Culture - The Mallard

Consorts (Part 3)

By Sarah Stook — 1 year ago

Eleanor of Castile

Life: 1241-28th November 1290
Reigned: 20th November 1272-28th November 1290
Spouse: Edward I (m. 1254)
Children: Sixteen, including Edward II
Parents: Ferdinand III of Castile and Joan, Countess of Ponthieu
Origin: Spain

Early Life: Eleanor of Castile was born sometime in 1241 in Burgos, Castile (later Spain). Her parents were Ferdinand III of Castile and Joan, Countess of Ponthieu. Ferdinand was one of Castile’s most successful rulers, as he greatly expanded its territory and joined it with León. Joan was Ferdinand’s second wife- Elisabeth of Swabia had died in 1235. Their eldest son, Alfonso, would succeed to the throne after his father’s death.

Eleanor was her mother’s successor as Countess of Ponthieu. She had five brothers, seven half-brothers and three half-sisters, though most did not live past early childhood. Eleanor was extremely well-educated, even for the time, and enjoyed the arts and literature. This extended to Alfonso and the Castile court itself.

Marriage and Children: The only living daughter of Ferdinand III and half-sister of Alfonso X, Eleanor was a desirable candidate in the marriage market. After several betrothals were played with, Eleanor was ultimately engaged to Prince Edward, heir to the throne of England. They wed on the 1st November 1254. Eleanor was about thirteen and Edward only a couple of years older.

Edward and Eleanor had a famously loving marriage. They were close from the moment they married, no doubt helped by the fact that they were practically the same age. Edward never strayed from his wife or had any illegitimate children, an extreme rarity for the time. He loved the fact that she joined him on the Crusades. Eleanor’s death would devastate him and it was only by need that he chose to remarry. They were rarely apart.

The pair had sixteen children- eleven daughters and five sons. Only seven of their children lived past infancy- indeed, the future Edward II was their youngest son and child. Eleanor adhered to the parenting styles of the time by sending her children away to be educated and barely seeing them. She did care for their education and arranged her daughters’ marriages.

Pre-Reign and Queenship: Eleanor and Edward initially lived on the continent, but moved back to England in 1255. During the Second Barons’ War, Eleanor joined her husband as he fought in Wales. She once again was at his side when he traveled to fight during the Crusades. At this point, Eleanor had given birth to six of her children. Three more would be born during the Crusades, though only one would live to adulthood.

In 1272, they received word that Edward’s father had died. They nevertheless stayed on the continent until 1274, whereupon they returned to England. The pair were crowned together on the 19th August of that year.

Eleanor was uninvolved in politics due to her husband’s views on the matter, but was seemingly alright to it. She instead focused on culture. Her influence included arts, literature, education, decoration and clothing. Eleanor’s superior education helped her in that respect. In that way, she fulfilled the traditional role of Queen- she was not political and focused on the feminine aspects of a reign.

Whilst she enjoyed a close relationship with her husband, Eleanor was generally very unpopular with the public. Her business dealings, which made her incredibly wealthy in both land and money, were seen as unbecoming for a queen. The large foreign retinue of cousins that came with Eleanor were also disliked, though Eleanor was smart enough not to let the men marry English noblewomen. She also supported her husband’s crusade against the Jewish people.

By the mid to late 1280s, Eleanor was frequently ill. In 1290, it was clear that she was dying. Eleanor used her remaining time to arrange the marriages of her children. In November of that year she was no longer able to travel and was thus given quarters in Nottinghamshire.

On the 28th November 1290, Eleanor Castile died at the age of 48-49. Her husband was by her side. Eleanor is buried in three places- her viscera (internal organs) in Lincoln Cathedral, her heart at Blackfriars Monastery and the rest of her body in Westminster Abbey. Edward would later be buried beside her.

Personality: Eleanor was an intellectual with a passion for the arts and culture, something that is part of her legacy. She was also extremely brave and strong, as evidenced by her joining her husband on the Crusades. Several of her children were born abroad as opposed to the safety of England. Unfortunately, Eleanor had her flaws. Her ruthlessness towards the Jews may not have been the same as her husband’s, but she still seized lands from them. Her general business dealings made her unpopular.

Legacy: Eleanor’s most famous legacy is that of the Eleanor crosses. Her broken-hearted husband built twelve large, intricate crosses to mark the stops taken as her body was taken back to London. Only two remain. Eleanor’s cultural influence was also strong. She is also often remembered for the loving relationship she shared with her husband, a sharp contrast with that of other medieval marriages.

Margaret of France

Life: c.1279-14th February 1318
Reigned: 8th September 1299-7th July 1307
Spouse: Edward I (m.1299)
Children: Three
Parents: Philip III of France and Maria of Brabant
Origin: France

Early Life: Margaret of France was born around 1279 in Paris. Her parents were Philip III of France and Maria of Brabant. She was the youngest child of both parents, with Philip having been married to Isabella of Aragon until her 1271 death. Margaret has a brother, a sister, and five half-brothers, though most did not live past childhood.

Very little is known about her early life, but she was likely well-educated as a princess of France.

Marriage and Children: Margaret’s older sister Blance was initially engaged to Edward’s son, the future Edward II. Upon hearing of Blanche’s apparent beauty, Edward broke off the relationship in hopes of marrying his son’s betrothed. It turned out that Blanche had already been married off. Her half-brother Philip IV had been king since Margaret was six and offered her as Edward’s bride. An angry Edward refused and declared war on France. Eventually, an agreement was made. Margaret’s half-niece Isabella would later marry Edward II as part of the agreement.

Despite Edward’s devoted love to his late wife Eleanor, the fact he only had one living son made it essential that he remarry. In the end, Edward and Margaret would enjoy a very happy marriage. Their age gap was at least forty years, but they lived harmoniously. Margaret’s decision to join her husband on the front was reminiscent of Eleanor and thus pleased him greatly. Their relationship was so great that Margaret would refuse to remarry upon his death.

Margaret had two sons within two years of marriage, fulfilling Edward’s hopes of further sons. She would later have a daughter that she named Eleanor after her predecessor.

Queenship: Like Eleanor, Margaret was not involved in politics but was surely a close confidant of her husband. She also bravely joined her husband at the front, something that endeared her greatly to him.

Margaret fulfilled her role as Queen in more ways than just providing sons. A medieval Queen was expected to be a mediator and a calm, feminine influence on her husband. The kind Margaret would intercede on behalf of those who had displeased the king. This most notably extended to her stepson Edward, who often quarreled with his father. Edward was only two years Margaret’s junior and the pair got on extremely well.

After nearly eight years of marriage, Edward I died on the 7th July 1307 aged 68.

Post-Queenship: Margaret remained in England following Edward’s death. Despite her youth (she was 26 when she was widowed), Margaret refused to remarry, saying that ‘when Edward died, all men died for me.’

She remained on good terms with her half-niece Isabella upon the girl’s marriage to Edward II in 1308. Unfortunately, Edward’s association with Piers Gaveston soured their previously excellent relationship. Margaret’s rightful lands were confiscated but she later got them back.

Personality: Margaret was a singularly kind, warm woman who was an excellent queen. She fulfilled her duties through her interceding on behalf of others and mediating between her husband and stepson. Margaret’s kindness went beyond what was expected of the time and thus won her affection. She showed bravery by joining her husband on the front. Despite their large age gap, Margaret was a devoted spouse and remained loyal after her husband’s death. She was kind to her successor Isabella.

