Many on the alt-right make references to Weimar Germany and the rise of the NSDAP under Hitler. The Richard Spencer wing is particularly fond of Nazi aesthetics, the haircuts being the most obvious example. Part of it, of course, is owning the insult. If they are going to be called Nazis, they may as well own it. This is a time honored way of signalling a rejection of the prevailing morality. If you are going to be called a dirty hippy, you may as well grow your beard and stop bathing. The alt-right is doing the same thing.
It goes much further than simply adopting the Nazi aesthetics, though. Richard Spencer is fond of drawing comparisons between his thing and the rise of the Nazis in Weimar Germany. He’s not alone. Ryan Landry works from the “Weimerica” motif, in his blogging and his Daily Caller posts. The popular blogger, Brett Stevens, does a lot of this too. The alt-right is not in favor of invading the Sudetenland or partitioning Poland, but they think Weimar Germany is a good analog to the modern US.
I don’t think it works, though. Germany after the Great War was exhausted in every measurable way. It was not just cultural exhaustion. That was certainly part of it, but the heart of Europe was leveled by war. By the end, civilians on both sides were lacking in the necessities of life. The economic base was destroyed. The political classes and social classes were in ruins. Not since The Thirty Years War had Europe been so completely devastated. That does not compare with modern America or even modern Europe.
The utility of such a comparison is mostly on the economic front. Modern America is not suffering from wholesale price inflation due to money printing. We are, however, suffering from asset inflation. The value of homes and businesses, particularly publicly traded companies, has skyrocketed across the West. This is showing up in home owner rates, as young people are finding it hard to buy a home. As Steve Sailer pointed out, affordable family formation is at the heart of what ails modern America.
There’s also the unfathomable public debt. It is not just public debt. Private debt is at record levels and showing no signs of cresting. In fact, it is reasonable to say the world is entirely fueled by debt now. It was the German decision to fund their war effort with debt that led to the economic catastrophe following the war. It was debt that allowed them to make one disastrous decision after another, taking on more risk in a hope of winning a final victory over the Allies, and reaping the benefits of that victory.
The critical missing ingredient, though, is the massive cost of war. America can, if she is inclined, scale back the military-industrial complex, withdraw from policing the barbarian lands and stop playing big brother to Europe. America has good options for averting disaster and no one is dictating policy to us. German after the war had nothing but bad options and the Allies were doing everything possible to maximize the suffering. The soil in which the Nazis blossomed was vastly worse than what is birthing the alt-right today.
A better analogy may be Ireland under British rule or the British Raj. The resistance movements that evolved in those countries were not the result of desperation or a political void. The British, while no one’s idea of generous colonizers, were not ruthless conquerors either. Compared to other European countries, the Brits were sensible and humane administrators. They tried to work with local elites to maintain order. More than a few Indians, for example, were sent to England to be educated and trained.
Even so, they were still foreigners and the natives, like all people, chaffed at being ruled by foreigners. It is a truth of life that most people would rather be ruled by a tyrant from their own tribe than a benevolent king from a foreign tribe.The Irish and the Indians were no different. They wanted the British gone, despite the fact that the Brits were the best thing to happen to them. These nationalists were not motivated by the chaos of cultural collapse. They were motivated by a positive love of their people and their culture.
That’s what makes these nationalist movements a better analogs for what is going on in the West. The people signing onto populist and nationalist movements are not doing so because the state has failed. Ours is not an age of economic dislocation and political chaos. No one is going hungry or being thrown into the streets. What’s motivating these populist revolts is that the people who rule over us are no longer like us. They feel like foreigners, who have no regard for local customs and traditions.
Another reason these are better analogies is the Hindus and Irish were successful, long term movements that brought with them a widespread cultural component. The Nazis, in contrast, were losers whose legacy still haunts the West to this day. Emulating the tactics and philosophy of the Nazis is a good way to follow them into the dustbin of history. It may be a fun taunt, given the nature of the people who rule over us, but in the end, cheap taunts are not going to overthrow colonial rule. Only a legitimate counter culture can do it.
Steve Bannon famously said, “If you think they’re going to give you your country back without a fight, you’re sadly mistaken.” This is a long war. The alt-right would be wise to think about how to win a long, low grade culture war. That means building up the intellectual and cultural side, while also systematically throwing sand in the gears of the colonial machine. The path to victory is to make neo-liberalism too expensive to maintain and too unappealing to support. Think Michael Collins, not Joseph Goebbels.
Excellent analysis and very good advice, Z. The Bannon quote really is the distillation of what is happening. I do have a quibble here, and it deserves some parsing, too:
Ours is not an age of economic dislocation and political chaos. No one is going hungry or being thrown into the streets. What’s motivating these populist revolts is that the people who rule over us are no longer like us. They feel like foreigners, who have no regard for local customs and traditions.
It is in fact an age of political chaos. The Right edge of the spectrum only recently entered the fray, and we see political assassination attempts from the Left, an ongoing coup against President Trump, rampant Maoism on campuses, cultural Marxism shutting down speech, and abject terror and heightened violence as these begin to be challenged and battled.
You are right, though, about what animates the ascendant Dissident Right (which is different in many respects from the Alt-Right although they share common goals and interests). The federal government/Ruling Class has become an occupation army and oppressive, and the reaction was inevitable.
I also disagree about economic dislocation. It’s not quite as visible and there is an absence of hunger and mass homelessness, but the disruptions wrought by The Economist-style policies have ruined countless lives.
Plato wrote all democracies devolve into tyrannies with endless wars and domestic oppression. We are there, but I do share your view it isn’t completely hopeless yet. It’s just going to be ugly and protracted.
Again, sharp piece.
Restatement of article:
“Man, these kids today in that alt-right movement that I only know about from Breitbart really need to do some stuff that just occurred to me for them to do. Somehow none of this has ever occurred to one of us old farts to do ourselves, back when it might have actually been possible to resolve things peacefully.”
[cue your excellent boomer article from awhile ago]
=======
Z: “The utility of such a comparison is mostly on the economic front.”
