The Nice Truck Attack led the news this past week. The Reactosphere® was, of course, not surprised. But the event did allow Neal Devers the chance to wonder: Should we Ban High Capacity Assault Trucks?. Jim is thinking along similar lines in Trucks Gone Wild. Adam Wallace pens A Note on Nice. E. Antony Gray is inspired by the event to pen a poem: The Longest Mile. At City Journal: Barbarism Again in France, in which:
No one is surprised. Depressed, yes, but not surprised. French officials have repeatedly warned that there will be more attacks. ISIS has made its strategy explicit: exhaust the police and push France into civil war.
Let’s just hope the right two factions are fighting.
Lawrence Murray discusses the way the French are Living with Terrorism. Spandrell takes up Toxic Arab Masculinity. Malcolm Pollack takes note of Mr. Nice Guy.
Then, even later in the week, the Coup Attempt in Turkey took us all by surprise. A pleasant surprise, because in lieu of a Restoration, reactionaries are often fans of the next best thing. Then we were disappointed the coup failed. Lately, we’re warming up to the idea that the Coup worked very Shylock Holmes has his Initial Thoughts on the matter.
(There is certain to be more on the Coup in Turkey in next week’s roundup.)
Let’s see… what else?
Neovictorian looks forward to the post-election apocalypse Civil War 2.0 Will Be Livestreamed.
The BLMers and Black Blocers and Mexican Flag Wavers seem to believe they’re immune to serious retaliation from Trumpers, who actually support Western civilization. But from what I see on Twitter and elsewhere, limits will shortly be reached.
I hope he’s right. White people are pretty good at putting a smackdown on trouble-makers with a minimum of bloodshed. The longer we wait, the worse it’s gonna get. Chris Gale takes note.
This needed to be said. Alf said it: I don’t care about freedom of speech. I don’t think anyone really does… unless they’re tryna sell ya somethin’…
The “Draughtsman-Writer” automaton by Henri Maillardet
Trying to engineer ‘freedom of speech’ as a meme for society pretty much serves as a Schelling points for naive people and liars. You don’t backwards engineer a society which is propelled forwards by forced honesty. The conditions in which people feel comfortable to share their honest opinions follow natural law.
Also from Alf: Faith in the signs, i.e., the actual signs around The Netherlands, which is are preternaturally accurate and complete. So accurate and complete, that one may be induced by them toward pathological altruism. Whiteopia is always easier to tear down than to build.
Mark Citadel provides an extensive “Companion Commentary” to Ivan Ilyin’s essay The Knightly Spirit.
In response to Reactionary Future’s Criticism of Capitalism from the Right, Jim has a brief but potent Defense of capitalism (from the right). He also has a prediction: No kayfabe at the Republican National Convention.
Sarah Perry thinks up One Hundred Imaginary Gifts from the Simulators. Not sure who the simulators are, but there are 100 gifts listed. Some of them might make good items for Sharper Image.
Nick Land jots down a Quote Note from Darwin on “artificial” selection. He also catches Ross Douthat in what I can only describe as an actual dog whistle. And these two twitter cuts are of some significance.
Reactionary Future makes a brief, strong case for Absolute monarchy—the future. Also: a sketch of the reactionary view of “property”.
Sydney Trads have up the @WrathOfGon classic: Low Time Preference. I like this in particular because is it elegeant backfits a modern evo-psych construct to classical virtue. And as we all know, virtues are highly adaptively beneficial. And another: Napoleon Bonaparte on Bankers and High Finance—very formalist. And yet another (Sydney Trads cannot get enough of Wrath of Gnon): Felipe Mora Carballo on Fatherhood… which put me in mind of this (at the risk of autohorn tooting).
Also at Sydney Trads, E. Antony Gray makes an appearance with some original short verse: “The Rose of Time”.
And at his home blog, Gray has a poetic (and again timely) thought: Gun Control.
