This Week in Reaction (2016/01/31)

The National Guard fire tear gas to disperse the crowd of students gathered on the commons, May 4, 1970.

Over at The Future Primaeval, Harold Lee has another gem: An analysis of The Obedient Rebels. He contrasts the quite radical schemes of 60s-era student radicals with the purely verbal shenanigans of the current crop. It seems like we can’t even get Quality Campus Radicals™ these days.

Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning wrote an insightful paper contrasting three different moral regimes. In an honor culture, you’re supposed to defend your honor through your own personal efforts. In a dignity culture, insults have less impact, and you’re supposed to delegate enforcement to agreed-upon civic institutions. In a victim culture, insults matter a great deal once again, but the correct response is to assume a powerless victim role and basically passively request that powerful other people, usually institutions, step in and do something about it.

Today’s student protestors choose Option V, which…

speaks to a student culture that has internalized powerlessness, cowardice, and lack of agency. The world is way bigger than you, and your only hope to get things done is to passively broadcast your grievances and hope that some other institution takes up your fight.

In other news…

“Borders are the whole point of freedom, as borders are demarcations of property rights.” If that’s what counts as dark, then… Related: Flea Politics. (But at Xenosystems, everything’s related.) Also, Land sends A correction my way. Standing by my claim. If capital “thinks” and “has enemies” as a species of artificial “intelligence”, then we’re anthropomorphizing toasters. It’s anthropomorphs all the way down.

Jim has some brief notes this week. On Hillary:

Observing Hillary’s performances, it is kind of obvious that she is a drunk or druggie who cannot be trusted to be sober for a public appearance, or else she is suffering from some premature brain disease, or very likely both.

On Roosh:

Come the revolution, those sluts will get a caning, and Roosh will get a shotgun marriage, and will probably be much improved by it.

The red pill is the alt right’s killer app. If you know what women are like, you will conclude that emancipation was a really bad idea. If female emancipation was a bad idea, you are well and truly off the reservation.

Finally: Trump is the man.

Dividual talks about The Goodperson (Gutmensch) Problem.

So Goodperson basically means a person suffering from pathological altruism. And there is also the intended undertone that they don’t just happen to be pathological altruists, they also find it very important that it makes the G-O-O-D people, either to signal this goodness to others or to themselves enjoy the warm feeling that they are GOOD people.

The gender neutrality is no accident:

[B]eing a good man and a good woman is all about not defecting on people personally close to you. It is not universal. It is particular. A good man doesn’t just support a random family out there, he supports his family. A good woman doesn’t just take care of some random kids: she takes care of her kids.

Now, the Goodperson is entirely different. The general idea is to be altruistic to complete utter strangers even when it endangers the interest or safety of people physically close to you.

Transgender service members discuss their experiences in the military at an ACLU, Palm Center forum. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

Seth Long considers Women and gays as military strategy… or military PR strategy to be more precise. A very dark, but quite plausible, thought.

Introducing Neoreaction’s newest rising star: Lawrence Glarus, who this week jots down some notes on maps of cultural memory and how to lose them: Notes #1

Reactionary Future remains a busy beaver, adding (by my count) two new permanent pages: The reactionary summary and The reactionary book and article resource list. He also has a planned collection of resources “from the enemy”. But just whom Reactionary Future sees as “the enemy” remains as yet unclear.

Also at Reactionary Future: The satanic machine of bodies—making up cells of a (social) body without a rational soul. Leading us to the conclusion that mass democratic systems are literal zombies. Or at least as literal as that sort of thing gets. Here he analyzes the best realistic outcomes of a Trump Presidency (I think he’s quite generous in that), and finds it wanting. And RF closes with some prescriptions for actual Kill-the-Beast Change. In the meantime, become worthy. You’re gonna need it. It was a tough call this week, but this one wins the ☀☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Award☀☀.

Spandrell has a confession to make in Blood is thicker than water:

German Biker gang reportedly defending women in Germany by beatin the shit out of Muslim refugees

I took my skin out of the game because I didn’t see how we’re going to win this game. So I bailed. It happened that I had a good way out. And yes, I think working class whites are retarded. But I think that of high class whites too. I’m not into sports, which makes it hard to build rapport with working class people. But I’m not into charity, or homos, or any other bourgeois signaling crap either, so I find it even harder to build rapport with most upper-middle class people. I don’t get along with anyone; it’s nothing personal. That’s why I have a fucking blog.

