00:16:44.340 very superstitious man, but he was very art minded. My grandfather, he played guitar. He was a painter.

00:16:51.440 He would, he was, he could draw. He was a great, he was very charismatic. He was really big into

00:16:58.260 telling stories. He was a tremendous storyteller. And these two men were kind of the, the,

00:17:04.860 like the two parts that inspired me to go on my path for my whole entire life. And one of the things

00:17:14.320 that probably was my first journey, I don't know if I want to call it the red pill, but one of the

00:17:21.560 things that kind of sparked my journey when I was a little kid, my grandfather, my maternal grandfather

00:17:27.260 read to me, the Hobbit. It was the first book that he learned in English that he read by himself in

00:17:33.840 English. And he loved it. He absolutely loved the Hobbit. So he read it to me. And I just fell in

00:17:39.500 love with that. The idea of magic and adventure and heroism and, and mythology and dragons and

00:17:46.980 trolls and everything that's in the Hobbit, all the beauty of Tolkien. It just became part of me.

00:17:54.140 And that inspired probably my entire life journey from then on growing up. I just could not get enough

00:18:01.440 of the imaginal of the ancient of the old. And on top of it, I carried with me my paternal

00:18:07.020 grandfather's sense of, of, um, that kind of mind, the learned mind to always try to learn and

00:18:15.480 understand why, right? Always understand why. So that kind of inspired me to be a disagreeable

00:18:22.880 curmudgeon my entire life. Everyone would say, well, this is how it is. This is how it, and I'd be like,

00:18:28.180 why, why is that? So I would always try to read things. And growing up, I kind of went down the

00:18:34.980 journey of this, this kind of stuff. And I can't remember my earliest memory, but probably what led

00:18:42.840 me to what you would call the red pill is my faith. When I was about a teenager, I don't know, 15,

00:18:49.960 16, or whatever, being some of my buddies, we're all into it. And a couple of those buddies are

00:18:55.820 actually now they practice with me today, but they're in my kindred. But, um, we started to

00:19:03.280 just read everything we could get our hands on about ancient religion, specifically Germanic

00:19:08.000 ancient religion, because those of us that are from Pennsylvania, many of us have very deep

00:19:12.640 Pennsylvania, Dutch heritage, Pennsylvania, German heritage. So we began to read everything we

00:19:18.640 could get our hands on, you know, the Eddas and just whatever myth, uh, kind of books we could find,

00:19:24.120 watch documentaries. And we started to do what you could call pagan practices back then. We had no

00:19:30.620 idea what we were doing. We were making live, we were doing libations to the gods and, you know,

00:19:35.460 believing in this stuff. And we're, we thought we were the only ones in the world doing this.

00:19:39.200 We had no idea, you know, this is back in, I don't know, early 2000s, you know, kind of early days of

00:19:45.840 the internet. So we couldn't really go onto the internet to find other people. We were young,

00:19:52.020 you know, all that. But from there, uh, eventually I got into the kind of Fedor Lord atheist phase

00:20:01.340 during the Richard Dawkins and all this kind of stuff. And I, um, also fell into libertarianism.

00:20:08.520 I started reading books like by Murray Rothbard, uh, Milton Friedman. Um, you guys are familiar with

00:20:16.820 this kind of literature and listening to different libertarian podcasts is where I found like prison

00:20:22.280 planet. And honestly, this is when I, this is about this time I found, uh, red ice, red ice creations

00:20:29.660 back when it was just, uh, Henrik when they were doing the really cool, weird conspiracy theories.

00:20:35.720 I'm going on and on, but long story short, uh, I went through that phase and then eventually I

00:20:40.760 realized that I was a very bad atheist and a very bad libertarian. And I really just didn't

00:20:46.880 understand what those things meant. So I got into, uh, guys like Thomas Carlyle. I got into guys like

00:20:55.360 Nietzsche. I got into guys like, uh, you know, these, these types of thinkers. Um, and then I got into

00:21:01.020 Buddhism. I read, you know, uh, Ted K and Jocka Lule and, uh, thinkers like this. And eventually I came

00:21:10.540 back into faith. It brought me back into faith. And from then, from then on, I have kind of, all of my

00:21:18.600 beliefs have been downstream from my faith. Obviously I, I found my way to like things like 4chan, you know,

00:21:24.520 the various, various platforms that, that distribute, um, dissident ideas and stuff like

00:21:31.340 that. And, you know, it took me on different journeys and reading a lot of Empyrean press

00:21:35.640 books. I'll tell you what, Empyrean press books, I can't tell you how many times they've turned my

00:21:39.240 head upside down, crazy stuff. But, um, yeah, so that's kind of been my journey, but it's mainly

00:21:44.500 been downstream of my faith to this day. Uh, as my faith develops and as I've learned more and matured

00:21:52.000 in my faith as a heathen, uh, everything else has always had to contour to that. So if I've learned,

00:21:59.340 hey, I misunderstood this thing, then all of my politics must change. Uh, one thing that I can say

00:22:06.220 is, uh, as a heathen, to me, the will of the gods and, and the teachings of the ancestors were, have

00:22:13.700 always been utmost authority. And to me, everything political is must contour to that. So the reason that

00:22:21.320 I'm kind of in these spaces, as I guess you could say a right wing or maybe nationalist or whatever

00:22:26.720 you want to call it, uh, the reason that I'm here is because I am a heathen and that these beliefs are

00:22:31.840 downstream of heathenry. So that's kind of my journey. All right. Awesome. Yeah. So this is quite

00:22:39.660 interesting. I hear this so many, so often, so many good guys that have been through two stages in

00:22:46.100 particular. So, uh, Fedora tipping atheist stage and a libertarian phase. So I haven't been through

00:22:53.180 these stages myself because I believe also this is because I'm grown up in Sweden. So the default

00:22:58.320 position is sort of that you are, uh, that you are already atheist and then you sort of find some sort

00:23:05.420 of, uh, faith, but I know in America you have a much stronger presence from Christianity still.

00:23:11.060 So, uh, but yeah, I mean the, the church in Sweden has been, um, greatly reduced for at least 70 years.

00:23:18.600 So it was never really a presence, but could you, could you both just give your take on this, that

00:23:24.300 the, it seems like many guys, they're going through these two stages often at the same time,

00:23:30.000 and then they sort of overcome it. Do you have any good take on, on why that is? So why you get to the

00:23:36.840 libertarian stage and the atheist stage, and then you get through it to, to find a more, um, a higher

00:23:43.360 stage one could, one could say. Well, go ahead, Mike. Well, I was just going to say, I'm not sure

00:23:50.760 that I have like a real sort of deep hot take on this. I think that basically both are essentially

00:23:57.100 approved, uh, it's, it's like approved dissident channels, uh, within the mainstream, that these

00:24:03.320 are things that are actually, um, they are there to kind of like corral you back into liberalism,

00:24:10.460 back into modernity, back into everything that sort of keeps the machine running. But it's like,

00:24:16.040 you know, it's, it's like the, um, uh, it's like the two sides of the, um, of, of the coin,

00:24:24.740 like that you're allowed, it's that you're allowed to, um, have. So, uh, what libertarianism

00:24:30.760 basically is, as I said before, it's sort of like baby's first dissident, uh, ideology kind of thing,

00:24:37.040 where it is in fact, you know, if a libertarian regime were to somehow take over in some place in

00:24:44.960 the West that was like hardcore and like actually standing on its principles, like if Ron Paul was

00:24:49.940 king of the United States, like magically back in 2012, then, um, it would, it would actually be a

00:24:58.000 problem for the regime, but it wouldn't be the problem for the regime that it would be if you

00:25:02.480 had something else, something that sort of was like pre-French revolution in its orientation.

00:25:08.160 Um, that is the one thing that you are not allowed to have, um, and atheism as well. Um,

00:25:14.800 you know, uh, a good, um, Jonathan Bowden had, had a good quote one time where he basically said

00:25:22.520 that there are two things that liberalism is unable to completely unable to integrate into itself.

00:25:28.320 One of them is the radical right. And the other one is religious fundamentalism. So these are

00:25:34.040 basically, they're sort of, uh, counter-cultural, uh, you know, channels that you're allowed to go

00:25:41.180 into that seem to oppose the mainstream, but are actually there to kind of reinforce it ultimately.

00:25:46.400 Yeah. I would say that for libertarianism, it was kind of an aesthetic thing, you know,

00:25:51.480 growing up, I am, I am a home body. I am a home. I'm proud of who I am, where I come from.

00:25:56.680 I shout from the rooftops how I'm proud to be a Pennsylvanian and all this kind of stuff.

00:26:01.160 So I've always been like that. Um, so for me, it was like an aesthetic thing. Libertarianism was the

00:26:06.820 most 1776. It was the most American. It was the most, and that's kind of what it was when it,

00:26:13.240 you know, in the United States, it was either mainstream kind of bow tie conservatism, neocon

00:26:19.880 stuff, or you could go hang out and go read books that are recommended by these like militia guys

00:26:26.240 and these like, you know, patriots and all this kind of stuff. So what are you going to choose if

00:26:30.500 you're a young guy, the guys that like guns and dude, cool, bad-ass stuff, or the, the dorks that

00:26:36.100 you don't like, you know what I mean? So I went with libertarianism and then atheism,

00:26:40.880 my atheism phase was simply a reaction to Christianity. That's all that it was. And I'm

00:26:46.780 not a, I've matured out of that. I don't, I'm a grown man. I'm 37 years old. I don't bear any sort

00:26:53.480 of like resent towards Christianity. I'm not, I'm not barg, you know what I mean? That's not part of

00:26:59.620 my identity. I've, I respect it and I respect men that are reverent and pious in their, their

00:27:04.860 Christian tradition. But, um, as a kid, it just didn't, it didn't fit. It felt weird. It felt,

00:27:12.360 it didn't feel right. So, and also growing up, a lot of my family were the, the boomer generation.

