The Forest Rebel Today: Part I
The first part of my essay on Ernst Jünger's 1951 book, "The Forest Passage."
Preface
In 1951, Ernst Jünger wrote The Forest Passage. This is my personal favorite book of his. The Forest Passage, I contend, is as relevant today as it was at the time of publication, if not moreso. The age of totalitarianism has only apparently (with the defeat of Hitler, Mussolini, and Japan and, later, the fall of the USSR), but not actually, passed. In fact, I believe that the liberal democratic State is perhaps the most insidious, powerful, and dominant form of totalitarianism ever to exist. The modern democratic State is, as Schmitt says, a total state; therefore, Jünger’s The Forest Passage has much to teach us about the nature of the situation today and how we can resist contemporary totalitarianism.
I will be reading from the Telos Press Publishing edition of The Forest Passage, translated by Thomas Friese with and Introduction by Russell A. Berman, published in 2013. I highly recommend you purchase this edition for yourself.
Where We Are
Before we enter into the text of The Forest Passage, it is necessary for us to take account of our present world.
By now, in the year 2025, of us are intimately familiar with the true power and tyrannical capabilities of the modern democratic Total State. Each one of us experienced it first hand during the pandemic years, beginning in 2020 and, in some unfortunate places, lasting all through 2023. Governments, at all levels, took actions hitherto unheard of in the post-war West. States across the globe implemented mandatory lockdowns. Businesses and places of worship were shuttered, some for weeks, some for months. In many countries, including the United States, a positive COVID-19 test could mean you were ordered, by the State, to quarantine in your own home or, in places like Australia, in internment camps. It actually became a criminal offense in some places for you to leave your house until a certain time had elapsed after a positive test. Masking became mandatory nearly everywhere, either by law or by the policy of businesses. Public gatherings were prohibited, unless, of course, they were part of the Civil Religion's outpouring of love during the race riots of 2020. “Social distancing” was enforced by the public and private sphere, with the relics of this ridiculous measure still extant on the floors of some stores and restaurants here and there. People were prevented from visiting family members or even hugging one another, by law.
Once vaccines were developed, they too became mandatory to participate in most aspects of everyday life, whether by government force or threat of exclusion from nearly every public sphere, including workplaces and places of indoctri-, I mean, “learning.” Children, having already been masked for months or years, were then rounded up and injected, despite their cries. (Those children seemed to understand the true nature of things in their little resistance). Employers terminated workers who refused to get vaccinated. Members of the armed forces were discharged for failure to comply. You were told you needed to get a vaccination card and have it on your person at all times. After all, you never knew when the authorities, public or private, could ask for papers!
Remembering a bit more, we can recall the internment camps of Australia, a supposedly democratic and free country, where men and women were, by threat of physical force, placed in “voluntary” camps surrounded by barbed wire fences, and routinely monitored by the police and health authorities. Were they to leave, they would be fined or even jailed. We can recall how in Canada, the State took severe action against protesting truckers, totally crushing them with the full force of the police apparatus, de-banking them, and even imprisoning them. Doctors lost jobs for even wondering if some State measures were unnecessary, Kentucky State troopers placed nails in the entrance of a church parking lot and collected license plate numbers when believers tried to defy orders to attend Easter Sunday service, and we were all told if we believed the lab leak theory (which has been proven true) we were insane conspiracy theorists. How quickly some have forgotten all this!
Besides the COVID-19 response, let us recall the way that the State was mobilized to find and prosecute hundreds of people who participated, even remotely, in the events of January 6. Apparently a whopping 13% of the FBI was being utilized to work on January 6 cases! Let us recall how pro-lifers were prosecuted by the FBI for peacefully standing up for the unborn. Let us recall how Donald Trump underwent a legal assault for nearly 4 years during the Biden Administration.
It would be a mistake to think this is all new or unique, though. Things have been bad for a while. To give an older but still relevant example of how the modern State, despite its liberal-democratic dressings, can enact invasive and totalitarian measures, I remind you of the post-9/11 measures and the PATRIOT Act. That was when the Surveillance State really emerged in a way it had never yet been realized, even in the Soviet Bloc. We were told that our freedoms needed to be curbed in order to combat terrorism, and most people accepted this. Hardly anyone raises any objections today to the hundreds of thousands of security cameras which watch our every move, or the collection of our private data on a massive scale. Those who do are usually derided as crazy libertarians, or shrugged off. “Who cares, man?”
