Fascism Against Time: Nationalism, Media Blindness, and the Cult of Augustus Sol Invictus
When I arrived, Augustus was reading Jack Donovan’s The Way of Men, a sort of manifesto of “male tribalism.” Jack, also living in Portland, has had his own infamy grow over recent years. His first book, Androphilia, was a call to other queer men to drop what he saw as the “gay identity,” and to instead reclaim their masculinity. He has gone on to write heavily about masculinity and male tribalism, now speaking at White Nationalist allied organizations like the National Policy Institute and American Renaissance. Most recently he has made news for joining the controversial group the Wolves of Vinland, a “folkish” heathen collective that combines many of the tribalist ideas of motorcycle gangs with Germanic neo-paganism.[v]
Augustus was on his way to get a tattoo from Donovan after our meeting, which was his campaign’s logo on his back. This is an eagle, wings outstretched, clutching a “fasces.” This, as I mentioned in the other articles, is a bundle of sticks bound together, the image for Mussolini’s Fascist Party. It is also the image above the Roman senate of antiquity, a move towards the plausible deniability of the Invictus campaign. In his comment on Facebook, he mentions this “fasces,” a motif he is happy to resurrect.
Campaign logo for Augustus Sol Invictus.
The bound sticks are called fasces.
Past polite pleasantries, we jumped headfirst into the meat of it as I delved into pointed questions about his positions on race, gender, nationalism, and other topics that have made his “Fireside Chats” so controversial. For his part, Augustus not only answered honestly, but seemed to fight to do so. I have interviewed dozens, perhaps hundreds, of people in my life, but almost none tried quite so hard to give an honest answer as he did across the table from me. Here he took time to analyze his own thoughts and to be as clear and as fair as possible, all of which is done to keep himself in line with some of the values that make up his own image of heroism.
I led with a question about race and IQ, asking if he believed that there were genetically defined racial difference in intelligence. This has been one of the most common edge arguments of White Nationalists over the last decade, creating a “field” known as “Human Biological Diversity.” This was formerly known as “race realism,” but HBD sounds even more innocuous and less likely to raise flags immediately to uninitiated onlookers. Augustus’ family is bi-racial, as he has bi-racial children with a woman from Puerto Rico.
He answered clearly that he thought that there was not enough evidence to make a determination one way or the other, and that IQ studies tended to be “political” and overly prejudiced. When I asked whether it gave him pause when thinking about his own children, he said no.
“No, I know my kids are smart,” he said, referencing that they were in the gifted program.
Much more at: http://godsandradicals.org/2016/03/24/f ... -invictus/