Legacy: Margaret is not as remembered as her predecessor Eleanor, probably helped by the fact that she was not the mother of a king. Her granddaughter Joan, however, would marry Edward II’s son and become mother of Richard II, the boy king. Her loyalty to Edward is something some will remember.

Isabella of France

Life: c.1295-22nd August 1358
Reigned: 25th February 1308-25th January 1327
Spouse: Edward II (m.1308)
Children: Four, including Edward III
Parents: Philip IV of France and Joan I of Navarre
Origin: France

Early Life: Isabella of France was born around 1295 in Paris. Her parents were Philip IV of France and Joan I of Navarre. Philip’s half-sister Margaret was Isabella’s predecessor as Queen, and they were both engaged to their respective husbands through the same agreement. Philip himself was a handsome man known to be a very strong and hard king. Joan was a beloved Queen who enjoyed a close relationship with her husband. She died when Isabella was about ten.

As befitting a princess of France, Isabella received a thorough education, probably similar to the one her aunt Margaret received.

Marriage and Children: The agreement that had Edward I and Margaret of France married saw Isabella engaged to Edward’s son. The king attempted to stop the marriage several times, but the issue became moot when he died.

Edward II married Isabella on the 25th January 1308 in a very elaborate ceremony. Unfortunately, it was not a good marriage. The roughly twelve year-old Isabella was immediately sidelined at her own wedding reception when Edward sat with his favourite Piers Gaveston. He went so far as to gift all of Isabella’s jewellery and presents to Gaveston, angering her and the nobles. Their poor relationship will be explored further in the Queenship section, as the repercussions were great.

As Isabella was only around twelve at the wedding, it was a while before the wedding was probably consumated. The pair’s first child, the future Edward III, was born nearly five years after the wedding. Isabella and Edward would have two sons and two daughters.

She was the typical medieval mother in her parenting style. Her machinations alienated her son Edward to the point of him imprisoning her upon reaching his majority. Isabella was close to her daughter Joan in later life.

Queenship: Isabella was immediately ignored by her new husband. This was not helped by her youth and the fact that she was too young to consummate the marriage, but Edward II was not a good husband. Her jewels and gifts had been given to Piers Gaveston. She was denied money and maintenance, forcing her to complain to her father.

Eventually, Isabella found herself allying with Gaveston. Despite her relative youth, Isabella was an intelligent young woman who was attempting to forge her own political path. Unfortunately for her, Gaveston had earned the ire of the powerful nobles and would be executed in 1308. Isabella was pregnant at the time.

Things would only get worse, despite Isabella successfully giving birth to a son. Edward became close to the Despensers, a father and son duo who would soon become his closest allies. Hugh Despenser the Younger was a great favourite of Edward and it’s believed that they had a sexual relationship. Isabella found herself still cast out of Edward’s inner circle. Despite her problems with a lot of the nobility, Isabella supported their efforts to get rid of the Despensers.

With Despenser at his side, Edward became a despot over the next few years. Isabella set up her own household far away but would be punished by having her children taken away and her lands confiscated.

Luckily, Isabella was able to get herself sent to France as a peace envoy. Whilst there, she rallied anti-Edward forces with the help of Roger Mortimer, a leading nobleman. The forces arrived in England and quickly took over. Edward was captured two months later and forced to abdicate. Both Despensers were brutally executed.

Isabella had her son Edward installed and crowned in early 1327. Meanwhile, the former Edward II was shuttled around before being placed in Berkeley Castle. He died on the 21st September of that year. The circumstances of his death are murky. Historians remain divided as to whether he was murdered or died of natural causes, though murder is more likely.

Post-Queenship: With Edward III barely a teenager, he required a regent. Isabella, along with Mortimer, fulfilled that role. She ensured her son listened to her and the boy had limited power. Mortimer was a careless man and was stupid enough to treat Edward badly. Eventually, Edward had enough, especially after his father’s death. The trigger was Mortimer ordering the execution of Edward’s uncle, the Earl of Kent.

Edward took his mother and Mortimer by surprise when he captured them in late 1330. Whilst he placed Isabella in a luxurious house arrest, he had Mortimer executed without trial.

Isabella spent years living very comfortably and was often visited by family and friends. Despite her cold reputation, she was a loving mother to her daughter Joan and doting grandmother.

The ‘She-Wolf’ of France died on the 22nd August 1358 around the age of 62. She is buried at Grey Friars’ Church.

Personality: Isabella was a complicated woman. She showed great intelligence and political acumen, but was also very ruthless and sharp. Whilst many queens were forced to live through their husband’s affairs, none would be quite humiliated as Isabella was. She was called a ‘She-Wolf,’ but we must remember she was a humiliated child bride. Such actions in men would not be treated so poorly. Whilst Isabella was controlling of her son, she did prove to be a loving grandmother.

Legacy: Isabella is remembered as a cold, calculating woman as opposed to the pure and virtuous ladies of her era. She succeeded in giving birth to heirs but did not follow the tradition of ‘feminine’ queenship. The truth is more complicated- Isabella was ruthless and cold, but no more than other historical figures.

Philippa of Hainault

Life: 24th June 1310/1315-15th August 1369
Reigned: 24th January 1328-15th August 1369
Spouse: Edward III (m.1328)
Children: Thirteen, including Edward the Black Prince
Parents: William I, Count of Hainaut and Joan of Valois
Origin: France

Early Life: Philippa of Hainault was born on the 24th June 1310 or 1315 in Valenciennes, modern day France. Her parents were William I, Count of Hainaut and Joan of Valois. She was the third of their eight children. Whilst Philippa did not have the title of princess, Joan of Valois was the granddaughter of a French king and sister of the other.

She was likely well-educated.

Marriage and Children: A betrothal between the future Edward III and Philippa was tentatively discussed as early as 1322. Four years later, Edward’s mother Isabella had them officially engaged in return for William’s help in invading England.

The marriage was a success even before the wedding, as it is said that Philippa cried when Edward left to return home. Their proxy wedding occurred in October 1327 before their official marriage three months later.

Edward and Philippa had a strong, loving relationship that lasted throughout their marriage. This did not stop Edward from straying in his wife’s later years, as he had a young mistress named Alice Perrers, with whom he had three children. It is argued that this only occurred when Philippa’s health was poor and that it was kept from her. This was oddly progressive for the time, as kings didn’t usually hide mistresses. Whilst he did have the affair with one other woman, Edward’s true love was clearly Philippa.

The pair managed to have thirteen children- eight sons and five daughters, eight of whom would live to adulthood. Interestingly, most of their children would marry rich English nobles as opposed to foreign royals. This was most unusual for their eldest son and heir Edward, who married his widowed cousin Joan. Perhaps the happiness between Edward and Philippa allowed them to have their own children be married for love.

Queenship: Philippa may have been Queen in name, but her mother-in-law Isabella was Queen in every other way. Isabella did not like relinquishing her title and thus prevented Philippa’s coronation. It was not until Philippa was pregnant that she was crowned. Luckily for Philippa, she bore a healthy son and unrelated events saw Mortimer executed and Isabella imprisoned.

Throughout her time as Queen, Philippa proved to be enormously popular and beloved. She was not necessarily political in the way Isabella was, but she used her influence when necessary. Edward trusted her to act as regent when he was away and she proved herself more than capable.

