okay as a Jean Enjoyer i feel like i need to say this because there are different genres of jean enjoyment (jeanres if you will). i am of the faction where i don’t really vibe with the whole “jeangst” thing (as it exists as a fandom phenomenon) and here’s why. so much of the stuff i see labeled “jeangst” is WAY too sympathetic to and forgiving of jean for my taste. like he’s woobified or there’s a lot of uncritical ‘poor jean harry is so mean to him and now harry’s amnesia ruined his life :(’ type stuff which is such a fundamental misunderstanding of him and his role in harry’s past & present and it skews how we view his dynamic with harry too. and i don’t mean this as “oh considering jean’s pov is bad!!1!1″ no i consider his pov all the time i am indescribably mentally ill about the torment that the jeanharry relationship puts both jean and harry through. but when we consider his point of view i really think that just ascribing him the simple role of ‘poor depressed punching bag’ strips him of all the interesting parts of his character & also contributes to a less nuanced and accurate understanding of harry as well (it makes it easy to villainize him for his addiction and mental illness, which in and of themselves aren’t moral failings-- harry was a bad person for his behavior, which is not the same as his addiction or his illnesses)

like, jean put himself in this situation. over and over again. yes he was likely forced into working with harry, but whatever’s going on between them is more than a workplace conflict. you look at luiga’s twitter and he’s said so much about jean and harry’s codependency and the other mentions of a very close and very unhealthy personal relationship. you see the way jean talks about his own role vs harry’s in the ending-- jean WANTS to be the poor victim, he wants everyone to see him as the helpless punching bag who is being such a saint by Putting Up With Harry And His Bullshit, look at me, i’m so much better than this stupid mentally ill addict! he’s like harry you are so unprofessional, and there is something wrong with you, and we are all so tired of putting up with you and your shitty behavior, but here he is sitting in a hotel lobby in a wig to harass harry while harry is actually doing his job!! like jean my love here you are reaming harry out about “doing his fucking job” sir what are you doing!! you are sitting in a hotel looking angry for 14 hours just in case your special little partner who you are definitely sooo mad at condescends to speak to you for a few minutes!! and you dragged poor judit out here too!! jean. girl. babe. it’s time to admit you are a massive hypocrite with an even bigger victim complex. you, a mentally ill addict, are losing your shit at harry for being a mentally ill addict. why don’t you meaningfully address the actual behaviors instead of just reminding harry that he’s an alcoholic every 2 minutes.

like i’m not saying jean should have infinite patience for harry after multiple years of mistreatment but damn dude the double standards are insane. jean is instigating a messy public breakup and being pretty abusive the whole time and then he’s like everyone feel bad for ME and not STUPID HARRY who is an ALCOHOLIC in case anyone forgot. he goes on and on about how much his life sucks and how much harry sucks and boohoo poor him he’s so depressed and beaten down by the shitkid etc but then in ANY sub-ideal ending you get there’s still something that tells you that he’s still taking harry back or at least considering it. in the cuno ending “he can’t leave you behind. he just can’t. one final time...” even in the worst ending “if you make it-- if you’re sober for 10 months-- tell us. i’ll work with you again.” jean babe if you hate him so much then stay the fuck away from him!! damn!! your codependency is showing!! your victim complex is showing!! just go get harry’s name tattooed on you at this point like at the very least it might get you some sympathy from people at the bar when they ask about what’s very clearly an Ex’s Name Tattoo

Utena rewatch notes for eps 1-7, warnings for some (general) discussion of csa:

I’m going to spend some time here listing “things I always forget about Utena” in the faint hope that to do so will, in the long run, shorten the list. It won’t.

The fact that Miki and Utena are pals. Good buds. Gossip chums. I know about this intellectually but I forget how early it starts, and the fact that they seamlessly pick up where they left off after Miki a little bit tried to kill her. That’s not fair, of course. He a lot tried to make Anthy his property...? But look at him twiddling the parsley that’s so cute

The fact that Miki and NANAMI are pals even pre her formally inheriting everything Touga owns

How early it’s established that “eligible young woman expresses concern for ~damaged goods” is part of the script for assigning desirability and eligibility, and is in fact a prime site of matchmaking activity... Touga and Nanami’s split gaze on Utena and Anthy dancing at the party, and Miki going to tutor Anthy but bonding with Utena instead while Anthy zones out and animates an elephant in her workbook, and then Utena and Miki exchange half-worried, half-irritated looks about her trauma; it’s all so trivial at this stage, but still pretty hard to watch. 

^ corollary to the above: I think RGU as a show has a real mean streak in its heart reserved for “rape is not about sex, it’s about power” and similar rhetoric, in part because the sanctioned visibility of rape and sexual abuse, in a culture otherwise silent on the subject of sex, makes those things into powerful representational aids in the grooming and sexual “education” of minors. At first glance it’s strange to have a group of middle-schoolers who talk about romantic love in a distinct binary of, on the one hand, crushes and confessions, and on the other the servitude of the Rose Bride; but the reality is that designating rape as safely distinct from “real” adult sexuality--as a violent abstraction that doesn’t implicate even the perpetrator in anything as vulnerable or shameful as desire--is the best way to make rape and rape victims a conceptual magnet for repressed teenagers, and from placeholder fantasy it goes on to form an alienating pattern of expectation. It’s an excuse to talk about sex without ever saying or learning anything about sex, only defining what sex is not in ever-more stylized terms, and secretly imputing to that negative space all your frustrated doubts and curiosity. A child fed that euphemistic diet long enough will have a much harder time identifying coercive, nonviolent sex---or really sex with any grey area, any shadow of consent, pleasurable participation, interest---as rape. Especially a child who has a lot of social capital invested in distancing herself from victimhood, in part because she prides herself on helping and supporting her victimized friend. 

