I'd like to preface this article with the observation that I think Andy Nowicki is a thoughtful, articulate observer of the New Right, as well as the moral and spiritual wasteland that lies beyond it. That said, in his article "The Patriarchy" and Proper Manhood he seems to have committed the intellectual equivalent of one of those stagger-steps one can't help but do when walking past a lovely woman on the sidewalk.
I'm going to do the equivalent of filming this fumble with a high-speed camera, slow down the footage, and show exactly how and where he went wrong.
Andy starts out by making a revealing assumption about what he thinks the aim of The Patriarchy is: "a Facebook page geared towards young nationalist men." Contrary to this, the page is and always has been reactionary, not nationalistic.
Our page description has always been – on the sidebar below the title pictures – "Faith, Family, Monarchy." My greatest influence (and the man whom I quote more than any other) is the anti-enlightenment thinker Joseph De Maistre. Nationalism is a product of modernity, and I don't ever stop railing against modernity.
His second error comes when he says:
Andy then proceeds to demote the articles themselves to the status of "pep talks." It's a subjective evaluation, one that could be applied just as easily (if the person doing the critique were so inclined) to Henry V's St Crispin's Day speech before the Battle of Agincourt, in Shakespeare's play.
The two articles received impressive responses in terms of feedback, page views, and "likes." Simplifying them and misreading their intentions makes what follows in Andy's article seem all the more reasonable. He goes on to say:
Andy is quite erudite, but not, to my knowledge, psychically gifted. My intention in choosing to attach those pictures was not "...to function as incentive for the guys reading (...) to become better men." My intention was to get men to open the article and digest the contents, which is the intention of every piece of cover art ever attached to an article, magazine, book, CD or DVD. The image says "This is worth your time" or "Look inside. You won't be bored."
As with any Facebook page, I have competition. There's The Soul of the East, Primordial Traditions, No More Brother Wars, Politically Incorrect - /pol/, Disdain for Plebs, and Degeneracy Today... though for some reason over the course of the week the admin of Degeneracy Today turned from critique to expression and started to post a near-endless stream of sexually-suggestive anime images which has his readership confused, annoyed, and questioning his sanity.
Anyhow, with this in view, I need to be at the top of my game in terms of presentation, or people won't use their valuable time to click on my articles rather than my competitors when they briefly come into view on the members' news feed. Like it or not, we are (and arguably always have been) an image-culture. The most striking, aesthetically-pleasing images will garner the most attention. I thus am in a position where I can either attach images of thoroughly mundane-looking women to accompany inspirational articles or I can choose someone who looks like Helen of Troy, and thus will compel thousands of people (5,278 and 4,388 views for the two articles in question at the time of writing) to emulate the Greeks of the Iliad and take the plunge.
In either event, it is the content of the articles that matter, not the images, and interestingly, despite Andy's impression of my readership as somewhat gullible, easily distracted/deluded and lecherous males, the vast bulk of the comments (85% or better) were entirely in regard to the article content and didn't even mention the images. The readership, for the most part, got it.
They knew I wasn't saying: "Hey boys, give it a go and you'll get yourself a stunner just like these!" but rather: "Don't be idiots. You're still young. Giving up would be idiotic. If a dull guy like me could have found four near-ideal women, whom he could have snagged permanently, there's a better than average chance that you'll find one, and, when you do, don't be stupid like I was... return her decency and devotion."
I gave them this warning because, while being an outright asshole is a good way to get into a woman's bed, it will harm your chances of enjoying a meaningful, lasting relationship with her.
The page is called The Patriarchy because I have taken a feminist pejorative and turned it into a rallying cry of constructive masculinity. The page fights feminism but isn't a strict MRA page because those guys are overstepping reality in the same way feminists are. A West full of MRAs and feminists just ensures no babies will be born and the European race perishes. The Patriarchy is about reminding men that there is value and, yes, even status, in being a husband and father.
Many bright, handsome young guys with loads of potential, however, initially responded to the page and its themes with "It'll never happen, so why try?" and other defeatist platitudes that I suspect they've picked up in the manosphere. That's why, in the articles to which Andy refers, I suggest that men use the manosphere or PUA pages for the techniques it can offer in terms of getting through the initial stages of attracting and engaging a young woman, but then totally dispense with it once a bond has started to form.
