Monthly Archives: April 2022

The Ethnostate

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A point I like to make about libertarianism is that while there can never be a libertarian society, libertarianism can be useful as a critical tool. In the last century it was useful in analyzing and confronting socialist economic policy. The “science” of the marketplace was good at dispelling the morality of left-wing claims. The market economy provided more people with more goods and services at fair prices than the models that claimed to defend the interests of the masses.

The ethnostate is similar to libertarianism in that there is no way to go from current social arrangements to an ethnostate. Even in places that have an ethnocracy, like Israel, going the next step is impossible. Even the most clannish societies have some outsiders in their midst. Even so, the model is useful when confronting the claims of diversity and multiculturalism. The ethnostate model exposes the contradictions and false claims at the center of post-Marx culturalism.

Ethnocracy, on the other hand, is possible. Israel is the obvious example of a country arranged so that the dominant ethnic group remains in power. Syria is another example of an ethnocracy, one ruled by a minority. You can probably classify post-Civil War America as an ethnocracy, ruled by the Yankee elite. The image of the WASP aristocrat is drawn from this reality. A good show might be an examination of American history through the lens of ethnocracy.

These examples are useful in understanding what is happening in the West and in thinking about alternative political models. Majority populations in the West used to unabashedly work to promote the interests of the majority, but then the poles reversed and majoritarianism became taboo. The concept of the ethnostate is useful in understanding why this happened. There is something about Europeans that make us open to division and internal conflict.

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Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.

This Week’s Show

Contents

  • Opening
  • Wilmot Robertson
  • The Ethnostate
  • Ethnocracy
  • Examples
  • Observations
  • Individualism
  • Alternatives

Direct Download, The iTunes, Google Play, iHeart Radio, RSS Feed

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On Odysee

Whither The Interregnum

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A topic that John Derbyshire and Peter Brimelow have discussed over the years is the cultural interregnum that existed in the late 1980’s and 1990’s. This was a topic raised in their talks at the inaugural VDare conference in Berkeley Springs. For a little more than a decade, starting toward the end of the Cold War and running through the Clinton years, certain taboo topics could be discussed in public. You could also take the rational position on these topics without being killed.

For example, Peter Brimelow published his book in immigration titled, Alien Nation: Common Sense About America’s Immigration Disaster. The book was an expansion of an exceptionally long essay he published in National Review. His essay criticizing immigration policy and warning about the cultural damage being done by it took up the majority of the space for that issue. National Review published an anti-immigration special edition and felt no need to grovel about it.

Around the same time, Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray published the The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. Not only did they publish the book, but lots of people bought, read and discussed it. Those alive during this period probably recall that it was a popular topic of conversation. Murray was actually allowed on television to frankly discuss the findings. Again, mainstream conservatives did not ritually denounce the book.

These are two examples of where now taboo subjects were acceptable. During this interregnum, a wide range of topics and people were allowed to operate. Jared Taylor, the founder and leader of American Renaissance, was allowed on television to talk about his views. His conference was shown on C-SPAN. Here is an old clip of Sam Francis speaking at the conference. Notice the lack of fainting and hysterical demands for violence against the people in the clip.

Today it is hard to imagine what it must have been like to live in a country where people could openly debate the topics of the day. One of the only benefits of the communications revolution is that we now have easy access to archival video from the time before the crazies took over the public square. We know there was once a place where adults could speak freely about difficult topics. The past is a counter to the claims of the present and operates as a hope for the future.

That is the context in which Brimelow and Derbyshire usually discuss this. The 1990’s was a peak time for them and the older dissidents. It was not just the peak years of their personals careers, but a peak for honest inquiry. The end of the Cold War and the apparent transition back to normalcy was a hopeful time. Instead of everything organized around a twilight struggle against communism, the focus of public life could return to the practical and productive.

There are two questions at the heart of this. Why did this period of relative tolerance occur and is it possible to return to such a state? For two decades now the lights have been going out in America and the West. The former Soviet Union offers more political freedom, because they have clear rules. The public square in the West is now controlled by a feckless, emotionally unstable mob that flits from panic to panic, destroying whatever happens to be in its way.

The answer to the first question is rooted in the past. What appears to have been an interregnum was actually a continuation of the Cold War consensus. Maintaining a broad public debate was an essential part of opposing communism. The West was where people could question the state. The Soviet Union did not permit public debate or questioning the state. This consensus carried forward after the end of the Cold War but shifted to more relevant topics.

Note that the closing of the American mind started with the 2000 election. During the Clinton years both sides of the consensus had to search around for a reason to exist now that the communists were gone. One side settled on post-Marx culturalism and the other embraced neoconservatism. For the former side, white people and heritage America would be the enemy around which the ruling class would organize, while the other side wanted Islam to be the new enemy.

You will note that the neoconservatives have produced a new enemy now that post-Marx culturalism seems to be burning out. The Russia-China axis will be the new forever enemy around which America must be organized. The other side seems to be open to this new arrangement, perhaps sensing that their war on white people is becoming dangerous for themselves. On the other hand, nostalgia plays an enormous role in ruling class thinking.

The second question is more difficult to know. The Judeo-Puritan ruling class that still prevails is a product of the 20th century. Unlike in Russia, where the old Cold War ruling class was eventually replaced by a modern one, America and the West remains saddled with a ruling elite built for a prior age. The American ruling class is sure that it can only exist if America is organized around some great struggle. It is why for thirty years they have lurched from one crusade to the next.

