The General

Extract No.2

INTERLUDE

Exploded letter to General Vance

REDACTED [Dear] JD Vance,

Can I call you JD? I saw you in Greenland via ‘the media.’ I saw that they took the piss out of your black clothes after you had criticised Zelenksy for wearing similar things. But that massive green jacket with the fur hood looked so cool. I expect it was expensive. Who makes those? You looked good in that coat as you went along with the person you later brutally fired because you’re a REDACTED [massive arsehole]. REDACTED [I bet you called the base ‘Pity Fuck’, I bet the troops made that joke and you went along with it. You’re a funny person, or ‘guy’ - shall I call you ‘guy’?] end of paragraph.

The main reason I am writing is to ask if you are aware that the people you’re currently mixing with have essentially been played by this English guy called Nick Land? Yeah and when he was writing some of his formative work he was A European. I know that this will at least annoy you. Land engaged with Curtis Yarvin and Peter Thiel online. They are accelerationists who became known as the ‘NRx’. The NRx advocate thus: ‘first “Retire All Government Employees” (RAGE) in order to “reboot” the economy’ then ‘replace democratic institutions with a CEO’ or ‘monarch.’ End of paragraph.

This must sound familiar end of paragraph.

This bloke called Roger Burrows has been on to all this for years. But you won’t like him, because he’s sound. And A European. Essentially. Anyway, it’s in the Financial Times in inn-er-ger-land now so you can just look it up. Hari Kunzru wrote a book on red pilling too. The problem with the Red Pills is that while they are more addictive than fentanyl you can’t overdose on them, REDACTED [you c|||||| arsehole] end of paragraph.

Anyway, I want to change the topic again and say that whatever Land, Yarvin and Thiel were or are rattling on about there are other myths behind what you all (or should I say y’all) are doing. Here are two of them end of paragraph:

MYTH 1: The Man Who Fell To Earth, both the novel, which is brilliant, but also the film starring David Bowie. If you want to know what’s supposed to be happening in the film read the book REDACTED [I can read all by myself, can you?] Elon won’t get to Mars, you will all end up drunk in expensive suits wasting your days away. Some of you will end up in chokey doing a stretch of bird. Some of you, you must know already, will be the target of hits end of paragraph.

MYTH 2: When I saw you in Greenland I thought the same thing I did when I saw Musk last, which is that you looked just a tiny little bit more sewn together than before. REDACTED [I mean your left eye is a bit funny and you look made-up, or is it your right? I don’t mean you look like you’re wearing make-up although you’re a bit Andy Burnham on that one I mean you look put-together, which you are, quite objectively] which prefaces another statement of my belief, getting to the point, that Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a core myth for you. I suppose I should say ‘guys’, everyone says ‘guys’ now, even in Britain, REDACTED [and when they do I want to have them guillotined] end of paragraph.

It just struck me that you may not understand ‘in chokey doing a stretch of bird’ but I may be over the 1,000 character count of the email JD Vance portal now so best leave it. I need to think about editing this down. How about ‘you’re a seriously questionable geezer.’ Under the character count but in another language, and not just ‘may as well be in another language’ end of paragraph.

I can’t do this in 1,000 characters. I’ll have to send you the book. But I redacted an insult or three there in the hope that you might keep reading. I need you to keep reading because I must make a detour now, which might seem like a digression, but isn’t. You see I went to see some paintings by Terry Atkinson. Atkinson was in a group called Art + Language. He taught art at Leeds University. The show was at a tiny gallery in Manchester at Moon Grove. One of the paintings is called ‘Remind those Motherfucking Proud Boys that in the end, Heydrich got a flat tyre. Goya says hello!’ Atkinson’s paintings take the form of ‘Mosaics’ and include Sam Cooke, civil war figures and then the Goyas (for instance from Los Caprichos) which rip the discourse apart: the work is sardonic, brutal, necessary end of paragraph.

The reference to Heydrich is a reference to Reinhard Heydrich, the architect of the Final Solution, hit in his car in 1942, a bomb detonated next to it, shrapnel and upholstery from the car shot into him, damaging diaphragm, spleen and lung and fracturing a rib. Of course, the assassins wanted the people to rise up, but what they got was the Lidice massacre. There is no trace of this in Atkinson’s paintings, so I am critical of them too, but it brings me to another slight discursive pivot: I know you have little time for Zelensky, but have you spent much time understanding what the Russians are doing in Ukraine? Have you watched 20 Days in Mariupol? REDACTED [The General’s wagging finger, cleavered into a blender, combined with mincemeat, onion and herbs, prepared in front of him by a most excellent, award-winning chef, into good ol’ American burgers, which he is forced to eat, with the barrel of one of his mother’s nineteen handguns tapping the back of his skull. Then his balls turned into bhajis] end of paragraph.

