Category Archives: Culture

Peisistratos

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In the late 7th and early 6th century BC, ancient Athens fell into crisis. As is often the case with the classical period, historians disagree about the causes. One issue upon which everyone agrees is that economics played a part. The wealthy families had become an oligarchy, owning most of the land. Debt-bondage was common. The collateral for loans in that age was the person. This meant that if the Athenian tenant farmers did not pay his rents, he and his children could be seized as slaves.

The way it worked is the farmer would borrow to finance the operations of the farm. If the farm did not produce enough to pay the debt, he would fall into debt bondage. In theory, he literally worked off his debt, so it was a temporary status. There was a special status in the law for someone in bondage for a debt, versus the normal type of slave. The reality was that debt bondage was becoming a permanent state for a large fraction of the population. The result was increasing social strife between the classes.

Rivalry between the leading families was also a problem. As is always the case when there is social unrest, some factions tried to take advantage of it and gain power for themselves at the expense of their rivals. in 632 BC, an Athenian nobleman named Cylon made an unsuccessful attempt to seize power. Many Greek city-states had seen opportunistic noblemen take power on behalf of sectional interests. Factions sought to gain control of the state, to gain an edge over rivals.

There were also regional rivalries that exacerbated the personal and economic turmoil of the age. The rural population had different interests than the urban population. Traders had different interests than farmers. Since most Athenians lived in rural settlements, and debt bondage was an increasing problem, Attika was increasingly resembling Sparta, where a small elite ruled over a large population of helots. This exacerbated the personal and economic rivalries convulsing Athens at the time.

Regardless of the causes, Athens was at a crisis point and fear of a tyrant rising to impose order, led the Athenians to turn to the wisest man in Athens. That man was Solon, a statesman, lawmaker and poet. He was of noble birth, but he was sometimes described as a self-made man, suggesting his family was of modest means. In 595 BC Solon had led the Athenian forces against the Megarians, resulting in a heroic victory. Allegedly, it was the power of his poetry that inspired the Athenians to carry the day.

By the time the Athenians turned to Solon, he was rich, a famous poet and a famous military leader. Solon was awarded temporary autocratic powers by Athenian citizens on the grounds that he had the wisdom to sort out their differences in a peaceful and equitable manner. His task was to find a way to resolve the factional rivalries. The result was a series of economic, legal and moral reforms that are remembered to this day as the Reforms of Solon. Once instituted, Solon gave up his position and left Athens.

The Athenians agreed to abide by these reforms for a period of ten years, but within a few years the old problems and rivalries were back. In addition to the old problems, the defects in the reforms created new problems. Some officials refused to perform their duties as described, while other posts were left vacant. The reforms worked if Solon was around to lend his name to them. Once Solon was gone, the result was worse than before the reforms. As a result, the people blamed Solon for the breakdown of order.

Eventually one of Solon’s relatives, Peisistratus, ended the factionalism by force, becoming tyrant and confirming what everyone feared would happen prior to Solon’s reforms. Solon was still alive, and he mocked the Athenians for allowing Peisistratus to seize power, by standing outside his home, wearing his uniform. Despite being driven into exile twice, Peisistratus was eventually able to impose order on Athens and he ruled as tyrant until his death. His sons succeeded him and ruled until 510 BC.

Solon gets positive treatment from history for having tried to preserve Athenian democracy and for having some success at curbing the power of the aristocrats. Aristotle credited Peisistratus with laying the foundation for the eventual rise of Athens. He changed the economy to be based on trade and he reformed agriculture, away from grains to olives. He did this by offering loans to farmers so they could make the transition. He also built a water system capable of sustaining a large population.

The lesson here is that reform is rarely successful, unless it is imposed by force. The reason is the status quo will always be preferable to those in power. Any reform through mutual consent must involve trade-offs that do nothing to alter the fundamental power arrangements. That was the defect of Solon’s reforms. While they temporarily alleviated the results of the power arrangements in Athenian society, they never attempted to alter them. The result of Solon’s reforms was nothing more than a pause in the factionalism.

This is something to keep in mind in the current age. The problems we see are not caused by errors in voting or mistakes in public policy. There is an underlying systemic problem that cannot be voted away. At the end of the Industrial Revolution, similar problems existed, but the political class was strong enough to impose reforms on the industrial barons and alter the power relationships in American society. That was possible because politics was a power center with the monopoly on violence.

Today, the political class is composed entirely of hired men, speaking on behalf of the interests that back their political careers. In fact, most are just actors, hired because they fit the right profile and look good on television. They have no power. This is the problem Trump is confronting as he tries to push through reforms. It’s not that Congress opposes these reforms. It’s that their paymasters oppose the reforms. He’s dealing with flunkies and errand boys. We don’t need a Solon right now. We need a Peisistratus.

The Russian Stain

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During the Cold War, popular culture portrayed the Soviets in two ways, often at the same time. There was the ruthless ideologue, efficiently going about his business as an implacable enemy of freedom. The other type of Soviet character was the morally conflicted guy, whose honor compelled him to serve his country, but he also understood that communism was immoral. As far as villains go, both types of Soviet were given a lot of respect, because Hollywood is sympathetic to Bolshevism.