I’d say the degenerate aspect of it is probably the most accurate comparison, and probably of equal or greater importance in terms of radicalizing people.
2 prime examples–
Bill Nye the Weimar Guy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6m53lNTdyPg
http://www.teenvogue.com/story/video-shows-toddlers-understand-consent
The most important part of nazi imagery doesn’t come from a pedantic historical analysis, however. (see below)
Z: “This is a long war. The alt-right would be wise to think about how to win a long, low grade culture war. That means building up the intellectual and cultural side…”
We have been thinking about this for a few years, and along with extensive research have been acting on it. Huge numbers of articles have been written, podcasts published, and parody songs performed. Rhetoric has been honed, and arguments polished.
A few examples, note the views & realize these accounts get banned on a regular basis, resetting the numbers. For that reason there are often multiple accounts that have the same songs, splitting the view numbers even more:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Z0UwYzKcLY
artists acct was banned a few months ago, this song had 100k+ views on it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSK3uXZid78
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5lShsePsD0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZrAUJ3dGJU
====
“Fash the Nation” during the election was the highest rated political podcast on SoundCloud before it was banned. Last episode received 27,000 views + downloads.
https://www.spreaker.com/user/fashthenation/fash-the-nation-070917?utm_medium=widget&utm_source=user%3A9834414&utm_term=episode_title
“The Daily Shoah” often receive solicitations to have paid ads on their show due to viewer count, but when asked to listen to an episode they never hear from them again. Until recently, when the person must not have listened & instead sent a signed contract. Hilarity ensued:
https://www.dailystormer.com/jew-company-mistakenly-buys-fortune-in-ads-on-top-nazi-podcast-because-of-dumbass-paki-slave-labor-force/
Think about that. These guys are talented enough to create a podcast that could be making $17k for a series of ads. A similar Leftist show called “Chapo Trap House” makes about $60k/month on advertising. The 2 main guys have been doxxed, causing 1 to get divorced, fired, and become unable to get hired as a programmer after 19 years in the business. Yet they continue to do it for free.
TheRightStuff has many other alt-right podcasts on it, often specializing in some area. The War Room is composed of veterans, The Fatherland is for parents, Salting the Earth is a mix but mainly politics (I appeared on it once), The Godcast is on religious topics, Darwin’s Digest is on science, Beyond the Wall is white hispanics in Latin America, etc. etc
https://radio.therightstuff.biz/
====
The Daily Stormer’s Alexa rankings put it significantly ahead of the flagship websites of libertarians & neocons, as well as Redstate.com and Moveon.org
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/dailystormer.com
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/reason.com
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/weeklystandard.com
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/moveon.org
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/redstate.com
Red Ice is another great site, often with more of a European emphasis:
https://redice.tv/red-ice-radio
Brilliant media review site:
http://nwioqeqkdf.blogspot.com/
My favorite alt-right movie review:
https://mjolnirmagazine.blogspot.com/2017/05/film-review-excalibur-further-right.html
====
There are many other alt-right websites & podcasts, each working in their own way to advance towards the goal. They are pretty easy to find, just search. You won’t find the truth about the alt-right on breitbart or CNN.
Another major push for getting the message out, perhaps even the biggest, is real-time on twitter and mainstream media’s comments section. You should notice this on just about every major publication with open comments. (pretty sure I’ve seen you on twitter a few times, I use some variant of Zorost for my accounts.)
Not only do we try to recruit people in our direction, but we try to trigger Leftists especially journalists, so that they’ll radicalize even further. This leads them to do our work for us, by triggering those in the middle and sending them in our direction. A few examples of our cultural work on twitter:
https://twitter.com/WesternIdentity/status/883302661818380289
check bios incl # of followers:
https://twitter.com/JYSexton/status/881633821715836929
https://twitter.com/JYSexton/status/881860850956599297
https://twitter.com/BenjaminNorton/status/878805680811102209
https://www.dailystormer.com/memes-are-a-threat-to-democracy/
====
====
Internally we’ve discussed the usefulness of nazi imagery, and it is unquestionably necessary for several reasons.
The alt-right isn’t a political movement. We will never have a legislative agenda. We will never have a political platform and candidates. We most likely already have people running as Republicans or Independents at local levels, but never openly. Although Paul Nehlen skirts pretty close to being alt-right…
The alt-right is a cultural movement. Our goal is the 14 Words, and the 2 main methods of achieving them are to increase white identity, and to shift the Overton Window to the point that whites can openly talk about white identity. If you don’t understand the Overton Window you can’t understand the alt-right’s tactics.
Nazi imagery is probably the best means of moving the Overton Window, especially since the triggered Left are now doing our work for us by labeling everyone to the right of Jimmy Carter a nazi (see recent episode of Tucker Carlson w/ Ralph Peters.)
https://youtu.be/BHPX_3U1W2M?t=27
In the same way that Christianity was used to culturally browbeat native americans into submission, America’s new religion of Holocaustianity is used to beat whites into submission. As Ralph Peters tried to do with Tucker. As anyone who has argued with a liberal in the past 10 years knows. Nazi-ism is a shibboleth of that religion, and must be erased before we can talk about solutions.
If someone can’t accept that Hitler didn’t plan on doing the holocaust, how do you convince someone that he SHOULD have? And thrown in the liberals to boot? Because that is the only way to secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.
Many of you are still wringing your hands about evil nazis because you can’t escape your conditioning. So be it, you aren’t needed. Our efforts are focused on the young, with even greater effect than we’d hoped. Many are noting that Generation Z (or Zyklon, as we call them) are more conservative than any previous generation. Imagine how conservative the whites within that generation must be, considering they are only 59%.
Young whites know they are screwed. They see every day in school that they are to be 2nd class citizens to the muds. This makes them very receptive to our message.
A few months ago a Houston school had a class photo shoot. During the ‘silly’ photo, the black students gave the black power fist salute. This was the white students reaction:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G24Giil9FUM
If you do a google search you’ll see many such cases.
http://www.vcstar.com/story/news/local/2017/07/11/police-probing-playing-hitler-speech-high-school-stadium/466625001/
I see where Zman, as a more dissident rightist person vs. alt-rightist person is coming from, vis a vis, the future of the movement. I also understand his hesitance with the wonky and uneven rhetoric.