REDACTED [I think you should. Watch 20 Days in Mariupol that is. Or go to Ukraine. And imagine your wife and kids raped in front of you before they cut your throat atop your spineless shitsack white corpse. I’ve just seen that picture of you hanging out with Modi. I thought that one of Gordon Brown with Gaddafi was bad. Fucking Ada] end of paragraph.

I agree with you on a personal level, JD buddy, can I call you buddy? That the ideological Europe I wish to see again has no shared values whatsoever with the version of America that you represent. Remember that film Red Dawn? You made it so the Russians no longer need parachutes. Gillray’s Plumpudding flashes up all over social media, it is utterly appropriate. Charlie Sheen and Patrick Swayze are pissed. Actually. I’m not going to call you buddy, you’re not my fucking mate. You’re the inverse of my buddy. So buddy backwards, you are Yddub, which already sounds like a Fremen name for an evil Harkonnen, so perfect. And you’re all fash under the Hindu mist, it’s no coincidence Hitler was into all that mumbo jumbo. You and Modi the murderer eh? Tut end of paragraph.

But there’s a long way to go, we must press on through the snow end of paragraph.

It may be confusing, but as well as the Dark Enlightenment we have the concept of the Dark Arctic. All kinds of players up there, Russian, Chinese, digging up frozen mammoth tusks and creating new markets for them. This is Dark Arctic revanchism. Which brings me back to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The ‘monster’ Dr Frankenstein creates escapes to the arctic wastes. Its creator tries to follow and kill it, but fails. The ‘monster’ is then alone and empty and mourns Dr Frankenstein’s death, becoming suicidal. That’s you lot, later. But it’s all of us because you’re dragging us all with you. You may want it simpler Yddub, the part where ‘the monster’ goes to the arctic. The monsters are going to the arctic. The monsters want Greenland. You are monstrous, are monsters end of paragraph.

Percy Shelley, I mean uh Mary Shelley was like a chick, right? He wrote the Masque of Anarchy after the Peterloo Massacre here in Manchester. But it seems to suggest that if protestors let the despotic forces cut them down those forces will return home shamed, I don’t believe that - I mean what am I? fifteen years old? - I can barely get through ‘rise like lions after slumber in unvanquishable number’ it’s so ‘swing your pants.’ I prefer ‘Remind those Motherfucking Proud Boys that in the end, Heydrich got a flat tyre. Goya says hello!’ Have you seen Goya’s black paintings Yddub? Have you ever been to Madrid? I went there and saw them at the Prado. He found the evil cave under our palaces full of fancy music and he got them down just so. You’re making the cave the palace aren’t you Yddub? You dybbuk end of paragraph.

REDACTED [Why don’t you sticks of excrement grow a pair and get off to Mars? See I’m getting better with my American, even if it makes my stomach queasy] end of paragraph.

But actually there’s a much simpler j’accuse to level at you and it’s how the fuck do you imagine yourselves to be Christians? You know the stronger always harm the weaker, so the revolution of Christianity was to reverse that into ‘love thy enemy.’ As a revolutionary aim it has neither been achieved nor beaten. But it’s downgraded hugely by being completely fucking unrealistic. So you know defunding DEI programs is fundamentally anti-Christian and so I call you the anti-Christ. The Pope dropped dead the day after you saw him, that’s worse than you moving in and next door’s lawn dying. I’m going to use the ‘c’ word, I can feel it bubbling up, oh no it’s gone now end of paragraph.

Oh no but I said it without actually saying it end of paragraph.

You’ve got muddled and mixed some really confused version of Darwinism into it all, if you’re going to embrace all that then you need to get your Darwin right and read Nietzsche, actually the decent anti-Christ, only one that people get equally confused and you know where that all led in the 1930s and 40s REDACTED [Yarvin says you’re an intellectual and fluent in New York Times speak but you seem like a raw player to me] end of paragraph.

But why am I bringing all that up? Everyone lives in their own nice warm body and so they MUST be the exception, I think this is the exception of Jesus too, so it all collapses back, look at all that abuse in the church, bollocks to all that.

So here’s the long and short of it Yddub: I think about the older guys in my home town on the Yorkshire-Lancashire border when I was growing up. I think about what they would have said to you: ‘You’re out of your depth lad’ end of paragraph.

They were often correct.

REDACTED [Best Regards]

Steve Hanson