 here perhaps the most talked about new guru is on the right wing sphere is bronze age pervert. And from my first reactions to this guy back in 2018, I was repulsed and simultaneously recognized as genius. Now we know more about him is a Romanian American who did a PhD in political science at Yale under Steven Smith. Let me play a little bit from a show we did June 22 2018 with Kevin Michael Grace and Dennis Dale and excise entire centuries, right? And this is sort of, well, we knew that, you know, that's this, what there must be a name for this fallacy, but to see it introduced as uncertainty fallacy, where people would introduce it as if it's not, you know, it doesn't affect their side equally, whatever it is or saying. My version of history is right. Every other every everyone else's version of history is, is wrong. I just wanted to mention one of the things we raised about homosexuality, I found this quite disturbing, that this openness, the gay rights homosexuality, he seems to be particularly against, but he points to this, the hidden homosexuality, you know, the, and I've been thinking about this because I just read the by Don Davis biography of Jimmy Savile, and an essay, which I highly recommend by Andrew O'Hagan on the Savile phenomenon and the phenomenon of a pedophilia at the BBC, that this hidden homosexuality that existed before the gay rights movement was just incredibly sinister. Yeah, I can imagine. I want to weigh in here. Incredibly sinister in some instances, overall, it wasn't incredibly sinister. There are plenty of sinister aspects of heterosexuality. All right, most, most gays, not going around acting like Jimmy Savile. I had a really hard time with the book. If Kevin hadn't assigned it, I wouldn't have made it three pages. First of all, I have no idea who this guy is. So I've no, no idea why I should take it seriously on anything I don't know his credentials, his past publishing history. He sets forward no reasons why we should listen to him. The guy hates ethics and ethical systems. The guy is not religious. His ethic is out of the jungle, basically, that might make us right. He glorifies piracy and tyranny. And on his Twitter, Bronze Age pervert, it's just like photo after photo of a barely clad man. It's really, I mean, his Twitter and his book are fairly disturbingly homo in some way that I don't get. And he's just one quote from him for the pervert, a life of simple, barbarian freedom. However short and brutal it may be, he's always preferred to the banal tedium of life or mere existence in the late stage civilization. I mean, I hate that. Like for the pervert, to me, the pervert is not someone to be venerated. A life of simple, barbarian freedom sounds like a horror show to me. However short and brutal it may be, I don't think we need, and generally speaking, an increase in brutality. I don't think we need a glorification of brutality. I don't think we need a glorification of the male form. I mean, that is just gay. You don't need that crap. And then the banal tedium of life, well, if you have friends, if you have family that you care about, if you have hobbies, life is not at all a banal tedium. So when we find out more about the guy behind Bronze Age pervert, you see that my early intuitions were correct, right? This guy is not someone with friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, thought to be living out of his car, not someone with normal human connections. So he's produced this grandiose exhortation, essentially that boils down to suck my dick and treat me like a God, which is kind of similar to the vibe given off by Kenneth Brown, aka Deep Left Jerkel, and by Menchus Mordbug, aka Curtis Yavin. So Rosie Gray writes in Politico, July 16. Yesterday, in 2018, Costin Alamario disappeared. There was a flurry of activity in October when Alamario, a Romanian American writer with a PhD from Yale, published an article at Jair Bolsonaro and the Pyphilis Crisis in Brazil in Palladium magazine, an online journal associated with the anti-democracy pro-authoritarian near reaction movement. Alamario announced on Twitter he was restarting his account, and he tagged far right figures like Steve Coulter and Steve Saylor and Ann Coulter. Hi, Steve. I closed my account before but reopened to post some new articles. Hope you follow back. You might be interested in this one about Brazil, he wrote to Saylor. But on October 30, 2018, he suddenly stopped tweeting. He hasn't posted since then from that account. He hasn't published any work since then, nor has he held a job with any public profile. As far as the general public is concerned, Alamario no longer exists. But as Alamario was disappearing, another figure looking to make a name in conservative circles was on the rise. 2018 was also the year that Bronze Age pervert, or BAP for short, became a household name in far right circles. He built a small but loyal following by June 2018, tweeting from his account featuring a profile picture of a shirtless, well-built man photographed from behind. Self-published his book, Bronze Age, mindset, curious mix of philosophy, polemic, and lifestyle advice. All in the service of the argument that embracing one's authentic masculine virtue, it's the only way to conquer the lower types of mankind and to root out the worst parts of democracy. So here's a sampling from the book. It goes without saying that you must lift weights, women's liberation, infect a society with a terminal disease. Readers should prepare for impending and desirable military rule in Western countries. So there's a pretty good take down against this new paganism by Jack Butler of National Review. Operate as a form of civic religion for the political left. Less discussed, however, according to Jack Butler of National Review, is the emerging form or forms of