This Week in Reaction (2015/03/06)

Nationalism Week this week in the Reactosphere®… We shall try to make the best of it. <pip pip>

I covered some of the highlights in my post earlier this week on Neoreaction and Ethno-Nationalism. But the discussion was on-going, and a storm quietly brewing, before NIO came out with his must-read Nationalism and NRx.

Mark Yuray takes on Athelron’s explanation of Cochran’s Socratic puzzle in On Concentric Loyalties: Sine qua non? Sed vere? I truly respect Greg Cochran and Athelron et al., but sometimes instead of HBD scientists simply admitting we don’t yet have an answer, instead we do these thought experiments which begin: “Assume genetics is the only way to arrive at convincing truth about complex biological organisms such as man….” Concentric loyalty is a feeling that most people have. The concept of concentric loyalty explains some of the things that went right in human history. The suppression of feelings of concentric loyalty today seems to be having some very bad consequences. There is a certain aptness to concentric loyalty, a sort of aesthetic pleasantness. And there is a certain unpleasantness in the denial of it, e.g., in “leap-frogging loyalties”. If genetics can come up with an explanation for concentric loyalty, wonderful. If genetics cannot do so, then so freakin’ what?

Then in response to this execrable piece of neo-nazi agitprop, and following NIO’s and my own musings regarding the fitness of “nationalism” per se, Yuray unleashed an animated announcment of his Divorce from Ethnonationalism. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a real fisking. And this one was a deusy.

TRS luminary Michael Enoch interviews Cledun, but barely gets a word in edgewise. Whatever Neoreactionaries mean “Ethno-Nationalism” in the Trichotomy, it isn’t that.

Cledun, well an associate of his, responds to Yuray in the comments with more of his strange blend of 1488-autism, verbosity, and hyper-rational deontology. This prompted Yuray to issue a part two of his divorce.

The Stick of Jim pronounces the final verdict of this affair quite well: Nazis are commies and commies are progressives.

National Socialists are Socialists.

The reason George Soros supports Nazis in the Ukraine is that he does not give a shit about Jews, but does care about socialism.

So say we all!

Welp… what else…

Spandrell is his usual awesome self here: Leftism is just an easy excuse. The power hungry will always search for ways to get some from those who have it. Ideology just happens to be a way—a good way as it turns out. My apologies for the big paste, but it is just. that. good:

And again: the precise content of the ideological point doesn’t matter. Your human brain doesn’t care about ideology. Humans didn’t evolve to care about Marxist theory of class struggle, or about LGBTQWERTY theories of social identity. You just don’t know what it means. It’s all abstract points you’ve been told in a classroom. It doesn’t actually compute. Nothing that anybody ever said in a political debate ever made any actual, concrete sense to a human being.

So why do we care so much about politics? What’s the point of ideology? Ideology is just the water you swim in. It is a structured database of excuses, to be used to signal your allegiance or defection to the existing ruling coalition. Ideology is just the feed of the rationalization Hamster that runs incessantly in that corner of your brain. But it is immaterial, and in most cases actually inaccessible to the logical modules in your brain.

Nobody ever acts on their overt ideological claims if they can get away with it. Liberals proclaim their faith in the potential of black children while clustering in all white suburbs. Communist party members loudly talk about the proletariat while being hedonistic spenders. Al Gore talks about Global Warming while living in a lavish mansion. Cognitive dissonance, you say? No; those cognitive systems are not connected in the first place.

And ideological sincerity doesn’t make sense on the face of it. Why would anything like that ever evolve? Given how ideology actually behaves, a gene that made you be coherent with your ideology can’t possibly spread in the gene pool. A gene for being able to aptly manipulate nonsensical abstract points to signal your position and intention vs. the present power structure; now that’s useful.

That’s MISTER Moldbug to you.

Speaking of Athelron, he posted these mashups of Moldbug quotes with Frank Underwood. They do pair well.

Free Northerner posts a re-run: Pleasures of the Flesh, about how the hedonic treadmill is… well… a treadmill. And, hey, if you didn’t see it the first time, it’s first run for you. Also, some notes on whether Sharing Interests with one’s wife is all that people crack it up to be.

Nick Land pulls a beautiful quote from Richard Fernandez on The Trouble with Entropy and how modern Shibboleths are directly fostering it. Land also points to one of Sailer’s very best—on Darwin and Galton and, as is almost always the case, so much more.