Today, Hollywood rarely uses Russians as bad guys, but our political class sees them as the epicenter of evil in the modern world. Steve Sailer noted the other day that the pundit class has rewritten recent history to fit this narrative. The neocons are celebrating the tenth anniversary of something that never really happened, at least not in the way they currently tell it. Here is neocon puppet Mikheil Saakashvili, and Robert Kagan and Condoleezza Rice repeating the same whopper.

The funny thing about this myth-making is that it is unnecessary. The number of people in the political class who could locate South Ossetia is tiny. Most normal Americans would be puzzled to learn that there is a country named after the peach state. As a public relations item, this ten year old non-event is useless. There’s also the fact that the actual events are easily accessible on-line. It looms large for the neocons, though, so they can’t stop thinking about it.

The neocons love mucking about in that part of the world. Some would say their interests go back to the pale of settlement days. That is the sort of thing that can get your in trouble. Still, there’s pretty good evidence that the American foreign policy establishment has been meddling in the region since the Soviet Empire. The Boston Marathon bomber was probably recruited by US intelligence at some point. His uncle seems to know a lot of people in the CIA.

The thing that no one has yet to explain is why has the American ruling elite become fixated on Russia. Even if the reason for the neocon obsession is ancient hatreds, why is the America left nuts about the Russians? It could simply be convenience, but there are better villains in the world for them to hate, at least in practical terms. China, for example, makes for a much better villain. Iran or Saudi Arabia work much better with the left’s current deep dive into matriarchy.

Even if you want to believe that the left has been infected by the ancient hatred that animates the neocons, the tenor of the left’s hatred is different. The neocons see Russia as a problem to be controlled so it does not revert back to its imperial habits. The left now sees Russia as Old Scratch. Russia is not a problem to be managed and more than the devil can be managed. The very existence of Russia is seen as an affront to the neo-liberal world order.

This visceral hatred has some similarities to the orogressive loathing of the imperial governments of Europe prior to the Great War. Wilson despised the old order, which is why he was so aggressively vengeful toward the Austrians and Germans. American progressives seem to have developed the same view of Russia, and to a lesser degree the Visegrad counties. Their resistance to the neo-liberal order is viewed as an ideological challenge and that can never be tolerated.

The difference is that a century ago, Wilsonian democracy was ascendant, while the monarchical order was in decline. America and American leaders were the new kids on the world stage, pushing aside the old guard. Today, the neo-liberal order is in a defensive crouch. Meanwhile, Russia and Eastern Europe are pretty much just normal countries do pretty well. Perhaps part of the hatred for Russia is the need to find something to blame for the current troubles in the West.

Of course, it is a reminder of the absolute intolerance of secular religions. When people assign the natural order to divine forces, they can be indifferent to alternative forms of worship, as a part of the great mystery of life. When the natural order is a man made creation and the moral code is created and maintained by man, any deviation must be viewed as a challenge to the creator’s legitimacy. The stubborn existence of European countries practicing the old ways is an insult to the neo-liberal creators.

There also may be the issue of reach. Russia is poor and relatively weak compared to the West, but it remains out of reach. It’s ability to thrive outside the new world order suggests the new world order cannot include the whole world. Central to the liberal impulse, going back to Wilson, is totalitarianism. Russia is like a stain that they cannot get out of the fabric of global society. Putin is a new Tsar, the return of that same stubborn problem they cannot resolve.

The Great Awakening

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Ron Unz has put out a handful of long columns under the American Pravda category on his personal website. These are posts where he digs into the official narrative on a subject and relates his experience with discovering the truth. They are packed with lots of well researched bits about the topic, often from obscure sources that have been erased from the official narrative. To his credit, he digs into the credibility of his source material, which is always useful.

They are a bit too long, but that may be a matter of taste. There is something about reading from a screen that makes long articles less pleasant. People have investigated this and found that shorter is better than longer on-line. It’s one reason the long form essay is going away. Most people consume their content on-line, so they prefer short pithy articles. There’s also the fact that most of this stuff is read at work, where you steal a few minutes to read something before lunch or on a break.

Anyway, this entry on post-war Europe was interesting. The post-liberation reprisals in France and Belgium get some mention in the official narrative, but almost exclusively with regards to women who slept with German soldiers. The gang-like warfare between communists and their enemies is never mentioned. Of course, there is never any mention of what happened to German soldiers in prisoner of war camps. War is an ugly business, and ideological war is the ugliest.

Regarding the ideological aspects of it, the blind hatred of the Germans by the American elite is never discussed. That’s why no one learns about the Morgenthau Plan in their history classes. It is another example of how ideological enemies cannot see the humanity in one another. The rage-fueled progressives were no different than their opponents in the war. They came to see the other side as the pure expression of evil and wanted them exterminated. The Morgenthau Plan was about genocide.

The most interesting part of theses posts is that they fit into the “red pill” experience you hear from many who journey to this side of the divide. Not everyone makes the journey, as they were always here, but did not know there was a “here.” Many do have a moment when the light went on and they either began to question their view of the world or simply changed their mind about some important item. Often, it is a book or article that is the triggering event.

Of course, none of his posts would be possible without modern technology. When the only store of knowledge was controlled by the people running the official narrative, there was no way to red pill anyone or be red pilled yourself. Unless you found a stash of old books, you had to accept the official narrative. Whatever happens in these troubled times, the fact that the society that produced the technological revolution could be consumed by it suggests nature in the long run, is self-correcting.

