DARK

RIGHT
BATMAN VIEWED FROM
THE RIGHT

Edited by

GREG JOHNSON
&
GREGORY HOOD




Counter-Currents Publishing Ltd.
San Francisco
2018


Copyright © 2018 by Counter-Currents Publishing All rights reserved Cover image by Nathan Malone
Cover design by Kevin I. Slaughter Published in the United States by COUNTER—CURRENTS PUBLISHING
LTD.
P.O. Box 22638
San Francisco, CA 94122

USA
http://www.counter-currents.com/

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-94093350-4
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-94093351-1
E-book ISBN: 978-1-94093352-8

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Johnson, Greg, 1971-editor. | Hood, Gregory, 1980-editor.

Title: Dark right : Batman viewed from the right / edited by Greg Johnson &
Gregory Hood.
Description: San Francisco : Counter-Currents Publishing Ltd., 2018. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017056694 (print) | LCCN 2018000090 (ebook) | ISBN
9781940933528 (e-book) | ISBN 9781940933504 (hardcover : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9781940933511 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Batman films--History and criticism. | Motion
pictures--Political aspects--United States. | Batman (Fictitious
character)--Political aspects. | Batman (Fictitious character)--Social
aspects. | Comic books, strips, etc.--United States--History and
criticism. | Conservatism in literature. | Batman (Comic strip)--Political
aspects.
Classification: LCC PN1995.9.B34 (ebook) | LCC PN1995.9.B34 D37 2017 (print)
| DDC 791.43/651--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017056694


CONTENTS

1. Editors’ Introduction—Gregory Hood &
Greg Johnson

THE DARK KNIGHT TRILOGY

2. Batman Begins—Trevor Lynch

3. The Dark Knight—Trevor Lynch

4. The Dark Knight Rises—Trevor Lynch

5. The Order in Action: The Dark Knight Rises
—Gregory Hood

6. Conservatism’s League of Stupidity:
Christopher Nolan as Fascist Filmmaker?
—Gregory Hood & Luke Gordon

7. Gotham Guardian: Will the Real Batman Please Stand Up? —Jason Reza
Jorjani

8. Superheroes, Sovereignty, & the Deep State
—Greg Johnson

9. Caesar Without Gods
—Christopher Pankhurst

10. A Dark Knight without a King
—Will Windsor

11. The Ponderous Weight of the Dark Knight,
—James J. O’Meara

BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN

12. Man of Steel—Trevor Lynch

13. Superman & the White Christ: Man of Steel
—Gregory Hood

14. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
—Trevor Lynch

15. Justice League—Trevor Lynch


Comics & Graphic Novels

16. The Alt Knight: A Retrospect of Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns for the
Current Year—Zachary O. Ray

17. Batman: The Dark Knight Returns—Trevor Lynch

18. Batman & the Joker—Jonathan Bowden

19. Arkham Asylum: An Analysis—Jonathan Bowden

20. Batman as Comedy—Spencer J. Quinn

TIM BURTON’S BATMAN MOVIES

21. Tim Burton’s Batman: Putting the Gothic
into Gotham—David Yorkshire

22. Batman Returns: An Anti-Semitic Allegory?
—Andrew Hamilton

About the Authors


“WHY ARE YOU PEOPLE HERE?”
EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION


Sometimes, an idea contains within itself the seeds of its own subversion.
Sometimes, so can a superhero.
Globalism necessarily requires the eradication of all organic cultures,
traditions, and identities. However, deracinating mankind obviously creates a
void. Even the most atomized individual desires some kind of a mythos, some
image of the transcendent and that which is above. In a world (as the trailer
voice guy would intone) where culture has been replaced by consumerism,
where “God is dead” and reality is experienced on a screen, the closest glimpse
most people have of the sublime is a superhero.
Superheroes are archetypes by which Consumerist Man interprets his reality.
Sometimes, as in the case of Thor, a modern superhero is literally the cheapened,
commodified, bastardized version of what entire peoples once adored as gods.
Yet no superhero, no archetype, is quite so complex and yet so popular as
Batman.
What makes Batman so appealing is that he is not really a “superhero” in the
classic sense. He is not an alien, a god, or the recipient of special powers from a
freak accident. He is an ordinary man who has transformed himself into
something greater. The Christopher Nolan trilogy emphasizes this characteristic
of Batman. As Bruce Wayne’s mentor cum nemesis Ra’s al Ghul counsels, “If
you make yourself more than just a man, if you devote yourself to an ideal, and
if they can’t stop you, then you become something else entirely . . . legend.”
And because in theory, anyone can choose to undertake this transformation,
Batman can outlive Bruce Wayne himself. As Wayne tells Officer John “Robin”
Blake in The Dark Knight Rises, “The idea was to be a symbol, Batman could be
anybody.”
Or can it? Bruce Wayne is, after all, no ordinary man. As the mob boss
Falcone sneers, “You’re Bruce Wayne, the prince of Gotham, you’d have to go a
thousand miles to meet someone who didn’t know your name!” Wayne has all
but unlimited financial resources and social connections. His butler and assistant
Alfred Pennyworth is a veteran of the British SAS. His ownership of Wayne
Enterprises gives him access to weapons and technology far superior to anything
the Gotham police possess. It’s true “anyone” can be Batman only in the same
way “anyone” can be a billionaire.
 Yet even with all of Bruce Wayne’s advantages, even with the catalyst of his
parents’ murder, he would not have become Batman without the intervention of
an Order. At least in the Nolan trilogy, the same institution which shaped
Batman is his greatest foe, the League of Shadows. The League takes its values
not from American capitalism or Thomas Wayne’s vague noblesse oblige but a
sense of a cosmic order, a desire to pursue “true justice.” When we first find
Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins, he is “truly lost,” uselessly brawling with
common criminals in a desperate quest for meaning. Ra’s al Ghul rescues him
from what surely would have been a short, pointless life, offering him a “path.”
After obtaining a blue flower, a symbol of trial similar to the white Edelweiß the
German Gebirgsjäger use to this day, Wayne is initiated in a quasi-mystical
fashion. He will serve True Justice, by destroying Gotham.
Yet Wayne shies away at this critical moment. He refuses to take the life of a
murderer, saying he should be tried in a court. Ra’s al Ghul protests, asking,
rightly, why trust should be placed in “corrupt bureaucrats” as a credible source
of authority. Wayne does not answer at the time, but the rest of Nolan’s Dark
Knight Trilogy, and the entire Batman mythos more broadly, is an answer to that
question.
Underneath the corruption and crime, there is an inherent goodness to the
people of Gotham city. If the terror under which they live can be lifted, the
people will redeem their city. Wayne, reborn as “Batman,” will transgress the
law in order to restore the law, at the price of never being welcomed back into
the society he saves, like John Wayne’s character in The Searchers.
The spectacular villains Batman battles over the course of the series—Ra’s al
Ghul, Scarecrow, the Joker, Bane—conceal the reality that the source of
corruption the Caped Crusader is fighting is simply the mafia. Gotham is a
corrupt town, where justice can be bought and where police are inseparable from
criminals. Like a revolutionary who embraces “propaganda of the deed,”
Batman’s inhuman appearance and mythical reputation is designed to shock the
common people of Gotham into anger against the rather mundane corruption
which plagues it.
The point of Batman is to achieve a world where Batman is no longer
necessary. This is why Batman’s first ally is James Gordon, a rare honest cop on
the beat (albeit one who won’t “rat” on his corrupt colleagues). This is why
Bruce Wayne thinks his mission is complete with the rise of Harvey Dent.
But as the Joker tells Batman in The Dark Knight, “You’ve changed things.”
You can’t go back to the way things used to be, to the mundane, once you’ve
introduced the extraordinary and the heroic. If law and order must be represented
by the superhuman, so must villainy must be represented by the demonic. Even
though Batman initially emerged to combat organized crime, the syndicate
which ruled Gotham at the beginning of the series is practically irrelevant
throughout the trilogy except as background.
Ultimately, Nolan’s trilogy is a mediation on the nature of civic order. In the
first film, Batman Begins, Bruce Wayne is transformed by the League of
Shadows into Batman, but rejects the League’s Traditionalist vision of “True
Justice” in favor of a reformist approach. Like his father, Bruce Wayne wants to
save Gotham, not see it brought to destruction in order to serve “balance.”
Batman’s triumph over Ra’s al Ghul suggests this is possible, as Gordon rises in
power at the police department and ordinary people begin stepping forward to
fight corruption.
In The Dark Knight, Batman’s theory is challenged by the Joker, who begins
tearing apart Gotham’s power structure from the inside. Instead of corruption,
the Joker brings chaos, which, though terrifying, is also enticing. “And you
know the thing about chaos—it’s fair,” as he puts it.
Batman’s ethos is challenged on two levels. First, his premise that ordinary
people are good is challenged by the Joker’s actions, as the villain forces them to
choose between morality and survival. Second, Batman’s faith in the system, and
in the system’s best representative, Harvey Dent, is challenged by the Joker’s
successful effort to mentally destroy him. What’s more, Batman himself is
irreparably damaged, as Rachel Dawes, his escape route to a “normal,” post-
Batman life, is killed.
These are deep themes, but the screenwriters blink rather than confronting the
full ramifications of the Joker’s actions in this film. As Trevor Lynch notes in
his review, rather than responding with defiance or at least survival instinct, the
people of Gotham react with paralysis and cowardice to the Joker. After
presenting us with a brilliant character like the Joker (perfectly portrayed by the
late Heath Ledger), we somehow end up with Batman growling the line, “The
people of this city just showed you that it’s full of people ready to believe in
good.” Barney & Friends couldn’t pull of that line, let alone Nolan’s “dark”
Batman.
Yet the film closes on a stronger note. Harvey Dent, the exemplar of the
System, is driven to madness and evil by the Joker. He even ends up threatening
the life of a child. Batman saves the day, but as the Joker points out, if the people
of Gotham learn their shining knight is a monster, “Two-Face,” their spirits will
be truly broken. To avoid this, Gordon and Batman choose to perpetuate a noble
lie, like Plato advised. Batman will take the blame for Dent’s crimes, Dent’s
reputation will be preserved, and his legend will justify the sweeping crackdown
on organized crime the city needs. Peace will come at the price of a lie. Batman
will retire, not to a normal life, but to bitter seclusion, treasuring the memory of
Rachel Dawes.
The genius of the third film in the trilogy is that it directly challenges the
moral of the second film and provides context for interpreting the entire series.
The League of Shadows returns, led by the onetime outcast Bane. Bane is in
some sense more honest even than Ra’s al Ghul, who initially rejected him for
personal reasons. In contrast, Bane seems to have subordinated his entire identity
to a sense of mission. As he puts it, “No one cared who I was till I put on the
mask.” Ra’s al Ghul’s unchosen heir wields the most powerful weapon of all—
truth. He confronts the public with the terrible reality of Harvey Dent, of how
their elected leaders betrayed their trust, and how their entire social order is built
on a lie. Revolution is the result.
Bruce Wayne is ill-suited to meet this new challenge. He is shattered by
Alfred’s revelation Rachel had chosen Harvey Dent over him. He is out of
practice and overconfident. Most importantly, he misunderstands the nature of
his foe, thinking Bane is someone just like all the others he has defeated.
Yet he’s not. Conservative critics misinterpreted this film, believing Bane was
operating as a Leftist. Yet Bane directly tells us his egalitarianism is a cruel
illusion for the people of Gotham—“I will feed its people hope to torture their
souls.” In the first film, Ra’s intends to drug the population of Gotham in order
to create the spectacle of one of America’s greatest cities tearing itself apart. In
the finale, Bane offers something even more intoxicating, the dream of equality.
The people will go mad voluntarily, not because they are on drugs.
But it’s all an illusion. Bane knows it will fail. And after Gotham’s people
have shown themselves to be animals, the crabs pulling their fellows back down
into the bucket, he’ll destroy the city anyway.
Bane “breaks” Batman in combat. But as in the first film, Batman rebuilds
himself and climbs out of the pit, symbolically reborn, remade. He defeats Bane,
only to find it is Talia, Ra’s al Ghul’s daughter, a woman he thought he cared
for, who is the true mastermind of the plot. But in the end, Batman still saves
Gotham—with the indispensable help of Selina Kyle (“Catwoman,” though she
is never referred to as such). Kyle is a cynic who also comes to believe in saving
Gotham, with all its imperfections.
Batman “dies” saving the city and is remembered as a hero, with Officer
Blake (“Robin”) set up as an heir. Bruce Wayne fulfills Alfred’s dream of laying
down the mask and moving on, living a new life accompanied by Selina Kyle.
And contrary to theories online, it’s very clear that this is the true ending, not
just Alfred’s fantasy. Wayne is alive, happy, and, finally, free.
Yet what message do we take away from all this? Bane has become something
of an icon among the Alt Right, his utterances memes and catchphrases. In a
way, Bane’s view is ultimately proven over the course of the film, not Batman’s.
After all, Bane does prove Gotham, given “freedom,” voluntarily chooses
madness. It’s significant that the only kind of law which exists in the final film is
that dispensed by Dr. Jonathan Crane (“Scarecrow”), the only villain who
appears in every film, a psychiatrist who is mad himself. What’s more, through
Bruce Wayne triumphs in the end, he does not get to live in peace as the “prince
of Gotham.” He fakes his own death and flees. Alfred says in the third film that
perhaps it is time for the truth to have its day. But Bruce Wayne ultimately can
only escape through another lie. And the suggestion that “Robin” will take up his
mantle serves as a proof the System is still, even after all these deaths and
sacrifices, incapable of preserving itself absent the intervention of extraordinary
men who work outside it.
In that sense, one wonders if the League of Shadows is simply to be proven
correct in the end. Dr. Thomas Wayne, through his charities and industry, tries to
save Gotham, only to be shot down by a thug. His death inspires the rich to at
least put some money towards their city, but it doesn’t prevent Gotham from
falling into corruption. Bruce Wayne, “Batman,” liberates the city from the mob,
the Joker, and the League at terrible cost, and he must ultimately leave the city to
keep what’s left of his sanity. And it is implied “Robin” will have to make the
same sacrifices. The Wayne family legacy, Wayne Manor itself, becomes a
home for orphans, perhaps a worthy endeavor, but something which would have
prevented the creation of “Batman” had it happened after the death of Thomas
Wayne. In other words, all these heroics ultimately serve only to unmake
themselves. The superhero destroys himself to create a world where no one is
extraordinary. He sacrifices all to save a System incapable of functioning on its
own.
The Nolan Batman trilogy is thus really one long debate between
“conservatives” and “traditionalists” or “conservative revolutionaries.” Heroic
conservatives like Batman believe the System must be saved and see their role as
doing what is necessary to save it. Traditionalists and conservative
revolutionaries, like those in the League, believe Cosmic Order must be served
and that terrible deeds now are justified to prevent corruption and devastation in
the future. As for egalitarianism, well, it gets its shot under Bane’s faux-
revolution. Selina Kyle, who speaks gleefully about class warfare early on in The
Dark Knight Rises, looks disgusted when she sees what Leftism really is in
practice. It’s no wonder she joins Bruce Wayne’s Restorationist project and then
flees with him to live abroad as an exile.
Beyond the Nolan trilogy and in his other incarnations, the Batman character
always symbolizes the same essential message. The System is incapable of
protecting itself. It thus requires the intervention of someone more than human,
of an “ideal,” of a person willing to take on the mantle of a criminal in order to
serve the law.
Such a roguish hero is undeniably attractive. While someone like Superman
almost always serves the established order, Batman lives by his own standards,
his own vision of the good. Not surprisingly, “The Dark Knight” is usually seen
as cooler than the “Big Blue Boy Scout.” Batman also has a uniquely American
appeal, as his heroic qualities come from his own efforts rather than inborn
traits. Even his wealth can be excused; after all, every American considers
himself a “temporarily embarrassed millionaire.”
Yet there’s a deeper question, one Bruce Wayne shies away from. If a System
is inherently corrupt, if it can only be saved by violating it, why should
extraordinary men sacrifice themselves to save it? Those who truly want to serve
justice will destroy it and build something superior, not allow the decadent and
evil to survive through their own heroism.
Perhaps Batman isn’t the hero Gotham, or America, needs or deserves.
Perhaps Bane has something more to tell us about the nature of our collapsing
civilization than “The World’s Greatest Detective.” And perhaps true heroism
lies in forcing a “reckoning,” not simply extending “the borrowed time” those
who rule us have all been living on.
We suspect you feel the same. No? “Really? Then why are you people here?”

❖ ❖ ❖

Why a collection of essays viewing Batman from the Right? The entire
superhero genre is inherently anti-liberal, for even though superheroes generally
fight for liberal humanist values, they do so outside the law. They are vigilantes.
But vigilantism only becomes necessary when the liberal legal order fails to
secure justice. This implies that, ultimately, we are not governed by laws, but by
men.
But the character of Batman, particularly after being rebooted in Frank
Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns and developed in Christopher Nolan’s Dark
Knight Trilogy, is not just anti-liberal, but decidedly Right-wing and thus the
topic of endless Right-wing rumination, interpretation, and meming. This
collection skims off the best of this work, giving special attention to the visions
of Nolan and Miller, but also exploring other films, comics, and graphic novels.
We wish to thank the contributors to this volume, plus John Morgan, Michael
Polignano, James J. O’Meara, A. Graham, Jef Costello, Paul Kersey, J. S.,
Nathan Malone, and Kevin Slaughter for helping bring this book to press.

Gregory Hood & Greg Johnson
April 18, 2018















BATMAN BEGINS

TREVOR LYNCH


In Batman Begins (2005) and its sequel The Dark Knight (2008), director
Christopher Nolan breaks with the campy style of earlier Batman films, focusing
instead on character development and motivations. This makes both films
psychologically dark and intellectually and emotionally compelling.
Nolan’s casts are superb. I was disappointed to learn that David Boreanaz—
the perfect look, in my opinion—had been cast as Batman right up until the part
was given to Christian Bale. But it is hard to fault Bale’s Batman. He may be too
pretty. But he has the intelligence, emotional complexity, and heroic physique
needed to bring Batman to life. (Past Batmans Adam West, Michael Keaton, and
George Clooney were jokes, but Val Kilmer was an intriguing choice.)
Batman Begins also stars Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Liam Neeson, Cillian
Murphy, Ken Watanabe, Rutger Hauer, and Morgan Freeman as one of those
brilliant black inventors and mentors for confused whites so common in science
fiction. In The Dark Knight, Bale, Caine, Oldman, Murphy, and Freeman return,
and the immortal Heath Ledger is the Joker.
Batman Begins falls into three parts. In the first part we cut between Bruce
Wayne in China and flashbacks of the course that brought him there. I despise
the cliché that passes for psychology in popular culture today, namely that a
warped psyche can be traced back to a primal trauma. So I was annoyed to learn
that young Bruce Wayne became obsessed with bats when he fell down a well
and was swarmed by them, and that he became a crime-fighter because his
wealthy parents were gunned down in front of him by a mugger. Haunted by
these traumas, billionaire Bruce Wayne ended up dropping out of Princeton to
immerse himself in the criminal underworld, eventually ending up in a brutal
prison in Red China.
Wayne is released by the mysterious Mr. Ducard—played by the imposing
and charismatic Liam Neeson—who oversees his training in a mysterious
Himalayan fortress run by the “League of Shadows,” an ancient order of
warrior-ascetics led by Ra’s al Ghul (Ken Watanabe). The League follows the
Traditional teaching that history moves in cycles, beginning with a Golden Age
and declining into a Dark Age, which then collapses and gives place to a new
Golden Age. The mission of the League of Shadows is to appear when a
civilization has reached the nadir of decadence and is about to fall—and then
give it a push. (Needless to say, they do not have a website or a Facebook page.
Nor can one join them by sending in a check.)
The League’s training is both physical and spiritual. The core of the spiritual
path is to confront and overcome one’s deepest fears using a hallucinogen
derived from a Himalayan flower. In a powerful and poetic scene of triumph,
Bruce Wayne stands unafraid in the midst of a vast swarm of bats. The first time
I watched this, I missed the significance of this transformation, which is an
implicit critique of “trauma” psychology, for traumas are shown to be ultimately
superficial compared with the heroic strength to stand in the face of the storm. It
is, moreover, perfectly consistent with the conviction that nature is ultimately
more powerful than nurture.
Bruce Wayne accepts the League’s training but in the end rejects its mission.
He thinks that decadence can be reversed. He believes in progress. He and
Ducard fight. Ra’s al Ghul is killed. The fortress explodes. Wayne escapes,
saving Ducard’s life. Then he calls for his private jet and returns to Gotham City.
In act two, Bruce Wayne becomes Batman. Interestingly enough, Batman is
much closer to Nietzsche’s idea of the “Superman” than the Superman character
is. Superman isn’t really a man to begin with. He just looks like us. His powers
are just “given.” But a Nietzschean superman is a man who makes himself more
than a mere man. Bruce Wayne conquers nature, both his own nature and the
world around him. As a man, he makes himself more than a man.
But morally speaking, Batman is no Übermensch, for he remains enslaved by
the sentimental notion that every human life has some sort of innate value. He
does not see that this morality negates the worth of his own achievement. A
Batman can only be suffered if he serves his inferiors. Universal human rights—
equality—innate dignity—the sanctity of every sperm: these ideas license the
subordination and ultimately the destruction of everything below—or above—
humanity. They are more than just a death sentence for nature, as Pentti Linkola
claims. They are a death sentence for human excellence, high culture, anything
in man that points above man.
Of course Batman’s humanistic ethic has limits, particularly when he makes a
getaway in the Batmobile, crushing and crashing police cars, blasting through
walls, tearing over rooftops. Does Bruce Wayne plan to reimburse the good
citizens of Gotham, or is there a higher morality at work here after all?
In act two, Batman begins to clean up Gotham City and uncovers and unravels
a complex plot. In act three, we learn who is behind it: the League of Shadows.
We learn that Neeson’s character Ducard is the real Ra’s al Ghul, and he and the
League have come to a Gotham City tottering on the brink of chaos—to send it
over the edge. Of course Batman saves the day, and Gotham is allowed to limp
on, sliding deeper into decadence as its people lift their eyes towards the shining
mirages of hope and eternal progress that seduce and enthrall their champion as
well.
Batman Begins is a dark and serious movie, livened with light humor. It is
dazzling to the eye. The script was co-authored by Christopher Nolan and Jewish
writer-director David Goyer. There are a few politically correct touches, such as
Morgan Freeman (although I find it impossible to dislike Morgan Freeman) and
the little fact that one of Wayne’s ancestors was an abolitionist, but nothing that
really stinks.
Batman Begins touches on many of the themes that I discerned in my reviews
1
of Guillermo del Toro’s Hellboy and Hellboy II. Again, the villains seem to
subscribe to the Traditionalist, cyclical view of history; they hold that the
trajectory of history is decline; they believe that we inhabit a Dark Age and that
a Golden Age will dawn only when the Dark Age is destroyed; and they wish to
lend their shoulders to the wheel of time. That which is falling, should be
pushed. The heroes, by contrast, believe in progress. Thus they hold that a better
world can be attained by building on the present one.
This is a rather elegant and absolutely radical opposition, which can be
exploited to create high stakes dramatic conflict. What fight can be more
compelling than the people who want to destroy the world versus the people who
want to save it?
This raises the obvious question: Who in Hollywood has been reading René
Guénon and Julius Evola—or, in the case of Hellboy, Savitri Devi and Miguel
Serrano? For somebody inside the beast clearly understands that a weaponized
Traditionalism is the ultimate revolt against the modern world.

Counter-Currents/North American New Right,
September 23, 2010


THE DARK KNIGHT

TREVOR LYNCH


In my review of Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins, I argued that the movie
generates a dramatic conflict around the highest of stakes: the destruction of the
modern world (epitomized by Gotham City) by the Traditionalist “League of
Shadows” versus its preservation and “progressive” improvement by Batman.
I also argued that Batman’s transformation into a Nietzschean Übermensch
was incomplete, for he still accepted the reigning egalitarian-humanistic ethics
that devalued his superhuman striving and achievements even as he placed them
in the service of the little people of Gotham.
This latent conflict between an aristocratic and an egalitarian ethic becomes
explicit in Nolan’s breath-taking sequel The Dark Knight, which is surely the
greatest supervillain movie ever. (The greatest superhero movie has to be Zack
Snyder’s Watchmen.) PHILOSOPHIZING WITH DYNAMITE
The true star of The Dark Knight is Heath Ledger as the Joker. The Joker is a
Nietzschean philosopher. In the opening scene, he borrows Nietzsche’s
aphorism, “Whatever doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger,” giving it a twist: “I
believe whatever doesn’t kill you, simply makes you . . . stranger.” Following
Nietzsche, who philosophized with a hammer, the Joker philosophizes with
knives as well as “dynamite, gunpowder, and . . . gasoline!”
Yes, he is a criminal. A ruthless and casual mass murderer, in fact. But he
believes that “Gotham deserves a better class of criminal, and I’m going to give
it to them. . . . It’s not about money. It’s about sending a message. Everything
burns.” In this, the Joker is not unlike another Nietzschean philosopher, the
Unabomber, who philosophized with explosives because he too wanted to send a
message.
The Joker’s message is the emptiness of the reigning values. His goal is the
transvaluation of values. Although he initially wants to kill Batman, he comes to
see him as a kindred spirit, an alter ego: a fellow superhuman, a fellow freak,
who is still tragically tied to a humanistic morality. Consider this dialogue:
BATMAN: Then why do you want to kill me?
THE JOKER: I don’t want to kill you! What would I do without you? Go back
to ripping off mob dealers? No, no, NO! No. You . . . you . . . complete me.
BATMAN: You’re garbage who kills for money.
THE JOKER: Don’t talk like one of them. You’re not! Even if you’d like to be.
 To them, you’re just a freak, like me! They need you right now, but when
they don’t, they’ll cast you out, like a leper! You see, their morals, their
code, it’s a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble. They’re only as
good as the world allows them to be. I’ll show you. When the chips are
down, these . . . these civilized people, they’ll eat each other. See, I’m not a
monster. I’m just ahead of the curve.

The Joker may want to free Batman, but he is a practitioner of tough love. His
therapy involves killing random innocents, then targeting somebody Batman
loves.

DEATH, AUTHENTICITY, & FREEDOM
The basis of the kinship the Joker perceives between himself and Batman is
not merely a matter of eccentric garb. It is their relationship to death. The Joker
is a bit of an existentialist when it comes to death: “in their last moments, people
show you who they really are.” Most people fear death more than anything. Thus
they flee from it by picturing their death as somewhere “out there,” in the future,
waiting for them. But if you only have one death, and it is somewhere in the
future, then right now, one is immortal. And immortal beings can afford to live
foolishly and inauthentically. People only become real when they face death, and
they usually put that off to the very last minute.
The Joker realizes that there is something scarier than death, and that is a life
without freedom or authenticity.
The Joker realizes that mortality is not something waiting for him out there in
the future. It is something that he carries around inside him at all times. He does
not need a memento mori. He feels his own heart beating.
Because he knows he can die at any moment, he lives every moment.
He is ready to die at any moment. He accepts Harvey Dent’s proposal to kill
him based on a coin toss. He indicates he is willing to blow himself up to deter
the black gangster Gambol—and everybody believes him. He challenges Batman
to run him down just to teach Batman a lesson.
In his mind, the Joker’s readiness to die at any moment may be his license to
kill at any moment.
The Joker can face his mortality, because he has learned not to fear it. Indeed,
he has come to love it, for it is the basis of his inner freedom. When Batman tries
to beat information out of the Joker, he simply laughs: “You have nothing,
nothing to threaten me with. Nothing to do with all your strength.” Batman is
powerless against him, because the Joker is prepared to die.
The Joker senses, perhaps mistakenly, that Batman could attain a similar
freedom.
What might be holding Batman back? Could it be his conviction of the
sanctity of life? In Batman Begins, Bruce Wayne breaks with the League of
Shadows because he refuses the final initiation: taking another man’s life. Later
in the movie, he refuses to kill Ra’s al Ghul (although he hypocritically lets him
die). In The Dark Knight, Batman refuses to kill the Joker. If that is Batman’s
hang-up, the Joker will teach him that one can only live a more-than-human life
if one replaces the love of mere life with the love of liberating death.

LESSONS IN TRANSVALUATION
Many of the Joker’s crimes can be understood as moral experiments and
lessons.
1. When the Joker breaks a pool cue and tosses it to Gambol’s three surviving
henchmen, telling them that he is having “tryouts” and that only one of them
(meaning the survivor) can “join our team,” he is opposing their moral scruples
to their survival instincts. The one with the fewest scruples or the strongest will
to survive has the advantage.
2. The Joker rigs two boats to explode, one filled with criminals and the other
with the good little people of Gotham. He gives each boat the detonator switch
to the other one, and tells them that unless one group chooses to blow up the
other by midnight, he will blow up both boats. Again, he is opposing moral
scruples to survival instincts.
The results are disappointing. The good people cannot act without a vote, and
when they vote to blow up the other ship, not one of them has the guts to follow
through. They would rather die than take the lives of others, and it is clearly not
because they have conquered their fear of death, but simply from a lack of sheer
animal vitality, of will to power. Their morality has made them sick. They don’t
think they have the right to live at the expense of others. Or, worse still, they all
live at the expense of others. This whole System is about eating one another. But
none of them will own up to that fact in front of others.
Batman interprets this as a sign that people “are ready to believe in goodness,”
i.e., that the Joker was wrong to claim that, “When the chips are down, these . . .
these civilized people, they’ll eat each other.” The Joker hoped to put
oversocialized people back in touch with animal vitality, and he failed. From a
biological point of view, eating one another is surely healthier than going
passively to one’s death en masse.
3. The Joker goes on a killing spree to force Batman to take off his mask and
turn himself in. Thus Batman must choose between giving up his mission or
carrying on at the cost of individual lives. If he chooses to continue, he has to
regard the Joker’s victims as necessary sacrifices to serve the greater good,
which means that humans don’t have absolute rights that trump their sacrifice for
society.
4. The Joker forces Batman to choose between saving the life of Rachel
Dawes, the woman he loves, or Harvey Dent, an idealistic public servant. If
Batman’s true aim is to serve the common good, then he should choose Dent.
But he chooses Dawes because he loves her. But the joke is on him. The Joker
told him that Dawes was at Dent’s location, so Batman ends up saving Dent
anyway. When Batman tells the Joker he has “one rule” (presumably not to kill)
the Joker responds that he is going to have to break that one rule if he is going to
save one of them, because he can save one only by letting the other die.
5. As Batman races towards the Joker on the Batcycle, the Joker taunts him:
“Hit me, hit me, come on, I want you to hit me.” The Joker is free and ready to
die at that very moment. Batman, however, cannot bring himself to kill him. He
veers off and crashes. The Joker is willing to die to teach Batman simply to kill
out of healthy animal anger, without any cant about rights, due process, or other
moralistic claptrap.
6. Later in the film, Batman saves the Joker from falling to his death. He could
have just let him die, as he did Ra’s al Ghul. The Joker says:
Oh, you. You just couldn’t let me go, could you? This is what happens
when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. You are truly
incorruptible, aren’t you? . . . You won’t kill me out of some misplaced
sense of self-righteousness. And I won’t kill you because you’re just too
much fun. I think you and I are destined to do this forever.

Again, one has the sense that the Joker would have been glad to die simply to
shake Batman out of his “misplaced sense of self-righteousness.”
At the risk of sounding like the Riddler:
Q: What do you call a man who is willing to die to make a philosophical
point?
A: A philosopher.

MATERIALISTIC VERSUS ARISTOCRATIC MORALS
Modern materialistic society is based on two basic principles: that nothing is
worse than death and nothing is better than wealth. Aristocratic society is based
on the principles that there are things worse than death and better than wealth.
Dishonor and slavery are worse than death. And honor and freedom are better
than wealth.
We have already seen that the Joker fears death less than an inauthentic and
unfree life. In one of the movie’s most memorable scenes, he shows his view of
wealth. The setting is the hold of a ship. A veritable mountain of money is piled
up. The Joker has just recovered a trove of the mob’s money—for which he will
receive half. Tied up on top of the pile is Mr. Lau, the money launderer who
tried to abscond with it.
One of the gangsters asks the Joker what he will do with all his money. He
replies: “I’m a man of simple tastes. I like dynamite, and gunpowder, and . . .
gasoline.” At which point his henchmen douse the money with gasoline. The
Joker continues: “And you know what they all have in common? They’re
cheap.” He then lights the pyre and addresses the gangster: “All you care about
is money. Gotham deserves a better class of criminal, and I’m going to give it to
them.”
Aristocratic morality makes a virtue of transforming wealth into something
spiritual: into honor, prestige, or beautiful and useless things. Trading wealth for
spiritual goods demonstrates one’s freedom from material necessity. But the
ultimate demonstration of one’s freedom from material goods is the simple
destruction of them.
The Indians of the Pacific Northwest practice a ceremony called the
“Potlatch.” In a Potlatch, tribal leaders gain prestige by giving away material
wealth. However, when there was intense rivalry between individuals, they
would vie for honor not by giving away wealth but by destroying it.
The Joker is practicing Potlatch. Perhaps the ultimate put-down, though, is
when he mentions that he is only burning his share of the money.

THE MAN WITH THE PLAN
Gotham’s District Attorney Harvey Dent (played by Nordic archetype Aaron
Eckhart) is a genuinely noble man. He is also a man with a plan. He leaves
nothing up to chance, although he pretends to. He makes decisions by flipping a
coin, but the coin is rigged. It has two heads.
The Joker kidnaps Harvey Dent and Rachel Dawes and rigs them to blow up.
He gives Batman the choice of saving one. He races off to save Dawes but finds
Dent instead. Dawes is killed, and Dent is horribly burned. Half his face is
disfigured, and one side of his coin (which was in Rachel’s possession) is
blackened as well. Harvey Dent has become “Two-Face.”
The Joker, of course, is a man with a plan too. Truth be told, he is a criminal
mastermind, the ultimate schemer. (Indeed, one of the few faults of this movie is
that his elaborate schemes seem to spring up without any time for preparation.)
When the Joker visits Dent in the hospital, however, he makes the following
speech in answer to Dent’s accusation that Rachel’s death was part of the Joker’s
plan.

Do I really look like a guy with a plan? You know what I am? I’m a dog
chasing cars. I wouldn’t know what to do with one if I caught it. You know,
I just . . . do things.
The mob has plans, the cops have plans. . . . You know, they’re
schemers. Schemers trying to control their little worlds. I’m not a schemer.
I try to show the schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things
really are. . . . It’s the schemers that put you where you are. You were a
schemer, you had plans, and look where that got you. I just did what I do
best. I took your little plan and I turned it on itself. Look what I did to this
city with a few drums of gas and a couple of bullets. Hmmm?
You know . . . You know what I’ve noticed? Nobody panics when things
go “according to plan.” Even if the plan is horrifying! If, tomorrow, I tell
the press that, like, a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers
will be blown up, nobody panics, because it’s all “part of the plan.” But
when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their
minds!
Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order, and everything
becomes chaos. I’m an agent of chaos. Oh, and you know the thing about
chaos? It’s fair!

The Joker’s immediate agenda is to gaslight Harvey Dent, to turn Gotham’s
White Knight into a crazed killer. “Madness,” he says, “is like gravity. All you
need is a little push.” This speech is his push, and what he says has to be
interpreted with this specific aim in mind. For instance, the claim that chaos is
“fair” is clearly à propos of Dent’s use of a two-headed coin because he refuses
to leave anything up to chance. (Chaos here is equivalent to chance.) Dent’s
reply is to propose to decide whether the Joker lives or dies based on a coin toss.
The Joker agrees, and the coin comes up in the Joker’s favor. We do not see
what happens, but the Joker emerges unscathed, and Harvey Dent is transformed
into Two-Face.

THE CONTINGENCY PLAN
But the Joker’s speech is not merely a lie to send Dent over the edge. In the
end, the Joker really isn’t a man with a plan, and the clearest proof of that is that
he stakes his life on a coin toss. Yes, the Joker plans for all sorts of
contingencies, but he knows that the best laid plans cannot eliminate
contingency as such. But that’s all right, for the Joker embraces contingency as
he embraces death: it is a principle of freedom.
The Joker is in revolt not only against the morals of modernity, but also its
metaphysics, the reigning interpretation of Being, namely that the world is
ultimately transparent to reason and susceptible to planning and control.
Heidegger called this interpretation of Being the “Gestell,” a term which
connotes classification and arrangement to maximize availability, like a book in
a well-ordered library, numbered and shelved so it can be located and retrieved
at will. For modern man, “to be” is to be susceptible to being classified, labeled,
shelved, and available in this fashion.
Heidegger regarded such a world as an inhuman hell, and the Joker agrees.
When the Joker is arrested, we find that he has no DNA or fingerprints or dental
records on file. He has no name, no address, no identification of any kind. His
clothes are custom made, with no labels. As Commissioner Gordon says, there’s
“nothing in his pockets but knives and lint.” Yes, the system has him, but has
nothing on him. It knows nothing about him. When he escapes, they have no
idea where to look. He is a book without a barcode: unclassified, unshelved,
unavailable . . . free.
For Heidegger, the way to freedom is to meditate on the origins of the Gestell,
which he claims are ultimately mysterious. Why did people start thinking that
everything can be understood and controlled? Was the idea cooked up by a few
individuals and then propagated according to a plan? Heidegger thinks not. The
Gestell is a transformation of the Zeitgeist that cannot be traced back to
individual thoughts and actions, but instead conditions and leads them. Its
origins and power thus remain inscrutable. The Gestell is an “Ereignis,” an
event, a contingency.
Heidegger suggests that etymologically “Ereignis” also has the sense of
“taking hold” and “captivating.” Some translators render it “appropriation” or
“enowning.” I like to render it “enthrallment”: The modern interpretation of
Being happened, we know not why. It is a dumb contingency. It just emerged.
Now it enthralls us. We can’t understand it. We can’t control it. It controls us by
shaping our understanding of everything else. How do we break free?
The spell is broken as soon as we realize that the idea of the Gestell—the idea
that we can understand and control everything—cannot itself be understood or
controlled. The origin of the idea that all things can be understood cannot be
understood. The sway of the idea that all things can be planned and controlled
cannot be planned or controlled. The reign of the idea that everything is
necessary, that everything has a reason, came about as sheer, irrational
contingency.
The Joker seeks to break the power of the Gestell not merely by meditating on
contingency, but by acting from it, i.e., by being an irrational contingency, by
being an agent of chaos.
He introduces chaos into his own life by acting on whim, by just “doing
things” that don’t make sense, like “a dog chasing cars”: staking his life on a
coin toss, playing chicken with Batman, etc. When Batman tries to beat
information out of the Joker, he tells him that “The only sensible way to live in
this world is without rules.”
Alfred the butler understands the Joker’s freedom: “Some men aren’t looking
for anything logical, like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned, or
negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.”
The Joker introduces chaos into society by breaking the grip of the System
and its plans.
He is capable of being an agent of chaos because of his relationship to death.
He does not fear it. He embraces it as a permanent possibility. He is, therefore,
free. His freedom raises him above the Gestell, allowing him to look down on it .
. . and laugh. That’s why they call him the Joker.

