Over the weekend, something that kept popping into my mind was that the paleocons have never spent much time thinking about what they did wrong during their long struggle with the neoconservatives. They spend a lot of time rehashing old fights and discussing the things they fought, like the Civil Rights Act or the Reagan amnesty, but they always seem to stop at the water’s edge when analyzing these things. It’s almost as if they agree with the Left that these policies were inevitable, due to the tides of history.
Part of it, of course, is the losing side never wants to spend a lot of time dwelling on their own failures. Even the humbling experience of being hurled into the void is not enough to overcome ego. We see that on our side of the great divide, where some alt-right figures simply cannot come to terms with the fact that they screw up a lot. This reality does not prevent others from being objective about these things. History may be written by the winners, but the great lessons are almost always on the losing side.
One lesson that was more obvious in the past, than in recent days, is that the paleocons always assumed the other side would be bound by an agreed upon set of rules. They were plenty suspicious of Progressives, but they could never bring themselves to think of them as outside the set of rules that decent people applied to themselves. You see this in their willingness to participate in politics by the rules established by the Left. Read old paleo-conservative writing and they never question the basics rules of the game.
The one exception is Sam Francis. In Beautiful Losers he wrote about the difference between what he called the Old Right and the New Right. For him, the former was the conservatism of the 19th century, which was legalistic and theoretical. The latter was the Buckley style conservatism he saw flourish in the Reagan years. This was a conservatism willing to engage in the nuts and bolts of politics. He predicted that their embrace of the liberal rules would eventually lead them to embrace liberal ends.
He was right about the Buckley crowd, but the paleos escaped that fate, only to be hurled into the outer darkness, spending their time either trying to maintain their orbit around the Progressive sun or lamenting their fate. The paleos were not good at building alternative institutions and as a result they were always living like outlaws in a kingdom run by the Left, with so-called allies willing to act as sheriff. It is an inescapable fact that the people hurling paleocons into the void were always their friends on the Right.
That’s one of the more obvious truths about the past failures, but another less obvious mistake remains unexamined. Some time ago I was sent a link to this post by Thomas Fleming, about how to begin the fight again with the Left. It is a well-written post by a great writer, so it is worth reading simply on aesthetic grounds. It has one flaw, however, and that is it repeats the same mistake paleos and others always seem to make when plotting an alternative to the prevailing orthodoxy. That is, the obsession with principles.
A point I have become fond of making, particularly at secret handshake societies, is that principles are the things winners create after they win, to justify their winning. Winners always create an origin story for themselves that suggests their dominance is the product of the moral order. The fetishization of Lincoln, for example, happened after the winners at Gettysburg were firmly in control of the conquered. The spasmodic hooting about unity we hear from the modern Left, is an aspiration they rejected when they were the rebels.
A mistake paleos and others often make is to assume that having a goal requires a well reasoned set of principles, by which they mean morals. Some goals contain within them all the justification they need., For example, Jews want their promised land to be an explicitly Jewish country. Similarly, White Nationalists want a land of their own that is the exclusive domain of whites. In both cases, the goal is the principle and the principle requires no further explanation. To do otherwise suggests the goal is negotiable.
Similarly, paleos were prone to negotiating with themselves. The endless debating over principles is really just an excuse for not moving forward. It may not be intentional, but that is the result. When the conqueror sets out to sack a city, the one thing he never does is wait until he has a detailed administrative plan for managing the city after the siege. The winners of life never lose sight of this truth. Principles are the things you create after the victory to lock in your gains and give the people a reason to celebrate your dominance.
Another thing that all forms of conservatism in the democratic era have struggled to understand is the role of the pseudo-intellectual trimmer. These are the sorts of people who attach themselves to right-wing movements, and immediately begin working to turn them into useful losers. A good recent example of this is Ross Douthat, who thinks the goal of his tribe is to infiltrate populist movements and then purge them of anything useful, turning them into a uniform that poseurs like himself can wear in the morality play.
This is exactly what happened with the Tea Party. What started out as an authentic white middle-class revolt was quickly hijacked by charlatans. In fact, the grifters arrived so quickly it looked like the Normandy invasion. These types of people operate in the same way English pirates operated in the age of sail. That is, the people in charge give them a free pass, as long as they meddle in the affairs of dissidents. The Right has never figured out how to defend itself from this attack or even tried to understand it.
Finally, the thing that got many paleos in trouble is they could never figure out how to keep the lunatics out of their thing. I’m talking about the people who cannot control themselves and say nutty things in public. The Buckelyites just purged anyone they saw as bad for their racket. In fact, it is what defines them. Paleos hated this about the Buckleyites and the neocons, but they never found an alternative. As a result, they were often put in the position of defending people who maybe should have been reprimanded instead.
The alt-right is a good recent example of this. What started as an edgy internet movement was plagued by old school nutters from the white nationalist subculture, as well as by loons who simply lack self-control. As a result, they became defined by guys like Chris Cantwell, instead of people like Mike Enoch. An outsider movement can only be successful if it offers a respectable face to the skeptical public. Policing the ranks for lunatics and subversives is a requirement, but one past movements never mastered.
Stoping at waters edge then thrashing the surf. Anticlimactic sticking of thumb in pie saying what a good boy am I.
Drain the water aka swamp;kill the archetypal giant mired in the bottom.
I couldn’t believe my eyes on this: “As a result, they became defined by guys like Chris Cantwell, instead of people like Mike Enoch.”
Mike Enoch, the Daily Shoah, ha ha ha. Funny! Enoch is really a great spokesman for whites. Nothing impresses like “Jews and ovens” jokes.
Affirmative Right, the group left over after one of Richard Spencer’s previous flame-outs said this
“The Retard Right, by which I mean scum like the (((Daily Stormer))) and (((TRS))), which both happen to be Jewish controlled, only exists to provide the Left with the means of shutting down genuine nationalists and sincere Right Wingers.”
It wasn’t that long ago you were writing stuff like that, a couple AmRen conferences and now you are extolling Mike Enoch!
(And yeah Cantwell is arguably even worse, but he’s at least sincere and stupid. What’s Enoch’s excuse?)
Crazy times.
Z: “[The Flemming essay] has one flaw, however, and that is it repeats the same mistake paleos and others always seem to make when plotting an alternative to the prevailing orthodoxy. That is, the obsession with principles.”
Visited parents last night. My conservative yet race-obsessed dad started going off my Right mom about how the Central American caravan has a legal right to enter the U.S. Just two years ago I would have tried to formulate a principled argument against him. Last night I just yelled, “Why can’t they come? Because we don’t want them here! That’s all that matters!” And I didn’t bother explaining. He said nothing.
The problem with “policing your own side” is where to draw the line. What is acceptable and what is unacceptable and how do people know in advance? Or know at all? If you decide that policing your own side is necessary then you are handing the lefties a rod with which to beat you.
The left never police their own. No degree of lunacy or derangement is beyond their pale. Indeed, they will resolutely defend the lunatics in their ranks because what matters to them is their ranks not the views of the people in those ranks.
