George is back with Virgil for Season 3 of the enchanting, enlightening Boreas Podcast!

The episode was recorded around Christmastime 2023. We discuss the katechon, one of the concluding topics in our new book, The Modern Malaise, available all over the internet February 7th, 2024.

Katechon ("he who restraints / that which restrains") is a term from St. Paul's second letter to Thessalonians and a mysterious concept much discussed over the centuries. We talk about how the katechon may be getting permanently removed by our current culture, which may lead – finally! – to the Apocalypse.

Total social equality is neither possible nor desirable. I explain why this is true with arguments from mimetic theory: desire is imitated, and so it always and everywhere creates celebrities and outcasts. On the other hand, I think it's true that "all men are created equal," as the Declaration of Independence proclaims. I explain how the sense of violent sacred allowed societies throughout history to hold to the idea of essential human equality while being highly stratified and practicing all forms of oppression. Finally, I discuss how the recession of violent sacred means that we no longer know how to establish peaceful differences. 

Is historical progress guaranteed? Is history moving definitively in one direction, or is there a chance that our civilisation might collapse and we go back to ground zero? If progress is definitive, what drives it? What is the motor and guarantor of that movement in one direction, rather than in a circle? George goes over the common philosophical perspectives and gets to the Girard's perspective: historical progress is real, and its motor from the beginning was and still is the gradual uncovering of the victimary mechanism, which amounts to the recession of the sacred. Tune in to hear where that came from and how it works.

We start where we left off in Part 1: Dostoevsky the romantic wakes up and realizes he lives in the underground, filled with resentment, frustrated ambition, and tormenting idols. The underground man struggles to break free in the character of Raskolnikov from Crime and Punishment and the teacher in The Gambler.

We then encounter formidable idols that attract and foment underground passions all around them: Prince Myshkin in The Idiot and Nikolai Stavrogin in The Possessed. Dostoevsky shows how such demons cannot lead anywhere but destruction. The author depicts the depths of rebellion as a human universal and as a particular of his place and age.

Finally, in The Brothers Karamazov, the Devil has a mask-off moment and shows his face. But Christ also shows up. The demonic nature of the underground torment and fascination is fully revealed. Christ stands accused by the Grand Inquisitor, who wants to build a society without him. But only Christ can reveal the perdition of obsessing over idols, enemies, and sinful fathers, whom one inevitably ends up imitating, and the way out that obsession and into a whole, undivided humanity. 

What if modernity's original sin isn't colonialism or slavery, but something earlier and deeper—the looting of the Catholic Church? In this episode, I explore E. Michael Jones's claim that the Dissolution of Monasteries was a "looting operation" that financed the birth of capitalism, and I read it through René Girard's theory of the founding sacrifice: the idea that civilizations are built on blood they can't acknowledge. From Cain's murder of Abel to Romulus killing Remus to Brutus stabbing Caesar, the pattern repeats—and I argue that the Protestant destruction of Medieval Christendom fits the template exactly. The result is modern man: triumphant, progressive, moralizing, and haunted by a guilt he cannot name or confess. Nietzsche saw it: "God is dead, and we have killed him. Who will wipe this blood off us?"

Why did Bill Clinton survive the Lewinsky scandal? Not because of legal technicalities or partisan loyalty. Because he understood something about power that most people still don't: a nation addicted to sexual liberation cannot condemn its president for doing what it has been taught to celebrate. In this essay I follow E. Michael Jones's Libido Dominandi from the Illuminati's blueprint for soft control through blackmail and moral compromise, through Clinton's presidency, all the way to the Epstein files. The thesis is simple and devastating — the moral law is the only thing that protects the poor, and the powerful know it. That's why they work so hard to tear it down.

Part 2 after René Girard and the Philosophers. Girard argued that Plato and the philosophers who followed him sidelined imitation — neglecting the rivalrous, appropriative mimesis that drives human conflict. Plato did quiet over the dangerous side of imitation. But imitation is everywhere in classical metaphysics. It's the engine of Plato's cosmos and Aristotle's telos, and the master principle of the Platonic-Christian tradition that follows. This episode traces how imitation became the hidden axiom of Western thought — and how, two and a half millennia later, Girard's mimetic theory helps us rediscover it. Featuring spoiled philosophers, autistic scientists, narcissistic gods, and the long shadow of Plato's classroom.