00:27:19.480 They were very kind of irreverent. And I didn't respect that because I respected my grandfathers

00:27:24.560 who were very pious men, you know, by my, my maternal grandfather, he would bless doorways

00:27:30.520 before he walked through. He'd cover mirrors cause he thought demons could see him. My, uh, paternal

00:27:35.840 grandfather was a deacon and understood theology. I had a whole little mini library dedicated to

00:27:41.020 theology and he read the Euthyphro dilemma and freaking, you know, all this kind of like,

00:27:45.920 these guys were really about it. And I looked up to them and then their children,

00:27:50.920 my parents' generation, like didn't take it seriously at all. It was, they were only kind of

00:27:55.720 Christian when it served them. Right. And I'm not, I love my parents. I'm not knocking them,

00:28:01.480 but I, as a young man, I rebelled against that. I was like, you know what, if it's not serious,

00:28:06.580 if it's not this also, it feels weird. So I'm against that. And then what was the other option?

00:28:11.580 The other option was at the time I thought was atheism, but you know, because it was also at the

00:28:20.240 time I, I expressed myself, I expressed my belief in, in, in polytheism several times during this

00:28:28.060 time. And people laugh at me or maybe, Oh, what do you believe in Marvel? This kind of stuff. So

00:28:34.040 they sort of, they sort of mocked me out of saying it right. But in my heart, in my mind, secretly,

00:28:42.360 I still believed. And there was one point I remember that it was over. Atheism was over for

00:28:49.300 me. I watched, I believe it was Richard Dawkins and he was on Bill O'Reilly or something like that.

00:28:54.860 He's on Fox news. And, uh, Richard Dawkins was going through his, his talking points. And he said

00:29:01.680 something along the lines of, um, I'm, I'm only a little bit more atheist than you. He says, uh,

00:29:09.860 you don't, you, I believe in one less God than you. I also don't believe in, uh, Apollo or Zeus

00:29:18.920 or Osiris or Thor. And when he said Thor, for some reason, I didn't like it on a visceral level. I

00:29:27.540 couldn't explain it. I didn't like it. He made me mad. It turned my stomach. I was like, F this guy.

00:29:33.640 This ain't my God memories kicking in your blood memories, kicking in, making you angry. Yeah.

00:29:38.760 Yeah. It was like, he spoke blasphemy to me and I didn't like it. So from that point on, I, I,

00:29:44.760 I went away from that. I couldn't explain it, but that's what happened.

00:29:49.660 Yeah. I suppose there's something when we're talking about blood memories, of course we have,

00:29:54.780 you know, inherited our DNA. So our physical appearance and our, you know, bone structure and

00:30:00.100 everything like that. And we also have blood memories. So I usually, when I talk to Christians

00:30:04.900 and they say, but why, why don't you follow the God of your ancestors? Um, why, why don't you convert

00:30:11.140 to Christ? And then I say, if I line up all of my ancestors a lot, many more of them will actually

00:30:16.420 be of, of the old religion. And of course, when you heard that, uh, dork, because he isn't really

00:30:22.100 physically impressive. And when these dorks, they speak, um, disparagingly about our sacred items,

00:30:29.780 it can be whatever it can even be about Jesus. If I hear a dork speak ill about Jesus, it's,

00:30:34.260 it doesn't sit well with me. And now, of course I'm not a Christian, but still Jesus has been with

00:30:39.780 many of my ancestors. So I also view it as an assault on European man in general. It depends on

00:30:45.700 who says it, of course, if, uh, I've criticized Christianity quite a bit over the last while.

00:30:51.140 Uh, but I definitely understand what you mean there and it doesn't sit well. And then for me,

00:30:55.940 I've had many of these moments as well. And then in later years, I've come to understand why I felt

00:31:01.860 a certain distaste for this smug, smug dorks talking ill about same thing. If we talk about history,

00:31:09.860 oh, this ancient Greeks, they weren't so they didn't have these cool physiques and the medieval

00:31:15.620 knights, they had poor health or whatever it might be. It's just physically unfit dorks speaking ill of

00:31:24.100 chads, basically in the same way. Um, so yeah, anyway, my, my take, my take in a, in a brief,

00:31:33.700 briefly stated about libertarianism and atheism is that there is, uh, an immature and I see mature

00:31:40.340 because as, as Mike said, it's, it's the first baby steps on becoming a dissident. It is a bit

00:31:46.260 immature, the sense of not wanting to submit yourself to something higher. And when I say

00:31:51.540 submit, it's something good. You do submit yourself to a higher cause, a higher power. I say that

00:31:58.020 definitely 100%. I am a humble servant of a higher cause and it gives me joy and freedom in doing that.

00:32:05.300 And I think for many libertarians, they have a sort of knee jerk reaction that they say they

00:32:09.620 don't want to be, uh, you know, anyone's servants, they want to be their own master. And so therefore

00:32:15.060 it's quite natural to not have any gods, not any, any higher metaphysical principles. Uh, and it goes

00:32:21.540 hand in hand, uh, quite a bit. Now I know, of course there are good libertarians. They are, uh, pious,

00:32:28.820 religious, everything like that. Um, so, but in general, just in, uh, I'm painting with a very

00:32:35.620 broad brush here that you have this reluctance to submit yourself to, to, uh, to something higher.

00:32:42.020 And then it goes hand in hand, uh, atheism and, uh, libertarianism. That's just my, uh, my, uh, take

00:32:48.340 at least on, on the matter. It's true. Yeah, I think so. And I agree with what Dave was saying

00:32:54.580 as far as like the visceral reaction to atheism specifically, um, by the time Richard Dawkins came

00:33:01.860 around, I was already sort of on the path to theism of some kind. You know, I had read a fair

00:33:09.060 bit about like Thomistic apologetics and like arguments for God. And even though none of the

00:33:15.860 specific arguments really convinced me, I always thought that there is something out there that

00:33:22.260 like there is a God or some sort of divine force or presence. I've never refined that quite a lot,

00:33:29.460 but back then I felt it too. And I just on a gut level did not like the kind of person

00:33:35.860 who would just sort of snicker and laugh about religious people. Um, it always, it always struck

00:33:42.340 me as being extremely unself-aware, uh, people who believe that they don't actually like that they

00:33:50.580 are perfectly rational as in like every one of their assumptions can be rationally justified.

00:33:56.580 Um, that's, it strikes me as extremely unself-aware because you always have to start from somewhere.

00:34:01.940 You always have to start from a point of faith. You always have to start axiomatically just to even

00:34:06.900 reason it all. You have to have axioms and the having of those axioms is by definition pre-rational.

00:34:13.860 It's something that's just assumed. That's just kind of a brute fact that's just taken at the outset.

00:34:20.260 And, uh, there's a lot of folks out there that kind of feel like they don't have those that,

00:34:23.860 and, and, and that everything that they believe is perfectly rational can be justified.

00:34:28.740 And it seems to me that that is like the ultimate blindness because at least religious people,

00:34:34.660 you know, understand that they begin from a point of faith. It's the sort of

00:34:39.220 Dawkinites or the, like, you know, the new atheists that, um, that don't see that they

00:34:45.460 too begin from a point of, uh, absolute faith. And this to me is like, it's the kind of Socratic

00:34:52.100 irony. It's like, at least Socrates knows that he doesn't know anything. Like, at least he's got that,

00:34:57.700 even if he doesn't know anything. Um, it's, it's that kind of irony, uh, that at least the religious

00:35:04.420 person, um, there's a humility there that really is in keeping with the sort of essence of

00:35:11.700 conservatism, you know, conservatism, like with a, a small C, you know, like the Edmund Burke kind of

00:35:19.460 conservatism. It's a kind of epistemic humility that you understand that you don't have all the answers

00:35:26.260 and that maybe the, um, you know, rational individual reasoning from his own, um, self-generated

00:35:32.980 first premises is not a very solid place to begin. So it's that kind of humility that

00:35:38.500 atheists and let's be honest, libertarians very often don't have that. They, they think that like,

00:35:44.180 they can construct a perfectly rational system. That's always struck me as being extremely not

00:35:49.220 humble. And, uh, that is always kind of like rubbed me the wrong way. Yeah.

00:35:54.740 Yeah. Well put. So Mike, you mentioned a few libertarian principles that you, that you couldn't

00:36:04.100 defend in, uh, internet debates. Could you just explain those, uh, those points? I got intrigued.

