Free Northerner has been going meta on “Alt-Right” and relatedtopics for a while now. He delivers a data rich answer to What is the Alt-Right? Nick Land asks the exact same question, but sees it purely as a populist (and therefore heterodox) movement:
Neoreaction, as I understand it, predicted the emergence of the Alt-Right as an inevitable outcome of Cathedral over-reach, and didn’t remotely like what it saw. Kick a dog enough and you end up with a bad-tempered dog. Acknowledging the fact doesn’t mean you support kicking dogs — or bad-tempered dogs. Maybe you’d be happy to see the dog-kicker get bitten (me too). That, however, is as far as it goes.
Ryan Landry, who pays attention to these things (and may someday be paid good money for it), tells us what actually happened…
The Rick Wilson: Arbiter of Matterers in the (So-Called) Course of Humanity
Mr. Rick Wilson lost his head on national television and talked about the altright as if it were a bunch of Nazis that “masturbate to anime”. First, Rick, I think the kids masturbate to hentai, but let us not split hairs since you lost your cool on national television and signal boosted a bunch of “nazis” in your words. Second, you idiot, you made people google “altright”, and what they found was most likely not a bunch of nazis who masturbate to anime. It was guys like Richard Spencer, who keeps it classy and respectable.
Plus a lot more.
Mark Citadel (with whom Anthony and Antony and I spoke last Friday for an up-coming AtT episode–great guy!) touches on the alt-right/NRx cleavage Have You Failed the Entry Exam? He skewers some particularly egregious NatSoc Buffoonery™ that stained the carpet of a Millennial Woes hangout. Some of my best friends might be fashists, but only ironically. Mark Citadel wins an ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention☀ on magisterial tone alone.
What do I think? I’ll let Based Konkvistador have the last word on the matter
There are bad reasons to have disdain for the Alt Right: The NYT thinks they are icky. Good reasons: They think Trump will save them.
But why has Mack and the rest of the Red State been so blind to this? Mainly because his gaze is directed outwards, and not inwards. The assumption that the state behind you is cohesive and of the understanding that you are trying to protect It, and make the world safe for it, is an assumption which is tragically false.
Warg Based Franklin comes on The Future Primaeval to talk about Bad Government. Let Warg count the ways. He wins ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention☀ for his efforts. (And no, it’s not because he’s my boss. Really…)
Capital is learning faster than its adversaries, and has done so since it initially became self-propelling, roughly half a millennium ago. It’s allergic to socialism (obviously), and tends to flee places where socialist influence is substantially greater than zero. Unless caged definitively, eventually it breaks out.
Nick Land seems to be reading Hestia Society notes here in The Deal.
Nydwracu dumps a big paste from Christopher Lasch’s The True and Only Heaven, wherein early 20th century liberal disdain for middle America, including that of HL Mencken, is abundantly documented. Also Land catches Nydwracu in with beautiful tiny pearl.
Lovely Emma Watson, whose wishes are in fact horses.
[T]he Emma Watsons of the Western world are in fact the greatest threat to our civilisation because their feel-good zero-accountability brain-farts have created the cultural backdrop against which we see the current degeneracy unfold
“Feel-good zero-accountability brain-farts”… LOL. And so true. Also Moar from @WrathOfGnon.
[A] long time back, students campaigning for the supposed achievements of NAMs to be given more attention in universities, sung “Western Civ has got to go” – meaning, or thinking they meant, the course “Western Civilization”
And similarly those calling for “the liquidation of the kulaks as a class” did not at first think they were calling for the liquidation of kulaks as individual human beings.
But in holiness competition, we get the phenomenon that neoreactionaries call “not getting the joke”. If you are going to be selected for loyalty to progressive memes, best take those memes absolutely literally and seriously, since only the truest believers get into the best universities and get the plum jobs. So the next generation of progressives takes the most ridiculous things as holy writ, the more ridiculous the better, since precisely the most stupid, ridiculous and outrageous things will differentiate you from the other applicant to Harvard.
Atavisionary updates his blogroll page, which wouldn’t ordinarily be news, if his weren’t the most comprehensive one in NRx. But it is.
