AmRen Diary Part III

On Friday night, Jared Taylor took to the podium to welcome everyone, but also remind everyone that the protesters would be out in force on Saturday. His order was to ignore them and avoid engaging with them. A local judge had ruled that the protesters had a right to harass the people at the facility and come inside to use the facilities. That meant it was possible the protesters would try to bust in and disrupt things. As a result, the park police were deployed inside as well as outside in an effort to maintain order.

From what I was told by one of the cops, the previous events had avoided all of this by putting the protesters on a hill well away from the facility. That way they could be easily contained by the park police and easily ignored by everyone else. The judge, a liberal for sure, did not like that so she came up with a plan in the hopes of creating a violent confrontation. It is a helpful reminder that the rent-a-nuts we see at these things are paid for by the ruling class. In a sane society, Antifa would not exist.

Despite the best efforts of our rulers, Antifa was more entertainment than political statement. The conference people stayed inside and largely ignored them. The young people could not avoid pulling out their cell phones and taking pics of the circus through the windows. Then they started taking selfies with the circus in the background. The scene had the feel of a futuristic zoo, where people get to view the humans who came out of the factory with serious flaws. It is hard not to laugh at this stuff.

The twitter feed of the mentally disturbed women where I got that tweet is useful, when thinking about groups like Antifa. Pretty much everything she tweeted about the day did not happen. There were no gun shots or confrontations. It was just a few hours of a freak show, where bizarrely dressed people and septuagenarian hippies danced around in the parking lot. It was a hot day and most of them ran out of steam by mid-afternoon. The whole thing was so silly, I suspect even some of the protesters felt ridiculous.

For Lacy MacAuley though, the thirst for violence is all consuming. This story about her trip to Turkey and this story about getting beat by Turks are good examples. This is a person who hates herself and hopes for nothing more than a violent denouement to her otherwise pointless existence. That’s probably true of almost all of these people. They self-mutilate and dress like clowns because they seek to degrade themselves. Almost all of them smoke and by the looks of it, I’m guessing, many use street drugs to excess.

Watching the freaks dance, as they tried to take photos of everyone inside, I noticed that it was a girl thing. There were extremely ugly old women, wearing shirts with feminist slogans. There were a few younger women, dressed in what used to be the uniform of the skateboard punk. The young ones clearly were the ones hoping for some ultra-violence, like the stupid girl Damigo decked at Berkeley. And of course, there was a tranny. This one was maybe six foot tall, with half its head shaved and the other side died bright yellow.

This reminded me of how David Horowitz described the Weathermen. In the late sixties and early seventies, the normal white males had either left or were pushed aside in radical politics. Instead, it was blacks and white women. In both cases, it was the women who had the greatest thirst for blood. Similarly, the Manson gang’s women were the ones hellbent on murdering people. The American Left has been a feminine movement for at least fifty years and maybe longer. After all, women pushed through Prohibition.

That raises something else that was obvious on Saturday. Antifa is a cargo cult. They think if they ape the aesthetics of the radicals from the past, the past will become the present. Many of the geezers I saw at the protest were just reliving their youth, if they ever stopped living their youth. The younger ones though, they are romantics. They believe the world needs to return to a better time when they were the radicals and people cared about their issues. Antifa and the other Progressive rent-a-mobs are the death rattle of the Left.

Oswald Spengler wrote about this phenomenon. A culture, like a person, is born, lives and then it dies. Like a person, it’s youth is a chaotic becoming, while its maturing is what it became. It’s death is romanticizing what it was and then, it is gone. That’s the American Left now. It is a thing for old people and young romantics, but the death certificate has been filled out with everything but the date. The radical culture that was born in the 60’s and flourished for two generations is about to expire.

One final thought on this. I was standing in front of the big glass windows watching the Antifa loonies, when I turned and looked at the young AmRen guys taking pics and selfies, laughing and enjoying themselves. On one side of the glass were grotesquely out of shape people in grubby clothes, smoking and gesticulating. On the other were young men in suits, well groomed and composed. It was one of those times when you can stand on the timeline of your life and see the past and the future at the same time.

AmRen Diary Part II

One of the things that is not appreciated, at least I have not full appreciated it, is just how lonely it is to think about the stuff we think about on this side of the intellectual universe. By that I mean, much of what is discussed here, for example, is never discussed at your office or your church or at social gatherings. When we can discuss this stuff with fellow travelers, it is in hushed tones and care is taken to make sure no one is listening in on the conversation. It’s the cost of having so much of reality made off limits to discussion.

That’s probably the biggest value of events like AmRen and why our side needs to start cultivating Jacobin clubs, so the like minded can do this locally. It is refreshing to be able to sit at dinner with other people interested in the same material, going back and forth on something like black crime, without having to constantly look over your shoulder. At lunch on Saturday, J’Onquarious pointed out that this is the only place on earth where we could have the sort of conversations we were having about social science data.