IN ALL SERIOUSNESS
I like the Joker’s philosophy. I think he is right. “But wait,” some of you
might say, “the Joker is a monster! Heath Ledger claimed that the Joker was ‘a
psychopathic, mass murdering, schizophrenic clown with zero empathy.’ Surely
you don’t like someone like that!”
But remember, we are dealing with Hollywood here. In a “free” society we
can’t suppress dangerous truths altogether. So we have to be immunized against
them. That’s why Hollywood lets dangerous truths appear on screen, but only in
the mouths of monsters: Derek Vinyard in American History X, Travis Bickle in
Taxi Driver, Bill the Butcher in Gangs of New York, Ra’s al Ghul in Batman
Begins, the Joker in The Dark Knight, etc.
We need to learn to separate the message from the messenger, and we need to
teach the millions of people who have seen this movie (at this writing, the
seventh biggest film of all time) to do so as well. Once we do that, the film
ceases to reinforce the system’s message and reinforces ours instead. That’s
what I do best. I take their propaganda and turn it on itself.
What lessons can we learn from The Dark Knight?
Batman Begins reveals a deep understanding of the fundamental opposition
between the Traditional cyclical view of history and modern progressivism,
envisioning a weaponized Traditionalism (the League of Shadows) as the
ultimate enemy of Batman and the forces of progress.
The Dark Knight reveals a deep understanding of the moral and metaphysical
antipodes of the modern world: the Nietzschean concept of master morality and
critique of egalitarian slave morality, allied with the Heideggerian concept of the
Gestell and the power of sheer irrational contingency to break it.
The Joker weaponizes these ideas, and he exploits Batman’s latent moral
conflict between Nietzschean self-overcoming and his devotion to human rights
and equality.
In short, somebody in Hollywood understands who the System’s most radical
and fundamental enemy is. They know what ideas can destroy their world. It is
time we learn them too.
Let’s show these schemers how pathetic their attempts to control us really are.

Counter-Currents/North American New Right, September 27, 2010


THE DARK KNIGHT RISES

TREVOR LYNCH


The Dark Knight Rises, the third and final film of Christopher Nolan’s epic
Batman trilogy, does not equal The Dark Knight—which was scarcely possible
anyway—but it is a superb piece of filmmaking. It is a better film than Batman
Begins and develops the characters and themes of both previous films into a
tremendously satisfying and deeply moving conclusion.
Christian Bale, Gary Oldman, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, and Cillian
Murphy reprise their roles from the earlier films. Michael Caine steals the film
whenever he appears on screen. New cast members include ravishing minx Anne
Hathaway as the Catwoman, the hulking, charismatic Tom Hardy as Batman’s
nemesis Bane, Marion Cotillard as Miranda Tate/Talia, and Joseph Gordon-
Leavitt (the least Jewish-looking Jew since William Shatner) as (Robin) John
Blake.
Aside from Hans Zimmer’s insipid and forgettable score, this is a superbly
made film, artistically and technically. It would be a shame if people did not see
The Dark Knight Rises in theaters because of a madman’s shooting rampage on
opening night in Aurora, Colorado. (Many of the audience members in Aurora
demonstrated, by the way, that heroism is not just for the movies.) You need to
see this film on the big screen. Lightning doesn’t strike twice, right?
Although I will discuss isolated elements of the plot, including the epilogue, I
will say only this about the plot as a whole: the League of Shadows returns to
destroy Gotham, and Batman returns to stop them. What I wish to focus upon are
the larger themes of the movie, particularly those that run through the whole
trilogy. The continuities between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight Rises are
easy to see, since the League of Shadows is Batman’s opponent in both movies.
The continuities between The Dark Knight and the rest of the series are not so
obvious, but they are deep and important.

TRADITIONALISM
In Batman Begins, the young Bruce Wayne is rescued from a brutal prison in
China by Henri Ducard a.k.a. Ra’s al Ghul (Arabic for “head of the demon,”
played by Liam Neeson), a member of the League of Shadows, a secret
brotherhood of warrior-initiates whose headquarters is somewhere high in the
Himalayas.
 The League of Shadows believes in the Traditional view of history. History
moves in cycles, and its trajectory is decline. A historical cycle begins with a
Golden Age or Age of Truth (Satya Yuga) in which mankind lives in harmony
with the cosmic order. As mankind falls away from truth, however, society
declines through Silver and Bronze Ages to the fourth and final age: the Iron or
Dark Age (Kali Yuga), which dissolves of its own corruptions, after which a
new Golden Age will arise.
The purpose of the League of Shadows is to hasten the end of the Dark Age
and the dawn of the next Golden Age. Thus when a civilization is falling, they
appear to give it a final push into the void: Rome, Constantinople, and now
Gotham. And in every case, these are not mere cities, but cities that stand for
entire civilizations. Thus the League of Shadows is here to destroy nothing less
than the whole modern world.
In Batman Begins, the League of Shadows trains Bruce Wayne as an initiate,
but he rebels before his final test and flees back to Gotham, where he reinvents
himself as Batman. The League, however, follows him to Gotham to destroy the
city, which is rife with corruption and decadence. Batman defeats them and kills
Ra’s al Ghul, but in The Dark Knight Rises, the League of Shadows returns
under new leadership to finish the job.

“DO YOU WANNA KNOW HOW I GOT THESE SCARS?”
When the League of Shadows finds Bruce Wayne, he is a young man almost
at the end of the road to self-destruction. Wayne is destroying himself due to his
inability to deal with the scars of his past. His primal traumas include seeing his
parents murdered by a mugger, as well as an inordinate fear of bats.
In addition to rigorous physical training, the League of Shadows also involves
spiritual initiation. One such exercise involves the use of a hallucinogen derived
from a Himalayan flower to confront and overcome one’s deepest fears.
Another exercise is to transcend the world’s ruling morality—the egalitarian
notion that all human beings have some sort of intrinsic value—by killing a man.
We are told he is a murderer and deserving of death. But Wayne thinks that even
a murderer has value and thus deserves more than mere summary justice. He has
rights to due process. So Wayne balks at this test and ends up killing quite a few
members of the League of Shadows in the process. But he has no trouble with
that, because they are “bad” people who don’t believe in due process and the
American way.
When Bruce Wayne returns to Gotham, he is an incomplete initiate. He has
overcome the traumas of his past, giving him superhuman courage. His training
in martial arts has given him superhuman abilities. But he has not rejected
egalitarian humanism. He still subjects himself to the conventional morality. He
is, in short, a superhero: a superhuman being who lives to serve his inferiors out
of a sentimental sense of humanity.
Now this might not be such a bad thing, if the people he served actually
looked up to him and honored him as their superior. But they are egalitarians
too, thus they resent their superiors, even if they are their benefactors.
In The Dark Knight, the Joker is a portrait of a fully achieved Übermensch.
(Remember that Hollywood only allows superior men to appear as monsters,
because to people today, they are monsters.) Like Batman, the Joker has
overcome the scars of his past—literal scars, in the case of the Joker. When the
Joker tells people how he got his scars, he spins a new story each time. As James
2
O’Meara brilliantly suggested, this shows that the Joker has overcome his past.
He tells different stories because, to him, it does not matter how he got his scars.
He has transcended them—and, as we shall see, everything else in his past.
Unlike Batman, however, the Joker has also gone beyond egalitarian
humanism. He is psychologically free from his past and morally free from the
yoke of serving his inferiors. As I argued in my essay on The Dark Knight, the
Joker’s crimes need to be seen as moral experiments to break down Batman’s
commitment to egalitarian humanism.
The Joker has all the traits of a fully realized initiate, but he doesn’t exactly
seem to be a team player. But of course we don’t know how the Joker came to be
the way he is, because that is part of the past he has transcended.
In The Dark Knight Rises, eight years have passed since the death of Harvey
Dent/Two-Face. Batman’s final act of self-sacrifice for the city of Gotham was
to accept responsibility for Two-Face’s crimes in order to preserve Harvey Dent
as a symbol of incorruptible commitment to justice. Batman has disappeared, but
Gotham’s organized crime problem has been solved by the Dent Act, which
provides for the indefinite detention of criminals.
The lie has, however, taken its toll on its architects: Bruce Wayne and
Commissioner Gordon. Commissioner Gordon has lost his wife and family.
Bruce Wayne has hung up his Batman costume and lives in seclusion in Wayne
Manor, in mourning for Rachel Dawes, who he thought was waiting for him
even though she had chosen to marry Harvey Dent. Wayne Enterprises is in a
shambles, defaulting on its obligations to its shareholders and the public at large.
In short, Bruce Wayne has returned to his state at the beginning of Batman
Begins: he is destroying himself because he cannot deal with the traumas of his
past, and he is dragging everyone else down with him. Wayne is not just
psychologically crippled; he is also physically crippled, walking with a cane.
 When the League of Shadows returns, Wayne gets a leg brace, dusts off his
Batman costume, and goes out to fight them. But Alfred warns him that despite
his technological crutches, he is spiritually and physically incapable of beating
Bane, who fights with the strength of belief, the strength of an initiate in the
League of Shadows. And Bruce Wayne is no longer an initiate.
Alfred is right. When Bane and Batman finally clash, Bane trounces Batman,
twisting his spine and then casting him into a vast pit in some god-forsaken place
in Central Asia. The pit is a prison. It is open to the surface, which adds to the
torment of the prisoners, who can see the world above but cannot reach it. Only
one person has ever managed to climb out. Many others have died trying.
In the darkness, Wayne has to physically and spiritually rebuild himself. It is a
recapitulation of his original initiation with the League of Shadows. It also
recapitulates the initiation of one of his opponents, who was born in the pit and
eventually climbed out as a child. Wayne masters his fear again and escapes,
rising from darkness to light, the cave to the real world: perennial symbols of
spiritual initiation. In this case, however, Wayne masters fear not by suppressing
it but by using it. By dispensing with the safety of the rope, he reactivates his
fear and uses it as motive power to make the final leap.
Having been effectively re-initiated by the League of Shadows, Wayne is now
able to fight and defeat them. The message could not be clearer: technology
cannot make us superhuman without the underlying spiritual preparation of
initiation.

INITIATION & SUPERHUMANISM
What is the connection between Nietzschean superhumanism, which is
emphasized in The Dark Knight, and Traditionalist initiation, which is
emphasized in the other two films?
I understand Traditionalism ultimately in terms of the nondualistic
interpretation of Vedanta: the height of initiation is the mystical experience of
the individual soul’s identity with Being, the active principle of the universe. In
our ordinary human consciousness, we experience ourselves as finite beings
conditioned by other finite beings, including our traumas; these are our scars.
When we experience our identity with Being, however, our finite bodies are
infused with the active, creative, infinite power: the source of all things. This
gives the initiate the power to overcome his merely finite, conditioned self, as
well as other finite beings. Thus Traditionalists have their own supermen: the
yogic adepts who attain magical powers (siddhis) through consciously
experiencing their identity with Being.
Being is one, thus it is beyond all dualities, including the duality of good and
evil. Thus the initiate who achieves mystical unity with Being rises beyond good
and evil. He also rises beyond egalitarianism, since there is a fundamental
difference between the initiated and the uninitiated. Finally, he rises above
humanism, since he realizes that individual humans have no intrinsic worth or
being. We are merely roles that Being plays for a while, masks that Being
assumes and then discards. And if the initiate’s role in the cosmic play is to
negate millions of these nullities, what’s the harm in that? Being itself cannot
die, and its creative power is infinite, so there’s always more where they came
from.
In sum, on the nondualist Vedantic model, the culmination of initiation in a
mystical experience of the identity of the self with Being leads to: (1) the
infusion of superhuman powers, (2) the overcoming of external conditions,
including one’s past, (3) a view of the world beyond all dualities, including good
and evil, and (4) the overcoming of egalitarian humanism.
Batman and the Joker display some of these traits, although nothing close to
the essentially magical powers ascribed to yogic adepts. Batman, of course,
never goes beyond good and evil, beyond egalitarian humanism. And the Joker,
who has achieved moral liberation, does not display any superpowers, although
he is remarkably accomplished.

“NOTHING IN HIS POCKETS BUT KNIVES AND LINT.”
When the Joker is arrested in The Dark Knight, Commissioner Gordon is
flummoxed: they don’t know who he is. They can find no DNA, fingerprint, or
dental records. They don’t know his name or date of birth. His clothes are
custom made, with no labels. As Gordon says, “There’s nothing in his pockets
but knives and lint.”
If the would-be superman sometimes strives to overcome and forget his past,
modern society means to keep us all tied to our pasts by compiling records. Of
course mere bookkeeping cannot stop the inner spiritual transformation by which
man becomes superman, rising above the conditioning of his past. But we are
dealing with materialists here. Your karmic records are meaningless to them. But
your tax returns and internet traffic are not.
In The Dark Knight Rises, Selina Kyle (Catwoman) is searching for a
computer program called Clean Slate that will delete her from all existing
computer records, allowing her to completely escape from her past. She craves
the Joker’s freedom. Batman offers to give her the program in exchange for her
help. In the end, both she and Bruce Wayne seem to have used it to escape their
pasts and start a new life together in Italy.
Of course, deleting all records of one’s past is not the same thing as
overcoming the past psychologically and existentially. That is possible only
through a fundamental transformation of one’s being. But once that
transformation is in place, the technology sure can be useful.

“ALL YOU CARE ABOUT IS MONEY.”
Contempt for money is another theme common to The Dark Knight and The
Dark Knight Rises. In The Dark Knight, the Joker demonstrates his contempt for
money by burning his share of a vast fortune.
In The Dark Knight Rises, some of Bane’s best lines deal with money. His two
most spectacular public attacks are on the stock exchange and a football game
(as Gregory Hood puts it so memorably in the next essay in this collection: the
bread and circuses of the decadent American empire).
In the stock exchange, one of the traders speaks to Bane as if he were a
common criminal, and a moronic one at that: “We have no money here to steal.”
To which Bane replies, “Then why are you people here?”
When Bane breaks a deal with a businessman who has outlived his usefulness,
the businessman protests that he has paid Bane a small fortune. “And that gives
you power over me?” Bane asks.
Most commentators are somewhat confused about Bane’s attitude toward
money, because he leads a Communist-style insurrection against the rich. But
there are two critical perspectives one can take on money. Figuratively speaking,
one can view it from above or from below.
Those who criticize money from below are those who lack it and want it.
Their primary motive is envy, which is not necessarily wrong. A hungry man has
good reason to envy your bread. And he has good reason to hate you if you
prefer to waste it rather than share it. The people who criticize money from
below actually have a lot in common with the people they envy: all they care
about is money, either getting it or keeping it.
Bane, however, criticizes money from above. His perspective is aristocratic,
not egalitarian. He is an initiate, a spiritual warrior against decadence. He
realizes there is something higher than money, and he feels contempt for those
who are ruled by it, for those who think that money is the highest power in this
world. He is, to use the Joker’s phrase, “a better class of criminal.”
Like the Joker, Bane is free of material concerns even as he masterfully
manipulates the base, material world to fight for higher, spiritual aims. Like the
Joker, Bane is not above using people who are only interested in money to
further his spiritual aims. Thus Bane both makes deals with the rich and incites
the envious mob to rise against them, all to hasten the destruction of Gotham.

THE GOOD LITTLE PEOPLE OF GOTHAM
In The Dark Knight, the Joker argues that the people of Gotham are only as
good as the world allows them to be, and when the chips are down, “they’ll eat
each other.” This sounds like a terrible insult, but from the Joker’s perspective it
is actually a form of optimism. Being willing to eat one another is a sign of
animal vitality unrestrained by egalitarian humanist slave morality. The Joker
claims that he is not a monster; he is just “ahead of the curve”: meaning that he
is already what the rest of Gotham would be if only they were “allowed” by
society (or courageous enough to go there without society’s permission).
The Joker rigs two boats to explode and gives the detonators to the people in
the other boats. He tells them that if they blow up the other boat, he will let them
live. If neither boat is destroyed by midnight, he will blow up both of them. One
boat is filled with criminals and cops. The other is filled with the good little
people of Gotham. In the end, however, neither group manages to blow up the
other, and Batman prevents the Joker from destroying both.
Batman draws the false conclusion that the boats were filled with people who
believe in goodness, whereas in fact they were merely too craven, decadent, and
devitalized to do anything “bad,” even to save their own lives. The Joker, it turns
out, was a lot farther ahead of the curve than he thought.
In The Dark Knight Rises, Bane proves the Joker’s point, but he shows that it
will take nothing less than a revolutionary mob before the people of Gotham find
the courage to eat each other, beginning with the rich. The revolutionary mob
gives people permission to act atavistically. But beyond that, they have moral
permission as well because, in the end, egalitarian altruism really is a kind of
cannibal ethics.
The least convincing part of The Dark Knight Rises is the portrayal of the
police as improbably idealistic and self-sacrificing. In The Dark Knight, the
police force consists almost entirely of corrupt, gun-toting bureaucrats counting
the days until their pensions kick in. In The Dark Knight Rises, Bane lures 3,000
police into the tunnels under Gotham and traps them there. When they finally
break out, they charge en masse into battle armed only with their sidearms
against Bane’s heavily-armed fighters. I don’t deny that it is possible to awaken
such idealism, even in the most cynical public servant. But I needed to see some
reason for such a dramatic transformation, perhaps something analogous to
Bruce Wayne’s transformation in his own underground prison.
Catwoman is motivated primarily by envy of the rich, but the revolution in
Gotham has left her thoroughly disgusted. She tells Batman that as soon as she
finds a way out, she is leaving. She does, however, linger for personal reasons:
she wants to save Batman too. She urges him to follow, telling him that he has
given everything for these people. He replies “Not everything, not yet.” Then he
apparently commits suicide to save the city. But in the end, we learn that Bruce
Wayne was not willing to give his life for Gotham. But he was willing to give up
Gotham and Batman for a life of his own.
The ending is enigmatic, but as I read it, Bruce Wayne has finally arrived at a
higher level of initiation. Again, he has triumphed over his past, this time
entirely, and he has used Clean Slate to erase all traces of his life and
Catwoman’s. He has also risen above egalitarian humanism. He no longer lives
for his inferiors. He lives for himself, and he has found happiness with
Catwoman, which is an interesting change, since it means he has decided to put
his happiness above the mere fact that she is a wanted criminal.
Of course, in my eyes, the fact that Bruce Wayne has apparently chosen a
private life makes him inferior to Bane. Yes, Wayne has ceased to serve those
who are beneath him, but merely serving oneself is inferior to serving a cause
that is greater than oneself, which is what Bane did.

TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES
One of the most important new themes introduced in The Dark Knight Rises is
the destructiveness of lies. Gordon and Wayne are both debilitated by the burden
of the lies they told to protect the reputation of Harvey Dent. Wayne is also
crushed by the loss of Rachel Dawes, which is made all the more painful
because Alfred chose to conceal the fact that she had chosen to leave Bruce
Wayne for Harvey Dent. Finally, near the end of the movie, Robin Blake lies to
a group of orphans to give them hope, even though there really wasn’t any. The
common denominator is that all these lies are told altruistically, to protect
people, and particularly “the people,” from the truth. Lies are particularly
necessary in statecraft, even at its highest and most disinterested. Lies are, of
course, a form of bondage to society and the past. Thus they must be rejected by
those who would be free, although the initiates seem quite willing to employ
deception and violence for a higher cause.

THE LEFT AS THE VANGUARD OF NIHILISM

The Dark Knight Rises is an extremely Right wing, authoritarian, fascistic
movie.
First of all, in this movie, both the good guys (Wayne, Gordon) and the bad
guys (the League of Shadows) are united in their belief that Gotham is corrupt
and decadent. In the earlier films, the good guys clearly believed that progress
was possible. Now they are just looking for excuses to retire, because society no
longer has anything to offer them. They have given without reward until their
idealism has been extinguished and their souls have been completely emptied.
They have become burned-out shells in thankless service to their inferiors.
Second, Nolan’s portrayal of the Left is utterly unsympathetic: Leftist values
are shown to be nihilistic. Thus promoting Leftism is a perfect tool for those
who would destroy a society.
Third, and most trivially, the uncritical portrayal of the police would surely
score high on the authoritarian personality inventory, although White
Nationalists are not so naïve.

❖ ❖ ❖

The Dark Knight Rises is a remarkable movie, a fitting conclusion to a highly
entertaining and deeply serious and thought-provoking trilogy. As unlikely as it
may seem, these films touch upon—and vividly illustrate—issues that are at the
heart of the New Right/Radical Traditionalist critique of modernity. Tens of
millions of young whites are eagerly watching and analyzing these films. Thus it
is important for us to use these films to communicate our ideas.
Yes, Hollywood always puts our ideas in the mouths of psychotics in order to
immunize people against them. But these ideas are one reason why the villains
are always more interesting than Batman, who merely comes off as a tool.
I have suggested that these movies incorporate elements from Radical
Traditionalism and Nietzschean superhumanism to generate maximum dramatic
tension. What conflict could be more fundamental than the one between those
who wish to destroy the world and those who wish to save it? That said, I cannot
help wondering if Christopher Nolan also feels some sympathy for these ideas,
although of course he would deny it. But whatever Nolan’s ultimate sympathies,
there is no question that somebody in Hollywood knows which ideas offer the
most fundamental critique of the modern world. Isn’t it time for White
Nationalists to learn them as well?

Counter-Currents/North American New Right, July 31, 2012



THE ORDER IN ACTION:
The Dark Knight Rises

GREGORY HOOD


The Dark Knight Rises is beyond Left and Right, beyond good and evil,
beyond any frame of reference that this society can understand. Christopher
Nolan’s Batman trilogy closes with a vision of weaponized Traditionalism
certain to be misunderstood by movie reviewers and talking heads who think in
terms of Republicans versus Democrats. It’s similarly beyond the grasp of
fanboys playing compare and contrast with The Avengers or Superman.
That said, it’s a comic book movie, it’s a blockbuster, and the demands of the
medium necessitate that Nolan cannot go all the way. The most interesting
characters are, as always, the villains.
That said, there is something deeply unsettling at the heart of this film, a
strange uneasiness that cannot be shaken even after applause fades, the credits
roll, and the costumed audience tromps happily into the early morning after a
midnight showing. The murder of 12 people at a premiere in Colorado throws a
glare on the sickness at the heart of our own society, begs a comparison between
the corruption of Gotham and the rot of our own post-America, and forces us to
ask, “Is the fire rising?”
The film is utterly unintelligible without the other films in the trilogy. It
begins with Gotham paying tribute to its fallen white knight Harvey Dent, who is
remembered as an incorruptible crusader against injustice. The symbol also
serves as the justification for Dent Act, which keeps the soldiers of organized
crime behind bars without hope for parole. However, the fragile peace of
Gotham is based on a lie: Batman accepted the blame for Harvey Dent/Two
Face’s killing spree at the end of The Dark Knight. Gotham has stability, but it is
the stability of a static and lifeless society, a soft but pervasive repression
reminiscent of Brezhnev’s Russia, with an explosion just below the surface.
The lie has taken its toll on both Commissioner Gordon and Bruce Wayne.
Gordon is weary, tired, almost broken by the burden of having to live out the
necessary falsehood. His victory over crime is hollow, his usefulness exhausted,
and his civilian superiors already planning his replacement. In The Dark Knight,
there is an agonizing moment when his wife Barbara is told that he has been
killed, followed by a tearful reunion when his necessary deceit is revealed. By
the beginning of this film, Barbara has embraced the noble equality offered the
gentler sex in our enlightened time and abandoned him, of course taking the
children with her. “Manning up” and doing what is necessary to save one’s city
and loved ones is ruthlessly punished by modernity, as it always is.
Wayne, meanwhile, has become a recluse, obsessing over his lost love Rachel
Dawes, who he still believes was waiting for him. His great task of saving
Gotham accomplished, Wayne is physically and emotionally crippled. Wayne’s
only project is the predictable endeavor of any good Hollywood
superhero/tycoon: the pursuit of clean energy. He is assisted by Miranda Tate, a
(seemingly) typical liberal do-gooder philanthropist, dreaming of sustainable
development, and no doubt, helping the underprivileged, uplifting the oppressed,
and doing it all from her drawing room. Unfortunately, Wayne learns that the
fusion reactor they were developing could be turned into a weapon, so he shuts
the project down, costing Wayne Enterprises millions. As the Joker points out in
The Dark Knight, Wayne and Gordon are both “schemers,” trying to “control
their little worlds.” As a result, they are trapped by their lies, their fears, and
their insecurities.
One of the first signs that the peace is breaking is the emergence of Selina
Kyle (Anne Hathaway’s Catwoman), a cat burglar seething with resentment
against the privileged. Contemptuous of Bruce Wayne and other limousine
liberals flattering themselves with their own altruism, Kyle seduces and steals
from high society as an act of vengeance, but she is actually seeking an escape
from her past. She removes a necklace from Bruce Wayne’s safe, but more
importantly, steals his fingerprints for an unknown use. While she thinks she is
striking back at the decadent rich, she is actually being used as a pawn by a more
dangerous and dedicated group with a higher end in mind than class warfare.
Their leader is Bane, a hulking but brilliant mercenary who was supposedly
“excommunicated” from the League of Shadows. Having built an underground
army (literally underground), Bane’s plans are disrupted when Commissioner
Gordon discovers their existence, ending up hospitalized. From his bedside,
Gordon pleads for Batman to return. The League of Shadows, which trained
Bruce Wayne and in many ways “made” Batman, is the Traditionalist Order
headed formerly headed by Ra’s al Ghul. Batman turned on the Order in
spectacularly unconvincing fashion in the first film. Why Batman turned on his
erstwhile creators remains unanswered in The Dark Knight Rises. Batman
merely states that they were a bunch of “psychopaths,” a strange claim coming
from a man dominated alternately by childhood fears and long vanished pseudo-
girlfriends.
Recognizing that Bruce is trapped by the past, Alfred reveals that Rachel had
chosen Harvey Dent over him and that he had concealed it to spare Bruce pain.
Alfred also pleads for Bruce to leave everything behind, pointing out Bane’s
obvious skill, strength, and training. Bruce refuses, seemingly hoping for death.
Alfred confesses that he never wanted Bruce to come back to Gotham, as there
was nothing for him there but pain, and confesses a fantasy of him living abroad,
somehow having gotten beyond Gotham City. Alfred tearfully leaves Bruce
Wayne’s service, leaving Batman truly alone for the first time.
After a brief liaison with Miranda Tate, Bruce Wayne uses Selina Kyle to
reach Bane, counting on Kyle being more than a mere criminal. He’s wrong. He
is betrayed and forced into a confrontation with Bane, who calls him “Mr.
Wayne” (to Kyle’s shock). Bane breaks him, defeating him in physical combat
and snapping his spine, before throwing him into an open air prison below the
earth. Crippled, Bruce Wayne will be forced to watch the suffering of Gotham
while being taunted by the promise of freedom above.
With Batman removed, the League moves with startling swiftness to take over
Gotham. A police raid into the sewers to capture Bane’s forces backfires, and the
police are trapped en masse below the earth. Bane uses his more materialistic
pawns to capture Wayne Enterprises and seize the nuclear device Bruce
inadvertently provided, as well as Batman’s arsenal. Bane reveals the bomb’s
existence after an attack at a football game. He exposes Batman and Gordon’s
lies about Harvey Dent and gives Gotham to “the people,” by freeing the
“oppressed” criminals imprisoned by the Dent Act. The result is that Gotham
becomes a kind of Paris Commune, with the possessions of the wealthy seized
outright and dissidents condemned to death by Dr. Jonathan Crane (Scarecrow),
the only villain who appears in all three movies, who returns as a revolutionary
hanging judge.
Commissioner Gordon, fresh from the hospital, tries to rally what resistance
he can. He is assisted by John Blake, an officer who has discovered the true
secret of Batman’s identity and wants him to return. The few above-ground
police fail to win back the city, as an effort to smuggle in Special Forces from
outside fails miserably.
Meanwhile, Batman recovers slowly underground. He learns about the origins
of Bane and his connection to the League of Shadows and Ra’s al Ghul. To
escape the prison, which only one other person (Bane) has done, he must climb
out of the darkness and into the light, as the other trapped prisoners chant “Deshi
Basara” (he rises). After several failures, Wayne is told that he can only escape if
he climbs without a safety rope—meaning that another mistake will mean
certain death. Wayne climbs and escapes, reborn as Batman. After saving
Gordon, his fiery emblem announces his return to Gotham. He frees the police,
and together Batman and his new army assault Bane’s base of power at City
Hall.
Batman manages to defeat Bane in their rematch, knocking off part of Bane’s
mask which delivers a gas that eases his chronic pain. At the moment of
Batman’s triumph, Miranda Tate plunges a dagger into him, revealing herself as
Ra’s al Ghul’s daughter Talia and the real escapee of the prison. Bane was
merely her guardian, who was injured defending her and expelled from the
League because of his love for her. Talia attempts to trigger the bomb, but the
mechanism has been disabled by Gordon, buying a few moments. She flees in
one of the Tumblers (Batmobiles) to guard the bomb. Kyle appears and kills
Bane with firepower from the Batpod, and together Batman, Kyle, and Gordon
chase down the bomb. Talia is killed, but there is no way to disable the bomb.
Thus Batman heroically flies the bomb over the ocean, where it detonates,
apparently killing him but saving the city.
In the aftermath, Gotham memorializes Batman as its true hero. Bruce Wayne
is remembered simply as a victim of the class violence. His true identity remains
a secret, and most of his assets go to help underprivileged children. John Blake
(whose real first name is revealed to be Robin) is given the coordinates of the
Batcave in Wayne’s will. Gordon, still Commissioner, finds a new Batsignal on
the roof of the police station, suggesting Blake has taken up the mantle of the
Batman. A heartbroken Alfred travels overseas. At a café, he suddenly looks up
and nods, and the camera reveals Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle. Bruce Wayne is
no longer Batman, but he is still alive.
From the perspective of Bruce Wayne, the film has to end as it did. While
there were rumors that Batman would be killed off, this “darker” ending would
actually have been a cop out. Bruce Wayne’s obsession with the Batman, with
Rachel, and his own death wish show that he never learned to put suffering
behind him. As Alfred points out, “You see only one end to your journey.”
Wayne has the characteristically American attitude that bad things cannot
happen to good people, and that suffering is a vast departure from the way things
ought to be. As a result, when something bad does happen, he can never move
beyond it and becomes brooding and obsessive. The ability of Bruce Wayne to
put down the mask and move beyond that Bat is necessary for his character to
show growth, in some ways, the first real growth since the death of his parents.
What Wayne never goes beyond, and the movie never explains, are his
continued sacrifices on behalf of Gotham. When Selina Kyle begs him to leave
the city, pointing out that he’s “given these people everything,” Batman says,
“not everything. Not yet.” But who are these people? At the beginning of the
film, when Bruce Wayne is brooding in his lair, he says to Alfred, “There’s
nothing for me out there.” Instead of living, he is, in Alfred’s words, “waiting for
something bad to happen.” Wayne is so disgusted with Gotham that he can’t
even bear to experience the peace he created at such a terrible price. Even his
grand victory at the end of the trilogy is moving beyond Gotham, putting down
the mantle of the Bat, and abandoning his own identity or anything that could tie
him to a place that only brings him tragedy and pain.
The motives of the so-called villains are more substantial but would seem
incomprehensible to anyone who hasn’t seen Batman Begins. The most
important role of the League of Shadows is to bring “balance” to civilization by
destroying the centers of degeneracy when the rot has become too great. Like
Constantinople or Rome before it, Gotham’s time has come. While Batman
managed to stop Ra’s al Ghul, Bane and Talia have come to finish the job.
The Dark Knight Rises thus gives us a portrait of an Order in action. In the
first scene, when Bane and his comrades seize a nuclear scientist from a CIA
flight, Bane orders one of his men to stay behind. Addressing him as “brother,”
he explains that the enemy will expect to find at least one of their bodies in the
wreckage. Seemingly unaffected, with a beatific smile, the League member asks,
“Have we started the fire?” Bane nods and responds, “The fire rises.” Bane
routinely executes followers who fail and demands (and receives) complete
willingness to die from his comrades. “Where do they find such people?” asks
one awed observer.
The first two targets Bane attacks in Gotham are heavy with meaning.
The first is the stock exchange. As Bane takes control of the trading floor, a
stockbroker pleads “There’s no money here, there’s nothing to rob!” Heavy with
contempt, Bane responds, “Then why are you people here?” After completing
the financial takeover of Wayne Enterprises, a non-League member accuses
Bane of taking his money but not doing what he wants. Bane responds, “And
this means you have power over me?” Realizing for the first time that he is
confronting someone who has a higher end than money, the criminal asks “What
are you?” prompting the response, “I’m Gotham’s reckoning.” Bane is not in it
for money, and the League of Shadows looks with contempt at the vulgar traders
and materialistic grubbers that constitute the supposed elite of the city. The
League of Shadows is going to pull down the Kali Yuga in Gotham, whatever it
takes.
At the same time, this is no egalitarian rant against “the rich.” The Dark
Knight Rises may be the most contemptuous treatment of egalitarianism ever
produced on film. Needless to say, what passes for the American Right is not
intellectually capable of understanding it, alternately complaining that Bane was
created in order to attack Mitt Romney’s finance capital firm or thinking it is a
partisan attack on Occupy Wall Street in the name of millionaires like Romney
and Bruce Wayne. Instead, The Dark Knight Rises is a direct attack on the idea
that people can manage themselves.
Bane’s second target is a football stadium hosting a pointless spectacle where
a mostly white audience lives vicariously by watching mostly non-white players
throw and chase a ball. The game begins with the singing of the national anthem,
as if Nolan is telling us that pointless distractions are what America is all about
today. If the stock exchange was the “bread” of this degenerate society, sports
are the “circuses,” and it is significant that Bane decapitates the political
leadership of the city by blowing up the mayor’s skybox at a sporting event.
Bane takes away the diversions and forces the people to re-engage with History.
When Bane seizes control of Gotham, he claims that he is coming to
“liberate” Gotham and tells the masses to “take control” of their city. He also
frees the prisoners on the grounds that they are “oppressed,” all de rigueur Left-
wing talking points. The result is a complete breakdown of the city, with a
criminal lunatic (Crane) serving as the focal point of power. The upper classes
are destroyed, and the “people” instantly give themselves over to pointless
consumption in a manner more degrading than the most spoiled trust fund baby.
When one of Selina Kyle’s erstwhile comrades celebrates that Wayne Manor
now belongs to “everyone,” Kyle is disgusted.
It turns out that Bane and Talia are planning on eventually destroying the
entire city with a nuclear bomb anyway. While many conservative commentators
claim that this is evidence that Bane (and thus Occupy Wall Street) is motivated
by pure evil, the real message is far more subversive. Bane allows the city to live
for a few months to show the world what Gotham’s citizens are capable of.
Libertarian ideologues and socialist revolutionaries get their chance, as the boot
of the state is taken off, and the police are trapped underground. The result is an
ugly, starving society ruled by the insane.
Bane delays destroying Gotham because he wants the world to watch how
freedom failed. He gives the city a false hope by letting the people govern
themselves, knowing they are not capable of it. This isn’t the conquest of a
healthy society—it’s a laboratory experiment where the League of Shadows
knows the outcome. A simple killing would be too merciful. The punishment
“must be more severe.” Only when the consequences are unmistakable and the
corruption has been ripped out by the root will Bane give Gotham permission to
die. Liberalism, classical or otherwise, is so self-evidently stupid that Bane gives
it free reign knowing that it will fail spectacularly. Even more impressively,
Bane and the other members of the League are willing to remain in the city when
the bomb detonates, dying so that the corrupt world can be reborn. This is a
creed of iron that demands the whole man in order to make him something more.
Batman is a more severe problem for the League because he is a product of
the same Order as Bane, thus he is capable of withstanding his attack. Batman
harnesses Traditionalism and the aristocratic (or even fascist) principle to save
society from itself. Bane explicitly recognizes this. When Batman fights Bane
the first time and uses his usual tricks, Bane comments, “Theatricality and
deception are powerful weapons to the uninitiated . . . but we are initiated.”
When Batman is broken and left in the darkness, he is symbolically “killed,”
only to be reborn after he remakes himself and climbs into the light, a motif
familiar to the ceremonies of many fraternal and religious orders. The use of
ritualistic incantation is another indication that we are not watching a superhero
with magical powers but the product of initiation.
But to what end? When Batman is recovering from his injuries in the
darkness, he has a vision of Ra’s al Ghul who taunts him that after years of
complete sacrifice, the most that Bruce Wayne could achieve is a lie. At the end
of the movie, once again, this is all that is achieved. Bruce Wayne did not die
either as a victim of class warfare or as a hero of Gotham. He fled the city to pal
around with Selina Kyle in Florence, enjoying lunches at fashionable restaurants.
He cannot bear to live among the people he saved.
Wayne Manor is turned into a shelter for the children of the slums, postponing
the inevitable end that the League was founded to hasten. Batman lives on
through Robin John Blake, but the whole point of the trilogy was that Batman
was supposed to be a temporary measure until the city could be returned to
health and the “normal” system could govern without recourse to masked
vigilantes.
Of course, this is the essential problem with Bruce Wayne’s worldview. The
return of the bat signal suggests that the extraordinary will always need to
sacrifice themselves for the ordinary. Bane showed the true face of Gotham, but
it was saved regardless, and it will continue to be saved by heroes that have to
emerge from outside of society. Good men like Gordon are destroyed by the
society that produces them, stripped of family and honor. Darker heroes like
Batman find they can no longer even live in it. The best solution that can be
offered is more charity from the rich, as if a Band-Aid can stanch a sucking chest
wound. Batman’s plea to save the city because there are “good” people is a
pointless banality reminiscent of Judge Smails from Caddyshack. The League of
Shadows presents a radical critique of society, and all Batman tells us is that we
have to stand for “goodness” and not “badness.”
The Batman trilogy poses deep questions about the nature of society, the
importance of Radical Traditionalism, and the meaning of heroism. However,
ultimately, it can only give the same answer as The Avengers: heroes are heroes
precisely because they use their gifts and dedication to safeguard a world that is
3
unworthy of them, preventing any attempts to turn it into something greater.
The Kali Yuga rolls on, the corrupt look up and shout “save us!,” and heroes
hasten to the call. But the sparks are there, and the conflagration is being
prepared.

