Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the Skull Throne! Send the white devil back to the hell he came from, for he is an evil, exploitative thing that feeds with vampiric imperialism from the pure bodies of the minorities he oppresses. Give not peace to the Jew, nor mercy to the white, for it is once more Rhyd’s glorious Vision: Blood Cries Out From The Soil

“Not in My Name”

Speaking of governments, one of the other legacies of The Enlightenment besides Capitalism, Nationalism and Democracy, is the notion of complicity. Like egregores, the modern state demands a shared identification of its people. That is, since sovereignty no longer derives from the land or the gods and now is said to derive from “the people,” it’s become difficult to separate the actions of a government from the people whom they are said to represent.

And now the Socialist is complaining about Governments “By The People.”

I swear, this isn’t even double think anymore. This is literally Rhyd will complain that the Governments oppress people they rule and do not give them a voice, and then complains when governments are by the people and driven by those people’s voices.

Yes, we have the idea that the “right to rule” comes from the governed. Rather than by Gods, watery bints with swords, or some other basis. Because somewhere, somehow, we decided that he who leads by the will of the people was the most just way of having leadership. But apparently, this is now bad as well.

This is different in other countries though. I first noticed it with a German friend. She and I had been talking about American CIA involvement in the overthrow of socialist governments in the Middle East and South America. I’d said to her something regarding how “we claim to believe in Democracy, but will undermine it when the people vote for someone we don’t like.”

“Why do you keep saying ‘we?’” she asked me.

I didn’t understand the question.

“We?  Why ‘We’?  You weren’t there, and you didn’t do it. The government did. Americans often say ‘we,’ and I don’t understand why. Germans don’t do that.”

Maybe because “we the people” are the ones that founded our government, miss Germany.

But I see what this is. If Rhyd can vilify democracy and claim that he is not a proponent of it or a part of it, then he can claim that he is not as responsible for “all the bad things in history” done by “the government” and so his hands will be clean of the blood he feels they should have.

Das Idiot is seeking Das Absolution.

I’d noticed this, but had thought it was merely a linguistic difference. “You never say ‘we’ when talking about Germany?”

“That’d be silly,” she replied. “I’m not Germany. I’m German, but I’m not Germany. You’re not America, either.”

Actually, We are America. We vote. Our votes determine who represents us. These representatives then choose, based on more votes by the people, the voices of the people, or their consciences, what shall be the policies of our nation. At ever step of the way, there is the voice of the individual person to help determine what the USA will be and do. (Or at least it was).

“We the People, in order to form a more perfect Union…”

I still think on that matter. It was relieving to understand that I was not personally responsible for everything the U.S. government had ever done. It was also terrifying, because I began to understand the meaning of implicit consent; how people in power were bombing children in Afghanistan and Iraq as if they represented my interests, and I was helping to pay for it with taxes from my paltry wages.

Told you, Rhyd wants absolution for his “sins.”

Before I’d understood this, my reactions to the founding (and foundational) violence of America were most often ones of disbelief. Sometimes I’d accuse the historian of such horrors of lying, or twisting facts towards an agenda.  But I realized I was mostly just being defensive, because I couldn’t believe “we” had done such a thing.

Which really bespeaks more to ignorance rather than morality.

I never questioned that America had done these things. I did consider some of these things bad, but I also quickly learned that every race, every nation, had done these things. I learned that in Africa, had we not bought those people as slaves, they would have been butchered to a man, and raped to a woman, and probably both to a child. I learned that the Muslims imported twice as many African slaves as Europeans did. I learned that Europeans had been enslaved and murdered as much as everyone else.

I learned that people are shitty and sometimes you have to do shitty things in order to survive. And sometimes, if you survive those shitty things, life gets pretty good for you. Until the next shitty thing happens.

But Rhyd, it seems, cannot grasp this. He is lost in a maze of “original white sin” and wants desperately to be more like the holier, “non-white” people he sees who have suffered…not knowing that they are as guilty of the sins as everyone else…they just happened to lose.

Thing is, “we” didn’t. Others did, just as others do now. But they did it in “our” name, just as they do now.

