“As Ian Sommerville put it: every day the queue at the post office grown longer, until one day it is no longer a queue but a mob.

“Prophesying the End is not a job for amateurs but should be left to those who have qualified themselves themselves for it by studies in cyclical history. This subject has its own technical, alchemical language in which to describe the successive staged that every civilisation passed through, from foundation to destruction. Among its products are Plato’s account of Atlantis and St. John’s Fall of Babylon. Behind these is the same archetypal theme, of a world order symbolised by a city-state.

“It was well founded, and as long as its rulers upheld the divine code of law, imparted to them at the beginning, the citizens had as much happiness as any society can provide. But in the course of the time they grew lax, neglected their laws and custom and lost respect for their elders. The city became an empire, exploited its neighbours and imported foreign luxuries to the ruin of its native economy. The divine indivisible One that inspired its foundation gave way to the Many – the multiple illusions and appetites of Mammon. Corrupted by wealth, the citizens turned morose and quarrelsome. They declined politically, from government by dedicated initiates, through decent democracy to mob rule exercised by the most vicious and vulgar.

“That situation has its inevitable product, a mighty, self-centered dictator. He is hailed at first because he promised to restore order and keep things going; but he is a type of Antichrist, and when he appears it is an infallible sign that the End is at hand.”

▪ John Michell, Confessions of a Radical Traditionalist (Dominion, 2005) extract from pages 278 to 279.

SydneyTrads is the internet portal and communication page of the Sydney Traditionalist Forum, an association of individuals who form part of the Australian paleoconservative, “traditionalist conservative” and “independent right”.