Coming Apart: The State of White America 1960-2010

By Charles Murray
New York, NY: Crown Forum, 2012

Reviewed by F. Roger Devlin

At 416 pages, Coming Apart is Charles Murray’s most substantial offering since 2003’sHuman Accomplishment. It continues a theme familiar to readers of The Bell Curve: increasing American social stratification. Murray focuses on whites because otherwise the social trends he describes might lazily be explained away as effects of demographic change; he demonstrates that the trends are almost wholly unaffected by race or immigration. As he notes, a constant focus on how racial minorities ‘lag’ whites serves to distract attention from important changes in the benchmark population itself.

The author begins with a description of American life on the eve of the Kennedy assassination, highlighting everything which would shock the younger generation: just three TV channels; no Thai restaurants; ‘coffee’ meant Maxwell House. If you missed a movie when it was in the theaters, you would not get to see it at all.

The products of the entertainment industry still usually validated American norms. Subjects such as abortion and homosexuality were never touched upon in television shows, only rarely and disapprovingly in movies. Most liberals were willing to say that extramarital sex was wrong. Only three and one-half percent of American families were headed by a divorced parent. In many neighborhoods, houses were left unlocked and children could go about unsupervised.

But American women had “much to be outraged about,” the author tells us, such as being expected to marry and have children! If Murray gets portrayed as a ‘hard-rightist,’ it is only because presenting data honestly is now all such a designation requires or implies.

Such class differentiation as existed in 1963 was only reluctantly acknowledged: ninety-five percent of Americans described themselves as either working class or middle class. Poor people refused to think of themselves as lower class, and rich people were almost as reluctant to be considered upper class. A typical house in exclusive Chevy Chase, Maryland cost only twice as much as the nationwide average. People who could afford luxury cars often refrained from a fear of seeming ‘ostentatious’ – an old protestant pejorative which has now mostly disappeared from American English.

This was still recognizably the American society observed by Tocqueville one-hundred-thirty years before: “In the United States, the more opulent citizens take great care not to stand aloof from the people. On the contrary, they constantly keep on easy terms with the lower classes: they listen to them, they speak to them every day.”

The people who had risen to the top in 1963 had little in common except their success. Most had grown up in middle-class or working-class families, and they retained the preferences and tastes of those milieus. Their status was precarious, and often not successfully transmitted across even a single generation. In other words, America was ruled by a rapidly circulating elite, not by an upper class. (The “old money” families of Philadelphia, New York and Boston were an exception, but their numbers were tiny and as a class they had no influence on the nation’s destiny.)

Coming Apart tells the story of how this equilibrium was upset in the years that followed. Murray first discusses the rise of a new upper class; then, turning to the opposite end of the social scale, he shows how the white working class has deteriorated into a proletariat.

The new upper class is a product of our higher-tech economy, which relies heavily on people with exceptional cognitive abilities. A young person with outstanding mathematical ability might formerly have aspired to become a college professor; today he can make a killing writing code or managing a quant fund. Business decision-making has also become more complex and the stakes are higher. “Today, if a first-rate attorney can add ten percent to the probability of getting a favorable decision on a regulatory ruling worth hundreds of millions of dollars, he is worth his many-hundreds-of-dollars-per-hour rate.”

The more efficient exploitation of cognitive ability has created enormous new wealth, but the benefits have been concentrated heavily at the very top of the income distribution. For over half of America, income has remained flat in real terms since around 1970.

American Family Income Distribution

Economic change alone cannot explain how this new elite has become a self-perpetuatingclass. For this we must look at postwar developments in higher education.

At one time, geography largely determined where most people went to college; even the Ivy League catered to the Northeastern social elite rather than the cognitive elite of the entire nation. Since the 1960s, however, our higher education system has come to function as a sorting mechanism for grouping youngsters according to intellectual ability. An American’s cognitive ability can, with ever-increasing exactness, be inferred from the college he attended.

Murray defines the cognitive elite as the top five centiles of cognitive ability. By 2000, just forty-one schools took in half these students. Today, “the typical classroom in an elite school has no one outside the top decile of cognitive ability, and many who are in the top hundredth or thousandth.”

As the author notes, most Americans’ notion of meritocracy is that all the brainy kids scattered across the fruited plains should be offered the same chance to develop their talents. The social class of one’s parents is not supposed to matter. This is not how things worked out, for two reasons: 1) cognitive ability is significantly heritable, and 2) it is now the major determinant of social status.

College education occupies young people during their prime mate-seeking years. Combine this fact with the cognitive sorting now performed by the college admissions process and you get intellectual homogamy: people marrying those with similar cognitive ability. This level of ability tends rather strongly to get passed on to their offspring. Most children within the cognitive elite have parents with an average IQ of 117 or more. Only about 14 percent of them are produced by parents from the bottom half of the distribution.

So while the brilliant son of a plumber from Podunk will still occasionally break into the Ivy League, there will never be enough others like him to determine the character of those schools. Most of his classmates will come from affluent families, and a disproportionate number from the new upper class itself. American meritocracy has ended up producing something like a hereditary upper class.

As Murray acknowledges, this new class has its virtues: they are well-mannered, make good neighbors, seldom get divorced, are devoted parents, careful about their health, and make sincere efforts to be socially responsible. At times, such virtues are driven to comic excess. The obsessive parenting of the new upper class has earned them the nickname “helicopter parents” from harried college administrators. Certain members insist upon drinking their fair-trade organically-grown coffee only from recycled mugs. Others not only jog and take the latest vitamin supplement daily, but react with moral abhorrence to second-hand smoke and saturated fats. The author recommends David Brooks’ Bobos in Paradise as a witty anthropological description of this new ‘bourgeois bohemian’ class.

“The culture of the new upper class carries with it an unmistakable whiff of ‘we’re better than the rabble,’” observes Murray. So, as a technical term to designate that class’s members, he suggests “Overeducated Elitist Snobs.” (The small-town Iowa boy still shows through Murray’s Harvard varnish.) He even includes a quiz by which the reader can gauge his own level of elitist snobbery. If you don’t know who Jimmie Johnson is, you may be in trouble.

Like everyone else, Overeducated Elitist Snobs prefer to live near others who share their background, tastes and concerns. Once they concentrate in significant numbers in any neighborhood, they inevitably begin to reshape it in their own image.

When Murray was at Harvard between 1961 and 1965, he reports, the students and professors of Cambridge, Massachusetts did not command the necessary critical mass. The town had some funky bookshops and folk-music joints, but the local eateries still catered to the working class majority. Harvard kids still rubbed shoulders with ordinary Americans.

Over the following generation, the working class was driven out by high-tech professionals and research organizations. Greasy-spoon diners gave way to gourmet espresso bars. A geographical and mental bubble grew up around the inhabitants of Cambridge.

The same process has been occurring in other college towns, the Philadelphia suburbs, Austin, TX, Seattle and elsewhere. These places have become the ‘Bourgeois Bohemian Paradises’ where you can find asiago-encrusted focaccia served with tarragon-infused olive oil after midnight.

To define such neighborhoods objectively, Murray created a scoring system that combined average income with percentage of college graduates. Then he ranked zip code areas nationwide. Those with scores in the top five centiles he designated “SuperZips.” There are 882 of them in America.

As of 2000, the SuperZips were still eighty-two percent white (including Jewish), while the percentage of whites in the rest of the country had sunk to just sixty-eight. Asians were eight percent in SuperZips, three in the rest of the country. Blacks and Latinos were three percent each in SuperZips, but twelve and six, respectively, elsewhere. A second edition ofComing Apart will update these figures from 2010 census data.

SuperZips tend to cluster together. The four largest clusters surround New York, Washington, San Francisco and Los Angeles, which together account for thirty-nine percent of America’s SuperZip inhabitants. Smaller clusters are associated with Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Dallas and Houston. Large swaths of America contain no such zip codes.

Why is the clustering of SuperZips important? “A class that makes decisions affecting the lives of everyone else, but doesn’t know much about how everybody else lives, is vulnerable to making mistakes.” They think having cheap Central American gardeners and nannies is terrific. It doesn’t occur to them that the policies which provide their servants also result in Blacks shot dead in the streets of South Central Los Angeles or less affluent White families forced to flee to Colorado. (My example, not Murray’s)

It will come as no surprise that a class so alienated from the lives and concerns of ordinary Americans tends to be liberal. This tendency is especially strong in the four largest SuperZip clusters around New York, Washington, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Conservative SuperZips of a sort can be found elsewhere, but the inhabitants are readingThe Wall Street Journal, not The Occidental Quarterly. Murray emphasizes that the shared culture of the new upper class is remarkably constant across the political spectrum.

After a hundred-odd pages on Overeducated Elitist Snobs, Coming Apart shifts its focus to the bottom end of the social spectrum: the new lower class. In the older America, ‘lower-class’ referred only to blacks, “the broken down denizens of the Bowery and Skid Row, or the people known as white trash.” Apart from blacks, such people were numerically insignificant. The working class was something altogether different. Indeed,

for most of its history, working-class America was America. In 1900, 90 percent of American workers were employed in low-level white-collar or technical jobs, manual and service jobs, or worked on farms. Even in 1960, 81 percent of workers were still employed in those jobs.

Most of America’s ‘poor’ were simply working-class people who didn’t make a lot of money.

Since the 1960s, white working-class America has suffered a catastrophic decline in virtue. Referring explicitly to Aristotle, Murray defines virtue as the habits which people require to live satisfying lives and which communities require to function as communities. A well-policed authoritarian state may be able to carry on after a fashion, if not prosper, in the absence of the virtues. America, however, has traditionally allowed its citizens a large measure of personal freedom:

Americans were subject to criminal law, which forbade the usual crimes against person and property, and to tort law, which regulated civil disputes. But otherwise, Americans faced few legal restrictions on their freedom of action and no legal obligations to their neighbors except to refrain from harming them. The guides to their behavior at any more subtle level had to come from within.

Such internal principles are precisely what the now-unfashionable term ‘virtue’ signifies. Murray distinguishes four virtues which have been especially important in the history of America: industriousness, honesty, marriage, and religiosity.

Industriousness refers to “the bone-deep American assumption that life is to be spent getting ahead through hard work, making a better life for oneself and one’s children.” Henry Adams pointed out that the spirit of industriousness affected those on the bottom of American society more powerfully than those on the top:

Reversing the old-world system, the American stimulant increased in energy as it reached the lowest and most ignorant class, whirling them upward as in the blast of a furnace. The penniless and homeless Scotch or Irish immigrant was caught and consumed by it; for every stroke of the axe and the hoe made him a capitalist, and made gentlemen of his children.

America was understood by both natives and immigrants as a land of opportunity, and the most characteristically American of virtues was the industriousness which permitted Americans to take advantage of their opportunities.

Honesty is a necessary precondition for a republican constitution and a free market. One Scottish visitor remarked upon the tedious regularity with which Americans would ask him whether he did not admire “the extraordinary respect which the people pay to the law.” Our limited data indicate a very low crime rate in early America: one study of Middlesex County, Massachusetts, found an average rate of prosecution for theft of 2.7 per 10,000 population between 1760 and 1810. Tocqueville remarked upon how few public officers were charged with apprehending crime. Sympathy for criminals was nearly non-existent.

Marriage is properly an institution rather than a virtue, of course, but it involves the exercise of certain virtues: loyalty and sexual temperance at a minimum, usually patience as well. There is little explicit evidence for the importance of marriage in early American society because the matter was regarded as self-evident; indeed, our current confusion about the nature and purpose of marriage has no precedent in history.

Some observers, however, did remark on the seriousness with which Americans took their marital vows. Tocqueville wrote that Americans “consider marriage as a covenant which is often onerous, but every condition of which the parties are strictly bound to fulfill.” And the Austrian-born immigrant Francis Grund said: “I consider the domestic virtue of the Americans as the principle source of all their other qualities.”

When Murray named his fourth American virtue ‘religiosity,’ I suspected it might be simply an unforthright way of saying ‘Christianity.’ Yet it is not specifically Christian doctrine he has in mind. In part, religiosity consists in the ethical monotheism bequeathed to Christendom by the Old Testament. John Adams, who was fully cognizant of America’s debt to Greece and Rome, wrote:

I will insist that the Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation [by propagating] to all mankind the doctrine of a supreme, intelligent, wise, almighty sovereign of the universe, which I believe to be the great essential principle of all morality, and consequently of all civilization.

Religion is also a crucial source of what sociologists call ‘social capital.’ Robert Putnam (Bowling Alone) has noted that “nearly half of all associational memberships are church-related, half of all personal philanthropy is religious in character, and half of all volunteering occurs in a religious context.” But this is not all: religious persons also account for a disproportionate share of social capital which is not explicitly religious:

People who say religion is very important to them are much more likely than other persons to visit friends, to entertain at home, to attend club meetings, and to belong to sports groups; professional and academic societies; youth groups; service clubs; hobby or garden clubs; literary, art, discussion and study groups; fraternities and sororities; farm organizations; political clubs; nationality groups; and other miscellaneous groups.