Cambria Will Not Yield describes The Invisible Empire of the European People. He’s willing to take the side of the police in the on-going war with the degenerate castes, but that doesn’t mean he’s a fan of the current Law Enforcement Complex. This was an ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention☀…
The Norman Rockwell painting of a policeman giving a lost child an ice cream cone is still the image that many white people have of the police. But the same artist’s painting of Federal marshals escorting a negro girl to school in order to desegregate the South is more in keeping with the role of the police in modern Liberaldom. They live to serve the state. If they are killed by black murderers, my heart goes out to them as it goes out to all whites who are being victimized by black barbarians, but when they defend the abortionists, the integrationists, or any part of Liberaldom, the police are my sworn enemies. To say you are just doing your job does not excuse you if your job entails the defense of liberalism.
He’d like to see more organic institutions of social order, and citing the example the original (non-degenerate) Ku Klux Klan founded by Nathan Bedford Forest.
It was Robert E. Lee who first used the term “invisible empire” to describe the Ku Klux Klan. And it was Robert E. Lee who suggested that Nathan Bedford Forrest should be the man in charge of that invisible empire. We must go down to our European roots and become like unto the men who made up that invisible empire. We shouldn’t literally copy the Klansmen, but we should be like them in spirit. They were a conquered people, in the material sense, who were ruled by a cabal of liberals who had loosed the barbarians of color upon them. And yet they triumphed. They preserved their people and their civilization, because they refused to submit to liberal rule. They didn’t respect any institution that was not organically part of their culture and their heritage. The South didn’t lose the war until they became part of Liberaldom in the 1950s. My contention is that all of us, we Europeans, should be klansmen.
This Week in Social Matter
Ryan Landry kicks off the week with another great Hidden History: America’s Attempt At Restarting The Spanish Civil War. This ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention☀ centers on the OSS agent (and probable KGB associate) Donald Downes in the 1942 Operation Bananas. Supposedly a spying operation on Spanish airstrips to make sure they stayed Spanish, Downes collected enough firepower (and Spanish commie contacts) to reingnite the Spanish Civl war.
Franco’s regime caught onto the operation early. They killed eight in a firefight and executed ten afterwards, while also arresting over 200 Spanish citizens. For an observation operation, it seems large. The problem Downes runs into is explaining in his memoir how he requested $6,000,000 in gold pieces to buy off generals, just in case. The group that Downes put together was so secret that despite Gen. Donovan’s allowance of a special Spanish group to form under Downes, Downes had made it “independent of the Spanish Desk in OSS.”
History, like the FDR Administration, appears to have been remarkably silent on this episode. Why are we not surprised?
Mark Yuray is on Monday with: Conservative Zugzwang Never Ends. Zugzwang, as every chess geek knows, is the compulsion by the rules of the game to move when any move weakens your position. It also well describes the position of conservatives since the end of WW2. Every move they make must weaken their position, yet they keep making them for the sake of the game. At least in chess, you can resign. Yuray describes the current board position:
America must accept a Muslim minority brought over from abroad, and must accept that every movie and TV show has a token gay character (or protagonist). Couldn’t America have brought over, say, a South African Boer minority from abroad, and installed a token Mormon character in every movie and TV show? Yes, in a theoretical America where the Left and Right are equally good at chess. In the real America we live in, conservatives have to deal with the pieces the Left allows them. They remain in conservative zugzwang.
Landry is back on Wednesday with breaking news on the world’s oldest profession, Weimerica Weekly: Normalizing Sex Work, in which “winning one for feminism” takes just a few more dollars.
Hubert Collins returns for this year’s finalists for Sucker Of The Summer: Every Stephen Douglas Of The Current Year. The “winners” turn out to be the entire editorial staff of National Review, since their mediocrity is only noteworthy in bulk. This was a very enjoyable read.
Stephen Douglas is best remembered for the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, which people reference to mean “long and airy debates.” Mr. Douglas won those debates, but two years later he lost the presidency. There is no flag to display with pride that shows your love of Stephen Douglas. There is no “League of Stephen Douglas,” either.
