Over at The Chronicle of Higher Education a rather hyper-sensitive blogger seeks to take the Alt Right to task. But not for the usual reasons.
You see, this time it has to do with appropriation, no not of internet memes or 80s New Wave bands, instead it focus on a famous English author: Jane Austen. It seems as if The Chronicle blogger has uncovered a nefarious scheme of internet racists who are using Jane Austen to further their “White supremacist” agenda of crafting an “ethnostate”.
Over at The Chronicle of Higher Education a rather hyper-sensitive blogger seeks to take the Alt Right to task. But not for the usual reasons.
You see, this time it has to do with appropriation, no not of internet memes or 80s New Wave bands, instead it focus on a famous English author: Jane Austen. It seems as if The Chronicle blogger has uncovered a nefarious scheme of internet racists who are using Jane Austen to further their “White supremacist” agenda of crafting an “ethnostate”.
From The Chronicle:
This view of Austen as an avatar of a superior bygone era is linked not only with fantasies of female retreat from the sexual whirl, but also with calls for white separatism. On the popular blog of the alt-right publisher Counter-Currents, the world of Austen’s novels is extolled as a prototype for the “racial dictatorship” of tomorrow. One commenter wrote, “If, after the ethnostate is created, we revert back to an Austen-like world, we males ought to endure severe sacrifices as well. … If traditional marriage à la P&P [Pride and Prejudice] is going to be imposed, again, in an ethnostate, we must behave like gentlemen.”
Yet if shared heritage is the key to incentivizing gentlemanly comportment, why are there so many cads in Austen’s world? Also, Austen’s protagonists express little of the populist boosterism and preoccupation with ethnic heritage that foster an ethnostate. Fervent patriotism is invoked sardonically rather than earnestly proclaimed: Upon his first visit to his father’s estate in the small town of Highbury, Frank Churchill archly states that he will prove that he “belong[s] to the place” and is a “true citizen.” Emma playfully replies, “I do admire your patriotism,” and Churchill parries by saying that Emma has witnessed “the very moment of this burst of my amor patriae.”
Other alt-right partisans pay backhanded compliments by emphasizing Austen’s singularity as a celebrated female novelist. In a post that debuted in 2012 on Alternative Right and has since been lauded as an alt-right “classic,” the “manosphere” blogger Matt Forney mentioned Austen as an outlier from the norm of female mediocrity: “Virtually all great leaders, thinkers and artists were men. Aristotle, Galileo, Michaelangelo [sic], Napoleon: all men. Not to say that all women are incapable of artistic, scientific or military talent; every so often, we get a Marie Curie, a Jane Austen or a Joan of Arc.” Here the alt-right finds common ground with the literary gatekeeper Harold Bloom; in his best seller The Western Canon (1994), Austen is one of four women on a list of 26 most influential authors. According to this formulation, Austen is not a trailblazer for the female authors who followed in her wake, but rather a rebuke to women who have not reached her level of achievement.
What an intensive conspiracy. In fact, it’s fevered anger like this that brings to mind one of Austen’s earlier novels, Northanger Abbey which plays which pokes fun at the popularity of “gothic” novels its time by having its protagonist see murder and danger around every corner, much the same way progressive bloggers vent about the comment sections of Alt Right articles.
Indeed, the Jane Austen outrage didn’t just stop with The Chronicle but has now penetrated into other elite purveyors of liberal discourse via The New York Times and The Paris Review.
From The Times article “Jane Austen Has Alt-Right Fans? Heavens to Darcy!”:
But it has prompted the most sustained chatter among Austen scholars, a more reliably liberal bunch who, like Ms. Wright, emphatically reject white nationalist readings of her novels.
“No one who reads Jane Austen’s words with any attention and reflection can possibly be alt-right,” Elaine Bander, a retired professor and a former officer of the Jane Austen Society of North America, said in an email.
“All the Janeites I know,” she added, “are rational, compassionate, liberal-minded people.”
That’s right! Rational, liberal minded people! We all know those Alt-Right buffoons aren’t reading books. Just look at how few references to Harry Potter they make!
Further:
In recent years, scholars have tried to find diversity in the seemingly all-white world of Austen, digging into subjects like Miss Lambe, a character in her unfinished final novel, “Sanditon,” described as a “half mulatto” heiress from the West Indies. (Yes, there is a scholarly paper with the title “The Silence of Miss Lambe.”)
But Ms. Wells said scholars teaching Austen at schools with “substantially multicultural students” still wrestled with a truth that must, perhaps, be uncomfortably acknowledged.
“Her characters are white, and her world is white,” she said. “What do you do with that?”
Of course Jane Austen comes out of a White world. This is why the commentary on the original Counter Currents article were so relevant. Because Jane Austen as a European writer speaks to peculiar conditions of European man, the same way Langston Hughes and Chaim Potok speak to their respective black and Jewish readers. All of Austen’s work takes place in a world where European identity, and in particular, regency English countryside identity, were presupposed.
The Paris Review, not to be out done, rehashes many of the same points, but includes the fact that we have also appropriated Barbour jackets (welcome news to me!):
First the white nationalists took that haircut—you know the one, an arty variant on the Marine’s high-and-tight buzz, endemic to white guys in gentrifying neighborhoods circa 2013. Then the white nationalists took Barbour field jackets, depriving a whole generation of the joys of waxed canvas. Now the white nationalists have come for Jane Austen, in whom they mistakenly see a love of tradition, and it is up to us to say: enough. Let them claim some other, lesser Regency writer—an E. T. A. Hoffmann, maybe, or even a Sir Walter Scott—and leave us to read Persuasion in peace, the animals. Jennifer Schuessler writes, “Some alt-right admirers hail Austen’s novels as blueprints for a white nationalist ‘ethno-state.’ Others cite her as a rare example of female greatness … A post on the website Counter Currents called ‘The Woman Question in White Nationalism,’ for example, includes a string of comments debating how the vision of marriage in Austen’s Pride and Prejudice fit with the ‘racial dictatorship’ necessary to preserve Western civilization. ‘If traditional marriage à la P&P is going to be imposed, again, in an ethnostate, we must behave like gentlemen,’ one commenter wrote.”