That said his heart is warmed by the recent uptick in identitarian activism in the West.

I can’t help rooting for a group of white thugs attacking a bunch of smelly dumb Muslims. Those guys look like me. And decades after victory, perhaps after I’m dead, when the nativist signaling spiral settles down, Europe would be free of barbarians insulting our men and assaulting our women. Imagine that.

Hope for the best; plan for the worst.

For my Dutch readers (or those with babelfish), Alf has a meditation upon Vaishyas en Brahmins. He gets one thing very right here: Brahmins hate powerful self-made men (like Trump). If they can’t prevent them from self-making, they’ll try to recruit them (like Ford & Carnegie). In the rare case they can’t do that, they’ll attempt to slaughter the only way they know: by religious persecution.

Also by way of Alf, this time in perfect English, he contemplates Anti-Fragility and Catholics. I think it’s a safe bet that an organization that’s been around for 2000 years is probably more anti-fragile, than not. Understanding the nature of this strength is worth more study. Weathering bad papacies, such as the current one, must figure in.

Poet Laureate E. Antony Gray has a timely rhyme: A Song of Winter.

Giovanni Dannato continues his series on political economy over at Forward Base B: Market Demand Must Be Regulated. I think that’s wrong. Supply may be regulated. But demand, I think, cannot be. At least not directly.

Esoteric Trad discusses Trumpal Energy. As always, Arthur strikes perfect notes in this ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention☀:

All of these of course are variations of “what if populist democracy can save us?”. Putting energy here when it has failed, time and time again seems misguided at best, and downright suicidal at worst. This article isn’t intended to be an attack on Trump or a criticism of enjoying him, or even of supporting him, rather it is just a reminder: Democracy is not the solution.

Mark Citadel goes inside baseball on the Russian Orthodox Church with Dressing Puppets as Priests.

Malcolm Muggeridge

Isegoria, at Moldbug’s suggestion (to Scott Alexander) is reading Malcolm Muggeridge’s Chronicles of Wasted Time.

Nydwracu is diving deep into original 20th century documents and finds Salami tactics.

Alice Teller’s words grace another beautiful @WrathOfGnon meme over at Sydney Trads.

Social Pathologist does some taxonomy in Cleaning out the Closet: part I. He characterizes the Alt-Right as more “Feeling Right” than “Thinking Right”. At root, he sees the Alt-Right as a “mass-man” movement, “spiritual heir of the French Revolution”. I wouldn’t say that necessarily describes all who self-identify as “Alt-Right” (which, after all, has become very popular and attracted many me-too-ers), but so far as Richard Spencer defines the movement, I think Slumlord basically nails it here. Richard Spencer signals very hard against traditional culture.

He continues his analysis in Cleaning Out the Closet: part II. If you think the first part was controversial, this one takes a cleaver to the heart of The Neoreaction. Slumlord distinguishes between positivist and non-positivist dispositions of NRx. I can’t say he’s exactly right. I can’t say he’s exactly wrong.

Free Northerner asks Why Trump?. And answers. It’s a screed. But a good one. A jeremiad really. Against the Center Right Establishment. Good enough to get an ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention☀.

And this week’s meditation from Cambria Will Not Yield: To Hate Where We Should Hate.

It took me many years to understand why some white Europeans hated a man who loved white, Christian Europe. At that stage in my life I hadn’t actually read the works of [Whig] Edmund Burke – his work on the French Revolution was not in the humanities program – but I don’t know that I would have comprehended his works had I read them. That great numbers of white people could hate their own people was too fantastical for me to grasp at that point in my life. Of course I later came to know the liberals and all their works, because I met them wherever I went in academia. And I came to regard Edmund Burke’s dissection of liberalism as the greatest work of literature outside of Shakespeare. He saw through liberalism and revealed to us the face of pure evil.

Perhaps Burke was a repentant Whig, mugged as it were by reality. It’s a tried and true bit of wisdom: The opposite of love is not hatred, but indifference. The choice to love is tantamount to the choice to hate whatever threatens love’s object.

