Fencing Bear at Prayer

Those were heady days to be an outcast, that summer of 2019. The champions—some called them martyrs, others provocateurs and trolls —had been cast out of the marketplace of Facebook, banished from the polite conversation of Twitter, and sent to live in the desert of Telegram, where only a few of their previous followers had the courage to follow. There, in the desert, they huddled together in small groups, sharing stories of their champions’ glorious battles against the forces of darkness, the nannies and scolds of feminism, the killjoys of socialism, and the harpies of the Woke. They all longed for the return of the good times when their champions had been at large, welcomed into the cities and onto college campuses by the crowds singing “Hosanna!” But for the time being, they found comfort and strength in the churches they were able to found dedicated to their various patrons, the martyrs of social media.  Some followed Alex Jones. Others followed Laura Loomer. Othe...

The people of the city were scared. There had been nothing in their neighbors’ behavior to suggest that they held such dangerous beliefs, but there they were, being paraded through the center of the city under armed guard. Inexplicably, their neighbors seemed happy to be on display where everyone could see them. As they rode through the streets on carts, they were waving and smiling and singing songs about freedom, while the people of the city screamed insults at them. “The city hates you,” the people screamed. “The city hates you!” Over and over and over again. Some of the city people carried flags and signs, others wore masks, others blew whistles, other raised their middle fingers in salute. The noise was deafening, the hate palpable. And yet, still the passengers on the carts waved and smiled. One of the passengers on the carts offered the people of the city lozenges, as their voices were hoarse with screaming. What had the passengers on the carts done to excite so...

I joined Zaklog the Great and Travis for a discussion of C.S. Lewis’s “Re-adjustment” “with digressions including Milo Yiannopoulos, Alan Moore’s  Watchmen , and the destruction of language.” Watch at Zaklog the Great . Re-adjustment   I thought there would be a grave beauty, a sunset splendour In being the last of one's kind: a topmost moment as one watched  The huge wave curving over Atlantis, the shrouded barge  Turning away with wounded Arthur, or Ilium burning.  Now I see that, all along, I was assuming a posterity  Of gentle hearts: someone, however distant in the depths of time,  Who could pick up our signal, who could understand a story. There won't be.   Between the new Hominidae and us who are dying, already  There rises a barrier across which no voice can ever carry, For devils are unmaking language. We must let that alone forever.  Uproot your loves, one by one, with care, from the future, ...

You remember this interview, right? Back in summer 2016, just after Milo had been banned from Twitter for trolling Leslie Jones over her trawling for sympathy over the bad reviews of Ghostbusters, ABC sent an interviewer to London to find out wtf Milo thought he was doing. ABC: “Are you a troll?”  Milo: “Of course.”  ABC: “What is trolling? How you do you look at it?”  Milo: “I like to think of myself as a virtuous troll, you know. I’m doing God’s work.” The ABC interviewer was incredulous. A virtuous troll? Surely, this was yet another of Milo’s despicable not-funny jokes. How could saying that a woman looks like a dude be virtuous?  Would Milo say that to her face? Milo [nodding]: “Yeah, probably. I probably would.” Go, watch. The expression on the interviewer’s face is priceless. But, of course, he never lets Milo explain, just calls Milo an idiot, and moves on to ask why Milo didn’t stand up for Jones against the whole of the internet—implying tha...

Earlier this summer, I was invited to spend a day at the Charlemagne Institute for Defending and Advancing Western Civilization  talking with the Alcuin Interns on three major themes in medieval history. We talked about Charlemagne , monasticism , and the conquest of Constantinople in 1204 . Our texts were Einhard’s Life of Charles , Jocelyn of Brakelond’s Chronicle of the Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds , and Geoffrey of Villehardouin’s Chronicle of the Fourth Crusade . I also spoke about the website for my online course at Unauthorized.tv . Assigned texts Einhard and Notker the Stammerer,  Two Lives of Charlemagne , trans. Lewis Thorpe (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976); new edition, trans. David Ganz (London: Penguin, 2008) Jocelyn of Brakelond,  Chronicle of the Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds , trans. Diana Greenway and Jane Sayers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989) Joinville and Villehardouin, Chronicles of the Crusades , trans. Caroline Sm...

