I wish I did not share your disappointment in the domain at large, but I do. And JMG is genuinely smart, insightful, and interesting… and his political sensibilities are very reactionary and bad, though too idiosyncratic to attach simply to any movement.
Huh. Good question. Not that has registered on me, but I have only kept an erratic eye on him, so I could have missed it. It does strike me as the kind of thing that would capture his imagination.
No, let’s do this properly: The Sex Pistols were a boy band that was formed in order to sell clothing. Look it up.
I may or may not be avoiding actual real work at the moment. . .
And I must also sadly confirm that the Pagan scene includes many figures as bad or worse. It is not the dominant note, but it is a common one.
I think both would rightly bristle at being called anti-intellectual. They are Read Hard Books, Write Hard Essays guys. They take ideas seriously. They ARE strongly anti-institutional-expertise. And they have screwy instincts.
Wildemuth, near as I can tell, reflects the classic trajectory Class Is Everything ➞ Anti-“Woke” ➞ Fashy new friends. Greer, I suspect, started at least halfway there. He resembles the authoritarian green anti-civ folks, but is very idiosyncratic.
That’s no defense of either Wildemuth or Gods & Radicals as they stand. I know at least a couple of people who had stuff published on the website who demanded that they take it down because they refuse to be associated.
Last I checked, Wildermuth still conceives of himself as a leftist. Before he took his Anti-Woke Turn, he did not have the red-brown scent on him at all. Early G&R contributors had every reason to understand G&R as green/left/anarchist, and I think many still don’t know his other side.