This kvetching brings to mind a line from Whit “WASP Woody Allen” Stillman’s movie Metropolitan, which has its earnest young socialist protagonist Tom Townsend debate the merits of Jane Austen with conservative young debutante’ Audrey Rouget. Upon pronouncing the concerns of Austen to be ridiculous for our times, Rouget caustically responds with “Has it ever occurred to you that today from Jane Austen’s perspective would look even worse?”
No one knows this better than the Alt Right.
“Has it ever occurred to you that today from Jane Austen’s perspective would look even worse?” https://t.co/eTZ0jAPEup
— Richard ? Spencer (@RichardBSpencer) March 13, 2017
The lie that the liberal state sells you is that you are free. The lie that it sells itself is that it is in control.
The much vaunted “deep state”, a constellation of intelligence, media, and administrative apparatuses has waged a virtual(literally) war on the administration of Donald Trump since before he even took office. His election, as has been repeated, was not supposed to happen. Hillary Clinton was supposed to represent the end of history when women where to take their rightful place as the first among last men. But, history has a way of going on, despite shrill shrieks to the contrary.
The lie that the liberal state sells you is that you are free. The lie that it sells itself is that it is in control.
The much vaunted “deep state”, a constellation of intelligence, media, and administrative apparatuses has waged a virtual(literally) war on the administration of Donald Trump since before he even took office. His election, as has been repeated, was not supposed to happen. Hillary Clinton was supposed to represent the end of history when women where to take their rightful place as the first among last men. But, history has a way of going on, despite shrill shrieks to the contrary.
Just as Donald Trump was not supposed to take the White House, so too was the CIA’s vast intelligence apparatus never to be exposed. In one swift moment, Wikileaks with the release of “Vault 7” has brought the deep state’s machinations out into the open. Naturally, they are none too pleased.
In post-modernity, information and image are power. The ability to gather information and shape narratives is what passes for power today. Everything, from who we are(or who we pretend to be) is shaped by the forces of technology. Much has been made of innovation in gadgetry or commerce. But what the past few years have taught us, are the dangers and potentials of our mechanized-technological society.
Our deep state cheered on color revolutions from Ukraine to Libya. They manipulated social media and worked back channels to open new spaces to control.
Today, the shriek about the sanctity of what they are doing. About traitors and about “truth”.
No doubt the revelations are coming as a shock to millions of Americans. To find out that your television, your phones, and your apps could make you an easy target for an all-pervasive administrative state is certainly jolting. The Orwellian fears of millions weren’t just the paranoia of a lunatic fringe but a very real concern.
So what now?
There has never been a better time for the truth. A better time to discover who you are outside of the television box or social media screens. Economist Thomas Naylor referred to the world the deep state is selling us as “cipherspace”, or a simulacrum of lies:
“We live in the world of make-believe, a world controlled by ciphers such as Wall Street, Corporate America, the White House, Congress, and the Pentagon. These ciphers enjoy the enthusiastic support of the media, the academy, and the shamans to whom we entrust the care of body, mind, and soul. They reside in cipherspace, a euphemism for what French writer Albert Camus called the absurd.”
The Alt Right has grown in reaction to this world of lies.
We are more than the mere atomized pixels on a screen, and we have a history that stretches back to times immemorial. “Vault 7” is a water shed because it exposes the creeping rot at the heart of the liberal state. In its quest for an end of history, to spread “freedom” to all it has become just as corrupt and as controlling as any state in history.
Who they are is clear. Who we need to be is now the question.
Martin Heidegger in his “Question Concerning Technology” saw that the destructive tendencies of modern technology just over the horizon. However, he also said that were the danger is, so too is the saving power close.
The technological-administrative state has long perfected tools against the struggle of our people. But now, we are starting to fight back. “Meme wars” and online trolling are just low-level skirmishes in the attempt to wrest narrative control from Liberal hegemony.
Wikileaks has given the narrative a deep blow this week. Now is the time to keep the pressure up. It’s time to tune out of cipherspace and tune into the truth. We can do no other!
Have you heard about the latest esoteric “racist” symbol? No, it’s not Pepe the Frog, but milk. That’s right the gallon you buy at the store every week for your…
Have you heard about the latest esoteric “racist” symbol? No, it’s not Pepe the Frog, but milk. That’s right the gallon you buy at the store every week for your morning cereal has become a code word for “white nationalism”, this threat has become so pervasive that the British tabloid Metro is here to provide an explainer:
For the last few weeks, white supremacists have been proudly declaring that they’re ‘lactose tolerant’, and are adding ‘glass of milk’ emojis into their Twitter names….
Gasp?! Lactose tolerance!
For example Richard Spencer, who is most famous for getting punched in the face, has replaced the ‘Pepe the Frog‘ emojis in his name with the glass of milk.
Who knew Richard had the power to make something racist just by associating his name with it. Next thing one knows, soon Apple products will be “racist”, oh wait.
According to Metro the trend began on 4Chan and escalated at Shia LaBeouf’s faux art exhibit:
It started when one user posted a world map (minus the US for some reason) of lactose tolerance in different countries, apparently showing that tolerance was higher in the UK and northern Europe… Sort of, although there’s another reason why the whole meme has taken off. When Nazis hijacked Shia LaBeouf’s ‘He Will Not Divide Us’ art performance (which has since been forced to close), they were seen on camera chugging milk and dancing around topless – showing off their runic and swastika tattoos.
Quelle horreur!
Now it has evolved into a general indicator that someone is a white supremacist. So there you have it.If someone you know starts adding milk emojis to their name and talking about how well they can tolerate lactose, it’s probably time to de-friend.
There you have it indeed. The left are so paranoid that a simple glass of milk triggers them. What’s next? Breathing air? After all, he-who-must-not-be-named also breathed air. It could be a gateway to “white supremacy”, to the barricades go comrades!