That said, I also agree with a commenter who said for most history started around WW2. This is, sadly, very much true, and it is not a left/right paradigm.
I also greatly appreciate your support for the creative out-put of those on the alt-right, as I support them, as well. So many smart, hard-working, young people dedicated to this cause has been very inspirational. The 3 1/2 decades I’ve been involved with Republican politics, and their contribution to the culture war has been a big fat goose egg. In just a few short years, the alt-right has kicked in the door and started making inroads. They may be small inroads, for now, but it sure beats the hell outta anything Conservatism, Inc., or the GOP, in general, has ever once offered in response to the left.
This seems right to me and distinguishable from your Boomer Cons entry. But will these things happen organically without some deep pocket financing to help them grow?
All in all, Zman is a serious optimist if he thinks this mess will be resolved peacefully in a culture war, when alien immigrants already make up more than a third of the population.
The culture war we in the alt-right are fighting isn’t to vote our way out, its to wake up enough whites to our impending genocide so as to allow us to defend ourselves.
The British rulers of India had a good side. But they looted the place. India was the richest country in the world in 1750 and of the poorest in 1947. The British also attempted to trash much of Indian culture, banning Yoga, of all things, and many of the holy books. Then the Brits reacted with astonishment to the Indians’ desire to throw them out…..
India was a mad max wasteland when UK 1st arrived, due to the breakup of the Mughul Empire. They were often invited into areas to be an enforcer of the peace. Its not like UK leaving allowed India to suddenly become super rich; its more that the price for their products in Europe had plummeted.
“What’s motivating these populist revolts is that the people who rule over us are no longer like us.”
^^^Yes, absolutely, as far as that argument goes.
Know this: Those ‘rulers’ who are no longer like us will never, ever willingly reduce their ‘authority’ let alone relinquish it. It will by necessity have to be taken by force.
I find the vague pleas to engage in some ‘low grade culture war’ laughable.
Where did you guys learn your shit. The level of the interaction on this issue is remarkable in depth and breadth as well as civility. Trying to find order in the midst of chaos is maddening, as in crazy-making. A benevolent monarch is a godsend although the devil is in the details keeping everyone happy. The culture has been lost incrementally and will be regained the same way, $0.02
I’m not so sure. I’m increasingly convinced that the people in charge have a glass jaw.
As a liberal of the 19th century once said, “the great thing about poor people is you can always hire half of them to kill the other half.”
Our “elites” have a lot of money
The purpose of the low grade culture war is to wake enough white people up to our dispossession and imminent genocide. This is not to vote our way out, or to initiate a long march thru the institutions. Unless you mean marching through the institutions, dragging the elites out and shooting them.
We don’t have time for a long war any longer, IMHO. The city gates have been breached, invaders flooding in, 50% of the population is siding with the enemy. Only a matter of time until we are hopelessly outnumbered and out voted. Wish I had a solution.
YouTube…. “Greatest Story Never Told”…. I’ll stick with the Nazi’s!
The Germans lost because neither Hindenburg nor Ludendorff was willing to follow the recommendation in late 1917 and early 1918 to withdraw to Germany behind better defensive lines and fight a purely defensive War. The Kaiser would simply not stand for such hard won ground to be given way.
Meanwhile as the Balkans collapsed even as Russia left the War; the Germans on the Western front were out of food, clothing, ammo, functioning weapons, and men. Many divisions were less than half strength from casualties, as reinforcements poured in from Canada, the US, NZ, Australia, and South Africa. HAD the German High Command got off its ass and left Spa for the Front to see for themselves, they might well have prolonged the War and gotten better treatment; from a more exhausted Alliance. But the twin weakness of the German military was always a unwillingness to cut its losses after so much early success; and very poor logistics since they had always fought at home or very near it.
That Wonder Woman movie was extremely irritating, the most important part of Erich Ludendorff was his inability as Quartermaster General to master, logistics. His offensive was poorly coordinated, spread out over vast ground, and petered out as the British no longer packed the outer trenches like sardines but had defense miles in depth and focused their main areas of the defense around the Channel ports. Meanwhile the Storm Troopers advanced rapidly but had little supply to keep them fighting; Ludendorff lacked trucks to supply them. And like Hindenburg, Ludendorff never left Spa, enjoying the good life while his soldiers died in a useless and doomed offensive.
Funny how both the names of Ludendorff and Hindenburg will figure in future German history,.beginning in 1923
Good article, makes lots of sense. Trying to rehabilitate Hitler sure looks like a losing tactic to me.
If people aren’t willing to see the truth behind Hitler they won’t be able to see the truth of what needs to be done in the future if we are to survive as a people and a culture.
This is what Gramsci and the other Frankfurt bastards knew: the long march through institutions. The path I see is to make the “right” as the counter culture like hippies and the students of Paris 1968 were.
Jordan Peterson has discussed responsibility and contribution to society as a revolutionary act of rebellion against the values of today. I agree with him, but I also witness how for some whites, who attend church, listen to country or music that mentions God without irony, they may be rejecting the Hollywood culture unconsciously.
So what if we do take over the institutions? In 20-30 years whites will be a persecuted minority. We’re already at the crossover point where white births= non-white births.
This is what white people trying to push conservative values will look like, not just in CA but all over:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUkT4Z-_xCA
No arrests were made for attacks on whites due to police chief & mayor being members of La Raza.
At the risk of sounding really pretentious (and annoying our host for pimping my own stuff),I had some thoughts on us as the New Raj a while back that I’d be interested in hearing your take on.
Very insightful essay and amusing at the same time. Thing is, any variants of the colonial model would seem to require a mother country elsewhere to provide the district officers to administer the benighted natives (us that is). While exotic outsiders are sometimes recruited to rule over us (as in the malignant mulatto dynasty just ended) what we have is our own ‘betters’ creating their own self-segregated colonial officer class. For example: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/11/opinion/how-we-are-ruining-america.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Fdavid-brooks&action=click&contentCollection=opinion®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection
Our current situation seems historically unprecedented in important ways.