It was Philippa’s kindness and charity that made her loved. The most famous of these cases was that of the Burghers of Calais. Angered by the holdout of the city, Edward swore he’d spare the citizens if six of the leaders (burghers) made themselves known and surrendered to him. Before he could presumably have them executed, a barefoot and pregnant Philippa fell to her knees before him. She begged him to spare them, saying that their unborn child would be punished if they did not. Edward was supposedly so moved by this that he agreed to let them live.

Her charity extended to those at home. Philippa also bravely encouraged troops fighting the Scottish invaders, something sorely needed as Edward was out of the country.

In her later years, Philippa fell ill. Those years saw Edward turn to Alice Perrers and father three children with her. Philippa finally passed on the 15th August 1369, somewhere in her mid-fifties. Edward was with her at her deathbed. She asked Edward to ensure that all of her debts and obligations were fairly paid.

Edward spent £3K on her tomb. Her death also saw a massive decline in his popularity. He was vilified for cheating on his loving wife with a younger woman- something extraordinary in a time where it was expected that kings would stray. Alice Perrers would become a huge villain in England. Perrers was accused of taking advantage of an old, grieving king by accepting extravagant gifts. Her interference in politics was not welcomed.

Upon his death, Edward was buried with his beloved Philippa.

Personality: Philippa is one of the most revered consorts in English history. Her kindness, warmth and generous nature made her beloved throughout her country. She was a very successful Queen- she completed the role of feminine mediator and provided her husband with many children. Even without that, her good heart kept her through. The fact that Edward was castigated for taking a mistress shows how loved she was.

Legacy: Philippa is not often remembered. She did not leave a lasting legacy through arts or culture, despite leaving a mark on the textile industry. Her eldest son did not become king, but her grandson would be. Philippa’s sons Edmund and John of Gaunt would become a direct monarchical ancestor.

Anne of Bohemia

Life: 11th May 1366-7th June 1394
Reigned: 20th June 1382-7th June 1394
Spouse: Richard II (m.1382)
Children: None
Parents: Richard IV, Holy Roman Emperor and Elizabeth of Pomerania
Origin: Czech Republic/Czechia

Early Life: Anne of Bohemian was born on the 11th May 1366 in Prague, modern day Czechia. Her parents were Richard IV, Holy Roman Empire and Elizabeth of Pomerania. Elizabeth was Richard’s fourth and final wife. Anne had three brothers, one sister, three half-brothers and three half-sisters. Richard was the most powerful king of the age and was also extremely popular.

She was likely well-educated.

Marriage and Children: The marriage between Anne and Richard II was an odd one. Despite Anne being the daughter of an extremely powerful monarch, she did not have a large dowry or other assets. The main reason was due to a problem with the Church and two rival popes. Richard and the Holy Roman Emperor both opposed France’s choice.

Richard and Anne were both fifteen when they married on the 20th January 1382. Despite Anne’s unpopularity and lack of wealth (Richard having to pay Anne’s brother for marriage), the two became devoted to one another. Richard never strayed and always defended Anne.

No children were born of the union. Anne was blamed by society, as women were at the time, but Richard never cast doubt towards her.

Queenship: Anne was known as ‘Good Queen Anne,’ which shows that she overcame early unpopularity. She would often intercede on behalf of others, as Philippa of Hainault had. This constant kindness made her beloved by the English people, and eventually the court. It was her sweetness that won the nobles over.

After a happy twelve years of marriage, Anne died aged 28 on the 7th June 1394. Edward was bereft. He ordered the palace that she died in to be torn down. Edward also refused to enter any building besides a church where he’d been with Anne. After his own 1400 death, Edward was buried with a tomb he’d already prepared beside Anne’s.

Personality: Anne was reportedly a sweet and kind woman. She cared greatly for her subjects and was merciful to a fault. It was her good nature that pushed away early criticisms directed towards her.

Legacy: Anne is not often remembered. She, and indeed Richard himself, has no children together, so she did not see any direct descendants claim the throne. Anne did bring new fashions over, such as new shoes.

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Between Tradition and Modernity: A Review of “British Conservatism: 2024 to 2044”, by Richard Cruston

By Ben Sixsmith — 1 year ago

This lively volume follows the development of right-wing thought in Britain between the beginning of the premiership of Labour’s Keir Starmer and the end of the presidency of Mark Hall of the United Party.

Richard Cruston, Professor of Political Theory at Trinity College, Cambridge, is a learned scholar who has written biographies of Edmund Burke, Roger Scruton and Jacob Rees Mogg. His deep knowledge of ideas and personalities were clearly essential in developing this book.

His story begins with the astonishing electoral failure of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in 2024 — ending almost fourteen years of more or less unrivalled Conservative success. In exile, the Conservatives found themselves fragmented, both politically, with the Johnson loyalists in a fiery campaign to make the unenthusiastic former Mayor of London and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Leader of the Conservative Party, and ideologically, with “post-liberals”, “national conservatives” and “classical liberals” vying for influence.

If conservative ideas mattered at all, it was in their influence on the Labour government. Professor Cruston is an authority on the development of post-liberalism — a communitarian trend which earned support in the wake of the 2028 London riots — which spread from the capital across provincial England — as its emphasis on order and localism chimed with the state’s management of societal division. Cruston suggests that there might have been the faint whiff of opportunism in the combination of communitarian rhetoric and neo-authoritarian security measures — with more of an emphasis on “community hubs” and “peace enforcement” than on family and faith — but it was politically successful.

The 2030 blackouts were considered the beginning of the end for the Labour government. Prime Minister Meera Devi won the 2032 elections on a platform that some commentators called “neo-Thatcherite” — promising economic liberalisation, energy reform and closer links with what became known as “the younger powers”. Professor Cruston disapproves of what he describes “the fetishisation of the market” — though he doesn’t say where the power was meant to come from.

Devi’s government placed significant emphasis on character and individual responsibility. “Disciplining yourself to do what you know is right and important,” she was fond of saying, quoting Britain’s first female prime minister, “Is the high road to pride, self-esteem, and personal satisfaction.” Regrettably, her time in power was dogged by scandal, with ministers being accused of cocaine addiction, using prostitutes, doing cocaine with prostitutes and being addicted to doing cocaine off prostitutes.

Ashley Jones’ Labour premiership offered conservatives a chance to regroup. Had they forgotten the ends of politics as well as the means? Were they too focused on economics and not culture? Cruston is informative on the subject of the traditionalist “Lofftism” which flourished in the late 2030s, only being interrupted by the “Summer of Crises” which finally led to the United Party taking power in March 2039.

Conservative thought flourished in the early years of the 2040s, with generous funding being invested in private schools, universities, think tanks and private clubs. Here — if you were fortunate enough to be invited — you could hear about great right-wing minds from Hayek to Oakeshott, and from Kruger to Hannan. It was a time of intellectual combat but also intellectual collegiality. Millian liberals could debate Burkean conservative and yet remain friends. You could say anything, some intellectuals joked, as long as you didn’t influence policy.

With the unexpected departure of President Hall on the “New Horizons” flight the future of British conservatism looks mysterious. Professor Cruston counsels that we return to Burke — a voice that spoke in a time of similarly great upheaval. Perhaps we should heed his words.

