While White Noise music is explicitly designed to inspire racially or politically motivated violence and is seen as part and parcel of the revolutionary ultra-nationalist subculture, he suggests that ‘metapolitical fascism’ has its own cultural reflection in the domain of sound, namely, apoliteic music [employing a concept from Julius Evola -- TOQ Editor]. This is a type of music whose ideological message contains obvious or veiled references to the core elements of fascism but is simultaneously detached from any practical attempts to realize these elements through political activity. Apoliteic music neither promotes outright violence nor is publicly related to the activities of radical right-wing political organizations or parties. Nor can it be seen as a means of direct recruitment to any political tendency.

Shekhovtsov’s article focuses on this type of music, and the thesis is tested by examining bands and artists that work in such musical genres as Neo-Folk and Martial Industrial, whose roots lie in cultural revolutionary and national folk traditions.

From Traditionalists, December 3, 2009

Dr. Pendleton’s fans will be interested to hear that he is also working on review essays about David E. Williams, Jerome Deppe, and Der Blutharsch.

Unity Mitford, Munich, 1937

. . . Effectively combating the anti-White mental poison will require us to mirror our enemy’s tactics through the development of a semiotic strategy our own — not for the enemy’s consumption, but for the emotional benefit of the “respectable” Whites whom the enemy have so thoroughly terrorized. Only then will the positive pay-off of pro-White dissidence become apparent to this self-effacing constituency. The data and the arguments already exist, and they are quite substantive; what is missing is the shiny packaging.

In the current cultural climate, in a society where power has its basis on money, it might seem impossible to elaborate a convincing semiotic strategy with which to sell pro-White dissidence to “respectable” Whites. When the masters of discourse have the power to frustrate the achievement of academic, professional, social, and economic status (i.e., the usual sources of social legitimization upon which self-esteem largely depends), attempting to suggest that incurring the wrath of these masters is likely to pay off might justifiably appear unrealistic and naïve. Few have the stomach to be martyrs or impecunious revolutionaries.

Yet, the fact is that Whites still possess a considerable demographic advantage, they still concentrate an enormous amount of talent, and they still control most of the wealth within their own traditional homelands: Enough opportunities exist within alternative networks, therefore, to remain economically active, and even enjoy material security, without subservience to the present political, academic, and media establishment.

Moreover, there are plenty of alternative networks — call them subcultures — that have successfully grown in demographic presence, economic power, and cultural influence, despite being defined, in some cases, by radically anti-establishment ideologies. The Black Metal music subculture, wherein I operate a record label, is an excellent example. The Neo-Folk music subculture is another. And the Martial Industrial music subculture is yet another. All, it should be noted, possess well-defined and highly stylized semiotic systems. . . . Read the whole article

The cover of Laibach's "Volk"

Volk
Laibach
London: Mute Records, 2006

Kunst Der Fuge
Laibach
Ljubljana: Dallas Records, 2008

Laibach is a Slovenian music group founded in 1980 in Communist Yugoslavia. Although Laibach’s music is often classified as “industrial,” that term does not begin to capture the band’s musical and conceptual versatility. Laibach’s releases run the gamut from a Beatles cover album (Let It Be[1]), to a heavy metal concept album on God (Jesus Christ Superstars[2]), to a “techno” concept album on war, globalization, and Western imperialism in the Balkans (NATO[3]), to the two albums under review here: Volk, a concept album about nationalism, and Kunst der Fuge, an electronic realization of J. S. Bach’s The Art of the Fugue.

“Laibach” is the German name for the Slovenian capital Ljubljana. The name first appeared in the twelfth century and became “official” after Rudolf von Hapsburg conquered the town in 1278. The name remained in use until the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918. From 1943 to 1945, the name was revived when Slovenia was occupied by the Germans. The Germans found many Slovenian collaborators, who combined Slovenian nationalism, anti-Communism, and pro-German sentiments. After the war, thousands of collaborators were murdered by the Communists, and the very name Laibach was banned. Thus from the beginning Laibach the band was as much about politics as music. Its very name was a challenge to the Yugoslav political order, and beyond that to all universalist ideologies and homogenizing political and economic systems.