A good example of this is a conversation I had with a Jewish guy on Friday night. That’s right, there was a Jewish guy at AmRen. In fact, there were quite a few. Something almost no one knows or thinks about is that smart Jews are having the same debates among themselves about the roles of race and identity in Western society. My sense is that race is the trigger point. Smart Jewish guys grow up in nice safe middle class towns learning the egalitarian faith, only to get into the world and see the reality of race.

Just to get this out of the way, in case it is not obvious, I’ve always been on the side of Jared Taylor when it comes to who is white in America. His line about Jews is “They sure look white to me.” That becomes blazingly obvious when you talk to a conservative Jew about religion or race. Long before I came into hate blogging I knew this, having had this conversation with conservative Jews in the past. I’m also fine with people who think otherwise and are into the JQ. So are the Jews I met at AmRen.

It is at a thing like AmRen where you can appreciate just how oppressive and stupid our intellectual life has become in the West. There are few places on earth where a Jew and non-Jew can talk about something like racial identity or the realities of black life. The guy I was chatting with was like a lot of people I met at AmRen. He was bursting to talk about this stuff because you can’t do this anywhere anymore, other than in the comment sections of sites like this. We really are living in an age of madness.

If one is looking for the little green shoots, a place like AmRen is a good place to start. No where else in America can a guy like Richard Spencer have a jovial and thoughtful conversation with a Jewish guy about whether Jews fit into white identity. Spencer thinks Jews are a separate identity group and he thinks Jews will figure that out on their own and do their own thing. The Jewish guy in this case, is unsure, but that’s why he was sounding out Spencer on the issue. Try having that conversation on a college campus.

That’s where the optimism lies. In the fullness of time, the smart kids get to be right. That’s the lesson of history. The people who rule over us are trapped in a frenzy of purging anyone who notices anything about the world. They are systematically and aggressively estupidizing themselves, by driving off anyone with the temerity to ask a question. By herding all of the smart white guys into the Dissident Right, they are not saving themselves. They are creating the army that will destroy the prevailing order.

After attending something like this, it is easy to come back high on your own fumes and there is some of that with me. I know someone into lacrosse and every time he comes home from a tournament, he is sure lacrosse is about to sweep the nation. That’s never happening, but believing it keeps lacrosse from dying off. That’s the benefit of networking and socializing to these sorts of things. Being a biological realist is a lonely life at times. It helps to know that you are not alone in the struggle.

Even so, I’ve sat around with grad students at places like Yale and I’ve been around a lot of smart people in STEM settings. Often, the most striking feature is the oppressive lack of curiosity and the fear of saying the wrong thing. The core of Western civilization, dating to the Greeks, is smart people openly discussing the hard subjects of the day, trying to push the rock of humanity up the hill. That’s what’s happening on our side. On their side, it is struggle sessions and the slow boiling off their best assets. There’s the green shoot.

AmRen Diary Part I

I went into the event not knowing if it was for me. The stuff I do here does not fit neatly into the general categories of the Dissident Right. I’m a race realist and a biological realist, but I don’t do much on white identity. As I told Jared Taylor, I thought that AmRen was an older crowd who wanted to go back to the 50’s. On the other hand, I also went into it prepared to be wrong in ways I could not imagine. The event sold out so it had to be more than old guys telling war stories, but what that actually meant was a mystery.

Well, I was amazingly wrong. The age of the crowd was the first thing I noticed. There were many people there in the under-30 age bracket. There were lot of guys in their 40’s and 50’s too. The average age was probably early 40’s and there were quite a few women in attendance. Most important, the crowd was smart. AmRen is full of smart, well read people, more interested in the right answer than anything else. I’ll get into more detail later in this post, but AmRen is a gathering of the best minds on the Dissident Right.

The reason for this is Jared Taylor. Some men are impressive for what they have done and others impress for who they are. Taylor is both. He has worked tirelessly for a quarter century promoting pro-white ideas, often at great personal cost. He is also a man of great decency, integrity and accessibility. He has a presence. Spend a few minutes talking to Taylor and you get the sense you will be telling your grandchildren one day, about the time you shook the great man’s hand at the conference he founded…

The most exhilarating part of the trip was meeting John Derbyshire. He will be embarrassed for me after reading this, but having the great man say, “I am a big fan of your work” was the thrill of a lifetime. It’s like having the Pope say, “I envy your piety.” Many men have made the intellectual journey to this place because of the writing of John Derbyshire. There is a long list of imitators, like me, who came into this thing because we’ve read and understood his stuff. It was an honor to meet you, John…

I am not Derb’s #1 fan. J’onquarious Williams holds that title, in addition to the title of “second greatest quantitative blogger.” He’s also a brilliant and charming guy. Most quantitative guys are terrible conversationalist, but JW is an exception. There’s a genuineness to him that is striking. Within five minutes of talking to him, you feel like you have known him for decades. It also helps that he knows his stuff and he is a super smart guy. There’s something to say for getting the right answer and then embracing it.