Counter-Currents/North American New Right,
July 22, 2012


THE DARK RIGHT RISES: CHRISTOPHER NOLAN AS FASCIST

FILMMAKER?

GREGORY HOOD & LUKE GORDON


CONSERVATISM’S LEAGUE OF STUPIDITY
The egalitarian Left isn’t just evil—it’s boring. Unfortunately, the
conservative “Right” doesn’t have anything better to offer. It’s not just true of
politics—it’s even true of their movie reviews.
The endless reinforcement of egalitarianism throughout the controlled culture
means that to a great extent, every “superhero” film has the same plot. An
extraordinary character is introduced, a challenge emerges to the liberal
assumptions of modernity, and the hero, by humbling himself and accepting his
responsibility to his inferiors, saves the day and preserves the sacred illusion of
equality. The unintended result of this kind of culture is that the most interesting,
intelligent, and genuinely substantive characters and ideas come from a film’s
supposed villains. Leftist commentators often recognize this and have genuinely
insightful (or at least accurate) observations to make about a film’s ideological
content.
Perhaps the most subversive and overtly right wing movie to be made in many
years was The Dark Knight Rises, the triumphant finale to director Christopher
Nolan’s epic Batman trilogy. The Left most recognized it for what it was. Noted
Lefty policy wonk Matt Yglesias tweeted: “Had a lot of problems with Dark
Knight Rises but it was sort of refreshing to see a balls-out insanely rightwing
4
movie.” Andrew O’Hehir at Salon noted:
It’s no exaggeration to say that the “Dark Knight” universe is fascistic (and
I’m not name-calling or claiming that Nolan has Nazi sympathies). It’s
simply a fact. Nolan’s screenplay (co-written with his brother, Jonathan
Nolan, and based on a story developed with David S. Goyer) simply pushes
the Batman legend to its logical extreme, as a vision of human history
understood as a struggle between superior individual wills, a tale of
symbolic heroism and sacrifice set against the hopeless corruption of
society. Maybe it’s an oversimplification to say that that’s the purest form
of the ideology that was bequeathed from Richard Wagner to Nietzsche to
 5
Adolf Hitler, but not by much.

They may not necessarily like fascism, or for that matter, anything that alludes
to heroism or greatness, but at least we are talking about the same thing.
Of course, many “movement conservatives” miss the point of the movie
entirely, seeing each new cultural phenomenon as another opportunity to bash
the “Democrat Party” or give a eulogy about the glories of various purveyors of
high fructose corn syrup and why they pay too much in taxes.
Thus, if we didn’t have John Nolte and Ben Shapiro we’d have to make them
up. The two writers at the late Andrew Breitbart’s Big Hollywood somehow
managed to view Nolan’s climactic film as some sort of love letter to Goldman
Sachs. Batman is pictured a capitalist hero presumably sent by the Cato Institute
to protect the prosperous citizens of Gotham from the moral relativists of
Occupy Wall Street. Comrade Bane is seen as the leader of evil Leftists, who
probably also support Islamism, and is nothing but a jealous nihilist who wants
to bring about equality.
6
Shapiro gushes, “The entire film is an ode to traditional capitalism.” He
condemns Bane’s “communist-fascist” (?) regime and worries that Bane’s evil
“Leftist populism” sounds like Barack Obama. While this is idiotic, it’s about
par for the movement, and is still a bit more intelligent than Rush Limbaugh’s
charge that Bane was deliberately named to create sinister associations with Mitt
7
Romney’s “Bain Capital.” Just as Barack Obama can simultaneously be a
Communist and a Nazi, Bane can be a liberal attack on Republicans and an
obvious stand in for President Obama.
Where Ben Shapiro actually achieves a kind of conservative movement
perfection is in celebrating that The Dark Knight Rises supposedly condemns
green energy for being unprofitable, rips public-private partnerships for
furthering Bane’s plan, and is somehow pro-gun. (In a sentence, the “green
energy” program works but Bruce Wayne doesn’t want it weaponized and so
halts it, the villain achieves his ends through totally private stock market
manipulation, and Batman doesn’t let Selina Kyle use guns.) It’s so precisely
wrong, reaching Bill Kristol and Dick Morris levels of factual absurdity, that it’s
beautiful. It’s this kind of logic that gives us intellectuals who build entire
careers explaining how Barack Obama’s Democratic Party is racist against
blacks and too pro-white, that Detroit, Camden, East Saint Louis, and Rochester
were destroyed by white liberals, and that the problem with academia and the
media is that they’re anti-Semitic. You almost have to admire it.
Nolte meanwhile is so far off the mark with his review and his responses that
it’s difficult to believe he saw the movie. He charges that Bane is simply
motivated by jealous nihilism simply because he’s miserable. Also, all of his
followers are losers—just like Occupy Wall Street, LOL!
Nolte writes:
“Rises” is a love letter to an imperfect America that in the end always does
the right thing. . . . Nolan loves the American people—the wealthy
producers who more often than not trickle down their hard-earned
winnings, the workaday folks who keep our world turning, a financial
system worth saving because it benefits us all, and those everyday warriors
8
who offer their lives for a greater good with every punch of the clock.

And of course, the whole movie was just an excuse by Christopher Nolan to
“slap Obama.” Press releases from the Southern Poverty Law Center contain
more intellectual subtlety and analytical depth.
Nolte’s review is exhibit A for the case that the Republican id is driven by the
feeling of being right, rich, successful, and in charge regardless of what is
9
actually happening. As Bane said before snapping a capitalist pencil neck, “Do
you feel in charge?” Nolte and Shapiro, clueless, would say yes.
New York Times token faux-conservative Ross Douthat objected to this
10
reading in a fairly accurate but incomplete analysis. Douthat noted there might
be a bit more subtlety to the question of Gotham’s underclass than they are just
11
jerks, but Nolte fired back, doubling down on his, uh, thesis. The bad guys are
just “insecure thumbsuckers raging with a sense of entitlement, desperate to
justify their own laziness and failure and to flaunt a false sense of superiority
through oppression.”

“TELL ME ABOUT BANE! WHY DOES HE WEAR THE MASK?”
Where to begin? Perhaps it is best to find some common ground with our
misguided and lovably dopey kosher conservative friends. Let’s advance the
theory that if we both accept the idea of liberal media bias, it is mildly suspicious
that biggest blockbuster of the year would be an “ode to traditional capitalism”
and a partisan attack on Barack Obama. While contemporary American
conservatism’s conception of the “Right” has devolved into support of charter
schools for blacks and opposing evolution because it’s racist, in theory, the Right
by definition involves the principled defense of hierarchy. Movie villains that
attack egalitarianism, attempt to set themselves up as an authority, or generally
have some higher aim besides “chaos” are on the Right, like most of James
12
Bond’s super-villains, Loki from The Avengers, or the Empire in Star Wars.
 Therefore, rather than just quoting Republican talking points, it’s useful to
look at the character of Bane and see how Big Hollywood’s charges hold up.

BANE THE NIHILIST
First is the idea that Bane is some sort of nihilist. A nihilist is an individual
who doesn’t think human existence has objective value or meaning. While Bane
could certainly be described as a rather brutal anarcho-primitivist, he certainly
does have a belief in actual life versus mere existence. Bane strives for an order
worth living in, and ultimately wants justice for all those responsible for the state
of society as represented by Gotham.
Bane is motivated to restore the natural balance to the world by putting an end
to a decadent society which will inevitably fall. In a sentence: that which is
falling must also be pushed. He views Batman as someone who makes things
worse by drawing out Gotham’s decline and suffering, which is why he must be
eliminated. Many of Bane’s minions lay down their lives on command to
accomplish this ideal, indicative that they believe in something beyond their own
personal interests. Their lives are forfeited towards a higher goal, not in a
wanton manner à la the Joker.
The dialogue spells it out fairly clearly. Bane addresses a henchman as
“brother” when he asks him to lay down his life for the mission. “Have we
started the fire?” the initiate asks. “Yes,” replies Bane. “The fire rises.” Unlike
the capitalists that Bane exploits to acquire the weapons and equipment he needs
to take over the city, Bane is not in it for the money. Staring down at a gaping
John Dagget, his former accomplice, Bane pronounces, “I’m Gotham’s
reckoning, here to end the borrowed time you’ve all been living on. . . . I’m
necessary evil.”
Does Bane have a vision of the good beyond just tearing down corruption?
Actually he does. Bane possesses a certain reverence for the concept of
innocence. In the course of the film it is revealed that Bane was willing to lay
down his life to protect the defenseless child Talia. His actions ultimately lead to
his own excommunication from the League of Shadows, and a permanent
physical impairment. The mask feeds him a painkilling gas that keeps the
injuries he sustained at bay. Some of the film’s deleted material shows a more
primitive version of Bane’s apparatus and his training in the League of Shadows
under Ra’s al Ghul, before he was expelled to keep him away from Ra’s al
13
Ghul’s daughter. Talia could not forgive her father, until Bruce Wayne
murdered him. Only then could Talia and Bane join forces to complete his
mission.
This is the heart of Bane’s identity, the transformation from a pain-wracked
prisoner into an avatar of Justice. As he defeats Batman in single combat, Bane
pronounces, “I am the League of Shadows. I am here to fulfill Ra’s al Ghul’s
destiny!” Michael Caine’s Alfred intones, “His speed, his ferocity, his training! I
see the power of belief. I see the League of Shadows resurgent.” Say what you
will about the tenets of the League of Shadows, Nolte, but at least it’s an ethos.
As we recall from the first film, the League of Shadows is a Traditionalist
Order dedicated to fighting crime without restrictions from society’s
“indulgence.” Batman is trained by the League, but he turns on them when he is
asked to execute a murderer. Incredulous, Ra’s al Ghul asks if Bruce Wayne
would prefer a trial by “corrupt bureaucrats.” Wayne has no response. When
Wayne is told that the League plans to destroy the festering rot that is Gotham,
Wayne kills many of the League’s members and blows up its headquarters.
Compared to the League, Wayne/Batman is a liberal.
Incredibly, but perhaps not astonishingly, neither Nolte nor Shapiro mention
the League of Shadows. It’s like trying to explain the transformation of Bruce
Wayne into Batman without mentioning the death of his parents. Most
importantly, as we find out (spoilers!) at the end of the film, Bane is not the main
villain. The main villain is Talia—Miranda Tate for most of the film—the
daughter of Ra’s al Ghul who seeks to complete her father’s mission. The person
who rose from the prison pit was not Bane, but Talia, and it is she who is leading
the mission to destroy Gotham. In both the first and third films, Batman is not
fighting against chaos, or communism, or high tariff rates, or some other
bugaboo of the Beltway faux-Right—he’s fighting a Traditionalist Order that
wants to destroy the city he loves.
The League’s justice decrees Gotham should die—Batman’s mercy says it
should live. Both are fighting for their conception of the good, and willing to die
for it. This isn’t nihilism, on either side.

BANE THE ECONOMIC SOCIALIST
Bane’s attack on the city of Gotham is twofold. First, he attacks the stock
market, an action which brings Batman/Bruce Wayne out of retirement. He’s
confronted by a stock broker who claims, “This is a stock market—there’s no
money for you to steal.” Bane replies, “Really? Then why are you people here?”
Bane doesn’t take the money—he uses a program to strip Bruce Wayne from
control of Wayne Enterprises so he can seize the arsenal and the energy project
to build an atomic bomb.
Of course, this is just a means to an end. When John Dagget protests that his
company has not been able to absorb Wayne’s and claims “I’m in charge,” Bane
replies calmly, “Do you feel in charge?” Laying his hand lightly on Dagget’s
shoulder, Bane shows he knows where power comes from—force. When Dagget
mutters that he’s paid Bane a small fortune, Bane replies, “And this gives you
power over me?” “Your money, and infrastructure, have been important, until
now.” Bane is in service to a cause greater than money—it’s not surprising that
American conservatives literally cannot comprehend it as coming from the
Traditionalist Right.
The real boss of the League, Talia, brings the message home in lines that are
delivered early in the movie, but take on a whole new meaning after her true
identity is revealed. Speaking to Dagget about a clean energy program, she says,
“But you understand only money, and the power you think it buys.” We think
this is just a champagne socialist looking down on the rich who don’t share
enough with the poor or spend enough on trendy causes. Actually, the clean
energy program is a way to develop a fusion bomb to take control of Gotham,
and Talia (who already has control of a vast amount of money) could not care
less about Lefty trends. She is also serving the purposes of her father’s Order.
The second main attack is against the football game, with Bane blowing up
the field after the National Anthem. Nolte’s take is “Nolan’s love for this
country is without qualifiers and symbolized in all its unqualified sincerity in a
beautiful young child sweetly singing a complete version of ‘The Star Spangled
Banner’—just before ‘Occupy’ attempts to fulfill its horrific vision of what
‘equality’ really means.” Of course, knowing that Bane actually is part of the
League of Shadows, we know there’s a larger agenda here.
Bane isn’t entirely immune to the idea of innocence, as we know how he
saved Talia. He even comments while listening to the song, “That’s a lovely,
lovely voice.” Then he says, “Let the games begin!” and pushes the button. The
League regards the city of Gotham as hopelessly corrupt and evil, and it’s
therefore significant that they announce their takeover at a football game—the
circus part of bread and circuses. The football game isn’t some glorious
manifestation of Americana—it’s a symbol of how pointless and worthless
14
modern life has become. Bane then announces that Gotham is to rise up and
“take back their city.” The next day, at Blackgate Prison, Bane destroys the myth
of Harvey Dent and calls for revolution against the corrupt, who will be cast out
“into the cold world that we know, and endure.” Gotham, says Bane, will be
given “to you, the people.”
There’s a heavy tone of irony in that last pronouncement, which goes to the
heart of Bane’s plan. Nolan said that much of the plot was based upon Charles
Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities, which depicts the moral collapse of
Revolutionary France. We know Bane is not a nihilist because of his own
pronouncements, actions, and membership in the League. However, has he
transformed the League into a vanguard fighter for a socialist commune?
While Big Hollywood says yes, there’s nothing to suggest that the League of
Shadows and its relatively wealthy members and backers (like Talia) are
socialists, and they speak consistently of fulfilling, rather than changing, Ra’s al
Ghul’s Traditionalist mission. It’s not that Bane is a socialist—it’s that he’s a
Traditionalist who despises capitalism, Revolting Against the Modern World
from the Right. American conservatives simply don’t get it, trapped into a
simplistic worldview where there is Communism on the Left and Capitalism on
the Right.
But how do we know this? How can we be sure that we aren’t, like Big
Hollywood, just reading into the movie our own ideological prejudices? Well,
it’s pretty easy. Bane directly tells us.

BANE THE EGALITARIAN REVOLUTIONARY
After “breaking” Batman, Bane takes him to the prison where he lived for
years. He tells Bruce Wayne “the truth about despair.” There can be no despair
without hope, and just as the prison has an opening at the top to drive prisoners
mad with the lust for freedom, so Bane will use hope to create greater despair.
Batman is to be punished because he betrayed the League of Shadows and the
cause of true justice. Wayne believed that his “Batman” could be a symbol that
lasts beyond him, that anyone could be Batman. As we learned at the end of The
Dark Knight, Bruce Wayne believes that the people of Gotham are
fundamentally good, and that given the choice, they will choose good.
Therefore, no matter how bad things get in Gotham, no matter how decadent the
elite may be, no matter how much he may personally despise them (even to the
point of becoming a recluse), Wayne thinks that which is falling must be
propped up. Bane considers this not just mistaken, but despicable. When Batman
dismisses the League as a gang of psychopaths, Bane attacks with outraged fury.
Thus, in defeat, Bruce Wayne will be punished by watching Bane torture an
entire city. Wayne, after all, lusts for death and release. Bane knows that
Wayne’s punishment must be more severe, that he has to be forced to understand
the depth of what he sees as Wayne’s evil. Bane will do this by “feeding them
[the people of Gotham] hope to poison their souls.” Bruce Wayne will watch the
people of the city climb over each other “so they can stay in the sun.” He will
force Wayne to watch as the true nature of Gotham City is unleashed. And then,
“when you have understood the depth of your failure, and Gotham is ashes, then
you have my permission to die.”
Thus, Bane’s proto-Occupy speeches aren’t about propagating the ideology of
the League—it’s spiritual poison. He even tells us it’s spiritual poison. His
screed about giving Gotham back to the people is done to mock the idealism that
Batman places in the populace of the city itself. Bane’s actions are an attempt to
fulfill H. L. Mencken’s quip that, “The people get the government they deserve,
and they deserve to get it good and hard.”
When left to their own devices, the people of Gotham fail miserably at
governing themselves. Without the force of Gotham Police Department, the
judicial fangs of the Dent Act, or the confining grip of Arkham Asylum, Gotham
quickly falls into disarray. The people of Gotham illustrate that they are nothing
more than a mob, who allow psychopaths like Dr. Crane/The Scarecrow judicial
power to give people death sentences for pointless reasons. Bane is Gotham’s
reckoning, not Gotham’s executioner. Only the people of Gotham can be the
architects of their own destruction.
Bane has zero pretentions about the ability of the people to govern
themselves. He gives them every opportunity, and they bring their fate on
themselves. The ultimate collapse of Gotham is caused by giving the people the
false hope that they are capable of governing themselves through his
“revolution.” His previous monologue on the worst prison being one with
perpetual hope is indicative of this sentiment. He also directly shows Bruce
Wayne that his mission in life was a failure. Wayne himself suspects thus, in a
dream sequence where the “immortal” Ra’s al Ghul tells him that after all of his
sacrifices, the most he could accomplish was a lie and that even he must realize
Gotham should be destroyed. Subconsciously, even the Batman knows his
mission is futile.
There’s also one critically important fact that puts the beliefs of the League of
Shadows and Bane beyond all doubt—this is a suicide mission. The nuclear
bomb that Bane forced Dr. Pavel to build is going to go off after a certain time,
regardless of what anyone else says about it. Bane will let Gotham destroy itself,
force the rest of the world to see it, and then blow it all up anyway. He’ll even
sacrifice his life and the life of his men in order to bring about a new beginning
on a non-egalitarian foundation. Like Batman, the world will be forced to
understand.
American “movement conservatism,” itself a product of the Enlightenment
dogma of infinite human perfectibility, can’t cope with this kind of message.
Thus, Big Hollywood has to ignore the League of Shadows, ignore Talia, ignore
the previous films, and even ignore Bane’s speech telling the audience exactly
what he is doing so they can keep on believing in “an imperfect America that in
the end always does the right thing.” At the Fox News level of cultural analysis,
Bane and the League of Shadows develop an intricate, years-long strategy that
ends with their own deaths for no other reason than shits and giggles.

THE HERO LIBERAL AMERICA DESERVES?
Needless to say, Batman/Bruce Wayne does save the day. In a sequence heavy
with Traditionalist overtones, Wayne climbs out of the pit, is “reborn” as
Batman, and defeats the League of Shadows. However, he can’t go back.
Fulfilling Alfred’s wishes for him, he avoids both defeat and death and chooses
an anonymous life away from Gotham, away from the society he sacrificed so
much to save.
One bit of credit is due the reviewers for comprehending the character arc of
Selina Kyle/Catwoman. At the beginning of the film, she claims that she is
somehow doing more for the poor than rich philanthropists. She looks forward to
the day when “a storm is coming . . . because you’re all going to wonder how
you thought you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us.” When
she actually sees the revolution unleashed, she’s disgusted to see how a wealthy
family’s home has been transformed into squalor. Kyle understands that
egalitarianism does not lead to paradise, but horror.
However, ultimately Kyle’s actions are motivated by her need to escape. Just
like Bruce Wayne, she cannot bring herself to live even in a restored Gotham
City. At the end of the film, she’s not some happy mama grizzly taking the kids
to Mickey D’s after a hockey game—she’s chosen a wealthy exile with Bruce
Wayne. Kyle too is an outsider. Unlike Talia, she chose selfish escape over
sacrifice for an ideal.
This is the price of heroism—the hero cannot be part of the society that he
saves. That is why the idea of a superhero can be inherently “fascist”—a
superhero is a being of pure will and great power who is held to a different
standard so he can impose that will on the larger society. A superhero saves
society from itself.
Bruce Wayne comes to this realization reluctantly. After all, the whole point
of Batman was that he was supposed to be temporary and that the police and
government could take over and function normally once things got to a certain
point. This doesn’t happen—Robin John Blake is the heir to the title of Batman,
having thrown away his own policeman’s badge and faith in the system. Like a
meat grinder, Gotham will demand more extraordinary men to sacrifice
themselves in order to keep functioning. To save the kind of society where
everyone is equal, the higher man must allow himself to be consumed as the
price of democratic heroism. Democracy can only be saved by people who don’t
really believe in democracy.

“DO YOU FINALLY HAVE THE COURAGE TO DO WHAT IS NECESSARY?”
Despite the happy ending of Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle palling around in
Florence, the ultimate message of the film, and the trilogy, is far too dark for
ever-optimistic American conservatives to internalize. Gotham only functions
when it is built on lies. Lacking both an aristocracy capable of leading, and a
populace capable of being lead, Gotham reverts to brutal authoritarianism in
order to bring about order. This is buttressed by noble lies that would make Leo
Strauss blush, and the constant sacrifice of higher men.
The nature of the people themselves ultimately never changes. When left to
their own devices, the people allow radical psychopaths to run the roost, a
reflection of their own fractured existence. At the end Gotham is saved from
total destruction, but once again needs the false lie of a higher man’s sacrifice in
order to make sense. Bruce Wayne escapes, turns his back on the city, and
moves on with his life in a foreign country. Maybe Nolte’s charge of nihilism
would more accurately apply to the man in the cowl, as opposed to the one in the
mask.
Much like modern America though, Gotham can only make sense for so long
before the wheels come undone. What is Nolan really saying then? Is it possible
he’s challenging our notions of what we actually are conserving? Gotham is
reminiscent of modern America, decadent, soulless, and lacking any social
capital. Is there a Gotham still worth saving? An America? That’s Nolan’s real
question, and something Batman, like conservatives, omit themselves from ever
having to answer.
While it is not surprising that Big Hollywood and movement conservatism
don’t “get” the movie, or much of anything else, the reaction speaks volumes
about how the Left understands the Right better than the Right understands
itself. Conservatives misinterpret the movie because they lack the ability to
comprehend anything deeper than corporate profiteering dressed up in platitudes
like “free markets” or a “shining city on the hill.” Higher ideas like
Traditionalism or the nature of man, society, and power might as well be a
foreign language to the Last Men pining for the second coming of Ronald
Reagan.
Christopher Nolan created a Rightwing film that conservatives are attracted
to, but will never truly understand. They can’t explain why they like the movie
because that requires a new vocabulary drawn from Tradition and the European
New Right. Lacking that, we get paeans to the Caped Crusader’s fight against
clean energy. Still, American conservatives instinctually claim anything with
sublimated Rightwing tendencies as their own. All politics is downstream of
culture, and unfortunately for conservatives, they lost that battle quite some time
ago. However, the impulse for an authentic Right is still there, and the real
culture war never truly ends.
Nolan films with a hammer. The Dark Knight Rises is a radical traditionalist
puncture wound against modernity: not the film we want, but the film we need.
Unfortunately, much like Gotham City, the conservative movement and its
intellectuals are already too far gone to understand it.

Counter-Currents/North American New Right, December 7, 2012



GOTHAM GUARDIAN: WILL THE REAL BATMAN PLEASE STAND UP?

JASON REZA JORJANI Among the neo-pagan American Pantheon of the Justice
League, Batman has always had a unique place. He hails neither from a
crystalline alien planet of supermen, nor from an equally exotic hidden island
utopia. He certainly was not raised in Kansas, like Clark Kent, and he does not
work in the hallowed halls of Washington, like Diana Prince. Bruce Wayne is a
native son of the grittiest, most powerful, and most corrupt city-state on Earth,
Gotham—the archetypal image of New York City, a modern Babylon or Rome.
He was not endowed by birth with the magical powers of a cryptic super-race
that render him virtually invulnerable. His extraordinary abilities are born of
long hard training and self-discipline, and many confrontations with an all too
palpable mortality. Finally, Batman is not a star-spangled, heaven-sent
Apollonian emissary of Truth, Justice, and the American Way. He is of one cloth
with the benighted world in the shadows of which he stealthily works. His work
often pits him against the authorities as an elusive bane of those who have
proclaimed themselves officers of Law and Order. The atmosphere of his world
is that of our own—a milieu where the difference between organized crime and
legal order is rarely clear, so that even the noblest man must resort to mass
deception and terrorism in his thankless task of protecting the decent.
Like any tale that taps into symbols and themes of archetypal power and
significance, the Batman mythos has developed a life of its own. In my view,
however, its many iterations culminated in the masterpiece trilogy of
Christopher Nolan. During my doctoral studies a Marxist colleague of mine who
dressed up as Bane for Halloween claimed that Nolan’s “Batman is a fascist.” I
immediately understood what he meant and replied that he was paying a great
compliment to fascism. Perhaps he will think otherwise of Ben Affleck’s
rendition of Batman, given that the actor’s stance on Islam is closer to Bane’s
than to that of the Dark Knight. The release of Dawn of Justice is an opportunity
for those of us who have protested that “Ben Affleck is not our Batman” to
reflect on the ethos of an Übermensch willing to be hated because he is
something more than a hero.
When Bruce Wayne, still in his Chinese prison cell, first hears of the League
of Shadows from Ducard and dismissively identifies them as vigilantes, Ducard
replies: “No, no. A vigilante is a man lost in his quest for gratification. He can be
destroyed or locked up. But if you make yourself more than just a man, if you
devote yourself to an ideal, and if they can’t stop you, then you become
something else entirely.” Later, during the final test in Bruce’s training, Ducard
says: “You have to become a terrible thought. A wraith. You have to become an
idea!” What Nolan is referring to here is “Justice” —with a capital J—as a
Platonic ideal or idea (Greek eidos) above or beyond the plane of transient
worldly manifestations.
Christopher Nolan’s Batman films sketch out the broad contours of a multi-
tiered organized crime syndicate that has effectively become a de facto world
government. At the lowest level are old time mafia bosses like Carmine Falcone
and Salvatore Maroni and a variety of new wave gang leaders and drug dealers
who each manage their own territories and are grouped in some cases according
to race or ethnicity. Lacking any real economic expertise, the first tier of
organized criminals must turn to experts in high finance in order to manage their
collective investments. Mr. Lau of Hong Kong represents this financier class,
and it is significant that he is in turn trying to invest in Wayne Enterprises on
their behalf. If a CEO like Earle had still been running Wayne Enterprises, Lau’s
business deal with the corporation would probably have gone through. While
Earle was at the helm of Wayne Enterprises he had departed radically from
Thomas Wayne’s philanthropic vision for the corporation by becoming involved
in heavy arms manufacture, as represented by the microwave emitter chemical
agent dispersal unit designed for desert warfare. At the same time, Earle tried to
take the company public so as to raise capital from big investors in the arms
industry. Bruce ultimately saves his family business from taking this course, but
only after Nolan has given us an idea of the second tier of organized crime: the
military-industrial corporation, which views the first tier of organized criminals
as legitimate “no questions asked” investors.
These first two tiers consist of weak-minded people who lack a fearless
commitment to principles that they would not violate at any cost. Their ultimate
aim is lining their wallets. Most organized criminals hatch their plots to gain
something, but this also means that they live in fear of all they have to lose. Both
the gangsters and the military-industrial corporatists are glorified thieves.
Consequently, more disciplined and intelligent men with well-considered plans
and long-term projects find them easy to manipulate. Among this third class of
organized criminals are experts in mind control and psychological warfare, such
as Dr. Crane (Scarecrow) and his handler Henri Ducard, as well as Ra’s al
Ghul’s daughter and the disciple who was her protector, Bane, and the Islamists
that he recruits as his “liberation army.”
Crane, an unethical scientist, manipulates the drug dealing activities of the
first level of criminals in order to carry out nefarious psychological experiments.
Crane is in turn Ducard’s pawn. Ducard controls at least part of the international
trafficking that brings various illicit substances from Asia to Gotham.
Meanwhile, the infrastructure of Gotham has been so badly corrupted that
Ducard’s men can infiltrate every level of it, to the point of stealthily acquiring
classified special weapons designed and manufactured by the military-industrial
corporatists. The League of Shadows is not merely after profit. In fact, Bane’s
rabble-rousing leadership of the Occupy Wall Street movement in The Dark
Knight Rises demonstrates the essentially anti-capitalist character of the cult.
Although it skillfully makes use of mobsters, militarist corporatists, and
unethical scientists and technocrats, it is ultimately a cult of “true believers” who
reject materialism and creature comforts. That is also what lies behind its thinly-
veiled association with radical Islam. This means that even these Assassins can
be manipulated. Only the Joker cannot be.
The Joker is not after money, or for that matter any other logically
comprehensible advantage or materially definable gain. In The Dark Knight,
Christopher Nolan shows us this through both Alfred’s anecdote about the bandit
he chased in the forests of Burma and the Joker’s own dramatic decision to burn
his half of the laundered money. The former clearly foreshadows the latter.
Alfred explains to Bruce that Batman hammered the underworld “to the point of
desperation, and in their desperation they turned to a man they didn’t fully
understand.” Bruce then echoes what Ducard said about criminals in Batman
Begins, namely that: “Criminals aren’t complicated.” Bruce thinks that they are
all after something and they just need to figure out what the Joker wants. Alfred
disagrees: “With respect Master Wayne, perhaps this is a man you don’t fully
understand either.” He then tells the story about the bandit. Bruce asks Alfred
why the bandit would have stolen the stones just to throw them away. Alfred
replies: “Well, because he thought it was good sport, because some men [Nolan
focuses the camera on the Joker’s face on TV] aren’t looking for anything
logical like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with.
Some men just want to watch the world burn.” Later, when in the predawn hours
Bruce, still half dressed as Batman, is sitting by the window of his apartment
overlooking Gotham and contemplating whether he is responsible for Rachel’s
death, he asks Alfred: “That bandit, in the forest in Burma, did you catch him?”
Alfred replies “Yes.” Bruce asks “How?” Alfred’s ominous response once again
references fire: “We burned the forest down.”
The two references to the bandit who wanted to watch the world burn and who
forces his pursuers to burn a forest down to apprehend him, frame the scene
where the Joker sets fire to the money he’s extorted from the mobsters and
gangsters that he has turned into his playthings. As he burns the mountain of
cash the Joker says to one of the gangsters: “All you care about is money, this
town deserves a better class of criminal. I’m gonna give it to them. Tell your
men they work for me now. This is my city.” The gangster retorts that his men
“won’t work for a freak,” whereupon the Joker delivers one of his most
revealing lines in The Dark Knight: “Why don’t we cut you up and feed you to
your pooches. Then we’ll find out how loyal everybody really is. Its not about
money, its about sending a message: EVERYTHING BURNS!”
The word “mob” has a dual meaning in Nolan’s Batman films. It is not only a
reference to the organized crime syndicate that rules Gotham, but also to the
masses who allow it to do so. As the Joker recognizes, the people of Gotham are
utterly hypocritical. Even though they want law enforcement to hunt down
Batman as an outlaw vigilante, and are ready to put him in prison once he turns
himself in, they are happy to use him when they really need him. Most of them
view him as just as freakish and “crazy” as the Joker, and moreover as the
catalyst for the “craziness” that has come over Gotham. They share the mob’s
wish to just go back to the way things were in the old days. Harvey Dent’s
impassioned plea at the press conference, to the effect that while things are
indeed “worse than ever” it is “always darkest just before the dawn” has no
effect on them. They do not appreciate him reminding them that although the
Batman is an outlaw, the people of Gotham, who have so far been happy to let
Batman clean up their streets, are really demanding that he turn himself in
because they are scared of a terrorist madman.
The Joker’s “social experiment” with the two ferries rigged with explosives is
an attempt to demonstrate the validity of his thesis that “when the chips are
down, these uh, these ‘civilized’ people, they’ll eat each other.” Although this
appears to fail, the Joker still makes his point through his “ace in the hole.” Both
Gordon and Batman agree that the Joker was right to think that if the people of
Gotham were to find out what he had turned Harvey into, their spirit would
break and they would give up all hope in the good. The only way they can avert
this outcome is to cover up the truth that the public cannot handle. This shows
that even Harvey Dent’s criticism of Democracy is too weak. Recall the
exchange between Bruce, his Russian ballerina date, Rachel, and Harvey in a
restaurant towards the beginning of The Dark Knight:
NATASCHA (Russian prima ballerina): How could you want to raise children
in a city like this.
BRUCE: Well, I was raised here, I turned out okay.
DENT: Is Wayne Manor even in the city limits.
BRUCE: The Palisades, sure. You know, as our new DA you might want to
figure out, uh, where your jurisdiction ends.
NATASCHA: I’m talking about the kind of city that idolizes a masked
 vigilante.
DENT: Gotham city is proud of an ordinary citizen standing up for what’s
right.
NATASCHA: Gotham needs heroes like you, elected officials, not a man who
thinks he is above the law.
BRUCE: Exactly, who appointed the Bat Man?
DENT: We did. All of us who stood by and let scum take control of our city.
NATASCHA: But this is a democracy, Harvey.
DENT: When their enemies were at the gates, the Romans would suspend
democracy and appoint one man to protect the city, and it wasn’t
considered an honor, it was considered a public service.
RACHEL: Harvey, the last man that they appointed to protect the Republic
was named Caesar, and he never gave up his power.
DENT: Ok, fine. You either die a hero or you live long enough to see
yourself become the villain. Look, whoever the Bat Man is he doesn’t want
to do this for the rest of his life, how could he? Batman is looking for
someone to take up his mantle.
NATASCHA: Someone like you, Mr. Dent?
DENT: Maybe, if I’m up to it.