paganism on the political right. Most prominent among them is Kostin Alamario, a Romanian political science PhD from Yale who goes by the internet moniker Bronze Age Pervert. Alamario is the author of Bronze Age Mindset, which Butler describes as quote, an intentionally provocative, discursive, and ungrammatical exhortation outlining his thought. In it, Alamario laments the diminution of the authentic expression of masculinity and the masculine virtues and the failures of political conservatism to preserve those virtues and whatever else is good about society. In ideas reminiscent of Frederick Nietzsche, Alamario castigates the quote, bug men or human cockroaches for their weakening of men and of society and the need for a league of neo-Ugermanches to rise up and reshape the world in their image. Butler contends that, wild as all the sounds, we should take the Bronze Age phenomenon and in rising new paganism seriously. Today, I talked with Jack Butler about the rise of this new paganism on the left and the right and how he contends that only a reinvigorated Christianity in the public square can adequately contend with these new pretender faiths of our time. You can find Hey, some comments in the chat, Luke, where you ever do a stream on decoding Luke Ford and Bernard said, come hasn't Luke already done that directly and indirectly already? Is the critique of BAP that he is homosexual? That is what I see most right wing Twitter. No, the that is one part of the critique of the critique of BAP is that he is anti-family, right? He's anti-women. He's he is for tyranny. He valorizes some of the biggest tyrants in history. He wants essentially an age of strongman, tyrants and pirates running the world. And I think that's a good idea. Additional resources in the show notes for this episode, as well as find previous episodes of Act in Line on our website. Jack Butler is submissions editor and national review online, a media fellow for the Institute for Human Ecology and a 2022-23 Robert Novak Journalism Fellow at the Fund for American Studies. He is the author of the essay Against the New Paganism for National Review, which we'll be discussing today. Jack Butler, welcome to Act in Line. Thank you for having me. So we're talking today about this piece that you had at National Review entitled Against the New Paganism. Why don't we start with just give me a bit of a summation of your argument there. What are you seeing out there is this new paganism trying to supplant the role that as you argue here, that only a forceful reinvigration of Christianity stands a chance against the pretender faiths of our time. What are these new pagan faiths that you see and what's the landscape look like? Well, I would say I see two primarily, although not exclusively, but it would be difficult to recount all of them. There is one that I will call the left paganism. I think it's funny that I put it that way, because you hear people talk about right liberals and left liberals. I guess now we have right pagans and left pagans. But the left pagans, I'll call that this is wokeness for lack of a better term. This is the secular faith, which I actually think owes something to the cultural memory of Christianity in certain ways. It has retained certain of its features, but without any of the redeeming qualities of it. So in that sense, it probably more resembles a kind of Dostosism, one of the early competitors of Christianity and its belief in a medican struggle between good and evil and its vaunting of an interspiritual core and its vaunting as well or elevating of a spiritual elite, people capable of seeing the true knowledge. And yes, that's the so chat says is a critique of Bronze Age pervert that he is homosexual. No, it's that he valorizes older men, you know, plowing younger men makes that the very highest thing that men could possibly achieve wants to remove men from women and from family. Very much that Bronze Age pervert is very much like Alan Bloom, who is just absolutely obsessed with seducing his students and speculating about whether they'd be open to gay sex. So the Bronze Age mindset booked is surprisingly well for a self published work. It reached its highest number three on the ancient Greek history chart on Amazon. It was a word of mouth phenomenon. And the other thing that a company that is the Bronze Age pervert Twitter account, which was obsessed with showing photos of. Naked man, you know, unclothed man. The razor gaze got a good article here in Politico. He became a key figure in the world of conservative masculinity influences. Yeah, I mean, the type of people who like Manchester's mold bug Curtis Yavin and type of people like Ken Brown, a deep left Joe call. All right, type of people really into Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate. Yeah, it would make sense that they had also valorized this anti social delusional narcissists. So over the past several years, this universe has gained followers and proven itself to be a reliable channel to conservative ideas and Republican politicians for young men in particular. It's a breeding ground for reactionary political ideas, clearly influenced anonymous accounts like delicious tacos, raw egg, nationalist and zero HP lovecraft. So. I believe that having bonds and ties is the most important thing in the world. I would rather be around people who have a good marriage and are atheists than people who have a mediocre marriage and a religious. I have far more trust in the behavior of people who have bonds who have a good family life and friends and extended family than people who are isolated and religious. Right. You can essentially predict the social orientation of somebody by the depth of their ties, particularly to family and extended family. So Bronze Age pervert probably the most influential