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“Traditionalism: The Radical Project for Restoring Sacred Order”, by Mark Sedgwick (Book Review)

By Derek Turner — 1 year ago

In 2014, speaking via Skype to a conference held at the Vatican, Donald Trump’s later advisor, Steve Bannon, casually mentioned Julius Evola (1898-1974), a thinker little known outside Italy, and who even within Italy was conventionally dismissed as a former Fascist whose writings still exerted a pernicious influence on the ’far right’. When that comment was unearthed by the US media in 2016, it sparked a furore amongst those desperate to discredit Trump as a danger to democracy. It also drew mainstream attention to a strange and possibly wide-reaching philosophy.

Evola’s Fascist sympathies went much deeper than anti-communist or nationalist sentiment, being rooted at least partly in a colourful and irrational worldview referred to by some authors (although not Evola) as ‘Traditionalism’. Through him, Bannon, and so by extension Trump, were potentially ‘linked’ to much broader intellectual currents, with connections across everything from the abstractest metaphysics to the earthiest ecologism.

There existed, obscure but important scholars had long argued, a mystical ‘perennial philosophy’ of transcendent religiosity and social stratification that was simultaneously as ancient as origin myths and applicable to modern discontents. Over the centuries, this concept has attracted intellectuals as diverse as the 15th century humanist Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, and Brave New World author Aldous Huxley. Other than Evola, its best-known and most systematic modern exponents were two metaphysicians, the Frenchman René Guénon (1886-1951), and the Swiss Frithjof Schuon (1907-1998), who issued writings and launched initiatives that channeled underlying cultural gloom, and still resonate powerfully. Like Evola, Guénon did not use the term Traditionalism, but his writings are regarded as key texts.

As well as Bannon, ‘Traditionalist’ sympathies of some kind were avowed by, or detectable in, influencers outside America – Hungarian politician Gábor Vona, the Russian ideologue Aleksandr Dugin (whom Bannon met in 2018, and who was supposedly an influence on Putin), and the Brazilian writer, Olavo de Carvalho, credited with helping Jair Bolsonaro win the presidency in 2019. Beyond politics, the connections were even more diffuse, with well-known academics, artists and even King Charles III (when Prince of Wales), articulating Traditionalist tropes to combat anomie and materialism, and promote organic agriculture, small-scale economics, traditional arts, and interfaith dialogue. But did all these different things have anything in common other than root-and-branch discontent with a drably dispiriting status quo? What possible relevance could Traditionalists’ distaste for democracy, and even politics, have for determinedly populist politicians?

This is a long-standing area of interest for Oxford-educated Arabist, Mark Sedgwick, now professor of Arab and Islamic Studies at Aarhus University. His 2003 book, Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century, was the first to draw mainstream attention to Evola, Guénon, Schuon, and others dubbed or self-described as Traditionalists. He brings to this discussion special insight into Islamic influences on Traditionalism, from the inner ecstasies of Sufism to the academically distinguished elucubrations of the contemporary Iranian-American theologian, Seyyed Hossein Nasr. Along the way, he treats ably and interestingly of many subjects, from Hindu ideas about caste via 17th century theories of history to the trajectory of Western feminism, and analyses the influence of Jordan Peterson, whom he regards as a Traditionalist for the internet age.

Traditionalism is a catch-all sort of term, and its outcomes are so diverse it is difficult to discern much consistency at all. Had it not been for Bannon’s remark, it is hard to imagine many even noticing Traditionalism existed. Conceptual complexity could help account for Traditionalism’s apparent ascent; as the author notes, “That which is not easy to understand is not easy to deny”. Sedgwick also suggests that Guénon’s theories may be fundamentally flawed because based on early 20th century understandings of ‘the East’ which are now regarded as too colourful and generic, even condescendingly ‘Orientalist’. Evola’s more dynamic and Western-oriented variant is likewise a product of its time, suffused with Nietzschean contempt for Christianity, and the epochal pessimism of thinkers like Oswald Spengler (even though he criticized both). Sedgwick nevertheless treats it as a coherent corpus of thought, with much relevance for today.

The central element of all variants of Traditionalism is ‘perennialism’ – the notion that beneath all the exoteric differences of world religions there is a unifying ‘sacred order’ understood only by the deepest thinkers, although hazily intuitable by the masses, if only they can be detached from the trammels of modernity. This is not just a tradition, but the Tradition that unlocks all cosmologies, and renders the most impassioned theological and political disputes not just superficial, but almost risible. Traditionalist writings are predictably esoteric, aimed solely at a supposedly more spiritually attuned elite.

Traditionalists tend to be greatly interested in such things as hermetic philosophy, occultism, shamanism, and symbolism, and believe strongly in what the ethnomusicologist Benjamin R. Teitelbaum called “spiritual mobility” (see his 2020 book, War for Eternity). They regard 21st century preoccupations like equality, gender politics, individualism, material progress, and technology as mere aspects of modernity, harmful or simply inconsequential.

The second ingredient is a belief in cosmic circularity, as opposed to the ideas of inevitable linearity inherent in mainstream Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and so throughout modern politics. The world, in this reading, goes through ‘ages’ of decline that can be followed by renewal. An original golden age of unity and quality is ineluctably succeeded by silver, bronze and ultimately dark ages of increasingly mechanistic reductionism – what Guénon memorably called the “age of quantity” – after which the cosmic wheel turns back to the start.

‘Golden Age’ thinking is common to many civilizations, but there are especially close parallels with the four ages (Yugas) of Hinduism, with ‘Kali Yuga’ (the last, sin-filled age of conflict) a shorthand term for today among ‘Aryan’-interested Rightists. This process is almost irrespective of politics, although some theorists see an expeditious role for ‘disruptors’. Evola saw Fascism as a means of reconstituting the Roman Empire, and Bannon saw (and perhaps still sees) Trump as a kind of creative destroyer of consensus, but politics has been a lower priority for other Traditionalists, who concentrated instead on transformation through self-realization.

It may easily be imagined that Traditionalists are prone to eccentricity; for instance, Evola believed that ‘Aryans’ were descended from an ethereal Arctic race which had decayed as they came south. In the 1980s, a writer calling herself “Alice Lucy Trent” officiated in County Donegal over a small community called the Silver Sisterhood, which worshipped a female deity, sported Victorian clothing, and refused to use electricity. Trent later changed her name to “Miss Martindale”, and moved to Oxford, to found a movement called Aristasia in a modest terraced house, where ambiguous persons wearing dresses and veils would hold ultra-reactionary court in a candle-lit, gramophone-sounding interior, and be seen driving around town majestically in a 1950s car. It was part-pantomime, part-serious critique, at once amusing and interesting.

Sedgwick rues some Rightists’ co-option of some parts of Traditionalism. Indeed, perennialism can be hard to square with ideas about a “clash of civilizations”, or immigration, or belief in physical racial differences (which even Evola downplayed). He nevertheless examines their thinking with commendable fairness. He differentiates between genuinely traditional teachings about religion and society, which really can be millennia old, and 1920s-to-present-day attempts to turn some of these teachings into realities. For Sedgwick, whatever about the youthful Evola, by his late period he had become a “non-traditional Traditionalist”, and the Evolan phraseology deployed by some on today’s radical Right is therefore mostly “post-Traditionalism”.

