Roger Griffin: Modernism and Fascism

Two other books which I had to the pleasure to read and which complement Gregor's book are Roger Griffin's, Modernism and Fascism and, A Fascist Century. Once again, these should be staple texts of the Right.

Griffin made a bit of name for himself in the field in the early 90's with a book The Nature of Fascism. Modernism and Fascism is his attempt to attend to the deficiencies inherent in that book.  Griffin's unique viewpoint is that, unlike other academics, he tries to understand Fascism in the same way that Fascists understood it themselves. He is clearly no apologist for Fascism yet what's apparent in this book is just how novel this approach is in academia and the hostility he has earned as result of it.

Firstly, he defines Fascism movement as one which advocates Palingentic Ultranationalism. He has been criticised by Gregor on the grounds that the definition is not specific enough-- I agree, more on that later--but whereas Gregor gives an account of the intellectual development of Fascism illustrating how Fascism came about, Griffin focuses on why it did so.

Like Socialism, Griffin traces the origins of Fascism in cultural turmoil of the late 19th Century, when Christianity had begun to lose its hold on the cultural elites.  The culture of the late 19th Century with its materialistic capitalism and individualism slid society towards decadence. This and the pressing social problems of the times  disgusted many in society who felt that a "moral renewal" and a "cleansing of the filth", was required to alleviate the pressing social problems of the time. Two broad streams of thought emerged from the chaos, those based upon nationalism and those based upon international proletarianism. Both solutions were premised on the notion that the past was unrecoverable. God was dead and the Ten Commandments would no longer do.

Like Gregor, Griffin too, realises that Fascism was born of pressing moral problem which came about with the removal of the weltanschauung "sacred canopy" afforded to men by Christianity.  But it wasn't just the philsophical arguments that mattered, the whole progress of "modernisation" had profoundly uprooted European society so that by the late 19th Century, Capitalism and the ideals of the Enlightenment were being discredited by the experience of life.

MODERNISM: the generic term for a wide variety of countervailing palingenetic reactions to the anarchy and cultural decay allegedly resulting from the radical transformation of traditional institutions, social structures, and belief systems under the impact of Western modernization. These reactions were fostered by the growth of reflexivity and its concomitant, the progressive temporalization of history characteristic of Modernity, one consequence of which was the trend towards re-imagining the future as a permanently 'open' site for the realization of utopias within historical time. Modernism gained momentum in the second half of the nineteenth century when liberal, capitalist, and Enlightenment myths of progress lost the partial cultural hegemony they had attained during the French Revolution and early industrial revolution, with the result that the manifold changes that society was undergoing became increasingly identified by intellectual and artistic elites with decadence, so that modernity itself became a trope for degeneration (Modernity).

The important point that Griffin hammers out is that movement which became Fascism was essentially modernist, i.e. sharing many of the same philosophical foundations of Socialism.  However, where it differs from Socialism is that Fascism was more "Romantic," in that the fascists turned inwards into themselves find a  Dionysian "spirituality" which gave them the strength to live. This task was supported by numerous philosophers, artists, writers architects etc.

Marx believed that, unlike `bourgeois ideologies', socialism was not to 'draw its poetry from the past'; that is, it could do without myth and the aestheticisation of politics — though in practice it could not do without them, as all the regimes of 'actually existing socialism' have demonstrated. By contrast, fascism celebrated precisely such forces as the way to recreate a sense of reality, meaning, and subjective revolution. This can be seen in the title of Alfred Rosenberg's The Myth of the Twentieth Century, or Mussolini's declaration in his 'Naples speech' of 24 October 1922, only hours before the March on Rome, that

we have created our myth. The myth is a faith, a passion. It is not necessary for it to be a reality. It is a reality in the sense that it is a stimulus, is hope, is faith, is courage. Our myth is the nation, our myth is the greatness of the nation.

On close inspection, whether it was the myth of Aryan blood or the myth of the past glories of Rome, all fascist celebrations of the past are in fact future-oriented, and an integral part of fascists' quest to find a Third Way out of the cul-de-sac of Western history which they felt liberalism arid Marxism represented.

On close inspection, whether it was the myth of Aryan blood or the myth of the past glories of Rome, all fascist celebrations of the past are in fact future-oriented, and an integral part of fascists' quest to find a Third Way out of the cul-de-sac of Western history which they felt liberalism arid Marxism represented.

At the heart of this Third Way lies the myth of the regenerated national community (in German, Voiksgemeinschaft), whose realisation is conceived by fascists as providing a solution to several basic problems characteristic of liberal-capitalist; modern society, notably (it the troubled relationship between the 'masses' and the state; (il) the crisis of morality, identity, and authority posed by life exposed to modernisation; and (iii) the tensions between the individual's private existence and ethnicity, culture, society, nationality, and history in the civic realm.

At the heart of this Third Way lies the myth of the regenerated national community (in German, Voiksgemeinschaft), whose realisation is conceived by fascists as providing a solution to several basic problems characteristic of liberal-capitalist; modern society, notably (it the troubled relationship between the 'masses' and the state; (il) the crisis of morality, identity, and authority posed by life exposed to modernisation; and (iii) the tensions between the individual's private existence and ethnicity, culture, society, nationality, and history in the civic realm.

One of the points that Griffin successfully gets across is that Fascism was a revolt against the "mechanistic" view pushed by Marx--a view rooted in Positivist metaphysics. In many ways Fascism, and Socialism, provided an alternative spirituality--a political religion--to replace the one lost by cultural failure of Christianity. But the paradox being that it was ultimately a religion that found inspiration in the feelings generated by the self. It was a sort of malignant new age spirituality.

One of the other tropes that Griffin smashes is the received wisdom that the Fascists were anti-Modernist, and that by being so they were cultural brutes. While it is true, that the Germans were not as sophisticated as the Italians, the fact is that many modern artists put themselves in the service of Fascism which they quietly downplayed after the war. Philip Johnson, Mies Van der Rohe and Walter Gropius were all prepared to work for the Reich. The Fuhrer may have shut down the Bauhaus school but seem quite unconcerned with its influence in industrial and architectural design.  The fact is that while the Fascists deplored depictions of "degeneracy" in the arts, they were surprisingly tolerant of modernist modes of artistic expression. There was a huge battle in the Nazi party on the merits of German Expressionism, pushed by Goebbels, finally overturned by Hitler.

Mussolini certainly had no problems with modernist art, and actively encouraged it. Evola, for instance, originally started off with Dadaist ambitions, while Hitler seemed quite prepared to accept "non degenerate" Modernism. (.pdf)  The fact that Hitler found deformed depictions of form repulsive did not mean that he was anti-Modernist unless the appreciation and depiction of deformity is equated with Modernism. And this is not even touching on the enthusiastic embrace by the Fascists of technology and its application on all spheres of life. The idea, pushed by international socialists especially, that the Fascists were reactionary traditionalists trying to reassert themselves is quite simply false.

Of the two books, A Fascist Century is the easier one to read, and there is an interview in the end of it with Griffin which is worth the price of the book. Modernism and Fascism is a far harder read, lacks the focus of Gregor but is very impressive in the scope of its erudition and is meant as a more academic treatment of the subject. Its other problem is that it is written in academese and simplification of its language would ensure a far greater audience and easier grasp of its ideas. Still it is a book worth the effort and should be a foundational text of the Dissident Right.

Gregor on Marx and Darwinism

Marx recognised early on that there was a synergy between his material interpretation of history and the Darwinian theories of evolution. It was only a matter of time that the significance of human "material" would be recognised as one of the economic determinants of production.

Gregor dwells less on the Darwinian aspect of Marxism as compared to its nationalist component but, once again, he clearly shows how a moderate Marxist "racial consciousness" developed into a rabid racial doctrine once the evolutionary struggle of Darwin was fused with the revolutionary Positivism materialism of Marx. Many of the arguments made by the Marxists were similar to the ones we see today repeated by the HBD crowd and it really is quite surprising to see the the descent into rassenkampf  being recognised by Marxism's theoreticians very early on.

By the turn of the twentieth century, it was evident that Marxism was undergoing fundamental revision. Not a few Marxists were reshaping revolutionary doctrine and policy by reinterpreting some of the basic tenets of doctrinal Marxism. Woltmann was clearly numbered among them—and while the analyses of the nature of science and truth, human thought, will, and morality were issues employed in the reshaping, it was Darwinism that was to have the most radical impact. 