This Week at Social Matter

Busy week over Neoreaction’s Flagship Publication… Ryan Landry takes the Sunday slot with The Expert Is A Prefabricated Voice.

Now [former ambassador (woo am-BASS-ador)] Gyarmati is a Hungarian, so you the [NYT] reader can think, “Ah-ha, even one of his own dislikes Orban.” Gyarmati is the head of an official sounding think tank that seems positive: International Center for Democratic Transition. Here is the ICDT page and their wiki page. Do not fret, George Soros does appear on the prominent individuals list. Their focus is on progressive pupu platter mainstays like elections, free speech, protecting minorities, protecting women, and sustainable programs. A contradiction no progressive answers is that if they want vibrant, dynamic societies, how is anything sustainable if it is always changing? Of course, maintaining national sovereignty and protecting one’s citizens while shutting borders will be unpleasant to him, since he is a tool of the system to “promote democracy.”

And I bet if you heard Mr. Former Hungarian Ambassador on the NPR, he’d speak impeccable English too.

David Grant returns on Monday with an essay near to my own history and heart: Undermining Progressive Utopianism In Star Trek The Next Generation. This is only a prelude to a forthcoming essay on the two-part TNG 6th season episode “Chain of Command”—which, I agree with Grant, is quite arguably the very best episode in Next Generation history. Here he outlines many ways in which the TNG universe reflects hopelessly utopian 20th century progressive values, and sets up the Cardassians as an narratively necessary, and very well-drawn, Federation enemy.

Margot Ford is next with 2016: The Year Of The Censor. She begins with The Duck’s Autodefenestration, and goes on to outline the ways social media sites are moving to protect free speech by banning it.

For all of the talk about the Internet’s promise to decentralize or democratize news production and access, the enterprise has curiously tended to undermine those nefarious groups that the establishment never particularly cared for in the first place.

The Duck’s martyrdom was, of course, largely intentional, to draw attention to manifold capricious bans past, present, and future. Also it was funny. I’m all for “Twitter’s House, Twitter’s Rules”—it’s private property after all—but any mockery for their own ham-handed shilling for The Establishment is well-deserved.

Ryan Landry returns Wednesday with his (preternaturally regular and on-time) installment of Weimerica Weekly – Episode 10. Since I am privileged to have listened to a couple of unreleased ones in advance, I have forgotten what this one was primarily about (other than Weimar America, because… duh!). But… I’m sure it’s good.

Later that day, Anthony and I are joined by E. Antony Gray and Based Mark Citadel (Resident Apocalypticist of The Neoreaction) for Ascending The Tower – Episode XIII (part 1). (Episode 2 is up at the time of this writing, but I’ll link it next week.) Citadel was a superb guest with seemingly inexhaustible insight and an awesome Oxford accent to boot. Check it out. As you may (or may not) recall, we’re in the midst of a right-wing esoterics series. This episode focuses on the esoterics of collapse.

This Week at 28 Sherman

Over on his home blog, Ryan Landry starts off the week shining the spotlight on one of the great Arch-Villains of the Cathedral: #ArrestSoros. SoBL is not just mouthing right-wing righteous platitudes here. He makes the case.

RICO allows for people at the head of organizations to be charged and held culpable for crimes committed by members of their organizations. They can either order them to perform the act or assist them in performing the act. Soros here would be assisting through his wonderful ability to pay for everything. Attempting or feigning to attempt to solve the Wall Street problem, prosecutors have even considered charging Wall Street organizations under the RICO statutes.

Landry goes on to list the potential RICO offenses. If that’s not enough to stick he suggests the Alien Tort Statute as an alternative avenue:

Completely gratuitous picture of Oona Chaplin

Think of the high court drama and made for television or the Internet testimony. The ATS is broad and the scope of crimes includes vague terms like “degrading treatment” and “crimes against humanity”. Review some of the agreed crimes against humanity like dehumanization, and think of the current refugee crisis. Uploaded Iphone videos alone should be enough evidence to build “Nuremberg 2: Merkel In A Noose”. Europe has now seen spikes in crime in nations that have accepted refugees. It would be easy to list crimes but murders performed by immigrants and widespread gang rapes of migrant on native in an atmosphere of “convert to Islam or your kids will” taunts qualify as enough to bring a civil action.

