Tuesday, May 3, 2016

The Freemen



I have read a captivating novel, The Last of the Freemen, by Carl Trotz (his blog can be found here).  From the Amazon description of the novel:

In a future America, trapped under a brutal and corrupt regime, Erin Gordon becomes a target for reasons beyond her control. Help comes to her from an unlikely source, as her neighbors - the secretive, agrarian descendants of suppressed medieval freemen - prove willing and able to intervene. Accepting their protection, she witnesses a people - unbeknownst to the world - who hold stubbornly to their traditions, and remain defiant in the face of modern tyranny.

The author, Carl Trotz, weaves together many themes and narratives that we find ourselves discussing and otherwise dealing with daily – some already in place and others feared to come.

The aforementioned Erin Gordon’s unlikely source of help is an individual named Harm.  In many ways, he might be compared to Ayn Rand’s John Galt.  Both characters are larger than life.  Both offer an intellectual and philosophical wisdom, combined with physical action.  In Galt’s case, the intellectual and philosophical attributes are much further developed by Rand.  In Harm’s case, let’s just say you better bring an army (no, bigger) and know where to look (good luck). 

I plan to write two posts regarding this novel.  In the second, I will explore two topics: The Stellinga and Thomas Müntzer – both referenced in the novel, both I find of interest.

In this post, I will offer the themes and narratives woven together by Trotz into this tale.  From this, I hope to convey a sense of the breadth of the work.  The following might seem somewhat dry; believe me, the novel turns all of this to life.

The Government
·        False flags abound: government-paid thugs create fear in the population in order to increase support for the government.  Shockingly, the government is never able to catch them!
·        Anti-government graffiti is removed immediately; graffiti advancing the government-paid thugs for some reason always remains.
·        The Feds override local police; there are numerous random checkpoints.  License plate scanners, drones and satellites are employed for monitoring and tracking.  Convoys of armored vehicles are a regular sight.
·        Loyalty Counselors ensure compliance.
·        The news is the government’s public relations department; controlled opposition is offered.
·        The government doesn’t have to prove your guilt – you have to prove your innocence.
·        Currency manipulation, money printing, and devaluation funds it all.
·        Guns are illegal.
·        Social workers check on (and remove) children.
·        Government schools teach five-year-olds about sexual intercourse.
·        They turn boys into criminals.
·        Laws against medicinal plants.
·        Destroy a culture in order to make the people easier to control.
·        Mash together the cultures – because folks without roots cannot stand.
·        Replace natural law and custom with their incontestable social-contract.
·        No more allodial title to land.
·        Price controls, carbon taxes, cholesterol tax.
·        Cashless society.
·        Leverage in all forms – this is for the well-connected to get what they want.
·        Government laws protect the government, not the people.
·        Anglo/English Empire.

The Sheep
·        Government eco-cars.  An access code is necessary even to open the hood.  It can be controlled remotely; it can be switched off. 
·        Many have a recurring belief that the next vote will change things.
·        Accepting the system, even knowing it is corrupt.
·        Killing for the state is spiritual for much of the population – listen to the words of The Battle Hymn of the Republic.
·        We are taught to idolize the brutal killers.
·        Neglected kids, broken families; broken cultures make for broken people.
·        The Constitution can’t save you – a piece of paper doesn’t create freedom.

The Freemen
·        In their Germanic tradition, the safest place is family and extended family.
·        The government doesn’t publicize those who successfully defy it – it would demonstrate their vulnerability.
·        You can be a free man or a self-shearing sheep.
·        Black market = free market.
·        Freedom = illegal activity.
·        Gold without a plan to launder it isn’t worth much.
·        Kindness is made criminal.
·        All the good people are fugitives.
·        The purpose of voting is to choose the next thief.
·        You’re not paranoid if they are really out to get you.
·        Defend your children at all costs – this is your nature.
·        Don’t send your children to government schools.
·        Don’t fight them on their terms.
·        You can’t stop what is coming, you can only be prepared for it.
·        Hunting season and hunting licenses are for subjects of the crown – do you need a license to hunt on your own land?
·        No authority above the family level.
·        Follow custom, not man.
·        Social pressure to behave a certain way – always true, so it only depends on what type of social pressure.
·        Gray areas work themselves out.
·        Absolute thought is fertile soil for the roots of tyranny.
·        Those who suffer the consequences for defiling the natural order deserve all that they get.
·        Regarding the government and connected: they will eventually rot – they always do.
·        There is a remnant.

I have written nothing about the characters beyond Erin and Harm.  Trotz brings many characters to life.  Through their dialogue and actions, you understand the depth necessary in family, community, and culture in order to hold freedom together. 

Freedom doesn’t happen merely by chanting “NAP.”  This is demonstrated clearly through every page of this novel.

15 comments:

  1. Thank you for the kind words, Bionic, and I'm very glad if the novel struck a chord with you. I'm a long-time reader of your blog - I followed you here from your days of commenting at the Daily Bell - and we share many of the same concerns. As I've looked around at the deteriorating state of things - and my inability to change much outside my immediate surroundings - I've become preoccupied with nullifying the State, and the "mainstream" culture it promotes, wherever possible in my life.