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By the time Dietzgen put pen to paper in the 1870's, Darwinism had already exercised influence on the European continent for more than a decade—and Marx himself had identified Darwinism as an intellectual activity sharing "affinities" with his own "historical materialism". In those circumstances, what Dietzgen did was to take some of the central propositions of Darwinism—"the struggle for survival; "survival of the fittest; and the conception of "progressive evolution"—and tailor them to fit what he took to he the Marxist inductive "science" of moral judgment.

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In one place, for example, Marx identified "race" as one of the natural "physical conditions" that influences the productivity of labor. That productivity, in itself, was critical to social development. Somehow or other, it would seem, racial traits influenced the very fundamentals of human social life. Engels, in his fullest maturity, in the year before his death, did speak of "economic conditions" as the factor that ultimately shapes historical development, to quickly add, "but race is itself an economic factor." Woltmann pointed out that it was uncertain how such notions were to he understood if they did not allude to heritable racial properties.

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While the prime motivation for Bauer's stork arose out of his recognition of the importance of national sentiment among Europe's proletariat, some of his intellectual strategies can be traced to that preoccupation among Marxists, at the end of the nineteenth century, to link the materialist conception of history to Darwinian notions of evolution. Years later, Karl Kautsky could still insist on their shared continuities. He reinvoked the memory of Ludwig Woltmann, and agreed with him—with reservations—in seeing Darwinism as an essential part of the "material foundation" of Marxism. Bauer was of similar persuasion. In his judgment, Darwinism was an intrinsic part of the rationale of the materialist interpretation of human history. In attempting to provide the most comprehensive scientific basis for Marxism, Marxists in general, and Bauer in particular, invoked Darwinism and advanced an account of human history that proceeded from biological, to social, evolution. 

Engels had originally tendered the claim in a variety of publications and with a variety of qualifications. Whatever their qualifications, Marxists like Dietzgen, Woltmann, and Kautsky embraced Darwinism as an essential part of Marxism as a theory of history. While acknowledging Darwinism as a material prologue to Marxism, Kautsky complained that Woltmann had pursued Darwinism into racism.  And of course, Kautsky was correct. 

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Woltmann's philosophical curiosity was to propel him still further. He took his studies of Darwinism, and his allusions to the role of race in the economic history of human kind, and tied them to the moral principle that Josef Dietzgen had made the lodestar of Marxist ethics. In his final works, the highest good that shaped Woltmann's individual and collective ethics was, as it was for Dietzgen, the "general welfare of humankind" 

What distinguished Woltmann's conception of the general welfare of humankind from that of Dietzgen turned on Woltmann's conviction that the biological survival and collective integrity of Nordics constituted the agency responsible for what that general welfare might be taken to he. Woltmann could affirm, with profound conviction, that if the secular progress of which all Marxists spoke was a function of the intellectual and creative talents of a racial minority of human beings, then the security, sustenance, and fostering of that race became a moral imperative of the highest order!' Its survival and expansion was the necessary condition for the production of all the welfare benefits, material and spiritual, of which Marx had spoken—and to which Dietzgen had alluded.

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By the time Woltmann published his Politische Anthropologie, his heterodox Marxism had been transformed. Darwinism dominated not only his conception of human evolution, but social evolution as well. The social dynamics we continue to identify with historical materialism remained largely inviolable, but the motive force behind technological invention Woltmann identified with heritable properties—creativity and intelligence—traits he increasingly identified with select individuals and select racial communities. By the first years of the twentieth century what emerged was a political ideology that had originally found its inspiration in classical Marxism—but which, as a consequence of systematic and sustained criticism, had been so altered that it could only be identified as a Marxist heresy. Whatever that is taken to mean, it obscures the reality that Woltmann's racism was the natural child of classical Marxism. [ED]

Woltmann was not the only Marxist who traveled that path. In 1862, decades before Woltmann's "heresy"; Moses Hess, the "communist rabbi"—the person who purportedly made a communist of Karl Marx—made very clear his racist and nationalist predilections with the publication of his Rome and Jerusalem. After having worked with Marx and Engels on some of their most important early publications, with the appearance of Rome and Jerusalem, Hess was to leave them behind. In his book, Hess made the case for Jewish psychobiological superiority, to advocate the creation of a Jewish homeland in the effort to assure Jewish survival—in order that they might continue to provide benefits for all of humanity. The Marxism of his young manhood had been transmogrified in much the same manner as had the Marxism of the young Ludwig Woltmann.

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In our own time, Woltmann's intimate association with Marxism is rarely, if ever, cited—and one of the principal sources of the revolutionary racism of the twentieth century thereby obscured. It was the decay of classical Marxism that contributed racism to the mix of revolutionary ideas that were to torment our time. Neither Moses Hess nor Ludwig Woltmann can he dismissed as anomalies. As the subsequent history of revolutionary Marxism was to reveal, racist and reactive nationalist variants of Marxism were to inspire revolutions throughout the doleful history of our most recent past.

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I must admit that I was completely blown away by the knowledge of Moses Hess. It's perhaps one of history's most tragic irony's--in more ways than one--that the "grandfather" of the doctrine that would lead to ovens of Auschwitz was Jewish.

Gregor on Marxist Notions of Nationalism

One of the best chapters in Gregor's book is the Marxist treatment of the subject of nationalism. It alone is worth the price of the book. What becomes apparent following the death of Marx and Engels is that, with regard to the nationalism, Marxist intellectuals split into two main schools, those who embrace nationalism and those who don't. What becomes apparent in reading the book is that those who embraced nationalism seemed to grant human nature fare more legitimacy than the "internationalists". Indeed the Leninst faction of Marxism was not really concerned with the feelings of the proletarians since the vanguard movement that Lenin was leading knew better than the proletarians what was true proletarianism. It was a movement led by an "elite" group of proletarians in contrast to Fascism which sought its legitimacy in the political will of the proles. As Mussolini said when putting down Marxist-Lenninism, "Fascism is the socialism of proletarian nations."

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In the course of his exposition, Stalin undertook to do something not undertaken by Lenin. Stalin offered a lexical definition of what he understood a "nation" to be. He told his audience that "a nation is a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture." He went on to argue with considerable confidence that should "a single one" of those properties be missing, "the nation ceases to be a nation. He conceived nations as transient, having a beginning and ending sometime in history. More than that, Stalin conceived the nation, an historical artifact, as belonging to a definite epoch—that of emerging capitalism. 

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Prior to the Great War, both Lenin and Stalin made very clear their total rejection of nationalism as a political vehicle for the mobilization of revolutionary masses in the service of socialism. Neither ever completely abandoned that conviction. Within the conceptual notions of Marxism-Leninism, nationalism could never serve "proletarian" purpose. At its very best, and under whatever guise, nationalism served only bourgeois interests. Lenin did approve the invocation of nationalism, however, in order to mobilize masses for revolution in the regions peripheral to the advanced industrial nations—only because such revolutions impaired the survival capacity of international capitalism......

..In the years leading to the First World War, both Lenin and Stalin were insistent in rejecting nationalism as part of Marxism-Leninism's revolutionary strategy because both saw the local nationalisms of the many ethnic groups that made up the Russia of their time depleting the collective energies of the international proletariat. Both sought a unified, centralized association of workers, loyal to their class, rather than to any "abstract" national, interests.

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Lenin maintained that once industrial capitalism had "matured"—that is to say, when it gave evidence of being "ripe" for socialist revolution—any manifestation of regional national sentiment was intrinsically counterrevolutionary. That was because Marxism knew of no nationalism appropriate to the needs of the international proletariat. Nationalism was intrinsically divisive at a time when the international revolution required a unified revolutionary class. The responsibility of Marxist revolutionaries was to "break down national barriers, obliterate national distinctions, and to assimilate nations"— following the secular trends of industrial capitalism itself—trends that were seen as "transforming capitalism into socialism." Those realities, Lenin insisted, left ultimately only two alternative "world outlooks" available to revolutionary leaders: reactionary "bourgeois nationalism" as opposed to progressive "proletarian internationalism:"  There could be no third altrnative. [ED]

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The treatment of nationalism, reflected in the work of both Stalin and Lenin, was to perceive it as something to be thwarted. In principle, nationalism was not to he recommended under any circumstances. Socialism's primary task was identified as "regrouping the proletariat of all countries into a living revolutionary force [having] only one conception of its tasks and interests"—abjuring national sentiment and rejecting any association with political nationalism. The "immediate mission" of socialist agitation was understood to he "the spiritual liberation of the proletariat from the tutelage of the bourgeoisie, which expresses itself through the influence of nationalist ideology.""

