#1 - In Response to "The Return of the King: The Age of Men Comes Once More," an essay by the Librarian of Celaeno.
#1 - In Response to "The Return of the King: The Age of Men Comes Once More," an essay by the Librarian of Celaeno.
I agree with you about Trump as entertainer, as a "wise fool," as a Lear-like edgelord. But if you're comparing him to Aragorn ... well.... I think that Tolkien would not be on board with that.
For those seeking insight into the beating heart of the Catholicpunk, I strongly recommend reading this essay — entitled The Return of the King: The Age of Men Comes Once More — by the Librarian of Celaeno. I do not know (yet) know much about the Librarian himself, although I infer he is a professor (as he mentions his “students”).
Celaeno is a mythic Greek entity called “the Dark One,” which seems to allude to various female personas entwined within the Greek human-god sexual matrix. And in the Return of the King, the Librarian of Celaeno does seem consumed with the idea of the “Hag Shack,” which seems to refer to deviant, controlling women (such as Kamala Harris) who suck the life out of men.
The essay itself is pretty harrowing, but it’s also an important window into the medieval zeitgeist now prevailing. I imagine the sensibility and the thought patterns in The Return of the King represent the intellectual (and emotional) center of Trumpism and of what I am calling Catholicpunk. This is a representative quote. But I encourage you to read it all.
What liberalism has given us is a perversion of the Longhouse one might- for lack of a better term- call the Hag Shack. Atomization, consumerism, and exploitation have twisted the Maiden, Mother, and Crone into the Whore, the Spinster, and the eponymous Hag. The loudest screeches about feminism come from those who dwell therein, creatures with only a vestigial and performative grasp of being feminine. They hate and envy men, which is why their ideal man These might be trans, but this is primarily the nursery of the bugmen (what the late Oriana Fallaci called hive insects graduating from worms to chirp in unison with their fungible fellow drones.
Below, you’ll find the text of a long encounter I experienced while engaging with the Librarian and his followers (to be fair, I am doing most of the engaging). As you’ll see, the term vergeltungsreich figures prominently in the exchange. The English translation of vergeltungsreich is “full revenge” or “full retribution.”
THE ENCOUNTER
In my last newsletter, I wrote about the clarity that Trump’s election and the likely MAGA Republican governing trifecta provides, and that I intended to go hard in my analysis going forward. I then wrote, “By going hard, I don’t mean channeling my anger and distress into attacking and judging others.”
My replies to the Return of the King essay are below. As you’ll see, my first reply did evince anger and distress. But I recovered, and now view it as a palate cleanser prior to the main course.
ME
Wow. This is hilariously idiotic. You are one fucked-up, attention-seeking, narcissistic angry dude. Congratulations! You must have had one gigantic orgasm writing this. I mean ... vergeltungsreich? You certainly wear your fascism proudly and openly. Yeah, Tolkien and you are like peas in a pod. In fact the whole gang of you are openly fascistic. One giant circle jerk. Sheesh. And I see Adrian Vermeule is a fan. That's a reveal.
FOLLOWED BY 10 OR 11 VITUPERATIVE REPLIES FROM THE LIBRARIAN’S STORM TROOPERS. WHICH, HONESTLY, I PROBABLY EARNED. SAMPLES BELOW.
You angry bro? All that raging and seething against Conservatives and Catholics. You're reminding me of all those meltdown TikTok-ers - just 40 years older and with a wider vocabulary.
STFU, you depraved piece of trash. He is one of the best writers on Substack, and you should ask for his forgiveness for your vapid, inane comments. As for me, I have no tolerance for low IQ scumbags like you, so out the door you go!
MR. LIBRARIAN
So what you’re saying is, I write like Tolkien? Thank you!
ME
Dear Mr. Librarian,
I’m delighted to see your loyal band of Storm Troopers have risen up to defend you. That must be validating. Good, brave Mr. Librarian. Evil, depraved Mr. Catholicpunk. Mr. Librarian = Gandalf. Mr. Catholicpunk = Gollum.
