The Neoreactionary Inquisition

(Image Source, T-shirt available)

Writing under my alternative username Nemester, the head moderator over at /r/darkenlightenment, I made a post and a comment in which I discussed entryists and how they might be effectively dealt with. I have gained lots of direct experience with actually dealing with entryists which should be valuable to everyone. The comment thread in question can be found here. To paraphrase, someone asked “Why don’t we just make our own SJW free communities?” Well, we all know the answer to that. Entryists will not follow “live and let live.” If you have a community which does not have sjw values, prig progs will move in and ruin it if given the opportunity. Many may do so unconsciously and unintentionally, but at least some are quite conscious of what they are attempting to do. Enough that they constitute a real threat to any genuine and healthy community. Here is my original comment on the question of how to deal with entryists:

Its not that easy, trust me. Leftists will come in and will try to change the nature of the sub. Generally, we refer to it as “entryism” when they pretend to be moderate or “reasonable” or whatever and slowly shift the overton window. The SJW manual (before sjw was a coined term) is “Rules for Radicals” by Saul Alinsky. It specifically tells these busy bodies to invade other organizations discretely, even ostensibly apolitical ones, so they can be transformed to push for sjw causes. There really are people out there who consciously invade communities like parasites to change it to fit their utopian ideals, which of course ruins the community in the process and often causes it to dissolve because it no longer represents what it is supposed to represent.

Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.

-John Derbyshire, Conquest’s Laws

Over in /r/darkenlightenment and in neoreaction generally, huge amounts of effort has been spent trying to analyze this problem and how best to handle it. We make a great deal of effort to signal in such a way as to be repugnant to sjws. This keeps some of them away, but not all. I also try to make sure that entryists are banned when I find them. Sometimes easy, sometimes not based on comment history. Even today, there were three SJW transexuals in the sub commenting, presumably subscribed, and trying to change the overton window. I don’t think neoreaction could have done anything more to signal that we aren’t fond of sjws, or the treating of a mental illness as if it were normal. If /r/darkenlightenment has a problem with sjws persisting there, then everyone has a problem. Yet there they were. 3 of them. These people are crazy and apparently masochistic. Crazy enough that instead of sticking to their corner of the internet they will invade yours and try to force you to think like them even if they know the established community strongly dislikes them. And they will use deceit in order to do it, per their own instruction manual.

Normal people don’t do that.

What is needed for virtually every single community no matter how apolitical is something akin to an inquisition. The inquisition gets a bad rap, thanks to old protestant propaganda. But the catholic church never actually killed anyone, or even stated that anyone should be killed even if found guilty. It was the king of the country that did that. In almost all cases accused witches or whatever were found to be innocent. Moreover, the inquisition prevented a lot of revolutionary mob behavior that killed way more people in protestant countries than ever died as a result of the inquisition. Especially witch burnings. Effectively, the inquisition was a way responsible men could prevent the mob from going crazy and doing stupid shit. To make sure cooler heads prevailed. Think of all the twitter witch hunt campaigns, that didn’t start with twitter. In the case of communities, established and trusted non-sjws (i.e., inquisitors) have to be put in charge with the mission of firmly clamping down on them and ejecting sjws as soon as they are seen. These inquisitors have to be both smart and informed enough to know an sjw when they see them, which can be hard because many are crafty and/or sincere “moderates” who aren’t aware of what they are doing in shifting the discourse leftward. Essentially creating an easier entry point for more radical sjws to follow. There absolutely is no other way. At least no other way that doesn’t require an extreme and directed dedication to preventing entryism. I can tell you right now, that isn’t easy. You really have to be informed on how these people operate, because they will dress up their language to try to appear like they are part of the community and some of them are extremely good at that. It really requires the most competent of the anti-sjws to do something like that effectively, and getting people dedicated and competent enough to start running all of these communities is not easy. Not only that, but unfortunately you have to reject libertarian ideals with regards to freedom of speech. I love freedom of speech generally, but specific communities have to be strict to maintain their culture because there are lots of people out there who will ruin it if given a chance. A community has to formulate their values effectively and clearly and actively enforce those values. If not, they will drift left and eventually become an sjw organization. To me it is clear what the lesser of two evils is.

My answer to the problem of entryism is a strict and authoritative inquisition with reliable and trustworthy inquisitors who have the intellectual capability and necessary knowledge to pick out even well camouflaged entryists and promptly eject them from the community. Easier said than done, but it is a practical plan on effective community governance.

