Foreshortened Confession

 

I WANT TO WRITE only in an explosive state, in a fever or under great nervous tension, in an atmosphere of settling accounts, where invectives replace blows and slaps. It usually begins this way: a faint trembling that becomes stronger and stronger, as after an insult one has swallowed without responding. Expression means a belated reply, or else postponed aggression: I write in order not to take action, to avoid a crisis. Expression is relief, the indirect revenge of one who cannot endure shame and who rebels in words against his kind, against himself. Indignation is not so much a moral as a literary impulse; it is, indeed, the wellspring of inspiration. And wisdom? Just the opposite. The sage in us ruins all our best impulses; he is the saboteur who diminishes and paralyzes us, who lies in wait for the madman within in order to calm and compromise him, in order to dishonor him. Inspiration? A sudden disequilibrium, an inordinate pleasure in affirming or destroying oneself. I have not written a single line at my normal temperature. And yet for years on end I regarded myself as the one individual exempt from flaws. Such pride did me good: it allowed me to blacken paper. I virtually ceased producing when my delirium abated and I became the victim of a pernicious modesty, deadly to that ferment from which intuitions and truths derive. I can produce only if, the sense of absurdity having suddenly abandoned me, I esteem myself the beginning and the end. . . .

Writing is a provocation, a fortunately false view of reality that sets us above what is and what seems to be. . . . To rival God, even to exceed Him by the mere virtue of language: such is the feat of the writer, an ambiguous specimen, torn and infatuated, who, having forsaken his natural condition, has given himself up to a splendid vertigo, always dismaying, sometimes odious. Nothing more wretched than the word, yet it is by the word that one mounts to sensations of felicity, to an ultimate dilation where one is completely alone, without the slightest feeling of oppression. The Supreme achieved by syllables, by the very symbol of fragility! It can also be achieved, oddly, by irony, on the condition that the latter, carrying its demolition work to extremes, dispenses shudders of a god in reverse. Words as agents of an ecstasy inside out. . . . Everything that is truly intense partakes of paradise and hell, with this difference, that the former we can only glimpse, whereas we have the luck to perceive and, better still, to feel the latter. There exists an even more notable advantage, on which the writer has a monopoly — that of ridding himself of his dangers. Without the faculty of blackening pages, I wonder what I would have become. To write is to get free of one’s remorse and one’s rancors, to vomit up one’s secrets. The writer is an unbalanced being who uses those words to cure himself. How many disorders, how many grim attacks have I not triumphed over thanks to these insubstantial remedies!

Writing is a vice one can weary of. In truth, I write less and less, and I shall doubtless end up no longer writing at all, no longer finding the least charm in this combat with others and with myself.

When one attacks a subject, however ordinary, one experiences a feeling of plenitude, accompanied by a touch of arrogance. A phenomenon stranger still: that sensation of superiority when one describes a figure one admires. In the middle of a sentence, how easily one believes oneself the center of the world! Writing and worship do not go together: like it or not, to speak of God is to regard Him from on high. Writing is the creature’s revenge, and his answer to a botched Creation.

ANATHEMAS and ADMIRATIONS

 

E. M. CIORAN

Birth of a Nation: H. A. Covington’s Northwest Quartet

 

This review was written before the appearance of the fifth Northwest novel, H. A. Covington, Freedom’s Sons (Bloomington, Ind.: Authorhouse, 2013).

H. A. Covington

The Hill of the Ravens

Lincoln, Nebr.: 1stBooks Library, 2003

H. A. Covington

A Distant Thunder

Bloomington, Ind.: Authorhouse, 2004

H. A. Covington

A Mighty Fortress

Bloomington, Ind.: Authorhouse, 2005

H. A. Covington

The Brigade

Philadelphia: Xlibris, 2008

Every time a friend adds another weapon to his arsenal, he says, “I hope to God I never have to use this.” But he keeps buying them, because they may come in handy. I say the same thing every time I pick up a Harold Covington novel. But I keep reading them. Someday, they may come in handy.

The four novels under review, collectively called the Northwest Quartet, tell the story of the creation of a sovereign White Nationalist state, the Northwest American Republic, out of the territory of the United States sometime in the second or third decade of the twenty-first century—right around the corner, historically speaking. The NAR comprises the present US states of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, plus parts of Northern California, Montana, and Wyoming. These states secede from the United States through a bitter five-year guerrilla war fought by the Northwest Volunteer Army. The NVA is an armed political party. Its ideology owes much to German National Socialism, but its tactics are modeled on the Irish Republican Army and the mafia, as well as Muslim organizations like Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the insurgents who have stymied the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan.

These novels are war stories, and frankly that makes me squeamish. I know that war is an integral part of human history; that it decides the destiny of nations, races, and the world; that it forms a large part of the data of world history and the backdrop of world literature; that one cannot write about men without writing eventually about war. I know that war is an occasion for edifying extremes of human greatness and depravity. I know that one can also derive personal inspiration and useful information from war stories. But I just don’t find representations of hatred and violence particularly enjoyable. And the better the writer, the more seductive such representations become, resulting in a kind of sadistic pornography of violence.

Covington is a very good writer, and these novels are very entertaining. Yet they are not war porn. Covington shows war as horrible. It is mostly like a camping trip that drags on way too long: boring, sleepless, nerve-wracking, dirty, and grindingly uncomfortable and inconvenient. But occasionally it is livened up by moments of exhilaration and sheer terror. It is just that he thinks the alternative to war is even worse, for peace with the present system means the oppression, degradation, and eventual extinction of our race. Beyond that, these novels are not meant to be mere entertainment. They are meant to be self-fulfilling prophecies. The author wishes to inspire the creation of a real Northwest American Republic, and his novels are filled with a great deal of sound practical advice about how to do it.

These are not just ordinary war novels, moreover. They belong to a new genre: White Nationalist revolutionary fiction, a genre that was pretty much created by William Pierce’s The Turner Diaries, written under the pen name Andrew MacDonald. Fans of The Turner Diaries will find the Northwest Quartet to their liking. Furthermore, Covington’s vision of political change is much more practical and detailed than Pierce’s, and although Pierce was a graceful, precise, and often powerful writer, he was not a born storyteller, while Covington is.

Covington calls himself a “hack,” but this is false modesty. He is a highly talented novelist, capable of creating vivid three-dimensional characters. He is particularly deft at crafting characters from working-class and Southern backgrounds. Covington also spins complex, gripping plots that move toward deeply moving emotional climaxes. These novels are tear-jerkers. But expect to do a lot of laughing as well, because Covington is also a biting satirist with a wicked sense of humor. He is, moreover, a remarkably versatile stylist—Victor Hugo on one page, Quentin Tarantino on another. In A Distant Thunder, A Mighty Fortress, and The Brigade, Covington’s tales of sassy, wise-cracking teenage terrorists bring to mind Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer, with its virtuosic fusion of apocalyptic horror, intense dramatic conflict, and teenage frivolity. This is high praise in my book.But the Northwest Quartet is not merely a literary achievement, for these are novels of ideas, and they establish Harold Covington as the most significant American National Socialist thinker since George Lincoln Rockwell. Covington diagnoses what is wrong with America and the current racialist movement, proposes a political solution, and lays out a great deal of sound organizational, strategic, and tactical thinking on how to bring it to fruition. And by communicating these ideas in novels, rather than essays or treatises, Covington assures that they reach a broader popular audience at a deeper emotional and motivational level.

An Overview of the Quartet

The Hill of the Ravens (330 pp.) is the first novel to be published, but it is the last in terms of the internal chronology of the Quartet. It is set sometime after the middle of the twenty-first century, several decades after the establishment of the NAR—close enough to the war of independence for many of the veterans to still be living, yet far enough along in the history of the NAR for the regime to have taken shape and the first generation raised under it to be coming of age. Unlike the rest of the Quartet, The Hill of the Ravens is not a war novel per se, but a detective novel in which the war of Northwest independence is a constant backdrop. Since the novel is set in the future, there are also trappings of science fiction.

A Distant Thunder (364 pp.) is the second novel to be published. In terms of its internal chronology, the frame is set a little later than The Hill of the Ravens. An oral history of Shane Ryan, a very old veteran of the Northwest Volunteer Army, is being recorded for posterity. Shane’s recollections, however, focus on the period immediately before the war of independence and the war itself. The setting is western Washington State, south of Seattle. A Distant Thunder gets off to a rough start, because the literary conceit of an oral history allows Covington to indulge in stream-of-consciousness rambling, which quickly becomes tiresome. But if you stick it out through the first 50 or so pages, you will be glad, for once this book gets you hooked it is a magnificent read.A Mighty Fortress (364 pp.) is the third novel in order of publication. In terms of the internal chronology, it falls near the end of the war of independence. It is set in the Seattle area, and a large portion of the book is devoted to the Longview Conference in which the United States and the Northwest Volunteer Army negotiate an end to the war.

The final novel of the Quartet, The Brigade (735 pp.), is Covington’s finest literary achievement. The plot is gripping, the writing is superb, and the climaxes are shatteringly powerful. It is set in western Oregon, in and around Portland. Its story spans the whole war of independence.

A Mighty Fortress is the first novel of the Quartet that I read, and I lucked out, because I think it is the best place to start. Literarily, it is one of the best written and most moving. In these terms, it is second only to The Brigade, which is my favorite. But The Brigade is 735 pages long, versus 364 pages for A Mighty Fortress, and many potential readers will be intimidated by the page count. So begin with A Mighty Fortress, get hooked, then read The Brigade, followed by A Distant Thunder, and finally The Hill of the Ravens.

Conditions of Secession

White Nationalists agree on the desirability of a white homeland in North America. The question is how to achieve it. Why is the secession of a White Nationalist republic from the United States a better aim than a completely White Nationalist United States? Why should we be satisfied with a part rather than the whole? Secession is preferable because there simply are not enough of us, and too many of them, for us to save the whole country. We cannot hope to defeat the entire US government and 100 million non-whites. But it is more realistic to hope that a predominantly white area of the country could secede. Secession would not require the destruction of the US government, but only the surrender of some of its territory. (It happened with the Panama Canal Zone, and it could happen again.) The secession of a predominantly white area, moreover, would not entail the moral and logistical nightmare of expelling millions of non-whites.

The strategy of the NVA is to make a large area of the United States ungovernable. The NVA also attacks the regime in its power centers: New York, Washington, D.C., and Hollywood. At a certain point, the regime decides to cut its losses and pull out. As Covington frequently reminds us, in such campaigns it is the accountants who surrender, not the generals. Such wars are difficult undertakings, but they are far easier than full-fledged revolutions. A regime will fight harder for its very existence than for some territory, especially territory remote from the centers of power.

Covington’s choice of the Pacific Northwest is logical because it is one of the whitest parts of the country. The Northwest is relatively far from the power centers in New York and Washington, D.C. It is not surrounded by the rest of the United States but has a long Pacific coastline and borders on Canada and (in Covington’s scenario) Aztlan. The region is also large and resource-rich enough to aspire to relative economic self-sufficiency, a necessity for a state that would likely face the same sort of political and economic sanctions as Rhodesia and South Africa before they fell to black rule.

