Bronze Age Pervert

Bronze Age Pervert (fl. 2013–present), also known as BAP, is a pseudonymous far-right Internet personality. According to Politico and The Atlantic, Costin Alamariu (born 1980), a Romanian-American writer, is the person behind the pseudonym. As of August 2023 he has more than 100,000 followers on Twitter.

In 2023, Politico identified the writer Costin Alamariu as the person behind the pseudonym, making reference to other articles and podcasts that had previously identified him. According to Politico, neither Alamariu nor BAP responded to requests for comment, and Alamariu did not deny being BAP when the association was previously made.

Alamariu was born in Romania in 1980 and immigrated to the U.S. with his family. He attended Newton South High School near Boston, majored in mathematics at MIT, and in philosophy at Columbia University. He graduated with a Ph.D. in political science at Yale, with a 2015 dissertation titled "The Problem of Tyranny and Philosophy in the Thought of Plato and Nietzsche". At the universities he attended, he was active in criticizing the perceived left-wing bias of academia.

Twitter

BAP is an active Twitter user but has posted under multiple handles, and on multiple sites. The earliest identified posts by the "Bronze Age Pervert" persona appeared on now-defunct web forums in 2010. The Twitter account @bronzeageperv then joined Twitter in November 2013 and developed links to Curtis Yarvin and members of Frogtwitter before the account was banned in February 2017. BAP joined Twitter again in March 2017 under the handle @bronzeagemantis.On August 4, 2021, Twitter suspended BAP again. As a result, BAP switched to using Telegram until he was later reinstated on Twitter. His old account was also unbanned.

BAP's original Twitter biography stated: "Steppe barbarian. Nationalist, Fascist, Nudist Bodybuilder! Purification of world. Revolt of the damned. Destruction of the cities!"

On Twitter, BAP used a multi-layered style, including post-ironic far-right memes alongside inspirational images of bodybuilders. The banner above theBAP''s Twitter profile was a close up photo of Cellini's Perseus with the Head of Medusa and his Twitter bio was "Aspiring Nudist Bodybuilder. Free speech and anti-xenoestrogen activist." Bronze Age Pervert is very concerned with the aesthetics of the conventionally attractive, classical male physique, and elaborates in Bronze Age Mindset that "the universal body, the correct type discovered by ancient Greek science and art" is "not something you will develop by nurturing your own 'individual' quirks, doxies, and faggotries". It seems BAP considers Greek thought as the kind of "science" that "can uncover for us ... the true hierarchy of biological types". He expresses admiration for Hippocleides for the latter's "display and use [of] his powers and excellences and biological superiority." According to BAP the "Bronze Age Mindset" he advocates and "biological superiority" are inseparable and "the same!". For these reasons Bronze Age Pervert encourages his readers to engage in active cultivation of the body via sports, bodybuilding, martial arts – preferably in the nude like the old Greeks and the early 20th century German Wandervogel and Freikörperkultur movements – as well as nude sunbathing. Something BAP refers to as a life of "sun and steel" in reference to the Japanese author Yukio Mishima's Sun and Steel.BAP urges his young disciples to disavow him rather than advocate for his ideas (in public), and insteadto burrow into government andwait for the right time to rise up.

The account is part of Frogtwitter, a group of pseudonymous online writers with a highly negative view of contemporary American society. This group mythologizes an aristocratic past while engaging in racism and antisemitism, often through memes laden with heavy irony. BAP frequently condemns alt-right leadership figures, such as Richard Spencer.

A number of right of center politicians have been criticized for following or interacting with BAP on Twitter, including former White House speechwriter Darren Beattie, Minnesota State Senator Roger Chamberlain, and US Senate candidate Lauren Witzke. In February 2017, Curtis Yarvin sarcastically claimed to The Atlantic that Bronze Age Pervert was his White House "cutout / cell leader". In addition to right wing politicians, the broad group of political influencers, bloggers, and podcasters known as "anti-woke leftists" or "dirtbag leftists" have received criticism in the press for discussing and engaging with BAP and the broader far right on Twitter, most notably Anna Khachiyan of the Red Scare podcast.

Josh Vandiver of Ball State University observed that Bronze Age Pervert's "cult" following seems to be global in nature with images appearing on social media of "readers holding the book aloft before beaches and mountains across the world". Bronze Age Pervert's followers often imitate elements of his Twitter account, his writing style, and repeat catchphrases such as "SUBMIT!" and "ghey". Vandiver uses the example of the last term to explain "[w]hen accused of being 'ghey,' [BAP's] preferred spelling of 'gay' – one of many insider code words, partly necessitated by social media censors – BAP accuses his accusers of being themselves hopelessly effete, often by way of comparison to imagined forefathers from a more virile, 'bronze' age". Additionally, Bronze Age Pervert's Twitter followers will "post images of their own physiques, sometimes under the hashtag '#frogtwitter,' seeking BAP's approval and coveted retweet" as well as self-publish their own 'BAPish' books, memes and writings that BAP will generously crosspromote via retweets.