One of the most remarkable turn of events in America’s 2016 election has been the revitalization of the phrase “America First!” America First as a slogan has its origins in the pre-World War II America First Committee which was dedicated to keeping the United States out of that war. It was a slogan that energized many in the hinterlands against what they saw as a useless entanglement over foreign interests many thousands of miles away. Notable supporters of the Committee included future presidents John F. Kennedy and Gerald Ford along with cultural figures like Walt Disney, Frank Lloyd Wright and E.E. Cummings. It even included many leftists independent of communist marching orders like Norman Thomas. And of course, there was its most noted celebrity spokesman, aviator Charles Lindbergh.
One of the most remarkable turn of events in America’s 2016 election has been the revitalization of the phrase “America First!” America First as a slogan has its origins in the pre-World War II America First Committee which was dedicated to keeping the United States out of that war. It was a slogan that energized many in the hinterlands against what they saw as a useless entanglement over foreign interests many thousands of miles away. Notable supporters of the Committee included future presidents John F. Kennedy and Gerald Ford along with cultural figures like Walt Disney, Frank Lloyd Wright and E.E. Cummings. It even included many leftists independent of communist marching orders like Norman Thomas. And of course, there was its most noted celebrity spokesman, aviator Charles Lindbergh.
America First as a slogan gained a second life in the candidacy of Pat Buchanan in the early nineties, a figure who sought to shake off the moribund morass of the Cold War and return America to its earlier traditions. However, by this time a new America was emerging, one which was not only at war with the Old America, but was downright hostile to its history, traditions and very people.
Many involved with America First had radically different views of what America ultimately was, but what united them was an understanding that America was a nation with its own interests and its own people. The old America that they defended was, in many ways, birthed out of the tragedy of the War Between the States. The all-consuming fire that tore asunder what could be called the American First Republic was put back together after a painful process of radicalism and reconciliation between its formerly warring parts.
After the shameful and destructive excess of Reconstruction in the Old South was ended, a place was carved in American history for its formerly warring White nations. The valor and honor of the Southern cause was acknowledged, as well as its monuments and particular memory, while at the same time the nation was understood as one, moving ever towards the frontier.
This was acknowledged from the Founding onwards; for instance, John Jay in Federalist no.2 states:
”With equal pleasure I have as often taken notice that Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people–a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms, and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established general liberty and independence.”
In 1921 then Vice President Calvin Coolidge would re-enunciate this similar spirit in an article for Good Housekeeping, writing:
There are racial considerations too grave to be brushed aside for sentimental reasons. Biological laws tell us that certain divergent people will not mix or blend. The Nordics propagate themselves successfully. With other races, the outcome shows deterioration on both sides. Quality of mind and body suggests that observance of ethnic law is as great a necessity to a nation as immigration law.
The title of his article? “Whose Country is This?”
Ultimately, the American nation of this time was defined by its White citizens, be they Yankee, Confederate, or Western. It was a tapestry reaching back to Plymouth Rock, Jamestown, and Columbus that provided a shared history and vision, and it was, for the most part, based on the history of its White citizens.
The settlement of the frontier led to the creation of what is now deemed “the American Heartland,” the breadbasket from whence America was fed and the yeoman collection of family farms birthed a vision of the “American Dream,” regardless of its fulfillment. The White men and women who went west formed the backbone of the America First Committee, along with many old stock Americans who were perturbed by foreign influence on American affairs.
The America First Committee was much maligned by many in the mainstream media of its day, as Nazis, Babbitts, or even Bolsheviks.
Things came to a head on September 11, 1941 when a man simultaneously derided as a “Nazi” and a “gopher Bolshevik” gave a speech to a Des Moines, Iowa crowd. Here, in the heartland, Charles Lindbergh made his plea:
” Men and women of Iowa; only one thing holds this country from war today. That is the rising opposition of the American people. Our system of democracy and representative government is on test today as it has never been before. We are on the verge of a war in which the only victor would be chaos and prostration.
We are on the verge of a war for which we are still unprepared, and for which no one has offered a feasible plan for victory–a war which cannot be won without sending our soldiers across the ocean to force a landing on a hostile coast against armies stronger than our own.
We are on the verge of war, but it is not yet too late to stay out. It is not too late to show that no amount of money, or propaganda, or patronage can force a free and independent people into war against its will. It is not yet too late to retrieve and to maintain the independent American destiny that our forefathers established in this new world.”
That “American destiny” that our “forefathers established” was at the crux of Lindbergh’s argument: that the destiny of America should be in the hands of Americans alone, and in particular, the historic American Nation bequeathed to us by the Founders. Not an abstraction, not an ideal, and sure as hell not an idea, but a people.
Of course, Lindbergh’s speech would go on to name another group of people, a group that could roughly be described by an American of his time as an anti-America. was one which sought to put various tribal, ideological and commercial interests ahead of those of the living historic America. In some ways, this was a milder form of a division that also occurred in that other “nation of the enlightenment,” France, which had similarly divided up into a France/Anti-France distinction.
Lindbergh went on to describe the groups as follows:
” The three most important groups who have been pressing this country toward war are the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt administration.
Behind these groups, but of lesser importance, are a number of capitalists, Anglophiles, and intellectuals who believe that the future of mankind depends upon the domination of the British empire. Add to these the Communistic groups who were opposed to intervention until a few weeks ago, and I believe I have named the major war agitators in this country.”
Of course, it didn’t matter that in the speech Lindbergh acknowledged the Jewish plight against Germany as “understandable.” It was enough to sink him and the movement. Just two months later Pearl Harbor would come, America would be at war, and the America First Committee would shut its doors and do their part for their country.
Even Lindbergh would fly in bomber raids over the Pacific. However, the America he fought to preserve started on a dialectical path that would forever change the nature of its people and its history.
The post-war Lindbergh serves as an interesting microcosm of the America he wanted to put first. He got involved in environmental activism preserving the natural beauty of his America.
