‘Descent Into Madness’

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Otto Muehl was a radical artist who in 1978, at age 53, founded a commune in Austria known as the Friedrichshof, which had as its goal “the destruction of bourgeois marriage and private property.” Instapundit linked to an article about a new documentary:

Paul-Julien Robert grew up on a country estate with dozens of adults; but he had no idea which one was his father. In the European free-love commune, where he was born in the late 1970s, pretty much all of the men had slept with his mother, any of them could be his dad.
Founded as a utopia where possessions, childcare, and love were communal, traditional family structures were banned. Paul-Julien was an unwitting participant in a social experiment that would end in police raids and the commune’s architect jailed for having sex with minors.
Otto Mühl, who was also a celebrated artist, founded the commune at Friedrichshof near Vienna in Austria in pursuit of a better society, but also to cure his loneliness. At the head of this sprawling collection of men, women, and children, the power he assumed over so many lives drove him to take an ever more authoritarian approach. By the end Friedrichshof was effectively a cult.
The commune’s descent into madness was documented on video  by the inhabitants . . .

Whoa. Full stop. “The commune’s descent into madness”? Wouldn’t it be more correct to say that the commune was founded in madness, and that the insane principles of its founding were then manifested in ways any wise person could have predicted?

Here’s a clue for you kids who have never studied history: Whenever someone uses “bourgeois” and “traditional” as epithets, you need to stay the hell away from whatever utopian scam that person is trying to put over on you. Hostility to private property and contempt for sexual morality are anti-social attitudes betokening the kind of dangerous radicalism that has only ever led to anarchy and totalitarianism (first one, then the other). The charismatic misfit’s destructive impulses are disguised as a sort of humanitarian idealism. The existing order is denounced as cruel and unjust, and its overthrow is advocated as the necessary first step on the road that will lead to Heaven on Earth. Gathering around him other ambitious dreamers, and attracting to his radical cause such natural-born fools as are easily deceived by talk of “Peace” and “Equality,” the leader requires of his followers sacrifices that serve chiefly to aggrandize the leader.

This is the basic story of many radical movements — you could read Daniel Flynn’s A Conservative History of the American Left to study the remarkable persistence of certain themes — but those of us who remember the 1960s and ’70s need little reminding of the Manson cult, the Symbionese Liberation Army, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and the Jonestown massacre.

Anyway, it was as predictable as clockwork that the founder of a “free love” cult like the Friedrichshof would ultimately prove to be a selfish pervert. Exactly how many young girls he had, or at what age he preferred to have them, most online sources aren’t clear, although one does find this quote: “I’m not a child molester. This is nonsense. The girls were all developed.” Trace that back to its original source and translate from German:

Interviewer: They were 13, 14 years old.
Muehl: So what? Charlemagne married a twelve year old.

 One obituary in German quoted him:

About the then 14-year-old who testified in the trial against him, he even remarked: “She undressed herself, the door was open. I’m not a hypnotist.” And: ”Why should the government dictate when you should have sex?”

See? It’s just an old guy banging 14-year-olds, why should the government care? You silly bourgeois! They were “developed”!

This “descent into madness” was the logical destination of the Friedrichshof for pretty much the same reason that sexual assault plagued the encampments of “Occupy Wall Street.” The alleged high-minded idealism of radical leaders is always exposed as a hypocritical mask for selfishness, and the idiots who are attracted to radical movements never have the kind of common-sense skepticism that would cause them to examine the leader’s altruistic pose and ask, “What’s in it for him? What’s his cut of the action?”

“I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth.”

You didn’t expect me to believe that crap, did you?

 

 

Category: Sex

80 comments

  2. Once the Cult of the Consenting Adult gets established somewhere, the first thing they do is start fiddling with the definitions of “consent” and “adult”.

  3. Hostility to private property and contempt for sexual morality are anti-social attitudes betokening the kind of dangerous radicalism that has only ever led to anarchy and totalitarianism (first one, then the other).

    Truer words have not been spoken. If only our public schools could teach basic reading and arithmetic and the above sentence, they would be serving the public good far better than they are.

    Unfortunately, they are closer to the exact opposite approach, indoctrinating our youth with leftist utopian nonsense and aversion to freedom, markets, property, and morality. The all-too-predictable results are visible all around us.

  4. Ah! The old line “Why should the government dictate when you can have sex?” Sounds like one of our modern day Libertarians. Any concept of community standards or codes of decency are tagged as “the government,” as that’s such a good boogeyman word.