And Putnam is referring to religion’s role in society today!

The decline in the four American virtues was preceded, as the author points out, by a subtle change in American thinking:

The belief that being a good American involved behaving in certain kinds of ways, and that the nation itself relied upon a certain kind of people in order to succeed, had begun to fade [by 1950] and has not revived. It came to be tacitly assumed that the American system itself would work under any circumstances as long as we got the laws right.

Murray then documents that decline, restricting his study to white Americans between the ages of 30 and 49 (‘prime age adults’), who have normally completed their educations and are engaged in careers and/or raising families. Within this set, he defines the working classas those with no more than a high school diploma, who work in blue collar, service, or low-level white collar jobs, or are not working. In 1960, this class included sixty-four percent of prime age Whites; by 2010, it had shrunk to thirty. The author’s principle finding is that the decline in the four American virtues has been steepest among this class.

According to a widespread perception, more prosperous Americans have become highly secular, while those in modest circumstances have tended to remain religious. Murray’s data do not bear this out. According to the annual General Social Survey (GSS), unbelievers account for twenty-one percent of the working class, slightly higher than the figure for the upper middle class.

But besides outright unbelievers, there is a larger set of people who may feel they ‘ought’ to be more religious, and who state a religious preference, but also acknowledge they do not attend worship services more than once a year. Murray denominates this group the “de facto seculars.” It is here that the decline in working class religiosity becomes especially apparent. Adding the two classes together, we find the total level of secularization approaching sixty percent. For the upper middle class, the figure is still around forty, though also growing.

Of working class whites who remain religious, an increasing share has turned to fundamentalist denominations. Such groups are more inclined to wear their religious commitments on their sleeves. Murray believes the increase in these high-profile believers explains the misperception that the working class as a whole has remained religious.

Criminal statistics show a large rise in crime affecting the white working class. Murray computes the proportion of prisoners in the adult working class population and finds that between 1974 and 2004 it grew by a factor of five. The corresponding statistics for the upper middle class are extremely low and remained largely unchanged during the same period.

There has been a well-publicized forty percent drop in crime since 1991, but this does not necessarily reflect a decline in criminality. The American prison population has exploded during the same period. We may just be getting better at locking criminals up.

Criminal statistics clearly do not tell the whole story of the decline in honesty. As Murray observes: “It would be nice to know if there have been trends in the consistency with which people keep their word, insist on taking personal responsibility for their mistakes, and tell the cashier when they have been given too much change.” But it is not easy to find data of this type. He does mention that the “a quadrupling of personal bankruptcies over a period [1986-2005] that included one of the most prosperous decades in American history looks suspiciously like a decline in personal integrity.” He was unable to disaggregate this data by social class.

Murray illustrates his statistics with anecdotes concerning a largely white working class neighborhood in Philadelphia called Fishtown. Back in the early 1970s, the place was the despair of social workers, who could not understand why residents would be disinclined to have governmental ‘help’ administered to them; one concluded they were “psychologically unable to face up to their social, cultural and economic deprivation.” Unfortunately, Fishtown has made a lot of progress since then.

In earlier days, the neighborhood was strongly Catholic. Most children attended parochial school, and “the church’s teachings—among others, that the home is a domestic church—gave validation to the core values of Fishtown.” By the late 1990s, one sociologist described religious observance thus:

Typical attire for most men at mass [includes] blue jeans, sneakers, and “Eagles” jackets with hoods. Older people and some younger parents in their 20s and 30s genuflected before entering the pews. I did not see any children performing this ritual, or saying any prayers for that matter. Most were standing around with their coats on throughout the service; they looked rather blank.

One Fishtown parochial school closed due to low enrollment in 2006; a second followed in 2011.

Crime was not much of a problem in earlier days, when residents sometimes administered rough justice without resorting to the police. If you found your car broken into, “you went to where the [glue sniffers] hung out, bashed some heads and found out who did it easy enough.” Even the local gangs “were kind of like vigilantes—beat the crap out of thieves, dopeheads, etc.”

When intact families were the rule in Fishtown, there was a great deal of solidarity between them:

If a neighbor saw a child misbehaving, it was considered appropriate for the neighbor to intervene. The parents would be grateful when they found out, and they would take the word of the neighbor if the child protested his innocence.

The increasingly common unmarried and divorced Fishtowners are less likely to behave this way today, and many parents try to curry favor with their children through lax discipline. One Fishtown woman’s apathy at the deteriorating situation has become so conspicuous that it has earned her the nickname “Not-my-kid Sue.”

Perhaps the biggest changes to come over white working-class neighborhoods like Fishtown in recent decades has been a decline in marriage. In 1960, over eighty percent of prime age working class whites were married; the figure has since plummeted to around fifty. Meanwhile, the number who have never married has risen from under ten percent to about twenty-five. He claims the increase “was driven mostly by the retreat of men from the marriage market.”

The decline in marriage has impaired the happiness of adults, but it has been catastrophic for the rising generation. Whether one considers delinquency, criminality, school problems, physical or emotional health or early mortality, children do best when raised by biological parents who remain married and worst when raised by a single mother (results for children of divorced parents fall in the middle).

The number of children born to white, unwed mothers has skyrocketed from three percent in 1960 to nearly thirty percent today. For mothers without a high school diploma, the figure is now around sixty percent. Many of these mothers are teenagers, and their children often end up being raised by the grandparents. Yet among mothers with a college degree, the proportion of unmarried births has yet to rise above three percent.

As marriage has declined, so has male industriousness. White men with only a high school education began dropping out of the labor force in the 1970s; the figure stood at twelve percent on the eve of the current recession. Since the 1980s, working class men have also become more likely than the American population as a whole to be unemployed (but seeking work), and twenty percent of them with employment of some kind are working fewer than forty hours a week. Murray sees no explanation for this, merely noting that it mainly affects the working class. I shall offer some thoughts of my own below.

One small but telling statistic concerns working class men who claim to be unable to work due to a physical disability. As the author notes, this figure must have gone down since 1960, given medical advances and the proliferation of labor saving devices. Yet it has risen from two percent to an utterly incredible ten percent. Disability has become a racket.

A time-use study cited by Murray reveals that “between 1985 and 2005, men who had not completed high school increased their leisure time by eight hours a week.” The greatest share of this increase was devoted to television viewing, followed by sleeping.

Murray recognizes the strong correlation between the declines in marriage and in male industriousness. Unmarried men are over three and a half times more likely to be out of the labor force than married men, between two and three more times likely to be unemployed but looking, and at least half again as likely to be working fewer than forty hours a week. Some of this difference is due to the preference of women for hardworking men, but more is probably due to the effect on men of marriage itself.

These patterns are also apparent in the history of Fishtown. One local mother reported that her sixteen-year-old daughter had been to six baby showers in four months—just a modest fraction of her fifty-two pregnant classmates. The mother estimated the comparable number from her own youth at around four per year.

A nun teaching at this same Catholic school remarks that some women in the neighborhood are married to men who seem less like husbands than extra sons: “There are women with two bags of groceries in their hands, children hanging on to both sides of their coats, and the husband with his computer game walking behind her down the street. There’s something wrong here!”

One group of Fishtown men calls itself the Sunshine Club. They work summers on the Jersey Shore, then get “some stupid job for a couple of months just to get time in to collect unemployment for the rest of the year until summer rolled around again.”

Another set of men prefer to live off their girlfriends‘ welfare checks; they are known as ‘runners,’ because they must constantly move to keep one step ahead of child support collectors, the police, their girlfriends or their children.

Murray writes that “being a single mother is tough, and it is appropriate to sympathize with women who are in that situation.” He does not say it is appropriate to be sympathetic to the manchildren of Fishtown, and most readers will be left with the impression that what they need is a good kick in the pants. Yet I wonder whether the same factors did not produce the undesirable behavior of both men and women that he notes today.

In the America of 1963, a high school graduate might expect to find a job which would allow him to marry and permit his wife the leisure to stay home raising a few children. He could buy a freestanding house and a car, and still afford to take the family on a two week vacation every summer. The wife would have been reared with a view to preparing her for the duties of marriage and motherhood; she may even have taken ‘Home Ec’ in school.

Then gradually, beginning in the 1960s, women became convinced marriage was an imposition to be ‘outraged’ about. Helen Gurley Brown began whispering in their ears that an independent career path could be filled with exciting romances involving attractive men, free of the ‘drudgery’ to which marriage consigned their mothers. The family income was abolished in favor of ‘equal pay for equal work.’ The law was changed to permit women to divorce their husbands unilaterally and without grounds. (Wives are responsible for around ninety percent of divorces.)

None of this much affects the men at the top of the income and status hierarchy. They make enough money that even women with personal incomes perceive them as supporters and are willing to marry them. If a wife leaves after the baby is born, child support payments are manageable and a replacement wife is easily found.

The Fishtown girls who might have married working men in 1960 may well be earning more than such men today just by sitting at desks entering data. They can obtain higher quality sperm from more desirable men without submitting to the constraints of lifelong monogamy; the ‘ex’ and/or the taxpayer is made to provide for any resulting children. They even enjoy the sympathy of male commentators for the terrible hardship all this supposedly represents. Is it any wonder such women are reluctant to devote their lives to raising the children of ill-paid construction workers?

The contemporary Fishtown man, his wages reduced by female competition and the ever-decreasing market value of upper-body strength, has correspondingly slim chances of earning enough to make himself an acceptable suitor to any woman with an income of her own. These men are not ‘retreating from the marriage market’; they are being driven from it as a matter of deliberate policy.

Even if a particular working class man beats the odds and finds a girl to marry, he cannot expect the satisfaction of supporting her; she may well end up supporting him. And what self-respecting man wants to end up like that poor sap uselessly tagging along behind his wife who just bought all the groceries?

But this is still not the worst. Prospective husbands stand a good chance of losing everything in the divorce settlement within a few years of the wedding. Child support is not so easy when it must be paid through low-skilled labor. Even if you avoid being jailed as a ‘deadbeat dad,’ you will certainly not have enough left over to contemplate a second marriage.

In short, the American dream of a home and family through honest labor is now far out of reach for an increasing number of low-status men. Under these circumstances, what is such a man to do with his life? I’d say an unconstrained bachelor existence with plenty of time for amusements looks very much like a rational choice. The male commentariat may make you out to be a bum, but that sure beats years of performing all the hard work traditionally required to support a family and then not getting the family.

Aristotle understood that certain virtues have social presuppositions: liberality, for example, can hardly be expected from persons living hand-to-mouth. Male industriousness, I would suggest, also presupposes certain social arrangements. Monogamy and the family wage system give you the Irish immigrant who strives to make gentlemen of his children with every blow of his axe; liberated women earning equal pay for their equal work bring forth the men of the Sunshine Club.

So single motherhood and the decline in male industriousness our author describes cannot be spirited away simply by getting men and women to the altar. ‘Outrageous’ though it may seem to a generation steeped in feminist propaganda, the natural economic basis of marriage must also be restored. White men are programmed by evolution to be providers. If you deliberately rearrange society to render this function superfluous, do you have any right to complain when men stop knocking themselves out to perform it?

Murray goes on to describe “the selective collapse of American community”—selective because, so far, it has largely spared the upper middle class.

One of the best known passages in Democracy in America discusses how ‘Americans are forever forming associations,’ and a look at almost any American locality one hundred years ago reveals a complicated interweaving of fraternal, charitable, educational, civic and religious associations busily engaged in all sorts of activities. Biographies of eminent Americans of years gone by are apt to include so bewildering a variety of memberships that the modern reader is left wondering how anyone could have found time for all of them.

Another defining quality of American society was the extent of its neighborliness, i.e., voluntary assistance among unrelated people who happen to live alongside one another. This made the community in which one grew up an important aspect of an American’s identity. One reason the Fishtown of years gone by was so dear to the people who lived there was that neighbors helped one another, looking out for one another’s children and informally exchanging services.

By the 2000s, seventy-five percent of Fishtown residents were socially disengaged, meaning that they no longer belonged to any “sports clubs, hobby clubs, fraternal organizations, nationality organizations (e.g., Sons of Italy) or veterans groups.” Eighty-two percent were civically disengaged, meaning they belonged to no “service groups, youth groups (e.g., being a Scoutmaster), school service groups or local political organizations.”

Much of this decline is due to the erosion of social trust: the expectation that the people around you will do the right thing. Whites’ estimation of the trustworthiness, fairness and helpfulness of others has declined across the board, but that of working class neighborhoods has declined more steeply and from an already lower base.

Robert Putnam’s research has demonstrated that social trust erodes as ethnic diversity increases. This erosion occurs even within each particular ethnic group in a multi-ethnic neighborhood. (Putnam suppressed these results for several years, embarrassed that they contradicted liberal happy-talk.)

The author expresses the hope that the distrust which has accompanied ethnic diversification will diminish over time, but acknowledges that this is only a hope. Of course, we never had to take the gamble: it was decided upon for us by irresponsible elites who have bought their own way out of all the negative consequences.

