Apollo, Dionysius, and the Odd Child Ares
By Quirked Up Nationalist
Friedrich Nietzsche supposed in art there exist two opposing and dancing spirits, the Apollonian and the Dionysian. The former exudes order, rationality, and wisdom through philosophy, whereas the latter indulges in base sentiments of gluttony, sporadic action, and lust. These spirits wax and wane, diametrically opposed to one another and exist best when balanced with one another. It is within my view that these spirits have seeped into politics. Art may be looked away from and passed over, yet politics in our age of the democratic Leviathan it may not be ignored. To ignore it is to offend and admonish it for being displeasing. To not engage in either of the two spirits in politics is to make yourself an enemy of followers of both. So once everyone is subscribed to the ideas of one or the other, the ideas are debated, and one gains power. The other reacts after the effects of the policies are felt and power changes hands after a debate. And power must change hands, or else those in power will begin to split themselves from complacency into new smaller camps, thereby giving power to the other camp, regardless. Two generations pass and once both camps have held power they debate for a third time.
This time there is palpable friction stemming from the first two debates and tenures, and both spirits fail to capture the heart of the people. The populace is divided into the tribes of progress and romance, and the tribal impetus hijacks the people from the wisdom that teaches balance as the healthy solution. The people, believing that extremism is superior to balance, desire a dictatorship of their politics. Moderates are seen as cowards or traitors, no better than the ‘others,’ and partisanship becomes the driving force of both camps. The people- seeing that their side will not remain in power forever under plural rule- resolve to destroy the opposing force. The people are seized by a spirit of violence, of war, the Aresian spirit. American political life cycles through Nietzschean aesthetic modes- Apollo, Dionysus, and Ares culminating in periodic collapse.
Planned Prosperity In 1945 the Greatest Generation returned from their service in the Second Great War to find a nation that had, in their absence, shifted into a different place in the world. The bureaucratic expansion that had taken place during the Great Depression remained as a part of life, rather than withering away in the post-war optimism. The families that exploded in size entering the 1950s were not living in the same free fashion of opulence that those of the 1920s were. It was greater, but performative, more controlled, monitored and managed not only by the local community, but the state as well. Prior to the intrusion of the government into citizens’ lives in the 30s, elections and political moods were divided along ethnic and state lines. Parties represented not ideas or theory, but regions and peoples. This died during the war, and parties rode the government expansion like barnacles on a ship. The bureaucracy exchanged that tribal inclination for a political one, the parties themselves becoming the identity around which people formed. Fiscal Conservatism, Socialism, Civic Nationalism, Globalism, and other political capeshittery.
The parties then, in that short period between 1945 and 1950, became inhabited not by the goals of different groups of Americans, but the artistic spirits that exist in political ideas separate from the tribal drive of man. The spirits however became the tribes through their manifestation in the people, and lost the potential for balance. In the 1950s the Apollonian spirit filled the American people; undoubtedly due to war veterans of a more bigoted inclination returning home in victory, and being the driving force of the public Geist. The Civil Rights Act—for example was passed significantly in part as a way to honor President Kennedy, and even then it faced push back. A desire for structure, order, and romanticism for an era of a homogenous America which the Apollonian drivers essentially missed out on was the foundation for the ‘50s, and also for the youthful revolution that followed. Violence and the Aresian had been exhausted overseas in Europe and the Pacific, so the expansive Big government was both tolerable and preferred to the constituent class in their desire for order.
In their desire for the American dream and their own personal movie-star life, the Greatest Generation created a vast generation of teenagers and young adults that grew up not being taught by their elders- but being told what society should be like. The mist surrounding progressivism and the Dionysian that originated from the Apollonian drivers’ near unanimous presence in the structures of power led to ideological curiosity among the youth. The 1960s gave the Boomers their first gasp of influence, as the rising star of the public spirit, paired with the immense size of the generation compared to their parents. The Dionysian spirit was ignited, and the desire for overturning of the powers that be as an act of maturing and overcoming a past trauma took root. The Aresian first breathed life here, and was an agent of the Dionysian as a tool of debate. Full-scale violence was repressed for controlled, surgical aggression. This materialized as protesting for social justice, hippies wandering the country, experimenting with drug use, and the first rise of draft dodging during the early years of the Vietnam war.