00:36:11.540 Sure. Um, well, it's going quite a ways back and I've sort of have to reach, reach back pretty far in

00:36:16.500 my memory to think what it was, but I think there was, there was a, um, so every libertarian feels,

00:36:24.020 uh, obliged to defend the idea that taxation is theft. Right. Um, and of course, as a libertarian,

00:36:32.340 I accepted this kind of on faith, but also, you know, I mean, it's an intuitive, right? The idea

00:36:39.060 that the government comes and says, you have to give us a quarter of your income or whatever,

00:36:42.820 it kind of feels like theft. Right. Um, so that actually is, it's, it's quite a strong argument,

00:36:48.740 but then I had to basically reckon with the idea of like, what is it that in fact makes something

00:36:56.500 property in the first place? So for example, um, I could say that I am the sole proprietor and owner

00:37:04.820 of the entire surface of the moon. And what is it that I, you know, what is it, uh, that makes that

00:37:13.060 mine? If I assert that claim, or what is it that makes it not mine? What is it, what is it that

00:37:18.700 actually makes property really belong to somebody? And of course, being a good libertarian, I had read

00:37:27.020 Bastiat. Um, and Bastiat says something to the effect of property is an agreement between people as to the

00:37:34.000 status of a thing, right? Property isn't actually like a thing. Property is a social phenomenon.

00:37:41.680 It's like each person in the community agrees that this particular car belongs to Mike and not to his

00:37:48.160 neighbor, right? Like that's the only thing that makes the car mine and not my neighbor's is, is other

00:37:52.880 people, um, agreeing to that or other people, um, acknowledging that. So property sort of against

00:38:01.380 the typical sort of libertarian notion of sociality, property is an inherently social thing. It's not

00:38:09.280 something that you get because you've mixed your labor with the soil. There's no like metaphysic,

00:38:13.960 there's no like magic, like secret handshake that you happens when you dig the, um, when you dig your

00:38:21.140 shovel into the soil and you start, you know, improving it. That's not what makes it yours. The fact

00:38:26.000 that you've improved it doesn't make it yours at all. What makes it yours is that other people say it's

00:38:30.760 yours, right? So there's an inherent sociality to property. And I just found that on that basis,

00:38:38.040 I really could not say that taxation is theft because essentially what taxation is, is it's the

00:38:45.320 sum total. I mean, this can be kind of argued, but I think it's, it's a fairly solid assumption that

00:38:53.120 it's the sum total of the community saying you owe something back to us, right? And there is nothing

00:38:59.340 illegitimate about that. And in fact, the idea of having something belong to you at all in the first

00:39:04.200 place kind of presupposes this social element of property. I guess basically, you know, a way of

00:39:11.280 putting it is that property is based on a social contract, right? And any libertarian that hears that

00:39:17.880 is going to go, it's like the mark of the devil, right? Social contract. They hate that. Uh, and I did

00:39:25.720 too. And this was one of the things that had like started me reeling that I kind of realized that all

00:39:31.820 of my ideas about like what it is, um, essentially what makes a law, I suppose that it really cashes

00:39:40.920 out to is founded on something that libertarianism can't even touch. It doesn't even get near it. Uh,

00:39:49.580 so that was one of the things that kind of played into my, what would kind of dislodged me from

00:39:56.560 libertarianism. Now I don't believe in the social contract anymore. I have a much more nuanced take

00:40:02.040 on it. And of course that term kind of has an a historicity behind it. There's a Russovian idea

00:40:08.760 that, you know, in the, uh, the primordial, you know, ooze, we were radically free individuals that like

00:40:17.460 came together as contractually, that's not the case, but as a kind of metaphor of, you know,

00:40:24.480 you are kind of embedded already embedded in a network of relationships that you didn't choose

00:40:30.140 and that those relationships are valid and they have force regardless of what your choices are.

00:40:37.240 You know what I mean? That is what libertarianism gets wrong. And I think it's a fatal flaw in the

00:40:42.480 ideology. And also, right. That's what, that's what got me was what is a right?

00:40:47.460 Well, you know, in order to have property, they say you have property rights, you have these rights

00:40:52.140 and I was like, all right, well, what is the right? How do you get a right? And they, they say,

00:40:57.060 all right, well, you know, these are, these come from God. These come from up on above. So you guys

00:41:02.220 don't really believe in those authorities. You have this kind of abstract authority that gives it,

00:41:06.380 but really meat and potatoes on ground floor in earth. What gives us those rights? Well, what gives

00:41:12.680 you the right is the state or the King or whatever. And I started questioning this because

00:41:17.180 they would always say, I would say, you know, cause I always had a, you know, I, a love for,

00:41:23.060 for monarchy. I always thought Kings were, were based cause they are based, based, very based.

00:41:28.980 And I would always say, well, why don't we have a monarchy? That's like less bureaucracy than a,

00:41:33.700 than a, you know, or modern democracies or whatever. They say, oh, well then you can't hunt on the

00:41:37.860 King's land. Dude, I grew up in PA. This is the deer hunter state. You still can't hunt on the King's land.

00:41:42.720 You got to get a permit. You got to get a license. You can only hunt in certain areas.

00:41:46.900 You know, you, there's still rules and regulations about hunting. You can't just go out and start

00:41:50.880 like hunting things to extinction or shoot a deer whenever you want. You got to, you got to get

00:41:55.140 approved. You don't have a right to do that. So why, so why is it that we, where do our rights come

00:42:00.540 from? Well, your rights come from an authority rights are privileges bestowed upon you by an authority.

00:42:06.380 So it's like, how is it that you're against authority and you don't want an authority,

00:42:09.980 but then also you want rights. It's just a formula for strong men or bad guys to come in and, and,

00:42:15.920 and just like take over and abuse you. You know what I mean? So it's like, what is a right? And I

00:42:21.240 came around, it's a liberal spook. There's no such thing as rights, rights are privileges bestowed upon

00:42:25.880 you by an authority. And you want that authority to be noble and just. And when the authority is noble

00:42:31.040 and just, like a benevolent King or a great leader or statesman or whatever, they bestow upon you good

00:42:36.980 privileges, they give you a good life. And when the guys in charge are bad guys, then they give

00:42:42.180 you, then they abuse you and they take away your, your privileges and everything like that. And it

00:42:46.380 doesn't matter if it's written in a constitution on a piece of paper, they're going to ignore it.

00:42:50.240 It's all the will of men. So when good men are in charge, you have a good society. When bad men are

00:42:55.860 in charge, you have a bad society and there's no, there's no abstraction or idea. That's why like

00:43:02.120 American conservatives, but, oh, well, it's my right. It's in the con this is unconstitutional.

00:43:06.240 And they just, they scream that from the rooftops as, as the leftoids just abuse the crap out of

00:43:12.240 them and send them through kangaroo courts and, and do all this kind of stuff. It's because they're

00:43:16.420 completely hamstrung and blindsided because they believed in this, this nonsense liberal spook

00:43:21.600 that isn't real. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And it's, this is such a

00:43:26.420 fundamental, this is a reality, a reality check, a truth that all, all white men just need to,

00:43:34.080 to understand now at, at the moment, I need to understand that political will is everything,

00:43:40.400 uh, because ultimately it's about who wields the levers of power. That's ultimately what it is.

00:43:47.640 It's a fight. It's a political fight who gets to say what goes. And this is also when we're talking

00:43:53.760 about the European situation with re-migration and everything. And there are these dorks saying that,

00:43:59.900 oh, you know, we, we can't repatriate because they have citizenships and all the rest of it.

00:44:04.820 And it's like, it's, it's a piece of paper. It's a, your passport, it's a piece of paper. It can be

00:44:09.720 revoked as long as there are, you know, uh, good men on the inside who are committed to restoring

00:44:15.620 order to the West. And of course, when I talk about re-migration we have in Europe, a good start

00:44:20.680 would be to send out all, all, everyone who's committed a crime and then everyone who's on welfare.

00:44:25.620 So that's a good start. And, uh, yes, it's absolutely fully possible. We're already sending

00:44:31.240 people out. So it would just be to, yeah, get our guys into positions of power guys with a good

00:44:38.200 political will. So that is the, the fundamental truth of politics. It's a, it's a game. It's a fight

00:44:44.160 of wills of political wills. And a lot is possible if we are, if we just have this, uh, this will

00:44:50.880 actually. Yeah. Dorks love rules because they're inherently they're narcissists and they just like

00:44:56.220 ruling over other people. They love to be, assume the role of petty tyrant where they can just be

00:45:02.100 these like kind of self-anointed hall monitors. You're in trouble now. They just, they love snitching.

00:45:08.580 They love big, you know, that's against the rules. But at the end of the day, if you have power,

00:45:12.880 if you have authority, you could do whatever you want. Period. Yeah. It's interesting because this

00:45:18.480 actually ties in with what we were talking about before about atheism, because ultimately what, um,

00:45:24.880 what liberalism is fundamentally is the idea that the rules themselves can govern. It's

00:45:33.180 constitutionalism. It's that if you get the right rules that the, the system can essentially run

00:45:39.040 itself without a sovereign, without a king, without a, you know, somebody at the head of it, it can,

00:45:45.220 it's just basically, if you get the, the, um, you know, firmware set up properly, that it can just

00:45:52.260 be a self-running system. And there was a book written by a gentleman. I won't mention his name.