Murray moves on to a fine discussion of happiness in the spirit of Aristotle. He identifies four principle factors that go to make up a successful human life: family, vocation, community and faith. It is not difficult to see how each of these components of the good life is related, respectively, to the virtues of marriage, industriousness, honesty and religiosity. Easy as it is to ridicule the old Stoic doctrine that virtue equals happiness, it is also easy to demonstrate a high correlation between the two, especially on the level of society as a whole. A hardworking nation of harmonious families actively involved with one another and living according to the tenets of a generally accepted religious teaching—this is about the closest approach to blessedness compatible with the human condition.

Crunching the data on reported happiness, Murray finds that marriage and vocation are the two most important factors. There is also a strong synergy between them: the benefit from a satisfying vocation (often but not always one’s paid employment) combined with a happy family life is greater than the sum of each considered separately.

It seems reasonably clear that religion plays a significant role in human flourishing, but the precise nature of its role remains elusive. In Murray’s data set, only twenty-three percent of those who never attend religious services describe themselves as ‘very happy.’ This figure gradually rises in tandem with frequency of attendance, reaching forty-nine percent among those who attend more than weekly. Mere belief does not seem to do anything for people apart from participation in worship services and the life of a congregation; on the other hand, Murray’s data do not support Pascal’s famous recommendation that merely going through the motions will cure unbelief.

I can think of one significant fact which seems to fly in the face of the religiosity-happiness correlation: Denmark, with the highest self-reported happiness in the world, is also the most secular nation in Europe. I have no explanation for this.

High levels of community involvement also correlate positively with reported happiness. Volunteering and charitable giving make the biggest difference, but group membership and activities, informal social interaction and even electoral politics also produce benefits.

Income, once it rises above the subsistence level, does not correlate well with reported happiness: “there is no inherent barrier to happiness for a person with a low level of education holding a low-skill job.” But all the virtues that do promote happiness are presently deteriorating among lower-income Americans.

Toward the end of the book, Murray integrates nonwhites into his data. “It was a surprise to me and perhaps it will be a surprise to you: Expanding the data to include all Americans makes hardly any difference at all.” From this he infers:

We are one nation, indivisible, in terms of whites and people of color. Differences in the fortunes of different ethnic groups persist, but white America is not headed in one direction and nonwhite America in another.

I don’t believe this optimistic conclusion is warranted, for two reasons. Firstly, it is contradicted by Robert Putnam’s evidence that racial diversity adversely affects social trust. Murray’s warning—“don’t kid yourselves that we are looking at stresses that could be remedied by restricting immigration”—is unconvincing in this context. Stopping and reversing ethnic diversification might not restore the American sense of community all by itself, but there is every reason to expect it would do a great deal of good.

Secondly, racial conflict tends to express itself politically, and hence tends not to show up in the sorts of social surveys from which the author derived his data set; in Murray’s terminology, it is an artifact of the study. It is true whites have begun suffering from a number of problems formerly associated with the black underclass, but this newfound community in vice and social pathology no more makes whites and blacks indivisible than our pre-existing solidarity in wearing shoes or watching television. If anything, a mutual decline in virtue is likely to intensify political conflict over government benefits.

America in the early twenty-first century is still a powerful and prosperous country but, as the author observes, it is rapidly losing the special qualities which made it a distinctive nation. He compares the process to the transition from republic to empire in ancient Rome:

In terms of wealth, military might, and territorial reach, Rome was at its peak under the emperors. But Rome’s initial downward step, five centuries before the eventual fall of the Western Roman Empire, was the loss of the republic. Was that loss important? Not in material terms, but for Romans who treasured the republic, it was a tragedy that no amount of imperial splendor could redeem.

By analogy, the soul of America was the unprecedented freedom it granted private citizens to shape their lives as they wished, leaving them to face the consequences of their own behavior. The very fabric of American society grew out of such freedom, as Murray explains:

Marriage is a strong and vital institution because the family has the responsibility for doing important things that won’t get done unless the family does them. Communities are strong and vital because the community has the responsibility for doing important things that won’t get done unless the community does them. [From such responsibility,] an elaborate web of expectations, rewards, and punishments evolves over time that leads to norms of good behavior that support families and communities in performing their functions. When the government says it will take some of the trouble out of doing the things that families and communities evolved to do, the web frays [and behavior deteriorates].

In essence, this is what is happening to America, and the poorest, least educated class has been first to feel the effects. The disease is progressive, however, since the welfare state inevitably tries to palliate the unfortunate results it produces by assuming still greater responsibilities. But this process cannot go on forever, and eventually civilization becomes unsustainable.

Can America expect five hundred years of imperial grandeur before the final curtain? Apparently, Murray thinks so. Nothing in Coming Apart surprised me as much as the following passage which occurs early on:

The economic dynamics that have produced the class society I deplore have fostered the blossoming of America’s human capital. These dynamics will increase, not diminish, our competitiveness on the world stage in the years ahead. Nor do I forecast decline in America’s military and diplomatic supremacy.

I take this to mean that the new economy’s success in turning high intelligence to account more than makes up for the inefficiencies of the welfare state and military adventurism.

Many nationalists treat it as axiomatic that the Washington regime’s ability to squander its subjects’ wealth, courage and ingenuity will eventually overcome any possible economic arrangement. If Murray is correct, however, the post-collapse strategy recommended by nationalist luminaries such as Guillaume Faye and Yggdrasil could prove dangerously mistaken.

Murray has his own version of the ‘worse is better’ strategy, however, involving the increasingly obvious unsustainability of the welfare state. When the large nations of Northern Europe begin falling into chaos of the sort Greece has recently experienced, it is just possible that Americans will reconsider their options and change direction in time. Alternatively, the irrationality of our own welfare system may soon become apparent to even the dimmest social democrat. Whatever the merits of the welfare state’s core goal—providing a basic income for all American adults—it could now be achieved simply by cashing out all current income transfer programs. (See 2006’s In Our Hands for an argument that this could be done while leaving Americans responsible for their own lives.)

Murray’s final hope is for what economist Robert Fogel has called a ‘Fourth Great Awakening.’ Historians commonly speak of three “Great Awakenings” in American history: in the 1730s, the early decades of the 1800s, and the period 1880-1910. Each was characterized by charismatic revivalism and brought otherwise unforeseeable political change with it. The last Great Awakening ushered in the progressive era, whose message of uplift for the poor is repeated by liberals to this day. But, as Fogel says, such slogans have little resonance for an age when “even the poor are materially rich by the standards prevailing a century ago and where many of those who are materially rich are spiritually deprived.”

Amen to that. Murray remarks upon how many persons of our day seem to live according to the principle that “the purpose of life is to while away the time between birth and death as pleasantly as possible, and the purpose of government is to make it as easy as possible to do so.” Many are happy to pay the taxes on which the underclass subsists as long as it frees them from any personal involvement with such people.

The author does not try to predict the specific form a new Great Revival would take, but he expects a return to civic engagement may form a part of it: “age-old human wisdom has understood that a life well-lived requires engagement with those around us.”

As Murray acknowledges, many among our elites behave reasonably responsibly on a personal level, including staying married and investing in their offspring. But a healthy and self-confident elite would do more: they would ‘preach what they practice’ and set a better tone for the rest of society. They would demand more of themselves than a life of eating health food and being ‘tolerant.’

If the present elite experiences no Great Awakening soon, perhaps some other class of men will. They might even end up providing America with its next ruling elite.

]]> F. Roger Devlin The Magazine Thu, 23 Feb 2012 18:45:19 +0000 http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/untimely-observations/the-soul-of-western-man/ http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/untimely-observations/the-soul-of-western-man/

The contentious reaction to Liddell’s satirical article about Black genocide has provided us with a unique opportunity to reconsider our strategy as a revolutionary movement.

I usually enjoy Liddell’s intelligent writing, but I agree with critics that he failed in this case to promote our cause. The exact meaning of his article was not easily indiscernible, and he may have frightened away visitors without offering anything substantial to compensate for this loss. Truly, there must be a better way to electrify our audience without sending newcomers running to the hills.

Those who spoke in Liddell’s defense argued that it would be a mistake to abandon our beliefs in order to attract members of the leftist herd. Liddell himself has urged us not to let the PC mob dictate our parameters.  I agree with these cautionary assessments, but if we are to be an effective vanguard rather than just another White Nationalist website, then we must strive to present our ideas in ways that can appeal to potential recruits who are still straddling the fence. Many of us once sat there. Have you asked yourself lately what brought you down from that fence and guided you to where you are today?

For the majority of us, I suspect our journey began with an intuitive recognition that something was not quite right with the world . . . and likely something was deeply wrong with it.  

Indeed, our first unconscious step towards the alternative Right was probably living though experiences that bore no resemble to the multicultural paradise promised to us by the prophets of liberalism. These “moments of awakening” compelled us to question the egalitarian orthodoxy and seek answers outside the mainstream sources of information.

Our intellectual journey carried us across the Internet and led us through the pages of the numerous books we ordered from Amazon. The insatiable thirst we had for alternative sources of knowledge eventually led us to the writings of men like Buchanan, Francis, Gottfried, and Brimelow . . . and then Evola, Nietzsche, Schmitt, and beyond. At last, we had found the answers we were looking for. At last, we had found voices that were courageous enough to speak honestly about the world. And it was not anything flashy, provocative, or “sexed-up” that made us continue to read the writings of these great men. On the contrary, we found their arguments to be articulate, dignified, and erudite. They satisfied our yearning for truth and they spoke to our noble souls. 

If we are to maintain our established cadre of regulars and expand our movement with new members who share our interests and beliefs—then this is how we must do so—by appealing to the noble qualities of Western Man that have enabled us to stand above the other civilizations of men.

Perhaps I am overestimating what AlternativeRight.com is capable of doing. It may be impossible to churn out as many articles as we do every week and always reach our audience on a deeper spiritual level. Maybe this is even undesirable, as writing of this caliber might not interest readers who crave something more humorous, playful, or provocatively rhetorical. But I believe we sell our audience short if we think frivolous writing is what they really want when they visit this website. More importantly, we sell our revolution short.

If we are to remain a serious movement, then we must appeal to serious men with the same type of meaningful writing that attracted us to the alternative Right. In other words, we must speak to men’s souls with the solemn voice of truth, dignity, and self-respect.

 

]]> Paul Deussen Untimely Observations Thu, 23 Feb 2012 16:58:17 +0000 http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/zeitgeist/stihe-the-u.s.-army-s-pregnancy-pouches/ http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/zeitgeist/stihe-the-u.s.-army-s-pregnancy-pouches/

In "Harrison Bergeron," Kurt Vonnegut imagines a world in the not-too-distant future in which all Americans are finally equal: the intelligent are fitted with distracting radio transmitters so they cannot think deeply; athletes and dancers are required to wear weights to handicap any performance; everyone who is beautiful is masked.

Who would have guessed that something like the nightmarish egalitarianism Vonnegut describes would be implemented in the United States Army?  

Stars and Stripes:

CAMP ZAMA, Japan – The Army is ordering its hardened combat veterans to wear fake breasts and empathy bellies so they can better understand how pregnant soldiers feel during physical training.

This week, 14 noncommissioned officers at Camp Zama took turns wearing the “pregnancy simulators” as they stretched, twisted and exercised during a three-day class that teaches them to serve as fitness instructors for pregnant soldiers and new mothers.

Army enlisted leaders all over the world are being ordered to take the Pregnancy Postpartum Physical Training Exercise Leaders Course, or PPPT, according to U.S. Army Medical Activity Japan health promotion educator Jana York.

Developed by the Army in 2008, the course includes aerobics classes, pool sessions and classroom studies on the physiology of pregnant women. The NCOs learn special exercises for pregnant women, who shouldn’t push themselves too hard or participate in high-impact activities such as snowboarding, bungee jumping or horse riding, York said.

Long before the American Empire is ended by a patriotic Old Believers like Ron Paul, it will collapse under the weight of equality.  

]]> Richard Spencer Zeitgeist Tue, 21 Feb 2012 05:22:17 +0000 http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/zeitgeist/oh-the-linsanity/ http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/zeitgeist/oh-the-linsanity/

In primetime sitcoms and dramas, the viewer is transported to a world of Black doctors and judges and brave district attorneys battling neo-Nazis. In sports, racial reality is laid bare. This is especially true in African-dominated football and basketball. In so much of the discussion of each, race lies just below the surface—and thus is unmentionable—whether regarding the various criminal outrages of star athletes or the styles of play that has emerged after de-segregation.

“Linsanity,” the now ubiquitous pun on the name of New York Knick’s Jeremy Lin, has brought such sentiments to the surface. Lin, the man—an un-drafted, previously unknown point guard from Harvard—has certainly earned his moment in the spotlight with his fine play. But as with Tibow-mania, “Linsanity” the phenomenon derives from the fact that Jeremey is a good, clean golden boy playing in a league for dumb, tattooed thugs. The Onion got to the essence of this with its headline, “Knicks Trade Jeremy Lin For Selfish Asshole Who Plays Knicks-Style Basketball”—as a particularly unpleasant commentator noted, “New Yorkers deserve a player who reflects their values.”