And with these two ideas rising to a near equal prominence by the end of the 1960s, the debate between which was better ensued and promptly stagnated. The structurally secure gerontocracy stumbled over Vietnam and Watergate. The rebellious spirited youth were unable to make headway in implementing their ideas in the halls of power. The levers of authority could not decide which spirit was more dominant. So the spirits fell away, and both camps became possessed by the spirit of war and violence, the Aresian spirit. The struggling revolution took a violent tone with Weather Underground, the Symbionese Liberation Army, the Black Liberation Army, and many other splinter groups forming in order to trigger a global revolution from the public squares of Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia. It did not end suddenly in 1980, but instead tapered off as all violence does, however it drew most blood in the 1970s, prominently with the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol bombings by Weather Underground.
And in a mirrored fashion to how the far-left was early in their violence, beginning in the late 1960s, the far-right’s violence lasted beyond the decade, into the early 1980s. This is where the violence mobilized into groups such as the Aryan Brotherhood, The Order, the C.S.A. group, and a wave of K.K.K. and Skin-head Nazism. These movements extracted their vengeance against society with formations of militant compounds, bank and armored truck robberies, shootouts with federal authorities, bombings of federal institutions and centers of Jewish culture, and assassinations of public figures. It dropped off in intensity in the middle ‘80s, mainly due to a rebounding of society during the resurgence of the Apollonian spirit in the Reagan administration’s early years. The groups insisted on violence even into Reagan’s second term, certainly so that all their hard work didn’t go to waste, however the general will of the people was at this point turned off from the idea of a race war, guiding the Aresian back into the Apollonian.
“LOVE, the natural, healthy kind, is indeed what makes the world go round, and is the most beautiful, holy miracle we ever see here on this earth. BUT WITHOUT A DEADLY HATE OF THAT WHICH THREATENS WHAT WE LOVE, LOVE IS AN EMPTY WORD, A CATCHWORD FOR HIPPIES, QUEERS, AND COWARDS.”
-George Lincoln Rockwell
The 1980s was a mostly successful attempt by the American Right to ‘return’ to the ‘50s and the desire for order. The Communists were emboldened by the corrupt and ineffective presidencies of the ‘70s, and America would need a strongman that sought to bring back the ferocity that America demonstrated in Korea and the infant years of Vietnam. Reagan filled this slot with overwhelming approval from the public, and romanticism and order became the status quo. Just as our parents, senators, and teachers all sermonize us about the glory of the ‘80s, and how the difficult life of the wandering generation X youth made them into the hardened adults of today, so to were they sermonized by their parents, senators, and teachers about how things were better in the ‘50s, before progressivism, socialism, feminism, and other fanciful notions took root in the mutinous youths.
The Apollonian served America well, and with the anti-communist warpath that Reagan set us on, the Soviet Union was pushed over the edge. The traditionalists tried to break the cycle with the continuation of their ideals into the next decade with Bush Senior’s Administration, however Dionysus- the spirit of theater here, not the aforementioned spirit- will not be besmirched by our hubris. The Ross Perot 1992 candidacy was the first example of a spirit cannibalizing itself. The Apollonian grew restless on the now silent ramparts of power, and stepped down from its post to wander the halls of knowledge in the keep that it enjoyed from its authority. There was no enemy to fight, so surely if it were to spend its time debating itself and courting various ideas within its realm, it could do so unmolested by the Dionysian- this time the aforementioned spirit.
In 1992 twelve years of Republican presidential dominance came to an end, courtesy of a split ballot between two conservative candidates and one progressive. The tent must be big, because whoever does not postpone the details for the broader strokes will hand the reins of power over to the ideological ‘other.’
The 1990s were, in truth, not meant to be Apollonian, regardless of how foolhardy the conservative political establishment was in strategy. The Cold War ended in 1991, technology broke down barriers between nations giving rise to xenophilia, and globalism was idealized as the logical end of not just social progress, but of technology itself. Clinton was an attempt by the Dionysian to reconcile the camps, with globalist policies like NAFTA, gun reform, and social reform in order to include minority communities in economic growth being policies for the party base’s enjoyment. Mirrored to that, the strengthening of police, stronger criminal punishments, and fiscal skepticism attempting to reach across the political aisle. In this cycle the Dionysian had a stronger seat of power, and the Apollonian was the disenfranchised camp.
Prior to this decade issues were political or necessary to resolve, but now every issue was political. If it was necessary to resolve, then negotiations were just a little bit more tense. Young people ignored politics to indulge themselves in debauchery and live what little life they had experienced up to that point to their greatest physical potential. Despite the issues that came from this hedonism, the ‘90s are rightfully considered to be the peak of western civilization. They had the face of Apollo but the spirit of Dionysus, the balance which we have run from so desperately in our tribalism.