When mere tax evasion just won’t stick, the situation calls for bigger sticks. The DoJ has ’em. Will it use ’em?

Tuesday, he’s got Money and Economics Links with straight-shooting commentary on all the hinkey stuff that’s going on.

This Week in WW1 Pics (and Letters): One Man’s Letters Home. Absolutely heartbreaking.

Finally, Ryan has a quick note on Trump’s No Show and of things to come (which already came but will be linked in next week’s TWiR).

This Week in Kakistocracy

Porter defines and gives lessons on Dorian Gray Conservatism. It’s practically poetry:

[S]o the Faustian bargain was struck. Dorian Gray conservatives were granted perpetual beauty to corporate sponsors, absolution from terms ending in ‘ism, and respect from blow-dried heads inside the media archipelago.

Kinda looks like Rubio.

Of course that was merely conservatism’s agreeable outward appearance. Its hidden portrait was turning repellent with betrayals and malign neglect: Consistent efforts to pry open the border, H-visas, foreign aid, foreign wars, and foreign politicians explaining “our values,” flag-draped coffins, loss of free association, neighborhoods extirpated by diversity, knock-out games, violent crime, apology groveling, affirmative action, HUD incursions, exploding government debt, money printing, judicial penumbras, social withdrawal, third-world cities, white as a pejorative, university Bolsheviks, flea market communities, insourcing, outsourcing, TPP, gay “marriage,” political purges, speech firings, funding alien fecundity, mosques blossoming like taco stands, cosmic racial hypocrisy, servility to AIPAC, the white privilege of being last priority, and always–always–the worst enemies to the right…all of this overseen with smiles ranging from wan to radiant. It is the superficial beauty of conservatism without conservatives. People with values replaced by values without people.

Next he covers Denmarks “Tough” New Immigration Laws (“Oh the Humanity”) Give Me Your Huddled Privilege. Turns out this tough new regulation simply requires sufficiently wealthy disposessors should pony-up and pay for the privilege.

Filed under If Yer Happy and Ya Know It: Clap Along if You Know What Happiness is to You. Here’s the lede. It’s a work of (curmudgeonly) art:

That western liberalism terminates neatly in the end of both is hardly a reason to reconsider the union. Maybe that’s one of its most enduring appeals. No matter what misery and decay may occur in practice, the theory always remains pristine. That is until being cross-examined at the Treason Trials. A venue where even the most loyal theories often turn state’s evidence. But before that red-letter day, we can rely on liberalism’s consequences like the Wailing Wall can rely on republicans.

The news is: Another foiled terrorist plot. Milwaukee this time. Well thank God. But you know what they say about cockroaches…

Topping off the week, Porter brings us Out of the Shadows—improving stereotypes of undocumented Iowans one sympathetic vignette at a time.

Inertia is the force that keeps gravity from plunging Earth into the sun. It is also the force that keeps native whites from plunging invasive opportunists into the sea. In the anthropological sense, it is the inertia of idly watching the first alien colony become an archipelago. What wasn’t resisted ultimately isn’t. And soon enough presumption becomes real power.

This Week in Evolutionist X

Evolutionist X kicks of the week with Pictures from Oceania / Indonesia / Polynesia etc. I am struck by the degrees of technological achievement by these peoples, and at once the apparent stalling of it, or even retrogression. And also the cannibalism. It’s hard to not notice the cannibalism.

Next she tries her hand at a theory of value: Useful, scarce, and ownable. I think the theory is dubious, but notwithstanding leads into some fairly based ideas about labor and indentured servitude. Which I happen to believe we need more of, not less.

Here is a public service announcement: Honesty is not hate. Well. It’s certainly true. But I think that ship has sailed. “Hate the sin; love the sinner” was the old-skool formulation. But modern ideology crept in and bound the sin to the sinner as part of his essential identity. Some good notes here. Like the a popular, low effort pathway to Hatred Avoidance:

If anything, it seems to me like whites have begun wearing their ignorance as a badge of pride, as insurance against the threat of being called “racist.” If you know nothing at all about a group of people and so never talk about their traits, then how can anyone call you racist? And better yet, when someone does say something about other groups, you can then, from your position of total ignorance, tell the other person that you are “deeply disturbed by [their] problematic and racist language” and stop the discussion.