What we see here is classic “disassociation.” Just a few paragraphs ago, Rhyd was talking about how he was both responsible, and the beneficiary, of all the bad actions the USA and white people had done in the past. He was a part of those Sins. Those Sins stained Him. He and every other European originating American was inevitably marked by the sins of the past.

And now he’s practically standing there, still with “gun in hand” as it were, and he’s rambling and chanting about how it “wasn’t him,” and “he didn’t do this,” it was “someone else,” “someone else was using my name to do these horrible things.”

I’m a vehemently anti-racist Pagan Anarchist. On what grounds could a government ever have thought I’d want them to kill indigenous people? Or buffalos? Or allow and encourage people to own slaves?  And how could they possibly think that they’d be accurately representing my will by dropping bombs on children in the Middle East?

Because:

A) they probably figured you voted in the last set of elections leading up to that point, so that your voice would be represented in the government.

B) you’re not the only person who lives here and some of us not only get to have differing views, we get to have them represented and even acted upon if the majority agrees with us during a vote.

The answer’s awfully obvious. No government such as that could ever speak on my behalf.

Then renounce your citizenship, never vote again, and do not speak to the public policies past, present, and future of the USA, its government, and its people.

If this government does not represent you, and actively acts against your will, then it is safe to say that they are not a government you desire and you should resign from the social contract that binds you to that government. You should no longer live in expectation of the rights of that government, the employ of that government, or the protections of that government.

Because it is a choice, Rhyd. You are either not represented by our Government, in which case you have no right to the Rights and Protections there unto…or you keep the liberties and rights you posses and you are bound by Law and Oath to the Government and It Represents You.

Pick.

There’s another side to this idea of sovereignty and complicity. If the actions of a government are a reflection of the will of the people, then it makes perfect sense that our government was wrong to attack us directly.  For any government to attack the people for whom that government is a mere proxy. After all, governments just do what they’re elected to do, right?

Oh bloody Hel, what stupidity is he going to try and argue now…

Many Gods, No Masters

So here I am, a gay Pagan living on stolen land. I didn’t steal it, but that doesn’t change the fact that it was stolen. Not having been directly responsible, I cannot personally make amends, nor can I, with all the magic of the gods and spirits, hope to resurrect the dead, to undo those crimes.

Technically, the land isn’t stolen.

The USA obtained the territory known as Washington state (and a bit more area) from the British. So we didn’t steal anything, we negotiated for it and bought it with diplomacy and by ceding some of our lands to the UK via Canada. It’s actually part of why there’s a long flat border between us and Canada. Now, I’m sure that Rhyd would claim that the British stole the land, but the British never stole the land. They either bought it, or they conquered it. Land taken as spoils of war is not, technically, theft.

Everyone likes to go on about “stolen land” but the land was never stolen.

But let’s see how Rhyd is going to purify himself of his sins.

More difficult, I have little choice in this matter. I live where I can; where I can afford; where things are open to me; where I feel safe. And I’m bound by the citizenship conferred to me at birth. I cannot merely “go back to Europe,” to my ancestral lands, because I have no legal claim to do so.

Actually, I heard recently that Ireland is offering “refugee status” to Americans who want to come over fleeing Trump. So…yes, Rhyd, yes you can. Also, nothing says you can’t renounce your citizenship. Because you can. Believe it or not. People do it all the time. So you’re not bound by your citizenship. the only thing binding you is your desire to keep all the rights and privileges your citizenship gives you.

Which were, ironically enough, bought for you by the dead as well. But I guess those dead do not count.

And you don’t need a “legal claim” to immigrate to Europe, Rhyd. You just have to fill out an application and hope they take you. Or you could become a Muslim, they’ll certainly take you then as a refugee.

I mean, you’ll have to give up being Gay and Pagan, but you won’t be part of a Euro-centric Imperialist cult, so you’ll have that going for you. And they won’t even mind if you blow up a building or two.

I guess I could perhaps do what many people do, which is ignore the whole thing, tuck the horrors away into a neat little envelope called “past” and pretend like these things don’t still happen. The more I work with spirits, though, the more I realize the dead don’t just go away like that. Besides, the horrors continue.  Poor minorities are still shot dead on American soil by city militia. The descendants of slaves continue to live in deep poverty and are thrown in prisons now, instead of slave ships.  And the government which claims to represent me, which derives sovereignty from my “consent,” slaughters people in other countries, too.