I can only say to your trusty crew that I was merely attacking and challenging a single man. Whereas you are attacking and condemning – with shockingly large quantities of unhinged vitriol – not an entire (and entirely imagined – mythic!!) class of people who number in the tens of millions.
Here are some thoughts on your Return of the King essay.
LORD OF THE RINGS
I'm of course not saying you write like Tolkien. I'm saying you and Tolkien could not be more different. Hundreds of millions of people grew up with and love Lord of the Rings. The books have profound meaning in their lives. Most of them are not political and would not recognize your savage (yet weirdly vague) invective wrapped in pseudo-mythopoeic rhetoric. I’m quite sure Tolkien would not.
I’ve certainly noticed the appropriation of Lord of the Rings and Tolkien by Catholic reactionaries of the First Things variety who believe – properly perhaps – that whoever owns Lord of the Rings owns Western Civilization. I’m sure in your mythic rendering of the story for our own times, feminists, feminized men (Tim Walz!), gays, trannies, antifa, cat-eating Haitian immigrants, and the faceless (and so inhuman/demonic) bureaucrats of the Deep State represent the sniggering, snaggling orcs who serve Sauron. And your humble (but strong), male Trump voters, along with their compliant female partners, are hobbits who breed like robbits.
However, good Catholic though he was, I doubt Tolkien would associate himself with you and your demonologies. He welcomed and understood myth as a rich and (yes) enchanted place that all could inhabit in terms that made sense of their own lives. Your reductionism would have been alien to him, and perhaps quite threatening, given his own experiences in the trenches in World War I. He might not have welcomed you at the Eagle and Child pub in Oxford where he and C.S. hung out.
VERGELTUNGSREICH
Hmmm. You’re going quite hard with the Nazi Carl Schmitt vibe here, aren’t you? Vergeltung in English means “retribution” or “revenge” or “retaliation.” Reich in this context might mean “rich” or “full.” I appreciate in your essay you are specifically referencing Trump’s personal victory over or revenge upon his tens of millions of haters (I mean, obviously, how could anyone hate Trump? He’s so dear (leaderish) and loveable.).
But of course, you’re well aware of the other meanings of reich and that the Nazi V1 and V2 rockets rained down blood and terror upon British civilians were known as the vergeltungswaffe, which in English means “vengeance” weapon. So one might pardon the reader (the dear reader) for associating your fuhrerprinzip heils to Trump (I did notice one of your fans did a “Hail Trump”) with German fascism.
EUCATASTROPHE
Tolkien’s eucatastrophe is a pleasing notion. That is certainly how we can understand the arrival of Frodo and Sam at the fires of Mt. Doom and the twist of fate that transformed Gollum into the agent of redemption. But I’m sure Tolkien would be the first to say that while this sort of myth is uplifting for the soul, he would never want myth of this sort to displace or, worse, merge with real life. Again, he knew from World War I, when millions of British soldiers mythically marched off to die in the trenches, that when myth leaves the stage and enters the streets dark and terrible things happen.
But let’s listen to you, with your seductive, mellifluous voice!
Mr. Librarian: "Everything was in place to permanently destroy the US as a country; if Harris had won, the forces puppeteering her would have created a new citizenry out of whole cloth and instituted changes that would utterly collapse the rule of law. That prospect is a fading proposition now, roundly repudiated by a force the enemy thought beaten down and irrelevant."
Seriously. More of the Carl Schmitt “enemy” paranoia? Here’s the thing. Much like Hitler and the Nazis, you guys – and by “you guys” I mean specifically you and your friend Adrian Vermeule and your loyal band of zealots who leapt to defend you and savage your assailant (me) – don’t know who you are without an enemy. Your entire notion of myth requires an enemy.
In this sense, I don’t experience much eu. Only more catastrophe. Because you (eu) require the enemy. Even now, with Trump and his Republican minions holding the reins, your mission will always be to root out and destroy your enemies. Honestly, I don’t believe you give a rat’s ass about all of these “doomed” male Trump voters. Your true love is for that which you hate.
