Travelogue: Gatekeeper’s Ball I

Having self-medicated the previous night, I approached the prospect of a full day of lectures on civic nationalism with some dread. I did myself a favor and skipped the first speaker, but I arrived in time to hear David Brog deliver a long sermon on the glories of immigration and how immigrants made America. It was 200 proof immigration romanticism spiced up with some personal anecdotes about his Jewish grandfather’s journey to America and how much he loved his adopted country.

Of course, he sprinkled his sermon with more reminders about how racism is the worst and there is no place for it in national conservatism. I suspect all speakers were told to do this, so that the media would record it. I counted fifty people at the media tables. Maybe the plan is to keep repeating the bit about racism until some of them will repeat it. Then again, this national conservative thing is shaping up to look like Mitt Romney style conservatism, so maybe these guys really believe this stuff…

The next speaker was a woman calling herself Mary Eberstadt. Her speech was garden variety civic nationalism. She made it clear that this new brand of nationalism is open to everyone. She did not throw a tantrum about racism, as has been the case with most of the speakers, but she made it clear that America is for everyone as long as they agree on the rules. The main difference between what we have now and what she proposes is the new thing is called nationalism…

The final speaker of the morning session was Yoram Hazony. It was an interesting performance to behold. He started out criticizing neoconservatives, making the absurd claim that the current crop of neocons are not the real neocons. They have strayed from the original into imperialism. Then he let it be known that one of the sponsors for this show was The Public Interest, a neocon quarterly founded by Irving Kristol. The fact that he said this without laughing was quite remarkable.

He then moved onto libertarianism. It’s interesting to hear these guys criticize libertarianism, because they don’t really know why they oppose it. They just associate it with the cultural decline, so they assume it is the cause. There’s also a reactionary vibe to their fight with the libertarians. These new nationalists don’t like the libertarians, because libertarians oppose nationalism. For their purposes, maybe that’s enough to dismiss the economic arguments against their brand of nationalism.

The third part of his speech was a trade about white nationalism. He fumbled around trying to say something about biological reality, but that made him sound like a nut from the flat earth society. Then he warned about the threat of white nationalism, especially among young people. Then he made the claim that there is no such thing as tribal loyalty, which is an odd thing, given that he claims a nation is a collection of tribes. As in his book, it’s clear he terrifies himself when he follows his logic to its conclusion.

I said to my minder after the speech that I enjoyed the speech much better when Paul Gottfried gave it in 1985. That’s really what this new nationalism is, when you clear away the wacky Christian Zionist stuff and the virtue signaling. This is just good old fashioned paleo-conservationism, stripped of its intellectual underpinnings. Instead of biology forming the foundation of nationalism, it is this magical connection between people that forms when people are in the same vicinity…

I nearly bust out laughing at one point in Harzony’s speech. He was flapping his arms about the evils of biological realism, talking about how evil race realists like me are dangerous because we know a lot about the human sciences. He made the claim that race realists were delusional. As proof he talked about how people love dogs and soldiers build strong bonds. At one point, I thought he was going to claim trench socialism was proof that kinship is an optical illusion. The whole thing was bonkers…

The keynote speaker for the lunchtime crowd was Tucker Carlson, who was treated like a rock star. He gave a fun talk that was not really a speech about anything, more like a string of loosely connected anecdotes and observations. Carlson claims he does not consume much of anything on-line, but he certainly sounds a like a guy familiar with what gets posted on dissident sites. He did a riff on the opposite rule of liberalism that sounded a lot like this post from years back. Maybe it is just a coincidence…

The funny thing about this event is not a single person has bothered to mention that conservatism, whether neocon or Buckley, managed to conserve nothing. Further, they don’t put any thought into why it failed. They just seem to think if they can go back and do it all over again, the results will be different somehow. Not only is that impossible, it fails to address the internal defects of conservatism. The reason we are at this place, is the so-called conservatives chose to embrace Progressive morality….


Support the media that supports you. While all of us toiling in the fields of dissident media are motivated by a sense of duty, having a place to sleep and food on the table still requires money. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. Or, you can send money to me at: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. I now have a PayPal setup for those who prefer that method to donate. Thank you for your support!