Of course no movement as small and sorry as today’s White Nationalism is going to wrest one square inch from the US government. Thus the movement must change as well. The first indispensable condition for creating a Northwest American Republic is the concentration of racially-conscious whites in the Pacific Northwest. This will make possible a second condition, namely the creation of a real, face-to-face white racialist community and movement, rather than a merely virtual movement. As Covington is fond of saying, no revolution will be made by people who are not within driving distance of one another.

Covington believes that such a racially-conscious community must be organized along Communist lines as a revolutionary Party of Northwest independence. The Party has three functions: education (propaganda), recruitment, and preparation. Initially, the Party will operate above ground, carrying out open as well as underground propaganda and recruitment. Covington is scornful of White Nationalist organizations that allow someone to join simply by mailing in a check. The revolution will not have a post office box. It will not take credit cards. It will not be tax-deductible. As Covington likes to say, “You do not join the Party. The Party joins you.” It identifies potential members, then carefully investigates and tests them. This keeps out informers and kooks. All recruits will be evaluated as potential political soldiers. For, from the moment the Party emerges into the public eye, it is preparing for the day that it is banned. Then it will transform itself into an underground guerrilla army. And while underground, it will be preparing to re-emerge as the government and army of a new society.

Beyond that, no white homeland will emerge unless there are certain moral transformations: Whites as a whole must recover their courage, and movement people need to become much more serious. In the novels, Covington speaks of 50,000 racially-conscious whites migrating to the Pacific Northwest in the years before the war of independence. But why the migrants begin to come, why whites recover their courage, and why the movement becomes more serious is described as a complete mystery. It would be less of a mystery if these novels became widely read.But even if the White Nationalist movement became dramatically larger, better-organized, and more serious, it would still be no match for the United States at full strength. Thus the regime must suffer a crisis, or a convergence of crises, before part of the US could hope to secede. The Irish Republic probably would not have gained its independence had the British Empire not been weakened by World War I. India would not have gained its independence had the Empire not been bled dry by World War II.

Fortunately, we know that the US system is moving full steam toward catastrophes on a number of different tracks. The political system is captive to minority and foreign interests and cannot pursue the common good. Our Israel-first foreign adventurism and profligate welfare spending are economically unsustainable. Multiculturalism and non-white immigration are leading to the ever-intensified degradation and dispossession of whites, which can only lead to increased ethnic conflict. Affirmative action and corruption have filled the government with incompetent employees who are parasites at best and actively throttle productivity and sow social chaos at worst. Education and popular culture continue their descent. The system is dependent on ever-increasing technological sophistication to exploit diminishing natural resources, yet the demographic trends are profoundly dysgenic. Morons are reproducing faster than geniuses, and the political system enfranchises and caters to the morons, with their high time preferences and ignorance of the causes of order and wealth. Furthermore, as Sam Dickson has pointed out, the system apparently has no brakes. For example, even before Social Security was enacted, it was known to be unsustainable, but nothing has been done to solve the problem, only to postpone the final crash by a few election cycles. Of course the system might be able to survive one crisis at a time. But eventually several crises will converge, and the United States will not be able to survive intact.

In a mild crisis, the first impulse is to hold on to everything. In a severe crisis, or a convergence of crises, one is forced to choose to surrender some assets to save the rest. Covington’s hope is to create a White Nationalist movement that is sufficiently strong to carve off a chunk of the United States when that moment arrives. In Covington’s scenario, the US leadership is more concerned about the territorial integrity of Israel than of the United States. This is a reasonable premise, since even today the United States cannot summon the effort and funds to secure its border with Mexico, but it can summon immensely more money and enthusiasm to fight wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at the behest of Israel. (In Covington’s scenario, the US is bogged down fighting and occupying practically every Muslim country in the Middle East at Israel’s behest, but that is still not enough to stave off Israel’s eventual disappearance beneath the Muslim world’s rising demographic tide.) Thus, if the regime is forced to choose between supporting Israel and keeping the Pacific Northwest, the Northwest will be allowed to secede.

In Covington’s scenario, another factor conducive to the secession of the Pacific Northwest is the regime’s decision to acquiesce to the de 

facto Mexican re-conquest of California and the Southwest and allow the creation of Aztlan. As a general rule, it seems prudent for white secessionists to uphold the principle of secession for all peoples, including Mexicans and Hawaiians. However, our rulers have never been too concerned with abstract principles and general rules. But they are clearly wedded to the destruction of the white race. The secession of Aztlan forwards that goal. The secession of the Pacific Northwest does not. Furthermore, the secession of Aztlan might actually increase the regime’s ability to hold onto the Pacific Northwest by allowing it to reassign troops and resources to the Northwest.

Other factors that conspire to lay the conditions of secession include: (1) an ever-increasing population of dispossessed whites who no longer have anything to lose in taking up arms against the regime, (2) large numbers of well-trained and deeply embittered white veterans from the regime’s imperial wars, (3) a sufficiently corrupt and incompetent federal government staffed by lunatic ideologues, soulless clock-punchers, and affirmative action drones, and (4) a long process of overt and covert propaganda by the Party designed to increase popular discontent and tensions within the system.

Once these conditions exist, it takes only a galvanizing event, a spark to ignite the conflagration. In Covington’s scenario, it is the Coeur d’Alene Uprising, which is modeled on Ireland’s Easter Rebellion. The professional meddlers of “It Takes a Village,” the federal equivalent of the Department of Family Services, decide to seize the children of a family of apolitical neo-pagans, the Singers, and adopt them out to more suitable parents, who will not read them hateful, racist Norse myths at bedtime. When they resist, they are massacred by federal forces, just like at Waco and Ruby Ridge. But this time, ordinary white people—the Singers’ neighbors—spontaneously take up arms against the feds.

Although the Party played no direct role in the initial resistance, it was prepared to seize the opportunity. Party activists—men and women alike—grabbed their guns and rushed to Coeur d’Alene. They declared themselves the Northwest Volunteer Army, hoisted a tricolor flag, and announced the birth of the Northwest Republic. Federal troops were rushed in, and after 16 days and a great deal of bloodshed, the tricolor was hauled down again. But the rebellion was not extinguished and eventually grew into a war of national liberation.

Conditions of Success

The Northwest Quartet contains a wealth of practical ideas that deserve serious consideration.

(1) Loose, Flexible, and Resilient Organizational Structures. Despite the influence of German National Socialism on Covington’s thinking, the NVA is not a centralized organization run on the Führer principle. Covington is above all a pragmatist, and such an organization would be too vulnerable to destruction by decapitation. Therefore, a loose and resilient organizational model is adopted from the IRA and the Cosa Nostra. The basic unit of the NVA is a three-man cell capable of operating semi-autonomously. Cell-members have only limited knowledge of other cells and the command hierarchy, so that if a cell is infiltrated or a cell member is captured, the potential damage is limited. Cells are parts of brigades, each of which has a commander and a political officer who serves as liaison with the Army Command. The NVA also has “Flying Columns”: mobile independent partisan units of 60 to 100 fighters operating in non-urban settings. There are no uniforms, blood oaths, torchlight rituals, and other such trappings, just an atmosphere of ruthless pragmatism and high seriousness in pursuit of victory.

(2) The Paramount Importance of Character. 

One cannot build an effective revolutionary movement out of defective people. Thus good character is the most important trait the NVA seeks in a member. Character is more important than ideology, skills, social background, financial resources, etc., because without good character, none of these other advantages can be reliably mobilized for the cause. Covington is not just talking about the classical virtues of courage, self-control, and wisdom, but also about traits like maturity and willingness to work with others in the real world, rather than merely in the cyber world of today’s movement. Covington is an admirer of Xenophon, who teaches that the army that is strongest in character has the advantage, other things being equal.

(3) The Revolution Must be Dry. Allied with the character issue is one of Covington’s best proposals, General Order 10: For the duration of the struggle, all NVA forces must not use alcohol or drugs. There are three good reasons for this. First, drink and drugs reduce effectiveness and impair judgment, which can lead to disaster. Second, regardless of the consequences, the demand to give up drink and drugs communicates in a very concrete way that this struggle is serious business. By demanding sacrifices from its members, the NVA commands greater respect and dedication. Third, it weeds out unserious people, those who prefer personal indulgence to racial survival.

(4) Religious Neutrality. Covington is adamant that the White Nationalist movement must be neutral on religious questions. The purpose of White Nationalism is to create a white homeland. This is a concrete political goal that people with widely diverging beliefs can pursue for many different reasons. It is more important that we work together for the same goal than have the same reasons for pursuing it. Religion in particular is not a topic that can be discussed rationally, thus nothing good can come from discussing it. Therefore, the topic should be avoided. Furthermore, the movement must take special care not to be, or to appear to be, opposed to the religion of the majority of whites: Christianity.

(5) Fight Smart and Cheap. It is possible for a 

small guerrilla force to defeat a much larger force by fighting more intelligently. The NVA does not recruit impulsive adrenaline junkies or berserkers with death-wishes. It does not ask people to volunteer for suicide missions and last stands. It does not ask soldiers to die for a white homeland—although they all know the risks. Instead, it asks soldiers to make their enemies die for a white homeland, while preserving their own precious lives to fight another day. The NVA looks for every opportunity to extract large benefits at little or no cost. Phoning in a fake bomb threat costs the NVA nothing, but it costs the enemy dearly in money and manpower. Modern technological society is so complex and interdependent that a small act of sabotage can have enormous and expensive consequences. This is why Covington holds that in such a war, it is not the generals who surrender but the accountants.

(6) Choose One’s Targets Carefully. The goal of the NVA is a white homeland. It cannot achieve this by alienating the white populace. Therefore, the NVA chooses its targets carefully and seeks to make the regime’s work more difficult while minimizing damage to white civilians. Its chief targets are active functionaries and collaborators of the regime. It also seeks to drive out non-whites by drying up their employment and social support networks. The NVA also seeks to avoid causing death or injury to children of any kind, because this elicits sympathy for non-whites and makes the NVA look like monsters. For the same reasons, the NVA also avoids targeting civilian airliners and religious figures and buildings, no matter how odious.

(7) Deliver Concrete Benefits to Whites. The NVA does not just fight the system. It also seeks to deliver tangible benefits to the white populace. By driving out non-whites, the NVA produces job opportunities and rising wages for whites, lower crime rates, and a visibly more homogeneous community. By targeting the regime’s tax collection system, the NVA ensures that white workers have more take-home pay. The goal is to persuade the white populace of the benefits of White Nationalism by actually delivering them during the war itself. This is one way in which the NVA positions itself to emerge at the end of the struggle as the government of a new nation.

(8) Destroy the System’s Credibility. While the NVA works to increase its credibility with the populace, it also works to destroy the system’s credibility by attacking its buildings, personnel, and allies. If the system can no longer protect itself, the people will conclude that it can no longer protect them as well. Again, the NVA is selective, focusing on federal and state rather than local governments. Wherever possible, the NVA seeks a modus vivendi with local law enforcement. If local police look the other way when the NVA is around, the NVA will leave them alone to protect the citizens.