Laibach’s flirtation with nationalism does not stop with its name. Laibach posters and album covers feature National Socialist propaganda images.

In the video of “Das Spiel ist aus” (“The Game is Up”–the video is available on the compilation Laibach – The Videos, the song on the compilation Laibach, Anthems), the members of Laibach appear in Nazi uniforms–on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and pushing a shopping cart through a mall, surrounded by shocked onlookers.[4] (The effect is hilarious.)

After the Yugoslav government banned the group from using the name “Laibach,” they adopted a simple seal: a cross with four equal arms surrounded by a toothed wheel. Is this an ironic juxtaposition of Christian and Communist motifs? Is a cross in a circle meant to resemble a swastika in a circle? Quite a few of Laibach’s songs are sung in German too-although a good many are sung in English, which is perhaps the group’s only concession to the international pop market.

Vlad the Impaler

But Laibach cannot be accused of an anachronistic adherence to German National Socialism, if only because of the ambiguous and contingent connection between National Socialism and Slovenian nationalism. Beyond that, Laibach’s work also contains currents of a broader Eastern European nationalism. For example, lead vocalist Milan Fras appears in headgear that makes him resemble the famous Vienna portrait of Vlad the Impaler, a Wallachian nationalist who resisted the power of both Turkish armies and German burghers. Laibach’s 1994 NATO album clearly rejects American and Western European imperialism in the name of the “Eastern Nation,” which I understand as a broad Eastern European nationalism. In light of subsequent events in Serbia and Kosovo, the album now seems prophetic.

In 1994, Laibach added an additional twist to their engagement with nationalism by creating their own virtual nation, NSK, which stands for Neue Slowenische Kunst, German (!) for New Slovenian Art. NSK was founded as an artist’s collective with music, painting, video, graphics, theatre, and theory divisions. It issues passports and postage stamps and conducts foreign exhibitions as diplomatic events.

Thus Laibach’s overriding theme seems to be nationalism as such. To borrow a phrase from Savitri Devi, they are “nationalists of every nation.” The Volk album certainly supports this thesis. The album’s fourteen songs are interpretations and transformations of the national anthems of fifteen nations in which fragments of the original words and melodies are embedded in new songs with additional words.

Track 1, “Germania,” is based on “Deutschland über Alles,” the melody of which was composed by Joseph Haydn. The meaning of “Germany before All” (or “Germany First”) is simply that for Germans, Germany should come first in their hearts before all other countries. It does not mean that for non-Germans, Germany should come first as well. (Of course the fact that the song appears first on the CD may indicate that for Laibach too Germany really does come first.)

Laibach’s lyrics ask whether “Deutschland über Alles” will continue to be sung, and, more importantly, will it mean anything in the future: “And in times of misfortune/ and in times of mistrust / shall this song  continue / from generation to generation, / from present to past, / shall this song continue / more than ever / in this time of mistrust?” This question is poignant because Germans today are punished by their Allied Occupation regime for openly putting Germany first in their hearts, and for expressing nostalgia for the Third Reich, the last time when Germans put Germany first.

The Third Reich, the War, and the Occupation together constitute a historical “fall” from which Germans must find redemption: “After the unspeakable, /after you have fallen as only angels can fall, /go and find your peace again, /get back home and grow your tree.” The trauma of the fall has, however, induced a kind of collective amnesia: “No victory, /no defeat, /no shame, and Fatherland no more . . .” All these are replaced with “only Unity, Justice, and Freedom for all.” I take this to mean a universalist credo that will erase Germany in the hearts of Germans-as a prelude to erasing Germany from the world entirely. Laibach’s words conclude “There will be no memory / or there will be no home.” The grammar is a little off, but I take this to mean that unless Germany remembers itself, it will be dismembered; it will perish; there will be no home. This is “the lesson you have to learn / now and in the future. / Do you think you can make it, Deutschland?”

Track 2, “America,” begins with the album’s only assault of loud, ugly “industrial” noise-a singularly appropriate gesture-followed by a montage of “The Star Spangled Banner,” the preamble to the US constitution, the blaring sirens of urban hellholes, the fire and brimstone rantings of televangelists, and Laibach’s own accusatory lyrics.