00:45:57.400 It's called political theology. And, um, it's like the, I, he basically came up with the idea that

00:46:05.060 this idea of constitutionalism or that the, like the rule of law, um, in the proper sense that the,

00:46:13.580 like, that nobody is above the law, that nobody decides the law. This idea is essentially a form

00:46:19.420 of deism, right? Um, it's the political, like secularization of the idea of the clockwork

00:46:26.880 God that just sets the world in motion and then steps away from it and, uh, just let, leaves it to

00:46:34.680 run. Um, this is the idea of deism that sort of gets, um, morphed into a kind of political ideology.

00:46:43.040 And what deism ultimately is, is it's the sort of penultimate step towards atheism. So all of

00:46:50.520 these things kind of link up together. Um, liberalism is the result of the enlightenment,

00:46:56.340 like clockwork, uh, you know, deist rationalist, uh, project essentially. So all of these things are

00:47:05.740 kind of linked together and to break away from one, say for example, atheism or libertarianism is

00:47:11.460 really to break away from all of them. If you're like a consistent thinker, if you're kind of like

00:47:18.000 following these things down to the kind of bedrock of like axiomatically where they lead.

00:47:24.660 So I think this is why it's important to talk about these things. It's part of why Imperium

00:47:28.600 Press publishes a lot of the counter enlightenment literature that we do, because if you get, you know,

00:47:33.980 if you get one of these concepts and you kind of get free of it, it can be a way for you to kind

00:47:40.000 of get free of the entire web of modernity in the worst sense. Now, obviously we don't want to go back

00:47:47.040 to like earlier technology. We don't want to abandon the internet and, or any of these things. But when

00:47:53.460 I say modernity, I mean like modernity in the kind of normative, like all the worst things

00:47:58.560 modern ideology, you know, that kind of thing. Once you get free of some of these, you can kind

00:48:05.300 of use that to get free of all of it. Yeah. And I'll tell you what, once you, once you kind of shed

00:48:10.520 that, that dork liberal, I like the libertine ideas and the, the, the hallmark. Oh, we have to follow

00:48:17.400 the rules above you feel free, right? Because those things demoralize you. And I think of too many guys

00:48:24.040 internalize that. And that turns into all, well, we can't do this. We can't do that. We can't bro.

00:48:30.860 Obviously you have to be realistic. We can't say, oh, well, let's build a spaceship and go to the moon

00:48:34.760 like us three here. We can't do that. That's a little, that's a little wild. But if we, if we're

00:48:39.780 moderate in our visions, we could say, Hey, we're, we can build this. We could build that. This is,

00:48:45.740 this is why smarmy libtodes say, well, build your own then because they think that you can't do it

00:48:51.740 because it's against the rules. Well, I, I have historically that has become, you know,

00:48:57.840 the F around find out for me. This is why I started the biz archives, right? I was getting mad

00:49:03.540 about the absolute just blasphemies that they were doing to these, these art forms that I love,

00:49:08.980 these films, these books and all this kind of stuff. I grew up, I love this stuff. This is part

00:49:13.840 of who I am. Heavy metal music. This is part of who I am as a man today in 2024. And the fact that

00:49:20.760 they're just defiling it made me so mad. And when I, there was one time I went on a forum and I was

00:49:27.180 like, you know, talking about a book or an author. I can't remember who it was, but then there was

00:49:30.880 some smarmy libtode with the soy face. He goes, yeah, we'll build your own then. I was like, all

00:49:35.880 right, dog, I will. So I did. And guess what? Now we're crushing it. There's nothing. I don't say

00:49:42.140 nothing, but if I still had that idea of all, this is against the rules. We can't do anything. We

00:49:48.080 can't build our own blah, blah, blah. I would have never done this. Now I'm seeing it. It's

00:49:51.980 like, dude, we could build our own Hollywood. We could build our own music industry. We could

00:49:56.340 build our own publishing. We already did. Me and Mike, you know, how many publishers are out

00:50:00.240 there crushing it? We sell more books than some of these, you know, big, big publishing

00:50:04.800 companies. We're crushing. We could do whatever we want. Right. And as long as we have, we figure

00:50:10.560 out how to raise the money, we have the willpower to do it. We have the manpower. We already

00:50:15.440 have the talent and the skill. All we got to do is like, want to do it, get obsessed

00:50:19.900 with it and work and you can freaking do it. So it's like, once you adopt this idea

00:50:25.680 of, um, uh, you, you, you shed this, the, the chains, this sounds kind of like a contradiction,

00:50:32.740 but when you shed the chains of libertine philosophy and, and you adopt this idea, I am, I am in service

00:50:41.620 to the, to the Holy powers, to the high Holy ones. You know, I, I that's, that's how I see

00:50:46.820 it too. Mr. Marcus is I am on this earth to serve the gods period and nothing. There are

00:50:53.380 no barriers. There are no obstacles built by men that I care about.

00:50:58.080 Yeah. Yeah. That's super, super good. And I, I completely agree. It sounds a bit like a

00:51:03.200 paradox, but, uh, I totally agree. It's, it is truly liberating to humbly submit yourself

00:51:07.980 to, um, to a higher cost. It's also similar in a way to fatherhood. It's quite nice to

00:51:13.380 just, you know, are, are the girls happy and, uh, content then, then I'm also happy and content.

00:51:18.980 I don't need to think too much beyond that, except for, of course, everything else, but

00:51:23.260 you can sort of, if you, um, if you place your focus and you, you humbly accept your position

00:51:29.600 as a man, that you're a bit, uh, disposable. I don't know if that's the right term, but you

00:51:35.040 know what I mean? Uh, uh, it becomes, um, it's nice. It's comfortable in a way to, to

00:51:40.020 not be the, the center of the universe, uh, as, as many people are today. Uh, so it's

00:51:45.800 good. It's nice to, to humbly submit yourself. Uh, also in regard to the, the eternal dork versus

00:51:52.800 the eternal Chad, this is like a typical thing that the, the, um, lib toad, uh, snickering

00:52:00.380 and, uh, sitting on the sidelines saying that it's not possible. And then you have someone

00:52:05.340 like say Arnold Schwarzenegger, uh, and he has a good quote, uh, and he said to break

00:52:12.460 the rules and not to break the law, but to break the rules to get ahead. And I thought

00:52:16.380 it was quite, I heard him saying that in a motivational speech, like 10 years ago, it

00:52:21.360 sort of stuck with me. It was quite good. So yeah, sometimes you have to break some social

00:52:26.100 rules. Um, I'm not a contrarian by the way, I'm quite conformist in, in many ways, but,

00:52:32.240 uh, since our beloved civilization has been so mad for the last, uh, few decades, uh, a

00:52:39.300 normal person has to sort of go against the current zeitgeist. Uh, but anyway, so really

00:52:46.260 good takes. I thought we could get into paganism a bit. So we have concluded that atheism isn't

00:52:52.740 really a viable path for a man of enlightenment. And then we'll come to the eternal question

00:52:58.460 and we don't need to, um, we don't need to, um, spend too much time on it because we're

00:53:04.400 going to get onto the, uh, the project you have going on hearth fire. We're going to spend

00:53:08.360 some time talking about that, but if you can just give your, uh, a few arguments or one

00:53:13.380 argument as to why we should go with the paganism instead of Christianity going forward, you can,

00:53:19.920 um, yeah, let us know. Sure. Dave, do you want to go first or should I? Um, I would say because

00:53:28.440 you ought to, because it is what people that looked like you, your forefathers believed for

00:53:33.380 the overwhelming majority of our existence, uh, almost the entirety of our existence. Our ancestors

00:53:40.160 believed in this or something like this for all of our, all of our time. It is, I would say to those

00:53:47.720 who are kind of questioning and I'm not coming at the Christians, but in the Bible has no Europeans

00:53:54.540 in it. The only Europeans that are in the Bible are the Romans and they're made to look like bad

00:53:59.420 guys. And, um, I would say that, uh, you should just do, here's the deal is like, are you really

00:54:08.120 built different? Are you really, are you really against the, are you revolting against the modern

00:54:12.660 world? If you are, then you are observing tradition. And what is our tradition? Our oldest tradition is

00:54:18.980 paganism is heathenry. And you should do it. The gods are real. The ancestors are still there. They're

00:54:25.600 just in the other world. When you, when, regardless of what you think you believe, when you die, you will

00:54:32.200 go to the underworld, you will be judged by the holy gods, and you will enter the hall of your

00:54:37.580 ancestors. That is going to happen. And, uh, the reason I believe that is because everybody,

00:54:44.160 everybody who's all the, all the most brilliant, powerful, great men in history agree with me on

00:54:49.860 that. And that's really the only argument I need, but I do understand how it's hard, um, for especially

00:54:57.420 folks that grew up in countries or families and, or, or in cultures where atheism and rationalism

00:55:03.180 reigns, reigns supreme. And they kind of, uh, robbed people of their, of their superstition and

00:55:08.120 their magical worldview and their belief in the metaphysical. But once you, once you come around to

00:55:13.900 believing and you fake it till you make it and you practice, the gods will, will approve that they are

00:55:20.940 real. And the ancestors are still there. They still hear us and they still love us. And that's why you

00:55:27.320 should do it. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Um, this sort of, that sort of goes back to my reasons for

00:55:36.440 not, um, not becoming a Christian. And I did try very hard and earnestly to do that, but ultimately

00:55:43.880 reading, uh, this, reading the scriptures, I kind of, it became very clear to me that it was not about me.