The article on post-war Europe, brings up something that often gets forgotten. It is not enough to undermine the moral legitimacy of the prevailing orthodoxy. That phony narrative sold to us is not just propaganda in support of the current order. It gives Americans a reason to feel patriotic. It makes us proud of who we are as currently defined by the people in charge. Learning that it is a lie is like learning that you were adopted. It leaves a hole, and something must fill it.

While undermining the moral authority of the people in charge is a big part of our project, we also must work on a replacement. It’s not enough to get people wise to the hypocrisy of the New York Times, for example, with regards to race. The Sarah Jeong fiasco does red pill a lot of people, but that only matters if they have something else to embrace. In the movie from which the term “red pill” originates, the characters had an alternative vision of their future.

This is the lesson of the Great War. The collapse of the monarchical system left a giant void in Europe. That system had been discredited, but there was no replacement for the people to embrace. Liberal democracy had yet to evolve the secular morality to justify it, so into the void flowed Marxism and Fascism. The twentieth century was the fight between liberal democracy, fascism and communism, with the result being the neo-liberal order we have today.

The posts on antisemitism will be of some interest. Ron is Jewish, so he comes to the subject from a different angle than the anti-Semites, but he is refreshingly frank about the material. It’s good reminder that Jews are not the monolith JQ people need to believe. There are a lot of alt-Jews out there. It’s not a majority or even close to one, but it is a substantial minority. Their fight within the Jewish community over Jewish identity is a mirror of what is happening within the Occident.

It’s a good reminder that even if you embrace the fact that human diversity requires separation, it does not mean hostility. In fact, diversity requires cooperation for peaceful separation to work. Even though one group may have different interests and a radically different sense of identity than another, they can still cooperate with one another where their interests align. For the JQ people who think they have taken the ultimate red-pill, this understanding about cooperation and diversity is the ultimate red-pill.

I’m fond of pointing out that much of what defines the modern age is that everyone forgot the timeless lessons of the human condition and now we must rediscover them. This great awakening we see on our side of the great divide is, in many respects, a rediscovery of the past. So much has been hidden from view to prop up the current regime, it’s shocking to most people. Like that kid who learns his parents had lied to him and he was adopted, what matters next is what we do with this new knowledge.

 

Waiting For The Spark

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At lunch recently, I overheard two young women talking about the coming revolution, which I assumed was a joke, so I eavesdropped for a little while bit turned out that they were talking about revolution. The bossy looking one was going on about something Trump did, and how it was going to be the thing that “woke people up about what is really happening.” My guess is the part I missed had something to do with Russians or maybe the Manafort Trial. The Left is obsessed with that now.

Since the election, the Left has been dreaming up scenarios in which the results of the election are overturned. For a long time, they were sure Trump would be impeached, but that seems to have faded. Last year my left-wing office manager was deep into the impeachment scenarios. Now the talk is of revolution, which probably fits better with their conception of themselves as the heroic resistance. They imagine Trump as a strong man, against whom they must resist until the system cracks.

Most of us think of revolution in the sense of people flooding into the streets to protest the government. Either the government makes an error, causing the mob to turn violent or radicals use unrest to foment a full-on revolt. The two models in the Western mind are the French Revolution and the Bolshevik Revolution. Given the make-up of the anti-Trump forces, it’s hard to imagine either scenario. The “resistance” is mostly girls and non-whites prone to committing violence against one another.

There is another model of revolution, that may be what our current rulers have in mind for us and that is the Cultural Revolution unleashed by Mao Zedong. This was a revolution from above, where the revolutionary elite enlisted the masses at the bottom to purge the middle of bourgeois traitors. Mao purged the party of rivals and then used subsequent protests to advance a lurch into radicalism. The complaints about party leaders were an excuse to start a cultural revolution.

The most famous aspect of it was the Red Guards. This was a student movement aimed at unleashing “a great revolution that touches people to their very souls and constitutes a deeper and more extensive stage in the development of the socialist revolution in our country.” Sinophiles hate the comparison, but this sounds a lot like our billionaire class financing the various radical groups and social justice warriors we see rampaging through the culture today.

Another point of comparison is the war on the “Four Olds” which were old customs, culture, habits, and ideas. This was both a war on the past, as well as a war on the culture itself. For example, the Red Guards pulled the remains of a Ming dynasty emperor out of his tomb, denounced him and then burned the remains. They went around renaming streets and toppling statues.  Today’s radicals do the same thing and preach against racism, sexism, homophobia and antisemitism.

No historical comparison is perfect. Again, Sinophiles really hate the comparison, but people are conservative about what they think they know best. There’s also the fact that Chinese culture is remarkably strong, and it was largely able to resist the ten-year campaign to obliterate it. American culture appears to be brittle and falling apart under the weight of a fifty-year planned invasion. The Chinese did not fill up their lands with hostile foreigners, armed with a ballot by the ruling class.

On the other hand, there are limits to everything. As the outrages from the Left stack up, the average white person in American grows angrier. Talk to anyone sympathetic to this line of thinking and they will tell you they have grown far less tolerant of their remaining liberal friends. I know I’ve lost touch with quite a few former friends, because I will not tolerate their nonsense. I have friends who just a few years ago thought Ben Shapiro was edgy and now think I am too soft.

