ON ART AND CIVILIZATION | MY ANARCHIST LOVE LETTER TO RICHARD SPENCER

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:00]There is something tender in wanting to save civilization.

[00:00:06]It is a gesture of devotion, almost courtship, the instinct to preserve what is most fragile, beauty, form, and memory. Men like Richard Spencer do not simply want to maintain the Western world. They want to cradle it. In their eyes, the white marble of Europe's cathedrals, the careful geometry of its city squares, and the aching harmonies of Vagnner stand as proof that something in the west reached for the divine and almost touched it. Who could look upon such splendor and not wish to protect it? I too love the art of this tradition. When I listen to Arvo Part or Sophian Pomart, I hear the same yearning, the desire to translate transcendence into sound. I see in the balanced facade of neocclassical buildings and the curvature of Greek statuary, a purity of intention that speaks directly to the human condition.

[00:01:09]This creme dela creme of civilization is civilization to Richard Spencer with all bad things of civilization either a necessary to bear. So we get this gorgeous artistic output or b unfortunate happenstances that could be gotten rid of. Narcissism, excesses of the libido, personality disorders, tyrants and slavery are all worth it. So we can behold exquisite European libraries, mannerist statues and Rooko paintings.

[00:01:43]This ties into white nationalism and the framework under which white nationalism makes sense. A white in America may know that they are 30% Irish, 30% Polish, 30% Italian, and 10% German, while the Africanamean does not know their ad mixture.

[00:02:01]But the white American does not have an ethnic identity to feel at home with just like the black. Through this, whiteness is shaped through long-term sexual selection and preference crystallized into an aesthetic and cultural ideal. A white American cannot go to Germany or Ireland or Italy and be accepted as one of their own there. An American moving to these countries will always be seen as an American, not as a long-lost brother coming home. This is genuinely sad. What does it mean to be white then? What is a unifying culture of all white people? The meatloaf fried chicken and apple pie of Megan Kelly in faux Christianity. Horrible. I understand this. Wanting a home is not evil.

[00:02:53]So the idea of white nationalism is this.

[00:02:57]What if all white people had a nation to call home?

[00:03:03]White nationalism seeks to remedy the cultural homelessness experienced by whites in fundamentally multicultural societies like the US and create something greater. While the intentions are noble, we know there are several logistical issues to this. The first is defining whiteness, which has already been spoken about by others at length.

[00:03:25]The second is convincing enough people that white nationalism is a good idea.

[00:03:31]And the third is removing non-whites from whatever territory the white nation occupies. I'm not rehashing what this implies, which has already been spoken about by others at length and is a non-issue for idealists like Richard.

[00:03:47]White nationalism inherently exists due to and has roots in romanticism and emotional reactions to art which I do understand. I believe European art is of the highest quality and really is extraordinary.

[00:04:06]You can see the idealism of white nationalism in the second counterpart to the 14 words because the beauty of the white Aryan woman must not perish from the earth.

[00:04:19]Some men are naturally more prone to idealism than others. To note, Richard Spencer has a beautiful physioamy. His light, bright, blue eyes signal idealism in face reading in contrast to my extremely dark eyes and logisticsoriented nature. Spencer's pale, bright eyes embody a colors saturated perception.

[00:04:40]The kind that falls in love with marble pillars and flags.

[00:04:46]My eyes are almost black. They see constraints, supply chains, and feedback loops. He sees the painting for the beauty it represents. I think about what drove the man to make that painting.

[00:05:01]Given that I understand his longing for home and beauty, why doesn't white nationalism satisfy me? I believe in anarchy as an aristocratic ideal. Not only that people should be brought up in the first place to hold themselves accountable instead of government doing so for them, but also as Renzo Novatore, famed Italian individualist anarchist puts it, "Anarchy for me means autocracy of beauty, of genius, of art, and of all those who possess the willful and selective qualities suitable for dominating, and that mother nature, justly or unjustly, grants and lavishes so generously on a few, while she denies them to most, as if the latter were her bastard children.

[00:05:53]Authority allows those without grace, without talent, and without honor to take precedence and rule over us.

[00:06:02]Disgusting. It doesn't matter if you use entryism to put the good guys in power.

[00:06:07]This repeatedly happens across all governments throughout history.

[00:06:16]Regarding Apolloism, we can embrace art, beauty, honor, and excellence without worshiping it. Worshiping these things can actually inhibit our ability to embody these virtues. You don't worship the concept of kindness. You simply are kind.