If the Third Reich is Laibach’s model of ethno-nationalism, the United States is their model of anti-nationalism. The United States was born with an identity crisis. Culturally and genetically European, the different strands of the American populace could have formed a new European nation with a unified national self-consciousness.

Cover of Laibach's "Kunst der Fuge"

But our founding stock was selected for rootlessness and a penchant for universalistic ideological fixations, religious and secular. This provided fertile soil for an abstract, universalistic, creedal conception of identity, which became more and more useful with the immigration of ever-more heterogeneous and unassimilable populations. America is now no longer a people, but merely a system: a technological, capitalistic plutocracy at war with its founding stock. Beyond that, the American system is at war with every distinct and independent people, with every culture but pop culture, with every ideal but self-indulgence.

The triumph of this “universal homogeneous state” is what Francis Fukuyama proclaimed “the end of history.” History ended first in America, and America’s mission is to end it everywhere else. It is not a civilizing mission, but a barbarizing one, spread under the banner of emancipation. Laibach ask “O the land of the free / and the home of the brave, / are you heaven on Earth, / or the gloom of the grave?” The answer is both, for the heaven of liberal democracy is the graveyard of all nations, cultures, and ideals. America is “the end of history, / the end of time, / the end of family, /the end of crime.”

Accordingly, Laibach prays (while mocking the American tendency to inject religion into politics):

NSK passport

Praise the Lord
And praise the Holy Spirit
To save us from your freedom,
Justice, peace . . .
from arrogance and pride,
from violence and conflusion . . .

Your great despair
And great depression
satanic verses of your superstition,
the land of plenty.

Your Bill of Rights, free enterprise,
the free will and the unbroken one,
your self-esteem and self-desire,
your trust in God and the religious fire.

Track 3, “Anglia,” is based on “God Save the Queen.” If the United States is the Mighty Fortress of the Universal Homogeneous State, the United Kingdom is its “Airstrip One,” from which American airpower can depart to rain death upon any nationalist upstarts in Europe or the Near East. Amazingly, this utterly degraded and subordinate role in the process of global denationalization co-exists with a sturdy nationalism-really more a nostalgia for England’s past imperial greatness. (Americans should not laugh, because we exist in the same position vis-à-vis Israel.) Hence Laibach begins: “So you still believe you are ruling the World, / using all your tricks to keep the picture blurred, / scatter your enemies, /confound their politics, /so you still believe you are ruling the world. . . . So you still believe you are superior, / and all other nations are inferior, / any sedition-hushed, / rebellious Scots-crushed, / so you still believe you are superior!” Unfortunately, British nationalism, like American, has been channeled into the destruction of its own people. Hence Laibach adds a single line to the first verse of “God Save the Queen,” which functions as the chorus of “Anglia”: “God save you all.”

Camp mit Laibach?

If Laibach think that National Socialist Germany represents the past of nationalism, track 4, “Rossiya” indicates that they think its future lies in Russia. Furthermore, the band seems to share the surprising fusion of Russian nationalism and Communism in the minds of many Russian nationalists today. “Rossiya” combines the Communist anthem “The Internationale” with the current “State Anthem of the Russian Federation,” which is based on the 1944 Soviet national anthem. Although the current Russian anthem removes the phrase “an unbreakable union” from the old Soviet anthem, Laibach quietly restores it, speaking of “an unbreakable union of fraternal states, united forever in Great Russia’s embrace.”

After the fall of Communism and the integration of Russia into the global capitalist marketplace, Russians learned that, for all its faults, Communism at least did not hand the resources of the nation over to international robber barons based in New York, London, and Tel Aviv. To Russians condemned to cold, hunger, and hopelessness by the transition to capitalism, there was a new poignancy to “The Internationale”: “Arise, the prisoners of starvation, /arise, the damned of the earth.” To this, Laibach adds: “let’s gather together, / let’s break us free, / the world is changing at its core!” Communism, like nationalism, is collectivist in spirit. And in practice, Soviet Communism was nationalistic. Thus the move from national Communism to international capitalism was seen as a step in the wrong direction.