The question is what it would take to move people from yelling at their televisions over the latest liberal outrage to marching in the streets. Sometimes, the smallest spark sets the biggest fire. The reaction to Alex Jones getting purged from the internet has been surprising, given that he is not a serious person. People, who never heard of him until yesterday, are angry over his banishment. My guess is the percentage of people thinking fondly of Pinochet is at an all-time high right now.

As far as the spark, a move against Trump is good bet. The glue that keeps things from flying apart right now is middle-class white people, who still have faith in the political system. These are the middle American radicals Sam Francis wrote about 30 years ago during the Reagan moment. They will tolerate just about anything, if they think they can fight the other side within the system. An effort to remove Trump or even silence his advocates, could be a spark that gets these people into the streets.

Extra-political efforts to ban guns are another possible spark. The coordinated efforts to cut off gun makers from the financial system is dangerous. Gun owners follow this stuff and there are a lot of them. The pink pussy hat people think they have numbers because billionaires will bus fifty thousand of them into DC. The NRA could get a million people in the streets if there is ever a real threat to gun rights. A big part of gun culture is the idea of the patriot bravely taking up arms to resist tyranny.

It is tempting to think this will all blow over. I just don’t see how it will ever be possible to make peace with the Left. They hate us and will use any means necessary. The lack of code is the critical part. How does one make peace with someone that will never abide by the rules? Whether this results in revolution, counter revolution or civil war is hard to know, but the number of people thinking the gap cannot be bridged is growing every day, so we wait for the Cossack’s wink.

Ghosts and Goblins

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Thirty years ago, everyone knew what it meant to be a liberal. They wanted to tax the rich and spend the proceeds on the poor. They wanted to regulate business so they could not exploit their workers or harm the environment. That meant favoring unions in the law. On foreign policy, liberals were the doves when it came to dealing with the Soviets. Of course, everyone knew what being a liberal meant when it came to social issues. The point being liberalism was a well-defined list of policy positions and opinions.

Today, what it means to be a liberal is a complete mystery, even to the people who proudly say they are on the Left. The Netroots Nation was this weekend, so all the grandees of Progressivism were in New Orleans to pitch their ideas. Look at the agenda. Other than the promises to oppose Trump, most of it focused on building traffic for their websites. “Digital Security For Organizers Of Color” sounds amusing, but mostly because it has that familiar paranoia that has come to define the modern Left.

If you bother to watch any of the speeches, the tone is what you would expect from people facing the end times. One after another it was a rallying call for the fight against some monster, real or imagined. At least the ranting about Trump includes a real person, even if the bill of indictment is insane. When you think about it, the Russian collusion business is just an updated version of “cavorting with the devil.” Their argument is that Trump made a deal with the evil one, who magically altered the outcome of the 2016 election.

That’s what liberalism is these days. It is a weird collection of superstitions about various ghosts and goblins like racism and white privilege. Racism no longer means prejudice against another race or even antagonism toward another race. Racism is the evil spirit that is somehow responsible for unequal outcomes. White privilege is just another name for the same mysterious force. It’s how millionaire black athletes can be victims of racism because the white middle class fans stop watching them over the anthem protests.

Another aspect of this is the extreme paranoia. Listen to the Left these days and you get the impression America is now the movie The Purge. The faithful spend every night in their bunker homes. Here is a story from Breitbart about Bill Maher claiming that the United States is turning into Iraq. He does not mean the post-war Iraq. He means the Saddam version where his Al-Bu Nasir tribe ruled over the nation. In Maher’s version, Trump, the Koch brothers and Rupert Murdoch rule over Maher’s oppressed majority.

Now, Maher is a cynical provocateur and opportunist. He was a hack comic for a long time until he figured out how to stoke the fears and fantasies of liberal fanatics. It is debatable as to how much he believes any of the stuff he says. In this case, he is clearly trying to appeal to his audience, by naming three hobgoblins of the Left. The fact that Charles Koch despises Trump and Murdoch was a Hillary supporter makes his theory as nutty as the Russian hacking nonsense, but his audience is not rational.

This vision of themselves as the put upon minority is integral to Progressive identity politics. Not only do the constituencies needs to believe they are victims, the Judeo-Puritan project is rooted in a bunker mentality. Their sense of the world is of a righteous people holed up in a New England town, as the imperial forces encircle them, while they pray the oil holds out until the golem arrives to free them. It is a dog’s breakfast of both spiritual and mythological strains that make up modern Progressivism.

Again, Maher does this because he knows his audience is stupid and this stuff works on them, but it speaks to something about the modern Left. Conventional conservatives like the go on about how the Left has no ideas now. That is true in the nuts-and-bolts public policy sense. The Left is no longer a political force. It’s made the turn and is on its way to becoming the Cult of the Supreme Being. Unlike Robespierre’s invention, this version is esoteric, mysterious and oriental. There is no defined supernatural, just a sense of it.