[00:06:35]I don't need to worship Apollo, especially considering that I'm more Appalonian than the people who call themselves that.

[00:06:44]Even though this isn't my case, I understand that many people need a model to look up to. I know that many bodybuilders have read manga as children, wanted to emulate their favorite character, and took up bodybuilding because of it.

[00:07:01]But those bodybuilders don't worship those characters.

[00:07:05]The character just needs to be vivid enough for the bodybuilder to emulate.

[00:07:10]They only use those characters.

[00:07:13]Apolloism mistakes the use of symbolic images for the need to sacriize them. It adds a second layer of abstraction that risks weakening the directness of the model. Those bodybuilders don't need a formal, repeatable, socially binding Apolloist manifesto to transmit the value of discipline, physical excellence, or dedication to an ideal.

[00:07:38]They do it through the direct mimemetic transfer of seeing someone who looks like what they want to be and then doing the work. That is more public, repeatable, and socially binding than anything you could write in a book.

[00:07:53]If the purpose of Apolloism is to provide an image of excellence, it is redundant. We already have stories and myths for that. The ism is over formalizing something that works better as lived imitation.

[00:08:10]If the purpose of Apolloism is to moralize white people, well, there's nothing more demoralizing than being told you need to be moralized.

[00:08:22]If Apollo is just a name for beauty, order, and excellence, then just say that. If Apollo is more, then explain how he truly is. Otherwise, Apolloism is just a way of packaging ordinary cultural transmission as a special doctrine. Is Apolloism mostly branding, or is there a difference between the true Apollo and the values you claim Apollo represents?

[00:08:48]If Apollo is just a symbol for the values you already want, why isn't the symbol itself optional? And if it isn't optional, what exactly does Apolloism do that regular art, meth, and imitation do not already do?

[00:09:05]And calling yourself an Apolloist or calling this embrace of virtue Apolloism just limits those ideas to a particular group instead of paving the way for those ideas to become mainstream. People call themselves appalonians and the only thing that actually signals is that they enjoy listening to Richard Spencer speak online.

[00:09:28]Furthermore, how are you even going to spread Apolloism as a spiritual and intellectual revival? Just write a book about it and make everybody read it?

[00:09:38]Well, we would all have to read that book by choice since you can't force Apolloism upon people like a concistador forcing the natives to read the Bible.

[00:09:48]Here's the thing. The age of Pisces, of our traditional spirituality, is coming to a close. We are entering the age of Aquarius. We have started to see the rise of spiritual but not religious movements from the bottom up like spiritualism, anthroposophy, and the new thought movement in the western world.

[00:10:07]and Yuangda Tenriko in the Bahigh faith in the east. These movements gained massive traction precisely because they emphasize tangible daily life improvements. Whether it be through health, peace, relationships, or giving people a purpose in a way that Apolloism doesn't. For Apolloism to gain meaningful traction, it has to tangibly improve the life of whoever adheres to it. You have to prove that worshiping Apollo is going to make one's life substantially better.

[00:10:42]Secondly, Spencer says atheists create the best religions and gives the example of Marxism.

[00:10:51]Marx's analysis was analysis that was never meant to be codified into dogma.

[00:10:57]Markx didn't try to make his own religion top down. His adherence adopted that fanaticism on his behalf. The truth is that atheists don't create the best religions. If you don't actually worship and believe in Apollo, how do you expect your followers to follow suit? Is Apollo something you believe in or something you're trying to make other people believe in?

[00:11:22]Richard Spencer's Apolloism is a manifestation of his caleric temperament. In the ancient Greek temperamental theory, calleric refers to a fiery, assertive disposition linked to yellow bile, marked by strong will, decisiveness, and a drive for control and results. You can see this in how he's intellectually trying to will a form of spirituality into existence top down instead of that spirituality happening from the ground up. His love of art is real, but his worship of it betrays the natural aristocracy that produces it.

[00:11:58]You may consider me to be in this category. I have made art throughout my childhood and adolescence.

[00:12:05]I despised being in the public education system and would draw whenever I got the chance. My sketchbooks were frequently confiscated and my mother even confiscated my digital art tablet until I just decided to use my phone to make digital art instead. Here's some art from when I was 15.

[00:12:36]Art is either made as a coping mechanism, self-expression, or a mixture of both. The overwhelming vast majority of art in civilization is made as a coping mechanism, not as pure self-expression.

[00:12:51]I paint the paintings which I am not.

