"...And All My Ways Are Battle."

“I don't care if people hate my guts; I assume most of them do. The important question is whether they are in a position to do anything about it.” ― William S. Burroughs

Preface

The following is a rough draft of a prospective book on the life of socialist turned anarchist-individualist, political activist, author, poet, publisher, and iconoclast Arthur Desmond (1859(?)-1929), who was born in New Zealand, came to prominence and ignominy in Australia, fled to Chicago, and authored what is arguably the most influential and popular underground book of all time, Might is Right, a book that is still banned, censored, blacklisted by retailers, and inspiring the twin flames of creation and destruction one hundred and thirty-five years after it was first published. Excerpted as part of The Satanic Bible (Avon, 1966), it runs contrary to EVERY modern, humanistic, "progressive" and liberal "democratic value" we are expected to uphold. It brooks no babbling about natural, inalienable "human rights." It does not take pity on the conventionalisms "of subordinates," to the "holy, sanctified, privileged lie," the lie inculcated from birth, given to the child like "mother's milk." Loudly its detractors scream, "Heresy!"

One reviewer on Amazon, where it is now banned, has called it the "Bible of the Predators." And maybe so?

Yet, its philosophical dicta are observed as the pragmatic underpinnings behind all personal and political affairs, whether it be in Washington, on Wall Street, or in London, Paris, Brussels, Stockholm, Tehran, or Tel Aviv. In Gaza and the West Bank, in Northern Israel, today, we see its philosophy dominating with every exploding shell, with every felled fighter so full of the righteousness of his relentless, bloodthirsty cause. Likewise in the Ukraine.

The same predictable parties will align themselves, as regards those conflicts, with lemming-like suicidality; with the enemies of themselves, curiously. "Queers for Palestine" and suchlike interesting manifestations of the tendency on behalf of some toward exalting and glorifying those who would, in reality, destroy them, is simply one example of what Desmond railed against as the vile, base, and self-abnegating, self-destructive fatal flaw of inferior personas; in this case, modern man. And he dissects such a will toward martyrdom and its ultimate origination with laser-like precision.

What follows, then, is an examination of this hated maverick, intellectual rebel, and deathless, mysterious soul.

***

God Save the Ice Cream

"The state sanctifies its violence as law. Yours it calls crime." Max Stirner

"Hate for hate, and ruth for ruth, eye for eye and tooth for tooth; scorn for scorn, and smile for smile. Love for love, and guile for guile. War for war, and woe for woe; blood for blood and blow for blow." Ragnar Redbeard

From the Inter Ocean for Sunday, March 27th, 1904:

"In the fifth daily engagement between the forces of the city, under command of "Jerry" Sullivan, and those of the Ser-Vis Ice Cream Company, under command of Albert (sic) Desmond, fought off of 155 Michigan Street early yesterday morning, the walls of the ice cream plant were reduced, and the freezers silenced.

"Altough manager Desmond was taken unawares, it is not believed that he will be relieved of his command, and there is absolutely no truth in the rumor that he will be beheaded." [1]

Picture, if you will, a man standing at the door of an ice cream store, the Ser-Vis Ice Cream and Candy Compay, holding off a dozen policemen with an old-fashioned bush gun (a Kruger-Jorgenson, to be exact), allegedly used in his time as a soldier in the Boer War, while around ten others are at the back door with battering rams to break in and capture this one, lone, crazed individual. The representative of the forces of law and order, Jerry Sullivan, is reputed in the satirical article printed in the Inter Ocean about the curious affair, to have taunted the lone gunman (who never ended up firing a single round) thusly: "I am told there is nothing better than your strawberry ice cream when accompanied by chocolate eclairs!" Or some such.

The raid, as it were, was precipitated when Commissioner Blocki "induced" eight city Bluecoats to batter down the door of Ser-Vis, as the telephone cable inspector Charles McCormick, who worked for the Chicago Telephone Company, was denied access into the factory. He was denied access by store manager Arthur Desmond, a rather fiery, tempestuous, pugnacious, and combative personality. Apparently.

Desmond, curiously, was on the Articles of Incorporation of Ser-Vis. He served as the store manager, but the actual owner of the factory was W.E. Ser-Vis (one wonders at this curious name), who swore out the complaint against Blocki. Desmond stated, "We have no quarrel with the city or Mr. Blocki [...] our quarrel is with the telephone company officers who insists (sic) on entering our building in order to repair or install cables beneath the sidewalk."

The absurdity of the curious incident recounted above aside, the man quoted, Mr. Desmond, Arthur Desmond, was only being half-truthful. In reality, he didn't want it to be discovered that he was operating his advertising concern, Thurland and Thurland, from a basement room in the ice cream factory. This was illegal as per zoning ordinances, but it was why Desmond required the telephone lines. How much W.E. Ser-Vis knew or suspected of this curious turn of affairs is a matter of conjecture, of course, perhaps none of it. (Or perhaps he was a co-conspirator?)

Literary Enigma

Artur Desmond was not a man who "had no quarrel" with authority but predicated his life from an early age in the struggle against a status quo that he despised. He started as an upstart, political maverick, coming from the hard-scrabble life of a New Zealand cattle drover, standing for parliament in Hawke's Bay twice, known for his fiery oratory, as well as his championing of the rights of Te Kooti, the Maori chieftain, and warlord, whom Desmond deeply admired. Later, in Australia, he became a more extreme political activist whose poetry and writings scorned the wealthy, and banks, and increasingly offered a critique of the capitalist system. His influence was felt by future prime ministers, writers, and philosophers, and his time there was marked by association with the thuggish A.S.B. (Active Service Bigade), comparable today to a group such as the Proud Boys.