Knicks Trade Jeremy Lin For Selfish Asshole Who Plays Knicks-Style Basketball

This weekend, Saturday Night Live got at two things that are true—first, a certain tacitly accepted hierarchy of victimhood, in which Blacks have favored status over Asians on the suffering totem; secondly, the willingness of Whites to sell out another White, if he should happen to step out of line with regard to “tolerance,” in order to gain social status over him.

Of course, the joke’s on SNL, as we actually have “progressed” to the point that a harmless—and likely unintentional!—quip about Asians has become a firing offense.

 

]]> Richard Spencer Zeitgeist Tue, 21 Feb 2012 04:59:31 +0000 http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/district-of-corruption/fingerprints-of-fraud/ http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/district-of-corruption/fingerprints-of-fraud/

In my last article, I refuted one mathematical proof of fraud in Russian elections. That “proof” stemmed from the observation that the distribution of votes for United Russia (UR) among election precincts was non-Gaussian. I showed  that theoretically there is no reason for the distribution to be Gaussian and presented non-bell-shaped curves in American elections. There are other “proofs” out there. The Wall Street Journal, for instance, found “fingerprints of fraud” in Russian elections. The deviation from Gaussian distribution is not listed as a “fingerprint,” but the WSJ has others:

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's ruling United Russia party captured a high share of voters—far above the 49.3% it received nationwide—in precincts where voter turnout was reported to be well above the national average, according the analysis. That dynamic suggests broad ballot-stuffing, according to experts in vote monitoring.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 1. Fingerprints of fraud: (a) in Russian 2011 parliamentary elections according to WSJ analysis; (b) in British 2010 elections according to my analysis.

Apparently, The WSJ assumed that the true turnout was more or less the same in different precincts, but in some of them, Putin’s KGB agents stuffed the boxes with ballots for United Russia. Such an operation could, indeed, increase both the turnout and UR vote share in the affected precincts. This looks like a reasonable explanation, and in 2008 American election, I could not find a significant correlation between turnout and the percentage of the vote for Obama. However, Kuznetsov has found such correlations in 2010 British parliamentary elections. Following this lead, I applied the WSJ’s analysis to British elections. Results are in Figure 1.

As you can see, when you go from constituencies with turnout below 60 percent to constituencies with turnout above 60 percent, the vote share of the Conservative Party increases two fold. The share of Liberal Democrats (LD) increases by one third, while the share of Labour Party drops 40 percent and the share of all other parties drops twice. Apparently, United Russia had borrowed the ballot-stuffing technique from the Conservative-LD coalition that rules Britain. 

The WSJ gives its estimate of vote fraud in Russian elections:

A comprehensive examination of the full results from Russia's nearly 100,000 voting precincts reveals statistical anomalies that experts say are consistent with widespread vote-rigging. These irregularities could cast doubt, by one rough measure, over as many as 14 million of the 65.7 million votes reportedly cast. 

Unfortunately, the WSJ authors do not say how they got this estimate. Apparently, not from the deviations from the bell curve, since they do not even mention them. However, Gazeta.ru had published an elaborate article by Shpilkin, which estimates the number of votes stolen in Russian elections. The method uses the very correlation between turnout and UR vote share, which the WSJ dubbed “a fingerprint of fraud.” Here is a figure from that article.

Figure 2. 2011 Russian parliamentary elections results in Moscow. Every dot represents a precinct (several hundred voters). You can clearly see that the higher the turnout is, the more votes United Russia gets.

I made a similar picture for British elections.

Figure 3. Results of 2010 British parliamentary elections.

In the above graph, every data point represents a constituency (several tens of thousands voters). You can see that the higher the turnout is, the more votes the Conservatives get.

Figure 4. Estimating the amount of fraud in British parliamentary elections.

In the next paragraph, I will use Shpilkin’s method to estimate the number of votes stolen in British elections. I keep all his language while making the minimal necessary changes to adopt it to British elections.

Assuming that the difference in distribution of votes between the Conservative-LD coalition and the other parties depending on the attendance is the result of artificial increase of the amount of votes for the coalition, we can try to establish the size of this increase. We will try to separate from Conservative-LD votes distribution, a part proportional to the sum of votes for all the other parties. As we see in Figure 4, we could separate a part from the votes for Conservative-LD, the part, proportional to all the other voices, so that until the attendance of 62% the remainder of the UR voices after subtraction of this part practically equals 0. In our assumptions that means that there were almost no added votes. The remaining (abnormal) part of this curve should be considered an artificial increase of the amount of votes for Conservative-LD. After the division between 'normal' (proportional to the votes for the other parties) and 'abnormal' is done, we can appraise them quantitatively and try to reconstruct the "corrected" voting results without such an increase. After subtracting this data from 17.5 million votes for Conservative-LD, the normal votes count up to 8.3 million, abnormal, artificially added votes total 9.2 million.

Since we are talking about the birthplace of parliamentary democracy, the conclusion is absurd. Therefore, we should seek a different explanation of the spurious correlation between attendance and vote share. Could it be that the members of the Conservative party are more active voters than the members of Labour party? Consider the following simplified model. There are two parties: Conservative and Labour. Three-quarters of the Conservative and one-half of the Labourists take the trouble to vote. One town is 80 percent Conservative and 20 percent Labour. The attendance here will be 70 percent; 60 percen of the registered voters will vote Conservative and 10 percent, Labour. Another town is 80 percent Labour and 20 percent Conservative. The turnout will be 55 percent; 15 percent of the registered voters will vote Conservative and 40 percent, Labour. We can get something similar to Figure 3 without any ballot stuffing by MI5.

Perhaps we do not need to postulate the KGB ballot-stuffing to explain the results of Russian elections as well?

]]> Mikhail Simkin District of Corruption Mon, 20 Feb 2012 17:07:18 +0000 http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/untimely-observations/is-white-genocide-right/ http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/untimely-observations/is-white-genocide-right/

In my previous article I dared to ask the rhetorical question of whether Black genocide was something that should be contemplated. The question was asked to draw attention to the abuse of Whites in South Africa documented by the blog Boer Genocide, which contends that the country is in the early stages of a genocidal campaign that aims to eradicate the White population of South Africa.

A few facts: Since the ANC took power in 1994 approximately 800,000 Whites out of a population of 5.2 million have fled the country, while in rural areas several thousand Boers have been slaughtered on their farms, often with the kind of mutilation that would be precluded by strictly economic motives. Meanwhile the government pursues measures like racist employment legislation, increasing gun control, and the raising of special militias that have a creepily genocidal bent to them.

But all this talk of genocide has got me thinking again. Just possibly, the proponents of White genocide and the thugs who are carrying out its preliminary actions actually have a point after all; a point that is a lot bigger and wiser than the point they actually have in their heads, which is probably just a tangled ball of savage inferiority, mixed with hatred, greed, and lust.

The greater point that those blooded hands and yellowed, hate-rimmed eyes unwittingly carry is that the existence of the White race in its present form is a curse upon this planet and that until that curse is removed either bodily or spiritually the entire human race is condemned to be dragged down in an increasingly dysgenic spiral that will feed its barbarism and savagery.

We could sit here till doomsday totting up Whitey's enormous lead in the civilizational stakes, and come to the mistaken conclusion that the White race is an unmitigated blessing, but the important thing is not how big and fast your car is but in which direction it is headed. White civilization may be driving a high performance luxury car, but it is headed straight towards a cliff. Meanwhile the other races and civilizations, in their jeeps, jalopies or, in the case of the Africans, tricycles made out of tin cans, are at least trying to head in the right direction, one that the greater universe all around us, in its deep, profound, impersonal way, approves of.

Life in South Africa may gradually be reverting to the mean of the rest of Africa, but at least that mean is a Darwinian one. In other words, at its very base it is a progressive one, where weakness and stupidity are gradually, drop by bloody drop, grain by grain, penalized and leeched out of the system, however inefficiently. Left alone and with enough time, natural processes in Africa should raise up a better race, civilization, and culture than the ones currently there.

But, wherever the White race extends its hand of influence, these healthy tendencies, which sometimes take on extremely ugly forms, are curtailed in a thousand little ways, whether through charity, aid, medicine, 'democracy,' human rights, the imposition of false war or false peace, or other forms of social, political, and economic interference.

With Whitey on the scene feeding the improvident and lazy and putting local farmers out of business in the process, doing deals with the corrupt, fattening the parasites, paying off the guilt merchants, and curing self-inflicted ailments, a dysgenia is created in which the African, or any other group that comes under their baleful benevolence, has a much reduced chance of developing the kind of self-reliance and positive individual and group traits that lead to progress.

Whitey, living by these same dysgenic standards in his own shrinking lands and being a soft touch for everyone else, has perhaps harmed his own chances even more, but there is a resilience in the race that may overcome this handicap and allow it to continue spreading its dysgenic miasma far and wide for centuries and even milennia to come.

So, imagine if you will a world without Whites. Such a world would also lack bleeding heart liberalism and dog-eyed posters of starvlings that can only live through White charity. Without the White man to carry it, the White man’s burden would very quickly have to learn to stand on its own two feet or die. To us in the pampered West this all sounds terribly cruel, but unthinking, over-sentimentalized negation of cruelty, of the kind that we Whites love to indulge in, destroys ultimate hope.

Understandably, White nationalists, in their human weakness, feel a similar sentimental attachment to their race, flawed as it is, as I do myself. But, by doing so, aren’t we just taking a narrow, short-termist, even tribalistically selfish view of the greater good of humanity? Surely one of the differences between us and the idiots of 'The Left' is that they think in mere years or decades, while we think in terms of millennia or even billions of years.

If the White race, besotted with universal notions of equality, human rights, philanthropism, cake for everyone, and race guilt for itself, is a barrier to the long-term progress of the entire human race, then surely a strong case can be made for the removal of that race not only from South Africa but from the entire world. The only alternative is to cure it of its unhealthy tendencies that threaten the rest of humanity, something that may or may not be possible.

What's starting to happen in South Africa is certainly not pretty, but maybe it is part of a much greater plan that only generations, millions of years hence, will properly understand.

 

]]> Colin Liddell Untimely Observations Mon, 20 Feb 2012 14:03:20 +0000 http://www.alternativeright.com/main/the-magazine/hold-the-genocide-please/ http://www.alternativeright.com/main/the-magazine/hold-the-genocide-please/

I admit to being slightly baffled by Colin Liddell's recent Alt-Right article, "Is Black Genocide Right?"

The title, along with the "sick joke" accompanying photo of a hungry vulture perched expectantly next to a miserable, pitifully scrawny African child, suggest a Jim Goad-esque/Jonathan Swift-ian ironic display of grotesque callousness, designed to provoke unsuspecting readers to outrage though the use of intentionally over-the-top rhetoric, employed by the author for explicitly satirical purposes.

Yet for all that, I'll be darned if the piece itself doesn't read, rather chillingly, as a straightforward recommendation of mass murder . . .  Perhaps there is a subtle point that I've simply been too obtuse to notice, but upon reading and re-reading "Is Black Genocide Right?" several times, I can't detect any hint of anything to mitigate the article's harshness of tone. I don't discern any sort of twinkle lurking in the author's narrowed eyes; nor do I see a hint of a wry, twisted smile on his pursed, angry lips. He seems as serious as . . . well, murder.

To be sure, Liddell makes several indisputably correct points in his article concerning conditions in South Africa today. He alludes to the extraordinarily high proportion of often hideously brutal crimes committed by Blacks against Whites in the so-called "Rainbow Nation" in recent years. There are the notoriously infamous farm murders in rural areas, as well as the less remarked-upon but far more common urban and suburban murders, rapes, carjackings, and muggings. Liddell also mentions the highly corrupt and criminally negligent rule of the ANC, whom the Black majority faithfully return to power year after year, in election after election. He references the despicably punitive policy of Black Economic Empowerment (BEE), an extreme form of affirmative action which enables clueless cronies of the (Black) ruling class to obtain copious contracts and grants while rendering more qualified Whites effectively persona non grata.

Liddell is scarcely wrong, then, in his diagnosis of the problem. And being a former resident of South Africa before it began its steep and terrifying decline into conspicuous barbarity, one can certainly forgive him for being upset about the terrors and indignities to which his fellow countrymen have been subjected since the ANC took power in 1994.

Unlike Liddell, I have only visited the Beloved Country. The two weeks I spent there in December are the subject of an article that will appear in the first issue of the National Policy Institute's new print journal Radix (see Alternative Right's main page). I can't claim the same sort of familiarity and sentimental attachment that comes of actually having lived in a particular place for several years. Still, I daresay that my brief visit, in addition to the research I've undertaken on the subject, has made me keenly aware of the dire and extremely dicey circumstances faced by the contemporary Afrikaner after nearly two decades of Black rule. I deeply sympathize with the frustration the Boer feels at the world's general indifference to his bleak plight. Indeed, it seems to me that the only way the unique culture of Afrikanerdom can survive is for the the Boer to gain self-determination—that is, to obtain his own ethnic homeland.