He is not on your money, and Hollywood does not make adoring films about him. The Constitutional Union Party is even less remembered. Just ask your high school history teacher; she’s never heard of it. So since Senator Ben Sasse has not made a name for himself as an orator, dubbing him the Stephen Douglas of our time may even be generous.
The Institutional Right®’s heroic opposition to Trump (and his icky followers) will not be rewarded in this life (or the next)…
If Hillary Clinton wins, in one hundred years, no one is going to say, “If only the Republicans of 2016 had just made a much bigger deal about invading Iran, then America’s descent into egalitarian managerial bureaucracy would have been abated.”
No southern nationalist wishes the Democratic ticket hadn’t been split in 1860. Hell, no one in the GOP even regrets nominating Barry Goldwater. Furthermore, the Clinton administration won’t need allies in George Will and Lindsey Graham, any more than the anti-war left of the George W. Bush years needed allies in Justin Raimondo and Pat Buchanan. If Donald Trump wins, every Stephen Douglas is out of luck. They’ll either have to trade their “principles” for power or become men without a party.
The Committee awarded this one an ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention☀.
Canuck Mark Christensen returns for the third and final part of his series on George Grant’s Lament for a Nation: We Stand On Guard For Thee: Canadian Tradition and American Civilization. The entire series has been excellent, illustrating the initial prophesies, and the subsequent reality, of how Canada would succumb culturally to its much larger and more congenitally liberal Southern Neighbor.
The authentic Canadian tradition embodies a different vision of what America itself might have been—and might yet be. If its political embodiment is now a colony of Liberalism, the tradition itself still exists and runs through many of Canadian institutions, especially the Crown herself. Now, it must be recognized that this Sovereign is in our day herself subject to the Empire born of the great Republic. Whereas America actively promoted Liberalism across the globe, Canada saw its ideology as being particular to its own Dominion. Its founders do not seem to have put much stock in promoting their worldview among American elites and thinkers.
On Friday, Michael Perilloux makes a pleasant (and pleasantly surprising) return with SWPLs, Amerikaners, The Alt-Right, And The Coming State. He has a big paste from Moldbug’s seminal 2008 post on the subject, along with much commentary. He plays the thought experiment of “Crypto-Reactionary Trump Organization”. If it existed, it could succeed at Restoration in the Current Year. But it doesn’t. So what will we have to do to make it exist and be stable and trustworthy before the next opportunity rolls around. “Amerikaner” is a term of neoreactionary art that looks to be a keeper. Perilloux earns an ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention☀ for this one.
Finally, for Saturday’s Poetry & Prose, Antony Gray is back yet again (that dude can poem up a storm), this time paying homage to W. B. Yeats.
This Week in 28 Sherman
Ryan Landry was away this week, enjoying a well-deserved bit of R&R. He’d filled the Social Matter pipe, but not at his home blog. But he did provide a This Week in WW1 Pics pic: Pre-War Cartoon Map .
This Week in Kakistocracy
Porter kicks off the week with The Terrible Legacy of Matt Drudge. “Black Lives Kill,” he (or some intern) said in the wake of the Dallas police attack. And Respectible Conservatives weren’t about to stand for that!
I imagine the proposition of black lives mattering killing is fairly uncontroversial to the widows and morticians in Dallas. Or to those in other energetic urban war zones, for that matter. It’s the pointing it out that really rankles conservatives. Which distinguishes them from liberals by virtue of their opposition to higher corporate tax rates.
Not so fast, Porter. It’s the liberals’ job to explain away the bad behavior of their “Mutt”. It’s the conservatives’ job to smack down anyone refuses to accept that explanation. It’s a Mutt and Jeff Within a Mutt and Jeff Routine.
Next he opens up the Daily Mail to discover ostensible Subliminal Devices for Dissidents. Some persuasive techniques remain more persuasive than others.
This Week in Evolutionist X
Evolutionist X dabbles in Pol Theory to start the week: High politics, Low politics, Red politics, Blue politics. I think she gets a lot right there. The thing to bear in mind is that they are not remotely orthogonal axes. High politics tends strongly blue. High red is a unicorn. This is because HLvM is the way demotist politics works.
In light of the Dallas police massacre, she finds it “hard to concentrate on genetics when you feel like your own society is coming apart at the seams“. She helpfully runs through a some numbers and a bucket of anecdotes, which ought inform a casual observer. There’s no way to look at reality and sustain an argument that there exists a Racist White Police Officers Gunning Down Innocent Black Men Epidemic. But that’s the narrative that some folks, including our Cultural Masters, want to believe, and others are made to feel morally inferior for not believing.
And for Anthropology Friday (in all but name), Evolutionist X considers The 6 Civilizations? In approximate chronological order they were: Mesopotamia, Egypt (Nile Valley), Indus Valley, Andean, China, and Meso-America. These are the classic ones, assumed to have arisen more or less independently. (Causal entanglement between Mesopotamia and Egypt doesn’t seem too much of a stretch, geographically speaking.) But she zooms in on the dig at Göbekli Tepe in Anatolia Turkey, which seems poised to turn ancient anthropology on its head… at least the timelines, as it is being dated to the 10th through 8th millennium BC. That plus genes make the ancient Anatolians possible (likely?) progenitors of the (what we always were taught were the) first civilizations in the Fertile Crescent.
This Week in West Coast Reactionaries
Octavian discusses the Australian Federal Election: Battle-Lines Redrawn.
Adam Wallace is back with an excellent path in navigating the JQ: Further Thoughts on the Jewish Question.
The “Eternal Jew” easily becomes a bogeyman to the materialist constantly looking for something external to react against, leaving them vulnerable themselves to fall prey to this spiritual sickness characterised by the traits of this archetypical “platonic” Jew. For if one neglects the spiritual needs, they will be sated by filth and dirt. Indeed, this is something Evola warns us of in the introduction to his translation of The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.
He quotes a lot of Evola and focuses in on the tragic story of Otto Weininger.
A bit of short (and dark) poetry from Pylads: Hedon Hung.
James discusses Peace Between Black and White and The Gun. Not that kind of black and white. At least not exactly. Also from James: The Necessity of the “Butlerian Jihad”.
And Testis Gratus takes a dim view of the Constitution Which May Be Written in Ink and Paper. LARPing about the perfect society isn’t just a harmless hobby, but instead a likely sign and symptom of the Enlightenment Rationalist disease:
Lana Turner. Wow.
It’s very easy to LARP about how such-and-such a regime will take over and rule and how this or that law will be revised, retracted, or added; these people will have these rights, those people will have those rights, and anyone else can can get lost. We have this idea that we must design the countries of the future beforehand to avoid our current problems and weaknesses. “It’s simple, just write ‘No darkies, no Muzzies, and no Jews’ into the constitution.” But isn’t this exactly how founders formed many of our current Liberal countries?
Indeed. No piece of paper can bind Sovereign Authority at any rate. So pretending to do so can only be a fig leaf for something else—something more sinister.
Like other heresies before it, Liberalism uses written law as a way to enforce belief, an inversion of its true purpose. Liberal governments fight their own populace in order to impose their rule, despite the façade of democracy. The French legislators didn’t care if the people believed in egalitarianism, they put it in all the same. Nowadays, it doesn’t matter if the average Texan doesn’t believe that gay “marriage” is valid, the progressives in Massachusetts will make sure that D.C. bashes them over their heads with “laws” until they do. Cuckservatives are absolutely pathetic in how they say that we just need to follow “muh piece of paper!” Strict adherence to the Constitution is just as ridiculous as the Talmudic opposition saying “there’s no law against it so it must be okay.”