Answer in two words to the claim that the British were “the best thing” to happen to the Irish: Oliver Cromwell.
“They feel like foreigners, who have no regard for local customs and traditions.”
Incisively stated. And Southerners know a little more about this than most. Great article. Again.
Please stop using the term Public Debt when you mean Government debt. The Public’s debt is, in reality what you term Private Debt.
You should not use the language of the enemy, it is deliberately intended to conflate the predator with the prey in the eyes of the unthinking.
Yeah…British were the best thing that happened to the Irish and Indians
So much good….
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)#Analysis_of_the_government.27s_role
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Victorian_Holocausts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Bengal_famine_of_1770
Oh yes, and the other wonderful British contribution to the world…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Boer_War#Concentration_camps_.281900.E2.80.931902.29
Oh, and if British rule is so great, maybe we cancel the American revolution, huh?
The impotent alt-white monkeys, keep viewing Trump’s win as a vindication of their ethno-nationalist garbage…wrong. Trump won because most of the middle and working class Americans are sick and tired of the Potomac and Hampton scum selling them out and taking apart the country..bit by bit. Sure concerns about immigration both legal and illegal is a big part. I hope Trump sticks to his America-first nationalist agenda and has no link with NaZ-man and his gutter scum alt-white ilk.
Piss off,
Another satisfied customer!
Thanks for admitting that you lost the argument. That is OK, the alt-white has no ideas other than “the darkies are coming, the darkies are coming”.
You still gotta go back, Pedro.
Right after you go back to your double-wide and bang yer mama, peckerwood
The Indians were having famines before the Brits came and had one or two after they left. That they could have prevented any of them is purely a modern conceit. That we even consider them to be relevant is solely due to the Soviet propaganda machine.
The British were surely the first to call mass detentions of populations “concentration camps.” They were not as humane as we would like them to be, but were much better than the mass deportations and/or enslavements that preceded them — practiced as late as 1922 by the Turks on the Ionian Greek population and in 1945 by Stalin when he deported the Polish and Czech Germans.
It is possible that the Brits have some culpability for the Potato Famine, they didn’t start it and I’ve never seen a study showing whether their agricultural production at the time could have even put a dent in it.
So kudos for knowing a little history from before 1938. But you really need to get beyond the agitprop that gets batted around on the prog blogs. You’ll probably lose all of your prog friends, but your mind will be freed.
That was magnificent. I needed that this evening.
For the record, I made a point of reading it while playing an mp3 copy of “Marching to Pretoria”. Good times.
I promise to make up for it tomorrow with selections from my extensive collection of Irish rebel songs. Would you suggest Fields of Athenry, Dublin in the Green, Rising of the Moon, or Johnson’s Motor Car?
And a lovely flute band version of the Sash, to round out my neutrality.
Multiply all those things x10 for they did to themselves when the Brits weren’t around.
Have you read this one yet?
http://www.thinkinghousewife.com/wp/2017/07/memories-of-a-drugstore/#more-101892
It’s haunting in a way. I was in Portland last night. I moved to that area in 1972 and it’s a light years change today. The Left have this idea that people can be perfected, if only the right people tell them what to do. But they run into reality, like the homeless that would rather set up camp on a sidewalk, than make the effort to earn a living and rent or buy their own place. So they talk about the homeless problem and how they need “affordable” housing, without understanding that their own land use policies and laws that discourage renting out a house are the real cause of the problem. FYI, we talked to a guy this weekend that is renting out those sea containers for housing there. Not legal, but he’s getting $300 a month for each one.
I would argue the foundation of German culture hasn’t changed in regards to the influence of the Weimar Republic. The period under our Austrian Chancellor was a one-off political/social experiment under the Nazi party that collapsed in spectacular fashion. But this was also true for Italy, Russia and Spain under Mussolini, Stalin and Franco.
And when I say collapsed, I’m only talking about the collapse of Germany’s political landscape not the established social constructs or social fabric of the German people. The massive destruction you talk about was the loss of cities and towns due a massive air raid campaign that flattened much of Germany’s industry and infrastructure. Yet despite the fire-bombings and obliteration of entire cities and tens of thousands of civilians, it had no lasting effect in changing who we are as a people.
Consider that as soon as the war was over Germany quickly rebuilt, and thanks in part to financial support from the Marshall plan, outpaced all of Europe as the economic super-power and has remained so ever since. You can’t accomplish this if your cultural, social and moral values have been destroyed. You can’t do these things if you have lost faith in who you are as a person, or who you are as a people.
One only has to look at the social changes in the UK and France since the war, to realize it wasn’t the political landscape that ruined them, it was the cultural and moral changes. The very changes America is experiencing through de-industrialization, race issues, youth disenfranchisement, and of course an influx of new immigrants who refuse to assimilate.
Any opinions on Genossin Merkel, Karl?
She’s technically a foreigner as well…
>it had no lasting effect in changing who we are as a people
That’s why the new plan is to straight up bring up other people!
German TFR is 1.4, which includes non-ethnic Germans who tend to breed like rabbits. Germans may not have “lost faith in who they are” but they are not terribly interested in sticking around into the future. A confident people is one where old men plant trees in whose shade they will never sit.
Not a lot trees being planted in the Fatherland.
@ thezman – Your TFR data is not static, but simply a reference to a particular point in time. So that could change, but we will see.
My point is ethnic Germans have not changed culturally as a people. A visit to any German Biergarten or Brauerei and a chat with the locals will convince you of that quickly enough! 🙂
@ guest – As to Frau Merkel, she was born in Hamburg to a German father and Polish mother. But that part of Poland was ethnically German at the time. So I would say she’s German enough.
I’ll take straws at this time, she has to go back still!
She and her 2 million new best friends.
German TFR has been declining since 1975. It spiked recently because of immigration. If that trend continues ethnic Germans will soon be a thing of the past.
The Irish and the Indians were no different. They wanted the British gone, despite the fact that the Brits were the best thing to happen to them. These nationalists were not motivated by the chaos of cultural collapse. They were motivated by a positive love of their people and their culture.
