IronMarch - A Squire's Trial
IronMarch - A Squire's Trial
IronMarch - A Squire's Trial
by
Alexander Slavros
and
Charles Chapel
An IronMarch publication
2015
Version 1.2
Original pencil drawing for cover by
"Ahoy, there!"
I turned around at the strange greeting, and saw a man
briskly walk toward me off the highway road and down the
path to the storage house. It wasn't rare that we got visitors all
the way out here; customers from the city would often come by
to check in on their goods, or deal with the boss when his job
demanded he stay here. But they all arrived by personal
vehicles, whereas this stranger that approached me was
traveling by foot. Moreover, he wasn't approaching from the
direction of the city – exactly how long has he been walking?
As he grew closer, I realized that he may have traveled quite
the distance.
He was clad in black, military-looking clothes, dust and dirt
from the road covering his boots and pants up to his knees, a
severely scraped and scratched knee-guard on the right leg. A
sizable back-pack, a jacket with rolled up sleeves, a loosely tied
scarf on his neck, and everything had pockets full of some-
thing. The more he approached, the more the little details be-
gan to spring up – like some custom patches over his clothes,
marks on his knuckles and some scars. What was the most
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theatrical flair on his part to make truly come alive. Never be-
fore had I felt so unsettled, and yet truly engaged and inter-
ested – had someone observed this from the side, they
would've mistaken our exchange for nothing more than a life-
long friend sharing some good-humored stories with someone
whom he hadn't seen in years.
For me, the whole thing was a wild roller-coaster that some-
how combined exciting, thrilling banter of a worldly traveler
with the unsettling comprehension of the horrid actions this
man had taken – and with not a single shred of remorse. It was
almost like he was from another planet and our customs were
too different to really reconcile, even though we both experi-
enced joy, fun and excitement the same way.
This man was like no other that I have met, or even heard of
before. Sure, we all know of pirates and adventurers; the
movies are over-saturated with such characters, but I never
imagined that such people could ever be real. There are, of
course, historical pirates and travelers, but these things are of
a distant past, so this man appeared as something from the
history books, or straight out of a movie... and yet he was also
a fascist. His visit was an unexpected intrusion into my day, or
rather, my life, as I had never encountered anything even re-
motely like this, possibly making this a once in a lifetime expe-
rience: like a bright flash of light in an otherwise monotonous
and dull-by-comparison existence. I was sure I’d never meet a
man like him again. I felt a burning desire to know more about
him, to figure out what made him tick.
- I don't get it. Hearing you, it feels like you can do anything
you want. Why walk around like a vagabond and hang out with
bums, calling yourself a ‘fascist’? I bet a man of your ability
could lead a successful life.
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- Yeah, that's the problem, isn't it? What makes you so sure
that fascism is the only truth, that all the other ideologies are
falsehoods?
- You misunderstand. I've never claimed that fascism was
some fixed doctrine, and that it embodied the whole truth. You
have it backwards, it's the other way around!
- What? I don't understand.
- I'm a follower of truth, first and foremost. Truth is my reli-
gion, truth is my guide, my master. And truth doesn't come
from any man-made ideology. If it's an idea that someone
dreamed up, then it's a definitely a falsehood. Truth comes
from nature herself, from the universe. It just is.
- That all sounds very interesting, but what does it have to do
with fascism?
- My friend, that is fascism.
I was unsettled at this answer, which I didn't expect. I stayed
dumbfounded for a few moments, not knowing what to think.
Am I missing something here? Isn't fascism just some racist
nationalist ideology that led to World War 2? Why is this guy
convinced there's some mystical truth to it?
- I see my answer confuses you.
He once again gave me that subtle smile, and looked to the
sky.
- I guess there’s too much of a disconnect between your pre-
conceived notions about fascism and what I'm conveying to
you. Mmhhh... I know, let me tell you a little story before we go
on!
- A story? Another of your adventures?
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- I don't see the difference. After all, if two people have con-
flicting "knowledge" about something, isn't it just like a differ-
ence in opinion?
- Truth is truth regardless of what anyone says, so "opinions"
are a result of ignorance, while knowledge comes from nature,
from experience. No one has opinionated arguments about
gravity.
- I'm not sure. Can't different people have different opinions
about the same experience?
- When was the last time you heard someone tell you that
you should listen to these "other guys" who say that gravity is
caused by your shadow gripping you and dragging you back
down to earth? After all, "all opinions are equally valid", aren't
they?
