These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.
–Some old white guy
Street protests and street theater are largely useless as political tactics in the modern age. A century ago, a gaggle of prim-faced scolds marching through the middle of town, demanding the end of alcohol, not only got people’s attention, it changed their minds about the issue. The street protests projected strength and suggested that the numbers on the side of the marchers were larger than assumed. The men in charge responded by giving women the franchise and banning alcohol. The downward spiral started soon after.
Today, people know that the street protest is a made for TV event and that the “protesters” are often paid to show up and make noise. Alternatively, it is assumed that the true believers are batshit crazy and best ignored. In other words, it’s just another TV show in an age where we are awash in TV shows. For the most part, the street protest is for weak losers desperate for attention. The only impact they have on the larger public is to confirm that the “movement” is impotent and can be ignored.
That does not mean street theater is entirely worthless. The alt-right showing up at Berkeley to beat up the Antifa losers was entertaining and it did scare the people in charge of the place. So much so they moved heaven and earth to block Ann Coulter’s speech last week. Make no mistake, the reason the school went to all this trouble is they feared a bunch of dudes in home made battle gear beating the hell out of the Potemkin Protesters the Left now hires to do their protesting for them. A replay would be embarrassing.
Berkeley is the epicenter of West Coast progressive lunacy so for the true believers at the center of the hive to feel this uncertain is suggestive. They have been in charge for so long they just take it for granted. The narrative says they are the ones in the street fighting the man. When the roles are flipped and they are suddenly the man, their go to move is to shut it all down. They have no choice, as to do otherwise would mean facing up to the reality of their situation and that’s never going to happen with true believers.
The real lesson, the one most useful to the alt-right, is seeing the controlled opposition confirm what many have been pointing out for years now. As soon as things got a little tough, the College Republicans folded their tents and blamed the “extremists” of the alt-right. The Young American Foundation, a Conservative Inc. racket to recruit college students, made a show of “defending free speech” but made sure they did not offer any material support. It was just another way to raise money for their racket.
In contrast, a handful of rednecks down south were able to force Auburn to host the notorious Richard Spencer, a guy everyone seems to think is Hitler in a cardigan. They went to court and quickly forced the school to honor its legal obligations. They were also able to rally a security force and get the cops to enforce public order. The result being a peaceful and orderly event. Conservative Inc. has tens of millions in cash at their disposal and an army of elite educated lawyers and they could not even defend Coulter.
What they could do though, is attack Ann Coulter when she correctly pointed out that the summer soldiers of Conservative Inc ran and hid as soon as things got difficult. David French is a mentally unbalanced crackpot, but he does speak for the dwindling number of Buckley Conservatives, who claim to be the vanguard of anti-Progressive forces in America. French speaks for all of the so-called conservatives when he is more upset at Coulter’s noticing than he is at black clad thugs shutting down her speech.
The whole affair is insignificant in isolation, but it is a another reminder to those who have begun the journey away from Buckley Conservatism, Libertarianism and boomer politics that those well-paid heroes of the Right never win these fights. They invest so heavily in the symbolism of conservatism because they conserve nothing but their own place at Lefty’s table. At best they are well-intentioned losers. At worst, they are willing props deployed by the ruling orthodoxy to disrupt the opposition.
The people in the dissident movements are not without their problems and many of them are certainly nuts, but that’s the nature of outsider movements. What’s increasingly clear is the fact that it is the outsider movements who are scoring the victories. They are the people changing minds and forcing the the fight onto the turf of Lefty. It’s not the dorks in blue blazers mooning over photos of Reagan. It’s the guys with home made armor decorated with sun wheels and cartoon frogs.
The other day, an old friend, who was a “happy warrior” type, mostly in the libertarian wing of the Buckley Right, quoted Mike Cernovich to me. I cautioned him to not take everything Cerno says at face value and he responded with, “Hey, no enemies on the Right.” A year ago he probably would have sided with David French or at least frowned upon the alt-right guys raising hell. When given the choice between those who are not afraid to be called a heretic and those who live in fear of it, people naturally choose the former over the latter.
The French piece has one of the most revealing quotes from a Conservative, Inc. hack that I’ve read in many a moon:
“The conservative movement… have only just begun to fight for free speech.”
What exactly has Conservative, Inc. been doing for the last 30 years if they’re only just know getting around to fighting for free speech?
They are the guys forever yelling “hold me back” as they are forever held back from joining the fight.
You can be sure they are sending out fundraising pleas claiming the Left is shutting them down.
