Jack Donovan and Swiss author and survivalist Piero San Giorgio discuss the movie Conan the Barbarian (1982), as ‘a question of power’. Piero does an excellent job of following the threads of genocide and power, without permitting the question of race that has dogged this movie to muddy the discussion. He also points to the film as reflecting the cultural death of European paganism at the hands of Christianity, which is a subject I have always been quite interested in.

I might add that the key aspect of this film, being the power of the villain to command suicidal acts on behalf of his cult followers, which these two authors are so fascinated with, comes not through the original author of the stories, Robert E. Howard, but via historian-director John Milus. Thulsa Doom, the villain played by James Earl Jones, was not a Howard creation. He is based on the ‘Grandfather of Assassins', the Master of Almut, a citadel that was eventually taken by vengeful Mongols, who let Armenian allies roast pieces of the cult leader over a brazier and force feed him his own flesh, until he literally ate himself to death. The other famous scene, that viewers like so much, is of the great khan [A Genghis Khan surrogate] asking ‘What is good in life?’ The answer, provided by Conan, is generally attributed to Genghis Khan.

Check this out if you are interested in paganism, Howard or Conan.