00:55:52.960 It wasn't about my people and that my people really had a peripheral and in some sense, an antagonistic

00:55:59.880 role to play in that. So that kind of, I don't know, it struck me in the wrong way, but in going

00:56:07.400 down this path a little bit further, it occurred to me that, you know, I mean, if you want to justify

00:56:14.440 anything, if you want to, whether it's religion or whether it's a political ideology or anything else,

00:56:22.620 you got to kind of sort of think about like, what, what is it that people do to justify their

00:56:28.340 positions? And ultimately what they do is they point to authority to do that. So for example,

00:56:35.440 um, a, a Christian, for example, will read something like the, the book of Job. And the book of Job is my

00:56:45.080 favorite book of the Bible by far. I think it's brilliant. I think that it is a treasure of,

00:56:51.740 um, traditional literature and that everybody should give it a lot of thought. Basically what

00:56:57.580 happens in this, this book is that there's a poor schmo named, um, named Job, whom the, um,

00:57:06.940 transcendent creator deity, uh, inflicts punishment on as the result of a wager with the adversary,

00:57:14.420 something kind of like, I mean, the Christians call that Satan, but the Jews call it the adversary.

00:57:19.740 And like that in itself is a hard pill for people to swallow, but that's not, that's not what makes

00:57:25.820 it interesting. Um, if you look at the book of Job, what happens is that Job finally, he just

00:57:31.880 finally had enough and he curses God and says, why are you doing this to me? Uh, you need, I've done

00:57:39.000 nothing. I've only ever been a good man. And, uh, the, the God Yahweh gives a very interesting

00:57:45.400 response here. He doesn't give a reason. He doesn't give a sort of abstract justification for his own

00:57:51.320 actions. What he says is who, where were you when I created the world, which is a hell of a response

00:57:59.400 that what he's basically saying is that I make the rules because I created you. Right. And if you think

00:58:09.320 about it, this is kind of the, um, ultimate form of a response that pretty much everybody gives when

00:58:17.100 they want to justify at a bedrock level, what it is that they believe. What I believe is good because

00:58:23.800 it created everything that's great in the world. Um, Christians will say this when they say Christianity

00:58:30.380 created the West, right? It's the same form of the argument. And even Richard Dawkins gives the exact

00:58:38.720 same argument. It's like just an iteration on the same form when he would say something like science

00:58:44.540 is what has made the West great. Look at what we can do with science. Look at what, what great

00:58:50.160 things it's brought. It's taken us to the moon. It created the internet. It, it, it, it is brought us,

00:58:56.400 you know, modern medicine, split the atom, all of this stuff. Science is authoritative because it has

00:59:03.780 created modernity. That is the basic form of argument that every person gives. Like when all

00:59:11.160 of the rationalisms, when all of the ratiocinative Thomist five ways, when all these things fall away

00:59:18.060 and they always do, that is the basic bedrock argument that's left exposed at the end.

00:59:24.840 What I believe is great because it created everything great. And if you take that seriously

00:59:31.460 enough, and if you realize that that's like what people are always arguing ultimately,

00:59:36.720 and you make that consistent and you push it far back enough, you arrive at paganism.

00:59:42.480 Yeah.

00:59:42.760 Because what created modernity? Okay. Let's say it's science. What created the West? Let's say

00:59:49.000 it's Christianity, but what created philosophy? Well, that's paganism. What is it that created

00:59:55.740 governance? What is it that created society? What is it that created religion in the first place?

01:00:03.120 It is the deep and abiding, the, the, it is the ancestral religion that goes back to the very

01:00:12.300 beginning. And that created us. What created us? It's paganism. It's the ancestor cult. It's, it's,

01:00:20.940 it's all of these things. What created the preconditions for Christianity? It's paganism. What

01:00:28.720 created the preconditions for science? It's paganism. What created the preconditions for the West? It's

01:00:35.780 paganism. It's paganism all the way down. So if you really understand the form of justification,

01:00:42.280 I'm giving a philosophical argument here. But if you understand the form of philosophical

01:00:48.240 justification, what it always cashes out to in the end, it cashes out to a form of argumentation

01:00:54.400 that ultimately lands on paganism as the final justification for everything. So I guess that's

01:01:00.840 what I would say if I had to give a kind of apologetic case for why you should be pagan.

01:01:07.400 Yeah. In the, in the Eda, it says very clearly in Voluspo, it says that Odin and his brothers,

01:01:15.240 Hainir and Lothor, right? Give us the, the, the gifts that make us who we are. That gives us our

01:01:21.880 Odr, our Und, Odr, our consciousness, Und, the sacred breath that animates us. And then Lothor gives us

01:01:29.440 lau, lati, and liturgoda. And that means hair, blood, and good or godly complexion, color. They

01:01:37.560 made us in their image. They are our sires. They are our fathers, right? And the whole point of

01:01:45.160 Christianity and liberalism is to say, fuck you, dad. And guess what? That's not what tradition is

01:01:51.980 about. Tradition is about serving your father and being your father's son and your son's father.

01:01:59.020 That is your identity. That's who we've always been. You know what created the West? You know

01:02:03.860 what created this, created everything? We did. Not, not abstractions, not, not philosophies,

01:02:10.940 not that. We did with our blood, sweat, and tears, and our bones, and our skin, and our flesh,

01:02:16.280 and our hands. And who created that? The holy gods did, the holy Gothen. So we must regraft onto the

01:02:26.000 vine of Odin and off of the vine of Abraham. Yeah, that's beautifully stated by both of you.

01:02:34.120 Quite, quite robust arguments indeed. I will say something to just add on. So this is only something

01:02:41.140 I, um, I realized over the last few years, since I started reading more about, um, all of these

01:02:46.840 things, and that's growing up or like, yeah, in my teenage years and early twenties, I thought

01:02:51.640 Christianity had the more advanced metaphysics. Then I realized that ancient Germanic metaphysics,

01:02:58.680 you know, the, the soul complex, it's so much more, um, complex than Christianity. So in Christianity,

01:03:04.080 you basically have, you have a soul, but in, in the Germanic view of things, you, you are many

01:03:10.820 different parts and speaking as, um, you know, purely from a scientific perspective or something,

01:03:17.600 it makes a lot more sense and you can understand yourself and your, um, yeah, everything about

01:03:24.760 the world, uh, if you view it in that sense. So, um, yeah, that's a very deep topic indeed. I might get

01:03:31.580 into it some other time, but yeah, that's perfectly, perfectly explained by, by both of you. So we'll get,

01:03:37.220 but so we'll get onto the, um, uh, the new project you have, which I am proud to be a part of. We have

01:03:46.040 Heartfire Radio. So if you could explain first and foremost, what it is and how you came to, uh, how you

01:03:54.080 came to, uh, to create it. Right. So what Heartfire Radio is, is it's a, a video casting, a podcasting

01:04:03.300 platform. We're sort of billing it as sort of like an, a YouTube for heathens, but it's not like

01:04:11.440 YouTube in that it is not just anybody that can kind of create a channel. It's by invite only.

01:04:16.440 Now, um, we have a really excellent, uh, lineup of podcasts that we're launching. Well, that is

01:04:24.320 launched just a couple of days ago. This, this month, September is the launch month for it. Um,

01:04:30.980 but what we want to do is we want to make it a big tent. We want to invite,

01:04:35.000 we want to invite everybody in who fits, you know, not everybody in the whole world.

01:04:39.280 It is going to be from, uh, people who have, who share our perspective, but we don't want to just

01:04:44.940 make it a kind of boys club just for the guys who are in there right now. We want to, we want to

01:04:50.120 open it up, but what it is, is it is a series of podcasts, all of which are either new or returning.

01:04:59.420 We're not just like taking podcasts that exist and, you know, charging a small fee for that,

01:05:06.060 like monthly or whatever. What we're doing is we're, we're essentially creating a space

01:05:11.180 where there's going to be a whole bunch of new content for people who are into heathenry or

01:05:16.400 paganism, or who are just like curious about like European history and, and religion and things like

01:05:21.820 that. Um, there's going to be seven podcasts launching. We originally, um, planned nine,

01:05:28.220 but we're, we're going ahead with seven, uh, this month among which is, um, Marcus, it's your,

01:05:34.740 um, your physique manufacturer, um, which I have just looked at the first episode and I am so

01:05:41.660 jacked about this. It's going to be so awesome. Uh, really. All right. Awesome. Great to hear.

01:05:47.680 Great to hear. Yes. I'm really excited about that. We've got the bog returning. This,

01:05:52.520 the bog was actually a big part of my original journey into heathenry and into this political

01:05:58.420 sphere. Uh, it's like, this is how I discovered Dave back in the day. And the reason why I reached

01:06:04.880 out to him in the first place many years ago is because I, I was a huge fan of the bog, uh, the,

01:06:10.560 but the bog ended after a little while. Uh, and now we're bringing it back. And I'm so proud of that.