On the other hand, reality eventually does prevail. America is now suffering a shortage of qualified people for high skilled jobs. It turns out that airplane pilots and engineers are not floating across the Rio Grande. It also turns out that the cost of racial vengeance is not only borne by the bad whites. Managerial class whites are now experiencing the consequences of their reckless misbehavior. This is no way to organize a society for a new cold war with old foes.

In the end though, the answer to the larger question that looms over all of this is that for America to become a normal society, it must acquire a normal elite. Again, Russia provides a useful example. The old communist elites were able to transition into a new system of rule by oligarch. The 1990’s was also an interregnum of sorts for America’s old Cold War foe. The end of that period brought about a return to normalcy with the rise of a new elite reflective of the new Russia.

This did not happen in America. The cost of winning the Cold War was the belief among the ruling class that they had no need to change. They were on the right side of history so the only rational answer was to push down on the accelerator. For thirty years America has been rocketing toward the glorious future with a generation at the wheel, high on Cold War success and cultural narcissism. Unlike Russia, America’s elite has never had to confront their limitations.

In the long run, the last twenty years may be seen as the slow painful death of the Cold War ruling elite’s legitimacy. This dark age in America and the West will be understood as the slow death of an old power structure. These spasms of illiberal authoritarianism are the death throes of an old system. From the rubble of elite legitimacy will rise a new elite and new cultural framework to support them. There will be a new elite for a new America and a new West.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.

The Dead Space

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Note: In a break from the grifter code, I am not going to assume the new merch is the greatest merch in history. Criticisms and suggestions are welcome. This is new ground for me, so I expect to be terrible at first and get better over time. Please shop here and leave a comment when you can. Also send feedback to me.

In the 18th century, Right and Left as political designations were limited to just one place and revolved around the old order. We get these terms from the French Revolution, where the defenders of the crown sat to the right of the president in the National Constitutive Assembly, while the opponents were on the left. There is also the tradition in the West of the honored guest being seated to the right of the host, who is usually the head of the family.

Into the 19th century this right-left arrangement evolved as the politics of the West evolved, often reflecting the nature of the people. The French Right lost its aristocratic flavor while the German Right embraced it. In Britain, the aristocracy was in decline politically, but the Right was the defender of empire and the order that was required to maintain the empire. In America, there was never an order to defend, so this dichotomy did not arrive until much later.

The point is that the definition of Right and Left has evolved. Since the middle of the last century, the Right has been assigned the job of defending the status quo, while the Left has been assigned the role of embracing change. One of the weird results of this arrangement is that both sides have been drained of ideology. The Right just opposes the Left if it pays well. The Left embraces one deranged fad after another, just so they have a way to organize a street mob.

An example of the irrationality of the two sides is this weird story about the far-left governor of Colorado criticizing the moderate governor of Florida. The far-left guy is calling the middle-of-the-road guy a socialist because he signed off on a bill that stripped special privileges for a multinational corporation. In reality, the far-left guy is signaling his support for child rape, but he cannot be that explicit, so he used a term he thinks would sting the guy he considers right-wing.

Right there we see the bankruptcy of language. Ideologically, government taking a neutral stance on business is the opposite of socialism. On the other hand, it is explicitly not right-wing, as the Right has always viewed economics as a means to an end, not an object of worship. The Right wants stability, so the disruptions of capitalism need to be minimized by the state. The moves by DeSantis are right-wing in that he is defending the family and their absolute right to protect their children.

Of course, there is no in left-wing ideology that says child molesters must have easy access to children. The Jacobins were not pro-pederasty. The Marxists were quite prudish about sex in general. The American Left had its sexual liberation phase, but that was always limited to feminism. The truth is, Progressives have always lived like white nationalist with Victorian sensibilities. The only thing left-wing about defending the groomers is that it is anti-establishment.

The fact is, America, and maybe the West in general, has entered a post-ideological phase in which there is no logic behind the old labels. What passes for radicalism is nothing more than bourgeois neuroticism. There remains a vague sense of a promised land after the struggle, but that is just a carryover from the past. They never bother to describe what comes after the revolution. No one even bothers to ask them to explain the point of their agitations. There is no point.

The other side is just as lost. It is trite to say it now, but conservatives have conserved nothing and they have no desire to conserve anything. Of course, the reason they have no desire to conserve anything is there is nothing left to conserve. It goes beyond the practical, however, as you see in the National Review post. The point of politics is to shape public morality. Politics is about deciding right and wrong. If your politics leads you to abandon that debate, then you have no reason to exist.

Politics in America have become unmoored from reason. The Left is simply in favor of chaos for the sake of chaos. Post-Marx culturalism promised a new era for mankind if they seized control of the centers of cultural production. Instead, they got what the old Marxists feared came after capitalism. That is a society devoid of morality and dominated by transactionalism. The end of the cult-Marx rainbow is sterile materialism and pointless consumerism.

In such an age there is no place for a defense of order, so there is no reason for the old-style conservatism to exist. Why would any sane person want to defend this order against the violence of the Left? This is the age of post-Marx culturalism, so if they are unhappy with their creation, let them destroy it. Maybe what comes next is the chance to build anew. In other words, the alternative to the modern Left is not conservatism but culture jamming and accelerationism.

