True to its name, the book is a bare-bones introduction to the arguments against democracy, rooted in a firmly reactionary frame. Detractors almost immediately complained that Anissimov was just rehashing the arguments against democracy articulated by the Austrian School economist Hans-Hermann Hoppe in his magnum opus Democracy: The God That Failed (see here, and I [and I imagine the opinion would be unanimous among neoreactionaries] cannot recommend the book enough). Similarities notwithstanding, Anissimov also introduces a number of more interesting additions to the case against democracy, and puts Hoppe’s economic arguments in their proper place in a [neo]reactionary perspective, and also categorizes alternatives to democracy and their relations with it and each other. It is important to remember that Hoppe was not a monarchist himself, but only considered monarchy a lesser evil compared to democracy. Hoppe’s preferred form of human political organization, in an ideal world, would have been anarcho-capitalism.

Using Hoppe’s paradigm, a neoreactionary differentiates himself from libertarians, anarcho-capitalists and faithful believers in the democracy by rejecting democracy on Hoppe’s (and Anissimov’s) grounds, and then subsequently rejecting anarcho-capitalism, for whatever reason. The reasons for rejecting anarcho-capitalism might differ, and might be the very reason neoreaction conceives of itself as a trichotomy of blood-and-soil ethnonationalists, throne-and-altar theonomists and hyper-capitalist techno-commercialists. But I digress. The important take-away is that Anissimov has appropriately reframed Hoppe’s arguments as a reactionary should, and thus put the economic arguments against democracy in their appropriate context along with a series of others based on psychology, history, genetics, etc. I am not the first to notice that Anissimov is doing more formulating than original thinking, but I am also the last person to condemn some good formulating — all new ideas are old ideas after all, but that just goes to show the power of formulation.

Anissimov touches on a lot of fertile ground ripe for intellectual cultivation, although their details are deliberately elided in the interest of brevity. In just one chapter, we consider the “problem of civilization” from the viewpoints of chimpanzee gangs, human hunter-gatherers, early Sumeria and the proto-Greek Indo-Europeans and their culture of chariot-riding warrior-chieftains. I’m sure Anissimov realizes each one of these topics could easily fill up a thick tome’s worth of neoreactionary guiding, especially the last one. If it was the particularities of the proto-Greeks and their culture that gave rise to Western civilization as we know it, I’d love to see a long-view study of Western civilization since antiquity and how well it has done with regards to conserving this Ur-culture.

Anissimov also touches on the “Putnam argument” against democracy (i.e. based on Robert Putnam’s research that found that “diversity” reduces social capital) and various other trains of thought relatively palatable to the modern liberal mind. Other examples include the “cognitive bias argument,” that voters are influenced by too many unalterable biases to make good decisions on average, as well as the “polarization argument,” that democracy encourages political polarization and increasingly intrudes into non-political spheres of life. Bringing up the American Founding Fathers’ well-documented aversion to democracy and their blunt elitism is another classic anti-democratic spiel, although it probably serves more to reassure neoreactionaries of their sanity than convince — ahem — “democracy enthusiasts” of the illegitimacy of their favored political system, seeing as most of them have probably been taught by now that the Founding Fathers were slave-owning, old white bigots who ought to be summarily dismissed and ignored insofar as they aren’t overthrowing an even-more-incorrigible old white bigot like the King of England. But hey, no one said this was easy.

Anissimov spends a fair amount of time reiterating Hoppe et al.’s libertarian economic arguments against democracy, and also goes into a fairly long tangent on democracy’s relations to GDP (gross domestic product) and income inequality. Following the latter, he also goes on an even more tangential rant on why income inequality is not inherently wrong. This part of the guide felt quite out-of-place compared to the rest, since it went on too long for what was comparatively a minor issue, and especially one so terribly based in progressive propaganda, coming as it does straight from the ramen-infested bowels of Occupy Wall Street. Anissimov definitely forgot for whom he was writing his book at times — yes, inequality is a fact of nature that will be reflected in society; neoreactionaries do not need persuasion of this fact!

All in all, Anissimov accomplished what he set out to do. Many of his assertions and much of his evidence could be turned into full-length books in and of themselves, and I would advise any intellectual entrepreneurs to take note of this fact. Anissimov critiques democracy, but as much as he critiques democracy, he critiques the average voter, the dogma of equality and modern culture itself. If this was a guide, it was a guide to unexplored territories, beckoning to the bold.

The post Yuray Reviews Anissimov’s Guide for Neoreactionaries appeared first on Social Matter.

“It looks so pretty.”

What the Americaness doesn’t notice is that behind the ghostly numbers telling the time, the cathedral is riddled with shrapnel.

I know well enough, since I took the picture myself and poked the gashes and snarls of metal embedded in the doorway. Artillery shells exploded here within recent memory. Here, where German tourists now waddle around in flip-flops and souvenir t-shirts. Here, within fifty paces of the kind of beach described as “must-see” and “breath-taking.” Here, where you can sip a cheap cappuccino in the sun and enjoy the quiet rhythm of lazy tour groups shuffle into sight, into the cathedral, quickly out again, and off to the beach. Swedes; Englishmen; Americans; Germans (Austrians?); Englishmen; Chinese retirees; Japanese retirees; Germans; Slovaks? Not with that economy. Poles perhaps? More Germans. In smoky bars that liven up after dark this menagerie of tourists looks very homogeneous, but during the day the locals turn brown and the foreigners turn red.

This spot is so quiet, so peaceful, so welcoming to the wallets of all kinds of vacationers from all over the wealthy world. And yet this romantic scene of European integration (or shall I say, E.U. integration) belies much darker realities. The obese tourists from Germany sip Fanta Shokata™ by the Coca-Cola Company™ as they wander past twisted metal from 76.2 mm mountain artillery shells embedded into the building. One of these wayfarers’ parents might have done some nasty things to one of the Polish tourists’ grandparents. Possible too some nastiness was exchanged with the forebears of the locals. Likely even some shared nastiness with the locals against the people who launched the shells into this area. Not that it would matter to these Europeans now. They’re modern and progressive. They’ve overcome the bigotry and narrow-mindedness of the past. They will all live among one another, in peace and harmony as brothers among nations. The motto of the European Union: “United in diversity.”

What I describe is, of course, not just ordinary in Europe, but in the world. Few places have escaped the judgment of Gnon. Anyone still alive today is descended from a group of people more vicious than the ones who now express themselves only in history books, if even — history is written by the victors, after all. It was not only the cathedral that was injured. In certain notorious parts of Southern Europe, damage from shrapnel can be seen fairly commonly on all sorts of buildings, residential and commercial both. The damage is left unrepaired out of poverty as often as it is left unrepaired out of spite, or defiance. In one Southern capital, NATO bombed a building of the defense ministry in the downtown area of the capital city. For a decade it stayed half-ruined, but no one left their posts or positions. Even in Northern Europe, large undetonated munitions from the last big kerfuffle are found buried among the cities of modern Western civilization.

All these signs are signs of Gnon. They are evidence of natural selection, not necessarily genetic, though often so. More often, and more importantly, they are evidence of the natural selection of adaptive and maladaptive behaviors, attitudes, delusions and outlooks. As right-wingers, we are familiar with the idea of Darwinism as it applies to free enterprise and evolution. These are just the two most obvious examples of the principles of natural selection. Nassim Nicholas Taleb does an excellent job of introducing the same principles of Darwinism and selection into many other domains of life, and does a good job of implying everything is always under natural selection, including the mundane things. One’s beliefs, behaviors, attitudes, delusions and outlooks are under constant selection, though the effect is not as glaring and well-studied as in biology or economics.

In practical terms, this means that if (for example) one is a little bitch, witnessing one’s childhood home turn into vapor will instill a good dose of stoicism into one’s psychology. The shocking, immediate, undeniably-real disproving of the childish pretensions that the world is fair, or that one is entitled to good things, or that the future is always bright and sunny — gone like smoke in a wind. All that will be left will be the communion with reality. Then again, it appears not everyone is equally capable of communing with reality. For some the communion is natural, for some it requires practice, and for some it requires monumental effort. And some unfortunate souls can only wish for mercy from Gnon in the form of a quick and painless selection out of the competition of life.

I note too that I purposely use the word “commune:” it seems that to immerse oneself in reality is the secondary state of man, secondary to the primary state of fantasy and easy delusion. To overcome the primary state, no less an effort than one comparable to the effort to commune with the divine is required — full of ritual, constant reminder, deep contemplation and a degree of faith and/or willpower. Just ask a bodybuilding fundie. Not coincidentally, we reactionaries and traditionalists might be inclined to argue that the divine is real and the real is divine. Communing indeed.

Far be it from me to pontificate on the material causes of an inability to commune with reality. I will, however, take the liberty of pontificating on a link between an inability to commune with reality and a lightening of the requirement to do so every once in a while. He who lives in wealth and comfort, by definition, is absolved of the necessity to “clean house” in his soul. Comfort, it appears, could be defined as a respite from confrontation with Gnon. And yet this definition is a denunciation too, for a respite from Gnon could never be permanent, only temporary — only a distraction. Without the constant confrontations with Gnon and his pressures for natural selection from the smallest habits and thoughts to the greatest civilizations, one cannot respond and adjust to Gnon’s new conditions for survival. One consequently only delays the potential for a permanently selective event, one that selects one soul, heart and body whole straight out of the race.

Deprived of the rough guiding hand of Gnon, someone like my Americaness can only see the pretty parts. Trained to be human not on the dictates of Gnon but of Elua, of human wish and folly, there can be no shrapnel in the pretty little church. Who would shell a cathedral? Why would they ever have a reason? Don’t they know we’ve reached a modern paradise of wealth and freedom and fraternity and comfort for all? Didn’t they get the memo? Who forgot to tell them?

Somehow, the West, which drowns in its own wealth, has become atrophied to the pushes and proddings of Gnon on a mass scale. Avoiding Gnon in the form of everything from STDs to staggering societal debt has become a popular past-time. It seems forgotten that denying Gnon sacrifice is unwise, for he can only return later with twice the vengeance. The West operates under the false belief that no selection will ever have to be countenanced again — equality shall rule, and no one shall ever have to judge anyone else for any reason. Not even Gnon may judge! This belief is clearly insane. Not that it would now matter to the Europeans milling around the cathedral. They’re modern and progressive. They’ve overcome the bigotry and narrow-mindedness of the past. They will all live among one another, in peace and harmony as brothers among nations.

And yet, that’s what the Yugoslavs said in 1989. And would you just look at those cathedral doors?

The post Comfort Kills appeared first on Social Matter.

Hello. I’m a Russian occupier. It is my profession. Historically, it just happened. I once occupied Siberia… I once occupied the Baltic States … I once occupied Central Asia … I once occupied Ukraine … Yes, I’m an occupier, and I’m tired of apologizing for it! I’m an occupier by birthright, an aggressor and a bloodthirsty monster. Be afraid. … All and sundry came to my house: the Turks, the British, the Poles, the Germans, the French — we’ve got enough land, two and a half meters for each and every one of them! Please, understand. I don’t need your hypocritical “freedom.” I don’t need your rotten “democracy.” Everything that you call “Western values” is alien to me. I have other interests. I politely warn you for the last time: don’t mess with me. I build peace, I love peace, but I know how to fight better than anyone else… Sincerely, your Russian occupier.

You can watch the video for yourself. More than 2.3 million views so far. In Russian. Quite a ride.

Can you imagine the American version?

Hello. I’m an American settler. It is my profession. Historically, it just happened. I once occupied North America… I once occupied Alaska … I once occupied Hawaii … I once occupied Cuba … Yes, I’m an occupier, and I’m tired of apologizing for it! I’m an occupier by birthright, an aggressor and a bloodthirsty monster. Be afraid. … All and sundry came to my house: the Redskins, the British, the Mexicans, the Japanese — we’ve got enough land, two and a half meters for each and every one of them!

Mighty racist, innit?