  5. In the Roman epistle, Paul is inspired to point out that the Law is a shackle against which one tugs; real growth and maturity come from within.

    You can’t legislate morality. That has to be inculcated within the family and the community of faith.

  6. I think you’ll find that if you don’t make “community standards” or “codes of decency” part of the law, Libertarians and libertarians won’t blame the government.

  8. Pedophiles, no.

    And courted is the wrong word.

    It’s about the liberty, you see. You can’t give that to anyone.

  9. Historically, iniquity always ends up the same: God is dead, self is god, power is righteousness and others are commodities to be consumed per the dictates of one’s lusts. This pattern NEVER varies.

  12. Liberals’ war against Western civilization uses three main attack vectors:-Attacking the family-Attacking private property-Attacking Christianity

    Precisely the same attack vectors used by their marxist, socialist, and communist ancestors.

  13. Unless you can conclusively prove that every gay is also a pedophile, you might try another approach.

    Last time I checked, there wasn’t an all inclusive Big Gay, Inc a few decades ago.

    Or today either for that matter.

  15. Did I claim or imply that every homosexual is also a pedophile?

    NAMBLA was an integral, fully accepted part of the bigger homosexual movement up until around 25 years ago. Its expulsion from inside the tent to under the bus was purely political – not ideological, ethical nor moral. That was my only point; please don’t read deeper into it. There’s nothing else there to read.

  17. What makes you think that the “bigger homosexual movement” speaks for every gay?

    There are folks I know who would deny that.

    Just as you would probably deny that John McCain speaks for all Republicans.

  22. If we allow history to guide us, we cannot help but draw the conclusion that pederasty has long been intertwined with and practiced alongside adult homosexuality. Cause/effect? Effect/cause? Or simply two aberrant manifestations of the same sin?

  23. Nope, I’m not.

    A few years ago when trying to work against McCain’s re-election as Senator from Arizona, I met some interesting Log Cabin Republicans.

    I’ve also met some liberal gays who want very little to do with the “greater agenda.”

    The ‘gays” are not as monolithic a block as certain political groups would have you believe.

  27. I don’t know if you know, but I know that I don’t (and I’m proud I don’t):

    If any one group can claim the title of the biggest, most inclusive tent for homosexuals, which would it be? After seeing more than a few acronyms my eyes start to cross.

  29. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I can make the exact same case for hetrosexual sex.

    That doesn’t mean I’m going to give it up.

  30. *shrugs*

    And my point is that just because someone is gay doesn’t mean that they molest children.

    Just like all redheads do not have short tempers. Or all Rotarians are shoplifters. Or that all Republicans want to pave the entire surface of the earth with concrete and asphalt.

  31. “And my point is that just because someone is gay doesn’t mean that they molest children.”

    I never said they did so I don’t know why you have the vapors about it.

  32. Because people keep trying to make the association.

    Look, in another place I called myself a reluctant gun advocate. Not because I own guns (I don’t), not because I like guns (I detest them), but because I thought people have a right to defend themselves.

    I don’t care about homosexuality. I do care about rights. Most of the gays I know don’t fit your labels and preconceptions.

  35. “Because people keep trying to make the association.”

    THEY – the homosexual movement as it existed at the time – THEY made that association with homosexual pedophiles themselves! They not only made it but celebrated and maintained it for years until it was politically expedient to officially end it.

    Truly you have a dizzying intellect.

    S’long.

  36. And if “the homosexual movement as it existed at the time” never spoke for all gays, but only a minority?

    Does that mean that the gays not in the “movement” made the association too?

  41. When you at least combine sexual restraint and Christian religious structure…you get Shakers making some useful inventions and furniture. But they are the exception, not the rule.

    Funny when it goes to free love and art, it tends to quickly descend into madness. There are examples through history all over the world.

  48. Almost all legislation is rooted in some sense of “morality.” So that is a silly cliche that should be laid to rest.

    But, if there is no shared sense of morality within a family or community, it would require immensely draconian laws and enforcement measures to force people to adhere to an attempt to legislate morality which oddly enough would probably be immoral in its own right…

  49. Almost all legislation is rooted in some sense of “morality.” So that is a silly cliche that should be laid to rest.

    But, if there is no shared sense of morality within a family or community, it would require immensely draconian laws and enforcement measures to force people to adhere to an attempt to legislate morality which oddly enough would probably be immoral in its own right…

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