Where we find ourselves is beyond the maps of the known world. Like the first ships that went over the horizon, the old rules and lessons of Western politics are not much of a guide in navigating the present. Like the basics of sailing, the basics of politics remain the same, but the purpose is what demands the reimagination of the effort. To continue the analogy, we have not reached the new world, but we can no longer make out the old world either. We are in the great political dead space.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.

The Virtual Theater Returns

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One of the great truths of American politics is that for the last few generations one side has been motivated by dreams of destroying their enemies, while the other side dreams of befriending the enemy. The people we call the Left in America are the former case and this is their primary definition. Their ideology changes, but the one constant is their desire to clear the field of their enemies. The other side is the Right, which exists to find some sort of accommodation with their friends on the Left.

This impulse to seek a compromise is why American politics has followed a familiar pattern since the Civil War. The Left proposes some novelty and the Right resists, always trying to reason with them. In the end they always cave. As Robert Lewis Dabney observed a century ago, “it (conservatism) demurs to each aggression of the progressive party and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation.”

In the main, this is a good way to describe the political dynamic, but this relationship has had a strange effect on people. The selection pressure for both camps has molded generations of Americans. On the Left, of course, the pressure had been in favor of a feminine histrionics. On the Right, the pressure has been in favor of those who are sure there is some right answer to every trouble. They just need the right guy to say the right words so the kingdom of heaven will open.

We are seeing this with the Twitter story. In the early days of the internet, there was little moderation as no one wanted it. Early adopters liked that it was a place where they could experience heterodox opinion. This openness drove technological innovation and helped make the internet a part of civic life. This is why the Left felt it needed to take control of it. They saw the internet as another institution that they must control in their war on normal society.

As the harpies gained control of Twitter, the so-called conservatives demurred to each new aggression, making angry noises while acquiescing. They supported free speech but demanded the end of anonymity. They supported free speech, but not hate speech, whatever that means. Every “defense” of principle included an important concession to the other side, in the hope of finding a middle ground. Conservative principles are always just a retreat from those principles.

Now we have Elon Musk buying Twitter. Musk has claimed to be a free speech absolutist who is buying the company to open it up again. He has closed on the company and will take it private. It is unclear as to what he intends to do with it in terms of censorship, but he clearly wants his fans to think he will throw open the doors of the platform so it can be what it was ten years ago. Time will tell if he is willing to do what is required to make that happen, but that is the dream.

Here we see those conservative attributes that have been carefully evolved over the last century or so. The first of which is the savior complex. Conservative people have been sure that what they need is a great man who not only has the ability to make conservative arguments, but the courage to do so. The same enthusiasm that put Trump in the White House is what will flood Twitter with new signups. Elon Musk is here to save us from the Twitter mobs.

Another attribute, the most destructive, in fact, is the conservative desire to mix it up with the Left. The reason Twitter exists is otherwise normal people are compelled to interact with people who hate them and want them dead. To be a conservative is to lie awake at night dreaming of left-wing approval. The right argument from the right guy will cause lefty to throw down his arms and embrace you as a brother. Twitter exists so conservatives can beg the Left for forgiveness.

This is obviously true, but conservatives cannot accept it. Gab has been up and running since 2016 and it offers what conservatives claim they want in a platform. Even better, it is free from the deranged lunatics that have ruined other platforms. Conservatives dismiss it because they say it is an echo chamber, by which they mean it lacks the people they claim to hate. They avoid alternatives to Twitter because they want to beg lefty for forgiveness and those platforms do not provide it.

The other conservative quality on display with the Twitter story is the desire to win the approval of the mobs. The same lack of self-worth that drives the conservative to beg lefty for attention is there in their love of the mob. Conservatives are sure if they can get a clear shot on stage, the crowd will reward them with flowers and applause. In a prior age, they would crawl on their belly to be on left-wing television or land a speaking gig at a university. Now they just want to be on Twitter.

Back in the old days, conservatives would argue that they had to be on far-left television shows in order to reach an audience. Today they claim they have to be on far-left internet platforms in order to reach an audience. In Dabney’s time, northern conservatives said they needed to speak with progressive newspapers in order to reach the broader audience. In reality, what the conservative wants is the approval of the Left and there is no limit in how far he will degrade himself to get it.

Twitter is American politics at is most basic. Since Gettysburg, politics in American has been a theater show. The Left hustles everyone inside the theater and puts on a show about a victim or a villain. Sometimes they combine the two. The crowd is told about the plight of some victim group and is supposed to sympathize. Maybe they are warned about some villain, which is always the same villain. Old Scratch takes many forms and the producers of American theater use all of them.

At some point conservatives are brought onto the stage. They shuffle out in their comfort fit slacks and polo shirts. Their job is to dismiss the warnings about the villain or tell the victim to “pull yourself up by your bootstraps.” The crowd is supposed to boo and hiss, but that does not always happen. Often the villain is so ridiculous that the crowd just laughs about it. Other times the victim is too creepy and weird for the crowd to muster anything other than contempt.

Often, the Left brings out their secret weapon, the Hitler costume. The spotlight focuses on the right of the stage and there it is. Then the Left asks if anyone in the crowd will play that role. Sure enough, an idiot runs up, puts on the costume and does the Hitler act. The crowd then starts throwing cabbages and tomatoes at Richard Spencer as he prances around on stage. The conservatives freak out, run behind lefty looking for safety and the curtain falls. The show is over.