Before THAT, we know the U.S. Government, often through the CIA, engaged in an unconscionable number of insane programs which were nothing short of monstrous. MKUltra, domestic wiretapping, drug trafficking, countless coup attempts, Operation Mockingbird, and more. The list could go on. We also now know that USAID has been used to fund various programs promoting progressive ideology at home and abroad.
Finally, consider the blasphemy laws in many Western nations now. No, not blasphemy against the Lord God, but blasphemy against so-called “protected classes.” Praying silently near an abortion clinic in the UK or Scotland, even in YOUR OWN HOME? The police can, and will, arrest you. “Hate speech” on social media against one of the protected classes? In some places, like Germany, you will be arrested. In all places, your job and livelihood are at risk. Leaving skid marks on a pride flag painted on the street? You will be hunted down and made to pay. There is no greater crime today than that of so-called “bigotry” and “intolerance.” After the 2023 Nashville school shooting, the greatest concern of the news media, government, and celebrities was not the Christian schoolchildren, but protecting transgenders, so much so that the transgender shooter has been portrayed as a victim by leftists online!
An important point to make amidst all of this is the role of non-governmental organizations in enforcing the official ideology and Civil Religion. Theodore Kaczynski puts it well in paragraph 73 of his manifesto.
Control is often exercised through indirect coercion or through psychological pressure or manipulation, and by organizations other than the government, or by the system as a whole. Most large organizations use some form of propaganda to manipulate public attitudes or behavior. Propaganda is not limited to ‘commercials’ and advertisements, and sometimes it is not even consciously intended as propaganda by the people who make it. For instance, the content of entertainment programming is a powerful form of propaganda.
Most fall for this and are not capable of withstanding the influence of the propaganda apparatus. As Jünger says, “The masses will follow the propaganda, which shifts them into a purely technical relationship with law and morality” (81).
Where We Are Going
While the Trump Administration has reversed or ended various DEI programs, pardoned the pro-lifers, pardoned January 6 protestors, and taken steps to shrink the Federal Government, we are not even close to being out of the woods yet.
Our personal privacy, especially online, remains in danger. Generative Artificial Intelligence continues to advance at a rapid pace, with tech companies openly pushing for the creation of Artificial General Intelligence and the Singularity. We also have monstrous laws in favor of euthanasia being implemented throughout the West, like in Canada and the Netherlands. Abortion remains a contentious issue, with countless babies slaughtered in the womb every year. Mass migration, encouraged by most Western governments, threatens to completely alter the makeup of entire nations and foment civil unrest and strain on the government. The Great Replacement is not a conspiracy theory; it’s just not okay to be against it. Capitalism continues to make us less free each and every day. It’s never been more expensive to own a home. True ownership of anything from music to video games to books is shrinking, with paid subscription services and online streaming taking the place of ownership. Our information is harvested and sold in ways we cannot truly know. Our attention is harvested for the improvement of the Algorithm, so that we consume more and more.
“An eye must be kept on everyone. The reconnaissance effort drives its organs into every city block, into every dwelling…we see the individual stepping up as his own policeman and contributing to his own elimination” (18).
“I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better.”
The Forest Passage
Dictatorship, State Power, and Control
To have a destiny, or to be classified as a number—this decision is forced upon all of us today, and each of us must face it alone. The individual today is as sovereign as an individual in any other period of history…because as collective powers gain ground, so the individual is separated from the old established associations and must stand for himself alone. He becomes Leviathan’s antagonist, indeed, his conqueror and his tamer (31).
We must first understand that at the time of its writing, The Forest Passage was especially concerned with the dictatorships that existed at the time or were just vanquished. Sections 1 through 9 are specifically aimed at discussing life within a dictatorship, and Jünger does admit the existence of states where real elections occur, and distinguishes between the world of dictatorships and the liberal world. I do not believe this discredits his analysis in the first part of the book, but we must understand that some of it is peculiar to life under a dictatorship, whereas some of it is universally applicable. For instance, he spends a great deal of time discussing sham elections; the type of elections where 98% of the electorate votes to affirm whatever is good for the regime. Think elections in North Korea. So, we must set aside some of this in order to get to that which is most relevant to our situation today, which has in fact changed since the 1950s.