Just as ridiculous… and rather eerily similar, TBH. Mr. Gratus stands atop the podium this week with an ☀☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Award☀☀. Try not to spend that all in one place.
This Week around The Orthosphere
Matt Briggs has been running through his Logical Fallacies Classics during his vacation. This week he presents the So’s-Your-Old-Man Fallacy and the Apes Do It So It’s Fine For Us Fallacy, concluding:
Strangely, we rarely hear calls to emulate dung beetles or blow files
For now, Dr. Briggs… for now. Also who can forget the classic Imposing-Their-Beliefs Fallacy? We suffer not from too much imposition of belief, but from too little. The only fallacy there is “saying that like it’s a bad thing.”
Also the moment we’ve all been waiting for Uncertainty Meets The World. Briggs’ new book has gone from the “Available for pre-order” stage to the “In Stock” stage.
Filed under Thank God for Science! Shocking New Research: Hunger Motivates Eating. And Briggs gets back in the Stream with This Government Lab Has Been Faking Data for Years.
Imaginative Conservative has up a pithy and timely quotation from Cardinal Newman Gradually Restoring the World. Also there, some choice anti-democratic words from Alexander Hamilton.
It is an unquestionable truth, that the body of the people in every country desire sincerely its prosperity: but it is equally unquestionable, that they do not possess the discernment and stability necessary for systematic government. To deny that they are frequently led into the grossest errors by misinformation and passion, would be a flattery which their own good sense must despise. That branch of administration especially, which involves our political relations with foreign states, a community will ever be incompetent to.
Should we trust James Madison? Of course not.
Chris Gale finds some troubling category errors in the field of suicide research.
Kristor has some high-test political theory The Gödelian Limit of Political Formalism—an exposition that, in my estimation, militates strongly against political ideology in the abstract.
[T]he general conservative deference to local traditions is the most appropriate political attitude. It is the opposite of a theory. It is rather a method. It is comparable to trying to understand the behavior of an animal species by observing its members in the wild and letting them alone, rather than by dissecting or running experiments on them. Or, it is like devising a detailed diet and exercise plan for the idiosyncrasies of an individual athlete, rather than trying to map out a detailed plan that will work for all humans, period full stop. Or, it is like applying a few time tested general principles to plan a building fitted to its environment, rather than designing an ideal house or farm plan that will work well everywhere.
The nouveau Ghostbusters (feminist edition) doesn’t sound worth covering, so I’ll Dalrock say it all: How many feminists does it take to change a light bulb? That is, unless Billy has something more to say about it.
Mark Richardson has Why feminism is evil 2. That’s part 2 of ten million, of course, but these reasons are particularly hideous.
This Week… Elsewhere
Al Fin is definitely speaking neoreactionary language here: Why the Dangerous Child Will Never Join a Mass Political Movement.
Philosophy tries to understand the world, and to find good ways of living in the world.
Ideology underlies the construction and propagation of organisations for change, such as religions, political movements, and all types of activist organisations. Look for instances of war, genocide, terrorism, enslavement, and mass murder, and you are likely to find an ideology behind them—for purposes of justification if nothing else.
Also from Al, a nice quote with some commentary: Resilience by Eric Greitens.
Much truth lies in this observation: Freelance Comment Of The Week: Reversing The Sap-Snark Polarity. Also Prog Exhaustion—hopeful sign? Or wishcasting?? Time will, I think, tell. It is one thing to give up on Muslim Inclusion, and another to give up on Color-blind Equalism, and quite again another to give up on the Emancipation of Women, and beyond several more pales to give up on the entire Enlightenment Experiment. At any point, the progs can retrench to preserve their power.
Roman Dmowski makes a compelling case for America Divided. I agree it’s bad, however I think it’s quite far from worst ever, or worst in our lifetimes. Depends on how old ye are I guess.