Many of today’s largest immigration restrictionist organizations trace their origins to the nascent environmentalist movement with concerns about quality of life and a literal preservation of America as a place. Many old stock Americans were involved in this cause including not only Madison Grant and Lindbergh, but people like John Tanton, another American from the heartland who seeks to preserve not just America, but its people.
This impulse was even derided throughout popular culture. Thus, you have jokes like those of brash fraudster Gordon Gekko in 1987’s Wall Street who declaims, “That’s the one thing you have to remember about WASPs: they love animals and hate people.” Contra Mr. Gekko, it’s not hatred of people, just an indifference to an alien people. Indeed, among the groups who opposed the 1965 Immigration Act, which transformed the United States demographically, were the Daughters of the American Revolution, who if thought of at all now are just a prop to establish someone’s WASP identity in popular culture.
But America was a changing place after the war, and prosperity and progress were intermingled with battles for the soul of the American nation that reverberate to this day.
Post-war America was one of peace, prosperity and cultural hegemony, so much so that many refer to this era as “the American Century.” The generation that returned from the carnage of Europe and the Pacific eagerly started to enjoy the fruits of their victory: in the G.I. Bill, the massive infrastructure improvements, and most of all, in starting families. Between the end of the war and the beginning of the 1960s Americans gave birth to millions of children who would grow up in a much different America than the one we have today, and would go on to shape America in a vastly different direction than many of their predecessors.
The children of America’s soldiers came of age not only in an “American” era, but one dominated by mass forms of media, large corporations, and big government. The way mass media consumption of movies and television have shaped “boomer” attitudes towards their own history would come to have massive repercussions for the America of today.
Looked on from today, many complain that the boomer generation faced few if any conflicts; however, that is not exactly correct.
The boomer childhood witnessed some of the greatest feats of humanity, including our earliest voyages into space and our (so far) impressive discipline in not blowing ourselves into a cinder. At the same time, it was punctuated with “events” that gave them the feeling of history. I say events, because in the dawn of the mass-media age, history is never just “made” but is molded not just in its moments but for many years after. The two biggest of these events were the Vietnam War and the so-called “Civil Rights” movement.
The Vietnam War was more of a watershed for White America than the Civil Rights movement, even if it is hard to see it that way today. In addition to its literal battlefields, Vietnam served as a sort of opening salvo in the culture wars. While the descendants of Lindbergh’s America First coalition were largely yelling to “nuke Hanoi,” left-wing inspired youth largely staged massive draft protests and became known as “hippies” and founders of the peace movement.
Even the demonstrations were very different. Take for example one of the Vietnam War’s most well-known protesters: Jane Fonda.
There couldn’t be a bigger difference between Jane Fonda and Charles Lindbergh. Lindbergh was known throughout the world for his daring feats of aviation and engineering prowess. The man even started work on a heart perfusion pump when his sister-in-law came down with a condition. This in contrast with Fonda, who was a second-generation actor whose biggest claims to fame at that point included “Barbarella” and being amongst the radical chic set.
One has only to contrast the ways the speak against their wars, and of the America they represent:
”In the shadow of the Temple of Literature I saw Vietnamese actors and actresses perform the second act of Arthur Miller’s play All My Sons, and this was very moving to me- the fact that artists here are translating and performing American plays while US imperialists are bombing their country…I cherish the memory of the blushing militia girls on the roof of their factory, encouraging one of their sisters as she sang a song praising the blue sky of Vietnam- these women, who are so gentle and poetic, whose voices are so beautiful, but who, when American planes are bombing their city, become such good fighters.”
While the Vietnam War was a major tragedy on the part of America, the country that Fonda speaks of is very different than the one spoken of by Lindbergh.
For Fonda, America is Arthur Miller, Hollywood and its assorted causes. It is ultimately an idea and not a place. The tragedy isn’t just that Americans are bombing the Vietnamese, but that the Vietnamese are living closer to some fantasy of America than Americans themselves. For many who came of age at this time, their patriotism was essentially forged as one for a country as an idea, rather than a place built by a particular people.
This was a watershed stage in the decline of American consciousness. Where once it was asked to think twice about its foreign interventions by a hero, here it was asked to do so by a harlot.
Vietnam was the first time that White America felt a modicum of doubt about the way history was moving. The American South had tasted such a reversal of history before, giving it a kind of strangeness to the rest of the American spirit, but the post-war reconciliation that carried through the World Wars largely delivered an American South that was, to paraphrase Walker Percy, victorious and prosperous. That is, except for the vexing race issue.
The Civil Rights movement has gone down as the new Founding Epoch of America’s new post-1968 mythology. The “dream” of Martin Luther King Jr. has gone on to crowd out all other dreams of America, to animate a far different country than the one its original Founders intended.
More ink has been spilled on this era than almost any other by movement pens. However, what is usually missed is how deep the story of the Civil Rights Movement goes into the America of today. That’s because America now is largely a different country than the one most American right-wingers envision it to be.
The America of today declared its independence with the 1964 Civil Rights Act and has sought to bring in line the rest of its institutions by any means necessary.
But for an older generation of White Americans, the Civil Rights movement was less of a revolution in the very mythological underpinnings of the American state and more just another brokered peace. Just as there was reconciliation after the “brother’s war” between the states, so too did many White Americans see the passages of most Civil Rights legislation. In this way, all the programs initiatives and welfare of the past half century have been nothing more of a counterfeit peace offering that White America deludes itself into believing. That’s because unlike the truce between the warring factions of North and South which were united by “common ancestry, customs” etc. the irreconcilable differences between the different racial groups in America have almost always led to conflict.
Understanding the America that the boomer generation has constructed helps to understand what it is they want to preserve. The triumphalist narrative of their history is best represented in such popular schlock at Forrest Gump which depicts an idiot’s encounters through various nodes on the staircase to progress.
For boomers, America was less a place of ancestry and heritage and more of a place of potential. In particular, individual potential. Its why an old hippie can become a yuppie without batting an eye. Their America is one of narrow possibilities and potentials, not an America of blood and soil.