I have more I’d like to say about this but I’m not thinking super clearly at the moment. Better saved for later arcs, I guess. 

And one more bullet point for stuff I’d forgotten:

That absurdist uproar often gives way to normal, willful obtuseness before the scene limps to an end---presence of the fantastic in Utena isn’t a release valve because there’s never a moment where another child won’t turn to you and say, “too bad about your weak stomach, Nanami” after the screaming and the snails. No one really pulls their head out of their ass long enough to be amazed by the signal nonsense going on in the background; “surprise” on the part of anyone but the victim only exists in service of self-defense or self-justification, with everyone indifferently shrugging off blame as they wonder how so-and-so got themselves into such a strange situation. I mean, and obviously this is quite funny when it happens in the context of a giant octopus balloon, but. The culture of Ohtori as this really impermeable web of minimization and chosen ignorance, where the only hope of acknowledgment seems to come from abusers, is kind of the creation of the yawning filler episodes. 

The student council scenes are so great---funny, scathing, and (by the standards of early Utena) compulsively watchable. One thing about the first arc is that, almost more than anything subsequent, it kind of serves as training wheels for inhabiting Anthy’s POV... in that all these strutting proto-abusers with their tragic backstories and comic human foibles and fixations are in different ways rehearsals of the stories Anthy tells herself about Akio. He’s too weak to control himself, like Saionji. He’s too protective of her to treat her as a person, like Miki. He’s been betrayed too often, like Juri. The first arc is where these kids get to keep tight control of their own presentation, before the inconvenient backstory-survivors wander back onstage, and ironically that means they look a lot worse than they will when they have to interact with others on an equal playing field; because none of the student council kids are Akio, however much they would like to be. They’re children and haven’t done shit yet. But Anthy has to perform the miserable sleight-of-brain that is contemptuously distancing herself from these failures on the one hand, letting them hang themselves by any amount of rope, and, on the other, constantly pardoning and sympathizing with the person who has hurt her most---her biting perspective on the student council members is just grist for the world’s most devastating lapse in perspective, out of all proportion. 

Three Good People

Just this week, three separate emails landed in my inbox that actually made me feel encouraged and hopeful about the future. Since so much of what I’ve written about lately has been so dour and/or anxiety-provoking, I thought I’d change up the pace this week and write instead about three recent events that made me feel hopeful about the future.

First up was the speech delivered at an American Jewish Committee forum in Brussels last week by Sebastian Kurz, the chancellor of Austria (and at age thirty-three the youngest serving head of government in the world). My feelings about Austria in general are complicated, and not least of all because my initiation into the whole world of Shoah-displaced people was via my parents’ next-door neighbors who were refugees from Austria and whose stories of life in Nazi Vienna were beyond terrifying. Nor have my sentiments become less complex with the passage of time, as I continue to marvel at the Austrians’ post-war success in turning themselves from a nation of avid Nazi supporters who enthusiastically welcomed union with Germany in 1938 into, by war’s end just eight years later, a victim nation to be pitied and rebuilt. Nor was this a momentary lapse of reasonableness: the so-called “victim theory,” according to which Austria had nothing for which to apologize and no sins for which to atone became the foundational idea of post-war Austria for decades and decades, only giving way to a more nuanced understanding of Austria’s role in the war (and in the exile and extermination of its Jewish citizenry) after Kurt Waldheim, a former Nazi officer, became Federal President of Austria in 1986 and forced the issue onto the public stage both in Austria and abroad.

That was then, however. And now is a whole ’nother story. I first became interested in Sebastian Kurz when I read a transcript of a speech he delivered last June in Jerusalem at a forum sponsored by the American Jewish Committee. One by one, the man addressed every skeleton in his nation’s closet, forcing both air and light into that traditionally very dark space and speaking words that would once have seemed impossible to hear from an Austrian politician. 

First, he took on the myth of Austrian victimhood. “Austria used to see itself as the first victim of the Nazis,” he said plainly enough. But then he went on to make his real point. “That is certainly true for all those who fought in the resistance, whom we cannot thank enough. But the ones who gathered in large numbers in Vienna in March 1938 [i.e., when Germany incorporated Austria into the Reich] were not victims. The ones who watched and participated when their neighbors were robbed, thrown out, and murdered were not victims. And the ones who committed the terrible mass murder of Jews were not victims at all. To remember means to admit the truth. At that time, many Austrians supported a system which killed over 6 million Jews from all over Europe and beyond, among them more than 60,000 fellow Austrian Jewish citizens in Austria alone!”

