Social Darwinism, Eugenics, Nazism, Satanism, Gor...oh my...
What's old is new again...or...there's nothing new under the
Sun. Published in 1890 by Ragnar Redbeard,
a pseudonym, Might Is Right is the
prototypical "go to" novel for the übermensch, the
eugenicist, the supremacist, the fascist, the anarchist and the Satanist. It wears many hats...but is it for real?
Might Is Right can
be considered the seed for many unsavory movements. It's a book that spouts the tired old Social Darwinist
mantra that left the cradle in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and
reached adulthood under a warped, mustachioed little Austrian, living the dream
in a place called Germany in the middle of the twentieth...
Social Darwinism, a popular pseudo-science of the late 19th
century, was based on Darwin's Origin of Species, and applied to humanity
instead of the animal kingdom. This
"theory" runs as an overriding thread throughout Might Is Right...almost as if the theory was the genesis of the
work. This, of course, led to the
eugenics movement of the late 19th and early 20th century in the U.S. and the
Western World...which in turn led to the theories of race and extermination
carried out by Hitler and the Third Reich.
Might Is Right can be
considered the representative tome for a generation of deluded thought.
Nobody really knows who wrote the book. Some have put forward Arthur Desmond, a
self-promoting, English charlatan who passed away in 1929, but this is not a
certainty. The question of authorship
was still being asked as late as 1917. There's
also a possibility that the whole book is nothing more than a farce...much like
L. Frank Baum's commentary on American Indians...meant to shock...to be
contrary in an effort to show the concept's absurdity. Unfortunately, this literary tactic requires
an audience with some depth of reason.
Many readers past and present have taken this text literally...
Anton LeVay plagiarized quite a bit of the book and stuck
plenty of the passages, word-for-word, into his Satanic Bible. Neo-Nazi
groups use it to justify their warped philosophies. A whole series of fantasy/sci-fi books seems
to have used themes from Might Is Right
to create a world called Gor...and
the whole real-life culture that has sprung forth and fancies itself Gorian.
It's a hard book to find...much less actually identifying a
first edition out of the numerous printings.
I don't consider this book a classic...but I do consider it an important
work in partially understanding the horrors of the years following its
publication. Should you desire to read
it...you can find a text version here...
Might Is Right
Might Is Right