 Nationalism, in all its formulations and expressions, was seen as nothing more than a bourgeois snare and subterfuge, a cover for antiprolitarian machinations. Through some occult process, the bourgeoisie managed to instill national sentiments in the proletariat. Such unreal sentiments could only work against the interests of the working class. 

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[Otto] Bauer's account differed from the "orthodoxy" common among German theoreticians in that he recognized that whatever bourgeois motives there may have been behind the emergence of national consciousness, in order for it to become a political reality, there must have been a susceptibility among workers and peasants. The bourgeoisie could hardly impose a sense of nationality on a population; there had to have been a ready receptivity that could account for its acceptance and persistence. Nationalism most have found a ready response among people quite independent of the specific content supplied by transient economic circumstances. It seems reasonably clear that Bauer found the standard Marxist explanation for the rise and significance of national sentiment simplistic. His work is dedicated to advancing an explanation with greater inherent plausibility 

Bauer saw national sentiment rooted in the Darwinian history' of human-kind. Like Dietzgen, Kautsky, and Woltmann, as well as many of the lesser Marxist intellectuals of the period, Bauer sought to trace the continuities between Darwin's convictions concerning human descent and Marxism as a conception of historical development. He sought to link national sentiment to the evolutionary history of humanity. He sought a credible explanation of why the mass of workers and peasants would become possessed so readily of a sense of national identity. Whatever the influence exercised by the bourgeoisie, it could not alone account for the broad-based national passion exhibited by members of the working class. 

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By the beginnings of the twentieth century, Bauer concluded elements of national sentiment had become so intrinsic to the psychology of the proletariat, that one could hardly expect them to be surrendered for a "naive cosmopolitanism" that entertained no distinctions whatever between communities. He insisted that there was every evidence that the internationalization of the industrial means of production did not mean the disappearance of a sense of national differences.. For the members of many communities, in fact, the realization that they were perceived "backward;' economically and culturally retrograde, by those nations industrially sophisticated, prompted a response among them that could only be characterized as reactive nationalism. As a consequence, Bauer anticipated that nationalism might well become a significant political force to be reckoned with even in those nations that lacked an industrial base or an effective bourgeoisie. 

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The importance of Bauer's variant of Marxism can be measured by the venom with which it was attacked by Lenin and Stalin in the years that were to follow. Both charged Bauer's interpretation with major responsibility in socialism's subsequent failure to meet the challenge of the Great War. In an uncritical sense, they were right. On the occasion of the war, the working masses of Europe chose to identify with their several nations—employing arguments that shared a significant similarity with those advanced by Bauer. In fact, some of Bauer's central convictions were to serve as a bridge between nineteenth-century Marxism and the Fascism of the twentieth.

Gregor on Marxist/Fascist Morality

I thought I would pull a few quotes from Gregor's book just to show how important morality and metaphysics were for the early Marxist theoreticians.  Left Marxists and Right Marxists may have differed on many questions but in the end they were all socialists.

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It will he surprising to some—though certainly not everyone—that among the first issues engaged by the revolutionary thinkers at the turn of the twentieth century were those having to do with choice and determinism, with morality and ethics, with nationalism, with leadership, with the mobilization of masses, and how revolution was to be understood in the broad expanse of history. They are questions that continue to shape the revolutionary thought of our time.

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Morals and ethics lie at the core of revolutionary commitment. As such, moral and immoral behavior, sustained or abjured by appropriate ethical assessment, becomes critical to any revolutionary enterprise. That enterprise is inextricably associated with the advocacy of, or resistance to, violence. At some stage in the process it becomes necessary to systematically address ethical and moral questions. At the very least, the proponents of revolution must justify to themselves or others their endorsement of real or potential violence. As early as his first efforts at revolutionary analysis, Karl Marx extended what could only be characterized as a slack interpretation of morals and ethics—as well as a singular account of human conceptual life in general. In The Communist Manifesto  of 1848, he simply dismissed the notion that there were "eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc.;" or that any such ideas should independently influence the course of human conduct. He argued, instead, that such ideas, other than eternal, were relative, a function of the time, place, and circumstances in which they find expression—and whatever influence they exercise, as we shall see, was to be understood to be the derivative result of objective factors that, taken together, he identified as time-specific "modes of production?'

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Those were the convictions that shaped Marx's view that it would soon be the case that the "mass" of contemporary revolutionaries, the proletariat, would no longer entertain archaic notions about religion and the whole attendant "learned" nonsense about a transcendent morality emanating from the "realm of God", Marx informed the revolutionaries of his time that the morality of the proletariat would represent the "interests" of the emerging productive forces—the productive forces of the future—and as such would represent the only defensible morality for rational actors.

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For all the efforts made to distinguish Marxism from fascism in any of its real or fancied forms, there is a lingering suspicion that the two ideological systems arc somehow related. The similarities were noted even before Italian Fascism had reached political maturity. Many Marxists were there at the birth of Fascism. However strenuously resisted by some, the relationship was recognized in totalitarianism. During the tenure of the regime, it was acknowledged by some of Fascism's major theoreticians. And after the passing of Leninist communism, its relationship to fascism, in general, was acknowledged by many of its erstwhile practitioners.

The difficulty that many have had with all that is the consequence of political science folk wisdom that has made fascism the unqualified opposite of any term of Marxism. So fixed has that notion become in the study of comparative politics that the suggestion of any affinities between the two is generally dismissed. And yet, some contemporary comparativists recognize that there was an unmistakable "essential ideological kindredncss" shared by fascism and Leninism. It was equally clear that at "certain pivotal ideational junctures, les extremes se touchent. (extremes come together)". It is important to try to understand how that could be possible. In answering that, one has a foothold on how one might explain the concept "totalitarianism”—that has fascism and the variants of Marxism as its referents. Attempting to begin to explain the relationship is part of the story of revolutionary thought at the turn of the twentieth century.

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Italian Fascism was not Hitler's National Socialism, and it was not Lenin's Bolshevism—but all three shared some sort of affinity, however minimal. For the purpose of the present exposition, the relationship between Mussolini's Fascism and Lenin's Bolshevism is of central concern. It speaks to the ideological relationship shared by Italian Fascism and one or another variant of Marxism, and helps us understand why relevant similarities regularly resurface in any study dealing with modern revolutionary political systems. It is a story that covers almost half a century of European radical thought—and involves some of the major intellectuals of the first quarter of the twentieth century.

While it is only a thread in the complex tapestry of revolution in our time, it is an important and interesting concern. It deals with revolutionary morality and the ethical system that sustains it. It addresses the issue of how the revolutionary theorists at the beginning of our time attempted to understand human choice and political decisions. It deals with revolution and its motives, and violence and its uses.

In the course of time; all these concerns were addressed by self-selected Marxist revolutionaries at the end of the nineteenth century; some of whom were to become the leaders of revolutionary movements in the twentieth. History was to subsequently identify some as "Marxists" and others as "fascists." Those with whom we shall concern ourselves were all Marxists of one or another persuasion. The most interesting, for our purposes, were to ultimately be identified as "Mussoliniani;' intellectual leaders of Italian Fascism.

The reactor core of any political movement are the ideas that motivate it, but these ideas are themselves supported by a metaphysical structure which in turn shapes their nature. Old Europe starts dying when it rejects its Christian heritage and embraces the materialism of the Positivists. Those of the Alt-Right who are positivists/materialists are simply the Left dressed in right wing garb.

Marxism, Fascism and Totalitarianism

In retrospect, what becomes evident is the fact that by the last years of the nineteenth century, there was little that might count as a single and definitive "orthodox Marxism." So rich in ambiguity and discontinuities was it that by that time at least four principal variants of Marxism could be identified: that of Bernstein and Woltmann in Germany,. the critical deconstnictionism of Benedetto Croce in Italy, and the ethical reformism of Sorel in France.

Blogging has been light recently because I've been trying to catch up with some reading. One of the books I had a chance to read was  A. James Gregor's, Marxism, Fascism and Totalitarianism.

Firstly, let me say that this is a superb book and should be required reading by anyone on the Dissident Right.  Quite simply it should be a foundational text. It's that good. Gregor is a professor of Political Science at Berkeley* and is one the worlds foremost experts on Fascism, particularly Italian Fascism and Marxism.  The book is not particularly long--400 pages--it is clearly written, conceptually precise and Gregor's habit of repeating the main points at the beginnings of chapters a great way of reinforcing the main ideas he is trying to get across. For people who are time poor, it's an excellent and clearly written overview on the subject of Marxist doctrinal development.