I was impressed. But he went much further. He admitted that Shoah survivors were specifically not welcomed back to Austria after the war and that his nation’s lack of generosity towards people who had been publicly humiliated and robbed of their possessions was a heavy burden all Austrians must now bear. And then he went on to talk about the efforts being made to foster what he called “a culture of commemoration” in Austria’s schools and to create a Shoah memorial in Vienna. Finally, he spoke warmly about his nation’s ongoing support for Israel, announced a million-Euro gift to Yad Vashem, and concluded with these words: “Let me state very clearly: Austria supports Israel and the global fight against anti-Semitism not for political or economic reasons, but as part of our friendship, of our moral obligation, to humanity. Only if Jewish people can live without restriction in peace and security can the eternal call “never forget” truly become a “never again.”

But that was last year’s speech and now, just this last week, Chancellor Kurz was back at an AJC forum, this one in Brussels, to talk about the resurgence of European anti-Semitism. I listened carefully and I recommend that my readers all do too. (You can click here to hear the speech, which is only less than twenty minutes long. Skip forward to the eleven-minute mark in the clip, which is where Kurz begins to speak. There is no translator; Kurz speaks in excellent, clear English.)  Again, he speaks openly about the grief and guilt he feels as a citizen of Austria when he contemplates his nation’s role in the Shoah. (He uses the term “Shoah” too, which also impressed me for some reason.) He resumes his theme about the importance of supporting Israel, which he references as a “stronghold of democracy, rule of law, and prosperity in the Middle East and in the whole world.” But this speech was primarily about anti-Semitism and I found his comments so important that I want to share them with you all in detail.

He declares openly that, in his opinion (as in mine), “anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are often two sides of the same coin.” The latter especially is not to be confused with being opposed to this or that Israeli policy; anti-Zionism is the global refutation of Israel’s right to exist and the Chancellor correctly understood that there can be no more precise definition of anti-Semitism than that. Particularly moving were his comments about anti-Semitism on the micro level: “No one, no matter who they are, where they are from, or what their faith is, must ever feel afraid to walk in the streets of any European country. We owe this assurance to all people in Europe and especially to the Jewish community.” Try to imagine Kurt Waldheim saying those words other than perhaps sarcastically!

I encourage you to watch the speech and to listen. There are so many horrific things in the world, so many haters, so much violence, so many reasons to feel unsafe and insecure. And then this one person appears on the stage, this very young man, who seems to see things clearly, who is in a position to make a huge difference, and who does not seem to fear speaking his mind openly and courageously. I listened to the youtube clip three times in a row and can only say that Sebastian Kurz accomplished something that I can’t recall an Israeli or American politician doing in quite some time: he made me feel fully hopeful that there are good people in the world…and that the world will be a safer and better place because such people exist in it.

And then I listened to two other speeches and was just as impressed. It was, given my generally dour mood over these last months, a remarkable experience.

First, I listened to the speech Representative Steny H. Hoyer (D-Maryland) delivered at AIPAC last Monday. He’s a good speaker, but it was the content of his remarks that I found so heartening: here was a Democrat—and not just a Democrat but the Democrat serving as House Majority Leader—who spoke passionately about his support for Israel in the way that was clearly meant to distance himself and his colleagues from the two outspoken anti-Israel Democrats in the House, Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan). When he dared any who would accuse Israel supporters of dual loyalty to include him in their charge, he sounded to me like an old-time Democrat for whom standing with Israel publicly and unambivalently would have been as natural as supporting any other one of our nation’s allies. His language was clearly aimed at those, like Omar and Tlaib, who frame their criticism of Israel using anti-Semitic tropes. He said that he and most Democrats stand “proudly and unapologetically” with Israel. He announced plans to lead a large delegation of Democrats to Israel later in the year. But most heartening of all was when he said this: “I am part of a large, bipartisan coalition in Congress supporting Israel. I tell Israel's detractors: accuse us. And millions of Americans, regardless of race or faith or partisan label, stand with Israel because they understand why our relationship with Israel is so important. Accuse us all!” He took a lot of heat for those words later on, including from some of his own colleagues, and tried to make it clear that he was speaking for Israel rather than against any specific individual. But his words were clear and heartfelt. I came away remembering that although Israel has some vocal enemies in Congress, it also has many friends…among whom Steny Hoyer certainly deserves to be numbered.

And then I listened to my third speech of the week, the one delivered at AIPAC by Joan Ryan, who just quit the Labour Party after forty years as a Labour M.P. in the British House of Commons over the issue of the anti-Semitism that has gripped the party under the leadership of Jeremy Corbin, whom she described openly as someone who “proudly declares Hamas and Hizbollah to be his friends” and who now “seeks to demonize and delegitimize Israel.”  She isn’t alone, of course: nine other Labour M.P.’s have quit the party in recent weeks over the rampant anti-Semitism and virulent anti-Israelism of is leader. For her decision to join them, she has been rewarded with what she herself characterized as a “torrent of abuse” that included threats of murder and rape. And yet she has stood her ground and spoke at AIPAC with a kind of confidence born of profound conviction. 

I’d like to give her the final word because I was so impressed with her remarks. “Sticking to your convictions,” she said, “isn’t always popular but it is always right.” (We all think that in theory, but which of us has paid the price Joan Ryan has for putting our money where our mouths are?) And then, after mentioning the vicious threats she has had to endure, she waved them all away graciously and bravely, noting that threats like that only strengthen her resolve to stand up for British Jews from attacks from the right and from the left, and to stand up for Israel. And she openly called on us all to “stand together—proud of each other and proud of Israel in the battles that lie ahead.”

