God’s Iconoclasm

“It was not until 733, when Charles Martel stopped the Moslem advance north of the Pyrenees, that this first great period of Islamic expansion came to an end. In just one hundred years time, the map of the venerable old Mediterranean world had practically been transformed from one vast Christian empire into a vast Islamic …

Sexually Transmitted Dracula

“For instance, Coppola has Van Helsing mention the word syphilis, which is the book’s ultimate taboo, but the whole point of Dracula as monster is that neither Stoker nor Harker can mention syphilis. The monster is, in effect, the sign that neither Stoker nor Harker can bring themselves to face the true cause of their …

Those Pesky Logical Conclusions

“In other words, horror is a kind of Enlightenment revisionism. Voltaire hoped for a society where religion and morals were abolished but where shopkeepers would still be honest. Sade showed the naiveté of that vision by carrying the premises upon which it was based to their logical conclusion” (E. Michael Jones, Monsters from the Id, …

The Past, Present and Potent

“Early in his tenure, Saddam Hussein announced his intentions to restore Iraq’s Babylonian heritage. He launched a meticulous, multi-billion-dollar excavation and reconstruction of the ancient city located sixty miles south of Baghdad, rebuilding a number of its most significant sites. They included Nechadnezzar’s opulent grand palace, the vast Esagila temple precinct, the beautiful Via Sacra …

Blinded Me With Science

“The parallels between Justine [by de Sade] and Frankenstein become obvious at this point. Sexual desire using science as a cover turns human beings into objects by promoting the notion that morals are either ‘unscientific’ or are a mere epiphenomenon of the mechanism as yet not understood ” (E. Michael Jones, Monsters from the Id, …

This Goes Way Back

“Israelis tenaciously hold on to the occupied territories of the West Bank because of promises made millenniums ago to the patriarch Abraham; Iraqis invade the lands of fellow Moslems in order to settle grudges that date back to the time of Nebuchadnezzar; Iranians stir up revolutionary passions that have lain dormant since the demise of …

Moral Dyslexia

“Mary Shelley, at this point in our narrative, did not understand all this, but by the time she had finished writing Frankenstein she did not see things Shelley’s way, either. She had by that time experienced the sadistic consequences of her sexual profligacy. Frankenstein was her attempt to make sense out of the conflict between …

Should Be Obvious

“The difference between Osama bin Laden and Eric Rudolph is the difference between aberrant acts and aberrant teachings. Any human being with a belief system can do abominable things. But abominable acts are more likely to come in greater numbers and frequency when they are encouraged and perpetuated by religious texts and those who teach …

Porn As Revolution

“The revolutionaries simply put to their own use the libido that Versailles had unleashed. Sade, who more explicitly than any other in France described and reveled in the link between pornography and political revolution, was not an aberration of eighteenth-century French culture, but the culmination of the French predilection for pornography” (E. Michael Jones, Monsters …