One of the things that depresses me endlessly is the right's "tolerance" of Fascism. While many think it extreme, they see it as an ally against the Left and criticise those who "punch to the Right".  The problem is that the Fascists were never of the Right in the first place, and their embrace of nationalism is simply a mechanism to bring socialism to fruition.

In the Socialist world of the 19th Century, Marx and Engels functioned as almost defacto dual papacy defining Socialist doctrine. Socialists who differed on doctrinal points would appeal to the two for guidance given that many of Marx's concepts were vague and not fully though out. Furthermore practical experience with implementing the revolution came up against real world difficulties which had to be worked out. With their death, this guidance was gone and Socialists, much like Christians interpreting the Bible, began to fissure with regard proper interpretation of the Master.

The big issues upon which the Marxists differed were on the subject of free will, the issue of "class", leadership of the proletariat and nationalism.

Marx was a strict materialist/Positivist at that human morality and action was simply the expression of current material and economic conditions.  Marx also held Darwinism in high esteem and it didn't take too long for his followers to fuse the two and introduce race as an "economic determinant", with certain races being better economic determinants than others. The go to guy was Ludwig Woltmann, who was very influential in German Socialism and intellectually prepared to the ground for the Natsocs. (Note, Socialists really play down the role of Woltmann)

The second interpreters were those who could not accept the strict determinism of Marx and gave man more "free will" in the direction of history. Chief among this school of thought was that of George Sorel who saw decadence in the bourgeois and virtue among the "workers" and in the work ethic.  Sorel's noble worker would rise up against the bourgeois and bring socialist society into fruition. Sorel emphasised the dignity of work

But the problem with workers is that they were more loyal to their country than to class and with the advent of the First World War many socialists saw that the appeal to country motivated the masses towards revolution rather than an appeal to class. Italian socialists who admired the martial virtues of Sorel's workers realised that the best way to bring about social revolution was to marry it to the cause of Nationalism, this was the approach of Mussolini and it is here where Fascism is born.

Lenin, on the other hand, rejected any form of Nationalism as a bourgeois distraction, designed to stymie the revolution, and insisted upon a Russian flavoured internationalism which would unite the working classes.  In fact, anyone who Lenin, who thought himself the only true interpreter of Marx, defined anyone who disagreed with his view as bourgeois reactionary. I sometimes wonder if Lenin was a Puritan from New England. Stalin continued the tradition.

The important theme that comes out of Gregor's work is that just as Protestantism and Catholicism are rival interpretations of Christianity, so are Fascism and Leninism rival interpretations of Marxism.

Gregor clearly lays the doctrinal development of each of the strands of Marxism. What's also quite impressive is the role of Italian thinkers in the development of the nationalistic interpretations of Marxism. The Italians thinkers were quite conceptually advanced in their understanding of Nationalism and offered a more "humane" version of Fascism than its Nordic cousin.  Compared to the Italian thinkers, the Germans were rubes.  It's quite interesting that Italian Nationalistic Marxism i.e. Fascism  was racially "lite" and there were quite a few Jewish Fascists among the Blackshirts.

The horrors of German National Socialism are clearly attributable to its Socialist origins which ,when hybridised with materialistic Darwinism and Ariosophy,  produced the killing machine which destroyed much of Europe and itself. Nazism was a HBD version of Socialism cloaked in Nationalism.

As Gregor shows, the only thing "Right" about Fascism is the nationalism it uses to cloak its ultimate vision of implementing a socialist society.

It's an outstanding book.

(*The Irony of the recent protests against Trump at Berkeley would not have been lost on Gregor)

Schneider's Speech at CPAC

I thought I would make a few comments on the speech given by Dan Schneider at the CPAC conference, particularly concerning the Alt-Right.  As I've mentioned before on this blog, it would appear that Spencer seems to have "captured" the association with the brand "Alt-Right" in the public's and has now become its default spokesman. As I've also mentioned previously, the media  seems to be quite unusually keen to reinforce the association which should give everyone a pause for concern. If the Cathedral is keen on something, it's safe to say that it is not going to be good for the Right.

Spencer may not be a wannabe American National Socialist but the ideas he represents. i.e. an atheistic ethnonationalism grounded on a syncretic formulation of materialistic determinism and romantic intuitism were also advocated by the man with a mustache. Hailgate and "nazi irony" make media attempts to portray Spencer and the movement he is associated with as Nazis v2.0 plausible.
The Left wants to reinforce this association and Spencer and his acolytes seem to want to oblige. He may or may not be controlled opposition but he is certainly behaving as if he is. I think it was a grave, grave mistake for the Dissident right not to clearly disassociate itself from Spencer early on.  As a result, rightly or wrongly, the stench of Fascism now permeates the non-mainstream Right in the minds of those who are "normies".

On the other hand, those who aren't normies are fully aware that Spencer represents one segment of the non mainstream "Right" and that there are there are a wide variety of different positions on many social questions in the Alt Dissident Right. I imagine that many at CPAC would have been fully aware of it this. Keep this point in mind.

Now the idea of the Alt-Right= Nazi is a welcome state of affairs to the Neocons and "Cuckservatives" who see the the existential danger to themselves by the existence of a Right that they do not control. They want to destroy any opposition and reinstate themselves, and associating their opponents with Fascism is a very effective mechanism to deny them any political legitimacy. I think Schneider's speech at CPAC was an example of this.

The first thing that struck me about Schneider's speech that is that he was very vague about who the Alt-Right was. Was it the media's version? Or the "in house" one.  There was no distinction and I certainly got the impression that he being deliberately non precise and slurring the entire non-Mainstream Right.

Secondly, like all great disinformation operations, Schneider's speech was combination of Truth mixed in with calculated lie. It's true that Fascism is a sect of the Left, it's true that Spencer has co-opted the Label of Alt-Right, but is it true that conservatism can be reduced to an individual's rights? In my opinion Schneider was pushing for a re definition of Conservatism as some form of Libertarianism.

Libertarianism is the political ideology of social autism. The problem with it, is that the political system that it needs to bring its political ideology into real world practice would resemble the open borders, multinational corporation, zhe-sexual, nationless individualism that we have now. So any attempt to redefine conservatism along libertarian lines is really a Trojan horse operation to re-install the the worst elements of the NeoCon ideology.

Unlike Libertarianism, the traditional Right has always emphasised that men do not exist as social atoms but as members of a community, and just as men have rights so to does the community. Furthermore, communities had norms which individuals were meant to follow, and one of the problems in right wing thought was where to draw the line between individual liberty and community rights. Right wing thinkers recognised that part of what made a community's identity were the norms that it chose to uphold and any dilution of those norms represented a dilution of that sense of community. Right thinking is therefore libertarian to only unto a point, and afterwards is coercive. Libertarianism pushes that thought towards one pole: the individual, and argues against any community norms except the bare minimum. 

What I found really interesting with Schneider's speech was the very lukewarm reception it got. It really does seem that the rank and file are beginning to see through the smoke and mirrors but that's not to say that the ideology of Spencer would have found much traction there as well. What I would have loved to see is Victor Orban give a speech at CPAC.  It think his version of nationalism is the one we should emulate. National Conservatism is far better than National Socialism.

Brief thoughts on the Alt Right, Dissident Right and Multiculturalism

Things have been silent on my blog recently because I've been trying to catch up on some of my reading. However commentator Maple Curtain left this message in the last post which I felt warranted a reply.

Whenever I read something on your site, it seems to me that you find it easy to oppose White Nationalists, but you advance no real plan to oppose globalist multiculturalists.

There is an existential battle for civilization ongoing.

You appear to be on the side of the Jews and against the Whites.

If it is otherwise, you might want to spend more time explaining yourself and less time attacking the Alt-Right.

Firstly, I agree that there is an existential battle for civilisation going on. It's been going on for at least 100 years so I guess that there is no point of disagreement there.

Secondly, as regular readers of this blog will know, I am opposed to multiculturalism but where I and the Alt-Right differ are our the reasons.

As I've said before, Richard Spencer with help from the Mainstream media, has now co-opted the name Alt-Right in the minds of public and has achieved semantic association with his brand. So when I use the term Alt-Right it represents the ideas of Spencer & Co. i.e.

(1) The Alt-Right is hostile to Christianity.
(2) The Alt-Right believes in Genetic Calvinism. (It's understanding of the the human person is, as Trotsky would say, grounded in "Zoological Materialism")
(3) The Alt-Right believes in the ideas associated a with Ariosophy.
(4) The Alt-Right is irrationally Anti-Semitic and this irrational focus on the Jews cause it to chase the mote instead of extracting the beam in its own eye.
(5) The Alt-Right is historically revisionist.
(6) The Alt-Right as defined by Spencer is objectively Fascist--as defined by Griffin--represents a series of ideas which represent a conscious departure from the "traditional ideas of European civilisation" and replace them with a Modernist volk based nationalistic palinogenisis.(7) It rejects truth if it conflicts with its own understanding of things.

(1)(5) and (7) and partially (6) are common to Socialism. (4)(5) and (6) are common to Nazism. (3) is a New Age religion based upon end of 19th Century romantic navel gazing which came about with the abandonment of Christianity. (1) and (7) it also shares with the Neocons.

The Dissident European Right believes in;

(1) The subordination of any preconceptions to the Truth.
(2) The truth of empirical observation.
(3) The truth of Christianity or at least it's possibility. (I'm not going to go into this into detail now as I have covered this before.)

Now its obvious that Christianity and the seven points listed above are incompatible, both in values and in their metaphysical metaphysical underpinnings. It's these ideas and their metaphysics which seperate  it from the ideas which made up the "Old Europe". The aim of this blog, and those who are in sympathy with it, is to restore the "Old Europe". But it's clear from an analysis of history that the "Old Europe" had problems which for a variety of reasons (Hello Traditionalists) ensured the birth of Modernist movements which are currently in the process of destroying her.

While my analysis is still incomplete the problems with "Old Europe" were primarily cultural and religious. Namely;

(1) A false anthropology which ignored the instinctual nature of man and over emphasised his rationality.
(2) A morality which gave too little acknowledgement to instinct. (this is important with regard to multiculturalism)
(3) A morality which expected instinctual override without due understanding of the consequences of this failure.
(4) A morality which failed to acknowledge the legitimacy of the erotic dimension of human nature.
(5) A failure to appreciate the consequences of the massive increase in population in the 19th Century.
(6) A failure to appreciate the consequences of the transformation in society bought about by technology in the late 19th Century.
(7) (1) set up the legitimisation of Democracy, (5) ensured that the franchise was extended to everyone and (2) meant that practically, societal control shifted from the rational to the instinctual.

How does this all apply to my differences with the Alt-Right?

Returning to multiculturalism when the Alt-Right criticises multiculturalism it does it through the understanding that other people are hostile elements with regard to the realisation of its potential. "Become what you are" is only possible if the darkie is kicked out of the group. The other practicle problem is what to do with the suboptimising elements. "Ovening" them might be "ironical" but given the materialist conception of the human person, it might be a bit "yucky" but its pretty convenient. As a side note, while its true that Nazi Germany did not like the Jews it initially had no plans of "ovening" them, but as the war progressed and without an ideology of moral limits,  as the options became limited it became a "good" idea given the circumstances. Aryanism v2.0 turns you into a bastard who everyone hates.

On the other hand a Dissident Right opposition to multiculturalism would rest up the notion that human being are instinctual and that homophily is one of the strongest and most easily observable human behaviours. Trying to make people live against the grain of instinct is possible but its hard and the requires a strong government hand. It's "entropically unstable" with terrible consequences if the guiding hand is lifted in any social crisis. So it is best for people to live in their own groups with their own customs.  Christianity would assert that all people have a human dignitiy and therefore any manner of social reorganisation needs to be humane and done with dignity to all parties concerned.  There's no "ovening."

Oh but Slumlord, the Christians have been vicious to other peoples in the past! It's true, but it in the past it was understood that what the Christians did was bad and therefore the  Christian system tended to self correct limiting the evil.  On the other hand, the Nazi's and Communists that murdered were considered good by the ideology and therefore the murder kept multiplying.

Ring Fencing the Dissident Right

Speaking of Spencer and of himself, Gottfried said, “I think it is probably a trick that history plays on thinkers. But I think you’re right—he says that I’m his mentor. I think I’m his reluctant mentor, I’m not particularly happy about it.” He sighed. “Whenever I look at Richard, I see my ideas coming back in a garbled form.”*

A few weeks ago Nick B Steves posted a image which attempted to define the boundaries of the Alt-Right, something I want to make a few comments on.

I want to start off by saying that this is not a dig at Nick, rather it's criticism, in good faith, of several problems that I see with it.

Firstly, Richard Spencer and his ilk own the Alt-Right brand. This ownership hasn't been conferred to him by anyone in particular, but the fact is that mainstream usage of words confers upon them their meaning. To be fair, the Spencerites have always assumed the title but now that the media sees Spencer as the official embodiment of the Alt-Right the mainstream usage of the word has become associated with him and his ideas. And the ideas are certainly not those advocated by Gottfried when he first raised the term.  Spencer, working with the media, have been able to twist its meaning.

What this means is that anyone who is opposed to mainstream "Conservatism" and who is opposed to Aryanism v2.0 needs to find another name to call themselves to stress that distinction in the public sphere. As far as I'm concerned the term, Dissident Right, is as good as any. It's also important for the Dissident Right to make a public disavowal of the Alt-Right, since the Alt-Right's main tactic--assisted by the mainstream media--is to be to claim other non-mainstream Right movements as their own. Given that some of the Alt-Right's positions give the appearance of being in agreement with the Dissident Right this tactic causes conflation errors amongst cognitive misers--i.e. most of the public--who associate all these movements as one.  The odium of Aryanism gets spread onto other movements by this mechanism and people like Gottfried have to spend their time defending themselves from beliefs that they don't hold.

Spencer might be a likeable, courageous and edgy guy, but his ideas and more importantly, the metaphysical garbage they bring with them, are toxic. It needs to be remembered that solution for left wing stupidity is not right wing stupidity and for a Christian like me, materialism repackaged as Aryanism v2.0 is stupid.

Secondly, what this image needs despite the graphic difficulty is a third (z) axis labelled Positivist and Trancedentalist, because this is where the serious ideological battles of 20th Century lay. Spencer's  vision is Positivist;  I'm not, therefore any "Right" that Spencer belongs to mutually exclusive to mine.

The Great Battle in Western Civilisation has been between Christian Transcendentalism and Materialist Positivism. Positivism got the upper hand about the time of World War 1 and has been reigning triumphant since. The major ideological battles within the 20th Century have been between the various positivistic factions and quite simply the argument about how to arrange the deck chairs of societal institutions misses the bigger picture of the ship sinking.  There is no survival of the West without a break from Positivism. Anybody who doesn't grasp this fact is arranging deck chairs.

I feel that the minimum membership criteria for inclusion into a Dissident Right which represents Western Civilisation should be:

1) A belief in the Truth.
2) An intention to calibrate act and understanding towards the Truth.
3) A belief in empirical data.
4) The belief in a Christian Transcendentalism, or at it's very minimum, a non-hostility towards it.

I want nothing to do with the Alt-Right and disavow them.

I belong to the Dissident Right.


*The article from which this quote was pulled  is a lot of rubbish in my opinion, but Gottfried's quote was good.

Merry Christmas

It's been one hell of a year!

To all my long suffering blog readers and commentators, a very Merry Christmas to you all!

Peterson on Biopolitics

Jordan Peterson gave this really good interview with Rebel media with regard to the origin of Social Justice Warriors. It's a very good talk because Peterson is able to expand upon several topics that this blog has touched upon in the past.

In the past, this blog has tried to raise awareness on the subject of System 1 and System 2 thinking. System 1 thinking, the "low effort cognitive state" is strongly influenced by personality and disposition, System 2 being less so. As Peterson--and his assistant--point out in this video, the dividing lines between Conservative and Liberal are based primarily in their dispositional states. In other words, for most people the political divide is as a result of motivated "low effort cognition" and is not the product of dispassionate reasoning on the various aspect of the political economy.  What this means is that politics, for many is an instinctive response, something Orwell directly alluded to when he wrote, "Ingsoc bellyfeel good."

Prior to the First World War, when at least in Europe, power was held by the ruling cultured and educated elite, there was a good chance that political decision making had a degree of rationality about it. However, with the democratisation of the West, the enfranchisement of the masses has meant that when it comes to political decision making, the center of gravity has drifted from the rational to the instinctual.  For the majority, Left and Right are "bellyfeel"--intuitive--associations.