As an Irishman I feel I must object to this part of your article. We had our own civilisation and language before the English showed up and would have Europeanised without them. They conquered by slaughter (eg Cromwell) and maintained their rule through brute force. They outlawed Catholicism for a period, engineered multiple famines, destroyed the use of our language and customs and left the country partitioned as a parting gift. They seized the best land and established Englishmen as the vast majority of property and wealth-holders. Come independence in 1921, Ireland’s population was less than half that of 1845. I think we would have done just fine without the English. Love your articles!
I don’t know. Left to your own devices, you now have a gay Indian as your leader. Maybe you should invite the Brits back 😉
I’ve been in Massachusetts for 22 years, I share your horror!
It is hard to think of a people generally who have failed to live up to their level of talent so much as the Irish, including those who had the sense to leave the island.
@saoirse
considering the way tories are mismanaging brexit you might have the last laugh.
The historical analogy might be better put to the 1920’s American experience. Our country built up huge edifices and financial enterprises (banking, lending, investing) based on credit. While others suffered, no notice was given, and “the arts” and “commerce” were held high as a product of the inflated and leveraged investment community. The air was finally let out of the balloon for no good reason other than it was time. The top-heavy leveraged financing structure met a market margin call, and it was all downhill from there.
Today we have the Fed and the central bankers working very hard to replace the air escaping from the economic bubble. If the historical parallel plays out, the culture wars will end up as a sideshow. The real battle will be economic survival, similar to what is going on in Venezuela today.
The culture wars are a sort of staking out of turf, with the hard left claiming the largesse of the system for themselves, by virtue of their showing up and claiming it in the name of “something done wrong to somebody, sometime”. The hard right sees a historical cultural element to it all, and stakes its claim based on adhesion to the rule of law and the passing down of community and culture through the generations. Neither side accepts or can even comprehend the claims of the other.
When the battles are over the next meal, instead of some intellectually derived first claim to the assets of the society, things will get very interesting, and not in a good way.
“It is a truth of life that most people would rather be ruled by a tyrant from their own tribe than a benevolent king from a foreign tribe.”
I enjoy reading your articles and I don’t comment because I mostly agree, but that’s one hell of a crock of sh*te. Pretty much all people all of the time have been ruled over by “foreign tribe”. The people of France had less in common with Louis XIV than Hillary Clinton has with contemporary Igbo. They didn’t object and, after a gang of deluded aristos and bourgeois whackjobs gave them democracy, the peasants took the first chance they got to give power to Napoleon who, had arguably even less in common with them.
This ‘truth of life’ is just a conceit of nationalism, and nationalism is just a tool the most advanced liberal powers used to take chunks out of decaying reactionary empires. As liberalism evolved, nationalism became an (always ineffective weapon) that people being pwned by liberalism used to try and defend themselves.
Indian nationalism, being, as it is, obviously completely fake, and obviously the product of people with western education is a case in point. Irish nationalism is a bit different because it got tied up with preexisting religious divides. However, even that is mostly fake and the proof is in the pudding. How much do the Irish mind being ruled from Brussels? Not one bit. And why would they?
The problem with your elite in America is that it is incompetent, deranged, unable to learn, and, in some sections, actually evil. The problem is not some bs warmed over 19th century fantasy about having elites that share your cultural interests.
The Irish don’t mind being ruled by Brussels because the EU checkbook is always out. Put the checkbook away and watch what happens.
On a completely different topic, I’ve been dropping little nuggets of wisdom into my 16 year old boy.
Today’s was that women speak three times more words than men each day.
You should work on the assumption that if you’ve told one woman something, you’ve told them all.
An example is the memo that every woman in America (but no-one speaks to Hillary) got a couple of years ago that the only acceptable leggings were Yoga pants or really skinny jeans or leggings and that a camel toe crotch was acceptable.
The NSA has nothing on these people.
Mike Collins and Ghandi didn’t have the same (((enemies))) as we do. The Nazis did. The ironic NSDAP aethetic was born out of 4chan where they were quick to recongize the source of the cultural malaise.
Further, if you think twitter trolls with avatars of Leprachans would get the same hysterical reaction as anime Girls in SS uniforms you haven’t been paying attention. Your sense of humor sucks if you don’t think it was funny during peak SJW years of Obama.
I’ll grant it’s a litle played out but I still can’t think of a better way to torment (((cultural elites))).
The “ironic NSDAP aesthetic” is a homosexual dress-up game; triple-parentheses are a faggy wrist-swish.
Fascinating. Meaningless. Please go on.
The analogy of the globalists’ as ruling colonial power strikes me as quite apt.
Doesn’t your view imply that the top priority is to break the public school monopoly? What good is it to have large families if all those children are taught by the state? If your child is not taught by a government school, they are taught by a private school, which is the product of the globalists, anyway.
The suburbanites, who might be more logical allies, have already spent gobs of money moving their children to school districts which are not violent, but which still advance the government ideology. Just around nice white kids.
So, we’re pretty screwed, it seems to me.
Remove the grease of other people’s money from the machine of neo-liberalism and the wheels will stop. Nazi aesthetics is click bait for the Richard Spencer brand.
That is quite true. The moment SNAP cards stop working every major liberal city with a heavy minority population goes up in flames.
Should the stock market bubble burst like it did 2007-8 and can’t be reinflated, the white proles and middle-class will take it out on D.C. and Wall Street. Nothing pisses people off and unifies them iike losing most of their wealth because of crooks and liars.
IOW it’s not some overarching ideology that will put people in the streets with guns. It will be a loss of savings and income. When a 401K loses 70% of it’s value, don’t think the owner is going to take pat answers from some beltway clown. They will either want to be made whole or retribution.
the right now has the mandate to be the edgy humourists, its time to unleash it
>It is a truth of life that most people would rather be ruled by a tyrant from their own tribe than a benevolent king from a foreign tribe.
“A tyrant; but our masters then / Were still, at least, our countrymen.” http://tinyurl.com/yaw4lvl8
I wish I had read the comments further down. Earlier today on reading that line in Z Man’s post I went googling for this very quote, not remembering it was a line from Byron.
