Svetislav Basara - The Cyclist Conspiracy

That dream soon became a reality, but I remained a royalist. I was not led astray by fashion. I justified it like this: if the Lord had wanted to create a multitude, he would have made many people, not just one as he did, and that one — quite human from the outset — messed it all up. If things really are like that, I thought, then one should be disunified and in disaccord at all costs.

The second, quite important, element for my conversion was the heraldry. Probably because of my humble background, I had always felt veneration toward the coats-of-arms of the royal and noble families; all those lions and eagles excited me to tears with their radiant grandeur. Yes, I know, not everything was noble in the good old days, but things were visually better shaped and much less naïve than the red pieces of linen that my former comrades used to hang on the façades of buildings immediately after winning, where it would say that everything is excellent and that it will be even better. To make matters worse, the masses believed that everything really was excellent and that it would be even better. (The power of the written word is enormous and that is why they control it so carefully.) Actually I was offended by the childishness of the attempt to convince me (or anyone else) that I came from an ape, that I am now a man, and that I should be happy because of that. Above all, in this world the possibility does not exist, nor even the right, for someone to be happy, and everyone knows this but no one is willing to admit it. Because of cowardice, at that. That is why the kids in the schools have to learn commonplace lies instead of being taught about Nagarjuna’s metaphysics and the texts of St. Augustine.

On the other hand, the consciousness in me grew that the royalist option is not a degradation but an advancement, because this all-encompassing democratization has led to nihilism. Sometimes it is progressive to go backwards. Just as the world was made from nothing, I also came into being from nihilism. I realized that I was given a message from the Lord. The difference between the Old Testament prophets and me, in a moral sense, and all other senses, was more than evident, naturally to my detriment. But the times had changed, again to my detriment; people now are of ever weaker quality. So it is — it is only right that, for the imbeciles (as people are), a prophet should be an imbecile (like I am). I supposed, by analogy with the Old Testament, that persecution awaited me. The character of the homo sapiens , that character which anthropologists, psychologists and all the rest of that breed do not mention, but which is most typical of the species, is that it does not want to hear the truth about itself and it is ready to kill in order not to hear it. And the truth is short and clear: we are vermin and perverts. And yet, liking to hear flattery, that homo gets suckered by the most fantastic of lies. Still, wherever there is vanity, there is also Nemesis, and Nemesis is the cruelest to those for whom the vanity is unfounded: toward all those individuals of humble backgrounds who want to be emancipated, who are proud of their handicap.

And then, there was the love of work, the glorification of day-laboring, the savageness in the coalmines — it filled me with a quiet, secret hatred. God does not do anything, that was proven by St. Augustine in De Civitate Dei. I swore a hundred times that I would never do anything. I comforted myself with the thought: Perhaps my laziness is evidence that I was a marquis or baron in a previous incarnation. Then there is that nonsense about historical progress: The poverty of the slaveholding system! The darkness of medieval feudalism! Nonsense after nonsense. Let us examine it: the slave worked, he got food and clothing and had no freedom of movement. All right. In the feudal system (for which I have a weakness), the serf worked, got a little more food and clothing and had no freedom of movement. That’s all right, too. Let’s see what kind of progress the emancipators brought us. Now the worker (supposedly) has unlimited freedom of movement, his salary is enough (barely) for food and clothing, but not for traveling. I just want to tell you — and this is a truly important point in the initiation — that nothing in history changes except the forms. Nothing and never important. Only gentlemanliness, nobility and politeness perish. And here is an example: try to imagine the beauty of a medieval hunt, where people went with bow and arrow on horseback, and then compare such a hunt with the modern hunting trips of the aristocrats where “the hunters,” steeped in vodka, shoot guns at deer that have been drugged and tied down.

In the circle of my closest friends, two opinions ruled about my conversion. One — that I was striking a pose, the other — that I had lost my mind. The matter stood — half and half. To be honest, those facts, that I was striking a pose and losing my mind, did not bother me in the least. On the contrary. First: every opinion is a pose, nothing can be done about that. Death is also a pose. Is there anything more artificial than a corpse? And then: What’s wrong with losing your mind? That is just, if I may use political jargon, turning away from the wrong direction. I never put much stock in the human mind. Nor in heroism, for that matter. I think that heroism is the highest degree of cowardice. A man becomes afraid of death and, come on now, we do it spontaneously, rushing at a foxhole, disposing of our fright and shouting HOOORRRAAY! we die and remain in the memories of our progeny not as cowards who committed suicide, but as heroes. Since the dawn of time it has been that way, and our progeny does not care about it. Human stupidity is eternal. Moreover, it is eternity itself. Whoever recognizes that, whoever despises the wisdom of the world, becomes immortal.

The equation is quite simple: If I think that I am stupid, I am wise and immortal; if I think that I am smart, I am stupid and dead. Çulabi, nota bene. It was revealed to me that I am an immortal being, but that did not offer me any relief. Au contraire. I felt better when I was a nihilist; nihilists generally feel better than everybody else. At least at the beginning, while they are still numbed by the vanity, like Nietzsche who bombastically declared the death of God and then ended up dying himself. Now, one can shout in tranquility, “Nietzsche is dead,” and that will be completely correct. But about God, still nothing is known; he is still surrounded by the unknown, which is a trait that especially attracted me to Him. Pomp and circumstance — that is for the rabble. One should turn to the secretive, to the dark: to secret societies, secret fraternities, and even to secret agents, why not. I, for example, felt a certain attraction toward the secret police just because they do everything far from the eyes of the public. But Nietzsche loved noise. He went so far in his mindless love of power that he began to anticipate Stalin visually: same haircut, same moustache, and the same stare. But he did not succeed. Stalin is out of reach.

The deeper I sank into obscurantism, the more sympathy I felt for, now deceased, Joseph Vissarionovich. I obtained his picture (just as you once did) and hung it on the wall next to my picture of the Savior. I admit, led astray by propaganda and democratic ideas, for a time I was an anti-Stalinist. But, as I matured spiritually, it became clear to me that Stalin was unjustly slandered according to the usual practice of humankind that it always despises its best sons. Çulabi, nota bene. As soon as the mob begins to spit on someone, that person should be admired. Joseph Vissarionovich was supposed to serve as a sacrificial lamb, so that a multitude of crimes could be dumped on him. Matters stand quite differently: the mob wants to denounce, to destroy, to desecrate, to kill. Let us not be deceived; one single man cannot turn millions into evildoers unless they are already evildoers in the depths of their souls. Here, Stalin was, if I may say it that way, just a catalyst; he directed the aggression of the masses so that destruction came to those who would have executed Satan’s plans in their entirety. Never forget that, in recent times, evil wears the mask of the good.