Hello. I’m a British colonizer. It is my profession. Historically, it just happened. I once occupied India… I once occupied Australia … I once occupied Africa … I once occupied Ireland … Yes, I’m an occupier, and I’m tired of apologizing for it! I’m an occupier by birthright, an aggressor and a bloodthirsty monster. Be afraid. … All and sundry came to my house: the Romans, the Normans, the Vikings, the French, the Germans — we’ve got enough land, two and a half meters for each and every one of them!

I can hear Labour-voters crying in agony.

How did it come to this? Why do Russians celebrate their old conquests and justify them with talk of civilization and glory, but Britons and Americans couldn’t even begin to do the same without being denounced as racists, imperialists, etc.? Come to think of it, why did the latter two stop doing what the first is still doing?

Henry Dampier has commented on the differences between [Novo-] Russian and American propaganda before. Limitless American budgets can nevertheless only focus on the “you-you-you.” Join the American army — you’ll benefit. The closest to an organizing principle they can reach is “diversity.” Token black marine. Token female soldier. Token Asian paratrooper. And so forth. White males with hokey ideas about brothers-in-arms dying for the Honor of the Fatherland need not apply. It’ll be more like gender-non-conforming-individuals-in-arms twisting drone-joysticks for the Justice of the Trayvon. Not so in Russia.

Russian diversity.

Russian propaganda for the fighters in Donbass is focused on Donbass and the people protecting it — grizzly white males who like to shoot, smoke and beseech the Lord Jesus Christ. That typically Western, narcissistic, and solipsistic propaganda trend, where a cast of soft-spoken, diverse characters stand and alternately plead with and browbeat the viewer about this-or-that cause they totally stand united for but are nevertheless hopeless about solving without you, before ending with a hashtag — this particular style of propaganda has been found somewhat wanting by the Russians.

One of these Russian occupiers is worth a hundred thousand teary-eyed liberal actors with hashtags.

It goes without saying that a rejection of narcissistic slave-morality propaganda didn’t arise out of nothing. Judging by the video, the Russian view of the West is markedly dim (and rightly so). Western “democracy” means NATO interventions and Guantanamo Bay. Western “freedom” means rule by the vulgar dykes of Pussy Riot and sermons from the fatuous scatologists of Charlie Hebdo. Western “values” mean “Daddy, Papa, and Me.” Enthusiasm for this societal program is not exactly sky-high. You can tell a lot about a people by their propaganda. Russia and the West may look suspiciously similar at times, were one to take just a surface glance at something like fertility rates. And yet the trend lines couldn’t be farther apart.

It’s worth watching this video about Alexei Mozgovoy, separatist leader in Lugansk, ruling his area like a “fiefdom.” (In the West, apparently, we prefer our lawless chieftains to have titles like “Administrative Chief of the ABCDEFG” instead of “Commander.” So long as it’s a bureaucracy committing the barbarism we can call ourselves civilized, I guess.) Vice is not any less biased than any other Western media outlet, and there is a wrenching juxtaposition between how hard the video-creators want you to hate Mr. Mozgovoy and how much perfect sense he is making. Mozgovoy suggests banning women from nightclubs and cafes, and continues:

Despite their behavior, women remain women and you are not allowed to rape them. At the same time, it’s not a bad idea for a society, and for women in particular, to take some steps to raise their morals.

Simon Ostrovsky asks him what problems they have with morality. The same as you have, he responds.

For instance, those young ladies who are in their childbearing age and need to give birth, so that there is no demographic crisis and so on, instead they are ruining their bodies. What kind of mother can she be after she has ruined her body with alcohol and drugs?

Ostrovsky asks some leading questions, trying to establish Mozgovoy’s “people’s courts” as Medieval barbarisms. Ostrovsky, liberal hipster douche, scarf, glasses and all, apparently doesn’t like democracy when the Russians do it. He apparently also forgot that Mozgovoy’s “people’s courts” are the ones replacing the awful “corrupt Russian courts” Westerners wail about, which Mozgovoy points out immediately. You see, America needs to invade Ukraine (and especially Donbass) to get rid of that corrupt Russian system and replace it with a good American system, for the people! Wait, what’s happening? No, don’t let the people! organize their own courts. Stop it! Democracy is bad! I mean–wait, what?

So did uneducated sexist redneck barbarian bigot on the wrong side of history Mr. Mozgovoy execute the poor man unfairly tried by the Putin’s people’s court? Yes! Bomb Russia now! Nope. What happened to your victim, Mr. Mozgovoy?

Nothing. He is alive, but in prison. […] Even though he was sentenced to death, that does not mean that he will be executed the next day. It’s necessary to allow time for an appeal, isn’t it?

Remember that in the Land of the Free, self-defense against a protected minority will get you publicly tarred and feathered like George Zimmerman or Darren Wilson before a trial has even begun. This will put your family in danger, put a price on your head, alienate you from the ruling powers of your homeland and devastate your livelihood. Even suggesting a protected minority might not be all it’s cracked up to be will turn you into a non-person, everything but flatly murdered. People’s courts come in all shapes and sizes. At least the Russian-run ones are concerned with crime and punishment instead of social justice.

Chalk it up to different mentalities.

The post Different Mentalities appeared first on Social Matter.

Are you a conservative or rightist of some kind? Have you heard about neoreaction? Have you heard good things about it? Have you heard bad things? Have you heard that neoreaction is just a bunch of Silicon Valley nerds with obscene power fantasies? Have you heard neoreaction is really just bunch of wimpy Yankees theorizing from an Ivory Tower (skyscraper?) in New York City? Have you heard neoreaction is just a poorly articulated justification for racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and bigotry? Have you heard neoreaction is just a lazy, long-winded excuse not to engage in right-wing political activism? Have you heard, perhaps, that neoreaction is nothing more than another Jewish conspiracy to subvert the interests of white European Westerners and everything they know, love and stand for?

What you have heard, my friend, may not be entirely accurate. There has been ample, pained, and published work trying to answer the question “what is neoreaction?,” and the answer seems elusive yet. It is, however, less difficult to enumerate a list of things neoreaction is not. For example, neoreaction is not a motor vehicle. Neoreaction is not a form of government. Neoreaction is not libertarianism. Neoreaction is not [just] monarchism. Neoreaction is not a website. Neoreaction is not a Jewish conspiracy. Neoreaction is, for that matter, not a conspiracy of Silicon Valley nerds, highfalutin’ Yankees, pompous urbanites, incorrigible bigots or lazy conservatives. It is true that some Silicon Valley nerds, highfalutin’ Yankees, pompous urbanites, incorrigible bigots, and lazy conservatives all find a home in neoreaction — as do some Jews. Yet no single group dominates the neoreactionary bubble of thought, so much so that neoreactionaries delineate three separate zones of neoreactionary thought and affiliation, termed the Trichotomy of theonomy, ethnonationalism and techno-commercialism. In other words: faith, blood, and property. God, family, and guns. Everybody’s got a favorite, but nobody maintains less than all three.

Neoreaction was more-or-less founded by the prolific writer and programmer Mencius Moldbug sometime around 2007. This basic point seems to be agreed-upon by nearly everyone. Moldbug could easily qualify as a Jew (a half-Jew), a Silicon Valley nerd, and a pompous urbanite. Moldbug may have been the catalyst for this new intellectual phenomenon, yet before, during and after Moldbug’s de facto hiatus in 2013, neoreaction has flowered into far more than him alone. Dozens of neoreactionary articles are written every day. Neoreactionaries are meeting offline. Neoreactionaries are forming occult networks. If you don’t see neoreaction doing anything, that’s just because you haven’t looked — or, because neoreaction doesn’t want you to see what it’s doing. Moldbug hasn’t been scheming for years behind-the-scenes, directing neoreaction from a synagogue. He’s been busy with far less sinister things. So who exactly has been steering the NRx-Mobile, hidden behind tinted windows?

1. Neoreaction is demographically less Jewish than a Hamas birthday party.

How could anyone imagine that a group adopting a mascot as supremely non-kosher as a crab was Judaic in any shape or form?

Shellfish: not kosher.

There are three Jews who are or have been involved in neoreaction. Two are half-Jewish. The third is quarter-Jewish. This makes them gentile enough to be Nazi field marshals. The three are the aforementioned Mr. Moldbug, Mr. Boetel from Radish Magazine, and the Anti-Democracy Activist. Mr. Moldbug is not religious, and hasn’t contributed a word to neoreaction since 2013. Mr. Boetel posts sporadically (the last time was in November), and makes a blogging out of masterfully mocking and deconstructing liberal-progressive narratives on history and current affairs. The Anti-Democracy Activist is a convert to Catholicism. Instead of the flag of Israel, he flies the flag of Rhodesia. If this here is a sinister Jewish conspiracy, it strikes me as a rather lackluster one. My Jew-dar just isn’t detecting anything. In any case, I must recommend reading all three men. And so what about the rest of the neoreactionaries?

The columnists for this very neoreactionary website include one Minnesotan Catholic, one Catholic Slav, a grizzly American Southerner and three Anglo-Saxon gentiles. Zero Jews. Guest writers have included Russians, Scandinavians, and more Anglo-Saxons of various kinds. No Jews to my knowledge. The aggregator for neoreaction, Reaction Times, is curated by a reactionary Protestant from Canada. Listed in the aggregator are 30+ sites maintained by gentiles of European descent, and three maintained by the aforementioned souls of the most tangential Jewish background. Aside from Mr. Moldbug, the most influential neoreactionaries are largely English, American and otherwise natively Anglophone. Russians, Slovenians, and Bulgarians make a mark too. Ditto American Southerners. The latest newcomers have been Croatian and Turkish. Hangers-on from Spain, Brazil, Scotland, the rest of the Anglosphere, South Africa, the Netherlands, Ireland, India, Panama, Scandinavia and elsewhere round out the neoreactionary sphere. I am still not aware of any neoreactionaries from Israel, nor any with surnames suffixed with ‘-berg,’ ‘-stein,’ or ‘-witz.’ Indeed, yours truly receives more traffic from Taiwan, Romania, and the United Arab Emirates than from Israel. Judaeoreaction? Why not Sinoreaction or Islamoreaction?

Current and active neoreactionaries are overwhelmingly European gentiles. The largest currents seem to be Anglo-Saxon, Roman Catholic, American Orthodox and Slavic. The most grossly over-represented ethnic group among neoreactionaries is not Jews, but South Slavs. The most cursory demographic investigation will reveal not just that neoreactionaries are not Jews, but that neoreactionaries aren’t necessarily Silicon Valley nerds, highfalutin’ Yankees, pompous urbanites, incorrigible bigots or lazy conservatives either. Some married with kids and others unattached students. Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, neo-pagan and atheist. Former libertarians, former progressives, former Tea Partiers, former paleoconservatives, former fascists, former apoliticals, and former Marxists. Born and raised everywhere from Alaska to Australia. I think we even have a woman or two. The diversity of neoreaction, in fact, highlights precisely how non-Jewish it is. Jews, far from running the show the way they do for neoconservatives, communists, or progressives (but I repeat myself), are conspicuously missing. If neoreaction is a Jewish conspiracy, it is the first one without any Jews.

2. Moldbug alone is not the sole arbiter of neoreactionary thought.

Mr. Enoch from The Right Stuff objects to Moldbug’s dismissal of white nationalism and psychologist Kevin Macdonald’s theory of innate Jewish behavior. Many neoreactionaries find Moldbug’s original position lacking, myself included. Many more accept Macdonald’s theory. Many are explicit ethnonationalists. Is Moldbug’s Jewish ancestry preventing him from reaching some unsavory conclusions? Perhaps, perhaps not. It doesn’t matter. Moldbug is not the sole arbiter of neoreactionary thought. His long deconstruction of the progressive worldview was an indisputable godsend to us Children of Modernity. His neocameralism — disputable. His poetry… eh. Key tenets of neoreaction, including the Trichotomy and the concept of Gnon, were not brainchildren of Moldbug’s. Neoreaction tangles with Evolian metaphysics, the tripartite caste society, entryism, geopolitics, holiness spirals, practical reaction, Western religion, “gene-culture co-evolution” and more, cheerfully and without Moldbug. Disagreements with Moldbug do not entail disagreements with neoreaction as a whole. Neoreaction is more than just Moldbug — which is why it’s called neoreaction and not Moldbuggianism.