And get a gold star in Sunday School. It’s win-win. And this was supremely well put:

Today’s devout believer is still required to spout nonsense, but about the very reality he passes through. His eyes are deemed liars; noticing patterns in peoples’ behavior is grounds for excommunication; racism is the new Original Sin. Like the virgin of yesteryear, he professes innocence.

And he might even be telling the truth.

Next Evolutionist X delivers the next installment of her invaluable series: Cathedral Roundup—Dartmouth Diversity Scam edition.

Rounding out the week, one more Kabloona Friday—Summer Comes Edition.

This Week… Elsewhere

Briggs has found an early entrant for WMBriggs.com Bad Science of the Year Award: Scientists Hint That Water Perhaps Might Possibly Be Good For Kids. Also: The Four Errors in Mann’s recent “The Likelihood of Recent Record Warmth”. Yes, Mann is still merrily publishing “peer reviewed” papers, instead of scrubbing toilets.

Briggs also deigns to answer: Is Using FanDuel Or DraftKings Gambling? What Is A “Game Of Chance”? And… a fisking of A Sermon From The Secular Scientism Priest Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Taiwan’s Nationalists suffer historic defeat with election of first female president, Tsai Ing-Wen

Did you know Matt Briggs was a Taiwan Watcher? I did. He bears depressing, but not altogether suprising, news of The Corrosive Effect Of Democracy, Far East Edition.

“Duty before pleasure”, notes Chris Gale: Take A teaspoon of concrete. Also this: a fine meditation on the bad ol’ hateful meanie segregation days, The zampolits of a dying ideology. (“zampolit”.)

Another rising star: Retrochronal looks on the bright side with A Benefit of Living in Moral Decay. And he’s not just talking about sipping piña coladas poolside. Tho’ that is one possible application of it. Also he digs into some deep Moldbuggery in Why Do Protestants Whine About Religious Freedom (A bit of Cryptocalivinism). He swings for bleachers, and gets at least a double:

Protestants sealed their sect’s fate by using the terms religion and church in USA law. Obviously they are functions of memetic control, we all know that. They accept that the word “religion” is a set of ideologies that Washington defines, rather than having any definable, formal meaning. So Kim Davis, be quiet. Or stop working for the State that did this. Of course gay marriage is a function of a certain church/religion, which Washington may judicially not persecute because of your dear freedom of religion, and Davis will never acknowledge is a church/religion.

Over at The Orthosphere, J. M. Smith makes an interesting point: “Classical Liberalism” is a Myth. In America, at any rate:

Setting aside a small (but always growing) radical minority, every American was a political and economic liberal. They may have opposed direct election of senators and supported the tariff, but these were concessions to the realities of a fallen world, and not repudiation of core dogmas. Southern slaveholders defended slavery on the liberal grounds of property rights and constitutional law.

And when everyone is, essentially, a political and economic liberal, there is no need for a word to denote a political and economic liberal.

Also from J. M. Smith—an ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention☀—what amounts to a divorce with conservatism: Dread, Love and Disgust. Conservatism, at least, of the whole, for whole is not worthy of being conserved.

World record holidng Russian powerlifter Maryana Naumova

It is always honorable for a man to defend a damsel, provided she is a damsel. It is always honorable for a man to conserve something he loves, provided it is lovely. But when there are no more damsels and nothing lovely remains, there is no need for a White Knight. The conservative was brought into being by the Revolution, and he has been rendered redundant by the triumph of the Revolution. When (heaven forefend) every woman in the world is a banshee, every White Knight will be a “white knight.”

And thus disgust. A Reactionary does not, after all, simply react to the novus ordo seclorum. Leftists do that. Leftists react with applause and tears of joy. The reaction of the Reactionary is disgust at foulness, filth and destruction. When he surveys the world from the back of his champing charger, he feels no impulse to lower his lance and clamp his spurs, since nothing he loves remains to be distressed by the slouching dragons. There is naught but shrieking banshees and leering demon lovers.