This was Twitter from its inception through the 2020 election. The problem is the producers went bonkers and burned down the theater. In that meeting with the board of directors, everyone realized they needed to rebuild the theater. Despite some moaning from the blue checks, the truth is they want the conservatives back in the theater as much as they want to perform for them. The privatization of Twitter is going to be the rebuilding of the virtual stage of political theater.

Time will tell with regards to Musk and Twitter. He will quickly learn that he must obey the rules of Apple and Google with regards to speech. Maybe he has had some sort of conversion and he will go to war over it. Most likely he will compromise in order to get their approval. This will titivate the conservatives, who will see in his capitulation the stamp of approval for their capitulation. Twitter will go from a woke site to a woke site full of conservatives begging the woke for acceptance.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.

Opposite Rule Revisited

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Note #1: The Monday Taki post is up. The topic is somewhat related to the post today, but using the war as a jumping off point. Because I was traveling over the weekend, no Sunday Thoughts behind the green door, but I have a write up of the VDare event posted there instead. Later this week I will have a longer post on the event at the castle and the issues discussed there.

Note #2: If you are a law student or know a law student, there is a competition around the legal difficulties of the J6 victims. It is an essay contest. If you are interested, here is their website. The principles behind it are listed on the site. Scroll down.

The Opposite Rule of Liberalism states that whatever the Left is saying about its political opponents, assume the opposite and you will get close to the truth. This should not be confused with contradiction. If the Left says “X”, it does not follow that the literal opposite of “X” is the truth. All this rule tells us is that what the Left is saying is not the truth and that the truth is going to be completely different from what they are saying, often the complete opposite.

The classic example of this is ten years ago when the Tea Party was a thing. This purely grassroots movement in reaction to the radicalism of the Obama administration was called “AstroTurf” by the Left. The Left claimed their activism was organic while the Right was manufacturing activism. The Tea Party was a creation of the Republican Party and their corporate masters. The reality was the opposite. Left-wing activism was controlled by the party and financed by corporate America.

The opposite rule can also work as a warning. In fact, this is the best application of the rule as it helps prepare for left-wing shenanigans. The way this works is that once you hear warnings from left-wing people about some threat, you can assume they are planning it or they are actively engaged in it. The last bit is the way to bet when the Left is overly excited about the claim. In other words, they have a habit of accusing their opponents of crimes the are committing.

A good example of this is when the neocons were organizing the police state during the Bush years. The Bush people said these new weapons of the state would only be used against Muslims. Most of them were probably sincere about this. Neocons hate Arabs more than they hate Europeans. The Left said these tools would be used against normal Americans. Of course, as soon as the Left gained power they started using these tools to spy on Americans.

This behavior of the Left, where they accuse their enemies of what they are plotting or doing, is used by conservatives as proof of the Left’s cynicism. For conservatives, hypocrisy is the most powerful abracadabra word. Despite all the evidence, they are sure that uttering this word will destroy their enemies. When the Left accuses their enemies of something they are doing, the conservatives scream about hypocrisy, believing is does something magical for them.

This never has the desired effect because being accused of hypocrisy only works if you care about factual accuracy. For conservatives, being factual correct is important, so they would rather lose than be accused of contradiction. This is mostly why they lose every fight. They like losing while being right. For the Left, advancing their goals is what matters, so they can live with contradiction. For them, facts are just another tool that can be used as a weapon against the opposition.

It also helps that left-wing politics attracts a specific type. Eric Hoffer observed that people often join mass movements out of self-loathing. They wish to swap their hated sense of self with the identity of the group, which they view positively. This is almost always true with left-wing politics. The people in it are looking for a form of salvation, where they are saved from thinking about their hated sense of self. Instead, they get to focus on an enemy they can enthusiastically hate.

Of course, hating an enemy that has the qualities you hate about yourself is pretty much the ideal enemy for this sort of person. Their self-loathing is transformed into a virtue while they express their hatred for qualities they fear they possess. Collectively, this transforms the Left into a mob driven by what looks like moral indignation and a desire to purge the world of corruption. This is what makes a relatively small number of people into a powerful force in American society.

This shameless ability to project onto others the sins of the Left has been the primary reason the Left has denominated American politics. They claim the moral high ground, accuse anyone that resists of doing something bad and then they do that bad thing to the people they are accusing. After all, they have created the justification for the bad thing they are doing. Conservatives spent the last half century trying to prove they are not the villains while the Left marched from triumph to triumph.

The opposite rule has been so effective, in fact, that there is no longer an effective opposition to the Left in America. Conservatism has collapsed and the political divide in America is the Cloud People, who populate and control the managerial class, and the Dirt People, who suffer under the rule of the managerial class. The Cloud People now accuse the Dirt People are various things, like the insurrection business, which is used to justify heavy handed tactics against the Dirt People.

This self-referential indignation that grows from self-loathing has become a religion for the managerial class. In fact, it has helped them become class aware. It is why they find bizarre things to impose on society. They are in support of child molesters in the schools, for example, because it gives them people to hate. Those normal parents showing up to fight against groomers and bigots in the schools provide the needed foil for the Left. Their religion demands a devil.

This bizarre religion that animates the ruling class is effective at walling them off from society and preserving their position. It is why any questioning of official policy is labeled one of the abracadabra phases that mean “outsider.” Ask about food bills doubling and you are spreading misinformation. Question the war in Ukraine and you are a Putin shill. Notice that crime is rising at rates not seen since the 1970’s and you are a violent white supremacist.