And this movement towards self-determination is taking root and bearing fruit, slowly but surely, in the coalescing of exclusively and explicitly Afrikaner communities like Kleinfontein, located a few miles outside of Pretoria, and—most famously—Orania, now beautifully blossoming along the Orange River in the midst of the otherwise dusty and desolate Northern Cape. These mini-ethnostates have sprung up, not due to an aggressive impulse on the part of the White minority to subdue, must less obliterate, the "kaffir," but instead due to the perfectly legitimate and healthy desire of Afrikaners to protect themselves and their own.

Given these facts, the tone of Colin Liddell's article startles and alarms me. Asking the Boers to carry out a "genocide" of South African Blacks is, in addition to being morally reprehensible, also massively rhetorically stupid. When Alt-Righters propose or applaud such notions, we lose credibility, and our cultural Marxist enemies gain ground. It becomes easier for them to paint us as dangerous extremists who must be silenced. Yes, the representatives of the Left routinely employ noxious double standards; yes, Blacks who victimize Whites are routinely excused from wrongdoing, their acts chalked up to the "legacy of European colonialism," or some such rot, while any Whites who commit crimes against Blacks are regarded as simply and self-evidently evil. There are, however—believe it or not—plenty of fair-minded moderates and dissident liberals out there who are quite aware of the odious humbug of political correctness. Our side would be ill-advised to alienate such potential allies with rhetoric that leads them to suspect that we are nothing but a bunch of vulgar, violent louts just aching for the chance to wipe out everyone of a different skin color, "Day of the Rope"-style.

I imagine that—as has happened when I wrote previous articles condemning Anders Behring Breivik and taking issue with the cult of personality surrounding Emma West—some readers will assail me here for not being properly "hardcore" in my beliefs. Well, if blanching at talk of mass murder makes me "soft," then I readily confess to the heresy of softness. (I would prefer, in my priggish way, to think that such a proclivity is instead evidence of decency on my part; but again, my critics and I will agree to disagree on this matter and others.)

When it comes to the issue of legitimate self-defense, however, I'm no White ethnomasochist—I am, indeed, hardcore. Let us help the Afrikaners live and prosper; let us give them support, in order that they may shield themselves and their children, from harm. And let us show the world that assisting our racial brethren is in no way synonymous with wishing ill upon, or supporting violence against, other races.

]]> Andy Nowicki The Magazine Wed, 15 Feb 2012 15:30:13 +0000 http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/district-of-corruption/the-war-on-guns/ http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/district-of-corruption/the-war-on-guns/

The capacity on the part of liberals to devise outlandish policies intended to combat crime is rivaled in stupidity only by their propensity to avoid true solutions. Gun control has always been the pet panacea of those who possess neither the desire nor the backbone to confront the true and obvious cause of gun violence: criminals and a lenient justice system. Rather than confront this bane head on, gun controllers have striven to crack down on their favorite whipping boys, the guns themselves.

Every time another maniac opens fire, as America recently revisited on the one-year anniversary of the near assassination of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, the calls go out for stricter gun control.  Gun controllers, however, never quite get around to explaining how the previous 20,000 gun control laws they enthusiastically enacted failed to stop the most recent tragedies. The memorable shootings in the Los Angeles Jewish center and the Texas shooting in a Christian church were not—and could not—have been prevented by existing gun control laws. Nevertheless, the reaction was typical and predictable.

In the short time in between those shootings, Bill Clinton latched onto and actually expanded what is probably the nuttiest (although not the most harmful) policy that is aimed at guns rather than criminals. In what is generally referred to as “gun-buyback” programs, Clinton took a page from local communities around the country and announced a $15 million federal plan which would assist local authorities in purchasing firearms in and around public housing projects. Today, the programs continue to enjoy a bizarre reverence.

Gun-buyback programs work like this: police in a local neighborhood or precinct, often with the assistance of misguided community organizations, announce that they want people to turn in their illegal (or legal) guns.  A period of amnesty is offered, whereby anyone who owns a weapon illegally will not be punished or prosecuted if they hand in the gun within the allotted time frame. No questions asked. Sometimes, the buyback program operates under the condition of anonymity of the illegal gun owner.  (There is no amnesty for crimes committed with guns.)

In exchange for turning in their guns, people will receive a determined amount of cash. Sometimes, they are offered basketball tickets or some other desirable item. Amidst great hoopla, the program is announced under the guise of an “anti-gun” program. Since people will be turning in their guns, and guns cause crime, ipso facto, crime will be reduced. 

The only effect that these ridiculous programs have on criminals is that certain robberies may be delayed while the muggers try to stop laughing. The entire program is predicated on the nonsensical notion that criminals are the ones that turn in their guns. That an IQ above 10 could actually take such logic seriously is one of the great mysteries of life. But, alas, some people actually purport to believe it.

The federal program was aimed at reducing gun violence in some of the most notoriously dangerous locations in America.  It intended to give local police departments up to $500,000 each to purchase guns for a “suggested price” of $50. “Every gun turned in through a buyback program means potentially one less tragedy,” Clinton profoundly exclaimed.

Clinton, who certainly inspires confidence when he asserts that the guns will be destroyed upon receipt by the police, calculated that the program would bring in roughly 300,000 guns. The federal money was intended to go to individual public housing authorities which would coordinate plans with local police. The Clinton administration came up with the novel idea that gift certificates for goods or services be handed out instead of cash. Very appealing to the neighborhood mugger.

Naturally, when reality actually managed to break through the clouds of deception, the facts revealed that there was no evidence whatsoever that crime had been reduced in locales where gun buyback programs had been enacted. This is in line with the fact that crime does not go down in areas which establish more gun control laws.  In fact, the only places where crime decreases are where right-to-carry laws are passed—laws which make it easier for law-abiding citizens to carry concealed weapons for self-protection.

The Associated Press reports that the thousands of weapons turned in through buyback programs over the years hardly make a dent in the 220 million to 250 million guns in circulation. The people who turn in the guns are undoubtedly comprised of those not committing crimes and people who simply want to get rid of their guns anyway.  Obviously, criminals who make their living breaking laws with guns are not interested in surrendering the tools of the trade for a gift certificate. But public policy is rarely based on logic and common sense.

Likewise, the Brady Law—the farce legislation which mandates a 15-day waiting period before the purchase of a handgun—is another monstrous sham that gun controllers celebrated in much the same manner they would fawn over Rosemary’s baby.

Touting the nation’s drop in crime as proof that the law is working, gun controllers have consistently paraded false numbers and results to bolster their propaganda machine. Ever since James Brady was disabled by John Hinckley’s bullet during the Reagan assassination attempt, Brady, and especially his wife Sarah, have dedicated their lives to destroying the freedom of others. Much like Long Island Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy, whose husband was murdered by self-described White-hating Jamaican Colin Ferguson in the Long Island Railroad massacre, the Bradys have used their personal tragedy to garner sympathy for an evil cause. 

Gun control has never been much more than the holy grail of deluded liberals who are determined to shed the image that they are soft on crime. Advocating for gun control is the pathetic attempt to pretend they are making a tangible contribution to the war on crime. Violent street criminals are infinitely grateful for the help gun controllers have given them whilst plying their nefarious trade. Indeed, an unarmed populace creates a much more conducive climate for the business of rapists and muggers. Criminals are, therefore, the most ardent supporters and giddy beneficiaries of tight gun control, of which waiting periods are an important part.

What are the real numbers regarding the Brady Law? Once again it was Bill Clinton, perfecting the art of the “lawyer’s” answer to straight-forward questions, who claimed sooner after the first results were in, as did his attorney general Janet Reno, that 100,000 applicants were prevented from purchasing pistols due to the “success” of the police background checks conducted during the waiting period. As usual, there was a grain of truth to the former president’s misleading words, which come unraveled upon further inspection. Certainly, 100,000 applicants were denied their constitutional rights because of Brady. The only problem is that some 90,000 (!) of these rejections were caused by mistaken identity, traffic offenses, and other computer errors.

In reality, therefore, only 10,000 rejections were “legitimate.” And of those 10,000 the vast majority of denials resulted from non-violent crimes committed by the applicants many years ago. The notion that hardened criminals, who break every law from petty larceny to murder, will actually go to the trouble of purchasing a weapon legally and submit to a background check is something that only the mind of a gun controller can be totally at ease with. Only fools believe that the Brady Law—or any gun control law—prevents criminals from obtaining weapons.

Waiting periods not only fail at their purported mission, they actually increase crime and cost innocent lives. The quintessential example was the Los Angeles riots in 1992. (Before the federal Brady Law, California had its own state version). During those horrible days of lawless mayhem, looting, rampaging and murder, terrified citizens seeking to protect their lives and their property flocked to gun stores and were told they had to wait. Left naked to assault and denied their right to bear arms because of the waiting period, an inhuman savagery was inflicted upon law-aiding citizens by predators who did not have to wait.

Moreover, the failure of waiting periods, rather than wake gun control tyrants from their delusions, has always been used as an excuse for yet longer waiting periods. California went from a two-day waiting period in 1940 to three days in 1958; to five days in 1965; to 15 days in 1976. During that period, violent crime rose steadily, peaking at a 400 percent increase. During the glory days of the David Dinkins mayoralty and the Crown Heights riots in New York City, the waiting period for a first-time gun purchase was four to six months. Big help.

Eventually, in a landmark victory for freedom and the Tenth Amendment, the Supreme Court struck down the provision of the Brady Law that required the states to conduct background checks, on the grounds that the federal government cannot tell the states how to spend their money. To no surprise, crime has not increased in the locales where the background check has been eliminated. Undeterred, gun controllers have fought to enact state versions of the bill which cost taxpayers millions of wasted dollars on useless paperwork, and police man-hours devoted to checking on honest citizens rather than patrolling the streets.

Despite the hoopla, gun controllers have never been able to correlate the effects of the Brady Law with the drop in crime, which in reality is due to demographic shift—the aging of the population. The real effects of the Brady Law and all gun control legislation are to increase crime and to trample on the precious freedom articulated in the Second Amendment. The real agenda is the ultimate confiscation of all privately-owned weapons and the loss of freedom.

So first it was waiting periods. Then it was background checks. Next came the “assault rifle” ban. Let’s not forget registration. Then bullet identification numbers. Confiscation, of course. Then the crackdown on “Saturday Night Specials.” Ban on semi-automatics . . .

It’s hard to be chic trying to keep up with the latest fad on the gun controllers’ stylish agenda. When one craze becomes passé, the confiscators can always be counted on to come up with another. So just as the mood ring replaced the hoola hoop, the new hip cause that will save America’s children from those evil gun owners is the gun lock.

Just as when the Hustle came out, anyone who’s anyone is in on it. There has been proposed legislation requiring gun locks, as well as state and local bills that will harass law-abiding handgun owners, while the criminals are once again hysterical laughing. But the liberals, on a certain level, ought to be admired for a certain consistency in the face of total failure. If liberalism is the religion, gun control is the First Gospel. In the Honeymooners, when Alice Kramden was criticizing one of Ralph’s notorious slip-ups in his hair-brained get-rich-quick schemes, he retorted, “No one’s 100 percent, Alice.” She replied, “You are. You’ve been wrong every time.”

And so it is with the pursuit of mandatory gun locks. The proposed laws require that all handguns be attached with trigger locks, which will supposedly keep children from killing themselves or others in horrible accidents. These types of accidents are almost non-existent, but gun control shills in liberal political circles play them up to give the false impression that they happen on a routine basis. It is important to understand that gun controllers are among the most shameless statistical liars. Their numbers can simply never be believed. For example, bicycles kill far more children than handguns, but Americans will look long and hard to see the actual numbers on the fingertips of the confiscators.

Furthermore, when gun control advocates trot out the statistics claiming a high number of “children” being killed by firearms, the definition of “children” is the one created by federal authorities, which is people under the age of 18. So when two 17 year old hoodlum drug addicts in the ghetto intentionally shoot each other between fixes, this counts as “children” being killed by handguns, with the image of a toddler reaching into his father’s gun rack.

Having failed to effectively disarm all law-abiding Americans, gun controllers seek to render the guns they own useless. Most of the mental midgets voting for these laws wouldn’t know a gun lock from a wrist watch, but they understand how to trample on the rights of honest people and get tough – not on criminals – but on inanimate objects. The whole point of having a defensive weapon in one’s home is for quick, life-saving access and use in the event of criminal intrusion. Gun locks cause critical time to be lost. Ever try opening the house mail box in the middle of the night?