Let us turn to his description of the process of sham votes in totalitarian states. Of note here is how the State and the propaganda apparatus encourage certain ways of voting. All of us implicitly understand this. Every election cycle we are subtlety—or not so subtlety—encouraged to make a certain choice. Usually, left-wing campaigns and ballot initiatives get millions of dollars in funding and lots of airtime. We are told by all the biggest influencers, all the businesses and CEOs, all the late-night hosts, the mainstream media machine, and nonprofits, that we must vote a certain way, otherwise we are ignorant, bigoted, racist, misogynistic, or even un-democratic! Typically, voter turnout campaigns and other such things which are on their face merely “promoting democracy” are thinly veiled attempts to move people towards voting for the Democrats. Republicans, though they are not in any way a true danger to much of anyone or to the State (though perhaps DOGE has changed this to some degree) do not often benefit from such campaigns, though they have their own propaganda networks.
Some, though, will inevitably see through this charade. Jünger writes, “Let us assume that our voter, thanks to his powers of discrimination, has withstood the long, unambiguous propaganda campaign that has been astutely ramped up right until election day. This was no easy task. Now, on top of that, the statement required of him is clothed in highly respectable formulations: he is called on to participate in a vote for freedom or perhaps a peace referendum. But who does not love peace and freedom? Only a monster” (8). Who does not love “women's rights?” Who does not love “bodily autonomy?” Who does not love “tolerance?” Who does not love “democracy?” Only a monster. Monsters love racism. They love nationalism. They love white supremacy. They love fascism. These are the words used to describe the boogeymen today.
So dangerous are these ideas that the liberal democratic Total State takes direct action to prevent those who espouse them from gaining power through democratic means. In Romania, the populist candidate was recently arrested on grounds that he is a pro-Russian fascist. This comes after the election results were quite literally nullified by Romania’s high court, on the grounds that it had been manipulated by Russia. He threatened the sacred formulations of liberal democracy and its Civil Religion. So, he cannot be allowed even the chance to gain power in a free election. Meanwhile, in Germany, the AfD has suffered several State actions against itself, and the centre-right CDU has allied with the leftist SPD just to keep the AfD from power, despite its massive gains in the recent election. Finally, in the US, I will just remind you of all the actions taken against Trump from 2021 to 2024, all of which must be understood as attempts to suppress him. In all these cases, the State is acting in a manner wholly contrary to its supposed foundations (though the truth is that liberalism operates this way by design, as
writes).Jünger goes on to point out how, “To investigate, observe, and control these points of precipitation, large numbers of police are required” (18). The United States is a police state, as is the U.K., Canada, Australia and everywhere else in the West. We know that the police will, without hesitation, enforce the Civil Religion while stamping out any counter-movements. It is telling that the main concern of the Biden Administration was “white supremacists.” If you are a Right-winger and you find yourself in a self-defense situation in the wrong place, you may as well prepare yourself for arrest and prosecution by the State. The police will not help you. The justice system is not your friend. Kyle Rittenhouse and Daniel Penny are great examples of this. The leftist mob will always receive preferential treatment. Rapists, murderers, thieves, and drug addicts will be let off the hook, especially if they are a member of a protected class (after all, arresting them perpetrates “systemic racism”). The same will not apply to straight white men who commit the crime of protecting themselves or protesting the Civil Religion. Sure, there are still some good places around the U.S. where the police stand against anarchy or perform their functions normally. But we can never really count on the police to be anti-establishment, and they will more often than not enforce whatever the Total State imposes, like during the COVID-19 era.
“No more desperate fate exists than getting mixed up in a process where the law has been turned into a weapon” (21).