01:06:16.760 We're bringing back the Fergan, uh, with Dan from Wolkinsman. Um, we're, we're bringing out,

01:06:22.540 uh, a podcast by our man, Tom from survive the jive. Uh, that one is really excellent too. I,

01:06:29.740 he's already given me a few episodes and I've been binging those over and over. Everything that's on

01:06:34.960 here has a lot of like, it, it, it's, it's not just topical, like throwaway stuff. You can listen

01:06:39.460 to them over and over again. I'm going to be doing a podcast of my own. Um, who am I forgetting

01:06:47.940 here? There's so many, there's just so many things that are going into this. It's going to be such an

01:06:52.280 excellent, excellent place for people to get heathen content. Uh, Mimir's Bruner. Yes. Mimir's

01:06:59.940 Bruner. We're bringing that back as well. It's an amazing, amazing, uh, YouTube channel that fell by

01:07:05.560 the wayside a few years ago. I discovered it after it had ended and I was really disappointed

01:07:10.040 that cause it was so great, but it wasn't going anymore. We're bringing that back to, um, so the

01:07:16.160 reason for Hearthfire, one of the reasons why it was sort of created in the first place is that like,

01:07:22.960 you know, as creators, Dave and I, uh, we like to consume podcast content. Like if I'm working on

01:07:28.940 Empyrean press stuff, I, you know, it's occasionally I have to do things that are kind of repetitive tasks

01:07:35.400 that allow me to, um, you know, focus audibly on something else while I do a repetitive thing.

01:07:40.840 So I'd be like binging, you know, episodes of the bog, um, episodes of the Fergin and so on and so

01:07:46.600 forth. And I noticed over a period of time that these podcasts were disappearing and that was such

01:07:53.840 a shame. Like I was so heartbroken when the, for, when the Fergin ended or when the bog ended. Um,

01:08:00.360 and you know, of course many years, uh, elapsed between that and Hearthfire, but I sort of felt

01:08:08.980 like, first of all, I had to keep a list of all these podcasts, some of which are still going and

01:08:14.220 I, and I listened to them, but it kind of felt like, well, why do I have to keep a list that

01:08:18.140 should all be in one place? And the other thing was that, uh, many of these podcasts ended because

01:08:23.920 essentially, you know, we're all busy guys. We, you know, either we do this full time or part time

01:08:31.280 and content creators, let's just be honest, content creators have to make some money in order to keep

01:08:37.580 this stuff going. So it felt like there should be a place where the highest quality content can all be

01:08:45.640 collected into one spot and where a small, like there could be a small fee. We charge $12 a month for

01:08:52.720 all these podcasts and more and all the back catalog of all these podcasts, um, where it could

01:08:58.260 be shared amongst the creators in a way that makes them sustainable so that the Fergin can continue

01:09:04.480 forever and, and make money and make financial sense for Dan to keep it going or for Dave and

01:09:09.920 Tristan and Andre to keep the bog going or, you know, for you Marcus to keep yours going. Like there

01:09:16.520 has to be a small, like it basically guys have to be able to make a, at least a little bit

01:09:22.700 of a living to do this. So we figured that if we collected all the best stuff in one place,

01:09:27.560 and if enough people sign up, then this is what it's going to do is it's going to create a kind

01:09:33.960 of center of gravity. It's going to be, create a place where it's the first place that everybody goes

01:09:39.200 to learn about paganism, to discover new pagan content and heathen stuff. And all of this,

01:09:44.560 it's going to basically be, um, the one place where people start when they learn about these things.

01:09:51.440 And we go on the journeys that we described at the beginning of this podcast.

01:09:56.300 And I think having something like that is immensely valuable. It's, it's worth, you know,

01:10:02.100 the small amount of like monthly fee that we're charging. And I just think it's going to,

01:10:08.740 it's going to make our brand of heathenry focus heathenry. It's going to really put that on the map.

01:10:13.540 And it's ultimately going to allow us to push back against the forces of darkness.

01:10:17.240 They want to push that away. And it'll give us the capital to start, uh, building bigger things,

01:10:23.440 right? We want, man, we have big visions. We want to, I want to get into film. I want,

01:10:29.280 I think we need to, we need to plunge into film. We have enough talent. We have enough know-how we

01:10:34.940 have it. We need to get into film. So I want to start focusing on, on the arts and you know,

01:10:41.460 who else to do the arts besides us. Well, this last year at Folkish Summer Hollowing, which is a

01:10:46.640 big event that I go to, if you're on the East coast and in America, check out Folkish Summer

01:10:51.400 Hollowing. It's a wonderful event every year, uh, headed by the Ehrman folk who are a great

01:10:56.120 organization, good friends of mine. But one thing that I noticed go into this event every year and

01:11:01.860 the other events is I look around and freaking just about everybody is some kind of creative,

01:11:08.160 some kind, right? Uh, I did a presentation talking about this, uh, theory that I call

01:11:14.300 folk futurism. And in the beginning I said, raise your hand. If you are a writer, if you are a poet,

01:11:20.540 if you are an illustrator, if you are a sculptor or an artisan or a, or a culinary person, raise your

01:11:27.200 hand. If you're a musician, if you're this, you're that creatives, there's people are running out of

01:11:34.060 appendages to raise. Everybody in the whole room is raising their hands. If you go do that just

01:11:39.020 about anywhere else, what are you going to see? You're going to see a couple of hands here or there.

01:11:42.420 We have a lot of firepower in our community as far as to create, to create film, to create music,

01:11:48.640 to create, uh, you know, art, uh, painting, high art. I believe that we are the people. We're,

01:11:55.740 we invented it, dude. Pagans invented poetry. We invented music. We invented theater. We invented,

01:12:01.800 these are our things. Why should we not have like a strong influence on this? Why can't we be the

01:12:09.860 ones to come back and create it? Especially now as things like Holly weird are, are in complete,

01:12:15.700 they're hemorrhaging money, complete free fall. The music industry sucks. Like look what's going on.

01:12:20.620 Mr. Marcus, you mentioned about 40 K. What a, what a horrible blasphemy they're doing to the great,

01:12:25.560 you know, black library and everything like that. All of the things that we love, they're pot,

01:12:29.820 they're destroying it. Rings of power. We're the guys that can do it. You know what I mean?

01:12:34.900 So it's not just, it's not just, um, about the podcast. It is, it is about the podcast,

01:12:40.660 about bringing all of our great, uh, uh, media mind, the good guys, bringing the good guys in

01:12:46.560 our media together to build a, a, a flagship that can help guys. Cause let's face it. If you're

01:12:52.580 listening, dude, all of your favorite guys that you listen to on your podcasts and shows and

01:12:57.180 everything like that, they put their neck on the line and they sacrifice quite a bit,

01:13:02.100 a lot for not a lot of money, right? You effectively, when you step out into the light

01:13:07.680 and you stand up and you say these things, you become unhireable. You, it ruins your life,

01:13:14.060 but I will, I will say money is power, man. And if we can get the capital, we can, we can give the

01:13:19.920 people great things. You know, it's not just about like getting rich, you know, but getting rich is

01:13:26.240 cool. But like, I say it all the time. I can't, I'm going to buy a Cadillac. I, you know, and I say

01:13:32.040 those things, but in reality, if, if when the people give me money, I turn it into something for

01:13:37.720 them. I can't help it. It's who I am. When I, when, when people say, Dave, we need, we want you to

01:13:44.180 make this thing. Here's here, take this money. I take what I need to survive off of it. And then

01:13:50.640 I use the rest to create something for the people because we need aesthetics. We need leisure. We

01:13:57.080 need entertainment. We need things that make us happy and things that we love. You know what I

01:14:01.700 mean? We need those things and who else to make them besides if you're listening, who do you trust

01:14:07.080 to make these things that, that like fill our lives out and make our, make our existence, you know,

01:14:12.760 fun and enjoyable and meaningful. Who do you trust? You trust, you know, these guys here,

01:14:18.940 you trust Marcus, you trust Mike, you know, you trust, uh, Tom survived the jive. You know, you,

01:14:24.800 you trust these guys because you know that they're good guys. You've been watching them for a long

01:14:28.760 time. You, you know, you know where their heart's at. Somebody's got to do it. So, you know, why not us?

01:14:36.720 Yeah, definitely. Well stated. So yeah, we have, uh, initially we, we planned for an hour,

01:14:42.220 which we have gone over now. So many interesting takes, uh, but, uh, yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna

01:14:47.560 get into, uh, somewhat similar topic. It's still within the realm of culture wars. And this is

01:14:53.460 something we talked about a few months ago, Dave, I sent you a message on telegram, asked you for,

01:14:58.880 uh, your take on, uh, 80s, uh, the 80s zeitgeist when it comes to music and films. So I used to have,

01:15:06.340 uh, of course I'm not the first one to, to think about this. And I'm sure many,

01:15:10.080 many others have talked about it and written about it, but you have in, um, in the zeitgeist

01:15:16.380 of the eighties, you have a completely different, a different feel. If you listen to some of the

01:15:21.160 songs, you can sort of picture yourself at, uh, uh, sensitive young man, uh, on a Friday night is at,

01:15:28.000 uh, an empty gym pursuing his dreams or whatever. And you have this film such as Rocky and, uh, and the

01:15:34.940 rest, I am born in 89. So I'm a bit too young to have grown up with them, but I still got,

01:15:40.280 got to see some of them at least. And you have something completely different now, just listening

01:15:45.380 to a song from the eighties. You, you sort of want to embark upon a, on an epic journey upwards,

01:15:52.220 but now you have this, now I'm not an expert in music, so I can't describe any of this, but you have a

01:15:57.920 different beat and you have a sort of low energy vibe to, to modern music. Whereas in the eighties

01:16:04.920 songs, you have like a really sort of high thumos, uh, vibe. So if you would just speak to that a bit,

01:16:12.760 I would be personally interested in hearing your take on it.