I still kind of get a kick out of the fact that the NR types to this day are still pretending that Charles Murray getting hooted off of a stage at Middlebury is some kind of watershed moment in the history of the Republic. I looked up Murray’s speaking fees online though and was a little nonplussed to learn that he gets between 30 and 50K (!) just to show up and jibber jabber inoffensively about Muh’ Principles. I figure that some of the cons in Conservative, Inc. must be starting to sweat over the loss in revenue that might… Read more »
I think this is mostly why Murray is a Trump hater. He hopes it inoculates him against heresy charges so he can remain on the gravy train.
Until you find out there is no inoculation against the Jacobins, as poor Dr. Murray has discovered. Used to be tolerant and of the “live and let live” mind. Unfortunately, we are rapidly approaching “pick your tribe” time.
A half century of affluence, coupled with systemic emasculation indoctrination, has rendered a large chunk of the male population into pussies and eunuchs. The ones on the Left are easy to spot, but the posers on the Right can be well camouflaged and hence more difficult to recognize. At its root, this disease is not so much one of the mind, but of the spirit. A man who cannot give rise to the warrior within is useless to himself and his species.
nah, they are easy to spot. unfailingly, they will respond to provocation with some variation of “don’t fight back, it will only make them madder”.
Exactly. They use that phrase literally, too. It was repeated ad nauseum during the last campaign, but with each utterance you could hear people on the Right catching onto the fraud.
My favorite Conservocuck saw is, “don’t get down on the mud w/the pig, you’ll both just get dirty & the pig likes it.”
F you, you spineless nobs, I’m eating bacon.
Perfectly done. I’m smarter than I was this morning, and more optimistic. Funny, I had a fiftyish guy in my shop for some work the night before the Coulter speech and he was getting ready to drive up to Berkeley (from Vegas) for the riots. He’s a self educated man with his own successful business. We checked online together and saw that she had cancelled it due to general Republican spinelessness. Offhand, I can’t think of a worse insult than being called out as a bitch by a girl, but maybe that’s just me.
My report back from the So-Cal alumni reunion (the place in the media all the time). The snowflakes own the place. They seem to be a very small percentage of the student population, but they have managed to cow the entire place, students, faculty, and administration. No one makes a peep about anything. It’s over. They hid it all from the alumni very well. Interestingly, the appeals for money are much lower key now. In talking to various other alums during the weekend, word is out far and wide that these schools are sitting on huge endowments, charging a mint… Read more »
My Journey away from the “Conservative Right” began after the Iraq War 2.0 which I believed then to be unnecessary resulting in the current mess in the middle east. It was/is the continued brainwashing on its justification that got to me. It was then I started to really notice stuff. Most so called conservatives dont believe any of it and are closet lefties IMO. That explains why they fold at the slightest opportunity what the left attacks or worse at the mere hint of an attack. Case in point look at the way they have handed the ginned up “Russian… Read more »
What jerked me into the new reality was someone’s comment last summer (maybe you, Z Man) to the effect that, “Just what the hell have they conserved over the last 30 years_?” [at the national level]. This is particularly true in what used to be the social conservative and fiscal legs of what once was the conservative/Republican Party stool (SoCon, Fiscal Con and National Defense Con). Now, at the state level, there *has* been some rollback of the Prog ratchet. For example, Gov Scott Walker in Wisconsin has made real, money saving, strides against public employee unions: Likewise in Indiana… Read more »
Federally? Federal gun rights and only that by a thread. Everything else other than the chance for them to loot has been passed to the Left When it comes to the question at hand, I ask myself this. If X side won, would it be a good place for me or any children For the Left , its a dystopian hell hole if Conservative Whites are genocided or don’t die in a civil war For the Establishment Right, the same since they don’t actually fight the Left The .Alt Right or hell Richard Spencer with a complete win? I could… Read more »
I actually heard the phrase, “what exactly have they conserved” many years ago and I agreed with it to a certain extent but the full magnitude of the importance of it still went over my head. I think it was still possible to deceive our selves to believe that they were at least TRYING to conserve something. Now, it’s pretty much impossible to believe that NR and other Conservative, Inc. operations are in any way sincere and serious about conserving anything worth conserving. Same with the Libertarians, who I no longer believe are the slightest bit interested in Liberating anything… Read more »
I wonder why so many clashes with the progs now take place as proxy wars for the right to deliver a speech on some shitlib campus. There are, actually, just two possibilities: either places like Berkley are truly strategic power heights, smth like political-intellectual Iwo-Jima, that have to be conquered at all costs, or the alt-right people (and the alt-lite, and the many sympathizers) are habitually staying under an unnecessary spell of an institution that is currently all symbol and no substance. Isn´t it possible that the coveted “grandes écoles” of the U.S. (((intellectual establishment))) are on the same downward… Read more »
To speak of anything that wanders from the approved message engenders loud cries of “seksist” and “raysist”, along with “how can you be so cruel?” It is not about having a conversation, it is about a weird kind of passive-aggressive self-pity party. These people self-describe as “handicapped” or “disabled”, and “you have no idea of who I am, or the life I have led, so how can you even make a comment”. Now I am certain that many students reject all of this stuff, but they darn well lay low and say or do nothing. Too bad that these higher… Read more »
Giving a speech at Berkeley is just good old fashioned trolling. I’m sure it’s a hell of a lot of fun for those involved. And if they luck out and get to beat up some antifa douchebags, all the better. Even if you weren’t there, the fact that it happened boosts morale. Why did /pol/ go to such lengths to keep finding Shia Lebouf’s He Will Not Divide Us flag? The flag was stupid, even for performance art. It represented no threat, it could have easily been ignored. But the lulz were just too good to pass up. As Orwell… Read more »
“A Orwell said, if there is hope, it lies in the trolls.”
