When his book Bronze Age Mindset came out, it caused a storm in both sides of the left-right spectrum. That’s because, for many people, leftists and rightists included when I say “many people”, Bronze Age Pervert is a controversial writer. His neo-nietzscheanism, combined with a radical prose that invokes inspiration in young people (especially white cynical middle-class men) who are disenchanted with modernity, which is a element of capitalism that invokes the myth of progress stemming from enlightenment philosophy. While he has his flaws (his anti-semitism and misogyny, for example), we are ignoring a huge part of his work that can be useful to leftist philosophy, and by treating all right-wing writers as if they were nazis by extensions, we are suffering. Just like we should study cybernetics, math, theology (especially occult, gnostic and catholic theology), we should study the dissident-right theorists, and its precursors (Mishima, Spengler, Schmitt, Evola, etc.)
The first insight that we should draw from him is his harsh critique, stemming from Ragnar Redbeard (rumored by some people to be Jack London) and his book, Might is Right. There is a distinct Pagan influence running through his destruction of traditional morality and tenets of liberalism, as common with dissident-right, (alt-right is not a useful term, when discussing BAP and his contemporaries). He outlines a vision of apocalyptic ubermensch, invoking pure ancient inspiration as “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.” (Bronze Age Pervert, Bronze Age Mindset) He shares the same sentiments with Redbeard, also drawing from Nietzsche a favoring of Master Morality over Slave Morality, Master Morality being the strength and power resisting Judeo-Christianity, and Slave Morality being Abrahamic ideals.
This can also be translated into a revolutionary spirit: destroying the Slave Morality of capitalism with the Master Morality of communism. Right now, as we go through a pandemic poorly managed by the Modernist forces of capitalist authority, we need this advice because our revolutionary spirit is being impacted by utopianism, another Slave Moralist ideology, and a symptom of capitalism.
The second insight is the simple fact that, as Bronze Age Pervert also describes, we have lost the revolutionary spirit of ancient Greece and Rome: philosophy was started by the Greeks to rebel against the polytheism of their time, and to find a way out of organized religion in general. The spirit of inspiration: to disrupt the orders of the old time, is the modus operandi of marxism itself. Unfortunately, the slave morality of capitalism has bankrupted us morally, making us go through non philosophical philosophies like atheism, and empiricism. Breaking through this Slave Morality can allow us to imagine new futures, as Mark Fisher wrote about in his unfinished book, Acid Communism, and that is why we have to break through the static mode of Marxism-Leninism, which in itself has become a Slave Moralist ideology.
Bronze Age Pervert has gave us the gift of breaking out of capitalism, despite him critiquing socialism and communism in some passages. We have discarded his, and contemporaries ideas for so long, in fear of being called problematic. However, we need to truly imagine new futures, and create a pathway for future generations to destroy capitalism.
Why The Left Should Listen To Bronze Age Pervert
This isn't a substantive comment, but I'm struck at how similar BAP's speaking style, use of humour, anecdotes and general demeanor is to Zizek's. It doesn't come through when reading the book, but it feels eery on the podcast. Would love to hear the two in conversation somehow. Maybe they could do a movie review podcast together.