87 thoughts on “Travelogue: Gatekeeper’s Ball I

  1. Orange Bad Man tweets against Prog squad with one hand – distraction.
    And a much needed boost for all our morale. We’ve all been dying to tell them to GTFO all our lives.

    But with the other hand he adjusts the Federal Register to end asylum on Mexican Border.

    Brilliant, and his pattern.

  2. There he sits, thinking about what an unholy mess his sock drawer has become. It’s a travesty, really.

    Remember, black socks go to the back of the drawer!

  3. Z man; doing the job we can’t without getting arrested.

    Or I couldn’t.

    Meanwhile the world buzzes around them as CNN et el pick up the Banner of Deportation.
    So now the topic is deportation of foreigners.

    Trump isn’t our Washington.
    He’s our Sun Tzu.

    • VXXC:
      What’s your deal?

      I’m all for healthy debate and disagreement, but your ratio of useful contributions to useless contributions appears to be, at this point, about 2:9.

    • He could change the policy- and that would be reversed tomorrow.

      Never let a crisis go to waste.
      This is about building a long-term momentum, a sea-change, after our long civnat slumber.

      I’m with vxxc on this.

      All I can do is hope Trump is overdoing it to send a hidden message, an S.O.S.!– he’s “draping himself in an Israeli flag”.

      • I know, I know, 100,000 per month-
        But if that don’t light a fire under your azz, I don’t know what will.

  4. You’ll like this, I think. Limbaugh spent quite a bit of time making the point that Tlaib, AOC, et al act as though being a US citizen has to do with “magic dirt”: that is, merely being on US soil is sufficient for citizenship. He made it clear that he does not like their “magic dirt” theory.

    And yes, they can leave any damn time they want. I’ll chip in.

    • Conservatives promoted the magic dirt theory for decades

      Omar, AOC and Tlaib are what they got.

      AOC is a fake, but I enjoy the other two, to rub the boomer’s faces in the diversity that they spend decades defending.

      “As long as they come in legally”

      It’s far better to have the boomers realize their error now, than to have a soothing, non-confrontational replacement.

  5. Sounds like the whole “Cargo Cult” thing come to life again. Any sightings of old neo cons and Buckley-ites making objects and effigies out of sticks and vines?

  6. You can’t compare people that built a civilization out of wilderness to people show up wanting guaranteed housing and food and Medical Care. Its nonsense but it’s been very effective nonsense for a long time. If I ever personally hear someone say those things are comparable I will correct them

  7. Tucker was back at it again tonight. He started off really well, describing the leftward drift of the Democrats as a result of the Four POC Women who seem to be leading the party over the falls. When he’s finished eviscerating them, he welcomed his guest. A negro then comes on to carry water for Tucker and praise Trump for getting black unemployment so low. We whites are supposed to gush about this, I guess. No wonder Carlson showed up at that event today. He loves to play in liberal sandboxes.

    • Let’s try not to purity spiral all over Tucker’s face. He’s the best thing we’ve got going by far, and he’s not even one of us.

      • It’s impossible for us to “purity spiral” against Tucker, he’s a powerful and wealthy figure with a huge platform and we are some guys in the comments section of a blog. He won’t be “scared off” by us, we don’t effect him.

        All we can do is offer a dispassionate analysis of his strengths and weaknesses.

        Tucker seems to push the envelope on populist issues and may even hint at knowledge of the… uhh… globalist elites

        But I’m not convinced he is actually pushing the envelope on race, there are dog whistles he could be using that he isn’t using, he may actually mean what he says when he constantly recites the platitudes about color blindness. IE: He might just be a populist CivNat

        His association with this ridiculous conference is also noteworthy.

        If Tucker is an earnest Civ Nat Populist, that’s one thing, but if he’s a Civ Nat in Israel’s pocket, that’s quite another.

        • WRT Tucker: Trust . . . but verify. He may be a closet DR, and building his brand until he’s too big to seriously injure, and in the meantime, has to walk a fine line (pushing some issues here, counterbalance with a virtue signal there). Or, he may be taking us for a ride. But at least he gets some DR points into mainstream consciousness.