If you google ‘our rulers then were still at least our countrymen’ without quotes, which is admittedly a mangled version of the line, Derb’s reading is the second of 126000 results. He correctly uses ‘masters’, not ‘rulers’.
Left to themselves, men will always prefer the arbitrary power of a king to the well-ordered administration of a nobility,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,a private individual, more civilized, more rich, more clever, and more influential than his native neighbours, is always an object of hatred and of envy.–
Tocqueville.
I’m sometimes baffled at what motivates ground-level lefties to support these aliens. Here in NJ we are entering into a Gubernatorial election. Phil Murphy is the Democratic nominee and the favorite to win. I can’t imagine more of an alien foreigner.
While he grew up middle-class Irish in Massachusetts, he joined the Cloud people by going to Harvard then Goldman Sachs. He retired a very rich man after a very short career having never actually producing anything and never worrying about making a payroll.
Then he started throwing money around progressive causes and bought himself the Ambassador to Germany job.
Why would anyone want this guy to be our Governor? What in his background speaks to the morons who are supporting him?
Highly perceptive essay, as usual (actually unusual). Agree that there are no perfect analogies in history. But using the British colonial one also has its problems. To begin with, the Brits were basically decent people in their colonial administration, particularly compared to their useful tools, the Belgians.* Conversely, The Cloud seems united in its idiotic glee in visualizing our destruction as cited by one commenter above.
It also requires us to assume that there’s a political faction in the mother country that we could appeal to the better instincts of to advance our cause. Davos/Aspen is not a mother country and the Republican Party seems an unlikely ally given its resistance to date.
You are right that we’re nowhere near Weimar, yet. I’d guess that its the sudden and ubiquitious decadence plus antifa rioting in the streets that recommends it as a parallel. But throw in a currency/debt economic collapse wiping out what’s left of the middle classes and we’d suddenly be frighteningly much closer.
Missed adding the *. Meant to say that any colonial power with long sea communications from about 1750 – ~1960 held its colonies at the sufferance of England and the King’s Navy. Hence Belgium was able to brutally exploit the Congolese since the English needed its existence to keep the French and then the Germans in check just across the English Channel.
I tend to see it more in terms of Seleucid and Maccabee, but agree that the Weimar analogy is not a good one. Mongols and Iraqis is another good — if obscure — case study. After the fall of the Caliphate, the Mongols were building Buddhist temples in Mesopotamia. 50 years later, they were reciting the Shehada.
There’s also the fact that something does not have to be true to be useful. To a great degree, the flawed comparison to Weimar has been useful, but I’m thinking its utility has run its course. Similarly, the comparison to India or Ireland may be flawed, but still useful.
Given the culture-filth we slog through every day, I can forgive just about anyone for looking to post-Weimar for inspiration. You are absolutely correct that it is time to move on. The question I keep asking myself is where do we go physically and culturally to regroup? The Irish had the churches and the Celtic revival. The Indians had a renascent Hinduism and nationalism. Semitic cultures fall back into tribe and mosque (temple in the time of the Maccabees). What is our equivalent of those things?
When we can answer that, then the revolution can begin.
“What is our equivalent of those things?
When we can answer that, then the revolution can begin.”
Answer:
Identity Christianity. (google)
seems like your objection to weimar comparisons is due to the differences in how each country arrived at that terminus. to me, the analogy is very apt especially when it comes to the break down in social mores, cultural degradation, and hope for the future. analogies are not exact, and America is not Germany, but we are definitely going through a Weimar phase at the moment — right down to fighting in the streets and the loss of faith in the political status quo.
Post-war Germany was a defeated nation on the brink of collapse. That’s the opposite of where we are now.
Frankly, the biggest challenge we have today is convincing people that history did not start in 1932.
ZMan, interesting essay, but there’s a glaring hole in your argument. The US is indeed a profoundly defeated nation, and most definitely on the brink of collapse, but the war we lost was a cultural and spiritual war. In this way, we are exactly like Weimar Germany. I assure you, your point of view will be forever changed after you watch this short documentary. https://youtu.be/Oph14OIUdQ0
Sam Francis realised that the Middle American Radicals were never going to beat the managerial class unless they developed an intellectual cadre that could lead the movement. He saw the Tea Party movement become “decapitated” for lack of an effective and intellectual leadership.
Strategic thinking involves defining, at least at a bear minimum, what it means to be “Right”. This is not a purity test, but to stop ersatz Leftists such as the Nazi Larpers and Libertarians from co-opting the movement. There needs to be some litmus test.
Trump was elected by the limbic revulsion among the remanent bourgeois and prole classes with the current elites. The psychic power of that limbic spasm will dissipate if Trump doesn’t deliver the goods or if the Left is able to seduce his base with baubles and trinkets. The real problem now is how to covert a Trump victory into a sustainable conservative assault on the Left.
Germany was mostly exhausted after the first World War, with one critical exception: the generation just barely too young to serve in the Great War (epitomized by the Nazi cult hero Horst Wessel) felt they’d missed out (sort of like the kids in the 80s who watched “Rambo” and wished they’d been in the ‘Nam) and they were eager for a fight with the left.
The real lesson of the Nazis (and the lesson our rulers better learn if they don’t want a repeat) is that you need to be careful who you humiliate and how badly you humiliate them. So much of the left’s culture of mockery which they call comedy (like Stephen Colbert and Bill Maher) feels like bear-baiting. Bear-baiting may be fun, but sometimes the bear slips his chain.