And, filed under Omigosh, He Just Keep ‘Em Comin’, from a throwaway classroom comment about abiogenesis, Smith notices The Crevasse at the Center of Things:

This unimportant incident points to a fundamental problem with the modern university. It’s not the football team, although that is a problem. It’s not the binge drinking, although that is a problem, too. It’s not even the fraternities. It’s the fact that there is no sun at the center of the universe. It’s the fact that what lies at the center is a crevasse. This crevasse may be only three feet wide, but it is a thousand miles deep, and all that professors do is nonchalantly step across it, while the diligent students scribble and the negligent students neglect.

Chalk up another ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention☀ for J. M. Smith.

Reactionary tree has a nice video up from Voice of Europe.

South African Reactionary Johann Theron guests on Amerika Blog with a very interesting Introduction to dark organizations. Not occult organizations—which would be a totally more sunny thing—but one’s that have lost the brightness of life. It seems that as social sickness sets in, it sets up vicious cycles of petty competition for ever smaller crumbs of status. And institutions of all sorts are not at all immune. Also from Brett: The future you can look forward to with diversity—a rundown on the 50 Most Dangerous Cities in the World. Coming to a Metropolitan Area near you! This was pretty good too: The alternative right must clarify itself.

At West Coast Reactionaries, Andrew Martyanov has some encouraging Thoughts on the Future of the White Man. A realistic assessment, and a challenge to not let understandable discouragement interfere with the essential things. This was an ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention☀.

Hotherus returns to WCRx with a slightly less antagonistic anti-Christian tract: The Conversion of Europe. My own take is that he’s not getting in hot water for writing about Christianity from a non-Christian perspective, as he avers, but for writing about Christianity from the perspective of a particular version Christianity. One that happens to be heretical, and also not particularly reactionary. Aurelius Moner’s comment was downright inspiring.

And also there, Adam Wallace has Stulti Philosophiam. A mashup of Evolan philosophy and humorous chan scribble drawings. Along the way, he cuts at the joints between the necessarily particular person and the abstract individual.

Thought this was pretty good: Donal Graeme’s first Masculine Monday.

James E. Miller is very good over at The Mitrailleuse, Conservative against the conservative movement:

The conservative advocacy business is rooted in the realm of ideas. It eschews the idea of a national interest, of a patriotic, America-first approach to affairs. Instead, it champions the ideological capitalist man with cosmopolitan values.

In other words: conservative advocacy divorced from anything to conserve. Which is why Trump, an unimpeachable NY liberal for decades, is the most “conservative” person in the GOP race.

Also at Mitrailleuse, Editor-in-Chief Jordan Bloom comes on to throw great gobs of green goo on National Review. Every cubic centimeter of which richly deserved. Here’s a bit:

One of the big reasons why National Review is not nearly as interesting as it was in its glory days is because they portray conservatism as this settled thing — a “broad conservative ideological consensus,” when in fact no such thing exists, and never did. Consequently NR is completely unable to explain Trump aside from the Salon strategy of pointing and shrieking. What makes 1950s-60s NR enjoyable reading even today is that it was full of people who were ideological refugees.

And a bit more:

What does American rightism, call it conservative or not, look like when the “silent majority” of attitudinally conservative people care more about nationalistic concerns, like globalization and immigration, than the libertarian economics that has cemented the Republican Party’s close relationship with business. This is the conversation I’d love to see us having right now, but of course nobody is interested in having it.

When Zippy’s good, he’s very, very good.

Over at Imaginative Conservative, moar on the late Forrest McDonald: History on Proper Principles. Also Christopher Morrissey comes on to discuss natural piety in Aristotle on the Contemplation of Being.

Extremely wise and welcome words from Sunshine Thiry:

Wives do not submit to their husbands so that their husbands will then act a certain way. Rather, wives submit to their husbands in order to please the Lord. No matter how fruity or how much of a jerk any particular husband may be, his wife will not improve the situation by deciding to disobey God.

That’s all I had time fer… The WordPress editor says this is up to ~4700 (non-markup) words. Anyways: Support your local Dissident Right Meetups and, as always, Keep on Reactin’! Til next Week… TRP, over and out!!