I’ve been thinking about the role of mythology in politics a bit recently (as you do). It all kicked off when I got Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke’s Black Sun – Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity out of the library. The book deals with post war esoteric fascist movements and goes into quite a lot of detail on Evola, Savitri Devi etc. What struck me was the shaky ground on which a lot of these ideas are based – how ideas which are originally assertions become fact over time. For example the reliance on Blavatsky’s theories about “root races” and her supposed viewing of documents from the “secret chiefs” in a cave in Tibet, which is at best not a proveable set of events…

Similarly the whole nazi occultism schtick which the author has covered in detail in the excellent “Occult Roots of Nazism”. This whole area has been an exercise in ascribing spiritual depth to the extreme right – presumably to gain some intellectual respectability. So there’s much mention of the role of the Thule Society as a group which brought occult ideas into the 3rd Reich. However Goodrick-Clarke has actually gone through the agendas of their meetings and found that they only really ever discussed such topics on one or two occasions. (Cue conspiracy theorists saying that it was all done behind the scenes, blah blah blah).

This all becomes a total farce when the hoary subject of Nazi UFOs is examined. An entire mythology of super fascist technology has built up since the second world war, most of which originates from speculation or total fiction. More layers are added (they are all on secret antarctic bases, they originate from Aldebaran, Hitler is still alive…) until the whole spectacle strains the credulity of even the most ardent new ager.

Obviously this sort of mythologising is not something which is exclusive to the right, so I got thinking about the role of myths in left wing scenes I have been involved in. There’s actually already a text about this on the site called Nostalgia in the UK which basically argues that myths create a golden age of resistance which people hark back to rather than examine the present with a view to creating the future.

It’s a theme taken up by Mr Dupont, who is kind enough to email me texts regularly. His most recent missive is called “Ony We Can Prevent Mythology” (not on the web, but let me know if you want me to forward you the email):

“[Ken Loach] says there are a lot of underemployed electricians and mechanics out there and whats needed is a reinvestment in traditional industries, this will resurrect old communities and everything will be well again because such labour brings dignity. Whilst we accept that it is likely that working in a cotton mill is more dignified than robbing old people to feed a hundred pound a day heroin addiction, it is even so a very limited socialist goal to have as your ambition for the poor only that they should find something useful to do with their hands.

To contrast, in the Technicolour Joseph style, the fat years then with the thin years now is an acceptable political tactic but to proclaim as your solution to the thin times a return to industrial slavery is about as limited and ugly a concept of freedom and equality as it is possible to get. What the left forgets is that the same rules are in play now as they were then, things have got worse but have not changed. The time of wonder and freedom cannot be found in examples of the past, the days full of stars have not yet arrived, they have no name, they will be utterly unlike today and unlike all previous days – The names given by the left for what they want, a living wage, dignity of labour, national ownership are precisely the limits of their agenda.

To go back to the days when such things were possible will always ultimately bring us to where we are now because whether things get better or worse, nothing essential has changed: liberalism slips into fascism, or state socialism and back again according to economic pressures, and whilst the rhetoric alters the same people hold power. In all political examples the same rules are in force.

Thus Left Wing means being stuck ideologically in a loop between past and present, it seeks to defend what has already been lost using moralistic arguments based in nostalgia (look how bad things have got) for fear of alienating a perceived reactionary public to whom you must always appeal with your clumsy populism, being convinced they are incapable of conceiving anything beyond existing terms. Whilst we agree with Loach that most people are thick we do not agree that appealing to their stupidity is an appropriate strategy for bringing on the beautiful revolution.”

All very sensible, but I wondered if there was a more positive role for mythology, and as if on cue another text dropped into my mailbox…

The Wu-Ming Foundation is really under exposed in the UK, but a massive deal in Italy. Some of them were involved in the Luther Blissett Project and their collective novel “Q” is being publised by a major publisher in english in the spring. Anyway they do a e-newsletter which you can subscribe to, the most recent edition of which is entitled:
WHY NOT SHOW OFF ABOUT THE BEST THINGS?A Few Quick Notes on Social Conflict in Italy and the Metaphors Used to Describe It

It’s a great read, and includes this:

“I am neither a political theorist nor a social scientist. I am a story-teller. I belong to a permanent workshop on genre fiction and popular culture. Our stance on the Italian social movements stems from that: we are interested in *mythopoesis*, i.e. the social process of constructing myths, by which we do not mean ‘false stories’, we mean stories that are told and shared, re-told and manipulated, by a vast and multifarious community, stories that may give shape to some kind of ritual, some sense of continuity between what we do and what other people did in the past.
A tradition. In latin the verb ‘tradere’ simply meant ‘to hand down something’, it did not entail any narrow-mindedness, conservatism or forced respect for the past.

Revolutions and radical movements have always found and told their own myths. They often got trapped in the iron cages of their own myths: their traditions and rituals became alienating, the continuity between past and present was *imposed* on the people instead of being proposed.
Radicals of all ages over-reacted to that situation by becoming iconoclastic, by trying to de-mythologize the imagery and discourse of the movement. By doing that, they simply replaced one alienating imagery with another. Iconoclasty soon became a new iconophilia. The pro-situs who adore St. Guy of Paris are only one of the most striking examples of this. As a consequence, misery and impotence rule, bitter nihilism and defeatism replace theory, and fools rush into the nearest dead end street (primitivism, techno-phobia etc.)

Myths are necessary. We couldn’t live together without stories to tell and listen to, without ‘heroes’ whose example we can follow or reject. Our language, our memories, our imagination and our need of forming communities are the things that make us human beings, and the stories keep them all together. There is no way we can get rid of myths, and why the fuck should we? Instead of wasting our time listening to some bullshitter who poses as the most radical of all, we ought to understand the way actual social movements want to fulfil their need for myths and mythologies, and help them keep mythologies lively, flexible and in motion.”

Which is, I think, pretty bang on. Particularly in terms of the collective process and not waiting for a grand narrative from some literary author, or whatever. In our boredom we can dream up new worlds – together.