I never meant for people to take from the pictures the false notion that if only they do [x] they will find women who look exactly like or comparable to either woman. No more than, say, Andy meant for us to think in his article that if we only do what he suggests we will suddenly look like the latest, most muscular, and handsome version of Superman yet – English actor Henry Cavill. Or that the anonymous women who propositioned him for online sex in this article necessarily looked just like the delightfully pert young woman in the picture that he chose to accompany the article. In much the same way, I did mine.
Not sure what he was thinking when he chose this gem, though:
I'm Lycurgus and the Patriarchy is my proto-New Sparta. I'm harsh with my people. They know that. I scold them when they get out of line, if they're being stupid I tell them so directly, and I ban people with a frequency and severity that invokes comparisons to Reinhard Heydrich and Felix Dzerzhinsky. It's not cruelty, it's a sorting process. Only the best remain, and they're of an extremely high quality. The younger men frequent the page daily, and their comment contributions are so good that I've now made it a practice to post screen grabs of the best of them.
The point is; there's leeway for me there. I don't need to spoon-feed them and clarify this, that, and the other. If I post a picture attached to an article, they know it's merely artistic and has no direct bearing on the article unless I specify that to be the case. They know there are no guarantees in life. They're well aware of the "cold, hard facts on the ground" and yet... they're undaunted. As I said to them in my second article:
I don't see anything unrealistic about that. I sincerely can't.
Andy is right, though, when he points out that many of the more appealing human traits tend to be viewed as "boring" by young men and women today, and as a younger man I was no exception. This is because young men and women are no longer prepared by their parents for love and life. Too busy with work, too busy with play, mothers and fathers don't speak to their children any more, much less participate meaningfully in their lives.
People laugh when the Duggars on the hit TLC show 19 Kids and Counting insist their older children practice the now antiquated social folkways of "courting." In this, the entire family plays a part in the developing relationship, everything is out in the open and the youngsters are encouraged–in a way I can't help but think Andy would approve–to master themselves and their carnal desires.
When I was a younger man, all I was interested in were those things that fell under the dictionary definition of "carnal." But after my fiancé died, I swiftly realised how utterly shallow, meaningless and selfish those relationships were. I was the opposite of a "man of steel"; I was a "man of appetite". I had hurt good, decent women, my fiancé included, and in none of those instances, when I had lied, cheated, or manipulated for immediate, short-term advantage, had I done a thing to bring me closer to those women, to make them value me more, trust me more, or love me more.
It had actually accomplished the opposite, and if I had not dumped most of them first, they most certainly would have gotten the drop on me. This is why I don't advise using the techniques you'll learn on PUA pages for anything longer-term. It's counterproductive.
If you're going to use those things at all, do so in the very beginning to help you with any awkwardness or lack of confidence you might have–but totally refrain from lying or anything that will bite you in the ass later–and then revert to your natural, decent patterns of behaviour as soon as the relationship is settled. That way the woman will think she's taken a bad boy and made him good, which is something a distressingly high number of women fantasise about.
There's nothing unrealistic about this, or irresponsible. There are no guarantees, but you're guaranteed to avoid a lot of the stupid mistakes I made, which will save you a lot of time and guilt.
Once again, to really address Andy's criticism that I'm pushing a "surefire" method, there are factors that will remain forever beyond your control. So, like the rest of us, you take your chance, or you give up before the starting gun sounds. As I said in my second article, quitting before you've even hit your mid-twenties isn't a sign of advanced wisdom or realism. It's a sign that nature is selecting your genes for the biological scrap heap.
I totally and passionately reject the allegation that anything that I've ever done at The Patriarchy "solicits a certain ignobility of spirit" from the readership. I have only ever sought to use my extremely limited free time to help young men avoid some of my earlier mistakes (many of which could definitely be called ignoble) and thus help them to live fuller, more correct, and more righteous existences.
I don't take issue with the last few paragraphs Andy writes, wherein he describes an aspirational, stoic masculinity that to my mind is not at all at odds with The Patriarchy and its membership. The only thing I would question is the emphasis that he places on physical beauty. While there are definitely women whom the bulk of men would consider beautiful, it's important to bear in mind that beauty in prospective mates is highly subjective. A woman who is intensely appealing to one man may not interest his friend in the least. How many times have you heard said (or said yourself) "I'll take the blonde, you take the brunette" or vice-versa.