• L'appel du vide -- the call of the void; or as Nietzsche says, "If you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss will gaze back at you" 
• A mimetic theory interpretation of the call of the void: inflamed (rather than mortified) desire leads to sadomasochism, leads to an urge to dash ourselves before the terrible and awesome model-obstacle
• Call of the void in romantic pursuit and poverty
• Call of the void leading to  political and ethnic self-harm

Having laid out all that's wrong with the modern malaise, a debilitating mental illness suffered by both the new right and the new left, George and Virgil set out to discuss what is to be done about it.

Conversation takes off with a discussion of desire: how in older times desire was feared as a disruptive force, how, on the contrary, in the modern times it is encouraged, and how that encouragement explains a lot of the uniquely modern social pathologies. 

It wasn't planned that way, but the conversation ends up deep-diving into the hopelessly misguided world of new-right dating advice.

1. Conspiracy theories getting out of hand on the right.
2. Separating sound skepticism from "esoteric" conspiracy theories.
3. Esoteric conspiracy theories as leftover of archaic paganism.
4. Conspiracy theorising is witch hunting in a secular age.
5. CTs may be violent  polytheism, but the woke left is the Antichrist.

Most people know Isaac Newton as the father of modern science. Fewer know that two thirds of his written output was on alchemy and theology — and that he kept it secret because it would have gotten him hanged. This week I read my essay Newton Contra Athanasius, tracing the strange inner life of the man behind the mechanical universe: the abandoned child who reimagined God as a distant sovereign, the secret Arian who spent decades building a forensic case against one of the greatest theologian of the early Church, and the unwitting architect of a worldview that is only now beginning to crack.

Modernity with its humanism and secularism rose out of Christian culture but seems to be at odds with it. I explain this paradox in accordance with René Girard's anthropology: how the recession of the violent sacred wrought by Christianity over the centuries created the cultural space that distances itself from all sacred and thus becomes transferrable to the whole world, producing modernity and globalisation. 

Exploring the connection between the black pill (resigned mindset) and embracing or rejecting "the flesh." Why scientism is an embracing of the flesh. Why the black pill is a demonic lie that should be rejected and protected against.

Charlie and George get into the rampant and much talked about phenomenon of declining testosterone levels in males. They discuss their personal experiences with health and fitness. Charlie shares from the extensive research and writing he's done on the topic. There's less direct reference to mimetic theory than usual, but we certainly explore the whys and wherefores.

William Shakespeare, James Joyce, and René Girard walk into a bar... 

And share a secret: the price of literary genius is the torment of mimetic cuckoldry, resolved through a type of repentance. I talk about how Girard found this secret in Shakespeare, and how Joyce had already encoded it in a single chapter of Ulysses, where Stephen Dedalus, presenting his Shakespeare theory to a roomful of erudite groundlings, ends up outcast as their scapegoat. The mob wins in the short term, but the artist persists.

• "Eternal Recurrence" of Nietzsche and pre-Socratic philosophers, history repeating itself, and the victimary mechanism, or "Satan casting out Satan"; 
• A big part of "trad Christian Twitter" as a swinging of the "infernal pendulum" from the heathen idols of wokism to a heathen interpretation of Christianity as a violent religion;
• Religious fear mongering as bottom-shelf cowardice and resentment, and as the way Satan gets his due in post-vengeance era;
• The impossibility of non-sacrificial space, manifested in the failure of modernity and in the repulsive and bloody sacralizations of postmodernism.

Dr. E Michael Jones is back, this time to discuss the historical influence of philosophy and science on culture. How modern science has been used to justify modern forms of political oppression. The conversation references Dr. Jones' book Logos Rising, and is relevant to the serial theme I've been running lately on the history of metaphysics.

While Plato was teaching his students to contemplate the eternal forms, the theatre portrayed women of Thebes tearing a king apart with their bare hands. I talk about how the founding gesture of philosophy was walking away in silence from archaic scapegoating, blood sacrifice, etc., and that René Girard, twenty-five centuries later, gets us to turn around and take a close, analytical look.

My French-Canadian friend Martin joins me to discuss the history of Quebec. Discover how this province, once the stronghold of French Catholic conservatism, underwent a rapid secular revolution in the 1960s. What role did the Catholic Church and later secular nationalism play in preserving Quebec's unique identity against Anglo dominance? We explore the demographic strategy of "La Revanche des Berceaux" – Revenge of the Cradles – and delve into the consequences of the shift from Catholicism to secular nationalism. What can the history of Quebec teach us about the demographic challenges facing the broader Western world today?