The well-publicized study by Professor John Lott of the University of Chicago, More Guns, Less Crime, proved what all sensible people already knew: the presence of guns in honest hands deters criminals and saves innocent lives. In all locales nationwide where right-to-carry laws were enacted since the mid-1980s, crime went down. Americans defend themselves more than 760,000 annually with legally owned firearms against violent predators.

But the gun lock craze has an even more sinister side. The legal theory of Strict Liability defines guilt as simply having committed the illegal act, regardless of mitigating circumstances. For example, a man is guilty of statutory rape by having sex with a minor, even if he had every reason to believe she was 30. Similarly, running a red light is always an offense, even if one is rushing a child to the emergency room. As a corollary to this gun control madness, gun controllers want to require that citizens act “responsibly” (get gun locks), but at the same time want to apply Strict Liability to such laws, so that even if owners purchase and attach the locks, they will still be held responsible in the event of an accident. Perhaps more importantly, they are pushing this theory independent of whether gun lock legislation passes. This is intended to terrify people out of owning guns. So far, courts have rejected this nonsense. But totalitarians never stop trying.

They also never stop believing in the Instrumentality Theory, which holds that the mere presence itself of instruments (guns) causes violence. Gun ownership has risen 50 percent in the past two decades. As Professor Lott’s study shows, however, not only has violent crime gone down in that period, it has decreased most substantially where gun ownership has risen most sharply. But religious fanatics rely on faith, not facts. So gun controllers will continue their passionate crusade for the gun lock, waiting periods, and buyback programs. The hoola hoop should be returning any day now.

]]> Frank Borzellieri District of Corruption Tue, 14 Feb 2012 18:23:46 +0000 http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/zeitgeist/stihie-rubik-s-cube-mlk/ http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/zeitgeist/stihie-rubik-s-cube-mlk/

Imagine the time, patience, and planning it would take to create a larger-than-life mural using Rubik's Cubes. Now imagine all of this energy used to create art that memorializes a race-hustling fraud who has become a symbol of Western Dispossession.   

Who else but SWiPLs would undertake such a project? Who else but SWiPLs would create gargantuanist public art by using an ironic reference to their '80s childhoods?

After the Revolution, we must create a Theme Park of Liberalism, in which onlookers can stand agape before monstrous curiosities such as the Rubik's Cube MLK.  

 

]]> Richard Spencer Zeitgeist Tue, 14 Feb 2012 17:12:20 +0000 http://www.alternativeright.com/main/the-magazine/is-black-genocide-right/ http://www.alternativeright.com/main/the-magazine/is-black-genocide-right/

It strikes me that one of the main things about having a good debate is how it is framed. Get that right and the chances are something good will be the outcome. However, for too long now, when we consider questions of race, especially questions concerning the Black race, we have been framing things in completely the wrong way. Instead of asking how we can make reparations for slavery, colonialism, and Apartheid or how we can equalize academic scores and incomes, we should instead be asking questions like, "Does human civilization actually need the Black race?" "Is Black genocide right?" and, if it is, "What would be the best and easiest way to dispose of them?" With starting points like this, wisdom is sure to flourish, enlightenment to dawn.

This might seem shocking to the usual gang of idiots, but right now very similar questions are being booted about and nobody seems to be batting an eye, all because the questions refer to White South Africans: "Does South Africa actually need the White race?" "Is White genocide right?" and "How many of the White devils do we have to rape, kill, mutilate, and bugger before the rest of them fuck off?"

These questions are being asked and answered everyday in South Africa as any visitor to the blog Boer Genocide will attest. The blog collects and collates news stories on an unending flood of racially-motivated atrocities – a Herculean task that has to be done because no one else, least of all the Western media, is moving a muscle to do so. And it must be deeply unpleasant work too as the crimes reported are truly horrendous and disgusting. A recent and quite typical story concerned a disabled White man, Thys Henzen, 43, who was arrested on a trumped up charge, beaten by Black police, and then savagely sodomized by Black prisoners in the police cells, something that is not uncommon and which has been likened to a "war crimes pattern."

His ordeal started on 29 January 2012: he was roughly arrested that evening inside his own home, brutally assaulted, thrown into the police vehicle despite his physical frailty - and a few hours later the totally helpless Afrikaner man was dragged from his wheelchair inside the SAPS-cells—and raped with considerable violence by a black detainee: one man had held a blanket over his mouth while another sodomised him. He has been examined and given a first round of antiretroviral medicine to prevent AIDS-transfer. However—he cannot afford the entire course of medicines he would need to make sure he won’t end up with AIDS after his ordeal.  

Boer Genocide’s title works like a question, positing the end of an unfinished story: Boer Genocide…question mark! With an increasing number of Whites excluded from the job market and reduced to poverty by the government's blatantly racist employment policies, and with thousands of rural Whites murdered on their isolated homesteads, the answer to this question looks increasingly obvious.

But why should Whites even be in a position where we are forced to consider such a possibility? The White race is history's victor. We conquered Africa and the Africans on the sheer merit of the superiority of our race, culture, and society, and in a land that was largely going to waste we built an affluent and modern society capable not only of supporting a large number of our own people but also a vastly larger number of Blacks than would otherwise have been able to survive there. Of course, Black labour helped, but if that hadn’t been there, we would have imported White, Indian, or Chinese labour and have done the job anyway.

Rather than asking about White genocide, it surely makes more sense by any objective standards of utility, morality, or progress, to ask whether there should be such a thing as Black genocide.

This is not just a tit-for-tat idea either. In the changing nature of the New South Africa, which is still essentially a collection of White-created-and-maintained institutions being gradually but inexorably Africanized – i.e. corrupted, ground down, and barbarized—we see the true nature of the society that will emanate from the continuing exaltation of the Black man; a world of savagery, disease, and death, replenished by a wild, thoughtless fertility; a world that will set no store on the higher values that have characterized the civilizations created by other races.

Although there are doubtless many South African Blacks who behave in ways that we could call decent, we have to wonder how much of this is real and not affected, when savagery of the worst possible kind seems to constantly lurk under the surface in even the most banal of situations.

No doubt Lloyd Doksande and Fanie Msiza could have been passed off by liberal apologists as examples of the decent, modern Black South African, content to rise up in the new South Africa by his merits and labour, but that was before the two workers at a Wimpy restaurant in Kempton Park decided to murder their young White manager, Lambert Theron, 21, after he refused to let them 'borrow' money from the till. This murder seeps with a savagery and genocidal hatred as so many crimes against Whites do. Once the attack commenced, the purely financial motive clearly took a back seat to sheer race hatred as the two men stabbed Theron at least 30 times, kicked in his teeth, cut off his lips, and crushed his head with a meat hammer.

The basic habits, ideas, and practices that help civilization to survive and prosper in other parts of the world seem largely absent among large elements of South Africa's Black population, and it seems that it is only a matter of time before the country sinks to the level of poverty and savagery endemic in most of the rest of Africa and places like Haiti and Detroit. If this is the case, then, rather than the question of White Genocide, shouldn't the debate really be focused on whether Black Genocide is something worth considering?

Rather than getting bogged down in specific, emotionally-wrought cases like the brutal sodomization of a disabled man or the savage killing and mutilation of an honest, young manager, we really should consider the bigger picture. As we know, the world is becoming increasingly over-populated, while at the same time vital resources are being rapidly depleted. The world will be unable to support much of its future projected population growth. In fact we are probably heading for a great 'die off' in which hundreds of millions of our kind will cease to be.

With Europeans and some Asians having much less children, most of the population growth leading to this future crisis is projected to come from Africans. This is the race that history and the present example of South Africa proves is least able to take care of itself; a race that has contributed almost nothing to the pool of civilization and which even shows little inclination to stay within the bounds of that civilization; a race that also seems to harbor a potent inferiority complex and savage hatred towards the creators of that civilization; and a race that votes to keep the ANC in power, the very party that helps power their increasingly genocidal attitude towards Whites.

Maybe it’s unfair to tar every Black in South Africa with the genocidal tar brush, but the support the majority have given to the ANC at least allows a reasonable case to be made for the kind of collective racial guilt that also serves as the basis of the ANC’s efforts to pull Whites down to the level where they can be raped, sodomized, murdered and mutilated.

]]> Colin Liddell The Magazine Tue, 14 Feb 2012 14:14:13 +0000 http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/zeitgeist/spectacle-in-babylon/ http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/zeitgeist/spectacle-in-babylon/

As the West disintegrates, its frenzy of self-affirmation becomes more grandiose and grotesque. Our elites, the manufacturers of what passes for culture, arrange mass rites that attest to their greatness and benevolence. The people stand in awe, and just as critically, they are entertained. Nowhere in the United States is this more evident than at the Super Bowl.

The Super Bowl is not simply a profit bonanza for casinos and network television or mere proletarian distraction; it embodies a potent means of social control. Played in the first week of February, the National Football League’s championship game sets the tone for advertising and entertainment in the coming year. It is also a useful platform to propagandize and condition a population of 300 million. America clearly enjoys its indoctrination, as all too many revel in this spectacle’s base nature. People who have not the slightest interest in football will excitedly gather around billboard-sized TV screens to watch the unveiling of a new commercial for erectile dysfunction pills.

Beyond its heavy dose of social programming, the Super Bowl functions as a pseudo-religious festival, one that only a degenerated civilization could produce[1]. Our cultural controllers offer cheap knock-offs of Transcendence. Where the ancients once held games to honor the gods, denizens of the Brave New World now pay obeisance to “freedom”, the oligarchic regime that administers it and a pantheon of celebrities. Glorification of corporate packaging, the physical prowess of the human animal or some deviant pop star is a mindless attempt to stave off the crushing absurdity of life without meaning. Death still looms over us unvanquished, and in its shadow men prefer desolation and nothingness to God. Fr. Seraphim Rose traces the logical course of Western man’s turning away from Christ, the universal and eternal Logos:

Men have rejected the Son of God Who, even now, desires to dwell in men and bring them salvation; and finding intolerable the vacuum this rejection has left in their hearts, they run to madmen and magicians, to false prophets and religious sophists, for a word of life. But this word, so readily given, itself turns to dust in their mouths when they try to repeat it.

Surrogate deities rise from the void and demand worship. At times these gods assume patently ridiculous forms, if only to accentuate our abasement. Such has been the case with Madonna, the Super Bowl XLVI halftime show sensation. Madonna Ciccone is a 53-year-old woman who in any healthy society would be relegated to its more sordid undersides. In this degraded age she is crowned songstress to the world, a tawdry prefiguration of the scarlet harlot from St. John’s Apocalypse. A veteran perpetrator of three decades of cultural subversion, Madonna executed yet another lewd, insipid musical extravaganza before a global audience. And while execrable in its exaltation of this “goddess”, the show seemed to fulfill another very specific purpose.

Madonna’s Super Bowl halftime performance projected a barrage of occult and Masonic imagery. The arcane symbols seen during the concert cannot be consigned to the realm of fantasy; indeed, they were blatant enough to be easily spotted by astute observers. Vigilant Citizen, a website covering the interplay between occultism and popular culture, published a rather convincing exposé on the esoteric undercurrent of the whole spectacle. Perhaps it’s tempting to dismiss such claims as conspiracist paranoia, yet Madonna’s wardrobe and set art, as well has her very biography, suggest more than a passing acquaintance with secret societies.

Having built her fortune on blasphemy, Madonna is also a high-profile practitioner of Kabbalah, Judaic magic rooted in the mystery schools of Babylon and Egypt. One reason among many for Hollywood’s suspension in unreality is that “the industry” has an extensive history with cults, so it should come as no surprise that a number of stars and their handlers might be participants in such activity. How remarkable that Madonna, the Material Girl, devotes herself to contact with unseen forces from the astral plane! The more refined work of radicals past, particularly the invocations of Bakunin and Proudhon, confirms that atheist materialism soon enough begets demonolatry, implicit or overt.

So if the media-entertainment complex has been embedding occult symbols into the popular consciousness, what exactly has been the point of it all? Vigilant Citizen and other commentators would speculate that the Illuminati, a globalist cabal of banking clans, are now revealing themselves to the stupefied herd they rule.

Revelations or no, serious mention of the Bavarian Illuminati is a sure ticket to ostracism from polite society. This revolutionary sect, founded in 1776 by Jesuit-educated Adam Weishaupt with suspected Rothschild family backing, did indeed operate in the late eighteenth century, but attempting to verify its continued existence in our time is a journey through the looking glass. We can, however, assert that sociopathic financial elites dominate the international political economy, do engage in all manner of predation and war profiteering, and quite possibly adhere to occult doctrines that underlie and justify their drive to a unitary world-state. One could, for example, easily imagine former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn at a ritual orgy of the kind depicted in Stanley Kubrick’s film Eyes Wide Shut.

 

Incontestable in the debate over any hidden hand in history is the triumph of Illuminism, the ideology that defines the modern West. From the Enlightenment to the present day, we have witnessed “progress” in regicide, the near-total devastation of the Church and the institution of liberal democracy. The very blood-memory of Christian Europe must be wiped from the face of the earth, and in its place equality will reign in a cosmopolitan market system. The family is to be liquidated, and human identity, man made in the image and likeness of his Creator, will be perverted and destroyed through Promethean desire and technology. Divine love shall be banished from paradise.