But logical consistency matters little in politics, even metapolitics. Traditionalism may persist as a presence on the Right, if sometimes more symbolically than as substance. Traditionalists’ emphasis on arcane knowledge is intrinsically appealing to some who aspire to be elite leaders. There are also similarities in outlooks and temperaments between Traditionalists and some Rightists – shared perspectives on the manifold problems of modernity, shared detestation of bleak materialism, and shared love of grand and sweeping narratives. As the once world-bestriding West shivers in winnowing new winds, and mainstream conservatism flounders, the epic appeal of a mythical past (and implied enchanted future) seems likely to grow. Sedgwick’s second book on this too long neglected theme makes another significant contribution to what may be an expanding as well as evolving field.

Book Details: Mark Sedgwick, London: Pelican, 2023, hb., 410pps., £25

My thanks to John Morgan for invaluable input on this article.

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Barbie, Oppenheimer and Blue Sky Research

By Nathan Wilson — 1 year ago

Barbie or Oppenheimer? Two words you would have never considered putting together in a sentence. For the biggest summer blockbuster showdown in decades, the memes write themselves.

In recent months (and years!), we’ve seen flop after flop, such as the new Indiana Jones and Flash films, with endless CGI superheroes and the merciless rehashing of recognised brands. The inability for film studies to recognise and attempt anything new has only led to the continued damage of established and respected franchises.

This in part is due a decline in film studios being willing to take risks over new pieces of intellectual property (something the Studio A24 has excelled in), and a retreat into a ‘culturally bureaucratic’ system that neither rewards art nor generates anything vaguely new, preferring to reward conscientious proceduralism.

Given this, there has been widespread speculation that films like Oppenheimer will ‘save’ cinema, with Christopher Nolan’s biographical adventure, based on the book ‘American Prometheus’ (would highly recommend), being highly awaited and regarded.

Although, I suspect cinema is too far gone from saving in its current format. I do believe that Oppenheimer will have long term cultural effects, which should be recognised and welcomed by everyone.

In the past, there have been many films that, when made and consumed, have directly changed how we view topics and issues. Jaws gave generations of people a newfound fear of sharks, while the Shawshank Redemption provided many with the Platonic form of hope and salvation. I hope that Oppenheimer can and will become a film like this, because of what Robert Oppenheimer’s life (and by extension the Manhattan Project itself) represented.

As such, two things should come out of this film and re-enter the cultural sphere, filtering back down into our collective fears and dreams. Firstly, is it that of existential fear from nuclear war (very pressing considering the Russo-Ukrainian War) and what this means for us as species.

Secondly, is that of Blue-Sky Research (BSR) and the power of problem solving. Although the Manhattan project was not a ‘true’ example of BSR, it helped set the benchmark for science going forward.

Both factors should return to our collective consciousness, in our professional and private lives; they can only benefit us going forward.

I would encourage everyone to go out tonight and look at the night sky and say to yourself while looking at the stars: “this goes on for forever”. In the same breath, look to the horizon and think to yourself: “This can end at any moment. We have the power to do all of this”.

Before watching Oppenheimer, I would highly encourage you to watch the ‘Charlie Dean Archives’ and the footage of atomic bombs from 1959. Not only is the footage astounding, multiple generations have lived in fear of the invention; the idea and the consequences of the bomb have disturbed humans as long as it has existed.

Films like Threads in Britain played a similar role, which entered the unconscious, and films like Barefoot Gen for Japan (this film is quite notorious and controversial, but a must watch) did the same, presenting the real-world effects of nuclear war through the eyes of young children and the fear it invokes.

In recent years, we have seemingly lost this fear. Indeed, we continue to overlook the fact this could all be over so quickly. We have forgotten or chosen to ignore the simple fact that we are closer than ever before to the end of the world.

The pro-war lobby within the West have continually played fast and loose with this fact, to the point we find ourselves playing Russian roulette with an ever-decreasing number of chambers in our guns.

In the past, we have narrowly avoided nuclear conflict several times, and it has been mostly a question of luck as to whether we avoid the apocalypse. The downside of all this is that any usage of the word ‘nuclear’ is now filled with images of death and destruction, which is a shame because nuclear energy could be our salvation in so many ways.

Additionally, we need to remember what fear is as a civilisation; fear in its most existential form. We have become too indebted to the belief that civilisation is permanent. We assume that this world and our society will always be here, when the reality is that all of it could be wiped out within a generation.

As dark as this sounds, we need bad things to happen, so that we can understand and appreciate the good that we do have, and so that good things might occur in the future. Car crashes need to happen, so we can learn to appreciate why we have seatbelts. We need people to remember why we fear things to ensure we do everything in our power to avoid such things from ever happening again.

Oppenheimer knew and understood this. Contrary to the memes, he knew what he had created and it haunted him till the end of his days. Oppenheimer mirrors Alfred Nobel and his invention of dynamite, albeit burdened with a far greater sense of dread.

I hope that with the release of Oppenheimer, we can truly begin to go back to understanding what nuclear weapons (and nuclear war) mean for us as a species. The fear that everything that has ever been built and conceived could be annihilated in one act.

We have become the gods of old; we can cause the earth to quake and great floods to occur and we must accept the responsibility that comes with this power now. We need to fear this power once more, especially our pathetic excuse for leadership.

In addition to fear, Oppenheimer will (hopefully) reintroduce BSR into our cultural zeitgeist – the noble quest of discovery and research. BSR can be defined as research without a clearly defined goal or immediately apparent real-world applications.

As I mentioned earlier, whilst the Manhattan project was not a pure example of BSR, it gave scientists more freedom to pursue long-term “high risk, high reward” research, leading to a very significant breakthrough.

We need to understand the power of BSR. Moving forward, we must utilise its benefits to craft solutions to our major problems.

I would encourage everyone to read two pieces by Vannevar Bush. One is ‘Science the Endless Frontier’, a government report, and ‘As we may think’, an essay.

In both pieces, he makes a good argument for re-examining how we understand scientific development and research and calls for governmental support in such research. Ultimately, Bush’s work led to the creation of the National Science Foundation.

For research and development, government support played a vital role in managing to successfully create nuclear weapons before either the Germans or Japanese and their respective programs.

I believe it was Eric Weinstein who stated that the Manhattan project was not really a physics but rather an engineering achievement. Without taking away from the work of the theorists who worked on the project. I would argue that Weinstein is largely correct. However, I argue that it was a governmental (or ‘human’ achievement), alongside the phenomenal work of various government-supported experimentalists.

The success of the Manhattan Project was built on several core conditions. Firstly, there was a major drive by a small group of highly intelligent and functional people that launched the project (a start-up mentality). Secondly, full government support, to achieve a particular goal. Thirdly, the near-unlimited resources afforded to the project by the government. Fourthly, complete concentration of the best minds onto a singular project.

These conditions mirror a lot of the tenets of BSR: placing great emphasis on government support, unlimited resources and manpower and complete concentration on achieving a specific target. Under these conditions, we can see what great science looks like and how we can possibly go back to achieving it.

Christopher Nolan has slightly over three hours to see if he can continue to make his mark on cinema and leave more than a respectable filmography in its wake. If he does, let’s hope it redirects our culture away from merely good science, and back towards the pursuit of great civilisational achievements – something always involved, as a man with a blog once said: “weirdos and misfits with odd skills”.