Peterson also goes into the dispositional states which lead to totalitarian personality types, especially with the need for order. Interestingly, Peterson recounts how the Frankfurt school was able to influence psychology in denying outright the existence left wing authoritarianism which has hampered the study of it. This in turn ties nicely with Griffin's recognition that our understanding of Fascism has been strongly influenced by the Marxist nature of academia.

What's really interesting is the how the "maternal" dispositional type steers politics to the Left, or more significantly to "compassionate" societies.  From a biopolitical perspective, Testosterone is the hormone of the Right and Estrogen the hormone of the Left.  Restricting the democratic vote to men resulted in a battle between High T and low T, adding women to the franchise, shifted it profoundly towards "compassionate" big government. That's universal suffrage for you.

Peterson recognises that there are a lot of similarities between Left wing and Right wing totalitarians. The Right aims at homogeneity by exclusion, whereas the Left aim at homogeneity by inclusion. The important point here is that action is strongly influenced by biologically inherited disposition modified by environment.

Peterson recognises that that people see the world through their temperament and some are able to get beyond it, but as the work of  Stanovich, Kahneman and Tversky demonstrate, very few are capable of rationality.  The "temperamental" lens, I think, should be a foundational instrument of the Dissident Right with regards to analyzing the effects of democratic movements in the 20th Century.

It's a very good presentation which I'd strongly recommend my readers to view.

Peterson on Tradition

In the previous post, there was a very interesting segment where Jordan Peterson expounds on the relationship between dogma and innovation. I think this is a very important segment since it highlights a problem that many Rightists miss. While it is quite easy to recognise the errors of liberalism, a rigid Traditionalism is just as toxic.

It's this blogs' contention that Traditionalists were the midwifes of the modern world. By placing Tradition above Truth, the Traditionalists ensured that doctrinal developments which would have given the Faith the capacity to combat the modern world were left stillborn.  Notice how Peterson formulates the the need to be vigilant and observant, and to update Tradition in accordance with the Truth, not fashion or preference.

A good example of this tension between Tradition and Truth is currently at play in the Catholic Church. While I'm not an enthusiastic fan of Francis, and am fully aware of the indissolubility of marriage, there does appear to be at least some Biblical legitimacy for "non mortal" divorce. There is a predictable pushback from the Conservatives against the Pope which I find hilarious, as these same Conservatives were the ones who previously insisted on the need for the faithful to be obedient on the grounds of Papal Authority alone. As I've said before, the Liberals are the easy to identify villains, the less obvious ones are Conservatives, who stop any form of doctrinal development and regard the faith as complete.

The segment in question can be found here.

Social Pathologist Approved

Commentator Greg sent me a Youtube link to this video for which I'm extremely grateful.

Jordan Peterson is a Canadian academic who spoken out against the Gender Pronoun laws in Canada and fully understands where this is going. It's a long video but that last 25 minutes are worth the view.
It also links up with my last post, making TRUTH the cornerstone of Rightist thought.

Peterson is one righteous bastard.

Honour and Respect.

Right Club

I am not a Conservative. Sometimes I have used the term loosely, especially when I was first called to on publicly to classify myself. I have since been as circumspect as possible in using the term about myself. I say: I am a man of the Right

Whittaker Chambers.

 One of the things that became apparent in reading Weaver's, Right Wing Critics of American Conservatism, is that "membership" of the Right was predicated primarily on being in opposition to the Left. I don't want to blame Weaver too much for this approach, since it is pretty much reflects the mainstream understanding of the Left/Right dichotomy. Weaver attempts to give the division some more philosophical rigor by placing the divide along the lines of those who oppose the idea of equality--the Right--and those who embrace it, i.e. the Left.

If you think about it, there are several serious problems with this approach.

Firstly, it tends to make the Left the reference metric with regard to the determination of the Right and by definition "frames" our understanding of the Right by defining it as NOT(Left). Now the Left understands itself as the only true revolutionary force and that its all of its opponents are reactionary elements hence, anyone who rejects the Left's definition of itself is automatically a Rightist. This also includes Leftist sectarians who are "not with the Program." Stalin, for example, was intellectually consistent from a Left perspective when he claimed that Trotsky, who was not with the program, was a fascist.

Unfortunately given the Leftward drift of our societies, this view is given a lot of mainstream credence, even amongst the unthinking Right, so that anyone "who is against them is with us". Or, in other words, we don't punch to the Right--that is the Right as defined by the Left. Part of the reason why this approach works is that human psychology judges on the appearance and not the substance and as long as progressivism can be given a "Right" veneer, it will be understood by the Lumpenproletariat as "Right Wing".

Take Fascism for instance, the Left defines it as a Right wing phenomenon, and intuitively it feels so, however upon closer scrutiny, we see from a study of history is of Fascism is that it is a heresy that arose from Socialism, its bastard child, so to speak, and therefore shares the same genetics. On the other hand, throne and altar Integralism arises from a totally different intellectual lineage which is opposed to the fascists/socialist DNA. Yet under a Left mandated taxonomy it puts both of them in the same camp.

But suppose we made the reference metric Traditionalism instead of Leftism, then the worlds ideologies could be divided into those which are traditional and those which are progressive. Under this metric both Fascism and Socialism are seen as part of the same progressive grouping.

Indeed, where one sits on the political spectrum is dependent on what one uses as a measuring stick. Unfortunately, for the Right, we've been quite happy to use other peoples metrics to define ourselves and this I believe has seriously hampered our ability to fight back, since many of our percieved allies have ultimately undercut us either explicitly or by being based upon a philosophical systems which are ultimately mutually incompatible. NeoConservatism, for example, has its philosophical roots in the Left and its triumph over Paleoconservatism shifted the Conservative establishment to the Left.

Secondly, by failing to define what it means to be "Right wing" on its own terms has meant that the Right has been awful in its discrimination when it come to choosing allies with who to fight the Left.

Take for example the Spencerian Alt Right. Spencer's advocacy of ethnic nationalism appealed to many people, as it does to me to a certain degree, but underlying philosophy which motivated Spencer is opposed to any type of  Western Tradition. His advocacy of abortion, his anti-Christianity, his tolerance of sexual degeneracy and his genetic determinism are staples of progressive thought which has more in common with the Left than the Traditional Right. Should the broader Alt-Right have won any battle it soon would be in conflict with the Alt-Reich for control and the movement as a whole would self destruct. My opposition to Spencer was the he was a Leftist in Right wing clothing.

What I think is most important task for the Right, at the moment, is to define itself explicitly. I've got a couple of suggestions, but before I do that, I want to return to Weaver's understanding of the Right as being those who are opposed to equality.

Why, exactly, is the Right opposed to equality? I personally don't think that it is a result of simple value preference, rather, the empirical experience of life demonstrates the manifest fact of inequality.  In other words, the Right believes in inequality, because human inequality is a TRUTH of life.

The concept of TRUTH is the core of the Left-Right divide, both in its understanding of what constitutes the TRUTH and the willingness to bend the knee to it. Quite simply, to be a man of the Right it means to believe and bend the knee to the TRUTH. To be a man of the Right it means living as if the TRUTH matters.

Now the Philosophical treatment of the concept of the Truth is beyond the scope of this blogpost but if I had to define what it means to belong to the European Right, as understood for the last two millennia, I would say the following;

Firstly, a belief in a reality that exists outside of ones self.
Secondly, a belief that the totally of reality that is only partially perceptible (i.e a rejection of Positivism)
Thirdly, of that which is perceptible, the truth of empirical observation.
Fourthly, the validity of logic and reason.
Fifthly, a belief in a Christian God, which as a result of our limitation to fully perceive reality, has given knowledge of Himself and His wishes through the act of revelation.

European Civilization rests on these five points. Reject any one of these and you're not a man of the European Right.

The Death of the Alt-Reich

I've got to admit that I had a feeling that Trump would disown the Alt-Reich. I'm also of the opinion that Steve Bannon advised him to do it, not that I think it would have taking much prompting, since I'm also of the opinion that Trump would have found them personally repellent.

Back in 2008, when Paul Gottfried first coined the term Alternative Right, the alternate Right he was envisioning was an intellectually serious, politically active counterforce to the GOP establishment which had essentially been taken over by the Neocons. Gottfried's Alt-Right, I imagine, would be a more intellectually aggressive and politically active form of Paleoconservatism.