However the tribalism remained, and the balance was upended all the same. The Aresian spirit rose on the right in opposition to globalism, Big Government, Federal Terror, and itemization of the system into economic units- the death of humanity. Ruby Ridge and Waco made the government into a boogeyman, and the following decade of violence was a reaction to the idea of an oppressive left-wing government. Militias became far more common, social life became political for even the common man, leftists responded to the dual loyalties of the government with eco-terrorism, and it peaked in 1995 with the Oklahoma City Bombing. An act against pre-socialist federal oppression, the attack by Timothy McVeigh was meant to inaugurate the next era of Aresian violence, and while it did trigger the government to react with more strong-handed policy, it still failed in its full intention. And the Dionysian was not asleep in its preparation, either. Rodney King and his martyrdom led to LA facing the worst riots in recent history.
Social justice has to march on, and it will not wait for procedure in the halls of power. The 2000s were meant to be the violent era, and the militant fervor of the ‘90s was only meant to be the crescendo to a far more violent, deadly peak. The next millennium would’ve begun with two Waco Sieges a year, and twice as many OKC attacks. Race riots would happen weekly and people would view them from the hills outside cities in exchange for the cinema. But the blood was not meant to be drawn out slowly. George W. Bush was inaugurated on January 20th, 2001 following a contentious election only rivaled in court violence by the 2020 election. Eight months and twenty one days later, Islamic extremists used four planes to kill nearly 3,000 American citizens in the space of six hours. The Aresian spirit lasted not ten years, but hardly even ten hours. Following the attack, Americans united under one cause and banner, and that was vengeful patriotism. The violence of the ‘90s was forgotten in the trauma, and the Apollonian clambered back into the seat of power overnight.
Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq, and so many others became the target of the Aresian spirit, now channeled through the Apollonian desire for order and tradition. George Bush became the head of the nation in the same way that Lincoln was a response to the Confederacy, his presidency becoming a vehicle for a very specific conflict, rather than guiding the nation in all aspects of policy like most peace-time presidents have done. Even more than the passive romanticism of the ‘50s and ‘80s, the 2000s ensouled the Apollonian in its active constituents of directed violence, combative excellence, and a full contempt for the enemy in warfare, unless they fight as the ancient heroes did. The Patriot Act was the next step after Clinton’s anti-terror legislation, however now that it was directed at a certain target and not a broad definition of ‘terrorist,’ even the most volatile neo-Nazis and McVeigh supporters cheered on the law.
The Apollonian spirit extends outside of politics now, the civilian itself becoming a member of the effort to curtail terror through cooperation with the newfound Department of Homeland Security. And where faith once kept man spiritual, the latest faith (and therefore most popular to the masses) of new age evangelism exists not for spiritual, but civic guidance in how best to serve the collective interest of the nation. The Apollonian filled the American man, woman, and child for eight long years. But as we know, it will not last. Not even by his own failures will the king be returned to serfdom. It just will happen. In 2008 the financial market crashed following the collapse of the mortgage bond market. A pessimism descended over the people, and the Apollonian spirit went back out to the field. The Dionysian absurdism replaced that pessimism and the people loved it for that reason. The individual was broke, soon homeless, and had been cheated out of the American dream. But in between weekends where men and women worshipped themselves as an affront to their looming poverty, they were driven to act. Why did 2008 kill the middle class? Some said the government, others said the rich, but everyone agreed that change had to happen. The Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter all existed to liberate all people from all chains, and they would begin with the system that had yoked them as servants; it wasn’t meant to be a workers revolution, but a revolution against an unethical class of elites.
It did not remain so, and soon after their conception all class-centric movements descended into culture wars, infighting cannibalizing the movements. They splintered in their populist desire, one for a globalist cosmopolitan ideology which came to shape the Obama years, and one moving the right wing into the desert until 2015, when the MAGA party could coalesce as Trump rode down an escalator in New York. Until then the Dionysian spirit came to be understood as the neo-liberalist forces in power during the early and middle 2010s. Social Justice, radical feminism, racial reparations, political correctness- it all manifested in the public consciousness, a youthful rebirth from the tragic end of the last Apollonian era that would finally wrench the levers of power from the traditionalists once and for all, and the global liberation could happen peacefully. The people had hope, and wanted to save their country from bigotry and racism. They believed that you could scream all you want, but you couldn’t stop progress.