Thus, the radicalism of the sixties gave way to the American boosterism of the Reagan years. Supply-side economics made everyone a king, from the Huxtables to Family Ties. The America of Ronald Reagan represented the conservative entrenchment of the revolution begun in the sixties. It even had its own “shining city on a hill” speech.
We arrive in an America forged on the cliffs or Normandy, where it once was Plymouth Rock, and declaring its own independence and purpose in ordaining that “all men are created equal” (with the only dispute within that catechism as to what it is true equality actually means).
That most boomer of presidents Bill Clinton captured this spirit when he spoke about the coming racial transformation of America and said:
“We should be honored that America, whether it’s called the City on a Hill, or the Old Gold Mountain, or El Norte, is still seen around the world as the land of new beginnings…America is not so much a place as a promise, not a guarantee but a chance, not a particular race but an embrace of our common humanity”
This would become the new American dream of boomer America. An America where everyone could be another unique brick in the wall. An America that didn’t see any colors but red, white, and blue. It was an America that was built through orgiastic dreaming and even some good impulses, but it was a fantasy America that never existed.
I’m too busy being successful to worry whether some other race is out to get me.
— Bill Mitchell (@mitchellvii) December 28, 2016
America was birthed anew, and today we are living in it.
Pat Buchanan tried to build a new coalition around “America First” throughout the 1990s. It was largely a failure, but succeeded in questioning the contours of the new America in both foreign and domestic policy. His most lasting testament however might be that he elucidated the divide in America more clearly than anyone else in his famous “Culture War” speech of the 1992 GOP national convention.
”My friends, this election is about more than who gets what. It is about who we are. It is about what we believe, and what we stand for as Americans. There is a religious war going on in this country. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we shall be as was the Cold War itself, for this war is for the soul of America.”
Buchanan was largely correct that America was now engaged in its own internal cold war. What was missing, however, was the fact that not only was there a grand cultural replacement going on, but also a demographic one. America was losing its historic, meaning White, character. The events of the following decade would only make this clearer.
On September 11, 2001, the certainties of this new America came shattering down in downtown Manhattan. The ‘end of history’ turned out to merely be its prelude. The attack by Islamic extremists on what was then the pax Americana sent shockwaves throughout the system with many trying to justify the horror that had just been broadcast to millions of people.
People were lectured about how our enemies hate us “for our freedoms” and a variety of the other various nostrums of the day. Many believe in this, because, having grown up with tales of America’s inexorable march towards the current year, no one could hate us for what we do. There was a right and a wrong, a Japan and a Pearl Harbor, a Bull Connor and a Martin Luther King Jr: and we had a “decider” as president.
It didn’t take long for America’s response to go south. Soon we were engaged in a war in Iraq, with soldiers largely coming from the rural south, America at home meanwhile was engaged in an orgiastic economic boom of “home ownership” whose hollowness would be laid bare.
But when many of those same men returned home, it was to empty homes. Most of them were foreclosed on in one of the largest economic downturns since the Great Depression. America, drunk on a mix of the prosperity gospel and anti-discrimination laws, at last found itself at a bust.
The “conservative” movement of this time was a largely moribund husk which mixed snake-oil evangelical outreach along with “MLK Was a Republican” style argumentation. In fact, it was argued that by their very existence Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice had shown that the color-blind society of boomer conservatives was not only real, but in practice.
The Bush years however, only managed to accelerate major trends in America. Its indifference to immigration and obsession with policy minutiae just moved the age of Barack Obama closer.
Obama’s eventual triumph in the 2008 election was the culmination of the America that was given birth in the sixties. The multicultural smart set finally had everything they ever wanted in a president. To quote the first lady “first the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country.”
Obama was also perhaps the first presidential candidate of the left to articulate the internal cold war going on in America. At a campaign stop in Pennsylvania he decried rural mostly White Americans who “cling to their guns and bibles.” Cultural agitprop is largely used as a proxy for speaking in demographic terms. That’s the truce in our cold war: race is the identity that dare not speak its name, lest we have blood on the streets.
Today, writing from Trump’s America one assumes that today Michelle Obama couldn’t be sadder. Trump’s campaign revived the phrase “America First” in a way that Pat Buchanan’s just couldn’t do. However, what remains is the question of what “America” it is that Donald Trump wants to put first.
Usually the phrase is interpreted by those on the right as having to do with the American “heartland” and the rural people there who “cling to their guns and their bibles.” But this is begging the question, who are these people?
They are mostly White, older Americans who have felt deeply betrayed by the way their country has been run. In turn the inhabitants of the other America largely see this group as Kulaks to be liquidated on the march to progress.
For conservatives, the question “who are we?” is an unsettling one, because they’ve bought into an America not based on a people, but on “principles.” Unless it comes to grips with the fact that America was founded and largely defined by White men, the country it puts first will always be one born of the left.
For them, they must answer the question: whose America first? And they must answer before it’s too late.
All was quiet in the trenches. For five months, they had been living in a hell the world had never seen before. Across the once-verdant fields of France and Belgium lay miles of dug out trenches, barbed wire, and the stamped out light of youth to never see home again.
Editor’s Note: This article originally was printed last Christmas
All was quiet in the trenches. For five months, they had been living in a hell the world had never seen before. Across the once-verdant fields of France and Belgium lay miles of dug out trenches, barbed wire, and the stamped out light of youth to never see home again.
The war came in August. It will be over by Christmas. At least that’s what the politicians say. Englishmen, Frenchmen, Russians, Germans, and Austrians to a man knew this to be true. At least it was when they left their homes all those bright, warm months ago.
Well, Christmas has come. No one was any closer to seeing his wife, his children, his home. Looking across the trenches, one could see lights burning, and what’s that? Singing.