He is not up to it, and since both Gordon and Batman agree that Dent is
Gotham’s finest, it turns out that no one is up to it. For most of The Dark Knight,
Batman believes that Dent is the “real hero” that he “can never be.” Bruce sees
his own fight against organized crime as provisional, and hopes to be able to
create the conditions whereby a public official of a democratic government can
take up the struggle through more legitimate means. Rachel clearly influenced
Bruce into taking this view. Towards the opening of Batman Begins she
preaches the virtues of an impartial Justice system over vigilante vengeance, and
while Bruce initially responds that “your system is broken” he ultimately tells
Ducard that the man he is supposed to execute “should be tried.” Ducard replies:
“By who? Corrupt bureaucrats? Criminals mock society’s laws. You know this
better than most.” This was Bruce’s view, but he has come around to seeing
things Rachel’s way.
Yet in the end we see that Rachel makes excuses to break her promise to
Bruce, betraying him to be with Dent—whose character she grossly misjudges as
being superior to that of Batman. When Alfred explains to her why Bruce and
Dent agree that Batman should not turn himself in, she completely misses the
point of what he means by saying that Bruce is not being a hero. She leaves a
letter with him whose contents consist of an appalling betrayal of Bruce. Alfred
decides to withhold the letter and then ultimately to burn it altogether, which
Nolan shows us as one of the montages over Gordon’s closing narration in The
Dark Knight. The juxtaposition of that image together with this narration is
intended to suggest that Rachel was just another member of the mob. Bruce
blinded himself to her true character (or lack thereof) because without his love
for her he would be so alone. Alfred burns the letter so that this sudden
realization of almost total loneliness will not endanger Batman’s compassion for
the people of Gotham.
Whether or not Nolan will admit it publicly, one moral of his film is that a
Caesar is not only justified under certain circumstances, but that the suspension
of democracy need not be temporary. Lucius Fox was mistaken to believe that it
is wrong for one man (or a few) to have as much power as the sonar cellular
spying system has given Batman, and Bruce Wayne was wrong to think that he
had to delegate this power to Fox and then allow him to destroy the machine
after only a single use. The Dark Knight explores why Democracy is a
misguided political system altogether. In this closing narration we see the total
inversion of Gordon and Wayne’s initial belief that Dent is the true hero and
Batman only a temporary stopgap. Dent’s heroism is a lie that Batman, who is
far more than a hero, decides must be maintained for the citizens’ own good.
Ra’s al Ghul was right that “theatricality and deception are powerful weapons,”
and Batman learns that it is sometimes necessary to use both. Here is the
dialogue and narration of The Dark Knight’s devastating last scene:
GORDON: Thank you.
BATMAN [after having fallen]: You don’t have to thank me.
GORDON: Yes, I do.
The Joker won. Harvey’s prosecution, everything he fought for, undone.
Whatever chance you gave us of fixing our city, dies with Harvey’s
reputation. We bet it all on him. The Joker took the best of us and tore him
down. People will lose hope.
BATMAN: They won’t. They must never know what he did.
GORDON: Five dead. Two of them cops. You can’t sweep that up.
BATMAN: But the Joker cannot win. Gotham needs its true hero [he turns
Two Face’s head over to the Harvey side]. You either die a hero or you live
long enough to see yourself become a villain. I can do those things, because
I’m not a hero, unlike Dent. I killed those people. That’s what I can be.
GORDON: No, you can’t, you’re not.
BATMAN: I’m whatever Gotham needs me to be. Call it in.
GORDON [giving a speech before Dent’s portrait]: “A hero, not the hero we
deserved, but the hero we needed, nothing less than a knight, shining.”
 [Gordon’s closing narration, over images of him breaking down the Bat
signal, and the cops chasing Batman . . .]
GORDON: They’ll hunt you.
BATMAN: You’ll hunt me. You’ll condemn me. Set the dogs on me, because
that’s what needs to happen. Because sometimes Truth isn’t good enough
[OVER THE IMAGE OF ALFRED BURNING RACHEL’S LETTER],
sometimes people deserve more, sometimes people deserve to have their
faith rewarded.
GORDON’S SON: Batman. Batman! Why’s he running, dad?
GORDON: Because we have to chase him . . .
GORDON’S SON: He didn’t do anything wrong.
GORDON: . . . because he’s the hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it
needs right now. So we’ll hunt him, because he can take it, because he’s not
our hero, he’s a silent Guardian, a watchful protector—a dark knight.

Beautiful, terrible—but only the way a myth, a modern legend can be, right?
On the contrary, that is what the mob believes and what the Cosmic Joker who
manipulates them wants you to believe. Nolan gives us a hint that he knows
otherwise. The card Joker tacks to corpse of the Batman copycat reads: “Will the
real Batman please stand up.”
In the closing narration of The Dark Knight, with its reference to the
“guardian” and the noble lie, it becomes clear that Nolan is promoting a new
interpretation of the idea of Guardianship that we find in Plato’s Republic—the
most antidemocratic political text in the history of philosophy. The basic
problem of the Republic is set forth in the parable of “the Ring of Gyges,” from
15
358a–362b in Book II. This thought experiment is provided as a means to
strengthen the argument of Thrasymachus that might makes right, with which
Republic opens in Book I before going on to counter this view for the rest of the
text. Gyges is a Lydian shepherd who, in the midst of a terrible thunderstorm and
earthquake, finds the subterranean tomb of a giant in a crevice that has just
cracked open the Earth. There are many marvelous things in the tomb, but the
giant himself is naked except for a ring, which Gyges removes and slips onto his
own finger before leaving the chamber. Later, he discovers that whenever he
turns this ring inward he becomes invisible, because others discuss him as if he
is not there. He uses this power to have sex with the Queen and murder her
husband, installing himself as the King of Lydia.
Plato asks, if there were two such rings, one being given to what we take to be
a just man and the other to an unjust man, would not nearly everyone at least
privately think of the just man as a fool if he did not go about raping and
plundering with impunity, if he did not, in effect, behave exactly as the unjust
man does (and would do even more efficaciously with such a ring)? In an annex
to the Gyges parable, Plato sharpens the question. Putting aside the ring, what if
the state of affairs in the world were such that the man who only seems just in
order to profit thereby were to be rewarded for his veiled injustice at every turn,
whereas the just man would be taken by the many to be unjust and on that
account hunted down and subjected to every variety of torture before in the end
being crucified, then who could honestly say he would prefer to be a just man
rather than a man who in the eyes of the many only seems just? Bruce Wayne’s
extraordinary wealth, honored position as “the prince of Gotham,” and his
cunning intellect, afford him something like the Ring of Gyges—he could be the
seemingly just man, being celebrated as a philanthropist while getting away with
all kinds of dastardly deeds or at least living the callow life of a playboy.
Instead, he chooses to be a feared, hated, hunted, vigilant guardian who protects
those who persecute him and who cannot expect a hero’s reward.
The famous or infamous passages on the so-called “philosopher king” as
16
Guardian of the city-state appear from 497b-503b of the Republic. I say so-
called “philosopher king” because Plato (quite scandalously for his time) thinks
that female philosophers are also fit to be Guardians. Three main points are
emphasized in these core passages.
The first is that Plato is fully convinced that philosophers cannot quietly retire
from politics because they distain its rampant corruption. Philosophers will
inevitably be victimized by unjust governments and perhaps martyred.
Moreover, given that philosophers who contemplate ideals and are purified
through long abiding in a transcendent state, if they turn their efforts to ordering
the affairs of the world they would tend to reflect the archetypal patterns within
their soul in the re-structured city-state as if in a mirror. In the absence of this,
Plato is fully convinced that men of lesser intuition and understanding will
always make themselves miserable through bringing about one or another unjust
regime as a reflection of their own inner discord. Although the philosopher
would rather keep to himself and his peers in a life of quiet contemplation, taken
together these two facts make it incumbent upon him or her to protect lesser men
from their own folly and to temper the violence that these men suffer at each
other’s hands by taking up statecraft as a public service.
Secondly, to the contrary of the view of those who think that Plato is naively
engaging in an idle meander through the land of make-believe, if one reads these
passages one finds several times both an insistence that such a regime should
actually be implemented and a repeated acknowledgment that although this
would be very difficult, and would be vociferously opposed by the mob, it is
nonetheless not impossible.
Third and finally, one finds that Plato recognizes that the implementation of
such a regime cannot be accomplished through reformist half-measures, but will
require a radical revolution that wipes out the prevailing corruption before
supplanting it with a more just social order. Like a master craftsman, the
Guardian is a “painter of regimes” who will not accept anything less than a blank
canvas or “a tablet . . . which, in the first place, they would wipe clean.” They
“would rub out one thing and draw in another . . . mixing and blending . . .
ingredients” for a new “image of man.”
Needless to say such a revolution will be resisted by the mob who are
incapable of understanding that it is for their own good, and that even those of
them who are killed in the course of it will benefit by being reincarnated into a
more just society. Therefore, a certain measure of deception will be necessary in
order for the Guardians to forward their noble-minded project. This is the aspect
of the doctrine of Guardianship in the Republic that is most evidently alluded to
in Nolan’s use of the Batman mythos to critique democracy. In the course of the
Republic, Plato offers us two principal examples of the role that a “noble lie”
might play in establishing a just social order.
The concept is introduced at the core of the so-called ‘myth of the metals’
recounted from 413a–417b, with the key passage being at 414c: “Could we . . .
somehow contrive one of those lies that come into being in case of need, of
which we were just now speaking, some one noble lie to persuade, in the best
17
case, even the rulers, but if not them, the rest of the city?” The second
reference comes at 457a–462c in the context of proposals as to how to coerce
compliance with controversial eugenics and population control policies, with this
striking pronouncement as its fulcrum at 459d: “It’s likely that our rulers will
have to use a throng of lies and deceptions for the benefit of the ruled. And, of
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course, we said that everything of this sort is useful as a form of remedy.”
The content of these noble lies might not seem to have much in common with
the noble lie that Batman decides to have Commissioner Gordon tell the people
of Gotham, but their form is the same. In all cases, the noble lie is really about
using deception or trickery as a way to fool people into becoming something that
they would not otherwise have been capable of becoming. It is a way of crossing
over and redefining the boundaries of the possible, like pretending to hold a
child who is just learning to tread water in the deep end of the pool but holding
him so lightly that he is already really keeping himself afloat but would still
drown if he were made aware of this. Or, in a more sinister example, it is like
forcing people you want to protect to face a false enemy so that they will build
their strength in earnest and be more prepared for a real enemy that you know
will arrive later.
The message of Hermes, the Trickster, may bring new boundaries decreed by
Heaven, but only because he already crossed the old ones or brought people to
19 20
cross them. He is the god of the threshold. Although he upsets the established
social order, Hermes is most decidedly not the god of democracy; he will align
himself with any number of different (and even opposed) political systems for
21
strategic reasons. He is known to play both sides, perhaps to provoke them into
a generative strife. It appears that the Hermes archetype is not only at work in
the Joker, but also in the response that the Joker’s apparent victory elicits from
the Dark Knight. In fact, the Batman and the Joker are an alchemical conjunction
of opposites with tremendous transformative potential. A majority of Gothamites
and most of the police force want to go back to a time before Batman, and the
city’s organized criminals think that the “craziness” the Joker has unleashed is
just too much. Yet, as Alfred explains to Bruce, he “crossed the line first,” and
as the Joker explains to Batman, “there is no going back.” Hermes has crossed
the boundaries and calls forth a new order out of Chaos.
A good student of Plato recognizes that “do not unto others as you would not
want others to do unto you” is a principle as necessary for maintaining the
cohesion of a gang of criminals as it is for governing a city-state. It is based on
the lowest common denominator of self-interest, not on any contemplation of a
moral ideal. Furthermore, it falsely assumes that most people are able to make a
contract of their own free will, and to recognize each other as equal partners in
such a contract.
When Batman decides that he must tell a Platonic noble lie, when he realizes
that his proper role is as a republican Guardian and not as the hero of a
democracy sustained through a social contract, something of the Trickster’s
dynamism has transformatively insinuated itself into his character as well. To
recognize this, in the compelling context of Nolan’s films, is to better discern the
esoteric Hermetic dimension of the Platonic project. Truth lies beyond the limits
of the possible, such that the instauration of Justice makes impossible demands
of allegedly “conservative” but unprincipled hypocrites. “You must be joking,”
they say—to which the only answer is for the real Batman to stand up.



SUPERHEROES,
SOVEREIGNTY, & THE
DEEP STATE

GREG JOHNSON


22
The superhero genre in comics and movies was largely created by Jews. In
some of my writings on film, I have argued that superheroes largely function as
23
symbolic proxies for Jews. Superheroes, like Jews, are outsiders and “freaks.”
They are, moreover, immensely powerful outsiders. Thus, lest they incite the
fear and ire of their host populations, they must practice crypsis to blend in.
Superheroes also play an apologetic role for Jewry. Despite near total Jewish
hegemony in the media and educational system, the public mind is still aware of
stories of secret Jewish cabals plotting to harm the goyim, from the Elders of
Zion to the Project for a New American Century and the Office of Special Plans.
Thus, to immunize the public from automatically regarding such cabals with
suspicion, the superhero genre portrays these immensely powerful and secretive
outsiders—individually, and in groups like the Justice League, the X-Men, and
the Avengers—as committed to the morality of egalitarian humanism and
benevolently serving the interests of humanity.
Of course, in reality the Bolsheviks, neocons, and their like more closely
resemble supervillains than superheroes. Thus, to inoculate the public mind from
drawing that sort of conclusion, supervillains are usually portrayed as Nazis, or
symbolic proxies for Nazis. Basically, supervillains are illiberal, elitist, and
nationalistic, with traditional or archaic rather than modern values, whereas
superheroes are liberal, globalist, and devoted to serving their inferiors.
But superheroes can exemplify Right-wing political themes as well. I want to
argue that superheroes are the fictional genre that best illustrates Carl Schmitt’s
anti-liberal concept of sovereignty. Specifically, I wish to speak about the
masked vigilante genre, epitomized by Batman, in which accomplished but still
biologically human individuals use criminal methods—including masks and
disguises—in the pursuit of justice. I am less interested in superhuman aliens
and mutants, although they too can function as vigilantes. And I am not talking
at all about superheroes who simply rescue people in peril, which is legal in any
system. I am talking about superheroes who take the law into their own hands,
who break the law in order to do justice.
Masked vigilantes are staples of literature and legend, including Robin Hood
and the Sicilian Vendicatori and Beati Paoli, all from the middle ages. But the
most well-attested historical examples of masked vigilantes are, of course, the
Ku Klux Klan.
Batman breaks the law in order to save the law, when the legal system
encounters an opponent that it cannot master. There is a moving scene in
Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises in which Commissioner Gordon
explains why he turned to Batman, a vigilante, for help:
There’s a point, far out there, when all the structures fail you, and the rules
aren’t weapons anymore, they’re . . . shackles, letting the bad guy get
ahead. One day . . . you may face such a moment of crisis. And in that
moment, I hope you have a friend like I did, to plunge their hands into the
filth so that you can keep yours clean!

This is a perfect description of the function of the sovereign as described by
Schmitt. Sovereignty means supreme political authority within a territory, as
opposed to political subjection. Within a society, the sovereign is the ruler, as
opposed to the ruled. A sovereign nation rules itself, as opposed to being ruled
by others. But what is the essential characteristic of the sovereign? In Political
Theology, his short book on the concept of sovereignty, Schmitt states that:
24
“Sovereign is he who decides on the exception.”
To understand what is exceptional, one needs to understand what is normal. In
human affairs, the normal is what usually happens. Normal circumstances can,
therefore, be anticipated by legislators, and the laws they create can be enforced
by functionaries—police, bureaucrats, judges, etc.—in a simple “deductive”
way: If a particular event falls under a general law, justice requires a certain
prescribed course of action.
But as Aristotle pointed out, in human affairs, generalizations pertain “not
always but for the most part,” meaning that there are not just normal
circumstances but also exceptional ones. But exceptional circumstances—if they
really are exceptional—cannot be anticipated by legislators. Thus merely
applying the existing laws in exceptional circumstances cannot produce just
results.
Justice, therefore, requires not just following rules in normal circumstances
but also exercising discretion in exceptional ones. This act of discretion has two
aspects: discerning that we are facing an exception and discerning what we must
25
do to cope with it.
 Such discretion can exist on all levels of the legal system. Cops on the beat,
judges in courthouses, and bureaucrats in offices all have to discern the just path
in exceptional circumstances. Of course the discretion of ordinary policemen,
judges, and bureaucrats can be reviewed and overruled by higher-ups in the
hierarchy.
But you can’t appeal and second-guess forever. Eventually, you will come to a
final arbiter, the final decider. The same is true of legislative or judicial
deliberation. At some point deliberation has to end. Matters must be decided.
Questions must be closed so that we can act.
The supreme law in any system is the constitution. And when the constitution
encounters an exceptional situation, there must be a supreme decider: he who
decides that society is facing an exception, and he who decides what to do about
the exception. This is the sovereign as Schmitt defines him. He is the supreme
power, uniting judicial, legislative, and executive functions.
Now a vigilante or superhero does not literally become a sovereign—unless,
of course, he pulls off a coup d’état. But he performs the function of the
sovereign by deciding that he faces an exceptional situation and what he must do
to fix it. Beyond that, he takes full responsibility for his acts, since all he can
appeal to is his own judgment of right and wrong. But unlike a true sovereign,
who is honored for serving the common good, the vigilante knows he will be
punished. But he is willing to bear the sacrifice.
Many societies make provisions to give individuals plenary powers in
emergency circumstances. For instance, in normal circumstances, the Romans
like the Spartans divided the executive power. The Spartans had two kings and
the Romans had two consuls, each consul being accompanied by 12 lictors
carrying the fasces, the emblems of political authority.
However, in emergency situations, the Romans would appoint a dictator, who
was accompanied by 24 lictors, symbolizing the unification of executive power.
Emergency situations included fighting wars and quelling insurrections, as well
as presiding over religious rituals and civic elections. When necessary, Roman
dictators could ignore or break the normal law with impunity. But dictators were
appointed only for the duration of the special situation or for a fixed period, after
which they surrendered their powers.
Another example of a provision for emergency plenary powers is Article 48 of
the Weimar German constitution, which allowed the chancellor to assume
dictatorial powers in an emergency. Adolf Hitler appealed to Article 48 to
assume dictatorial powers after the Reichstag arson. Those who defend the thesis
that “Hitler did nothing wrong” will be pleased to learn that he became dictator
in a completely legal manner.
 In Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, prosecutor Harvey Dent defends
Batman’s vigilantism by likening it to the role of the Roman dictator: “When
their enemies were at the gates, the Romans would suspend democracy and
appoint one man to protect the city. It wasn’t considered an honor; it was
considered a public service.” Of course there is an important difference: the
Roman dictator was a legal office, whereas Batman is an outlaw. Nevertheless,
Bruce Wayne sees Dent as someone who might make Batman unnecessary by
performing his functions within the legal system.
But that is not really possible, for Gotham is a liberal democracy. One of the
basic principles of liberal democracy is “government by laws, not men.” Liberals
see human decision (“arbitrariness”) as a source of injustice, which must be
eliminated from the political system. From Schmitt’s point of view, however,
one cannot eliminate decision from politics. One’s only choice is to own up to it,
to take responsibility for decision, and to make sure that the best possible people
are empowered to decide—or, like liberals, we can try to evade that
responsibility.
The liberal idea of government is a machine that runs by impersonal rules to
make sure that everyone is treated justly and fairly, but which is indifferent to
the quality of the individuals who compose society and the cultivation of virtue.
If decision is inevitable, then we have to find and shape the best possible
deciders. But if society can simply operate like a machine, human vice and
mediocrity are no impediments to good government.
Liberals also believe that if they just put the right procedural rules in place,
they do not need to worry about the consequences of acting according to those
rules. Thus they are dismissive of political philosophies that depend upon any
vision of the future, any notion of a common good or ideal society that we
should strive for. You can argue all you like that liberal principles lead to
catastrophic consequences—for instance, free trade undermines national
sovereignty and First World living standards; the free movement of peoples
leads to social alienation, miscegenation, and conflict; or expressive
individualism leads to cultural degeneracy, collapsing families, and personal
unhappiness—but liberals simply deny that consequences have any moral
weight. Instead, they will cling to their procedural notions of the good—their
sacred “principles”—even though the world might perish.
Liberalism seeks to evade decision in all aspects of politics. But the
fundamental pathology of liberalism is the evasion of specifically sovereign
decision, which forces the sovereign function outside the law. Those who would
save liberalism from itself, when it fails to meet the challenge of the exception,
must sacrifice themselves by becoming outlaws. In Commissioner Gordon’s
terms, they must “plunge their hands into the filth” of illegality so that public
officials like him can keep their hands “clean.” Clean according to the laws that
are “shackles” rather than “tools” of justice. Clean of “arbitrariness,” clean of the
responsibility of deciding, clean of sovereignty.
Schmitt teaches us that sovereignty ultimately reposes in men, not laws. This
is true even in liberal systems, which refuse to admit it openly. Which just means
that liberal democracies are ruled by secret sovereigns, men who exercise
decision as they hide behind the laws and pretend that their hands are tied, that
they are just following orders, that their hands and their consciences are clean.
In liberal society, there are two kinds of secret sovereigns. First, there are the
founders, the framers of the constitutional order who decided what the
fundamental laws will be. As I put it elsewhere:

Laws are ultimately created by decisions. Thus those who believe that
decisions must always be governed by laws are simply abandoning their
own freedom and responsibility and choosing to be ruled by the free
decisions of those who came before them. Just as the deist model of the
universe depends upon divine wisdom to frame its laws and set the machine
in motion, liberals depend on the human wisdom of the Founders who
26
created the constitution.

This is why Americans revere the Founders and recoil with horror at the thought
of another Constitutional Convention. The founders made fundamental decisions
so we don’t have to, fundamental decisions that we fear to make. The Founders
were great men, and we are lesser ones. The Founders, of course, were not the
products of the system they created. But we are.
Second, because the founders of a liberal system cannot anticipate every
exceptional circumstance, sovereignty must be exercised in the present day as
well. And if no legal provisions are made to give plenary powers to a sovereign
in a time of crisis, that means that sovereignty must be exercised outside the law.
This leads us to the concept of the “deep state,” which, as far as I know, is the
only Turkish contribution to political thought. The idea of the deep state (derin
devlet) is a coinage of Turkish Islamists. It refers to a shadowy network
concentrated in the Turkish military and security services which spreads
throughout the bureaucracy and judiciary and intersects with organized crime.
The deep state works to maintain Turkey as a secular, nationalist society,
primarily working against Islamists, Left-wing radicals, and Kurdish separatists,
all of whom threaten the Kemalist order. The Deep State is behind at least four
Turkish military coups. The failure of the July 2016 coup has given Recip
Erdogan the pretext for purging the deep state from Turkish institutions. Time
will tell if he has succeeded.
The concept of the deep state needs to be distinguished from other extralegal
forces that influence political policy. It is easy to confuse the deep state with
such notions as an “establishment,” a permanent bureaucracy, secret agencies,
smoke-filled rooms, lobbies and pressure groups, political “inner parties,”
NGOs, and even secret initiatic societies, all of which shape political policy and
negotiate between interest groups.
These groups are simply part of politics as usual. Thus in Schmittian terms,
they have nothing to do with sovereignty, which comes to light only when
politics as usual breaks down. The deep state is where sovereignty resides if a
system fails to legally institutionalize it. The deep state consists of people who
have real power within a given system and who work together, killing or dying if
necessary, to preserve the system when it enters a crisis. In James Cameron’s
1994 movie True Lies, Arnold Schwarzenegger works for a secret US
government organization called the Omega Sector. It is named “omega” because
it is the system’s “last line of defense.” That is the function of the deep state.
I believe that the American fascination with superheroes, conspiracy theories,
and secret societies feeds upon an awareness that liberal democracy punts on the
question of sovereignty. We know that our government is riddled with shadowy
networks working to advance special interests at the expense of the body politic.
And we desperately hope that at least one of these groups might actually be
looking out for the system in a time of crisis.
Since White Nationalists wish to create a new political system in North
America, and since we are hoping to be helped by crises in the present system, it
behooves us to ask who would kill or die to preserve the American system in
such a crisis. Is there an American deep state? If so, where does it lie? If not,
where might it emerge?
The military is the most likely place where a deep state would emerge, since
soldiers take oaths of loyalty more seriously than politicians and are prepared to
kill and die for the present system. But a fatal crisis might include catastrophic
military failure. It might involve a standoff between the military and other
institutions that can only be resolved by outside parties. In such cases,
Bonapartism would no longer be an option.
I don’t think that the organized Jewish community would function as a deep
state in a crisis. As I argue in another essay:

Organized Jewry is the most powerful force in America today. In terms of
politics as usual, Jews get their way in all matters that concern them. But
 although organized Jewry surely would intersect with an American
sovereign deep state, if America faced a severe constitutional crisis, I do not
think that Jews would step in to exercise the sovereign decision-making
functions necessary to preserve the system. They would surely try to stave
off a crisis for as long as possible, to preserve their wealth and power. Then
they would try to milk a crisis for all it is worth. But ultimately, I do not
think they would risk their own blood and treasure to preserve the
American system, for the simple reason that the Jews today show no sign of
caring about America’s long-term viability. It’s not their country, and they
act like it. They are just using it, and using it up. They are not stewarding it
for future generations. Therefore, they will not take responsibility for its
preservation. In a real crisis, I think their deepest instinct would be simply
27
to decamp to friendlier climes.

The sovereign combines ultimate power with ultimate responsibility. Like the
captain who goes down with his ship, he knows that the price of failure is death.
Jews want wealth and power without responsibility. They’ll shrug off dishonor
rather than suffer death. They’re survivors. Thus, in the end, Jews are just toying
with and merchandising the idea of superheroes who constitute deep states and
play the sovereign role. But that does not stop White Nationalists from taking the
idea seriously and planning accordingly.
First, no matter where an American deep state might emerge, the difference
between a true White Nationalist and a mere racially-conscious conservative is
that we regard the system’s ultimate guardians as our worst enemies. Our goal is
not to save this system but to create a new one, which makes us revolutionaries,
not conservatives.
And that makes us a different kind of outlaw than Batman, who like so many
patriotic and public-spirited white people today, accepts the egalitarian-humanist
ethos and thus sacrifices himself to preserve a system rigged to destroy him. We
want to create a new system, rigged to encourage our survival and flourishing,
not our degradation and destruction.
Second, if White Nationalists are serious about creating sovereign white
homelands, we need to think of ourselves as a government in exile, as the
guiding intelligence and deep state of a stateless people. Just as the British
opposition parties maintain shadow cabinets, we must form a shadow
28
government. A League of Shadows, if you like. Every regime is founded by an
elite. Every regime is governed by an elite. Every regime turns to an elite in a
time of crisis. So let us become that elite. In a world without sovereign white
homelands, we must create them. In a world without superheroes, we must
become them.

Counter-Currents/North American New Right,
July 27, 2016


CAESAR WITHOUT GODS: CHRISTOPHER NOLAN’S DARK KNIGHT
TRILOGY

CHRISTOPHER PANKHURST


Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy (Batman Begins, The Dark Knight,
and The Dark Knight Rises) begins with the evocation of fear which becomes the
motivational impulse for Bruce Wayne’s story. As a child he accidentally falls
down a disused well, and, whilst he lies trapped and injured, he is terrified by a
flock of bats that appear like a chthonic force of nature from the bowels of the
earth. His father rescues him and tries to encourage a sense of self-overcoming:
“Why do we fall? So we can learn to pick ourselves up.” The entire trajectory of
the three films is set in motion with this brief motivational dictum.
When the young Bruce attends a performance of the opera Mefistofele with his
parents he experiences a panic attack brought on by some of the performers
dressed as bats. Their appearance causes his primal fear to re-emerge. The
family cut short the opera and leave, and this is why his parents end up being
shot by a mugger in a street outside the theater.
Some years later Bruce attends a parole hearing for his parents’ murderer. He
takes a gun intending to kill the man on his release thus resolving both his sense
of fear and his guilt at his parents’ deaths. Unfortunately (or fortunately) for
Bruce, the freed man is first shot by one of mob boss Carmine Falcone’s
employees as a punishment for testifying against Falcone. Bruce then seeks to
run away from both his inheritance and his unresolved inner conflicts, ending up
in a foreign prison where he meets Ra’s al Ghul (under a false name) from the
League of Shadows. At the culmination of his training with the League, Bruce
learns that they intend to destroy Gotham. In fact, the League presents itself as a
group of Spenglerian shock troops who, throughout history, have repeatedly
intervened at the end point of a civilization, pushing it over the edge to
destruction in order to allow something new and vital to come into existence:
This is not how man was supposed to live. The League of Shadows has
been a check against human corruption for thousands of years. We sacked
Rome; loaded trade ships with plague rats; burned London to the ground.
Every time a civilization reaches the pinnacle of its decadence, we return to
restore the balance.

 In this encounter with Ra’s al Ghul, Bruce learns to become a strong,
superempowered individual, but he is also presented with the opportunity to ally
himself with a particular view of historical unfolding. The League exists to
oversee the trajectory of civilizational development and to ensure that at the end
point of a civilization there is a complete destruction of the decadent forces. As
far as the League is concerned, Gotham represents the pinnacle of decadence,
and as Gotham is modeled on New York this is perhaps not entirely surprising.
Once Bruce Wayne learns of the League’s strategic goals he rejects them and
decides to oppose them. But, apart from the training he has undergone with the
League, he does take one important lesson from them. Ra’s al Ghul forces Bruce
to confront his personal demons (and, perhaps significantly, Ra’s al Ghul’s name
is Arabic for ‘head of the demon’):
To conquer fear, you must become fear. You must bask in the fear of other
men. And men fear most what they cannot see. You have to become a
terrible thought. A wraith. You have to become an idea!
But the purpose of such a transformation is clear:
A vigilante is just a man lost in the scramble for his own gratification. He
can be destroyed, or locked up. But if you make yourself more than just a
man, if you devote yourself to an ideal, and if they can’t stop you, then you
become something else entirely . . . A legend, Mr. Wayne.

This is the crucial point in Bruce Wayne’s (and the film’s) development.
Bruce has an opportunity to embrace an ethos that transcends, not only the self,
but also the limitations of a late civilization. But such a prospect is intensely
problematic for Bruce Wayne. As the head of Wayne Industries, he is not a
typical inhabitant of Gotham; he is in some ways an aristocratic figure, almost a
sort of medieval prince. This is partly suggested by the appearance of Wayne
Manor which is meant to resemble an English stately home (and in fact, for both
the original and the reconstructed Wayne Manors, English stately homes were
used). And the point is further emphasized by casting the English actor Sir
Michael Caine in the role of Alfred. Even more significantly, Bruce Wayne’s
name is embedded in the architecture of Gotham. The central landmark of
Gotham is Wayne Tower, and the transport network around the city is provided
by Wayne Industries. The hub and spokes of the city are nominally identified
with Wayne, and he is born into a sense of noblesse oblige due to his father’s
dual bequest of wealth and social responsibility. One of Bruce Wayne’s roles in
this film is to return as the head of Wayne Industries and thus fulfill his
inheritance and reclaim the name of the father.
Thus, Bruce chooses to reject the meta-historical role offered to him by the
League of Shadows and to instead focus on a very personal project of self-
overcoming. He is offered Spengler, but he accepts Jung.
C. G. Jung’s concept of individuation is an important theme throughout the
trilogy. It is first introduced by the rogue psychiatrist Dr. Jonathan Crane whose
alter ego is Scarecrow. Whilst in the persona of Scarecrow, Crane drives Falcone
to madness with his fear toxin, and Falcone is left babbling the single word,
“scarecrow.” Crane explains that, “Patients suffering delusional episodes often
focus their paranoia on an external tormentor, usually one conforming to Jungian
archetypes . . . in this case a scarecrow.” It is significant that the film introduces
this concept as a false explanation by a criminal psychiatrist.
At the end of Batman Begins, Bruce has defeated Ra’s al Ghul, he has
appropriated the symbol of the bat to represent the overcoming of his own fears,
and he has forged an effective alliance with Jim Gordon of the Gotham police
force. The crime syndicates have begun to be defeated, and corruption has been
tackled. But the appearance of the Joker’s calling card at the end of the film
gives an intimation that not all is well. It also establishes that Bruce Wayne and
Gordon are engaged in a process of endlessly deferring the collapse rather than
preventing it, a tacit admission that the League of Shadows represents an
inevitable process rather than a mortal adversary.
When the Joker does appear in The Dark Knight he enables Bruce to confront
the shadow side of his self. According to Jung, the shadow sometimes appears in
the form of the trickster, a mythological motif that has both a collective, social
function as well as an individual one. This makes sense because, as already
mentioned, Bruce is nominally identified with the infrastructure of Gotham.
The Joker represents the trickster in a number of ways. The trickster is the
embodiment of the unconscious; he is not evil, it is just that his distance from
any sense of rational order makes him do appalling things. Alfred recognizes this
when he says that, “some men aren’t looking for anything logical, like money.
They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want
to watch the world burn.” The trickster can also appear as either male or female,
just as the Joker does when he cross-dresses as a nurse. Even his observation
that, “I’m a dog chasing cars. I wouldn’t know what to do with one if I caught it!
You know, I just . . . do things,” hints at the theriomorphic form that the trickster
will sometimes adopt.
But most significant, and most sinister, is the Joker’s lack of a biography.
When he is arrested the police are able to find no trace of him on their files, and
they discover that his clothes are all hand made. He is disturbing because he
appears to have no relational ties with society. He even seems to have no name.
The subtextual implication here is that identity cannot exist without some form
of societal context. The Joker emerges ex nihilo and has no connection to
anything. Consequently, his motivations, as such, can never be comprehended
because they can never be located in a particular context. He is a shade who is
not afraid of death because, effectively having no identity, he is already dead.
He also makes up stories about his past, giving contradictory accounts of how
he got his facial scars. This lack of a biography lends an ethereal chill to the
characterization. In contrast to a book such as The Killing Joke, which explores
the family background and origin story of the Joker, The Dark Knight turns him
into someone who seems to have never existed in society at all. We simply can’t
get a grip on him because he doesn’t exist as a social agent. Whereas Bruce
Wayne is unusual in the extent to which his own interests are embodied in the
infrastructure of society, the Joker is unique because he has absolutely no
interface with society at all. No family, no branded clothing, no police record;
nothing. This makes him a particularly powerful iteration of the Joker because
more mythic qualities are allowed to speak through him.
Meanwhile, Batman has been becoming more and more identified with the
role of a Caesar figure. This is made explicit in the discussion between Bruce,
Rachel, and Harvey Dent:
HARVEY DENT: When their enemies were at the gates, the Romans would
suspend democracy and appoint one man to protect the city. It wasn’t
considered an honor, it was considered a public service.
RACHEL DAWES: Harvey, the last man who they appointed to protect the
Republic was named Caesar, and he never gave up his power.

This identification of Batman with Caesar is only an intensification of the
already existing identification of Bruce with Gotham. Just as Bruce seems to
embody the interests of Gotham due to his investment in its infrastructure, the
Dark Knight emerges as the Caesar figure who embodies the state in his own
person. And this makes explicit the notion that the late phase of a civilization is
the propitious moment for a Caesar figure to appear. There is thus a progression
from Bruce Wayne in his role as technocrat ruler of the city state, the de facto
prince of Gotham, to the Dark Knight who becomes Caesar as a desperate
response to the declining power of the state.
As the Dark Knight progressively becomes closer to a Messiah figure, the
importance of the Joker’s role as the shadow in the guise of the trickster
becomes more apparent. In an essay on the trickster, Jung writes:
Only out of disaster can the longing for the savior arise—in other words the
recognition and unavoidable integration of the shadow creates such a
harrowing situation that nobody but a savior can undo the tangled web of
 29
fate.”

In both a personal and civilizational sense this can be seen to be particularly true
for the film. The two figures are linked in such a way that the emergence of the
Dark Knight as Caesar must necessarily coincide with the appearance of the
Joker as the trickster. They respectively represent the response to and the
background disorder of the late phase of a civilization. This is why the Joker
insists, “I think you and I are destined to do this forever.”
Something worth noting is that although the trilogy is filled with gestures
towards religious notions, there really are no religion and no gods anywhere to
be found in Gotham. In Spengler’s terms, this accords with the formlessness of
the age of Caesarism. The prior animating spirit has now disappeared from the
civilization. The age of money has coarsened and promoted cynicism to such an
extent that the very possibility of a religious awakening seems risible. But one
real joy of Nolan’s trilogy is the way in which he continually allows the form of
prior religious functions to intrude into the secular world of Gotham. Whether
this is in the form of the Dark Knight as a Messiah figure, or the apparent
immortality of Ra’s al Ghul when he reappears in The Dark Knight Rises as an
actual wraith, there is an implicit acknowledgement that the forms of religious
observance are ineradicable, even if the gods themselves are not.
In The Dark Knight Rises, the League of Shadows reappears in the guise of
Bane. There is little to be said here about the course of this film other than to
note that the League’s reappearance serves to underscore the inevitability of the
form of historical unfolding that they describe. The Dark Knight has committed
himself to preventing their victory, but the trilogy seems resigned to its
inevitability. This is what gives a real feeling of tragedy to the films.
The ending of The Dark Knight Rises seems problematic. After recovering the
nuclear bomb from Ra’s al Ghul’s daughter, Batman flies off out to sea where
the bomb detonates. It would appear that, having once more deferred the process
of civilizational decline, the Dark Knight has now completed his mission of
personal transformation in an act of supreme self-sacrifice, laying down his life
to save his people. His realization of Messiah status is complete; perhaps there
will also be a cult that will develop around him allowing the citizens of Gotham
to rediscover the sense of the numinous that has now become so obscure to
them.
But we quickly learn that the Dark Knight’s sacrifice is actually no such thing.
At the end of the film, Alfred sees Bruce and Selina Kyle seated at a nearby
table whilst on holiday in Florence. Apparently, Batman did not die in the
explosion after all. John Blake, the police officer who earlier confronted Bruce
about his social responsibilities, then discovers the Batcave, and we are led to
believe that he will adopt the persona of Robin and continue the fight against
corruption in Gotham.
There is a school of thought that interprets Alfred’s discovery of Bruce and
Selina as a dream, or fantasy, although the film itself makes it pretty clear that
Bruce had set up his faked death in advance. Still, the happy ending does seem
out of keeping with the darkness that had preceded it. There is something
unsatisfying in learning that Bruce has emigrated to a life of domestic happiness,
leaving the fight to save Gotham up to someone else. Thinking about the ending
along these lines reveals that, in fact, the “happy” ending merely masks a very
deep pessimism. The decline of Gotham will continue with increasingly
ineffective interventions from the forces of law and order. Bruce’s personal
transformation, which might have achieved its apotheosis in a moment of true
self-sacrifice, has been put aside for the purpose of domestic tranquility. And the
possibility of Gotham’s renewal through an act of numinous immolation is
shown to be predicated on a lie.
According to Spengler, the age of Caesarism represents the closing of a
chapter in history. With no more room for spiritual development, the civilization
becomes a personal plaything of various rulers who no longer express the
numinous vitality felt directly in the early and high stages of its development:
By the term “Caesarism” I mean that kind of government which,
irrespective of any constitutional formulation that it may have, is in its
inward self a return to thorough formlessness. It does not matter that
Augustus in Rome, and Huang Ti in China, Amasis in Egypt and Alp
Arslan in Baghdad disguised their position under antique forms. The spirit
of these forms was dead, and so all institutions, however carefully
maintained, were thenceforth destitute of all meaning and weight. Real
importance centered in the wholly personal power exercised by the Caesar,
30
or by anybody else capable of exercising it in his place.