It’s also very feminine. The hysterical shrieking about the hobgoblins that haunt the Left is reminiscent of the old Blondie cartoons, where the woman would stand on a chair shrieking about a mouse in the kitchen. In a more sophisticated age, the readers knew that the woman’s performance was just that, a performance. It was an acting out and reinforcement of traditional sex roles. Today, when the Progressive climbs onto her chair and shrieks, there is no mouse and no man to rush in and comfort her. It’s a lonely act.

This collapse of Progressivism into a feminine mystery cult is why conventional conservatism has collapsed. Conservatism was never a genuine alternative. Their role was as a foil to the Left. That worked if Progressives had a policy agenda, but that is no longer the case. Listen to the leading figures of the Left and their policy proposals range from comically ridiculous to vaguely aspirational. Again, you see the feminization. The Bernie Bros are now Bernie gals like Ocasio-Cortez and Sarah Smith.

What this says about what comes next is hard to know. Spiritual movements are a part of the human condition. Anthropologists think belief is one of the earliest modern human traits, co-evolving with language. As Christianity fades in the West, something must replace it. Maybe we are seeing the birth of the next great religion. Alternatively, the ranting and raving against nature could be the death howls of a culture that has reached its terminal point. The end is a people huddled in darkness, afraid of the goblins outside.

They Hate You

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The Sarah Jeong story has probably been the best thing to happen to our side since Trump came down that escalator. The challenge of this age is in convincing typical white people that it is not socialism they should fear. It is extermination. There are still people waddling around talking about socialism. Mention race to them and they start hyperventilating about their constitutional principles. What the Sarah Jeong story does it make it impossible to avoid the elephant in the room.

It’s not that this Asian airhead hates white people. Blacks have been out in public talking about how much they hate white people since the Civil Rights era. White people have been trained to accept this, by assuming it is meaningless. Blacks are powerless, so their hatreds are no threat. Then you have the subversives like Ben Shapiro telling them that black hatred of whites is bad for blacks because it keeps them from showing up at CPAC every year to take selfies with adoring white people.

Asians are supposed to be different. They are the model minority. White people just assume that Asians are on their side. They work hard, avoid crime and social dysfunction. They come here looking for a chance, give their kids nice names like Sarah and send them off to good colleges. You’ll note that you never hear anyone suggest we should end immigration from Asia. In the blossoming race war, Asians are never in the discussion, because white people assume they are good people.

Suddenly one of the model minorities has revealed that she hates white people and even more disturbingly, the people known for eating dogs apparently think white people smell like dogs. It adds a whole new element to what the coalition of non-whites has in mind for us once they get total control. More important, this white hating Asian migrant is defended by so-called conservatives. Ben Shapiro wore his tiny little fingers raw tweeting out defenses of the Times decision to back Jeong.

The initial response from white people was to celebrate progressive values by howling about the racism. When that went nowhere, they moved onto howling about the hypocrisy. When the response from the left was to laugh in their face, white people were forced to face reality. The other side are not socialists. They are a coalition of non-whites and some traitors, who are held together by a hatred of white people and the fantasy of a non-white world. They hate white people. That’s it.

White people will try hard to rationalize it and force themselves back into the comfortable role of doormat to the left, but the scales will fall from the eyes of many whites. Many may have already come to terms with this reality, but it is the behavior of people like Ben Shapiro that is the eye-opener. The guy who recently said racists should be hounded out of their jobs, is now defending Jeong and the New York Times, either from a position of solidarity or out of craven opportunism.

Another aspect of this is that it undercuts the argument made by conventional conservatives about their vaunted principles. The other side has no rules, and they have no intention of limiting themselves with rules. All the breast-beating about racism was a lie and it always was a lie. Since the left controls the moral framework, they have just taken the first step toward normalizing tribalism. Jared Taylor is now Ben Shapiro’s moral superior.

This story also offers a chance to point out to white people that there is no bargaining with these people. A bargain requires a degree of good faith on both sides and some way to hold both sides to the deal. The Left thinks it has a moral duty to do whatever is necessary to destroy the rest of us, so they are not just allowed to break the rules and lie about it. They are morally obligated to use any means necessary to win, which is why they named one of the activist groups By Any Means Necessary.

Now, white people have been finding ways to roll over and play dead for a long time, so this event will not suddenly turn them into identitarians. Whites have a habit of internalizing each Progressive outrage. It’s important to remind the normie white person in your life that the other side never quits, they can never be shamed into giving up on their goals. They lost over 30 votes on homosexual marriage but kept at it until they won one and then got the courts to enshrine homosexual marriage as a founding principle.

If you think the defense of Sarah Jeong by subversives like Ben Shapiro is an end point, you are mistaken. Now that they have established that it is okay to hire virulent antiwhites, the next step will be the firing of whites because the antiwhites find them upsetting. In other words, the presence of whites will be grounds to claim the workplace is hostile to non-whites, so the whites must be fired. How long before Justice Roberts claims the Founders always wanted whites to be non-citizens?

The Corporatist Enterprise

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Fascism is word that no longer has meaning, mostly because the left has made it the catchall term for anything they currently oppose. Even adjusting for that, no two academics can agree on a usable definition of fascism. Paul Gottfried, who has studied the subject more than anyone alive today, makes the point that fascism was a lot of different things, even to its advocates. It was an anti-movement, a reaction to and rejection of things like modernity, radicalism, and liberalism.