anonymous right wing account, particularly the most far-reaching political and cultural vision. It's an extreme vision built around a rejection of equality, democracy and other promises of modern liberalism. And his devotees include Michael Anton, former White House National Security spokesman, Darren Beatty, former Trump White House aide. Michael Anton wrote about the book for the Claremont Institute, says that it speaks to a youthful dissatisfaction, especially young white males, where equality is propagandized and imposed in our days. Bronze Age pervert has only grown in popularity, despite being banned from Twitter for a period until late last year. Peter Thiel said he found BAP's solutions to modern problems tempting, though he disagreed with his distortions to the Judeo- Christian tradition. Republican Ohio Senator J.D. Vance follows follows BAP on on Twitter. So I mean, even in however decadent the West is today, there's so much worth living for. So on the other hand, I did recognize some sharp insights as I pushed myself through the book very unwillingly. But I was like, why why? He never gives me a reason why I should read him. But then I realized that says he's sick. He's just going to come out, he doesn't have to give a reason. No man that needs to give a reason. He publishes a book. You can read it or not. I asked you to read it and you read it. You know, he does come from a tradition and this tradition begins around 1900. He mentions this word Wanderfogel. This is a tradition that began in Germany and became very popular on the continent. And you see a North American equivalent as well. You know, associated with this movement or various cults, the cult of youth, you see the cult of youth is very strong in this book, the cult of beauty, the cult of nature, the cult of animals. And, you know, people will say that this led to certain the rise of fascism. It helped in the rise of fascism in the 20th century. I mean, there are there are definite connections. I mean, the cult of youth strikes me as particularly dangerous because it leads to a kind of ground zero thinking that we should leave aside the wisdom of the elders and the wisdom of tradition and give ourselves over to the passion of youth. Now, I mean, obviously, there's a virtue to use. I want to defend him in this regard. This bug man life that he talks about, it's terrible. This idea that we all you see this movement for us to live or presumably the elite to live to the age of 150. You must have seen this both of us. Oh, yeah. And by living to 150 that they don't mean as feeble and senescent either. They mean living vigorously to 150. There's no question in my mind that if people could live to 150, the largest cause of death would be suicide. Can you imagine having to work for 130 years? But just to give one example, but this idea that what's our purpose in life to acquire things and to occupy space? Well, nobody. Nobody operates on the purpose of life is to acquire things. I mean, not even nobody that I know. I mean, for most people, the purpose of life is the development of their relationships with their family and their friends and their community and their hobbies and their interests. I mean, it's a human connection that's the purpose of life. I mean, it's Kevin. Have you have you truly met people who the accumulation of things is a primary goal in life? Is that a serious question? Yeah. Most people most people that this is most people today. I think that's completely wrong. I mean, seriously, you think most people today are primarily dedicated to the collection of things. Most people today, as I understand them, are primarily dedicated to their families, extended families, friends, communities and their interests and their profession. We are this problem of scale, which he doesn't address directly in the book has led to this atomization, the maximizing of utility. It's horrifying and disgusting. And I fully agree with everything he has to say about it. I mean, Luke, I think that you have entered into a tradition, which is radically opposed to modern life. Absolutely. That this idea that we should, you know, move across the country, leave behind our family and friends in our communities, because why? Because it will mean more money or more status. You must have. Well, in much of Orthodox Judaism, they'll send their children across the world to go to a yeshiva in Israel or South America or Australia thinking that it's good for them to learn, learn in a yeshiva setting, largely apart from their families, also for many Kabad emissaries, the shlukum, all right, they will pick up stakes and take their family all across the world to set up a Kabad house to provide spiritual solace to any Jews that might be in the area and don't have a synagogue or don't have Jewish resources. So, yeah, family is a very high value in traditional Judaism, traditional ways of life, but it's not the only value. And there are plenty of times when people are asked to sacrifice their connections to that which is familiar and to their family and extended family to go serve things of even greater value. Realized that you run into that there was an onion story about this a few years ago about some guy who had stayed in his hometown, you know, and was married and had a few children. And the joke of the story was that everyone understood that this guy was a jerk because who would do something like that instead of deciding to move to New York City and live in the village and, oh, look, you and I saw someone famous the other day. You know, this this constant striving, striving for so I repeat my question, do you know people for who their primary purpose in life is accumulating material goods? I do not know such people. And I've known billionaires. I know millionaires, right? Everyone I know who's rich, their