Wesley takes note of the fact that America is not a civilized country. But I mean, c’mon, most of those 11 homicide victims per 100k people don’t look like you, right? And then on Thursday Wes goes meta on sin itself in A golden age of morality? While I think it inarguable that sin was less common at most times and places over the last millennium and half, Wes is certainly right to point out it was still quite common, and right to note the biggest cultural shift has not been in the amount of it, but the ways we find nowadays to polish such turds.

Bryce has a couple of good pieces up over at his auxiliary blog. I had a minor quibble with Margin and Complexity, but the overall thrust of the argument, i.e., Simplify, is quite well put:

Simplification should be alluring, and moreover, it is a mandate. Simplify, or Gnon will simplify for you.

Then, from notes on his forthcoming book, provocatively (and tentatively) entitled The Origin of Social Order, Mr. Laliberte entices us with The Three Laws of Order.

From Jim a very incisive formula:

If one poster girl, or black poster boy, fake, then all fake, since obviously progressives will run with the best they can find.

Similarly, if everything most Americans “know” of black treatment in the antebellum South comes from a fraudulent book and TV miniseries, then what most American’s know about it is bunk.

Neovictorian asks a deliciously ironic question: Is Marijuana the Gateway Drug to “States’ Rights”? He thinks so. I hope so.

Over at Theden a good piece from Robert Joyner: Educational Reform and the Refusal to Face Gaps.

From Isegoria: even Herbivores aren’t always… um… herbivorous. So, take that, human herbivores. Also when running a tech company, smart isn’t all you need.

This Week at Social Matter

Last Friday’s SM post from David Grant came just after my roundup last week, so this week in Social Matter starts early. Weekend Material: Watch Predator (1987) is a thought-provoking review, through a neoreactionary lens, of a movie I had missed. I was at the time at a university that forbade movie attendance. But in this Age of Netflix I’ve no longer an excuse. It’s on the queue.

Welp, the first part of SB’s and my conversation with Hurlock is finally up.

On Monday, Mark Yuray delivers Different Mentalities—i.e., between consumers of Russian and Western propaganda. Vice Magazine‘s Simon Ostrovsky wants you to notice Novorussiyan witch trials without attending to America’s own.

Henry Dampier drops by in his normal Tuesday slot to ask Can Multiculturalism Be Retracted? To think it is easy is to ignore just how bound up the pattern of accelerating migration is with the entire raft of state-aggrandizing, left-liberal policy over much of the last century.

Mitchell Laurel shows up this week at SocialMatter for the first of what I take to be a permanent gig. He reviews Michael Pillsbury’s China’s Hundred Year Marathon. Clocking in at over 4100 words, Laurel’s review amounts to a mid-sized pamphlet. He takes some issue with Pillsbury’s hypothesis: China doesnt’ seek to be a new America so much as it seeks to be a renewed version of itself:

The Chinese see that the only way forward for them is through cooperation. Cooperation given freely, cooperation given fully, cooperation undertaken now. That’s why the Chinese reach out to every nation on the planet and attempt to win them over with money and quaint Chinese culture. It’s not because they want to convert the world in their image. Unlike the Americans, the Chinese know that the whole world does not care to be Chinese. They want to spread out and cooperate because they know that’s the only way for them to survive. They must start offering win-win solutions everywhere.

Laurel proceeds to take us step by step through China’s 9-step ostensible plan to achieve world domination. Quite interesting and educational. Great work!

Reed Perry takes the mic from Glanton on Thursday to talk about The Tyranny of Suffrage. It is a magnificent, haunting piece about a son—somebody’s “Our Boy”—who died in WWI, and the world for which he died not much giving a fig. On the way, Perry makes a direct assault on women’s suffrage on the grounds of simple, straight-up justice. He indicts the a posteriori effects as well. Probably best thing I read this week. (maybe a toss-up with the Spandrell I mentioned). Speaking of Women’s Suffrage, this link, via private correspondence, is on point: A Cause Lost—and Forgotten: Lessons from Mary Ward and the Women’s Anti-Suffragist Movement.

John Glanton shows up on Friday this week bearing a pretty positive review of Michael Anissimov’s Critique of Democracy. (My own review is here.)

Ash Milton adds a shot of perspective to the Russophilia, and its near variant Putinmania, that has arisen in Neoreaction, as well as other spots in the greater alt-right, with Russia Is Not Our Saviour. Ash and Mitchell are gonna have to have a cage match to settle this thing once and for all.