    • I don’t necessarily disagree, but I think Tucker’s objective is to keep the Dems out of the White House, keep the Senate, and maybe even take back the House. To achieve this end, he pushes certain narratives much like Trump himself. How to win the election?

      Objective 1: scare the normies, especially the swing voters. Do that by making the Foreign Four the new face of the Dem party. He was pushing that hard last night. Also make Antifa the Street Action Auxiliary of the Dem party. Also pushed that.

      Objective 2: Accept that AIPAC and The Nose are too powerful right now to piss off, so don’t. And as a bonus, force the Pelosi to defend the FF, who spout out against The Nose. Infighting. Divide and conquer. Part of that strategy includes presenting a few Erudite Blacks as role models to let the most loyal Dem base know that they don’t have to live like this. Every bit helps.

  8. Your first paragraph persuades me that I don’t want to hear more about these people. Only immigration that interests me is negative immigration: no green cards, no H1Bs, no naturalizations, wall, deportations, Official English. Maybe 100 genius visas for authentic world-historical geniuses, but that number may be too way too high.

    • I sometimes tell people: If you had lost as much money over your career to the H1B visa program as I have, you’d be hunting Indians with dogs.

  9. I’ll tell you whether I’m a racist or not once someone actually defines the term. As it is, I find nothing shameful about the term, but I’m happy to recoil in horror if it turns out the word means something really bad, like someone who notices the divided loyalty of certain people….

    • For example, I noticed that blacks are about 14% of the US population, and black men make up about 6% of the US population, but black men make up about 70% of the NFL and about 74% of the NBA. Is it racist to notice this disparity? If i say, hey, it looks like black men appear to be particularly gifted at sportsball activities, is that racist of me? if so, why?

  10. Did you have a chance to catch Peter Thiel’s speech? It made the national news. My workplace is in complete meltdown over it.

    • Yes…heard Thiel on Tucker. What is your work and why high Chinese grand drama meltdown relating to your work? Please tell. Thanks.

  11. Never doubt the power of the mind to delude itself. People can contort themselves into some wierd logic not to abandon their preheld beliefs. It’s been shown that beliefs are strengthened by contradictory information.

    • Tykebomb said: “It’s been shown that beliefs are strengthened by contradictory information.” I think your talking about “confirmation bias.” Here’s a wiki link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias . Personally, I just think these people are nostalgic and what to get the band back together. In the hay day of the buckley cartel they were young and full of hope. They had a long run, but now it’s fading away. The buckley years where like Wood Stock for square middleclass conservatives .

  12. It doesn’t matter what these Yahoos and YaJoos think about biological nationalsm – as though there’s another kind. It’s coming.

    The Dems are on the cusp of permanently controlling the presidency, which also means controlling the judiciary and the bureaucracy. And the Dems are all in on tribalism, including pointing out the current ruling tribe. Whites – and Jews – are about to get to know tribalism about as gently as the Andy got to know the sisters in Shawshank Redemption.

    Like so many generals in history, American Jews are fighting the last war. They still think that the big danger is Europeans and their diaspora when the real danger just keeps marching toward them.

    Look around fuck nuts. The Indians are coming. The Asians are coming. The Muslims are coming. And they’re all just as tribal as you are. The days of you getting to have your chocolate babka and eating too are over. Unlike idiotic gentile whites, these groups will never accept you as “one of them” while simultaneously letting your act in your own interests.

    You know why? Because it’s fucking stupid and suicidal.

    Jews worry about the Nazi bogeyman while groups as tribal as they are make inroads. I never thought any group could be as stupid as gentile whites, but American Jews are making a run at it.

    • Come now. After they murdered Czar Alexander, father of Nicholas, they unexpectedly heard the sound of Cossack hoofbeats!

      Having suddenly discovered they had been historically pogrommed, they fled to America and started lighting off anarchist’s bombs in public squares.

      So. Oppressed. Just like the Brown of Four!

  13. Doesn’t matter what these Yahoos and YaJoos think. They can point and sputter all day about the evils of biological nationalism – as though there’s another kind – to their cuck audience. It’s coming.