And what of Communism’s decades of terror, its tens of millions of victims? These seem to be minimized or forgotten. Or perhaps they have merely been assimilated to the harsh environment, the Mongol hordes, and the cruel autocrats who made the Russians the toughest nation in Europe. Laibach’s opening verse captures this fiery, frozen crucible of the Russian character: “United forever in vast, endless space, / created in struggle by unhappy race, / where sunrays of freedom / are frozen in ice, / united forever in Great Russia’s embrace.” Ironically, by alleviating such conditions, liberal democracy and consumer society might prove a greater threat to the survival of the Russian nation than Communism ever was.

Laibach cover incorporating National Socialist image

This connection between Communism and Slavic nationalism[5] is underscored in track 12, “Slovania” (“Slovenia”), which is based on “Hey Slavs,” the unofficial pan-Slavic anthem which later became the anthem of Communist Yugoslavia. Laibach’s own contribution consists in dedications of “Hey Slavs”: “These words are for those who died, / these words are for those left behind. / These words are for you, Poland, / and these ones for my homeland.” The other dedicatees are “the spirit of our fathers,” “the glory of our sons,” “the power of the Spectre” (Communism?), “the Holy Alliance” (the 1815 alliance between the Russian Empire, the Austrian Empire, and the Kingdom of Prussia against the ideals of the French Revolution), “lovers,” “warriors,” and “all communists.” The final lines are cryptic, but they hint at a modern, Russian-oriented pan-Slavism: “Out of the feudal darkness, / away from the Nameless One / we stand alone in history, / facing East in sacrifice.” The references to Communism and the Holy Alliance indicate that the spirit of this pan-Slavism will be collectivist, anti-liberal, and Christian.

Track 13, “Vaticanae,” is a suitably ethereal arrangement of the “Papal Anthem and March,” which indicates that for Laibach, Slovenia’s western-looking Catholicism, like their eastern-looking pan-Slavism, is an important aspect of the nation’s identity.[6] Track 14, “NSK,” is the anthem of Laibach’s own state Neue Slowenische Kunst. Over a march that sounds like it is being played on a scratchy vinyl record from the 1940s, an electronic voice reads the stirring concluding words of Winston Churchill’s “We Shall Fight on the Beaches” speech of June 4, 1940. In light of “Anglia,” the irony is delicious.

Tracks 5 through 7 deal with France (“Francia”), Italy (“Italia”), and Spain (“España”). “Francia” is based “La Marseillaise,” but Laibach rallies the “children of the fatherland” not against French monarchists, but against “foreign hordes” of African invaders transforming France into an African (and Muslim) nation stretching from the Congo to Calais. “Italia,” based on “Il Canto degli Italiani” (“The Song of the Italians”) also called “Fratelli d’Italia” (“Brothers of Italy”), is Volk‘s most straightforward (and beautiful) adaptation of an anthem. Yet it adds two cryptic and sinister verses describing Italy as “the slave of Rome” and asking Italy if she will die for her freedom or forget her past and its ties. “España” is a melodic, martial, and triumphant fusion of the music of Spain’s wordless national anthem “La Marcha Real” (“The Royal March”) and the words of “El Himno de Riego” (“The Song of Riego”) the anthem of the Spanish Republic, which was banned under Franco. It is hard to see how the Communist Republic has anything to do with a healthy Spanish nationalism, but “El Himno de Riego” is truly a stirring call to arms. Laibach’s interpolations, moreover, have nothing to do with Communism, invoking instead the masculine and heroic Christianity of Spanish tradition: “Brave is your Jesus-El Toreador!” and “Brave is your Jesus-El Conquistador!”

Tracks 8 through 11 deal with non-European nations. Track 8, “Yisra’el” (“Israel”) is an ironic blending of the Israeli national anthem, “Hatikvah” (“The Hope”) with the martial Palestinian national anthem “Biladi” (“My Country”). Track 9, “Türkiye” (“Turkey”) is based on the Turkish national anthem “İstiklâl Marşı” (“Independence March”). Track 10, “Zhoughuá” (“China”) blends “The Internationale” with the Chinese anthem “Yìyǒngjūn Jìnxíngqǔ” (“March of the Volunteers”), for in China too, Communism has fused with nationalism. The hauntingly beautiful track 11, “Nippon” (“Japan”), is based on the Japanese anthem “Kimi ga Yo” (“May Your Reign Last Forever”).