It's also useful to bear in mind when approaching a woman for the first time, that while your pulse is hammering, your palms sweating and your mind a sluggish heap of useless Jell-O, there is an awfully good chance that she is feeling exactly the same way. Feminism sought to create an unnatural gap between man and woman; to deprive men of their innate powers and convince women that they don't need masculine power at all. It wasn't entirely successful, and as I said in the second of the articles:
The woman in the photo attached to the first article, so beautiful and supposedly unattainable that no ordinary fellow could ever reasonably hope to gain her attention, much less her devotion, just happens to be... Andy Nowicki's: "(self-proclaimed) most devoted, most maniacal fan." She owns and operates a fan page for Andy, which is really quite good. She has bought and read all of his books, and in regard to her author-signed copies, describes herself as "one ecstatic fangirl!"
If the potential existed for you, Andy, and it existed for me with four other wonderful women, it exists for all of us.
My thanks to Andy and Colin for allowing me this right of reply. It's only fair though, considering that I'm making them feature characters in my latest novel, which I must now devote what little time I have left this afternoon.
The only question now is, do I kill off Andy's character in a slow, tortuous manner, or in an incident both hideously garish but mercifully swift? One of my enthusiastic young Patriarchs, Werner Van Schalkwyk, has already suggested that he be beaten to death with a giant rubber dildo.
I have no idea how I'll work that into the book, and while it probably won't kill him, I've decided that a giant rubber dildo attack must happen to him.
Place your suggestions in comments below.
I'm going to do the equivalent of filming this fumble with a high-speed camera, slow down the footage, and show exactly how and where he went wrong.
Andy starts out by making a revealing assumption about what he thinks the aim of The Patriarchy is: "a Facebook page geared towards young nationalist men." Contrary to this, the page is and always has been reactionary, not nationalistic.
Our page description has always been – on the sidebar below the title pictures – "Faith, Family, Monarchy." My greatest influence (and the man whom I quote more than any other) is the anti-enlightenment thinker Joseph De Maistre. Nationalism is a product of modernity, and I don't ever stop railing against modernity.
His second error comes when he says:
"[The Patriarchy] ran a series of posts, each of which featured an eye-catching picture of a highly attractive young woman possessed of an apparently impeccable traditionalist orientation and mindset."As can be seen in the actual posts (#1 dated 31 December 2014, #2 dated 13 January 2015) I only introduced the first girl as being of a traditionalist mindset. The quote from the post:
"This woman, who I will not name, is a member of this page. Think of her not as an individual, but as an archetype. She is beautiful and highly intelligent, yet modest and demure. She is strong and capable, but willing to defer to you and feels safe under your protection. She will defend your offspring to the death, but open herself completely to you, making herself totally vulnerable out of trust and love."I could make these claims about the first woman because I know her. More on her later. I made no such claim, however, about the woman appearing in the second article, which was aimed at the default defeatist attitude which some ridiculously young men now harbour with regard to their chances of finding any woman.
Andy then proceeds to demote the articles themselves to the status of "pep talks." It's a subjective evaluation, one that could be applied just as easily (if the person doing the critique were so inclined) to Henry V's St Crispin's Day speech before the Battle of Agincourt, in Shakespeare's play.
The unmistakable pepping effect.
The two articles received impressive responses in terms of feedback, page views, and "likes." Simplifying them and misreading their intentions makes what follows in Andy's article seem all the more reasonable. He goes on to say:
"The original poster, in his defense, intended for the girls on display to function as incentive for the guys reading (and more notably, staring, swooning, and drooling) to become better men. Nor were the pictures salacious, unduly provocative, or otherwise exploitative. Still, the fact that these images were utilized as a form of enticement has unavoidable pitfalls, if character formation is indeed what is being aimed at."It's nice to be defended in an article where your defender also manages to call you both immature and irresponsible, a little dizzying perhaps, but I must take issue with this particular defense.
Andy is quite erudite, but not, to my knowledge, psychically gifted. My intention in choosing to attach those pictures was not "...to function as incentive for the guys reading (...) to become better men." My intention was to get men to open the article and digest the contents, which is the intention of every piece of cover art ever attached to an article, magazine, book, CD or DVD. The image says "This is worth your time" or "Look inside. You won't be bored."
As with any Facebook page, I have competition. There's The Soul of the East, Primordial Traditions, No More Brother Wars, Politically Incorrect - /pol/, Disdain for Plebs, and Degeneracy Today... though for some reason over the course of the week the admin of Degeneracy Today turned from critique to expression and started to post a near-endless stream of sexually-suggestive anime images which has his readership confused, annoyed, and questioning his sanity.