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Economic Bondage Against the Family (Magazine Excerpt)

By Philip Diaz-Lewis — 1 year ago

In his 1936 Essay on the Restoration of Property, the author Hilaire Belloc recalls an image he had read two decades before and reproduces to the best of his memory. I’ll adapt it: imagine a single machine that produces everything society could possibly need. If this machine is owned by the collective, through a caste of bureaucrats, we have socialism. Everyone who tends the machine are regularly doled-out what they allegedly need by this bureaucratic caste. If the machine is owned not by many but by just one man, we have monopolistic capitalism, of the type resulting from complete laissez-faire. Most people work the machine and get a wage in return so they can buy its produce. Some others are employed in entertaining the owner, and all the rest are unemployed.

Belloc doesn’t say it, but we could imagine that working the machine involves just pushing a button repetitively. If technology did advance to the point that all which humans need could be provided by one machine, surely it could be worked by merely pushing one button repeatedly.

I rehearse this second-hand image because through it Belloc makes a point: these are capitalism and socialism as “ideally perfect” to themselves. If such a machine existed, this is what each system would look like.

Both monopoly capitalism and socialism share an agnosticism about the role of property and work in human life. Neither ideology views work nor property as ends in themselves but only means to further ends. For the socialist this end is consumption. Material needs are more important than freedom. To borrow again an image from Belloc, socialists view society as like a group stranded on a raft. The single overwhelming concern is not starving, so food is rationed and handed out according to a central plan. Perhaps a man finds fishing fulfilling and would lead a happy life honing the fishing craft. Maybe he would benefit from selling fish for a profit so he can support his craft. But the circumstances are extreme, so the group take collective ownership of his fishing rod and collective charge of distributing the fish. It’s for this reason that socialism is so appealing to ideologies that see existence as struggle.

For the monopolist this end is profit. Money-making is the only purpose of economic activity, separate from any human need or fulfilment from work. Property is good only if it generates money; not because it has any fixed purpose within human life. Work also is good only if it generates money, and if profits can be increased while reducing the amount of work needed, this is preferable. This is the reasoning Adam Smith uses to create the production line. The goods produced, further, also have no value apart from the profit they create.

Neither system recognises that humans are rational animals who flourish by both having and using private property as an extension of their intelligence. Thus, if a machine existed which could produce everything needed for life by repeatedly pushing a button, both systems would adopt it and consider themselves having achieved perfection. Everybody (or almost everybody) could be employed doing the same repetitive activity, differing only on the matter of whether their employer is private enterprise or the collective.

The worker pushing a button is akin to one working on a conveyor belt in a factory, or in bureaucratic pen-pushing. His livelihood consists in a single repetitive and mindless task which requires little intelligence to perform. A craftsman, on the other hand, creates something from start to finish by himself or as part of a team effort with other craftsmen. Intelligence runs all through the activity. Making a teapot, fixing a car engine, building a house, or ploughing a field, each requires applying a design with one’s hands, that has already been worked-out by one’s mind.

Another effect of this agnosticism involves the consumer. The sort of consumption monopolists think about is a limitless glut happening in a social vacuum. It is want unrelated to need, because the only way we can truly specify need is by defining a fixed purpose for human life. Human needs, on an ancient view, relate to the kind of life humans must live to be truly happy and flourishing. So, we need food, water, shelter, and other commodities. But we also need to exercise our uniquely human faculties, like creativity, aesthetic appreciation, imagination and understanding. We also need to know how much of a good or activity to have. After all, eating until we pass out isn’t good for us, and to sit around imagining all day may run into idleness.

As a result, neither system has much room for organic human community at the local level. Such communities depend on need which goes beyond the mere satisfaction of material wants. Work, for example, is more than just a way to get what we need to live. It’s a vocation, which taps into our rational human nature, and gives us joy through creating and shaping our surroundings.

This is an excerpt from “Nuclear”.

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Petty Nuisance: The Cure to Modern England (Magazine Excerpt)

By Brandon Ku — 1 year ago

From an aesthetic, or mannerism perspective, gentlemen had indeed almost entirely perished from the Isles. But the idea that no one should be seen confronting anyone, and a stiff upper lip must be kept at all times had passed onto generations after generations well and intact. But does a combination of that and an increasingly restrictive legal system means nothing can ever be done to rescue Great Britain from its managed decline?

Not really. But the struggle needs to start small, tiny first steps to ease everyone out of the mindset of being a ‘gentleman’.

Unfortunately, if you started pushing over idle motorcycles on your local taxi ranks and smashing windows on your local ‘souvenir shop’, you won’t last long until your own people (yes, your own people) will start reporting you to the KGB (Komitet-Gosudarstvennoy-Bezopasnosti Great Britain), and the government WILL be on your opposition’s side.

What you need to do what some may call a ‘petty nuisance’, completely within the boundaries of law. Or rather, practicing your rights to its maximum, and making the ENEMY’s life harder – cross a zebra crossing just as a Deliveroo rider or a matte-black tinted-window Range Rover arrives so they will have to stop, if they don’t, make them, it is YOUR right! There are much more ways to do this, the sky really is the limit.

Be an active petty nuisance to your enemy, this is your last resistance to those who are invading your life. It may sound humble, perhaps futile, but it keeps the spirit of resistance awake, reminds you that this is still an active struggle, it kills the gentlemanly mindset to give in, to compromise, it keeps a little bit of that fire alive. You will find yourself fighting back more and more as you become more and more comfortable with it. And eventually, perhaps hoping, you will find yourself winning, in this petit crusade, fought with petty nuisance.

This is an excerpt from “Nuclear”.

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Britain x Family (Magazine Excerpt)

By Samuel Martin — 1 year ago

In the last magazine, I outlined a Sensible Proposal for reforming the British state. It wasn’t exhaustive, but the meat and potatoes were there. In the proposal, I briefly mentioned the need to do exactly this. I suggested the BBC, if it wants to be spared abolition, should broadcast stuff worth watching – programs that will elevate, rather than demoralise, our great nation.

Specifically, I proposed broadcasting Spy x Family to the masses.

Far from being tongue-in-cheek, I sincerely believe that such a policy – and similar policies – would be excellent reforms for any government to implement.

For the uninformed, Spy x Family is a Japanese manga series created by Tatsuya Endo in 2019. The story follows a spy (Loid Forger, codename: Twilight) who has to “build a family” to execute a top secret mission. Unbeknownst to him, the girl he adopts as his daughter (Anya Forger) is a telepath, and the woman he agrees to be in a marriage with (Yor Forger, née Briar) is a skilled assassin.

As of March 2023, Spy x Family has over 30 million copies in circulation, making it one of the best-selling manga series in history. On April 9^th 2022, the Spy x Family anime was released. Like the manga, its popularity was instantaneous, obtaining around 7 millions views on its inaugural episode – an immense success for a new show.

Appealing across and within various demographics, topping the charts as Japan’s favourite anime of 2022, it has cultivated an eager international fanbase. Consisting of 25 episodes, a second season will premiere this year, as well as an anime film.

That said, whilst the media success of Spy x Family is there for all to see, little is said about its impact on Japanese society. Nine months after the show’s debut, Japan’s fertility rate experienced an uptick after consecutive years of stagnation and decline.