Filed under Pretty Darn Inside Baseball, Alrenous takes a 4-gauge fisk to Yudkowsky’s Affective Heuristic. Also this was interesting (and understandable). He takes issue with Eric Raymond discovery of “universal system of ethics” in the silent trade. It’s simply applied prudence.
Thursday was the 223rd anniversary of January 21st, 1793. Rhys Caerwyn has the details on the Day the France went certifiably insane.
Speaking of telos, Giovanni Dannato notes: Markets Exist To Benefit Society: He says, “If money is blood, the market is the circulatory system.” And if that analogy is true, then…
The trouble with a system of “free market” capitalism is the implicit belief that the market exists for its own sake, not to serve the best interests of the social body in which it is but an organ. We should do as well to conclude that our own bodies exist for the good of the heart and arteries. So if the brain, liver, or muscles were to suffer a blood shortage it is the will of the almighty drop of blood and evil for the brain to regulate the heart to more evenly distribute the blood supply throughout its organs. Or if there were parasites in the blood, to conclude the veins “know” what’s best and to restrain the immune system because the parasites “earned” their place.
Dannato scores another ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention☀.
Moar Alt-Right Drama (where’s Dante when ya need him?) suppressed by Free Northerner in Purging Roosh. He lists the reasons why that’s neither possible nor desirable.
From Right Scholarship, an impressive Manifesto for Catholic Cultural Studies. Sounds pretty similar to what Hestia is trying to do. You’ll just have to RTWT. This wins the ☀☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Award☀☀.
CNWY’s Saturday epistle: No Other Flags Over Europe. One does wonder when the muzzies are going to notice that most of the flags of Northwestern Europe feature prominently a (shhhh) cross.
This Week in Social Matter
We noted last week how rock musicians enjoyed certain latitudes for edginess expressions in the ’70s. Today they have to be edgy, but only in certain carefully prescribed ways. Ryan Landry has the story Rock N Roll Is Dead, The SJWs Have Killed It. Think of it as Rock-n-Roll+.
Meet the new boss. Just the same as the old boss.
A proudly queer band by the name of Gloss received some media publicity. It was a bit odd, though, as they are mediocre and had only recorded an eight-minute demo. If you read media reviews, the media always crows about how Gloss sings of the pain and sorrow that follows a transgendered teen. They are speaking for those with no voice, just as Bruce Jenner spoke for twenty-five minutes at the ESPYs after coming out in a nationally televised interview, since trans* people are never given the microphone. The band has trans* performers. If this band sang in a foreign country with all this press for little output, you would assume it was a State Department-CIA operation–like Pussy Riot.
Some people pushed back.
Sorry, only one band pushed back: Whirr. Whirr poked fun at Gloss for being terrible and pushed the idea that Gloss was going trans* as a gimmick to get press and make money.
This would be funny… if it weren’t so sad. I know many musical artists, with more talent in their left pinkies than Gloss has in its whole band, who’ve struggled in obscurity their entire lives, working day jobs, and getting hundreds of likes on facebook. Chalk it up to cishetwhitemale privilege I guess. We live in an age of shit, where shiteaters decide which culinary delights get 5-star reviews. Making something beautiful is the most counterrevolutionary act of all.
And Landry returns Wednesday with Weimerica Weekly—People Have No Shame If You Incentivize No Shame Edition.
“29 Sherman” week at Social Matter. I trust that things will be picking up soon. (It’s already next week. 3 articles by 3 different authors on 3 days. So. Good!)
This Week at 28 Sherman
Over at his home blog, Ryan Landry’s patent-pending Big Monday Commentary Piece®: Humpty Dumpty Progressivism—an exposé on the media’s selective enforcement of public morals narrative tropes. For example,
The idea of a Slutwalk was a multi-year feminists tool in reaction to one cop warning women in Toronto that they should have situational awareness and be cognizant of how they dressed as they walked through rough cities. This was victim blaming and set off years worth of women proudly marching as sluts. Fast forward to January of 2016. The city of Cologne Germany experienced hundreds of sexual assaults by a thousand Muslim rapefugees. The mayor, a woman, advised women to watch how they dressed not to entice Muslims and to keep an arm’s length away. Victim blaming and a rape culture cause the feminists to do… nothing. No protest. No nothing. Humpty Dumpty Progressivism strikes again!