Yes, “poor minorities are still shot dead on American soil by city militia.” And yes, “The descendants of slaves continue to live in deep poverty and are thrown in prisons now, instead of slave ships.”

When they commit crimes.

I swear, it’s like everyone who is supporting this “black lives matter” thing never bothers to actually find out what happened. Of all the cases I have come across, because they name victims and I can do web searches” 99% of the time the black person killed was in the process of committing a crime, generally a violent one, fairly often towards the cops involved.

Of the three cases I can remember of hand where it wasn’t, they were that one in NYC where the guy died after it taking six cops to restrain him…and he died of an asma attack on the way to the hospital not at the hands of the cops, a kid who took the orange safety tip off his gun so it looked like the real thing and was apparently going to shoot cops with it (so they reacted before they could get killed), and a swimming party where a cop pulled his gun as an angry mob was about to descend on him and his fellow officers (but didn’t shoot anyone and was pulled back by his fellows). Every other case involved physical crimes on behalf of the black person.

When a black person goes to jail, it is because they have committed a crime. Same as when a white person goes to jail, or an Asian person, or any person. To claim that putting black people in jail is wrong because their ancestors were once put into ships is completely insane. By that justification, White people shouldn’t be held responsible for the deaths of Indians because at some point in history white people were being killed by Muslims.

Crime is Crime. Crime means going to Jail. It ain’t racist.

And as for that government blowing up kids in some distant land, yeah. That government is doing it partially to protect you because some of their countrymen decided to blow up some of our countrymen. And for a guy who is all about “shared responsibility because of profiting from violent actions” you suddenly want to have a problem with shared responsibility towards people who benefited from violent actions?

Knowing all that, I cannot look away.

This, too, is why it’s impossible for me not to see conflicts elsewhere as part of the same legacy of which we, in America, still re-enact. Watching the conflict in Israel/Palestine, I cannot help but think both of the plight of the people in the occupied territories and their poverty as being similar to what the indigenous people around me suffer. Simultaneously, I cannot help but identify with people in Israel who did not themselves choose to steal land from others. Many of them are the descendants of people who moved elsewhere, some are also people who fled from violence and hatred elsewhere.

Rhyd, you myopic idiot, do you want to know why the Palestinians live “lives of oppression?” It’s because back when Israel was first created as a refugee home for the Jews, post the holocaust (you know, that mass genocide which you seem to have a problem with when it comes to blacks and Indians), it was set up as a two state area. One state was Israel, one state was Palestine. It was hoped that both peoples could live together in harmony, the Jews would be safe, and everyone could finally start to heal from the wounds left by the Nazis.

And on the very night the British stopped being all Imperialist and left, the Palestinians tried to murder all the Jews.

And thus has started seventy something years of Palestinians and their fellow Arabs attempting to do “Holocaust Part 2, the Holocausting” and the Israelis doing absolutely anything they think will work to keep themselves alive. Now, I’m not all that pro-Isreal anymore, and I will admit they’ve done some rather mean things at times, but given that their options are “be mean” or “be exterminated man, woman, and child” I’m willing to admit the truth about the situation. Unlike Racist Rhyd, here, who sees white people “oppressing” brown people and thinks the best option is for all the white people to die, apparently, for the sin of being “white oppressors.”

Besides thinking Capitalism is the worst thing we’ve ever come up with, this is why I’m an Anarchist. The foundational violence which haunts every “freedom” in America was perpetrated by people who were not me. The violence which America still enacts in the world is committed by people who falsely claim to be acting on my behalf. I did not consent to those horrors, nor do I consent to them now, nor will I allow them to do those things on my behalf.

Pretty sure, if we’re basing this on body counts and oppression, Marxism is the worst thing humanity has ever come up with. Islam’s pretty close though. Christianity ain’t far behind.

