Alex Tarnava on propaganda, music, philosophical hormesis, and what each of us is capable of.
Vadim Gershteyn, PhD, MPH served as my editor for StressHacked and contributed writing to my upcoming book The Stone Wall. He joins me for this discussion.
VG: “This book contains truth that may make many people uncomfortable,” you state in the conclusion to the upcoming The Stone Wall (check out a reading here). You add, “It contains truths that may negatively impact my businesses, my life, and my reputation.”
Such a statement begs the question of why you would pursue this activity of truth-telling; though I think you have answered it adequately elsewhere: if you do not do so, the future may be more intolerable than if you had done so and succeeded in your messaging. You have choice words to say about Aleksandr Dugin in that same conclusion, not to mention in the rest of the book, noting that burning a bridge with him may even impact your own safety in the future.
Since he occupies such a large part of The Stone Wall, can you explain to the reader of this newsletter why Dugin is important for you, for the reader, and for social discourse generally? I will preface this only a little bit: in previous newsletters, I have mused that Dugin is correct in his interpretation of Martin Heidegger wherein Heidegger’s concept of being-towards-death is culturally-constituted (counter to Heidegger’s more orthodox students), with various cultures producing people that are variably ‘afraid’ of death and/or variably ‘invested’ in keeping their own lives intact. To use a somewhat vulgar example, the start of Ill Bill’s song “Glenwood Projects” has the rapper’s uncle, Uncle Howie, making the following monologue (emphasis mine):
Glenwood motherfucking Projects! That was the fucking place, man, fcking crack smoking all night, cooking it up, selling C4, weapons, blowguns, every motherfucking thing, what a fucking rush!
We were cooking the shit up, and I smoked it up, and the Jamaicans, man, they came back, fucking torched the place with me motherfucking in it!
I couldn’t get out the fucking apartment, they locked me in, I had to go out the fucking window, it was fucking dynamite!
What kind of being-towards-death is represented in a figure like Uncle Howie? In the orthodox interpretation of Heidegger, being-towards-death encrusts how we live in the present (whether we watch a bad movie for the nth time or construct something meaningful with our resources); in Dugin’s interpretation, being-towards-death is if we, like Uncle Howie, live life like we want to die. There are plenty of people who do live life this way, but I don’t think they are me (or you). This is one insight of Dugin’s I savor, though I am repulsed by his monumental racism towards Ukrainians and his duplicity towards concepts like race and racism as such. Who is Dugin and what should we take away from him?
AT: For me, Dugin isn’t actually that interesting or novel. He is a dime a dozen propagandist, following a formula that countless of his ilk have, and are currently, employing successfully. Obvious truths, interlaced with some genuinely thoughtful insights, sandwich big lies. The magnitude of the lie, when properly infused between obvious truths and thoughtful insights, is critical in acceptance of the lie. The bigger the lie, the more likely people believe it.
Dugin takes a lead role in The Stone Wall as a tool, one necessary for me to make my greater points. That is all the man is, a tool, pun intended. Throughout The Stone Wall I implore the readers to engage with their most cherished beliefs, to dissect problems that may cause them great pain. I decided to lean on Aleksandr Dugin, as he was the closest individual I could engage with that represents a racial attack on the ethnicity I most closely identify with. This is a man that has stated, to paraphrase, that Ukrainians are not Slavic people, but rather some species of subhumans that have crawled up from the sewers. He’s called for the nuclear obliteration of Ukraine.
In the chapters preceding those focused on Dugin, I asked you to engage with me on the rising antisemitism, controversies surrounding the Holocaust, and the historical complexity behind issues important to your people, the Jewish people (predominantly Ashkenazi). Next, we engaged in the intertwined history of the Ashkenazi Jews, and various oppressed Slavic tribes in modern Ukraine, or rather the Pale of Settlement, and how that history has causatively contributed to the modern conflict. You did so without flinching.
In the next section, I ask the readers to question everything they think they know, good and bad, on the debate regarding men and women. The section after that attacks the political ideologies permeating the far Left, and the far Right. The final section attacks everything we believe we know about power and authority. As you are aware, not a single editor came through The Stone Wall “unscathed,” without having been triggered, upset, angered about one point or another. I did not come through The Stone Wall unscathed, and just thinking about certain points, fiery debates, and truths that had to be confronted still momentarily overwhelms me.
Dugin was a tool, a symbol to show you and the other editors, and also now that we are complete, the readers, that I am prepared to suffer with you all down the same path I am asking you to walk. We must suffer, because through suffering we gain clarity, and perhaps only through suffering can true clarity be achieved. Uncle Howie, for me, is the being-towards-death of a man that is resigned to accept great and sustained suffering for the sole reason that he refuses to purposefully walk into the fire, intentionally subject himself to existential pain, in order to come through a reborn, stronger man. It’s a tragic fate that the majority of us, to varying extents, accept with a whimper. For Uncle Howie, almost dying is the only time he feels alive, because being alive makes him want to die. I say this not aware of the character, only based on the archetype you provided.