So after so much dour news from so many different quarters and for so many months, these three speeches helped me recall that there really are decent people out there who have no trouble standing up for what they perceive to be right. That none of the people cited above is Jewish or a citizen of Israel also means a lot to me: it’s so easy to feel alone in this uncaring, dismal world that it is incredibly encouraging to recall that we aren’t alone, and that Israel also isn’t. The sonim won’t go away. But apparently neither will the good people. And where good people stand their ground and face down their foes, history has taught us again and again that they eventually prevail.  

Why Valkyrie Western Martial Arts in Vancouver, British Columbia Canada is a Cult

We have made an extraordinary claim in calling Valkyrie Western Martial Arts a cult and this claim demands extraordinary evidence.

Very well.

Firstly it is useful to know that Randy hates everyone else in HEMA other than his own circle of sycophants that feed his ego.

Painting thousands of people with a broad brush.

Lovely.

And as Randy is such a lovely person with no possible personality defects whatsoever since he is such a marvelous genius of high intellectual ability, Randy did, as all such genius of his caliber do, discover a lot of difficulty starting his own clubs after leaving Duello. 

And as he watched their success grow and grow over the years, he became very jealous and as all narcissistic types such as himself typically do, he sought to undermine them any way he could, often passive aggressively. 

While we cannot show evidence for all of the things he has done over the years to undermine the credibility of Duello, it is necessary to understand that a hostility toward Duello has been part of the culture of the different clubs he’s organized over the years, Valkyrie only being the most recent and most successful iteration of them. 

But first before we get into all of this any further, please watch the following videos from clinical psychologist Dr. Ramani if you are not familiar with narcissistic personality disorders and how these people operate. Especially in what their motivations are to ruin other people who have done them no wrong. 

It is important to have some familiarity with what narcissistic people are and what they do. This is very important because it will be easier for you to recognize narcissistic behavior by the leadership of Valkyrie once you have watched these videos. 

7 types of narcissists

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jfRGnG--H4

What is projection?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58kED7LSSBk

About enabling narcissists

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZEyLwy6Z9s

When narcissists turn others against you 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOXhri6c4AA

Why narcissistic feel threatened when you are successful

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhfkeGZbGC4

How to outsmart narcissists 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0-0U9Kw3HI

The rest of videos on her channel are useful for watching too as they delve into more topics very relevant to this situation.

https://www.youtube.com/c/DoctorRamani/videos

Then take a look at this study from the University of British Columbia titled “Signaling Virtuous Victimhood as Indicators of Dark Triad Personalities”

https://scottbarrykaufman.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Ok-et-al.-2020.pdf

The key takeaways here are that Narcissistic individuals use several key tactics to manipulate others. 

They lie, Intimidate and love bomb. 

And yes, they also use virtue signaling, too. In particular they seize upon the virtue signaling of social causes in order to serve their own interest, steering those causes away from legitimate issues and toward things that serve their own ends so that they can reap rewards.

Remember, these supposedly virtuous people at Valkyrie claim to have known about abuse for many years. So why is it only recently they have come forward with these claims? 

Think about this all critically and very carefully. 

Is someone who knows about abuse but says nothing about it for years a truly virtuous person? Yes or no.

If you say “No” because you believe doing nothing perpetrates abuse by allowing it to continue, you are correct.

(If you said ‘Yes’ you need to seriously re-examine yourself, friend.)

So, why then is Valkyrie just now, only years later, coming forward with these accusations from events that happened many years ago? It’s probably because they know nothing happened years ago because the independent investigation that cost Duello tens of thousands of dollars and was led by a female owned firm concluded that no abuse had occurred, and they refuse to accept nothing criminal was going on. And because they know no abuse was going on they are now adding more accusations, such as Kaja claiming she herself was sexually harassed. Well why didn’t she go to the police or say anything until now, while advocating constantly for others? 

It’s because Kaja is making it up. 

But we’ll explore the many contradictions about Kaja (including her dating her own students) in another blog article. 

The point here is that Valkyrie is attempting to claim virtue for themselves by exposing all these dark deeds Duello has supposedly allowed for years, and which Valkyrie’s staff claims to have known for years but they have done nothing about. Is that really the case?

Or rather is it the more obvious answer; that the situation is exactly as Academie Duello described -- that Valkyrie wanted to control the Canadian Federation as it was forming and Valkyrie’s perception is (since as narcissistic people are extremely fixated on power others have and they do not possess) as a much smaller and less influential school they felt they couldn’t control the federation with Duello around. 

So they sought to derail things and force others to shun Duello so they could not be part of the federation and this was also a chance to try to eliminate a business competitor in the Vancouver area.  

As the study from the University of British Columbia demonstrates, narcissists will also participate into efforts that they think will gain them attention, so when they see people getting rewarded for virtue signaling it encourages them to participate, even if they have very little themselves to do with the issue at hand. This is because they have seen the rewards others get and decide they want to get some of that for themselves. So having some prior experience in getting people to shun others in HEMA on a mere accusation with no evidence whatsoever, they decided they could make this work against Duello, too. And they have been correct in how many people have suspended all critical reasoning, refused to listen to Duello’s side of the story and bought into the witch hunt against the school.

And why was it so easy? Because for years the online HEMA community has been dominated by virtue signaling narcissistic people who kick out anyone that disagrees with them and who threatens their ability to gain rewards for virtue signaling. 