The onerous debt of the Versailles Treaty and the war guilt clause were part of what made Germany snap, but the occupation of the Ruhr by African colonial troops (for whom the allies erected whorehouses by leveling German cemeteries and casting aside disinterred heroes) was probably the final straw. I’m not a neo-confederate or even a Southerner, but if i had to guess where real bloodshed might start (not just skirmishes), I personally think the Hunter Wallace faction of the alt-right has the most balls and ideological intelligence (Sam Francis was a southerner). Yankeedom may remove one too many statues of Robert E. Lee and replace it with MLK (or, Lord Help Us, Obama), and the boys may once again don Butternut. Yes, their last fight was also a “lost cause,” like the Nazi attempt to challenge English continental hegemony, but there’s no reason the alt-right can’t use what worked among the tools in the arsenal of failed movements and discard what doesn’t work. My guess is Richard Spencer would never make the ultimate mistake of a Napoleon or a Hitler, and attack Russia. The alt-right seems to have a favorable opinion of Russia, much to the chagrin of the Jews and neo-cons
“Bear baiting may be fun, but sometimes the bear slips his chain”. How appropriate for these times.
When they come to take the frieze of soldiers from the side of Stone Mountain, GA, I’ll be at the top, waiting to meet them.
Thought Keynes did a decent job of describing those outcomes in Economic Consequences of the Peace. The problem with the “bear baiting” is that this was all fun and games until the chain was slipped in the form of Trump. Now the Prog media is big anthill stirred with a stick. Nobody knows what to do when they get hit back.
Zman
“It is not just pubic debt”
Typo, Freudian slip or how you really feel?
Mark Moncrieff
Upon Hope Blog – A Traditional Conservative Future
Just a typo, but I have used that gag in the past.
Excellent observations, Zman. A willful return of the Irish to their cultural roots in the Celtic Twilight foreshadowed the rise of national unity, political action and and the war for independence that came later. The guerrilla tactics of Collins and his Apostles would not have been enough without the Irish people standing with them.
We must continue to make inroads among our peers. The rage of seeing my people stripped of their identity, their health, their possessions and their future fuels the fire. Reading, writing, creating, teaching, sharing, making friends, having long conversations that slowly change minds is time consuming work, but absolutely necessary.
A Long March through the institutions.
Heh.
In US context, control of FED should be enough. When institutions, cities and states start to go under (like Puerto Rico and Illinois and California tomorrow) control of the lender of last resort will be the only thing that matters.
You mean the counterfeiter of last resort?
We could deal them a blow by letting anyone teach, no degree required. Would make schools cheaper too. Anything that strips schools from the hands of the Left is a good thing. We could go back to allowing businesses to ask reasonable questions of applicants too, which would mean they could hire qualified applicants that don’t have a college degree.
Amen Brother…It’s why I advocate for people that are surrounded by those who hate them to be moving to areas where their way of life(Liberty) is encouraged and made to prosper…I have said before that I will help people to the best of my ability to move to my area…
You’re describing a best-case scenario, with unknown probability, while ignoring the bad side of the ledger. A large cohort of our population is now in it’s third generation of government inculcated dependency, and for many of these lost souls, they have not only lost the will to work, but also the underlying ability to do so. That will not be easily (or quickly) reversed. This problem used be centered in the lower class marginal communities, but now a quick look to college campuses we reveal how far it has metastasized. This problem is more akin to a cancer at the societal level.
There’s never been a mature nation without a large cohort dependent on the whole. That’s just a feature of human society. It’s also why libertarianism is the antithesis of society.
Yes, but for most of our history the model was local first-person charity (caring for the tribal elderly and creating opportunity for the disadvantaged neighbor to earn). This preserved personal integrity and self-worth.
Government handouts are nothing more than vote bribery and seducing the weak to sell their integrity for a lifelong addiction to dependency. In many ways, this is more cruel than slavery.
Not sure why this “feature of human society”, which is nothing more than using public funds to buy influence, is the fault of the libertarians. In a libertarian world there is no welfare or public education, no government loans for college, no government funded sick care, no wars of aggression…
Libertarian world => Fantasy Land.
Oh I see, yes, that explains it then. Thanks!
Thank you for this. Every single society with any urbanism of any kind has a welfare system. The more automation , the more dependency
And note the Medieval European period with few large cities , strong family bonds and a large demand for agricultural labor had an elaborate welfare system with specific requirements of distribution by the elite, a church driven food aid system, social security as annuity and more.
Now by the Victorian era the social compact had collapsed and its not by the way a surprise why Communism showed up in that period, while Marxism doesn’t work it sure seemed better than what people had. Hope is powerful
What happened instead was Social Democracy which by the 1930’s or so people very roughly managed to get back to what they had around 1230 and in some places more
And note any Libertarians bleating about “Non Aggression Principle.” , no such thing, cooperate or be killed. That is how people work
Some economic liberty is essential as are markets but too much economic liberty and too little stability will render your state unstable
Once it becomes impractical to start a family, your culture starts to die (c.f the entire developed world, every single nation) no opting out of costs.
No “Moar faith to hack the meme” won’t work (c.f religious and nationalist states in Europe have lower fertility than secualr social democracies)
You can’t make your people stupider either like the Democrats want or the system will collapse from an inability to maintain it
However if you have that socially conservative system and most importantly stable income preferably by work and with some growth for families, even urbanites will have enough people to keep things going.
Pay or be replaced by someone who will or someone an entirely different society
They work, it’s just that you don’t recognize it as such. They deal drugs and work little scams. They have no desire for an 8-5 job, where they have to show up every day.
As Brett Stevens over at Amerika often says, jobs are jails. I can’t blame them.
The biggest problem that the White Right has is not acknowledging radical differences in time preference, conscientiousness , IQ , testosterone , violence tendencies and clannishness
Hell there are differences between different White groups and these differences are fundamental to political choices
They’ve instead adapted Leftist equalism which is in short false and stupid and will lead to bad incomes
This will doom the Republic
Fundamentally the survival of the Republican can only come with a Right Wing authoritarian state who sets reality based rules that will be consistently enforced and are expected to be obeyed and will be obeyed by the elite as well.
The later BTW is a lot more important thanks you think if the elite are lawless so will the common folk be.
And yes this means Economic Liberalism has to go as well . An economy that ends up in Oligarchy is as useless as Communism .
Markets? Yes. Free movement of capital and import of labor or even use of automation that causes too much instability can’t be allowed .
