Politico has reported recent discussions among White House staff of a self-published, rambling essay called Bronze Age Mindset. The book is a dizzying 198-page treatise, written under the pseudonym of Bronze Age Pervertshorthanded to BAP by his ardent fans. And they are legion. Its a smash hit with the right, and is currently ranked #3 on Amazons bestseller list in Ancient Greek History, and #174 in Humoran inarguably more competitive category.

The authors Twitter presence is a post-post-post-ironic blend of jokey homoerotic photos of bodybuilders and boorish far-right memes. But while BAPs prose is rather artfully penned, Bronze Age Mindsets arguments are fractured and incoherent. Imagine the opinions of Jordan B. Peterson, as expressed by Ayn Rands Superman, in the playful vernacular of Donald Barthelme. The essay nevertheless manages to exert a sneaky power on the reader, despite being so chopped and screwed. BAPs introduction to the book is an incantation of sorts, the haunting final sentence of which ends without a terminal period; a detail that is unlikely to have been omitted by mistake:

I want to prepare you to receive this old spiritold spirits are moving from behind the reeds... the silhouette shimmers against a river in late summer, and I see already men who know how to honor such uncanny old friends. May they inhabit us again and give us strength to purify this world of refuse

The far-right literary oeuvre provides ample opportunities for such spirits to be conjured. In the years since Trumps election, one particular workGerald James McManuss 2001 political thriller Dark Millennium: A Visionary Talehas felt eerily prescient. Its protagonist, U.S. President Alexander McGrail, is presented as both a hero and a beloved villain. Hes a narcissistic sociopath and a racist. He treats women badly. He betrays trusted allies. As the story progresses, he enlists a top military officer, General Brandt, to help him put a diabolical secret plan into action: Together they fake a terrorist attack that kills every Democrat in Congress. McGrail blames Muslim extremists for the tragedy, but the press doesnt buy his explanation. Their offices are thus raided and the media is eventually shut down completely. Then, as is the case in many of these authors fantasy scenarios, things spiral into race war.

Incited by the medias accusations against the president, Americas black ghettos ran red with blood and flame. Uprisings broke out first in the eastern cities. ... In Manhattan, Brandt oversaw the execution of thirty thousand captured blacks. They were dragged kicking and screaming to the edge of a huge pit that was dug out of Central Park. Some blacks demanded their rights, most begged for mercy, but they were all thrown into the pit and remorselessly machine-gunned by Brandts men.

The violence spreads throughout the country as McGrails America systematically murders all people of color, feminists, socialists, and, of course, Jews. The story ends years into a future wherein McManuss fictional leader is, despite his personal flaws, venerated as the herofounder of a pure and enduring whites-only ethno-utopia.

The point is not to say that the harrowing plot of Dark Millenniumis about to come true. It is, rather, to acknowledge that there exists a broad, far-right subculture, which is actively posting, plotting, and praying that it will. Charlottesville was an attempt to galvanize this very movement. Its organizers sought to Unite the Right, and bring together the various outlier factionsmens groups, paleo-libertarians, sovereign citizens, and the likethat constitute the nebulous Alt Right and Alt Light. Instead, things quickly devolved into hooliganism, as the same old clowns rolled up, united only by the same old hatreds of the same old groups that have been targeted for decades, as codified in books like The Turner Diaries, The Camp of the Saints, and Dark Millennium: people of color, feminists, socialists, and Jews.

Despite this movements failure in Virginia, the right has since become increasingly unified online, emboldened by evidence of their influence on Trump, and a mounting sense that they are gearing up for something big. The neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer recently featured a homepage header image of cartoon machine guns circling the Constitution. The sites publisher, Andrew Anglin, posts multiple times daily, revving up his followers, and has called for a soon-to-come age of ultraviolence, followed by a forceful solicitation of compliance with leadership:

There will be leaders. You need to be prepared to recognize them for who they are, and you need to be prepared to do whatever they tell you to do, exactly as they tell you to do it. You are going to be required to do things that you cannot possibly imagine yourself doing right now. And if you do not do these things, you will die.

If Donald Trump loses the presidency next fall, we all know hell tweet up a storm on election nightrailing against the corrupt media, decrying rigged elections, shrieking about socialism. But then what? What if he takes it to the next level and calls for violence or declares martial law? One hopes that those to whom we entrust the power of state violencecops, soldiers, spieswould keep the oaths of a constitutional order. Or, might they instead take us down a new path; a darker one, snaking though clearings felled by norm-breakers like Mitch McConnell and Devin Nunes: hearkening to the paeans to the great replacement of Tucker Carlson, the fragmented agitations of BAP, or the fascist violence of Andrew Anglin? All of these folktales could quickly come into competition, with the winner determining whether or not a Trumpian crie de guerrewill accomplish what Charlottesville could not: calling the lone wolves to the hunt, bolstered by a newly-unified army of Bronze Age Mindsetsuncanny old friends.

What if the next Democratic debate kicked off with this question from the moderators: Senator Warren, lets say you win the election in a narrow victory. Rather than concede, President Donald Trump goes on live television and whips his crowd into a frenzy, exclaiming, Theyre trying to steal the presidency from us! The time is now! Rise up and fight! How would you, as president-elect, respond?

The Beltway set may yet believe this question to be crazy. But in Trumps Americawhere Greenland is for sale, weather is changed with the swish of a Sharpie, and tanks roll down Pennsylvania Avenue on July 4they should know that crazy people are seriously contemplating these questions, and looking to the books theyve spent a lifetime reading and sharing for prophecy, if not instructions. We so-called normies must be prepared to answer.

The rest is here:

The Far Rights Apocalyptic Literary Canon - The New Republic