Autism is a rare but real disorder, but the recent rise in claims of being "on the spectrum" is a massive fad, a mimetic contagion. The spectrum is glamourised by popular entertainment and embraced by celebrities. With reference to René Girard's work, I analyse why people might want to signal autism (rather than "mask" it). It has to do with many notions that hit a raw nerve in our culture: narcissism, victimhood, innocence, ambition, mediocrity, genius. I also address the gender aspect of the autism fad. 

Find out why claims of autism are a sad cheat code for the liberal culture.

Parks Gore and I discuss Terence McKenna's Stoned Ape Theory. McKenna argued that human evolution was driven by hominid consumption of psychedelic mushrooms. We explain his theory and argue against it in light of René Girard's work. Girard believed that in-group violence was the unprecedented problem whose solution through violent sacrificial ritual and religion provided the leap from animal to human. We then talk about psychedelics and spirituality, both in ancient or indigenous culture and in the New Age / psychonaut one, and how it clashes against Christianity. We touch on the great problem of human origin.

Keynes as prophet of mature capitalism, against its rival religion of communism. The arcane language of economics sages. Mythologies that economics/capitalism supplanted (and that's a good thing). Nature of mythologies old and new: how they make you feel good early on, and what happens when they run their course. 

Modernity is the precious product of Western Christian Tradition. It is good. You can't and you don't want to go back to some fanciful "trad" era. The aim should be to learn how to navigate the novel challenges of our exciting though perilous times, not give up on them.

An early reader of The Modern Malaise tunes into Boreas Podcast to talk about his personal journey through the shadowy valleys of male coming-of-age, one that included many – or rather all – of the challenges covered in the book: an obsession with Nietzsche, a body-building buddy group, online dating, and money Twitter. His impressions and advice on making it through.

Charlie is out for this one and George has a head on reckoning with the whole culture of pickup artistry. How PUA doctrine stacks up against the mimetic understanding of desire, why PUA doesn't work, and why you should stay away from it.

George and Virgil are back on their project of subverting the twin neo-paganism of the new right and the postmodern left. These two take a lot of pride in themselves subverting "traditional morals." For the new right, it's Nietzschean revaluation of all values and ceasing to feel sorry for the "refuse" of humanity. For the postmodern left, it's subverting traditional power structures, all of which are oppressive.

But the truth is, both of these would-be subversions are aping the one permanent subversion, which is the subversion of the sacrificial mechanism, or the scapegoating mindset brought about by the Old and New Testaments. 

Listen to this episode to hear it explained how one can tell good subversion from bad, and how and why paganism, both old and new, is beautiful lies hiding an ugly truth, while the Bible is the beautiful truth revealing the ugly lies, which we still try not to see.

We explore the patron saint of Modern Malaise Martyrs: Friedrich Nietzsche. The famous 19th-century philosopher was an incel before there were incels, alt-right before there was alt-right, a sperger before there were spergers, a racist before ... never mind... ; the original ubermensch railing against the worms and slaves of this world (almost everyone other than himself)... We look for the motivations for Nietzsche's philosophy in the cultural background of Europe of his day and in his personal history, and especially his relationship with the composer Richard Wagner. Tracing René Girard's footsteps, we explain how Nietzsche's unhealthy views contributed to his ultimate madness. 

Narcissism is an ever-popular topic. There's a lot of speculation and fascination around it. In this episode, I attempt a mimetic theory breakdown of the phenomenon that simplifies it a great deal. The episode details the various aspects of narcissism and goes over its historical background. It then presents the Girardian idea of narcissism as a failed seduction strategy.

Humans are animals that desire. Unlike animal instinct, which is fixed on predetermined objects and cannot change, desire is always a desire for a higher being - for transcendence - and is determined for us by our models, or mediators, or idols, whom we believe to possess that higher, transcendental being. However, the truth is that no human being possesses transcendence. Our erroneous belief in its earthly existence causes all kinds of trouble by making us miserable, envious, greedy, etc. 

This longer-than-usual episode first goes over the origins of authority. It challenges conventional Marxist, Darwinian, and Hobbesian theories and their derivatives. It presents René Girard's theory of authority evolving out of the archaic role of the human sacrificial victim. Finally, it applies this insight to the modern era and explores its modern implications.

George reads his latest blog article / newsletter.

"You cannot be a human without a transcendental vision. The here and now is not enough; there must be something wholly above it, not just something higher and better, but something absolute and eternal. This something is transcendence. It anchors human life in meaning and purpose."