As we noted a last week, AMK is writing a book: Neocameral Future. This is Chapter 1: The Evolutionary Legacy Hypothesis
[H]umans evolved for one environment and live in another. This results in chronic misery and hatred of the political order. Some rebel against the inhuman nature of capitalism. Others dislike immigration and mass migration. Some resent massive inequalities. Still others refuse to have children. All of these manifestations are the result of techno-material conditions outstripping our humanity. We are simply not made for the modern world, and either it, or us, needs to be remade to bridge the rift.
He goes on to give a fantastic synopsis of that “rift”—between the life for which humans were well-prepared by evolution and the one we’re actually living today—and why all candidate modern political systems not only fail to fix anything, but make things far worse.
Gratuitous pic of lightly made up girl
Nearly all modern political philosophy is unified by a need to close the rift between human nature and modern technologically developed society. They can be divided into three categories based on what they believe is the source of maladaptation. Progressives believe that the source is culture, the problem inequality, and the solution abolishing whiteness, or educating the people. The Khmer Rouge believed the source was modern industrial capitalism, the problem inequality, and the solution a return to agrarian communism. Communists believed that the source was capitalism, the problem inequality, and the solution communism. The Amish believe that the source is modern decadence, the problem is modernity itself, and the solution is to live without modern technology. Scientologists believe the source is the reactive mind, the problem how to erase it by clearing people of their engrams, and the solution auditing. Transhumanists believe the source is human nature, the problem genetics, and the solution genetic and intelligence enhancement through gene therapy and/or mind uploading. Accelerationists believe in abolishing the rift by abolishing either the human race with artificial intelligence or capitalism itself. Reactionaries believe that the source is the Cathedral and modernity, the problem the absence of traditional structures, and the solution a return to traditional living forms.
In all, a lot to like from AMK, and a bit to disagree with in this ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention☀. I encourage all my NRx Pol Theory fans to head over and give it once over. Also there: The Greatest Argument Against Egalitarianism is the Very Existence of Racism. In a nutshell: Xenophobia or Class Resentment… Pick (at least) one.
Over at City Journal, NYC Mayor de Blasio continues to look really unmayoral: Mayor Militant. A timely and absolutely heart-wrenching story of The Policeman’s Wife.
Also from City Journal, a look at local politics around St. Louis: The Citizen As ATM. Around St. Louis includes Ferguson of course. It sounds like Missouri is like New Jersey, only moreso. Things could be worse than the highest property taxes in the nation. And in St. Louis County, they are.
Speaking of City Journal, Heather MacDonald (Hmac and the other other exception that proves the rule) has a new (and incredibly well-timed) book out The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe. As of this typing, Amazon ranks it “#1 Best Seller in Violence in Society”. (Not sure how big that category is, but it deserves to be bigger I bet.)
2016 is The Year Racism Died, and Neo-Ciceronian has the post-mortem. Also: Feminists Don’t Hate Masculinity – They Envy It—the meme graphic alone is worth the price of admission. I have no idea where I bumped into this Neo-Ciceronian guy, but he’s pretty good.
Racism, the epithet, may be dead; but that only means everyone is free to be racist again: America’s Consensus Pronounced Dead, and Lawrence Murray has that post-mortem. Also from Lawrence: Investigating Kulak Unrest at The New York Times… and how, irrespective of what they say about it, such coverage provides a path for alt-right memes to propagate to the wider public.
August J. Rush has completed a major bit of research in The Executive Army. Agencies like HHS, the IRS, and EPA sure are buying a lot of guns an ammo. Rush has the numbers and a possible (and not entirely salutary) reason why.
Knight of Númenor kicks off a series on Islam & Muslims: The progressive Muslims, and their importance to Reaction. It will be interesting to see where this goes.
That’s all folks. Keep on Reactin’! Don’t be Donatists to each other!! NBS… Over and out!!!
Glad you enjoyed the posts.
Thank you, Based Dad
LOL. Good work, Son!!
Wow, thanks for the links guys!
You’re welcome, Titus.