Hence the inevitability of Bruce’s very personal quest and the impossibility of
his grasping the truths uttered by Ra’s al Ghul, truths which are literally above
time. Bruce is living at the wrong point in history to be able to engage in a
mission that might enable a transcendence of the self and the realization of a
truly aeonic role, so he must confront his own inner demons and meanwhile do
what he can for Gotham. True history cannot take place here.
The full pessimism of the trilogy’s message can be seen with this passage
from Spengler:
With the formed state having finished its course, high history also lays itself
 down weary to sleep. Man becomes a plant again, adhering to the soil,
dumb and enduring. The timeless village and the “eternal” peasant
reappear, begetting children and burying seed in Mother Earth—a busy,
easily contented swarm, over which the tempest of soldier-emperors
31
passingly blows.

With his retirement from Gotham and his new life of family and contentment,
Bruce reveals the full force of the trilogy’s pessimistic view of history. Gotham
continues to fall, hope is built on a falsehood, and each victory over the forces of
chaos is brief. In Bruce Wayne Gotham really does get the hero it deserves.

Counter-Currents/North American New Right, July 19, 2016


A DARK KNIGHT
WITHOUT A KING

WILL WINDSOR


Christopher Nolan’s Batman Trilogy deserves its large audience among White
Nationalists. Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, and The Dark Knight Rises all
comprise a canon in the superhero genre that stands above the rest, perhaps only
exceeded by Watchmen in its representation of Right-wing themes and
philosophy. Much has been said about the emphatically Right-wing character of
Batman’s villains, especially the League of Shadows, but less has been said
about the Rightist aspects of Batman himself.
Typical of the superhero genre, Nolan’s Batman protects the liberal system.
Batman is nominally portrayed as the defender of liberalism, a “heroic” savior of
the neoliberal, cosmopolitan city of Gotham. He ostensibly believes in the
democratic system and its institutions that are worth fighting for. All it needs is a
little help from a crime-fighting billionaire. In this, Nolan’s Batman is no
different from other superheroes, who follow the same narrative pattern of
protecting the existing system as its hero from the villain who critiques the
system and seeks to destroy it.
Yet in Nolan’s trilogy, this narrative framework is routinely undermined and
revealed as a weakness in Batman’s character. A tragic flaw that serves as the
habitual source of Batman’s undoing and frustration. Furthermore, unlike
conventional superheroes who are portrayed as “heroic” because they champion
liberal values, Batman betrays the system he seeks to uphold, acting outside of
the rule of law in defiance of liberal notions of justice. Indeed, once the mask is
removed from Batman as the “silent guardian, watchful protector” of
neoliberalism, a much deeper Right-wing character emerges.

SYMBOLISM & IMAGERY
The first clue that Batman is a Right-wing character are his appellations the
Dark Knight and the Caped Crusader. Both refer to medieval European warriors
who adhered to an ethical code glorifying honor, righteousness, and loyalty.
Such men are reviled by the Left as exemplified in Obama’s equation of
crusaders to present-day jihadists. Other medieval allusions are woven into
Batman’s backstory. Bruce Wayne’s family is Gotham nobility, they built most
of Gotham, and are its most wealthy and powerful family, emblematic of
American-style aristocracy. When Bruce Wayne’s parents are shot by a vagrant
in Batman Begins, they had been attending an opera, a hallmark of aristocratic
culture. As sole heir of the Wayne family, Bruce is free to engage in higher
pursuits as he is secure in his wealth and power like most feudal elites. The mob
boss Falcone even refers to him as the “prince of Gotham” when Bruce
confronts him about the release of his parent’s killer in Batman Begins. As such,
Batman can be viewed as a contemporary version of a noble who transforms
himself into a crime-fighting knight, both of which are representative of
historical institutions on the Right.
Notwithstanding his use of advanced military technology, Batman fights with
a grittiness that is not flashy or enhanced by any supernatural capabilities; it’s
authentic and brutal. He fights with his fists and defeats his opponents through
mastery of an ancient style of martial arts, one that employs the psychological
(deception and fear) as well as the physical (strength and technique) to overcome
enemies. The art of combat, a celebration of virtus, is unequivocally Right-wing
and plays a prominent role in the Batman character. Altogether, the aesthetics of
Batman harken to pre-liberal masculinity, when men were nobles and knights,
fought for their people, believed in grand visions, and pursued higher callings in
life. Even the uninitiated receive a healthy dose of manliness, the bedrock of any
Right-wing movement.
All of this is set against the backdrop of Gotham, a giant metropolis that
amalgamates America’s premier globalist cities: New York, LA, and Chicago.
These shining liberal utopias are accurately depicted in Gotham. Crime and
corruption are rampant, choking off the city’s lifeblood. The streets of Gotham
are dark, dreary, and deadly, bereft of all beauty and awash in the refuse of
humanity that liberalism produces but cannot eliminate. Gotham is the future
that awaits our Western cities. Even the rich in Gotham are not safe, something
we have yet to look forward to in the coming years. Within this dying liberal
dystopia springs forth Batman, entrenched in medieval symbolism and
masculinity, bringing real change: righteous violence.

ACTIONS
The most Right-wing aspect of Batman is his fascist use of force. Batman
recognizes that order must be brought about by violence. Violence is necessary;
violence is justice. The Left believes that “violence is not the answer,” that
criminality and corruption can be solved by displays of acceptance and
understanding, or programs that address the “root cause” of such problems.
Batman understands that only violence can stop criminality. No social programs
will ever stop the criminal dregs of society from becoming who they are. Batman
flouts the legal system’s procedures that protect criminals, and defies society’s
laws that restrain law enforcement. The actions of Batman reveal the failure of
“the rule of law,” which requires a vigilante to break the law in order to uphold
the law. Society’s preoccupation with the rights of criminals has disarmed
authority from the ability to properly fight criminality. Justice requires force.
Batman exemplifies this truth.
We on the Right understand that force in itself is amoral. Its morality depends
on who wields it and who triumphs. Liberalism restricts the use of force and
violence against criminals because it sympathizes with the criminals, the
miscreants, and the reprobates that liberals see as victims of an oppressive white
society. Libertarians fear the potential abuse from more violence. On the Right,
however, we understand that violence cannot be avoided. It is necessary to
maintain civilization. The goal is to find those worthy of the power, those of
higher character and justice, those like Batman. This can only be achieved in a
society that appreciates violence and virtue, not one of democracy and equality.
In Nolan’s trilogy, the villains reinforce the conclusion that Batman’s use of
force is just and that he should use more force not less. In The Dark Knight,
Batman deploys a city-wide wiretapping device to finally locate the Joker
despite the liberal objections of Lucius Fox who sees it as violation of sacred
privacy rights. Batman is proven correct in his fascist use of force as it
successfully results in the Joker’s location and capture, demonstrating the value
of force when used for the right purpose. Earlier in the movie, the necessity of
uninhibited force is again justified when Batman travels to China and kidnaps
Lau, the mob money launderer, and brings him back to Gotham for trial. The law
had become not only a shield but an enabler of criminality as Lau exploited the
law’s limits on jurisdiction and extradition to advance his criminal empire. Only
through force unbound by the law does Batman render justice against Lau.
In this respect, Batman pays heed to Ra’s al Ghul’s counsel in Batman Begins
that “criminals mock society’s laws.” The irony is that Ra’s al Ghul delivered
this pronouncement in light of the need to kill extrajudicially, which serves as
the final test for Bruce Wayne to become a member of the League of Shadows
and “demonstrate his commitment to justice.” In the Nietzschean figure of Ra’s
al Ghul, the killing of the condemned by the righteous is the ultimate expression
of justice. Bruce Wayne objects to such a test, asserting that the execution of a
murderer should only be delivered by a court of law. Wayne’s refusal to kill is
arbitrary. Although Wayne recognizes the necessity of being freed from legal
limitations, he quixotically believes that killing alone requires judicial sanction
—the demarcating line between just avenger and unjust vigilante. In Snyder’s
rendition of the character in Batman v Superman, Batman’s refusal to kill is
rightly done away with. However, Nolan uses the refusal as a critical mistake.
The Joker lays bare Batman’s “self-righteousness” as utterly foolish, and
exploits it just as Ra’s al Ghul warned: “Your compassion is a weakness your
enemies will not share.” The Joker willingly allows himself to be captured by
Batman knowing that he will be taken into custody unharmed. Once inside the
interrogation room, the Joker delivers his punch line that both Harvey Dent and
Rachel Dawes have been kidnapped and bound in separate warehouses, and
Batman must choose which one to save before they are both blown up. Batman
chooses Rachel but inadvertently saves Harvey, as the Joker lied about their
locations. Rachel dies, and Batman loses his closest friend and love interest. He
also fails to “save” Harvey Dent who turns into the madman Two-Face in the
aftermath. If Batman had simply executed the Joker earlier when he had the
chance, such a loss would have been avoided, but sadly he lacked the “courage
to do what is necessary” to defeat evil.

WORLDVIEW
Another dimension to Batman’s character worth examining is his worldview.
The killing of his parents motivates Wayne to transform himself into a crime-
fighting superhero to clean up the streets of Gotham. Initially, he is consumed by
rage after the release of his parents’ killer and embarks on a seven-year journey
of criminality in an attempt to make sense of a corrupt world. His crimes land
him in a Chinese prison where he is rescued by the League of Shadows, a
Traditionalist order that trains Bruce to become a member. Under Ra’s al Ghul’s
tutelage, he learns to sublimate his rage towards the higher cause of justice and
vengeance. Although Wayne objects to their radical vision, the League of
Shadows imparts to Wayne a warrior ethos that animates his actions.
Bruce fights to uphold liberal institutions, but his actions and motivations
derive not from his belief in egalitarian morality but rather from a warrior code
that is one-part League of Shadows and one-part his own moralistic fabrication.
The net result is a warrior code that recalls the spirit of chivalry: protecting the
weak, fighting injustice, defending the city. But is also deeply flawed as it
perpetuates a corrupt system. Understood in this light, Batman fights for Gotham
not because he believes in egalitarian ideals, but because he wants to defeat
criminality, the source he perceives as the cause of his parents’ deaths.
This rejection of equality is openly hinted at in The Dark Knight when
Batman impersonators question Batman’s supremacy as sole vigilante: “What
gives you the right? What’s the difference between you and me?” to which
Batman dismissively responds “I’m not wearing hockey pads.” Bruce Wayne
also mocks the lifestyle of our cosmopolitan elites by relying on an outwardly
hedonist image of Bruce Wayne who spends his time lavishly drinking and
consorting with bimbos as the perfect cover to avoid suspicion in a society that
glorifies such vanities as normal. Batman does fight for the system and not
against it, but he stands apart from the system, motivated instead by a warrior
ethos unbound by society’s rules that make his actions admirable but ultimately
frustrating.
Ra’s al Ghul diagnoses such a warrior ethos that fails to do “what is necessary
to defeat evil” as a weakness derived from the denial of the Will. In a scene that
appears inspired by Nietzsche, Ra’s al Ghul instructs Wayne on the primacy the
Will as they spar on a frozen lake:
RA’S AL GHUL: Your parents’ death was not your fault.
[Bruce attacks Ra’s al Ghul with his sword]
RA’S AL GHUL: It was your father’s.
[Bruce furiously attacks Ra’s al Ghul, but is easily defeated]
RA’S AL GHUL: Anger does not change the fact that your father failed to act.
BRUCE WAYNE: The man had a gun!
RA’S AL GHUL: Would that stop you?
BRUCE WAYNE: I’ve had training!
RA’S AL GHUL: The training is nothing! The will is everything!
[Ra’s al Ghul bests Bruce once again]
RA’S AL GHUL: The will to act.

This Nietzschean Will is constantly denied and suppressed by Batman. His
failure of the Will is ultimately the most important Right-wing critique offered in
Nolan’s films, most strikingly the disasters that follow when Batman captures
the Joker instead of executing him. A knight’s moral code of chivalry serves
little good for the protection of a system that rejects all the values a chivalric
code was meant to uphold. In the end, Batman’s worldview is self-defeating.
Wayne can never save Gotham because the corrupt system never changes.
Wayne refuses to “become who you are”—the prince of Gotham, its ruler—and
instead believes that lesser men like Harvey Dent should govern the city. A
knight can fight against the forces of corruption, but only a king can change the
system to end corruption and injustice.

VILLAINS
Batman’s denial of the will makes his character rigid. His belief in Gotham’s
institutions denies the heroic nature within him that his villains attempt to bring
out.
 The Joker taunts Batman to release the inner beast, to free himself entirely
from society’s norms, as the Joker has done. He points out that society already
considers Batman a freak like him, so why bother following their rules. “The
only sensible way to live in this world is without rules” the Joker says, to live
according to one’s Will, to be authentic. Western man has subjugated our
Dionysian self to Apollo, always making sure that actions proceed from a
reasoned plan, which the Joker delights in destroying. A little chaos is needed to
reignite tribal man; he’s just ahead of the curve.
Similarly, the villain Two-Face who starts out as Harvey Dent, envies
Batman’s power. He instructs Bruce Wayne on how the Romans would suspend
democracy and appoint an absolute ruler during war, which was considered an
honor for the man chosen. Harvey in a sense wishes to be Batman, to take
control of the city by force, whereas as Batman would rather be Harvey Dent,
who attempts to change society through the system. Two-Face implores Batman
to be Gotham’s hero, but Batman shirks from such power. The juxtaposition, as
with the Joker, is an explicit call for Batman to use more force, to take control of
his city.
The villains Bane and Ra’s al Ghul of the League of Shadows challenge the
very identity of Batman as just and morally good. Both villains rail against
Batman’s desire to save Gotham. Batman is not justice but injustice. Gotham
must die. It must be destroyed so that it can be reborn anew, cleansed of its
decadence. The only justice that can be rendered is Gotham’s reckoning, and by
standing in the way, Batman is unjust. In Batman Begins, Wayne describes his
vision for Batman as an incorruptible symbol of hope, to inspire people that
“good” will win out. In The Dark Knight Rises, Bane ridicules Batman as worse
than an empty symbol, a symbol of despair:
There’s a reason why this prison is the worst hell on earth . . . Hope. I
learned that there can be no true despair without hope. So, as I terrorize
Gotham, I will feed its people hope to poison their souls. I will let them
believe they can survive so that you can watch them clamoring over each
other to stay in the sun.

Bane is directly challenging Batman’s sole purpose and declaring him not a
symbol of justice but of self-delusion and despair. Justice rests upon truth, but
Batman would rather perpetuate a lie that Harvey Dent was Gotham’s white
knight than tell the truth about his murders because “people will lose hope.” In
contrast, Bane’s whole message is about truth, the harsh truth about Gotham as a
lost city of decadence and corruption that must be eliminated. Bane reveals the
truth about Harvey Dent to the people: “You have been supplied with a false idol
to stop you from tearing down this corrupt city.” Batman is thus shown to be a
deceiver standing in the way of truth and justice. The League of Shadows show
Batman for what he is: a fruitless charade that merely prolongs the decay. Rather
than wait out the decay as civilization crumbles, Bane and the League of
Shadows accelerate “progress,” allowing democracy to be fully realized by
handing over the rule of the city entirely to the people. “Gotham is yours. None
shall interfere. Do as you please,” Bane tells the denizens of Gotham, releasing
the masses to consume themselves and tear apart the city as its final destiny.
This is why Batman’s villains are far more memorable and interesting than
Batman himself. They are free to pursue their will, whereas Wayne is trapped in
a fool’s game where nothing materially changes, one that the Joker finds
irresistibly amusing: “You won’t kill me out of some misplaced sense of self-
righteousness. And I won’t kill you because you’re just too much fun. I think
you and I are destined to do this forever.”

CONCLUSION
While recovering in Bane’s prison pit, Batman hallucinates a vision of Ra’s al
Ghul. It is a subconscious admission of his failure:
You yourself fought the decadence of Gotham for years with all your
strength, all your resources, all your moral authority, and the only victory
you achieved was a lie. Now you understand Gotham is beyond saving and
must be allowed to die.

Even though Wayne rises from the pit to save Gotham one last time, he knows
Ra’s al Ghul is right and that he has failed. He can’t let Gotham be destroyed on
his watch, so he performs his final deed and then passes the buck to somebody
else and leaves the city for good. Wayne is destined for heroic nobility, but he is
insincere. He does not remain true to his calling of justice, failing to do what he
knows to be right and necessary out of misplaced self-righteousness. He lacks
the will to act, the will to power. Maybe one day a truly heroic Batman will
emerge, one that uses his superhero abilities to rule the people not serve them.
Nonetheless, Batman conveys an altogether Right-wing impression that can be
admired and appreciated for its traditionalist outlook and approach. The
medieval symbolism and imagery, as well as the depiction of righteous violence
all invoke important Right-wing attributes concerning masculinity, discipline,
and order. Where Batman falters, his villains are there to offer compelling foils
and to shed light on the right path to take. The Nolan Trilogy offers a total work
of art dedicated to a fascist superhero in need of his King. In the coming
ethnostate, we can look forward to a Batman who finds him.

Counter-Currents/North American New Right, August 4, 2016


THE PONDEROUS WEIGHT OF
THE DARK KNIGHT

JAMES J. O’MEARA


Reviewers of the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises, on various Alt-
Right sites have been reasonably led to ask why comic books—excuse me,
“graphic novels”—have come to dominate Hollywood. Since both industries
were founded by and are dominated by You Know Who, the answer seems easy
—ethnic networking—why pay royalties to the goyim?
There is, as usual, a deeper reason, and, as usual, you’re gonna get it here!
By deeper I mean this: the ethnic networking is obvious (at least, to those of
us who can See); we need to know why it works, why it succeeds, and why so
well, and why just now.
Clearly the real problem is not Them but rather the state of the world—the
cosmic cycle—that makes Them able to function with extreme prejudice.
In some worlds, the cream rises to the top. In other worlds, what rises is the
scum. In a material world, the most materialistic prosper. And who is more
materialistic, less intellectual or spiritual, than . . . Them?
As I was looking for something else, this rather un-typical passage caught my
eye in René Guénon’s The Crisis of the Modern World:

In such a world there is no longer any room for intellectuality or for what is
of a purely inward nature, for those are things which can neither be seen nor
touched, weighed nor counted; there is only room for outward action in all
its forms, including those most completely devoid of meaning. Furthermore
it is not surprising that the Anglo-Saxon passion for “sport” gains more
and more ground every day; the ideal of the modern world is the “human
animal” who has developed his muscular strength to the utmost; its heroes
are the athletes, should they even be brutes; it is they who awaken the
popular enthusiasm and it is their exploits that command the passionate
interest of the crowd; a world in which such things are possible has indeed
sunk low and would seem to be nearing its end. (“A Material
32
Civilization” )

What does this have to do with the Rise of the Dark Comic?
 We need a still finer-grained analysis. The rising tide of scum has not lifted all
comics. Superman, above all, is still treated as an impossible figure of fake
“nobility” and “goodness,” a sort of lumbering Golem, an embarrassing leftover
of the Cold War. We still mock George Reeves’ pot-bellied, baggy suited TV
image, and if not for his tragic accident, Christopher Reeve would no doubt have
long since entered an Adam West or William Shatner stage of profitable self-
33
mockery, especially after the last, disastrous, self-directed series entry.
The popular figures, Iron Man, Spider Man, and of course, Batman, are
usually distinguished from Superman as being “flawed” or “troubled”—
supposedly another sign of Their “psychologizing” influence—but I’d rather
focus on the more basic fact: whatever their “problems,” they are, unlike the
“invulnerable” Superman, just like you and me—only slightly better.
On this front, I think it would be useful to compare the two leading movie
“franchises”: Batman and James Bond (also subject to a recent reboot, complete
with an ethnic-OK actor).
During the initial James Bond phenom, Kingsley Amis wrote an excellent
study, The James Bond Dossier, a splendid example of the kind of valuable
results one can get from paying serious attention to “mere” pop culture, blurring
34
the line between “fan boy” and “literary critic.”
Amis makes the valuable point that Bond, like all successful fantasy figures, is
never too far from what we can comfortably imagine ourselves to be, especially
if we “could only get the right break.”
Bond, obviously has no “super powers,” other than a certain amount of
intelligence, physique, and good, albeit “cruel,” looks. What he accomplishes is
due to extensive training, the latest equipment, and a good tailor. All of which is
lovingly described as part of Fleming’s characteristic label fetishism, allowing
us to imagine our closets and resumes loaded with just the right gear.
Amis calls attention to a very sly and subtle line in which Bond is described as
being, of course, “the best shot in the service” . . . other than his instructor.
And we could be too, with just a bit of imagination, and a cracking good
instructor, and a snooty British armorer to steer us away from buying “a
woman’s gun.”
Before taking on Hugo Drax at cards, Bond bones up on cheating methods—
35
books on card sharping seem to make up the bulk of his small home library —
and as for his legendary drinking and smoking, when you add it all up—and
Amis, bless him, does just that—it’s not really more than we could do with a
little effort, thus earning the comfortable feeling of being a bit of a rogue but
without headaches, pink elephants, and emphysema.
 Even so, by Thunderball Bond is so worn out that the service sends him to a
health spa! Hard work, but great benefits—a dream job indeed! And of course,
while there he engages in what publishers would call “a deadly game of cat and
mouse” with an Italian count, and uncovers an anti-NATO plot—just like we
would!
I’m reminded of a more recent phenom, when Madonna was still put forward
as some kind of icon of muscular femininity—hard to recall, now that she seems
more like your drunk aunt dancing with her dress over her head at the wedding
—and defensive women would retort, sure, I could look like that if I had no job,
a private, state-of-the art gym, and a staff of personal trainers.
It’s all a question of degree, of course—Peter Parker’s radioactive spider bite
is only a little less implausible than Kryptonian birth, while Tony Stark’s Iron
Man is Bond finally deciding he’s not going to return the equipment “from the
field” and will just keep it, thank you very much, Q.
But of them all, it’s Bruce Wayne who has it in spades. If we inherited a
gazillion dollars, a vast mansion, an industrial concern that manufactures
advanced weaponry and armor; oh, and a faithful retainer that just happens to be
ex-SAS—essentially, the Old Bond played by David Niven in the first, comedic
Casino Royale—then we too could be the Dark Knight.
As Jack Nicholson’s Joker says, “Where does he get all those wonderful
toys!”
Similarly, the late Paul Fussell points out in his invaluable study Class: A
Guide Through the American Status System (New York: Touchstone, 1992) that
the popularity of The Official Preppy Handbook (despite the title, another
product of Them) was a result of insinuating that a certain level of class, the
upper-middle or lower-upper, could be had, or at least simulated, which to the
American is just as good, by simply buying the right items, and if the houses and
cars were out of reach, you could always buy the shirts and shoes, with the stores
and labels conveniently listed, Fleming fashion.
And thus Ralph Lipshitz of the Bronx was reborn as Ralph Lauren of
Southampton.
No surprise when the recent, failed, attempt at a reboot, True Prep: It’s a
Whole New Old World (New York: Knopf, 2010), proclaimed the King and
Queen of Prep to be . . . Barrack and Michelle Obama. Of course! Fantasy
36
fulfilled! Now Michelle can feel proud to be an American.
As figures of average man fantasy, it’s no surprise that both Bond and Bats
put their lives and even sanity on the line in the defense of modern capitalism
and democracy, even while openly disdained for their efforts. (Bond, for
example, becomes obsessed with Blofeld both as a world-conspirator and the
killer of Bond’s wife, and eventually winds up with amnesia in a Japanese
fishing village, then brainwashed by SMERSH and sent to kill M.)
Bond’s Britain, as Amis documents, is the pre-War world of Raffles and
Sapper, already disappearing when Fleming was writing, while modern film
Bond confronts a female M that regards him as a perhaps useful but still
dangerous anachronism.
Batman opposes the “weaponized Traditionalism” of the League of Shadows,
and does so in the name of the most characteristic feature of the Reign of
Quantity: democracy, “a few good people,” and other notions with nothing to
recommend them other than the “common sense” idea that more people weigh
more, and therefore count for more. I mean, what else could determine policy, or
truth? And yet, he is a hunted vigilante, living in exile, the scapegoat of all of
Gotham’s problems.
But these are just the slight inconsistencies of heroic fantasies designed for the
unheroic masses of an anti-heroic world.
But where do Guénon’s remarks about “sport” and “the human animal” come
in? I think the popularity of Batman, and what makes him a more modern,
popular and relevant figure than even Bond—despite Daniel Craig’s heroic
attempts at rebooting the Bond franchise—comes from a related development:
the Schwarzenegger factor.
37
Alan Helms in Young Man from the Provinces, his account of his career as
“the most celebrated young man in all of gay New York” in the 1950s, discusses
his aversion for exercise and the gym, and notes that in some 3000 years of
painting and sculpture of the Ideal Male Form, not once did anyone come up
with something looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Until, as Guénon might have added, now.
We’ve mentioned the laughable figure of Superman, poor George Reeves who
had to take his brown costume (picks up better in black and white) home each
day to wash and iron, slowly shrinking over the course of filming the series until
the sleeves came up to his mid-forearm. “Family Guy” mocks Robert Mitchum
as an “out-of-shape in-shape ’50s guy” (easy to do if you’re a cartoon, buddy).
Mystery Science Theater chuckles at actors who “look like a 19th-century
‘strong man.’”
Standards, in short, for actors have tightened up, if you will, and imagination
—and suspension of disbelief—are apparently too “purely inward,” as Guénon
would say, to be operative. Ignoring the lessons of Henry James, we childishly
demand “the real thing.”
 Of course, no actor can be “perfect” and, along with the parallel demand for
“state of the art” special effects—another rich source of mockery on MST3K—
we see the reason for what will be, ultimately, the complete replacement of
actors and sets by CGI. And, like Madonna, no one except an unemployed
maniac is going to hit the gym to grunt their way to perfect Arnoldhood. (Hmm,
actually quite a few around these days . . . .)
What to do in the meantime? Where is the plausible fantasy of the Average
Man who worships over-developed brutes but is too lazy to pump iron? Enter the
Batman. Or rather, the Bat Suit.
As the protagonist in Money, a mid-’80s novel by Amis’ son Martin, wearily
admits, “I need a full-body cap.”
The post-graphic novel Batman has been played with more or less controversy
by a series of rather unprepossessing actors, typical of “modern men” such as
Michael Keaton—fresh from success as “Mr. Mom”—or the decidedly wispy,
rather metrosexual Val Kilmer and Christian Bale. It’s as if behind the mask of
the Dark Knight was—Alan Alda.
Correspondingly, the costume has changed from Adam West’s drab TV-
wrestler’s garb to ever more state of the art armor and fake musculature—rather
like the mighty American football players with their space-age padding, versus
supposedly “girly” soccer players who make do with T-shirts and shorts.
The more “everyman” inside the suit, the more “superman” the suit itself.
The exception of course was the Schumacher-directed George Clooney film.
Although not spectacularly muscular, Clooney was far too much of an alpha
male to “fuel the fantasy,” and while the new bat-and-robin suits were mocked
as “homoerotic” the real problem was not that as such, but rather the related
notion of calling attention to the body as such, with the suits’ thrusting
codpieces, lovingly delineated buttocks, and even sculpted nipples.
Again, the more powerful the man inside, the less the suit needs to
compensate. And that, in case you ever wondered, was why Batgirl’s suit was
sans nipple. As Jodie Foster says on the commentary track to Silence of the
Lambs, Agent Starling doesn’t need a “woman suit” like Buffalo Bill to be
powerful, since she is already a real woman.
The crowd wants seedy, alcoholic Tony Stark, played by seedy, drug-and-
alcohol ravaged Robert Downey, in the Iron Man suit, not lithe, handsome and
well-endowed David Bowie in his Goblin King leotard.
Perhaps to compensate, look, it’s Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze, and get a
load of that suit!
And speaking of Arnold’s suits: the “business suit” was designed with the
same purpose: weedy London business men, deprived of the invigorating
benefits of outdoor labor, could still project a masculine silhouette. Contra
snippy critics of the ’80s, the padded, “power suit” was invented in the 1800s,
and for men, not women.
Thus, as Fussell points out, Schwarzenegger looks even more ridiculous in a
suit, no matter how “well-tailored.” Even Fussell couldn’t imagine Arnold
38
becoming a governor.
Conversely, we see, contemporaneous with new Batman films, the suit
employed as a weapon in Mad Men. To drive the point home, in an early
episode, we see Don Draper serenely glide out of the pot-smoke filled apartment
of last night’s bimbo, beatniks and cops grabbing some tenement wall to make
way for the Man in the Suit.
How appropriate then that the League of Shadows should announce itself by
attacking a sporting event, and be able to take out Gotham’s “top” officials by
39
blasting them out of their skybox.
And was there any doubt that the pumped-up, bare-chested Bane would, in the
end, be defeated by the Man in the Bat Suit and his wonderful toys?

Counter-Currents/North American New Right
July 28, 2012



MAN OF STEEL

TREVOR LYNCH


I have never liked the character of Superman. He is not a man who has
transcended humanity toward something higher. He is simply an alien, who
looks like one of us, and who comes equipped with a whole array of
superpowers. From a Nietzschean and Faustian standpoint, that translates to zero
appeal. I am not interested in being rescued by a superior being. I am interested
in becoming a superior being. Furthermore, none of the Superman movies or TV
shows ever managed to make this character compelling to me (although I love
the John Williams score for Richard Donner’s 1978 film).
But when I went to see Man of Steel, I was prepared to be sold, for this movie
is a team-up of two of Hollywood’s leading young goy geniuses: director Zack
Snyder (Watchmen) and Christopher Nolan, director of the Dark Knight Trilogy
and Inception, who co-wrote the script with long-time Jewish collaborator David
Goyer.
But Man of Steel is a deeply disappointing movie. Compared to Watchmen
and the Dark Knight Trilogy, which are intellectually and emotionally deep,
complex, and involving, Man of Steel is pretty much a brainless, soulless
spectacle.
The underlying problem seems to be that Snyder and Nolan just aren’t that
crazy about the character of Superman either. Hence they have delivered an
uninspired, by-the-numbers, would-be “Summer Blockbuster.” (Aren’t
blockbusters also a kind of bomb?) Man of Steel even stoops to the last refuge of
bad scripts: the movie is swarming with cameos. (“Look, it’s Kevin Costner!”
“Look, it’s Morpheus!” “Look, it’s that wog from Battlestar Galactica!”) After
this film and Sucker Punch, it is time to put Zack Snyder on artistic probation.
Watchmen may have been just a fluke. This whole movie reeks of cynicism and
greed.
But there is also a deeper, older stench underneath. As I have argued in my
40
reviews of Hellboy and Hellboy II: The Golden Army, comic-book superheroes
largely function as symbolic proxies for Jews, who virtually created the genre.
Superheroes, like Jews, are always outsiders and “freaks.” They are, moreover,
immensely powerful outsiders who must engage in crypsis to blend in, lest they
incite the fear and ire of their host populations.
 The superhero genre also plays an indispensable apologetic role for Jewry.
For in the case of superheroes, these immensely powerful and secretive aliens
are benevolently disposed to their host populations, magnanimously enduring the
fears and suspicions of their narrow-minded and xenophobic inferiors whose
interests they serve out of a commitment to the morality of egalitarian
humanism.
Jews, of course, use their superpowers and knack for crypsis to rather different
ends, ceaselessly scourging the goyim with plagues like Bolshevism, free market
capitalism, feminism, multiculturalism, pornography, psychoanalysis, non-white
immigration, Zionism, endless wars, and, to top it all off, the ongoing genocide
of the white race.
This, of course, is supervillain behavior, but the superhero genre inoculates us
from drawing that conclusion by making supervillains into perpetual Nazis, or
symbolic proxies for Nazis and other nationalistic, anti-egalitarian, xenophobic,
and traditional-minded whites (but never nationalistic, anti-egalitarian,
xenophobic, traditional-minded Jews).
Superman is, of course, one of the most explicitly Jewish superheroes.
Superman was created in 1933 by two Ashkenazi Jews, Jerry Siegel and Joe
Shuster, and from the beginning he was cast as an “American” antipode to the
German “supermen” who rose to power in 1933. Like Moses, Superman was set
adrift in an ark and found and adopted by an alien family. Superman’s original
name is Kal-El, and his father was named Jor-El, “El” being a Hebrew word for
“God” and a root of such names as Israel and Elizabeth.
In Man of Steel, the supervillain is General Zod. We learn that Krypton is a
planet that practices eugenics, has a caste system, and has engaged in
colonization of the cosmos, creating giant machines that transform other planets
into environments like Krypton, obliterating whatever creatures lived there
before them.
After a 100,000 year Reich, however, Krypton is in deep decline. Its colonies
have failed, and the planet itself is in danger of implosion due to mining its core
for energy. Two men, Jor-El and General Zod, wish to save Krypton.
Jor-El is the far-sighted scientist who warned the Kryptonians of the folly of
mining their planet’s core (how enlightened). Jor-El and his wife Lara have
created a natural child, Kal-El, a child of choice and chance (how liberal). Jor-El
then somehow hides in the genetic codes of other, as yet unborn Kryptonians in
the body of Kal-El (whatever that means). Then Jor-El launches the child into
space in a tiny capsule. This, somehow, will save the Kryptonian race. Sounds
like a plan!
General Zod, the leader of the warrior caste, attempts to restore Krypton by
launching a military coup. He wishes to extinguish the bloodlines of the rulers
who have brought Krypton to its sorry state. But he is captured and exiled with
his followers. But when Krypton finally implodes, they are freed. They then
search the universe for Jor-El’s child to recover their genetic database. They
track him to Earth, which they wish to seize and “terraform” into another
Krypton, so they can begin their race anew. Humanity, needless to say, will be
exterminated. (Inequality + eugenics + Lebensraum + genocide = “Nazis.”)
Superman rejects Zod’s proposal in the name of egalitarian humanism. A
believer in diversity and open borders, he suggests that the Kryptonians share the
planet. One Kryptonian tells Superman that his morality is an evolutionary
disadvantage. Kryptonians have no morality and believe only in evolution. Of
course Superman’s egalitarianism is not the same as “morality” as such. The
Kryptonians also have a moral code, namely a kind of social Darwinism, which
means that they feel no obligation to any weaker species, particularly when the
very survival of their race is in peril.
Well, you can’t bargain with Nazis. Remember Munich, 1938? So ray guns
and bullets are discharged, blows are exchanged, spaceships and airplanes and
Kryptonians whoosh around, and Metropolis is pretty much reduced to rubble,
all to another thundering, tuneless, dreary Hans Zimmer score. In the end,
General Zod is killed, and his followers are poofed into another dimension
where they will be held in suspended animation until Alan Smithee’s Man of
Steel II comes out next summer.
The lesson of Man of Steel is the same lesson as practically any other
superhero movie: white Americans must never dream of controlling our own
destiny. Instead, we must trust in the benevolent hegemony of superheroes: a
tiny, hidden minority of powerful aliens and freaks. Superheroes are the only
thing that can save us from supervillains and all the evils for which they stand:
inequality, eugenics, hierarchy, xenophobia, etc. In short, everything practiced
by Jews to preserve their race, and everything which, if practiced by whites,
would secure us against Jewish subversion, domination, and ultimately genocide.

Counter-Currents/North American New Right, June 21, 2013


SUPERMAN & THE WHITE CHRIST
AMERICAN, ALIEN, OR GOD?

