Bronze Age Mindset: Body-building the future? | Dr Nikos Sotirakopoulos

Bronze Age Mindset: Body-building the future?
Nikos Sotirakopoulos, visiting fellow, Ayn Rand Institute
Chair: Geoff Kidder, CEO Ideas Matter

In 2018, a strange book appeared, propelling its author, an anonymous twitter account by the name of Bronze Age Pervert, to the centre of public conversation. The book was said to be a manual for Donald Trump and Steve Bannon, and has come to define the reactionary Right. Ostensibly a satire of the genre of self-help books claiming to cure your modern malaises by returning to the past (‘Train like a spartan’, ‘discover your inner caveman’), the book has become a cult hit. It spawned a legion of obsessive followers who dedicate themselves to its message: Nietzschean vitalism, bodybuilding and racist trolling of the left. Yet even its critics admit its appeal: wicked humour, a unique, postmodern style, and biting critique of the empty shibboleths of today’s elites.

Is the book, or its author, just another voice wanting to preach to a disaffected youth, like Jordan Peterson or Andrew Tate? What should we make of the reactionary Right’s return to Nietzsche and fascist aesthetics? When the future seems foreclosed and the public square a distant memory, is anything left to us but bodybuilding and trolling?

A full list of lectures at The Academy 2023: https://ideasmatter.org.uk/the-academ...

00:00 God is dead: The left's turn to gesture politics
01:55 The new right's copycat politics
03:01 Bronze Age Mindset: Manifesto for the new right
04:47 The essence of the book
07:03 The bugman
09:33 BAP predicts the future
11:02 The life of the pirate
14:50 How to escape the great ugliness
16:27 Why is BAP popular?
19:04 The problem with BAP: He is conventional
21:23 BAP: Cultural relativist?
23:50 Can we beat the great ugliness?