    I first encountered the story of Saxon resistance to Charlemagne back in my college days (the 1980's) and it seemed like a story worth telling, but I never got around to it. Then one day I daydreamt into a thought-experiment: what if their culture survived, underground? How would it have evolved, and what would it look like today? My prejudice entered the picture, of course, and they quickly became a more complete version of my own State-nullification.

    Kinship, and a sense of law above what is created by agents of the State: I believe these to be essential. Culture holds them together. My novel, besides (hopefully) being a compelling tale, is meant also to be a rough blueprint for countervailing the rising Statism that surrounds us.

    Thank you again, Bionic, for the coverage.

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    1. Carl, it was a creative weaving of a story based on this history.

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    2. It seems that Amazon offers your book only in the Kindle version. I like physical books. Is there any way of getting one?

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    3. I'm working on a print version. Hopefully the details will be hashed out soon; check back on Amazon in a couple of weeks and there should be a physical version linked to the e-book. Thanks for the interest.

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  2. "Freedom doesn’t happen merely by chanting “NAP.'"

    William S. Lind said: “Freedom is not doing whatever you want. Freedom is substituting self-discipline for discipline imposed by somebody else.”

    Literature is actually my primary interest and I wish it could be my only interest. I actually hate politics but have always been compelled to understand it as much as possible so that I know who is screwing me over and why.

    I haven't mentioned yet how much I dislike the word culture (I thought it might come off as nit-picky). I feel like that Nazi who said,"when I hear the word culture I reach for my browning." I understand why people use it and sometimes there is no better word, but really the sort of stuff that it appears Mr. Trotz is writing about would be better labeled "identity." You don't fight and die for culture, you fight and die for identity, which is why the phrase "our people" carries so much weight, and why symbols of identity carry so much meaning like the Celtic Cross.

    Real culture is volkish and bound up in identity.

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    1. I'm actually not crazy about the word "culture" myself, so I sympathize. But I haven't found an alternative that I like better. Hopefully this won't seem like splitting hairs, but '"identity" strikes me as too personal, and too static. To capture the fluid, living environment made up of language, customs, beliefs, and all those intangible things like a child unconsciously imitating their parents, "culture" was the best word I could find.

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    2. My sense of culture is a shared belief system setting group standards. Identity is much more personal and individualistic. Complementary but not identical.


      TomO

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    3. I would say the difference between culture and identity is that the former is unconscious and the later is conscious. When you look at the daily customs, traditions, and habits of a people it makes sense to call it culture for want of a better term, but when the people look inward at themselves and try to understand what they are relative to others, including where they came from- it is identity.

      I don't see Identity as a completely static concept. A Frenchman of today is different from a Frenchman of 500 years ago, but they are both Frenchmen. It is more rigid in the sense that if a Chinaman was to adopt aspects of American "culture" they would still lack a Euro-American identity.

      Mr. Trotz, your book looks cool, planning on writing anymore? Have you by chance read William S. Lind's novel "Victoria?"

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    4. I will likely write more, if there is interest; perhaps I'll continue the same storyline. I have not read Mr. Lind's novel, but I will check it out, thanks.

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  3. Well, I just bought it (Kindle). It had better be good!!! (kidding).
    I'm not so highly evolved that I can appreciate the difference between "culture" and identity". I'm cool with "culture".
    But anyhoo, I DO get the implications of culture in a society. Maybe it's my age. "Do ya own thing" is great when you're twenty. But I'm a village elder and I need to hold things together if I can.
    Huh, I just defined a "conservative" anarchist versus a "radical" anarchist.

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  4. The only problem I have with novels of this nature (fair disclaimer: I haven't read anything of it other than this review) is that they risk creating a fetish out of a logical fallacy: The Efficacy of Evil Fallacy, (Rand's Malevolent Universe Premise) when they create horrific dystopia which their art portrays as not only evil and malicious, but also effective and threatening. The people in the West who feared Soviet Communism, and worried over it obsessively, arguably produced consequences frequently worse than the people who endorsed it. This as contrasted by people like von Mises, who calmly pointed out why the Soviet Experiment could not come to a successful conclusion on the Bolsheviks' terms, due to the Economic Calculation Problem. The problem with "fighting evil" is that it aggrandizes it and focuses human attention on "evil" as a metaphysical existent, which it is not.

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  5. Millions did die under Stalin; those trapped under Soviet rule had good reason to fear. But yes, if I understand your meaning, governments (and other elite promotions) thrive on fear, and individuals can be paralyzed by it. My goal has been to create a people who aren't ruled by that fear, who know the State is made of fallible individuals, and who step carefully as they defy it.

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  6. I bought the book. Will see.

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  7. As monotonically remnant in spirit that proves oft than not, no decision of this life free man or lessor, has any value worthy of eternal life in full measure forevermore, accepting One living in the service of honor above all else.

    Why?

    Honor is a begotten mantle crowning reality, that serves as a creditable unalienable blessing and fundamental right both real and intangible, that when passing, remind Man that he is spirit and not a race!

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