I think both of us came away understanding that a lot of people are reading us and therefore, we have a duty to be good at what we do. JW told Derb that he was thankful that guys like Sailer and Derbyshire were there when he was ready for it. I think he hit the nail on the head. We both now see that one day someone will be saying the same thing to us. That means we have a duty to do our best work. Speaking only for myself here, I find that incredibly humbling and motivating. It’s good to have a team again…

On a slightly different note, I walked into the Friday night reception, hoping to see one of the famous guys and maybe buy them a drink. Instead, someone stopped me to say he was a fan. Then someone else did the same. That’s flattering, of course, but it takes getting used to. I watched guys like Richard Spencer spend hours getting his picture taken and shaking hands with admirers. He is incredibly accessible and he seems to enjoy talking with the young guys who look up to him. That’s hard thing to do well.

He invited me and some others to a late dinner and he was just one of the guys, debating the topics and soliciting opinions. There are some big differences between the two of us on philosophical matters, but he was very interested in discussing them. My take away is he is a guy fully aware that he has to keep growing into his role as the movement grows, so he is eager to sound out people on these topics. Not a lot of people can do that. I came away with considerably more respect for who he is and what he is doing…

I was at dinner with Spencer, because of a fellow I’ll just call the International Man of Mystery. This mystery man introduced me to all the big hitters at the conference. It seems that he knows everyone and they think it is important to know him. In addition to being the most connected guy in the universe, he is a wonderful conversationalist and an extremely intelligent man. Walking through the darkness to a party, feeling one another out about our politics, I sensed more was going on that meets the eye.

Every cultural movement needs people, who know how to put people together and put people at ease. Otherwise, they fall into factionalism and petty jealousy. Guys, like our International Man of Mystery, keep everyone working together. Of course, conspiring in the Tennessee darkness with an International Man of Mystery makes doing this a lot more fun. On the other hand, if I step out of line, I’ll have to hire someone to start my car in the morning. But, life is full of trade-offs…

Our International Man of Mystery put us at dinner on Saturday with Greg Johnson of Counter-Currents Publishing. I must admit I’m not as familiar with these guys as I probably be, but that speaks the wealth a breadth of content coming out of the Dissident Right. The banquet had a lot going on so I did not have nearly enough time to talk with Greg, but my first impression is that he is a very smart guy, who has spent a lot of time thinking about his set of issues. I came away thinking I need to make a point of reading his stuff…

At lunch on Saturday, JW and I were joined by a young guy, a teenager I think, who made us feel a little dumb. The kid is very smart and he has read a lot. He asks great questions. What struck me about the conference is that the Dissident Right is now the place for smart white males and not just old guys. Young guys are coming into this because they can be smart without someone screaming at them for noticing things or their toxic masculinity. Having a bunch of smart guys on our team is encouraging…

Regular reader Rurik was kind enough to buy me a beer and make a point of impressing upon me how much people enjoy what I’m doing here. I truly appreciated the kind words…

I met a brilliant young guy, who is emblematic of what I observed at the conference. He had a sense of race realism, but only after watching a Jared Taylor video did it all come together for him. This is a common story. The conference, at some level, had the feel of a group of people coming out from a cave to see the stars. That’s encouraging as it means something is genuinely happening.  He posts under the handle “scotty” so if he starts turning up in the comments here, bring your A-game….

I’ll be doing some more posts on the conference. I don’t want to go too long, so I’ll stop here for now…

The Z-Blog Power Hour: The Freak Show

 

This week was a big test for the project as I was traveling and that meant recording this thing on the road and when time permitted. The result was some strange acoustics in some parts and an on-the-fly editing job at the airport.

I am at American Renaissance this weekend, so I will not be posting much on the site. I expect to return on Sunday and provide a full report on Hate-Fest 2017 as soon as I get settled in on Sunday

This week, Spreaker has the full show. YouTube has the full show and some new graphics to distinguish the bits from the full show. I am now on iTunes, which means the Apple Nazis can now listen to me on their Hitler phones.You’ll also a note I have renamed this thing, which is explained in the podcast.