There is just one problem. Wasn’t the inquisition that evil and oppressive church using their power against the poor, oppressed masses? Didn’t they just go out and murder a bunch of people willy nilly just because they were a bunch of fascist pricks? Surely such an institution should not be a source of inspiration. Surely.

Fortunately, I also provided was a link  which elaborates on why the commonly held views on the inquisition, its purpose, and the results of its actions are little more than myth. Myth originating from old protestant propaganda. The original progressives. The propaganda was passed down the generations in the west and eventually was assumed to be truth.

As it turns out, the inquisition was originally formed mainly because uneducated, illiterate mobs regularly found people they considered to be heretics against god and promptly wanted to execute them with some gusto. Or maybe that was just an excuse for a community to kill someone they didn’t like. In any event, one of the main purposes of the inquisition was to give such accused people a fair hearing, with due process and all those inconveniences, to see if they actually were heretics before they were burned to death. Specifically, the inquisition was set up so the accused were judged by someone who was actually able to read. You know, the ones who might actually have some idea about what the bible says god likes or doesn’t like.

As the inquisition took on more complexity from more humble beginnings, this was how it was structured:

Following the most progressive law codes of the day, the Church in the 13th century formed inquisitorial tribunals answerable to Rome rather than local bishops. To ensure fairness and uniformity, manuals were written for inquisitorial officials.

By the 14th century, the Inquisition represented the best legal practices available. Inquisition officials were university-trained specialists in law and theology. The procedures were similar to those used in secular inquisitions (we call them “inquests” today, but it’s the same word).

Sounds really oppressive. Let’s gather a mob and burn them at the stake.

Seriously though, maybe it is just me, but I think I would rather be judged by an inquisitor than an angry mob. Probably just me.

Moreover, unlike non-church authorities and the unruly mobs who saw heretics as evil traitors deserving of a quickly administered slow and painful death, the church felt that true heretics were in fact just lost sheep and deserved compassion. In other words, they should be lead back to the church if at all possible rather than be killed. True to their intentions, most of the people seen by the inquisition were acquitted or given a suspended sentence. Those who were truly guilty were made to confess sin, do penance, and eventually released back to the community. Only those few truly belligerent souls were ever found guilty, and it was the non-church authorities that decided the proper punishment was death. In reality, the inquisition saved many, many people from unruly mobs; far more than ever died from being found guilty. And that doesn’t even consider lynch mobs that didn’t bother getting started because they knew the inquisition would put a stop to it. Chances are that without the inquisition many more than just that minority would have been found guilty by the local yokels and would have gotten their own front row seat at the barbeque.

Considering how often leftist mobs go out of their way to ruin people, can there be any doubt that if they had the authority they would eagerly call for the same people to be killed? I don’t think so. Its a scary thought considering there is an example of mob social media attacks against typically innocent people almost every week. The last few weeks seemed to have even more than usual.

Well, the medieval inquisition seems relatively fair, but that doesn’t seem to have much to do with entryism. The Spanish inquisition specifically turns out to be the actual role-model to consider; at least the last stage.

A good place to start seems to be a summary of the entire life of the Spanish inquisition before picking the part that is best suited to being a guide in combating entryism. It seems that medieval Spain was quite the diverse place owing to various conquests by Christians and Muslims in the area. Muslims, Christians and Jews all lived side by side in the same area and attempted to get along (tongue in cheek). However, in 1391 an angry Christian mob in Barcelona and other towns went to the Jewish quarter, rounded up all the Jews, and gave them a choice between baptism and death for the exact same reasons given every other time in history something like this has ever happened. Most accepted baptism. Later the King of the area, who had made a failed attempt to stop the mob, reminded everyone that forced baptisms don’t count and allowed all Jews to return to their religion. However, most of the new converts decided to remain Catholic. These Jews for Jesus, or conversos, created an initial population which subsequently received a steady stream of additional voluntary converts (3000 alone after one debate between a rabbi and a Christian). However, most retained many of their old customs and the new Christians never fully integrated with the old Christians. Therefore, a new culture of religiously Christian, yet ethnically and culturally Jewish, people was born. Some even had arrogance enough to claim they were better Christians because they were related by blood to Jesus and Mary.

In any event, the new converso class managed to gain a fair amount of wealth and success (probably as a result of IQ differentials which are still present today). This led to old Christian nobles to become jealous and start accusing the conversos of not really being Christian; they believed the conversos were in fact still secretly Jewish and were working to infiltrate and take over the society as part of a conspiracy to destroy it from within. Though I doubt any such conspiracy actually existed, modern scholars, including Jewish ones, have embraced the conspiracy theory as part of a narrative where Jews oppressed by the Catholic church struggled to maintain their faith. Sigh. Who would have thought that Nazis and progressives would find something other than socialism to share in common (Nazi is short for National socialist), and that it would be a Jewish conspiracy theory of all things? Progressives really need to learn some basic logic, if only to maintain some consistency. The reality was most of the conversos were in fact faithful Catholics.

