“Our females are feminine and our males are masculine,” was probably the most damning admission in this interview. Greg Johnson’s interview style seems to bother his subject enough to make this interview more interesting than Waggener’s typical recorded discussion. At about 7:30 Paul really takes off into the vital essence of tribalism in the context of the vampiric nature of our empty ghost culture. Paul’s commitment to paganism is impressive and his embracing of the biker gang initiation process is practical in the extreme.
Greg’s best question comes at 13:00 and brings Paul to the place he thrives verbally, which is commenting on the sick corporate world designed to generate “hollow people.” The economic aspects of community building—often glossed over in such discussion—couched in terms of keeping “money inside” the group, is refreshing to hear from someone who is not part of the sanctioned outsider group. Cultural reclamation is exposed here for what it is, courageously searching, building a staircase of the mind and squashing the mediocrity that naturally wells up from our corporate monoculture.
Greg and Paul both discuss the toxic levels of “irony” found in our current monoculture. The listener might be interested to know that in early modern times, in Renaissance Italy, a man of quality was supposed to cultivate an “ironic distance” from the sordid world.
Another discussion that Paul tackles well is the question of pornography, of our blooming culture of observation rather than participation. It goes without saying that our rulers want this to be so. However, if we look at Ancient Rome, which held onto its masculine virtue much longer than our fleeting American era, we see a culture where only slaves, criminals and enemies condemned to death were allowed to participate in spectator sports, and in which actors were regarded as the lowest of people. Indeed, condemned criminals, unfit for combat, were made to act in plays in which they were killed on stage! The point is that the Romans knew how damaging voyeuristic obsession was to masculinity and we do not—that is outside of a few fanatics like Paul and some learned scholars like Greg who have gone off the academic reservation.
Paul also admits to coming from a family whose father was a religious leader. Such is the background of many men who have, in the past, built successful cults and founded heresies and ideologies that became religions in their own right.
This is one of the best interviews I have heard online.
Of Lions and Men