If you are encountering Laibach for the first time, Volk is definitely the place to begin. Musically, it is Laibach’s most melodic and accessible recording, yet all the group’s distinct sonic trademarks are present. Conceptually, it is the group’s most ambitious and thought-provoking project so far, yet it is also rich with humor and irony (but only at the expense of their enemies).

Poster for Laibach/Bach "Kunst der Fuge" concert

Laibach’s latest release, Kunst der Fuge, is a Laibachian electronic realization of Bach’s last, unfinished work The Art of the Fugue. I found this choice surprising, but I shouldn’t have, since Laibach’s earlier works demonstrate a wide knowledge of classical music, including Baroque counterpoint. (This is used to droll effect when combined with a monotonous, thumping techno bass line on NATO‘s cover of the Swedish glam-metal band Europe’s “The Final Countdown.”)

“Original instruments” purists, of course, would dismiss such electronic performances without a listening. But Bach himself did not write The Art of the Fugue for a particular instrument. And for those of us who first heard Bach played by Walter/Wendy Carlos, synthesizers are original instruments anyway. I have a number of performances of The Art of the Fugue in various arrangements–piano, organ, string quartet, and chamber orchestra–and Laibach’s has taken its place among them as a legitimate and sometimes revelatory interpretation. Like all of Laibach’s works, there are playful and ironic moments. But the core is deeply serious, even spiritual. At the brink of death, Bach was writing pure, Platonic Gedankenmusik, and it is Laibach’s electronic realization, precisely because of its iciness and inhumanity–its cold interstellar vastness–that brings this listener right to eternity’s edge.

Is Laibach mystical then as well as militant, in the tradition of the Christian warrior-monks like the Templars and Teutonic Knights? The closing words of “Das Spiel ist aus” certainly seem to view European man’s struggle for survival from the aspect of eternity:

Was erstanden ist, das muss vergehen.
Was vergangen ist, muss auferstehen!
Wir der Böse sind, und wir sind Gott.
Wir sind zeitlos. Und du bist tot!
Raus! Das Spiel ist aus!

What has risen must pass away.
What has passed must rise again!
We are the Devil, and we are God.[7]
We are timeless. And you are dead!
Out! The game is up!

Forthcoming in TOQ vol. 9, no.1, Spring 2009

[2] Laibach, Jesus Christ Superstars (London: Mute Records, 1996).

[3] Laibach, NATO (London: Mute Records, 1994).

[4] The video of “Das Spiel ist aus” is available on Laibach-The Videos (Mute DVD, 2004). The version of “Das Spiel is aus” accompanying the video is available on the compilation Laibach, Anthems (London: Mute Records, 2004). Another version of “Das Spiel ist aus” originally appeared on Laibach, WAT (London: Mute Records, 2003).

[5] A similar connection is drawn in “National Reservation” on NATO, Laibach’s anti-war, anti-Western imperialism CD. A remake of “Indian Reservation,” a Cherokee lament that became a US number one single for Paul Revere and the Raiders in 1971, “National Reservation” substitutes “Eastern” (i.e., Eastern European) for “Cherokee” and leaves the rest of the song pretty much unaltered, including the lines “Though we wear shirts and ties, / we’re still the red men [i.e., Communists] deep inside.”

[6] Consider the imagery of Also sprach Johann Paul II, by the Laibach side project 300.000 V.K. (= 300,000 Verschiedene Krawalle, 300,000 Assorted Riots) (A.M.D.G., 1996). On the back cover, the Polish pope is depicted as Vlad the Impaler, as portrayed in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 movie Bram Stoker’s Dracula. On the CD itself, John Paul’s voice is mixed with Richard Strauss’ Also sprach Zarathustra over a throbbing, martial techno beat. The CD evokes the muscular, heroic, crusading Christianity of those who resisted the Muslim invasions of Europe, not today’s decadent Christianity that has thrown open the gates.

[7] This is Gnostic or Vedantic non-dualism, of course, not orthodox Christianity.