Fleeing Australia after being charged with "seditious writings," he fled. Whither did he wander? He ended up in America, Chicago, the "Windy City." A tough one, too.

It was here he printed and sold pamphlets, contributed to such journals as The Eagle and The Serpent, a journal of "Egoistic" thought, created journal, The Lion's Paw, and associated with such scandalous and radical thinkers as "Malfew Seklew" (born Fred M. Wilkes, in England, Seklew was an individualist anarchist writer of the period who reputedly died while a squatter in an abandoned building in NYC), with whom he shared property in Chicago. He was also an associate of "Dill Pickle Club." It was the latter "Dill Pickle Press" that brought out the 1927 edition of MiR, the last printed while Desmond still lived.

Desmond authored many books and pamphlets under a bewildering variety of aliases. His other well-known work (although that is vastly overstating things) is called Rival Caesars, written with Wm H. Dilg, with whom he operated the advertising concern of Thurland and Thurland. A few of his aliases include (but were certainly not limited to): Arthur Uing, Richard Thurland, and Gavin Gowrie.

His most famous, influential, and well-known work, of course, is Might is Right. It is to the latter we must turn to understand Desmond, the living man, as well as Desmond the literary enigma.

***

There is no other author I can think of that has had a greater impact on me than Arthur Desmond. And yet, few will know the name.

More will know him by his pseudonymous nom de plume, Ragnar Redbeard. But these will still be only a few. Of course, with present technology, this is easily remedied. Many will pull up a Wikipedia article if asked. They may peruse it. Depending on how deeply they discern that which they read, they may continue to learn more, or they will shake their heads in disgust at the "proto-fascist" manifesto Mr. Redbeard is said to have penned.

That book, Might is Right (as is most popularly known, although it is also referenced as "Survival of the Fittest" and "The Philosophy of Power") has had an immense, incalculable impact on my life. I have published it under more than one edition, and my audiobook version is almost certainly the most listened-to reading of it beyond the audio adaptations done by experimental musician Boyd Rice, as the album Might! (Mute, 1995).

It is the one thing of any consequence I feel I have managed to create. Nearly one hundred thousand listens later (and more than that, I'm certain), I still feel, even after decades of personal evolution and years of gradual drift away from the desire to be "known" for something, as if there is something, some lure, some, dare I say, mission left to fulfill in regards to Mr. Desmond and his so-maligned book, his "proto-fascistic" treatise on power dynamics and Darwinian struggle, on political chicanery and morally relativistic, even Machiavellian deviance; the brilliance of the predator, and the subservient, servile cowardice of "the base, communistic cabala of the 'Man of Many Sorrows'." (In example, one of his favorite targets, the sanctimonious, bleeding, crucified Christ, the "weeping savior" God of Asia Minor, who was "born in a cattle-shed, and died on a gallows.")

Such a weeping, pious, sanctimonious example of self-abnegation and quiet submission to suffering as Jesus Christ was not for Arthur Desmond, or, rather "Ragnar Redbeard." No, his world was a "natural world of war, a natural world of warriors." The superior man struggled, fought for his freedom, and, if successful, took the booty ascribed to him and his by right of victory, having watered the ground with his adversary's thin, icy blood. To the victor went the spoils of conflict. To the loser, a cold, icy, dark, and worm-besotted grave. Such were the vicissitudes of fate.

The strong did as they pleased. The early lessons of standing for Parliament in Hawk's Bay New Zealand showed him, often cruelly, that men forfeited their autonomy and personal liberty at the altar of naked POWER and rapine WEALTH. And that, fundamentally, this was all and the end of the argument.

From New Zealand to Australia, from "Christ as a Social Reformer" to Hard Cash, "A Thousand Books of Fame," to Rival Caesars and Might is Right, the literary legacy of this historical Shadow Man is burning bright once more. Ninety-five years after a cerebral hemorrhage in his Chicago bookstore finally laid the great Viking of the Word to waste, the world is still blacklisting him, banning his words, and hurling invective, slander, and calumny his way, framing him as they see fit: racist, fascist, anarchist, sociopath, Satanist, heretic. He's worn every label, and been tarred with every brush. As previously mentioned, Satanist Anton LaVey excerpted Might is Right for part of his classic The Satanic Bible. Curiously, we live in an era when being an outright "Satanist" (however one defines it), is less controversial than being an admirer of a book such as Might is Right.

What follows is the life story of Arthur Desmond, born in 1859 in England, or perhaps Ireland, or New Zealand, to Irish-English parentage, and raised in New Zealand, where life was rugged, and the colonial settlers were often exploited as surely as medieval serfs by those who consumed the commercially valuable land at the expense of those who worked it. Throw into the mix the racial strife between white man and Maori, and young Desmond (if that truly was his birth-given sobriquet) learned only too quickly the brutal, unfair truth of existence: that, in this world of "warring atoms" (as he so termed it), power, amoral and always a "zero-sum game," is, in the end, the only currency respected, beyond counterfeit, and never to be devalued.

"Force rules the world

Has ruled it,

Shall rule it;

Force is triumphant."

Ragnar Redbeard

Notes:

[1] The above was from material reprinted in the incredible book The House of Gowrie and Thurland and Thurland: The Devil's Book Agents (www.ragnarredbeard.com, 2022), an anthology of writings and publications by Desmond and others distributed by his publishing concern and bookselling business, advertised as radical books, "for and against anything." This anthology was edited by Desmond archivist Robert Carmonius, who has done an astounding, titanic job on documenting and preserving the literary legacy of Arthur Desmond, no small undertaking since it focuses on a man that lived his life in the shadows. His website is linked below. Please visit. You won't be disappointed.

Might Is Right by Regnar Redbeard (Full Audiobook) NOTE: CONTROVERSIAL SUBJECTS! NSFW.

My own website is:

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