And their populism failed. Their flavor of it, in the least. In 2016, Donald Trump was elected President of the United States in a contentious election, however despite his fiscal conservatism and fiery rhetoric, at this point the people still largely believed in the Dionysian, even many of his supporters despite his semi-Apollonian political psyche. He did present a novel change, and that was a movement that was less romantic for the previous era, instead focusing more on order and rationality in policy. As with all late-stage Dionysian eras, there is an attempt to skip ahead to the fresh Apollonian spirit, and Trump nearly did it during his first term. He was popular enough, passed some large policies, and reversed a few small bills from the Obama era.
In the ‘90s the Apollonian era was ended by complacency, however this time the spark of the Apollonian spirit was cast out of power by hubris. Just like Dionysius and his theater, so too will Ares and his violence extract his tribute from our people. Covid-19 froze the world in 2020 and majorly caused Trump to lose his reelection bid that same year. Apollo was cast out. Joe Biden was elected in 2020 in a suspicious and hotly contested election, however while Obama was elected to bring society to a point where one could celebrate without end, Joe Biden was elected specifically to undo what Trump had done. In May of 2020 George Floyd’s death triggered a wave of violent protests and riots, reigniting the Dionysian desire for liberation and individual freedom, with the Aresian instinct for violence. Trump supporters under their own directive stormed the Capitol on January 6th in order to prevent the certification of the election. Ares has returned, but muted this time; thanks to the pandemic, no doubt. The violence was delayed, at least for a couple years. But it did continue. In 2021 two men were arrested while plotting a terror attack against the DNC headquarters in Sacramento. In 2022 an abortion clinic was firebombed in Pensacola (among over eighty other attacks of similar targets,) a racially motivated shooting took place in Buffalo, a man was arrested in an attempt to assassinate Brett Kavanaugh after the Roe v. Wade draft leak, a black supremacist shot up a subway car in New York, a man attacked an FBI field office in Cincinnati, and a failed state congressional candidate shot at his competitor’s houses in New Mexico. In 2023 a man shot up an outlet mall in Allen for racial motivations, and in Jacksonville a white man shot three black people before killing himself. In 2024 two men attempted to shoot and kill presidential candidate Donald Trump, once in Butler, Pennsylvania coming within inches of a fatal injury and a second time in West Palm Beach, Florida, only retreating when shot at by Secret Service agents. In 2025 an Islamic terrorist drove a truck through a crowd of people in New Orleans, an Army veteran blew up a Tesla truck in Las Vegas, a transgender shot up a church in Minneapolis, and on September 10th a man shot and killed the right-wing figure Charlie Kirk. Militant groups are slowly resurging, both on the right and the left. However this is not the full effect of Ares. This is his waking stirs. During his exile Donald Trump adopted more aspects of the Apollonian, and drew back from bipartisan efforts. Joe Biden’s administration was violent in the halls of power towards the right, and in return that procedural Aresian spirit has inhabited the right wing. Broadly speaking most violence thus far in this period has been done by the ruling powers, a novel shift from what we have seen in the past. And since September we have seen a lull in literal bloodshed. But it will not last.
Much like how the impatience and tribalism of man drives the two spirits into opposition, so too does it drive civilians from loyalty to the establishment and the unhurried crawl of bureaucracy. The war will not remain in the courts, and it will come out into the streets when the board is set in the midterms. Trump’s second administration has not been romantic for the past, like the Apollonian eras before, but instead one purely of order and national cohesion under a new social contract. It is my hypothesis that the Trump administration is saving many ‘nuclear options’ for legal warfare until after the midterms, and leftists are similarly restraining a reign of terror until either right before or soon after the midterms conclude. Both sides believe that if they can win the midterms, they will win the following presidential election through the shifting public favor. If the right wins, the left will unleash a strong wave of protests, riots, and possibly assassination attempts. They have precedent for that much. The right will unleash many of its ‘nuclear’ options here, with a stronger position in the government than they currently do. If the left wins, the right will escalate its legal war against the left in a heavier handed more dictatorial fashion, possibly going so far as refusing to certify election results. If it gets to this point, the left will begin undermining the institutions through the system, as well as engaging in violence outside in the streets. That will be the great escalation of this Aresian spirit’s era. Something else to keep in mind is that the eras are growing more vibrant, more potent in their essence.
Trump is more conservative than Bush, who was more conservative than Reagan, who was more conservative than Eisenhower. Obama was more progressive than Clinton, who was more progressive than Kennedy and Johnson. The 2000s were going to be more violent than the ‘70s. Logically speaking that means that the Aresian is going to be stronger in the coming years and entering the ‘30s than it has ever been. It will logically crescendo even higher in 2028 after the Presidential election to a point beyond the Days of Rage, Chattanooga, and OKC.
