I got Ivan Brunetti’s Schizo #2 in the mail today and read it. Brunetti has a gift for articulating the fantasies some of us (just me? I don’t know what your inner life is like) drift toward.

Anarchy is free-form fascism. Animals already live in anarchy: they act only by imprinted instinct and follow no written law, so the strong have every right to oppress the weak. In nature, there is no such thing as a crime. And where did this lifestyle [leave] our friends in the animal kingdom? [At] our mercy […] my view my sound fascistic, and I guess my world view is almost identical to that of a fascist. The only difference is that a true fascist likes the world as it is, whereas I fucking [hate it.]

Eight years ago David Buss asked if people had evolved psychological mechanisms - “modules” - for killing other humans in certain contexts. I’m sure he meant “if” in a technical sense centered around “evolved,” which we can’t really know - but this is question-begging from a guy who specializes in strategies to prevent sexual victimization and human prestige criteria. The answer is yes, agrees Brunetti, Noé, Houellebecq, Lovecraft: four members of the literature of hatred. Always the awareness of being chewed and crushed by forces beyond human control. Whether strong or weak, there are no strategies for individual resistance except involuntary stupidity, ignorance, or suicide. It isn’t pretty: Houellebecq on Lovecraft’s racism, from his excellent essay H.P.L.: Against The World, Against Life:

It was in New York that his racist opinions turned into a full-fledged racist neurosis. Being poor, he was forced to live in the same neighborhoods as the “obscene, repulsive, nightmarish” immigrants. He would brush past them on the streets and in public parks. He was jostled by “greasy sneering half-castes,” by “hideous negroes that resemble gigantic chimpanzees” in the subway. And in the long lines of job seekers he came across them again and realized to his horror that his own aristocratic bearing and refined education tempered with his “balanced conservatism” brought him no advantage. His currency was worth nothing here in Babylon; here wiles and brute force reigned supreme, here “rat-faced Jews” and “monstrous half-breeds skip about rolling on their heels absurdly.” This is no longer the WASP’s well-bred racism; it is the brutal hatred of a trapped animal who is forced to share his cage with other different and frightening creatures.

Against the backdrop of today’s literary mawkishness - whether the lies of James Frey and “JT Leroy” will translate into point losses in the marketplace - here is something which flashes like a diamond: fear.