01:16:15.400 So, yeah, um, we love to invoke eighties, eighties, nostalgia aesthetics. Now it's very

01:16:21.460 hauntological, right? We, we, uh, we see it everywhere. Everything has some sort of retro

01:16:27.620 vibe. It has these, these pastiches in the films. You have completely modern films that are putting on,

01:16:33.820 um, overlays that make it look like it was filmed on celluloid. You have people that are making music

01:16:40.180 that, uh, is purposely to sound like an older recording and older production when they don't

01:16:46.380 have to do that at all. You know, people back then were bound by that. This is, this is a phenomenon

01:16:51.440 that we're seeing so much in modern art and entertainment. Um, and we love it. We love the

01:16:56.980 neon colors. We love the synths. We love the, we love the vibe of the eighties. You know, like you,

01:17:02.440 Mr. Mark, I was born in 87. I wasn't a lot like I wasn't, you know, I was three years old when the eighties

01:17:07.220 ended, but I, you know, I saw all the films. I was young enough, you know, because back then,

01:17:13.300 you know, it wasn't like it is today back then you were still renting VHS tapes and we, we still

01:17:19.140 had the, the eighties and the nineties sort of blended together. It wasn't this, this rapid change

01:17:25.020 between, between decades like we are now, but now since probably, I don't know, 2008 or 2005,

01:17:32.560 around that time, we entered this hauntological stasis, the stagnancy of culture where it's sort

01:17:39.580 of this, um, this sort of blend of all things of previous decades together with no, uh, authentic

01:17:47.760 identity, no identify identifiable markers to show that it is this, uh, this era. Like it was like,

01:17:55.360 if I show you a picture of a kid with, with a, with a baggy t-shirt and a, and a, uh, Sony Walkman

01:18:00.580 cassette player, you're gonna be like, that kid's from the eighties. Look at his high top shoes,

01:18:04.540 you know, whatever. Yeah. I show you some, some guy with some sort of, uh, flowy blouse type button

01:18:09.940 up and he's got a headband and this, the John Lennon glasses, but that guy's from the sixties,

01:18:15.080 right? You could, based on aesthetics, we can see time art, art allows us to discern and see time.

01:18:22.680 And unfortunately for the last 20, 20 or more years, we no longer have that capacity during the eighties.

01:18:30.440 They had a very distinct aesthetic, uh, aesthetic identity, right? Um, and with this, they had a

01:18:38.760 very positive view of the future. They had a positive vision for the future. Uh, if you go

01:18:43.960 watch even, even some of their more somber movies that came out, the blade runner or freaking, you

01:18:49.640 know, I don't know, you, you think whatever film where there's like a dystopian future terminator

01:18:54.400 dystopian future ahead, it still aesthetically had a positive, had a positivity. Actually,

01:19:01.200 I don't want to say positive. It had a vitality, right? That we don't have anymore. And the word

01:19:07.680 that I would say to describe the eighties and, uh, Mr. Marcus, when we first talked about this,

01:19:14.560 you sent me a few songs. You mentioned a few songs. One of them was St. Elmo's fire, right?

01:19:18.880 Yeah. I'll be a man in motion. It's a great song. Higher and higher. That's what a great song,

01:19:24.880 right? There's so many great songs. Um, this is a song that had vitality and this is what's

01:19:30.320 interesting about the eighties is, um, when we think of the eighties now, and we try to

01:19:36.480 replicate very pastiche, we see all the eighties was so much more masculine and it was, but I'm about

01:19:41.920 to point something out that I think is interesting. Um, and I'm Mr. Marcus. I think you're going to

01:19:45.680 appreciate this, but, um, we now have this kind of like pastiche commodified simulacra of masculinity

01:19:53.520 where guys are like, yo, we've got to get this beard stuff. We got to, you know, I grow a beard,

01:19:57.840 right? I'm a beardsman, but I'm not knocking beards, but guys are like, you all got to grow

01:20:01.520 the beard to be manly. And it's very performative, very performative masculinity. You got to get these

01:20:06.960 beard oils. You got to buy this type of beer, got to get these guns to show and prove how manly we are.

01:20:12.480 And we, and when, and, uh, bacon and whiskey and all that stuff, right? Yeah. And in the eighties,

01:20:20.400 you add the, we could listen to these songs. Like Mr. Marcus, you're mentioning that song,

01:20:24.080 St. Elmo's fire. Go watch that video. You would, I wouldn't call that guy like a turbo Chad. He's

01:20:30.000 kind of scrawny. He's where like, he's got a lot of the eighties stuff was actually by our standards

01:20:36.080 today. What we would call, wasn't overtly like muscular and masculine. It was because you had

01:20:41.680 Arnold and Dolph Lundgren and Stallone and all this kind of stuff, but you also had music that

01:20:47.040 was written by guys that you wouldn't say were like that, but you would still say that it was masculine.

01:20:53.280 Why? Yeah. I would just, sorry for interjecting. I would say what, what appeals to me there is the,

01:20:58.400 the passion and sincerity. He, the, the St. Elmo guy, like if you look at the music video,

01:21:04.160 yeah, sure. He isn't a jacked Chad, but he is, he's, you know, on,

01:21:09.360 on apologetic and just letting his passion flow. And that is something that I, in later years,

01:21:15.360 I've come to realize what many guys are missing is, you know, on apologetic shows of passion and

01:21:21.520 just, you know, letting the divine energy flow through you.

01:21:24.400 Yes. And what it says is yes. Masculinity is muscular. It's strong. It's all of these things.

01:21:31.680 It is Stallone. It is Arnold. It is these things. It is the warrior. It is, but masculinity is also

01:21:38.480 dynamic. It can be beautiful. It can be poetic. It could be passionate. It's not just, you know,

01:21:44.400 meatheads and no, and I'm not saying, you know, I'm not, I don't want to say that. That's a bad way to

01:21:47.520 say, but it's, it's not this, like the way the libtards say, Oh, toxic masculinity is just these

01:21:53.520 dumb, you know, Jack dudes. We know scientifically that tall, tall, strong guys are on average more

01:21:59.840 have higher IQs period. But what I'm, what I'm getting at here is that masculinity is dynamic.

01:22:06.320 And the word that I would say that describes the eighties, and this is a very masculine thing.

01:22:11.440 And some guys are going to like maybe recoil on at this, but I want you to chew on it.

01:22:16.000 Romance. And I don't mean just romance as in falling in love. I do mean that, but I also

01:22:22.640 mean romance proper. The idea of this, like this, this, uh, grandiose kind of, uh, like the passion,

01:22:31.120 the passion for the world, the passion for life, the love of life, the vitality that goes into this.

01:22:37.440 And with this cane romance minor, the love for a woman, when you, when you listen to eighties music,

01:22:46.880 whether it is muscular or whether it is a little bit kind of, maybe a little fruity, like maybe

01:22:52.240 Prince or Michael Jackson, or the guy that does St. Elmo's fire or Phil Collins, right? Who would say

01:22:57.600 Phil Collins is a ma is a man's man, right? But Phil Collins has great songs. He's a little bald,

01:23:03.120 right? All of these songs, they were dedicated to their love for their women, for their wife,

01:23:09.840 for, for a lover, for whatever, not all, but a lot. And it wasn't just for women. It was for life.

01:23:15.840 It was for, it was about romance with life. And what happened, the phenomenon that happened

01:23:21.920 is the, the, the supposed love songs, as they went on and went into the two thousands,

01:23:26.960 were no longer about wooing and, uh, romancing or being poetic or anything like that. It was about

01:23:34.720 like very visceral bodily things like sex and lust and the, the gross side of it. And it was,

01:23:41.360 it's no, it's very nihilist and irreverent. It doesn't have that, that romance anymore,

01:23:46.880 right? And when it comes to heavy metal, I love heavy metal, dude. I'm a man, a warrior. I love thrash.

01:23:52.720 I love death metal. I love doom. I'm a metal head. But at some point, heavy metal became less

01:23:59.200 about writing awesome songs and became about becoming guitar dorks that wrote just, just like

01:24:05.040 all about riffs and everything like that. And then the women stopped coming to shows,

01:24:09.440 you know what I mean? And then we lost that vitality. We lost that romance. And because of

01:24:14.480 that, not there's many, many other factors, but now it's not a, it's, it's not a big surprise that

01:24:20.960 since we've lost the romance of the eighties and the nineties and the seventies for, for our women

01:24:26.000 and for, for, uh, life itself that we no longer sire children and we no longer have successful

01:24:33.040 marriages. So I have a take on the eighties and like why it was vital that I think actually ties

01:24:39.920 in a lot with what Dave just said. And it may appeal also to Marcus who I know is reading Spengler a lot

01:24:47.200 these days. Um, so most people are familiar with Spengler's like civilizational cycles, right? Like

01:24:54.640 it's, he, he gives the metaphor of the seasons. First you get the springtime. That's like the cultural

01:24:59.520 vitality. Uh, sorry. First you get the, like, you know, yeah, the springtime, that's where it all begins.