René Girard showed how Western literature over the centuries traces a descent of transcendence from heavenly and distant visions down closer to earth, where our idols become other people and we become miserable. No one can escape having a transcendental they worship, they can only choose to deny it. 

In this episode I trace this historical arch of the descent of idols, and how discuss how modern culture's earthly idols lead to misery and destruction.

A Girardian angle on the stock market. Yes, the market is irrational, and no, it's not because we have "herd instincts" and other traces of evolutionary survival instincts, but because we are mimetic. Investing is like romance. Girard's mimetic theory does not in any way, shape, or form support any Marxist or neo-Marxist attacks on the Western civilisation.

How one goes from trying to conquer the universe with artificial intelligence to being fascinated with cute cats. Electronic omertà. Eight billion flawless AI robots. Being on spectrum as a free pass for being a prick. The perpetual orgasm of knowing the mathematical mysteries of the universe. Etc.

George closes out the season with a meditation on low self-esteem. How can this increasingly common affliction be explained by a failure in the relationship with our mimetic models? And especially the most decisive mimetic models of our lives – our parents ? How is low self-esteem connected to things like homosexuality, transgenderism, transhumanism, and in general a desire to transcend and transgress everything? How is it related to "scientism" and even science itself? Tune in to find out.

A review of the life and works of the great Fyodor Dostoevsky following René Girard's book Dostoevsky: Resurrection from the Underground. A masterpiece of literary criticism in its own right, this book brings edifying and brilliant insights into Dostoevsky's own masterpieces, but only by connecting them to the novelist's lesser works and personal life.

Girard traces a coherent arch in Dostoevsky's life and works, from a frustrated naive romantic trying to fit into the literary fads of the age while coping with his personal inadequacies to a man who experiences a spiritual breakthrough and perceives the unflattering, diabolical truths about the motives that drive him. These motives have everything to do with Girard's mimetic theories on desire and on modernity, theories that came to him while reading Dostoevsky, among other novelists, as a young academic. 

We begin to see how Dostoevsky's and Girard's works are coupled and how they provide such a powerful, prophetic interpretation of modernity.

Part 2 will be covered in the next episode, which traces the arch from Dostoevsky awakening in the underground, to struggling to escape it, and finally to the spectacular resurrection out of it.

René Girard wrote a book of literary criticism of Shakespeare titled "Theatre of Envy: William Shakespeare." The book makes centuries of Shakespeare critics look like fools while confirming the bard himself as a monumental literary figure. This podcast summarises some of the big points of Girard's analysis of Shakespeare.

Shakespeare dramatised and reflected on what Girard calls the mimetic nature of desire ("love through others' eyes"), using it as a key plot device in many of his works. In this episode we talk about a few of them, including Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Rape of Lucrece, Romeo and Juliet, Midsummer Night's Dream, Troilus and Cressida.

Furthermore, Girard analyses Shakespeare's depictions of what he calls mimetic crises and sacrificial murder. We discover these elements in Troilus and Cressida and Julius Caesar.

This episode is Part 1 of 2 (for now) on the topic of Shakespeare interpreted by Girard.

Wilhelm Reich, the pupil of Sigmund Freud and the founding father of sexual liberation, argued that sexual repression produces fascism. So why were the top ranks of the Nazi party crawling with homosexuals? In this episode, I refer to E. Michael Jones' book Libido Dominandi and René Girard's mimetic theory to show that Reich had it exactly backwards—it's not sexual repression that produces fascism and perversion, but sexual liberation. We cover Ernst Röhm's creative legal defense, Magnus Hirschfeld's blackmail files, why the Nazis burned evidence of their own degeneracy, and how the same link between homosexuality and fascism is alive and well in the dissident right today.

A reading of my essay with the same title that reviews Stephen C Meyer's book Return of God Hypothesis. I go over the arguments of the book that debunk the materialist narrative around the Big Bang, or the beginning of the universe: 1) what's called the Fine Tuning Problem, with the the mathematical and physical impossibilities it exposes, and 2) the metaphysical absurdities that arise from the inability of science to establish the "ground of being." 3) I touch on the counterargument known as the Anthropic Principle. The next episode will cover the materialist failure to account for the origin and diversity of life.

