to me the fact that the narrator makes the shifting mound take the form of a princess is so funny

he had to pick something that was the right mix of not a difficulty to kill and something we wouldn't have a qualm ending the life of and he seriously thought, hmm. yeah. princess.

The Soldier, The Warrior, and the Postmodern Rifle Range

In Philosophy for Militants there is a distinction made by Badiou between concepts of the warrior and the soldier, specifically how the two are regarded as part of a transition into modernity as well as a larger lens that allows us to look through a sort of Orientalist concept of war and participants such that we can extrapolate not only a means of describing the ideology of postmodern warfare, but moreover bring it into a renewed understanding of Maoist concepts of class warfare as well as how that contrasts to the violence of fascist and reactionary forces in nations such as America as well as globally through their articulation against and within American hegemony.

The fundamental separation of the soldier from the warrior lies in the concept of the warrior as an individual, moreover an individual of Epic proportions, one who fights not as a human, but as an animal or even approaching godhood, described as a demigod. The Classical concept of warfare is specifically structured by warriors who hold a preternatural status, who specifically refuse humanity in order to defend it. They may be supported but moreover, one cannot strive to become a warrior without at least some ordination, a granting of the status through a sort of emphatic turn whereby one gains this divinity, proceeds through a becoming-animal into the status of the warrior. The romantic concept of the warrior is present in modern discourses, and while I will diverge from Badiou in describing it in postmodern particularities, the means by which one first finds the development of the soldier.

Badiou traces the soldier to the French Revolution, as a means of locating the soldier in relation to notions of bourgeoisie control: one is a soldier out of the masses and within the masses, it is part of joining this democratic structure that one loses differentiation in the sense that a warrior may have gained it, but moreover the way in which one is thus part of this democratic subjectivity, the way in which one is able to be rearticulated as fighting for a cause that is one’s own rather than the warrior fighting for others. The French Revolution, here, presents such a dramatic paradigm because of its apparent democratic reformation: by transitioning away from monarchistic concepts, it allows for the ordination of the warrior to pass into antiquity and the conceptualization of a will of the people to be created as the means by which the soldier finds their grounding. This is drawing upon a great number of ideas which fashion themselves out of revolt as occupation, the largely mercenary structure of martial occupations before the concept of the soldier, the means by which it was not for oneself but for a ruler that one fought, and the creation of an attachment to a nation, a people, and later nationalisms and even ideologies that one fought.

This was codified in notions of the Unknown Soldier, as Badiou describes: in sacrificing himself entirely to the effort, he becomes part of the only way that one may pass into a structure akin to that of the warrior, the totalizing and divine spirit of the soldier at large. Given Badioiu’s specific language around this, his French influence is apparent and moreover allows us to make the comparison to days dedicated to All Saints and All Souls within Catholic traditions, especially given that Catholic aesthetics figure so heavily in the notion of the soldier in France, and largely Christian ones in Western notions of the soldier. That the presence of chaplains in military media is so common is not merely part of acknowledging the religiousness of the death-drive and the means by which many face the angst of combat through religion, but in part the implication of divine ordination of the soldiers. This is developed through notions of the Unknown Soldier as known-to-God, as being recognized as an individual within the body of the Unknown, even though it is specifically in unintelligibility that one can only sublimate oneself into the Unknown at hand.

This is further developed with the specific conception of war as an act of religion, and the means by which modern concepts of the soldier are present both in anti-Western paramilitary organizations such as Daesh, and the implicit ordination of imperial forces such as the United States military. That there are many within the US Military that ordain themselves as part of a new Crusade, part of linking themselves to a creation of a democratic prerequisite for a specific Christian truth to be realized, as well as the specific means by which the Crusade allows for the enacting of a sort of libidinal appropriation of the political Orientalism of the War on Terror, a process whereby the individual approaches a previous concept of the Godly Warrior seen in the modern masturbatory ideation of the Crusader by fascist thought, even while remaining as a soldier. Additionally, this is seen in the means by which a specific concept of Judaism is used by American Christians in order to aestheticize the IDF as a force, to conceive of it not as the military of Israel, but in fact as part of defending a certain concept of the Holy Land which has been structured by colonial control and colonial demarcation of Christianity within Western power. It is only through reinforcing and continually renewing this that the true Christian impetus for reclaiming the Holy Land may be realized.

Of course, in addition to the realization of the soldier, one finds figures such as Kris Paronto, a soldier-turned-warrior who was present in 2012 at the American Embassy in Benghazi. The former member of the Army’s 75th Ranger Regiment express in particular the means by which the postmodern individualization of the warrior takes place. The Army Rangers are a unit largely meant to provide infantry support to missions of particular difficulty or importance: while units of “special forces” are much smaller, and play more particular roles, the Rangers are intended to be an infantry force that can deal with overwhelming demand in combat on a level that matches the special forces they are supporting. In short, they are the soldiers most akin to warriors in their aesthetic realization, but are still short of the exact means by which one comes to find this new warrior. Paronto, however, is rising to fame specifically because of his perfect placement in regard to the larger mainstream of conservative politics following the failed election of Hillary Clinton. While nowhere near as preeminent as in 2013-2015, there are still many conservatives who hold the embassy attack widely referred to simply as “Benghazi” as one of the prime indictments not only of Hillary Clinton, but of the Democratic Party as unable to defend American hegemony. Furthermore, Paronto cuts an image of a new sort of warrior: bearing tattoos but not too many, committed to a conservative politics that allow for easy appropriation by neoliberal justifications of action, and moreover a vocal reactionary in creating an Orientalist concept of Islam within public discourses. 