Amen, brother.
I used to read a lot of “BuckleyCon” stuff and it definitely reached me. Grew up with it from the 1980s. Seemed right for the times even if there were some topics missing. But by the 1990s it was clear they’d achieved all they ever would under Reagan. In retrospect even Newt just created room for a GOP House oligarchy to cut their own taxes and feather their nests. And despite a few culture warriors scoring points, in the 90s and 2000s they let what was once the far left gain total control of the discourse. And now, like French,… Read more »
Commies only have one direction, destruction of the West. Or Dead. Whether we talk about it or not, this is ultimately a matter for us dirt people to take care of. Not the political class. Not law enforcement. Not any government. Not the courts. Not the military. None of these entities have vested interest in this war being waged on us, and make no mistake it is being waged on us dirt people of the West. We have always been the target. This is personal. And by ultimately I’m saying if left to the mercies of unintended consequences we will… Read more »
Even as a very young (<10) child I remember the nearly reverential tones used by television and magazines to describe Alan Alda in the late 70s. In my brain I had categorized him with Charles Nelson Reilly and Paul Lynde – men who weren't normal. This puzzling adoration was my first realization that something was afoot, and not all was to be believed. (Flipping between the three major networks during their national evening newscasts to find that they were nearly always reporting the same story at the same time had a similar effect.) Operation Alda was aimed at Boomer men… Read more »
I have the same joke about the Official Left — feminists, for example, have dominated the culture for 50 years, making everyone’s life miserable, and they *still* haven’t managed to get that lousy 25 cent raise. That’s why Conquest’s 2nd Law is wrong, IMHO, or at least in need of serious modification. Organizations don’t become left wing; their bureaucracies simply switch goals, from “achieving the stated objective” to “propagating the bureaucracy.” Bureaucratic drift means leftward drift, sure, but not all the way, as true-believer organizations kill themselves (I remember watching grad school colleagues unionize themselves out of jobs, because that’s… Read more »
Conquest’s Third Law: “The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.”
Dr. Jerry Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people”: First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration. Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA… Read more »
It’s interesting, the comment about the alumni deciding not to contribute to their schools. I made a similar decision for all of my alma matters some years ago, based on the same metric, the endowment funds, not to mention the Inexorable, Excreble, Progression of the Progressives on campus. Nope, not funding that. I was pointing out to friends yesterday, that as older more conservative people start to recognize the Power of the Purse, the first natural consequence should be to invite our younger, wiser, more progressive progeny to fund their own damn degrees. No greater gift can a parent provide… Read more »
The symbolic hunger strike, that got me, too. What a commentary on all of this. The faculty and administration are also mostly laying low, except for those tenured people who share the grievances of some of the students. The response seems to be the bare minimum, per the CYA advice of attorneys. Respond in boilerplate affirmation of the existence of the idea that some people who probably misunderstand the situation might think there is possibly a conflict, but claim nothing and yield nothing. Much as corporations do at shareholder meetings and with liability lawsuits. Unless this madness exhausts itself, the… Read more »
Yes, the faculty share their grievances – and the terrific salad bar, too. One of the best Twitter comments on the Hunger Strike was: “I’m a vegetarian, but I also eat beef, pork, and chicken”
I’ve never donated a cent to my public alma mater because it’s a hotbed of Communism, it gives away spots in engineering school to foreigners who will slave away as post docs into their 40s, and raises tuition outrageously. Tuition is already 3 times what I paid a mere 14 years ago. I think the days of half the population attending “college” are rapidly coming to an end. Captain Capitalism pointed out that the college bubble hasn’t burst because there are still plenty of Millennials who see it as this magical experience where they get to fornicate and drink for… Read more »
These debt slaves largely are unemployable. They used to go into government, which explains why it started to pay more than the private sector, but those jobs are drying up. The drive for “debt-free” college is a campaign to prop up the system without reliance on tuition. The Left’s useful idiot incubator is threatened so it has demanded the public keep it afloat. Good luck there.
