When the Bronze Age Mindset was published in 2018 it became a best seller and popular among many of America's elites. In the global online right it quickly reached the status of cult classic. I never had reason to pick it up, until recently. I wanted to understand a little more why some of the world's most rich and powerful were attracted to such an obvious work of right-wing reactionary thought. The book identifies its author only as "Bronze Age Pervert" which tells you a little about the man and his work. It is sometimes perverted and crude, but not in a way that was off putting. The style of the book is unique, enjoyable, and indescribable. He invents his own sentence structure and words, which even if you have never heard before you can always immediately intuit the meaning of. The author has recently been identified as Costin Alamariu, an American academic of Romanian descent.
I decided to pick up an older book, Sun and Steel by Yukio Mishima (1968) at the same time and read it directly after. The latter was an influence on the former and I picked up on a few similar themes.
I was particularly interested in how these works of pagan philosophy interacted with Christianity in particular as many of the anti-woke elite seem to be gravitating towards the ideology of sun and steel, as it was in the Bronze Age.
Bronze Age Mindset is very much an un-Christian work. I hesitate to say "anti-" because we are fellow travellers in the war against a common foe and BAP identifies us as allies. Perhaps this "bronze age mindset" could become an enemy of Christianity later, but we must first have total defeat of the modern left before that can be debated seriously. BAP identifies that pagans do not have faith, and the very idea of faith is his brief criticism of Christianity. Faith, he says, makes men weak.
He is thoroughly Nietzschean in that regard and "we are gods" could be the summation of the Bronze Age Mindset. I am not really the target audience. His rage is aimed at the disaffected young man in a decadent and effeminate world. The decadence will not last, but he is not content to be a spectator. He wishes to work to actively bring Babylon to its knees, not by cultivating virtue, but by multiplying its vices until the corruption gives way to an age of barbarism. I identify this archetype with the "Scourge of God" that we see much of in the Bible and history.
He praises the great explorers and the Conquistadors as much as the Greek warrior. Even the modern mercenary can have the kind of life he sees as the highest good, but many international rules now make it virtually impossible to attain. To be free from gynocratic rule, men must become pirates and give up on the current order. There is no opportunity to reform, but only to survive its collapse.
That's where the book is purely nihilistic. There is no positive view of family, although he begrudgingly admits having one is necessary to continue the species. He believes this is the death of a man. I disagree. Family drives men to greatness, but Bronze Age Mindset doesn't make that leap. He only calls only on men to prepare for the coming age of barbarism and to join the brotherhood of the damned.
It's a story for the young man already left behind with nothing left but to watch the world burn, or to be the one doing the burning.
The main positive idea BAP puts forward is that of cultivating strength and bodybuilding, but I think that is best discussed in a review of Japanese author Yukio Mishima's work, Sun and Steel, which is a story for another time.