Options there social democracy, distributism , populism/economic nationalism or any combination of those. Economic Liberalism , Libertarianism and Neo Conservatism are right out
A lot of people’s entire reason to exist depends on these things though so good luck getting that, its far more likely the US will devolve into smaller states, a race war or become Brazil
I get the sense Landry is commenting not condoning
The real comparison is not, as you say, economic. It is spiritual. Those making well-considered comparisons between Weimar Republic and Great Satan USA (jk – or am I?) begin with the assessment that it is spiritual decline (or call it morale) which makes societies susceptible to economic or political troubles. Morale is more important than materiel.
I think the “Weimerica” analogy holds for spiritual reasons also. Peter Jones recently compared the USA to the Weimar republic.
I think our moral and spiritual collapse will be followed by an economic one. Decadence precedes destruction.
The Roman Republic would go through periods of spiritual renewal. The reason is they also went through periods of moral decline. This has been the story of America too. Again, history did not begin in 1932.
According to public school and the history channel all modern history began in 1938 with the holocaust.
The game’s not over yet, Z Man.
My mother is a fat old grey haired shit lib that loves to wipe my nose in her politics. A year back I had enough when the old bint told me I had better get used to mass immigration and say goodbye to my white male priviledge.
I let the old bitch have it right back with both barrels. I told HER to get used to Donald Trump – and not only that – whatever comes after Trump. She sat and sputtered and fumed!
We COULD have the conditions for the rise of full blown Nazis in a mere decade or less if something isn’t done. That’s my two bits, anyhoo.
let me tall you about both barrels…
You ought to have more respect for your mother.
I used to think so too. It’s been my experience, however, that people who are treated with courtesy and respect when they have done absolutely nothing to earn it – they become progressively entitled, then arrogant, and then contemptuous of people that are doing their best to get along with them. Sometimes you just have to take them into the boards hard to make them reciprocate.
Ignore it. I’m a mother & a grandmother, & I’m hereby absolving you from the responsibility of respecting anyone, most especially an uncaring monster who birthed you from her loins, yet who would gleefully cheer your demise.
Feel free to active cheer hers, instead.
My mother is a sociopath. I once loved her.
Seriously_? What kind of mother has glee at the idea of the destruction of her own son_? At some point the bonds of respect are sadly broken.
My own mother had a hard life growing up and was pretty hard to live with at times because she was so angry about it, but she _never_ was anything but supportive of the future of my brothers and me. Then she found The Lord and was a joy to be around in her too short old age.
“Glenn” is a troll. it’s a made up story.
Glen Filthe isn’t a troll he has been around a long time, even has an .Alt Right blog of his own.
Can’t speak to the veracity of his story mind but there are Boomer’s just like her. The narcissism is strong in that generation
Also while our host his .Alt Right of Center , you see the political differences
Glen is a regular over on Jim’s Blog which is Right of Attila the Hun and to the Right of Brett Stevens at Amerika , firmly on the White Sharia camp.
I don’t entirely disagree with him mind you but its a matter of degree.
Yep. No trolling here. I agree with the alt-right agenda to about 95~98%.
Getting back to my main point: shit libs created and paved the way for guys like the Z Man, Vox Day, Jim, and Donald Trump. Their message is simple: stop the lunacy or else.
If the lunacy continues – then the next step is Richard Spencer and an even more militarized and aggressive right wing.
That’s all I wanted to say.
The mother, on the other hand, can treat her adult son any damn way she likes, right? This is man, you dimwit, not a child. Idiot. Piss-ant.
You’re welcome at my house for Thanksgiving.
Have you, Mr. Z man ,ever wondered why the Neocon filth, such big cheerleaders for the slaughter of Muslims, have never been victims of “Islamic Terrorism”?
From “The Song of Roland”, by medieval Neocon filth (stanza 270, trans. Glyn Burgess): “The heat is great and the dust rises;/ The pagans flee and the Franks press them hard./ The chase lasts as far as Saragossa./ Bramimonde has climbed to the top of her tower,/ Together with her clerks and her canons,/ Whose false faith God never loved./ They have no orders and their heads are not tonsured./ When she saw the Arabs destroyed,/ She exclaims in a loud voice: ‘Help us, Muhammad!/ O, noble king, now our men are vanquished;/ The emir is slain with such great shame.’/ When Marsile hears her, he turns towards the wall;/ He weeps and bows his head low./ He died of grief, oppressed by misfortune;/ He gives up his soul to the living devils.”
bile…I guess you missed that little moslem shindig back on 9/11/01?
When I was in the Gabon thirty odd years ago the majority of the people I chatted with said they wished the British were back in control
Fuck it again Gambia, Gambia, Gambia
Fix that you autocorrect fuckers.
Well, I was in Gabon 25 years ago and the French were still there, operating heavy logging equipment with wine for lunch. They majority of the people I chatted with were wishing for the British, too.
Same in Togo 25 years ago: they wished the Germans were still in charge because the “Germans weren’t afraid to line people up against the wall for stealing.” Germany lost Togoland as its sole west African colony early in the first War. It is important to also note that although Germany was forced to the surrender table, not a single major battle of WW1 was fought on German soil and its industrial and commercial infrastructure remained untouched. This was part of what fuelled the German anger over the armistice.
If I recall correctly they lost because of lack of access to energy sources.
Food scarcity. They were starving to death.
In Mali, they prefer local rule but have an affinity for and like the French. They think of the French as generous colonialists, back in the day.
Insightful as always. This cultural cold war may never go hot but it is not going to stay the same. A systemic and unified front must be prosecuted by individuals as well as leaders to further discredit and replace this seemingly dying prog regime.
They are really few in numbers and their weakness is showing by Trump’s street fighting examples. The old cliche , Wizard behind the curtain comes to mind.
And that is what it is, at this time, a cultural war. I know the times I’ve made sarcastic reference to the US as Weimerica, it has been to try to draw some analogy between the degeneracy of today & the cultural rot of the Weimar period of Germany, of which most Americans are wholly ignorant.
Is it perfect? No. I’m not even sure it’s good, but it has stirred numerous conversations, and for that alone I find it useful enough.
I agree. The parallels to the moral and spiritual corruption are actually quite apropos, even though the economic and political ones are not.