Spencer probably coined the term Alt-Right independently for his vision of the Right. But his vision, while promoting "white interests" seem to be far too comfortable with Fascism, anti-Christianity, materialism and 1488 crowd. Spencer the defended the quasi Nazi "pranks" of his followers with same plausible deniability with the same credibility as the New York times defended its objectivity with regard to the Presidential election.  For those who could see, it was bullshit, for those who wanted to believe, it was truth.

Part of the problem with using the same name for two different concepts is that amongst the proletariate is that semantic conflation occurs, so that everything blurs into one. To informed insiders, there were different elements of the Alt Right. To normies, the Alt-Right was just one group with a strong sympathy for the 1488'ers. It appears that it was the strategy of the 1488'ers to encourage this conflation so as to appear bigger than what they were. Unfortunately, many of the lowbrows in the Alt-Right seemed quite happy to go along, as "there were no enemies to the right".

Unfortunately, this attitude betrays a lack of understanding of what the 1488 crowd are about and reflects poorly on the intellectual aptitude on many who were sympathetic to it. Fascism, in all its variants is a modernist movement designed to appeal to right wing instincts, whilst Socialism is a modernist movement designed to appeal to left wing instincts. Both movements aimed to destroy traditional society and any conservative movement that wishes to embrace modernism is on a path to self destruction. In many ways, Fascists were the original Neocons and it was quite embarrassing to see just how many were willing to embrace right feels Modernism v2.0.

I'm proud to say that this blog called them out from the outset.

I've got to admit that whilst I disagreed with Spencer's politics I was impressed with his media acumen. But his "own goal" over the weekend simply astounded me. I could not believe he was so stupid.  His acolytes are now claiming he was framed but the fact of the matter is instead of telling his supporters, to "knock it off because some people won't understand the irony", when they did the Nazi Roman salute, he raised his glass to them. It was another Aleppo moment, mein Gruppenfurher. I couldn't believe he was that stupid.

At worst, I think he calculated that the time was right and he was hoping for it to be his Natsoc "coming out" moment, at best it was media naivety of the highest order. Did he expect the media to play fair? Didn't he expect the media to put plants in the audience? Doesn't he know how the Cathedral operates?

The Hail Trump moment pretty much sealed the fate of the Alt-Reich /Right by permanently allying it with the Nazi cause.  The optics, recored for posterity and reply to argument, will forever condemn it.  A Alt-Reich will remain as there are plenty of stupid people out there, but the legitimacy it was gaining has been completely lost.

Stick a fork in it, it's done.

BTW.  Ramzpaul, who has no link whatsoever with the blog, put up a very good video on the subject.  It's definitely worth a view.

Right Wing Critics of American Conservatism

I've just finished George Hawley's, Right Wing Critics of American Conservatism and would like to say that this is a really good book. Its main emphasis is on non-mainstream American Conservatism post WW2 with some mention of pre-War thinkers. It covers a lot of ground, and it covers it succinctly. Most of all it gives, each of the movements, I feel, a fair hearing and accurate rendition of their main personalities and ideas. I think anyone looking to get a good broad overview of the subject would not go wrong with this book.

But I think the book is also valuable for Hawley's own input into the subject matter since I think his survey quite accurately identifies several problems which still beset "the Right".

What's becomes apparent upon reading the book, is that the non-mainstream Right is composed of various disparate groups whose philosophical positions are sometimes contradictory and incompatible. So Hawley's first problem is how to define the common doctrinal tenet in all these groups. Hawley comes to the conclusion that what separates the Right form the Left is the Right's rejection of the notion of equality, a notion which is the central tenet of the Left. Personally, I've got a couple of problems with this approach. Firstly, I think it a too superficial analysis which leads one to the conclusion that the battle between Left and Right is a battle between the preference for equality or its opposite.

Secondly, it does tend to put together, "under one tent" groups which are otherwise intrinsically opposed to one another. Paleoconservatives and American Nazi's are both considered right wing, yet both have visions which are incompatible with each other. This has been a fundamental problem which I feel has seriously hampered the Right in its ability to combat the Left.

As things stand, membership of the Right Club seems to be premised on the notion of being anti-Left. In other words, it's a reactionary anti thesis to the Left's ideas. This, of course, "frames" the right in Leftist terms and cripples the Right by allowing any idiot who is opposed to the Left, no matter how stupid the reason, into the Club. A great example of this are the National Socialists, who get lumped as Right wing despite the fact that their ideological heritage is more in common with socialism and the French Revolution than with Burke.

Pragmatically, what this means is that the Right is frequently allied with forces which turn against it at a critical moment, stabbing it in the back, the Neocon revolt against Trump being an example of this. (Many of whom voted for Hillary).

The membership problem needs to be resolved.

The other issue that Hawley identifies in his survey is the gradual decline in highbrow conservative publications and thought. It sad fact that the public space has been seriously dumbed down but do I think he is onto something here. However, given the dramatic rise of the internet, most of the good stuff is happening on-on line. But as Hawley notes, most public discussion when it comes to conservative issues is done through the shock jocks and media presenters and he laments that there has been a decline in the quality of public space Conservative thought.

Still, I think he missed what I regard as the greatest new development in Conservative thought--the Manosphere--and totally underestimated its significance. The manosphere, as far as I'm concerned, is the only area where conservative thinking is quite alive and active at the moment. The sexual dystopia that we live in has, in many ways, been abetted by traditional western thought. Poisoning Eros did not just reduce lust but it also neutered sexual polarity and fueled the feminist revolution. When sexual identity is defined by moral virtue instead of erotic ones, the biological nature of the actor sort of becomes irrelevant and split is unintentionally encouraged between biological fact and human actor.  The Manosphere is a corrective to this thought since it teaches that biomechanics puts real limits on sexual polarity.

Overall, I think, his charge is justified. Neoreaction--at least to me--seems to have stalled for the moment and I think and more active presence would be a corrective to this dearth of new ideas.

Finally, Hawley points to the demographic challenges facing Conservatism. Hawley notes that the vehicle for Conservative values seem to be, by and large, Older White Males. Given the demographic reality we live in and the decline in Conservative values among the young, Hawley paints a bleak picture of Conservatism's future.

As said before, it's a good book which gives a good and easily readable survey of post World War Two non mainstream conservatism. Thoroughly recommend it. Five Stars.

The Middle American Revolution

It's a shame that Sam Francis was not alive to see Donald Trump's victory. More than anyone else, he had discerned the hurt and pain which was being felt by America's yeomanry since the 1980's. In his small way, through pen, article and book, he  tried to educate Americans about their predicament and motivate them to resist. During his lifetime, his efforts were in vain. Rather, it took eight years of Communist  Democrat governance to final motivate them.  Trump's victory was  in effect, a vindication of his views, especially the belief that the Republican "Neo-Con" approach to politics was wrong. Trump's strategy, which was essentially textbook Francis, delivered spectacularly.

Trump by any considered deliberation is a flawed candidate, who in normal times would never have achieved what he did, except that these are not normal times. Middle America was looking for a saviour, the threat to its existence being palpable, that it was prepared to overcome his history and his all-to-clear faults and chose him, to the surprise of the World, in preference to the diabolical harridan. By appealing to middle America, Trump was able to defeat--against impossible odds--the combined media/establishment collusion. 

As an Australian, U.S. politics affects me in an indirect, if real way. Yet, I've got to admit, this election has given me more anxiety than any here in Australia. Like many other commentators, I felt that this was America's--and therefore the West's--last chance. I think had the Harridan won, the U.S. would have crossed a precipice from which it would have been impossible to recover. Christian persecution would have ensured and a demographic flood that would have been unleashed that would have drowned what remained of the bourgeois, Middle American culture. America would have remained as a geographical entity but it would have transformed into something altogether unrecognizable. I think many Church leaders realised this as well and there was palpable sense of fear among some. For the first time ever in my memory, when the prayers of the faithful were being offered in my local Catholic church, a "non political" prayer was offered in support of Trump.

This election was THAT important.

Trump's victory was therefore not just a big f**k you to the establishment but a deliverance from what was sure to be a persecution of Christians, the beginning of which was started under the Obama administration. Still there needs to be pause. Whilst we were not pushed over the edge, both the U.S.--and Western Civilisation--still stands at that precipice, and unless the Trump administration actively goes out to destroy the institutional structures which turned against middle America and its cultural foundations, all this election amounts to is a stay of execution.