• René Girard's understanding of the symbiosis of imitation and innovation.
• In traditional societies, imitation was encouraged, innovation was discouraged; in modern society, it is the opposite; why?
• Imitation and innovation game in science, the arts, business, and geopolitics
• Bad imitation: resentment of the rival and cargo cults

• Mexico: A Girardian analysis of Mel Gibson's movie Apocalypto
• China: Girardian notes on Terracotta Warriors and pandas
• Rome: The Gladiator movie; the origin of gladiatorial games
• Greece: The origin of the ancient Olympic Games

Exploring Jews in the role of Girard's archaic scapegoats: magical outsiders who blend in and either bless the community with white magic or curse it with black magic, and how Jews react and act in this role.

We finally have a guest! George talks with Charlie Deist on the topics of self-help books and "success culture." The two friends share personal experiences. They discuss the historical and social causes that gave rise to the self-improvement mindset, and they refer to René Girard's theory to critique it. They talk about how obsession with success can damage an individual, and how one could avoid such damage.

Marx promised workers had nothing to lose but their chains. But what if the real chains aren't economic—they're mimetic? In this final installment of The Anti-Manifesto, I lay out what revolution could never accomplish: a genuine escape from the tyranny of capital. Not by seizing the means of production, but by understanding that capital itself is generated by our converging desires—and that walking away is the one move the system can't counter. From the Ten Commandments read in reverse to the sadomasochistic logic of usury, from stumbling blocks that ensnare the innocent to the ascetic wisdom that breaks the spell, this is the counter-prescription to every manifesto ever written. You have nothing to lose but your idols.

The final, fifth part of a five-part series.

Dr. E Michael Jones returns to Boreas Podcast to recount his personal history investigating and writing on the Medjugorje apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a history summarized in his 1998 book "The Medjugorje Deception: Queen of Peace, Ethnic Cleansing, and Ruined Lives." Dr. Jones communicated with highest-level representatives of US goverment and the Catholic Church during his investigative work. Our discussion touches on the suspect spirituality of the phenomena and morality of the individuals involved in promoting them to thousands of pilgrims over the decades, and on their connection to regional, global, and church politics and controversies.

René Girard's mysterious quote on masochist reasoning being a model of scientific induction. Connecting masochistic conclusions about the nature of the universe to that of the scientist. What logical genius may have in common with masochism – the idiot-savant stereotype. Why modern materialistic and atheistic ideologies tend to turn sadomasochistic.

George's old friend Virgil joins the studio for the start of another season of George Boreas Podcast. This season is a project of about seven episodes that will be turned into a book. The goal is to study an increasingly influential internet subculture that goes by many different names (trad? vitalists? frogs? alt-right? etc.), but that involves the rejection of modern western "degeneracy" and a creation of its own vision based on a philosophy emphasising virility and mental and physical fitness. It proposes a 21st century version of Nietzsche's "revaluation of all values."

In this first episode, Virgil and George try to map out what the subculture considers wrong with today's soft and degenerate Western society - the modern malaise.

Charlie and George tackle the controversies of immigration politics. The historical motives behind immigration and against it in the USA and elsewhere. Immigrants as assets in the progressive-conservative conflict of Western democracies. Discussion of the libertarian view of immigration. & more.

Communism was an archaic way of dealing with and worshipping materialism, a chief ideology of 19th century and modern times. In this episode, I look at the text of The Communist Manifesto, the famous originary pamphlet of communist revolutions, and explain why it contains the elements of a hypnotic spell. If communism is an archaic religion, texts like the Communist Manifesto are its ritual incantations. All rituals end in a sacrificial act. In this case, it's the immolation of the "bourgeoisie" and victory of the "proleteriat."

This is Part 1 of a 5-part series.

The Devil is trending. Talk of demons can be heard from Tucker Carlson, theorists on UFOs and AI, right-wing podcasters interviewing exorcists, and the Psychedelic Renaissance aficionados. So I go over what I recently wrote about the devil on my blog: Girard's anthropological interpretation of the Devil as the force behind seduction, conflict, and accusation; the victimary mechanism as the Satanic mechanism, depicted in the story of the Gerasene Demoniac and the parable of Satan casting out Satan; the devil in schizophrenia and in psychedelic experiences.

Dr. E. Michael Jones discusses how usury transforms economy and culture: conflict of usury and labor, the historical transition from feudalism to capitalism, sexual liberation and usury, and the psychology of usury. We discuss the denial of limit in the sexual and economic realms. Transition from feudalism to capitalism in the British Isles: dissolution of monasteries and the capitalist science and ideology that followed in the wake. The impact of usury today on inflation and education. And more.

