Boreas Podcast
Mimetic theory takes on everything.
Episodes
Marx promised workers had nothing to lose but their chains. But what if the real chains aren't economic—they're mimetic? In this final installment of The Anti-Manifesto, I lay out what revolution could never accomplish: a genuine escape from the tyranny of capital. Not by seizing the means of production, but by understanding that capital itself is generated by our converging desires—and that walking away is ...
Dr. E Michael Jones returns to Boreas Podcast to recount his personal history investigating and writing on the Medjugorje apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a history summarized in his 1998 book "The Medjugorje Deception: Queen of Peace, Ethnic Cleansing, and Ruined Lives." Dr. Jones communicated with highest-level representatives of US goverment and the Catholic Church during his investigative work. Ou...
Marx titled his magnum opus Das Kapital, yet he completely botched what capital actually is. Here's the real definition: capital is the power to influence the behavior of others—and it's generated not by factories or machinery but by converging desires. The moment two people want the same fish, that fish becomes capital. If Elon Musk survives nuclear apocalypse alone in a bunker with mountains of gold and ma...
Marx got feudalism wrong. Medieval knights weren't cunning exploiters hoarding the means of production—they were sacrificial figures whose privilege was justified by their willingness to die in battle. In this episode, I trace the strange transition from sacred warfare to sacred shopping, revealing how European aristocrats literally traded away their power for diamond buckles (Adam Smith's words, not mine). ...
In this conversation, Dr. E. Michael Jones and discuss themes from his book The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit, including the role of Christianity in shaping revolutionary movements. We explore points of the historical context of modern revolutionary rebellion. Dr. Jones contrasts righteous rebellion with sedition, critiques the impact of usury in modern society, and addresses the scapegoating of Jews. The discussion als...
Karl Marx wrote how the bourgoisie feishized commodities—but what if he was blind to his own deeper fetish? In this episode, I argue that Marx only went halfway: he scorned capitalist markets while remaining utterly entranced by the altar of production itself. His enchantment was of the archaic or violent-sacred kind, and so it lead to archaic mobilization, persecution, and aesthetics.
Part 2 of a 5-part series.
Communism was an archaic way of dealing with and worshipping materialism, a chief ideology of 19th century and modern times. In this episode, I look at the text of The Communist Manifesto, the famous originary pamphlet of communist revolutions, and explain why it contains the elements of a hypnotic spell. If communism is an archaic religion, texts like the Communist Manifesto are its ritual incantations. All rituals e...
Continuing on the previous episode with the review of Stephen C. Meyer's book Return of God Hypothesis. This one goes over the impossible odds of assembling proteins or DNA to either begin or evolve life. Then, it goes over the digital or symbolic nature of information that encodes life and explains why natural laws in their ontological essence cannot produce such information. We distinguish orderliness of the ty...
A reading of my essay with the same title that reviews Stephen C Meyer's book Return of God Hypothesis. I go over the arguments of the book that debunk the materialist narrative around the Big Bang, or the beginning of the universe: 1) what's called the Fine Tuning Problem, with the the mathematical and physical impossibilities it exposes, and 2) the metaphysical absurdities that arise from the inability of ...
Modernity with its humanism and secularism rose out of Christian culture but seems to be at odds with it. I explain this paradox in accordance with René Girard's anthropology: how the recession of the violent sacred wrought by Christianity over the centuries created the cultural space that distances itself from all sacred and thus becomes transferrable to the whole world, producing modernity and globalisation.
"You cannot be a human without a transcendental vision. The here and now is not enough; there must be something wholly above it, not just something higher and better, but something absolute and eternal. This something is transcendence. It anchors human life in meaning and purpose."
René Girard showed how Western literature over the centuries traces a descent of transcendence from heavenly and distant visions ...
How and why I got into researching Amazonian spirituality. Modern interest in shamanism and the reality of shamanism among Amazonian tribes. Sorcery and witchcraft and recorded cases of scapegoating among the Amazonians. The imperative of conviviality and consequences of breaking it. Inner peace and its flip side: outer violence.
Here finally is a true and powerful traditionalist response to both feminist accusations and the cheap bragging of low-IQ wife-beaters. Why and how are men "born to rule"? The answer is clear once we recover the once-obvious link between authority, violence, and sacrifice. The gory origins of authority in blood sacrifice, archaic, ancient, and modern. The biological expandability of male versus female bodies...
Parks Gore and I discuss Terence McKenna's Stoned Ape Theory. McKenna argued that human evolution was driven by hominid consumption of psychedelic mushrooms. We explain his theory and argue against it in light of René Girard's work. Girard believed that in-group violence was the unprecedented problem whose solution through violent sacrificial ritual and religion provided the leap from animal to human. We the...
Autism is a rare but real disorder, but the recent rise in claims of being "on the spectrum" is a massive fad, a mimetic contagion. The spectrum is glamourised by popular entertainment and embraced by celebrities. With reference to René Girard's work, I analyse why people might want to signal autism (rather than "mask" it). It has to do with many notions that hit a raw nerve in our culture: na...
What is the link between comedy and tragedy? Why do both laughing and crying involve tears? How is comedy related to tickling? Why do we laugh more in modern times? These and many other questions answered in a philosophical discussion based on René Girard's essay on the topic, "Perilous Balance: A Comic Hypothesis."
We start where we left off in Part 1: Dostoevsky the romantic wakes up and realizes he lives in the underground, filled with resentment, frustrated ambition, and tormenting idols. The underground man struggles to break free in the character of Raskolnikov from Crime and Punishment and the teacher in The Gambler.
We then encounter formidable idols that attract and foment underground passions all around them: P...
A review of the life and works of the great Fyodor Dostoevsky following René Girard's book Dostoevsky: Resurrection from the Underground. A masterpiece of literary criticism in its own right, this book brings edifying and brilliant insights into Dostoevsky's own masterpieces, but only by connecting them to the novelist's lesser works and personal life.
Girard traces a coherent arch in Dostoevsk...
René Girard's mysterious quote on masochist reasoning being a model of scientific induction. Connecting masochistic conclusions about the nature of the universe to that of the scientist. What logical genius may have in common with masochism – the idiot-savant stereotype. Why modern materialistic and atheistic ideologies tend to turn sadomasochistic.
The Devil is trending. Talk of demons can be heard from Tucker Carlson, theorists on UFOs and AI, right-wing podcasters interviewing exorcists, and the Psychedelic Renaissance aficionados. So I go over what I recently wrote about the devil on my blog: Girard's anthropological interpretation of the Devil as the force behind seduction, conflict, and accusation; the victimary mechanism as the Satanic mechanism, depi...
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