And this week in WW1 pics: Trench Clubs. An impressive collection of ’em.
This Week in Kakistocracy
Porter begins the week where else? Well, with Porter you never know. But of course: The Migrugee Crisis™. Seems some Syrians are drawing straws short enough to end up in São Paulo. That’s in Brazil. And you’ll never guess The First Phrase She Learned by Heart. In Brazilian, that is. Not that you can really blame the migrugees, but… Syrians? in São Paulo?? Brazil??? I’ve heard White Guilt really sells at a huge premium there, and even then usually only on the black market.
Next: lulzworthy coverage of the Lilly White Academy Awards. Turns out Mrs. White is actually Jewish. (I blame lazy immigration officers.)
[Ed. Tweet embed removed for dubious authenticity. Suffice it to say Jews are overrepresented in Hollywood. Especially among producers which the original graphic (oddly) left out. No reason to exaggerate the truth to make valid points. [More Ed. This was a tweet I embedded because I thought it was humorously relevant. It played no part of Porter’s linked post.]]
Porter highlights a neglected minority of NFL players—those who hate their jobs—Third and Long. Poor dears.
Filed under Refugee Crisis? Crisis for Whom?? Porter has notes on Swedish Moral Grandstanding. And speaking of migrugees, Japan’s obstreperousness on the whole issue has Porter rethinking his lifelong meh on Asian women.
This Week in Evolutionist X
Evolutionist X begins the week with a book review: Strawberry Girl, by Lois Lenski (1945), which she chose based on the strength (and refreshingly strong language) of the back cover blurb. A nice review with a bit of history about “Southern whites”.
She also asks: Is Southern Hospitality a Myth? Having lived (and hosted folks) in both places, I think she gets a lot right here. It’s really just different cultures. Southerners find Southern Hospitality hospitable. Northerners will find it perhaps quaint… or sickening. I tend to the quaint opinion myself. But, really, it’s okay for people to be different.
Mrs. X has steaming rant about English class. Just kidding about the steaming part. She actually makes crucial points in this one. The problem with English “Papers” is that they are not, in general, oriented toward the actual practice of English literature.
While there are better and worse ways to teach math, I accept that the math I did in high school and college was “real math,” and that anyone faced with calculating when a plane going 500 miles an hour will get to Detroit will do much the same calculation as I did. To the extend that I use math in my adult life, it is generally performed exactly like I was taught to do it, or else I can figure it out based on what I have already learned.
I think the problem is “English”, qua one monolithic mashup of grammar, composition, and literature. These are a separate disciplines and trying to mash them up in one class called “English” seems a like a big mistake.
And capping off a very busy week in Evolutionist X, one more (at least) of Kabloona Friday—Unburdening Eskimo Society Edition. Among other poignant snippets.
This Week… Elsewhere
I was gonna skip this: Benjamin Franklin’s meditations on The Project of Moral Perfection. I mean… Benjamin Franklin fer heavsakes. A more godless founding father I do not think we had. But then I said, Wait!, that’s important: An obviously godless, yet learned, yet industrious man coming at not only morality, but moral “perfection”. Or an approximation of it at any rate. And his principles are not far off. Not far off at all. Also a tribute to Forrest McDonald, who passed away this week. I relied significantly on his work in my undergraduate thesis and felt like I was his student. They aren’t making historians like him anymore. Forrest McDonald (1927-2016) RIP.
Chris Gale has been doing Poems of the Day, too much to cover comprehensively. (By all means go read). But I especially liked this short one from Ezra Pound numbered 49.
The lessons of Icarus and Herr Doktor Frankenstein are always thought to apply to the other guy, which is why the hubris in this field is none too small. Since we have little idea which exact genes control intelligence, and how intelligence “interacts” with the rest of a person, there is no way we can accurately predict the effects of our meddlings. This should, but does not, dampen enthusiasm.
I gave my own answer to that here. A long time ago. This too: an update on his forthcoming Book: Uncertainty. Kewl name.