The Republic Realized

The Hill of the Ravens is Covington’s guided tour of the Northwest American Republic several decades after its birth. At the beginning of the novel, the main character, Colonel Donald Redmond of the Bureau of State Security, is called to the office of the President of the Republic, his father-in-law John Corbett Morgan. He is given a secret and highly sensitive mission: to reopen the investigation into the betrayal and massacre of the Olympic Flying Column during the war of independence. Tom Murdock, the commander of the Olympic Flying Column, and his lover Melanie Young are among the greatest heroes of the Republic. Gertrude Greiner, who betrayed them to the US government, is one of its greatest villains. Thus when Trudy Greiner resurfaces after decades of hiding in Aztlan and announces she plans to return to the Republic to clear her name, she threatens to tear a gaping hole in the mythology of the young nation.

Moreover, if she does clear her name, this will necessarily cast the shadow of suspicion on the other eight survivors of the Olympic Flying Column. In the following years, some of these survivors came to number among the Republic’s most distinguished citizens: Admiral David Leach, the Chief of Staff of the Kriegsmarine; SS Major General William Vitale; Frank Palmieri, the NAR’s Minister of Transport; Dr. Joseph Cord, the Republic’s most brilliant scientist (clearly a portrait of William Pierce, a man Covington despises); and Dragutin Saltovic, an internationally-renowned classical pianist. If any of these men were traitors, it would be far worse for the Republic than the mere exoneration of Trudy Greiner.

Redmond’s investigation provides an ideal framework for a guided tour of the Northwest American Republic—touching on the political system, the military, economics, education, science, culture, and religion—which is Covington’s pedagogical purpose. (My only criticism of this book as a novel is that it feels a bit too much like a guided tour.) The NAR is a society of 40 million racially-conscious white people from all over the globe. It borders on Canada to the north, the United States to the east, and Aztlan to the south.

Because it is a relatively small country surrounded by chaotic and hostile neighbors, the NAR is characterized by high levels of military training and preparedness and high levels of spending on defense and research and development, including a space program. The NAR also has a War Prevention Bureau, an organization dedicated to assassinating foreign enemies of the NAR who try to stir up wars against it. If Saddam Hussein had been half the villain he was made out to be, he could have saved countless Iraqi lives—including his own—with such an organization.

The NAR also provides education and health care and guarantees full employment. A ministry of culture ensures that the glories of European high culture are both preserved and accessible to all. In one of Covington’s many amusing touches, the ministry also exerts subtle pressures on dress and has apparently managed to turn back the clock to Edwardian or Victorian fashions—let us hope they stop short of powdered wigs, codpieces, and bearskins—giving the novel an archeofuturistic flavor. (One advantage of fascism is that it does give men more opportunities to dress up.) The NAR is also a “green” society, which prioritizes public transportation, non-polluting technologies, nature preservation, and even uses Jurassic Park technologies to bring back extinct species (another wrinkle on archeofuturism).

Although the government of the NAR is strong and centralized—indeed authoritarian—it is no dictatorship. The NAR is a mixed regime with legislative and executive branches—multiple centers of power that check and balance each other in accordance with the Republic’s constitution. There is also a popular dimension to government. There is universal suffrage. Since women took up arms to fight for the Republic, they also have the vote. But there are different levels of citizenship, and the higher levels come with more votes, ensuring that quality reigns over mere quantity. Although founded as a one-party state, different “tendencies” have emerged within the Party, effectively splintering it into a multiparty system. All this seems decidedly odd for a movement inspired by German National Socialism. But Covington posits that the NVA could succeed only by rejecting the Führer principle and adopting a decentralized, informal cell structure, and the pluralistic regime he describes seems like a natural outgrowth of this organizational strategy.The NAR, like the racialist movement today, is also divided between different religious camps, chief among them Christianity, Christian Identity, neo-paganism, and complete non-believers, who are always on the verge of strife. Because of this, the NAR ensures freedom of religion and the separation of religion and state. Managing the religious situation requires a delicate balancing act among the leadership. One of Covington’s most interesting and wryly ironic ideas is that in such a situation, National Socialism would serve as a force for moderation.

Libertarian-leaning people will rejoice to learn that the government of the NAR, though strong and influential, is also small. There are 

two mains reasons for this. First, when left to their own devices, white people create ordered liberty as surely as blacks create chaos, so there is no need for state control of vast sectors of life. Second, government must be large when it goes against the grain of nature, specifically when it tries to make unequal individuals and races equal. When we abandon the lies of equality and multiracialism and let nature take its course, government does not need to be very big. Taxes are low and money is sound. There is so much privacy and freedom of movement that the secret police (a very small agency, directed mostly at external enemies) have trouble even locating individuals. (Try losing the government in today’s “land of the free.”) There is religious freedom and the right to bear arms. Covington evidently dislikes lawyers and envisions a minimal legal system that any citizen can understand.Far more important, however, is the fact that the Northwest American Republic ensures positive liberty for healthy biological and cultural development. The NAR is a society in which men are free to be men; women are free to be women; and children are free to grow up in a healthy and beautiful environment, free of America’s chaos and violence, drugs and degeneracy, junk food and junk culture. It is a society in which whites are free to act according to their innate sense of decency; to create according to their innate sense of beauty; to apply their genius to discovering the secrets of nature and solving the problems of living; to give free reign to their questing and adventurous spirit.

The worst aspects of Covington’s vision are his “day of the rope” revenge fantasies, which smack more of Old Testament superstition and self-righteousness than of Aryan reason. These can only repulse otherwise sympathetic readers and make our enemies’ work easier. The NAR is no utopia, then. But even with its imperfections, Covington has given us a vision—maybe even a world-transforming myth—that deserves to be taken seriously.

I highly recommend the Northwest Quartet. Besides being enjoyable and informative, these novels deliver another important benefit. White Nationalism is almost entirely a virtual movement of geographically scattered individuals connected by the internet and print publications. There is very little face-to-face community and real-world activism. Because of this, the movement has an overall tone of self-indulgence and frivolity. Whether or not one ultimately accepts Covington’s outlook, nobody can read these books without coming away with a much more serious attitude about White Nationalism and the conviction that we need real community, real activity, real dedication, and self-sacrifice. Perhaps the best compliment I can pay these books is that they are so subversive that someday the government will have to ban them. So get your copies today.

Greg Johnson 

The Occidental Quarterly, vol. 9, no. 1, Spring 2009

Satanic Pedophile Elite Theory

 

Years ago, during my brief academic career, one of my students explained to me how the Canadians were taking over Hollywood. At first, I thought that “Canadians” was just a euphemism for Jews. But no, as he continued, it became clear that he earnestly believed that the Canadians were taking over Hollywood, because it was cheaper to shoot movies and TV shows than in Canada.

Around the same time, a friend told me of an encounter with a man who believed that feminism was a lesbian conspiracy. As evidence, he cited Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, and even Ayn Rand. What did all these feminists have in common? Obviously, he said, they were lesbians . . .

I had a similar experience when I first heard good people explaining that the West is ruled by Satanic pedophile elites. Surely, I thought, this is just a euphemism for Jews. But no, although some of these people are well-aware of the Jewish Question, they point out that a lot of our elites are not Jewish—Bill Clinton and Bill Gates, for instance.

Yes, but by the same token, many of our elites aren’t actually pedophiles or Satanists, either.

Still, I am quite pleased that large numbers of people believe that the likes of Jeffrey Epstein, John Podesta, and their friends are Satanic pedophiles. It might not be literally true in all cases. But it does capture something about our bizarre rulers.

At the beginning of American Psycho, Brett Easton Ellis argues that Patrick Bateman, though fictional, is true by quoting Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground: “such persons . . . not only exist in our society, but indeed must exist, given the circumstances under which our society has generally been formed.” The same goes for Satanic pedophiles. Call it literary truth, poetic justice.

If you can even be mistaken for a Satanic pedophile, you might be doing something wrong.


You can buy Greg Johnson’s Is America Doomed? here.

Also, is it really unfair to characterize people as “pedophile” when they gave Jeffrey Epstein a very lenient prison sentence for trafficking underage women, then had no difficulty associating with a convicted sex offender once he was out of jail? Obviously, none of these people felt dirty associating with Epstein. If not pedophiles themselves, they were content to give one social validation.

Thus I am content to leave Satanic Pedophile Elite Theory securely in place. I welcome the chilling effect it has on elite networking. Congressional candidates will be less likely to take junkets to Israel and checks from Miriam Adelson if they know that it will be someday taken as evidence that they rape children.

No matter how cocooned our elites are from the real world, they interact with ordinary people all the time. Now they have to wonder if their waiter, parking valet, dental hygienist, anesthesiologist, gardener, coke dealer, or nanny thinks they might be rapists, cannibals, and Devil worshippers. The more “diverse” these people are, the more likely they are to believe such things. It is just a taste of the fear and vulnerability our elites have imposed upon ordinary white people through multiculturalism and open borders.

My main problem with Satanic Pedophile Elite Theory is that it is too naïvely optimistic.

Let’s begin with the “Satanic” part.

Some people seem so evil that it is tempting to believe in supernatural causes. But why the temptation? Is it because you think that no human being could be that evil without supernatural help? Is it because you believe that human nature is somehow innocent? Or do you just think that you are immune to such corruption? That strikes me as naïve optimism. In truth, all human beings by nature are capable of monstrous behavior without any supernatural help. Bill Clinton didn’t need the Devil to make him do it—and neither do you.

Second, if you believe in supernatural causes of evil, presumably you also believe in supernatural solutions. That too strikes me as naïve. If we really are ruled by shockingly evil elites, we don’t have time to wait for supernatural help. We need to overthrow them and bring them to justice. And when we do bring them to justice, we should simply disregard claims of supernatural repentance. If these people have changes of heart, they can demonstrate that by informing on other criminals.

What’s worse than being ruled by Satanists? Being ruled by people who are so evil that demons aren’t required.

Now let’s deal with the “pedophile” part.

Both Epstein and Maxwell were convicted sex traffickers. Pimping is a crime, even with adults, and it is even more a crime with underage victims, who cannot consent to sex, thus every act of prostitution is also an act of rape. Nobody seriously believes that Epstein was the only one having sex with these women. Bill Gates didn’t get VD from the toilet seat on the Lolita Express.

Sex crimes have such a powerful hold on the imagination that most people seem to have lost sight of what Epstein was all about. The whole point of Epstein’s operation was espionage.

At a certain point, Epstein was asking his friends for secrets, and not just trade secrets but state secrets. Revealing state secrets is treason. Rape is a serious crime. But treason is far more serious than rape, because treason does not victimize a single person, it victimizes whole societies.

Thus I was amused when people treated the fact that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was arrested for treason, not sex crimes, as a sign that the Epstein case is a “nothingburger.” No, the Epstein case was never just about sex. It was always about espionage.

Now let’s talk about the blackmail angle.

Many people think that Jeffrey Epstein filmed wealthy and powerful men having sex with underage girls, then used the tapes for blackmail purposes. Now, I am sure that Epstein kept records for blackmail purposes. But it seems charmingly naïve to believe that the likes of Bill Clinton, “randy” Andy Moutbatten-Windsor, Peter Mandelson, etc. would need to be blackmailed into betraying their oaths and nations.