The fire is painful, but worth it—if you’re strong enough to endure. The forewords written by yourself, and many of the other editors, are I believe a testament to this assertion.
VG: I disagree only somewhat in your claim that Dugin is “a dime a dozen propagandist.” He has read Heidegger, if only to appropriate him for a political vision that I compared to Zen Buddhism (more on that in The Stone Wall). Few propagandists read Heidegger, even to appropriate him. I still recommend Heidegger’s Being and Time (especially the Joan Stambaugh edition) because it is among the most therapeutic books I’ve ever read, say whatever else you want about it.
You are right that Uncle Howie “is the being-towards-death of a man that is resigned to accept great and sustained suffering for the sole reason that he refuses to purposefully walk into the fire…to come through a reborn, stronger man.” Though there are many of these types, as you note, who accept this fate with a whimper. Or perhaps with a celebration. Howie’s most famous media appearance is his role in Necro’s video for “I Need Drugs,” which shows Howie and his companion, an Orthodox Jewish man wearing a kippah, shooting up heroin in a dingy New York apartment while Necro raps gleefully in front of them. It’s among the most disturbing videos put to film, akin to the low-rent horror movies that inspired it, but it is also a testament to a creative expression of a man’s singular artistic vision. In this way Necro’s video reminds me of Being and Time.
I often go back to art because it seems to me the closest thing to salvation in an otherwise worthless life, a life that does not examine itself, that does not subject itself to existential pain, as you put it. But this is an incomplete impetus, for the reason that one cannot burn a candle at both ends, except to give your enemies a lovely sight.
Besides art, there is truth, and, as Heidegger puts it, “Art is truth setting itself to work.” In particular,
What is at work in the work? Van Gogh’s painting is the opening up of what the tool, the pair of peasant shoes, in truth is. This being stepped out into the unconcealedness of its being. The unconcealedness of beings is called by the Greeks ἀλήθεια. We say truth and think little enough by this word. In the work, if there happens an opening up of beings into what and how they are, a happening of truth is at work. … In the work of art, the truth of beings has set itself to work. “To set,” in German “setzen,” says here: to bring to stand. A being, a pair of peasant shoes, comes to stand in the work in the light of its being. The being of beings comes into the steadiness of its shining. … The essence of art would then be this: The setting-itself-to-work of the truth of beings. But up until now art had to do with the beautiful and beauty, and not with truth. The arts that bring forth such works are called, to distinguish them from the arts of handwork that make tools, the fine arts. In fine art, the art itself is not beautiful, but it is called so because it brings forth the beautiful. Truth, by contrast, belongs in logic. Beauty, however, is reserved for aesthetics.
Necro’s video is not beautiful but it is true. And, as Heidegger implies here and doesn’t quite establish linearly, truth and beauty are related to each other for what I would argue is evolutionary reasons. The first ever tools created by hominins that became homo sapiens are hand axes (bifaces) that were simultaneously hunting tools (music, incidentally, originates from hunting) and decorative necklaces. Human survival was in this way predicated on beauty, and I think the linguistic remnant wherein we describe everything from an athletic performance to a courtroom defense as ‘beautiful’ is evidence for this.
You are right that reading, editing, and contributing to The Stone Wall was an intellectual fire, for myself and the other editors. I am reminded of the phrase “fire, walk with me” which appears in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks (speaking of a singular artistic vision!) and which refers to the idea that one must step into the world of spirits to find out the hidden, paranormal truth that mars the occult Twin Peaks universe. The secular way to view this lesson is to wrestle with your own shadow in order to integrate it. In the Jungian sense, it is to integrate that part of you that (speaking for myself) can engage in philosophical hormesis while still appreciating the base reality that gives birth to a Necro or a David Lynch, for better or for worse.
AT: What defines a propagandist is effect, their method for gaining it, which philosopher they appropriate, or any other consideration being secondary. In terms of effect, Dugin is a dime a dozen.
As for walking the fire, I had a discussion with a friend at a charity event in the Hamptons yesterday. He’s Jewish, Israeli, and I’d previously told him about the book when we were writing it, including the dialectic we engaged surrounding the cycle of persecution with Jews (particular focus on Ashkenazi, the various Slavic and non-slavic groups in modern Ukraine, and how this has led to the modern problems. He had expressed back in December he couldn’t wait to read, so knowing I would see him at this event, I brought a copy. I reminded him that the writing was challenging, and no reader or editor escaped “unharmed,” relaying that it deeply affected and disturbed all of us, and that is the point.
He remarked “every one of us has it in us to become Hitler,” and that is exactly the point in the book. Only by walking into the fire and seeing parts of ourselves reflected back at us from the flames can we come to terms with human nature, because it is our own nature. Only by coming to terms that these tendencies are, at least in part, living within each of us can we strive to live a life of intention, to build a society through careful thought and wisdom, where we mitigate the worst, bring out the best, and do everything we can to ensure that the atrocities of the past do not repeat themselves. If we avoid this pain, because facing ourselves is too hard for us to accept, they—meaning the atrocities of the past—certainly will repeat, at least in some capacity, eventually.