I’m reading The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America since 1945, George H. Nash, 1976. Highly recommended.
Though I have to admit, when he has quotes from decades ago about the horrors to come from progressive policy’s, I end up laughing out loud. They are always on the right path but they never go far enough.
No enemies on the Right. Alternately, know enemies on the Right.
Which of dese? Gracias, Zedman.
The cucks sit to your left. The Nazis to your right. You ignore the Nazis and take every opportunity to piss in the cucks face. That’s how you move the window.
The Bow Tie Brigades are naked from the waist down. Even, no, especially, the men have pussies. David French is an absolute fraud and hot mess. He claims to be a man of the Right but it is the only philosophy he routinely rejects. He claims to be pro-life but was one of the NeverTrumpers who, if they had prevailed, would have made Kermit Gosnell look like Mother Teresa. He claims to be some kind of evangelical but belongs to a left-wing Protestant church. And so on. D’Affaire Coulter woke up a lot of people. It speaks volumes that she… Read more »
The real curative for the “Nazi” smear is to have the kids do their homework and read their history. What they’ll discover is the people they’re told are the good guys (or at least our allies) killed far more people than the bad guys in World War 2. Then they will look around the universities and political playing field and wonder why so many people who claim to be good are on the side of mass murderers, and it will be easier to embrace the mantra of “No enemies to the right.”
I ran into Charlie Cook, english fop, Fox News contributor, and NR writer at the NRA convention in Atlanta. He was walking the floor and looked extremely uncomfortable, like a whore in church. I don’t care what he’s written in the past, his dislike for the crowd he was surrounded by was palatable.
Tyranny, like the bipartisan axis, is not easily conquered.
Hear, Hear!
Antifa will crush you faggots
A delightfully ironic contribution.
How you spell ironic contradiction in terms:
Black-Warrior-Antifa-Crush-Faggots
hahaha antifa have been revealed to be a bunch of gay paedos!
I live in a Hispanic/Latino neighborhood in Brooklyn that’s getting a bit gentrified — by Progressives. And Antifa is putting up stickers all over the place trying get the Hispanics/Latinos angry at the Progressive White people who are moving in. So, here the “faggots” that Antifa is trying to crush are Progressives. On the other hand, I believe that the great-great-grandchildren of these Progressives (who seem to be reproducing at replacement-rate or above) will be a Master Race of non-Progressive (but Paternalistic) mostly-White-background Overlords dominating a vast Brown underclass.
Whenever I talk to hipsters about gentrification. Especially millennial SJWs in bushwick and bed sty I matter of factly refer to it as ethnic cleansing. So great.
Sweet
Get plenty of the hipster refugees up in Westchester…they are so socially progressive until their children leave pre-school or elementary school and have mingle with “those people”–then they materialize on our doorsteps. Their latest local crusade is to make our Village a “sanctuary village” or some such BS. On the other hand, can probably relieve on of them of 7 figures pawning off my “walk to the local lily white elementary school” real estate on my way out.
Yuppie scum is what we use to call them. Ruin old, ethnic city neighborhoods with high rents. Trading delis and corner stores for starbucks and wholefools .
And when they crap out a litlle ” mini-me ” flee to the designated “white suburb ” for more of the same just more trees.
Brad Lander’s district??
The other day, as I was walking around Bay Ridge, I overhears a snippet of a hushed conversation between two white guys, probably in their late twenties/early thirties. The only phrase I could clearly make out was “nazi solution”. Two tall white guys, probably descendants of the norwegians who’ve lived in this neighborhood for generations. It would be a shame if all of the halal food carts and falafel shops suddenly dissappeared, now wouldn’t it? Mmmmmm, lutefisk.
We wuz warriors ‘n’ shiiet
I’ve got a .338 Norma that says otherwise.