His witty example made me laugh, but at the same time, I
saw where he was coming from. You don’t really see argu-
ments of opinion in hard sciences and established facts. I don’t
imagine anyone would argue that 2 plus 2 equals 4 with just an
opinion, especially since we can literally prove it using our fin-
gers. All these arguments of ideals and opinions that I’ve lis-
tened to in college or seen on TV never concerned factual in-
formation or say, pit a dentist against someone who pulls out
their teeth with a bit of string and a door on matters of dental
hygiene. He must have taken my laughter and short moment
of musings as confirmation that I agreed with his point, and he
carried on.
- Here’s another universal element of falsehoods – they are
all made up by people, which is, again, why there are so many
of them. A lie can be either a conscious creation to deceive, or
a result of delusion or misinterpretation.
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- So, you mean truth comes from some higher power that
created everything, like God?
- Something along those lines.
This was certainly an interesting conversation as I’d never
heard these arguments before, even in college. However, once
again, I had to remind myself that this man is a self-pro-
claimed fascist, and that none of this was really related to what
I know of Fascism and Nazism. The Toreros weren’t some lofty
discussions club, they were violent thugs, and apparently he
and they are in the same boat. He even mentioned that the
other fascists he was with were “pirates” who left immigrants
stranded in the sea. What of the racism, the war-mongering,
the atrocities and violence, the totalitarianism – all that any-
one I’ve ever known associated with fascism? How does any of
this ‘truth and lies’ philosophy connect with something so vile?
- But wait, we’ve gone very far off track; I’m still no closer to
understanding why you are a fascist, and it feels like all of this
has little or nothing to do with fascism.
- And had I tried to tell you what fascism is without all that
we have discussed up to this point, you wouldn’t have under-
stood me. I had told you that Truth is my master. I do not wish
to comply with man-made ideas, instead I stand as someone
who champions truth. That is what Fascism is all about. One
great man once said: “You either believe in the truth, and ap-
ply it to yourself without egotism, otherwise you don't believe
in it and you’re kidding yourself.” This is precisely what
makes fascism different from everything else – it seeks to ap-
ply truth to human life, regardless of what that means for any
individual or group: no egotism, no shallow interests, no enti-
tlement. Everything else, all the ideologies and systems, are
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- Ha, no, it’s just their nature. But you’re using a false anal-
ogy. All humans are equal, we’re not differing species of ani-
mals, so we should all be treated equally. If one person is al-
ways ahead of others, it’s unfair; you can’t justify THAT with
nature.
- Is that so? Would you say that all humans are the same
height?
- Of course not.
- Do they all have the same strength?
- No, there’s big variations in strength.
- Have you ever met anyone who was clearly more stupid
than you?
- Yeah, but I’ve also met people who were smarter, too.
- How can someone who’s bigger, stronger and more intelli-
gent be perfectly equal to someone who’s smaller, weaker and
dumber?
- It just seems like they should be equal.
- If two people apply for a job, what does JUSTICE call for?
Should the more competent and experienced person get the
job, or the lesser one?
- I think it would be unfair to give the job to the lesser man.
- So justice calls for INEQUALITY, not equality. Because the
TRUTH of the human condition, is that we’re not equal at all.
- Well, I can’t really argue with that, though it seems wrong
somehow. It seems like it’s really unfair to people who are less
gifted by nature. They keep being told to succeed, yet they
can’t perform, failing at everything they do.
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get into shape. That is, until you let them off the leash once
more.
- Because in such forced conditions, it would no longer be a
matter of their will, but rather of someone else’s will being im-
posed on them, right?
- Absolutely.
- Very well, I suppose I would have to consider your argu-
ment for inferiority.
- Then please consider the following as well: inferior people
always turn to falsehoods because they are discontent with
what their reality is, and refuse to accept it, driving them to act
out against reality by in the only way possible – delusions and
lies.
- And what of the superior people, then?
- The superior people are so by nature. All they need to do is
be themselves, and in doing so, they are standing closer to the
truth. Just how nature simply is, so they must simply be.
- I’m not sure what you mean by this. Sounds like superior
people have it easy, too.
- I suppose it may look that way to some, but in ancient
times, certain societies built themselves on a structure that re-
flected the Superiority-Inferiority dichotomy. And one of their
principal rules was that everyone must be true to their nature:
so when an inferior person tried to reach beyond his station,
he was shunned – not just by the Superior, but also by his
equals and the inferior. They became pariahs. However, if a
Superior person attempted to engage in the duties or actions of
the inferior he was all the same shunned, not just by his equals
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and the superior, but also by the inferior. They, too, became
pariahs.