The air was thick with frost and blood. Not unlike a thousand winters before it in the long history of our continent. But these were not songs of war that echoed across these Trojan plains. No, they were songs of warmth and brotherhood. One by one, the soldiers emerged. They tentatively walked across the no man’s land into what until only moments ago was certain death. Brother clasped brother, arms were shed, and the spirit of this most ancient of European days filled the air. There was singing, games, smoking, and all the manner of festive cheer that any German, Frenchman, or Englishman could muster.
This feeling of brotherhood was not to last forever. No, soon the orders came down and these children of Europa went back to the killing fields. To continue the first act in a long suicide. It was not until many years later that her children would know peace of any sort at all.
Today, over one hundred years on, her children face a new challenge. Perhaps her greatest in over a thousand years. She is facing invasion from without and a sickness unto death from within. Her “leaders” give speeches with subtitles in alien tongues, while her children are made homeless to make room for a new and strange people on her shores.
Europa’s women and children live in fear, perhaps for the first time in generations. Their virtue and indeed their very lives are threatened every day. Descendants of Vikings, of Romans, of Conquistadors now lie prostrate before the strange, abstract gods of our age.
The one thing that can’t be taken from us is who we are. We are the children of Europa. One hundred years ago, our grandfathers laid down their arms in brotherhood. Not because of some vague “brotherhood” of man, but due to the living tradition of the season that surrounds us.
As you read this, I hope you are holding your families and loved ones tight. Spare a moment to remember our ancestors who have gone before us, and look into the eyes of your children if you have them. It’s time to put away the petty squabbles and endless feuds that have divided us for centuries. After all, we are all the extended family of Europa.
The spirit of Christmas, or Yule, or however you wish to call it engulfs us. It would be wise to keep the flame of unity shown on those old fields of battle burning throughout the year. Frenchmen, Englishmen, Germans, Russians, Spaniards, Italians, and yes, even Americans must keep the fire burning. Because a dark winter awaits if we don’t.
Merry Christmas, and may we prevail!
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been witness to one of the most shameful displays I’ve ever witnessed: the attacks on my colleague and friend Richard Spencer’s mother. Her enemies have steadily waged a war of lies, gossip, and fear designed to attack a family’s very structure and a community’s trust. I guess it really does take a village.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been witness to one of the most shameful displays I’ve ever seen: the attacks on my colleague and friend Richard Spencer’s mother. Her enemies have steadily waged a war of lies, gossip, and fear designed to attack a family’s very structure and a community’s trust. I guess it really does take a village.
Mrs. Spencer and her husband have never been involved in the National Policy Institute or its projects. They are an apolitical couple with a very political son. But today, everything has become politicized, even our families. The message our enemies are sending is that you can only have a family, or love your son so long as they toe the party line. If you dare even go so far as to “love your son” as Richard’s parents have done, well I guess you’re just “collatoral damage”.
Those who have been whipped into a fervor take umbrage at the gall Mrs. Spencer has in merely owning a building, and speaking out against extortion are now starting to cry wolf. Help! Help! they cry, hordes of angry internet trolls are sending anonymous messages. Quelle horreur and call the National Guard!
What is really going on is that those who have attacked Mrs. Spencer know they are the guilty party. As the emails from Ms. Gersh show, these are acts of intimidation against a family whose only sins are community spirit and familial love. They know they are in the wrong, so they need to change the narrative.
By changing the narrative from defamation of character and willful attacks on a person’s livelihood to anonymous internet harassment, these people are simply attempting to change the victim in this story. Now instead of Mrs. Spencer, it is her very adversaries who are the ones being attacked. Even though they’re not the ones having to sell their businesses, being asked to denounce their children, or having their families torn asunder. No, it’s a few mean tweets and emails that make them uncomfortable. That’s the real problem.
After all, we too, get our share of anonymous threats. Almost every day I wake up to emails in the Radix Journal email account that are either copies of Richard Spencer’s address or some form of “We’re coming for you, we have guns and we’ll get you just like we did before.” Not to mention the hundreds of tweets and text messages Richard gets per week that are snide remarks at best and death threats at worst.
I light a real menorah in my window in Helena @RichardBSpencer. Come find me. I fought terrorism in the ME and I’ll fight it here. #mtpol pic.twitter.com/HYovlfL9vM
— (((Joshua Manning))) (@joshuamanning23) December 22, 2016
Even a Politico editor was brazen enough to call for violence against Richard, for which he was asked to resign.
As if they couldn’t stoop even lower, they’ve even started to attack Richard’s wife. Growing up I was always taught that attacking a man’s mother and/or his wife is just not cricket. But that’s the current year for you.
These moments, dreadful as they are, can be moments of clarity. They show the craven and callow depths those opposed to us are willing to go to. No, they can’t up and jail us(yet) but they can make our lives a living hell.
While they complain about our “millions of dollars”(I wish! donate here
!) in non-profits and alleged foreign connections, they rake in multi-million dollar endowments and can organize openly without a concern in the world.
Make no mistake, they’re doing this because what Richard is doing is having an impact. They’re frightened of our ideas having a fair shake, so they’re resorting to any trick in the book to keep our message down. Well, to Richard and his mother I can only echo the words of Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby “They’re a rotten crowd…you’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.”
The election of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States has been a flashpoint for identitarians the world over. But with the campaign over, the real battle for the administration has just begun. Of course, Donald Trump is no identitarian (in fact, he’s disavowed the Alt Right), but for those who see hope in his civic nationalist project to reduce immigration, Donald Trump’s cabinet choices are of paramount importance. Personnel is policy, as the old Washington saying goes.
What’s the only thing standing between the United States and a Military coup?
The Military…
The election of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States has been a flashpoint for identitarians the world over. But with the campaign over, the real battle for the administration has just begun. Of course, Donald Trump is no identitarian (in fact, he’s disavowed the Alt Right), but for those who see hope in his civic nationalist project to reduce immigration, Donald Trump’s cabinet choices are of paramount importance. Personnel is policy, as the old Washington saying goes.
