Below are the opening remarks I delivered at The April Event held in Toronto. There will be a video recording of the event including all the speeches released in the coming months.
Hello, my name is Dimes, and I will be the MC tonight. I host a show called Blood $atellite and I helped plan this event. I’d like to take this time to thank our esteemed speakers for arriving from near and far to bless us with their wisdom: Catgirl Kulak, Ferryman’s Toll, and Dr. Ricardo Duchesne. I’d also like to thank the other luminaries we have in the audience for making attendance even more worthwhile.
I’d also like to take some time just at the top to thank all of you amazing regulars who took the time to come here tonight. Everything in here is for your partaking: eat and drink and be merry. Especially as this officially counts as a birthday party as per our event permit, so as we go about this extravaganza please ensure you are silently, privately singing the birthday song in your mind. Do not telegraph you are doing it by gazing at me. I should not know.
At this point I must include an important message that I hope everyone hearing my voice will internalize. Company of Adventurers, the April Event, and the speakers you’ll be hearing from soon all denounce violence, terrorism, and any advocacy that falls outside the boundaries of hate speech outlined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, especially as defined by Bill C-9 otherwise known as the Combatting Hate Act.
Please clap.
These are not your vilified Far Right Schizos. Even someone such as myself, let it be said, as true now as when it is about to be said, that I am a sweaterboy cutie. I am indeed someone that could be brought home to the family for gracious interrogation. I have nothing to fear, nothing to hide. They ask me, “where do you stand on the holocaust?” I say “hey, whoa, buy me a drink first!” They press me further, I say “look, don’t worry,” and then I give them two thumbs up. They ask, “wait what do you mean by that?” and I go “HAAAAAAAAAH?”
I’ll now direct your attention to the far room where you will find a merch table. Here you will find copies of Dr. Duchesne’s most recent book “Greatness and Ruin,” you will also find some clothing for sale care of Good Svffer and Operation Ensign. You can pay for this with cash, credit, or debit as we have a card reader at the table. If you get back there and find someone not attending the table to make payments, I trust you will wait until they arrive as they may be monetarily tending to other matters.
Now if you’ll forgive a coalhead oldtroon loudmouth, I’d like to just say a few words.
I won’t take up too much of your time, because you didn’t pay to see me. Hell, I may not even be what you expected to see when you listen to Blood $atellite your favorite show’s favorite show’s favorite show. Maybe you had an image in your head of what I looked like, I know how it is. In your mind’s eye you pictured The Golden One, obviously. I get it. You imagined a cocaine hunk like Elijah Schaffer, I KNOW. UGH! But here’s the thing: you don’t need to live this way; you can employ theatre of the mind. You can close your eyes and return, just like we do with our politics.
Imagine me as a buff Swede. Imagine my plus one standing right there at the front row, Rachel Gilmore. She’s so supportive. She’s watching me, her hands clasped in prayer, as she often does. She has heard me rehearse this very speech half a dozen times muffled through the door, but she’s wearing an expression like she’s hearing it for the first time. She’s giving me girlfriend eyes, you know those eyes? I’m her world. We complete each other. After I’m done talking she claps excitedly, I ask how it was, how did I sound, she says it was great. I say “aw I dunno, I think I said Catgirl Kramer.” She assures me nobody noticed.
After the show, back at the hotel, it’s a modest hotel because we don’t have a lot of money, but we don’t need a lot of money. We love the struggle. We kick off our shoes, she wants to celebrate, but I am tired and she holds me, stroking my hair. Something like that close your eyes you bastards. I say I’ll be up in a minute I’m just resting my eyes, but she knows. And she smiles knowingly, assured my heart is pure but my body is weak.
My body is treacherous.
I get text on phone, vvvvt vvvvt. She assumes it’s some micro niche eceleb groupie that I carry around in my pocket like so many dollars and cents. The phone is lit up right there, maybe it’s an emergency though, she doesn’t snoop. She checks it. It’s Fortissax, he’s asking how it went. It’s Canada’s Fortissax. She puts the phone down. It vibrates again, vvvt vvvvvt. Then he asks if there were any French girls there. That’s our Fortissax. He needs a thick woman, he needs a French woman, this is known. He’s gonna do it. We’re going to get him there.
The next event is going to be his wedding, we’re all gonna be there. He split the difference and married an American Creole woman. The Canadian Pagan ceremony is beautiful, they’re standing face to face below, I assume some sort of fucking longboat covered in bones or whatever. They’re perfect for each other. But she’s sick. She’s dying. She’s gonna get better. She’s gonna lick this thing. But maybe she doesn’t. Maybe Goat Odin has different plan. It takes a great man to marry a dying woman; it speaks to his character. It’s all class.
Anyway, so as I said the merch table only takes tap cards so if you need a PIN you might just have to pay cash, and there’s an ATM nearby.
The ground has shifted beneath us and there is more opportunity than ever before to get people on board with what we want. But it is no longer about jailbreaking people out of ideas or exposing them to truth.
Before we were entranced by fantasies of what would happen when our ideas, or even our principles, were accepted by the mainstream. We dreamt of what would happen when we win the culture war. We are winning now more than any time I can remember, but the conflict now is over the model of what winning looks like. Winning does not mean that you have won; nobody announces that they are achieving victory even as it is in sight. “I am becoming victorious.”
That’s the noxious nature of that word which pollutes our thinking.
Everyone talks about legacy, and how important that is. Sometimes that is self-serving, since many of these people have no relationship with their immediate family. But it is better than nothin; looking ahead and shouldering sacrifice is better than nihilism. The desire to create something permanent and righteous is important. But we rarely think ahead to the other side of this struggle, hypothesizing when this is all over and the history books recount what happened here. And they will write about what happened here. All the sordid little dramas will be accounted, all the feuds tallied, all the betrayals highlighted. The good works glossed over as they look for failures to humanize you.
Do you ever think about what they will say about you after you are gone, about your role in what is happening now? Have you accomplished good works, have you behaved in an esteemable way? Have you shown bravery, or behaved cowardly? Have you helped those around you, or just been the most prolific critic? The image you cultivate – your dissident brand – that can be manipulated. That can be appropriated. The ideas you develop and the concepts you construct, these can be adopted by your opponents even after they gracelessly heelturn.
That’s what’s happening now, as I am sure you have noticed: ideas that would have been prosecutable 5 years ago are embraced by the mainstream with the vibe of a teenage girl wearing a Che Guevara shirt. All along the way, you find yourself further boxed out of the conversation. There was no redemption, there was no vindication. And shame on us, shame on me for expecting any different.
They’re never going to admit you were ever correct about anything. Their history books are being written as we speak, and theirs tell how they were reasonable the entire time and only sensibly – intelligently – changed their minds at the precise moment it made sense. They’ll just pretend all the things you said were things they said. I hope you kept screenshots of every claim and evidence of each exchange because it soon becomes a knife fight in the gas light.
The things you do, even the failed attempts, that’s your real legacy.
I am sure there are many Gods represented in this room but one thing we have in common is a sense that one day our deeds will be weighed in full, and if you died tomorrow what would the sum of these discrete actions be?
Right now, you are already more attuned and effective than most, but increasingly you will find yourself beset on all sides by enemies of action. It’s always easier to be vaguely correct on the internet than brazenly imperfect in public. But these are the things they will speak about when you are gone, for better or worse.
Right now is what winning feels like. It feels like a robbery. But you have a wealth these pretenders, these grifters, these jackals will never possess. We measure our success by how many ideological sluts don rubber skin suits with our faces emblazoned on them. All that matters is the work that has to be done.
Thank you for coming to the April Event, let’s have some fun.