That is the only reason they engage in this virtue signaling and all of their noble claims are bullshit.  We know this because examining them critically exposes contradictions in what they do and what they say they do.

Keep this in mind as you look at Valkyrie’s key leadership and what tactics they employ in their goal of destroying Duello. The only way to see through a narcissists’ manipulation tactics is to document everything to catch them in lies and contradictions. Fortunately we have done that.

As you read the next several paragraphs pay special attention to the contradictions made by Valkyrie. There are MANY contradictions between what Valkyrie leaders say and what they actually have done, especially in regards to their accusations against Duello.

Firstly, Randy Packer is the founder of Valkyrie. This is typically misunderstood in the HEMA community because for marketing he uses the female coaches he has converted into his cult of personality, one of which is his wife at present. 

Although Randy has not been very vocal about the current accusations against Duello, we have to begin this expose with Randy because he is the leader of the cult and shaped its culture which is now on display for the whole world to see in their public accusations against Duello. And he is manipulating his cult members to fight his battle against Duello for him, feeding his narcissism while encouraging their own worst narcissistic traits as well. 

Randy has been antagonistic toward Duello since shortly after he left the school many years ago (mainly because he wanted to teach his own invented martial art), and this resentment has only increased as he struggled to build his own club ever since leaving, of which he has had several failures in the past. Here is a blog as far back as 2013 where he talks about his “chosen rival school” and a lunch with Valkyrie students where they talked trash about Duello and in a moment of surprising clarity, he even acknowledged this rivalry he chose to build was becoming all consuming to their culture and a distraction  

From Randy’s blog in 2013,

http://boxwrestlefence.com/blog/2013/08/26/bitter-words-black-hearts/

There is a quite a lot to unpack here.

Firstly, the “rival school” here is Academie Duello. That much is obvious. It was the only other school in Vancouver and their beef with Duello is well known to the Vancouver HEMA community.

Second of all, Randy admits in the first paragraph these conversations “sometimes happens”, which is a really round-about way of saying they constantly talked trash about Duello.

Thirdly, Randy only wanted to change the behavior after someone else called him out on his, and it’s unlikely he would have ever written this post if no one had. 

Fourthly Randy acknowledges in a moment of clarity that the insulting of Duello is unwarranted and feels embarrassed about how much he has engaged in it.

Unfortunately any clarity Randy gained after this event must have quickly been forgotten since as of present Valkyrie is actively trying to slander Duello with lies and distortions of facts. So obviously nothing changed and this article he wrote was a bunch of bullshit rationalizing his own shitty behavior and that of his school while trying to pretend like he learned a real lesson. 

This entire post was just Randy virtue signaling. That’s why it didn’t stick. That’s why Valkyrie continued down their path of toxic narcissism until the events of present day where they are actually trying to ruin almost two decades of Devon Boorman’s life’s work to satisfy their own lusts for power.

Again, all the way back to 2013, Randy acknowledges his school had developed a culture of talking trash about Duello, a far more successful school than his.

The second thing you must understand is that Randy Packer is not well.

We don’t mean this in any condescending way, but by his own acknowledgement across numerous social media posts and blog articles, Randy Packer is a mentally ill individual suffering from several things, but for the purposes of this blog article we’re only going to criticize his narcissistic personality disorder as that is something which is treatable and his narcissism is what is causing him to be so antagonistic to other people. 

We’re not completely heartless here, and the purpose here is not to be cruel by making fun of Randy for his mental drawbacks. We’re simply trying to expose that he is not a reliable narrator nor a credible person when it comes to the topic of objectively viewing facts with reason and logic due to his narcissism. Randy Packer is not capable of employing critical thinking skills due to this, although he sincerely believes he can. 

Here is Randy’s own admittance of his mental condition, although he tries very hard to re-frame it to sound more positive to satisfy his narcissistic ego. 

Ah, yes. “Neuroatypical”. 

Neuro-Atypical. 

The phrase “neurotypical” is used among the Anti Able-ism community to refer to people who are not autistic. Randy is not autistic however and his mental illness is bipolarism. 

Unfortunately Randy as a highly narcissistic individual is unable to accept his mental illnesses do not contribute positively to his life and he has appropriated some of the terminology and ideology of the anti ableism community to suit his own re-framing of his mental condition. 

So he works very hard to manipulate others into believing that he is far more knowledgeable about many things than he actually is, and this leads him to employ overly grandiose language in an effort to appear highly intellectual -- and which draws people into rabbit holes where they become very easy for him to deceive with pseudo-scientific ideas. 

Here are some additional quotes from Randy about his mental state and he tries to present it as a positive thing that makes him superior to other people as part of his denial-ism of his illnesses,

In the above screenshots, Randy rejects science because “the problem is my brain”. What he means is, his extremely subjective and narrow perspective of reality is more accurate than all of the empirical research that scientists who actually study the human brain have accumulated on how the human brain works. So he instead fixates on a popular myth and perpetrates it because it feeds his own ego in some strange manner.

Now remember those sycophants mentioned earlier, who he surrounds himself with? They ate his delusional rambling up and reinforced his beliefs. they too rejected well established scientific facts about how the brain works, and instead bought into his interpretation of reality. Why? Because he’s been doing this stuff for years to the point they don’t think critically anymore.

Randy is a fairly effective manipulator of these types of people, too. 