Sure, it was a very small uptick and Japan’s fertility rate remains far below the point of replacement. In all technicality, Japan’s continues to worsen, just at a less severe rate. Nevertheless, in less than a year, Japan has gone from another stereotypically infertile state to the most fertile nation in the Far East.

Coincidence? I think not!

As a matter of fact, one of the most common reasons for remaining childless, often surpassing financial concerns, is the presumption that having children will deplete one’s quality of life.

Considering how bad things are becoming in Britain, one would require a pretty pessimistic idea of what family entails. Indeed, when you realise what people think of when they hear the word “family”, it’s easy to see why.

At the beginning of the last century, positive portrayals of family life were hegemonic; portrayals that contrasted a more nuanced reality: family life was often less-than-picturesque. Consequently, more cynical (or realistic, depending on your exact stance) portrayals of the family became more commonplace.

I invite you to look at literally any TV show made over the past 30 years. Families are almost always portrayed as rowdy prisons, children are portrayed as nasty parasites, and divorce is portrayed as blissful liberation.

This is an excerpt from “Nuclear”.

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Birth of the Cosmoproletariat (Magazine Excerpt)

By Brian Budd — 1 year ago

When you hear talk of globalisation, the winners and losers have become fairly set categories: the “winners” are the hyper-mobile, global class that are capable of picking up and putting down almost anywhere, whether that is London or LA, Tokyo or Berlin, Moscow or – well, maybe not Moscow, at least not at the moment.

These winners are the beneficiaries of the most dynamic economy that has ever existed in history before, in such a way that – even if we cannot put a hard date on it – I think it is pretty clear that the modern global economy defines the contemporary era of mankind more than anything else. We are living in the “global age” and there will inevitably be those for whom that age is good.

And then there are those for whom that age is bad. These are the majority of people whose lives are usually spent in one place, from school to work and, if they’re lucky, a few years of retirement. They might be more mobile than their ancestors, for whom life was inevitably spent in the same village, whilst they travel around their county or district but, broadly speaking, never stray too far.

These are the losers, we are told. They have suffered the effects of globalisation – declining industry, evaporating investment, creaking and groaning infrastructure – but are powerless to do anything about it, as they get caught in a cycle in which power follows money and money flows away.

So why not go where the money is? Why not travel abroad, where the work is? Part of the reason is that the last thing the “losers” have left is each other. The day before the In/Out Brexit Referendum, news vox-pops of people on the street saying they would vote to Leave, when asked why, gestured and said “look around. What do I have left to lose?” The backdrop of shuttered shops and boarded windows was the answer, and it wasn’t a very compelling one.

But the answer off-screen was one that the Remain camp had tried to buy into – they had their families, their households, their communities. When David Cameron claimed Brexit would “put a bomb” under the British economy, and George Osborne’s treasury pumped out statistics on the damage it would do to the average household, they were trying to speak to the rational brain that fears material loss. It made sense – it was the same brain they had been speaking to for six years with messages of necessary spending cuts, tax breaks, and increasing job opportunities.

Except this did not work because that audience was not there. The average person did not have the material loss to be threatened, and at a time when fatherlessness was rising, families were breaking down, and over three million households were single-parent; even that small amount to lose was felt to be lost already.

The one thing that the losers had left was their community – and by and large, these were communities that had been decimated by the austerity years. So, they stayed, because their families might be thin and disappearing but their community remained fairly strong.

When Karl Marx decided that the slow transfer of people from the countryside to the cities meant that the “proletariat” would emerge, he was attempting a scientific analysis of what was already happening. As people moved from field to factory, leaving behind their old places in the world and attempting to take up new ones, they forged bonds of solidarity to replace the ones they lost. Human beings are deeply sociable, both from an inherent reality, and an existential need; we can only come into this world as a result of others, but we need to be seen and recognised while we’re here.

So, Britain especially saw the rise of industrial communities – and not just the political conscious-raising efforts of Trade Unions, for politics is tiresome and boring, really. There were also football clubs, local churches, free schools, civic action groups, and so on – in Bristol, there were 400 alone. I’m sure Marx’s miserable mind was able to only imagine the political, but in truth the personal is so much more interesting and enriching than the political. Don’t be fooled that they are the same thing.

This is an excerpt from “Nuclear”.

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A Dirge for the Aristocracy (Magazine Excerpt)

By Philip Diaz-Lewis — 1 year ago

Culture is often a bearer of such practical wisdom. Indeed, the reason we listen to the experienced and wise, despite their lack of formal education, is that their experience has imparted practical wisdom. Theoretical wisdom is implicit in this down to earth practicality. Although the village elder might not be able to say why a certain behaviour is virtuous, her account, being correct, could be elaborated to reveal a true and natural principle. Extending this to an entire culture, we have one basis for social conservatism. The accumulated experience of ages has a sort of implicit wisdom to it, which can be potentially made into a theory, even though nobody may have yet done so. However, this isn’t enough, lest we be agnostic pragmatists like David Hume. For the one clinging to classical ideas, all practical wisdom has a theory behind it whose objective springs we can discover through reason.

One such cultural heirloom that is greatly misunderstood these days is aristocracy. Most cultures in human history have had aristocracies of some type. A noble class existed in ancient Mesopotamia, Persia, Mesoamerica, the Andes, Egypt, China, Japan, Greece, Rome, among the Celts, as well as mediaeval and early modern Europe. Indeed, aristocracy of some type has been one of the most common institutions of humanity across history. Yet in the last three hundred years, aristocracies have shrunk, from the predominant ruling elites of the world to disempowered and mocked cliques, clinging to privileges regarded as archaic.

Britain is one of the few countries that still has an institutional aristocracy. But its influence is ever diminishing, its numbers ever depleting, and its ideals waned to nothing. I doubt many would contradict me if I said its public image is far from positive. I believe the cause of this decline is that it is a remnant of a previous ethical outlook, one rooted in ancient Greek and Roman thought, and Christianised in the Middle Ages. This outlook collapsed in Britain during the eighteenth century (before it did in most of Europe). Whig liberal philosophers like John Locke chipped at its foundations. The aristocracy as a result became an institution without a purpose, embedded in a new society totally hostile to it.

So, what are these foundations? I think three: human goodness as function, a communitarian spirit, and a family-centred life. Really, it’s only the first, functional goodness, the latter two being elaborations of it.

Goodness as a function is simple. To be good is to function properly according to a species’ ideal. In the same way a good hammer is good at banging nails, and a good oven at baking bread, so a good human being is good at “human-ing” to coin a verb. The question ‘what is goodness?’ for ancient and mediaeval thinkers is almost invariably ‘what’s the function of humans?’ Yet because humans have reason, unlike animals who merely follow their instincts, our function involves more than survival and reproduction. We make art and science, and can appreciate the value of things through understanding. We are the animal that is happy with a garden and a library, as Cicero says.

This is an excerpt from “Mayday! Mayday!”. To continue reading, visit The Mallard’s Shopify.

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The Internet as Mob Rule

By Philip Diaz-Lewis — 1 year ago

The ancient Greeks believed political constitutions repeated in a pattern called kyklos (“cycle). The idea first occurs in Plato’s Republic, gets elaborated by Aristotle in his Politics, then reaches its apogee in Polybius’ Histories.