Such people would sell out their nations as a favor to Epstein, who would do them favors in return. One of those favors might have been to supply them with underage girls. But there were probably a lot more important—and incriminating—favors in the offing, including bribes and kickbacks.

Now, if some of these people refused to share secrets with Epstein, I don’t doubt that he was willing and able to go the blackmail route. Moreover, if some of these people became enemies of Epstein, I am sure he was ready and willing to use blackmail as well.

But first of all, Epstein probably would not have needed to be so vulgar as to actually threaten exposure. It would simply be understood.

Second, when you commit a crime with someone like Epstein, only your first crime is purely voluntary, because once you have committed any crime, it can be held over your head to compel you to commit more of them. And it looks like Mandelson and the former prince Andrew committed far worse crimes than sex with underage girls.

What’s worse than Jeffrey Epstein using underage girls to blackmail wealthy and powerful men into betraying their countries? The possibility that blackmail was never even needed.

Greg Johnson
https://counter-currents.com/

Remembering Revilo Oliver

 

(July 7, 1908–August 20, 1994)
The Professor & the Carnival Barker

Professor Revilo Pendleton Oliver died in 1994, full of years and honors, as they say; and also notoriety. Long a Classics professor at the University of Illinois in Urbana, he gained his PhD in 1938 with a translation and commentary on a 1500-year-old Sanskrit drama. At age 80 was capable of holding lengthy telephone conversions with a young fellow linguist, in which (just to show off) they would switch back and forth between German and Attic Greek.

What made Oliver unique, however — and notorious — was his career as a cultural critic and political spokesman in the American Right, a career he maintained for decades while shouldering full academic responsibilities at the university. In the 1950s he was present at the creation of National Review and later at the founding of the John Birch Society. He eventually fell out with the founders of both organizations, partly because he grew disillusioned with their evasions and duplicity in a general sense, and partly because he urged a more frank and forthright treatment of such untouchable matters as race and the Jewish Question.

He continued to maintain cordial, if distant, relations with William Buckley and the occasional Bircher. But not so with Robert Welch, the candy tycoon who founded the John Birch Society. In seven years of association with Welch — giving speeches for his Society, editing and writing for his magazine, and generally acting as Welch’s highbrow front-man — Oliver came to regard him as nothing more than a charlatan, a swindler, a liar, and a cheat.

Prof. Oliver kept a hand in political matters, moving ever-rightward as he lent his name and oratorical persuasiveness to Lou Byers’s National Youth Alliance and then its successor, the National Alliance of Dr. William Pierce. But he never got over Robert Welch, the Master Salesman who lured him into what appeared to be an outstanding patriotic organization, then almost immediately betrayed him and the Birch Society itself.

As noted, Prof. Oliver had been a charter member of the “Birch business,” one of eleven men invited by Welch in late 1958 to the home of a wealthy, hospitable lady in Indianapolis for a two-day conference to discuss the formation of a new political movement. Another of the eleven was Koch Industries founder Fred Koch Sr. (It’s nice to imagine that the other nine were equally forceful and notorious, but this alas was not the case; their names now long consigned to Rotarian obscurity.[1])  Later on such luminaries as Hollywood actors Adolphe Menjou and Walter Brennan would be part of the window-dressing of the JBS National Council, but at the start most of the Birch founders — all, in fact, except Oliver himself — were mature, wealthy businessmen, mainly from the Midwest.

Robert Welch was coward and a bad liar, something Oliver noted early on. That came in the summer of 1960. A Chicago Daily News columnist named Jack Mabley published excerpts from a private typescript that Robert Welch had circulated among his inner circle. Known simply as “The Book” (or later on, the “Black Book,” “Blue Book,” or The Politician), this was litany of political grievances that Welch wished to share with his close circle. Famously, it argued that Dwight Eisenhower had been not only been an incompetent (albeit supremely ambitious) officer during the Second World War, he was a knowing tool of the Communist Conspiracy. “The Book” was also generously sprinkled with remarks about the insidious influence of Jews in American public life and foreign relations.. [2]

Caught off-guard, Welch responded with a cascade of contradictory lies. He denied that the quotations were authentic; they were taken out of context; the Book was not an official prospectus, but merely a private letter, or draft, shared among some friends. After a couple of years, Welch and the Society went to the trouble of producing a sham version of the volume, with all the offending passages removed.

Prof. Oliver was faced with a dilemma. Robert Welch was clearly unworthy of his supporters, of the Society he had founded. But what to do? Oliver decided to hang on a little longer, out of loyalty to the Society’s stated goals and honest supporters. He was a major drawing-card for the John Birch Society; he couldn’t let it down. And so he did hang on a few years more, trying not to complain too vociferously when his speeches were vetted or canceled, his magazine articles censored. The end finally came in 1966, in circumstances he explains in an excerpt reproduced at bottom.

Prof. Oliver continued to publish reviews and political commentary almost until he died, age 86, at his home in Urbana. In the 1980s he regularly appeared in George Dietz’s Liberty Bell, often contributing lengthy essays that later appeared in book form. (E.g., “Enemy of Our Enemies,” his critical pendant to Yockey’s The Enemy of Europe, published in 1981.)  However, he was now in his 70s and 80s, long retired from his university, and considered his public career closed.

About 1980 was persuaded to publish a collection of his favorite reviews and political commentary from the 1950s and 60s, that is to say, his National Review and American Opinion period. This compilation, America’s Decline: The Education of a “Conservative” was in due course assembled and printed in England, distributed under the invented imprint of Londonium Press.[3] After a half-century or more, most of these writings hold up very well. His in-depth comparison of history-philosophers Spengler, Toynbee, Brown, et al., “History and the Historians”[4] from American Opinion in 1963-64, continues to be a particularly readable and useful reference. It may be an eye-opener to anyone who doubts that highbrow academic-style criticism could have been published, serially, in the house organ of the Birch Society.

However the most trenchant parts of the book are not Oliver’s collected essays, but the autobiographical chapters that he provides as running commentary on the state of Conservatism in America. We have his early postwar hopes (riding a train with his wife, he tells her that he is confident that the Communists and scoundrels in Washington are about to be subjected to a thorough housecleaning), his early disillusionment with William Buckley and National Review, and finally the long, bitter saga with Master Salesman Robert Welch.

The book ends with a long, unsettling coda about his Birch years and American Conservatism in general. I excerpt it here at length because it both recaps the Welch story and tells, bitterly, why American social dynamics must prevent such patriotic hopes as those of the early Birchers from ever taking flight again:

With the July-August issue of 1966, my connection with American Opinion came to an end . . . The cycle begun in 1954 was completed in 1966, and I had leisure to look back on twelve years of wasted effort and of exertion for which I would never again have either the stamina or the will.

After the conference between Welch and myself in November 1965, I determined to verify conclusively the inferences that his conduct had so clearly suggested, and with the assistance of certain friends of long standing who had facilities that I lacked, I embarked on a difficult, delicate and prolonged investigation. I was not astonished, although was pained, by the discovery that Welch was merely the nominal head of the Birch business, which he operated under the supervision of a committee of Jews, while Jews also controlled the flow, through various bank accounts, of the funds that were needed to supplement the money that was extracted from the Society’s members by artfully passionate exhortations to “fight the Communists.” As soon as the investigation was complete, including the record of a seen meeting in a hotel at which Welch reported to his supervisor; I resigned from the Birch hoax on 30 July 1966 with a letter in which I let the little man know that his secret had been discovered. On the second of that month I had kept an engagement to speak at the New England Rally in Boston, where I gave the address, “Conspiracy or Degeneracy?” [5] . . .

After the speech, I was warmly congratulated by Welch, who was delighted that it had been generously applauded by an audience of more than two thousand from whom he might recruit more members: he had not yet been informed by his supervisors that they disapproved. They did give him something of a dressing-down, and when I resigned, he had the idea of pretending that he had been horrified by a speech that contained racial overtones, such as well-trained Aryans must always eschew. And he had the effrontery — which he later mitigated by claiming he had not received my letter — he had the effrontery, I say, to fly to Urbana, accompanied by his lawyer and a former Director of the Federal Reserve, on the assumption that a poor professor could easily be bribed to sign a substitute letter of resignation, which he had thoughtfully written out for me, together with the article in the Birch Bulletin in which he was going to announce his surprise at receiving the letter he had written for me.

Welch’s sales-talk was perhaps a little constricted because he had always to speak with my tape recorder operating on the table between us, and since I wished to say nothing that he could later misinterpret, I resisted the temptation to feign negotiations and thus ascertain what was the very highest price he was prepared to pay for my honor and self-respect.

Since that sickening afternoon, I have been unable to think of the little shyster without revulsion and a feeling that I have been contaminated by association with him. I have tried to be not only scrupulously fair to him in the foregoing pages, but to give him the benefit of every possible doubt, and I believe I have succeeded, but it has cost me some effort . . .

I have paid almost no attention to the Birch business since I resigned. I am somewhat astonished that Welch’s superiors still think it worth the expense of supporting it, even though it does provide a playground on which innocent but perturbed Americans can run off their energies in harmless patriotic games. Friends still send me copies of some of the more remarkable verbiage that spurts from Belmont, and I note that Welch, perhaps on instructions, no longer has much to say about the “Communist Conspiracy,” and, after flirting with the notion of reactivating Weishaupt’s diabolic Illuminati, seems to have settled on the conveniently nameless and raceless “Insiders” as the architects of all evil, inspired by an unexplained malevolence. The principal purpose, aside from keeping the members in a revenue-producing excitement, is to make certain that their chaste minds are insulated against a wicked temptation not to love their enemies. The pronouncements from Belmont are of some slight interest, since one may be sure that the B’nai Birch are told only what has been approved by the B’nai B’rith . . .

It is true that today, fourteen years later [i.e., 1980] the salesmen, thanks to well-written house organs, can still sell memberships to earnest people who are worried and don’t know what to do about it, but in practical terms the Birch Society has a political importance about equal to that of the Mennonite churches, which have a much larger membership of earnest and hard-working men and women in various communities, where they may be seen driving their covered buggies on the shoulders of highways while they resolutely hold to their faith and avert their eyes from all the works of the Devil . . .

The Birch Society was essentially an effort by the Aryans of the middle class. My pleasantest memories connected with it are of my gracious hosts, the members of local chapters in various cities throughout the nation who sponsored my lectures on its behalf. The men and women whom I thus met were the finest type of Americans, and I enjoyed the afternoons and evenings I spent in their company, but they were all (so far as I could tell) members of our race. But almost without exception, those intelligent and amiable men and women had failed to draw the obvious deduction from that fact — failed to regard the racial bond that was the one thing they all had in common, for the managers of the Birch business had actually endorsed the poisonous propaganda that teaches Aryans that they are the one race that has no right to respect itself or even be conscious of its identity . . .

Membership in the middle class, however, always implied a certain measure of economic independence, and the loss of that independence dissolved the middle class as a significant social stratum.