Bronze Age Mindset

Bronze Age Pervert self-published the book Bronze Age Mindset via Amazon Publishing in June 2018. The 77-chapter "exhortation" is written with intentionally poor grammar, mixing Nietzschean philosophy with criticisms of modern society.

The book centers on BAP's ideal vision, the eponymous "Bronze Age Mindset", which he defines as "the secret desire…to be worshiped as a god!" and which he calls a state "of complete power and freedom". The book's main theme argues against the concept of human equality. BAP discusses classical figures, including Alcibiades, Periander of Corinth, and the heroes of the Homeric epics. In particular, BAP argues that the historical figures of the pirate and soldier of fortune are heroic ideals and asserts that classical education is wasted on both (social) liberals and conventional conservatives. Although BAP does not provide sources, notes or formal references in the book, he mentions Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and pre-Socratic thinkers like Heraclitus very frequently.

Reception

The New Republic describes the book as "rambling", "dizzying", displaying "prose ... artfully penned" but "arguments ... fractured and incoherent". The Economist echoes the "rambling" classifier. Elisabeth Zerofsky in the New York Times calls the book "a pseudo Nietzschean critique of modernity" written "in a style that mixe[s] a kind of faux-caveman brutishness and message-board pidgin with classical references". Book reviewer Inga-Lina Lindqvist of Swedish Aftonbladet cautions readers that despite the often impenetrable fever-dream style, "to simply dismiss BAP as yet another internet maniac who read Nietzsche and misunderstood Homer's humanistic intentions does not fly. He's too educated, too funny and too influential for that." BAP's thinking is marked by deep anti-egalitarianism and Jesse Russell, writing for paleoconservative Chronicles Magazine, praises "self-styled online intellectual pirate" BAP for realizing that we are currently living in 'Nietzsche's nightmare' of boundless egalitarism; he perceives more acutely than his more libertarian right-wing critics like C. Bradley Thompson of Clemson University's Institute for the Study of Capitalism and "his Straussian friends". Andrew Marzoni in Aeon Magazine is less impressed and calls the book "Nietzschean pastiche", "a tedious commentary on classical philosophy", an unoriginal, basic paleoconservative call to action after "100 pages of manipulating Empedocles and Heraclitus into refutations of evolutionary biology, civilizational progress, the liberation of women and LGBTQ groups, and the contemporary effeminisation of men (much of which omits definite articles in mock imitation of a caveman)".

In 2019, conservative intellectual Michael Anton reviewed Bronze Age Mindset for the Claremont Review of Books in a friendly yet critical manner, thus exposing a more mainstream right wing audience to the thought of BAP. Anton claims that the book's provocativeness makes it successful and popular among right wing youths: "it appeals to the young; it appeals to the young in part because it's outrageous ... [I]t opens not just the author but his readers to 'attaq'." Bronze Age Mindset was first given to Anton by Curtis Yarvin, a major figure in the neoreactionary movement, and political philosopher Darren Beattie encouraged Anton to read it. The Straussian Claremont Institute subsequently published a symposium on the review in their online publication The American Mind, including a response essay from BAP in which he compared "the anti-male and anti-white rhetoric of the new left" to anti-Tutsi propaganda before the Rwandan genocide. In the same symposium, Anton responded to BAP's response by reiterating his concern about the 'BAPist' wholesale rejection of the equality principle of the American Founding and the philosophical and practical consequences of said rejection.

Tara Isabella Burton in her discussion of Bronze Age Mindset in her own book Strange Rites highlights BAP's tirades against the "bugman", a concept of a human that is analogous to Nietzsche's and Kojève's idea of the wretched "last man". According to Burton, BAP spends most of Bronze Age Mindset deriding the progressive, sensitive bugmen of the twenty-first century, whom she describes as beta males denuded of their strength by the feminizing corruption of politically correct modernity. The bugman, according to BAP, "pretends to be motivated by compassion, but is instead motivated by a titanic hatred of the well-turned-out and beautiful." Supposedly, the bugman is animated by pure ressentiment, and longs to tear down all that is stronger, more beautiful and more powerful than he is. In BAP's own words: "The bugman seeks to bury beauty under a morass of ubiquitous ugliness and garbage, ... thus his garbage is flowing out of cities built on piles of unimaginable filth. The waters are polluted with birth control pills and mind-bending drugs emitted by obese high-fructose corn syrup-guzzling beasts."

Bronze Age Mindset gained a cult following in right-wing circles, including staffers of the Trump White House and on Capitol Hill, according to anonymous sources described by Politico and Huffington Post. National Review writer Nate Hochman claims that many of his peers who read the book and Anton's review of it ended up interning at the Claremont Institute, and asks, "Why did every junior staffer in the Trump administration read 'Bronze Age Mindset?' There was something there that was clearly attractive to young conservative elites." In the summer of 2018 it was among the top 150 books sold on Amazon sitewide, which is notable according to Anton and Dan DeCarlo since it was achieved without the aid of a publicist or book deal. In October 2019, it was still ranked third in Ancient Greek History and #174 in Humour on the Amazon best-seller list.