This week in Henry Dampier

Henry starts out the week “going meta” in Why Write? This is a rare, from him, glimpse into his own intellectual development and that of what now goes by the name “#NRx”. Don’t miss it. You probably won’t see the likes of it again anytime soon.

He also says, quite rightly, that Common Genes Don’t Forge a Nation. But I think a common je ne sais quoi does.

Henry’s Political Impacts of Ivy League Grade Inflation is a brilliant think piece. The punchline is that even though fighting the Cathedral directly has never been harder, out-competing it is getting ever easier. But it’s still plenty hard and will take some time. I’m thinking: Like the Amish, except with a scalable self-defense plan.

On Wednesday, following a couple of big gulps of Taleb, Henry expounds upon The Ludic Fallacy—mistaking the model, especially that of human behavior, for the reality. It is common trap, especially for model-makers.

Thursday’s Book Review tackles Ed West’s The Diversity Illusion. West, who is one of a tiny few mainstream journos to name drop Moldbug, seems like a good honest chap; even if a bit uncomfortable in the role of pointing out the Emperor’s Junk is showing. Henry lets him do a lot of the talking.

Another Kindle Sale as part of Henry’s “campaign of annoyance to get as many people as possible to improve their digital reading habits” and also put a couple bucks in his pocket. It’s win-win.

Finally, on Friday Henry sketches an outline of one of his more controversial views I Don’t Believe In the ‘Automation Eats All Jobs’ Thesis. Controversial, that is, in neoreactionary circles, who tend to be a couple standard deviations more dystopian than most. I’ve been very skeptical of this thesis as well. Human civilization begins with labor saving technology: The Plough. Labor or time that gets saved always goes somewhere: either to new things to work on, or, crucially, leisure.

This week in 28 Sherman

On Sunday, the Son of Brock Landers delivers the next installment in his series Hidden History: How America Created the Cuban Missile Crisis.

BTW, previous editions of 28 Sherman’s Hidden History include:

• The Hard Hat Riot
• Labor Strikes During WW2
• Fighting Bathhouse Closures
• The Truth of “Never Again”
• The French Mutinies of 1917
• Mockingbird, Murrow and McCarthy
• The Last Supreme Court Nominees Discriminated Against

Old Cuban lady smoking cigar.

…plus a bunch of others that he probably wrote before he came up with “Hidden History” concept. Anyway it’s a great series, and something I hope he’ll turn into a book someday. 2015 is shaping up to be The Year of Neoreactionary Books!

Speaking of Cuba, SoBL questions the Obama Administration’s late Reaching Out. No sense making nice-nice with the winners of the Cold War now.

Next he plays the new game of Clue: Nemtsov Edition. Most likely guesses are that someone is trying to frame Putin. But who? Or is Putin trying to frame someone for framing him? Stay tuned.

SoBL alerts us to the latest leftoid rage about Chicago PD’s ostensibly “black” sites. Basically a white occutard was taken into custody and found they didn’t serve tea and crumpets. Why would anyone listen to him? That’s the scary part:

The motivations behind this article might be as more ammunition for the police overhaul underway at the federal level. The Brown-Garner outrage from 2014 created calls for community engagement, body cameras and whatnot. In reality, it created an in for the federal government to be able to tap local police departments on the shoulder to fall into line. It is a sovereignty battle. The threats will be lawsuits and simple “you must play to get the grants and discounted equipment”. The anarcho-tyranny will be turned up a notch, the unreported brown-black race war will continue, and nothing will improve.

He says “Yes, Conservakin, Obama Doesn’t Love America + Isn’t Christian”. This was a particularly strong and thoughtful piece, even for SoBL. He says:

Rudy’s comment on Obama not loving America is true, but with a far deeper truth hidden to it…. The deeper truth is that we all love the America that our mind envisions when we say the word. The red state men that make up the strength of our military do not think they’re fighting for the progressive buffet when they enlist. They are fighting for girls in gingham tops, BBQ, mudding in a truck, guns and hot days swimming in a river. The blue state SWPLs who started loving America in November of 2008 love the progressive buffet America that resembles post-WW2 western Europe. Blacks love black America, and so on. We all love our specific America, and the fortunate thing of atomizing people and being able to use financial apartheid is that the elite can softly segregate people as they screw them over.