This is why the left always has a great, grand marquee while the right has only a tiny umbrella.
KingTut: “The problem with “policing your own side” is where to draw the line.” Agree. Since your early teens it’s been a life theme. “Watch your reputation.” “Who to hang out with? Those guys, or those other guys? And what will it mean for me? How will it look? Should I care?”
Zman: “A rule of politics is to never get seen wearing funny hats. Another rule is to never be on the same stage with a nutjob.”
Funny. But I hope someday our guys may get invites to the mainstream stage. But you can be certain, half of them would refuse on account of not wanting to “dignify” Zman by sharing the same stage. Giving him a “platform”. Etc.
Z-Man inverts reality:
the paleocons (Revilo Oliver, Joe Sobran, Buchanan, Derbyshire, etc.) were driven out of Buckley’s Conservatism Inc. by an invasion of “ex”-Trotskyite communist Jew neo-conz (Podhoretz and Co.). Since
the Paleos, being “civilized”, could not even Name the Jew
they were defeated by the Jew.
so “police” as you wish.
those who cannot Name the Jew,
will be annihilated by the Jew.
Z: “I get the attraction of the black pill, but there is a reason for the sin of despair. The Church used to burn black pillers.”
That’s hilarious. Catholic Church: “You’re freaking us out. You’re too Catholic. Sorry, gotta fry. Nothing personal.”
Great article as usual but doesn’t the last paragraph contradict the crux of the article? (not a Cantwell fan btw)
All of it goes back to a lack of upper class cohort sympathy I’m afraid. Paleos lost the plot because they lost their old guard wasp and catholic backbone. This elite is who usually does the void hurling and nutter management. Rank and file members in a relatively horizontal movement don’t have the ability to manage their membership, hence the alt right having plenty of 1.0 lunatics who simply orbit and pollute the discourse as they see fit.
The issue at hand is finding a functional cohort of whites in the upper class who will at least become white advocates unburdened by any kind of idealism.
Excellent point. It is crucial for us to have a part of upper class on our collective side. White trash optics ensure not only that high status people dismiss the right, but actually feel contempt for it.
Look, I’ve probably misread the article again but I’ve got to disagree with you on this one again.
Principles matter, they really do, the problem is finding the right ones.
You are quite right that in the Right continually gets subverted by elements from within. And the main reason this happens is that there is no standard, i.e. set of principles which determines what constitutes membership. Here’s a Litmus test: Are Natsocs Right or Left wing?
In the previous post you dissed all those who called Nazi’s left wing. The problem is that when you drill down into its “intellectual” principles you realise that they are the same as those of the Left. The Second World war in the East of Europe was a battle between the Indentiarian and international versions of Socialism. Mussolini’s transformation from Leninist protege to Hitler’s chum involved a change in racial awareness, not overall epistimological outlook. You’ve swallowed the Kool-Aid in thinking that they are substantially different. The Nazi’s did not call themselves National “socialists” for no reason at all. You don’t see this because you don’t have the right principles.
If the Democrat party in the U.S. were to suddenly go Nativist and Segregationist, the Alt-Right would dispensary completely. Whites only gay marriage, widespread divorce, Transgenderism and socialist state would all be fine for many of the people who now form the Alt-Right. The thing people fail to realise is that Left wing nativism is still Left wing. This is the thing about Leftism, it came morph into different versions of itself but still remain fundamentally Left wing. This is how the Left always wins.
This is why the old Palecons worried about stuff like God, man’s relationship to the state, the role of the family in society, liberty and law. Their problem, as I see it, is failing to identify what are the right principles for inclusion into the Right. Buckley suffered from this as well with disastrous results. But these guys were trying to build coalitions since the numbers of “Righties” were vanishingly small. They were forming coalitions with people opposed to the mainstream Left–which is not the same as being Right– leading to cognitive aberrations like the libertarian/Trad consensus and “Judeo-Christianity” out of necessity.
Things which are intellectually incompatible to anyone who bothers to think about them at all. But the American guys were handicapped from the start. Trying to reconcile American founding principles with “Rightism” is trying to square the circle.
The most important task for the Dissident Right is to determine the prinicple’s which draw the line for membership. Failing that we’re back to where we’ve been before: Beautiful Losers.
The idea of a Chris Cantwell vs Mike Enoch dichotomy is pretty funny from an insider perspective.
They’re basically the same person, edgy pro-white counter-Semitic post-libertarians who have flirted with third Reich stuff. Cantwell is arguably more moderate and in line with traditional American conservatarianism. Enoch’s bad optics highlight real is arguably worse.
The difference is mostly one of recent marketing strategy, with one keeping the old edgy libertarian strategy and embracing bad publicity, while the other tones it down to try and stay on more mainstream, heavily censored platforms.
The idea of policing a decentralized “movement” to ensure good optics is questionable when
a) there is no possibility of top down control
b) there is a big market demand for the edgy stuff, it might even have the most demand.
c) the media is only ever going to provide bad publicity and will jump at the opportunity to do so. (If a reasonably intelligent person didn’t fulfill the bad optics role, they could simply find some nobody to do it, like they did for all those years with KKK Grand Wizards on Jerry Springer or whatever)
The only real solution is for people to stay in their lanes, do their own thing and police who they associate with.
But in the end, regular Whites are simply going to have to get over words like “racist” and “nazi”, if they ever want to have a country where they are sovereign.
A general word on Principles. They are terribly important in the lives of good, steady individuals, and of sustainable societies. But you cannot argue principles with those whose principles are detestable, or non-existent. To the contrary, you must not. My outlier example is a pederast I know fairly well. He believes, and believes sincerely, that he loves children. That he has served two terms in prison and has taken several beatings from unhappy fathers does not change his sincere love of children, and of himself. To employ persuasion on some people announces that on some level you accept there are grounds for discussion. It is especially hard for reasonable people to declare things and people to be out of bounds for discussion, and on we go with emanations and penumbras until the capitulation or the siege.
Agreed. Principles are not meant to be debated, but to be acted upon. As much as I love well-crafted words, and I very dearly do, the reality is that talk is cheap. Jesus said, “You will know them by their fruits.” Ask not what someone says, but what they do. Therein lies their principles, which can then be judged worthy of emulation or rejection. The hypocrisy of Conservative Inc. is that they silence men for their words rather than condemn (or praise) them for their deeds. In this narrow sense, the idea of noticing good or bad optics at least seems like a fairer criterion of judgment.
“It is especially hard for reasonable people to declare things and people to be out of bounds for discussion.” I’d replace your “reasonable people” with “squishy people”. People (of the Left or Right) have ready-made phrases for who or what is out of bounds. The modern trick is to not sound morally labored about it, but to be quickly dismissive and snide. Such as the often heard, “that’s just wrong”, “ok, that’s creepy”, “there’s a line”, “outlier/wackjob”, or the female short-hand for all the above, “ewwwww”.