Caribbean Rhythms

In August 2019, BAP began a political commentary/history podcast called Caribbean Rhythms with Bronze Age Pervert. According to the conservative National Review, the podcast uses a narrative style that highlights the great man theory.

While BAP complains that society has become "something approaching [a] mass concentration camp,” journalist Graeme Wood notes that rather than having been spiritually crushed by theconcentration camp's matriarchy and "bug men", BAP's classmates -- alsohighly educated males, many of whomwerealso fascinatedby Nietzsche, "are successful, they hold good jobs", married with families. Bryan Garsten points out that Greek heroes are not all focused on male beauty and bonding, or warfare and conquest of inferiors. Odysseus’s "greatness emerged not from his rejection of this world, ... He owed myriad debts to those around him: to his men, to his son, to his wife." He also questionsthe virtue of aristocratic tyranny."Life in a liberal democracy is full of demanding moments, ... As far as I have read, life under tyrants is full of lassitude, selfishness, duplicity, betrayal."William A. Gaston (a political theorist, former Marine, and Brookings Institution scholar) asks how the allegedly weak and flabby liberalism of the United States and its allies were able to defeat the virile fascism of Germany and Japanin World War II.

Political science professor C. Bradley Thompson has criticized BAP's illiberal, anti-equality, anti-American, anti-rationalist stances and considers Bronze Age Pervert and his writings to be more or less fascist in nature. Other (Christian) right-wing critiques, like those of Dan DeCarlo, tend to focus on the "empty aesthetics" of the youthful "BAPist" movement and it being "a deeper recrudescence of paganism." Jesse Russell notes that fundamentally, the right wing critique of "BAPism" differs little from the critique by the conventional right of the alt-right movement during Donald Trump's unlikely 2016 presidential campaign.

Left-wing and liberal critics of BAP have identified him as part of the manosphere as an (ultra)masculinist and as part of a wider atavistic trend on the post-liberal populist right wing. Additionally, liberal classics scholars and commentators accuse BAP (and others like him) of misusing, misinterpreting and misappropriating the Classics for their political agendas.

Vassar College's Pharos project, whose mission is "to document appropriations of Greco-Roman culture by hate groups online", accuses BAP of providing the "traditionalist right wing" with a tailormade "mythic" narrative that depends "on a toxic blend of misogyny and white supremacy, with the ancient world as its archetype and source of prestige."

Academic Josh Vandiver writes that the broader alt-right and the manosphere, both of which he considers BAP to be a prominent member, "is unique, and a product of its time, in making masculinity an overt discursive subject and a core (if contested) concept in its ideology, a type of masculinism" which should be understood as "reactions to the perceived triumph of feminist and LGBTQ politics", and thus were critical to the creation of the alt-right. Within that so-called manosphere, masculinity in its various forms is explicitly named and its relation to politics, culture, society, sex, and sexuality is vigorously debated. He also notes that BAP, as well as other alt-right platforms, have revived the idea of the Männerbund, which Vandiver describes as "the intensive grouping of male warriors and initiates understood to have dominated pre-Christian Indo-European societies, especially Germanic ones." Vandiver concludes by cautioning that BAP and the rest of the manosphere "will continue to take the [far right] movement into unusual and uncharted territory".

Tara Isabella Burton categorizes the "BAPist" phenomenon as fundamentally an atavist, backward-looking one. According to Burton, "at once a conscious rejection of intuitionalist values and, in many ways, their natural heir, modern atavism promotes a nostalgic, masculinist vision of animal humanity." It is the nostalgic focus on an idealized notion of the past because "once upon a time, this narrative goes, in a vanished age of gods and heroes, men were men and women were women. Human beings acted in accordance with their biological destiny. Men fought wars. Women had babies." However, in each case, humanity has supposedly fallen away from its inherent nature and intended purpose. Burton argues further that atavism is not a new phenomenon at all: "from Friedrich Nietzsche onward, modern reactionary culture has fetishized the imagined past and condemned (...) 'sclerotic' (to use BAP's word) civilizations of the present." In her book Strange Rites, Burton explains that according to atavists, "real freedom" lies in submission to (biological) hierarchies, nature, strongmen and Nietzschean supermen worth submitting to. Burton adds: "as Bronze Age Pervert is fond of saying: 'SUBMIT!'".

The conclusion of Burton's discussion of the "BAPist" phenomenon is that it more akin to a religious cult than a traditional political community as observed in the 20th century. Vandiver concurs with this sentiment and posits that "if a religion emerges from the Alt-Right, BAP may prove, in retrospect, to have been one of its founders." Thompson is also keen to point out that "BAP devotees treat him as prophet just as the natives first treated Kurtz in The Heart of Darkness" and that his following includes "the most unlikely of groups, namely, graduate students and junior faculty trained in political philosophy, particularly those from the so-called Straussian school of thought."