This is where that opposite rule becomes so effective. The need to accuse an outsider of the worst crimes the Left can imagine becomes a justification for committing those crimes against the alleged enemy. It is how America so quickly moved from defending the liberal order and individual rights to celebrating corporate censorship and the persecution of political prisoners. The bad guys get worse, so the means to defeat them must get worse as well. This is the terror escalator.

This is a parasitic and corrosive ruling ethos. The sharp decline in the quality of life for most Americans over the last generation is one result. The collapse in social trust is another consequence. Like the desperate person eating the seed corn, what we call liberal democracy is consuming the social capital of society in order to fuel the hate-machine that props up the managerial class. At some point, maybe soon, they run out of things to burn and the system becomes unstable.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.

Avoiding Error

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Note: If you are a law student or know a law student, there is a competition around the legal difficulties of the J6 victims. It is an essay contest. If you are interested, here is their website. The principles behind are listed on the site. Scroll down.

A week ago, Elon Musk tweeted out an offer to buy Twitter and my initial reaction was that it was a publicity stunt. I chastised a few people on Gab for thinking that this offer by Musk was serious. I was wrong. A few days later the formal filing was made public and it was clear he was making a bid for the company. This week he filed the paperwork indicating he has secured the capital to make good on the offer.

Now, why was I wrong? One reason is I have a bias against rich people so I naturally think the worst of them. I have often used Musk as an example of what is wrong with state capitalism. Most of his business is dependent on favors from the political class or direct subsidies from government. His electric car business would have died long ago without massive subsidies from government.

Another reason I got this Musk business wrong is I violated an important rule of navigation in the modern age. I formed a hot take. The first batch of news and commentary is always wrong, so the hot take based on that stuff is almost always going to be wrong in important ways. The right answer with regards to Musk’s initial tweets about buying Twitter was to wait and see.

This was not the only bit of wrongness on my mind this week. The debate about Ukraine is a good example of getting things wrong. Certain groups of people who are dissident adjacent staked out a bad position on Ukraine. They will have to climb back off that limb at some point and hope everyone forgets about it. This happens a lot on this side of the great divide for some reason.

That is the show this week. How to avoid these errors. We are all floating in a sea of electronic media, so it is easy to be manipulated by that media. It is also easy to react the wrong way to the barrage of information. Central to being a dissident is standing outside the barrage of lies and live in the truth. Therefore, avoiding error by de-conditioning our minds is a primary project of dissident politics.

For sites like this to exist, it requires people like you chipping in a few bucks a month to keep the lights on and the people fed. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you don’t want to commit to a subscription, make a one time donation via crypto. Or, you can send money to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. You can also use PayPal to send a few bucks. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.

This Week’s Show

Contents

  • Opening
  • Examine your bias
  • The Binary Mind
  • Critical Reading
  • Who To Trust

Direct Download, The iTunes, Google Play, iHeart Radio, RSS Feed

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On Odysee

Alternative Authority

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Starting in the 1990’s the neocons started to talk about conservatism as a process, a means justifies the ends approach to politics. This was not a change in how conservatism defined itself but it was a change in how it sold itself. You were supposed to support conservatives in order to achieve certain ends, like rolling back abortion laws and curtailing the welfare state. By the Bush years, this means justifies the end claim was front and center in the pitch from neoconservatives.

The reason for this, of course, is millions of conservatives had voted for Bush and the Republicans thinking they would do what they promised. The GOP had both house of Congress and the White House. They expected conservative governance. Instead, they got Lyndon Johnson. They had to accept this result, you see, because conservatism is a process, not a set of end results. As long as conservatives were defending the process, people needed to shut up and be happy.

The main reason for this rhetorical sleight of hand was to trick rank and file conservatives into supporting a president that was the opposite of what conservatives expected from a conservative president. The neocons wanted to continue their bloody war against Islam and they needed a second term from Bush. In the 2000’s, they had started to infest the other side of the political class but the take over of the foreign policy establishment was not complete.

This was possible because of a flaw within conservatism. From the beginning, the Buckley people focused on defending the constitutional order. They were the guys talking about interpreting the Constitution as written. They were defending the system against both distortions and changes from the Left. They magnanimously accepted adverse results as long as the constitutional order was followed. This fetish for defending process is what the neocons exploited.

This points to a much larger problem with conservatism. They were never willing to appeal to authority to justify their claims. The closest they got was originalism in the law, which claimed the written constitution as authority. This has two problems. One was that the Left rejected this claim in favor of a living constitution. The other is the Left kept tinkering with document through judicial rulings which became precedents. The result of originalism was a defense of left-wing gains in court.

This is why conservatism is in collapse. In fact, it is fair to say that conservatism is dead as hardly anyone bothers with the term. The only people using the term are those still working the hustle on their aging donor class. Otherwise, the only people considered to be on the Right use the term is when criticizing the old conservative movement for not having conserved anything. It turns out that winning the process war meant nothing to those conservative constituencies.

The elephant in the room is authority. Fundamental to any human organization is a clear understanding as to who decides. Iran is an Islamic state with laws based in the sect of the ruling class. It is the religious elite that is the ultimate decider. The Russian people are the leaders of the Russian Federation and Vladimir Putin is the leader of the Russian people, so he is the final authority in the Russian Federation. This is clear to everyone who lives within the Russian Federation.