All these agitations and accusations by the mob, and advanced by nobles, is what led to the formation of the Spanish inquisition, which was under the authority of the Spanish government rather than the church. What ended up happening is that old Christians, not under investigation since they weren’t new converts, and practicing Jews, not bound by the Catholic church in any way, used the inquisition to try to settle scores against conversos they had personal issues with. Jews were not subject to the inquisition because the purpose of the institution was to find wayward Christians and set them back on the right path. It never did anything to actual Jews. There were certainly some abuses in the early years of the institution, but that was probably because it was under local authority rather than the church. The pope did in fact try to stop the mob’s undue influence on the determination of guilt, and to make it a policy to throw out questionable testimony. The pope specifically condemned burning people at the stake. This did not initially work because of the secular king’s control, and more substantial abuses (i.e., deaths) were had that were primarily fueled by mob agitation and hysteria.

Eventually, however, the institution was reformed and proper legal practices were implemented. Any potential secret Jews were given due process and most were found to be innocent; those guilty were treated humanely and given an opportunity to do better. These reforms ended up working out pretty well, and the Spanish inquisition eventually assumed its proper role of stopping mob violence.

Staffed by well-educated legal professionals, [the spanish inquisition] was one of the most efficient and compassionate judicial bodies in Europe. No major court in Europe executed fewer people than the Spanish Inquisition. This was a time, after all, when damaging shrubs in a public garden in London carried the death penalty. Across Europe, executions were everyday events. But not so with the Spanish Inquisition. In its 350-year lifespan only about 4,000 people were put to the stake. Compare that with the witch-hunts that raged across the rest of Catholic and Protestant Europe, in which 60,000 people, mostly women, were roasted. Spain was spared this hysteria precisely because the Spanish Inquisition stopped it at the border. When the first accusations of witchcraft surfaced in northern Spain, the Inquisition sent its people to investigate. These trained legal scholars found no believable evidence for witches’ Sabbaths, black magic, or baby roasting. It was also noted that those confessing to witchcraft had a curious inability to fly through keyholes. While Europeans were throwing women onto bonfires with abandon, the Spanish Inquisition slammed the door shut on this insanity. (For the record, the Roman Inquisition also kept the witch craze from infecting Italy.)

The Spanish inquisition got its bad name not from the early episode with conversos, however. Nor from its obviously reasonable response to the witch hysteria. Rather, it got its bad name as a result of the protestant reformation and the propaganda spewing from northern European printing presses. The Spanish decided early on that they were defenders of the Catholic church and that they were in no way going to allow the earliest iteration of the progressive memeplex to infect their country.

Innumerable books and pamphlets poured from northern presses accusing the Spanish Empire of inhuman depravity and horrible atrocities in the New World. Opulent Spain was cast as a place of darkness, ignorance, and evil. Although modern scholars have long ago discarded the Black Legend, it still remains very much alive today. Quick: Think of a good conquistador.

Sound familiar? Na, just a coincidence obviously.

In any event, this last episode is where the Spanish inquisition really shines. They were in fact combating the ancestors of the very same cathedral we still face today and did so quite effectively in the face of their main weapon of propaganda; propaganda remarkably similar to that still used today. Reasonable, informed men worked within the institution of the inquisition to make sure protestant entryists did not succeed in their culture. Even though they were firm, they did not engage excessively in executions or torture relative to their contemporaries. They merely identified entryists and gave them the option to stop trying to destroy the culture from within or face imprisonment. Ceasing to attempt to destroy the culture usually got them a slap on the wrist and they were free to go. It worked pretty well too it would seem. They also did not concern themselves with people who did not claim to be a part of the christian community. If you were part of an out-group, and you maintained your separation, you had absolutely nothing to worry about. Sounds like a good policy. Understanding the exact processes and procedures implemented by this late stage of the Spanish inquisition thus seems like an extremely valuable area of study. They took on the progressives and within their territory they won. At least they won until the protestant countries, and specifically the US, achieved much greater financial and cultural success later and were able to exert enough soft power to disrupt other cultures.

Though clearly neoreactionary communities don’t have the level of authority that the Spanish inquisition possessed, valuable lessons could be learned regardless. Every neoreactionary community requires trusted, intelligent, and knowledgeable inquisitors who can properly, fairly, and compassionately govern them. Inquisitors who nonetheless can be firm when necessary.

