“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.

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.

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