In the case of Iran, authority for this arrangement, the thing that legitimizes it in the minds of the people, is the Koran and their religious traditions. The text of their holy book, the traditions of their people and the moral hierarchy is the authority for their political arrangements. In the Russian Federation, it is the long history of these people and their relationship to one another that forms the basis of authority. Its perseverance through communism is proof of this natural order.

This is where we see “common good conservatism” trying to fill the void left by the collapse of Buckley conservatism and the departure of neoconservatism. They want to move away from individual rights as the center piece of conservatism toward a vague sense of collective interests. Instead of focusing on what provides the individual with the least amount of government coercion, they want to focus on what provides the most amount of common good.

In simple terms, disputes over rights will be decided in favor of the interests of society as a whole, rather than abstract principles about individual liberty. If someone complains about prayer in school, the courts should ignore their complaint because prayer in school provides more social benefit than that one person’s desire to be free of the religious sentiments of the community. Homosexual marriage would be banned, because it harms marriage, which harms society.

This may sound good and feel like a step in the dissident direction, but it suffers from the same defect as Buckley conservatism. That is, there is little mention of who decides and upon what authority they make these decisions. Some talk about the Church providing authority and others mention the administrative state. Mostly this is just a way to avoid speaking directly to the issue of authority. It is just assumed that once people think in terms of the common good, everything falls into place.

This is the same error conservatives have always made. Their chanting of the phrase “ideas have consequences” was mostly about the belief that all they had to do was win the argument and the rest would take care of itself. History makes clear that force and determination can conquer the soundest logic. The Bolshevik program was nonsensical and dangerous, but they wanted it more so they carried the day and controlled Russia for three quarters of a century.

Human society is based around a series of questions. Who we are? What are the rules that define us? Who decides? What is the process for enforcing the rules? It is only the last question that conservatives bothered to answer, which left the other questions to whoever wanted to answer them. This is why conservatism failed and any alternative will fail if it refuses to address the questions that come before debating the process by which rules are enforced.

The great trick of liberal democracy is in convincing people it exists. The narrow elite that controls Western societies decides because they control the managerial class, which in turn controls the administrative state. Their authority rests on their will to power and the delusions of the people, who steadfastly insist they decide public policy through the ballot box. It is a devilish trick by a devilish people, but until an alternative questions this arrangement directly, it will persist.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.

The Lying Liars

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Most of what we consider public life in modern societies is public reactions to things done by the powerful. The New York Times makes up a new hoax and the week is spent on the hoax. The usual suspects swear by the obvious lies and normal people spend days picking apart the lies. Occasionally, we get the reverse where some uncomfortable truth gets loose and the usual suspect go bananas trying to “debunk” it while normal people cling to it as blessed relief.

This is the news cycle in a nutshell. There is very little news. It has been at least a generation since the major news outlets in America have done reporting. Most of it is just stenography. The “journalist” copies what a government spokesbot has sent to them and dresses it up with some commentary. Then there are the narratives that are designed to give the public a way to repeat the official truth that sounds convincing to them and their acquaintances.

The source of this is the “new journalism” that emerged in the 1960’s. The late British reporter Chris Munnion chronicled this in his book Banana Sunday. He spent most of his life covering Africa for the Telegraph. In the 1960’s he noticed Americans showing up with pre-written narratives. They would seek out quotes and pictures to fill out the story they had prepared for the trip. Even if the facts contradicted the narrative, they stuck with the narrative because that was the new journalism.

Narrative journalism is just accepted these days. The “news” has always been a form of passive-aggressive political activism so its evolution into story telling on behalf of powerful interests seems natural. When you think of the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal as propaganda arms of their respective clients in the managerial elite, it all makes sense. Instead of the Ministry of Truth we have the mainstream media “speaking truth to power.”

That last bit gets mocked by normal people on this side of the great divide because they have woken up to the reality of this age. As if often the case, however, there is a kernel of truth locked in this media fabrication. The people inside these disinformation operations genuinely fear the public. When they say “speak truth to power” they mean broadcast their truth to you in the hopes that you will buy it. Modern mass media is mostly a defensive weapon of the elites.

That is why it is worth thinking about what goes on inside these operations and what types of people work there. For example, here is a post in the Washington Examiner from someone calling himself Jaimie McIntyre. The Examiner bills itself as a conservative news outlet, but McIntyre is a far-left conspiracy theorist who has spent most of is career at operations like CNN and NPR. His post is a story comparing the suicidal holdouts in Mariupol to the Alamo.

Now, the “facts” in this tale are supplied by a group called the “Washington-based Institute for the Study of War” which sounds quite serious. When you look them up you find they have a web site and a staff listing. That staff listing is a who’s who of neoconservative warmongers. There is Kimberly Kagan of the infamous Kagan clan and Bill Kristol, the head loon at the Never Trump clan. These are the people responsible for the disaster unfolding in Ukraine.

Jaimie McIntyre is a crack reporter and he has access to the internet, so he surely knows the nature of his primary source. He makes no mention of it as that would have deflated the narrative. In other words, he is lying and he knows he is lying. Most likely the bulk of the narrative was supplied to him by the neocons. They have been pushing this theme since the start of the war. They think Americans will fall for the claim that the Ukrainians are innocent victims of the evil Putin.