That is not a fair rendering of Gottfried’s thoughts on the subject, but it is a useful starting point when thinking about historical fascism. The book Fascism: The Career of a Concept is an excellent entry point into a topic for those interested in a sober minded history of fascism. An aspect of fascism that rarely gets discussed in the current age is its corporatism. Fascists, particularly Italian fascists, were corporatist. Mussolini saw the state as something like an organism that transcended all institutions.

The most famous expression of this is the line from Mussolini’s Doctrine of Fascism, “everything in the state, nothing against the State, nothing outside the state.” The state not only provides the services expected of the government, but it also provides the spiritual purpose for those in the state. The individual exists only in so far as his interests as an individual correspond with the interests of the state. The state is an organism that defines the citizen.

This is often used as the description of totalitarianism, but that is not an exactly accurate comparison. Bolshevism, for example, was indifferent to the spiritual life of the citizen, only focusing on the political and material life. That is the striking thing about Italian fascism versus Marxist movements. It attempted to give purpose to the life of the citizen, beyond his material utility. Instead of viewing the citizen as an economic unit, fascism saw the citizen as a heroic part of the great struggle.

This spiritual appeal can be seen in the modern managerial state. Politics is becoming all consuming. You cannot watch a movie or sporting event without being barraged with messages about “who we are.” Trump sounds like an anachronism, because he talks about bread-and-butter issues, while the rest of the managerial elite focuses on esoteric topics like “who we are” and “our democracy.” By democracy, they mean the managerial system and culture.

It also shows up in the modern conception of the business enterprise. It is not enough to have a job. It must give purpose to your life. It must be part of the great struggle that helps you reach your potential in service to the great cause. You see that in this story about a firm that forces its employees to embrace vegetarianism. Read about the company and it sounds like a religious mission. It used to be that businessmen only wanted to make money. Now they are priests.

It’s why rank and file employees of new style companies like Constant Contact feel the need to moralize from their cubicle. The young woman doing this is not merely a bonehead functionary. She sees herself as committed to the cause of the company, which is a holy cause. It is not a place where she performs tasks for money. It is what defines her life as a person. Led by tech, the managerial enterprise is not just an employer to its hired help. It is the defining feature of their lives.

The historian Ernst Nolte described one aspect of fascism as “theoretical transcendence” which he called a metapolitical force. Fascism sought to go beyond what exists in this world, toward a new future that was free of the restraints on the human mind. It imagined a world that was free of class, poverty, ignorance, and material restraint. That is what the modern managerial enterprise preaches. They are not just selling a service. They are changing the world.

The bizarre nature of the modern enterprise, where it describes itself as a mission to change the world, is one result of democracy. It obliterates local institutions, leaving the citizen as a stranger to himself and his fellow citizens. The corporation fills this void by providing a structured environment where the employees share an identity and see one another as on the same team. The managerial enterprise becomes both the local community and the church for its people.

The trouble is that a business is primarily about making a profit. Social activism keeps running up against the profit motive. Short of state sanctioned monopoly power, the corporate enterprise must compromise its values in order to make a profit. This is why democracy must favor monopoly. You see this with media companies, where the government encourages collusion and combination. Amazon enjoys massive subsidies, as it obliterates all other forms of retail.

This dynamic between the growing cultural power of the corporation, and its greater dependence on the state for protection, results in a merging of the two. Walk around a government campus and you see the modern corporations. College presidents now call themselves CEO’s, not because the college has become a business, but because both are now part of the great mission. The line between the state and the private sphere no longer exists because it cannot exist for both sides to thrive.

This is why gun grabbers, for example, have turned to corporations to advance their gun grabbing agenda. The state failed to ban guns, so now banks, media companies and retail monopolists are stepping in to “solve” the problem. In the not-so-distant future, you will have the unfettered political right to carry a gun, but no one will sell guns because it is practically impossible. No “private” enterprise will do business with a gun maker or a gun retailer. Individual rights are worthless without individuals.

The Irrational Mind

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Smart people tend to think smart people are immune from irrational beliefs. The smart scale has belief at one end and rationality at the other. The conceit of smart people is that they populate the rational end, while dumb people are at the other end. This leads to hubris. Smart people often fail to examine their own beliefs, assuming their every utterance is the model of rationality. It also leads to blindly going along with the crackpot ideas popularized by pseudo-intellectual posers.

The fact is, that smart scale is fiction. Smart people are just as prone to nutty ideas as anyone else. Belief as a stand-alone cognitive trait is largely independent of our ability to work the puzzles of life. History is full of examples. Francis Bacon dabbled in the occult and alchemy. Ben Franklin was a Rosicrucian. J.B.S. Haldane was the father of population genetics and a resolute communist, then a socialist and at one point a fan of eastern mysticism.

Another consequence of thinking belief and rationality are mutually exclusive is the mistake of assuming a rational motive to crazy actions. For example, Steve Sailer thinks people like Paige Harden are running a complex ruse when they go out in public and howl from the progressive catechism. After all, Harden is a smart person who spends all day working on tough problems related to human genetic diversity. Sailer jumps to the conclusion that she must be doing this to safeguard her research.

That is comforting to a smart guy like Sailer as it appeals to his preference for a wheels-within-wheels explanation of the world. The truth is though, smart people are just as prone to group think and crazy talk as everyone else. Read Mx. Harden’s social media feed and you come away with the sense that she is every bit as nutty as the hormonal feminists from the womyn’s studies department. She believes these things because these are the things her social class now believes.