GREGORY HOOD


Superman is the most American of heroes—and the most foreign. As the
archetypal comic book character, Superman sets the standard for everyone else
—the classic “white hat” who stands for “truth, justice, and the American Way.”
While complicated “dark” heroes like Batman or outright antiheroes like the
Punisher can be endlessly reinterpreted or deconstructed, there’s only so much
one can do with the Man of Steel before changing the character entirely. To
change Superman’s background and beliefs (as in Red Son) or create a thinly
veiled “evil” Superman (as in Irredeemable) is to simply use the unchangeable
core of the character as a launching pad for meditations on the ideas of identity,
heroism, and culture. Superman is the American hero, and if he indeed ceases to
be American, it is a powerful indicator that America itself has ceased to exist as
a meaningful cultural identity. While that is happening, we’re not quite there.
At the same time, Superman is an alien—literally and figuratively. A creation
of Jews, a foe of the Nazis who threatens the Führer with a “strictly non-Aryan
sock on the jaw,” Superman is both an assimilationist and supremacist fantasy.
On the one hand, Superman is raised in Middle America by patriotic, plain-
speaking rural folk with clean morals. The result is the flag-waving “big blue
Boy Scout” who in most canon stories voluntarily serves as a tool of the
American government.
On the other hand, Superman is from an alien planet, living among, but not as
one of the Americans. His strength and virtue are valued only insofar as they
serve the ends of the American elite, as interpreted by the moral commissars of
the Lower East Side. More moral, more enlightened, more powerful, and (often
quite literally) above the goyim, Superman as Jew is such an obvious metaphor
that the National Socialists were pointing it out 70 years before comic books
41
became the basis of college courses.
In Zack Snyder’s Watchmen, a character is quoted as having said, “The
Superman exists—and he is American.” Later, the character corrects that what
he said was “God exists—and he is American.” In Man of Steel, Snyder gives us
a Superman/God who becomes American.
Krypton is an “Aryan” planet in appearance (no non-white Kryptonians)
organized along caste lines. The planet is quite literally collapsing, as the core
has been hollowed out in the quest for resources. Jor-El (Russell Crowe) is a
scientist who alone has seen the catastrophe awaiting his people, and more
importantly, has seen its root cause. The Kryptonians were a space-faring,
expansionist people until they tried to take direct control over their reproduction.
The result was a complete halt of all natural births, the end of expansion and
space colonization, and cultural stagnation and death. Jor-El and his wife, as a
final sign of hopeful defiance, give a natural birth to Kal-El, and send him to
Earth to escape the death of their planet.
Man of Steel is predictably egalitarian in most ways. The villain is General
Zod and his small team of military followers. Zod is utterly devoted to
preserving the physical existence of his race. He launches a coup against
Krypton’s failed leadership and plans to extinguish their bloodlines. He respects
Jor-El but kills him for stealing the key to the “codex,” the genetic record of the
entire people. Finally, when he is reawakened after his coup, he travels to all of
the space colonies, looking for any sign of survival.
In contrast, Superman (Kal-El) seems eerily indifferent to the survival of his
people. When he finds out who he is, where he comes from, and what is at stake,
he seems oddly troubled at the prospect of racial renewal, prompting his
adoptive Earth mother to blurt out, “Isn’t that [racial survival] a good thing?”
After all, as his real father Jor-El notes, it is his position as an alien among the
Earthlings that makes him a “god to them.” To become just another Kryptonian
is in some sense to strip Superman of his destiny—to make him not a Superman
at all.
As a young man, we see “Clark” reading Plato’s Republic. The Republic
famously posits a caste system of specific classes trained to rule, with the
enterprise overseen by a group of philosopher-kings. Each class is “bred” for its
specific purpose and given an explanatory myth, fitting into an organic whole
that is the “just” community.
Zod is the self-aware product of this kind of a system, with every action he
has ever taken in his entire life justified on the grounds of the protection of his
people. When Superman destroys his efforts, he destroys his very soul.
Nietzsche wrote, “That which is falling should also be pushed.” It could be
argued that Zod is simply trying to shock life back into a dead system. If we can
still use the term “human” to refer to Kryptonians, it could even be argued that
Zod isn’t human, but the product of a failed breeding scheme.
In contrast, Superman is given the power of choice, even defined by it. As the
first natural born Kryptonian in centuries, Kal-El is not assigned a particular
mission. His father outlines one for him—telling him that he will set an example
for the people of earth to follow. They may stumble or fall—but he will pull
them behind him. He can be a savior for them. Jor-El rejects his own people in
favor of a messianic mission for another—“You can save them all,” he tells his
son from beyond the grave. While Jor-El theoretically believes in choice, he
dooms his son to a heavy responsibility, essentially demanding he accept his
responsibility as a god.
However, “Clark” also has an Earth father, Jonathan Kent, who tells him that
he doesn’t owe anyone anything, even basic morality. “You’re going to have to
decide what kind of man you want to be,” he tells his adoptive son. Jonathan
Kent knows he can’t physically discipline his son—he can only give the best
moral teaching he can and force Clark to confront the awful responsibility of
choice. When Clark uses his powers to save a school bus full of drowning
children (including a boy who earlier bullied him), Jonathan Kent questions
whether he did the right thing. When Clark indignantly asks if he should have let
them die, Jonathan responds, “Maybe.” Lest he be accused of cruelty, Jonathan
later sacrifices his own life to protect his son’s secret, allowing himself to be
sucked into a tornado and with his last action silently commanding Clark not to
reveal himself.
One key problem with the “Superman as Jew” analysis is that if Superman is
an alien, he is defined by his rejection of his alien roots and his embrace of his
folksy American upbringing. Religiously, it’s canon that Superman was raised as
a Methodist, and in Man of Steel Kal-El turns to a Christian church for comfort
and guidance in his moment of crisis. It is a minister who gives the advice he
will ultimately follow, a “leap of faith” to trust humanity.
General ZOG, er, Zod’s plan consists of pushing out the native inhabitants of
a place in order to make it safe for colonization by a new people who feel it is
their right and destiny to do so. Zod even explicitly rejects offers of
human/Kryptonian coexistence, which would be a sacrifice on the part of the
humans, not the Kryptonians. If Superman is a “Jew,” he is one who turns
against his own kind, fighting to destroy the new program of interstellar
Zionism.
Clearly, Man of Steel is not some deep anti-Zionist propaganda—Zod is an
obvious stand-in for nationalism, hierarchy, militarism, and duty, all evil things
that need to be destroyed by our modern democratic world. Superman stands
with the weak, the victims, and the would-be dispossessed. Still, the overtly anti-
white, anti-Traditionalism message should not disqualify Snyder’s attempt to
create his own unique take on the Superman character—that of the White Christ,
the Aryan warrior-god who commands compassion through fear, self-sacrifice
through the selfish display of power. More than that, it is a god who insists upon
the power of choice, who asks that we follow him along the path to godlike
behavior. But what kind of behavior does this savior ask of us?

THE WHITE CHRIST
Jesus “meek and mild” is not the God of the European peoples. Nor is it the
mysterious rabbi whose esoteric teachings were rooted in various obscure
schools of Jewish mysticism. As chronicled in James Russell’s The
Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity, Jesus was “sold” to the Germanic
peoples as a warrior god, the dragon slayer, a more reliable guarantor of victory
in battle than the treacherous Odin, who has his own agenda. After all, Loki
charges the All-Father in the Lokasenna that he “oft has thou given to those
whom thou oughtest not—victory to cowards,” and Odin doesn’t really deny it.
Christ as the Bringer of Victory in this world was the Savior figure of the
Christianity that created the “Christendom” that launched the Crusades. It is the
breakdown of this world-accepting, “pagan” Christianity that is leading to the
deracinated, emasculated late American Christianity of today. In many ways, the
egalitarian, anti-racist, world-denying, self-despising “faith” of liberal Christians
and certain evangelicals is more faithful to the Jewish communitarian cult that
was Christianity before its “Germanic” transformation.
It’s fairly obvious that Zack Snyder is deliberately giving us a portrayal of
42
Superman as Christ—he admits as much. Superman is “literally Biblical,” in
his view. However, Snyder’s Superman echoes the earlier, heroic Christianity—
the all-powerful being still capable of suffering, the god intervening to save the
fallen, the man slowly coming to terms with his divine nature. Henry Cavill’s
Superman is almost comically Aryan—all chiseled features and overwhelming
amounts of muscle. This is the literal portrayal of Christ as a warrior favored by
early Germanic Christians that survives in churches to this day as images of a
White Christ.
Like the young Christ, Cavill’s Clark Kent is aware of his awesome power
(though a more physical kind of strength rather than debating Jewish law) but he
restrains it. In one scene, he is being taunted but silently endures it—when he is
finally left alone, he has crushed a steel bar with his hand as he struggles to hold
himself back.
The mystery of Christianity (and the cause of much schism and bloodshed
within the faith) is the idea God and Man are one in the person of Christ Jesus.
In Nicean Christianity, He is in “being of one substance with the Father.”
Obviously, if Jesus was God, he could have come down from the cross—he was
even challenged to do so by the Jewish priests. However, Jesus had to suffer and
die—and more importantly, freely choose this sacrifice—in order to the pay the
blood atonement and absorb the wrath of God for man’s sins. The nature of this
sacrifice was that mankind did not “earn” it—it was freely given of God to an
undeserving people. Christ could only accomplish His mission through His
destruction—and resurrection.
Snyder’s Superman also meets his destiny with a sacrifice. When General Zod
arrives on Earth and tells the planet to produce Kal-El, only Lois Lane and his
parents know who he is. Kal-El could have flown away or remained silent.
Instead, he presents himself to the world, even allowing the military to go
through the farce of handcuffing him “if it makes them feel more secure.” He
then allows himself to be delivered to Zod and makes his choice to fight him.
When his ghostly father (his consciousness preserved through technology) tells
him that he can save Earth, Superman flies out of a spacecraft into position
above the planet, his arms stretched outward as Snyder consciously replicates the
pose of crucifixion.
However, Superman’s adaptation of his position as “savior” doesn’t come
through passive sacrifice, but through combat. He brutally battles the
Kryptonians in the streets of Metropolis, utterly annihilating the city in the
process. When he disables Zod’s device to destroy the Earth, it requires him to
use all of his power. More importantly, as Superman is fighting Kryptonians, he
is essentially fighting his equals. There is no supernatural power that his
sacrifice “unleashes”—he must achieve victory in this world, though physical
force, and he can be defeated and killed despite his best efforts.
In the same way, those who fulfill Jor-El’s hope of “following” Superman do
so not through dedication, but through physical acts of courage and self-
sacrifice. A military officer originally skeptical of Superman later sacrifices
himself to save the city, his dying words an echo of a Kryptonian’s earlier taunt
—“A good death is its own reward.” Perry White “follows” Superman in his
own way by working to rescue one of his reporters even though such an effort
will most likely lead to his own death. The path to the divine this new Superman
has for us (as laid out by Jor-El) is to sacrifice everything for the people around
us, and so redeem ourselves.
The problem, of course, is that Superman can do extraordinary things
precisely because he is Superman. The rest of us can’t fly, don’t have heat
vision, and can’t shrug off bullets. The efforts of White and of the American
military in the film would have been pointless and futile were it not for
Superman’s godlike powers. Self-sacrifice is a noble creed—when the only
things that can kill you are your fellow gods. Now that the Kryptonians have
been defeated, what can possibly stand against Superman (besides, of course,
other baddies from outer space)?
 Furthermore, while Superman represents a creed of everyone sacrificing for
everyone else, he’s not willing to live by the same rules as the rest of us.
Understandably concerned about the godlike being flying around wherever he
wants, the government uses a satellite to track his movements. Superman takes
down the satellite, destroying millions of dollars worth of government property.
He informs a military officer that he will help America but only on “my terms,”
and that after all, he can be trusted because he was raised in Kansas. It’s a good
thing no one ever raised in Kansas grew up to despise the country and inflict
43
horrible consequences on everyone else.
Ultimately, how will Superman serve an example to the rest of the people?
Through service to be sure, but service mixed with intimidation and feats
designed to inspire awe. Superman’s moral code is to be followed because he is
Superman and at a level of power and strength so far above us that he can
compel it. What makes him a hero is that he also chooses to impose this
responsibility on himself, despite his impulses. After all, if he did otherwise, he
would simply destroy cities occasionally out of resentment of the ungrateful
creatures he saves (as the Plutonian in fact does to Singapore during
Irredeemable). But the threat is always there.
Just like the Christian God, Superman gives us the promise of salvation but
backed by the threat of force if we do not follow his suicidal code. It’s pretty
clear what Superman would do if the American government did something that
violated his sense of right and wrong—after all, the Superman never kills rule
went out the window when he snapped General Zod’s neck.
Snyder’s Superman is a warrior-god, someone to intimidate us into following
“the better angels of our nature.” More than that, just as in Christianity,
Superman imposes (and shares) with us the terrible responsibility of choice, and
the consequences that follow from making the wrong one. The idea of fate, of
unchosen loyalties, or inherent natures are rejected—even Jor-El says he cannot
go with his son because he is as much a part of the failed system as General Zod
or Krypton’s incompetent leaders. The only exception of course is Superman
himself—the god who has an entire race encoded in his DNA, who has power
because of who he is rather than anything he did, and the only actor whose
choice actually means anything, because he can compel everyone else.
Our people followed the White Christ because they understood the idea of
fealty to a greater power, loyalty to the ultimate Lord who could promise victory
in this world as in the next. Unfortunately, submerged beneath the warlike
aesthetics and organizational power of the Church was the poisonous egalitarian
universalist creed, which ultimately eroded the faith from within in a drama that
is playing out all around us. This terrible contradiction set our people against
themselves, and since the French Revolution (and arguably before) we’ve been
tearing ourselves apart.
Snyder’s Superman is a White Christ who shares our struggles, understands
our hatreds, and gives us victory in this world. However, ultimately, by serving
as a superhuman enforcer of an egalitarian creed, he is not pulling humanity
along, but holding it down.
Heidegger wrote that “Only a god can save us now.” He may be right. But it
won’t be this god—or the creed he asks us to follow.

Counter-Currents/North American New Right, June 26, 2013



BATMAN V SUPERMAN:
DAWN OF JUSTICE

TREVOR LYNCH


In any matchup between Batman and Superman, I side with Batman. I’ve
never liked the character of Superman, because he is not a man at all. He’s
basically a god. He’s not a human being who has raised himself to the pinnacles
of human excellence. He’s an alien who is simply endowed with superior
abilities. There is nothing heroic about Superman, because he is almost
invulnerable. He faces no risks. There’s nothing he must struggle to overcome.
Batman, however, is a true Nietzschean superman, a man who has made
himself more than a man. He’s a man who faces injury, death, and imprisonment
night after night in order to fight evil. I don’t want to live in a godless universe,
but frankly I would prefer that we make ourselves into gods rather than find
them readymade.
I didn’t like Zack Synder’s first Superman movie, Man of Steel, so I had very
low expectations for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. That said, for the
first 80% of Batman v Superman, I found myself thinking this is a pretty good
movie. Zack Snyder would be a great silent movie director, and the opening
credit sequence (based on Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns graphic
novel) is pure poetry. The first appearance of the Batman is genuinely terrifying.
There is a great nightmare sequence in which Batman fights against Superman’s
henchmen who are dressed as Nazi soldiers while giant cockroach-Valkyries
whisk the fallen to some sort of hellish Valhalla. The directing, editing, and
special effects throughout are superb. Hans Zimmer’s score, moreover, is one of
his better efforts. But for all that, at about the 2-hour mark, the movie became
ludicrous, unintelligible, and uninvolving.
The movie is set about two years after Man of Steel. The public is souring on
Superman. Sure, he saved the earth from the Kryptonians, but a lot was
destroyed in the process. And maybe the Kryptonians came here because of him.
And he is one of them too. How can we trust him? How do we know he will
always be benevolently disposed to us? Is Superman outside the law? Shouldn’t
he have to follow the same laws as the rest of us? Superman may look human,
but he is not. Shouldn’t we fear a god who has no real attachment humanity?
Three of Superman’s critics are Senator June Finch (Holly Hunter), billionaire
Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg, whose characterization is a cross between Zorg
from The Fifth Element and the Joker from The Dark Knight), and billionaire
Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck), who moonlights as Batman. For his part,
Superman’s alter-ego, Clark Kent, sees Batman as a dangerous vigilante. There
are also conflicts between Luthor and Senator Finch, who refuses to allow him to
import kryptonite, and between Luthor and Batman, who steals the kryptonite
after it is smuggled in.
Conflict, of course, is the stuff of good plots. But characterization is essential
too. Unfortunately, Luthor’s motives are the murkiest, which is unfortunate,
because he drives the entire plot. Luthor gets Lois Lane taken hostage by African
revolutionaries, knowing Superman will come to her rescue. Then he has
mercenaries massacre the guerrillas, and Superman is blamed. Luthor tries to
acquire kryptonite to use against Superman, but it is blocked by Finch then
stolen by Batman. Luthor bombs a Senate hearing at which Superman is
testifying. Superman, of course, survives but is humiliated and disappears for a
while.
When Superman returns, Luthor gets Batman and Superman to fight one
another. Batman, however, is prepared for the fight with new armor and
kryptonite weapons, which significantly weaken Superman. However, when
Batman is poised to kill Superman with a kryptonite spear, he pauses at the last
minute when Superman says “Martha,” his mother’s name—which,
coincidentally, is the name of Bruce Wayne’s mother as well. Then Lois Lane
arrives to explain that Superman has been blackmailed into fighting Batman by
Luthor, who has kidnapped Martha Kent. Then the two superheroes unite to fight
Luthor and rescue Martha.
Now, this sort of peripety is the stuff of classic drama and grand opera and
Bollywood. Yes, it is ludicrous when stated baldly, but it doesn’t have to seem
that way. It could have been handled well. It almost works as it is. But it also
marks the point when the movie stopped working.
After Superman and Batman team up to fight Luthor, he unleashes his final
assault. Using technology from a crashed Kryptonian vessel, Luthor has created
a monster (basically an electrified version of Peter Jackson’s cave trolls) that is
capable of destroying Superman.
Batman and Superman are then joined in their epic battle by Wonder Woman,
played by Israeli actress Gal Gadot. Although I admit that my reaction is not
entirely rational, given the amount of disbelief I had already suspended, I found
the addition of another superhero intensely annoying. I had the same reaction to
Twilight. I was fine with the vampires but thought the whole thing was ruined by
adding werewolves.
 Superman realizes that the troll, like him, is vulnerable only to kryptonite, so
he uses Batman’s kryptonite spear to kill it. Unfortunately, using the spear also
weakens Superman, whom the beast kills in its death throes.
To my great surprise, when Batman began to deploy his kryptonite weapons
against Superman, weakening him to the point that he could have been killed, I
found myself liking Superman more. It makes sense, though, because to be
vulnerable is to be human. But to fight on in spite of vulnerability is true
heroism. Before this, Superman may have been super, but he was no hero,
because he was invulnerable. Invulnerable men, however, do not face risks,
require virtues, or make sacrifices. And when at the movie’s climax Superman
risks death and then actually dies to save us, it had a real emotional punch. And
when all the whooshing and zapping dies down and the movie shifts into
dénouement mode, it somewhat recovers.
Lex Luthor is imprisoned (and when his head is shaved looks like a rat),
Superman is memorialized, Clark Kent is buried back in Kansas, and Batman
joins Wonder Woman to search for other “metahumans” like herself, since after
Superman’s death the earth is vulnerable to other threats that lie beyond. I smell
franchise.
But it appears that they will have some help after all, for in the last shot of the
film, a few particles of earth thrown on the lid of Clark Kent’s coffin begin to
levitate. Yes, that’s right, Superman did not just die to save mankind, he will rise
from the dead to continue the fight. This confirms Gregory Hood’s reading of
Man of Steel as offering Superman as an Aryan warrior Christ.
Superman’s experience of vulnerability to kryptonite was, in effect, his
incarnation—his descent from being an immortal god to being a mortal man—in
order that he could die for our salvation. And his impending resurrection is a
return to divine status, although this time he will also have a connection to
humanity, because he lived and died as one of us, which makes him far less
threatening.
Zack Snyder is an extraordinarily talented director. Watchmen remains the
greatest superhero movie ever made. But it had an excellent script, a script that
even improved upon the original graphic novel. The best director in the world
can’t overcome a bad script though, and Snyder’s recent works, from Sucker
Punch to the Superman movies, suffer from bad scripts.
In terms of performances, Jesse Eisenberg’s Luthor was more a collection of
quirks than a character. Henry Cavill and Ben Affleck look better than they act.
Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman isn’t even good-looking.
The Christian allegory in Snyder’s Superman films is an interesting
dimension. Batman v Superman is relatively free of political correctness. But it
is also free of the philosophical depth and Rightist political themes of Nolan’s
Dark Knight Trilogy. Although the portrayal of Luthor as a shrimpy, neurotic,
fast-talking Jewboy who manipulates two hulking white superheroes into trying
to kill each other does have an archetypal quality that gives one pause.
After a strong opening week, Batman v Superman sank like kryptonite. Let’s
hope it is the end of the franchise and Zack Snyder finds a better outlet for his
considerable talent. He’s actually talking about remaking The Fountainhead, for
instance. (Snyder and Christopher Nolan would be among my top picks for a
proper Atlas Shrugged adaptation as well.) Until then, he remains on artistic
probation.

Counter-Currents/North American New Right, May 25, 2016




JUSTICE LEAGUE

TREVOR LYNCH


44
Watchmen is the greatest superhero movie of all time, and when it was
released, its director Zack Snyder was poised to follow Christopher Nolan into
the first rank of directors working today. But instead, he has directed an ever
worsening series of turkeys: Sucker Punch, Man of Steel, Batman v Superman,
and now Justice League, which is one of the worst movies I have ever seen:
derivative, dumb, and dull. An assault on the senses and an insult to the intellect.
It is also one of the most expensive movies ever made, costing an astonishing
$300 million. It is really rather amazing that a director of Snyder’s proven talent,
with a solid cast and a $300 million budget, could not have turned in a better
movie. Clearly, there’s a lot of rot and a lot of ruin still left in Hollywood, and
the sex scandals are just the beginning.
Justice League is a critical and commercial flop. Some people are trying to
deflect the blame onto Warner Bros. and Joss Whedon. It turns out that earlier
this year, Snyder’s 20-year-old Chinese adopted daughter, Autumn, committed
suicide. (Snyder had eight children, four natural and four adopted.) Snyder took
some time off to be with his family, and Warner Bros., which deemed the movie
too long and too dark, brought in Joss Whedon for rewrites and reshoots. The
problem, however, is not with Whedon’s superficial changes but with the basic
script, which is utterly derivative, and with the characterization, which is
laughably shallow.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. In remotest antiquity, a dark lord
from another world named Steppenwolf (hold your laughter) tried to conquer the
world with the aid of three magical “Mother Boxes” and an army of zombie-
cyborgs called parademons. However, the races of the earth—the Olympian
gods, Amazons, Atlanteans, and men—came together in an alliance to defeat
him. The Mother Boxes were wrested away from Steppenwolf, who vanished.
The Mother Boxes, which only worked in tandem, were then separated and
placed in the care of the Atlanteans, the Amazons, and the kings of men.
After untold thousands of years, however, the death of Superman somehow
reactivated the mother boxes, which called Steppenwolf back to earth. Of course,
this is a ridiculously arbitrary plot turn, since Superman was only a recent arrival
on earth, which raises the question of what kept the Mother Boxes “sleeping” for
the untold millennia before his arrival. But never mind. The dark lord
Steppenwolf is back with his parademons searching for the magic Mother Boxes
that will allow him to conquer the world. To stop him, a league must be created,
bringing together an Atlantean (Aquaman), an Amazon (Wonder Woman), and
several humans, including Bruce Wayne/Batman, Barry Allen/Flash, and Victor
Stone/ Cyborg.
Yes, thus far, it is just a retelling of The Fellowship of the Ring.
But the combined efforts of the Justice League are still not enough to defeat
Steppenwolf, so a deus ex machina is required. Thus they use one of the Mother
Boxes to resurrect Superman, who whooshes in to save the day. There are lots of
CGI battles, which basically feel like being trapped inside a pinball machine, and
finally Steppenwolf is sent packing, no doubt to return some day when bidden by
the dark lords of Hollywood to harvest more shekels from the goyim.
Okay, Okay. But aren’t there are only so many plots? And can’t a derivative
plot still be salvaged by interesting characters and dialogue? This is true, but
Justice League fails there as well. We have already been introduced to Batman,
Superman, and Wonder Woman. Thus all Snyder really needed to do was
breathe some life into Aquaman, Cyborg, and Flash. And what a lousy job he
does. Aquaman is the most one-dimensional character of all. He is covered with
tattoos, has long hair, and swigs whiskey from a bottle. So we know he’s badass.
He’s angry at his mommy. He likes to help people for some reason, but thinks he
does it best alone. Cyborg is a black man with a stratospherically high IQ which
he inherited from his black scientist father. No regression to the mean in this
universe. And Flash, just like Lex Luthor in the last movie, is a shrimpy,
neurotic, fast-talking, cowardly Jewboy. (What’s Zack Snyder trying to tell us?)
There’s no depth, nuance, subtlety, or humanity in Justice League, just plastic
robots, batteries not included. The established characters also seem hollowed out
and flattened. But with no human beings at its core, the movie’s CGI battle
scenes become a tedious, emotionally uninvolving assault on the senses.
One of the running theses of my career as a movie reviewer is that someone in
Hollywood is reading anti-modern, Traditionalist Rightists and recognizes that
we represent the most fundamental negation of liberal humanism and thus the
perfect supervillains. Justice League nods in this direction at the beginning when
Wonder Woman foils a group of white “reactionary” terrorists who want to blow
up the Old Bailey in London. Also, under the opening credits, which are a
montage of social chaos after the death of Superman to a cover of Leonard
Cohen’s “Everybody Knows,” we see a white man with shaved head menacing a
shopkeeper in a hijab and her child. But like everything else in this film, even
this feels perfunctory, phoned-in, and fake.
 I hope the failure of this movie and the suicide of his daughter will cause Zack
Snyder to take some time away from Hollywood to rethink his career. The great
weaknesses of his recent films have been plot and characterization. His best
films, 300 and Watchmen, were based on classic graphic novels, and from that
high starting point, he actually improved upon them, both in terms of
visualization and plot. But Snyder’s career since then seems almost like a
controlled experiment to establish that all the directorial and technical wizardry
in the world can’t make a compelling movie if the plot and characterization are
lacking, nor can brand-loyalty and PR-puffery turn it into a success.
The fact that Justice League has bombed is proof that there is still some
justice in the world.

Counter-Currents/North American New Right, November 28, 2017


THE ALT KNIGHT: A RETROSPECT OF FRANK MILLER’S THE DARK
KNIGHT RETURNS FOR THE CURRENT YEAR45

ZACHARY O. RAY


Sometime in the near future, in an America crippled by degeneracy and
stifling bureaucracy, two men of stature fight in the streets. One, an aging
billionaire fed up with his society’s imminent collapse, has become a polarizing
threat to the governing establishment. The other, a compromised but well-
meaning foreigner wrapped in an American flag, bringing a false and used-up
patriotism to a disenfranchised population.
The men I speak of are not Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, but the World’s
Finest themselves—Batman and Superman.
In this future, your average American might look into the sky as an object
flies overhead, but it’d just be a bird or a plane. The era of the superhero is over
—their presence banned as a threat to democratic normalcy. The Cold War is
hotter than history has recorded. Meanwhile, Gotham is slowly succumbing to
the decay of street gangs and low-energy politicians too incompetent or
comfortable to bother themselves. Homeless doomsayers trudge through the
streets prophesying the end times. The superhero has been reduced to the realm
of legend for young generations, who, with no heroes of their own, are drawn to
the seductive promises of miscreant gang chieftains.
Published in 1986, Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns breathed life into
a comic-book industry suffocated by the creativity-killing censorship of the self-
imposed Comics Code Authority (not so different from the “private” censorship
of social media today).
DKR not only ushered in an era of creative vitality, bringing a dying medium
back to its feet, but to this day it serves as a clever and relevant work of modern
satire. The Cold War may be over, but just as in Miller’s dystopia, we’re living
in a Kali Yuga—an age void of heroes, when eccentric mediocrities are
fetishized by the 20-square-inch boxes in our living rooms, and all hope is
almost lost . . . almost.
While every work of art is defined by the vision of its artist, there comes a
point in the life cycle of all great works where art takes on a new life beyond its
author’s intent—a point in which the piece no longer belongs to the author, but
to the culture.
 In this sense, The Dark Knight Returns serves as an Alt Right hero’s journey,
in so far as it chronicles Western man’s spiritual struggle towards superhuman
reawakening against modern egalitarian mediocrity—including a necessary
break from American conservatism. It is a battle cry, not just for a creative
revolution in the stuffy recesses of the comic book medium, but a call to arms
against the existential lethargy of modern man.

THE BAT PILL

“The time has come. You know it in your soul. For I am your soul . . . You
cannot escape me . . . you are puny, you are small—you are nothing—a
hollow shell, a rusty trap that cannot hold me . . . you cannot stop me—not
with wine or vows or the weight of age—you cannot stop me but but still
you try—still you run—you try to drown me out—but your voice is weak . .
.”
Enter billionaire Bruce Wayne, age 55. Ten years ago, he hung up his cape
and cowl—swearing an oath he would never don them again. A restrained titan
among Last Men, his purposeless life draws on, as he drinks by himself during
the day, dreaming of a perfect death—a perfect death to take away the pain—the
pain of watching his beloved Gotham City slowly sink into the abyss of rot and
chaos—as good men do nothing.
All that is left for the former crime fighter is nostalgia and baseless thrill-
seeking. Behind what appears to be a life of futility broods a malevolent demon
—the Batman persona incarnate, transcending masked vigilantism and biological
decrepitude—urging, no, compelling the fruitless Bruce Wayne to become who
he is. No longer can Bruce Wayne stand by as news station after news station
regurgitates the same deterministic and sanitized murder stories. As we are
learning today, Wayne can ignore reality no longer.
The threat is here and it is time to act. In a blaze of glory, Batman sweeps the
streets of Gotham—revitalizing hope in Gotham’s citizenry.
There is little doubt that Miller, the man who called Occupy Wall Street
“nothing but a pack of louts, thieves, and rapists” and author of the unabashedly
identitarian 300 and “Islamophobic” Holy Terror, was channeling many of the
same concerns back in 1986 that the Alternative Right is facing today. While the
West is certainly sick, it is a sickness it has brought on itself. Unlike European
colonialism in the 19th century, the Global South’s colonialism today is strictly
the result of the self-imposed ethno-masochism of a civilization defeated by
centuries of victory (to paraphrase Bane from The Dark Knight Rises) and
internal warring.
 While DKR is not, by any means, a commentary on modern immigration, it
challenges the same wounded spirit of the modern world. Like his fellow
supermen in tights, Batman quit because he chose to quit. There was no one to
stop him. He gave up by his own volition, but something deep inside him urges
that the war goes on.

A REFLECTION

“I close my eyes and listen. Not fooled by sight, I see him . . . as he is. I see
him. I see . . . a reflection.”

Due to Batman’s successful return to crime fighting and subsequent public
approval, a coalition consisting of the media, politicians, and “public
intellectuals” arises devoted to stamping out the new public champion
threatening their authority. Sound familiar?
Arkham Asylum Home for the Emotionally Troubled releases two of
Batman’s greatest foes, Two-Face and the Joker, upon psychological evaluation
by Dr. Bartholmew Wolper—a curly black-haired, whiny, and narcissistic
psychoanalyst, who occupies the airwaves crying out against the “reactionary”
crime fighting of the Dark Knight, while he sits cozily in a television recording
studio in his pali sandals, ironic (or not so ironic) toothbrush mustache, and
Superman t-shirt.
Wolper, accompanied by the narrative of the mainstream media, inspires the
release of the two by demanding that they are not murderous villains, but
misunderstood outsiders victimized by Batman’s “fascist obsessions.” As is
customary, soon after their releases, both go on the greatest terroristic murder
sprees of their careers. (It’s worth noting that Dent’s plan involves blowing up
Gotham’s “Twin Towers”—mind you, this was written in
1986.) Even Wolper, the primary advocate behind the anti-Batman controversy
and release of Gotham’s most dangerous, is murdered by the Joker on a live late-
night talk show, as a public relations attempt to clear the Joker’s name goes
awry.
Like the refugees in Europe and the Black Lives Matter crowd, the Joker
knows how to game the progressive establishment. He has been crystal clear in
his unwillingness to live peacefully in society, yet the metropolitan liberals
refuse to see this. A great irony of Islam’s disdain toward the West is that it is
derived from the very “weak horses” (to borrow from the Lion Sheik himself)
who defend Muslims at every turn.
Like Leftists today, Wolper defends civilization’s enemies, despite the fact
that it is the likes of him who they hate most of all.
To move on to the central point, the irony of Batman and the Joker lies in their
stark contradictions. One, a hero, looks like a brooding monster; the other, who
looks like a childhood circus performer, is a mass-murdering maniac. As
Nolan’s The Dark Knight captures perfectly, the Joker is chaos incarnate. He is
the Dionysus to Batman’s Apollo. Batman’s recurring conflict with the Joker
represents his attempt to bring order to the randomness of existence that took the
lives of his parents. Batman is the virility that is birthed in the midst of chaos.
Just as the Joker only awoke from a coma upon hearing of Batman’s return—a
coma that was induced by Batman’s disappearance from the public eye—
Batman cannot exist in a world without chaos (embodied in the Joker).
Western man is no different. Western man reaches his potential only when his
back is against the wall. The refugee crisis, and the innumerable attacks and
rapes that have followed, though an immediate threat to our long-term existence,
could be just the thing to spawn a new flowering era in Western history.
It’s worth recognizing that Miller initially frames Batman’s moral crusade,
quite true to character, as one of ressentiment. The very Batman persona, itself,
grew out of Bruce Wayne’s deep-seated frustration with the seemingly
unintelligible disarray of life’s suffering. It is for this very reason that Batman’s
existence has been thematically bound to the Joker over the decades. Batman
exists so that he can create a world where he will not have to exist. For many
identitarians, it’s easy to fall into this same temptation—hating one’s enemy
more than loving one’s own.
But by the climax of the penultimate issue, Batman paralyzes the Joker, who
subsequently commits suicide to frame him. Batman has now overcome his
greatest existential threshold. His journey must now be self-fulfilling, self-
perpetuating, or he must die. The manhunt for the Batman that ensues only
confirms the inevitable—that Batman’s crusade must take on the establishment
sooner or later.
Two-Face also reflects Batman’s persona. After finally being apprehended,
Dent tragically reveals that despite his recent plastic surgery to correct his
disfigured face—a procedure funded by Wayne himself in a naïve humanitarian
attempt to rehabilitate his old foe—Dent’s shadow-self has overcome him
entirely. This symbolic gesture foreshadows Wayne’s own transformation: in a
conflict of wills (Wayne vs. Batman), it is inevitable for one to win out in the
end. This is true not just within the soul, but in the world.
Conservatism fails for this reason. Deep inside, every conservative recognizes
nature’s iron law of inequality, masked by the current year’s egalitarian
paradigm. Conservatism making the way for the much purer and harder Alt
Right was only a matter of time.

THE WAY OF THE GANG IS THE WAY OF THE DEMON

“They can’t be arrested. You could never hold them all. They have to be
defeated. Humiliated.”

In between his conflict with his old foes, Batman confronts the Mutant Gang
(who are not actual mutants by the way). He recognizes that to beat them he
must crush their head. After Batman beats the Mutant leader to a bloody pulp,
the disillusioned Mutant Gang, with their proverbial god now proverbially dead,
soon dissolves (reminiscent of the decapitation of Thulsa Doom in Conan the
Barbarian). Unlike in Conan, however—and in a way much more accurate to
human nature—many of the former gang members find in their enemy a new
god worthy of their reverence. Donning woad and jackboots, the Sons of Batman
cult is born—devoted to mercilessly crushing crime and those too cowardly to
fight it themselves. More on them later . . .

SUPERHUMAN, ALL TOO SUPERHUMAN

“‘Yes’—you always say yes—to anyone with a badge—or a flag.”

As his name suggests, Superman was in fact named after the Übermensch
from Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Writing in a time when
Nietzsche was more closely associated with the fascistic tenets of National
Socialism, Jewish cartoonists Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster sought to reshape the
“Superman” in their image. No longer the hierarchical freethinker of
insurmountable willpower, their Superman™ was an egalitarian strongman, an
alien, whose might lay not in his will but raw materialistic faculties. Like the
neoconservative establishment, Superman is a foreign entity wrapped in our flag.
Originally depicted as a hard-boiled “champion of the oppressed” in 1938, at
the dawn of America’s entrance into the Second World War, Superman, with
Old Glory and bald eagle in hand, became a distinctly American icon alongside
Uncle Sam and Lady Liberty. The Man of Steel became a symbol of “American
exceptionalism”—his red and blue uniform inspired young boys to scrounge up
scraps of metal in the streets for democracy’s war effort.
Copies of the monthly Superman comic book featured the Big Blue Cheese
whopping Hitler to a pulp with his fists. When Superman punched Hitler in the
jaw, it was as if we were punching Hitler in the jaw. And that was good enough
for us.
 What happens when you run out of bad guys? Such a dilemma is explored in
DKR. Superman is still the same walking propaganda poster he has always been.
Here Miller treats him subversively. In DKR, America is, much as it is today, a
flabby managerial state, flimsily held together by the flag and the people’s
bourgeois unwillingness to resist force, micromanaging the status quo and
stamping out anything opposing it. Unlike the rest of his fellow superhumans,
Superman is still at large—but only because he is on the US government’s
payroll.
For decades, virginal nerds have been arguing over who would win in a
showdown between Batman and Superman. Recently it has been fascinating to
watch fewer and fewer relate to Superman and more to Batman. This says
something about our culture. Like the conservative establishment of today,
fighting for “truth, justice, and the American way” isn’t enough anymore.
Modern culture, or anti-culture, as it should more appropriately be called,
shuns truth. “Justice,” as it is defined today, has been reduced to “virtue
signaling” and guilt tripping. And what exactly is “the American way” anymore?

SUPERMAN™ VERSUS SUPERMAN

“You sold us out, Clark. You gave them the power—that should have been
ours. Just like your parents taught you to. My parents taught me a different
lesson—lying on this street—shaking in deep shock—dying for no reason
at all—they showed me that the world only makes sense when you force it
to.”