Unlike modern theorists of cyclical rise and fall of civilisations, such as Oswald Spengler, the kyklos doesn’t have a zenith or golden age. It’s rather a waxing and waning of stable society types, followed by unstable society types. What characterises a stable society is that the ruling class and citizens both strive towards the common good, conceived as the objective purpose of human beings, which results in their happiness and flourishing. Society becomes unstable when its members stop having the common good in mind, and instead strive after their selfish private interests to the detriment of other citizens.

Kyklos then presupposes several things. First, it isn’t culture specific. Its objectivist outlook means it applies equally to all political human groups, always and everywhere. Second, the engine that drives history is human virtue and vice, and not economics, class struggle, or war. These are secondary factors resulting from the characters of human beings. Healthy economies, contented class structures, well-won peace and just wars all result from virtuous people. Third, the stable government types are various. Kyklos defends neither monarchy, nor aristocracy nor a republic exclusively. It isn’t a Whiggish or utopian theory of history, that says if and only if a certain group are in power all will be well. Rather it claims that whatever group are in power, they must be virtuous to rule well. Vice immediately leads to disorder.

Simplifying in the extreme, the kyklos model runs as follows. Rule can be by one person, several, or many. When these rule for the common good, they are just, and are called monarchy, aristocracy and republican respectively. When they rule for their private interest to the detriment of society, they are tyranny, oligarchy and democratic respectively.

It’s important to note that by “democracy” I don’t mean here a system of popular representation or voting. The virtuous form of this is called a polity or republic in classical thinking. In the latter, bonds of authority and specialised expertise remain. In the former, absolutely everything is sacrificed for the sake of equality of the masses (see below).

A good monarch rules with benevolence. His successors are unjust and become tyrants. The nobility removes them, creating an aristocratic state. These in turn degenerate into oligarchs as they grow decadent and self-interested and begin to oppress the poor. The people rise up and remove them, creating a republic where all citizens have a say. But the mass of citizens loses the bonds of political friendship, grows selfish, and the republic becomes a democracy. Democracy eventually deteriorates to a point where all bonds between people are gone, and we have a mob rule. The mob annihilates itself through infighting. One virtuous man seizes power, and we return to monarchy. The cycle begins anew.

With these preliminaries out of the way, I come to my point. I believe the present age we are forced to live through is highly ochlocratic. Of course, it’s not a pure mob rule since we have non-mob elites and a rule of law. I also think our age is oligarchic (dominated by elites swollen with pleasure). But it’s more ochlocratic, I contend, than it was a few centuries ago, and enough that mob behaviour characterises it.

The defining trait of unstable regimes, as I’ve just said, is vice. However, vice doesn’t just happen spontaneously as though people awake one morning deciding to be selfish, spoilt, and cruel. Evil people, as Aristotle notes, often believe they are good. Their fault is that they’ve mistaken something which is bad for what is good. For example, the man who hates the poor falsely believes money is the same as goodness. The man who mocks monks and sages for their abstinence believes all and only pleasure is good. Even when we know what is good for us, ingrained habit or upbringing might make the illusion of goodness overpowering. A lifetime of cake-gorging can condition one to the point it overrides the knowledge that sugar is bad for health.

I think the Spanish thinker Jose Ortega y Gasset in The Revolt of the Masses (1930) unwittingly echoes Plato when he points to the faults of the democratic “mass-man” of the twentieth century. All human societies need specialised minorities to function. The more demanding and specialised a field, the more those who do it will be a minority of the population. Further, all societies, to function, need sources of authority which aren’t decided by a majority vote. Modern democracy has created the illusion that the unspecialised mass is sovereign and has no reliance on anybody. It has achieved this mirage through artificial liberation: creating unnatural freedoms through constant government intervention and technocratic engineering.

This in turn has supported vices out of unthinking habit. The mass-man accepts his lack of qualifications and is proud of this absence. He isn’t one deluded about his knowledge. Quite the opposite. The mass-man is someone who openly declares he knows nothing but demands to be listened to anyway because he’s a member of the sacred demos. In short, according to Ortega y Gasset, the ideology of the mass-man is: “I’m ordinary and ignorant, and so I have more of a say than those who are specialised and learned.”

The internet is a democratic medium par excellence. This isn’t to say that its members are all egalitarian and individualist, rather, its very construction assumes egalitarian and individualist ideas, and these force themselves onto its users whether they be willing or not.

Here we can extend the criticisms that Neil Postman makes at television in Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985) to the web. On the internet, all information is available to everyone. Anyone can create it, and anyone can opine on it. The medium doesn’t distinguish for quality, so the greatest products of human civilisation sit alongside the basest, on the same shelf. There are no filters online for expertise or experience, indeed, any attempts to create such filters are decried as “gatekeeping”. As a result, the internet has no difficulty settings (to use a metaphor). Getting through the easier levels isn’t mandatory to reach the harder ones. You can skip ahead, so to speak, and mingle with the pros as their peer.

Someone might object here that I’m exaggerating, since online communities monitor themselves all the time. I can indeed post my amateur opinions onto an internet space for astrophysicists, but these will mock and exclude me once I become a nuisance. However, this isn’t an answer. The internet is built on the assumption of mass wisdom, and the only way to enforce hierarchies of value on it is by banding a mob together. The space around remains anarchic. Yes, there are communities of wise people online, but these exist in an ocean of communities of fools. The medium presents them all as equally valuable. Which communities grow powerful still depends on the wishes of the mass.

When the internet produces a rare fruit of quality, this is because by sheer accident, the wishes of the mass have corresponded to reality. It isn’t an in-built feature.

The result is that the internet functions like a classic mob regimen or ochlocracy. The medium has no sensitivity to quality, but rather responds to will, provided enough people are behind it. Those who wield influence online do so because the mob will has selected them. They are our modern versions of Plato’s Athenian demagogues, or rabble-rousers of the French Revolution. A mass of ignorant and desperate people swirls around equally ignorant and desperate demagogues who promise them whatever they want. Demagogues rise and fall as the mob is first enamoured then bored of them. As the internet has grown to encompass our whole lives, this ochlocracy has spilt out into the real world.

In this space, truth entirely drops out. It’s a common fault of the ignorant to confuse desire with truth since desires are often hotly felt and what is very vivid seems real. Our egalitarian internet machine therefore is wont to magnify desires rather than realities. And because it magnifies desires, these ever more get confused with reality, until mob wishes would replace the common good of society. I believe a good example of this is how the online demagogue-mob relationship works. When internet personalities, especially political and social influencers, fall from grace, it’s usually because their followers realise they can no longer get what they want out of them (seldom do demagogue and mob cordially separate because each has become wiser). The power lies with the followers and not with their purported leader.

Which brings me back to kyklos. A classic Greek political cycle resets when a virtuous individual takes the reigns from the mob and establishes a monarchy. He recreates justice through his personal goodness. This was more likely, I think, in ancient societies where religion, community and family were stronger, and so the pool of virtuous people never entirely depleted. If our ochlocratic internet is indeed a stage in a kyklos (or a component of an ochlocratic stage), and it ends, I think it will end with one demagogic idiocy imposing itself on the others by force.

A population conditioned by the internet to think mass-appeal as equivalent to truth will readily accept a technocratic whip provided it claims to issue from the general will. Which idiocy gains supremacy is a matter of which can capture the greater part of the mass in the least time, to form a generation in its own image. This is why I don’t think the current trend of the internet becoming more regulated and censored is good. The regulators and censors come from the same debased crop as those they regulate and censor.

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