On Friday, SoBL notes that Michael Sam Proves Skeptics Right. Dancing with the “stars”. Gay Privilege, anyone?

This week in Mitchell Laurel

Not slowed by his recent promotion at Social Matter, Mitchell Laurel continues to be a posting machine from his new digs in Portugal. He starts off with coverage of the murder of Russian liberal Boris Nemtsov with his usual cheer… and conspiracy theorizing. Also he links a superior explanation for the murder. Moar updates Thursday with signs pointing to Chechnyans.

Next up, Mitchell takes note of The Coming Demographic Crisis Of The Ukraine due to the twin genomic killers of ill-advised war and brain drain. Just how gently used those excess single Ukrainian hotties will be, I think, remains to be seen.

News on the American provocation in the South China Sea and the coming Russo-Cypriot alliance.

This was good: Political Inoculation: Islam And The West. Mitchell considers Islam no threat to the West, so long as it stays out of the West, which would be easy enough to do if it weren’t for our current political class.

As I’ve said many times Islamic terrorism is a Western created foreign policy tool, and a very successful one at that. Beginning with its use in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union, the Jihadis have become a fantastically useful mercenary army/clandestine spyforce/patsy group. Anytime, anywhere, they can be used, and to do entirely irrational acts from the perspectives of their own supposed groups. Naturally those situations are fabulously useful to the West and her allies.

Next, Mitchell takes the “neg” on Against (William R.) Polk’s Ukrainian EU Solution. The EU is a wholly owned subsidiarity of USG. Not many under the spell of the organs of Western propaganda realize this, but the Russians are not much under that spell.

USS Ronald Reagan

A big piece of analysis—part 1 of it at any rate—on the increasing marginal disutility of USA’s pimped up navy.

This was good: Feminism: Socialism in Panties. Mitchell highlights some benefits (and deficiencies) in “anti-feminist” Karen Straughan taking down feminism from a libertarian, if not very conservative, perspective. I agree: its a foundation of sand. But, hey, enough sand can still do some good.

Also from Mitchell, Have The Chinese Millionaires Failed In Their Vancouver Obligations?. Not really he says. More on the Ukraine: Rebels In The West or, if you think coal-mining is a dirty, thankless job, how ’bout fighting a losing war with incompetent leadership? Here are some historical notes on The Failure Of Italian Imperialism and some analysis of Armenia and Azerbaijan. Late adder: Turkish Testing And The Black Sea Future.

Is there any Mitchell Laurel is not interested in? Let’s see we’ve yet to see a post on knitting, and, somewhat surprisingly, on hockey. That’s about it.

This week in Sage Basil

A first this week: Peppermint gets his own section in Da News. He went on a tear of sorts. Of what sort, I cannot tell. He continues to re-read Moldbug and compare the notes with Oliver in Socialism is Cancer. The result is an unpredictable medley of various forbidden flavors, but this is one of the ones I thought most tasty:

The relationship of the Jews to socialism is the same as the relationship of HIV to Karposi’s sarcoma. And it is not unknown in history for a nation to contract Jews through sodomy.

This is why the frightful Jewish conspiracy Oliver talks about has not managed to suppress neoreaction or even neonaziizm. HIV can only kill CD4 cells. The actual death of the patient needs to be from other causes; the United States has AIDS and many parts have been colonized by various fungi, but with the general collapse of social organization comes the inability of anyone to do much of anything.

Peppermint, the plant not the cupcake

I said unpredictable, right? This post disintegrates into a montage of personal attacks. Peppermint cannot find anything evil in his heart to cast at Jim though. This we yet find in his favor. He sounds quite like he’s ready to throw in the towel on the neoreactionary sphere. (Not that there’d be anything wrong with that.) But he returns two days later with vast pastes from Oliver in History and the Historians and apology of sorts… for lack of proofreading.

Finally, or at least so he says, Peppermint has Something for Nick Land: The International Jew, with more intemperate pot shots this time, but I’d like to think of them as: intemperate pot shots for a purpose. Trouble is I cannot quite see the purpose. I find the accusation that NRx spends not enough time focusing on Da Joos to be risible. It often seems like we focus on little else. And I don’t think Peppermint insufficiently perspicacious to notice this, nor that Moldbug and Radish, two people of the approximately three neoreactionaries in whom he expresses confidence, are no small part Jewish. If this be court jestering, Peppermint has raised it to a high and verbose art. Quite befitting neoreaction, I think.