Seasteads: self-governing communities floating upon the ocean. Utopian communities  free from oppressive government, or super-villain lairs plotting their own takeover of the world? Charlie and George discuss this and other visions of libertarian dreams.

What is the one single basic principle of all war strategy?

The answer is given from readings of René Girard's mimetic theory together with Sun Tzu, Carl von Clausewitz, and the Bible.  I suggest how to apply it in modern life.

Also, there is a discussion of military history and how war changed through to modern times. Were Sun Tzu and Machiavelli cynics? Were European aristocrats who shot each other in pistol duels idiots? How did Napoleon influence modern warfare?

Are Gospels pacifist in the strict sense? Was René Girard a pacifist? 

Listen to find out.

What is the link between comedy and tragedy? Why do both laughing and crying involve tears? How is comedy related to tickling? Why do we laugh more in modern times? These and many other questions answered in a philosophical discussion based on René Girard's essay on the topic, "Perilous Balance: A Comic Hypothesis."

Continuing on the previous episode with the review of Stephen C. Meyer's book Return of God Hypothesis. This one goes over the impossible odds of assembling proteins or DNA to either begin or evolve life. Then, it goes over the digital or symbolic nature of information that encodes life and explains why natural laws in their ontological essence cannot produce such information. We distinguish orderliness of the type produced by natural laws with that produced by functional design seen in written language, computer code, or DNA code. We explain why the inference of intelligent design is the obvious conclusion arising from strictest standards of logic. This inference was the norm for the great founders of modern science, so why is it no longer the norm with us?

• Gregory Bateson's double bind as the cause of schizophrenia
• René Girard on the double bind as a universal human experience
• Girard's notion of the haunting double as the source of the double bind and central cause and symptom of schizophrenia

"In reaction to the continuous humiliation that is poverty, the underprivileged enter a life of self-destructive sadomasochism, which according to René Girard is the final state of all frustrated desires."

The poor aren't fine. They are possessed by demons, and the demons are the privileged. So they can't pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Neither can they be healed by money alone. What they need is an exorcism.

Karl Marx wrote how the bourgoisie feishized commodities—but what if he was blind to his own deeper fetish? In this episode, I argue that Marx only went halfway: he scorned capitalist markets while remaining utterly entranced by the altar of production itself. His enchantment was of the archaic or violent-sacred kind, and so it lead to archaic mobilization, persecution, and aesthetics.

Part 2 of a 5-part series.

Retry

• Girardian takes on racism
• How white racism is unique: blindness to violence and genteel insistence on "scientific objectivity"
• Racism as sadomasochism that ends up in self-destruction and/or mixing with the "inferior"
• You are whom you f*** so if you want to keep your race pure get used and comfortable with hating your own people.
• Scale back on globalisation.

According to René Girard, sadomasochists have an obsessive yet accurate understanding that all desire feeds on obstacles placed between it and its goal. The obstacle, and the pain it creates, convince desire that transcendence is within reach. For sadomasochists, this pain is the sacrament through which they partake of that evasive transcendental being that is the goal of all desire.

Test run with George talking to himself off-the-cuff about production of monsters.

Some personal background on how I ended up writing and talking so much about Christianity. Reading some of Dostoevsky's "Grand Inquisitor" and discussing the big question of individual freedom versus belonging. 

Dr. E. Michael Jones returns to discuss the history of sexual revolution. We explore its connection to personal vice and political control. We go over influential figures like Adam Weishaupt, Sigmund Freud, Wilhem Reich, Claude McKay, Bill Clinton, and Jeffrey Epstein. Dr. Jones also explores the role of sexual liberation on mass entertainment, the feminist movement, Black music, psychological control, and blackmail. We touch on sexual transgression and Jewish influence as the hidden grammar of government and revolution.

George and Virgil have their take on a topic on which everyone has a take: WOKE CULTURE, or WOKISM. 

René Girard may be the first person to clearly foresee the ongoing obsession with victimhood, predicting it in his writings back in the 1970s. So wouldn't you want to know how the prophet saw it? In this episode we serve that to you as a centrepiece in a smorgasbord of other enlightening and empowering insights on the topic.

The episode is part of a series on the new-right reaction to the modern malaise. Understanding the sworn enemies of the new right is part of understanding the new right themselves.