Moldbug’s focus on Puritan/Protestant leftism to the exclusion of negative Jewish influence on Western civilization rightly irks some. Let it be repeated and emphasized that both Moldbug and neoreaction at large focus not on Puritanism, Protestantism or Christianity per se as the sicknesses of civilization, but rather the steady process of leftist degradation that used them as a vector over the centuries. No, Puritans wouldn’t approve of Iggy Azalea. This does not invalidate neoreactionary theories about leftism, holiness spirals, and Puritanism. It seems that now a more rightly neoreactionary position would be that both Jews and Puritans share significant blame for the decline of the West. An autopsy for Western civilization might read: “Immune system critically weakened by virulent holiness spiral and concomitant leftism. Fatal stroke from foreign pathogen.” There are surely many other groups and individuals who helped cause this untimely death in some way or another, but these two religious minorities seem to be the primary culprits.

Is Macdonald’s theory of Jewish behavior correct? If not, it wouldn’t be for lack of evidence. I don’t find the theory shocking, strange or unique at all. Macdonald does a thorough job of documenting what a hostile minority looks like. Regular minorities turn into hostile minorities after majorities try to forcibly convert, enslave, eradicate or otherwise injure them. Alternately, regular majorities turn into hostile majorities after minorities try to scam, deceive, impose on, thieve from or otherwise injure them. Minorities become hostile to survive. Majorities would argue that the minorities deserved it, being the dirty parasites and predators that they are. The minorities view the majorities the same way. Who “started it” is always impossible to figure out, and instead of turning to endlessly complicated conspiracy theories, it is much easier just to remember a simple heuristic: diversity plus proximity equals conflict.

3. Neoreaction answers the Jewish Question, once and for all.

Neoreaction, contrary to vitriolic accusations leveled against it, has not stayed suspiciously silent on the Jewish Question. Nick B. Steves wrote a three-part series on the issue. He concluded:

The Jews qua Jews are so uniquely destabilizing that no Jew could ever be trusted with any amount of power. They should be banned from our organization (presuming we had one) and probably forcibly relocated to a homeland of their own.

Do you smell latkes? I don’t. Jim has done a lot of his own commentary on Jews and cultural Marxism, Jews and anti-Semitism, Jews and Puritans, and Jewish misbehavior. Nick Land has staked his position. 28Sherman displayed a keen awareness of all things Jewish and political just yesterday. Neoreactionaries, steeped as they are in politically incorrect, anti-Semitic, old history books, are far more than acquainted with questions of Jews and Judaism. The perceived silence of neoreactionaries on this topic is not borne of conspiracy or cowardice, but conclusion.

The most perfunctory appraisal of the situation reveals that the Jews were and are a religiously and genetically distinct minority among Christian Europeans. Diversity plus proximity equals conflict. Each and every nefarious action attributed to Jews throughout history in the West can be traced to the ubiquitous and ever-present hostility that exists between different ethno-religious groups (or thedes or phyles). This hostility is a law of the Universe, a dictate of Gnon’s. Evil Jewish Bolshevism, depraved Jewish pornography, destructive Jewish capitalism, chauvinistic Jewish Zionism — all can be easily and sensibly interpreted as various manifestations of natural conflict between hostile groups i.e. Jews and Christian Europeans, Jews and Muslims, etc. There is little reason to zero in on the Jews and obsess about them as uniquely heinous among all the world’s peoples. The only thing unique about them is their continued survival despite the scale and length of their run-ins with foreign gentile civilizations, but this differentiates them by degree, not type — Jews are not at all the only hostile minority on the planet, and not at all the only one that’s survived to 2015. Various expressions of anti-Semitism throughout history, such as the Holocaust or the Russian pogroms, can also be sensibly interpreted using this paradigm of ethnic conflict. The manifestations of ethnic conflict may be complex, but the underlying causes are always the same: diversity and proximity. It is not difficult to figure out and most neoreactionaries have done so, and thus shut up about it.

Law of Gnon: This is what the out-group looks like to the in-group. Always.

The answer to the Jewish question, as Mr. Steves concluded, is quite simple: segregation and separation. This solution is not unique to the Jews, but is the standard tried-and-true, traditional method of solving the problem of the violence at the nexus of diversity and proximity. Note that unlike progressives, neoreactionaries do not believe one can abolish the laws of nature and turn diversity into a strength, least of all using the State. Diversity engenders animosity and eventually violence, and is thus a weakness. The only solution to diversity is unity. Separate and segregate. This axiom is true when considering Jews and Europeans, and it is true when considering any other two distinct groups.

This is how liberals see conservatives. Law of Gnon strikes again. Always.

-

Satisfied with the question of the Jews, neoreactionaries notice that the rot in Western civilization frequently attributed solely to the Jews had in fact existed long before subversive Jews did (see: Jim). Neoreactionaries notice that there exists an entire science of civilization with its own laws and principles. They notice that the architecture of contemporary civilization is slowly disintegrating. They notice saboteurs and invaders. Ahead they notice a barren grave with their names on it, and they notice grotesque monstrosities rising from Hades and beckoning to them with meticulously tailored malformed claws: “Check your privilege.” Neoreactionaries notice all this and judge it terribly unworthy. It is just a matter of opinion whether the next step is letting the edifice of civilization collapse, building a new civilization in the ruins, or attempting to stay the badly quivering columns.

Or maybe what’s needed is Zombie Hitler and another round with those damn shadowy Hebrews. But if so, close your Internet browser — you won’t find them here in neoreaction.

The post Neoreaction is a Jewish Conspiracy to Thwart the Incipient National Socialist Revolution appeared first on Social Matter.

“Today, project neurologists confirm this research project’s earlier hypothesis that very early in life perhaps, even in utero, Putin suffered a huge hemispheric event to the left temporal lobe of the prefrontal cortex, which involves both central and peripheral nervous systems, gross motor functioning on his right side (head, rib cage, arm and leg) and his micro facial expression, eye gaze, hearing and voice and general affect,” the report said.

Work by “autism specialists,” apparently, backs up the report’s findings. The news article takes the time to (rightly) dryly note that “researchers can’t prove their theory about Putin and Asperger’s, the report said, because they were not able to perform a brain scan on the Russian president.”

Now, dear readers, I am no psychologist. I am no psychiatrist. I do not fund Pentagon think-tanks, and I can’t say I’ve spent much time studying neurological or developmental disorders, let alone patterns of behavioral tics and their relations to psychological traits. I am, however, a currently still bipedal homo sapiens with an intelligence quotient North of 70 and useful pairs of both functioning hands and functioning testicles, so I think I am qualified to decide whether or not a major world leader who is:

1. “The Most Badass Leader in the World” according to Business Insider.

2. “The World’s Craziest Badass” according to Cracked.com.

3. “Terrific, Triumphant, All Good, Totally Badass” according to Foreign Policy magazine.

4. “The Richest Man On Earth” according to Bloomberg.

5. “The Most Powerful Man in the World” according to Forbes.

…is also in possession of any deep-rooted anti-social mental disorders.

Here are the official United States government National Institutes of Health factsheets on autism and Asperger’s syndrome, which you may peruse to your heart’s content. Let’s take a look at the factsheets and see how they compare to Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin’s very public behavior and history.

Autistic children have difficulties with social interaction, display problems with verbal and nonverbal communication, and exhibit repetitive behaviors or narrow, obsessive interests.

Asperger syndrome (AS) is a developmental disorder.  It is an autism spectrum disorder (ASD), one of a distinct group of neurological conditions characterized by a greater or lesser degree of impairment in language and communication skills, as well as repetitive or restrictive patterns of thought and behavior. 

You can click on Link #1 above for 39 photos of Vladimir Putin displaying highly un-obsessive and un-narrow interests, ranging from motorbiking to piano. The same set of pictures makes me doubt whether President Putin has any inherent difficulties with communication or social interaction, considering he can be seen successfully interacting with little boys in martial arts costume, little girls in tea-party costume, other world leaders in very serious grown-up costume, Russian outlaw biker gang leaders, sleeping tigers, horses, baby birds, giant fish and polar bears. In fact, judging by the amount of wild animals Putin is seen hunting, comforting, riding, putting down or knowingly glaring at, it might be inferred that he actually possesses better social skills than the rest of us, confined as we are to mere human-to-human social interactions. By the way, for reference, here’s a picture of the Russian outlaw biker gang leader smiling at Putin like a virginal maiden might smile at her deflowerer:

Wonder what Heartiste would have to say about this.

Speaking of deflowering, Vladimir Putin also happens to be the father of two daughters with his ex-wife, who has by now long ceded the spotlight to Putin’s rumored younger conquests. I will spare the details, since you can easily Google “putin luv life.” Putin also happens to be — as if it actually bears repeating — the three-term President and (by progressive standards) tyrannical dictator of the biggest country and largest nuclear power on the planet. This power, by the way, is currently flouting the established unipolar geopolitical world order with the United States government at the helm, to the great chagrin of pale bespectacled hermaphrodites all over the West. To add insult to injury, this power is succeeding at it too, in no small part thanks to President Putin’s wily statesmanship. I am doubtful that it is possible to reach and maintain this position of Putin’s, especially after surviving a career in the brutal Soviet security services (the KGB), without possessing social skills that are — at a minimum — not fundamentally crippled.

Here’s a video of that old dog Vladimir singing ‘Blueberry Hill’ to a live television audience. I would question deeply how many of the researchers mysteriously discovering new mental disorders in Putin would be able to imitate Putin’s performance, from the singing-in-a-foreign-language part to the singing-publicly-on-television-in-front-of-millions-of-judging-people part.

But of course, the point was never about whether or not Vladimir Putin is actually mentally disordered or not. Taken at face value, it would be a damning fact that the defense apparatus of the United States government doled out money to hucksters claiming that the most ruthless, calculating, successful and powerful men on the planet are in fact secretly shivering nerds incapable of communicating with other human beings. The characterization of President Putin as a sufferer of Asperger’s syndrome is the final proof yours truly needs that the Western government-psychiatric complex — and I include the government- part because the institutions have become practically inseparable at this point — is full of charlatans spewing complete and utter hogwash for easy government grants. If their mad prescriptions will result in a populace addicted to anti-depressant chemicals, blatantly false assessments of dangerous foreign leaders, and self-mutilating leftists standing as examples of health and normalcy to the populace at large — so be it! So much the worse for society: the God of Science(tm) has spoken, through his archangel Psychology(tm). The joke, in the end, is that the real mentally disordered are not in the Kremlin, but in the Pentagon and its think-tanks itself.

Gary Brecher, the War Nerd, writes an excruciating column on the American defense industry’s transparent focus on expensive power fantasies to the detriment of actual national defense. His examples primarily stem from the air defense industry, but the situation in intelligence and psychological warfare is undoubtedly similar. There is little incentive for cosmopolitan psychologists and psychiatrists receiving multi-million dollar grants from cosmopolitan careerists at the Pentagon to study foreign leaders to actually develop truthful and applicable recommendations and conclusions — this would just reduce the need for more “studies,” for more multi-million dollar grants. Because, you see, “…this is all about money, and [has] nothing to do with defense.” To the undoubted eventual horror of the cosmopolitans, the same just might not be true for the Autist in the Kremlin.

The post Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin: Autist appeared first on Social Matter.

Source: Wikipedia.

Huntington himself offered some explanations for why civilizations clash in the typically modern, Harvard style of over-explaining fairly banal concepts, i.e. civilization is profoundly felt, profound differences cause conflict, etc. — not news to anyone who was socialized outside the coddling reach of the American progressive clerisy. More liberal-minded Westerners, especially ones who serve as functionaries of the American Empire overseas (what has been variously labelled the Cathedral, the Blue Empire or USG), tend to be unable to grasp these basic tenets of Homo sapiens, owing to the degree they themselves have actually evolved into another species, Homo economicus. Well-meaning progressive bureaucrats proselytizing on the ancient blood-soaked soil of the Balkans, for example, exit largely unsuccessfully, and with a progressive faith either deeply strengthened or fundamentally shaken. Adored Western celebrities like Benedict Cumberbatch have to apologize profusely for using innocuous and vaguely outdated terms like “colored people,” for fear of offending the omnipresent Other. Elsewhere float around sectarian paeans with tenderhearted, tolerant lyrics such as:

Both women and children / Throw them off a bridge!