In the Washington Post we have another version of the Alamo narrative. This one is authored by a someone named David Stern. The Post identifies him as a journalist based Ukraine. In reality he is most likely an operative of the American foreign policy establishment charged with peddling their narratives in Western media. Note that his copy does not mention that the holdouts are Azov fighters. The Post does not want anyone noticing those guys in the story.

If you scan the Washington Post, what you quickly see is that most of their Ukraine “reporting” relies on operatives from NGO’s and the intel community. They know that the information they are being fed is from partisan sources. That would be fine if they made that clear, but they go out of their way to conceal this truth. Their job is to sell the official lies and they take that job seriously. They are lying and they know they are lying but they keep lying because that is their job.

Of course, a real journalist would be curious about these sources that all seem to say the same things about current events. For example, a story on the “Institute for the Study of War” and who pays their bills would be interesting. It would provide the public with some understanding about who is trying to convince them that nuclear war is the price we must pay to defend Ukraine. Instead, they investigate a popular Twitter account called The Libs of TikTok.

That last bit is another good example of the mendacity of the media. This story was created by the Washington Post. They assigned credit for it to a vulgar dingbat calling herself Taylor Lorenz. This woman is so dumb she could count her boobs twice and get the wrong number both times. The real source was German intelligence who employs a former Twitter employee named Travis Brown. He works for the Protoype Fund, which is funded by the German government.

Again, like the Examiner piece using the “Institute for the Study of War”, the real story her is a foreign government attacking an American citizen. A real news organization would want to know who facilitated this. The Post surely knows that Taylor Lorenz is too stupid to work a phone so she did not call Travis Brown. Of course, that story will never happen because that idea would never cross the minds of the editors. Their job is to sell the official lies and they take that job seriously.

That is the main point of this exercise. At all levels of what is called journalism you will find people who lie with enthusiasm. The selection pressure is all in favor of people who enjoy lying to the public. They like the scheming and the deception. Like all sociopaths, they are shameless about it. Shame requires a soul. As Solzhenitsyn put it, “We know they are lying, they know they are lying, they know we know they are lying, we know they know we know they are lying, but they are still lying.”

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.

The Latest Thing

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Yesterday a federal judge struck down the CDC mandate requiring passengers to wear ceremonial face coverings on public transport. For the last two years airplane passengers have been required to wear masks at the airport and on the plane, unless they were eating or drinking. Of course, this has allowed the petty dictators to harass people while traveling. The mask-marms have been looking for reasons to fly just so they could harass people. Now that is over.

The CDC appears to have conceded the point and will not appeal. They tried to front run the news by announcing the mandate has ended. The media has made sure to put the name and picture of the judge on all of their attack channels probably hoping that one of their lunatics goes bonkers over it. The public reaction has been celebratory, based on what has been posted on-line. Normal people are sick of the ridiculous charade over Covid and just want to be done with it.

To the dismay of the Covidians, the public is ready to close the books on the whole thing and just forget about it. Most normal people are a bit angry at having gone along with this lunacy. There is certainly some shame involved. This is to be expected as everyone feels shame after having been taken for a fool and not having said anything against this stuff. That is why this will be memory-holed by the summer, so people can just move on.

It is a little hint as to why the sociopaths in the media keep getting away with these mass hoaxes that have become a feature of life. People wake up and see that everyone is now into the latest thing. Maybe that thing is outrage over a police shooting or maybe it is some new abstract concern. All of the right people are on their soapboxes and all of the best people are following along with them. It is only normal for people to want to do the right thing and support the latest thing.

Of course, the latest thing always turns out to be the latest fraud. Some go longer than others, depending upon the agenda. The crusade against Islam launched by Republicans and cheered by conservatives ran for a long time. It is not easy building out a police state so they needed that fraud to run for years. Covid was part of the color revolution launched against Trump and quickly became a convenient tool of control by the petty tyrants that terrorize daily life.

The facts are becoming clear at this point. The lockdowns had no impact on the course of the virus or its impact on the public. There was never any data to support the policies and now we know it caused more harm than good. Similarly, idiotic things like social distancing and mask wearing were useless. In the fullness of time, we will learn that the vaccine was a massive boondoggle. It was just a money transfer to Big Pharma and the health care rackets.

There is another angle here. The courts have struck down almost all of the Covid polices by now. The ceremonial mask wearing on planes was the last big item to be cancelled by the courts. All of these could have been knocked down by the courts when they were enacted, but it took two years for judges to remember that we have this thing called the law. It is a reminder that the courts are just another ruling class institution run by the maniacs of the new religion.

Notice that even dissidents struggle to remember the Bush years. That was a fraud on the public of epic proportions. Millions of people voted for it and supported it, but now they have stashed it in the shadows of their mind. The reason is none of us want to be reminded of our blunders. Failure, no matter how instructive, brings a sense of shame so we put our failures out of minds. Just as the Bush years have faded from our minds the Covid fiasco will soon fade too.

This is how these frauds keep working. It is the Gell-Man amnesia effect scaled up to the whole of society. This is the phenomenon where you read something in the media and see it is total nonsense. You know the subject of the article and you quickly see that the article is full of falsehoods and mistakes. You then go to the next article about which you know little and accept what is presented. You completely forget that the previous article was all nonsense.

This is what is happening in America. People see the latest thing trending on Twitter and start learning about it through the media. When they see the latest thing is a fraud, they get mad about it. Then they see the next thing trending and forget all about the fraud of the previous thing. The Covid fraud is now the previous thing while Ukraine is now the latest thing. People are accepting the latest thing from the same people they know sold them the previous thing.