Paronto is not the first example, and will not be the last, especially given the means by which these cultural figures are generated. Paronto appears on the cover of Ballistic magazine, a firearms publication where he is shown shirtless, reloading a customized handgun in what appears as a sort of evocation of the homoerotic dedication supposed within elite units and within any bond of maleness created in traditionalist ideology: at once it is both an aspirational goal, and one to be admired, to even be loved, specifically as part of creating through difference the prohibited love of homosexuality at a fundamental remove from such love and admiration. A search for Paronto shows up articles of a similar sort: while many are about his politics of the individual for-others as part of a fascist libidinal creation of the postmodern warrior, others are part of a large apparatus of advertising for the firearms industry maintained by the designation of certain parts as for “operators” found in the military as well as in spaces such as elite police units like the FBI’s HRT (Hostage Rescue Team) with the implication that the consumer may in turn approach the status of operator through consuming these goods. Recently, one firearm company has released a replica of the sort of carbine that was used by Delta Force in Operation Gothic Serpent, most famous for its recounting in the movie Black Hawk Down and for the book of the same title which effectively created the genre within which other titles such as American Sniper and The Operator have been released, narrative nonfiction which switches between moments of humanization for the American soldiers and outpourings of imperialist violence.

The manner in which the gun industry has capitalized upon this is largely seen in the ways that average consumers conceive of themselves as operators, as part of this community not of possible soldiers, but of warriors. The AR-15 platform is flawed in many ways, but as it has been developed over time there have been solutions, if not particularly widely adopted ones, to many of the platform’s largest shortcomings. The postmodern AR-15 is just as much a consumer good as it is a weapon, thanks to the means by which accessories are so readily appended to it. To describe these accessories as “useful” is to entirely miss their point: they do not add to the functionality of the rifle, but rather the means through which the rifle may direct libidinal flows of the user. Optics, foregrips, lasers and lights are some of the most popular accessories and to say that these are not “needed” by the users is to effectively miss what is desired in them. These rifles are not intended for combat, but rather for a simulacra thereof, a copy of combat that will never occur, for a sort of combat that will never come to fruition. Even the AK-47, a symbol of resistance on a global scale, is appropriated through this move toward modularity and schizophrenic realization of consumption upon the ideology of the rifle. Just as one can customize a latte at Starbucks, one can customize a rifle. Elite units such as some FSB and Spetsnaz units can be seen using more recently manufactured AK-74 rifles which have been fitted with furniture and accessories of largely American origin. There are, of course, practical reasons for this: the AK-47 and its derivatives were not designed to be particularly ergonomic, and that these accessories provide better ergonomics is simply a consideration of effectiveness of the weapon both in combat and more generally as part of extending the body of the soldier. But, it also indicates a sort of acquiescence to a Western idea of the rifle as individual, as customized, as part of schizophrenic patterns of consumption. In return, one finds former Special Forces figures pitching weapons accessories, or certain platforms as their own, a sort of realization that the way in which Nike moved from Jordan to Lebron could be used to move from Mogadishu to Pakistan, with companies rushing to capitalize on a desire to own a replica of the weapon that “killed Bin Laden.”

All of this must be understood as part of both becoming a warrior and becoming a soldier, as part of the psychoanalytic and semiotic load that is present in the very objects through which war is waged. This must not be a call to abandon modern advancements in weapon design: if power grows from the barrel of a gun, then there is no reason to reject a means of refining the gun from which power grows. That the Soviet Union boasts a history of small arms research and design that rivals the United States’ during the Cold War, and that under Mao there were indeed advancements in similar research in China should show the means by which paradigms of weapon development can be considered in regard to militant practice. Consideration of how the AK-47 can be produced with relatively simple machinery at high volumes and with a remarkably high tolerance for use without maintenance is important in that it shows the means by which a potentially ideal weapon can be reached: one that is not marked by consumerism in itself, but rather by how it allows for a move away from the soldier as a part of democracy and moreover toward the totalization of revolt and revolution within the structure of a movement or Party.

This is where we reach the conclusion Badiou comes to, in that it is neither the soldier nor the warrior that must be considered as the ideal militant for purposes of revolution. The soldier specifically finds definition in sacrificing oneself for the democratic body, sublimation into it and moreover defining oneself through it, as a sort of prosthesis for it. The warrior is a return to the divine ordination that preceded the soldier, and is thus part of allowing revolutionary action to be realized through individualism. Instead, it must be through a process of realization, of comprehensive change that meets the enemy, but does not limit itself to acts of violence: the soldier is only a soldier in combat or the implied presence of combat to come. Instead, militancy is a far more comprehensive means of describing readiness, of describing the way in which resistance and revolution is structured, such that it is part of forming a newer, fundamentally differentiated society. While Maoist thought obviously recognizes the power of the gun as part of entering into a sort of metaphysics of opposition, it is not in pointless outpourings of violence that one finds Maoist ideas at their most developed. Rather, it is in willingness to oppose reactionary violence with force, force enough to entirely stamp it out, and no more, that one finds the core of Maoist militancy. American hegemony emphasizes a libidinal outpouring of this, whether it be in the creation of the F-35 or in the many adaptations made to the AR-15 platform. In effect, civilian massacres, acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing are not anathema to American imperialism, they are a long-standing part of it and continue to be part of it as a neocolonial force. Only in refusing this violence can one meaningfully find a new paradigm of militant resistance.