Boyd Rice (b. 1956) is a remarkable figure. He is a composer, poet, artist, essayist, photographer, filmmaker, actor, and self-educated scholar of both pop culture and Western esotericism, particularly Grail lore. It is tempting to call Rice a pop culture phenomenon himself, but he has never had much popular appeal. Because of his versatility, one might call him a Renaissance man, but that term is not appropriate either. The Renaissance was a period of Western civilization’s rebirth, whereas Boyd Rice is an artist of its decline.

Indeed, although I very much enjoy his music, one must admit that Rice is an artist only by the loosest and most decadent of standards. He has no apparent musical training, and his albums consist primarily of electronic sound and noise collages or mellow, minimalistic lounge music overlaid with Rice’s droll, deadpan recitations of poetry or prose. (He can’t sing either.) His photographs and other visual art works are also collage-like, some suggesting sexual fetishism, most suggesting nothing at all.

Yet Boyd Rice is a paradox, for despite his decadent milieu, lifestyle, and artworks, he came to adopt and advocate a number of heretical convictions and healthy values. He read Nietzsche, Spengler, and Jung, as well as less canonical critics of modernity like Gabriele d’Annunzio, Ragnar Redbeard (the pen name of an eloquent nineteenth-century advocate of Social Darwinism), Charles Fort, the Marquis de Sade, and Savitri Devi. He rejected egalitarianism and progressivism and embraced such unpopular causes as Social Darwinism and eugenics. He became frankly racist and sexist (to put it mildly) and took a strong interest in Italian Fascism, Romania’s Iron Guard, and German National Socialism.

Rice started performing in black paramilitary uniforms emblazoned with the wolfsangle rune and collaborating with artists with similar interests, like Douglas Pearce of Death in June and Albin Julius of Der Blutharsch. He is apparently not, however, anti-Semitic, given his friendships and collaborations with Jews, half-Jews, and purported Jews like Anton LaVey (founder of the Church of Satan), Daniel Miller (of Mute Records), and Adam Parfrey (of Feral House Publishers).

Rice is not alone among decadent artists and thinkers. In truth, there are two kinds of decadence: the decadence of the left and the right. The decadence of the left is that of the sick man who would console himself by obliterating all standards of health. This is the origin of all forms of nihilism: literary and artistic, moral and political. Nietzsche had its number. The decadence of the right is that of the sick man who longs for and idealizes health and beauty. In this category, we find painters like Gustave Moreau, Franz von Stuck, and the Pre-Raphaelites; writers like Rousseau, Nietzsche, Wilde, Lawrence, Pound, and d’Annunzio; composers like Wagner and Richard Strauss; and many adherents of political movements like Fascism and National Socialism.

To describe such artists as decadent is not necessarily a criticism of their characters per se. Artists are more sensitive to their surroundings than most. Decadent artists become decadent because they live in decadent times. The decadence of the right is thus allied with a critique of modernity. Because these artists know they are not immune to the corruptions of their times, they idealize healthier, archaic societies—pagan Antiquity or the high Middle Ages—and hope, or even work, for their return.

Rice’s move to the right was apparently sincere. He certainly did not do it to become rich and popular. He lost many friends, allies, and opportunities—although new and better ones eventually appeared—and he ended up leaving repressively “tolerant” San Francisco for relative anonymity in Denver. Furthermore, Rice has never embarrassed himself with apologies, explanations, or recantations. But the best evidence of his sincerity is the work itself. It is rich in humor and irony—like setting words by Jung, Savitri Devi, Meister Eckhart, Gobineau, and Sade to lounge music—but never at the expense of his convictions.

As an essayist, Boyd Rice is always entertaining and often quite profound. Unfortunately, most of his writings first appeared in small-circulation “underground” magazines and newspapers that are now difficult and expensive to track down. Thus editor Brian M. Clark has done a great service by collecting most of Rice’s essays, including some previously unpublished ones, into a single volume. Standing in Two Circles does not include Rice’s Grail book The Vessel of God and related writings,[1] save for two enticing samples, but it contains most of his essays, all of his song lyrics, and many images. If you are a Boyd Rice fan, you probably already have this book. If you are not a fan, read it and you might become one.

Standing in Two Circles is organized chronologically, but I prefer to deal with its essays under thematic headings.