This Week’s Show

  • 00:00: Perfunctory Opening Comments
  • 02:10: Amazon (Link) (Link)
  • 07:35: Patreon (Link)
  • 12:47: Twitter (Link) (Link)
  • 17:50: Cat Fight! (Link)
  • 22:00: Movies (Link) (Link)
  • 26:30: Tranny Seals (Link)
  • 30:30: Poor Larry (Link)
  • 38:45: Ghetto Posting (Link) (Link) (Link)
  • 49:00: Libertarian Twats I (Link)
  • 51:40: Libertarian Twats 2 (Link)
  • 54:45: Libertarian Twats 3 (Link)
  • 58:00: Sloppy Williamson (Link)
  • 62:00: Closing

Direct Download

The iTunes Page

 

 

Thot-ocracy

Young males have coined a term for particularly obnoxious type of female increasingly common today. The term is “thot” which, according to Urban Dictionary, is an acronym for “that ho over there.” That’s probably true, as most kids communicate via text message these days. Of course, it also sounds a lot like “twat” so that could be why it caught on with young males. Additionally, the term means a girl who is a slut, but carries on as if she is special. It’s the sort of thing that is said to bring someone down a few notches.

Anyway, the word thot does not exactly roll off the tongue, but it is useful shorthand for the type of young woman that has become too common in our mass media. This is the girl, who would have been standing next to a Ford at the auto show in another era, but is now put on television as a serious commentator or journalist. They get the job because of their looks, but somehow they think they are public intellectuals. This American Thinker post about Katherine Timpf is a good example of the phenomenon.

The black man who stalked and assaulted Fox News megastar Kat Timpf in Brooklyn this week has nothing on me.  I was a charter member of Kat’s Disgusting Club two months before this still unidentified POC — piece of crap — dumped a bottle of water over her blonde locks and earned him the second spot in what used to be a more exclusive enclave.

My journey into the group began on the first episode of Kat’s show, “The Fox News Specialists.” In her trademark flip style, Kat declared that no one had anything to tell her about how black people are relentless victims of relentless white racism all the time, everywhere and that explains everything. She already knew.

“I do understand issues with criminal justice, particularly in the black community and police brutality,” she intoned.

Another black whisperer is born.

Mx. Timpf is probably a nice person. I only had a vague recollection of her so I looked up some clips of her on YouTube. Here’s a longish one. From the photos on line and her video clips, it appears she figured out that she could work the naughty librarian look into a paying gig in conservative media. Her bio says she is a libertarian, but exactly no one gives a damn about her political views. She’s on TV because she is easy on the eyes and willing to play the sex kitten on these chat shows. That’s how it works.

There’s nothing new about this, but in the past, the women doing the TV bimbo roles knew why they were on TV. In fact, many had made it to television via modeling or beauty pageants. Phyllis George was the winner of the 1971 Miss America pageant and that got her a gig on CBS as a sportscaster in 1974. She provided the legs, while gnarly old dudes like Jimmy the Greek and Brent Musberger talked football. George never carried on like she was an expert on football. She was eye candy and the moderator of the show.

Today, young women like Katherine Timpf are walking around thinking they are where they are because they are important thinkers. The exchange she had with Colin Flaherty was sadly comical. She picked up some libertarian talking points and she repeats them, making “criminal justice reform” her issue. In the old days, the beauty pageant girls would cast about for a talent that they could use in shows. Today, TV bimbos cast about for a social cause they can champion on TV, while showing some leg.

As an aside, notice that what passes for “conservative” these days in the mass media is basically just Reason Magazine style libertarianism. It’s about as edgy as these people can muster, for fear of upsetting Lefty. That’s mostly because all of these outlets are located in New York or DC. If Timpf wants to keep getting invited to parties and events, she knows she has to avoid anything that upsets the Progs. The fact that generic libertarianism gets the good housekeeping seal of approval is instructive.

Anyway, this meandering post is not supposed to be Timpf-bashing. I’m sure she is a nice girl who is kind to old people and puppies. The reason she is in this position to be an example of Dunning-Kruger, is that the media indulges people like her, allowing her to think she is an intellectual. In fact, the culture as a whole has been re-engineered over the last few decades to encourage young girls to wildly over estimate their abilities. It’s no surprise that we have a couple of generations of thots on our hands.

The rape hoax culture on the college campus is largely due to coeds thinking they can do all the things boys can do, like get knee-walking drunk down at the bar. A man wakes up next to a strange women, he just assumes he was on his game. A women wakes up with her panties on her head and she is looking for someone to blame. After all, she has been told her whole life that the world is here to cater to her whims. Chad Thundercock down at the bar should have known she was going to change her mind after she got sober.

The conflict between how women are trained and biological reality could be one cause of the social justice warrior phenomenon. The outbreaks seem to be in male domains like tech and gaming. The girls show up expecting the world to bend to their will and when it doesn’t, they start blaming reality, rather than question their training. The innate desire for attention, curdles into self-abuse and misdirected anger at males. That’s a half-baked theory, but it is just as plausible as toxoplasmosis.

It is hard to see how this cycle of madness ends. The reaction of Timpf to being assaulted the other day suggests that no amount of reality will beat any sense into these women. Being self-absorbed and stupid pays too well. Even the ugly ones get to work the system to live well above what their talents should warrant. Whether we like it or not, the future, at least for a little while, will be a thot-ocracy. American society will be dominated by airhead bimbos who think a pair of librarian glasses makes them an intellectual.