[00:12:54]Good poets by necessity write the poetry they cannot live. I don't believe in art for art's sake. Creativity without direction or greater purpose is a surefire way to become a mess of a human being and ruin your life. The purpose of art is to exalt life to strengthen your resolve to live. That's what art does as both a coping mechanism and as a means of self-expression. The purpose of art is not to depress or demoralize you. The disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed crowd have it all wrong. You can't actually discern who is comfortable. So, they're just disturbing people.

[00:13:38]We all instinctively understand why putting a massive pink plastic dildo as a statue in a public square is abhorrent.

[00:13:48]Demoralizing art fails three tests. One, does it exalt life or drain it? Two, does it reflect human excellence or mock it? Three, would its creator defend it face to face with their work subjects? I can also argue against poor taste in private with character-based ethics and how what we do in private bleeds out into how we act in public. demoralizing or degenerate art should be banned or at the very least strongly restricted in access. I agree with Hitler on this topic.

[00:14:26]The inherent alienation of the individual from their nature requires art as a coping mechanism and the most gorgeous art like Gothic cathedrals and Greco Roman statues seek to emulate nature. The scattered light going through a stained glass window of a cathedral mimics the spattering of sunlight through tree branches. And Greo Roman statues emulate what humans look like at their healthiest and strongest.

[00:14:57]Civilization's art is not separate from nature. It's nature filtered through human longing for connection. This art is the closest we get to interacting with nature holistically. So, we think it goes above nature itself.

[00:15:13]Art isn't what makes civilization worth saving. It's what makes civilization bearable.

[00:15:20]99% of human history was hunter gatherer societies for a reason. Hunter gatherers weren't building walls around whiteness.

[00:15:30]Their homogeneity emerged organically from kinship, geography, and survival, not ideology or bureaucracy.

[00:15:40]Tribal purity wasn't a political project. It was life itself. Bloodlines forged in forest and blood, where ethnicity meant family extended across generations. Spencer confuses this natural cohesion for his engineered ethnostate. One breeds from the earth, the other suffocates under charters and borders.

[00:16:03]Contrast this to how in huntergatherer societies, their transcendent purpose was their day-to-day life, where their life was cohesive and whole in the fact that it all tied in together around hunting for food. Socialization, work, food, companionship, and art all tied together around this. Contrast this with how our hobbies, socialization, work, and family are completely disconnected, compartmentalized boxes within our lives. The life of modern man. He goes to work and performs his office persona.

[00:16:39]He then commutes and arrives at the gym where he performs his gym persona. He goes on his phone and performs his online persona. Then comes family time.

[00:16:51]Then comes solitary coping hobbies. The life of a Christian surf. The morning starts off with prayer. Then it leads into mass which is obedience to Lord and church. Finally, he goes to his guild work which is separate from meal preparation and consumption which is separate from confession.

[00:17:15]And lastly, he spends time with his family.

[00:17:19]every step of the medieval Christians day chneled through one religious frame.

[00:17:26]Whereas in huntergatherer societies, hunting/ food preparation was socializing which was childbearing which was ritual which was storytelling which was work which was art in the life of a hunter gatherer.

[00:17:42]We need cohesion and simplicity in all aspects of our lives in order to not experience alienation. The existence of gorgeous cathedrals don't justify how billions live now. To address the palenetic nationalists, even if you magically made humanity go back from before the French Revolution, everything would build back up until this point due to material conditions in society. call it dialectical materialism or common sense. Critics may argue in response that a hunter gatherer society would relegate me to a mere breeder. What they don't understand is that I am a breeder.

[00:18:26]It is not a role to be relegated. That is an act of civilization. I want a hunter gatherer society that's honest about this fact, not civilization's euphemistic cloak over my nature.

[00:18:42]Quality of life matters more than narratives of civilizational glory. What use is an empire for God if you are a slave for him? You may argue it is your prerogative to be a slave to God. But keep in mind that is not God. He is a higher being above us in every sense of the word by definition.

[00:19:06]If such a being or force were to truly exist, as I believe there is a high likelihood, it would not be one we are capable of conceptualizing as mere mortals. Religious people do not believe in a god, only their conceptualization of what such a thing may be like.

[00:19:24]This is why religious texts disagree with each other.

[00:19:28]Art is only free when it is done from pure choice, not as a coping mechanism.

[00:19:35]Art within anarchy is only a self-expression, not as a coping mechanism from an alienated existence.

[00:19:43]Experiencing the beauty of European art and alienation pales in comparison to experiencing the beauty of the French cave paintings in a state of wholeness.

[00:19:54]Both Spencer and I want excellence, but I want to set her free.