It has been quite the summer for those of us in Milo’s Telegram chat. First, there was the Great Sticker Fest using pictures of Milo. Then came the Advent of Awoo and the Evening of Whack-a-Mole, not to mention the daily surprise of waking up to thousands of new comments from the Night Shift Down Under. There have been new friendships formed, long conversations about the merits of furries, song nights and pet parades. We have been at times the Fag Palace complete with Court (I played the Queen Mother) and GloboHomo, Inc. (President of the Board of Directors). We have had singing competitions and reading competitions. We have enjoyed chatting with Milo. And then came Sharia Tuesday, and we were suddenly all too aware of how complicated the game had become. It began innocently enough. Well, as innocently as the first time Adam shared an apple with Eve. What would happen if Milo told the women in the chat that they could not post for 24 hours? What would the conversation be li...

“For over 1,000 years of the Western tradition, up to the dawn of printing, reading great books meant training for reading the Scriptures, not because the clergy did not want people thinking for themselves – remember, we are also told that the clergy didn’t want the laity even reading the Scriptures, which raises the interesting question of who was buying all those books – but rather because they wanted people to grow in virtue and wisdom through engagement with the living Word.” Transcript of my lecture for the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation. Given August 14, 2019, in Sydney, Australia. Full text at ABC Religion & Ethics . For my continuing adventures as a conservative in academia, see MedievalGate .

Short answer: no! Long answer: my address to the Canadian Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship in May . Wait for the Q&A—we had a lively discussion! With thanks to JustRightMedia for their work recording the conference! For a complete list of my video and podcast appearances, see Bear On Air . 

Everyone agrees. The West has a problem. For good or for ill, what we used to call “Western civilization” is crumbling. The monuments of its past are being pulled down. Its heroes are being wiped from the public memory. Efforts at stemming the loss are vilified as “racist” and “white supremacist.” Nobody in polite society wants to be associated with its institutions and ideals anymore. Particularly not with Christianity. Even in so-called conservative circles, to call oneself “Christian”—as opposed to “Judeo-Christian”—is something of a faux pas . A bit gauche. Definitely lowbrow. Not particularly intellectual. Certainly not something a rational thinker would wholeheartedly embrace. Well, perhaps it is okay to be Christian in the circles I frequent online, but then I have never been invited to the right cocktail parties. Not that I would have any idea how to behave. Then again, as they say, turnabout is fair play. I’m a Christian, and Christianity has always been a bit embarras...

My colleagues in academia must be so jealous of me. I am friends with the most fabulous faggot on the planet. You don’t believe me? Look, it says so, right here in The Chronicle of Higher Education ! Sorry, paywall. Let me quote the relevant passage for you (click on images to enlarge): I like “cheeky paean” as an epithet for “ Three Cheers for White Men .” And “journalist-turned-troll-turned-pariah” is amazingly mild as a description of Milo. But my favorite line has got to be this one: There’s enough of a mind-meld between the unlikely pair that some scholars suspect that Brown was essentially the co-author of Yiannopoulos’s thesis-length investigation/diatribe . In an email, Brown denied any ghostwriting: “Milo wrote it. He interviewed me. He is a talented journalist who knows his craft.” Have you ever read anything hotter ? I have a “mind-meld” with Milo?! I think I may need to lie down for a little bit. It’s true, Milo and I have been in correspondence for al...

The first episode in my course on medieval history is up at Unauthorized.tv  (History and Logos Channel)! The series will be for subscribers to the channel, but this episode is free to watch. Supporting materials will be posted on Medieval History 101: The Unauthorized Version . Come join me! For my continuing adventures as a conservative in academia, see MedievalGate . For a full list of my video, podcast, and radio appearances, see Bear On Air .