The scheme of organization of the Birch Society called for chapters that were to meet in informal rotation in the homes of the members. That presupposed fairly spacious homes, incomes adequate to maintain them, hostesses who had some leisure for social activities and could obtain, at least occasionally, some domestic help, and, usually, men who had secretaries whose services they could divert from time to time. So long as the members were to be of the class that supplies “community leaders” and were to be the organizers of local “fronts,” that scheme of organization was unexceptionable and indeed requisite, and such prestige as the Society ever had depended on the rule, ‘The Birch Society always travels first class’. When the Birch business tried to become in itself a popular movement, the chapter organization made it almost impossible to enlist any substantial support from the “working class.” A member who received hospitality he could not return was necessarily embarrassed, and segregation of members into chapters on the basis of income merely accentuated economic differences.

The Birch salesmen soon began to vend their gospel to anyone who could be induced to pay the comparatively low dues; indeed, they had to, to meet their implied sales-quotas. The increasingly proletarian structure of American society did not alleviate the inherent difficulties, for there remains the divergence of interest between “management” and “labor,” and, as in all the societies infested by Jews, there is a reciprocal hostility that is always latent and is evoked by talk about “free enterprise” and the other socioeconomic principles that were traditionally esteemed as virtues by the middle class. The only conceivable basis for a political movement that could transcend differences in income and manners is, of course, the biological unity of race — and that, of course, is precisely what the Birch hoax is now used to prevent enemies, both sophisticated and savage, while toiling to subsidize them. Many of those estimable persons would have been shocked by a suggestion that they had a right to consider first their own welfare and that of their children, for that would have been “selfish” and even sceptics have been imbued with the hoary Christian hokum that we must love those who hate us. There was, therefore, no feasible course of action in 1966, when I knew that those well-meaning Aryans had been betrayed and I felt certain that their cause had been irretrievably lost—although I tried to hope that my estimate was somehow wrong.

The American middle class has now been liquidated, except for a few remnants that are found here and there and are tolerated because they have no vestige of political power and will soon disappear anyway. A middle class can be based only on property — on the secure possession of real property of which a man can be divested only by his own folly. A middle class cannot be formed of comparatively well-paid proletarians who may have a theoretical equity in a hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar house they are “buying” on a thirty-five year mortgage, and in a fifteen-thousand-dollar automobile for which they will not have paid before they “trade it in” on a more expensive and defective vehicle. Nor can it be formed of proletarians whose wives have to work — whether as “executives” or as charwomen — to “make ends meet.” With the exception of relicts who live on investments that have not yet been entireIy confiscated by taxation, the economic revolution is as complete in the United States as in Soviet Russia: there are only proletarians, some of whom are hired to manage the rest. Managerial employees get more pay and ulcers than janitors and coal miners, but they are equally dependent on their wages and even more dependent on the favor of the employee above them. The nearest approximation to a middle class, both here and in Russia, is the bureaucracy, and it is their vested interest that the Birchers imagine they can destroy.

The poor Birchers go on playing patriotic games on their well-fenced playground. They pay their dues and buy books and pamphlets from Belmont to distribute to persons who may read the printed paper before discarding it. They continue, now and then, to coax a few friends to hear an approved speaker, who, if not a Jew himself, at least knows who his bosses are, and they all listen excitedly as he tells them how very bad everything is, from Washington to Timbuctoo, without ever mentioning any of the nasty facts of race and genetics, about which nice boys and girls should never think . . .

The B’nai Birch, to be sure, may bask in the approval of their amused and contemptuous Jewish supervisors, and they may feel some satisfaction that they keep their minds so pure and moral that they hate the wicked “racists” who believe, rightly or wrongly, that our race is fit to live, and who have the one cause that might conceivably generate sufficient political power to preserve us from the ignominious end of cowards fit only for slavery and a squalid death. But even in this respect the Birch hoax, now so insignificant that the prostitutes of the press forget to say unkind things about it now and then to make the members feel important, has become so impotent that it will not measurably affect our fate, whatever that is to be.

So long as it was honest (if it ever was), the Birch Society represented the last hope of American Conservatism, of the effort to restore the values and the freedom of the way of life of our Aryan forefathers on this continent — to regain what they lost when they thoughtlessly permitted their country to be invaded, their government to be captured, and their society to be systematically debauched and polluted by whining aliens. The American tradition was a fair and indeed noble one, and it still has the power to awaken nostalgia for a world that no man living has himself experienced, but for practical purposes, it now has only a literary and historical significance. To be sure, there are, outside the inconsequential Birch playpens, earnest men and women who still hope to restore the decent society and strictly limited government of that tradition, and their loyalty to what has ineluctably passed away entitles them to respect, just as we respect the British Jacobites, who remained loyal to the Stuarts and nourished hopes for a century after Culloden, and as we respect the earnest men and women in France who, as late as 1940, remained loyal to the Bourbons and dreamed of restoring them to their throne. But such nostalgic aspirations for the past are mere romanticism. They are dangerously antiquarian illusions today, when the only really fundamental question is whether our race still has the will-to-live or is so biologically degenerate that it will choose extinction—to be absorbed in a pullulant and pestilential mass of mindless mongrels, while the triumphant Jews keep their holy race pure and predatory.

American Conservatism is finished, and its remaining adherents are, whether they know it or not, merely ghosts wandering, mazed, in the daylight. And it is at this point that the present volume of selections from what I wrote on behalf of a lost cause fittingly ends.[6]

Notes

[1] Those eleven men who attended Welch’s Indianapolis meeting in 1958, including the two who declined to put their names on the original National Council (Kent, Scott) were: T. Coleman Andrews (Richmond VA); Laurence E. Bunker (Wellesley Hills MA); William J. Grede (Milwaukee WI); William R. Kent (Memphis TN); Fred C. Koch (Wichita KS); W.B. McMillan (St. Louis, MO); Revilo P. Oliver (Urbana IL); Louis Ruthenburg (Evansville IN); Fitzhugh Scott, Jr. (Milwaukee WI); Robert W. Stoddard (Worcester MA); Ernest W. Swigert (Portland OR). Listed here.

[2] Revilo Oliver, America’s Decline, 1981, reprinted 2006.

[3] Londonium Press’s address in the original edition was 21 Kensington Park Road, which now houses a bookshop but was in those days the home and storeroom of Bill Hopkins — antiques dealer, novelist, and notorious “Angry Young Man” of the 1950s.

[4] Oliver, America’s Decline, pp. 228 et seq.)

[5] Audio of the speech on YouTube.

[6] Oliver, “Aftermath,” America’s Decline, pp. 421 et seq.

 Margot Metroland
https://counter-currents.com/

The Sukkhavipassaka

 

Attached to samādhi->


It is the aim here to ascertain the meaning of these three terms, and especially of the last with respect to the minimum of concentration (samādhi, samatha) implied by it as indispensable. The material for this inquiry is the Pali texts and their commentaries.

Samathayānika (‘one whose vehicle is quiet’): see, e.g., Visuddhimagga Ch XVIII. ‘Quiet’ (samatha) stands here for the four jhānas and four āruppas (‘Formless Attainments’).

Vipassanāyānika (‘one whose vehicle is insight’): see, e.g., Vism Ch XVIII. ‘Insight’ here means investigation intended to lead to the attainment of the Noble Eightfold path in any one of its 4 stages.

The suddhavipassanāyānika (‘one whose vehicle is pure insight’) in Vism Ch XVIII is probably equatable with the next.

Sukkhavipassaka (‘bare-insight worker’): see quotations in Appendix I; since the term is often used to explain the Piṭaka term paññāvimutta, an examination of the meaning of that term is required before attempting to fix a meaning for sukkhavipassaka.

As will be seen from the Sutta references summarized in Appendix I, the term paññāvimutta is given a number of widely varying descriptions. The word descriptions, rather than definitions is used purposely here; for numerous differing descriptions can, and should, be made of a single thing or person from various angles as, say, of a fig-tree from above, from the side, etc.), with different emphasis, in alternative terms, and so on; but a definition is properly only a single strict delimitation, usually of a quality or set of qualities. The Buddha makes great use of multiple descriptions as well as of definitions. (See. e.g., App. I § 8). So, taking these descriptions of the paññāvimutta as complementary and not contradictory, they can be used as the basis for ad hoc definitions, if required.

However, paññāvimutti (‘understanding-deliverance’) emerges as the particular distinctive quality (guṇa) or idea (dhamma), found in all arahantship, of being liberated by the permanent deliverance from ignorance (avijjā) given by understanding. This quality (or idea) has in itself no grades (only the four unrepeated stages of the Path—the ‘8 stages of insight’ in Vism Ch XX and XXI are not relevant here, see § 5). But in the formal statement of the 6th (supramundane) abhiññā, that is Arahantship as exhaustion of taints (see. e.g. M I 35–6 and App. I § 8), both paññāvimutti and cetovimutti (‘heart-deliverance’) appear always together.
Cetovimutti, however, alone, is the temporary liberation from need (taṇhā) provided in anyone, Arahant or ordinary man, by the eight attainments (4 jhānas and 4 āruppas ; see e.g., MN 29, and Paṭisambhidāmagga Vimokkhakathā), and at its lowers is the first jhāna. Cetovimutti thus has grades, is temporary, and is the particular field of quiet (samatha), while paññāvimutti has no grades, is permanent (in each of its four stages in its removal of ignorance) and is the particular field of knowledge of the Four Truths. In combination with cetovimutti of some grade, paññāvimutti gives the Arahant permanent unassailability to his deliverance from both ignorance and need.

Now while paññāvimutti is thus the quality (or idea), the word paññāvimutta is used of the ‘person’ (i.e., ‘type of person’) possessing that quality. Arahants, as ‘persons’ vary, not in paññāvimutti but in the grade of development of their cetovimutti, and on this general basis two kinds of Arahant are contrasted, that is, the ubhatobhāgavimutta (‘Both-Ways-Liberated’) and paññāvimutta (‘one liberated by understanding’); see MN 70, Puggalapaññatti etc.). The former, at maximum, has the highest grade of cetovimutti with the five mundane abhiññās, while the latter, at minimum, has only one or the four jhānas (this will be shown later): a possessor of the five mundane abhiññās is never, then, called a ‘paññāvimutta’ (though he of course has paññāvimutti), and one with only the jhānas for cetovimutti is never called ubhatobhāgavimutta (thought he of course has some cetovimutti). However, the two terms overlap in the intervening grades of cetovimutti (the 8 vimokkhas, 4 āruppas, etc.), and the line of demarcation varies according to the terms to the terms of description and contrast (see App. I). The lower the grade of cetovimutti the more emphasis comes to be laid on paññāvimutti, though the former is never and nowhere stated to be quite dispensable with. The paññāvimutta ‘person’ (puggala)—‘persons’ being a convention (vohāra)—is thus not strictly or uniquely definable in the way that the quality of paññāvimutti is. Hence the treatment of him by multiple descriptions.

At this point the question arises: Does the Tipiṭaka allow any interpretation of paññāvimutta to the effect that, at the very minimum, he can reach Arahantship quite without jhāna, even as a factor of the Eightfold Path? Does the Satipaṭṭhāna method suggest this?