    The Dems are on the cusp on permanently controlling the White House, and, therefore, the judiciary and bureaucracy. And the Dems are all in on tribalism, including pointing out the existence of the ruling tribe. Whites – and Jews – are about to get tribalism good and hard. All the virtual signalling in the world won’t protect whites from an Andy-like roll in the hay with the “sisters” in Shawshank Redemption.

    Jesus, even the tribe has grown fat and lazy. Like their stupid, “I don’t see color,” Rotary Club sidekicks, they can’t imagine a world where they’re not in charge, where someone challenges them, where another group is as tribal as they are. Fuck nuts, look around. The Indians are coming. The Asians are coming. Even idiotic Muslims are coming.

    They all hate you! They all think like you! They all know what you’re doing and aren’t afraid pointing it out! And most of all, they all want to be where you are now!

    The days of whites getting away with their above-it-all attitude toward race is coming to an end, like it or not. So are the days of Jews getting to have their chocolate babka and eat it too. Jews won’t be able to be both “one of them” and completely separate with Indians or Asians or Muslims or blacks or Hispanics. They’ll be fucking Jews, just another tribe scrambling to grab as much of the pie as other tribes.

    How Z doesn’t bitch slap every person at the conference is a wonder.

    • Citizen: You’re on a roll today. Lots of excellent comments – one reason we all like to hangout at Zman’s place – it’s generally free of the pontificating, boring, civnat boomertards that have made iSteve such a turgid, repetitive place. Plus Zman doesn’t moderate comments for days, even if when one disagrees with him. Nor does he term those who disagree idiots and ban them.

      • Open borders libertarians are as fictional as van poolers. They’re another media creation like Buckley conservatives or right wing militias.

  14. If you attended Rich Lowry’s breakout session and got through it without laughing that would be impressive. I would guess Tucker’s staff reads a lot online and gives him recaps of what they find interesting and worth his time. A couple of them must be at least sympathetic to reality based on what makes onto to his show.

    • If one were to attend Rich Lowry’s breakout session, one would need a testosterone booster shot afterward. Women, too.

  15. >>>but she made it clear that America is for everyone as long as they agree on the rules.<<<

    And those rules are the result of millennia of Anglo/Nordic Heritage, which itself is underpinned by Anglo/Nordic biology.

    If we can agree on that, I’ve no issue with finding common ground with CivNats.

      • Not sure I see the connection there.

        My point is that if CivNats agree that traditional (pre-65) Americanism has a biological basis, then it becomes de facto racial nationalism.

        • MemeWarVet said: “Not sure I see the connection there” The connection is real easy. Your “Anglo/Nordic” rules are irrelevant to the brown tsunami. “But she made it clear that America is for everyone as long as they agree on the rules.” This women is just another numbskull living in a comfortable bubble. If she lived in a neighborhood full of blacks and browns and could see who they really are, she would hall ass down to the border wearing camouflage and holding a machine gun. .

    • I was kind of surprised by the failure of a real civic nationalism to emerge post Trump.

      What we call civic nationalism today is just mainstream conservative or yesterday’s liberalism, it still accepts recent immigrants as more American than racist Americans and just wants Americans to be replaced legally.

      There was little or no ideological development post Trump, we just ended up with generic, zero-ideas mainstream conservatives in the MAGA camp and White Nationalists on the outside. Mostly Trump just made conservatives more pro-gay.

      I guess you can see hints of authentic American civic nationalism in people like Ann Coulter, who feels more attached / paternalistic towards groups that were here pre-1965. (Unfortunately for her, those groups turned out to be really easy for the left to radicalize against Whites)

      Probably any real civic American nationalism was forced to concern itself with demographics, so it got classified as White Nationalism and censored / de-platformed / excluded from government.

      The thing that calls itself civic nationalism today can’t be compromised with, it’s just an extension of liberalism and the tribe.

      • I think perhaps the sort of Civic Nationalism you’d referenced might have developed if Bannon had stuck around. Once he was out of the picture, it was all Express Train to MIGAville.

  16. You people talk about racism like it’s a good thing.

    Maybe I misunderstand you but if not just let me remind you that the vast majority of the country is committed to fighting racism and white stuff supremacy

    You will lose

    • Ben Meyer said: “…let me remind you that the vast majority of the country is committed to fighting racism…” Dear Ben. If you think that what you and all your loved ones are doing is winning some big prize, then you deserve to drowned in the cesspool of your own blind ass stupidity.