Your mosques will pay for each of our churches / … Let them kneel when they see Jesus on the cross

Soup from your blood / Cake from your flesh

And, as if purposely trying to further corroborate Huntington’s outlined clash of civilizations:

Serbia — on your feet, win many battles against …

Modern barbarians from America who nurture degenerates.

Even in the fairly neutered Federal Republic of Germany, an extremely popular rapper like Fler can brag about his “blue eyes, white skin” and proclaim “People say I’m a Nazi / I don’t care, say whatever you want.” Identity is not quite out of fashion yet, even for Europeans, though the thought of similar proclamations happening a little further West is nigh unthinkable. PEGIDA, despite internal drama, is making waves. These contemporary examples from the yet-to-be-enlightened parts of white Europe abound. But I digress — back to the clash of civilizations.

In the years since the early 1990’s, Huntington’s predictions of conflict have not been proven wrong, as a more extreme fan of Francis Fukuyama might have wished. The ‘bloody borders’ of the Islamic civilization have only intensified in violence. Various conflicts — political, military, economic or otherwise — can be identified at essentially all the limits of Huntington’s civilizations. Conflicts can be identified within them too, but the bloodiest and most inflammatory ones inevitably occur at the eternally-disputed boundaries between civilizations. Take another gander at the map above. Between Orthodoxy and Islam we get wars in Bosnia, Kosovo and the Caucuses. Between Islam and Africa we get Boko Haram. Between Islam and the Hindu civilization we get perpetual terrorism. Between Orthodoxy and the West we get wars in Croatia and Slovenia and the current crisis in Ukraine. Between the West and Latin America, we get quiet rumblings of future upheaval. And of course, between the West and Islam, we get Charlie Hebdo. The clashes of civilizations which are revving up between Huntington’s West, Orthodoxy and Islam will be the defining historical movements of this century.

Skeptics of the gravity of the clash of civilizations between the West and Islam ought to consider the fact that in a mere 14 years since the September 11th attacks in 2001, practically every major Western city has suffered some sort of Islamic attack. New York City, Washington, D.C., London, Paris, Madrid, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Brussels, Glasgow, Boston, Ottawa, Sydney, Stockholm — all have tasted the bitter brew of jihad. To that list we can even add smaller locales like Fort Hood, Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Endeavour Hills and the French cities of Toulouse, Montauban, Dijon, Nantes and Joué-lès-Tours. Granted, these attacks vary significantly in form, organization and casualties. The highly-coordinated attacks of 9/11 were not quite the same as the incident involving the fanatic shouting “Allahu akbar!” and mowing down Dijonnais pedestrians in a van. Yet, somehow, I am not comforted knowing that, when strolling through the greatest centers of Western civilization, I can now expect a number greater than zero of Islam-inspired mass shootings, beheadings, bombings (suicide and otherwise), stabbings, hostage-takings, hijackings, assassinations and vehicular manslaughters — all of which, just since the start of the new millennium, have taken place on Western streets where blue-eyed, white-skinned children used to wander and play, at will, carefree.

A bit belatedly, French special police hunt for Islamists with whom to do the ol’ civilization-clashing.

Huntington’s Orthodox civilization has had its fair share of struggles with Islam as well, from Serbia’s tit-for-tat genocidal episodes with neighboring Muslims in the 90’s to Russia’s mindbogglingly violent Chechen saga. Chechens as a group are a bit of a crack team for Islamic civilization. Only Chechens could find time to nearly simultaneously terrorize both America and Russia in their own territory, while also leading the establishment of a brutally sincere Islamic Caliphate in the Middle East. Not bad for an ethnic group barely 2 million strong.

The Great Unspoken Truth in the West, that groups like PEGIDA are attempting to speak, is that the clash of civilizations between Islam and the West is not one that could be traditionally regarded as inevitable. Efforts of Europeans long gone have put firm geographical barriers between the West and Islam. The poorest, most rural, most fundamentalist Muslims find not high walls and sentries at Europe’s proverbial gates, but secular governments welcoming them with patronizing words and generous benefits. These Muslims follow the money, slowly accumulate in urban ghettos, and, sooner or later, the clash of civilizations occurs. A couple of left-wing cartoonists are riddled with bullets. Alternately, Western interference in Muslim countries half-way across the world contributes to increasing proportions of dead, angry, and/or gun-toting Muslims. Sooner or later, some armed and aggrieved (usually by the same Western powers) Mahometans come up with a way to strike back at the Great Satan. A couple of skyscrapers experience — ahem — “controlled demolition.” The West, through a combination of schizophrenic foreign policies and reckless immigration policies, is forcing a clash of civilizations that was last settled at the gates of Vienna in 1683.

The once-imagined “Third Way” of Mitteleuropa was mortally wounded by the Boot of Progress in 1918, and put out of its misery in 1945. Western “Progress” and Eastern “Progress” stared each other down until the East buckled under the weight of its Marxist delusions in 1991. The West, triumphant, sounded its own death knell with talk of the “end of history.” History, the cheeky little scrub that he is, came back as quickly as he disappeared upon hearing victory bells. Now the civilization of the West is contending with an Orthodox jihad and an Islamic one, neither of which it is adequately prepared to face, since it can’t even admit it has any opponents left to face. The Islamic civilization, held at bay for more than 300 years, is invited into a West deeply doped up with an ersatz eschatology. The Orthodox civilization, now a quarter-century after the ignominious death of its own ersatz eschatology, is flexing new muscle. The problem with progressivism is that reality doesn’t progress — only narratives do. From TIME:

“This is not another Cold War that we’re entering into,” [U.S. President Barack Obama] said in his 36-minute address. “After all, unlike the Soviet Union, Russia leads no bloc of nations, no global ideology. The United States and NATO do not seek any conflict with Russia. In fact, for more than 60 years we have come together in NATO not to claim other lands but to keep nations free.”

Any perceptive watcher of the world will notice there are more than a few ideological differences between Russia and America to complement the geopolitical ones. Considering NATO’s aggressive expansion since 1991 into Eastern Europe and the otherwise post-Soviet space that was Russia’s proverbial backyard, the claim that NATO is not about “claiming other lands” seems suspect, to say the least. Every great empire in history has tried to frame its own expansion as anything but temporary naked conquest. The American President’s words are in any case as disingenuous as can be. The ruling class of the United States, the Cathedral, the self-organizing consensus of academia, the media and the state bureaucracy (that, for far more complicated reasons, conveniently organizes around chauvinistic left-wing progressivism), viciously hates President Vladimir Putin, Russia, and the Russian people. The politically correct descendants of America’s Puritans cannot stand the forthright, alcoholic Russians, who refuse to join the “international community” and don’t see why anyone would want to sacralize the act of shoving male penis into male anus. For this transgression against progressivism, Russians deserve to burn alive. Russians, surprisingly, aren’t too fond of the choice the “end of history” has offered them — your ass or your life! — and are rather vehemently organizing, opposing, and combating the West’s latest intrusions into Orthodox civilization.

On the bumpy road towards a clash of civilizations.

John R. Schindler (a.k.a. “The XX Committee”), former U.S. intelligence spook, has more than a few interesting things to say about the Russian perspective of this ongoing confrontation.

If nothing else, the current crisis has demonstrated to Russians, with Kremlin prodding, that the United States remains their Main Enemy that it was for decades, now led by the arrogant and weak Obama, who is hated by the Russian public. [Author’s Note: 76% of Russians “personally hate” Obama.]

[…]

To the shock and dismay of hopeful Westerners, including nearly all NATO leaders, the hard hit of sanctions has caused Russians to hate the West, not Putin. Most Russians view their war in Ukraine as a legitimate defense of Russians and Russian interests, certainly nothing like America’s aggressive wars of choice halfway around the world, and they are backing the Kremlin now.

[…]

The Kremlin now believes they are at war with the United States, an Orthodox Holy War in the eyes of many Russians, and that struggle is defensive and legitimate.

[…]

…what they are battling against is not the Ukrainian government, nor American neoconservatives, rather the Devil himself.

President Putin inaugurated the New Year by signing off on a new military doctrine designating NATO as Russia’s #1 adversary. It emphasized Russia’s right to respond to conventional threats with both nuclear and conventional weapons. Schindler does not see good things in the future of Poroshenko’s Ukraine. Huntington’s Orthodox civilization advances consciously on the West.

Serbia — on your feet, win many battles against …

Modern barbarians from America who nurture degenerates.

The West (and Europe in particular), Russia and Islam form a dueling trio in the 21st century iteration of the clash of civilizations. The problem for the West is that it seems to be the only participant unaware that a contest is underway. The Islamic terrorist attacks in Paris occurred on the very same day rebel French writer Michel Houellebecq’s latest novel Soumission was published — of all things, the novel’s plot concerns a future France ruled by Islamists. God apparently has a sense of humor, if only a sick one. Houellebecq’s fictional (or are they really?) Islamists take power over the nationalist opposition with the crucial support of France’s left-wing establishment, dutifully following its progressive directives all the way to the graveyard of civilizations. Following the non-fictional Paris attacks, Western mainstream media duly warned us that the real danger was not swarthy fanatics from the hostile continent across the Mediterranean, but Islamophobia.

In a sense, they are only rejecting one half of the truth for the more palatable half. If you’re a progressive leftist or liberal, especially one in Europe, you’re going to be targeted by both Islamists and Islamophobes. Anders Behring Breivik, Europe’s only notable right-wing terrorist in recent memory, bombed Norwegian government offices then shot up 69 people at the youth summer camp for Norway’s Labour Party. He did this because the Labour Party was supporting Islamic immigration to Norway, a typically leftist thing to do. Breivik did not bomb a mosque and he did not shoot up a madrasa. The motley Islamists who perpetrated Paris’ most recent attacks targeted Charlie Hebdo, a police officer, some random passersby, and a Jewish grocery store. They did this because Charlie Hebdo was blaspheming (a typical leftist thing to do), because the police officer was French (a typical leftist thing to be), because the Jewish grocery store was Jewish (another typical leftist thing to be) and because the random passersby were French (don’t make me repeat myself). The Islamists did not target: Front National, neo-Nazis, Varg Vikernes, Catholic churches, far-right-wing bloggers. Funny that, innit?

This bizarre convergence of interests among radical rightists in Europe and radical Islamists has hardly escaped notice. None other than Michel Houellebecq examines this increasingly incongruous situation in the novel Soumission. Still only available in French and German (an English translation is scheduled for September 2015), yours truly had to rely on this little compilation of reviews by Steve Sailer for enlightenment (yours truly was not about to spend upwards of 22 EUR on the German version — not with a time preference as aristocratically low as yours’ truly!). I will assume you read the linked compilation of reviews, and I will highlight only the most important parts, which are substantial nonetheless:

The new university President, Muslim convert, and rising political star Robert Rediger is revealed as a former identitarian [Read: nationalist] who has quickly advanced up through the ranks and is becoming one of the ideological leaders of the Islamic movement.

[…]

As the novel goes on, the mystery concerning the identitaire role in the new regime only mounts. There were already questions during the “civil war’ as to the various motivations of the jihadi youth and the identitaires. Since they were almost always hooded, it was hard to tell who exactly was attacking whom and there were debates over which side had more of an interest to disrupt the elections. But slowly it is revealed just how much ideological influence Roger Rediger has on the new Muslim government. The clincher is that next door in Belgium, a new Islamic regime comes to power headed by an ethnic European who has well-known roots in the identitaire movement. In Lenin’s classic Who/Whom framework of power relations, it becomes increasingly clear that far from being the weak and subjective Whom, at least some European far right nativist identitaires are actually on the power-holding Who side of the struggle.

