I find myself at odds with most postmodern tribalists. There are two reasons for this.
One, I am not interested in branding and suspect that branding associated with tribalism will suck the tribalist back into the materialistic ethos of civilization.
Two is the bigger question. If libertarianism can be taken for a read on civilization, than its worship of greed as a social mechanism places half of the libertarian equation as squarely civilized and the other half, the nonaggression principal, as squarely tribal. The libertarian extension of the nonaggression principal to extra-cultural polities is simply suicidal and inauthentic.
However the aspect of libertarianism that is tribal is the notion that aggression within a society is wrong.
The cornerstone of tribal groups—including the Athenians, who numbered 10 tribes and either exiled censured persons or demanded they commit suicide—is that “we don’t kill our own.” The censured person in a tribal setting is outcast, exiled, ostracized, which, in a tribal age is a death sentence for any non-adaptive personality. The important thing was metaphysical, that the tribe did not kill its own.
This extended to child rearing, with the beating of children common in civilizations and extremely rare in pre-civilized societies. [1] There is not apparently a racial component to this outside of the Australoid folk, who are well known for killing and torturing their own women and children. The supposition that the reported Native American aversion to child beating at the time of European contact is a racial characteristic is false, with the Mississippian and Aztecs practicing extensive infanticide, child torture and human sacrifice from within the group. Of course, these were civilizations. Outside of survival infanticide, in response to famine, harm to children was so rare among Native Americas that Increase Mather noted it as a weakness of character compared to New Englanders who beat their children. Likewise, while white men routinely abandoned their women and children to the enemy, the warriors of Metacomet and of other tribes fought heroically to defend their non combatants. There was also girl sacrifice among the Pawnee, preferably of a captive from another tribe.
In pre-state societies there is even a lack of concussive sports like boxing in favor of wrestling, with a common taboo being the striking of a man with the hand. In ancient Greece, the hybrid tribal polities required purification of any man who killed another by accident or on purpose in sports competition or single combat, before he could be accepted by the community.
While not universal, the common tribal ethics concerning in-group violence is one of taboo.
Conversely, all states reserve the right to kill and or imprison [which was worse than death to most primitive folk] any individual which breaks certain laws.
The case is clearly made in the historic record that tribal societies are typified by external violence against other groups and that civilized societies are typified by internal violence against the individual.
For this reason, I have been deeply troubled by neo-tribal white identity groups from their first inception as they differ very little from criminal gangs, in that most of their violent activity is focused inward against their own ethnicity, for the stated purpose of forcing compliance with norms, usually related to limiting or banning associations with people of other ethnicities.
In Maryland and Pennsylvania, the two states where I have resided, the vast majority of violence committed by or at the behest of skinhead gangs and white nationalist groups has been against whites, not those ethnicities that such groups are supposedly resisting.
Likewise, black street gangs chose as their target, black individuals at over a 99% rate. What is even more astounding is that black street gangs are roughly as likely to kill a member of their gang than a member of a rival gang.
Such feral tribalism, represented by the gangland term “blood in, blood out,” is also a feature of white biker gangs, who predominantly kill their own.
Feral tribalism is nothing more than the hijacking of tribal imagery and identity in imitation of the hierarchal cannibalism of the predatory state. Hence much neo-tribalism is nothing but civilization in a barbaric costume, with few neo-tribal advocates demonstrating any true understanding of the barbarism they supposedly embrace.
It s true that some such organizations are honestly trying to reject civilization, but their lack of knowledge leads them too imitate civilized methods. There is also the fact that starting a tribal entity within a civilization makes exile and ostracism problematic forms of censure when such outcasts may merely gravitate to the state enforcers and serve as spies, informants and advisors for the larger, more lethal society.
What is missing, in my mind, is an honor code that is greater than the tribe, a code that imparts value to the honorable person across tribal lines and thereby dissuades him from turning on his tribe once he is exiled. [1] Such an honor code is not sustainable among emasculated persons or among women. So I suggest the restoration of masculinity and the necessary honor codes implicit in masculine fraternity as a precursor to tribal reconstruction in opposition to Civilization.
A criminal gang, or one imitating criminal gangs, cannot cultivate an honor bound man who will retain his honor after expulsion from his tribe or gang. In many cases this is the idea, to tie membership to honor, thus stripping the person to a social cipher upon expulsion. This common gang value is morally somewhere between a corrupted form of corporatism and a reduced from of patriotism, both so conditional on in-group approval as to be effeminate—forms, ironically devised largely by gangs formed of fatherless youths with a feminized view of life.
To build real tribes we first need a masculine society to draw from, built one man at a time, not cobbled together in an ally in the minds of fatherless punks.
Notes
1. The idea of child beating seems closely tied with the rise of slavery, which follows the exact trajectory of civilization.
2. Such was the purpose of warrior societies among Native Americans and among knightly orders in Feudal Europe and of the Code Duello among the aristocratic class of the Early Modern Age. Since masculine societies seemed to form when tribal values and structure were under duress [this happened during Soto’s invasion in 1541, with the superseding of feudalism being addressed by the adoption of the Code Duello, and finally with the Boxers in China and Ghost Dancers in the American West] and since postmodern society has seen a shattering of values, that recuperative masculine societies might serve as foundations for later, and hence more legitimate, tribal entities.
The Lies That Bind Us
The Foundational Falsehoods of the American Dream
Of Lions and Men
Hey James, what's your take on Jack Donovan, and the Wolves of Vinland?
I have not read Jack's latest book on the subject.
As far as The Way of Men, I rate it as the most important book of my time.
They seem to be doing their best to form a tribe using extant models, which means following the biker gang incorporation model based on the logic that such gangs have survived intact under direct pressure from the State. However, such gangs chew up and spit out a lot of people. I personally know some of these folks, who have gone from citizen, to biker and to atomized outcast. Now, the negatives of the biker gang model seem to be driven by crime, so as long as the Wolves refrain from crime this should be a sustainable model.
On the plus side, the literature and videos I have read and viewed from the Wolves show an emphasis on the members surpassing the founders—which is the only way to pioneer something—and on self-reliance and clannishness, which I think are all positive.
As to the negative, they are heavily involved in branding, which is something I'm suspicious of in that it is so image heavy and materialistic. However, this does provide a platform for engaging outcasts of the Norms and they are battling a media-driven social model.
Ten years should tell. If there is splintering and feuding in the pioneer period it's doomed.
The few people I've come in contact with who were part of some kind of White Identity Fan Club, all of 'em seemed like losers who blamed their own failures on others. The one guy I met who tried recruiting me into his group smelled like law enforcement from a mile away, even with the Nazi tattoos.
Jack Donovan looks like he gets his masculinity from a 5ml vial. I will admit to never having read any of his books, but listening to him on podcasts and looking at his website, he appears to be somewhat the poser. Maybe I just have an aversion to groups. If James LaFond says The Way of Men is a must read, maybe there's something to it. I'll add it to my list of things to read.