Perhaps all will happen in conjunction. We will become desensitized to the headlines, militant groups will openly represent themselves as guardians of local order, and in 2032 both tickets will be some form of, ‘We’re going to imprison or kill the other side.’ Maybe that’s dramatic. Perhaps the parties will resort to grassroots death squads and secret police forces instead of outright policy. But we won’t shy away from the violence. But democracy, the father of the spirits, demands that its children all get a turn. In ‘36 both tickets will be some form of, ‘bring the country back together.’ A return to sanity, surely. The Apollonian will win, order will prevail, and from that order people will begin to seek liberation from order, eventually sacrificing safety, and violence will return. Our optimism does not mean we aren’t going to pick up our guns when the next time comes around. There is no peaceful time to ‘return to,’ since it will lead to violence. There is no point at which the violence stops. Progress will keep running us into that same violence. This is our system, not just voting and barking at the TV. This is democracy, manifest. It is not what we should want to pass onto our children. An endless back-and-forth between rapid revolution and slow and steady descent into the same abysmally demoralizing end.
The cycle must end, but when and how? It will end when the social contract of civic or ideological nationalism regardless of whether it’s open to all or restricted in growth- is wiped out. Otherwise the system and its benefactors- the elites of all industries will perpetuate, and the violence will envelope our children just as it does to us. They may not admit it, but the leaders, anchors, and everyone else that holds power to some effect want an instantaneous violent foreign terror attack to replace the drawn out fraternal violence of the Aresian spirit. This is the most effective way to drive the cycle forward into the next peaceful period. It may even be a sustainable practice. A foreign terror attack even in this contentious era would unite the country around one flag. But this would not break the cycle; instead it would cement it for the next thirty years. And we want to break it, as established. We want perpetual national peace, not the principled fratricide of liberalism. In the words of Paine, “if there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.”
Instead of discussion and procedure, there must be a force which excludes itself from democracy, from the civic religion of liberal theory and political plurality. The Aresian spirit must be sustained long enough to either become a distinct political force- with the goal of upending the social contractor to outright destroy the system through the efficient cause of violence. Despite the peril, you must ignore the system, and seek not acceptance, but disdain by the ruling class. To this end, a collective, a fasces, must form, and invoke pageantry, patriotism, and at times violent force upon the nation. The ‘American’ must be defined, this identity should become the political religion of the collective. The Apollonian will protest in a love for the systems, procedures, and all other failed projects of the Constitution. The Dionysian will protest in a love for the cosmopolitan, a man free from all chains, including the obligation to father and fatherland. This is because the Apollonian and the Dionysian exist as products of this twisted violent system in which we exist. Without it the spirits would not exist. They are not individual beings, but instead they are the collective wills of the people, their tribal identities. Therefore the people will naturally see an attack on the system as an attack on them, as participants of the system. People have not lost their tribal labels, only exchanged them for ones that are not supposed to be tribal. Ideas are not meant to be tribes, but history will leave us all behind; even theory. Strengthen your resolve when your parents, brothers, sister, neighbors, and at times wives doubt, hate, and revile you. Your ascension beyond their political games trigger growing pains on their part, and they will accept you given time. They, too, will join this new way.
The collective is what liberalism failed to invoke; it is the Apollonian and the Dionysian in conjunction, in balance. It is born from the Aresian because that is the time of rebirth, of mutation, and of ideological diversity. The only principle of the collective is patriotism, all else is subject unto the needs of the nation. When liberation is needed, the Dionysian is indulged. When order must be imposed, the Apollonian is indulged.
A new tribal identity is formed here, just as we had prior to the 1930s. Where our pluralist democracy failed, collectivism the will of the daring few, imposed on the many—will reunite the country for a simple purpose, and that is lasting and stable peace among the constituents of the nation.
Important Announcements
Saturday Blockbuster!
The New Way in conjunction with Fifth Column Library is screening films relevant to our struggle each Saturday night at 8 pm EST.
This week we will be featuring The Goebbels Experiment by Lutz Hachmeister:
Through archival footage and dramatic readings of his personal writings, the life of National Socialist Germany's Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels, is examined.
White Power
The definitive edition of White Power by George Lincoln Rockwell has just been published by Fifth Column Library.
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The official version from Rockwell’s own party was poorly formatted.
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It was clearly edited to add bias or reference events that took place after Rockwell was killed.
So of we fixed those issues.
Our new edition includes:
Clean, readable typesetting
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