Perhaps worst of all is that “Resistance only seems to invigorate the ruling powers, providing them a welcome opportunity to take offensive action” (22). Groups which organize and protest against the State, Civil Religion, and those organizations aligned to it seemingly give the State even more power. It gives the State the opportunity to declare you and your family domestic terrorists or a threat to democracy. They will use this to justify actions against you and anyone else who in any way shares your views, whether it is censorship or worse.
Besides the raw power of the State, we must consider how else man is stripped of his liberty today.
State Power Not the Only Method of Control
We live in an age of unprecedented comfort and safety. Most people today enjoy this; therefore, they will not often do anything which is uncomfortable or unsafe. “Resistance demands great sacrifice, which explains why the majority prefer to accept the coercion” (42). It is far easier to give in to the propaganda, accept “progress,” affirm the Civil Religion, and move on. In fact, it is unlikely that the State will even allow people to partake in any dangerous or unsafe activity, as innumerable safety measures are enshrined in the law. We can firmly contend, then, that man is more and more domesticated by modern society. This is a point that Ted Kaczynski makes in his manifesto as well. We do not have to go through the power process anymore. There is progressively less physical struggle demanded of us. Our lives are becoming more and more comfortable, more and more automated, safer and safer, but this is dangerous. People are unwilling to give up these comforts, and will accept just about any encroachments on their freedoms so long as their comfort is not threatened. I think quoting a paragraph which Jünger devotes to this is necessary:
In general, man will tend to rely on the system or yield to it even when he should already be drawing on his own resources. This shows a lack of fantasy. He should know at what points he must not be induced to give up his sovereign power of decision. As long as things are in order, there will be water in the pipes and electricity in the lines. When life and property are threatened, an alarm call will summon the fire department and police. But the great danger is that man relies too heavily on this assistance and becomes helpless when it fails to materialize. Every comfort must be paid for. The condition of the domesticated animal drags behind it that of the slaughterhouse animal (24).
What poignant words. Man, when domesticated, is just steps away from being subject to slavery and slaughter. Our comforts do not come without costs. When we become reliant on the State or on vast technical apparatuses, we become weaker and incapable of sustaining ourselves in a time of crisis. Our reliance reduces us to a servile state of dependency. We can imagine all those people who rely on government assistance for nearly every aspect of their lives. When we consider those people, do we imagine they will broadly be supportive of the status quo and the Leviathan State, or against it? When push comes to shove, they are unlikely to side against the State because they are sustained by it.
Despite his comfort and society’s rapid technological progress, modern man is increasingly afraid. He is afraid of crime, of war, of violence, of climate change, and of world catastrophe. One needs to only look at X for a few minutes to see how frantic we are. “It becomes apparent that practically all [people] are in the grip of the kind of panic that has been unknown here since the Middle Ages” (29). Additionally, “It is due to fear that “man restricts his own power of decision in favor of technological expedients. This brings all manner of conveniences—but an increasing loss of freedom must necessarily also result” (27). What convenience AI and automation bring! What convenience the myriad apps bring! What convenience are the subscription services! How convenient it is to give up some privacy for easy-to-use tech. It’s all so convenient; all the easier to control us when we just roll over like we do.
Our fear is exemplified in our relationship to the 24-hour news cycle, now accessible on our phones at every moment. Each day we receive dire news of some new crime, political occurrence, or international tragedy. “The need to hear the news several times a day is already a sign of fear; the imagination grows and paralyzes itself in a rising vortex. The myriad antennae rising above our megacities resemble hairs standing on end—they provoke demonic contacts” (29).
What to Do?
In the face of all this fear, propaganda, coercion, and automation, “the individual must decide whether to give up the game or persevere from his own innermost forces. In the latter case he opts for a forest passage” (24).
Those who opt for the forest passage are the forest rebels, who are described as such:
The forest rebel is that individual who, isolated and uprooted from his homeland by the great process, sees himself finally delivered up for destruction. This could be the fate of many, indeed of all—another factor must therefore be added to the definition: this is the forest rebel's determination to resist, and his intention to fight the battle, however hopeless. The forest rebel thus possesses a primal relationship to freedom, which, in the perspective of our times, is expressed in his intention to oppose the automatism and not to draw its ethical conclusion, which is fatalism (25).
In Part II, we will explore who the forest rebel is.