Nope. That was not all, oh no, it was not all. More stream of consciousness blogging in The Dual Telos—of sex… and so much more! Peppermint starts off as though he’s going to “come out”, but never quite does. (Not that there’d be anything wrong with that.) He ends with a few more tomatoes to throw at Dampier, presumably for not being Peppermint’s platonic ideal of Dampier. (Well, who is?) A variety of ink blot patterns show up in-between. Each reader will come away with impressions that may say more out the reader than the writer. Then again, hey, you’re the one showing all the dirty pictures…

We listen because we care, Peppermint, not because we can make out what you’re saying… Well, at least I do.

This week… Elsewhere

In #SRx news, Skyagusta has up Reaction Implies Action; Or, Imperative: Build. He gets things exactly right here:

Here is where reactionaries set ourselves apart. Reaction implies action. Reactionaries are just as ineffectual as any blithering Facebook Conservakin unless we can adopt and apply the imperative to Build an effective counter-solution to the Leftist establishment which currently dominates the West. Effective implies based in traditional principles. Counter-solution implies providing alternative power structures, detached and independent from the establishment.

That in a nutshell is what #NRx means by “passivism”: not merely do nothing (perish the thought); but instead, seeing that the game of mainstream party politics is rigged, finding another game to play—building a new, more humane, more workable, more survivable structure. Also from Skyagusta: an excerpt, from an Italian Marxist, On Antebellum Patriarchalism in the Plantation-era American South. And, late-breaking, another excerpt, this time from Fitzhugh’s Cannibals All! or, Slaves Without Masters.

Not Robert Mariani (nor Jordan Bloom)

Robert Mariani, who with Jordan Bloom, runs the immensely successful parody twitter account Salondotcom, introduces the first triannual Mitrailleuse’s Trolling Contest. Tri-… Triannual, eh? Hmm… I’m sure that’s just a coincidence…. But seriously, this sounds like rousing good fun.

Bonald is the go-to source for all things Catholic, all things Physics, and all things Star Trek. I largely agree with his premise, i.e., that Star Trek succeeded in spite of, not because of, it’s creators’ loopy politics. In fact, I’d put the nadir of the Star Trek universe, not at Voyager (which was merely unmemorable), but in the first two seasons of Next Generation, during which Roddenberry had the greatest creative control over the… well… the enterprise. Those were memorably BAD.

Kristor is his usual outstanding self here with The Insatiable Maw that Devours Men & Nations—an extended meditation on addictions, good and bad, and where they come from.

Right Scholar checks in with an original poem about St. Antipas of Pergamum.

Mr. Roach opines on the debacle of Netanyahu’s speech in the House. Agreed here. As if we needed further proof that we are a nation run by clowns. On both “sides” of the aisle.

Malcolm Pollack takes a somewhat contrary view on Netanyahu’s Speech. Well, certainly Netanyahu is a far greater and accomplished statesman and orator (and warrior and gentleman and probably a bunch of other things) than Obama. But that’s all the more reason to keep him from exercising influence over the slobbering retards in our Congress that fawn over Israel. Also from Malcolm, words of wisdom:

The edges of our lives are unlike the middle. The child is unaware of [his] future; the old man has none.

See also his random thoughts coupled with some beautiful pics of a rather frozen Cape Cod.

Via The Kakistocracy, Overcoming the Luddites—the science-denying, pearl clutching, bigots of Progressivism. Also the GOP pulling a hard left again in its never-ending Game of Chicken with Dems.

Legionnaire Donovan Greene delivers the latest Fragments—bashing democracy is not as edgy as you think and writers’ block is a fiction edition.

Just re-followed Briggs. He had some sort of blog mishap a couple months ago and all the sudden I stopped getting emails for his updates. If you needed any further proof that the journalistic profession, in addition to science, is untrustworthy and corrupt this should about do it. Also in an unexpected victory for Bayesians everywhere, academic journal Basic and Applied Social Psychology has decided to ban p-values and confidence intervals.

That’s all I got time fer. Ya know, some people claim that neoreaction’s stagnating and boring. Speak for yourself. Sometimes I feel as though I’ve been cursed by these interesting times. Here’s to a boringer week. As always, let me know what I’m missing. It’s probably unintentional… Keep on reactin’! Til next week, TRP… Over and out!!