Republicans Embrace Fascist and Antisemitic "Alt-Right" Manifesto, Bronze Age Mindset
In June of 2018, an anonymous online persona known as “Bronze Age Pervert” self-published a book entitled Bronze Age Mindset. The book — a fascist and white supremacist manifesto that unabashedly promotes antisemitic, racist, Islamophobic, misogynistic, homophobic, and ableist ideology — quickly gained popularity with young far-right extremists. Over the next two years, as the far-right gained more and more of a foothold in government and Republican institutions alike, the Bronze Age Mindset fan base expanded to include congressional staffers, members of the Trump administration, and elected officials.
The manifesto’s author makes no secret of his beliefs about the inferiority of non-white and non-Christian groups. The book derides, by name: Chinese people; Filipino people; Jews; Muslims; Arabs; and the continents of Africa, which it dismisses as “irrelevant,” and Asia, which it terms “the enemy.” Of Jews, the author writes:
Highlighted image from Bronze Age Mindset provided by Luke Turner
“The Jewish way of thinking, or the Judaizing tendency…approaches mental deficiency and even retardation when it comes to anything visual…The Jewish hatred of matter, an ancient prejudice that precedes the Bible, and the hatred also for beauty that they share with other Semitic peoples — and many others besides — all of this comes together to promote a kind of aggressive nerdishness.”
Highlighted image from Bronze Age Mindset provided by Luke Turner
The author also argues that “the creation of Israel is the most ‘anti-Semitic’ [sic] act ever conceived” and an act of “self-overcoming” the “culture of the cramped shtetl, of nerds dominated by women and old people.” As anti-fascist researcher Luke Turner has pointed out, this narrative relies on the antisemitic stereotype of Jews as inherently weak, Jewish men effete and Jewish women nags. For the author of Bronze Age Mindset, the creation of the State of Israel was ‘antisemitic’ in that the formation of a militarized state ‘overcame’ or ‘defeated’ innate Jewish weakness, replacing it with brute strength and masculinity.
Republican proponents of the book include:
Michael Anton, former Senior National Security Advisor in the Trump Administration
Anton wrote a lengthy review of the book, which he deemed “important.” Anton noted that the book was a gift from his friend Curtis Yarvin, an openly anti-democratic (by both Yarvin’s and Anton’s own admission) far-right blogger, who attended a dinner party at Anton’s home. Yarvin has a history of white supremacy, arguing — like Bronze Age Mindset — that some racial groups have higher IQs than others, once writing “not all humans are born the same, of course, and the innate character and intelligence of some is more suited to mastery than slavery.” Yarvin later sought to defend this statement, claiming that he was complimenting the resilience of Black people who were enslaved. He offered this comparison: “if I said that Greek Jews were more likely to survive in Auschwitz than Western European Jews (which is also true), this would strike me as a positive comment on the toughness of Greek Jews, not an opinion that they should be sent to the ovens first.”
Darren Beattie, a former speechwriter for the Trump White House and aide to Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL)
According to Anton, Beattie — who has his own extensive history of antisemitism and racism — encouraged him to read Bronze Age Mindset and take it seriously. Beattie has also engaged with and praised Bronze Age Pervert (often colloquially referred to as “BAP”) on Twitter.
Minnesota State Senator Roger Chamberlain
The Minnesota Reformer, an independent news outlet tracking Minnesota politics, published an expose on the Republican State Senator in August of 2020, documenting his nearly year-long record of public engagement with and support for Bronze Age Pervert. As the Minnesota Reformer piece notes, Chamberlain has “liked” multiple tweets from the Bronze Age Pervert account, and follows several neo-Nazi accounts on Twitter. On September 8, 2020, Chamberlain “liked” a tweet from Bronze Age Pervert calling critics of the book “footstools of international finance” — a phrase evocative of antisemitic tropes about global Jewish cabals controlling world events and economic systems.