In Angus, George C. Scott says “Superman isn’t brave. Superman is
indestructible, and you can’t be brave if you’re indestructible.” Perhaps
Superman is, in fact, a perfect description of modern America. For the past
century, Americans have had the privilege of being the big kid on the block.
Geographically we have the protection of the world’s two largest oceans.
However, for the first time since perhaps the War of 1812, America is beginning
to taste nonexistence. Victory, and the spoils of war, have defeated America. For
so long Superman had the comfort of knowing no one posed an immediate threat
to his existence.
Once this changes, he doesn’t know what to do. How was it possible for
mighty Rome to fall into oblivion while the tiny Jews, persecuted and bounced
around through history, are as old as history itself? Why is Europe, at its height
of scientific discovery, succumbing to the barbarism of a bunch of brown
goblins who haven’t moved past the Middle Ages?
 When you don’t know suffering you won’t be ready for it when it arrives.
Miller’s reinvented Batman, however, is a superman in the Nietzschean sense
—beginning as a disaffected Gothamite, by the end he transforms into more than
just a man. Unconcerned over the well-being of the status quo and democracy,
as societal order breaks down due to nuclear detonation by the Soviets, it is
Batman, with the “Sons of Batman” (former disaffected youths to whom he has
given purpose) at his command, who takes the reigns of authority and declares
“Tonight, I am the law!” as Gotham is consumed in fire and chaos.
Earlier, despite his highly weaponized, and expensive, equipment, Wayne
couldn’t even defeat a brute gang lord. Now, a spiritually awakened Batman is
taking on the most physically powerful threat on Earth, and wins in the
showdown that made the “Superman vs. Batman” debate exist in the first place.
When Superman fan boys bellyache that “the only reason Batman could beat
Superman is because Batman is willing to do what Superman isn’t,” they are
conceding that Batman is more powerful. Power is the ability to change, to force,
to will. It doesn’t matter how much intelligence or capital you have, if you aren’t
willing to use it what good are you?
Batman, having proven the establishment’s illegitimacy by cleaning up their
country better than they ever could, forces the ventriloquists to bring out their
mightiest puppet, the Man of Steel, in a last-ditch effort to stomp him out once
and for all.
Gone are the days of punching Hitler in the jaw.
In that climactic street fight, Superman rips Batman’s helmet off, stripping
away his masked identity and exposing his human identity to the world. No
longer does Batman need a mask. Bruce Wayne is of no more value—there is no
longer anything to hide. This consummates his becoming.

THE DARK KNIGHT AS THE THIRD WAY

“I couldn’t judge it. It was too big. He was too big . . .”

What we’re witnessing today in the United States is an establishment whose
elites, caught up in a political paradigm limited by a bipartite party system, are
finding themselves with their pants down when faced with alternative, non-
centrist, third-way politics. You can choose rootless multiculturalism on the Left
or rootless globalism on the Right but nothing else. Until recently, this has been
the paradigm of the age.
The Dark Knight Returns is sprinkled with panels of television broadcasters
arguing over the exploits of the recently resurfaced Caped Crusader. For some,
talking heads and citizenry alike, he is a menace to the established order—an
“outdated fascist reactionary.” To others he is a patriotic Minute Man of sorts,
restoring Gotham to its status quo. But like the Alt Right of today, he is so much
more than this. He is a revolt against the modern world altogether and all its
bourgeois insecurities. And as he learns by the end of the novel, he must “bring
sense to a world plagued by worse than thieves and murderers.” Batman is in a
spiritual war—first within himself, now the world, and in order to change the
world, just as his spirit was reborn in the cave, his flesh must be “reborn” to take
on the world. Batman was good while it lasted, but like all life, it must either die
or evolve.
By the end, Batman realizes that there is more wrong with the world than
street crime. The problem with it is the world itself, and in order to reestablish a
sense to its madness, the only solution is to let go of this life and, as Jack
Donovan might say, start the world. Batman won the streets by defeating its
leader. He must win the world by defeating its leaders as well.
When it comes down to it, that’s what makes the Alt Right so vital.
Conserving the status quo is no longer sufficient—for the status quo does not
belong to us anymore. It belongs to the Last Men and spiritual rejects. If we are
to win, we must refuse to accept death, no matter how glorious it may be, as our
end game. We must instead reaffirm life and order, toward a rebirth.
By the end, no longer is Bruce Wayne awaiting a good death. No. There is no
future in death. He, as a superman, is in search of a good life—a life void of
mediocre leaders, a life where heroes will once again roam the skies.



BATMAN:
THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS

TREVOR LYNCH


Batman: The Dark Knight Returns is an animated movie adaptation of Frank
Miller’s graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns. Released in two 76-minute
parts in 2012 and 2013, then combined into a 148-minute edition DVD and Blu-
ray, this is lame, sclerotic, constipated, Z-grade animation drawn out to
paralyzing lengths, completely lacking the visual style and dynamism of the
original graphic novel, which is more animated on the printed page than in this
adaptation.
Why review it, then? The original graphic novel seems quite paradoxical. The
characters of Batman and Commissioner Gordon are highly Right-wing, truly
off-the-charts on the F-scale. But this is counter-balanced by a number of
features that can only be described as politically correct: anti-racist, anti-sexist,
and anti-homophobic. What ties these two dimensions together is Miller’s Right-
wing individualism. His Rightist values are universal principles that can be
followed by anyone, regardless of race, sex, etc., and it is only permissible to go
outside the law in service of these values. The film, although it mostly detracts
from the graphic novel, also adds a few touches that heighten its Right-wing
dimensions.
After the death of Jason Todd (the second Robin), Bruce Wayne retired from
the role of Batman at the age of 45. Ten years later, Gotham is at the mercy of
the Mutant gang (which is, ludicrously, all-white and practically all-blond, as are
practically all the other criminals in Gotham). Commissioner Gordon is 70 and
on the brink of retirement. The Joker is catatonic in Arkham Asylum. Harvey
Dent/Two-Face receives reconstructive surgery courtesy of Bruce Wayne. Dent
is declared sane, released from Arkham, and promptly drops out of sight and
returns to crime.
Bored with retirement and appalled by the crime wave, the 55-year-old Bruce
Wayne dons cape and cowl and returns to fighting crime. On one of his patrols,
Batman rescues teenage girl Carrie Kelley from the Mutants. Kelley then buys a
Robin costume and goes into crime fighting, eventually winning the trust of
Batman. Kelley’s character is an obvious concession to feminism, and, with her
short hair and tomboyish demeanor, to lesbianism as well.
 Batman eventually defeats Two-Face and the leader of the Mutants. Some
former Mutant gang members rename themselves the Sons of Batman and
become vigilantes. This disturbs President Ronald Reagan—portrayed as a
sinister, greenish Frankenstein monster—who asks Superman to step in and stop
Batman. Superman threatens Bruce Wayne, telling him to go back into
retirement, then zooms off to Corto Maltese to fight the Soviets. Commissioner
Gordon retires, and his replacement Ellen Yindel (feminist, lesbian, and very
probably Jewish) issues a warrant for Batman’s arrest.
Meanwhile, Batman’s return has awakened the Joker from his catatonic state.
Psychiatrist Bartholomew Wolper, who previously certified Harvey Dent sane
and has publicly argued that Batman is actually guiltier than the criminals he
fights, now champions the Joker, declaring that he had been cured and should be
reintegrated into society. Wolper reintroduces the Joker to the world on a late-
night talk show, but it does not go as planned. The Joker slashes Wolper’s throat
on live TV, then gasses the entire audience to death and escapes.
Batman tracks the Joker to an amusement park and beats him within an inch
of his life. Batman knows that he could have prevented every murder committed
by the Joker since his release if he only had the strength to kill him years before.
But even now, Batman cannot bring himself to simply execute the Joker.
Instead, he plans to turn him over to the system that had just let him out to kill
again. But the Joker does the right thing for the wrong reason. Out of sheer spite,
he snaps his own neck, knowing that Batman will be accused of his murder.
Batman, however, makes a narrow escape.
The Corto Maltese war escalates into a Soviet nuclear strike. Superman
deflects a nuclear missile to a deserted place, but the detonation causes an
electro-magnetic pulse that shuts down all electronic equipment, plunging
America into chaos. Batman rallies the Sons of Batman to restore order to
Gotham, making it the safest place in the nation. Reagan is embarrassed by this
and orders Superman to stop Batman.
Batman and Superman then square off. Batman is strengthened by a
mechanical exo-suit, and Superman is weakened by the nuclear blast and a
kryptonite-tipped arrow, leading to Batman’s victory. (All this is reworked in
Zack Snyder’s Batman v Superman.) Batman then dies of a heart attack, Alfred
Pennyworth dies of a stroke, Wayne Manor is destroyed, and Batman is revealed
to be Bruce Wayne. In the epilogue, however, we discover that Batman/Wayne
faked his death and plans to carry on his crusade against crime in secret.
The portrayals of Wolper and the Joker are the most politically incorrect
aspects of the movie, pushing it almost into Alt-Right territory. Wolper is a
Jewish name, and he is drawn with a big nose and a black Jew-fro. In the movie,
this impression is driven home by voicing him as a smarmy, liberal New York
Jew. As for the Joker, he is voiced as a snarky, sibilant, effeminate homosexual.
The most substantive Right-wing elements in the film were already present in
the graphic novel, of course, but seeing them on the screen had much more
impact.
First, when Jason Todd’s death is mentioned, the expectation is that
Batman/Bruce Wayne will affirm the bourgeois assumption that nothing is worse
than the violent death of a young man. But Wayne rejects this assumption at
root, saying that Jason was “a soldier.” Wayne’s unspoken assumption is that it
is appropriate for soldiers to give their lives for a cause, because there are some
values higher than the preservation of individual life.
Second, when the retired Commissioner Gordon meets with his successor
Ellen Yindel, he makes an extraordinary case for going outside the law for
reasons of state, to pursue a higher good. He recounts how the Japanese attack
on Pearl Harbor shocked Americans into entering World War II and recounts
how it was later revealed that Roosevelt knew the attack was coming and did
nothing to stop it, precisely to get the United States into the war. Many innocent
men died, but Gordon clearly believes that Roosevelt did the right thing, even
though he is not willing to come out and say it. Instead, he says that he could not
judge it, because “It was too big. He was too big.” Yindel only sees the
relevance to Batman later, when she gives up her pursuit of him because “He’s
too big.”
Of course, Roosevelt’s ploy to get the United States to bleed for Jewry in
another World War became the template for the conspiracy to get the United
States to go to war with Israel’s enemies in the Middle East. This, coupled with
Miller’s politically correct views of race and sex, gives The Dark Knight Returns
a distinctly neoconservative ideological flavor: a marriage of liberal-democratic
and globalist values with Schmittian political realism. But this is consistent with
the larger superhero genre, in which Nietzschean Supermen, or just plain
Supermen, always work to promote egalitarian humanism.
It’s time for Batman to shrug.

Counter-Currents/North American New Right, May 5, 2018


BATMAN & THE JOKER

JONATHAN BOWDEN


The Brave and the Bold
A Team-up comic featuring Batman and the Joker
DC Comics, No. 111, March 1974

This comic was published in 1974 by DC comics or National Periodical
Publications. It retailed for twenty cents, and I bought it in the United Kingdom
for eight new pence. The author was the veteran scripter Bob Haney, and it was
drawn by Jim Aparo. None of the other contributors—the inker, colorist, letterer,
or editor—is recorded.
The whole point of looking at this comic is that it dovetails with Trevor
Lynch’s review of the film The Dark Knight elsewhere in this volume. Yet there
are important differences—the directness or crudity of the form, its clientele of
adolescent boys, and the amount of censorship it was under pulls it in a
dissimilar direction.
There is no room for the Joker, his arch nemesis, to philosophize about
Batman falling short as a superman. For the very insistent dualism or absence of
moral relativism means that the Joker’s actions—not his words—are depicted in
a despicable light. But this has an unintentional result, in that it makes Batman
less liberal, more ferocious, vengeful, and “fascistic.” The center of gravity then
shifts, and the police commissioner, Gordon, is forever trying to restrict
Gotham’s finest, curb him from vigilantism, and keep him on the straight and
narrow.
The story involves the Joker wiping out a totally respectable family who had
the temerity to inform on a criminal. He did it as a response to normal society
and as a sort of Stirnerite aporia—a nihilistic and anti-social act. Batman is
outraged and swears an implacable vengeance. He threatens to Gordon that he
will kill this sadistic clown once and for all. Gordon sniffs: “We’re here to
represent the Law, Batman, no vigilante stuff.” To which Batman sneers: “You
better find him first if you want to bring him in alive!”
There then occurs several quite complicated somersaults or backflips in the
plot—thereby confirming that comics are very close to both film and television,
being heavily plot-driven. The Joker allegedly returns to Gotham’s morgue in
order to mutilate his victims with the rictus leer which is his trademark. Why?
Had he forgotten to do so?
Gradually, via an underworld tip-off, Batman tracks the purple-clad and
green-haired minstrel to a lonely gravel barge (now disused). Another clue leads
to a Turkish steam bath where he pounces upon the Joker as he hunts an
underworld killer called Slade. Batman is wounded in the encounter, but
survives.
 Little by little, it dawns on Commissioner Gordon and Batman that the Joker
is innocent, that he’s hunting the real slayer, Slade, and that to capture the latter
will involve collaborating with the Joker. (Note: Is there, no matter how
subliminally, a notion of wartime collaboration here? Who knows?)
The Joker and Batman contact each other so as to bring home the ghastly deed
to Slade. The Joker taunts and berates Batman throughout—yet there remains
this strange attraction, symmetry, and false “completeness” between them. After
various shenanigans, involving a chase sequence following the auction of an old
gangster’s Cadillac, the final element of the drama supervenes.
Throughout all of this, though, Batman has become more and more maniacal.
He strong-arms criminals, roughs up a morgue attendant, disobeys police orders,
is placed under arrest by Gordon (“see that Batman doesn’t leave this room”),
and plots openly to murder the Joker.
I believe that a comic like this has to be as either/or . . . or as Manichean as
possible, morally speaking. A film can be 18 or X-certificate, and the era of
graphic novels “suggested for the mature reader” didn’t exist then. All
mainstream comics were severely vetted or controlled and subject to a
censorship board—just like in early Hollywood. Hence we see the moniker
which appeared on the front of such works that read “Approved by the Comics
Code Authority.”
Such strictures often led to barely suppressed adolescent fantasies—very
much unconstrained in young boys—of violence, energy, revenge, or
transgression. But this occurs also, don’t forget, at the hands of the hero. In these
works the moral alter ego of Batman is Gordon, the police chief, not the Joker.
The villain must be utterly repulsive and crepuscular . . . yet this opens up the
“dangerous” notion of justified revenge on behalf of the illiberal masses. Given
their lowness as a form, comics can luxuriate in the “badness” of the hero—even
to the point of pitilessness.
For example, the pulp magazine from the ’30s, The Shadow, that Batman
slightly resembles, luxuriated in vigilantism, sadism, punishment of criminals,
and revenge by one’s fireside. The radio show based on it was the most listened
to in America at that time. Orson Welles played the virtual anti-hero.
Anyway, by the comic’s conclusion, Batman, Slade, and the Joker are in their
rightful places. It is all revealed to have been a plot to assassinate Batman in a
disused canal lock. The Joker and Slade are accomplices. They are cold-blooded
psychopaths. Batman is their eternal enemy. Yet he turns the tables on them,
escapes from underwater, kicks Slade unconscious, and pursues the Joker
towards the sports car: the Batmobile. The man who smiles without mirth can’t
start it and is beaten by the Avenger, but, under the Code, a moral ending must
be enforced. All collaboration is spent. Batman overcomes his desire to enact an
extra-juridical killing. The Joker will be returned to a state correctional
institution for the criminally insane, Arkham Asylum.
Nonetheless, for a brief moment the Joker and Batman were on the same side
against Gordon (and Slade), prior to the inevitable reversal. The idea remains
notwithstanding that the dramaturgy between these characters can become more
complex—if adult psychology and philosophy is added. Finally, such a comic
(virtually forgotten now and a third of a century old) exemplifies the naked
fascism of the heroic avenger up to the penultimate frame.

Counter-Currents/North American New Right
November 14, 2010



ARKHAM ASYLUM:
AN ANALYSIS

JONATHAN BOWDEN


Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth
Story by Grant Morrison, art by Dave McKean
New York: DC Comics, 1989

Arkham Asylum claims to be among the most “adult” comics ever produced,
and, although there are a few other candidates, it does merit this accolade up to a
point. It has also inspired numerous spinoffs, including video games. Elsewhere
I have written about a Batman and the Joker team-up comic from the mid-
seventies, but this was deliberately circumscribed by the Comics Code Authority
and lacked a mature sensibility.
Note: By “adult,” I am not referring to a predilection for transgression, low-
grade, or “edgy” material here. Most of these attempts in popular culture are
faintly ludicrous, it has to be said. No. What I am referring to is transgression of
the philosophical limitations placed on such narratives by an insistent Dualism.
This leads to a totally uncomplicated schema where the forces of light and
darkness ply their trade in a Manichean way.
The first point of departure is in the treatment of mental illness. Nearly all of
the villains in this institution for the criminally insane are regarded (by the
storyline) as mad, bad, and dangerous to know. They are all considered to be
responsible for their actions irrespective of their madness. In this respect,
Arkham—in a fictionalized New York City called Gotham—resembles a British
mental hospital such as Broadmoor. This establishment was erected in Berkshire
in the 1850s as the prototypical institution for the criminally insane—even
though such descriptions are studiously avoided.
All of the super-villains contained herein—the Joker, Two-Face, Croc, Black-
mask, Doctor Destiny, the Mad Hatter, the Scarecrow, Clay Face, Maxie Zeus,
Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee, Professor Milo, etc.—are held to be
accountable for their crimes, but treatable. This accords with the liberal-
humanist notion (based on Pelagianism) that Man is naturally good, rational,
kind, humane, and non-criminal. The facts of Man’s post-animalian state
completely militate against this, of course, but don’t forget that we’re dealing
with an ideology here.
Several psychotherapists are employed in the institution in order to treat the
maniacs contained therein. When the lunatics take over the asylum (quite
literally), some of them even volunteer to remain with their charges. They have a
responsibility, you see.
Just like in a real hospital, a range of treatments (whether medical or
ideological) is tried: paint-spot/ Rorschach tests, word association mind-games,
as well as classic Freudianism—whereas some of the other “therapies” are
obviously from the Behavioral school. The director of the institution even uses
severe ECT (Electro-Convulsive Therapy) on the “patients.” This is interesting
for two reasons: one, the anti-psychiatric movement campaigned against this
from the 1960s onwards; and, two, it indicates the biological basis of mental
illness. It can only be physically assailed if it is somatic to begin with.
In fact, those who are criminally insane fall into two large categories. The
offences that they commit—murder, rape, cannibalism, etc.—tend to be rather
similar, but the originating conditions are very distinct. The two categories are
psychopathia and schizophrenia. Interestingly, the word psychopath (reduced to
“psycho” in popular language) is now deeply “offensive” or politically incorrect.
It has got to the point that certain staff in these hospitals can be disciplined if
they make use of it.
Psychopathia is a birth condition—that is, persons suffering from an advanced
personality disorder are born and not made. Psychopaths begin torturing animals
about age of four to six and then proceed onto young children later. They regard
killing their own species as the equivalent of swatting a fly. Likewise, for them
rape is normal sex. It appears that psychopaths are hard-wired to believe that life
happens to be a constant war zone of each against all . . . and that love is hatred,
quite literally.
They are relatively incapable of lying, unlike normal humans who are
mendacious all the time. (Note: this is usually to survive social situations
without conflict.) Psychopaths live for conflict, believe life to be worthless, and
have utter contempt for social workers, parole board types, concerned
professors, and do-gooders who attempt to help them. They often advocate the
harshest punishments for criminals of their sort (excluding possibly themselves);
they would love to apply such indignities with the maximum amount of torture
or humiliation. Psychopaths lack certain female chromosomes (if male) which
soften the ferocity of the male nature and prepare it for camaraderie, fatherhood,
paternalism, and the softer virtues.
One of the most famous psychopaths in criminology was Peter Kürten (the
basis for Fritz Lang’s film M) who was executed in Germany in the early 1930s.
This occurred during that authoritarian halfway house period (typified by a whiff
of Conservative Revolutionism) between the end of Weimar and Hitler’s rise.
The Joker is certainly a psychopath, but in Arkham Asylum he is presented as
suffering from Tourette’s syndrome. This is a clever notion, because Tourette’s
is a complicated diagnosis with both positive and negative characteristics.
(Mozart is believed to have suffered from it, for instance.) The simplistic thing
to say is that Tourette’s is a tic-based condition which is both genetic and
inherited (i.e., strictly biological). The Joker’s mindless and repetitive desire to
be rude, upset social order, utter blasphemies, and be mentally sadistic (whilst
grinning inanely) are all part and parcel of it.
Yet, if we probe deeper, the Joker can also be diagnosed as suffering from
Super Sanity: his ego is completely suppressed, and experience washes over him
continuously. He has no filter in relation to hyper-reality (in other words) and is
therefore incapable of a conservative gesture, whether linguistically, morally,
violently, sexually, etc. Everything is in the moment—he is a pure Existentialist
without remit or prior expectancy. With him, Being is becoming—to use
philosophical language.
He bears a strong resemblance—as a result of this—to the personality of
Caligula, the mad Roman emperor, as designated in Robert Graves’ I, Claudius
and Claudius the God, as well as Albert Camus’ absurdist play. To bring it to a
point: the Joker, like the Mad God Caligula, can embrace you, flirt with you,
assassinate you, and dance with the corpse—while laughing continuously . . . as
well as having tears of mock-genuine sadness flowing down his cheeks. “I’ve
done away with my best friend, but he deserved it” would be a typical remark.
Batman, by point of contrast, is everything which is ordered, finite, prior,
Right-wing, a priori, anti-atheistic (in a metaphysical sense), and Objective . . .
philosophically. Bruce Wayne (Batman) is a metaphysical Objectivist, a Fascist;
the Joker (by dint of contrast) is an anarchist. Yet anarchism and fascism are tied
together by virtue of their dialectical inversions of one another. Scratch
Nietzsche and you move to Stirner (in the center of this spectrum); scratch
Stirner and you end up with the individualistic element in Bakunin, for example.
You can also go back along the spectrum as well.
Another consideration arises: the notion of the anarcho-fascist or Right-wing
anarchist (a combination of Batman and the Joker). This would include a great
number of artists, such as Céline, D. H. Lawrence, Wyndham Lewis, Gottfried
Benn, Ernst Jünger, Yukio Mishima, Drieu La Rochelle, T. E. Lawrence, Ezra
Pound, and so forth. A new conundrum also arises here: most far-Right leaders
(unlike the majority of their followers) exhibit Anarch traits, the most notorious
political artist of the 20th century being Adolf Hitler, of course. (Note: the
supporters of such movements tend to be much more conservative than their
leaders, per se; they look to such individuals to provide the rebellious
conformism, aggressive normalcy, and transgressive stoicism that the Right
needs.)
But if we might return to Arkham Asylum proper: one of the other major
tropes is the treatment of homosexuality. Interestingly, the writer, a Scottish
creator called Grant Morrison, wished to visualize the Joker as an effeminate (if
threatening) transvestite replete with French bodice and underwear. This is to
accentuate the grinning red lips, green hair, palsied or blanched skin, string tie,
purple jacket and slacks, and green dress shirt of the original. To link inversion
with a psychopathic clown (i.e., a negative image) is relatively reckless on
Morrison’s part . . . given that any such treatment would be considered
“politically incorrect.”
In Italian neorealist cinema after the Second World War (for instance) two
lesbians were used as a dark or sinister portrayal of fascism, but negative
depictions of inversion are rare in contemporary media. (This is contrary to the
liberal-Left view that “homophobia” lurks as an omnipresent catch-all.) The last
sinister depiction which I can recall is the triumvirate of villains in the
Humphrey Bogart version of The Maltese Falcon. This starred, quite
memorably, Sidney Greenstreet as the eponymous Fat Man. I remember a
bourgeois Marxist catalog from the 1980s at the National Film Theatre (in
Britain) describing the villainous troupe’s portrayal as an example of “bigotry.”
Nonetheless, Morrison’s schemata for the Joker continues—with him
embodying an inverted sadism in contrast to Batman’s gruff, no-nonsense, Josef
Thorak-laced, and straight as an arrow sensibility.
There are also some terrific scenes in this folie à deux (so to say); one of
which occurs at the end of the piece. In this particular, Batman starts wrecking
the asylum with an axe, and, as he does so, one of the maniacs runs down
various corridors (in this Bedlamite labyrinth, you understand) screaming “the
Bat—the Bat; he’s destroying everything!” To which Black-mask responds,
“You see, Joker; he’s too powerful, you should never have let him in here.”
In a great panel, drawn and painted by Dave McKean, the Joker screams as a
false martyr: “That’s it! Go on, blame me, go on . . . do!” All of this is
accompanied by the quiff of emerald hair and the manic smile—amid tons of
greasepaint—which just grins on and on without mirth. Just how far the author,
Morrison, is aware of any symmetry with Otto Weininger’s Sex and Character is
a moot point, however. In his own mind, he is probably trying to create the
“wildest” version of Batman on record, nothing more.
In finality, Arkham Asylum goes quite a long way towards considering Batman
as a putative Superman (in a Nietzschean sense). First of all, he has to overcome
distaste at going in the place to begin with; then he must confront his own
“demons”—by virtue of the mentally questionable state of someone who dresses
up as a bat in order to beat up criminals for a living. Also, Batman seems
hesitant in the face of the Joker’s triumphant lunacy inside the Asylum where he
can posture as the Lord of Misrule. In one revealing moment he refers to an
Arkham run by lunatics as the “real world.” Presumably, in this context, the
world outside the gates superintended by Commissioner Gordon is unreal.
Nevertheless, Batman goes through a series of tests—even a crucifixion
manqué—as he gradually conquers the place and subdues it to his will. Over
time he sidesteps Harvey Dent’s (Two-Face’s) deconstruction from dualism,
beats down upon Clayface’s disease, refuses the nightmares of Doctor Destiny,
or the serendipity of Professor Milo. Likewise, he emerges from the Scarecrow’s
cell unscathed and confronts the man-alligator, Croc, in a clash of the Titans.
Yet, throughout the whole process, he is getting stronger and stronger . . . as he
engages in personal transcendence or self-over-becoming. Until, by the end of
this film on paper, he can absorb the insanity of the place, sublimate it, purge it,
throw it forward, and then clamber out on top of it.
By the time the drama ends, Batman makes a move to rejoin the waiting
police (headed by Gordon) and the media outside. The criminal lunatics remain
inside where they belong, but in a strangely subdued way. The fascistic hero
may have lanced the boil (granted), but he has only been able to do so by
reintegration, fanaticism for a cause outside oneself, and the adoption of a
strength greater than reason. At the end (although sane) he has incorporated part
of the Joker’s Tarot (The Fool or The Hanged Man) into his own purview.
To use an Odinic or pagan device, he is walking with Weird or embracing his
own Destiny (fate)—i.e., the will which lies at the end of the road where you
will the end’s refusal. In this state—perhaps—a fictionalized variant on the end
of the Charlemagne Division exists. Remember: they fought on to the end in a
fire-torn Berlin because they had no country of their own to return to.
It is intriguing to point out the states which a form of entertainment for
children can begin to approach. But it’s only a funny book, isn’t it?

Counter-Currents/North American New Right,
December 31, 2010


BATMAN AS COMEDY

SPENCER J. QUINN


Other than with the campy television program from the 1960s, you’re
probably not going to equate Batman very often with comedy.
Of course, there is ample room for dark humor in Batman stories. The Killing
Joke by Alan Moore is great example. But this is not the same thing as comedy,
in which the universe itself is funny. With Batman, the universe is more twisted
than anything else. It’s always high noon in the middle of the night with the
forces of abject evil baying like ravenous hyenas, waiting for civilization to
weaken and stumble. All that we’ve worked for is beset on all sides by
corruption and barbarism and apathy, and is always a knife’s edge away from
pure anarchy. That’s why need vigilant heroes like the Batman as a bulwark
against our greatest fears.
Over the top just a wee tad? Sure. But we love it anyway.
While most superhero comic books recognize Good and Evil, Batman stories
tend to have a more Right-wing appeal for the way they identify this evil. For
Batman, evil is not highbrow so much as it is base, brutish, and nasty. Superman
may zoom through the heavens to thwart Lex Luthor’s latest ingenious scheme
or defend Earth from some intergalactic predator. But Batman is the one getting
his knuckles bloody as he beats mafia henchmen to a pulp. Unlike most other
heroes, Batman must stoop to face evil as if it were vermin. And the deranged, in
the Batman world, may as well be vermin. Notice how Batman’s villains are all
caricatures of the insane: Joker, Riddler, Penguin. They don’t even have super
powers. They’re just stark raving mad and obsessively diabolical. Batman has to
deal with hideous people like this. And he is only a man, so it all takes effort.
A more Left-wing approach would be for the hero to “punch-up” (to borrow a
phrase from Doonesbury’s Garry Trudeau). In such a milieu, the wealthy and
powerful are the root of all evil since they are most often blamed for greatest
Left-wing evil of them all: inequality. A true Left-winger’s heart bleeds for the
downtrodden, the poor, the underdog. Such a hero may have to deal with trouble
on the street, but more often than not, it is the respectable, beautiful elites
lurking in their mansions with bags of money who are the real culprits. Look to
the Spirit, another urban crime fighter, who is a little more along these lines than
Batman is. In any case, since inequality among humans is inescapable, evil in a
Left-wing world must be permanent.
 For the Right-wing, evil is not some socioeconomic construct to be eliminated
by progress, but something that lies in the hearts of all men. Batman has it too,
and that is why we love him. He contains it, he overcomes it. This is a struggle
we all have to face. Further, because he has intimate knowledge of evil, he
knows that we must be ruthless when fighting it. You must stamp evil out, or it
will consume everything. I’ll even go so far as to say that most Right-wingers
have a little id-like Batman living inside their minds, itching to bust heads.
Where a Left-winger may feel compassion for the deranged and seek a cure,
Right-wingers will more likely see monsters in human form who must be
stopped, one way or another. Where a Left-winger would prefer to send a thief to
prison for rehabilitation, a Right-winger would wish he could cut the thief’s
hand off.
And this is very real.
I’m reminded of a story the great Iowa wrestler Dan Gable relates about his
sister, who was raped and murdered in the 1960s when he was still in high
school. As Gable tells it, he made himself obsessed with wrestling in order to
take his parents’ minds off their all-consuming grief. He obliterated everyone in
his weight division and won the state tournament, but it didn’t matter. His
parents’ couldn’t let go. Every day, Gable’s father would take an unloaded rifle
to a hill near the prison and wait for the convicts to be let out into the yard. Then
he would find the man who murdered his daughter, take aim, and fire. And fire.
And fire.
Remember that Bruce Wayne’s parents were also murdered in cold blood, and
the boy responded in an eerily similar way. If there is one word to describe such
a reaction, it is “healthy.” It is the ardent desire to never let evil out of your
sights, and to fire and fire and fire. That is essentially what Batman is all about.
Yet, if evil can be stamped out or contained in Batman’s Right-wing urban
purgatory, then a world without evil could theoretically exist. What then? Well,
this is where comedy comes in.
Batman in a world without evil is . . . believe it or not . . . funny.
By funny, I don’t mean black comedy or satire. I’m thinking more along the
lines of Benny Hill or the Keystone Cops minus all the sped-up motion. This
precious concept is best illustrated by my all-time favorite Batman story which
appeared in Detective Comics Issue 567 in October 1986. It’s entitled, “The
Night of Thanks, but no Thanks!” It’s a one-shot story written by none other
than Harlan Ellison. And it is hysterical.
(Spoiler alert)
It’s shortly after midnight, and we find Batman about to swoop down upon a
convenience store robbery. But when he arrives, the proprietor puts a gun to the
thief’s head and tells Batman to find a payphone and call 911. Grudgingly,
Batman does so.
Half an hour later, Batman spots a mugging in progress, a man trying to rob a
lady. Our masked hero then rushes to the lady’s aid only to find her now beating
the crap out of the mugger, Ruth Buzzi-style, with her purse. She then orders
Batman to make himself useful and call a cop. Next we see ol’ Bats back on the
phone saying, “Yeah, it’s me again. Wanna make something of it?”
So, you see where this is going. Batman finds a crisis, and either he is not the
one to solve it, or he discovers it’s not really a crisis, or he actually makes
matters worse. A young man is about to jump off a ledge, but before Batman can
make his cinematic rescue, a cop reaches through a window and beats him to it.
Batman finds someone trying to break into a car only to discover that it is the
car’s owner who had locked his keys inside. Batman busts a drug deal and then
learns that he had just blown the careful ruse of an undercover cop. He then sees
someone on a ladder disabling a security alarm. Turns out it’s a technician who
is innocently fixing it. She then asks Batman to hold her flashlight while she
works and gripes when he doesn’t hold it steadily enough.
At 2:16 am, Batman is sitting on a park bench feeling sorry for himself and
doing nothing. In what other story are you going to find Batman sitting on a park
bench feeling sorry for himself and doing nothing?
Finally, 3:54, he spots an actual crime. A big, bald-headed brute coming his
way eating a candy bar. The man has the nerve to toss the wrapper onto the
pavement. Batman stands heroically in this criminal’s way and gets on his case
for littering.
Yes, the great Batman, reduced to fighting the dreaded crime of littering.
And just when you think the Caped Crusader may actually have a fight on his
hands, the gentleman concedes the argument as eloquently as possible. He picks
up the wrapper and tosses in it a trash can, all the while apologizing profusely
and thanking Batman for reinforcing good citizenship. He walks away wishing
Batman the very thing he wants the least: a quiet evening.
The story ends at 4:16 am with Bruce Wayne’s butler Alfred discovering
Bruce sulking in his study. “Master Bruce!” the old man says, “Your patrol
ended early. Was it a trying evening filled with the usual danger, sir?”
“Worst night of my life, Alfred,” a despondent Bruce responds. “Absolutely,
without a doubt, the most miserable night of my life.”
Reflecting on the Batman-as-comedy idea, I believe, may teach folks on the
Right the greatest lesson about fighting evil. It really is about the destination and
not the journey. Fighting for fighting’s sake is, for lack of a better term, bad.
Evil can be stamped out or contained. That is the very purpose of our forming
great civilizations. And once we get to that point, we should know to tone down
the fighting to appropriate levels. We should know to relax a little and enjoy our
lives. Unlike the Left which will never stop fighting for a utopia that can never
be achieved, we on the Right understand that life doesn’t have to be a constant
struggle, and it doesn’t have to be perfect. There will be nights when things take
care of themselves just fine. And we should be thankful for that.
But if we take the fighting evil idea too close to heart, it becomes more about
the former and less about the latter. When that happens, we’ll end up just like
Batman, haunting a peaceful city and wishing desperately for war.
Only then it won’t be quite so funny.

Counter-Currents/North American New Right,

May 29, 2018


TIM BURTON’S BATMAN: PUTTING THE GOTHIC INTO GOTHAM

DAVID YORKSHIRE


ORIGINS & EVOLUTION OF THE GOTHIC IN FILM
The gothic is a quintessentially European aesthetic. Moreover, it pertains and
appeals more specifically to those of North-West European descent and is to be
found in various modes and tropes throughout North-West European culture and
contrasts with the Classicism of Southern Europe. Gothic as a term was first
applied to medieval art and particularly architecture by Renaissance critics in
similar propagandist fashion to how the term Dark Ages was also used to
describe the period following the collapse of the Roman Empire. In both cases,
the terms were coined to denigrate Germanic ascendancy in culture as
unenlightened and barbaric in relation to the culture of Greco-Roman Classical
46
Antiquity and its Renaissance.
Equally, when the Gothic appeared in literature towards the end of the 18th
century, it was as a reaction to Enlightenment Classicism and the Age of Reason.
Gothic motifs here are typically old aristocratic families, subterranean and eerie
settings, the past—particularly the medieval past—entering the present, the
supernatural, emotional extremes in characterization, an older powerful
antagonist, a young hero, and a heroine that faces some sort of imprisonment or
constraint. As regards the subterranean and eerie settings, typical are those again
often associated with the medieval: dungeons, castles, manor houses, churches,
47
and cathedrals.
Contemporary (read post-Marxian) critical theory relating to the Gothic has
centered on the subject of transgression against societal norms, yet what is rarely
addressed is that these norms are post-Enlightenment, not meaning from the
likes of Kant or Franklin, but from the radical liberal tradition beginning with
Locke. In other words, the transgressive forces of the Gothic proper (as opposed
to contemporary texts that often attempt to subvert the genre itself) are not those
compatible with any philosophical position further Left, but, in their traditional
and mythical rootedness in what is quintessentially European, can only honestly
be interpreted from the Right. While the old liberal radical Left used the term
48
Gothic disparagingly, the New Left of the post-1960s cultural revolution has
appropriated the Gothic for its countercultural impact, while either critiquing or
attempting to divorce it from its Rightist elements, such as those pertaining to
aristocracy, myth, religiosity, and Eurocentrism.
In this struggle between the rationality of the Enlightenment and the alleged
unreason of the Gothic, one can see a foreshadowing of the philosophies to come
that relate to the human condition: the persona and shadow of Jung and the
Apollonian and Dionysian of Nietzsche, the “darker” aspects in both
philosophies being defined in relation to post-Enlightenment bourgeois society.
Yet with both of these philosophies, one sees a reconciliation of polarities
beyond good and evil.
The Gothic as a genre in and of itself has all but disappeared and is often
referred in post-Gothic texts as “the Gothic mode,” diffused as it is throughout
other genres. In film, one sees it readily in German Expressionism, in its
Hollywood derivative Film Noir, and in more contemporary genres like
Steampunk. Here, cinematic settings in particular are atmospherically Gothic:
the urban cityscapes are often eerily lonely and dark, often nocturnal, and the
characters that inhabit them psychologically extreme. German Expressionism
exaggerates the mise en scène to reflect a psychological imbalance in characters;
the architecture is therefore often stylistically Gothic, as the form lends to this
extremity. Steampunk’s reinterpretation and advancement of Victorianism into
the present, often creating alternate timelines where the digital revolution never
occurred and steam remained the basis of technology, inevitably bring with them
the high Victorian architectural style of the Neo-Gothic.
Steampunk was certainly influenced by events in the world of distinctly white
European forms of music. The rise of industrial, gothic rock, and darker new
wave bands like the Damned, the Cure, Bauhaus, and the Sisters of Mercy, to
name the more famous ones, created a whole new post-punk aesthetic, in which
its acolytes wore black, especially leather and plastic clothing, white make-up,
and silver jewelry. The aesthetic had a distinct Victorian vampiric look to it, and
it was no surprise that its adherents were called simply Goths. The music videos
that accompanied the singles released into the charts were set in the city back
alleys at the junction of Film Noir and Steampunk. Although this cultural scene
began in part, perhaps appropriately, in the industrial yet culturally traditionalist
north of England, its Mecca was to be found in the metropolis of London, in a
nightclub named the Batcave.