The Trumpening So Far

One of the more amusing aspects of the 2016 election was how the pearl clutchers of Conservative Inc. would rush out of their hobbit dens every week, shrieking, “That’s it! Trump is finished!” It was always after Trump mocked their virtue in some way. They would carry on like it was just a matter of time before their adoring public rallied to their banner and chased away the evil dirt monster. They are still waiting for anyone to show up and take their side. Meanwhile Trump has completed his sixth month in office.

Since January, another pattern has emerged. The Fake News makes up a story and the commentariat carries on as if it is fact. A few months ago, the Fake News swore that Bannon was about to be fired. That did not happen so they moved onto Kushner. His alleged ties to Tsar Alexander were going to force him out. Now, the Fake News swears that Trump is about to fire Sessions. Suddenly everyone in Conservative Inc, who hated Sessions, is now defending him as a great statesman and politician.

The key to understanding Trump has always been that he loves drama. The never ending quarrel is what gets him up in the morning. He thrives in chaos and when he cannot find it, he creates it. The reason is Trump is an opportunist. That’s his nature. He seeks to maximize what he has in order to leverage it into a chance to catch someone sleeping, so he can get a bargain in his next deal. This post from two years ago described Trump pretty well and it is holding up now that he is in the White House.

There’s another aspect of Trump that has always been true, but is taking center stage now that he is in the White House. Two decades ago, he was often compared to George Steinbrenner, the late owner of the New York Yankees. Like Steinbrenner, Trump is an unpredictable and often impetuous boss. He gets mad at people for no sensible reason and he hold grudges that make even less sense. Steinbrenner fired people for trivial reasons, but would then hire them back. That’s what we see with Trump now.

The reason Trump was so perfect for the reality show The Apprentice was that he had the reputation for being the hot-headed boss. It was not hard for Trump to be convincing when he would say his catchphrase, “You’re fired!” It was something that people imagined he said every week, because he had the reputation for firing people. It may have been exaggerated, but we see now that Trump is not only a tough boss, bu he can be petty and small. His treatment of Sessions is childish and pointless.

The thing is though, guys like Steinbrenner and Trump got very rich in the toughest of businesses. The reason is they had a knack for creating chaos, forcing people out of their comfortable positions. An enemy on the move is vulnerable. By creating a whirlwind of chaos, Trump gets everyone moving and inevitably, making mistakes. One possible reason for the paralysis in Washington right now is that the snowflakes in the GOP are too frightened to move. They have never experienced anything like this and they are scared.

From the perspective of the Dissident Right, this is a good result. Most of the GOP are liars, who have been finking on their voters for years. Their inability and unwillingness to repeal ObamaCare has exposed this to even the most naive voters. Of course, Trump’s penchant for creating chaos has collapsed the Washington media. Even the most gullible is now assuming the news is fake. The ability of the political class to peddle their agit-prop has been greatly diminished because Trump has destroyed the media universe.

On the other hand, Trump’s mad man management style is keeping him from getting anything through Congress. He thinks he can wear down people like Ryan and McConnell, but he is misreading the situation. Being Speaker is not like being the CEO of a company. Leadership can only enforce discipline by withholding favors and that has a limit. Ryan can’t fire uncooperative members of his caucus. Trumps’ bullying style is probably making that task harder for the leadership.

Of course, the bigger issue is Team Trump does not know what they are doing. Jared Kushner was good at marrying well and maybe he is good at business, but he does not have the slightest clue about Washington politics. Trump’s penchant for relying on family over smart advisers is fine in business, because Trump is usually the smartest guy in the room. In politics, the only person less qualified than Trump is his daughter, who he seems to rely on more than political strategists like Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon.

Regardless, six months into the Trumpening and there is plenty to disappoint and dishearten his voters. His vacillating on immigration is the most worrisome. It’s why he is in the White House. His unwillingness to bring the hammer down on recalcitrant Republicans is mind boggling. Instead of tormenting Sessions, he should be blasting the bugmen of the GOP. Again, Trump’s impulse to keep everyone on edge, even his allies, makes supporting him an exhausting and unrewarding endeavor.

On the other other hand, Trump did not get to this point by doing things like a normal politician so it would not make sense for him to try to become a normal politician. His unconventional style has worked when the professionals said it would fail. A point worth making again is that you can’t judge Trump by traditional metrics. He’s a once in a century political force who will be judged more on what he destroys than on what he creates. He is the destroyer of worlds, because the world of Washington needs destroying.

Codes of the Underworld¹

One of the many concepts that has entered the mainstream from the Dissident Right is signalling. It’s first appearance came as criticism of social justice warriors, who were signalling their virtue by opposing someone or some thing, real or imagined. Virtue signalling is not new. It has probably been a part of human society since people began to settle into agricultural communities. Scipio Africanus, the great Roman general, who defeated Hannibal at Zama, was also famous for his virtue signalling.