A careful examination of the Suttas summarized in Appendix I and of other relevant Tipiṭaka passages shows quite clearly that not one of them furnishes ay information on the question: the four jhānas are not mentioned either collectively or singly in connection with paññāvimutta. In fact nowhere in the Tipiṭaka is it said that Arahantship (or any stage of the Path) can be reached without jhāna. In the particular case of the Susīma Sutta (App. I § 4) the specific omission of the jhānas from the list of attainments not necessary for the paññāvimutta is, however, particularly striking. If the Buddha intended that jhāna, too, was not necessary, why did he not say so outright, which he never did? But in other Suttas, too, such as those at SN 35:70 & 152, no mention is made of jhānas:

might that not show that the Buddha may have wanted perhaps to hint that Satipaṭṭhāna made jhāna unnecessary? Let us see. Those two Suttas do relate specifically to the fourth Satipaṭṭhāna, the contemplation of Ideas as Ideas of the Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna sutta (DN 22). And in that Sutta the Noble Eightfold Path is defined in full with sammā-samādhi (‘Right Concentration’), its eight factor, clearly and unequivocally as jhāna. That is the answer.

The Suttas’ answer to the question is thus perfectly definite:
there is no dispensing with jhāna. And this is also confirmed equally decisively by the Abhidhamma, where the Dhammasaṅgaṇī’s comprehensive list of 89 types of cognizance contains no type of Path-Cognizance without supramundane jhāna.

In view of this, then, if the Commentaries say the contrary if, for instance we think that they assert or suggest that a sukkha vipassaka can become an Arahant without any jhāna-concentration at all—, then, if we are not mistaken, they must be in irreconcilable conflict with both the Suttas and the Abhidhamma: there is really no escape. If that is right, they disregard the instructions of the Mahāpadesa Sutta (A II 167) and their own criterion, which is that of a statement in commentaries conflicts with the Tipiṭaka, it must be rejected. Let us see if, in act, they actually do so.

The commentaries often use their term sukkhavipassaka to explain the Piṭaka term paññāvimutta, though they are not at all synonymous. That being so, since the Tipiṭaka, as already shown, does not allow the omission of jhāna from the indispensable qualities of he paññāvimutta or from the factors of the Path (and consequently Arahantship), this meaning must ne conveyed also by the commentaries either explicitly or implicitly, of they are not to contradict the Piṭakas. Let us take five representative statements— the most awkward we can find from the commentaries, which at first glance most clearly seem to state the contrary.
Mayaṃ nijjhānikā sukkhavipassakā (App. I § 4a).
So (paññāvimutto) sukkhavipassako ca catūhi jhānehi vuṭṭhāya arahattaṃ pattā cattāro cā ti imesaṃ vasena pañcavidho hoti (App. I § 5a).
Paññābalen’eva … vimutto ti attho (App. I § 7a).
Jhānābhiññānaṃ abhāvena (App. I § 8a).
Anuppāditajjhāno āraddhavipassako (App. I § 8a).
What are we to make of these?

Do they, especially § 4, not show incontestably that the commentator held that jhāna was unnecessary altogether? That quotations out of context can be misleading is so obviously true that it is constantly forgotten and has always to be reiterated. The full immediate contexts will be found in Appendix I with English translations. But let us take each statement individually and examine it closely in the light of its proper context, of the text commented on, of possible alternative grammatical solutions, and of the teaching as a whole.

(1) The word nijjhānika here (as described in the note to App. I § 4a) does not mean “no jhāna,” but on the contrary unmistakably alludes to the term dhammanijjhānakhanti; for the appearance of this expression in the sutta (MN 70) where the paññāvimutta is described makes this allusion inescapable. The word thus means ‘ponderers’ indeed there appears to be no usage anywhere of nijjhāna in any form in a negative sense, the prefix being here augmentative, not privative. As to the words that follow in the same passage (§ 4a), namely vināsamādhiṃ evaṃ ñāṇuppattiṃ dassanatthaṃ, these simply state what is, in fact, the essence of the Buddha’s teaching: that concentration alone does not provide final liberation, which is only attainable by the intervention of insight leading to Path-attainment (see § 2 above). The words Vinā samādhiṃ belong properly to dassanatthaṃ not to ñāṇuppattiṃ. And this does not imply in any way jhāna—concentration (cetovimutti) has no part to play at all.

(2) The addition of the sukkhavipassaka to the four distinguished by the jhāna they have emerged from (vuṭṭhāya) might seem to suggest that he does without jhāna at all times. If that were actually intended, though, it would be odd, given that the Susīma Sutta here being commented on omits, specially and pointedly, any mention of jhāna (see § 2 above) from the dispensables, that the commentator should leave such an important point not cleared up (and it is not cleared up anywhere else). But this oddness here vanishes if we take proper account of the word vuṭṭhāya; for that means ‘having emerged’ and so applies only to the time before reaching the Path, but conveys nothing about the composition of the Path reached. The samathayānika first develops jhāna, on the basis of which, after emerging from it, he develops insight, till he reaches the Path whose eighth factor is supramundane jhāna. The vipassanāyānika (including the sukkhavipassaka) places jhāna second, or works without it at all, till the attainment of the path whose eight factor is likewise supramundane jhāna. This passage therefore gives us information about the practice of vipassanā, but none at all about the composition of the path or the indispensability of jhāna (see also § 5 below).

(3) This simply restates what is said in the later part of App. I § 4a, namely that the attainment of the path, as such and considered apart from the necessary accessory concentration, is the peculiar field of understanding (and of it were not, understanding would have no part to play.) (4) This might seem at first conclusive, explicit and incontrovertible evidence in favour of the view that the commentaries did reject jhāna as indispensable. However, let us take a close look at the wording of the sutta commented in (see App. I § 8, 1st para). The commentary (§ 8a) says jhānābhiññānāṃ abhāvena: but in the sutta passage being commented on we find the words sayaṃ abhiññā sacchikatvā (which are actually the basis for this formula being called the ‘sixth, supramundane, abhiññā’). So here in the sutta we have the sixth, supramundane, abhiññā alone without the other five, mundane, abhiññā. Now while the ‘five’ are the exclusive product of the fourth jhāna and so belong only to samatha (see e.g. Vism Ch XII and XIII), the ‘sixth’ is, considered alone, the exclusive product of understanding (as explained under (i) above). If we, then, uncritically take the commentary’s compound jhānābhiññānaṃ to be what the grammarians call a dvandva-compound, resolve it into jhānānañ-ca abhiññānañ-ca, and translate the whole phrase by ‘with the absence of jhānas and abhiññās we have made the commentator contradict flatly the very passage in the sutta he is commenting on—the sutta assets the presence of an abhiññā and the commentator has been made to deny sweepingly both jhānas and abhiññās—which is plainly absurd. The proper and only way here is to take the compound as a tappurisa-compound, resolve it into jhānena abhiññānaṃ, and translate the whole phrase by ‘with the absence of abhiññās du to jhāna’ (i.e., of the five mundane, which are due to the perfecting of the 4th jhāna). Further confirmation is provided by the presence, in this same sutta passage, of the word cetovimutti: and there is no cetovimutti without jhāna. It is also said in this same sutta passage that this Arahant ‘has not… the Eight Liberation’s. Now the first three of these are jhāna collectively in three aspects, the remaining five being the four āruppas and cessation. In this connection the commentaries (App. I § 5b and 6a) are at special pains to show that ‘having the Eight Vimokkhas’ is a collective statement allowed of one who has gained any one āruppa but not of one who has only jhāna: having jhāna is thus compatible with the eighth ‘having no Eight Vimokkhas’. Such an explanation would indeed be futile of the commentators held that jhāna was dispensable for Arahantship.

(5) The expression anuppāditajhāno āraddhavipassako means simply ‘one who begins his insight without first arousing jhāna’ and so is interpretable under (ii) above. So here too all the commentarial passages describing the paññāvimutta and exhibiting their use of sukkhavipassaka tell us nothing about jhāna not being necessary for the path.

There is, in fact, nothing here to tell; for that has already been told unequivocally in the suttas and Abhidhamma in the appropriate place (see § 2). It would also be quite absurd to suppose that Ācariya Buddhaghosa forgot the Dhammasangaṇī’s definition, since he uses its 89–fold classification of all cognizance as one of the main pillars of his exegetical system, and equally absurd to suggest that he forgot that the Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna sutta, commented upon by him in such detail, contains the sutta definition of Path-samādhi as jhāna (also repeated elsewhere). But it would be reasonable to suppose that he remembered them well—well enough for him not to suspect that these passages which he wrote could possibly be interpreted to mean that jhāna could be dispensed with, for him not to refer here to definitions that he must have regarded as too well known to need repetition in every instance. For in the Visuddhimagga (p. 666–7 / Ch xxi) he wrote the words—repeated in the Atthasālinī (p. 228–9)—Sukkavipassakassa uppannamaggo … paṭhamajjhāniko va hoti: ‘The bare-insight worker’s Path … always (only) has the first jhāna’.

Examples of omission for the sake of emphasis of other aspects will be found, for instance, in Majjhima sutta 121 (omission of the 4 jhānas), in majjhima sutta 125 (omission of only the first jhāna), etc., etc., and these too are not to be taken as ‘hints that what is omitted is unnecessary’.
This inquiry would not be complete without observing that several types of concentration (samādhi) are distinguished in the commentaries. The Visuddhimagga (p. 85) lists, among other sets, two kinds, namely upacāra and appanā. Elsewhere it is explained that by upacāra samādhi (‘access-concentration’) is intented the concentration of kāmāvacara (‘sensual sphere’) type that accompanies strong vipassanā (‘insight’), which arises when the five hindrances (nīvaraṇa) have been suppressed but before the jhāna-factors have arisen (based on the passage at M I 21, lines 31–3: ‘my energy was aroused, … my heart was concentrated and unified’, which theme is developed differently at Paṭisambhidā I 99). Appanā-samādhi (‘absorption-concentration’) is defined as jhāna (with the jhāna factors arisen), and as rūpāvacara (‘from sphere’) or arūpāvacara (‘formless-sphere’). However, in another context (Vism 289) a third type called there khaṇika-cittekaggatā (‘momentary unification of cognizance’) is introduced but not developed. Of this the Paramatthamañjūsā says khaṇikacittekaggatā ti khaṇamattaṭṭhitiko samādhi; so pi hi ārammaṇe nirantaraṃ ekākārena pavattamāno paṭipakkhena anabhibhūto appito viya cittaṃ niccalaṃ ṭhapeti:  .“Momentary unification of cognizance” is concentration that is steadied for only a moment; yet when that occur in one mode uninterruptedly on an object without its being overcome by opposition, it steadies cognizance (making it) motionless as through it were absorption’ (p.278 Hewavitarane ed.). This, in its context of a sub-comment on a comment on the sutta-phrase samādahaṃ cittaṃ assasissāmī ti pajānāti (‘he understand ” I shall breathe in concentrating cognizance”), might seem to half-open the door to some form of substitute for appanā (to use the commentarial terminology, which is not in the Piṭaka) Remembering, however, that both suttas and Abhidhamma define Path consciousness unequivocally as inseparable from jhāna (paraphrased in the commentaries by ‘appanā’) what is ‘as though it were absorption’ can never be the actual supramundane sammāsamādhi of the path (see e.g., Atthasālinī p. 214). Though it is doubtless a perfectly legitimate way of describing certain aspects of the necessary degree of concentration without which no insight can take place at all, this passage cannot be taken, and was never intended to be taken, to have any bearing on the composition of the Noble Eightfold Path.

