Race and the Gods

My first column for Polytheist.com is up, an introductory discussion regarding Race, the State, and Modernity in Polytheism.

The various Polytheisms, unfortunately, have under-developed understandings of race, the State, and the Modern itself, understandings which leave them them frightfully open to co-option by reactionary, “New Right” theorists. In response to such incursions, supporters of Liberal-Capitalism can rightly point to racist tendencies within Paganism, but they are not the only accurate critics: Leftist theorists, too, have continuously pointed to Pagan-Polytheist acceptances of racial theories and have suggested that such tendencies are inherent to Polytheism, particularly in aspects of cultural and ethnic re-construction.

 

It’s heavily inspired by recent discussions about antifascist critiques of Heathenism and cultural reconstructionism.  Also, some events which compelled me to cut off tentative ties with Celtic Reconstructionism (they’ve got some desperately unaddressed racialist issues they need to address, and even some of the most liberal amongst them fail to call out racialist tendencies).  It’s also related to something else though–the “New Right” (that is, the racialist Right) is not all wrong.  Their racism is ridiculous, but their critiques of Modern Capitalism are correct.  They just, unfortunately, blame it all on non-Whites, ignoring the fact that the wealthy and powerful who are fucking them over are, guess what?  White.