One of the clearest indications that you’re doing something right is when the official voice of godless materialism starts to sound like Lost in Space’s Dr. Smith being chased by a spider. Polska, Poland, has been causing the New York Times to squeal like a teen-aged girl told she can’t have the newest cell phone. It’s a pretty thing to see.
Bonald does a colonoscopy on the pathology of Puritan moral psychology: .
Sound familiar?
[T]his is the most terrifying thing about Leftists: their absolute and vindictive moral certainty, a product of their Manichean worldview that casts themselves as pure good and their opponents as pure evil. They claim to be tolerant, but to those they really do disapprove they are pitiless. It occurs to me that Leftists may have a very different personal experience with morality than Christians. While Christians all to some extent fail to follow our own moral code, and are thus confronted with our own personal weakness and viciousness, Leftist morality, being a matter of attitudes, can be quite easy. It’s not hard to avoid having negative thoughts about blacks, especially if your only exposure to them is The Cosby Show. Nor am I impressed with so-called “liberal guilt” which always seems to mean condemnation of one’s ancestors for failing to meet one’s own standards. The fact that this is what passes for guilt with them just illustrates how different are their moral experiences. For us, morality usually means confronting ourselves; for them, it mostly means confronting evil others. What if many on the social justice warrior Left have never, or almost never, felt personal guilt or shame?
Democracy is an unworkable fiction. It always has been. Most people are crazy until they self-discipline; democracy removes knowledge of this need. People in groups choose easy compromises over hard truths; democracy legitimizes this process. The ideology of all people being equal creates a pervasive guilt and paranoia in all people, and it makes them existentially miserable. They turn to fetishes, greed, and inanity to escape, but nothing can save them.
We live in a time that is thoroughly sick with this deep mental illness. Sanity is considered insane because insanity is mandated to be normal and sane. The paradox breaks people, starting with the most intelligent. While democracy has bungled every decision it has been handed, it has also muddled and distorted the minds of its citizens, so that now misery rules the land but no one will admit it.
I got no idea who this guy, “Cato Disapproves” is (doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue), but this was a fantastic bit of testimony: Christianity and Meaning.
The decadence, the moral and epistemological relativism we see so widespread today is directly traceable back to Christianity’s decline as the center of European life. Religion is more than simply believing in the supernatural, it is a way of life, it is the organizing principle of most societies throughout human history and the creative source of culture and meaning for all civilizations. Because many people see religion as simply a set of superstitious beliefs they did not foresee the consequences of a secular society which is an inadequate substitute for giving people meaning and purpose.
Why the fairness argument fails with conservatives and men in general[:] We don’t tend to have much sympathy for men who complain about unfair treatment. Whether you think we should have more sympathy or not is a separate question. The reality is this is true.
Moar:
The other problem with framing this as a matter of fairness is this naturally leads to an attempt to fix the family structure we have selected to replace marriage. Fairness means more egalitarian divorce, child support laws, and custody arrangements. It means replacing marriage with something more fair than the system we have already replaced marriage with. This isn’t what we need to do. What we need to do is restore marriage, not come up with a more palatable way to destroy families.
JM Smith has another gem over at OrthosphereOver the Line: a bit of etymology on the word “outrage” and a big fat moral to chase with.
In his book Coming Apart (2012), Charles Murray tries to capture this state of affairs by saying that we have lost our sense of “unseemliness,” meaning our sense of what lies beyond the “limit of decency.” His examples are outrageous acts of ostentation and cupidity by members of our new elite. Their monstrosities of excess are not criminal, perhaps not even unjust, but they are outrages against what was, until just the other day, a common sense of decency. Until just the other day everyone, including the filthy rich, would have seen and respected a limit to luxuriance.
Completely gratuitous picture of Jessica Alba
Beyond this limit lay excess, outrage, indecency, or, to draw in yet another word, obscenity. All obscenities are not lewd, although excesses of lewdness are always obscene. An obscenity is a gross outrage against the bounds of decency, an instance of offensive excess. And we can no longer agree about what is obscene because a time of universal outrage is a time of universal obscenity. This is what Murray means by “coming apart.”