In this maelstrom of job seekers, no doubt President-elect Trump is being pulled in many different directions by advisors as varied as Reince Preibus, Steve Bannon, and his own children. This has resulted in a mix of appointments, from the establishment’s old guard, to businessmen, and many retired military officers.
It’s the latter that concerns me.
For starters, it is the wet dream of every cuckservative rag in the beltway to see as its savior some military-industrial complex man in an empty green suit. When one finds oneself on the same side as Bill Kristol, it’s best to check one’s priors.
This fascination goes deeper, down to the very roots of why many of us wanted to see Donald Trump elected. We saw an American Caesar, someone who stood outside of the swamp in Washington and would cross the Rubicon of ‘respectability’ that has strangled existential political discourse in our country for so long. The general, as a figure, is like a post-modern cowboy in the American psyche. Since most Americans no longer serve in its military, these men become mythic gods of war calculating from their Olympus at the Pentagon.
In reality, most generals are nothing more than career bureaucrats who have who have gotten where they are because they play by the latest in PC rules and hold out for a cushy retirement as a government contractor.
Let’s take our current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey who said “Diversity is our greatest strength because it reflects America”. Even the much beloved Gen. “Mad Dog” Mattis has fairly conventional views on Russia which put him line with the old conservative establishment, so much so they even tried spending billions of dollars to convince him to run, oh then there’s his ties to defense contracting. Not to beat a dead horse, but I’d also be skeptical of someone whose reading list consists of Bernard Lewis, Reza Aslan, Thomas Friedman, and Max Boot to make sense of the world around us.
Then there’s Gen. Kelly over at the Department of Homeland Security. Overall, we don’t know much about him. We know that he was commander of US forces throughout South and Central America. In that role he made combatting drug trafficking a major effort. This shows, he knows the threats that cartels and illegal activities pose to a nation’s border saying in a Military Times profile “I think you have to have — we have a right to protect our borders, whether they’re seaward, coastlines, or land borders” however he followed that up with “We have a right to do that. Every country has a right to do that. Obviously, some form of control whether it’s a wall or a fence. But if the countries where these migrants come from have reasonable levels of violence and reasonable levels of economic opportunity, then the people won’t leave to come here.”
This shows a certain level of existential thinking, however it’s one more in-line with a sort of neoconservative technocratic thinking. The emphasis placed on economic development of other countries belies this. In fact, Kelly was a leading proponent of the “Alliance for Prosperity” which has resulted in billions of US dollars going to places like Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador for such hazy goals as “development” and education. It’s also worrying that Kelly made what some have called “extraordinary relationships” with Human Rights groups while administering Guantanamo Bay. I for one, reach for my gun anytime that vapid phrase is used.
Then we come to Gen. Michael Flynn as National Security Advisor. Gen. Flynn is undoubtedly the best of “Trump’s Generals” so far. He is for a radical re-thinking of America’s relations with Russia and other foreign policy shibboleths, and has even winked at the Alt Right on occasion. Most importantly, he is derided by the same types who usually adore general picks. That said, he has not exactly been innocent of the revolving lobbying door that afflicts generals just as much as congressman.
Many, especially those on the right, tend to view the military through rose colored lenses. But it’s been just as infected by cultural Marxism as any other major American institution. This is especially true of its top brass, who must learn to play the game better than most. As a hierarchal institution, change in the military come from the top down. After all, when the ban on transgender soldiers was just lifted then Secretary of Defense Ash Carter quoted Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley as saying “The United States Army is open to all Americans who meet the standard, regardless of who they are. Embedded within our Constitution is that very principle, that all Americans are free and equal.”
This is the crux, most generals are either apparatchiks of the system, or self-interested rent seekers looking to cash in once they retire. I wish it weren’t so, but those of us on the Right, shouldn’t look at our current top brass with anything but a jaundiced eye.
In the wake of discussing “hailgate”, and other controversies it has become easy to forget what a triump the National Policy Institute’s *Become Who We Are 2016* conference was. Over 300 identitarians and Alt Righters desended on Washington D.C. for a two day celebration and exploration of the new vanguard on the American right.
In the wake of discussing “hailgate“, and other controversies it has become easy to forget what a triump the National Policy Institute’s Become Who We Are 2016 conference was. Over 300 identitarians and Alt Righters desended on Washington D.C. for a two day celebration and exploration of the new vanguard on the American right.
Over at Rolling Stone, and article titled “Radically Mainstream: Why the Alt-Right Is Celebrating Trump’s Win” gives a bit of flavor to the conference’s success, though not too much of course, after all, the ideological glass ceiling has to preserved:
At nearly 300 attendees, this year’s gathering – taking place less than two weeks after Trump’s upset victory – is his largest to date…Ten days earlier, I’m waiting outside a restaurant in Washington, D.C.’s trendy Logan Circle. It’s the day after the election, and Spencer has suggested we meet for lunch. The mood of passersby is desultory. Two men recognize and greet each other; when one asks how the other is doing, he shrugs sadly. The first man responds, “I know.”
But when Spencer arrives, he’s elated. He was out late drinking and celebrating the win, and says he got only three hours of sleep. He started his evening at the Trump Hotel and then just roved around the city, where he says he was stopped and greeted by fans. “I don’t want to get too indulgent,” he says, “but it is actually kind of wild where you’ll meet people and they’ll be like, ‘Oh, I love you.’…Over lunch, Spencer says that building white nationalism – or “identitarianism,” as he prefers to call it – poses enormous challenges, because the movement’s ideas are still considered taboo, even toxic, by many Americans. “You’re jumping off into the unknown without any assurance of a parachute,” he says of working in the movement. “Or that you’re kind of taking a leap off a cliff and hoping that your parachute works.” You do so knowing your job opportunities may be curtailed, your family ties strained. Funding, too, has been a struggle. “A multi-millionaire can fund a rather extreme left-wing group and suffer no social consequences for it. He’s not going to get disinvited from his cocktail parties, he’s not going to be denounced by his minister. But on the right – I think even you would admit it’s like that…”
“We’ve been legitimized by this election,” he says. While the campaign itself was a huge boost to the movement, Trump’s election, he says, has brought the Alt-Right to “a new level.” “Legitimacy is … an unmeasurable, intangible thing that is everything.”