primary purpose in life is their family, friends, a community and their interests or material goods. You know, you you read about men, you read of men in their man caves, you know, and they're proud of this, but it's just it's pathetic and disgusting. I don't see what's discussing about having a man cave, enjoying time in a man cave, having other blokes over. I know men with man caves, they have other guys over to study Torah, to watch football games, to just hang out, drink and talk, having spaces for just men to be alone with other men, having a room in your house that's for you. I think that's a healthy thing. But every room in the house must be equally open to everyone. I don't think so. Thank you. What's your name today? My name is fine. OK. Hi, guys. I haven't read the book, but I tuned in just as you were sort of summarizing the book. And I wanted to ask Kevin like because you mentioned Celine and that was kind of fascinating to me. What about like, is he like Rambo, too? I mean, is this like a late like a decadent? Well, he goes into decadence. I mean, he he lets us know that he likes to hang out with the wretched of the earth or those people who made themselves the wretched of the earth. That is to say, the, you know, the horse, the sluts, the addicts, the dealers, et cetera, and he he makes it an extraordinary suggestion. After quite some reasonable suggestions in the final section of his book, he goes under this reverie about how, you know, the good guys could take over the pause, take over the filth and use it as a kind of weapon. Well, I mean, I always think of the line between like a romantic attitude and a decadent attitude. I mean, it's a very thin line. And it seems to me like I feel like in my lifetime, I've lived in a world dominated by like enlightenment, scientism, sort of everything, you know, staying your lane is basically like, you know, pay your dues, wait your turn, the baby boomers are in charge for your whole life. And it's like, I think that this book makes sense to me if it shows up kind of like without credentials, but with like a raw energy that yeah, there's like maybe even decadent or romantic. And I think I even think like because I'm very familiar with his tweets. And I remember that whole aesthetic of the buff kind of shaved chest, bronze looking what we call him bodybuilder guys. And I could be wrong about this, but I even thought that some of that was like a trolling of like, of like the like Luke's homophobia, you know, which is just kind of archetypal, like baby boom, like kind of uptightness, where like I think that it could just be a playful, fun, romantic, loud, unapologetic force. And what it's for is for sort of finally projecting us into the next thing, like whatever it is, we finally have to let go of, you know, baby boomerism. And this might be a fun way to do that. Is any of that resonate? Well, he puts himself inside another tradition, I don't know whether he recognizes it, which is the decadent tradition again, roughly circa 1900. You see the yellow book in England. You see the the symbolist poets in France, the deliberate cultivation of the derangement of the senses. Yeah, as it was known, to to lead to a higher reality. Now he mentioned. Yeah, I am probably too uptight, I need to get in touch with my Grico Roman passions for young boys, I guess. All right. Back to Rosie Gray writing here in Politico yesterday, the person behind the online persona is not other than Alamario, who holds a PhD in political science from Yale. So when you're on the internet, a way of getting internet fame is by having extreme views and doing so consistently authentically and playing a role. This is Danielle Lee Thompson, who wrote a PhD on conservative influences. So she compares the way that BAP operates to performance art and to Khafabi, the concept in professional wrestling of acting out stories and characters to heighten the drama of stagefights. I generally find this distasteful. It's not really my thing. So BAP resembles folkloric tricksters who are willing to push the boundaries of flight discourse by creating a mythic character of their own, which you cannot do as a normal human being. And I think what's enabled Alamario's transformation of himself into a mythic character is he doesn't really have many or any real world ties. He seems to be completely cut off from normal forms of human connection, which in my book, it's not a good thing. So his transformation from a contrarian academic to transgressive internet sensation and idol of the new right is a story of the special allure that a provocative pseudonym holds and how it can help launch a modern media celebrity and spread extreme ideas. I don't think it's about the special allure here that a provocative pseudonym holds. He's a vessel for some people's fantasies of, you know, getting blow jobs for a lot of young men and having, you know, esoteric, Greco-Roman philosophy to justify that. So Bronze Age Mindset's written in signature slang, what means W-A-T, gay, G-H-E-Y, instead of gay, gril or gore. It's a salvo against contemporary society and liberal pieties. It's a part of a chorus of trad voices getting traction online who deplore modern society's emptiness and the replacement of traditional values with progressive ones. So Ken Brown, Deep Left Joke, seems to me, you know, following in the footsteps of Bronze Age pervert doing something pretty similar, wanting to start a court. Which is Gnosticism? You know, you see a very strong attraction to Gnosticism that is the belief that this spark of the divine that he talks about, that only a handful of people will ever be able to appreciate the spark of the divine and a very strong element of Manichaeism in his writing as well. This idea of... It sounds great to me. You know, that this tremendous split in