This pattern works as long as the vast bulk of people are supplied with plenty of food, safety and entertainments. You may not be able to lift your arm due to a reaction to the vaccine your employer mandated, but you do not want to be that guy who goes against the grain. After all, you look around and see that everyone is enjoying the current thing. As long as everyone is excited for the next thing, why be that guy who mentioned what happened with the previous thing?

The lesson of Covid is that reason is of no use on the public. Abductive reasoning will always triumph over deductive and inductive reasoning. The only thing that can break this cycle of madness is when the latest thing is a bad thing that cannot be jawboned away by the media. At that point, their efforts to sell a new distraction turns around on them and becomes a liability. When the current thing is real suffering, people will remember all the previous things were lies.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.

Willing Victims

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Note: The regular Taki post is up. The subject is related to the post here. There was no Sunday Thoughts due to Easter. There is a post about what is happening with the conduct of the war for those interested.

Word has begun to trickle out of Ukrainian and Russian channels on-line that the Zelensky government has ordered the remaining holdouts in the city of Mariupol to fight to the last man. Many have surrendered but there is a remnant that has refused to give into the reality of their position. On Sunday, the Russians gave them one last chance to walk away alive. The word from both sides of the information war is that the Zelensky government instructed them to die with honor.

The Russians have been slow to take the necessary steps to clear this part of the city of the remaining militants. One reason is pointless slaughter is not something any professional military enjoys. The other reason is they were hoping to minimize damage to the steel works. The slow progress of the war has been due to the Russian desire to minimize infrastructure damage. Given that the Russians will have to rebuild these territories after the war, this makes sense.

The other reason is that the remaining group of fighters is composed of elite Azov soldiers, including some high level leaders. It also has a group of foreign mercenaries trained by NATO. The Russians say they have detected seven European languages in the radio traffic. There is a strong possibility there are high ranking NATO advisors in this group. The Ukrainians have made several attempts to extract people from this site, so the Russians would like that prize if possible.

This is one of those glimpses into the heart of the issue. The Ukrainian government does not care at all about the Ukrainian people. These nationalists, like the civilian population, are just low value pieces on the board. The real issue is the long running proxy war against Russia. Zelensky is just a cat’s paw for the neocons in Washington who are running this war. They back him because he does what he is told and he does what he is told because he will retire an extraordinarily rich man.

Of course, the nationalist who rushed to back the Zelensky regime now find themselves supporting a craven lunatic. This is the trouble with living in the world of abstractions and theoretical concepts. You can easily find yourself on the same side as the people who want you dead. That is where many nationalists now find themselves. They are backing Ukraine against Russia, which means they are supporting the Global America Empire, which would like to exterminate them.

This is part of the greater lesson of Ukraine. A sense of identity that is built around old grievances or opposition to some externality usually leads to disaster. The obvious lesson is Irish nationalism during The Troubles. The IRA and Sinn Féin were defined entirely by their opposition to Britain. That has led Irish nationalists to let Ireland be consumed by the EU and globalism. The Irish are now free to important as many Africans as can make it to their island.

You see the difference between positive and negative identity in the reactions of Poland and Hungary. Polish identity is strongly linked to hatred of Russians. Hungarian identity is about the uniqueness of the Hungarian people. The Polish government is going overboard to support Ukraine against Russia, while the Hungarians have chosen to stay out of the fight. The result is Poland is being used as a flophouse and launching pad by NATO, paying the cost for all of it.

The deadliest example is in Ukraine itself. If the people calling themselves nationalists actually cared about the welfare of the Ukrainian people, their history, language and culture, they would not be acting this way. Their zeal for Russian blood is destroying the things they claim to defend. Tens of thousand of Ukrainian men will die and millions of Ukrainian people will be displaced because the so-called nationalist care more about their hatreds than the Ukrainian people.

The example they should have followed was the Finns. At the start of the Second World War the Finns found themselves invaded by the Soviets. The Finns staged a heroic defense of their homeland in the Winter War. Finnish leaders, however, actually cared about the survival of the Finnish people so they struck a deal with the Soviets that cost them land and some dignity. Finnish nationalists put their people before abstract concepts and arrived at the proper decision.

This is the fundamental problem with modern nationalism. It is nothing more than a bundle of hatreds and complaints tarted up with aspirational language that has no practical application. This is why nationalist parties in Europe do poorly. They are great on the high minded concepts and critiques against globalism, but they are short on a practical agenda that promotes a positive sense of identity. Note that Le Pen has been buoyed by her focus on bread and butter issues in France.

It is why nationalists movements have done so poorly in America. The critiques against global trade and open borders go back to the 1970’s when the paleo-conservatives started making them. The fact that Pat Buchanan was right about everything thirty years ago has made no difference. Cheap consumer goods, on-demand degeneracy and powerful pharmaceuticals are not much of a culture, but they beat the lack of a positive alternative vision of life.

Of course, the main reason for this is nationalism has been defined by the enemies of it and that definition has been accepted by the nationalists. The negative identity is defined by what the enemy opposes. Therefore, nationalism has been defined by the people who oppose it, which means it is a cartoon version of the real thing. Until nationalists start with a clean sheet of paper, put their enemies out of their head and sort out what they offer, they will remain the willing victims of their enemies.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sales@minterandrichterdesigns.com.