But yes, Rhyd, every freedom you have is because someone else either died for it or killed for it. That’s kinda how it works. And if you cannot “affirm your freedom” then you must either “Affirm your slavery” to a system you cannot support, you must “affirm your death” to be free of that system, or you must resign from that system (possibly to wage war against it). But right now, you’re being insanely dishonest about everything.

But these things will be done Rhyd. These blood bought freedoms will be fought for, and other people will continue to pay the price. You can either live with it…or you can’t.

Anarchism doesn’t stop at rejection of a government. Recognizing that the suffering of other people relies on my implicit consent, I cannot allow that violence to occur. Governments who claim to represent my interests and who extract money from me in order to commit atrocities must be toppled, and the conditions which have allowed them to thrive must be changed so that they no longer may do so.

THEN WHY ARE YOU STILL WORKING FOR THAT GOVERNMENT AS A SOCIAL WORKER, RHYD!

Why the fuck are you not bombing government buildings, killing cops in the street, and engaging in a terrorist war against this thing you so claim to hate? Why haven’t you renounced your citizenship, forsaken these “oppressive” laws, and actually started living by your own god damn moral code?

If this is all truly evil, then you must per force resist that evil. And if you will not resist to the full measure of your being, then you cannot call yourself a moral person and condemn others for failing to do as you fail to do.

My Anarchism, however, is also my Paganism. The gods and spirits we’ve pushed out of our present continue to exist, as do the dead. Just because I live in the present, I am not absolved from my inheritance, nor of my legacy.  I cannot perform rituals on stolen land without working to have it returned, I cannot worship gods of place and people without fighting those who’d poison those places and sever those people from their gods.

Bullshit Rhyd, just plain bullshit.

You claim you’re tainted, you claim you’re absolved, and you claim your still tainted. You offer a salvation that cannot save, and you condemn as sins the prices all people pay, the deeds all people have done. You will not practice what you preach, and you preach a false practice.

There’s something really liberating about this knowledge, though. The notion that the past is dead is false, and this means we Pagans who are attempting to reconstruct ancient worship of ancient gods are still living among fragments of those religions. We don’t need to prefix what we’re doing with “neo-,” even if what we come up with, guided by our gods, is a different configuration from what our ancestors had.

I swear, one of these days Rhyd is going to manage to become so stupid and hateful the death-pact between his head and his anus is going to rupture and he will be consumed in a black hole of hatred and ignorance.

I mean honestly, the very thing that makes us “evil” is apparently the thing that means we don’t have to “prefix” our paganisms now, is it? Completely ignoring the original natures of Pagan religions (which originated most of the stuff he hates, btw).

That is, if the past is not ever truly gone, it can be rewoven, reshaped. It’s around us now. Processes which started centuries ago and continue to this day can be ended and amended. Fragments buried in plain sight under our illusion of being modern can be teased out from their hiding places.

We only need to stop claiming that the past is over, so we can own up to the past that is still with us.

No, the past cannot be “rewoven and reshaped.” The Past is the past, it is fixed in time. It happened, and it cannot be made to unhappen. Now, you can feel guilty if you want over what someone else did in the past over which you had no control, and that’s your business Rhyd. But you do not have the power or the right to make me feel guilty for something over and done with, done by people who came before me and whom I have no control over, doing the exact same thing that everyone else on this planet has always done to.

I will not be guilted, nor will I hate, by those who have come before simply because your morality is different from theirs. Because they faced hard choices with hard consequences while you face easy choices with few consequences. You speak of the dead, and honoring the dead, but all I have seen you do is slander the dead who fought, died, and killed to give you a place where your ass could be Gay and Pagan, rather than Christian or Muslim or Dead.

Yes, Rhyd, you have profited from the deaths of millions…and you slander their names and shit on their graves. You do this because of their race. You do this because they happened to be the winners and not the loser in wars. You do this because it makes you feel holy, self righteous, and gives you powered among the entitled masses who dare to condemn that which they did not live and cannot understand.

Blood does indeed cry out from the Soil, Rhyd…the blood that allows you to be what you are. But you would rather hate that blood than honor it…because you can’t stand the price paid to allow you to pray to whom you want, and to fuck whom you want, and to not fear because of it.

 

Bellona Invicta