- So there are certain limitations for the superior as well,
then.
- Yes. And again, mind you, that we are talking about innate
human nature and not merely social structure. You can regard
the world around us today as literally a revolt of the inferior,
and they rule today from the top of the social structure, yet
they still are not content and complain about inequality – be it
between the races, sexes, or anyone else. Inferiors gaining
power did not actually change their innate nature; it did not
change the truth.
- The inferior are still inferior, despite being given benefits
and positions they shouldn’t even have in the first place.
- Very accurately put, my friend! I see you’re becoming more
adept yourself at this reasoning.
He was right, besides, I was no fool by any means, and he
spoke convincingly. At this point, I was certain that prodding
him again about things like racism and totalitarianism will not
lead me to a direct answer – but if I wait and follow his reason-
ing, he will eventually reveal all the pieces of the puzzle for me
to solve. It was rather engaging, and certainly nothing like
what I heard about fascism or, frankly, anything of what we
talked about. Sure, the topics were all well and familiar now,
from the news and my own daily life and encounters, but he
now presented them all to me in a completely different light.
However, I was no longer sure how I felt about anything any-
more, so I was resolved to hear him through to the end, and so
prodded him to continue.
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Why should you increase the risk factors in your life to spare
the feelings of certain groups?
- Maybe it’s fine to discriminate in our personal lives, then,
but to base government policies on it is totally unjust. You
can’t make me swallow that pill.
- The basic fact of life is this: whenever two groups exist
within the same territory, they will always end up fighting to
get the resources and political power. This is nature. If you
want to avoid conflict, then the only solution is to make sure
every group has its own territory. So in a way, you’re right that
it’s wrong to have one government discriminating against a
foreign group in its midst – the correct solution is to eject
them, instead.
- But Jews aren’t even that different from us. We’ve been co-
existing for so long, why would they cause problems? I can’t
even tell a Jew apart from our people, so you’re making a
mountain out of a molehill.
- That’s where you’re wrong. Jews are the most different
group from our people there is on this planet. They are crea-
tures that fester and willfully, knowingly indulge in falsehoods.
While we strive for truth, they are truth’s sworn enemy.
- This seems far-fetched…
- Remember the point we discussed earlier, how humans can
have different natures?
- Yes, but it’s obvious that this applies to individuals, not
groups. I mean, there are tall Jews, short Jews, smart Jews
and stupid Jews, right? So we can’t put them all in the same
basket. I’m sure there’s plenty of scumbags among them, but
what you’re saying just doesn’t seem believable at all.
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- Let me ask you this: do you think some groups tend to excel
at certain things, or to have different traits, as a group?
- I don’t know…
- How about the Olympics, then? What type of people tend to
win foot races?
- Blacks seem to win almost all racing events.
- What kind of people tend to win weightlifting events?
- It seems it’s almost always whites or Asians.
- And swimming?
- Mmmh... never seen a black win or do well at water
sports…
- The jumping events?
- I see where you’re going with this, but this is only athletics.
Those things are secondary.
- No, you’re wrong. If you search your memory honestly,
you’ll see that in every domain, some types excel more often
than others, whether it’s school, chess, ping pong, artistic
merit, you name it.
I became conflicted… on one hand, I hated the point he was
making, and I was certain he was wrong… but as my mind
raced to find counter examples, all I could come up with were
more confirmations, almost as if my mind had already done
the job of putting people in categories along the lines that he
was suggesting.
- Look, it’s one thing to say that groups are better at some-
thing or another, but it’s another thing to accuse them of being
evil liars!
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- Oh, too long. We’ve lived with lies for centuries, now.
- Centuries? How is that even possible?
- Do not think that the world we live in today came about
overnight. Our fall from truth took us a very long time, with
lies slowly chipping away at our understanding of truth, mak-
ing way for bigger lies that made way for bigger ones, still –
think of it as having made a mistake early on in a mathemati-
cal equation; the further you continue to solve it, the more the
mistake grows and deviates from the correct answer. But it
was never by radical revolution that these lies triumphed, but
by that same abstract thinking that slowly opened up paths for
new lies to take hold. Some, of course, took the form of revolu-
tions, but not without a long existing background that was pre-
paring people to accept such lies, making these revolutions
possible in the first place. All civilizations experience a rise and
fall, and the fall is most always like slow decay, and we hardly
realize it – like a frog in water, not noticing how gradually the
water turns to a boil – whereupon, the frog dies.