Anyhow, with this in view, I need to be at the top of my game in terms of presentation, or people won't use their valuable time to click on my articles rather than my competitors when they briefly come into view on the members' news feed. Like it or not, we are (and arguably always have been) an image-culture. The most striking, aesthetically-pleasing images will garner the most attention. I thus am in a position where I can either attach images of thoroughly mundane-looking women to accompany inspirational articles or I can choose someone who looks like Helen of Troy, and thus will compel thousands of people (5,278 and 4,388 views for the two articles in question at the time of writing) to emulate the Greeks of the Iliad and take the plunge.
In either event, it is the content of the articles that matter, not the images, and interestingly, despite Andy's impression of my readership as somewhat gullible, easily distracted/deluded and lecherous males, the vast bulk of the comments (85% or better) were entirely in regard to the article content and didn't even mention the images. The readership, for the most part, got it.
They knew I wasn't saying: "Hey boys, give it a go and you'll get yourself a stunner just like these!" but rather: "Don't be idiots. You're still young. Giving up would be idiotic. If a dull guy like me could have found four near-ideal women, whom he could have snagged permanently, there's a better than average chance that you'll find one, and, when you do, don't be stupid like I was... return her decency and devotion."
I gave them this warning because, while being an outright asshole is a good way to get into a woman's bed, it will harm your chances of enjoying a meaningful, lasting relationship with her.
The page is called The Patriarchy because I have taken a feminist pejorative and turned it into a rallying cry of constructive masculinity. The page fights feminism but isn't a strict MRA page because those guys are overstepping reality in the same way feminists are. A West full of MRAs and feminists just ensures no babies will be born and the European race perishes. The Patriarchy is about reminding men that there is value and, yes, even status, in being a husband and father.
Many bright, handsome young guys with loads of potential, however, initially responded to the page and its themes with "It'll never happen, so why try?" and other defeatist platitudes that I suspect they've picked up in the manosphere. That's why, in the articles to which Andy refers, I suggest that men use the manosphere or PUA pages for the techniques it can offer in terms of getting through the initial stages of attracting and engaging a young woman, but then totally dispense with it once a bond has started to form.
I never meant for people to take from the pictures the false notion that if only they do [x] they will find women who look exactly like or comparable to either woman. No more than, say, Andy meant for us to think in his article that if we only do what he suggests we will suddenly look like the latest, most muscular, and handsome version of Superman yet – English actor Henry Cavill. Or that the anonymous women who propositioned him for online sex in this article necessarily looked just like the delightfully pert young woman in the picture that he chose to accompany the article. In much the same way, I did mine.
Not sure what he was thinking when he chose this gem, though:
 |
| From "Girls, Girls, Girls, and God," which strangely didn't feature any pictures of God. |
I'm Lycurgus and the Patriarchy is my proto-New Sparta. I'm harsh with my people. They know that. I scold them when they get out of line, if they're being stupid I tell them so directly, and I ban people with a frequency and severity that invokes comparisons to Reinhard Heydrich and Felix Dzerzhinsky. It's not cruelty, it's a sorting process. Only the best remain, and they're of an extremely high quality. The younger men frequent the page daily, and their comment contributions are so good that I've now made it a practice to post screen grabs of the best of them.
The point is; there's leeway for me there. I don't need to spoon-feed them and clarify this, that, and the other. If I post a picture attached to an article, they know it's merely artistic and has no direct bearing on the article unless I specify that to be the case. They know there are no guarantees in life. They're well aware of the "cold, hard facts on the ground" and yet... they're undaunted. As I said to them in my second article:
"This page is for men who look at distant summits and see a challenge, not imminent failure."It ultimately won't matter if they fail, because they will have tried their utmost and lived life fully along the way. If they give up peremptorily, spend nights and weekends alone in their bedrooms, wanking or playing Call of Duty when they could have been out in the world, forging bonds of either friendship or passion with women–and experiences with their posse of male comrades–it will be time vastly better spent... not wasted by any means. I'm not telling them to succeed or die, after all, nobody's telling them to come back with their shield, or upon it, I'm telling them to man up and try.
I don't see anything unrealistic about that. I sincerely can't.
Andy is right, though, when he points out that many of the more appealing human traits tend to be viewed as "boring" by young men and women today, and as a younger man I was no exception. This is because young men and women are no longer prepared by their parents for love and life. Too busy with work, too busy with play, mothers and fathers don't speak to their children any more, much less participate meaningfully in their lives.