And what’s up with that website “Reckonin'”? I’ve heard of some of the authors of the pieces there, but I’ve never come across the site before. And seemingly neither has anybody else. I could only find one comment in the nine most recent articles! (The Fleming piece is nearly two months old and has zero comments.)
…it repeats the same mistake paleos and others always seem to make when plotting an alternative to the prevailing orthodoxy. That is, the obsession with principles.… [P]rinciples are the things winners create after they win, to justify their winning. Winners always create an origin story for themselves that suggests their dominance is the product of the moral order.
I have to disagree with this. If one looks at, say, the Founding Fathers, the Bolsheviks, and the Nazis, it seems that they all had pretty clear (and quite different!) “principles” to guide their actions, and these principles were established before they took power and not concocted afterwards.
You use a sort of shifting of terms here that I’ve noticed elsewhere in your writing. First you speak of principles, but then you shift to an “origin story” as if these are the same thing. The principles that drove the American Revolutionaries, the Bolsheviks and the Nazis are one thing, and developed over a long period of time. The “origin stories” like the Boston Tea Party, the role of the cruiser Aurora in the October Revolution, or the Beer Hall Putsch are entirely different from the guiding principles that drove those men.
Principles are the things you create after the victory to lock in your gains and give the people a reason to celebrate your dominance.
No. Only those who have “principles” (meaning, in the context of the Fleming article, “overall guiding principles”) going into a battle for power can be expected to emerge victorious.
[The article] has one flaw, however, and that is it repeats the same mistake paleos and others always seem to make when plotting an alternative to the prevailing orthodoxy. That is, the obsession with principles.
“One flaw”? That’s the entire point of the article! The man was responding to a Swede who asked for advice on strategy, and Fleming responded as follows:
“You make several good tactical suggestions, which could be quite practical if they were implemented, but, before devising a set of tactics, one has to have a strategy in mind, and before one can devise a strategy, there must be an objective or set of objectives that determine our course, and, before establishing objectives, one first has to have a set of principles which make the objectives not only desirable but worth the effort to attain them.”
Fleming then goes on to give an analogy about how you can never attain your “objective” if you don’t know what it is. Your analysis of the piece is actually a complete rejection of its fundamental argument. You say power must be seized first and then you can make up justifications afterwards, which seems to imply that power is an end in itself. But Fleming’s point is that without a clear sense of where you want to wind up, you’ll never get there.
His concept is is based on a military analogy: you need broad principles (i.e., an overarching “grand strategy”) for the war as a whole to determine your strategy in specific campaigns, which in turn determines the tactics used in individual battles. In his illustration about traveling, if you don’t know the purpose of your journey, you’ll never get anywhere and will just mill around in the Bermuda Triangle because (to modify an expression used of modern politics) there is no “there there.” The implementation of pre-existing principles is the ultimate goal!
As it is, I entirely agree with Fleming. In the absence of any clearly conceived understanding of what you want to achieve, it’s impossible to make any sort of progress (ha ha; note that the Progs do have a clear goal and are getting there quickly: “eliminating human distinctions and… obliterating the past,” as Fleming puts it).
It may be telling that Fleming himself isn’t very clear about what he thinks the goals of the Right should be (he just says this can’t be a wistful nostalgia for the past). But regardless of that, clearly defined goals (“principles”) are imperative for victory!
You’re talking about selection and maintenance of the aim. Sometimes this will be based on considerations of pragmatism divorced from principle. Strategic military thinking is all very well but it’s always subservient to politics … that’s really the point of the military, to impose the politics. A philosophy needs principles. Clearly, as a matter of empirical observation, politics doesn’t.
While I probably identify quite closely with the paleocons, there did seem to be a bit of Eeyore style pessimism about them, always better at telling us why we were doomed rather than pointing us toward a better future.
It is a bit startling how thoroughly they were purged, perhaps when you have your eye on your enemies to the Left, you are susceptible to being totally wiped out by your enemies on the Right. There is a lesson there for today methinks. It isn’t a stretch to say that the gatekeeper neocon “Right” is a more immediate impediment to the cause than the loony Left. There is a fine line in more respectable conservatism between being a gateway drug to the real Right versus being gatekeeper to turn folks away (Shapiro, NRO).
In short, people on the Right are decent people. It’s almost impossible for decent people to realize that there are individuals who are NOT decent. Who are — there’s really no other word for it — evil. It’s why cops and public prosecutors drink — for every ten felons they see whose life could’ve gone another way, they see one who is just plain evil, who would be a social cancer no matter what he did, or where, or when. If you haven’t seen one of these guys in the flesh, though — I’d wager few of us have — you really just can’t grok it when the evil people come right out and declare their evil to the world. Lenin said, many times, in as many ways as language can bear, that the end justifies the means. So did Hitler, and Mao, and all the rest — decent people didn’t believe them, because decent people really can’t believe them… not least because believing them entails that we, too, might have to embrace evil means to rid ourselves of evil people.
They are starting to understand that the Democrats have evil intentions, but in many cases voting is a matter of habit…The upper Midwest got clubbed by the two-by-four of their jobs disappearing, which is why Trump got elected, but that hasn’t happened everywhere.
The problem is even worse than that.
Even if you point out to the decent people that somebody is an evil piece of crap that deserves to end their life on fire in a ditch – the “decent people” will often stand in your way and prevent you from doing what is needed.
They’ll use their cries for decency and obeying the law as a shield to prevent the evil-doer from getting their just rewards.
Put females into the mix and the problem gets even worse because their hamster really gets off in the presence of men who are evil and who can wield power.
This former prosecutor raises his vodka rocks to honor you as a perceptive truth speaker. Any Christian realist knows that evil exists; that only God can overcome it; and that our lot is simply to resist it with every fiber of our being. I have seen it. I have resisted it with the help of able comrades. But it remains baying at the gates of our cities, at the doors of our homes, and at the very ears of our innermost souls. I hope and pray that none of us gives up the fight.
Maus;
And as Christian men, we have a *duty* to resist the evil that will always be among us, with God’s help and guidance.
A very sincere salute.
Remember in the 90’s when the Republicans would brag about their “big tent”? I always thought that was a disaster. Now I know it was more of a con by the crooks running the party. They never wanted to define their boundaries on the left because they always intended to drift that way.
Instead, the GOP would have been far better served by expelling HW from the party for his tax betrayal (and all the other ways large and small he undid Reagan’s efforts). Reagan would have done us all a favor if he had chosen an actual conservative like DuPont instead of Bush.
Reagan got TOLD he was going to “choose” Bush.
He didn’t really have a choice.
The swamp was in effect back then as well – and the fake news arm of the swamp , led by Cronkite , was threatened to be used as lever to derail Reagan’s candidacy if he didn’t comply with the choice.
Gary North has covered this issue in the past – as he had a direct connection with a person who was present at the meeting and heard it go down.
Even back then – the swamp wasn’t going to let a President do you any favors.