His frog example was something I could recall from when I
studied biology in school, though one of my co-workers said
it’s not true for some reason or another. Still, the analogy
served to illustrate his point, and I could certainly think of ex-
amples in life when people don’t notice something is wrong
until it’s too late. And his mathematical equation was some-
thing I could understand all too well, as I was rather proficient
with math and algebra and know exactly how easy one seem-
ingly small mistake can create a wildly different outcome. Has
a good portion of human history been, then, a growing miscal-
culation? Some wrong notion, ages ago, becoming the founda-
tion for more incorrect statements that seemingly made sense
under that wrong premise?
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stretched a little before I sat on the edge of the well and looked
down its dark depth. It’s hard to say where my thoughts wan-
dered now, as I looked into the dark. Maybe I was considering
how to cope with what I’ve learned and this whole experience,
knowing that tomorrow I would be back to life as usual – if
that were even possible now, as I’m sure I wouldn’t be able to
help myself but look at everything through this new perspec-
tive I’ve learned. The man put a hand on my shoulder, and I
turned my gaze once again to his face.
The very drastic difference between them and the man was all
too apparent; he was happy with so little, capable, and confi-
dent, while they were bitter and loved to complain, but
wouldn’t do anything to resolve their issues. Their complain-
ing, in of itself, seemed to be more of a necessity than actually
overcoming its source.
As I got into the car, I then couldn’t help but think that in so
many ways I was no different from them, even if I didn’t al-
ways voice all my complaints and disappointments with my
life – I’ve grown to accept it as a given. I sat in my car, thinking
about my own life without starting the engine. It seemed that
the more the sun settled, and the further away the man was,
the more my everyday reality descended once again upon me
as the darkness did. It suddenly occurred to me that I didn’t
even know the man’s name. I felt somewhat disappointed at
how I didn’t have a name to place with the man who had prob-
ably been a brighter source of light in my life than the sun it-
self.
I didn’t want to dwell on these thoughts, as I could feel my-
self growing more weary and decided to try and push it all out
of my mind and fall back into my normal routine. I started up
the car and drove straight to my home, not too far away from
the storage house. As I walked from my car to my house, I
stopped for a moment and looked into the direction of the city,
once again thinking of the man I met and wondering what he
might get into with the Toreros. Finally, I made it inside and
went straight to bed.
The next three days I tried to live as usual, but my concern
after meeting the man was proven true: I now couldn’t help
but see everything from his point of view, as I analyzed all I
heard and saw through his points, reasoning, arguments and
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longer. I even remember that when I would hear about it, I’d
voice how horrible this was if true, and then immediately for-
get about it as my everyday concerns would take over. I
seemed to be morally outraged at the time, but now I couldn’t
think of it as anything more than complacency. That was not
outrage. I had forgotten about this news piece until today, and
what I felt now was real outrage, outrage that grew out of what
the man would call a desire for Justice.
Then I stopped with a heavy crate in my hands and just
stood there, looking into space, not really seeing anything in
front of me. I felt my heart race and again thought back to the
man and what he told me: “I will let my heart decide.” I
dropped the crate and proceeded to walk out of the building.
Nobody had really payed attention to me at that moment, so I
left unobstructed. I should have walked to the boss, if he was
even in his office, and told him that I quit, but it seemed rather
a meager and pointless thing to do.
I drove straight home and began to pack an old backpack
that I had, by no means suited for traveling, but it was all I
had. I packed it only with some extra clothes and essentials, as
well as all the money I had in the world, which wasn’t all that
much. I left my home and drove into the city. Before leaving, I
looked up some information on the Toreros and found out that
they own a bar in the capitol. This was my destination.
Having parked outside the bar, I left the backpack in the car
and got out. As I walked towards the door, doubt crept in, and
I started second-guessing what I was doing. I all but stopped
right at the entrance to the bar, when again I thought back to
the man. There are no doubts if Truth is on your side – know
yourself, and follow your heart. How was I to know what kind
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When I drove to the outskirts of the city on the road that the
Toreros told me he had taken, I got out of my car for the last
time, and grabbed my backpack. From here on in I was going
to proceed on foot and catch up to him, and then we’ll finally
be able to exchange our names, and I would join him in his ad-
ventures as he tells me what else there is to know.
Later that same day, he smiled brightly at me as he said:
“Well, it’s nice to finally have a name to go with your face,
Sancho.”
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