politics – Page 119

Clown World Chronicles: Understanding the Honk Meme

There’s a new meme making waves in cyberspace. Based on the original Pepe the green frog meme, this new form adds a multicoloured clown wig, a red clown nose, a novelty bow tie and a eerie, distant smile. The meme is normally presented with the word ‘Honk’ or similar. This essay explains the honk meme.

The original Pepe meme is how an entire subculture has found a manner of expression. This bland-looking rubber-lipped frog has come to stand for an entire generation of everymen, his various expressions of rage, fear, anger and bliss the way that generation signals emotions in Internet groups. Many threads on Internet message boards start with a picture of Pepe, and these images portray an incredibly broad range of sentiments.

Pepe represents the travails of a generation that finds itself doing much worse than its parents did. The Millennials are discovering that their standard of living is lower than the generation before it, and much lower than that of the Boomers. Studies show that wage workers in Western countries have lost most of their house-buying power over the last few decades, and it looks set to get worse.

So Pepe’s new appearance, in the form of the Honkster, signals a dark turn in the collective mindset of the young.

Essentially, the idea is that we now live in Clown World, where nothing makes any sense any more. Our society is no longer a real society, where people care for each other on account of belonging to a wider kin group, but a parody of one, in which the old have all the wealth and power and aspire to suck as much life out of the younger generations as possible. We’ve strayed so far from our founding principles that we’ve lost our moral compass.

The sheer ridiculousness of so much of everyday life, it is reasoned, can only be explained with the idea that the normal timeline of Planet Earth deviated from its previous course at some unknown point in the recent past, and entered this place called Clown World. According to this theory, the Planet Earth is now in a different dimension of reality to the one it was in up until a few years ago. Therefore, the ordinary laws of psychology, sociology and political science no longer apply.

In Clown World, the clowns are in charge. This is nowhere more easily understood than by observing the total absence of qualifications among our ruling classes. Donald Trump in America, Theresa May in Britain, Justin Trudeau in Canada and Jacinda Ardern in New Zealand all appear uniquely hopeless. They blunder clumsily from one slapstick mishap to the next, and they appear intent on making the world into as big a circus as possible.

In Clown World, there is no longer cause to feel any hope. The world has failed. Not only has it failed, but it’s failed so badly that it seems like it was really just a joke the whole time. Nothing this absurd could possibly have been taken seriously by so many people, and therefore the only rational thing to do is to throw one’s head back in laughter as the clowns make honking noises.

The slack smile of the Honkster is not the smile of joy. It’s not even the sardonic smile of a generation that knows their parents traded away their inheritance for a pittance. It is the drugged smile of oxycontin, anti-depressants and anti-psychotics, pharmaceuticals being the only way to cope the fact that our world is a brave new one, in which people’s suffering has been medicated away to reduce their propensity to rebellion.

In this context, it has been said by an anonymous wit that “The world ends not with a bang, and not with a whimper, but with a honk.”

The honk is the look on the face of the Green Party supporter when she is gang raped by the same refugees she voted to open the borders for.

The honk is the sound the key makes in the lock when it turns to jail a man for criticising Police inaction in the face of reports of Islamic rape gangs operating in their area.

The honk is the cry of helplessness of a hundred million young people all over the West, drawn out so long that it has taken on a different character entirely, morphing from despair into a demented humour.

Realistically, this honk ought to be a terrifying sound. The discordant honking is the fanfare of a generation that has not only lost hope, but which has also lost meaning. In Clown World, it makes no sense to hope for anything, because there is no relationship between hoping for things and getting them. One cannot set one’s will to a goal and achieve it here, because nothing makes sense. The whole world is against one.

As the economic situation worsens, the face of the Honkster might be replaced with something less humourous. The bitterness inherent in the Clown World meme, and the nihilism it reveals, suggests an unstable and unpredictable environment. The Honk meme might be a sign that the social fabric is starting to tear.

If you enjoyed reading this essay, you can get a compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2018 from Amazon for Kindle or Amazon for CreateSpace (for international readers), or TradeMe (for Kiwis). A compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2017 is also available.

The Case For Cannabis: A Criminal Record is A Disproportionate Punishment

Cannabis possession or cultivation are currently crimes, which means that a criminal record is a common result from being arrested for a cannabis offence. Our justice system, however, is supposed to operate on the principle that “the punishment fits the crime”. This article will argue that getting a criminal record for anything to do with cannabis is grossly disproportionate, considering the severity of the crime.