He got TOLD to drop in ’76 so Ford could cruise to the nomination and lose with dignity. Reagan refused to drop out.
He must have really thought he needed the moderates like Bush, and / or he had no idea what an asshole the guy was.
In all of this I think in all of this what is missing are the motivators for white males under forty, a primal sense of loss.
For what I can see of the alt-right/dissident right/maul right/whatever, any ‘leader’ that crops up is Entryist. Because they miss the point, it is carefully concealed rage expressed in a Joker-like nihilism. That is why they would borrow from extremist movements various trappings and then stamp a silly cartoon frog’s face on it. It is a big BFYTW statement.
For the white male MIllennial and his allies working two or three jobs with no worthwhile spouses to found, no worthwhile culture to partake of, and no future to consider the only they can do is put on fake face while they die inside.
Some say the divorce rate among Boomers was so high because they were raised with Disney Fairy Tale Romances and the reality turned out to be very different. With the Millennial they were raised with the Consumer Culture of Plenty during the Reagan and Clinton Years. The Alt-Right/AntiFa dichotomy is a signal of their divorce from what they were raised with.
You bring up a good point. The last time we saw a real sense of hope in the culture (not the false hope of the grifter Bill Clinton) was during Reagan’s terms in office, especially the first term. You had to be there, witness it, and have had some sort of understanding of how it was a way out of the wilderness of the ‘60s and ‘70s. Without that memory and understanding, it is difficult to see how the current situation actually offers some hope, in a historical context. Of course, we also learned that passing the baton to a CIA-backed elitist also served to destroy any momentum we had.
Damned right, Dutch. Someone over at Counter Currents once described the 80’s as “The Last Golden Indian Summer of American Patriotism” and that was dead-bang right. I know all of Reagan’s flaws, and all the opportunities we missed back then, but it was the last time America really felt like America. You can’t help but miss that, any more than you can help missing your first adolescent love (even though you know damned well what she probably turned into…)
Hi Z , really good writing. I have found you via TRS. Your blog gives me hope, that this world is not turning into hell. Keep good work.
Z, did this line of thought happen to be on your mind during dinner with Paul Gottfried? Or was there any similar topic of conversation bandied about?
I started thinking about this during a speech by someone I cannot mention. Gottfried is a little more realistic about the failures of the Right in general, but at his age, thinking about what comes next is not a major concern.
Once again, go one level deeper. The current conflict is not a debate over ideology where words are determinative. It’s more like a old-time pistol duel where losing can leave you with a hole in the forehead, not a bruised ego. The Left (being human parasites) has always understood this and behaved accordingly. The Right (which frequently have been equally pampered armchair combatants) have suffered from a dementia over the “civilized rules of the game.” A healthy evolutionary fitness regime does away with both forms of deadweight.
“Once again, go one level deeper.” Most annoyingly pretentious line of the year.
I imagine so, if you lack the ability to expand your thinking. Fear not, others are not so deficient.
One thing I have observed in recent months is that as the Democrats have amped up their attack on all whites and traditional America, the right, which will soon be the alt-right, no longer has to worry about the bogeymen like the KKK, whom no one in America has seen in decades…Ethnic politics transcends all ideology….Even ’60s liberal Jim Kunstler has come a full 180 and is now calling for the defeat of every Democrat in the country.
The other observation is that it is a complete waste of time to campaign for the Cat Ladies’ votes, and no energy should be expended there.
Speaking of Christopher Cantwell, yesterday his website featured a post entitled, “Bad News for Jews…Gab is Back.”
Running away from the likes of Mr. Cantwell and promulgating that to the world is not a principle that is going to carry the day.
In fact, embracing that principle is buying into Bill Buckley’s craven conservatism.
I don’t think shunning nascent Hitler Heilers is craven conservatism, but that’s just me.
All moral factors aside, Hitler was a loser who destroyed his country, and killed more white people than anyone except Stalin and Ghengis Khan. Even if you don’t reject him on any other grounds, for anyone who loves his people and Western Civ, that should be enough.
That Hitler was a loser does not thereby justify the pompous virtue signaling of promulgating one’s virtue of sprinting away from Cantwell.
Your description of Hitler, “a loser who destroyed his country,” could be applied to Churchill, who also killed lots of white people in service to socialism.
A point I’m fond of making is that you can invest your energy into rehabilitating Hitler, but the result will be you maybe one day taking your caramel colored grandkids to the Adolf Hitler elementary school. That’s the problem with the Hitler junkies. They are OK with that result. Therefore, they are bu definition not on my side.
Who is investing their energy rehabilitating Hitler?
You’d have better luck convincing blacks that slavery was a charitable act.
The Democrat Party has done a pretty good job of convincing blacks that its plantation is might comfy.
Yes, lots of people are OK with slavery as long as you don’t call it that.
Agreed, but I don’t recall defending Churchill. And in my position, I have little virtue to signal. I just think that the Nazis were a catastrophe for Western Civ in general, and the Right in particular, and that attempting to rehabilitate them is playing into our genocidal enemies hands. If you’re looking for right-wing authoritarians to emulate, Pinochet and Franco and Primo Rivera are much, much more worthwhile.
No, you did not defend Churchill nor did I attempt to rehabilitate Hitler. I invoked Churchill as an exemplar of your descriptor. Lincoln would also apply.
My point is that to the extent that we spend time falling all over ourselves to separate us from the Cantwells of the world in a misbegotten attempt to persuade Normie to like us, we lose.
Ron DeSantis could easily lose the Florida Governorship because of an accidental remark of “monkey”. Dave Brat might be thrown out of Congress thanks to C-ville backlash. Our actions have consequences in normieland.
Do you think that Normie is impressed with backpedaling, craven defensiveness?
“I’m a racist and proud of it” “Vote for me”
A real barn-burner
Who needs Dinesh and the DRRRs with your disposition?
Just like Scott Brown vs. Lizzie Warren in 2012. Once Brown flexed his cuckiness, he was destined to lose.
Why would a Massachusetts democrat or independent vote for the imitation when he could cast his ballot for the genuine article in Warren?
For what it’s worth, I do not think that you were trying to rehabilitate Hitler, and I regret that I might have given that impression. I still think that Nazis were and are pure poison for our movement, for any number of reasons.
Cantwell is a loose cannon, clearly unstable and exactly the person we should have nothing to do with.
You don’t separate from the likes of him so normies would like you, you do it so they would even consider listening to what you have to say.
It’s like trying to persuade normal people of anything with crazy street preacher as your sidekick.
I have long thought Franco was the wisest Euro leader before & during WWII.
His wisdom was rewarded with a substantial bribe from the British – two million pounds – to stay out of the 2nd WW. The Spaniards nonetheless contributed a ‘volunteer’ division – or maybe it was just a brigade – to the Nazi cause in the east.
That said, without the victory of Franco’s armies in the 1930s, Spain would have spun off into chaos. As recent developments show, Spain has more in common with Yugoslavia than with other nations in Europe.