01:25:04.960 It's sort of like the barbaric explosion. Uh, then you get the summer, which is sort of like, you know,

01:25:10.960 that's when the, uh, the, uh, the culture starts to question things and starts to get a little bit

01:25:17.200 more, um, intellectual. And then you have the autumn where it gets really intellectual and, uh,

01:25:24.160 maybe overly so. And then you have the winter where things kind of freeze up and stagnate and become

01:25:30.160 sclerotic and everything like that. Um, so most people are familiar with Spengler's ideas of that.

01:25:36.400 There's also a cyclical theory called the Strauss how cycle generational cycles. And it's kind of

01:25:43.280 the same idea, but like, um, zoomed in down to like actual generations of like, you know,

01:25:50.240 the baby boomers, like in the gen Xers. Right. So the first of these four cycles is kind of like

01:25:56.560 Spengler's, um, his springtime, they call it the high, which would be for us. It would, the,

01:26:02.960 the last time that happened was like the GI generation, the world war two generation,

01:26:07.120 where you have really high sort of like social conformity and like everything is, is, is,

01:26:12.320 it's, it's, it's leave it to beaver. It's everything that's like people are, you know,

01:26:16.780 they know their place. Society is a very harmonious place. Then you get to the summer,

01:26:22.120 which they call the awakening. And that's basically the baby boomers, right? It's a time of revolution

01:26:26.520 and enlightenment. Collective values start to kind of break down a little bit and things become a

01:26:33.380 little bit more individualistic. Then you get gen X, which is kind of like the autumn. They call it

01:26:38.960 the unraveling. And this is where collective, um, you know, collectives have mostly been hollowed out

01:26:45.480 and are now we're very individualistic. And then you get the winter, which is the, what they call the

01:26:50.640 crisis. And this is kind of like the millennials and the zoomers, which is crisis. Obviously all the

01:26:55.560 social glue is completely dissolved. So where the eighties fits into that in like that sort of

01:27:02.060 cyclical pattern is kind of between the awakening and the unraveling we could call between the summer

01:27:08.740 and the autumn. Now where that falls summer and autumn in the Spanglerian cycle is kind of somewhere

01:27:15.920 around the Renaissance or the romantic period. That's kind of where the eighties is for this little

01:27:21.780 micro cycle. You know what I mean? And if you think about it, most of what we consider to be like

01:27:28.120 the classics of like Western art, like in the Christian era, at least is in that sort of period,

01:27:36.280 right? It's like, it's between the Renaissance and the romantic era. And I think that there is a real

01:27:42.380 romanticism in the way that Dave described the eighties that is actually kind of similar to the

01:27:48.520 romanticism of the actual romantic era of like, you know, the turn between the 17th or the 18th and

01:27:54.900 19th centuries. That's kind of where that fits within like the micro cycle that we're talking

01:28:02.280 about of like the last 80 years or something like that. And if you wanted to go back to a different

01:28:07.320 civilization, look, the same cycles really where the eighties fits in like, if we're being analogous

01:28:12.860 here, obviously, is that's where you get something like classical Greece, right? Like the Periclean age

01:28:18.820 with like the age of philosophers and all the like, you know, marathon and, and, and Thermopylae and all

01:28:25.220 of this stuff. This is where you get like, this is the Greece that everybody remembers is kind of like

01:28:29.920 the eighties phase of Greece. Or you could say the same thing about like, you know, Caesar's Rome or

01:28:39.200 something like that, like that era, like Augustine Rome is like the high point of culture in Rome.

01:28:44.220 And that's kind of like the eighties of Rome. I'm, I'm serious. Like this is like in terms of the

01:28:49.580 actual cycles here, the, the eighties into the early nineties, I would say is kind of like that

01:28:56.780 summer going into autumn of like the Spenglerian cycle. If you take this Strauss-Howe theory kind of

01:29:03.280 seriously. And I think it actually explains quite a lot. So that that's my kind of weird esoteric

01:29:09.500 take about why the eighties and nineties were awesome. I love it. Yeah. That's an awesome take.

01:29:14.240 Definitely. Super, super good take. So one last thing that I wanted to say, Mr. Marcus, and I'm so

01:29:23.220 glad you brought up the eighties thing because I'll just say this. So a while back, I can't remember,

01:29:31.620 it was a couple of few years ago, maybe it was pre COVID Marcus, you were kind of on the chopping

01:29:35.980 block. You thought you were going to get, you thought you were going to get shut down. You really

01:29:39.960 kind of thought it was kind of like your last days. Yeah. You made a post on telegram that I'll

01:29:45.980 never forget. You said, if this is the last time that I'm out here, if I am, this is, if this is my

01:29:51.920 thing, remember my teachings that you should be strong. You should love your wife and you should

01:29:59.020 love your country. And that was, I was like, that is why Marcus Follin is the OG. He started

01:30:08.960 the trend of the, the, the base bodybuilders, the, the base chads and all this stuff. You

01:30:14.120 started that you're the OG. And not only are you the guy that started it, you're the still

01:30:19.580 reigning the best one. In my opinion, I'm not just kissing your butt. I mean this because there's

01:30:23.960 so many other guys that go, uh, they go on and they follow your example and the end

01:30:29.480 of the day, their teachings are anti-natalist. They, they have this men go their own way kind

01:30:34.480 of stuff. They have this, like, I'll just go be selfish. And it's just, it's like you

01:30:39.900 understand at its core, the beauty and the purpose and the higher point of being, uh, masculine,

01:30:48.400 right. Is to serve. You say, I am a humble, I'm not doing this because I want to kick people's

01:30:54.920 asses and prove and flex and do all this stuff. You do do all those things, but it is to serve

01:31:00.620 your country, your people, the Holy powers, your wife and your children. That is what masculinity

01:31:07.060 is for. And that is what this romance was about, right? Is the purpose of masculinity isn't,

01:31:14.420 it is aesthetic. It is strong. It is muscular. It is all of these things. It is passionate.

01:31:20.120 It is beautiful. It is dynamic. It is all of these things is what I said, but at the end

01:31:26.620 of the day, the highest thing a man can be, the highest thing a man can do is to become

01:31:32.460 a father and a patriarch. And you, that is at the core of your teachings. And that's why

01:31:37.820 I think that you're still the best.

01:31:39.300 All right. Thank you. Thank you very much, much appreciated heartwarming words for sure.

01:31:46.820 So I think that will be a good note to, to wrap this up so I can feel all good with myself

01:31:53.060 for the rest of the day. Your, your words, they're healing my tormented body as I, as I'm suffering

01:31:58.840 from Nurgle's torments here. Uh, so yeah, awesome takes. Uh, I really liked both of your takes

01:32:05.620 about the, the eighties site guys, cultural site guys there. So before we wrap it up where,

01:32:13.320 um, you can plug your, um, your various sites. So everyone who is listening can, can go and

01:32:19.780 check both of you out.

01:32:22.420 Yes, absolutely. And thank you very much for having us on. It's, it's very much appreciated

01:32:26.400 and thanks for signing on for Hearthfire. It's so great to have you there. If you want to,

01:32:30.800 if you want to check out Hearthfire radio, go to hearthfireradio.com. If you liked the,

01:32:36.660 you know, the interplay, the dynamic that Dave and I have here, you want to check out culture dads,

01:32:41.180 go to culturedads.com. If you want some based reading, if you want to reclaim the Western

01:32:46.020 canon and read it as it was intended to be, go to imperiumpress.org. Um, and that's all my plugs.

01:32:53.840 Yeah, guys, culturedads, culturedads.com. That's culture with a K culturedads.com. Go over there,

01:32:58.740 get signed up, get signed up to the gum road, follow the links. So you get so many great perks,

01:33:02.360 such as hardback copies of the Western canon series and beyond so many great perks. You get

01:33:06.700 culturedads every single week. You just can't beat it. Keep your eyes peeled for Hearthfire radio.

01:33:11.740 It's up, hearthfireradio.com. Go get signed up. It is the fortress of folkish media. You're going to

01:33:18.480 love it. We got our boy, Marcus, me, Mike, we got Tom Rousel. We got, you know, we got so many great

01:33:25.580 members, Bruner, Dan cap with the Fergan. It's a lineup like never seen before, never be seen

01:33:31.440 again. And it's going to grow with your support. You guys are going to love it. So you'll get signed

01:33:35.500 up over there, but check out what I'm doing. Go over to the biz archives.com and go buy books

01:33:39.560 in the traditions of, of sword and sorcery of, of science fiction and cosmic horror up and coming

01:33:47.060 authors and classic reprints from yesteryear based fiction entertainment. We're coming,

01:33:54.200 we're bringing it. So guys get signed up, follow us everywhere and your love and blessings. All you

01:34:00.640 guys, Mr. Marcus, this has been, I've been a big fan of yours for a long time. Thank you so much for

01:34:04.800 having me on. This has been like an honor for me. So thank you so much. Blessings to you and your

01:34:09.200 beautiful family, my man. Yeah. Thanks a lot. And thank you both for coming. It's been a pleasure

01:34:15.040 hearing your takes and, uh, I'll, I'm sure we'll talk again soon. So I leave the, uh, links to your,

01:34:22.960 uh, your pages in the description and, uh, yeah, thanks for being on, uh, on the channel and thank

01:34:28.840 you to everyone who has been listening.

The Golden One - September 07, 2024

Mike From Imperium Press & Big Dave Martel. Red-Pill Journeys, Atheism, Libertarianism, Paganism

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