But why would the right-wing nativist identitaires want to help push Muslim overlords into power in their country? Jacques searches the internet and finds a very interesting article written by none other than Roger Rediger:

The whole article was an appeal to his former identitaire and traditionalist comrades. It’s tragic, he pleaded fervently, that irrational hostility towards Islam prevents them from recognizing the obvious: they were for the most part in perfect agreement with the Muslims. On the rejection of atheism and humanism, on the need for the subordination of women, on the return to patriarchy: their struggles from any point of view were exactly the same. But this fight to establish a new and natural phase of civilization could not now be conducted in the name of Christianity. No, it’s only with Christianity’s newer, simpler, and truer sister religion Islam that this battle could be waged.

Therefore it was Islam which now had to carry the torch. Because of all the dainty rhetoric, cajoling, and shameful stroking by progressives, the Catholic Church could no longer resist moral decadence. It was now unable to clearly and vigorously resist gay marriage, abortion rights and women moving into the workforce. We had to face the facts: the church had reached a repugnant degree of decline. Western Europe was no longer in any condition to save itself – just as ancient Rome had not been able to so the 5th century. The influx of massive numbers of immigrants — who were still under the influence of traditional cultures which not only accepted natural hierarchies, but also obliged both the submission of and respect due to women — was an historic opportunity for a moral and familial realignment of Europe. In fact this opened the prospect for a new golden age on the old continent. While these new immigrant populations were sometimes Christian; but we must admit they were mostly Muslim.

Roger Rediger was the first to admit that medieval Christianity was a great civilization whose artistic achievements remain forever alive in the memory of men. But little by little it lost ground, medieval Christianity was forced to compromise with rationalism and submit to secular power, and by degrees, was doomed. And as to why? Basically, according to Rediger, it was a mystery; God had simply decided it would be so.

 

Deus vult?

Houellebecq’s identitarians use the mantle of Islam to finally subvert and defeat the decadent Western order. Western civilization, decrepit but poisonous, is finally replaced by Islamic civilization, with the twist that Islam’s existing adherents from the warmer climes only do half the job of replacement — the other half enthusiastically accomplished by native rightists! Whereas today Leftists use the Muslims to buttress their electoral margins contra the Right, tomorrow the Right will use the Muslims to buttress their cultural margins contra the Left. Instead of fighting the Left head-on as the elitist progressive’s low-status, hated country bumpkin, Houellebecq’s rightist simply converts to Islam and enjoys his role as the left-winger’s minority dominatrix, meting out white guilt and otherwise enjoying traditional life.

As a Eurocentric Catholic chauvinist, I take great issue with this prophecy. I am unwilling to sit idle while Europe turns into Saudi Arabia (or worse, Syria) and the United States turns into Brazil. It is lucky, then, that Houellebecq’s perfect timing less provides an argument for Islamism than it illuminates the clash of civilizations soon coming to a head. For Houellebecq’s insightful prophecy is not that Islam will inevitably replace Western civilization, but that Western civilization will be necessarily replaced soon, by something. Islam provides just one convenient path to explore for a writer of fiction. I will now point out that in the same way that France’s rightists, nationalists and identitarians share some uncomfortably similar interests with jihadists, they — crucially — share just as many, if not more, with the other “jihadists” –Huntington’s Orthodox civilization. “Europe’s Far Right and Putin Get Cozy, With Benefits For Both.”

“In Russia today there is a mix of exalting nationalism, exalting the church and Christian values,” says Lellouche. “They are now replacing the red star with the cross, and they are representing themselves as the ultimate barrier against the Islamization of the continent.”

The Christmas tree outside of Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral is traditionally purchased by French groups and worshippers. This year it was a gift from the Russian government.

Marine Le Pen, head of the National Front, has made no secret of her admiration for Putin and has traveled to Moscow on several occasions. It seems to have paid off. Last month a Russian bank lent the National Front $11 million.

Two more salient points:

1. “Lellouche” is Pierre Lellouche, a “member of a mainstream conservative party.” His dismissive tone of Front National and its Russian orientations tells me all I need to know. You can always be sure a “conservative” is doing the opposite of what he should be doing if he wanted to defeat the Left, and will always be thinking the opposite of what he should be thinking. Don’t be a “conservative”– remember the rules.

2. One of Houellebecq’s details in his story of France’s Islamization is the new role of far-off, foreign, resource-rich Islamic nations like Qatar and Saudi Arabia in providing funding for France’s elite universities (presumably suffering financial difficulties). Am I too optimistic to see the parallel with a far-off, foreign, resource-rich Orthodox nation like Russia providing funding to a French institution like the Front National, or to the Notre Dame Cathedral’s Christmas Tree?

Houellebecq’s prophecy for France’s future under Islam ought to be reconsidered with the three-pronged clash of civilizations in mind. It is not Islamic civilization, but Orthodox, that stands the better chance of rescuing the ruins of the West. The two faces of European civilization — Western and Eastern, Latin and Greek, Roman and Byzantine, Catholic and Orthodox — have shared a fraught, but fraternal, history. The Russians put an end to the madness of Napoleon. They put an end to the madness of Hitler. They may, perhaps, put an end to the madness of Obama. Trapped in the abyss of its own vast wealth, the West lobotomizes itself with mad ideologies that dissolve families and all other organic bonds, replacing them with sub-optimal publicly-produced substitutes. It normalizes insanity and pathologizes health in the quest for eternal equality. Sickness, sterility and death are touted as moral advancements, while all expressions of natural virility are feared, medicated, suppressed, diverted, or finally quashed by the State. The results — such as plunging fertility rates — speak for themselves. I myself hear it now already; but in thirty years, the silence of a missing generation shall be deafening. I can only hope that the silence, once in a while, will be interrupted not by the shrill howls of the muezzin, but by the ringing and chiming of old church bells — and perhaps even the laughter of children playing in the streets, carefree.

The post The Clash of Civilizations in 2015: The West, Russia and Islam appeared first on Social Matter.

The professor was an excitable and amiable middle-aged man, fairly chubby by North American standards. His swarthy complexion, gleaming bald head and bushy mustache betrayed his foreign ancestry — an Egyptian Coptic Christian from Cairo, long since emigrated to the New World, and long since employed at his hallowed American university, though he had never quite managed to master that standard, saccharine accent of the American Midwest. His Arab speech was deep and gravelly, yet still uniquely colorful. He could not utter a sentence so much as perform it, effortlessly gesturing and gesticulating, hopping and hawing with each sentiment he expressed. Simple questions were whispered, furtive inquiries, well-wishes were joyous spasms. Ordinary greetings, from this Middle-Eastern Santa Claus, looked to lifeless American onlookers like two long-lost brothers reuniting after a lifetime apart — except the one portly, bespectacled, mustachioed brother was obviously far happier than the other one, who invariably seemed confused or surprised. Professor Al-Santa ibn Claus’ verve was nonetheless infectious, and I would be shocked to learn he was anything but beloved by his students. Born and raised on the ancient Nile, this smiling pedagogue was a living reminder of a bygone era when the sad stereotype of the bitter Marxist academic still didn’t exist.

The young lady conversing with him — if memory serves correctly — was an undergraduate student at the university. She was an international student, a Turkish girl from Istanbul, Turkey’s largest and liveliest metropolis, geographically (and culturally) bridging two continents. Her social lineage, much like that of most Turkish immigrants to the United States (and deeply unlike that of the infamous Turkish immigrants to Germany — but I digress!), was borne from the European half of Istanbul. Turkey, though now making sensational headlines as a rising power sliding into Islamic fundamentalism, still has a significant, wealthy, secular upper-class; liberal cosmopolitans who wish Turkey could join the European Union, and who explain to non-Turks the repugnant provincialism of the reigning President Recep T. Erdoğan the same way pious American liberals used to explain the repugnant provincialism of the reigning President George W. Bush. These Turkish Europhiles and Occidentalists, concentrated in Istanbul, spawned this idealistic young woman who joyfully gushed about her future plans to work in non-profits aiding Palestinian refugees and Kurdish orphans. Like all true liberal, upper-class E.U.-peans — or, in her case, aspiring ones — her tender bleeding heart couldn’t countenance the horrors the Zionist apartheid state imposed on her downtrodden brothers and sisters in Palestine. Her English — likely carefully nurtured by her urbane parents, who likely put her in one of Istanbul’s many French, British or American international schools — was impeccable, with only the slightest veneer of Anatolian staccato modulating the same American accent the animated Egyptian could only shovel out in bursts of Cairene vim. This scioness of Turkey’s aspiring class of secular Eurocrats was the kind of girl who would soon spend nights hunched over her laptop screen in champagne-revolutionary fervor, impulsively tweeting #OccupyGeziPark.

(No such literary introduction will be given of yours truly, I am afraid. In this anecdote, I am but the anonymous catalyst for a revealing conversation.)

Rather poorly read on the contemporary Middle East, but curious to no small degree, I asked the professor about the level of social conservatism in Egypt. Do Muslims pray often? Is there a large black market for alcohol? Is there religious tension because of the Copts? In my pre-reactionary, progressive-by-default naiveté, I even asked “Are women in Egypt oppressed?” The professor answered my questions eagerly, with all the expected gesticulations and mini-dramatic-performances. The Turkish girl and I listened, rapt, as one is when witnessing such a masterful union of entertaining affectation and unornamented truth. Finally, he informed us of the state of women’s liberation in Egypt:

(I strive to convey his affable, slightly-broken English.)

“In Egypt, there is no girls living alone; single girls alone, this — it is not allowed socially! It is unapproved in Egyptian society. Egyptian girls must always live with the family if they are not married. The married girls live with the husbands, yes, but the single girls always live with the families.”

The female Istanbulite’s eyebrows leaped up in anticipation of news of an incoming women’s rights violation. “Trigger warnings” weren’t a thing back then, so far as I can remember, but even if they were, this bombastic professor would not have come with one. Asks the Turkess: “Women can’t live alone? Why? What if they’re students?”

The professor continued gracefully with his energetic explanation: “Aha, yes, sometimes if the girls are students they live in the dormitory. But this is rare, very rare. Not common, I think. Girls who are studying at the university also live with the family mostly. In Egypt it is not acceptable in society for the girl to live alone. If girls will live alone in an apartment, this will be shocking, it will be disgraceful. Even sometimes the janitor in the building, or the electrician, or the neighbor, he will knock on the door or he will find the girl, and he will say ‘Hey, you! What are you doing? Where is your husband? Where is your father? Why are you living alone here? Are you having men come in your apartment? Do you meet men there? Do they pay you to come there? What are you doing there alone?'”

The Turkish girl’s eyebrows at this point were practically detached from her head, so wide were her eyes with shock: “That’s… that’s horrible! Women have a right to live by themselves if they want to! Women have a right…” More high-pitched, futile cosmopolitan protests followed, but the conversation had essentially ended there, with an unperturbed professor shrugging his shoulders and rushing off to a meeting (with a dramatized wave, a hint of a bow and a gracious “Ma’a As-Salaama!” [“Good-bye!” in Arabic] — as always) and an amused me, softly smiling outwardly, and inwardly chuckling the kind of mischievous chuckle one can only enjoy after witnessing a truly monumental yet unintentional trolling. The disquieted young lady turned to me slack-jawed for reassurances for her offended liberal sensibilities, but I too had places to be, and quickly emulated the professor’s neutral exit. “Well, I guess that’s just how it is over there! See ya later!”

- – -

I love interacting with people from cultures that an effeminate Harvard sociologist would consider “hopelessly backwards.” These cultures, though often deeply alien in many ways to our own Western/European tradition and civilization, nevertheless share large similarities with the old Western world one reads about in history books. Though I doubt this fine site’s astute readers will need the point of the anecdote explicitly repeated, I will repeat it for the sake of the stray left-wingers who sometimes stumble into our territory: in Egypt, a girl living alone is immediately and automatically assumed to be a prostitute. And, hilariously, by the standards of Islamic Egyptian society, single girls living alone in the West are invariably precisely that: whores. And, distressingly, single girls living alone in the West are invariably whores by the standards of the Western society of 1950, of 1850, of 1750, 1650… and every century of Western society all the way down to 50 BC, and earlier. Women have four lifetime sexual partners on average, says The Telegraph. I will venture a guess that this figure is far below the actual amount — nobody wants to admit to being a slut or a whore, after all, even anonymously to a researcher. Despite abysmal modern sexual mores, even four is about three more than millennia of human civilization would have considered appropriate for a properly-reared young maiden. I can hear the protests already: “Not all women are like that! Some women who live alone aren’t whores!” Averages, baby, averages — I’m not here to talk about outliers, who always exist. The strong, independent, feminist woman high off women’s liberation sleeps around like a man, and this makes her a whore by any standard of civilization.