    • We’re really getting the shit-tier trolls around here. The vast majority of the country doesn’t give a damn about anything but Netflix & Walmart, and every legitimate commenter here is worth a thousand orcs and bugmen. As racist Frank Miller said in 300, “see, I brought more soldiers than you.”

  17. Z Man said: “The funny thing about this event is not a single person has bothered to mention that conservatism, whether neocon or Buckley, managed to conserve nothing. Further, they don’t put any thought into why it failed. They just seem to think if they can go back and do it all over again, the results will be different somehow. Not only is that impossible, it fails to address the internal defects of conservatism. The reason we are at this place, is the so-called conservatives chose to embrace Progressive morality….” I’m sure everybody here has read this quote by Robert Lewis Dabney, but it bears repeating. https://www.counter-currents.com/2012/11/robert-lewis-dabney-on-conservatism/

  18. I can just imagine how our blog host was taken to this thing: straight jacketed, trussed to a wheeler like Hannibal Lecter…
    Try to behave yourself while you are there and don’t cuddle anyone’s milk. We will kill and eat these weaklings all in good time! 🙂

    • Glenfilthtie: re: “all in good time” is such a good reminder,

      I had no knowledge of george’s reference above to Donald’s response to the Brown Four Congress Femi n a z i s, of “go back to where you came from.”

      So just this morning, in some post-workout conversation (only ladies were present) I shared an anecdote with a fellow swimmer.

      Story was essentially: my response to a crabby old French lady years ago who thought she owned our local pool and thus was allowed to be snarky and bossy to rest of us. Eventually I got tired of it, and said “if you don’t like it here, go back to France where you came from.”

      The great part about it was that I used HER native tongue to address her discontent. And while I was at it, I used the (in this case) pejorative “tu” form of “you” rather than the more respectful “vous,” given her age , relative to my own.

      As I relayed this “crabby French lady” pool story just this morning, my fellow athlete’s response was: “OK, thank s Trump!”

      Being taken aback by the unexpected response, I let it go (which is somewhat unusual given my fiery nature and general passion for these issues).

      Then I thought about this gang here and being patient, and staying quiet. Her time will come. And I made a mental note. When The Troubles arrive, there is another added to a lit.
      But as Glenfilthie says above: “all in good time.”

  19. Sounds to me like a bunch of people on the Titanic talking about redecorating.

    • Sounds to me like a bunch of Jews trying to yet again co-op one of our movements. Any hint of whites starting to think like the tribe inevitably leads to a flock of Jews and their money to parachute into the area and take over.

      • Harzony’s “new” nationalism is another (((Trotskyite))) entry/gatekeeping ploy. Give him any rope and he will hang a Con, Inc size albatross around the neck of white nationalism. Drive this Gypsy from our midst.

      • I was kind of surprised how obvious this attempt was, it must be aimed at boomers or something.

        I could imagine a much more appealing, less obviously Israeli version of fake nationalism. That would be a threat, people are desperately looking for something.

        This isn’t even close to Trump’s 2016 fake nationalism

      • I just watched Lindsey Graham half heartily defending Trump concerning the “go back to where you came from” comments directed at the commie 4.

        About the first words out of Lindsey’s mouth were something about ” They hate Israel and are anti-semitic.” Then he said Trump should not have said what he did.

        I could not possibly care less if these people hate Israel. I am concerned that they hate America and the founding stock. As a U.S. Senator his first thought should be how events affect America. Not Israel.

  20. I hope the check was big enough for Tucker for him to stomach being there. Everything I’ve read and heard from him recently indicates he’s much closer to our thing than those guys.

    • There is a recent photo of Tucker hanging out with Yair Netanyahu, who tweeted about how Tucker is a big supporter of Israel

      Tucker likes to steal our talking points, but we should look carefully to see what ends he is directing them towards

      • The DR really should drape themselves in Israeli flags. It’s a great troll. Making the flag of Israel an alt-right symbol would be hilarious.

        • Fake nationalists have been doing that over in Europe for a long time… didn’t work out too well

          • Maybe it works better if real nationalists do it.