Adversaries locked in violent conflict exchange acts of aggression. With each act, they attempt to end the fight, to have the "last word of violence." Yet, the exchanges only produce symmetry: as they go blow-for-blow, rather than establishing difference, they become more and more alike. This dynamic applies to all pursuits of desire, which are always pursuits of some transcendental difference, but it becomes the most manifest when a pursuit flares up into open conflict, or war. However, the pursuit never ends in transcendence, or "libidinal impregnability." It produces death as it chugs along, and it ends in sacrifice.

1. Girardian takes on addiction.
2. Beyond the biochemistry, brain science, and environmental triggers.
3. The pursuit of deviated transcendence.
4. The tormenting obstacle; obsessive or repetitive stumbling.
5. Addiction to pain as well as euphoria; sadomasochism. 
6. Escapism; addiction as medicine.
7. Aggravated addiction and hallucinations, monsters, and demons.

In this conversation, Dr. E. Michael Jones and discuss themes from his book The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit, including the role of Christianity in shaping revolutionary movements. We explore points of the historical context of modern revolutionary rebellion. Dr. Jones contrasts righteous rebellion with sedition, critiques the impact of usury in modern society, and addresses the scapegoating of Jews. The discussion also touches on conspiracy theories, the end of the Third Republic (a concept Dr. Jones applies to the USA), and Hegel's philosophy, culminating in a reflection on faith and works in Christianity.

Dr. E Michael Jones is back as guest. We discuss his book The Slaughter of Cities and more: the destruction of the American ethnic neighbourhood, suburbs as a form of control, and how it connects to the ongoing destruction of Western nations.

Virgil is back to talk to George about living the good life. We've done a lot of critique on the frogs and the snowflakes. Now it's time to discuss how to tell the right path and pick role models that will lead us to a good place. It helps to learn what "deviated transcendence" means, as well as the difference between internal and external mediation. Virgil and Charlie touch on some famous names as examples of true heroic exceptions.

George and Virgil talk about the parallels between our 21-century times and Nietzsche's 19th century. Things have gotten worse: as society became more and more equal, we got more and more rivalry and competition. Youth of today are confronted by their own Wagners at every step. We then swerve into talking about the anthropology of mimetic crises and how the Bible irreversibly opened our eyes to how they work.

Here finally is a true and powerful traditionalist response to both feminist accusations and the cheap bragging of low-IQ wife-beaters. Why and how are men "born to rule"? The answer is clear once we recover the once-obvious link between authority, violence, and sacrifice. The gory origins of authority in blood sacrifice, archaic, ancient, and modern. The biological expandability of male versus female bodies. Male competition and female competition (if such a thing even exists), and how it plays out in modern business environment. Patriarchy as a balancing and restraining force. The liberal blindness to the dark side of desire and competition, and what it means for our spiritual and civilisational future.

• What is it that makes us uniquely human? Thinking (homo sapiens)? Organizing (homo economicus)? Symbols (“the symbolic species”)?
• I propose that it is desire in Girardian sense — we are homo desiderans: the desiring humans.
• Artificial intelligence versus the desiring human.
• Wordcels, shape rotators, and a third way.

Christ's admonitions to turn the other cheek, love thy enemy, etc., from the Sermon on the Mount unsettle many brave Christians. We interpret these admonitions conclusively with the help of René Girard's mimetic exegesis. Take courage soldier! – Jesus does not advocate cowardice or resignation. We also reference C.S. Lewis, and discuss how "love thy enemy" links to Sun Tzu's precepts in The Art of War.

The victimary mechanism is foundational to human culture, but it already started with animals. For example, chimpanzees seem to hunt to create in-group cohesion. René Girard argued that the victimary mechanism was the motor of hominization, the process that produced humans from animals. By channeling violence outside the group, the mechanism created safe space inside the group where nurturing, cooperation, and intelligence could flourish. The intelligence in turn enhanced the ability to keep the inside and the outside separate and distinct. The positive feedback loop quickly generated a vast gulf between the new hyper-intelligent species and all other animal forms.

How and why I got into researching Amazonian spirituality. Modern interest in shamanism and the reality of shamanism among Amazonian tribes. Sorcery and witchcraft and recorded cases of scapegoating among the Amazonians. The imperative of conviviality and consequences of breaking it. Inner peace and its flip side: outer violence. 

