By Jack
Butler
Tuesday,
February 14, 2023
In the
past few years, some people and institutions on the right have either fallen
for or taken far too seriously the musings of a figure who goes by the online
pseudonym “Bronze Age Pervert.” His real name is Costin Alamariu, a Yale
University political-science Ph.D. originally from Romania. In 2018, Alamariu
compiled his musings into a lurid, deliberately ungrammatical, book-length
“exhortation” called Bronze Age Mindset, which became an
underground hit on the right. In 2019, Politico reported that it had some fans among
young male staffers in the Trump administration. (Alamariu’s true popularity
may be hard to discern, as he counsels fans to deny having read him, and to
moderate their public views strategically.) He seems to be really into lifting
(nothing wrong with that, even if I
prefer running myself),
and resents modern society for suppressing the authentic expression of
masculine virtue (which, indeed,
it does).
But
there is far more to Alamariu’s worldview than just being pro-lifting and
pro-masculinity. In a piece for the Daily Beast over the
weekend, I outlined some of its unsavory details,
as evidenced in Bronze Age Mindset and elsewhere. He has
contempt for the American Founding, which he dismisses as “so much nonsense”
that has “nothing to do” with America’s success. He is similarly disdainful of
Christianity, which he thinks may have begun as the same faith that originated
Buddhism, or perhaps Zoroastrianism, and whose central figures, such as Saint
Augustine, were probably made up. As I elaborate in the piece:
He speculates that the New Testament was “written by a Jewish woman, as
a parody of Greek tragedy,” and criticizes Christians (and Jews) for
“suppressing the natural spirit of man.” The nicest thing he has to say about
Christianity is that offending its believers is “stupid” when they have the
same enemy.
To
Alamariu, moreover, women are a malign force who “drain” men of their “vital
essence” and are responsible for all the world’s ills over the past century;
immigrants are “zombi hordes” and “sh**” from the “Turd World” ruining our
cities and national parks; and rebreeding “the original Aryan race, or as close
an approximation as possible, through some kind of a Platonic Lebensborn
program” is a desirable fantasy.
At the
root of Alamariu’s worldview is a dark vision of the future in which his
followers, whom he describes as “superior specimens” in need of “space,” “wipe
away” our “corrupt civilization,” and unleash their vengeance upon the “lower
types of mankind,” or “humancockroach” who have repressed them. (The Bronze Age
Mindset is defined as the desire “to be worshiped as a god!”) Alamariu
describes his vision of “true justice” in this way:
the zoos opened, predators unleashed by the dozens, hundreds….four
thousand hungry wolves rampaging on streets of these hive cities, elephants and
bison stampeding, the buildings smashed to pieces, the cries of the human bug
shearing through the streets as the lord of beasts returns.
This
godless, neopagan, will-to-power fantasia is not conservative. Which makes it
unfortunate that people and institutions affiliated with the Claremont
Institute, which has done
much great work,
have engaged with and elevated Alamariu’s worldview. It was a misguided attempt
to channel this worldview into something more responsible that served instead
to strengthen and popularize it. This misbegotten attempt at dialogue failed to
realize that Alamariu’s right-wing nihilism — anti-religious, anti-Founding —
exists in a kind of perverse symbiosis with the left-wing nihilism so regnant
today that it ostensibly criticizes. We need
something better than both.
To
provide a superior alternative, however, one must admit that conservatism, as a
whole, has seriously failed at doing so. The trouble that confronts us today is
partially the result of conservatism’s failure since the Cold War’s end. The
challenges we now face, in large part due to conservatism’s failures, include
an emboldened Chinese Communist Party, the crisis of American masculinity, the
weaponization of capital and technology against the Right, and an
administrative state that brazenly violates the U.S. Constitution even while
failing to perform core responsibilities.
So no,
simply perpetuating conservatism as usual will not suffice.
Conservatives need to do better, lest only voices such as Alamariu’s are
seen as providing answers to our current ills, or lest conservatives be seen as
defenders of a status quo we all know is seriously defective. As I write:
Alamariu should not be permitted—by default—to claim the moral high
ground in his denunciations of modern nihilism and egalitarianism. The American
Right must present a positive and distinctly American vision of a free and
virtuous society that mollifies young right-wing discontent.
Even
granting the highest possible charity to Alamariu’s nihilism, however, it could
only ever critique. It cannot build. Apart from his worldview’s aforementioned
defects, Alamariu advises his followers to reject the “Phariseeism” of virtue
and to consider descending into “a floating world of complete vice.” He also
downplays the importance of starting a family, doubting that such an act would
“ever be enough” to meaningfully address our contemporary moral decay. To
dismiss not just Christianity and the American
Founding but
also morality and family life is not to save our country, but to renounce our
best chances for rehabilitating it, thereby ensuring its doom.
And to
use very-real attacks on masculinity as an excuse to unbridle it completely
instead of defending and
channeling it properly is not to address the crisis of men, but to exacerbate it. That
crisis will not be solved if more men reject family responsibilities and
embrace vice. Strength and courage are necessary tools, but they must be
directed by principles higher than mere violence, or base self-aggrandizement.
Men should worship God, not themselves. Alamariu’s program is for debaucherous
teenagers and those who still act like them. Not men.
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