In the below screenshot here is Randy manipulating people into believing they too must be “neuroatypical” because only a “neuroatypical” person could possibly ever feel very strong emotions rated on a totally subjective scale he made up. Which is as equally tragic as much as it is manipulative. 

Here’s a dose of reality; 

Every human being feels intense emotions. Even if they refuse to admit it, they do. 

So it does not matter how a person rates themselves in this highly scientifically inaccurate self-assessment test Randy invented. The only purpose this kind of thing serves is to manipulate others into his delusional way of viewing himself and others. 

Randy also hates doctors, by the way. Not like this should be that surprising....

So here is Randy rejecting the opinions of formally trained medical doctors in favor of his own personal interpretation. Even though Randy does not have any formal medical training, because he is not a doctor. 

Yet regardless of his rejection of science, he receives tons of comments and support from his adoring fans on his pseudo-scientific ramblings he posts constantly and has been doing for many, many years. 

None of this information is a surprise to the people who trains and are part of his cult. This kind of stuff all appears perfectly normal and perfectly sane to them. 

And this is one of the reasons why Valkyrie is a cult. 

There are more reasons of course, but no one calling Randy out on his very clearly delusional ramblings and pseudo-intellectualism is one of the things that established them as a cult.

Just like Kaja, as a good little member of Randy’s cult, organized his collection of pseudo-intellectual and scientifically inaccurate ramblings into a book (Fear is the Mind Killer) that she sells by claiming it was “written by a woman” when in reality it is based on Randy’s bullshido mixed in with whatever careful re-framing she do, to make in more easier to sell to others in the martial arts community.

You would like to see proof? Here you go.

And you may ask yourself, “What does Randy’s pseudo-scientific bullshido actually sound like direct from his mouth?”

Well, your wish is granted. Here is a sampling. It’s English, and yet it’s not. Honestly a lot of this reminds us of how Scientologists speak to each other.....and that’s probably what Valkyrie is.

Valkyrie is the Scientology of the HEMA community.

Yes’ we’re very sure Randy. Only a true genius such as yourself will find any of this “easy to get”

Sure thing, dude. When you struggle to make your curriculum coherent for students to learn you should just write a long rant about how making shit up as you go is way smarter. That’s responsible and totally not just some bullshit you made up to protect your ego from the harsh pill of reality-- your bullshido is hard for others to learn because it’s not very well thought out.

We do have to acknowledge you’ve been fairly good at manipulating people into not paying attention to the obvious problems in your rantings and have successfully tricked them. So we’re not going to say you’re completely stupid. This bullshido is conquering some people’s minds at the very least.

We know we’ve spent a lot of time on covering Randy’s postings, but we did so to ensure we provided enough context for our claims about him.

We feel this should be enough to establish that Randy acknowledges he has mental issues and then demonstrate to you that Randy is actively trying to manipulate other people into believing they too have one. The screenshots should also provide proof for our statement that Randy is definitely mentally ill and does not think in a very rational way. He is instead very delusional, as are many of his cult members for following him. 

These screenshots from his profile should also serve to remove any doubt you may have that he does not accept his mental illness as being a negative thing that limits him. Instead he fancies that it makes him superior to other people, which is also delusional. Sadly he has surrounded himself with sycophants that feed his delusions and in so doing, buy into his sphere of influence as a cult leader.

As mentioned in the prior article, even as far back as 2008 Randy was able to manipulate a person such as Justin to engage in an extremely dangerous sword fight with him that if any one of them had made just one mistake, could have killed or seriously maimed them.

https://fightersagainstnarccistic.tumblr.com/post/624517817683886080/why-valkyrie-western-martial-arts-in-vancouver

Some people are more susceptible to this kind of trauma bonding thing than others, and Randy has a habit of finding them. This is our belief on why Valkyrie has been focusing so much on vulnerable populations such as LGBTQ, who have experienced prior abuse in their lives that makes them well conditioned for this kind of manipulation tactic. 

In another example Randy had his class go to a gun range, even though many of his students are people very uncomfortable / afraid of firearms. 

http://boxwrestlefence.com/blog/2014/10/07/gun-play/

If you take the time to read Randy’s blog articles (and there are many!), throughout his writings he often talks about “intense workouts” and training sessions. These are part of his tactics to trauma bond with his students and form his cult and while he doesn’t always say what these sessions are, the above event is an example of what kind of things he is willing to do in order to create these trauma bonds with his students as part of forming his cult.

What do we really mean by cult here?

We’ve said it several times that Valkyrie is a cult. 

From the following article, https://blog.usejournal.com/how-cults-entrap-people-d2f012c10149

There are several main ways people entrap people into a cult.

First, they hide their true intentions by misreporting what they are asking people to do. In this case, Valkyrie advertises itself as a martial art school that is a “safe space” for LGBTQ people, which is a targeted vulnerable population  more likely to be manipulable with the tactics they use. 

Secondly they install some fear; in Valkyrie’s case by convincing the person that they are unwelcome at other clubs and the people of Valkyrie are their champions and family. They convince the students that they are constantly under siege and at risk of being harmed by others.

Here are some examples of this kind of fear installing,

https://kajaswords.com/2020/03/10/to-catch-a-predator-early/

Here Kaja spreads fear of “predators” who she claims are widespread in the HEMA community and uses a bunch of fallacious reasoning to justify the claim.