EDIT:

Here is another article on the Spanish inquisition.

Find other great dissident right content with the two Atavisionary RSS feeds: Atavisions and Prolific Atavisions. In addition, download the free ebook Smart and Sexy to learn what, how and why there are biologically based cognitive differences between the sexes

18 Replies to “The Neoreactionary Inquisition”

  1. Great blog! I’m glad to have found it. Used to be many great Dark Enlightenment bloggers out there, but lately things have become crazy. It’s interesting to note on witchcraft that Church has very early (2nd century AD IIRC, but maybe I’m mistaken) declared that it’s official stance on magic (also other things connected to it like astrology, numerology, etc.) is that it doesn’t exist. Later councils of Middle Ages just reaffirmed orthodox position (like, for example Council of Paderborn). Thus ROC and EOC, unlike Protestants, didn’t acknowledge the existence of witchcraft, so Inquisition referred to it as superstitio.

    1. Please pardon the apostrophe at “it’s”, should be “its”. Happens sometimes, when I type quickly.

    2. Magic either is a fraud or it is consorting with demons which result in real manifestations of demonic activity producing real world results. Like peoples experience with an ouija board for instance.

      1. Precisely. The Liberal accusations against the persecution of witches assume that all who were burned were innocent of the crime, namely harnessing demonic power. The Liberals of course do not believe in demonic power, and so they have a circular argument.

        1. To be clear, I don’t believe in magic either. Neither did the catholic church apparently given they called it “superstitio” or superstition. I don’t believe in demons either. The main point of the inquisition, dressed up in the language of demons not with standing, was first and foremost to keep the mobs form acting crazy. Second, it was to prevent destruction of the culture by non-magic using political radicals.

  2. Protestant propaganda? Where is the proof that the vilification of the Spanish Inquisition is protestant in nature.

  3. Fantastic work, Atavis! Practically nothing to add. The complete rehabilitation of the reputation of the Inquisition is long overdue. Not only was it not evil, but pretty much the best and most humane solution to ineradicable social problems.

  4. Crypto-Judaism was a real thing. As soon as the marranos were out of sight in places like Brazil or out of reach in places like the low countries, they set up synagogues. There is also plenty of evidence for secret societies of marranos practicing Jewish ritual. This kind of thing probably contributed to the increasingly Kabbalistic weirdness of Jewish liturgy in the renaissance. I mean, if your going to have secret doctrine, why not go the full Xenu? Anyway, it was a real thing and your dismissal is a matter of prejudice.

    Interestingly, the first known mention of the rites “fremaconrie” came from a Portuguese Marrano in Rhode Island. Could me a coincidence, or it could be that freemasonry originated from one of these Marrano secret societies.

    http://www.freemasons-freemasonry.com/zeldis14.html

    Scroll down to the “Campanel Inigma”

  5. You have these issues because you have no canon or pope.
    Is this or that perturbation darkly enlightened? Well, who knows? Problem: it’s not a matter of opinion. So, if the rhetorical gifts happen to lie on the wrong side, you get Cthulan drift.

    If you had a canon, you would at least be able to objectively tell when someone’s trying to change it.

  6. I find the point of this article, to expel those that don’t follow the neoreactionary party line to be hypocrisy on your part, considering you guys complain about progressives doing it to you.

    1. We learned it from the progressives more or less. The main difference is that we would only apply these rules to our own communities that we built. People who don’t like the rules are free to fuck off and do their own thing. Non-nrxn communities would be ignored by us except to ensure that separation is maintained. As long as they stay away and don’t interfere with us, what idiocies others believe aren’t all that relevant. Within our community, we will be discriminatory on who we allow in because we don’t want the trash. We intend to rigidly enforce this separation. Progressives want every community no matter how apolitical or unrelated to progressivism to adopt and enforce progressive norms. They aren’t content to form groups and keep to themselves. This is the main difference, and it is because of this tendency of SJW invaders to destroy communities they had no part in building that any community with a desire for self-preservation has to accept that pure freedom can’t be allowed. Progressives and other undesirables will use it against the community and destroy it. It isn’t that we wouldn’t like principled support of freedom, it is that it is unfortunately not pragmatic given the nature of our opponents. We aren’t going to sit around lamenting that fact, we are going to engineer a solution to a constant omnipresent problem.

      1. “Progressives and other undesirables will use it against the community and destroy it. ” undesirables. Lovely. Talk about a haughty view. Again it will end up being like the inquisition quest to ban freedom of thought and expression because they believed they had the truth.

Leave a Reply to Alrenous Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *