Sunday, May 08, 2016

The Left, White Nationalism and the 1488'ers


Perhaps the most interesting meta-political development over the past few years has been the rise of the dissident Right. It still in its early stages but it appears that several media outlets have begun to notice and no doubt, so enough, a concerted campaign will be mounted to to discredit it.

The traditional pragmatic approach of the Left, in dealing with it opponents, is to label them all as fascists or Nazi's wherever there is some doctrinal disagreement which they wish to emphasise. It needs to be understood that here the aim is not to logically justify that assertion as much it is to reinforce an association in the minds of cognitive misers, who are the majority in a democratic body politic.  As readers of this blog will note, cognitive misers, think in terms of associations so  Left psychops are intended to  primarily work through the limbus and not the mind itself.

As advertisers have long noted, positive associations with a product are far more effective in selling it than a logical explanation of its virtues.  What has hampered the Right in its battles against the Left is the traditionalist anthropological fallacy which saw people as rational actors instead of cognitive misers. The Right, in trying to combat the Left, has perused a strategy a logically refuting through data and argument on the assumption that ideas will prevail.

This assumption was wrong.

Sam Francis explains:
My conclusion that conservatism has transformed itself into virtual extinction will surprise and perhaps even anger those who favor the formalistic and normative approach, which does not easily stoop to considerations of social change and historical fluctuation and is reluctant to admit that some things, even ideas, fail. Regarding political events as the earthly manifestations of timeless abstractions, the intellectual mainstream of the "Old Right" from the end of World War II developed a highly sophisticated body of ideas and a highly articulate body of spokesmen to express them. Perhaps because they were too uxoriously wedded to Weaver's principle that "Ideas Have Consequences," most of the conservative intellectuals who subscribed to this body of thought always seemed to assume that it was only a matter of time before their own beliefs would creep up on the ideas of the Left, slit their throats in the dark, and stage an intellectual and cultural coup d'etat, after which truth would reign. [ED] I have never thought so, in part because I have less faith in the power of intellectual abstractions than most of my conservative colleagues. The historian Lewis Namier remarked that "new ideas are not nearly as potent as broken habits," and Burnham, describing Vilfredo Pareto's view of human rationality, wrote that "rational, deliberate, conscious belief does not, then, in general at any rate, determine what is going to happen to society; social man is not, as he has been defined for so many centuries, a primarily 'rational animal.' In the tradition of Namier (who briefly studied under Pareto) and Burnham, I place more emphasis on the concrete forces of elites, organization, and psychic and social forces such as class and regional and ethnic identity than on formal intellectual abstractions and their "logical" extrapolations as the determining forces of history. Ideas do have consequences, but some ideas have more consequences than others, and which consequences ensue from which ideas is settled not simply because the ideas serve human reason through their logical implications but also because some ideas serve human interests and emotions through their attachment to drives for political, economic, and social power, while other ideas do not.
The latest findings of cognitive science further buttress this view. The way to control the masses is not though the mind but through the primal limbic drives, and the Left, for all its talk of rationality, has recognised this fact, and pragmatically always concentrated its efforts on getting the proletariat to  "feel the strength" of its arguments instead of logically assessing them. Hence the aim of the Left has been to positively align its objectives with positive limbic sensations and hence the importance of its ideas and its causes being cool, hip, compassionate and trendy are more than them being factually correct. And its approach, I believe, has gone a long way towards its triumph over conservatism. Conditioning, not argument, is the way to sway the masses. Orwell's definition of "bellyfeel" in the Newspeak dictionary makes this same point.

Conditioning, however, requires the co-opting of pre-existing tendencies of the human psyche and associating them with the product. Goebbels for instance, ordered that depictions of the Jews in German propaganda to always be in the negative and to associate such depictions with other negative imagery such as rats and filth. The idea being that the negative associations be strengthened by such methods. However, there is a limit the power of such a technique and German propaganda was quite clear never to show the Jews being mistreated in any bestial form or manner because by doing so you generate sympathy for your victim and the intention to demonise him fails.

Conditioning is one of the most powerful mind control mechanisms since it operates at the level of the modus operandi  of the cognitive miser: Associative Cognition.

The Left has always recognised that for the average Westerner, the Nazi "brand" is associated with the worst forms of evil in the 20th Century and therefore it has always tried to smear its opponents as Nazis. The idea here being not to prove the logical connection but simply to reinforce the association so that whatever their opponent stands for, their idea becomes associated with the negative emotional state that comes with contemplation of Nazism. Of course sometimes the association is so out of kilter that the slur fails, but the failure rests on a clear ability to recognise the mismatch between the slur and the target. But what happens if the distinction is not so clear?

Suppose the target is actually quite sympathetic to Hitler, suppose when you Google the target quite a few Nazi images show up, suppose your obsessed with the evil of Jew's, how clear is target distinction then?

It isn't and the Lefts claim gains traction.

The terrible thing about the Nazi's, is apart from their terrible crimes, is that they seriously weakened the West's capability of withstanding Leftist attack by tarring all the elements of their ideology with the stench of evil through association.  Nationalism, did not produce the concentration camps in the First World War,  yet post war it has become associated with it.  Prussian Militiarism, which was honorable prior to the Second World War, through its association with Nazism degraded all further virile aggressive defence and the standing of the Military in the West. The Nazi's greatest legacy may be that they were able to weaken the good ideas of the West by association with the evil they wrought.

If, the dissident Right wants to bring back some of these ideas, things such as nationalism, ethnic homogeneity, virile masculinity etc, it needs to disassociate them from the associative links with Nazism that they have have established in Western Culture. The thing is that the Left wants you to think that all White Nationalists are Nazis and the the 1488'ers want you to think the same. They both have the same objective.


22 comments:

Dr. Mabuse said...

"Of course sometimes the association is so out of kilter that the slur fails, but the failure rests on a clear ability to recognise the mismatch between the slur and the target."

A recent example being the Tea Party. Despite the Left's strenuous efforts to associate that cause with white supremacy and Nazism, the video and photos so obviously showed the normality of the people involved that the accusation only made the accusers ridiculous. The good citizenship of Tea Partiers picking up trash after a gathering became the actual association, not the fictional image of hate-filled thugs the Left tried to conjure.

Hoyos said...

You seem like the lone voice crying in the wilderness on this one, so bless you for that.

Ironically the most effective resistance to Hitler himself within Germany was traditionalist and nationalist. The old Prussian style militarists were not huge fans of Hitler (one of them even had a team of reliable men on standby to kill Hitler should he ever visit, in the mid 30s no less). There's a reason the SS was given more and more prominence, the Nazis knew that the army wasn't completely reliable politically. They were fans of his bringing back the German army from virtual extinction however; history is a muddy and complex place.

I've been called a cuckservative for making a distinction between men who act like gentlemen and men who act like barbarians regardless of race (like these apes have never met a decent man of another race, come on). I've had putatively fellow Christians attack me for saying free will is a good thing. I've had defenses of "individualism" (although I think personalism is the more correct term) attacked as being leftist.

The problem is that these people have no ordered loves. The ethny, the nation, are important but only within a scheme of values. Individualism proper is dangerous, but personalism values people one at a time within a scheme.

If recent history is any indication, these 1488ers are going to pick fights they can't win and put us all under the state microscope (shot through as they are with government informers and agent provocateurs). I just wish there were more men out there defending tradition, nearly everyone on the alt right it seems is keen to just stay silent about the Nazis running around.

Hawk Spitui said...

We'll get called Nazis no matter what, regardless of anything the 1488ers do. Do you want to be eternally collapsing into heap of denials and apologies every time the accusation is made, like your typical conservative politician? Rather than letting the opposition use it as a stick to eternally beat us with, better to own the insult and use it to troll the opposition. You'll never defeat the Nazis by perpetually running away from them.

Hoyos said...

The goal isn't to avoid being called a Nazi. The goal is to not let Nazis hijack the movement. Nazis shouldn't be allowed to hijack the movement, because, shame I have to say it: they are destructive to human flourishing.

It would be easier to own the insult if we didn't have NatSocs in our midst but unfortunately we do. How many are actual government informants is anybody's guess (don't think I'm falling prey to conspiratorial thinking either, google it, WNs are shot through with so many informers that a group of federal agents pretending to be Nazis once arrested a group of state policemen pretending to be Nazis).

Trolling the opposition is fun, but we also need to court our natural constituency. Most of us didn't start as reactionaries, we only became so after being exposed to intellectually and emotionally persuasive ideas. I'm not worried leftists being leftists, I'm worried about instinctual traditionalists being scared back into the mainstream. That being said it is a fine line to walk.

Puzzle Privateer said...

I see three ways out of this and it's not clear to me which is the best, or perhaps a combination of the three could work:

1.) Break the association with the Nazi's.

2.) Make the Nazi's cool again.

3.) Turn the Nazi label into a joke.

But I have no idea how you pull this off exactly. Maybe make sure the biggest voice for Nationalism is a White dude married to a Jewish girl?

Puzzle Privateer said...

"better to own the insult and use it to troll the opposition"

I think this comment is going in the right direction. Own it like rock stars owned "devil worship".

This is one attempt at it: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ch81tdXVAAA0vrh.jpg

It both owns the label and tries to do it with humor. Not sure how well the meme actually works though.

Deadlocked said...

Could you explain what you mean by "Prussian Militiarism" ahd "virile aggressive defence"?

etype said...


Nrx 'alt-right' finds reason why it is perceived as neocon redux in alt-right clothing - the NAZI'S!

Cognitive Misers? - Physician heal thyself.

Harold said...

“The Left has always recognised that for the average Westerner, the Nazi "brand" is associated with the worst forms of evil in the 20th Century and therefore it has always tried to smear its opponents as Nazis.”

Nazis are not considered to be evil incarnate because of intrinsic factors. They are considered so precisely because the type of conditioning you describe.

The Social Pathologist said...

@Wanda

It's very difficult to slur you opponent as a Nazi when they're not acting like one, on the other hand, when one does act like a Nazi it becomes really easy.

@Hoyos

The goal isn't to avoid being called a Nazi. The goal is to not let Nazis hijack the movement.

Bingo. The Left is always going to slur us with Nazi associations and I don't really care about that, what I don't want the movement to do is wither and die by having these knuckleheads merge in. Anyone who thinks that their version of White Nationalism is a product of the right is a very superficial thinker. It's interesting that the Nazi's had nothing but contempt for the German Aristocratic class. They were socialists through and through.

Trolling the opposition is fun, but we also need to court our natural constituency.

Yep, and it's not going to be courted by pseudo Nazi imagery and worrying about super-mind-control powers by the Joooo's. Furthermore, a lot of the trollers aren't really committed to serious pushback, just the thrill of pissing people off.

BTW, Hoyos, we're already on the watch list.

@PP

We need to make a clear distinction between ourselves and them, just like the paleocons did with the Neocons. It needs to be understood that we do not stand with them and push the barrow that good of ethnic identity becomes corrupted by their involvement.

BTW, I don't think the meme worked well.

This response done by VfD in response to ridicule by the German Left press did.

@Deadlocked

Briefly. The idea was that Prussian Militarism caused the war and therefore Prussian Militarism was bad. The reality was that Nazi doctrine did and Prussian militarism was a means by which this was achieved. But in dissing Prussian military virtues, the Left has tried to fill the void with a soppy milksop approach to masculinity. Any sort of virile active patriotism is automatically seen as proto Nazi through guilt by association.

@etype.

Nrx 'alt-right' finds reason why it is perceived as neocon redux in alt-right clothing - the NAZI'S!

To say it means that you really don't understand. Actually, the Neocons and the Nazi's are very similar from a philosophical point of view. NRx is more akin to the Kaiser's men than the Fuhrer's.

The Social Pathologist said...

@Harold

Nazis are not considered to be evil incarnate because of intrinsic factors. They are considered so precisely because the type of conditioning you describe.

So, so true. People don't understand the source of their malice only its effects.

etype said...

@Bruce:
Surely Bruce, you understand logic - when your only answer is “you don’t understand”.... this is because ‘YOU do not understand,’ and so need to dumb things down to the level where you can come up with a reply.... generally the cheapest, most throwaway line, so you can get back to pretending ‘It’s Us Or The Nazis!!!!’

This is why your current approach, in lieu of anything substantial - is the same tired ‘virtue-signalling’ re-re-recycled as a cover for the fact you have absolutely nothing going on, only posturing. This ‘virtue signalling’ is concordant with your feminine styled appeals to stop the Nazi’s from invading Nrx in a staged cross-border, radio-station false flag, I mean ‘think of the children!’. What’s next Bruce? Appeals to free the under-nourished Nrx from the concentration camps? Nrx needs a new homeland to be free from persecution from Nazi’s? Will Nrx claim reparations from Germany?

Nrx has nothing to do with either Imperial or ‘Nazi’ men - the limits of your knowledge and predilection for Larps are clearly showing . Stop pretending you know what you are talking about. I realize by necessity you must make low brow appeals, you high IQ types.... but how long do you think Nrx’s can LARP into whatever you want, whenever you want, until people get the picture that any group disposed to cheap, low-brow tactics - is cheap, low-brow and inclined to race to the bottom where it’s talent can shine. As I said Bruce, it’s you who doesn’t understand.

Anonymous said...

Why are you a philo-semite? Jewish power and constant efforts of subversion are incontrovertible facts. Acknowledging this makes one a National Socialist no more than breathing air does. St. Paul wrote in the Holy Scriptures that the Jews are the adversaries of all men. Was he a proto-Nazi? Jewish trash who hate the Church would certainly say so. Was St. John Chrysostom a villain because of his wonderful preaching against Jewish perfidy? How about St. Pope Pius V who caused Jews found in possession of a Talmud their filthy book, cursed may it forever be, to be put to death? Was he worthy of censure for this holy defence of Christ? Fr. Fahey wrote several books on the machinations of International Jewry proving that they were behind Soviet Communism and the genuineness of the Protocols. Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote of their hostility to the Russian people in his book Two Hundred Years Together, which oddly enough is very difficult to obtain a copy of in English. I suppose that this is just a coincidence, it surely couldn't have anything to do with the monopoly Jews have over publishing, could it? International Jewry is partly responsible for the situation the world finds itself in today. I say partly as the stupid goyim enthusiastically ate up and continue to cheerfully ingest the poison handed out by the Jews. In a way these filthy apostates are worse than the Jews themselves, as one expects it from them, but these apostate cockroaches have spat all over the graves of their own Catholic forefathers. The worthless apostate west will be crushed by Russian might as is foretold by Our Lady of Fatima. The superior and more vigorous races from Eastern Europe will take the pre-eminent place in the world replacing the decayed, effete and disgustingly cowardly and utterly worthless apostate west. They are Rome to the vomit-inducing west's Carthage. May God's justice soon crush these miserable maggots who dare lift their putrescent insignificant little selves up against His Might. These lice think they will triumph but they will learn that "He that diggeth a pit shall fall into it: and he that rolleth a stone, it shall return to him." Proverbs 26:27, they will lament when the Gospel of St Luke 19:27 is fulfilled; "But as for those my enemies, who would not have me reign over them, bring them hither and kill them before me." The Holy Angels will have the honour of doing such a beautiful work as is prophesied by numerous Saints. May God save those who are His.

The Social Pathologist said...

@etype.

I've got no idea what you're trying to say.

@Anon

Why are you a philo-semite?

I'm eusemitic. (neither philo nor anti).

Unknown said...

SP, you are certainly right about the appeal to feelz and not reason, and that the left has owned this game for at least a century. (Parenthetically, if you want to find out if someone's a cognitive miser, accuse them of being a cognitive miser. It seems to work every time.) NRx consciously, intentionally (and rather infamously) orients itself toward the cognitive elite. Those who have the werewithal to both understand the rational arguments and not be easily swayed by the feelz. (Right Brahmin signaling.) It seeks to cultivate an aesthetic that is a mix of futuristic thinking and traditional norms of beauty. If you're worried about 1488ers taking NRx over, then I think that concern is misplaced. NRx takes it's racism and antisemitism very seriously, with exquisite nuance and tasteful appointments. If you're trying to save the wider dissident right, well... good luck with that. It doesn't have a wall to defend. There's no sense trying.

But I think Puzzle Privateer is onto something. There's more than one way to defeat the power of the feelz. Turn the Nazi imagery into a joke. No movement has less power in the world today than Nazis. Revenge porn chopping up Nazis? Oooh Edgy. Wanna be real edgy? What if the Nazis were the good guys?! The overdubs of Hitler's bunker scene are hilarious. Make overweight, rednecked, white hood losers look bad? Oooh Edgy. Wanna be real edgy? Make the SJWs the evil bad guys, and the redstater defending his wholesome way of life?

Personally and overall, I think the extreme humor that for example Daily Shoah (and related shows) applies to minorities is very useful. It makes reasonable discussions about very real racial and religious divides much more palatable. "Of course we don't want to gas all the Jews. But surely you [would-be Brahmin signaller] are not so simple as to think that the Jews are completely benign?" Being able to have that coversation, without rancor, without any actual hatred is important. Extreme comedy may help us get there.

Hoyos said...

@Nick B Steves

I would say that we can own the feelz a lot more than we do as well. Even we nasty mean ol' Reactionaries are human and a purely intellectual appeal runs the risk of being bloodless. Jokes are a great solution for this and storytelling is another incredibly powerful medium that we need to get involved in (those of us with the talent for it). The grim thing about the 1488ers is that when they're joking, they're not really joking. Sort of the racist version of snark (which CS Lewis correctly identified as the most deadening and spiritually dangerous form of humor). Hell, they even have their own version of virtue signaling, but that's a bit OT.

On the story telling front, there was a nice review at Honor and Daring of Kingsmen, a movie with all kinds of accidental reactionary messaging. Shoot there are more than a few "mainstream" entertainment products that have real anti-progressive messaging. It sneaks in because all the crudeness inoculates it against accusations of conservatism. Kind of like South Park. Unfortunate that we have to dig so deep into the bowels of vileness to sneak it past.

The Social Pathologist said...

@Nick

Thanks for your comments, and thanks for all the link-love.

Those who have the werewithal to both understand the rational arguments and not be easily swayed by the feelz

See, I see NRx in a more expansive role, steering the alt-Right, and stopping it from going stupid. I hope to put up a few posts on Sam Francis over the next few weeks and he has a lot of interesting stuff to say about the failure of the Right. His critique of the National Review for instance, is that it became irrelevant, because it became a forum for eggheads, divorced from the reality of trying to achieve power.

On the other hand, the Middle American Radicals, were easily defeated by the GOP establishment, but not having a "head" which could guide them and fight against the professional hustlers in the GOP.

Secondly, I don't think there is that clear a distinction, from observers outside the dissident Right, that there is a distinction between 1488, alt-Right and NRx. We're lumped in it together. When the crackdown comes, and it will, I think its important that there is a clear gulf between us and them. This is not about virtue signalling to the left, rather, the 1488'er ideology, apart from its nationalism, is simply Leftism by another name.

As for Nazi themed humor, I think it goes down as well amongst the swayable middle as do Sept 11 jokes do for Americans: Namely, they don't. The use of Nazi imagery firmly keeps up "Nazi theme centred". i.e Joos and Racial purity. These are peripheral,though important issues, which stop us from thinking about the real issue which is why European man unwilling to assert himself. The elephant in the room is atheism, which no one talks about because of concern about immigration and joos.

Thirdly, I agree with Hoyos.

The grim thing about the 1488ers is that when they're joking, they're not really joking. Sort of the racist version of snark

Hoyos, thanks for the heads up about Kingsman. Will look into it.

Maple Curtain said...

Well, the Left (i.e. the Jews) association of evil with the Nazis and the ability to tar all opponents with that brush - the Holocaust cudgel - is waning over time.

Why? Well, a number of factors. Yeah, the Nazis wanted to rid German-controlled lands of Jews, and lost of Jews died, but 1/ the war was a long time ago; 2/ there are few people living who were adults during that time period; 3/ the history of WWII was never taught to earlier generations but Jew media created very powerful myths; 4/ those myths are being exposed as a little bit of truth mixed with a lot of lies (propaganda, for the squeamish); Jew hypocrisy about ethno-centrism (good for me, but not for thee) and Jewish influence in media, finance, etc; 5/ the Jews are, once again, being increasingly triumphalist in goy nations; etc.

Essentially, what I am arguing is that there will be a turning point when a critical mass of people do not buy into the old myths, and new realities (social chaos, economic collapse) render older negative "associations" powerless to control the masses.

A lot of Alt-Right types are frantically virtue-signalling now that 'the White goy is not a Nazi' because they are afraid of the Jew propagandists in the MSM.

Others, like Andrew Anglin, can see that counter-propaganda, and sheer mockery of the Jew myth-making can be very powerful in destroying the older negative "associations."

I'm betting that Andrew Anglin and his 'Cracked Magazine for Nazis' approach is going to be a great deal more effective in the long run that any of the hand-wringers who are trying to make nice with the enemy.

The Social Pathologist said...

@Maple Curtain

A lot of Alt-Right types are frantically virtue-signalling now that 'the White goy is not a Nazi' because they are afraid of the Jew propagandists in the MSM.

And a lot of a Alt-Right are "stupid signalling" and showing that they don't really understand the problem at all.

For your education

Anonymous said...

The problem is the indoctrination that we are exposed to through the mass media.

For instance it should be trivially easy to attack the left with claims of Stalin, the Gulag, Mao, oppression in west Germany, totalitarianism, Holodomor etc.

However the public has not been conditioned along those lines they are fed a different story through our mass media. What is required is a system to organise and publish alternative realities. The internet has made this possible along with crowdsourcing and the next generation will be less effected by mass propaganda.

Maple Curtain said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Maple Curtain said...

@The Social Pathologist...

"And a lot of a Alt-Right are "stupid signalling" and showing that they don't really understand the problem at all."

It's really quite astoundingly arrogant for you to presume that those who criticize the role played by Jews in contemporary society are, de facto, too stupid to understand that there are other important factors at play in the decline of the West as well.

Your own article at the link provides quite a litany of Jew actions against the goy within goy societies, yet you use flawed logic to then become a Jew apologist.

Why not re-visit the comment by Nick B Steeves?

Just because the West is weak due to a loss of faith, amongst other reasons, does not mean that the Jews, and their actions, are of no consequence.

Your tactics reek of the usual virtue-signalling by one who hopes to accepted by his masters.

Hey, your blog, not mine. Have your fun. But the Jews are a problem, in so many ways, as you have identified.

And, the NAJALT debating strategy is, well, bunk, unless you have more than half a handful of "righteous" Jews to parade to the world.

Have you ever met more than a handful of Jews?