A rule of politics is to never get seen wearing funny hats. Another rule is to never be on the same stage with a nutjob.
Sounds like one of those principles with which the winners do not burden themselves – at least according to you.
Libertymike, exactly. You’ve gotta have principles to at least police the ranks and stop the nutjobs from getting in. The problem is finding the right principles.
The main reason why the Right is continually subverted is because it lacks the principles to determine who is in or out. If White Nationalism is your founding principle then why not let the Natsocs in? This is why working out why the Natsocs differ from the Paleocons is important.
The problem for the Right in the 20th C was did it not know what it stood for. Natsocs for instance, pushed a virulent racial policy but did so within an underlying left wing epistimological and metaphysical structure, ultimately furthering the cause of the Left in the end.
Slumlord;
You’re right about needing *some* principles. Lack of confidence in their basic principles and instead going with a theology of niceness and good-thinking is how the mainline protestant denominations got converged by homosexual activist infiltrators in their HQ. They are dying and deserve to.
I propose: 1. It’s OK to be White. 2. It’s not OK to be for things that have damaged/destroyed Western Civilization (i.e. NatSoc & InterNatSoc).
Even Leonard Bernstein took some flack after hosting the Black Panthers. So, don’t be on the stage with nutjobs, but having nutjobs around may serve a purpose.
Plausible Deniability isn’t what it used to be.
This should be repeated like a mantra on every right wing site.
“An outsider movement can only be successful if it offers a respectable face to the skeptical public. Policing the ranks for lunatics and subversives is a requirement, but one past movements never mastered.”
Explain how being a loon for the Left works, but being a loon for the Right does not and you have the answer.
My answer is the loon does not matter. Albeit so long as one has control of the scribes who can manipulate the loons diatribes up or down the Richter scale of public importance.
A lot of the normies have checked out. That the media (think Jim Acosta) and the loons on the Left (think Pelosi and Maxine Waters) come off as deranged to a lot of the normies, we simply need to be serious and steady in our positions. People don’t follow the lead of the media like they did in the days of Walter Cronkite. CNN and MSNBC took care of that for us. As they like to say over at Instapundit, “all the Left has to do is not act crazy, and they can’t even manage to do that”.
This is so true. Take Hillary in 2016; she could have just pretended to be moderate and she would have won. She’d done so before.
I watched her campaign for the Senate here in NY and win – despite being an obvious carpet-bagger – by being classy, and low-key, visiting the hoi polloi out here in the western half of the state, eating breakfast at small-town diners, etc., stuff her downstate GOP opponent didn’t bother to do.
All she had to do is not act crazy, and she did it. She was – I blush to say this – even personable.
So what happened in 2016? How did she lose touch with the ‘politics 101’ skills that make dumb rural people vote for you, skills that her husband had in spades?
Theories range from heavy alcohol abuse to massive, subsequent crimes committed while S of S; from the after-effects of weird drugs to total fealty to billionaire paymasters and their crazed SJW infantry.
P/N;
Saw the same thing you did re The Beast from the Upper East [- Side of da Citi, that is] in the early ’00s. She and her Elite Urban White Female cohorts finally felt free to drop the mask of Comity once Obama was going to fundamentally transform us deplorables, IMHO.
What a strain it must have been to pretend to have anything in common with the ikkky white males like daddy all those years… No more having to pretend to be like June Cleaver in any way shape or form. Their Global Utopia was just over the horizon. They could feel it at their extended lunches…
The scale problem is difficult to solve. Alex Jones is probably the furthest along in terms of building his own infrastructure. Otherwise we are dependent on platforms owned, run, or vulnerable to our enemies. Breitbart was caught napping after the election, failing to learn from the example of Chuck Johnson (is he even around anymore?). Every time one of our loons goes off, the establishment gets its pound of flesh.
The *only* alternative to Leftism is a politics based on, derived-from religion: Choose your religion.
Dr. Charlton! Great to see we’re reading the same blogs. I started frequenting ZBlog and Notions earlier this year, and have enjoyed and profited from both.
While agreeing with you, I think it is pathetic that our age is so far removed from its roots in culture that we need to revisit religious belief as a ‘political act’. The materialistic bourgeois idyll of comfy homes in the ‘burbs, isn’t that a ‘religion’? It’s not leftist, anyhow…
Good reply
Mr C.
Agree completely. The Christian Religion is an excellent source of enduring principles, just to start with. While those principles were generally operative in the past, one did not have to be a believer to see that they worked pretty well.
Z: “The spasmodic hooting about unity we hear from the modern Left, is an aspiration they rejected when they were the rebels.”
In all the documentaries re. 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s icons; e.g. writers, rock stars, actors, directors, etc. the background theme employed to give weight to their subject is their iconoclasm.
The favored descriptor in these docs is “subversive”. Something dark, clever, and naughty…and utterly cool. Cut to a brooding Dylan photo in black sunglassses with cigarette. The Left used to LOVE that word. (Still do, but will only grant it to their cohorts.) I recall watching a Cheech & Chong doc and hearing “subversive” every 30 seconds.
Now that the Left is The Man, “subversive” has been replaced with the odious “divider”.
They’d never christen Trump or one of our guys, a subversive, or the updated “disruptor”. No, our guys get the repellent, “retrograde”, “hater”, “divider”. Their guys get, “provocateur”, with the French accent. Our guys get the dismissive, “attention seeker”.
“Dangerous” is a funny one too. It used to be something the Left wanted to have sex with. Now it’s something that’s supposed to be actually dangerous. The Alt-Right doesn’t get to be dangerous like Lenny Bruce or Punk. We get to be dangerous like an airborne virus.
This is a good thing. One of these days, one of our “dangerous” “subversive” good looking, charismatic younger guys is going to break through and change the game completely with the emotional romance-novel-reading upper class white women. Trump may have even been the opening wedge on that one. The Left has a big vulnerability here, especially with the likes of the angry beta boys and wronged wymyn they keep pushing out front.
Dutch. I get you. A cool sexy manly guy would have to emerge. The prime cultural influencers (influence here meaning, ability to instill the proper thoughts & feelings we’re to have), are TV hosts, actors-directors, and pop stars. Among these thousands, we don’t have a single representative. Think about that. (Forget the Alt-Right, we don’t even have a lukewarm Conservative.) Such a man can’t even get in the door, and if he does, he’s quickly thrown off the Hollywood sign. So he will have to come unabashedly from politics. (Maybe a handsome novelist who’s articulate on the talk shows, but doubtful).
You say this rebel thing is “a good thing” for us. That we can present a real man the Lefty women can’t help but get weak for. But the Left has this covered too. Hate to break it to you guys, but not every Lefty is a “soyboy”. They have their tough-talking real men, who can pretend dangerous by merely speaking more radically Left than the current Left…with “a bit of the old, ultraviolence.”
Since WW2, there have been three presidents whose celebrity was established outside of politics: Eisenhower, Reagan, Trump. Their cumulative W/L record in presidential races: 5-0. All GOP.