 Kaja’s fallacious reasoning here is that if someone disagrees with your entirely subjective opinion that their jokes are inappropriate then they automatically must be a predator. It’s disingenuous, manipulative and serves only to install fear into people of others in the HEMA community than her own cliche of people.

She also made a video called “Creep spotting 101″ while insisting this stuff is so commonplace, but is really just part of Valkyrie’s desire to spread fear among its members and others so they can present themselves as ‘the good guys’ fighting ‘the bad guys’.

https://kajaswords.com/2020/03/14/video-creepspotting-101/

Thirdly they love bomb the person with constant statements that make them feel accepted, no matter what they say and do, and feed their own narcissism and grandiose ideas about themselves, and as the supplier of this love they pull the person into their “family”, and they usually refer to their cult as a family, too.

We’ve already shown you examples of the love bombing tactics in another post.,

https://fightersagainstnarccistic.tumblr.com/post/624524819434749952/how-the-valkyrie-western-martial-arts-cult-works

Fourthly they practice elitism; they make many claims about how much better their group is than everyone else, and convince the cult member that because they are getting this secret amazing knowledge they too are better than others.

For the proof of this, just look at all of Randy’s rantings about how much better his martial art ideas are than everyone else, but it’s also indicative in the rantings of people like Kaja who act as if they are the only “safe space” martial art school for LGBTQ people in all of Vancouver; the entire city, essentially. It’s an absurd claim to make. 

Fifthly, they use shunning as a manipulation tactic, and harass and threaten those who move away from the message the group is supposed to be saying. No one is allowed to dissent away from the party line.

For examples of this look at how they treat their ex-members, who are still afraid to speak out against them publicly because they still have friends within the Valkyrie cult. And they have reason to be afraid given how easily Valkyrie has been able to turn hundreds of people against Duello with no evidence for their accusations. 

You can also just read Kaja’s recent rantings and demands for the HEMA community to side with Valkyrie or be shunned, too.

With no jury, no trial and no objective third party person to verify her claims Kaja insists that Devon and Academie Duello must be shunned. 

She demands this because she knows there is no legal substance to her accusations, that they are false and so she has appointed herself judge, jury and asks the community to be the executioner of her will against Duello. And people fall for it because they suspend their capacity to employ critical thinking and join the witch hunt Valkyrie has organized to serve their own agenda. 

In what kind of world does the accuser get to solely decide the guilt and punishment for a criminal? Not one that is governed by justice or fairness. Kaja is simply manipulating people’s emotions to serve her and Valkyrie’s goals in ruining their competitor they have never been able to beat in the market. 

Sixth, they start consuming large amounts of their members time and getting them deeply emotionally invested into the group, even if it’s just getting them to hang out all day online to chat and constantly be connected to the group. This pulls them away from other people until the cult becomes the primary outlet for socialization.

Currently this emotional investment into Valkyrie is involving online groups organizing around spreading the “word of Valkyrie” in their project to vilify Duello, which his being done across multiple online groups in the HEMA community and many club Facebook pages, too. All of this is engineered by Valkyrie cult members convincing others to join their crusade against Duello. 

Boston Armizare is also who is responsible for creating the r/wma reddit thread, too

https://www.reddit.com/r/wma/comments/hx8ji6/club_member_banned_from_posting_on_rwma_for/

Seventh, as with the shunning, anyone who tries to leave the group to join another group is vilified, as is anyone that will not join the group. 

Look carefully at all of these things in how Valkyrie and its members operate online and you can clearly see these elements at work. 

Next article

What Valkyrie Doesn’t Want You To Know https://fightersagainstnarccistic.tumblr.com/post/624524819434749952/what-valkyrie-western-martial-arts-doesnt-want

