DEATH. WAR. POETS.

Satan would say, "First, we kill the poets"

As a child, I was told many fairly-odd tales. A lot of them came from my history textbooks. Like the one about how a single bullet fired in Sarajevo, ( of course), led to much of the planet painted in blood. A moody teenager with a pistol, and suddenly Europe forgets how to think. The textbooks make it sound like an accident of history, a tragic domino effect, as if the kings and bankers and industrialists were just helplessly swept along by fate.

It never quite set well in my stomach. With time I came to realize that The Archduke’s assassin was the patsy. The war that followed wasn’t born from a single shot, it was summoned. It was ritual. A Satanic sacrament of steel and fire. An offering to the dark gods of progress. The first bloody steps of The Long March through history. Millions marched, singing hymns to empire, into the mouth of the machine.

Blood baptized the modern age.

It was not about Serbia. Or alliances. Or honor. It was about the world’s first global initiative: industrial mass human sacrifice. The filthy fusion of flesh with mechanized death. An initiation rite for the 20th century, conducted not in temples, but in trenches.

Gavrilo Princip didn’t cause World War I. He followed the script and lit the candle. The altar was already built. The priests were waiting. And somewhere in the smoke above Verdun and the Somme, something very old and very hungry smiled.

I’m working with Manalive Media Group on a powerful film about The Great War, “Inspired by the poetry of those men, of all all nations involved in World War One, who were sent off to fight in the “war to end all wars.”

From Manalive’s website, penned by Manalive CEO, Douglas Dye:

Today, amidst the raging floodwaters of liquid modernity, we wade in the aftermath of a culture that has been usurped — stolen right out from under our noses. As is so often the case, it happened slowly and then all at once.

And now, as we stand knee-deep in the damp ashes of tradition, community, order, intellect, and the sacred, we must ask ourselves what we can do to counter the widespread ruin and incoherence of the present and reclaim the future. While the tactics may be varied, our directive is clear: we must take action.

We must return to sanity, renew the spirit, and re-enchant the imagination.

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FROM A FALLEN CULTURE RISES MANALIVE MEDIA GROUP

Founded by genuine, joyful people of good will, we will move the culture in our direction by bringing to life enlightening, elevating, and entertaining stories of a decidedly moral persuasion — aiming not just to shine a light on what is beautiful, good, and true, but reignite the flames of a lost tradition that gives form to and nourishes Western Civilization.

We will begin to reclaim the culture.

One powerful story at a time.

More details to come about this exciting project.