THE BAD CANON – MIGHT IS RIGHT

Might is Right is an incendiary tome with a thesis that is simultaneously very clear and near-impossible to decipher. For all the babble, what the author envisions is a world in which men don’t feel beholden to laws or each other. Mostly, though, it takes the attitude of a teenager who hates everything around him, but instead of parents and school, it’s Judeo-Christian ethics and, like, every important book or work that’s ever been written (minus Shakespeare, oddly. He seemed to like Shakespeare.). The anonymous writer chose the pseudonym Ragnar Redbeard as a clear reference to the Nordic lineage he espouses. In addition to the prose, the book is punctuated by poems that look to be modeled on biblical psalms and nursery rhymes, but with lines like “Cursed are the organizers of Charities, they are propagators of plagues” instead of “Little Boy Blue.” The author is a relatively talented writer, in the most technical sense, but the poems are lacking. In my edition, there are also illustrations, which are inspired in their awfulness. They were added later and have nothing to do with the author, but added greatly to my experience. There’s never any explanation for the poems, but who needs explanations when a book contains pictures like this:

Many have proposed that the book is a work of satire, though enough neo-Nazis have taken it seriously that it has managed to serve the opposite purpose regardless of the intention. It’s a meandering work, lifting liberally from a variety of thinkers and periodically lapsing into Redbeard’s own nonsensical diatribes. The parts he steals from other authors make the most sense, and his own thoughts usually spin into near-sublime absurdity, to the point that in reading I couldn’t shake the feeling that the joke was on me. But even if it is satire, it is a failure in that regard, as ultimately one should be able to tell at the end of the read.

Much of the last chapter impugns women, identifying them as “two-thirds womb. The other third is a network of nerves and sentimentality.” In addition to a poor understanding of a woman’s anatomy (we are at least 1/8 eyeballs and vagina), sexism shouldn’t fit in with a real vision of social Darwinism. It’s an idiotic concept, anyway, as even animals band together to help one another more often than not, but excluding women from a vision of humanity as buff, Nordic, Objectivist sociopaths is ridiculous. When his ideal person is that specific, he should take anyone he could get. Redbeard also describes women’s “noblest occupation” as “not merely to read erotic novels, pound the fiddle, waltz divinely, or fry steak and onions, but to breed men, to raise up a race of unsubduable fighters – fighters for their own hand.” This is another passage where I felt like the joke was on me for even wondering if it was serious. What reader could absorb such a passage and nod along aggressively to an image of women as violin-playing, romance-novel readers who deep fry steak?

In most of the works I’ve read thus far, the writers have managed to misinterpret Christ for their own purposes. Might is Right is unusual in that Redbeard doesn’t twist Christianity to meet his needs and frequently mentions Christ as one of the problems with modern society. The most memorable part in which he does this, though it is repeated, involves a very strange interpretation of the doctrine of “living as Christ”:

“‘If we only lived as Christ lived, what a beautiful world this would be.’ Saith all the thoughtless ones. If we lived as Christ lived, there would be none of us left to live. He begat no children; he labored not for his bread; he possessed neither house nor home; he merely talked.”

It’s a bold statement and complete misinterpretation, but unique in its existence, as most of the other hate tomes have manipulated Jesus’ teachings or honestly believed Jesus was on their side. It reminds me of garden path sentences, like “Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.” Except this one is “Live like Christ? I can’t, he’s dead!”

In case you were nervous the book isn’t racist, rest assured, it is. As I read the beginning and didn’t encounter any racism, I entertained the idea that maybe Redbeard could have surfaced long enough from his lunacy to realize that, at least in the world he invented, one in which we are free of the cultural and societal “chains” he hates so much, that the men who would prevail should be the men who deserve it, regardless of their origin. But I worried too soon, as Redbeard whipped out a bunch of racist bullshit periodically, though he does manage to target nearly everyone at some point, except his beloved Nordics.

Ultimately, it’s silly to try and make sense of a work that is so ridiculous, and it’s simultaneously comforting and disturbing to consider that the only people who would take it seriously must be as batshit as the writer, or as crazy as the character the writer put on. Whether it’s a performance or not, though…

“Behold! When the fraudulent ‘equality of natural rights’ evangel is mellifluously poured forth in the Market Places by suave dollar-hunting attorneys or half educated mechanics, even those staid citizens (whose whole life is of it a direct disproof) lead the roaring, raving, yelling crowd in its maniacal bellowings.

Lo! The Angel of Lunacy is camped in their souls!”

If the Angel of Lunacy is camped anywhere, it’s in the soul of Redbeard himself.

SARAH ROSENSHINE

Last week’s Bad Canon: “The Story of Little Black Sambo”