Filed under Hey! Great New Menciian Blog: Axel McKibbin at The Anti-Puritan brings us Crime versus investment. A taste:
If we define crime as the destruction of the future for present profit, then democracy is crime. But even more than that, democracy is a marketplace for the purchasing of laws. So it is disorganized crime where multiple, competing rent-seekers bid for maximum wealth at their neighbors expense. Libertarians can do nothing about it. A Senator sells other peoples money in exchange for campaign contributions. He arranges redistribution, tax breaks, subsidies, and welfare provisions in exchange for the funds necessary to enrich himself and get reelected. He is a multi-party broker. A libertarian Congressman is simply an unprofitable broker with nothing to sell.
The mainstream media discovering the “alt right” has been the most fun event in the news for some time. They don’t know how to approach it. It’s an interesting introduction for those recently awakened but still too complex to make its points. May the counter-revolution rage strong in the future.
My thanks for continuing to include me here. I’m working on a series on the economic pillars of a virtuous order now that I’ve pondered the natural social classes and the wellsprings of culture and innovation.
Next up will have to do with the importance of distributing money to the most deserving and best in character and judgment.
@Brett: The news media is not used to being the ones who don’t run the show. Trump’s well-placed hostility to the media is (by far) the most #NRx thing about him. But this occult role of media was, of course, not something unknown to Nixon.
@Giovanni: You’re doing great, and underappreciated, work. Your approach strikes me as very consistent with Natural Law philosophy. Perhaps you are a Catholic or have been saturated in Catholic culture. But it feels very natural to me. Anyway, bravo!
@Nick: I’m not Catholic, nor do I subscribe to any particular religion, but I do take some inspiration from Dark Age to Medieval laws of finance and ethics that were a reaction to the excesses of the Roman Empire. Graeber’s book on Debt: the First 5000 years was a big influence.
Looking up natural law through Aristotle, Cicero, and Aquinas. A great lead you gave me. Already am a big fan of Aristotle’s golden mean. Simple yet one of the most effective concepts to apply to real life.
First, I try to apply common sense in a very child-like way and build from there.
The mainstream media discovering the “alt right” has been the most fun event in the news for some time. They don’t know how to approach it. It’s an interesting introduction for those recently awakened but still too complex to make its points. May the counter-revolution rage strong in the future.
LikeLike
My thanks for continuing to include me here. I’m working on a series on the economic pillars of a virtuous order now that I’ve pondered the natural social classes and the wellsprings of culture and innovation.
Next up will have to do with the importance of distributing money to the most deserving and best in character and judgment.
LikeLike
@Brett: The news media is not used to being the ones who don’t run the show. Trump’s well-placed hostility to the media is (by far) the most #NRx thing about him. But this occult role of media was, of course, not something unknown to Nixon.
@Giovanni: You’re doing great, and underappreciated, work. Your approach strikes me as very consistent with Natural Law philosophy. Perhaps you are a Catholic or have been saturated in Catholic culture. But it feels very natural to me. Anyway, bravo!
LikeLike
The idea of the daily poem is to correct the modernists. It started with Kipling… but has moved on. If anyone has ideas, just email me or comment.
And thanks for the links and comments.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Is Southern Hospitality a Myth? Having lived (and hosted folks) in both places, I think she gets a lot right here.
Thank you! I’m glad to hear that.
LikeLiked by 1 person
@Nick: I’m not Catholic, nor do I subscribe to any particular religion, but I do take some inspiration from Dark Age to Medieval laws of finance and ethics that were a reaction to the excesses of the Roman Empire. Graeber’s book on Debt: the First 5000 years was a big influence.
Looking up natural law through Aristotle, Cicero, and Aquinas. A great lead you gave me. Already am a big fan of Aristotle’s golden mean. Simple yet one of the most effective concepts to apply to real life.
First, I try to apply common sense in a very child-like way and build from there.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hmmm, maybe I need to start marking my articles with these awards and mentions. They are official after all.
LikeLiked by 2 people
@Mark: Well… “Official” is not officially ya know Official. So…
LikeLike