These days, you will hear guys on the alt-right talk about counter-signalling. The easiest example of this is the newly minted rich guy going out and buying expensive display items, like cars or gaudy homes. NBA players are prone to this. They want to signal their wealth by acquiring highly visible, expensive items. An old money guy, in contrast, counter-signals by living in an old farmhouse that has been in the family for generations and driving a 40 year old Saab. He’s the sort of rich that feels no need to advertise it.

Signalling is a basic human trait. We all do it to one degree or another. Walk into a prison and you will see an array of tattoos on the inmates. These will signal gang affiliations, time served in the system, facilities in which the inmate has served and the individual’s violence capital. That last part is an important part of keeping the peace. To civilians, a face tattoo is always scary, but in jail, the right neck tattoo can tell other inmates that they are in the presence of an accomplished killer for a particular prison gang.

Virtue signalling and danger signalling are the easiest to understand, but people also use verbal and non-verbal signals to indicate trust or test the trustworthiness of others. A criminal organization, for example, will have a new member commit a pointless crime to demonstrate their trustworthiness. This is not just to sort out police informants, as is portrayed on television. It’s mostly to ascertain the willingness of the person to commit to the life of the organization. It’s hard to be a criminal if you will not commit crimes.

Outlaw biker culture is a good example of the use of signalling to establish trust relationships. Bikers have always, for example, adopted Nazi symbols as part of their display items. Bikers are not sitting around reading Julius Evola. What they are doing is signalling their complete rejection of the prevailing morality. By adopting taboo symbols and clothing, the outlaw biker is letting other bikers know his status, as much as he is letting the squares know he is a dangerous guy, who should be avoided.

This type of signalling is also defensive. Someone who is not serious or unprepared for life in a motorcycle club will try hard to hide this from himself and the club he is trying to impress. When those club members all have visible tattoos and swastikas on their vests, no one can kid themselves about what is expected from members. The visual presentation of the outlaw biker does more to chase away posers and trouble makers than character tests and initiation rituals. A biker is a walking entrance exam for prospects.

It’s not just an in-group/out-group thing. When you start prospecting for a biker club, you are routinely forced to choose between the moral framework of society and the morality of the club. The same process works in cults, interestingly enough. The prospect is always in a position where he must either divorce himself emotionally from his old life and the old world, or leave the club. It’s why one percenter clubs take their time patching in new members. It takes time to leave the old world and fully commit to the lifestyle.

That’s the way to read the alt-right and the stuff they say and do on-line with respect to non-whites, Jews and women. They don’t actually spend a lot of time talking and writing about these groups. They spend most of their time talking about how to organize themselves, the issues that face white identity movements and the philosophical points of their thing. The offensive memes and the racists language are mostly signalling. If you freak out over Hitler themed twitter avatars, then you are never going to be in their thing.

As with bike culture, it is defensive signalling to ward off entryists and the posers, but it is also a signal that joining their thing is more than just a secret handshake. If you are on-line talking about white identity, you’re never going back to the squaresville world of normie politics. You are rejecting that world as illegitimate in favor of the new thing. In effect, the racist memes are an offer. Accept it as a price of admission, but understand that by accepting the offer you are leaving the old morality behind for the new moral framework.

What this sort of signalling suggests is that the alt-right may have more staying power and more momentum, than their current numbers would suggest. Political movements come and go because they are rooted in the moment. “Free Silver” stopped being a rally cry once the currency issue was put to bed. The “Happy Warrior” stuff from the prior generation no longer has any relevance, as those ideological wars are now a part of history. Political movements are born to die, as soon as their issue is resolved.

The other thing about political movements is they are inherently open. The whole point of the Tea Party, for example, was to rally a lot of people from different ideologies to challenge the Progressives, who sacked Washington. The Tea Party people welcomed anyone who opposed the bailouts and reckless spending that was ushered in by Obama and the Democrats. That openness is what allowed the army of grifters from Conservative Inc to sail in and hijack the movement, turning it into a fundraising arm of the GOP.

Cultural movements, like identity or race movements, are closed and exclusive. They certainly seek to grow their numbers, but only on their own terms. They place narrow rules on members and never accept divided loyalties. You are either in the thing or outside the thing. There is no in between. This is why the American Left has been so persistent and able to re-spawn after each collapse. It’s not a list of agenda items. It’s a lifestyle with a moral code and a wide array of symbols for the members to accept and display.

That’s what is evolving with the alt-right. There’s no way to be “sort of alt-right.” You’re either in it or you’re not in it. That’s become clear with the schism between the civ-nat guys and the alt-right. Rejecting a guy like Milo Yiannopoulos forces guys like Gavin McInness to decide. He can be edgy TV funny guy or he can be in the alt-right and everything that implies. The result is his thing is dissolving as some people bite the bullet and join the alt-right, while others go back to sleep.

The jury is still out as to whether the alt-right is the long hoped for response to the rise of the New Left in the 1960’s. Ironically, the worst thing that could happen for the alt-right is for Trump to be everything his critics in Washington claim. White identity politics can only flourish when whites believe they must be an intolerant minority, battling other intolerant minorities for space. What is clear is that the alt-right is not another Tea Party. It has staying power because it is a cultural movement, not a political one.

¹The title of this post comes from this excellent book, Codes of the Underworld.

The Jay Kay Kay

Last week, The Anti-Defamation League put out a proscription list of hate thinkers they have deemed to be a danger to the republic. In years past, they would roll out lists of old geezers from the 1960’s, but now they are going after the alt-right. They describe Richard Spencer’s thing as “the most visible extremist movement” in the country. They also listed the alt-lite as fellow travelers. The point of the list is to intimidate people into disassociating from the people on the list. The ADL is trying isolate and ostracize these people.

Ironically, it is not a lot different from what the Klan used to do in a bygone era. As is true with most things in the current crisis, the history of the Ku Klux Klan has been retconned to fit the current narrative. According the prevailing mythologies, the Klan was just like the 19th century Cossacks. Instead of riding through Jewish villages on horseback, the Klan drove through black neighborhoods in pickup trucks.They are portrayed as sort of an off-the-books secret police, run by southern political leaders.

The truth is something different. The primary role of the Klan was to keep whites in line, not blacks. Sure, the Klan would terrorize blacks on occasion, but they were mostly interested in keeping the white majority in line. A white business that did not strictly adhere to the color line, for example, could find itself in trouble with the local Klan. They did not have to resort to physical violence in most cases. The most effective weapon of the 20th century Klan was social pressure to force whites to toe the racial line.

The other important bit about the Klan that has been thrown down the memory hole is that they lost. The reason is that after a while, their moral authority eroded and therefore their ability to apply pressure on whites decreased. Think about it. The Klan has no credibility today so they have no power. That means they had real power only when the white majority took them seriously. A look at history shows that the Klan was most active when their influence was on the wane. In that regard, it was always a rearguard action.

The same logic applies to the ADL and SPLC. Within recent memory, being called out by either group would ruin a media career and certainly destroy a political career. People in outsider politics could guarantee they would remain in outsider politics if they found themselves on the ADL’s list of bad thinkers. While you could survive having private doubts about the prevailing orthodoxy on race, you could not survive even the hint of antisemitism. That’s what made the ADL and SPLC so powerful.

This list and the SPLC’s recent missteps suggest that like the Klan in the 50’s and 60’s, these groups are now waning in authority. Including guys like Gavin McInness on their list of crime thinkers is so ridiculous, the only proper response is to laugh. The Proud Boys are about as edgy and subversive as bingo night at The Villages. The only reason anyone cares about them is that McInness is a media gadfly. His “group” is really just a fan club he maintains to promote his media appearances and internet show.

Another indication that these groups and their moral authority are on the wane is the fact that the response has ranged from indifference to mockery. McInness had a meltdown on twitter, but he was the exception. Most of the alt-lite people simply ignored it, as there was very little media coverage. The alt-right people were howling with laughter, congratulating one another over having made the list. The whole point of the name and shame campaign is to actually shame people. If they are laughing, they are not feeling much shame.

There’s another connection to the Klan. These groups, especially their leaders, have gotten very rich in the skins game. Morris Dees has become super-rich peddling himself as the Hebrew Avenger. When you need to hide your money in the Cayman Islands, you have a lot of money. The skins game has been very good to groups like the ADL, just as segregation was a profitable venture for members of the Klan. The ADL is mostly playing defense now, hoping for one last payday in the skins game.

Of course, that’s where the analogy breaks down. The Klan was never able to turn their thing into a profitable enterprise. That’s mostly because they lost, but there’s not much evidence to suggest they tried to monetize their movement. The ADL and SPLC have always been money making schemes from the start. Despite the greed though, they were highly effective at changing public attitudes. At the very top of the modern hierarchy of sin is the sin of antisemitism. It’s the one unforgivable transgression.

Still, the thumbless way that groups like the ADL are responding to the Dissident Right suggests they have not just lost their way, but lost their relevance. When Progressive propaganda outlets are running features like this one about the SPLC, the writing is on the wall. The people in charge no longer respect the moral authority of these groups and their intended victims no longer fear them. Like the Klan, the ADL and SPLC can only exist as long as they are feared or respected. Neither is true now.