People laugh when the Duggars on the hit TLC show 19 Kids and Counting insist their older children practice the now antiquated social folkways of "courting." In this, the entire family plays a part in the developing relationship, everything is out in the open and the youngsters are encouraged–in a way I can't help but think Andy would approve–to master themselves and their carnal desires.
When I was a younger man, all I was interested in were those things that fell under the dictionary definition of "carnal." But after my fiancé died, I swiftly realised how utterly shallow, meaningless and selfish those relationships were. I was the opposite of a "man of steel"; I was a "man of appetite". I had hurt good, decent women, my fiancé included, and in none of those instances, when I had lied, cheated, or manipulated for immediate, short-term advantage, had I done a thing to bring me closer to those women, to make them value me more, trust me more, or love me more.
It had actually accomplished the opposite, and if I had not dumped most of them first, they most certainly would have gotten the drop on me. This is why I don't advise using the techniques you'll learn on PUA pages for anything longer-term. It's counterproductive.
If you're going to use those things at all, do so in the very beginning to help you with any awkwardness or lack of confidence you might have–but totally refrain from lying or anything that will bite you in the ass later–and then revert to your natural, decent patterns of behaviour as soon as the relationship is settled. That way the woman will think she's taken a bad boy and made him good, which is something a distressingly high number of women fantasise about.
There's nothing unrealistic about this, or irresponsible. There are no guarantees, but you're guaranteed to avoid a lot of the stupid mistakes I made, which will save you a lot of time and guilt.
Once again, to really address Andy's criticism that I'm pushing a "surefire" method, there are factors that will remain forever beyond your control. So, like the rest of us, you take your chance, or you give up before the starting gun sounds. As I said in my second article, quitting before you've even hit your mid-twenties isn't a sign of advanced wisdom or realism. It's a sign that nature is selecting your genes for the biological scrap heap.
I totally and passionately reject the allegation that anything that I've ever done at The Patriarchy "solicits a certain ignobility of spirit" from the readership. I have only ever sought to use my extremely limited free time to help young men avoid some of my earlier mistakes (many of which could definitely be called ignoble) and thus help them to live fuller, more correct, and more righteous existences.
I don't take issue with the last few paragraphs Andy writes, wherein he describes an aspirational, stoic masculinity that to my mind is not at all at odds with The Patriarchy and its membership. The only thing I would question is the emphasis that he places on physical beauty. While there are definitely women whom the bulk of men would consider beautiful, it's important to bear in mind that beauty in prospective mates is highly subjective. A woman who is intensely appealing to one man may not interest his friend in the least. How many times have you heard said (or said yourself) "I'll take the blonde, you take the brunette" or vice-versa.
It's also useful to bear in mind when approaching a woman for the first time, that while your pulse is hammering, your palms sweating and your mind a sluggish heap of useless Jell-O, there is an awfully good chance that she is feeling exactly the same way. Feminism sought to create an unnatural gap between man and woman; to deprive men of their innate powers and convince women that they don't need masculine power at all. It wasn't entirely successful, and as I said in the second of the articles:
"You mustn't ignore the fact that you have literally hundreds of thousands of years of deeply-ingrained, God-endowed conditioning on your side over which a thin veneer of feminism plaster has been haphazardly slapped. You have the greater default advantage."This is the point at which I drive the dagger home.
The woman in the photo attached to the first article, so beautiful and supposedly unattainable that no ordinary fellow could ever reasonably hope to gain her attention, much less her devotion, just happens to be... Andy Nowicki's: "(self-proclaimed) most devoted, most maniacal fan." She owns and operates a fan page for Andy, which is really quite good. She has bought and read all of his books, and in regard to her author-signed copies, describes herself as "one ecstatic fangirl!"
If the potential existed for you, Andy, and it existed for me with four other wonderful women, it exists for all of us.
My thanks to Andy and Colin for allowing me this right of reply. It's only fair though, considering that I'm making them feature characters in my latest novel, which I must now devote what little time I have left this afternoon.
The only question now is, do I kill off Andy's character in a slow, tortuous manner, or in an incident both hideously garish but mercifully swift? One of my enthusiastic young Patriarchs, Werner Van Schalkwyk, has already suggested that he be beaten to death with a giant rubber dildo.
I have no idea how I'll work that into the book, and while it probably won't kill him, I've decided that a giant rubber dildo attack must happen to him.
Place your suggestions in comments below.
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