            And it makes sense: we want what Israel have: a country of our own. We should tout Israel as a role model, and never stop praising them as loud as we can for their sensible immigration policy.

            Let the Israel Firsters suck on that: we’re more pro-Israel than the neocons, we want the whole world to be like Israel, not just Israel.

          • Feel free to try. You will get some support from the kind of people who attended the Israel conference Zman describes above.

            But it’s a bad idea, Israel is not a real nation, it is not a nation that practices morally defensible values that we would want to emulate.

            It’s the headquarters of an international criminal network. It is practicing theft, rape, genocide and colonialism. The bad kind of colonialism.

            Equating yourself to Israel is basically declaring your intent to commit horrible crimes against the rest of the world.

            Since we are in a position of weakness, doing that isn’t a good idea, it just encourages people to help finish us off.

            Our position is more akin to the position that the Palestinians are in. Framing it that way provides a basis for cooperation among Nationalists. (We all have a shared interest in stopping the crimes being committed by the empire.)

          • Equating yourself to Israel is basically declaring your intent to commit horrible crimes against the rest of the world.

            Normie doesn’t consider Israel a state criminal, he considers Israel a plucky underdog. My plan would leverage pro-Israeli propaganda to our advantage.

            And white Americans are nowhere near the position of the Palestinians, that’s almost an insult. The Palestinians are a bunch of whiney, histrionic losers, topping the list of “Most Unwanted Immigrants”, right below Somalis.

          • People have done Zio-Nationalism a million times.

            You can get support from the boomers who attend the conference in this article by equating yourself to Israel.

            But you are trading off your integrity, your ability to appeal to the youth and the truthfulness of your rhetoric to appeal to… boomers, who won’t do anything for you anyway.

            And It’s more of an insult to the Palestinians. If your values are based in nationalism, then “being a good immigrant” doesn’t rank in the list of positive qualities, they are supposed to be annoying. But they’ve endured a lot of hardship and sacrificed a lot in their effort to achieve self determination, we can’t say the same.

          • People have done Zio-Nationalism a million times.

            They have? Who? How? Where?

            The only person I know who does it, is Ramzpaul. Not even Ann Coulter has the spunk.

          • Basically all gate keepers who want to move beyond pure classical liberal CivNat hit on the idea of complaining about Muslims, sucking up to Israel, while begging to be allowed to have borders.

            Lauren Southern, The Golden One, Tommy Robinson, Rebel Media, that kind of stuff.

            It has been going on all along. This is an approach that all young people have been exposed to and most have moved on from. Feel free to try another version of it, but it is not innovative, and it ultimately doesn’t address the most important issue; America isn’t an independent nation and the Kushners won’t let you have nationalism.

          • The point is we want what Israel has (a truly sovereign nation), not that we want to be Israel.

    • Tucker is legit, one of the few mainstream talking heads that resonates with me. He gets it. He’s grown from his libertarian days, much like myself. Definitely someone we need on our side!

      • I enjoy Carlson’s show. I watch it every night, in fact. But I can’t help thinking that there’s got to be a catch. Back when Bubba was in the White House, I listened to Rush Limbaugh. He was hilarious, and said a great many things that needed to be said. But once Bush II was in office, I realized that Limbaugh was just a partisan hack. Shame on me for taking so long to figure that out.

        • Tucker openly embraces such oldies but goodies as the universalism of the founding, America is a proposition nation, we are nation of immigrants, and the donkeys are the real racists.

          If one does not hear the above, one is deaf.

          • Yeah, you’re right. I think what happens is one of these guys says a few things you really agree with, and you’re so happy to have heard it that when he says things that are obvious nonsense it’s easy to overlook them.
            Mea Culpa

          • No Mea Culpa necessary.

            Yes, its great when he is slamming the Muzziette from Minneapolis / St. Mogadishu, but disheartening when he turns to a guest who frames Omar’s speech as, uber alles, anti-semitic, and an attack on the “only democracy in the middle east.”

          • He spouts them, But I don’t know if he embraces them. He does know who butters his bread, so he has to give his pinch of incense here and there. Whether he’s tossing incense to the DR or TPTB, hard to say. But at least some of the right talking points get exposed through him.

Comments are closed.