Marx got feudalism wrong. Medieval knights weren't cunning exploiters hoarding the means of production—they were sacrificial figures whose privilege was justified by their willingness to die in battle. In this episode, I trace the strange transition from sacred warfare to sacred shopping, revealing how European aristocrats literally traded away their power for diamond buckles (Adam Smith's words, not mine). What emerges is a picture Marx couldn't see: capitalism and communism aren't opposites but rival cults worshipping the same materialist idol through different rituals. The real story isn't class struggle—it's Christianity slowly weaning Western civilization off the violent sacred of war toward the (somewhat) less bloody sacred of economic competition. And the communists? They responded to this progress by lunging backward into the most archaic form of resolution: mob formation, scapegoating, and blood sacrifice on an industrial scale.

Part 3 of a 5-part series.

Parts I through III traced mimesis in Ancient Greek philosophy, René Girard's mimetic theory, the Scripture and the Church Fathers. Here in Part IV, we arrive at Medieval Scholasticism. It is said to have baptized Aristotle. With that, it also built a great intellectual edifice that set off the modern Western academia. But Aristotelian demonstratio and scientia is based on natures and teleology, not persons and imitation. The change of focus set a chain reaction that caused the nominalist and pietist reactions, Reformation, scientific and political revolutions, and ultimately, modernity.

Parts I and II covered the role of imitation in philosophy: essential, but incomplete. In this Part III we compare the account of imitation in René Girard's mimetic theory to the scriptural narrative of the Fall.

We are made to imitate: Scripture says man is created in the image and likeness of God. The trouble in Eden starts not because Adam and Eve decided to imitate God. It's the mode of their imitation. In turning to perceive God as their rival, they take the Serpent as their model. 

From the simple story of the Fall, we can derive the whole mimetic anthropology of rivalry, scapegoating, and sacred violence found in Girard's writings millennia later.

Last episode for the summer. Shakespeare snobbery. Two audiences of Shakespeare: the mob and the initiates. Two layers in Othello and Hamlet: romanticism and mimesis. Othello: thirst for the exotic and the death wish. Hamlet: disillusionment with the violent sacred. Shakespeare the man: relationship trauma and dramatic genius.

The fifth and final part of the "Metaphysics Scandal" series asks what happened after Scholasticism broke. The answer is two roads — empiricism and rationalism — that look like opposites but in the extreme arrive at the same destination: a world scrubbed of God and person, leaving only function.

What drove both roads is older than either. It is the Promethean spirit — the will to possess knowledge by force rather than receive it as gift. Today, an endpoint of that arc is artificial intelligence: the moment when function threatens to become total, when the machine that cannot be a face is offered as a substitute for one. Pope Leo XIV's new encyclical calls it an anthropological crisis, not a technological one. This episode is an attempt to explain how we got here.

George rushes were respectable scholars fear to tread: the mimetic-theory hypothesis on homosexuality. The idea is that homosexuality arises when the sexual attention and appetite shift from the instinctual object of desire – i.e. a person of the opposite sex – onto the rival. George elaborates on the theory and applies it to the next-level sexual nonconformity we're seeing today: gender fluidity, multiplying types of sexuality, gender transitioning, etc. The phenomenon is explained as resulting from hyper-sexualised culture, but also from individuals trying to differentiate through authentic desire.

In Part I we saw Newton's anti-Trinitarianism and his science as a single revolution, opposed to the idea that divine form can enter matter and restructure it from within. This week, the counter-argument. We turn to the man in the opposing corner: Athanasius of Alexandria. We introduce his magnum opus, On the Incarnation. First, the metaphysics — form, matter, ousia, the Image. We then interpret the main thesis, which is that the same Divine Logos who created the world became incarnate to save it. The closing questions consider the social consequences of scientism derived from Newton's vision, with its cosmos of inert matter governed at a distance, in which the Incarnation becomes unthinkable, and in which persons too become bundles of forms and properties tossed and turned by impersonal forces.

Marx titled his magnum opus Das Kapital, yet he completely botched what capital actually is. Here's the real definition: capital is the power to influence the behavior of others—and it's generated not by factories or machinery but by converging desires. The moment two people want the same fish, that fish becomes capital. If Elon Musk survives nuclear apocalypse alone in a bunker with mountains of gold and machines, his capital is exactly zero—because capital exists in relationships, not objects. This is why Marx, the ultimate "supply guy," couldn't see that the dainty lady shopping for dresses and the factory owner exploiting workers are caught in the same mimetic web. In this episode, I argue that capital has existed "since the monkeys," that both capitalists and communists worship the same materialist idol, and that the real escape isn't revolution or free markets—it's walking away from the fascination entirely.

Part 4 in a 5-part series.