humanity, that this dualism. Now, I mean, philosophically, the book is all over the place because he seems to be, he seems to argue, for instance, near the beginning of the book, that the mind does not exist, that we are solely body. Now, how one could argue for the existence, how could one could demonstrate consciousness or argue for the existence of consciousness without the mind? Well, that's an interesting question. I mean, I think that my understanding of those French symbolist poets Rimbaud and those guys, like you don't argue with them, you know, it's not even an argument, it's a tone that's being communicated. And what you're saying makes me want to read it, but I detect that you didn't enjoy it so much, which is fine. I mean, that's kind of inevitable, maybe. But you see how, like, you could write a manifesto of tone that would appeal to just a new wavelength. And anyway, so interesting choice. I'm glad you put it on the list and I'll talk about it. Well, no, if you see it with the decadence, sorry, I'll just say this quickly, but the decadence, you see a revolt against what was seen as over-civilization, a scissification, yeah, if you like. Yeah, which I think we need. I mean, I remember trying to wait, let's let a lot, Dennis, you kept getting rolled over, so Dennis, make your point. Oh, I was just going to say to the content. No, it exactly what you described, I was hoping this was what the book was. I wasn't looking for it to be empirical or sound argumentation or that sort of romantic and literary thing of work of art, pushing for the broader narrative. I didn't care that this guy is I don't know who this guy is or anything else, but he failed content. You can read the book if you like, but I think he failed at it. Okay, exactly what he attempted to do, what I think you described. There is there, you know, the book is overwhelming. It's it's kind of like I'll compare it to, you know, a disco that you can hear the even before you went to it, right? And as soon as you enter, you can feel that kick drum hitting your sternum and you either surrender or you flee. That's what this book is like. It is very difficult to read. But if you if you go forward, yeah, I found this book completely repulsive, you will find that it has a powerful narcotic like effect. Well, we're through parts. Sorry. Well, like I wonder if like, wouldn't you probably say similar things about dust fakes or a foostra? Exactly. It's kind of what he's attempting. Yeah, and like the thing is for like, you know, I'm kind of making fun of, I mean, I think we've done this before, Luke, the thing about credentialism or, you know, I mean, I think it makes sense to me that he doesn't it probably doesn't have a PhD. So well, it does turn out that he has a PhD and he was a very gifted student. He wrote an original PhD thesis. So this is like a dumbed down version of his PhD thesis. You know, if we exist in a world where everybody has to have credentials or else we don't read them or listen to them, that's one world that's an Enlightenment world. It's hierarchical. It's predictable. It's stable and conservative. But every once in a while, you need a 32 year old Alexander Hamilton and James Madison to write a brand new constitution and tell the and Luke Kraft says 40, this challenges your Judea Christian foundations. You can't handle the challenge. Carter notes back really stands for bear back anal penetration, gay style. And to fuck off. Like it seems like that's kind of, I mean, I'm just I didn't steal the deal, though. He's all one guy. He doesn't finish. Yeah, that's a good inconsistent and you know, he's making big promises. This is you hear the bump bump bump. Yeah. And you get in the club. Yeah. Kevin Michael Grace is a big fan of the Bronze Age mindset book and Bronze Age Bova. You never really find the music. OK. Well, that's too bad. I don't know. Read it. It's it's out there. I'll give you a copy. Yeah, if you read it, we'll definitely have you back on, Manic. Just get your take. But see, when I encounter someone either on the written word or the kiddish club or at the L.A. press club who starts making pronouncements about Judaism, Islam, Christianity, the ancient Greeks, very definitive, very strong pronouncements like this Bronze Age Bova guy, it makes me question like how much do they really know? Because I yeah, I found the book repulsive from valorization of tyrants, the promotion of, you know, homosexuality of, you know, men taking, you know, younger men and essentially inducting them into sex while at the same time pretending to be all anti-gay. The the slang, everything about it, I found repulsive. I could come on here right now or I could come on here and start making all sorts of pronouncements about Nietzsche or I could make pronouncements about Christianity or I can make pronouncements about Socrates. But I wouldn't be coming from a background of debt. I would just be it would just be completely shallow, you know, things off the off the top of my head. And Luke says in the chat, 40 is using the gay stuff to discredit the rest of what Bap has to say. Well, he valorizes tyrants. I don't valorize tyrants such as Calicula. Like he valorizes rule by pirates, essentially. He valorizes military rule. And I'm sure there are times in circumstances where military rule is the best option. Overall, though, I don't think rule by tyrants, pirates and militaries is a good way to go. I also don't hold by denigrating women and family life. I think that family life is the most important thing in the world that I haven't achieved, but I still believe it's the most important thing in the world for most individuals and people who don't have a family life are much more dangerous and less reliably pro-social than people whose lives are interwoven with the lives of other people.