Just a supporting observation.
This thing will be successful only if the Alt-Poseurs, the unhinged, and random Nazi Larpers can be kept well away. The Left has the MSM to cover up their maniacs and it does a good job of that. We do not have that luxury.
Whenever Sverigedemokraterna (SD) in Sweden is described in the media, the journos always use the phrase “Neo-Nazi roots”. While libelous by intent, it is not libel by the letter of the law. But the party purged the Neo-Nazis way back in 2000, though it does have a problem with Nordic Resistance Movement entryists. As long as it can be legally tagged as “Nazi” there are certain people that will never vote for it. When something is toxic, it may not be worth salvaging. Just hit the reset button.
The danger though, is it becomes a form of virtue signalling for the unhinged, as well as the hinged. Then there are the grufters, who sneak in and start declaring this group or that group out of bounds for some reason. It is a challenging problem with no obvious answer.
Communist movements during the Cold War always ran into trouble when there was an ideological disagreement. They fought numerous fratricidal battles, to the point of it becoming a Monty Python joke. In the post-USSR environment, they have been much better at working together. DSA has become the most popular movement on American campuses. Not only is the grifter problem huge, there is also the problem that the other side can get any active participant fired, which usually leads to divorce if married.
I think the awareness of the potential is a good start among leaders like yourself. (Yes you are…)
So the Tea Party became co-opted. But did they go away? Or did every one of us vote for Trump?
Here’s my take. It’s not possible. Neither party is going to tolerate another political organization that has the potential to reach tens of millions of angry whites.
I remember what happened to the Reform Party and later the Tea Party. Both co-opted and destroyed as viable entities by the GOP.
Why do you think the establishment is going after the Proud Boys and RAM? They are crushing anything that gives off a whiff of political dissidence by whites.
Look at Jordan Peterson. He’s a old school liberal and scientist who is as moderate as they come and just speaks his mind. Yet he’s attacked by feminists, gays and the Marxists in media(which means almost all of the media). They demonize the man.
At first I thought it was possible, but after their attacks on Peterson, McInnis. It shows they are not tolerating any kind of dissent.
Moderate voters hate lawlessness, whether it comes from the Proud Boys or from Black Lives Matter. And nothing kills business investment quite like a riot. The establishment has learned from its early defeat in Berkeley, that our people keep stupidly repeating. If you want to hold a right-wing event, hold it in a right-wing rural area on private property. But that won’t satisfy the martyr complex.
Peterson is controlled opposition, we should arguably signal boost the leftist attacks against him.
Textbook example right here of what NOT to do
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/nov/03/liverpool-runs-far-right-marchers-out-of-town?utm_term=Autofeed&CMP=twt_b-gdnnews&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1541277438
The demonization of everyone to the right of the (ever-leftward-shifting) NRO staff is something we have to find an effective way of countering. I hope King is reelected in Iowa.
I’m not naturally optimistic, but I remain optimistic about this particular point in time. I went through the poll numbers and early voting numbers last night. Republicans are going to have 54-58 seats in the Senate. Democrats are not going to take the House. I’m sticking with my prediction of 225R-210D, plus or minus 3, in the House. If anything, the Republican numbers in the House are going up from my prediction. Trump is tightening his grip on the Republican party and is accelerating the implementation of his agenda. The alt-right is going to have more room to maneuver than it has ever had in the past.
Moreover, Republicans have found some small modicum of a spine and a little bit of piss and vinegar. It was a brilliant move by Kemp to announce publicly that the Democrat Party is under investigation by the FBI for cyber crimes. I can’t imagine a Republican candidate doing that in the past, because muh principles. Republicans are slow learners, but they are learning.
Nobody on the right has any respect for the hacks at NRO, American Standard, or the faux-conservatives at NYE, WaPo, or on the networks. The playing field is wide open for the first time in decades. It’s game time.
It is a huge help to our side that the Lefties seem to support anyone who pushes back against us, and not really noticing that so many of their candidates are simply freakish or overtly criminal. Then you get the charmless scolds like Obama and Hillary. In any sort of real test of what people want in their leaders, these people would not be elected to clean out cat boxes. May the Left continue to make it easier on us in the future, as they have done up to now. At least we have that going for us.
You can police the ranks all you want, the enemy will portray the movement the way they want. We are not talking strategic mistakes here as to why the paleos failed.
Enoch is not top tier nor ever will be. Greg Johnson? Come on.
This is a failure of a culture and the society that was in it. We don’t have enough out there to persuade. Finger in the dyke and other stop gap movements like Trump will forestall the decline but what really is the dissident rights realistic objective here.?
But I get it, we fight anyways, just a little reality here.
The Right has a tendency to leave things on the table out of principle, or perhaps we should call it cowardice. There are very few colleges in this country where conservative students are a “silent majority”. Instead, the Right should be organizing as an “affinity group” and demand its own space. But rather than turn the logic of multikult on its head, they prefer to “mock” the left for “safe spaces”. It doesn’t help that TurningPoint is textbook controlled opposition.
This is very close to what I was describing in the post I made earlier. I think that the right today is in many ways similar to the people in the time leading up to the eleventh century who were seeking refuge from overweening lords and nobles. They found refuge in and around towns and villages, and those places, with the help of the peasants and petty merchants who moved there for protection, subsequently managed to throw off the noble yoke. They developed somewhat safe spaces, at least for a time.
Then you see the return of kingly power, and the kings used the power and the class antagonism of the town burghers toward the nobility to gain power, then went into a balancing act between the nobility and the burghers, playing their animosities off against each other. This ability is displayed best in the calling of Estates General in the two hundred years before the French Revolution. In the time leading up to that, the kings lost the ability to keep things in balance and their potential rivals at each others throats instead of the throat of the king.
The Revolution itself was the overthrow of the monarchy by both the bourgeoisie and the nobility, and then a fight over the power vacuum that resulted.
My sense of what this means to us is that we are basically the peasant/bourgeois class in relation to a national and global elite. If we want to be able to experience liberty and live our own lives, we must seek shelter among ourselves, and then pursue greater goals. Being able to do so successfully means maintaining group cohesion, and being able to keep those among ourselves loyal to that group. This means having a balance between tolerance and discipline within our ranks. And the best means of doing that is through the medium of culture.
The whole idea is to be in a position where we have the ability to rule after we take the Bastille, and not end up destroying our ambitions in figbting over the spoils.
I get the attraction of the black pill, but there is a reason despair The Church used to burn black pillers.
Sin of despair, Catholicism never leaves one does it?
That’s why I ended my post as we fight anyways. Maybe, just maybe.
I am reminded of Kurt Russell’s line at the end of The Thing. You know the scene where all is lost but they heat up the encampment and destroy.
“We aren’t getting out of here alive, but neither is he” .
I not for destroying the good but take out those baddies on the way out if that is the final outcome.
Red pill day tomorrow for me.