Boyd Rice

Rice’s political views can be gathered from his essays “The Warrior Ethic” and “Nature’s Eternal Fascism.” Rice believes in “natural law” in morality and politics. Unlike Locke, however, when Rice looks to nature, he sees no basis for egalitarian liberal ideas like natural rights. Instead, he sees nature “red in tooth and claw.” In nature, no creatures are equal, and all strive to prove it, struggling violently for survival and supremacy. The natural political order, therefore, is unapologetically hierarchical and warlike: aristocracy or fascism, not democracy or socialism. Rice’s views of historical fascism can be gleaned from his essays “Dystopia,” “Savitri Devi,” and “They Stole Mussolini’s Brain” (an entertaining diary of a musical tour/pilgrimage to sites associated with Fascism and National Socialism). Rice seems to admire Fascism and National Socialism not just as ideologies in accord with “nature’s eternal fascism,” but also as aesthetic phenomena.

In “Dystopia,” Rice argues that modern egalitarianism and progressivism, try as they might, cannot abolish natural law. Egalitarianism and progressivism both lead to dysgenics: the best become ever-stupider and ever-weaker, and the worst become ever more numerous. Eventually, such a society will liquidate itself and be replaced with a younger, healthier, more primitive and vital hierarchical society.

Rice speculates that egalitarianism and progressivism might simply be nature’s way of finishing off an old civilization to make room for the new. Here we can see the influence of Spengler’s The Decline of the West, with its idea of civilizations as organic wholes that go through processes of growth and decline, and Savitri Devi’s The Lightning and the Sun, with its explication of the Traditional doctrine that history moves in cycles, beginning with a Golden Age and declining into a Dark Age (Kali Yuga). Rice’s main criticism of Fascism and National Socialism is that they were futile, since they attempted to restore a Golden Age form of society in the dregs of the Kali Yuga. They came too late, or too early.

Since restoration of the Golden Age is impossible, Rice advises those condemned to live during the Kali Yuga to learn to love it, to “stop and smell the neurosis,” to view the nightly news as “a sitcom about the end of the modern world”—and to supply the laugh track (p. 145). The essay “Passive Activism: Yellow Ribbons & Other Red Herrings” shows us how, by lampooning ribbon campaigns, bumperstickers, public service TV commercials, consciousness-raising billboards, and other excruciating expressions of liberal high-mindedness. Indeed, much of the book can be read as a manual for understanding and enjoying life in the Kali Yuga.

Rice’s Social Darwinism is rooted in a metaphysical and religious outlook set forth in the surviving fragments of an unfinished book entitled Physiosophy. Rice calls the whole “nature.” Nature includes not only all things commonly judged good, but their opposites as well: “If ‘all’ means ‘all that there is,’ then by necessity this would be inclusive of darkness, animal instincts, the flesh, the material world, lust, evil,” etc. (p. 86). Nature encompasses all oppositions not by blurring their differences, but by preserving them in dynamic equilibrium.

Rice is not, however, an atheistic naturalist. Instead, he is a pantheist: he identifies nature with God. Nature is not, however, God as opposed to the “devil,” but a whole that encompasses even that opposition. Rice names his god “Abraxas,” an ancient Gnostic deity who encompasses all opposites. Rice also uses the symbolism of the eiwaz rune, which encompasses and balances the opposition of life and death, and the cross of Lorraine, the two horizontal bars of which are supposed to symbolize the arms of Christ and the arms of the devil. Rice’s brief meditation “The Persistence of Memory” speaks of a mysticism of the blood that connects his religious views to his fascination with genealogy: “The quest for the Grail [one’s bloodline] is a quest to return to the source. It is a quest to reunite the part with the whole, the descendant with the ancestor, the temporal with the primordial . . .” (p. 157).

Rice’s pantheism is, in effect, a form of whole-hearted world-affirmation. By divinizing the whole, Rice divinizes the negative as well as the positive. Divinizing the negative does not make it positive but says “yes” to it nonetheless. Rice calls his non-dualistic pantheism “monism.” He draws his inspiration from Western sources like Heraclitus and Ernst Haeckel, but it is consistent with Hindu Tradition as well, which deifies evil as well as good, destruction as well as creation, chaos as well as order.