Better Living Through Suicide

Religions tend to set limits. Those limits come with the force of God or some spiritual force that transcends man. Otherwise, a religion would be nothing more than man-made rules enforced by the strongest. This is why laws in most of the world are rooted in the dominant religion of the region or country. The local religion is a list of restrictions and limitations placed on the believers. Naturally, when it came time to form a government and write laws, they relied upon the laws and rules of their religion.

This may seem rather obvious, but the concept of the limiting principle is easy to take for granted. This is a core feature of most religions and it easiest to understand by considering our laws. Take two people who are not robbing banks. Just as long as both are not robbing banks, neither is more or less of a bank robber than the other. Both are simply not bank robbers. In other words, while there may be degrees of bank robbery, there are no degrees of not bank robbery. Not being one is the limit of that virtue.

This is true of religion, of course. The sinner can be someone breaking a minor rule or someone violating the big rules. Their degree of sinfulness can be established, but their degree of virtue does not exist. If you are not violating the rules of the faith, then that is as good as it gets for you, at least in this life. In other words, there is a limit to virtue. That limit is the rule or prohibition. You are either within the rules or not. Efforts to out-virtue others are usually seen as vanity, unjustified boasting about one’s spiritual state.

The limiting principle keeps religions and the law from going crazy and descending into virtue spirals. After all, if one can be more virtuous than the next guy, then the next guy can be even more virtuous. The cycle ends only when everyone is dead. The same is true of the law. Utopian schemes like communism are aimed at constructing the perfect society, but since perfection is impossible, it is a never ending cycle of madness to make society better, which means making people better. It’s why they always end in violence.

This has always been the problem with efforts to create a civic religion. Robespierre and his radical buddies figured this out quickly, which is why they came up with the Cult of the Supreme Being. Of course, their new reason cult got weird in hurry and contributed to the demise of Robespierre. The reason is any effort to invest moral authority in men or their creations turns those men into gods. The madness of the French Revolution was a virtue spiral, as there was no transcendent limit. The radicals could always be more radical.

We see this with the nature movements that have been a feature of the Left for as long as anyone reading this has been alive. The greens always aim for some sort of Edenic outcome. Their goal always lies just a little further. The idea of “good enough” is outside their comprehension. Couple that with their preternatural belief in the sinfulness of man and you end up with a nature cult that borders on being a suicide cult. The end point of every Progressive nature movement is the end of mankind.

The greatest impact individuals can have in fighting climate change is to have one fewer child, according to a new study that identifies the most effective ways people can cut their carbon emissions.

The next best actions are selling your car, avoiding long flights, and eating a vegetarian diet. These reduce emissions many times more than common green activities, such as recycling, using low energy light bulbs or drying washing on a line. However, the high impact actions are rarely mentioned in government advice and school textbooks, researchers found.

Just look at that list. It sounds like a combination of the Shakers and 1970’s new age mysticism. In order to save the planet, according to researchers and experts no less, is to avoid having more humans and make the ones waiting around to die as miserable as possible. The unspoken reason for selling the car and sitting in the dark with your nothing burger is so you can suffer and atone for your sins. In other words, it is not enough to be a green, you have to kill yourself as the ultimate sign of your virtue.

This is not new. The Shakers, obviously, are an example of what happens when a religion cannot imagine a limit to virtue. The Shakers, though, had the decency to mind their own business and not try to inflict themselves on the rest of the world. In the long run, they were a slow-motion suicide cult, but they were willing to let nature take its course. The modern nature cults not only want to rush their demise, they want to take the rest of us with them, or at least make us suffer for their religion.

This is the problem that has haunted the Left in America. There’s no concept of good enough. They are always chanting, “we can do more” or “there is more work to do.” No matter how much damage they do in the holy cause, they are sure that more needs doing, more must be done. It’s why their causes tend to burn out in fits of insanity like we see with the whole transgender thing. The quest for the ultimate victim has led them to celebrate mental illness as a virtue and deny biological reality.

There’s another point here worth mentioning. A reason Progressives lack the concept of the limiting principle is that the modern American Left grew out of the postmillennialism of the 19th and early 20th century. This was an American Protestant movement based on the belief that the time between now and the end times would be one where the Church came to dominate the nations of the earth and usher in an era of peace, prosperity and righteousness, signally the return of Christ. Abolitionism was a product of this movement.

Modern Progressives have abandoned the language of Christianity, but they retain the characteristics and much of the language of their spiritual forebears. Instead of spreading the Word, they spread democracy. Instead of defeating Satan by expanding the kingdom of God on earth, the modern Progressives expands the inclusive Community to defeat the Hate. Saving the earth is, in a way, the restoration of Eden. When the goal is to immanentize the eschaton, it is no wonder they set no limits for themselves.

Gab TV

I will be on the Devil’s Advocate, a Gab TV show, tonight at 7 PM Eastern Time. You can sign up for Gab here. All you need is an e-mail address and a the ability to click your mouse. There’s no wait period or approval process. Just click on TV at the top left.