As I’ve written elsewhere, with right-wing Catholic intellectuals, it’s always all about the demonology. You literally might wither away and die without some vast, vague class of people to fear, condemn, hate, and attack indiscriminately. Because you really don’t discriminate in this essay. You just make weird, vague assertions – with no evidence – about millions of people who are granular and distinct, who each live their own lives, carry their own burdens, and seek their own small triumphs over those burdens.
You give yourself away with your universals – permanently destroy, forces puppeteering her, whole cloth, utterly collapse. You write beautifully but your words are not intended to invoke truths grounded in reality. They merely serve to activate dark feeling states grounded in nothing. The heroic myths are fine. It’s the darkness with which you envelop them. That there always must be an enemy and that enemy must always be destroyed.
Weirdly, you condemn suicide (which you connect to sadism and sodomy) but your mythic outcomes seem always to lead to your hero making a suicidal last stand in battle (and of course Hitler and his pals all killed themselves). Your valorization of war (the Valor!) is pretty inseparable from the valorization of death. It is certainly not pro-life, unless being pro-life involves killing and dying (oh wait, it is the promiscuous women of your Hag Shop who sleep around and casually slough off their offspring who love the killing and the dying!).
Here’s a good way to think about your message Hitler himself wrote that war is life and peace is death. That is pretty much how you frame things, too, wouldn’t you agree? I can imagine you would wear proudly the SS Deaths Head, itself, like so many things Nazi, rooted in demonizing myth.
But I wonder. You talk a good game. But are you any different from Liz and Dick Cheney, whom Trump condemned for sending off to war to die thousands of good men, while refusing to step into battle herself? You are in your ivory tower. Are you ready to literally go to war and die for your beliefs, to achieve the transcendence that sanctifies your myths?
I could go on. And maybe another day I will. There’s certainly much more to review – the Hag Shag image (which you suggest is inadequate, while nonetheless invoking it enthusiastically). Your delightful mythic positioning of J.D. Vance, Elon Musk, RFK, Jr (especially hilarious), and of course Barron Trump! But I’ve just returned from Berlin and am tired.
It was interesting viewing the American election from Berlin. I serialized 25 issues of my newsletter into a Berlin Diary that synched our election up with the run-up to the March 5, 1933 Reichstag election that cemented Hitler’s total authority. Following his failed Beer Hall Putsch and a quite significant electoral smack-down in November 1932, Hitler’s own vergeltungsreich both mirrors and anticipates Trump’s. You should read my series. You might see versions of yourself in it. Goebbels perhaps. Goebbels with a Substack. I like that image.
Anyway, have a good day. Enjoy your work in the library, assembling all of those index files of the condemned and the damned.
Heil,
Peter
PS: The irony is of course that many of the "liberals" whom you tribulate would probably agree with much of your specific concerns about men. They understand the challenges and think in terms of policies to remedy those challenges. Consider Richard Reeves at the Brookings Institution. I think many of your "liberals" would also agree that Enlightenment liberalism is in an entropic state of decay, and needs a refresh. But you apparently cannot imagine these "granular" realities - you cannot abide the rich and beautiful complexity of the world, even as we humans have almost entirely succeeded in destroying it - because that would require you to no longer suffer your own hare-brained mythic demonologies.
I then followed up with this.
ME
Also. I agree with you about Trump as entertainer, as the "wise fool," as an edgelord. He's quite the King Lear. But if you're comparing him to Aragorn ... well.... I kind of think that Tolkien would not be on board with that.
But maybe your notion of "the return of the king" is more capacious. Maybe it's about the restoration of (mythic) medieval notions of subsidiarity, harmony, and grace to "the West." A Catholic vision of everything in its place. Of the great chain of being restored.
Or maybe the return of the king" is only about an epic beatdown of "the enemy." Perhaps a vergeltungsreich. Ah yes ....
Going forward, I am going to subscribe to many of these right-wing newsletters, report back to you on what I learn, and engage the authors directly.
WEIRD