Having a criminal record makes a person’s life a lot harder. Many employers will filter out applicants with criminal records before they even seriously consider them. This is true of almost every job that requires any real responsibility. This means that a future of poverty, or at least severely limited economic opportunities, is a common consequence of getting a criminal conviction.

Of course, having a criminal record is supposed to make people’s lives harder. A criminal is a person who has declared that they are unable or unwilling to abide by the rules of decent society, and it’s fair that they’re marked as such for the safety of other people. We’re not allowed to chop people’s hands off anymore, so there’s no other way to clearly mark a person as a member of the criminal class other than to give them a record.

The problem is that cannabis use isn’t a crime like a real crime is. Real crimes have victims. It’s fair that a criminal record marks a person who has acted with gross disregard or malice towards life and towards suffering. But a person who grew some medicinal cannabis plants has not shown any callousness or ill will. If anything, they should be rewarded for taking actions to alleviate suffering in the face of discouragement from the law.

Becoming unemployable because of a criminal record is one thing if you are a murderer, rapist or fraudster. In cases like these, it’s probably fair for the vast majority of employers to rule such people out from the beginning. But a person who used cannabis, even if they grew it, has not done anything to warrant being placed in the same class as those who have callously brought harm to others.

In any case, that’s not where the punishment ends. Most fair people can agree that it’s unnecessarily brutal for a person with a cannabis conviction to have trouble finding work for the rest of their lives, but it’s also extremely hard to travel with a criminal conviction. Many countries – Canada and America among the most notorious – regularly refuse to let people in if they have a criminal record, reasoning that they have failed to demonstrate sufficient good character.

These two punishments tie in with each other. Many jobs nowadays involve international travel, and this pattern looks set to continue as the world continues to globalise and integrate. This means that, in order to be able to perform an increasing number of jobs, one needs to be free to travel internationally. A person with a criminal conviction preventing them from travel is effectively disqualified from all of these jobs.

Forty years ago, when the War on Drugs was just ramping up, the sort of person who got a cannabis conviction probably wasn’t likely to travel overseas anyway. But in 2019, being restricted from overseas travel for life is a heavy punishment indeed.

It’s worth noting here that a criminal record also affects the wider family. An adult whose employment and travel opportunities are restricted will have trouble providing not only for themselves, but also for their families. So the children of people who grow up with cannabis convictions are also punished.

All of this constitutes obscene cruelty, especially when it is considered that cannabis is a medicine, and that most people who grow it do so to alleviate suffering.

It was once – falsely – believed that cannabis caused a lot of harm. When it was thought that cannabis was a dangerously addictive drug that destroyed peoples minds, then giving someone a criminal record for cannabis may have made some vague kind of sense. Now that we know that cannabis prohibition was built on false premises, it is apparent that giving someone a criminal record for dealing with it is unfair.

In this case, the correct thing to do is to formalise this state of affairs, and as soon as possible, by repealing cannabis prohibition. We can no longer, in good faith, argue that giving someone a criminal conviction is a punishment that fits the suffering caused by the supposed crime.

This article is an excerpt from The Case For Cannabis Law Reform, compiled by Vince McLeod and due for release by VJM Publishing in the summer of 2018/19.

The Four Alchemical Realms of Law

When people talk about whether or not something is illegal, they’re talking about whether or not something is against the law. The problem with this logic is that there are several different kinds of laws, and some of them override others. As this article will examine, there is a realm of law corresponding to each of the four masculine elements of clay, iron, silver and gold.

The realm of clay corresponds to natural laws. These laws are fundamental, and therefore they underpin all the laws of iron, silver and gold. Like the clay, these laws are so fundamental that they don’t need to be written down, and they don’t need to be understood. They are simply Nature doing its thing, and they have applied long before any human laws existed, and still apply to the vast, vast majority of the Earth’s creatures.

In a state of Nature, most people are barely aware that these laws exist, until they feel the pleasure or pain that comes with acceding to, or violating, those laws. But the laws of Nature exist no matter whether a person is aware of them or not. Fall off a cliff, you die. Eat poison, you die. Get too close to the big animal with the sharp teeth, you die.

Although the basic laws of Nature are physical laws, and then chemical laws, some of them are also biological laws. Laws of clay that start to approach the realm of the laws of iron are those like “Don’t try to have sex with female X or male A will thump you over the head.” These are essentially the same laws that non-human creatures use to defend their territory or resources. “Might is right” is an example of the laws of clay.

The realm of iron corresponds to the the laws that are enforced by organised human violence. When civilisation began, all offences against the sensibilities of property owners were written down into a code of laws, and penalties for transgressing them proscribed. An entire class of judges and jailers came into being to enforce these laws, paid for by the surplus wealth generated by the order that came with civilisation.

These are laws of iron because the Police will beat you up or put you in a cage if you disobey them. You may even get your head chopped off with an iron axe. Unlike natural laws, legal laws are written down, and therefore can be enunciated very clearly (although some will always quibble). The point of this was to distinguish them from the laws of clay, which were never any more than simple animal instincts.

Like iron, the laws of iron are unyielding. The Justice System doesn’t care if you knew it was illegal or not, or if you really meant to do it or not. Justice is blind, which is another way of saying that it is merciless. Laws degrade into laws of clay once money starts getting involved in the justice system and better lawyers get lighter sentences. But when they don’t degrade, the edges of them become gilt with silver.

The realm of silver corresponds to the laws that are enforced by society. These are the laws that relate to social status, i.e. whether or not a person is considered high value by their community. Violating laws of silver doesn’t carry a risk of arrest like violating laws of iron does, but they can lead to people being less friendly towards you, and giving you fewer employment, social or romantic opportunities. Obeying laws of silver tends to lead to the opposite.

As silver is softer and brighter than iron, so are the laws that fall under the realm of silver more malleable than those that fall under the realm of iron. A person who has transgressed a law of silver, and who has earned some enmity from his fellows, can escape punishment by making a sufficient compensatory effort. Therefore, the laws of silver are more subtle than the laws of iron, and can also change on a whim.

However, like iron, they are cold and sharp enough, in their own way. Many a man has been found innocent at trial but nevertheless destroyed by whispering and gossiping. Social exclusion might be more subtle than an axe, and the consequences less permanent, but it is still enough to cause suffering, and therefore enough to modify social behaviour.

The realm of gold corresponds to the laws that are enforced by God. In this sense, the laws pertaining to the realm of gold are similar to those pertaining to clay, in that they are not written down, and neither are they social. Although other people might be able to help a person understand the laws of clay and gold, they can’t force that person to abide by them, unlike the laws of iron and silver. They can only instruct and leave it up to that person’s true will.

It isn’t easy to speak about what the laws of gold are, but it can be said that they are even more subtle than those of silver and iron. Here we are speaking of laws like the law of karma and the law of attraction. It has to be understood at this point that the realm of gold is the realm of consciousness, and its laws relate to how to alter the frequency of one’s consciousness.

Much of alchemy is the art of playing higher laws off against lower ones, so that one causes change in accordance with one’s will despite being bound by laws the entire time. This is a subject of its own and deserves its own essay, but there are some things that can be said about it here.

One can alter one’s consciousness by obeying laws in higher realms at the expense of laws in lower realms. The most powerful example of such a thing was the example of Socrates. By obeying the laws of gold, and completely ignoring all of the laws of silver, iron and clay to the point of causing his own death, Socrates made himself immortal in this world. Likewise, gathering with friends to break unjust laws of iron (such as drug laws) can create magically powerful bonds of solidarity.

This is another possible interpretation of Aleister Crowley’s saying that “The key to joy is disobedience”. By disobeying the cruder laws, such as the law of biological entropy, unjust statutory laws and by prising the truth above social fashion, it’s possible to raise the level of one’s consciousness. A skilled alchemist can therefore reduce the level of their suffering, and the level of the suffering around them, even as they disobey laws, and even though disobeying those lower laws consistently brings suffering.

A Former Black Magician Provides a Magical Analysis of the Christchurch Mosque Shootings

Mass killings almost always have the effect of spreading terror throughout the population that was slaughtered. Most of the time, this terror is the intent of the act. When it is, the killings could be said to be black magic rituals, acts of Greater Magic intended to force the will of the perpetrator onto all the people who observed it. The Christchurch mosque shootings of March 15 can be considered such a deed.

According to one perspective, there are three elementary kinds of magic. The kind that I am interested in here is black magic. This uses the power of fear to cause change in others according to the will of the magician. The other kinds are white magic, which takes fear away, and grey magic, which causes confusion.

The easy way to understand black magic is to understand it as intimidation. It’s why the Police wear uniforms, and caps with black and white chequered bands, and why security guards wear black t-shirts and shoes with thick soles. It’s why the Undertaker wears black, why the Waffen-SS wore black, and why it was said by Gareth Edwards of the All Blacks jersey that “There is something about the blackness of their jersey that strikes fear into your heart.”

Black magic could also be understood as the art of domination. A successful black magician is dominant because of the fear that other people have for them. The best way to intimidate and dominate a person, of course, is to cause them direct physical and personal injury, or credibly threaten to. If they are not able to retaliate to this then they will be forced to submit.

The Christchurch mosque shootings were black magic rituals intended to strike fear into the hearts of certain populations in New Zealand. In this sense, they were much like the John F Kennedy assassination and 9/11. The hope was that the killings would incite submission. This is the most effective way to understand them, and to explain both the actions of the shooter and the response of the nation. Furthermore, it allows us to predict the future.

Jacinda Ardern, and the New Zealand mainstream media, being atheists and non-believers in magic, made a number of grave errors in the aftermath of those shootings. They made these errors because they did not account for being in the domain of magic. Some decisions, although they may have made sense from the perspective of being nice and soothing tensions, didn’t make much sense from the perspective of countering black magic.

When Ardern decided that the name of Branton Tarrant shall not be spoken in polite company, she raised his black magic power to the level of Voldemort from the Harry Potter series. Oddly, there’s a scene from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in which Harry is told: “Call him Voldemort, Harry. Always use the proper name for things. Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.”

This is advice that Ardern should really have heeded. When she spoke to Parliament and made a particular effort not to mention Tarrant’s name, she demonstrated that the nation had collectively shit itself in response to the shootings. We showed that they had affected us very deeply and that we were greatly shaken. Tarrant was living rent-free in our heads.

The problem with this, from a black magic perspective, is that is shows vulnerability, and vulnerability attracts more cruelty. I’ll repeat that again: vulnerability attracts cruelty. A lot of people don’t like to accept this, on account of that it is so cruel, but it’s nevertheless how things work. Black magicians like to seek out vulnerability because it means that their magic will have a greater impact.

So any budding black magicians out there, thinking of a way to make their actions as powerful as possible, may have observed Ardern’s response, and taken note of the vulnerability displayed. This is a very bad sign, because it predicts a high likelihood of future attacks, whether follow-up moves by white nationalists or reprisals by Islamists.

After all, Tarrant himself was the victim of a previous act of black magic: the Drottninggatan truck attack in Stockholm in 2015 that left three dead, including an eight-year old girl named Ebba Åkerlund. Images of Åkerlund’s body torn into several pieces left a powerful impression on many Internet dwellers, in particular those on the chans. Tarrant was affected so heavily that he mentioned it in his manifesto.

The downside of black magic, of course, is that if the intended victims of it do not submit then their fear will turn naturally to hatred. When it does, it’s possible for cycles of revenge attacks to arise, and even to become normalised. The horror of the Drottninggatan truck attack was insufficient to cause Tarrant to submit, and as such it turned to the hatred that we saw expressed on March 15.

The way to counter black magic is with fearlessness. London’s response to the 7/7 bus attacks of 2005, which killed 56 people, is the model to follow. Instead of the response that Vince McLeod dubbed “The Great New Zealand Chimpout“, the British response made a point of being business as usual, thereby denying the perpetrators the emotional impact that they desired.

It was noted by all that various criminal gangs, in particular the Mongrel Mob, took a front and centre role in the community response to the shootings. The most visible response involved leading a public haka. The haka needs to be understood, in this context, as a black magic ritual. Its purpose is to demonstrate to the enemy your vigour, determination and unity of purpose. In this, a haka is little different to any other war dance.

The point of performing a haka after such a mass shooting was to demonstrate to the unseen “bad guys” out there that we are strong, we are ready and we are willing to fight. We will not be cowed. This is often the context in which a haka was performed in pre-contact New Zealand: someone would spot a member of an enemy war party in the bush, alert the others, and a haka would be performed to show that enemy that they were going to die if they continued to intrude. This was understood as black magic and called mākutu.

Certainly the New Zealand nation is currently in a state of extreme fear. Acts of national unity are necessary, but they have to be carefully considered owing to the extreme circumstances. In that regard, Tarrant’s actions have to be considered one of the, if not the single most, powerful acts of black magic ever performed in New Zealand. The only real comparison in recent history would be the Rainbow Warrior bombing, which only killed one person.

If the New Zealand nation wants to go forward without attracting further black magicians, and further ritual sacrifices (no matter who conducts them), they need to demonstrate that they are not afraid of death. This is chiefly done by enjoying life, and continuing to enjoy life as we had done before the shootings. Full attendance of Super Rugby games is one example. This will demonstrate to all the black magicians out there that we are not weak and not to waste their efforts on us.

Viktor Hellman is a regular contributor to VJM Publishing and author of the upcoming Anarcho-Homicidalist Manifesto.