Whore of Babylon: Babylon the Great, the Mother of Prostitutes and Abominations of the Earth. Coming soon to a neighborhood near you. Just kidding; she’s been around since 1969, corrupting your daughters and fighting manspreading, mansplaining, manterrupting… no, no joke, Google any of one the three.

Average age at marriage for Western women only ever increases, and the divorce rate likewise only slowly climbs upwards and upwards. More fornication, more adultery, more divorce, more bastard children, more fatherless children, more broken families, more pornography — not to mention more public (and even state-backed) sexual perversion of all kinds of vile multicolored stripes. The only related metric that is decreasing is total fertility rate. To maintain a stable population, a nation’s fertility rate would have to hover around 2.1 children per women — enough children to replace the parents, and an extra 0.1 children to make up for all the people who die prematurely from accidents, war, disease, excessive masturbation, and what-have-you. A nation with a fertility rate below the magic number of 2.1 will steadily shrink in population until it disappears from the Earth. How is the West doing with fertility rates then? United States: 1.97. United Kingdom: 1.88. France: 1.98. Russia: 1.53. Spain: 1.50. Italy: 1.48. Germany: 1.42. Tiny Iceland is managing 2.08, but Portugal a dismal 1.32. Poor Bosnia is at 1.28, one of the lowest in the world. Austria, Croatia, Romania, Hungary, Serbia, Poland, Ukraine, Cyprus and Slovakia are all below 1.50. These countries are quite literally slowly disappearing from the map. For a sobering comparison, the smoldering crater known as Afghanistan is at 5.00, war-torn Iraq is at 4.06, and the dysfunctional Congo is at 5.98. Even North Korea is managing a 2.00 fertility rate — the same country where amassing a nuclear arsenal and luxurious liquor cabinet for the Supreme Leader is more important than preventing mass starvation and widespread famine. A North Korean family could probably survive for a year on one of their Supreme Leader’s many chins, and they’re still reproducing more than Americans ostensibly living in the vast land of plentiful bounty and limitless opportunity.

Seriously, just look at this guy.

This 21st century Bacchanalia is flashy and fun, bursting with a vibrant hedonism of clubs, bars, festivals, conventions, easy sex, easy drugs, easy booze, easy desserts, easy work, constant novelty and stimulation from the Internet, the television and from Hollywood, but it will end us all. If everyone is avoiding family life and child-rearing so that they can spend more time doing what our grandparents (and great-grandparents, and great-great-grandparents, and great-great-great-grandp…) would have called “mortally sinning,” we’ll all be gone without a legacy before the end of the century. When one speaks of “mortal sin,” one must remember that the very English word “mortal” is derived from the ancient Latin word for death, mors. Our forefathers are looking down on us as we commit the most pathetic and protracted suicide in history. Rather grim, innit?

If you are a standard, milquetoast, liberal-by-default Westerner, this might all sound like racist, sexist and homophobic vomit. I would remind you then that, in our culture, we have multiple mainstream, high-tech systems for helping complete strangers prostitute each other. Take Seeking Arrangement, a popular service that helps young females, typically college students (the girls who, in any other era, would have been nobly raising society’s next generation), whore themselves out to unscrupulous and wealthy men for expensive gifts and money. Like Monty Python’s rude French sentry, I vomit in the general direction of this service. Prostitution is still largely illegal in the West, de jure. It seems we make some exceptions, however, when the pimps and prostitutes can satisfactorily rationalize their whoring to us — just enough to soothe our dwindling consciences and atrophied probity.

Alternatively, consider the extremely popular mobile phone application Tinder, “rumored to have upwards of 10 million daily users” making 15 million “matches” a day. What purpose does Tinder serve? Perhaps the “Tinderfessions” Twitter feed, with a mind-boggling 188,000 followers, can shed some light. Looks like Tinder is useful for supporting adultery (“Met my boyfriend on Tinder. Pro: so hot, great in bed. Con: has a wife…and 3 kids. – Emma”), taking the hassle out of fornication (“Swiped right on a girl that was ahead of me in line at Publix. Heard her phone go off when we matched. We banged 2 hours later – Chase”), helping modern-day troubadours build harems (“Been hooking up with a match for a month now. On my way to front stage seats cuz the lead singer of this band is in love with my pussy – Kas”), and most nobly of all, helping all-American sweethearts become home-wrecking, blackmailing whores: “Blackmailing a match I fucked who tried to hide the fact he was married. Can’t wait for my new Macbook Air to arrive. #ThanksTinder – Kim.” Thank you, Tinder, thank you indeed! “Mother of 3 slept over and fucked all night while their dad babysat them at home. She was Constantly cumming, and came in her pussy twice -F” Good Lord. When did the West run so low on self-restraint, virtue, shame, guilt, conscience, charity and kindness that 56 people felt a need to “favorite” the kind of morally reprehensible behavior that destroys the lives of three children? 15 million matches a day: when you hear someone say Cthulhu is digesting our civilization, this is what they mean.

Paraphrasing the admirable James A. Donald, the West of the 18th century considered women so lacking in continence that they would crawl through nine miles of broken glass to fornicate with their demon lover if not restrained by their husbands, fathers, brothers and pastors. In Egypt, a sexist, homophobic, hopelessly backwards Islamic society, girls living alone, beyond the reach of their family, are assumed to be whores. The Egyptians, I think, are not as backwards as we chauvinistically presume, since it seems their intuition about the behavior of unrestrained females has been more than comprehensively vindicated by the state of Western society today, where all girls can live alone (and do much more besides) — and where all girls are whores. Feminism failed. Modernity failed. We got women’s liberation and ubiquitous technology of unimaginable power and complexity, and the result was not a new Golden Age for civilization, but a new Golden Age for depravity.

“Modern,” “enlightened,” “liberal,” protestations aside, the situation in the West of 2015 is clear. Females can live alone, vote, run for office, commit infanticide, get away with murder, work men’s jobs, receive preferential treatment in universities and corporations, deny fathers their children, ruin innocent men with false accusations of rape & assault, and almost anything else they want to do — with the full support of the educational system, the media and the exponentially-expanding police-surveillance state. The dream of women’s liberation has been achieved, and then some. And then some. And then some more. And even some more after that! Females can live alone, unlike in Egypt. Females can live alone, and they do exactly what our 18th century forefathers, and 21st century Egyptian fellows a continent away intuited that they would do — they whore themselves. “Women’s liberation.” Women’s liberation is women’s prostitution. We should have known better.

If I miraculously became the Supreme God-Dictator of the West tonight, and upon finishing my gourmet breakfast of bacon, eggs and the finest Caspian caviar the next morning, I issued an edict that no woman may live alone, what would happen to the West’s marriage and divorce rates? The fertility rate? The bastardy rate? The amount of fornication, adultery, pornography and sexual perversion? The number of broken families? The number of kids shuffling between Mommy’s house and Daddy’s house on alternating weekends? (Or, more likely, just watching Mommy shuffle boyfriends while Daddy contemplates the taste of gun metal with a restraining order trembling in his hand.) What would happen to the rates of suicide, teen pregnancy, alcoholism, mass shootings, herbivore men, sexually transmitted diseases, eating disorders, self-radicalization, depression, gambling, drug abuse, obesity, cat-lady spinsters, gang violence, self-harm, ethno-religious tension (and violence), juvenile delinquency, social alienation and hollow shambling wrecks of human beings one missed medication away from walking off the edge of a thirty-story building?

A metaphor for Western society: not really working out as planned.

Quite simply, if we put every woman back in the home, back next to the hearth, and gave her one son and one daughter to educate, civilize, inform, teach, nourish, protect, cultivate, cuddle, cherish and love, what would happen to our society? What if we gave her a fit, cultured, intelligent and loving husband who could teach his son baseball and read Cinderella to his daughter? A husband who didn’t spend his boyhood drugged out on ADD medications, his teenage years drugged out on cannabis, and his young adulthood drunk out of his mind? A husband who was taught to appreciate Beethoven, recognize Van Gogh’s Starry Night, recite a little poetry in French, and recognize a Biblical quote in Ancient Greek? A husband who was taught to shoot a gun, punch a drunkard, row a canoe, and hike up a mountain without complaining? Who kept a library where the television might’ve been, and who knew who his father was, his grandfather, and their fathers and grandfathers before them? Who worshiped the same God as his most distant ancestors, and lived on the very same land they conquered long ago? Who maintained and honored the inheritance bequeathed to him by his forefathers, both material and spiritual, and left it in better condition than he received it, and passed it on to his own sons and daughters? Might we see a resurgence of the stable, loving family? Might we actually see — trigger warning – a better society?

Dramatized wave. Hint of a bow. Knowing wink. “Ma’a As-Salaama!“

The post Women’s Liberation is Women’s Prostitution appeared first on Social Matter.

Rising #inequality & climate change are defining challenges of our time. You can help: http://t.co/ONSAl4jeRJ #wef15 pic.twitter.com/B4ee6BVYvf

— Oxfam International (@Oxfam) January 16, 2015

Yes, it seems to be true: RT reports that by 2016, the richest 1% of the global human population will control more wealth than the other 99% of the human population combined. Through Oxfam, an “anti-poverty charity,” we learn that:

Last year, Oxfam reported that the world’s 85 richest people have the same wealth as the poorest 50 percent (3.5 billion people). This year, Oxfam said the reality has become more worrisome, with just 80 people owning the same amount of wealth as more than 3.5 billion people.

We are alerted to a “dark portrait” of the state of affairs. This news proves we face “challenges [of] severe wealth concentration.”

However, despite constant warnings that the upward curve in wealth concentration will only lead to disaster, the rich continue to gobble up a bigger and bigger share of the global wealth pie.

“Gobble up.” RT’s gratuitous baiting of low-brow egalitarian Western leftists is transparent, but rather amusing. Right-wing opponents of Putin’s Russia would do well to remember that RT is not aimed at Russians, but at English-speaking Western leftists. RT will run pieces on the evils of rising income inequality more fervently than an Occupy Wall Street hippie (along with pieces on racism in America, the surveillance state, etc.) because the Kremlin implicitly recognizes that egging on these kinds of leftists in the West is beneficial for Russia. Better to keep the non-profit mafia whining about Ferguson than Sochi — if you think Putin is crying into his fair-trade coffee about the treatment of African-American brothas by white 1%ers, you are sorely mistaken. Speaking of the non-profit mafia:

Oxfam executive director Winnie Byanyima, who will co-chair the Davos symposium, said she will draw attention to the grim fact that “one in nine people do not have enough to eat and more than a billion people still live on less than $1.25 a day,” she told The Guardian.

“Do we really want to live in a world where the 1 percent own more than the rest of us combined? The scale of global inequality is quite simply staggering and despite the issues shooting up the global agenda, the gap between the richest and the rest is widening fast.”

A cursory Google search reveals that Mrs. Byanyima is a Ugandan aeronautical engineer, politician and diplomat. Apparently, she was Uganda’s first female aeronautical engineer. Like all heartfelt tinkerers, Mrs. Byanyima quit her engineering job with the now-defunct Uganda Airlines as soon as she got it to help start the Ugandan Bush War. (Mrs. Byanyima, who was born in 1959, and received both a B.Sc. and an M.Sc. from British universities, would have graduated high school in 1977, just four years before the Bush War began in 1981, and would have required between four and eight years to receive her degrees.) Apparently, Mrs. Byanyima found fomenting political unrest to be more conducive to her skillset than engineering, and she later served in various Ugandan governmental posts (under the watch of now long-time Ugandan President/Instigator of Bush Wars Museveni, who she grew up with), and then later United Nations posts (hmm…). As a one-time “Director of the Gender Team in the Bureau for Development Policy” at the UNDP, I am sure Mrs. Byanyima is extremely qualified for her new executive directorship.