That is the age-old error regarding the left. The default assumption is that they are acting as rational players. If they are rational, yet arriving at insane ideas like communism, egalitarianism, and multiculturalism, they must have the wrong facts or a mistake in their reasoning. After all, they are smart people and smart people always seek the factually correct answer. Therefore, the only explanation for their mistake is they lack the facts or have a flaw in their logic.

The bourgeois Marxists of a century ago are now bourgeois anti-whites today. Read old books from a century ago and it is remarkable to see how many smart people bought into fascism, socialism, and communism. The New Deal intellectuals were all fans of European fascism, and many were communists. The British ruling class was saturated with various forms of socialism. Today, you cannot be a Cloud Person without embracing anti-white hatred. It is what good people do.

Of course, most of the bourgeois socialists of a century ago were serious about their radicalism right up until it required sacrifice. It is the old gag about the pig and the chicken discussing breakfast. The pig is committed, while the chicken is merely involved. You see that with the modern anti-whites. You can be sure that Mx. Harden makes sure to avoid the spicier parts of Austin like Montopolis, which is just seven percent white. She appreciates her diversity from a great distance.

Just as pointing out the outlandish contradictions between how bourgeois socialists lived and what they advocated had no effect on them, pointing out Mx. Harden’s hypocrisy is a pointless exercise as well. In fact, she will hate you all the more for having tried to force her to focus on herself. The whole point of being an anti-white is to hide from her own whiteness. Her belonging to the anti-white anointed is all about self-abnegation. She hates white people because she hates herself.

Modernity is based on the false assumption that man is rational. That people wish to be satisfied with their material wants and at peace with their neighbors. The truth is people are motivated by a quest for grace. Humans want to believe the universe cares for them, and it has a purpose for their lives. Therefore, they seek out some avenue to reach that state of grace, to give purpose to their lives. Ask Paige Harden about her research, and you will get some statement about social justice.

That is the key to understanding the current crisis. Our ruling elites believe they are on the side of history, so the results of their actions must be the will of the heavens. They do not measure the results empirically or think through the consequences. When they see white people complaining about anti-white rhetoric, the anti-whites see this as proof of their righteousness. Marxist said the recalcitrant working classes were suffering from false consciousness. Today’s anti-whites accuse recalcitrant whites of white privilege.

The Power Of Comfortable Beliefs

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A frustration on our side are the people, who should be on our side, but continue to believe things that are obviously untrue. For example, we see new evidence against the alleged benefits of immigration, but most Americans still worship immigrants like they are magic talismans. Show some principled conservatives a video from a naturalization ceremony, featuring bearded Muslims and those principles conservatives will burst into celebratory tears of joy.

What makes this more frustrating is that you could sit down with these people, explain the facts of immigration to them, and they will nod along in agreement. Then, an hour later they will say something stupid like “we need these workers to do the jobs Americans won’t do!” Generations of propaganda about open borders play a role, but a bigger part is that it is just easier to stick with the familiar opinions. Once you arrive at an opinion on some subject, changing it is not easy.

This is not just something that happens with the hoi polloi. The intelligentsia suffer from it more than normal people. Steve Sailer often notes how supposedly smart people in the human sciences fall for old fallacies about genetic group differences. Here is an example from a while back. Eric Turkheimer is a smart enough guy to know he is wrong, but it is easy to be wrong. There is also a social benefit to remaining wrong, so he stays in the easy chair of egalitarian ignorance.

Greg Cochran puzzles over this stuff in the field of medical research, about which he knows a great deal. His idea that pathogens may be the root cause of things like Alzheimer’s is a revolutionary idea that is universal rejected by science, despite some promising evidence in the case of Alzheimer’s disease. Cochran remains puzzled by this, but the answer is the same as with group genetic difference. It is simply easier and safer to believe the old ideas.

There seems to be something baked into the human consciousness that rejects empiricism, even for people in empirical fields. Mystery is more interesting than certainty, superstition is more inspiring than materialism. A famous example of this is how medicine initially responded to the Spanish Flu. Despite germ theory being established science, many doctors still thought the cause was miasmas that came from burning human waste.

One obvious cause is that when everyone believes something, or people assume everyone believes something, it is assumed to be correct. This is human nature, which is why propaganda is such a big part of our lives. Our rulers flood the zone with one set of opinions, in an effort to drive out all others, so that people will assume everyone accepts the official dogma. It’s why every TV ad features race mixers. There can be but one opinion, the approved opinion.

There are practical considerations, as well. If you are in politics, there is no upside to pointing out to your liberal colleagues that open borders are suicide. Bernie Sanders is not a bright man, but even he understands the laws of supply and demand apply to labor markets. He will enthusiastically support the Puerto Rican bimbo running on a mix of open borders and universal free stuff. There’s no obvious benefit to pointing out that this woman is as dumb as a gold fish, so they nod along with her.

When even people in difficult STEM fields virtue signal on nonsense like racism, there is more than practical necessity at play. Paige Harden is a smart women working in a field compiling mountains of evidence contradicting the progressive narrative, but she will stick with the narrative, because everyone she knows believes it. If she gets her way, brown people will be squatting in the burned-out husk of her lab, as society will have reverted to their natural state.