Planning for the overthrow of the Old Order, the Illuminatus Weishaupt called for infiltration and control of media, education and the arts to comprehensively shape the worldview of the populace. In this directive we find perhaps the true purpose of occult propaganda, to bring the masses, in C.G. Jung’s formulation, under the power of oppressive archetypes. The result of such a program in America is both ludicrous and sinister; the 2012 Super Bowl halftime show resembled a bizarre hybrid of Lucifer Rising and Idiocracy.

What, then, would be the grand secret behind a campaign to initiate the nations into occultism? Certainly the powers of this world aren’t looking to share any special knowledge they’ve acquired- rather, they conduct ruthless psychological warfare against us. In manipulating the collective subconscious, the plutocracy sets out to engineer a deracinated, hedonistic and irredeemable sub-humanity. Their more perfect union is our perfected enslavement. Yet this reality must not serve as a temptation to despair. In his rebellion against Logos, even Satan is no more than the ape of God, and can fashion only vapid counterfeits to authentic Being and salvation.

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[1] In his excellent work In Tune with the World, Catholic philosopher Fr. Josef Pieper writes regarding the phenomenon of the pseudo-festival:

Wherever in the course of history we encounter artificial holidays, we may conclude that they point to a particular interpretation of man’s being: to the claim that man, especially in the exercise of political power, is able to bring about his own salvation as well as that of the world. Proof of such lofty powers can always be simulated, provided political propaganda tries hard enough. The semblance can even be kept up, at any rate for a while. And on the basis of it artificial festivals, likewise for a time at least, can thrive or even exert a more or less convincing spell- especially if the combined powers of the pseudo-arts, entertainment, sensationalism, and manipulated illusion are brought to bear, and if in addition the political rulers command and control such ‘spontaneous festive gladness’.

]]> Mark Hackard Zeitgeist Mon, 13 Feb 2012 22:42:14 +0000 http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/district-of-corruption/a-conservatism-that-can-win-again/ http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/district-of-corruption/a-conservatism-that-can-win-again/

]]> Richard Spencer District of Corruption Mon, 13 Feb 2012 07:26:47 +0000 http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/euro-centric/a-game-of-two-halves/ http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/euro-centric/a-game-of-two-halves/

Nowadays English soccer supporters don't go to their stadia and tune in to Match of the Day to see 22 men running around kicking a ball. That's just the wallpaper. Judging by the media's focus, the real interest these days is in the ever present danger of a racial tiff breaking out in a league that has thrown together a myriad of different nationalities and cultures in an environment that exemplifies masculine competitiveness.

A recent highlight–Saturday's Liverpool vs. Manchester United game–featured 25 players (including 3 substitutions) with 18 Whites (11 from the British Isles), four Blacks, and three mixed-race players. While this game was not without sporting interest, the real talking point was the refusal of the Uruguayan player Luis Suarez to shake hands with the Senegalese-born Patrice Evra, the same man whose accusations of ‘racism’ had seen Suarez banned for eight games earlier in the season.

This happened during the pre-match handshake, an enforced ritual where both teams are required to file past each other shaking hands in a futile pretence that they are all gentlemen with not an ounce of 'racism,' 'homophobia,' or anything else nasty and toxic in their bones.

After Suarez asserted his personal right to not shake hands with his accuser, Evra then attempted to grab Suarez's arm, but was shrugged off. Further down the line, Suarez's handshake was then refused by Evra's mulatto team-mate Rio Ferdinand with no similar histrionics from the Uruguayan who conducted himself with quiet dignity.

Ferdinand might possibly have been thinking about the other racial controversy that is still reverberating in the soccer world, involving his brother Anton, who plays for relegation candidates Queens Park Rangers, and the England and Chelsea captain John Terry. After a match in November last year Terry was accused of racially abusing the younger Ferdinand.

The specifics of the two cases bear looking at. In a 115-page report, released in December, the sport's governing body, the Football Association, effectively built its case against Suarez on differentiating the two available witnesses. Rather than his-word-against-mine, Evra was lauded as a "credible witness," while Suarez was stigmatized as "unreliable and inconsistent."

Evra, whose background is Senegalese and French, claimed that Suarez said in Spanish–Suarez's native tongue–that he had kicked Evra, "because you are black," said "I don't speak to blacks," and used the word "negro" five times as they argued. Suarez may have perhaps over gilded the lily when he claimed that his use of the word 'negro' to address Evra was conciliatory and friendly. A panel of "Spanish linguistic experts" brought in by the FA concluded that Suarez's use of the term 'negro' was not intended as an attempt at conciliation or to establish rapport.

The only logical inference to draw from all this is that referring to a Black person's race without any other insulting terminology is itself regarded as an offence by the FA, and that being Black has therefore been officially decreed a state of inferiority or humiliation.

Terry's case is more serious because he is reported to have conjoined the word 'Black' with 'cunt,' allegedly calling Ferdinand a "fucking black cunt." Terry claims that he was actually asking Ferdinand, "Oi, Anton, do you think I called you a black cunt?" That 'cunt' should be considered insulting in our sexually liberated times is in its own way an odd endorsement of sexist attitudes by the PC authorities. A more enlightened attitude would surely regard a reference to negroid skin colour combined with the divine seat of feminine identity as one of the highest possible compliments.

While Suarez was fined £40,000 and banned for eight matches by the FA, Terry's punishment has been much more severe. In December he was officially charged with the criminal offence of "using racist language" with a trial to be held in July, after the 2012 European Championships in which the England national team was considered one of the favourites to win. Although the maximum penalty if found guilty would be a fine of £2,500, chickenfeed to someone like Terry, a conviction would see him officially branded a racist and see further sanctions imposed on him by the FA.

The negative effects this could have on his career and post-soccer career have already manifested themselves, with the Football Association, led by its Jewish chairman, David Bernstein, deciding to strip Terry of his England captaincy despite the fact that he has not yet been convicted, a move that may also prejudice any jury selected for the trial. This interference by the executives of the FA has had a knock-on effect, causing the England national team manager Fabio Capello to resign from his post due to what he saw as unwarranted interference in the team's affairs.

Capello, a top Italian manager brought in to boost the national team in 2008, continued to support Terry, seeing his captaincy as vital for England's success in the European Championships. The racial controversy by removing both the team's manager and captain in the months leading up to that tournament has severely dented England's chances of success. But, of course, football itself is no longer that important. It has been hijacked by the PC brigade as the perfect vehicle to ram racial mea-culpa-ism and White guilt down the throat of the sport's still largely unreformed White working class audience.

Soccer is game that involves speed, skill, and various kinds of interaction–both verbal and physical–with team mates and opposition players under intense pressure. The most successful players are those like Suarez and Terry who act and speak instinctively without too much conscious deliberation. Many of the players come from tough, ethnically diverse, working-class neighbourhoods, where the use of colourful racial sobriquets is part of the air that people breathe. Whether someone were what is conventionally called a 'racist' or not would have little bearing on their chances of occasionally saying the kinds of things that Terry and Suarez have been accused of. That Terry, who has captained countless multi-racial Chelsea and England teams with great success, should be called a 'racist' seems particularly laughable. Not only does it highlight the absurdity of the criminalization of specific parts of the common language, but also suggests that the 'anti-racist' lobby has in fact scored an own goal.

In contrast to the players and fans, the game's administrators come from upper-middle-class and business backgrounds, where instinct, urban grit, and ethnic 'enrichment' are largely absent; a rarefied world of insincerity and self-serving hypocrisy, where cold eyes hide dark thoughts and calculation measures every word.

What long-term effect these high profile cases will have on the mass of English football supporters remains to be seen. What is immediately noticeable, however, is the degree to which both Liverpool and Chelsea, with the full support of their fans, have stood firmly behind the two players.

Football is often said to be a game of two halves, meaning two 45-minute periods in which the fortunes of the opposing teams can change dramatically, but this expression now has a new meaning, hinting at the cultural, class, racial, and political struggle that is ripping the sport apart.

]]> Colin Liddell Euro-Centric Sun, 12 Feb 2012 05:46:08 +0000 http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/untimely-observations/the-fifth-freedom/ http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/untimely-observations/the-fifth-freedom/

I believe that culture can be transmitted through various mediums, and just as Marshall McLuhan’s famous dictum expressed, “the medium is the message,” I believe that video games—at least in our present age—is one such medium. Whatever people may feel about the significance of video games influencing our culture, one thing is certain: it has become a medium for entertainment that is every bit as popular as books, music, and television.

Having said that, this article is about one of my favorite games of all time: Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell, a stealth-based video game developed by Ubisoft. And although it’s debatable just how much input Clancy has put into the series, one thing is certain: a lot of people love it.

The series centers on the story of Lt. Commander Samuel Leo Fisher, USN (Ret.), a veritable aging badass with a very dark sense of humor. With regards to gameplay, Splinter Cell is a thinking man’s game, and it focuses upon stealth as opposed to Rambo style manslaughter. Fisher’s Trifocal nightvision goggles, slick black suit, modified FN2000 (in earlier games), and old-guy dark humor makes for a good male fantasy.

Even as a guy living in a Third World country, I can say that I am a fan of Sam. He actually reminds me of my own father—efficient, intelligent, and scary. However, the Splinter Cell franchise can also be easily labeled as Neo-Con propaganda, in the sense that its basic narrative is based around clandestine black-ops conducted all over the world in the name of preserving Democracy, Liberty, and MTV.

Throughout the entire series (at least until the latest installment, ‘Conviction’), Fisher has worked for a fictional organization within the NSA called Third Echelon. Third Echelon’s agents are called Splinter Cells, and their mandate is based around the concept of The Fifth Freedom.

To make a long story short, the Fifth Freedom is the Freedom to exercise any means to safeguard the “Four Freedoms” which precedes it. In a lot of ways, it is the most succinct expression of Carl Schmitt’s State of Exception.

For reference, Roosevelt’s ‘Four Freedom Speech’ highlighted the following “Freedoms:”

• Freedom of speech and expression
• Freedom of religion
• Freedom from want
• Freedom from fear

Splinter Cell however, takes FDR’s position one step further, and into Carl Schmitt’s backyard. According to the Splinter Cell Wiki, the Fifth Freedom is:

“ . . . considered to be the freedom that protects the other four. It is normally an unspoken freedom and is considered a form of diplomatic immunity. The Fifth Freedom permits members of Third Echelon (and other members of clandestine operations) to eliminate a person(s) without any Legal or Governmental consequence, as long as it is to protect the other Four Freedoms of United States citizens. During certain sensitive missions, the Fifth Freedom is not always a viable option to field operatives, who must then adapt to accomplish their goals. When the Fifth Freedom is made available, then an operative is permitted to remove any threats deemed necessary, without the fear of legal repercussions.”

So there you have it . . .

Despite the moral ambiguity implicit with an agency like Third Echelon, it is easily justified within the context of the game’s setting. The world of Splinter Cell, much like our own, is very politically unstable, and just like the real world, American society is in a state of crisis.

Fisher understands the dangers of the world that he is living in, and he knows what his actions imply about his country and the ideals that it’s supposed to represent. He also has no pretensions about his line of work . . . or its ethics. He even describes his job in the following manner:

My name is Sam Fisher. I'm a soldier. I'm not much of a philosopher, but if you want to know what I believe, I'll tell you. I believe the greatest threats to our freedom actually start small. They begin as random events that most people don't even notice. But they grow. They multiply. They start chain reactions that threaten the entire world. Some people call that "fate". I call it "Chaos Theory". But, believing in Chaos Theory doesn't mean you have to surrender to it. That's where I come in. I find those threats before they get out of hand, and I eliminate them. Quickly, quietly, relentlessly. I take the lives of a few to protect the lives of many. I commit acts of war to preserve the greater peace. I take no joy in killing, but make no mistake; I'll do what needs to be done. Because it's my job. It's my duty. My name is Sam Fisher, and I am a Splinter Cell. (My bold)

Rhetorics aside however, perhaps the most compelling aspect of Splinter Cell is the trajectory of Sam Fisher’s journey. He goes from a morally ambiguous avatar of American Neoconservatism into an avatar of American existential confusion throughout the course of the franchise.

In the very first Splinter Cell game, Sam Fisher fought fictional Georgian President Kombayn Nikoladze, and his merry band of terrorists in order to stop World War 3. As far as the plot goes, the first Splinter Cell game was pretty straightforward. Fisher was the good guy. The Eastern Europeans, with the bad accents, were the bad guys. Therefore, Fisher teaches the bad guys about Carl Schmitt’s “State of Exception” with the barrel of his gun.

In subsequent games, however, the good vs. evil narrative will not be as strong as it was in the first game. In the second game, for example, ‘Pandora Tomorrow,’ Fisher doesn’t just go against a group of Indonesian terrorists, the Darah Dan Doa, he also fights against a pissed-off ex-CIA agent turned terrorist by the name of Norman Soth.