In happy ages, the positive aspects of the whole are dominant, and the negative are hidden. Spiritual paths therefore emphasize the positive and exclude the negative. This is called the “Right-Hand Path,” the right being a Traditional symbol of the positive. In the Kali Yuga, the negative aspects of the whole are dominant, and the positive are hidden. Therefore, in the Kali Yuga, it is appropriate to embrace those things that are forbidden in healthier ages and transmute them into spiritual resources. This is called the “Left-Hand Path,” the left being a Traditional symbol of the negative.

Now, one might suspect that the “Left-Hand Path” is just an excuse for people who know better and who could work for a better world to give up and wallow in decadence, but the notion does help reconcile Rice’s serious side with an otherwise baffling array of frivolous pop culture interests discussed in his other essays: Mondo films, novelty soaps, Tiki decor, singing actor records, Lawrence Welk’s Country Club Village development, Martin Denny and other purveyors of cool lifestyle music, booze culture, “Op Art, Pop Art, Warhol . . . glamour, formalism, futurism, and fun” (p. 185). The final essay, “Toward the Plastic: The New Alchemy,” a manifesto co-authored with Giddle Partridge, defends these interests from the dour advocates of back-to-nature authenticity, arguing that nothing is more natural than plastic, for plastic is an expression of “a creative impulse central to the soul of man. . . . the desire to transform reality; to replace the commonplace with the fabulous and to make fun a tangible presence rather than mere abstraction” (p. 185). The alchemical transmutation of lead (or plastic) into gold can be taken as a symbol of the Left-Hand Path.

Surely Boyd is just being ironic . . .

Two essays are memoirs of Rice’s friendships with Anton LaVey and Charles Manson. LaVey’s religion of “Satanism” has nothing to do with devil worship, but is instead an atheistic philosophy compounded out of Social Darwinism, Nietzsche, Aleister Crowley, and Ayn Rand. Satanism attempts to re-value all aspects of existence “demonized” by Christianity. But Rice’s portrait of LaVey does not discuss shared ideas, but rather shared tastes and obsessions: Tiny Tim, Ed Gein, cheesy exploitation films, obscure 60s girl groups, practical jokes, etc.

Rice portrays Manson as a paradox. He is a kind of guru or shaman, a man with extraordinary charisma and insight into human nature and history. Unfortunately, Manson’s divine madness is compounded with the more mundane variety, which is why he has spent most of his life behind bars. Manson comes off as a bit of an “esoteric Hitlerist”: “They killed [Jesus] the first time at Golgotha. Then he came back in Germany in the 1930s and the whole world gathered together to destroy him” (pp. 99-100). He also shares Rice’s metaphysical non-dualism, including his fascination with Abraxas.[2]

Rice’s race realism is displayed in “Hitler in Zimbabwe,” the hilarious proposal for a book about events on the Dark Continent after whites upped stakes and left the natives without adult supervision. Rice’s brutish view of sex, as expressed in “Revolt against Penis Envy,” is the precise reaction you would expect from a Social Darwinist to hysterical feminist slogans like “All sex is rape.” Also unattractive are Rice’s stories of drinking binges, practical jokes, sexual precociousness, and stalking. Frankly, some of these stories left me hoping that Rice merely has a sick imagination. Nobody is wholly admirable, but Rice’s honesty is still unsettling. Should it surprise us, however, given his views? In the end, Rice’s willingness to reveal his dark side may just be a practical and personal application of his world-affirming pantheism. As Manson, who gave the book its title, said: “Rice, I’ll call you Abraxas, because you stand in two circles at once” (p. 100).

Those wishing to sample Boyd Rice’s recordings should begin with Scorpion Wind, his most musically and philosophically interesting album, a kind of fascist lounge music.[3] Even old people find it listenable. Another mellow favorite is Boyd Rice and Friends, Music, Martinis, and Misanthropy (NER, 1990). As an introduction to NON, I recommend Might! (Mute, 1995), texts from Ragnar Redbeard’s Might is Right set to “noise music.” For the “softer” side of NON, try the anthology Terra Incognita: Ambient Works (Mute, 2004).

Oliver Pendleton (Ph.D.) is the pen-name of an American music critic.