This scene from ‘The Truman Show’, complete with Zman’s cloud people (the overlords who trapped Truman in a false reality/prison literally have their control room in the sky, behind a glass dome painted with blue sky and clouds), shows where a critical mass of whites need to arrive in terms of spirit and determination to break free:
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x47swnx
“This is a failure of a culture and the society that was in it.”
Agreed, that’s why we need to reform both the culture and the society. It can and will happen, it’s been done before. But people need to realize that political and military measures are necessary, they are only the beginning.
Our real work begins after we’ve :won:. But one thing at a time.
Where does Greg Johnson fail? He’s better than anything you would read in the print media, easily.
Mike Enoch and Greg Johnson are both doing what they can to convert people. Whether you think they’re “top tier” or not, I welcome their efforts, and wish we had more like them out there, willing to engage in badthink.
Enoch is smarter than you and 99% of other alt/dissident right commentators. He can communicate effectively and is not a math ignoramus. And Greg Johnson’s cultural products such as film reviews and such beat most any I read elsewhere. He has several books containing just film reviews. They are well worth your while.
Broaden your horizons and put a leash on your inner Eeyore.
I appreciate you sharing your thoughts on these 2. I get bored with all the names running around/bandied about. Too indifferent to look into them all. I will look into the ones ‘serious’ people take seriously. I mean that as a compliment.
TBoone:
On thing I realized regarding “Our Thing” or “This Thing” is that Gen X folk are on the older end of it. Millennials and Gen Z are a bit different and the means to connect with them are not those that are optimized to appeal to Gen X.
Mike Enoch pitches his commo toward Millenials & Gen Z. And has a New Jersey accent. That puts off some GenX & Boomer sorts. Then you listen to him over time and realize he has read deeper in the politics, philosophy, etc. than most any of his contemporaries. And is not a math idiot. He just sounds like a Jersey Shore Bro’ when talking Nietz’, MacDonald, or Spengler with his buddies on the podcasts. Find the podcasts at therightstuffdotbiz. Enoch is not writing books, he’s all podcastery.
Greg Johnson is likely queer as (a) Three Dollar Bill. Have not confirmed or busted that suspicion, but I don’t really care. Whatever his personal inclinations, he diligently pushes a traditionalist outlook on relations between the sexes and politics. He has done his homework and is detail-oriented enough to keep his Counter-Currents vehicle viable for 10 or so years, while publishing quite a bit of cultural and political work supportive of Our Thing. He is bit more highbrow than Enoch. His stuff can be found at counterdashcurrentsdotcom, on youtube under countercurrents or his own handle, and he does podcasts/youtubecasts with folk like Luke Ford, JF Gariepy, and others. That is in addition to his own books and books he edits and publishes for others.
Good luck.
Yes. Enoch has made mistakes, for sure. But he’s also learned from them and has made adjustments. I respect that. He’s going to be sticking around, I believe.
He’s not necessarily a leader, but he’s got great influence, and as you’ve said, he’s a pretty smart guy.
If his latest stream with JF Gariepy is any indication, Enoch has learned his lesson. It was pleasure to listen to, they knew just when to put the brakes on the conversation and yet said everything.
Not a big Enoch fan, but Greg Johnson is certainly worth your time, even though I disagree with him as much as I agree.
If the nutjobs are our #1 greatest internal impediment, #2 has to be leaders or prominent folk in Our Thing that have severe personality issues that prevent them from working with each other. Enoch & Johnson seem less afflicted with this problem.
Smarter than all of us eh? How would you know. He walked into a trap in Charlottesville that most could see from far away. His personal life is a few doozies of mistakes. In debates he batting maybe .500, Halsey English had him for lunch.
Yeah I get it though, I do like the guy and he is good to have on our side.
Just ruminate on the names like Pat Buchanan , Frances, Jared Taylor and the like, not anywhere near that level.
Greg Johnson, gay. Sorry
Enoch walked into a trap because he, like almost everyone on the right, didn’t grasp the importance of not getting involved with WN 1.0. What major personal life mistakes are you talking about?
Greg Johnson’s Counter Currents beats your top level Jared Taylor’s AmRen in quality of writing and sheer number of right wing thinkers whose works it presents. In Johnatan Bowden’s words “Counter Currents is a right wing university”. Your dismissal is really gay.
I’m sure it’s a matter of taste and/or perspective. I personally don’t find Johnson persuasive, while Mike Enoch seems like the kind of guy whose company one could enjoy even if one were on the other side. We want folks that can bridge the gap. I know that’s not substantive, but since when have facts and substance been the driving factor of persuasion?
Johnson’s framing of WN in context of “every nation deserves a homeland” and “nationalism for all people” seems to be a most pragmatic way to presents our ideas to normies. His interviews with Tara, JF Gariepy, Luke Ford etc. combined with reality of whats happening with migrants/illegals/invaders could really get people on board. I have strong disagreements with some of his positions but on the whole, he has exactly the approach we need to bridge the gap.
Enoch as well, as long as he maintain his humor and stays away from crazies.
Okay, to win against the neocons, or progressives or whomever, would have required an escalating battle with a certain racial subtext that would have had an endpoint looking something like Germany in the 1930s or perhaps Spain in the 1400s. Now this was probably not even a possibility in the United States because of the greater racial diversity, even among the white population, where divisions between Protestants and Irish and Italians was probably more obtrusive than what I refer to.
However, even had it been possible to organize, I still think Americans would simply prefer the road taken to any catastrophic outbreak of real anti Semitism. The things they say about us simply aren’t true; we have an overwhelming compulsion to be nice and inclusive. Recalling the intro to the expanded edition of culture of critique, Lindbergh’s wife, while bewailing the vilification and social ostracism she was subjected to, still said she would prefer to go to war rather than see any outbreak of anti Semitism. That’s probably how most feel.
It’s not only possible but inevitable. The longer it is pushed off into the future the worse the carnage will be.
A lot depends on what people mean by “Principles”. If we’re talking about real moral principles like “Thou Shalt not Murder” or Thou Shalt not Commit Adultery” principles are both admirable and necessary. But the kind of crap that modern Conservative Inc spokesmen come up with, usually stuff like “Thou Shalt not Notice Obvious Facts about Race”, or ‘Thou Shalt Not Question Free Trade”, or “Thou Shalt Love Israel with All Your Heart”, etc, etc, need to be sh*tcanned, and the quicker the better.
Francois Guizot in The History of the Civilization of Europe spends a lot of time describing the evolution of the bourgeoisie, especially in France. This is because of the importance of the Third Estate in the French Revolution. His ideas in this book heavily influenced both Tocqueville and Marx. Guizot’s ideas about class were the breeding ground for the Marxist explanation of the Revolution and revolution in general. That said, his interpretation of history remains a source of good information.
The applicable thing here is that in the early life of the bourgeoisie they were not what they were later on. They managed to defeat nobles in their towns, but never looked beyond their towns. Later on they developed more generalized, greater aspirations for power, while earlier they mainly thought of themselves as part of a group within a set of boundaries.