Sam Francis initially had great hopes for the Reagan Revolution but was dismayed as the enthusiasm and energy of that movement was co-opted and decapitated by the politics and machinations of the managerial state. By the time Reagan left office, the state was bigger, more intrusive and less accountable. Regan, in many ways, built the state structure which was co-opted by the Democratic Left and later used to crush middle America.

Francis recognised that in order for any Middle American Revolution to succeed it had to dismantle the managerial state--insofar as it was feasible--and deliver power back to America's traditional bourgeois class. Failing to do so would simply result in a resumption of persecution with the next turn of the political cycle. Unless the Trump presidency is led and guided, it too risks being a Reagan v2.0. What gives me a lot of hope is Trump's reputation of not forgetting his enemies. He has also been given control of Congress and the House of Representatives.

I say "led and guided" quite seriously because as a result of this election, official "Conservatism" is dead, and a new one needs to take its place. The internet, and not the mainstream media, is now the forum of ideas and it's quite surprising to see just how influential it has been, especially with regard to the "Right". Trump, also, seems to have grasped its influence.

Its not the purpose of this post to give a detailed program but "culture management" and "power limitation" are the keys to enduring victory.  Leviathan needs to be hacked to pieces and it should be the role of the dissident Right to push the Administration in the right direction. For example, some of the ways which the Administration could dismantle leviathan is by;

1)Stopping the Federal subsidy of the Left. Defund and Tax the Humanities departments. Move them physically into minority areas and only provide "conditional funding". Make Humanities degrees conditional on completion of a STEM qualification and so on.

2)Break up the media monopolies. Recognise that the internet is now a utility and needs to be regulated as such. Break up Google, Facebook, Twitter etc.

3) Make it a Federal offense to mislead in journalism.

4) Decentralise, Decentralise, Decentralise. Only allow at Federal Level what can't be done at local.

5) Reverse the "Demographic Engineering" of the Left. Unchecked migration had the synergistic effect of dropping labour costs and turning the country "blue". It doesn't have to be done inhumanely. i.e. If your an undocumented immigrant you can stay but no citizenship rights and so on. Undocumented migrants should be housed in "Blue" areas since these people are more accepting of minorities.

6) Leave religion alone. Don't promote it, don't hinder it and so on.

7) Carbon tax on newsprint.

This has been, in terms of political drama, THE. BEST. ELECTION. EVER.  But I have often felt that given the apparent insurmountable odds faced by Trump, there has been something of the Divine active in the affairs of men. To quote Roissy;

I’m not a religious man, but it seems to me the Hand of God is guiding this election, and that He has notarized The Trumpening. The tragedy that accompanies this view is that even with God handing them every reason to vote Trump, a large group of Americans sees fit to defy His magnanimity. Well, the unwoke are about to be smote.

In Catholic circles we are currently in the Year of Mercy. I think we have been given--what many intelligent non-believers also believe--is one last chance.  We can't afford to stuff this one up. The gloves are off, it's a grab for power.

Understanding the Trump Phenomenon

BTW, this could probably be one of the best political commercials ever.  Narrated by Michael Moore himself.

I love seeing the beast being turned onto itself.

Spread the word.

Janus

An even deeper source or socialist resistance to the syncretic 'Marxist' approach to fascism proposed here may be that it implies a far closer and more uncomfortable affinity between fascism and communism in practice than most Marxists would like to acknowledge. As forms of political modernism, both offered totalising solutions to the problem posed by the decadence of liberal society, which were outstanding specimens of the application to socio-political engineering of the "historical predictions' that Karl Popper identified with his concept of 'historicism' - a curious reversal of the connotations given the term by Benjamin - and with the mainspring of totalitarianism. In both cases, time utopia of a new society was formulated by blending scientific and technocratic discourse with mythic thinking, thereby producing that characteristic ideological product of modernity, `scientism'.' Both, when implemented, spawned an elaborate 'political religion' and, in their Nazi and Stalinist versions, provided tilt rationale for mass murder on an industrial scale,

Roger Griffin, A Fascist Century

One of the reasons I'm hostile to the alt-Reich--as opposed to the Dissident Right--is because it's a false hope for the Dissident Right and which will ultimately undermine it. And the reason why it will ultimately undermine it is because the Alt-Reich's father is Marx himself. Unlike the Left, whose danger to the Right is self evident, the Alt-Reich is a much more subtle foe, masquerading as an ally when in reality it's a disguised version of the enemy. This may seem difficult to comprehend as the Alt-Reich espouses many of the ideals of the Dissident Right, such as ethnic homogeneity, sexual polarity and border control but these views arise from a totally different metaphysical system to that which "powered" the Old European Civilisation and therefore represents a break from it. Put simply, the all the versions of Fascism, from "soft" to "hard" are essentially Modernist political ideologies and therefore are the kindred spirits of Marx.

Part of the problem in understanding Fascism and its variants is due to the historical treatment the subject has received. Jewish scholars have tended to give it a Semetic spin, whilst Marxist scholars have tended to see it as a bourgeois reactionary phenomenon. The problem is that these perspectives are wrong. Spanish and Italian Fascism did really care much about the Jews whilst all the parties claimed to act in the interest of the workers and were initially largely supported by them. The bottom line is that these perspectives are wrong.

Perhaps the world's foremost academic expert on the subject of Fascism is Roger Griffin, whose academic work has changed the contemporary for understanding of Fascism. To put it briefly, Fascism is the syncretist product of "Right wing feels" and the philosophy of modernity. i.e. modernism/positivism. It's a different version of modernity to that offered by the Left but all the same, it is a rejection of the past. From Griffin's, A Fascist Century.

This is not to be taken as unqualified endorsement of the view that Hitler was a conscious moderniser, which has been argued by some scholars. His basic obsession was not with modernising Germany, but with eradicating the nexus of forces to which he attributed its collapse (Zusammenbruch) and dissolution (Zersetzung). While he admired American technology, he loathed the multi-racial liberalism and materialism it embodied, and strove to turn Germany into the heart of a European empire based on crude racist and Social Darwinist principles for the triumph of the fittest. But while Ian Kershaw is right to criticise Zitelmann's thesis it is still appropriate to see Hitler's vision as an alternative, and (no matter how perverse and unrealisable) a revolutionary version of modernity, rather than the expression of anti-modernity or 'reactionary modernism'. It is a palingenetic utopia (indissociable in retrospect from the horrendous dystopian implications of its actualisation) which reverberates in Hitler's words on the occasions where he privately gave vent to his deepest convictions; 'Those who see in National Socialism nothing more than a political movement know scarcely anything of it. It is even more than a religion: it is the will to create mankind anew'.

Hitler's project for the renewal of European civilisation - its transformation into a genuine Kultur - under German hegemony involved a wholesale rejection of many aspects of the modern (indeed when he used the term it was with negative connotations). However, not only was this project entirely reliant for its realisation on all aspects of modernisation able to be co-ordinated with Hitler's larger palingenetic aim, but the aim itself was inconceivable without such quintessentially modern forces as massification, social engineering, bureaucratisation, rationalisation, the technologisation of warfare, Social Darwinism, nationalism, racism, and charismatic power. Furthermore, its focus was the quintessentially modern form of power assumed by the nation-state. ...............At the root of the Holocaust was the state-led drive for a fully designed, fully controlled social world, of a society lovingly tended and ruthlessly pruned by the 'gardening state'. So far the forces of pluralism at work in modern society have conspired to prevent such biopolitical projects from being carried out on a grand scale. But when this countervailing moment is overridden by authoritarianism there is little to stop wholesale social engineering and the terror state this creates: the electoral victory of Nazism in 1933 ensured that its totalitarian scheme of utopian society could be implemented to a terrifying degree.

To study Nazism is, on one level, to study the awesome potential of modernisation to create ephemeral and abortive (but to their victims terrifyingly real and definitive) symbioses between the traditional and the modern, to produce a form of modernity deliberately attempting to crush the Enlightenment humanist tradition. To grasp this fact destroys any comforting equation between modernity and humanism, modernity and civilisation, modernity and progress, modernity and the good. There is a famous line at the end of Brecht The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, namely 'The womb that gave birth to Nazism is fertile still."

Griffin's proposition, is that while Fascism and Socialism are superficially distinct entities at a deeper level they're simply different variants of Modernism, both variants being profoundly anti-traditional. Any "Right wing" which aims to be a restorative force in history cannot ally itself with a movement which plans to undermine it.