Comments on: The Red-and-White Blues

By: Gordian

Gordian — Fri, 20 Feb 2015 19:09:33 +0000

“Conservative” and “gun-owning” are surface issues which don’t get at the deep cultural incompatibility between Northern, Southern, and Western American communities. Those of us in the South and West do not want to be governed under Northern rules, assumptions, and political symbols. We don’t want the New England-style of “township democracy” and we don’t accept the assumption that real communities overlap with district lines. Those of us in the South don’t have issues with class-based envy or disdain, and we don’t care about materiel inequality, either in its liberal-Calvinist guise (income inequality) or conservative Catholic guise (distributionism).

I have no problem with rural northerners, but I don’t want to be ruled from the North any more than I want to be ruled by Britons, Canadians, or Australians. Northern values are not universal and it is not immoral to abide by the values of our own ancestors who dissented from them.

By: Valkea

Valkea — Fri, 20 Feb 2015 16:52:40 +0000

I am pro-White and support endogamy among Whites, but I would say that liberal power (mainstream conservatives + liberals + the liberal system generally) sees things differently, i.e. ultimately not from the point of view of ethnicities. Liberal biopower (management of population; births, deaths and anything in between) sees Whites as politically the strongest group, and the most likely to form a unified opposition to liberal immigration policies and liberal globalization policies, which would draw supporters from other ethnicities also. So biopower weakens Whites by in essence forbidding their ethnic identity, maligning them, hindering their efforts to form large scale social and political cooperation, dictating constricted speech codes, etc., and at the same time favoring and promoting the identities and cooperation of ethnic minorities, both inside and between minorities, and allowing them to speak fairly freely. This creates power balance between majority and minorities, and gives the decisive power to the liberal elite. It is the old power politics; weaken the strongest and strenghten and unite the minorities. One day when the ethnic minority identities, cooperation and unity is no longer useful, biopower will dissolve them too. The ultimate goal of biopower is to create totally mixed global “gray race”, as much as possible, so that there is no clear ethnic, cultural, religious, etc. groups. This makes the management of populations easier for large complex organizations / bureaucracies: conflict management becomes easier; less information processing capacity is needed in LGOs; single marketing scheme can be used globally; less variance is needed in production to cater to ethnic, religious, etc. tastes and requirements; bureaucratic processes and procedures can be simplified and unified; borders lose much of their meaning, enabling more the forming of single global political and economic unit; etc.

By: Gordian

Gordian — Fri, 20 Feb 2015 15:21:51 +0000

If we accept Cicero’s claim that most of the central markers of community identity are ideological rather than biological (ie. conceptions of justice and weal separate the Latins from other Italics, despite high levels of intermarriage between these tribes), can we separate identity politics from ideological politics? Can we advance leaders who will take seriously policies which advance the health of our communities independently of core identitarian traits? Aren’t concern for the health of one’s community a core element of communitarian identity?

I’m interested to see what comes out of this.

By: John Glanton

John Glanton — Fri, 20 Feb 2015 03:58:26 +0000

Heh, I appreciate the vote of confidence.

I’ll probably write more on this if I get my thoughts sorted out. Basically I believe that our political ideals ought to be higher than simply winning ethnic conflict (even though if push comes to shove I’d settle for that). Nevertheless we have to be realistic about the permanency of ethnic conflict in all human affairs and conduct ourselves accordingly. It doesn’t have to be identity politics, I don’t think. But it does have to be identity-wise politics.

By: Crud Bonemeal

Crud Bonemeal — Thu, 19 Feb 2015 23:31:06 +0000

Which Yankees?

Even here in New York State there are plenty of rural people who tend to be conservative, religious, gun owning. I see signs about fighting our latest gun control act on a huge percentage of lawns.

Whiteness is getting at something, regional identities are getting at something, but they’re both incomplete.

The problem with trying to do anything in the US is that there is so much diversity that it is very difficult to assemble a critical mass of people who think alike.