I think part of our problem is that we have been going about things backwards. Our aspirations have outrun our ability to form a sense of adhesion to our own community. If we can reverse that we will go far.
Quick correction: Sam Francis wrote “Beautiful Losers.”
That’s right. I always do that for some reason.
Sobran and Francis were somewhat similar. Both appeared to be men of strong principle and thereby became outcasts in the orbit of “respectable” conservatism. Of course, Sobran was more libertarian and Francis was more identitarian. They’re the type of guys that the current Dissident Right can look to for inspiration.
P.S.: Regardless of that one minor error, this was another excellent essay.
Maybe look to them for inspiration but not as examples. They were outliers very early in their careers.
I liked Sam Francis, but Sobran was always a bit too libertarian for me, at least in his later years. Sobran best serves as an early example of what happens when you cross the (((Wrong People))). I reacted to the Sobran incident with shock at the time; I was a full Buckleyite “Movement Conservative” then , and this occasioned my first real doubts. A lot of other people felt this way too; looking back on it, purging Sobran was probably a bad move for Buckley, and for the “Commentary” crowd who was behind it – neither of their reputations ever really recovered.
The funny thing is I was always a bigger fan of Francis than Sobran, but for whatever reason i always mix the two up when recalling something either of them wrote. You’re probably right. The degree of overlap is high and both are fading from memory, at least my memory.
My favorite Sobran column…
http://www.sobran.com/columns/1999-2001/000208.shtml
I seem to remember Sam Francis identifying himself with bourgeois American elite from before the rise of the American managerial class. Is this correct?
Let me throw some counter points at Zman’s valuable article. Maybe if the bourgeois middle-class Tea Party had spent more time thinking about principles (and less about their economic class, their taxes, their 401k), maybe studying the European (actual) right of the last two centuries, they wouldn’t have been vulnerable to the Conservatism, Inc. grifters who seemed to be speaking their language. What’s more, the grifter-subversives would not have been permitted by the oligarchs controlling the money spigots to touch them with a barge-pole, if they wanted sinecures at think tanks, newspapers, TV networks, etc. Maybe if the paleoconservatives had devoted their considerable intellects to a more radical, stirring, fundamental critique, more could have been accomplished, more young hearts and intelligent minds could have been captured. The paleoconservatives still would have been cast into the void, but the dissident right could be much stronger today. I think the right needs to be radicalized towards something along the lines of what Jonathan Bowden described:
“The affliction which Indo-Europeans suffer from is entirely mental and subjective; they are chronically afraid of their own shadow in Jungian terms. If the civilization which their ancestors created has any future at all then they must overcome their resistance to barbarism; they must o’erleap it on the altar of high culture.”
“Truthfully, in this age those with intellect have no courage and those with some modicum of physical courage have no intellect. If things are to alter during the next fifty years then we must re-embrace Byron’s ideal: the cultured thug.”
https://www.counter-currents.com/2010/08/bowden-why-i-write/
Thinking about all this, I’m reminded of Jack Nicholson in ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’, trying to break the water basin loose from the floor and throw it through the window, to escape the asylum and go watch the World Series. With everyone else watching him like he’s crazy, he tries, and fails, “…but I tried didn’t I? Goddammit. At least I did that.”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKQcx1jzn4k
His spirit and efforts through the film ultimately inspire the American Indian to break that water basin loose from the floor, and throw it through the window, and escape into freedom, in what I personally found one the best endings in film history:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3Dz6FOE_Gk
great point! be a cultured thug, that shoe has fit for a long time – but i’ve typically had so little patience lately that i usually go for the jugular immediately – i really can’t stand debating deliberate idiocy any more.
“These types of people operate in the same way English pirates operated in the age of sail. That is, the people in charge give them a free pass, as long as they meddle in the affairs of dissidents.”
just gold, a real insight.
one that i might offer is that prior to NR, it seems like conservatives operated much more like a patriarchal hierarchy – military discipline used to be the general model. screw up, get busted rank, not thrown out.
these days, its more like the HR catbert types are not satisfied until violators are completely cut off and in the cold.
how about punching right takes the form of demotion – if we want a respectable vision of the alt-right, we stop the immediate recourse to infighting to the death… without having a debate society to finesse the point.
The Cultured Thug…that would be me.
Whenever I hear some pseudo intellectual ramblings such as yours, I’m remindinded of this:
“Perhaps the most dangerous by-product of
the Age of Intellect is the unconscious
growth of the idea that the human brain can
solve the problems of the world. Even on the
low level of practical affairs this is patently
untrue. Any small human activity, the local
bowls club or the ladies’ luncheon club,
requires for its survival a measure of self-
sacrifice and service on the part of the
members. In a vdder national sphere, the
survival of the nation depends basically on
the loyalty and self-sacrifice of the citizens.
The impression that the situation can be
saved by mental cleverness, without unsel-
fishness or human self-dedication, can only
lead to collapse.”
The navel gazing stupor of pondering first principles, eloped by libertarians and conservativeinc., is the opiate of the right.
Stop it already.
I’m not seeing much “naval gazing” in what I’m writing, rather it seems pretty straightforward and “cause and effect” to me. We all operate on first principles, the question is whose/which ones. The left has provided the ones on which the Western world is operating, through a host of “navel gazing” intellectuals, whose ideas have spread and permeated the world in which we’re living. We’re seeing where these first principles have led us, and where we’re going. These first principles haven’t been spread purely by force of rational persuasion, propaganda (mass media, education) has been central to their spread, and economic and ethnic interest of elites have been central in driving them to spread these ideas downward and outward. Those convinced that these first principles are the correct ones have not always, and certainly not entirely, been persuaded on a rational level. Few people are rational or thoughtful (how else to explain the continued adherence to the blank slate), and people are often grabbed by “visions” and myths that they want to make reality, so much so that they’ll sacrifice mightily for them (like the left’s True Believers in the egalitarian heaven on earth they’re going to build, as soon as they’ve disappeared the West into the Third World).
I’d argue a change in first principles and new visions and myths are essential to get back needed “loyalty and self-sacrifice of the citizens”, and to make other desperately needed changes. Also, I think a major reason why the libertarians and Conservatism, Inc. are so useless is that they operate on fundamentally leftist principles. How far should one take this “anti-naval gazing”? Are Aquinas and Plato out? How do you propose to change peoples’ thinking, and inspire self-sacrificial revolt (beyond an anonymous ballot for Trump, and a few words to accepting friends and family) before Western man and his civilization disappear from history, before our posterity finds themselves hopelessly stuck in a mixture between a Brazilian ghetto and Brave New World?
Bob Seger?
Leonard Cohen’s 1966 novel.
I don’t have time to explain the way the world is to progressives and conservative inc. The pain is coming and no amount of drum circles or “smart” people conferences can stop it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwuckTkE7T4
You…you mean…not even sweat lodge ceremonies can save us?