It is an important thing for outsider movements to keep in mind when thinking about how to approach the other side. The normie in the tricorn hat hooting about the constitution is not amenable to facts and reason. He is in a comfortable place that lets him feel morally superior to lefty, while embracing progressive morality. You turn him to the dark side by making that place uncomfortable for him. It is why mockery and humor are powerful weapons of outsider movements.

It is also why various forms of socialism persist, despite the monstrous failures at implementing them and the mountain of evidence contrary to the theory. The appeal of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is that going along with her is easy and fun. The media and all of the beautiful people are celebrating her. She is like a viral video that everyone feels they need to see. Socialism has always that desire to feel that something better must lie ahead..

Barak Obama was the definition of an empty suit. He managed to make John Kerry seem complex. Yet, millions of white people showed up to vote, crying as they pulled the lever, believing they were about to experience the rapture. Obama was obviously a feckless ninny, but it was easier to believe he was the messiah, so most people went along with supporting him. It turns out that the most effective movements are the ones that make it easiest for people to accept things that are obviously untrue.

Old TV Shows

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I have been working on some projects that have required me to sit in front of the laptop most evenings. My habit when I have to work in the evening has been to watch some television while working. Without a cable subscription, this means watching something off the Kodi or whatever movies are free on Amazon. I saw they had The Sopranos and The Wire on prime, so I decided to binge watch those two series. I watched them when they were on, but it has been ten years, so I figured I had forgotten most of it.

I enjoy watching old movies just to see the culture change. Watching a movie from the 1940’s is like watching a foreign film. There are hints at subversion, as the commies were in deep with Hollywood back then, but they had to be careful, so it is extremely subtle. A degenerate like Gore Vidal could slip some subtle homosexual stuff into the script, but even in the 1960’s, the degenerates had to be careful. They had to fear old, weird America, as whites were still in charge and were willing to fight back.

Anyway, I was a little surprised at having the same sort of reaction watching shows that are just ten years old now. I watched The Wire first, as I get asked about it and I forgot most of the story. There were scenes in the show that would be cut out today, for fear the anti-racist lunatics would burn down the studio. A realistic portrayal of black America is no longer permitted, so I wonder if the show would even get made today. Then there would be the demands from the actors to make it even more black or make the whites eviler.

The fact is the writers highly glamorized the hell out of black crime in Baltimore. There are no savvy and clever black drug dealers. All you have to do is look at the crime reports, and it is obvious. Most of the murders in the city are between knuckleheads over petty disputes. The crime is disorganized and random, because the street gangs are just as disorganized and chaotic as everything else in the black community. The truth is the smart drug distributors stay far away from the street level drug dealing in Baltimore.

Similarly, there are no smart, but corrupt black politicians. There is plenty of corruption, in fact the entire city government is riddled with hacks. It’s just that they are ham-handed about it. The Feds could lock up every elected official tomorrow, but that would be both pointless and politically impossible. Imagine the reaction to seeing black politicians frog marched out of their offices. Watching these parts of the series, I had the same reaction as I do when watching a 1970’s portrayal of black America. It is all sadly alien.

The Sopranos is a show that certainly would not be made today. There is a part of the story when the main character’s daughter dates a mixed-race boy at college. For starters, the kid is half-Jewish and half black, with his mother being black. No way the today’s writers touch a topic like that unless the mulatto is somehow made into a Wakandian superhero. Then there are the comments from the mafiosi about blacks that no actor would agree to utter on screen. There is simply no way it could get made today.

That said, I forgot how good the program was for a TV show. I recall that pretentious phonies preferred The Wire at the time, but the truth is, The Sopranos is a vastly better show. The humor is first rate. That is the thing that struck me. Our current age is dominated by vinegar drinking scolds, so nothing is funny anymore. Humor is dead because everything Hollywood makes is saturated in multicultural proselytizing. Much of what makes The Sopranos work is that it still has plenty of old-fashioned jokes about life.

Keep in mind that these shows were made just a decade ago. In the 1980’s, watching shows from the 1970’s meant adjusting to the lower technical standards and clunky soundtracks. Frankly, I find it easier to adjust to black and white movies than the campy soundtracks of the 1970’s, but maybe that is just me. The point here is that the damn broke in the culture war last decade. The lunatics no longer feel any restraint, so it is endless poz in everything. Someone from the recent past would not recognize us today.

Something I have mentioned before, but really came to mind while speed watching these shows is just how much is padding. I now fast forward through all sex scenes, as they add nothing to the show. Thirty years ago, I could understand spicing the show with some smut, but in the world of unlimited porn, there is no need for it in a regular adult drama. Maybe they put it in there out of habit, like the car chase in every action film or maybe the actors demand it. They are all vulgar degenerates, after all.

Another thing I find myself doing is skipping past the pointless character development stuff that usually makes no sense. Maybe women like learning about the emotional issues of the fifth guy on the crew, but it adds nothing to the story, so I do not care. In the Sopranos, I skipped most of the scenes featuring the kids. I get that they are a part of how this mob boss is struggling with life, but that can be assumed. I do not need to spend twenty minutes watching the daughter interact with the mulatto in her college dorm.