BBC: A strange encounter with St. Vincent

By Mark Savage BBC Music Reporter

3 October 2017

“Are you ready for this?” St Vincent’s press officer is making small talk ahead of our interview, on a scorching hot summer’s day in London. “Sure,” I reply. I’ve listened to her new album. I’ve made copious notes. I’ve jotted down about two dozen questions. “No, but are you ready for this?” he asks. “I’m not sure what you mean.” “Oh, you’ll see.” Sounds ominous… A few minutes later, a cloaked woman appears and, without speaking, leads me by the hand into the street, through a fire escape and into a bare concrete room. She gestures to a billboard-sized poster of St Vincent, which has a non-disclosure agreement at the bottom. I sign it in pink felt tip, and am led to a prefabricated wooden cube. The monk woman unbolts a door, barely big enough for a medium-sized Labrador, and I stoop through. Inside, the walls are bright pink. There are two pink standard lamps, with pink light bulbs, placed in opposite corners. And there, sitting at a cheap wooden table, is St Vincent, playing ambient guitar music through her iPhone. Her hair is, I think, painted blue and cut in a close bob. She makes unwavering eye contact as we shake hands and the door is shut (locked?) behind me. “Wait til the paint fumes get to you,” she deadpans. “It’ll be really awesome.” As she describes the room - “it’s like a psychedelic womb” - the 34-year-old sips a drink through a bendy straw that’s been moulded into the word “No”. “That’s in case there’s a yes or no question. We can just save time.” This, I suspect, will not be your average interview. St Vincent is here, ostensibly, to promote her new album MASSEDUCTION (that’s “mass seduction”, not “mass education”). It’s the follow-up to 2014’s St Vincent, an expectation-defying art-pop record that cemented Texas-born Annie Clark as one of her generation’s greatest guitarists. If anything, the new record is even better - pitching wildly between jittery electronics and despondent ballads as Clark exposes her feelings on sex, drugs and sadness. “It’s an incredibly sad album,” she says. “Quite manic and painful. "I listen to it, and some points of the album are so sad it makes me laugh. It’s just so tragic. But that’s human life.” The first single, New York, is a disarmingly simple ode to lost love. “New York isn’t New York without you, love,” she sings over lonely piano chords, with the pulsing heartbeat of the city submerged deep within the mix. “It’s a kind of dance song that you listen to in your bed and cry,” she says. New York is one of several break-up songs on the album. It’s safe to assume they’re about Cara Delevingne, the elaborately-eyebrowed supermodel she dated for 18 months until last September - but Clark isn’t going into specifics. “Songs are Rorschach tests,” she deflects, referring to the inkblot psychological tests. “The interpretation of the song, or the feeling of the song, has more to do with the listener than it does with my intention and I’m fine with that. "But that song’s a love letter to New York, certainly, and to me it’s a composite of so many people and so many experiences in New York.” The album also continues the saga of Johnny, who first appeared on St Vincent’s debut album, Marry Me. Back then, she pleaded to be his partner, singing, “Let’s do what Mary and Joseph did / Without the kid”. By her fourth record, though, they were distant and estranged, as he embraced New York’s party scene. In the latest instalment, Johnny is dependent on drugs and living on the street. When Clark crosses his path, he accuses her of abandoning him. “What happened to blood. Our family?” he hisses. “Annie, how could you do this to me?” It’s heartbreaking, and savagely self-critical - but Clark won’t say whether it’s based on a real person. “Everybody’s real and everybody’s a composite,” she replies. It seems evasive. It is evasive. But the singer is a thoughtful, considerate interviewee. She seems to taste the questions, chewing them over before answering. Her responses are precise, but never abrupt. So why, then, are we talking inside a bright pink Tardis? The point, Clark explains, is to put both of us “in uncomfortable positions”. “You’ve done a million interviews. I’ve done a million interviews. There’s only so many times you can repeat your Wikipedia page to someone. "So what happens if we shake that up? Maybe you and I react differently, and that’s interesting.” What actually happens is that we spend 15 minutes talking about the process of being interviewed. She winces as she recalls a journalist quizzing her on the time she played New York while dressed as a toilet. “I had just made a horror movie,” she says, referencing her short film Birthday Party, “and this was a costume from it”. “Then I had an interviewer say to me, ‘Was that some Freudian display, as if you feel you’ve been pissed upon?’ "I was like, 'Wow, that says a whole lot more about you than it does about me.’” Principally, though, she’s bored of being asked the same old questions. “I’ll give you an example!” she says, grabbing her phone and scrolling through a series of about 30 voice memos. “I get asked to justify my existence as a woman in music all the time, so here is an example of something I might say.” She clicks play and sits back in her chair, arms crossed. Her voice, in a bored monotone, emits from the speaker. “Being a woman in music means being asked about being a woman in music. And when you ask me a question about being a woman in music, what you’re really doing is presenting me with two very tired narratives, and asking me to choose one of them. "The first one goes like this: I am a victim, and now is the time to list, in great detail, my many grievances in order to assert my place in the hierarchy of victimhood. "Or you’re asking me to defend now, in words, as if my work wasn’t enough, why I deserve a spot at the table. "I refuse to participate in either narrative.” Her protest duly noted, we proceed to safer ground. Clark notes that her new album was finished exactly 10 years after her debut was released, and marvels that she’s made it this far. “I’ve been happy every place that I’ve been - and every place that I’ve been, I felt like I had made it. Even when I was playing pizza parlours, or clubs in London for six people - three of whom were listening - I was like, 'I’m playing in London!’ "So for me, it’s been a constant, irrepressible desire to make things.” Making this album with Jack Antonoff (Taylor Swift, Lorde), she employed the absurdist tactics of her idols David Bowie and David Byrne, placing “motivational phrases” on the music stand as she sang. One, shared on Instagram last year, simply read “dead meat.” “Sometimes, when you’re doing vocal takes you have a pad and pencil there so you can make notes, and I’d subconsciously written 'Dead Meat’. It just made me laugh that that was whatever was coming out of my brain at that time.” Her Freudian scribbling had no impact on the song, though. “Self laceration is just another form of ego. It doesn’t really help,” she insists. “I’ve learned that the hard way. Trust me, it’s not that usable. You really have to get out of your own way, especially when singing.” And that, it transpires, is what really motivates her - the “meditative state” she achieves while making music. “I need it. And I realise I need it when I haven’t done it for a while and I feel very agitated. "You know, it’s like some people get really frustrated and angry and they’re like, 'Oh, I need to have an orgasm!’. And then you do that and you feel so much better. It’s just that easy.” At that moment, the cloaked woman knocks at the door and our time is up. “Thank you very much, it was a pleasure to meet you,” says Clark. “You too,” I reply, expressing relief that I didn’t trigger any of her “stock answers”. “You’ve done well!” she laughs. “You passed! Bye!” St Vincent’s album, MASSEDUCTION is released on 13 October.

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