ORIGINS OF THE GOTHIC IN BATMAN
Batman was originally set in New York City. According to Batman’s co-
creator Bob Kane, the name Gotham came quite by chance:
Originally I was going to call Gotham City “Civic City.” Then I tried
“Capital City,” then “Coast City.” Then I flipped through the New York
 City phone book and spotted the name “Gotham Jewelers” and said, “That’s
it,” Gotham City. We didn’t call it New York because we wanted anybody
49
in any city to identify with it.

Gotham is an antiquated nickname for the Big Apple, and its appearance in
the telephone directory was as incidental as its selection was not. The name
Gotham was coined by Washington Irving (and one notes his connection to the
Gothic literary mode) in 1807 and taken from the village of Gotham in
Nottinghamshire, England, a village notable for its habitation by fools. This
cannot have been far from both Kane and writer Bill Finger’s mind when
creating a lawless city inhabited by crazy villains, and, whether consciously or
subconsciously, neither can Gotham’s phonemic association with the Gothic.
In spite of Kane and Finger’s ethnicity that often inclines members of their
tribe to be at odds with Western culture, they created a character that is very
much in the European tradition. The character of Batman himself is a hybrid of
both the Classical and the Gothic. Kane stated that the idea for his form came
from a design for an ornithopter flying machine by Leonardo Da Vinci with the
50
inscription “Remember that your bird shall have no other model than the bat.”
Yet the shadowy chiropteran costume is equally Gothic, as are Batman’s
nocturnal habits, which all serve to bring to mind that archetype of Gothic
literature: the vampire.
The outward vestments of Batman and his alter-ego Bruce Wayne serve to
reveal the inner compartmentalization of two major character aspects to the
audience. Wayne’s bourgeois suit emphasizes the modern Renaissance man, the
Apollonian persona constructed for polite society, “persona” of course meaning
both character and mask. Ignoring the camp 1960s television series version, the
Batsuit’s Gothic external mask disguises the Dionysian shadow within.
Indeed, the 1960s series did much to undo Batman’s Gothic image, which
only really recovered thanks to Frank Miller’s Dark Knight series of comic
books from the late 1980s. Indeed, it was Miller’s success in reinvigorating the
comic character that led directly to interest in a potential film. It is, however,
perhaps quite ironic that Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy has
concentrated more on gritty realism than a stylized Gothicism, although this may
also have been a conscious decision not to attempt to recreate the Tim Burton
51
films.

TIM BURTON & GOTHIC BATMAN
In addition to Miller’s graphic reinterpretation of Batman, one other event
enabled the filming of 1989’s Batman: Richard Donner’s 1978 version of
Superman, hailed as the first modern superhero film. In the cinematic superhero
overload of today, it is difficult to comprehend the impact the film had, or to
imagine a prior cultural space in which a serious filmic treatment of a superhero
was seen as a daring move. Indeed, Donner’s original grossed far more at the
box office than any of its campier and cornier sequels.
The aforementioned genres of German Expressionism, Film Noir, and
Steampunk contract to a point in Batman. Gotham’s criminals and police are
attired in the 1940s suits of Film Noir that are by no means out of place in their
surroundings. The cityscape of Gotham itself is an aesthetic blend of Steampunk
with Film Noir. The art deco theatres and gothic tenement blocks are juxtaposed
with fantastic Steampunk appendages: pumps, pipes, vents, shafts, fans, and
ducts, which constantly belch out steam. The Steampunk setting culminates in
crime boss Carl Grissom’s chemical plant, and it is no coincidence that this
building is where the (il)logic of comic book fantasy overrides the laws of
physics, Jack Napier plummeting into a vat of chemicals and being transformed
into the Joker.
The Steampunk settings are also congruent with German Expressionist
cinema, and there are obvious nods to Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. The high
altitudes and odd angles of both building construction and civil engineering
within the film and camerawork as creative process of the film reveal the huge
influence of German Expressionism and also correspond nicely to the demands
of a film in which the main character emulates the aerial swoops of the bat. The
film is replete with downward and upward shots that give the audience a
collective sense of vertigo that destabilizes the equilibrium of the senses and
transports it beyond its comfortable bourgeois world of safety and reason.
It is no coincidence that the film ends with multiple opportunities for these
vertical shots as Batman fights the Joker, rescuing Vicki Vale from him in a
Gothic cathedral, high up in the belfry and above the ribbed vaults and flying
buttresses and onto the roof, in almost a re-enactment of the climactic scene in
Metropolis in which Freder Fredersen rescues Maria from the mad scientist
Rotwang. Indeed, one can readily see similarities between the Joker and
Rotwang in their insanity, scientific expertise, and narrative functions in the two
films.
Where the two characters differ most significantly is in their respective
relationships to modernity and tradition. Rotwang bears the greater similarity to
the “mad professor” archetype of Gothic fiction, for there is no rejection of prior
cultural tradition. The Joker’s vandalism in the museum as he abducts Vicki
Vale is an attack on traditional and bourgeois culture; Rembrandts, Degas,
Renoirs, Gainsboroughs are all defaced, while the piece by Francis Bacon is left
intact: “I kinda like this one, Bob. Leave it.” He represents the Left-wing
anarchist, whose only aim is to destroy America as a cultural extension of
Europe.
Many fans have criticized the use of the pop singer Prince’s songs in the film,
yet one notes the context in their employment; they invariably accompany the
Joker on his “artistic” and “theatrical” endeavors—here in his deconstruction of
traditional art and also during his gaudy lowbrow parade. In its Negroid
superficiality, Prince’s music fits the bill perfectly.
In contradistinction, accompanying Batman/Wayne is the classical film score
by Danny Elfman. Both the Bruce Wayne and Batman identities come from
quintessentially European traditions in their construction by Burton and
company, the bourgeois Classicism of Bruce Wayne and the reconfigured Gothic
Batman for the postmodern technological age being split into a very dualist
Apollonian persona and Dionysian shadow, as is revealed in the dinner scene
between Bruce Wayne and Vicki Vale, when Wayne, uncomfortable as Vale in
the vast Gothic dining hall, suggests they go into the kitchen:
VICKI VALE: You know, this house and all this stuff really doesn’t seem like
you at all.
BRUCE WAYNE: Some of it is very much me, and some of it isn’t.
VICKI VALE: That dining room is definitely not you.
BRUCE WAYNE: No, the dining room isn’t.

The Gothic dining room is not Wayne, but it is Batman, as is, ironically, the
whole Gothic edifice of Wayne Manor, underneath which the equally Gothic (in
terms of narrative mode rather than architectural style) Batcave is hidden,
revealing that Batman is Wayne’s Dasein and Wayne a mere social actor. The
Jungian shadow is therefore the true self and the persona, as its etymology
suggests, a mere mask.
When Wayne leaves the dining room with Vale, it is because being with Vale
in the room makes him uncomfortable. He is awkward in conversation and table
manners, and it is Vale who reveals the inappropriateness of the room by
exaggerating her mannerisms as she puts her hand to the side of her mouth and
calls to Wayne at the other end of the long table. The acting by the male and
female leads is commendable, with Michael Keaton’s awkwardness juxtaposing
well with Kim Basinger’s self-assuredness in bourgeois society. What Wayne
represents is very much the aristocrat awkwardly attempting to fit into a society
now ruled and modelled by the bourgeoisie.
Here we have then an interesting morality at the center of Burton’s Batman.
Whether consciously or subconsciously—and one notes Burton’s unconscious
attraction to the Gothic—we are served a critique of bourgeois superficiality and
the society of manners and mannerisms as anathema to the heroic. Furthermore,
these social conventions are seen as distinctly feminine, the gendered self-
assuredness being reversed when these conventions are broken by those who
operate outside them, like the Joker. Suddenly, Vale becomes the helpless
damsel in distress of Gothic fiction, and Wayne assumes his natural role as
Gothic hero, and it is no coincidence that the Joker is (literally) brought down in
the finale by a gargoyle from the aforementioned Gothic cathedral.
Burton’s attraction to the Gothic as a white European has then resulted in both
his subversion and masculinizing of the mode, as he recreates it in his own
image. In the Gothic literary genre proper, it is the villain who is the
personification of the “True Rightist” traditional and mythic past—a
representation of the superstition and barbarity of particularly the so-called
“Dark Ages.” Yet in Batman, we have a “Dark Enlightenment,” where the post-
Enlightenment Apollonian bourgeois world can only be saved from the forces of
nihilism by a Dionysian Übermensch who embraces pre-Enlightenment ideals of
aristocratic paternalism, the warrior code, an appreciation of the mythic and
tradition—ideals that are subverted in true Gothic texts like Bram Stoker’s
Dracula or Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho. As Jonathan Bowden
often pointed out, this is ever the irony in Hollywood’s masculine archetype: that
the aristocratic warrior type must always defend the liberal capitalism of the
bourgeoisified West.
In all, Burton has created a filmic extravaganza specifically tailored to the
sensibilities of the white European male. The only significant Black character in
the film is that of the reconfigured Harvey Dent. The decision to cast a black
American actor in Billy Dee Williams as a canonically white character was a
conscious one on Burton’s part as he looked ahead to Dent’s becoming the
villain Two Face. He was interested in the black and white concept. What he
52
meant or where he was going with that was never realized. Critics like Camille
Bacon-Smith and Tyrone Yarbrough have attempted to prove that as many
blacks attended Batman showings as whites, based upon a cursory head count at
53
single showings at a tiny sample of picture houses, but the hype surrounding
the film was well-documented at the time, and audiences were overwhelmingly
white. Her study shows rather the dishonesty of contemporary academia.
The film, then, is a white film for white audiences. Tim Burton’s version of
the Batman narrative is not merely a retelling of Batman, but simultaneously, a
postmodern retelling of the Gothic tale, which in turn, is a retelling of European
folktale and fairytale. Certainly, Burton’s ever expanding portfolio of work bears
out this assertion, and, in spite of restraints, constraints, and conventions
imposed upon the film industry by both Hollywood’s Jewish executives and the
state apparatus with regard to the employment of ethnic minorities, Burton’s
films remain firmly in the European artistic tradition.

Counter-Currents/North American New Right, July 20, 2016


BATMAN RETURNS:
AN ANTI-SEMITIC ALLEGORY?

ANDREW HAMILTON


Soon after the release of director Tim Burton’s Batman Returns (1992)
starring Michael Keaton as Batman, Danny DeVito as the Penguin, Michelle
Pfeiffer as Catwoman, and Christopher Walken as evil capitalist Max Shreck,
America’s premier newspaper, the Jewish-controlled New York Times, published
an op-ed piece by two Columbia College seniors, Rebecca Roiphe and Daniel
Cooper, entitled “Batman and the Jewish Question” (July 2, 1992).
Today, Roiphe, the daughter of feminist Anne Roiphe, is a professor at New
York Law School.
Batman Returns is the second movie in the series, after Tim Burton’s
inaugural Batman (1989). It told the tale of the Penguin, a freakish villain who
posed a deadly threat to the citizens of Gotham City. As a deformed baby, he
had been secretly set adrift à la Moses in Gotham City’s river by his parents,
who deemed him repellant.
Nurtured in the sewers, the Penguin tries to seize political control of the
metropolis with the help of wealthy, megalomaniacal industrialist Max Shreck.
Ultimately, the Penguin mounts an attack to kidnap and murder all of the
firstborn aristocratic children of Gotham City.
This last plot element, an obvious reference to Passover, was introduced by
Jewish screenwriter Wesley Strick, who admitted, “Of course I was referring to
54
Exodus.”
In their article, the two Ivy League Jews charged that Batman Returns was
anti-Semitic. The Penguin, they averred, “is not just a deformed man, half
human, half-Arctic-beast. He is a Jew, down to his hooked nose, pale face, and
lust for herring.”
Some of Roiphe’s and Cooper’s allegations make little sense to a non-Jew.
For example: the Penguin’s “umbrellas that transform into bayonets, machine
guns, and helicopters are Moses’ magic staff. The flipper hands he holds at his
chest are Moses’ hands, which in Exodus become ‘leprous as snow.'” The
Penguin’s “army of mindless followers, a flock of ineffectual birds who cannot
fly, is eventually converted to the side of Christian morality. They turn against
the leader who has failed to assimilate.”
 One could deconstruct their argument further, but my objective here is to
report Jewish perceptions.
Here were some of their charges:
Using “images and cultural stereotypes,” director Tim Burton “depicts the
Penguin as one of the oldest cultural clichés: the Jew who is bitter, bent
over, and out for revenge, the Jew who is unathletic and seemingly
unthreatening but who, in fact, wants to murder every firstborn child of the
gentile community.”
“The Penguin feigns assimilation into society and gains the citizens’ trust
for a time. But eventually even the ignorant masses understand this false
prophet for what he is, a primordial beast who seeks retribution, ‘an eye for
an eye.’”
The evil, wealthy capitalist who allies himself with the Penguin against the
citizens of Gotham is named “Max Shreck” after German actor Max
Schreck, who portrayed Dracula in F. W. Murnau’s Expressionist silent
film classic, Nosferatu (1922). Metaphorically, Shreck is a blood-sucking
vampire.
The Gentile Shreck “wants only power, but the Jew who has suffered wants
to punish others for the crime that was committed against him.”
“The Penguin’s evil plan is the enactment of a paranoid notion that Jews’
effort to preserve their heritage and culture is a guise for elitist and hostile
intentions.”
“Batman Returns takes place at Christmas time. The Christmas tree, the
lights and the mistletoe serve a thematic purpose. They represent the
Christian ethic, which will save Gotham City from the false ideology of the
Penguin. In the final scene Batman articulates the distinctly Christian moral
of this film: ‘Merry Christmas and good will toward men . . . and women.’”
Finally, the authors discern a Wagnerian motif: Jewish composer Danny
Elfman’s musical score, they say, “makes indisputable the influence of
Richard Wagner.” In addition, director Burton’s horde of penguins are like
the Niebelungen; the “Penguin-Jew-villain” is Wagner’s Alberich from Das
Rheingold; and the duck-shaped boat in which the Penguin navigates
Gotham’s sewers is a parody of the “Schwan der Scheldt” from Lohengrin.

THE CHORUS CHIMES IN
Publication of these accusations in the Times conferred instant legitimacy
upon them. The article generated numerous letters to the editor, commentaries in
other venues, and was republished across the country. One large metropolitan
daily re-ran it under the headline “Batman Returns Casts Jews as a Force for
Evil.”
A Jewish reader who initially assumed the article could be dismissed as the
“product of a pair of intellectually overheated, pretentiously affected, and
politically correct undergraduates straining to ferret out nonexistent sinister
55
motives,” became a convert after seeing the “vile motion picture.” He was
puzzled why it hadn’t been censored in the production process.
After positing this taken-for-granted censorship regime, he inconsistently
concluded that Batman Returns “gives the lie to the shibboleth that Jews control
the entertainment industry and use it to manipulate the American public.”
Even paleoconservatives felt compelled to weigh in on behalf of the weak,
ever-persecuted Jews.
Chronicles magazine’s contribution to the dialogue was “Christmastime in
Hollywood” (December 1992) by David R. Slavitt, a derivative review
reproducing the opinions of the Columbia undergraduates nearly verbatim.
“These Columbia kids,” Slavitt averred, “are not crazy. If anything, their
report is cautious, modest, and generally understated.” Although it was hard to
believe “that an industry from which the Jews are not significantly excluded” (!)
would “base a surefire summer hit on the old blood libel,” nevertheless, Batman
Returns is “an old-fashioned 1930s Jew-baiting movie.”
Since there were no 1930s “Jew-baiting” movies in America or virtually
anywhere else, he was undoubtedly referring to Germany.
“The trouble with the Penguin,” Slavitt sermonized, “is that his bestiality runs
riot and that he outwardly proclaims it: ‘I am not a human being! I am an
animal!’ Which is the fundamental basis of all bigotry—that they are not like us
and in fact are not even human.” “The Penguin,” he concluded, “is at least as
Jewish as Roiphe and Cooper claim.” In summation:
The message from Batman Returns is that all our ills arise from the work of
some small but evil bunch of rich and powerful people who are different
from us—not quite human, beasts, vermin—and are therefore after blood,
wanting to kill our children and our God.

Note that this outlook is, without qualification, exactly the way Jews demonize
whites!
The movie left Slavitt feeling “dismayed” and “numb.” He hinted darkly that
a pogrom (or worse) might be in the offing.
A not exactly earth-shattering observation by Slavitt was that the film had an
Expressionist look. (This is true of virtually all of Burton’s films.)
Expressionism was common in the German cinema of the Weimar era. The
implication seemed to be that this, too, was somehow anti-Semitic.
Although the production designer for Batman Returns was Bo Welch, he
inherited his expressionist designs from Batman (1989). The set designer for that
film was British-born Jew Anton Furst, who committed suicide before the
second project went into production by leaping from an LA parking garage.
Designer Bo Welch did mention in an interview that he had blended “Fascist
architecture with World’s Fair architecture” for Gotham City, and studied
Russian architecture and German Expressionism.

ANTI-SEMITIC ALLEGORY?
Were the Jews right? Was Batman Returns an anti-Semitic allegory? Or were
these aspects of the film some sort of odd coincidence?
When I saw Batman Returns I was well-versed about the Jewish problem, but
did not automatically think, “This film is anti–Semitic!”
That doesn’t mean such themes weren’t present, but until they were pointed
out by anti-white writers they did not register with a racially conscious person
such as myself. And, unlike me, most Gentiles are unaware.
There is another film that works better as anti-Jewish allegory.
That is John Carpenter’s low budget sci-fi flick They Live (1988). Carpenter,
who is white, is a typical Hollywood denizen. His objective was to discredit
Reaganism and free enterprise. The film also prominently features a hoary
propaganda cliché, the white-Negro “buddy” team (The Defiant Ones, Mel
Gibson’s Lethal Weapon series).
I have never seen They Live attacked as anti-Semitic by Jews the way Batman
Returns was. Rather, I first read that take on the movie in 1988 in the now-
defunct Populist Party’s magazine The Populist Observer, and have seen many
pro-white writers make the same point since.
In They Live the (unintended) anti-Jewish theme sticks out like a sore thumb
for conscious whites in a way that it does not in Batman Returns. But the
depiction of the Penguin in Batman Returns unquestionably set off the Jews’
own alarm bells.
The anti-Jewish elements in Batman Returns might have been as unconscious
and unintentional as Carpenter’s were.
Another approach is to ask who made the film. Whose sensibilities, conscious
and unconscious, does it express?
The corporate parent was media colossus Time Warner, run by Jews Steven J.
Ross (real name Steven J. Rechnitz) and Gerald M. Levin.
The co-head of subsidiary production company Warner Brothers was Jew
Terry Semel, later CEO of Internet giant Yahoo!.
 Of the movie’s six producers (director Tim Burton was one), Peter Guber and
Benjamin Melnicker were Jewish, while New Jersey-born Michael Uslan’s
ethnicity is unknown. Apparent Gentiles were Jon Peters, supposedly half-Italian
and half-Amerindian, and Denise Di Novi, a presumptive Italian-American.
Daniel Waters wrote the screenplay. Unfortunately for anti-white conspiracy
theorists, his screenplay was heavily rewritten prior to filming by Wesley Strick,
who is Jewish. Strick has been credited with authorship of two-thirds of the final
script, including the Old Testament allusions.
As an aside, the final script reveals one way Hollywood scriptwriters,
directors, and actors employ buzzwords to quickly convey white racial images
and stereotypes to one another during production. In one scene I saw references
to nameless characters including “ALL-AMERICAN DAD,” “ALL-
AMERICAN MOM,” “ALL-AMERICAN SON,” and “ADORABLE LITTLE
GIRL” with her “precious little purse.”

TIM BURTON
A movie’s director ordinarily exercises more control than anyone else over the
final product in terms of story, look, theme, etc. Counter-Currents and TOO film
analyst Edmund Connelly relies upon “auteur theory”—the theory that the
director is the main “author” of a film—in his readings of Hollywood movies.
56
He succinctly summarizes that theory here.
Tim Burton exercised considerable control over the making of Batman
Returns.
His previous Batman (1989), the first film in the series, was one of the biggest
box office hits of all time, grossing over $411 million. It won critical acclaim
and an Academy Award for Best Art Direction. The success of the movie helped
establish Burton as a profitable director.
During production, Burton had repeatedly clashed with the film’s producers,
Jon Peters and Peter Guber. But after the success of Batman, Warner Brothers
wanted him to direct the sequel. He finally agreed on the condition that he be
granted total control. As a result, producers Jon Peters and Peter Guber were
demoted to executive producers.
Tim Burton has always seemed hyper-Jewish to me. (By my definition, half-
57
and quarter-Jews are also “Jewish.” ) Indeed, I find it nearly impossible to
believe that he isn’t. He is so strange, so alien, that next to him Alfred Hitchcock
looks like Ward Cleaver.
But if Burton is Jewish, he is extremely crypto-.
The media implicitly presents Burton to the public as white. Reporters state
that he was born in 1958 in Burbank, California to Jean Burton (née Erickson),
the owner of a cat-themed gift shop, and Bill Burton, a former minor league
baseball player who subsequently worked for the Burbank Park and Recreation
Department.
Yet Tim Burton’s background remains obscure. As late as the 1990s a
newswriter incorrectly identified him as a “British director,” and years ago I read
that he was adopted.
He does not look Aryan.
His sensibility—notably his weirdness, obsessions, and conspicuous
neuroticism—does not seem Aryan, either.
Burton’s “art,” whether his commercial films or the paintings, drawings,
photographs, etc., featured in a retrospective at New York’s Museum of Modern
Art, does not look Aryan. Proof of all of this is on display in a 7:00-minute
YouTube interview with Burton posted by the Museum of Modern Art in 2009
58
that highlights examples of his artwork.
59
In 2003, a Jewish website no longer in existence listed Burton as Jewish, and
of 515 voters at a contemporary Jewish site called Guess Who’s the Jew?, 58%
60
thought him Jewish and 42% non-Jewish. The site does not verify that he is in
fact Jewish, but rather tabulates the perceptions of visitors.
Burton’s amazing career trajectory suggests favoritism. He became a leading
director of big budget movies while still in his 20s.
His career received major boosts from Disney Studios, where he was
employed as an animator (gauge his qualification for commercial Disney
animation work in the YouTube clip), and Warner Brothers, which gave him his
first significant break directing Pee Wee’s Big Adventure (1985) starring Pee-
Wee Herman (Paul Reubens, born Paul Reubenfeld).
Burton’s current mistress is actress Helena Bonham Carter. Nearly half
Jewish, Bonham Carter has a complicated family tree, the product of
hybridization between members of the British aristocracy and Europe’s Jewish
aristocracy. Burton has two children by her.
Finally, despite the toxic charges of anti-Semitism, Burton’s career did not
miss a beat. He was not unceremoniously cashiered like Mel Gibson and Charlie
Sheen. That’s too bad, because a suffering world would have been spared much
ugly cultural dreck if he had been.

SELF-IMAGE
That from a Jewish perspective there are coded “anti-Jewish” messages in
Batman Returns is interesting.
 More interesting, though, is the fact that the controversy over them has
completely disappeared from public view.
As John Derbyshire observed in connection with William Cash’s much-
61
reviled 1994 Spectator (UK) article, “The Kings of the Deal”: “‘It’s surprising
what you can find on the internet,’ we used to say when the thing was new.
62
Nowadays I am more often surprised by what I can’t find on the internet.”
This is certainly true of Batman Returns. The 1992 assaults on the movie are
conspicuously absent from the World Wide Web, especially given how prevalent
they were at the time. Googling David Slavitt’s Chronicles article does not turn
up a single reference.
Perhaps some subjects are routinely downplayed or concealed by slyly
jiggering search results. I can think of a particular search formula I consistently
used with great success for many years that no longer works. The ADL partners
with Jewish mega-giants Google and Facebook to censor Internet content on
ideological and racial grounds. Such control of information choke points confers
tremendous power.
Today most people do not know that such accusations were ever made,
although oblique hints linger. For example, Jewish movie critic Leonard
Maltin’s bestselling annual Movie Guide gives Batman Returns only two stars,
calling it, without explanation, a “nasty, nihilistic, nightmare movie” with a
“dark, mean-spirited screenplay”—an obvious allusion to the Jewish themes
discussed here.
But those who self-righteously take umbrage over alleged anti-Semitism in
Batman Returns deserve no sympathy. They should have their faces shoved into
anti-Semitism every bit as vicious and unrelenting as the anti-white filth they
propagate daily without remorse, and experience the resultant violence and
hatred as well. Such vile people are in no position to preach.
That won’t happen, of course, but it should.
Surely the most extraordinary aspect of the entire affair, however, is that
Jewish elites gazed upon the physically, psychologically, and morally deformed
Penguin and instantly saw themselves.
“That’s us!” they cried. “They’re depicting us!”

Counter-Currents/North American New Right, June 22, 2012




ABOUT THE AUTHORS


Jonathan Bowden (1962–2012) was the author of Pulp Fascism: Right-Wing
Themes in Comics, Graphic Novels, & Popular Literature (Counter-Currents,
2013), Western Civilization Bites Back (Counter-Currents, 2014), Extremists:
Studies in Metapolitics (Counter-Currents, 2017), and many other books.

Luke Gordon writes for Counter-Currents/North American New Right.

Andrew Hamilton is the author of many essays and reviews, principally for
Counter-Currents/North American New Right.

Gregory Hood is the author of Waking Up from the American Dream (Counter-
Currents, 2015) and many essays and reviews. He is a staff writer for American
Renaissance (amren.com).

Greg Johnson, Ph.D. is the Editor-in-Chief of Counter-Currents Publishing and
the author of Confessions of a Reluctant Hater (Counter-Currents, 2010; second,
expanded ed., 2016), New Right vs. Old Right (Counter-Currents, 2013), Truth,
Justice, & a Nice White Country (Counter-Currents, 2015), In Defense of
Prejudice (Counter-Currents, 2017), and You Asked for It: Selected Interviews,
vol. 1 (Counter-Currents, 2017).

Jason Reza Jorjani, Ph.D. is the author of Prometheus & Atlas (2016), World
State of Emergency (2017), Lovers of Sophia (2017), and Novel Folklore (2018).
His website is https://jasonrezajorjani.com/.

Trevor Lynch is a pen name of Greg Johnson and the author of Trevor Lynch’s
White Nationalist Guide to the Movies (Counter-Currents, 2012) and Son of
Trevor Lynch’s White Nationalist Guide to the Movies (Counter-Currents, 2015).

James J. O’Meara is the author of The Homo & the Negro (Counter-Currents,
2012; second, embiggened ed., 2017), The Eldritch Evola … & Others (Counter-
Currents, 2014), End of an Era: Mad Men & the Ordeal of Civility (Counter-
Currents, 2015), and Green Nazis in Space: New Essays on Literature, Art, &
Culture (Counter-Currents, 2015), as well as many other essays and reviews.

Christopher Pankhurst is the author of Numinous Machines (Counter-
Currents, 2017).

Spencer J. Quinn is the author of White Like You (Counter-Currents, 2017) and
Reframing White Nationalism (Counter-Currents, 2018).

Zachary O. Ray writes for Counter-Currents/North American New Right. His
blog is Plugging Out, http://plugging-out.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-alt-knight-
retrospect-of-frank.html Will Windsor writes for Counter-Currents/North
American New Right.

David Yorkshire is the editor of Mjolnir Magazine,
https://mjolnirmagazine.blogspot.com, and the author of many essays and
reviews.


Notes
[←1]
In Trevor Lynch’s White Nationalist Guide to the Movies, ed. Greg Johnson (San Francisco:
Counter-Currents, 2012).
[←2]
http://www.counter-currents.com/2011/03/andy-nowickis-the-columbine-pilgrim/
[←3]
http://www.counter-currents.com/2012/05/the-avengers/
[←4]
https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/
226709543688740864
[←5]
http://www.salon.com/2012/07/18/the_dark_knight_
rises_christopher_nolans_evil_masterpiece/
[←6]
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Hollywood/2012/07/
20/Spoiler-Alert-TDKR-Most-Conservative-Movie-Ever
[←7]
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/jul/18/rush-limbaugh/rush-limbaugh-
claims-link-between-batmans-bane-and/
[←8]
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Hollywood/2012/07/
21/Dark-Knight-Rises-Review-Nolte
[←9]
http://www.counter-currents.com/2012/11/what-makes-republicans-tick/
[←10]
http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/23/the-politics-of-the-dark-knight-rises/
[←11]
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Hollywood/2012/
07/23/NY-Times-Rips-Nolte-Dark-Knight-Review
[←12]
http://www.counter-currents.com/2012/05/the-avengers/
[←13]
http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/deleted-scene-in-the-dark-knight-rises-explains-banes-
origin-movie-becomes-years-no-2-film-so-far-20120807
[←14]
http://www.counter-currents.com/2011/10/big-fan/
[←15]
Allan Bloom, The Republic of Plato (Basic Books, Perseus Books Group, 1991), 36–39.
[←16]
Ibid., 176–83.
[←17]
Ibid., 93.
[←18]
Ibid., 138.
[←19]
Lewis Hyde, Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, and Art (New York: Farrar, Straus and
Giroux, 2010), 7.
[←20]
Ibid., 7–8.
[←21]
Ibid., 215.
[←22]
See Ted Sallis’ review of From Krakow to Krypton: Jews & Comic Books, http://www.counter-
currents.com/2011/10/from-krakow-to-krypton-jews-and-comic-books/
[←23]
See my reviews of Hellboy and Hellboy II: The Golden Army in Trevor Lynch’s White Nationalist
Guide to the Movies, ed. Greg Johnson, Foreword by Kevin MacDonald (San Francisco: Counter-
Currents, 2012) and Man of Steel in Son of Trevor Lynch’s White Nationalist Guide to the Movies,
ed. Greg Johnson (San Francisco: Counter-Currents, 2015).
[←24]
Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty , trans. George
Schwab (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1988), p. 5.
[←25]
I argue that this discretion presupposes a prior, intuitive knowledge of justice, of the right thing to
do. We cannot conclude that following a given law produces an unjust outcome in exceptional
circumstances unless we have another access to justice besides the law itself. Since this knowledge is
not articulated in rules, I call it an intuitive awareness of justice. This intuitive knowledge has to exist
prior to our attempts to articulate what justice is. Only because we already intuitively know what
justice is can we judge general laws to be inadequate to exceptional circumstances. This same
intuitive sense of justice also allows us to discern the just course in unique circumstances. Intuition
furnishes a non-universal “law” to guide us. Plato’s arguments about justice in the Republic all
depend on this prior, intuitive knowledge of what justice is. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle
called this intuitive grasp of justice “equity” (epieikeia).
[←26]
http://www.counter-currents.com/2014/08/schmitt-sovereignty-and-the-deep-state/
[←27]
http://www.counter-currents.com/2014/08/schmitt-sovereignty-and-the-deep-state/
[←28]
There are many examples of such shadow governments, but the one that fits best with the theme
of superhero as sovereign vigilante is Operation Nemesis, the secret organization of Armenian exiles
formed in Boston in 1920 to assassinate the Turkish architects of the Armenian Genocide, which they
proceeded to do, almost to a man. See my review of Eric Bogosian’s Operation Nemesis,
http://www.counter-currents.com/2015/07/operation-nemesis/
[←29]
C. G. Jung, Four Archetypes, vol. 9, Part 1 of the Collected Works of C. G. Jung (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1970), 151.
[←30]
Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West (New York: The Modern Library, 1962), 378.
[←31]
Ibid., 381.
[←32]
http://www.worldwisdom.com/public/viewpdf/default.aspx
?article-title=A_Material_Civilization_by_Rene_Guenon.pdf
[←33]
Actually, George Reeves’ decline into drink, drugs, gigolo-ism and a still unexplained death,
would seem even more tragic than Reeves, but only interests TV conspiracy cultists. “His life was
filled with hard-drinking men, manipulative women, mafiosos and a career that plummeted like a
comet.” See Sam Kashner’s Hollywood Kryptonite: The Bulldog, the Lady, and the Death of
Superman (New York: St. Martins, 1997).
[←34]
Kingsley Amis, The James Bond Dossier (London: Jonathan Cape, 1965).
[←35]
Like his lumpen-audience, Bond doesn’t fancy books. His fans get the hint: Jack Kennedy
established his George W. faux-regular guy cred by letting on that he enjoyed Fleming, and thus
brought the Bond boom to the States. Kennedy was the prototype of the type analyzed here: a
physical wreck kept together with drugs and braces who promoted an image of “youth” and “vigor”
while pursuing disastrous 007-style ventures in Cuba and Vietnam. Don Draper shows his disdain for
his snooty French father-in-law by displaying a Bond book on his bedside table, just like Jack
showed those Frogs how to do things in Indochina. The season ends with Draper, deserter and fake,
having a drink while the jukebox plays “You Only Live Twice.”
[←36]
Similarly, the Hannibal Lechter saga, post the middle-brow reboot The Silence of the Lambs,
postulates a criminal super-genius who dotes on Florence, everyone’s favorite tourist stop, and
eventually escapes to become . . . a minor Florentine museum official. Oh, but the shopping! Like
any American middle-brow, he seems to spend his time drinking espresso in quaint cafes and
communicates with Agent Starling via fancy perfumes from chic boutiques. In the happy ending of
TDKR, Bruce Wayne fulfills Lechter’s ultimate fantasy: brunch in Florence with Agent Starling.
[←37]
Alan Helms, Young Man from the Provinces: A Gay Life Before Stonewall (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2003).
[←38]
Nor his own son, Samuel, becoming a bodybuilder: S. W. Fussell, Muscle: Confessions of an
Unlikely Bodybuilder (New York: Poseidon Press, 1991).
[←39]
Paul Kersey, who has tirelessly documented the role of pro and college sports in creating an
alternate reality of PC-approved “human animals,” observes “There’s a reason Bane started his
“revolution” in the movie The Dark Knight Rises at a football game.”
http://stuffblackpeopledontlike.blogspot.com/2012/07/blog-post.html
[←40]
In Trevor Lynch’s White Nationalist Guide to the Movies.
[←41]
http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/superman.htm
[←42]
http://screenrant.com/zack-snyder-man-of-steel-marvel-vs-dc-superhero-movies/
[←43]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Dunham
[←44]
See Trevor Lynch, “Watchmen,” https://www.counter-currents.com/2017/05/watchmen/. See also
my reviews of 300 in Trevor Lynch’s White Nationalist Guide to the Movies and Sucker Punch in
Son of Trevor Lynch’s White Nationalist Guide to the Movies.
[←45]
http://plugging-out.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-alt-knight-retrospect-of-frank.html
[←46]
See Giorgio Vasari, The Lives of the Artists, trans. J. C. and P. Bondanella (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1991), pp. 117, 527, and Giorgio Vasari in Vasari on Technique: Being the
Introduction to the Three Arts of Design, Architecture, Sculpture and Painting, Prefixed to the Lives
of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, ed. G. Baldwin Brown, trans. Louisa S.
Maclehose (London: Dent, 1907), 83ff.
[←47]
For more on the subject, see for example, David Punter, The Gothic (London: John Wiley &
Sons, 2004).
[←48]
See Fred Botting, “In Gothic Darkly: Heterotopia, History Culture” in A Companion to the
Gothic, ed. David Punter (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 3–14.
[←49]
Cited in Jim Steranko, The Steranko History of Comics (Reading, Penn.: Supergraphics, 1970),
44.
[←50]
Interview with Bob Kane, The Two Masks of the Caped Crusader, The Family Channel, 1990.
[←51]
Christopher Sharrett, “Batman and the Twilight of the Idols: An Interview with Frank Miller” in
The Many Lives of Batman: Critical Approaches to a Superhero and his Media, ed. Roberta E.
Pearson and William Uricchio (New York: Routledge, 1991), 33–46.
[←52]
Tim Burton, “Commentary,” Batman Special Edition, PolyGram/Warner Bros., 2005.
[←53]
Camilla Bacon-Smith and Tyrone Yarbrough, “Batman: The Ethnography” in The Many Lives of
Batman, 90–116.
[←54]
http://www.nytimes.com/1992/07/20/opinion/l-anti-semitism-in-batman-returns-be-serious-who-
s-really-divisive-122392.html
[←55]
http://www.nytimes.com/1992/07/20/opinion/l-anti-semitism-in-batman-returns-be-serious-
gratuitous-bigotry-120792.html
[←56]
http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2012/05/how-they-lie-to-us-the-film-margin-call/
[←57]
https://www.counter-currents.com/2011/12/jews-and-whiteness/
[←58]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mANsedYvsBs
[←59]
http://jewishpeople.net/famousjewssz.html
[←60]
http://www.guesswhosthejew.com/Tim_Burton.html
[←61]
http://www.johnderbyshire.com/Opinions/Culture/
Extras/KingsOfTheDeal/page.html
[←62]
http://www.vdare.com/articles/john-derbyshire-on-the-ballistic-trajectory-of-political-correctness
 Table of Contents
Front Matter
Cover
Title page
Copyright page
Contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
About the Authors