By Edred Thorsson
Arcana Europa, 117 pages, ISBN: 979-8615990625
Anyone who follows the dreary spectacle of American politics will have noticed the recent tendency to denounce “identity politics” or the rise of “tribal moralities.” At the same time, the idea of “tribe”—when applied to small groups of friends, subcultures, or even gyms and other special-interest clubs—seems to be gaining in positive cultural currency. And although it may bear only a superficial relationship to any of these phenomena, real tribalism is both a far more dangerous (at least to the evil and corrupt Establishment) and far more meaningful component of the human experience than either its critics or its proponents might suppose.
Tribalism is still the most important form of social organization in many parts of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East today, and it remains essential to the identity of North America’s indigenous populations. But as Edred Thorsson—a scholar of Germanic and Indo-European culture—demonstrates, the tribe was also the primary socio-political institution of our European ancestors, and a key to their self-understanding. By studying the tribal histories of the Franks, the Lombards, and the Saxons, whose memories are enshrined in the regional and national place-names of Europe, we learn both where we have been, and where we might be headed.
Because rest assured: the globalist dream of a borderless international marketplace, where everyone is an “individual” with no higher loyalties or obligations, is turning into a nightmare. If and when this civilization collapses, it is the tribes—who have reclaimed their ancestral mythologies and banded together for mutual support—that will survive. Even if this grim eventuality never comes to pass (for nothing in history is certain), tribal reconnection may be the best medicine for the spiritual sickness that afflicts us all. It is both a way forward— and a way back—to everything that has been lost: our identity, our culture, our sense of place and family, and the deep human connections that give life its true meaning. Re-Tribalize Now!