By: Manticore

Manticore — Thu, 19 Feb 2015 22:15:06 +0000

“White nationalism” is tilting at windmills, but “interest group politics for whites” is poking a sleeping giant. Regionalism complicates the former dramatically, the latter no so much. It’s in the wind for the first time in 50 years. All it needs is an articulate voice…like Mr. Glanton’s.

By: Kyussopeth

Kyussopeth — Thu, 19 Feb 2015 21:55:15 +0000

I had similar thoughts at my own blog brought up by an argument with a libertarian friend.

“Mr. Krauthammer’s quote gets to the heart of the inability of Red Tribe members to understand what is actually going on & why persisting in arguing with Blue Tribe members gets you nowhere. The Blue Tribe is a thede it is a nation unto itself its actions make perfectly logical sense once you understand this. Their ideological stands are there to differentiate themselves from the rapacious Red Tribe scum. Their objective is the defeat of the Red Tribe at any cost. The Red Tribe is their mortal enemy & through both politics & culture they ceaselessly war against their thede’s chief enemy. Blue Tribe sees no reason for restraint and they will accept any ally in their war against Red Tribe. Why? because evil cannot be allowed to be victorious.”

By: J Katz

J Katz — Thu, 19 Feb 2015 18:56:17 +0000

Speaking of tribal politics in Minneapolis:

http://blogs.citypages.com/blotter/2014/07/phyllis_kahn_alleges_election_judge_called_her_old_jewish_lady_opponent_muslim_brother.php

Can someone please enlighten me on how leftists explain away / justify this much explicit cognitive dissonance to themselves and others?

By: Gordian

Gordian — Thu, 19 Feb 2015 18:43:40 +0000

I think the test of the locus of identity should be practical rather than theoretical, however, which is regionalism’s big advantage over WN. American regional identities are functional, and while there are certainly cultural differences among Texans and Virginians, for example, they share the Ciceronian criteria for a functioning community: common language, common concept of justice, and a common weal (or way of making a living). The latter is central as to why cooperation between Yankee and Southerner is always going to be tentative and limited. Northern urban commercialism is corrosive to Southern community life and social structure. Admitting the Yankee into a non-Yankee community erodes its viability. See Florida and Colorado for Southern and Western examples, respectively.

I certainly believe in common cause between cousins. I have nothing but respect and benevolence for Westerners, rural Canadians, Australians, and Britons. New Englanders, West Coasters, Londoners, urban Canadians, and their compatriots, however, can go to hell. Or, to use my own native dialect, they ain’t kith or kin to me.

By: John Glanton

John Glanton — Thu, 19 Feb 2015 17:29:23 +0000

A lot of the debate about whether a white identity exists is just a matter of what scale you’re talking about. You’re right that, in a sense, it’s a tenuous or fraudulent identity, meaning that it’s more accurately described by smaller, more coherent constituent identities. But the exact same critique can be made of the term “Southerner” or “Yankee.” The South is not a monolithic whole and its people aren’t uniform from Texas to North Carolina or from Tennessee to Georgia. Not historically and not now. There is no identity that can’t be deconstructed in this manner: by appealing to the finer grained analysis.

The finer grained analyses are important, producing the sort of insight that’s evident in your comment. But generalizations allow us to discuss things we wouldn’t be able to otherwise. The idea of “sports,” for instance, disintegrates under close scrutiny. It’s a fraud category that includes a bunch of incompatible and unrelated activities. Neverthless everyone knows what you mean by the word sports and it allows us to have conversations that would be prohibitively unwieldy if we eschewed such vague and imprecise words. In the same way, “white” is an imprecise word. But it still allows us to have discussions about national level racial politics that would otherwise get bogged down in endless qualifications and specifications.

In other words, I think your comment is perceptive as usual and I’m in general agreement with it. But there’s certainly a time, a place, and a scale at which it’s appropriate to talk about white interests. At that level of discourse, I’m in the white camp whether I think that’s an accurate category or not. It behooves me, I think, to offer some words in whitey’s defense.