In these contexts it needs also to be remembered that the term vipassanā, whether in the Piṭakas or the Commentaries, whether by itself or as a component of the commentarial term sukkhavipassaka, is used specifically for that kind of examination of experience which leads up to attainment of the Path, but not for the understanding (paññā) contained in the actual path under supramundane sammādiṭṭhi (‘Right View’). Vipassanā is thus only that kind of understanding that precedes the Path, its last states before the actual Path itself being called vuṭṭhānagāminī vipassanā (‘insight leading to emergence’ Vism 661), and the Path itself being called vuṭṭhānaṃ that is, ‘emergence’ of Right View from wrong view (and so with other seven factors: see Paṭisambhidāmagga I 69).

It would therefore seem that any use of the term Vipassaka (whether sukkha or not) as synonymous with maggalābhī (‘path-obtainer’) would be incorrect. It that is so, then whatever is said about a sukkhavipassaka, as vipassaka, tells us nothing about the composition of the path which he may attain, for which we must look to the proper definitions in the proper places.

It is perhaps allowable to infer that, at minimum, a sukkhavipassaka need not develop jhāna at any time before he actually reaches the supramundane jhāna of the Noble Eightfold Path, but unless his Path contains at least the supramundane first jhāna it is not, in fact, the Path but only dhammuddhacca (‘overestimation of ideas’) in the form of a vipassanūpakkilesa (‘imperfection of insight’) see App. II; also Vism Ch XX end).

With the reservations already made about the difficulties of defining ‘persons’ (§2 above), the following general definitions can perhaps be made.

(i) Samathayānika (‘one whose vehicle is quiet’); one who in his work to reach the path (in each of its four stages) habitually first arouses jhāna, then emerges from it, and practises insight on the jhāna emerged from. This leads him, if successful to the ‘emergence’ of the path with supramundane jhāna (at minimum the first as its eighth factor.)

(ii) Vipassanāyānika (‘one whose vehicle is insight’): one who habitually practices insight before jhāna on his way to the Path. If he makes no use of, or does not attain jhāna before he reaches the path, he is called a suddhavipassanāyānika (‘one whose vehicle is pure insight’), in which case he can be taken as equivalent to the next.

“(iii) Sukkhavipassaka (‘bare-insight worker’): one who never emerges from jhāna (or any attainment of samādhi) before the time he reaches the supramundane sammāsamādhi of the Path—in his case the supramundane first jhāna (Vism 666–7; Atthasālinī 228–9). Unlike the paññāvimutta, which term describes the Obtainer of the Fourth Stage of the Path and its fruit, the term sukkhavipassaka (like the other two commentarial terms (i) and (ii) above) is only applicable to one who is trying for, but has not yet reached, the path in any one of its four stages, and so it can be, and is, used for the ordinary man who has not yet reached even the Stream-Entry Path as well as for those trying for the other stages of the Path. The term sukkhavipassaka-khīṇāsava (App. I § 8a) then properly means ‘one whose taints are exhausted, who has arrives at the Path by the way of the Bare-insight worker’. Since his insight is called ‘bare (dry), impoverished’ (App. I § 7b), his way is probably not the easiest.

(iv) Paññāvimutta (‘liberated by understanding’): since all Arahants are, strictly speaking ‘liberated by understanding’, this term, when used to distinguish one kind from another has only a relative or comparative meaning: in this sense, a paññāvimutta is contrasted with a Buddha as not having discovered the path he follows (App. I § 1.), or he is contrasted with an ubhatobhāgavimutta (‘both ways liberated’) Arahant by his not having fully exploited to the full the field of samādhi (samatha: App. I § 2 etc.), while at minimum the ubhatobhāgavimutta must have one of the four āruppas (App. I § 5b, 6a), a paññāvimutta can at minimum have only the first jhāna. What is the latest point to which his attainment of it can be put off is not stated. If called (collectively) ‘without the Eight Vimokkhas’ (App. I § 6, cf. § 8) he can still have jhāna (App. I § 5b, 6a). Both paññāvimutta and cetovimutti (the last in some degree) are present in all Arahants (App. I § 8.).

(v) The Suttas (notably the Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna sutta) and the Abhidhamma (Dhammasaṅgaṇī) state unequivocally that there is no Noble Eightfold Path without supramundane jhāna. This is confirmed in the commentaries (specifically with the words ‘the bare-Insight Worker’s path … always (only) has the first jhāna (§ 3 end). Commentarial passages that at first glance seem to state the contrary can be found after proper investigation, not to do so.

(vi) The general spirit of the Buddha’s teaching in relation to samatha is expressed by the following sutta: “Bhikkhus, these two ideas partake of true knowledge. What two? Quiet and insight.
When quiet is maintained in being … a pure heart is maintained in being … (and) lust is abandoned. When insight is maintained in being, … understanding is maintained in being, …. (and) whatever ignorance there is abandoned. No heart defiled by lust is liberated, and no understanding defiled by ignorance is maintained in being.
This heart-deliverance is due to fading of ignorance’ (AN 3:10/I 61). Other suttas expressing this are far too may to refer to here.
Consequently, such suttas as the Satipaṭṭhāna sutta (MN 10), or those at, say, Saṃyutta 35:70 and 152, have to be taken as emphasizing the essential part played by insight in developing understanding, without, however, implying that the minimum jhāna of cetovimutti can ne dispensed with.

* * *
APPENDIX I 

(For discussion and justification of translations see § 3.)  § 1. Paññāvimutta (at maximum) distinguished from sammāsambuddha only by the fact that the paññāvimutta follows the way that a sammāsambuddha discovers (SN 22:58/S III 65–6).

§ 2. Paññāvimutta contrasted with ubhatobhāgavimutta in terms of the ‘9 attainments’ (4 jhānas, 4 āruppas, and cessation): the paññāvimutta can have all these, but what distinguished him then from the other is that he has not fully exploited them (in their aspect of samatha). No paññāvimutta is without one of these attainments. (AN 9:44/A IV 452–3).

§ 3. Paññāvimutta contrasted with tevijja, cha¿abhiññā, and ubhatobhāgavimutta: he is less than these, but no mention that he can dispense with jhāna. (SN 7:7/S I 191).

§ 4. Susīma sutta: the paññāvimutta need not have the five mundane abhiññās (supernormal powers) or the 4 āruppas (formless attainments): specific omission of jhāna from the attainments that can be dispensed with. Compare the wording of attainments here with that in, say, MN 6. (SN 12:70/A II 121–7).

§ 4a. Commentary to Susīma Sutta: mayaṃ nijjhānikā sukkhavipassakā paññāmatten’eva vimuttā ti … “Ājāneyyāsi vā” to ādi kasmā vuttaṃ? Vinā samādhiṃ evam-nāṇuppattim dassanattham.
Idañ hi vuttam hoti: Susīma maggo vā phalaṃ vā na samādhinissando na samādhi-ānisaṃso na samādhissa nipphatti, vipassanāya pana so nissando vipassanāya ānisaṃso vipassanāya nipphatti … Translation: (note: nijjhānikā fr. nijjhāna (‘pondering’), and alludes directly to dhamma nijjhānaṃ khamati … dhammanijjhānakhanti (MN 70/M I 480), cf. also nijjhatti & nijjhāpenti (M I 320); no instance of this term in any form as negative of jhāna, prefix nir- being augmentative, not privative, here). “We are liberated by understanding, friend”: we are ponderers, bare-insight workers, liberated simply by understanding … “Whether you understand or …” and the rest: why is this said? In order to show without (reference to) concentration the arising of knowledge thus. What is meant is this: ‘Susīma, neither the Path nor (its) fruit are the outcome of concentration, or the benefits of concentration, or the productions of concentration, rather they are the outcome of insight, the benefits of insight, the production of insight’. (Note: this simply states the fact that concentration alone does not, as susīma seems to have supposed, produce true liberation, which is the field of understanding; but nothing is said here to the effect that jhāna can be dispensed with).

§ 5. Paññāvimutta contrasted with ubhatobhāgavimutta in terms of the 4 āruppas only, the difference then being that the paññāvimutta need not have these. (MN 70/A I 477–8). No mention of jhāna.

§ 5a. Commentary to MN 70: Paññāya vimutto ti paññāvimutto. So sukkhavipassako ca jhānehi vuṭṭhāya arahattaṃ pattā cattāro cā ti imesaṃ vasena pañcavidho hoti. Pā¿i pan’ ettha aṭṭha-vimokkha-paṭikkhepavasen’eva āgatā … (cites Puggalapaññatti 14; see § 6 below, and particularly reservations in this respect in both § 5b and 6a).
Translation: (resolution of compound not rendered) ‘He (one liberated by understanding) is of five kinds namely the bare-insight worker and those (four) who have reached arahantship after emerging from the four respective jhānas. Now here (in this particular aspect of the āruppas) the text is also stated in terms of rejection of the Eight Liberations’ (as in the Puggalapaññatti) but see commentary to that, § 6a below).

§ 5b. Sub-commentary to MN 70 (cf. § 6a below):
“Paññāvimutto” ti visesato paññāya eva vimutto na tassa paṭṭhānabhūtena aṭṭhavimokkhasankhātena sātisayena samādhinā to paññāvimutto—yo ariyo anadhigata-aṭṭhavimokkhena24 sabbaso āsavehi vimutto/ tass’etam adhivacanam // adhigate pi hi rūpajjhānavimokkhena1 so sātisayasamādhinissito ti na tassa vasena ubhatobhāgavimutto hotī ti vutto vayaṃ attho/ arūpajjhānesu pana ekasmim pi sati ubhatobhāgavimutto yeva nāma hoti/ tena hi aṭṭhavimokkhekadesena tannāmadānasamatthena aṭṭhavimokkhalābhi tveva vuccati samudāye hi pavatto vohāro avayave pi dissati yatha sattisayo ti// … Aṭṭhavimokkhapaṭikkhepavasem’eva ti avadhāraṇena paṭikkhepavasen’eva āgatabhāvaṃ dasseti/ ten’āha “kāyena phusitvā viharatī” ti.

Translation: ‘Liberated distinctively by means of only understanding; not by means of any concentration with extra (development), entitled (collectively) the “Eight Liberations” and made the basis for that (understanding), thus ‘liberated by understanding” ; this is a synonym for the (type of) Noble One (i.e., Path-attainer) liberated altogether from taints with respect to a Liberation (i.e., form-jhāna—see note at the end for the ‘Liberations’) that has not arrived at (the collective title of) “the Eight”. For even when (that title is) arrived at (by his developing a formless jhāna (as in § 2 above) yet since (the paññāvimutta is here regarded specifically) with respect to (some) form-jhāna Liberation (of his), he (thus) has for support (the form-jhāna) concentration “with extra” (i.e., with extra formless-jhāna), and so the meaning is that he is not then called ubhatobhāgavimutta in virtue of that (extra formless-jhāna), though when there is even one of the formless jhānas he is called an ubhatobhāgavimutta too (as in MN 70, see § 5 above). For he is called an “Obtainer of the Eight Liberations” in virtue of the ability of a part (i.e., one of the last five) of the Eight Liberations to confer that name since the usage is found to occur with respect to the whole and to a member, as in the case of (the term) sattisayo… “Also stated in terms of rejection of the Eight Liberations” points out how it is stated in terms of rejection on account of emphasis’.