To channel Mr. Moldbug, Byanyima’s real education was not in engineering, but in progressive-leftist demotism, and her first big break was not at Uganda Airlines but in an African bush war, and her real career wasn’t in “helping women get a leg up,” but “fomenting political unrest” — only later at the United Nations — all for a good cause, of course! It should go without saying Oxfam believes that “rising inequality and climate change are defining challenges of our time.” Wait, climate change? I thought this was an anti-poverty organization? Silly me, I forgot about the Cathedral again.

The image attached to the Oxfam tweet at the top of this article is emblematic of Western liberal delusions about reality concerning wealth and income. A rough-around-the-edges South Asian man (let’s call him Pakistani Abdul), pushing watermelons hanging off his old bike, presumably to market, with a huge poster of a clean-cut Westerner (read: dirty white devil) sitting in an airplane reading from some new gizmo — the massive hashtag reads “#INEQUALITY.” We are exhorted: “Join the debate!” What do liberals see in this image that we normal people do not? Like all good leftists, they psychologically project. Where we see Pakistani Abdul pushing his wares to the market, presumably pondering this year’s harvest, the leftist liberal sees a potential college student, a potential high-achiever, academician, bureaucrat, hoop-jumper, future lawyer/doctor/consultant (and future progressive) denied a chance for the good and holy life by privileged, rich white racists — if only Abdul could have applied to cawww-lidge! That Abdul couldn’t care less for these bourgeois Western pretensions does not even occur to them. That Abdul is mentally incapable of achieving them is beyond unthinkable.

But no matter — we will continue the “debate” about “income inequality” across “the global community” under the assumption that everyone on the planet has the ability, willpower, desire, necessity and urgency to seek out an upper-middle class Western existence of paper-pushing and platitude-mouthing. It’s a “severe challenge,” after all. Right next to climate change. Hopefully Abdul will get educated and donate some money to those climate change groups. Just check out Oxfam’s seven-point plan to alleviate income inequality:

Oxfam said it was calling on governments to adopt a seven-point plan to alleviate global inequality:

• Clamp down on tax dodging by corporations and rich individuals.

Rebuild that Berlin Wall, boys, these rich nancies aren’t going anywhere until we’ve got their monies!

• Invest in universal, free public services such as health and education.

Spread the wealth around, boys, free stuff for everyone! Paid for with our “clamping down” on “tax dodgers.” Wink wink, elbow elbow.

• Share the tax burden fairly, shifting taxation from labour and consumption towards capital and wealth.

Taxes are only a burden when the State is upwards of 40% of the economy, such as in modern times. This was not the case in the past.

• Introduce minimum wages and move toward a living wage for all workers.

When “minimum wage,” lost its luster, the leftists moved onto “living wage.” Next it’ll be a “happy wage.” Because if gays deserve “gay marriage” because they “love,” each other, why shouldn’t the poor deserve “happy wages” if they want? Don’t they deserve to be happy? Why do you hate poor people maaan?

• Introduce equal pay legislation and promote economic policies to give women a fair deal.

Destroy patriarchy and abolish the family so that the State can step in and expand its power over people’s lives. Because for the leftist, if the solution isn’t the State — is it really a solution? (No! Off with their heads!)

• Ensure adequate safety nets for the poorest, including a minimum income guarantee.

Repetition, because propaganda doesn’t work if it’s only repeated once.

• Agree a global goal to tackle inequality.

Identify the ones who disagree i.e. the ones who won’t let you rent-seek, and immediately begin slandering them as poor-haters, rich gobblers, and what-not. Maybe instigate a class revolution. Bring out the guillotines. You know how it goes with the Left. “Executive” director indeed.

Income inequality is a farce directed by the same leftists responsible for the globe’s social ills, masquerading as righteous crusaders while doing nothing but ruining the value built up by highly non-leftist people. They are rabble-rousers and demagogues of the worst kind. Remember Mrs. Byanyima: the upstart revolutionary guerilla becomes a politically correct United Nations functionary. This is not a coincidence, and it is not an isolated incident. Bernardine Dohrn bombed the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, and just a couple police stations. She is now a professor at Northwestern University School of Law. Her terrorist husband has a dormitory named after him at the same university, and is himself still a “Distinguished Professor” at the University of Illinois in Chicago.

If this article was rambling, it’s because the gravity of the situation confuses the author’s attempts to make sense of a course of action. When did avowed terrorists become mentors of youth? When did jungle guerillas become internationally-approved moral guides? Then again, the most recognizable faces of the previous century all belonged to murderous maniacs and their differently-sizes mustaches. I suppose we’re still defined by murderous maniacs in the 21st century — the mustaches just seem to be missing, replaced with pasty clean-shaven faces or (increasingly) Islamic beards. Such a shame. The mustaches were the only good thing left.

The post Income Inequality Exposed: the Cathedral Lives appeared first on Social Matter.

Statue of Don Felix Sarda y Salvany. Photograph by Josep Renalias.

The good Dr. Don Felix Sarda y Salvany (1844-1916) was a Spanish Catholic priest and writer from Spain’s Eastern region of Catalonia. His scribal tenacity was impressive; the Don was the editor of the Catholic weekly journal La Revista Popular for more than 40 years, and in the years leading up to the start of the civilization-ending First World War, he published a twelve-volume series titled Propaganda catolica (“Catholic Propaganda”), dryly described by an unknown Wikipedia contributor as “a vast collection of short books, pamphlets, articles and conferences.” The Italian historian Roberto de Mattei says of the Don Sarda: “[he] was a popular priest in Spain at the end of the century and was considered exemplary for the firmness of his principles and the clarity of his apostolate.”

(I note here wryly that my Google Chrome browser attempts to correct the word ‘apostolate,’ describing [among other things] organized religious works, to the word ‘apostate,’ describing a religious defector.)

According to the Spanish Bibliography of Reference, the Don exercised an “apostolate of immense efficiency and resonance.” His writings against the growing liberalism of 19th century Europe achieved some level of notability after a series of Spanish political fiascoes from 1868-1874 that began with a liberal revolution and deposition of the ruling Queen Isabella II, followed by a short-lived monarchy under the Savoyard Prince Amadeo, followed by his own deposition and a similarly short-lived Spanish Republic that ended in 1874 when the original Queen Isabella II’s son Alfonso XII was restored as King of Spain in a military coup. Three coups, two monarchies, one republic, and all back to square one in just six years — politics today just isn’t as exciting as it used to be. But I digress.

I will here provide a choice quote of the Don’s so that the reader may be sufficiently intrigued to studiously follow the forthcoming backstory and analysis (my highlights in bold):

 “The theater, literature, public and private morals are all saturated with obscenity and impurity. The result is inevitable; a corrupt generation necessarily begets a revolutionary generation. Liberalism is the program of naturalism. Free-thought begets free morals, or immorality. Restraint is thrown off and a free rein given to the passions. Whoever thinks what he pleases will do what he pleases. Liberalism in the intellectual order is license in the moral order. Disorder in the intellect begets disorder in the heart, and vice-versa. Thus does Liberalism propagate immorality, and immorality Liberalism.” (Liberalism is a Sin, Ch. 26)

During the 1868-1874 interregnum, the Catholic Church in Spain suffered a number of blows to its status, especially due to the short-lived First Spanish Republic that moved to establish a secular state. While Catholicism retrieved its status as the state religion of Spain after the restoration of the monarchy under Alfonso XIII in 1874, the sense of spiritual decay that had gripped Spain since the 18th century continued unabated. Yale historian Noel Valis describes a “a growing alienation from the Church,” and refers us to the observations of a Protestant chaplain in Spain Hugh James Rose, who dedicated an entire chapter of his 1873 book on the country to the “Decay of Faith in Spain.” Choice observations of Rose’s: “The Church of Spain … is an institution which has lost its hold on the masses, both educated and uneducated … [there is in the Spanish] a sense of spiritual drift, of having come unanchored from their religious moorings.”

It is in this context that Don Sarda’s magnum opus was released, the 1886 book Liberalism is a Sin, which was subsequently reprinted up to twenty times by 1960. Salvany, who believed liberalism “is the burning issue of our century,” found a quick rebuttal to his work by the liberal-leaning Catholic intelligentsia — both pieces were submitted to the Roman Catholic Church’s Sacred Congregation of the Index (the successor institution to the Index Librorum Prohibitorum — List of Prohibited Books). The Congregation’s secretary ruled soon after in favor of Salvany, finding errors in the rebuttal and “uncharitable insinuations” about the good Don.

To illustrate the then Church’s zealous and masculine dismissal of liberal protests, I will excerpt the secretary’s letter to the liberal Bishop who ordered the rebuttal:

To The Most Rev. Jacobo Catala Et Alboso,

Bishop of Barcelona

Most Excellent Sir:

[…]

D. Felix Sarda, merits great praise for his exposition and defense of the sound doctrine therein set forth with solidity, order and lucidity, and without personal offense to anyone.

[…]

The same judgment, however, cannot be passed on the other work, that by D. de Pazos, for in matter it needs corrections. Moreover, his injurious manner of speaking cannot be approved, for he inveighs rather against the person of D. Sarda than against the latter’s supposed errors.

[…]

Therefore, the Sacred Congregation has commanded D. de Pazos, admonished by his own Bishop, to withdraw his book, as far as he can, from circulation, and in the future, if any discussion of the subject should arise, to abstain from all expressions personally injurious, according to the precept of true Christian charity; and this all the more since Our Holy Father, Leo XIII, whereas he urgently recommends castigation of error, neither desires nor approves expressions personally injurious, especially when directed against those who are eminent for their doctrine and their piety.

[…]

Fr. Jerome Secheri, O.P.
Secretary of the Sacred Congregation Of the Index.

Don Sarda had the full backing of the Roman Catholic Church of the late 1800’s, and his works built on the Syllabus Errorum (Syllabus of Errors) issued by the Holy See under Pope Pius IX in 1864, which condemned, among other things: pantheism, naturalism, absolute rationalism, socialism, communism, and modern liberalism. This is all relevant to the crux of this entire piece, which finally manifests itself: that the Don Felix Sarda y Salvany, and his contemporaries in the Catholic world, were not just potentially in agreement with the tenets of the nascent neoreactionary school of thought (more introduction to it can be accessed here, here and here), but fully paleo-neoreactionaries, a clumsy description which we might condense into reactionaries, with the understanding that our contemporary neoreactionaries are rediscovering reactionaries and applying their insights to the chaotic world of 2015 (hence, neo-). I will now highlight several key tenets of the 21st century neoreactionary school of thought that were articulated nearly word-for-word by the 19th century Don, and, crucially, firmly defended by the Catholic Church at the time, as illustrated above. There are far more instances of overlap that I will go over comprehensively sometime over the next 1-2 weeks on my personal blog, Ara Maxima, but these three will suffice for now.

1. To Hell with the journalists.

The contempt that most Westerners hold for the “mainstream media,” and the much deeper contempt that neoreactionaries hold for journalists themselves is rooted in a very real and consistent tendency for journalists to style themselves as heroic investigators of dark secrets held from the masses for illicit gain, but to act in reality as left-wing propagandists advancing a uniform agenda of feminism, multiculturalism, LGBT-ism, and a myriad of other -isms through a long-cultivated routine of mental gymnastics and/our outright fraud. The result is a “mainstream media narrative” divorced from reality to one degree or another, useful only to leftists (Don Salvany’s “liberals”) for political purposes — namely, attacking and crushing with overwhelming propaganda the rightist resistance they invariably face.