He says he sees Trump as a symbol, a vehicle for white aspirations, in much the same way so many projected their hopes and dreams onto Obama. “That made him cool, it made him a force, and I think we’ve made Trump a force in that way. And you can’t measure how important that is…”
He imagines producing a series of white papers that would trickle up into conversations inside the White House, starting with one he produced in October on why NATO should be dismantled. “That is influence, where people are thinking things that they had no idea who planted this in their head,” he says. He likens his approach to the film Inception, in which Leonardo DiCaprio plays a thief who’s able to invade people’s unconscious thoughts. “It’s planting ideas,” he says. “People will come to the conclusions themselves, but the true influencer is the one who kind of helps them, that kind of leads them there.”
On the home front, Spencer expresses enthusiasm for Ivanka Trump’s proposal for paid family leave. “A lot of intelligent women who have great DNA, who are wasting it, in a way, by becoming career gals, and they’re waking up and they’re 45 and they’re living with cats,” he says. Paid leave would allow them to discover that “they really like kids and like being at home, and like babies.” When I say I hear in his words echoes of natalism – a political ideology that promotes childbearing – he agrees, saying he’d call it “natalist socialism.”
He talks cryptically about his contacts in the world of conservative think tanks and media. “They know who we are, we know them, like there is contact, there has been first contact.” He has high hopes for Washington’s younger thought leaders, because “when you talk about people over the age of 50, it’s sometimes hard to get them to create new neural pathways.”
“If you’re young and you’re edgy,” Spencer says, “you’re Alt-Right” – or, he hopes, you will be soon…
What has been “legitimized,” in the Alt-Right view, is the movement’s central creation myth: that white people are being “dispossessed” in contemporary America. Regnery tells me during a break in the conference, over coffee in the Reagan building’s food court, that he feels “a real sense of dispossession” because the country is no longer “90 percent white…”
Trump’s election is symptomatic, to Spencer, that “it is dawning upon millions of white Americans that their future is being cut off from them.” That’s why he’ll encourage his forces to make sure Trump fulfills his campaign promises to not only build a wall, but impose a “dramatic” and “lasting” impact on immigration. Deporting all “illegal immigrants,” he says, would “fundamentally make a difference in terms of the demographic trajectory of the United States.”
“We want to be radically mainstream – that is, we really want to enter the world, we want our ideas to be at the table, and people to listen to them,” says Spencer.
Now, he notes, “that is happening to a very large degree.”
Radically mainstream, we’re the future of the right.
It seems that our beloved Editor-in-Chief, Richard Spencer, has gotten into a bit of a feud with his old prep school, St. Mark’s School of Texas in Dallas. St. Marks…
It seems that our beloved Editor-in-Chief, Richard Spencer, has gotten into a bit of a feud with his old prep school, St. Mark’s School of Texas in Dallas.
St. Marks was, in fact, an inspiriation for Wes Anderson’s film Rushmore, along with his own prep school, St. John’s of Houston. (Anderson’s friend Owen Wilson was a “Marksman” (class of ’87). Richard’s dressing down by the headmaster calls to mind Max Fischer’s travails in Anderson’s eccentric comedy.
But ultimately, condemnation by a headmaster years after graduation lies somewhere beyond satire. Indeed, such humourless thought policing is the reason satire is near dead in mainstream society. As such, it is only proper that we send up this type of behavior wherever it manifests itself—and as always, with joy!
Leading up to the election, Radix Journal will publish a symposium, “The Meaning of Trump,” drawing writers from across the Alt Right. This is Radix Journal‘s managing editor Hannibal Bateman‘s entry It’s…
Leading up to the election, Radix Journal will publish a symposium, “The Meaning of Trump,” drawing writers from across the Alt Right. This is Radix Journal‘s managing editor Hannibal Bateman‘s entry
It’s not morning in America, instead it’s been a long twilight for as long as I can remember.
My generation has been defined by great events we had no control over, from 9/11 to the 2008 financial crash. We’ve felt as if things just happen to us, that we’re life’s eternal moviegoers. We’ve had no consciousness but that gifted to us by our hallowed “media”, typically wrapped up in tropes from the boomer generation that have sapped our country like a swarm of locusts. We’ve been indoctrinated with every lie under the sun about race, about sex, about history and above all we were fed the big lie: Equality.
Most of us were content just to dream, just to hope for some future that could be instead of the nightmare we’re hurtling towards. Many times it just felt like fantasy, the past too seemed like another world, even though it was just a few generations ago. Our grandparents remembered a world where Europeans could be proud of who they are, but we’ve never known a time when we weren’t blamed for every evil in the world.
Then came Trump.
Like a bolt of lightning it was as if we could dare again. Trump may not be one of us, but he’s given our people something that we haven’t known in decades, pride. For those millennials who support Donald Trump it has awakened a fire that has long been suppressed. As the media and their lackeys among the younger generation become more shrill to their contemporaries, “RACIST, BIGOT, SEXIST!” The more many in our generation come to untangle the Gordian Knot of lies they’ve been sold.
This election, as Richard has opined before, contains in it the seeds of being and death. When Trump says “We either have a country or we don’t” he’s making politics existential and personal. Perhaps for the first time, many are realizing that America has been in the process of becoming nothing more than a global favela. Where we once put men on the moon, today we’re just content with out of this world bargains.
People who call themselves “conservatives” have shown themselves to be the eternal losers they are this election. Their “principles” are just a mask for cowardice, and as Peter Thiel out it their “Free Market” ideology is just a mask for decline. But the world coming into being by the left and it’s conservative enablers is not the only option.
Trump is an ending and a beginning. Of what, it’s hard to say just yet but for my generation he’s given us a direction towards the way out of dystopia.
Regardless of today’s outcome, we have a new beginning.
Type on the field below and hit Enter/Return to search