§6. Paññāvimutta contrasted with ubhatobhāgavimutta in terms of possession of the Eight Liberations (collectively: § 5 above and § 6a below). The Paññāvimutta need not have the Eight Libera-tions collectively. (N.B. the insistence of the commentary here and the Sub-commentary in § 5b above on the collectiveness of the term ‘Obtainer of the Eight Liberations’ and that it can only be gained by attaining one of the āruppas, but not by attaining form-jhāna clearly shows that the commentators were fully aware of the indis-pensability of jhāna for the attainment of the Noble Path). (Puggal-apaññatti 14 & 73).

§6a. Commentary to Pug: Reproduces § 5a up to ‘Pañcavidho hoti’, and adds etesu hi eko pi aṭṭhavimokkhalābhī na hoti// ten’eva “na h’eva kho aṭṭhavimokkhe” ti (Pug. text) ādim āha// arūpāvacara-jjhānesu pana ekasmiṃ sati ubhatobhāgavimutto yeva nāma hotī ti.

“Translation: For not even one among these [five (see 5a)] is (called) an “attainer of the Eight Liberations” (collectively), hence “without (having touched with the body) the Eight Liberations” and so on is said. But when there is any one of the formless-sphere jhānas (i.e., the four āruppas) he (i.e., this `obtainer of the Eight Lib-erations’) is also called “ubhatobhāgavimutta” (Note: this means that an “obtainer of the Eight” can be called an ubhatobhāgavimutta in contrast to a paññāvimutta who has no āruppas and he can also be called a paññāvimutta in contrast to an ubhatobhāgavimutta who has, say the five mundane abhiññās (see § 2 above). The Mūlaṭīkā adds nothing extra).

§7. Paññāvimutta described in contrast with the ubhatobhā-gavimutta in terms of ‘seeing with understanding the 7 standing-points for consciousness (viññāṇaṭṭhiti) and two bases (āyatana), namely those of the non-percipient and neither-percipient-nor-non-percipient. He lacks the 8 Vimokkhas (see Nos. 5b and 6a), this tells us nothing about jhāna (DN 15/D II 70).

§7a. Commentary: ‘Paññāvimutto’ ti paññāya vimutto;
aṭṭhavimokkhe asacchikatvā paññābalen’eva nāmakāyassa ca rūpakā-yassa ca appavattim katvā vimutto ti attho. So sukkhavipassako ca paṭhamajjānādīsu aññatarasmiṃ ṭhatvā arahattaṃ patto cā ti pañcav-idho (see § 5a) hoti.

(There follows quotation from Pug. As in § 5a) Translation: ‘… without having reached the Eight Libera-tions (collectively, see nos. 5b and 6a), he is liberated by causing, through the power of understanding alone (see § 4a), the non-occurrence of the name-body and the form-body. He (the paññāvimutta) is five fold as the bare-insight worker and the four who reach arahantship by having already steadied themselves in one of the jhānas beginning with the first (before they reach their Path)’. (Note: no more is said here than in § 4a and 5a).” §7b. Sub-commentary: Paṭhamajjhānaphassena vinā pari jānanādippakārehi cattāri saccāni jānato paṭivijjhanto. Tesaṃ kic-cānaṃ matthakappattiyā ṇiṭṭhitakiccatāya visesana mutto ti vimutto.

So paññāvimutto … samathabhāvanāsinehābhāvena sukkhā lūkhā asiniddhā vā vipassanā etassā ti sukkhavipassako.

Translation: ‘One knowing, penetrating, the four Truths in the (four) modes of diagnosing (suffering), etc., without (having already had) the experience of (even) the first jhāna. He is freed dis-tinctively by these four functions being brought to their culmina-tion and to their function-completion, thus he is liberated. It is he that is “liberated by understanding” … He has insight that is bare (dry), impoverished, owing to the absence of the moisture of main-tenance of quiet in being, or is unmoistened, thus he is a “bare-(dry)insight worker” (Note: Since this passage deals explicitly with insight (vipassanā) alone, nothing can be deduced from it about the composition of the Path: see § 5).

§8. The Arahant without the Eight Vimokkhas has both paññāvimutti and cetovimutti: Kathañ ca bhikkave puggalo samaṇapuṇḍarīko hoti? Idha bhikkhave bhikkhu āsavānaṃ khayā anāsavaṃ cetovimuttiṃ paññāvimuttiṃ diṭṭhe ‘va dhamme sayaṃ abhiññā sacchikatvā upasampajja viharati, no ca kho aṭṭha vimokkhe kāyena phusitvā viharati. (AN 4:87/A II 87)

Kathañ ca bhikkhave puggalo samaṇapuṇḍarīko hoti? Idha bhikkhave bhikkhu sammādiṭṭhiko hoti … sammāsamādhī hoti sam-māñāṇī hoti sammāvimuttī hoti, no ca kho aṭṭhavimokkhe kāyena phusitvā viharati. (AN 4:89/A II 89) Kathañ ca bhikkhave puggalo samaṇapuṇḍarīko hoti? Idha bhikkhave bhikkhu pañcas’ upādānakkhandhesu udayabbayānupassī viharati: Iti rūpaṃ iti rūpassa samudayo, iti rūpassa atthaṅgamo; … iti viññāṇassa atthaṅgamo ti, no ca kho aṭṭha vimokkhe kāyena phusitvā viharati. (AN 4:90/II 90) Translation: ‘And what, bhikkhus, is a samaṇapuṇḍarīka? Here, bhikkhus, a bhikkhu by realization through his own direct-acquaintance (abhiññā) here and now enters upon and abides in the heart-deliverance (cetovimutti) and understanding-deliverance (paññāvimutti) that are taintless owing to (complete) exhaustion of taints; and yet he has not touched with the body the Eight Liberations (aṭṭha vimokkha) and abode in them’. (AN 4:87).

‘And how, bhikkhus, is a person a samaṇapuṇḍarīka? Here, bhikkhus, a bhikkhu has Right View, … has Right Concentration (sammāsamādhi), has Right knowledge, and has Right Deliverance; and yet he has not touched with the body the Eight Liberations and abode in them’. (AN 4:89) ‘And how, bhikkhus, is a person samaṇapuṇḍarīka? Here, bhikkhus, a bhikkhu abides contemplating rise and fall in the five categories of consumption thus: Such is form, such its origin, such its disappearance; such is (feeling… perception… determinations…) consciousness, … such its disappearance; and yet he has not touched the Eight Liberations and abode in them’. (AN 4:90) §8a. Commentary: Samaṇapuṇḍarīko ti puṇḍarīkasadiso samaṇo; puṇḍarīkam nāma ūnasatapattam saroruham, iminā suk-khavipassaka-khīṇāsavaṃ dasseti. So jhānābhiññānaṃ abhāvena aparipuṇṇaguṇato samaṇapuṇḍarīko nāma hoti. Samaṇapadumo ti … jhānābhiññānam bhāvena paripuṇṇaguṇattā samaṇa-padumo nāma hoti. (ad. 87).

Dasaṅgikamaggavasena vā arahattaphalañāṇa-arahattaphala-vimuttīhi saddhim aṭṭhaṅgikamaggavasena vā sukkhavipassa-kanīṇāsavo kathito. (89).

Anuppāditajjhāno āraddhavipassako appamādavihārī sekhapug-galo kathito. (90).

Translation: “Samaṇapuṇḍarīka” is a samaṇa like a puṇḍarīka; a puṇḍarīka is a waterlily with less than a hundred pet-als. By this he shows a bare-insight worker; and he is called a samaṇapuṇḍarīka because his qualities are incomplete with the absence of (those kinds of) direct acquaintance (abhiññā) due to jhāna &. “Samaṇapaduma” … is so called because his qualities are complete with the presence of (those kinds of) direct acquaintance due to jhāna25.’ (87).

(Here) the bare-insight worker is expounded by means of the ten-factored path or by means of the eight-factored path together with arahant-fruition knowledge and arahant-fruition deliverance.’ (98).

(Here) an initiate person (i.e., not an arahant, but who has at least reached stream-entry) who abides in diligence as one who ini-tiate (his) insight without having aroused jhāna (already)’.

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APPENDIX II

A sutta in the Aṅguttara Nikāya Fours (AN 4:170/A II 156–7) gives four ways of arriving at Arahantship, apart from which, no Arahantship—final knowledge’ (aññā)—can be arrived at. They are:

Samathapubbaṅgamaṃ vipassanaṃ bhāveti—he maintains in being insight preceded by quiet.

Vipassanāpubbaṅgamaṃ samathaṃ bhāveti—he maintains in being quiet preceded by insight.

Samathavipassanaṃ yuganaddhaṃ bhāveti—he maintains in being quiet and insight yoked together.

Bhikkhuno dhammuddhaccaviggahitaṃ mānasaṃ hoti. So … samayo yaṃ taṃ cittaṃ ajjhattaṃ yeva santiṭṭhati sannisīdati ekodi hoti samādhiyati; tassa maggo sañjāyati—a bhikkhu’s mind is misled by overestimation of ideas. On that occasion cognizance (then) become steadied in himself again, clarified, becomes single, and is concentrated. (Then) the path is born in him. (AN 4:170/A I 157; Paṭisambhidā Yuganaddhakathā).

As to the fourth instance, the commentaries explain uddhacca here by ‘vikkhepa’ (‘distraction’) and viggahita by virūpagahita and virodhagahita (respectively ‘seized by deformation’ and ‘seized by opposition’) and paraphrased by taṇhāmānadiṭṭhi (‘need, conceits, and wrong views’). Uddhacca as one of the ‘ 5 Hindrances to concentration’ is properly ‘agitation’, but here the meaning is more literal in the sense of being ‘distracted’ from fact, and is ‘thrown up’ (ud+hata+ya), i.e., ‘overestimates’ ideas. He thus overestimates what he has achieved and mistakes it for the Noble Eightfold Path when it is not.

Now these four ‘ways’ are not four alternatives: the first three are alternatives, and need no comment, since they are three alternative ways of arriving at the Noble Eightfold Path without mistake in the way. The fourth, however, makes a mistake on the way, whichever of the three ways he is following, and afterwards sets himself right and eventually reaches the Noble Eightfold Path.

The mistake he makes is to fancy some mere advance in Vipassanā (‘insight’ in the sense of §5, 9.v.) is the Noble Path. That mistake is called in the Paṭisambhidāmagga Yuganaddhakathā, a vipassanūpakkilesa (‘imperfections of insight’) and is divided into ten different kinds, which are also treated in detail in the Visuddhimagga, Ch XX.

The conclusion to be drawn from this sutta, in the light of the definitions of the supramundane sammāsamādhi of the Path given in the Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna sutta and the

Dhammasaṅgaṇī, is that if someone fancies he has obtained the Noble Eightfold Path but not even the first jhāna as a component of it, he has in fact, simply exhibited dhammuddhacca (‘overestimation of ideas’), the remedy for which is further practice in elimination of need, conceits, and wrong views.

Nananamoli Thera