“Here are theoretical and practical Liberals. The first are the dogmatizers of the sect—the philosophers, the professors, the controversialists, the journalists. They teach Liberalism in books, in discourses, in articles, by argument or by authority, in conformity with a rationalistic criterion, in disguised or open opposition to the criterion of the divine and supernatural revelation of Jesus Christ.” (Ch. 9)

“Amongst Liberals we must not forget to include those who manage to evade any direct exposition or expression of the Liberal theory, but who nevertheless obliquely sustain it in their daily practice by writing and orating after the Liberal method, by recommending Liberal books and men, measuring and appreciating everything according to the Liberal criterion, and manifesting, on every occasion that offers, an intense hatred for anything that tends to discredit or weaken their beloved Liberalism. Such is the conduct of those prudent journalists whom it is difficult to apprehend in the flagrant advocacy of any proposition concretely Liberal, but who nevertheless, in what they say and in what they do not say, never cease to labor for the propagation of this cunning heresy. Of all Liberal reptiles, these are the most venomous.” (Ch. 9)

“And all this comes of a foolish desire to be estimated Liberal. Insane illusion! The usage of the word Liberal makes the Catholic who accepts it as his own one with all that finds shelter in its ominous shadow. Rationalism is the toadstool that flourishes in its dark shades, and with Rationalism does such a journalist identify himself, thus placing himself in the ranks of the enemies of Jesus Christ!” (Ch. 13)

2. To Hell with the “moderates.”

A more niche contempt held by the modern Dissident Right at large — including the gamut of neoreactionaries, monarchists, paleoconservatives, white nationalists, New Rightists, identitarians, right-libertarians, anarcho-capitalists, radical traditionalists and so forth — is the contempt for the mainstream right-wing political forces that exist in every Western country but act as little more than controlled opposition for the zealous Left, making loud noises in parliament halls but inevitably and invariably capitulating to the Left’s demands, only to style themselves as the vanguards of the old order a decade later — but not the primordial rightist order, but the 10-year-old new order of the Left!

“This class has not fully penetrated into the domain of truth. That they will ever enter the city of light depends upon their own sincerity and honesty. If they earnestly desire to know the truth in its fullness and seek it with sincere purpose, God’s grace will not fail them. But they are in a dangerous position. On the borderland between the realms of light and darkness, the devil is most active and ingenious in detaining those who seem about to escape his snares, and he spares nothing to retain in his service a great number of people who would truly detest his infernal machinations if they only perceived them. His method, in the instance of persons infected with Liberalism, is to suffer them to place one foot within the domain of truth, provided they keep the other inside the camp of error. In this way they stand the victim of the devil’s deceit and their own folly. In this way those whose consciences are not yet entirely hardened escape the salutary horrors of remorse; so the pusillanimous and the vacillating, who comprise the greater number of Liberals, avoid compromising themselves by pronouncing themselves such openly and squarely; so the shrewd and calculating (according to the measure of expediency—how much time they will spend in each camp), manage to show themselves the friends and allies of both; so a man is enabled to administer an official and recognized palliative to his failings, his weaknesses and his blunders. It is the obscurity that arises from the indefiniteness of clearly defined principles of truth and error in the Liberalist’s mind that makes him the easy victim of Satan. His boasted strength is the very source of his weakness. It is because he has no real solid knowledge of the principles of truth and error that he is so easily deluded into the belief of his own intellectual superiority. He is in a mental haze—a fog which hides from him the abyss into which his vanity and pride, cunningly played upon by Satan, are invariably drawing him.” (Ch. 8)

3.  Demotism

Demotism, the idea that a ruler must rule “in the name of the people,” is a malady of civilization omnipresent in the post-Enlightenment period: the three great dragons of the 20th century, capitalism, communism and fascism, all ostensibly ruled “by the will of the people,” a stark contrast to the aristocratic monarchies of Old Europe which ruled not “by the will of the people,” but “by the will of God.” The idea of demotism is a uniquely neoreactionary insight, which the Don Felix Sarda y Salvany foreshadowed heavily in this excerpt on the differences between Catholic and secular governments, and their relationships to monarchical and republican governments. Don Sarda’s point seems to be that the crucial worth of a government lies not in its constituted political form i.e. whether it is republican or monarchical, but rather in its agreed-upon basis for legitimacy — the people, or God? Couldn’t an absolute monarch be a demotist, and wouldn’t this constitute a problem? And couldn’t a republican government consist of ardently religious aristocrats sharing a divine right to rule over the masses? There is ample room for debate here.

“A government, whatever be its form, is Catholic if its constitution, its legislation, and its politics are based on Catholic principles; it is Liberal if it bases its constitution, its legislation, and its politics on rationalistic principles. It is not the act of legislation—by the king in a monarchy, by the people in a republic, or by both in a mixed form of government—which constitutes the essential nature of its legislation or of its constitution. What constitutes this is whether it does or does not carry with it the immutable seal of the Faith and whether it be or be not conformable with what the Christian law imposes upon states as well as upon individuals. just as amongst individuals, a king in his purple, a noble with his escutcheon or a workman in his overalls can be truly Catholic, so states can be Catholic, whatever be the place assigned them in the scale of governmental forms. In consequence, the fact of being Liberal or anti-Liberal has nothing whatever to do with the horror which everyone ought to entertain for despotism and tyranny, nor with the desire of civil equality between all citizens; much less with the spirit of toleration and of generosity, which, in their proper acceptation, are Christian virtues. And yet all this, in the language of certain people and of certain journals, is called Liberalism. Here we have an instance of a thing which has the appearance of Liberalism and which in reality is not Liberalism at all.

On the other hand, there exists a thing which is really Liberalism and yet has not the appearance of Liberalism. Let us suppose [i.e., imagine] an absolute monarchy like that of Russia, or of Turkey, or better still, one of the conservative governments of our times, the most conservative imaginable; let us suppose that the constitution and the legislation of this monarchy or of this government is based upon the principle of the absolute and free will of the king or upon the equally unrestricted will of the conservative majority, in place of being based on the principles of Catholic right, on the indestructibility of the Faith, or upon a rigorous regard of the rights of the Church; then, this monarchy and this conservative government would be thoroughly Liberal and anti-Catholic. Whether the free-thinker be a monarch, with his responsible ministry, or a responsible minister, with his legislative corps, as far as consequences are concerned, it is absolutely the same thing. In both cases their political conduct is in the direction of free-thought, and therefore it is Liberal. Whether or not it be the policy of such a government to place restraints upon the freedom of the press; whether, no matter under what pretext, it grinds its subjects and rules with a rod of iron; a country so governed, though it will not be free, will without doubt be Liberal. Such were the ancient Asiatic monarchies; such are many of our modern monarchies; such was the government of Bismarck in Germany; such is the monarchy of Spain, whose constitution declares the king inviolable, but not God.

Here then we have something which, without seeming to resemble Liberalism, really is Liberalism, the more subtle and dangerous precisely because it has not the appearance of the evil it is.” (Ch. 12)

Without regard to political or religious identity, I recommend all sane men take a day or two to carefully read the Don Felix Sarda y Salvany’s Liberalism is a Sin. Filled with biting commentary, no-holds-barred reactionary criticism, and such ardent and unforgiving opposition to the leftist-liberal movement that would make the staunchest Ultramontane blush, the entire text is available for free online at this link. Go, young men of the post-modern world: let your ancestors’ spiritual guides’ teach you the real things that they’ll never teach you in school.

The post Enter the Don Felix Sarda y Salvany: Liberalism is a Sin appeared first on Social Matter.

All three walked quickly. They maintained a nervous gait, as if trying to angrily injure the ground with each step. Hands in pockets, their backpacks hoisted high and tight so that they were leaning inwards. Their eyes never met mine, because their peculiar postures kept their lines of sight directed firmly downwards two meters ahead of them. All three had white earphones firmly implanted into their heads. All three became separate again as quickly as they had become close.

For a moment as they walked away, I felt as if I had witnessed something of supreme importance, even though I didn’t know what it was. Breath firmly bated, balanced somewhere between contemplation and bewilderment, I then finally exhaled a knowing chuckle: I had just witnessed social alienation!

Exhortations on the dangers of social alienation (or atomization, or isolation, if you prefer), are hardly limited to the Right. Slate, among other things, relates a statistic that “loneliness” has doubled among Americans since the 1980’s. The Los Angeles Times says “People who are socially isolated are more likely to die prematurely, regardless of their underlying health issues…” Social alienation – the term I will stick with – is hardly an invented problem for traditionalists and Luddites, yet its manifestations are poorly articulated by the secular clerisy and its implications even more poorly.

The most recent vogue seems to be to describe problems of social alienation in relation to, or as a result of, social media and technological advances. The Slate writer in the previously linked piece only implicates new technologies as causes of social alienation. Her personal anecdote about loneliness begins with a coast-to-coast relocation, but she doesn’t overtly identify her move as a culprit. It is easy to see why technology attracts the most blame – throw a stone through Times Square and you’re more likely to break someone’s iPhone than someone’s skull (at least, you’ll break both).

Yet technology alone cannot be blamed for social alienation – iPhones and Facebook accounts do not force themselves on unsuspecting socially integrated people in the middle of the night in a dark alleyway (or frat-house, for the feminists out there). The three atomized individuals who passed by me and my street corner made a conscious choice before they began their journeys across town not to care for the bustle and noise of their homes and fellow citizens. If a fellow citizen was whistling holiday tunes, they would not know. If songbirds sang today, they would not know. If a cry for help rang out from behind a building, they would not know. Since they had made a conscious decision to notice nothing but their feet and the two meters of pavement in front of them, they would hardly know anything about their surroundings at all. Ought one not feel a chill realizing that pop music might get in the way of rescue after an accident or attack?

Where does one typically shove in the earphones and ignore reality? On airplanes? Public transport? Yours truly, who strives to be socially integrated rather than alienated, typically only turns on the iPod on international flights, surrounded by cranky foreigners. I recall one particularly interesting transatlantic flight, wherein I was sandwiched between a number of uniformed American soldiers returning from Iraq on one side, and a number of bearded Muslim scholars of some sort attired in traditional Islamic garb on the other. Yes, in such a situation, I would imagine the healthy response to be alienating oneself from the particular social situation, and inputting the earphones. Yet what does it say about Western society, then, that self-imposed isolation by technology, even while in public, is the norm? Frankly, it says that the average Westerner has come to expect to meet cranky foreigners in daily life outside the home.

I see the roots of social alienation in the political policies enacted by government functionaries steeped in the ideologies of materialism, globalism, internationalism, secularism and socialism. From small Italian city centres swarming with Bangladeshi families to sprawling German cities filled with loitering Africans, the doctrines of diversity, multiculturalism and mass immigration have never been proven so harmful yet been so devoutly implemented anyway. While the precise source escapes me, I recall one German identitarian remarking that, above everything, what bothered him most about immigrants was how loud they were compared to Germans – boomboxes, shouting matches, loud conversations; all these disrupted the rhythmic lulls of native German life. In such a situation, why not atomize? Choice of music in, “vibrant” “multicultural” life out. This has become the default situation, seemingly, from Seattle to Stuttgart.

International industrial capitalism certainly plays a role too – the modern world is unique in the way it prompts people to move from city to city, or even country to country, in search of a paycheck. A growing class of rootless cosmopolitans certainly doesn’t positively affect the average social alienation of a society. Yet, the most flagrant gestures of inward, anti-social movement do not stem from periodic relocation. It is not just that citizens fail to invest money in their local communities, or fail to establish long-term clubs or businesses or relationships due to their nomadic modern lifestyles. Rather, they have opted not to invest even their eyes or ears in their surroundings. Modernity has turned the public sphere into a 3:00am Bangkok—Kabul flight with a crappy airline, and the Cathedral reassures us this is a great improvement on our societies of old.

On a recent trip to Germany, I spent an afternoon exploring the streets of my hotel neighborhood and killing time in the cafés and bars therein. In the few free hours I had, I remember noticing an animated Greek couple, an angry Serb yelling into a mobile phone, a visibly intoxicated (and possibly retarded) Russian, a Turkish kebab vendor who couldn’t affect a German “r,” and a surly blonde German waitress, covered in tattoos, who served me my coffee. (The café bathroom had an ANTIFA sticker on the door). The stream of native Germans, whom I passed on the street, silent and unobtrusive, failed to make an impression on me. I can’t remember how many of them wore earphones.

The post Thy Name is Social Alienation appeared first on Social Matter.