The moral ambiguity comes from the fact that Soth was actually involved with the Darah Dan Doa prior to the events in ‘Pandora Tomorrow,’ when the US government, through Soth, supported the terrorists as part of its covert operations in South East Asia.

Unfortunately for everybody, East Timor happened, and because the US decided they liked East Timor better than Indonesia, managed to piss off the Darah Dan Doa’s leader, Suhadi Sadono, who then decides to unleash terrorist attacks on US soil with the help of his BFF, Soth. The bottom line is that Fisher, in ‘Pandora Tomorrow,’ fought to contain a geo-political mess precipitated by terrorists who were once supported and funded by the US. However, the moral ambiguity does not end there.

In ‘Chaos Theory,’ the third game of the series, Fisher would discover that the man responsible for almost starting World War 3 was his friend and PMC CEO Douglas Shetland. Shetland, an irate former Marine recon, was dishonorably discharged after the US government used him as a scapegoat for an incident which happened in Bagram, Afghanistan. Intead of going to anger management classes, Shetland instead decides to start World War 3 in Asia.

Naturally, it was Fisher’s job to stop him, and his Japanese partner, Admiral Otomo from starting a war. However, the chinks in Fisher’s mental armor are getting worse at this point. Fisher probably had a hard time getting used to the idea that an American PMC, with very close ties to the US government, almost started World War 3. And although it was explicitly stated in the game that the US government did not know about Shetland’s hidden agenda, Fisher is sure to have some doubts and questions floating around inside his head. And really, who among the readers of the Alternative Right would believe a story about the US government being duped by one of its own Private Military Contractors?

In the fourth installment of the game, Fisher jumps the shark. In Splinter Cell: Double Agent, Fisher is no longer just an agent working for a secret and extrajudicial branch of the American government. He got promoted into being a double agent, after his daughter was “killed” in a car accident.

And his first duty in his newly acquired position? Why, it’s to spy on a domestic terrorist group known as the John Brown’s Army. This time, the bad guys were extremist militia types who wanted to blow up New York and LA. Moreover, it’s also strongly implied that the JBA may be a white nationalist organization because one of its main members, Carson Moss, was “a racist and was linked to several hate crime beatings.”

During his stint as an undercover agent, Fisher’s gray morals also turn into an even darker shade of gray, and his hair into a stronger shade of bald. In order to maintain his cover within the JBA, he was forced to do certain, let’s call it, morally reprehensible things. In canon, for example, Fisher kills his African American boss and best friend, Irving Lambert, a man who is every bit as ruthless and morally ambiguous as Fisher, so as to maintain his cover, and thus stop the bad guys from blowing up New York.

The ending of ‘Double Agent’ is not linear in the sense that the player’s actions will determine whether or not New York is given a thorough purging. Canonically, Fisher saves New York, but at the cost of killing Lambert. However, with his daughter dead, the living symbol of what he is fighting for, and the death of his boss and best friend by his own hands, Fisher has lost all faith in his country.

However, the true implications of this change will not appear until the latest installment of the Splinter Cell franchise, ‘Splinter Cell: Conviction.’ In ‘Conviction,’ Fisher is no longer bald, but he is still in an existential funk. After several years of being emo, Fisher now quietly lives in Southern Europe.

This all changed however, when he got a call from Anna Grimsdottir, an old colleague from Third Echelon, who tells him that someone is trying to kill the president of the United States, a short haired blonde woman, who may or may not be based on Hillary Clinton.

To make a long story short, Tom Reed, the new director of Third Echelon, wants to use Splinter Cells to kill President Patricia Caldwell (the Hillary Clinton look-alike), on behalf of Megiddo, a secret cabal of very naughty people who are out to control the American government and use it serve their own naughty agendas.

Naturally, Fisher comes out of retirement, struggles with his inner demons, finds out that his daughter’s death had been faked, reunites with his daughter, and of course, saves America’s first female President from being murdered by the new director of Third Echelon, Evil Guy (possibly womyn-hating) Tom Reed. The game has Fisher run around Washington DC beating up people and shooting up a massive body count. The end of ‘Conviction’ sees Fisher victorious, and Reed dead, who is either killed by Grimsdottir or Fisher, depending upon the player’s choice.

The underlying message of ‘Conviction’ is that America can only be saved if Fisher can find the bad guys who are trying to take control of the American government. However, there is a more important issue at hand here than fighting Megiddo, and that is the system created Third Echelon, and it is this system that has created most of the disasters and problems Fisher fought against throughout his long career.

In truth, Third Echelon and the Fifth Freedom have set the precedence for the terrorist attacks in Conviction. The agency and the motivation for its creation are—in a sense—an implicit recognition that the American system—as it was established by its original founders—cannot cope with the changes posed by a new and emerging geo-political system. The conspiracies and terrorist attacks throughout the Splinter Cell series are merely the symptoms of this problem.

Moreover, Fisher is more than just an anti-hero. He is also in a lot of ways a reflection of the evolution of American morality with regards to the War on Terror. He is a reflection of the confusion, ambiguity, and general cynicism of the American public with regards to the current geopolitical order. And although Fisher’s convctions of serving the “greater peace” may seem commendable, his actions as a Splinter Cell sets the precedence for many of his own problems later on.

This confusion is also expressed, among other things, in paranoia over an unknown evil that’s mysteriously corrupting the American government. In the game, it’s Megiddo, but this archetype exists in various other franchises and stories. The significance of the secret society archetype is that it is the personification of uncertainty and fear that people have towards the vulnerability of the system they’re living in. It is a tendency to project one’s fear of the unknown towards a group or a system. It is an attempt to contextualize and even humanize the problem that they’re facing.

The truth however, is that they’ve already taken over, and they’ve taken over a long time ago. How far back depends on your mileage and how you define “they.” And Splinter Cell, although it has dared to push Fisher to the very limits of acceptable metapolitics, has failed to push him through the threshold of something profoundly radical, and that is the idea that mass democracy and the American experiment have both failed. The world that is living in has failed.

It’s easy to make a game about a good guy fighting off some group that’s based on the illuminati, but in the real world, those forces that are causing the decline of the US, and arguably perhaps the world, are not some secretive organization that could be brought down with an FN2000. The military industrial complex, hyper-capitalism, multiculturalism, unlimited mass immigration, globalization, egalitarianism, totalitarian humanism, etc.—these are Fisher’s real enemies. And to attack them is not to attack some evil cult or NWO secret society, it is to attack the American System itself.

And Sam Fisher, as the avatar of American Patriotism, is still trapped within that system. He is trapped within a system based around the Fifth Freedom, and to break out of that system is something that Fisher, and most Americans, are not prepared for.

Splinter Cell is a fun game, but its story, Sam Fisher’s story, is also an interesting parable of the American story, and the paradox it has created over the course of Pax Americana.

]]> Siryako Akda Untimely Observations Fri, 10 Feb 2012 19:27:55 +0000 http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/district-of-corruption/poor-little-oppressed-white-people/ http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/district-of-corruption/poor-little-oppressed-white-people/

Recently, Arizona State Representative Cicil Ash suggested, rhetorically, that Arizona might want to have a "White Appreciation Day." More accurately, he pleaded with the up-and-coming Latino Establishment that once Whites are a minority in Arizona, it might deign to grant them a holiday. Some might think that actions like this mark the first step towards a Western awakening. I still see it as something worse than defeatism. With this episode in the news (as well as the appearance of CPAC 2012), it's worth revisiting my essay "Poor Little Oppressed White People," which was first published in The Occidental Observer.  

Jamie Kelso is an unlikely manipulator of the masses, but the activist and web-radio host scored a definite coup when he was filmed engaging a group of young people at this February’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Thus far, the clip has been viewed some 30,000 times on YouTube and has even inspired a convoluted essay by a neoconservative academic.

Kelso’s arguments were sound, based in reason, history, evolutionary theory, and the natural desire to treasure one’s own. He presented a moderate, reasonable case for racialism, one noticeably lacking in the Sieg Heils, Swastika tattoos, howls of “White Power!” and other accoutrements of the far Right one sees on TV.

Not surprisingly, Kelso was denounced as a hater by a moustachioed hipster from Campaign for Liberty. He also elicited some non-sequitur responses about how it was only Democrats who supported lynching and the Ku Klux Klan, as well as bewildered stares from the smartly dressed young women hovering around him. (Even if Kelso was eventually asked to leave, one shouldn’t forget that the crowd was clearly fascinated by what they heard…. Just imagine if they had encountered Jonathan Bowden in full force, and not the unassuming Mr. Kelso.)

Whatever the case, “genetic interests” are unlikely to ever be a discussion topic at CPAC, and it’s important to ask why.

Kevin MacDonald has argued that modern Americans’ allergy to racialism is a product of Whites’ “attraction to abstractions,” an expression of the “individualistic heritage that is an ethnic trait of Europeans, most obvious in the Puritan/WASP tradition.” (My colleague Alex Kurtagic has offered some important, Schmitt-inflected contributions to the concept of “rights,” as well as some helpful suggestion on how we could better put forth our ideas.)

No doubt, much of what MacDonald says is true, though some objections immediately present themselves:

First, the Japanese have excelled in the abstract logic required in advanced electronics and industrial engineering, and their economy is geared towards exporting to global markets; yet, judging by their national consensus on immigration restriction, they have little compunction in fighting for their genetic interests.

Secondly, though today’s self-styled “conservatives” think in terms of America as a “Proposition Nation,” the puritanical WASPs, deist intellectuals, and yeoman Calvinists who founded the country engaged in brutal wars for territory with the Indians, restricted immigration to “free, white persons,” and maintained (disastrously, for future White generations) African slavery. The Left is certainly correct when it asserts that from its inception to the Franklin Roosevelt’s administration, America was a downright racist — even White supremacist — place. Perhaps innate Anglo-Saxon inclinations did evolve into “anti-racism,” but for many generations, this was hardly a foregone conclusion.

Whatever the case, a conversation about the limitation of the Protestant mentality is certainly one we should have — but it’s not necessary for understanding the “conservatives” who disagreed with Kelso, for they were engaging in the timeless practice of cheerleading for the regime.

Though there certainly might have been some genuine Tea Party types at CPAC, the conference is, essentially, a tasteless junket for Republican staffers, young people who want to be staffers, and the various “movement” rent-seekers who scare up money from old women in direct-mail campaigns. Racialists shouldn’t think that conservatives are “like us, though not quite” — or that we are “like them, only more so.” Both assumptions are false. The Political is not defined by linear gradations of Left and Right, with us on one end, Lenin on the other, and Glenn Beck somewhere in between. And though we will certainly find colleagues for our cause in average Americans, perhaps the worst place to look is the professional “movement.”

And in many ways, the problem is deeper. “Conservatives” — and here I mean professionals and FOX News enthusiasts — genuinely believe that in embracing “Americanism” and the Washington regime (both of which are defined by postwar Liberals), they are supporting the most powerful, most special, most world-historical thing on Earth. The twenty-something CPAC attendees are, much like Young Pioneers of the Soviet Union, true believers in American Empire; prattling on about freedom, democracy, and equality allows them to feel that they are connected to Power. (Or in conservatism’s more vulgar manifestation, “AMERICA, FUCK YEAH!”)

To give up on the regime’s reigning ideology of “universal values” — and embrace limited genetic interests — is, in their minds, to abdicate power. Why worry about our extended family when “America” should be liberating and protecting all peoples around the globe. (And one shouldn’t discount the degree to which Red State America literally profits from both federal handouts as well as the military industrial complex.)

We should certainly lament the fact that conservatives support so enthusiastically a regime that is working tirelessly to dispossess them; however, it is also clear that until the collapse of American globalism — and the displacement of the movement’s leadership — we can’t expect much from “conservatives.”

There is, however, one grassroots right-winger who is consciously — and publicly — acting in the interests of White people. His name is Colby Bohannan. The Texas State undergrad recently launched The Former Majority Association for Equality, a San Marcos-based organization awarding small scholarships to White males — and White males only — with academic talent.

The title of Bohannan’s organization seems to evoke Wilmot Robertson’s classic White Nationalist text, The Dispossessed Majority of 1972… The site’s Mission Statement alerts us that we shouldn’t get our hopes up:

One obstacle that we immediately anticipate is to not appear racist or racially motivated. We do not advocate white supremacy, nor do we enable any individual that does. We do not accept donations from organizations affiliated with any sort of white supremacy or hate group. We have no hidden agenda to promote racial bigotry or segregation. FMAE’s existence is dedicated around one simple principle, to provide monetary aid for education to white males who need it.

Bohannan seems genuine: he is responding to a need in his community and does not desire to upturn the dominant civil discourse of “equality” and inclusion. Unlike most all “minority” scholarship applications, the “former majority” application [PDF] does not ask students to delve into their racial identity or recount tales of oppression. The Association only solicits the applicant’s career goals and his thoughts on a rather wholesome and bland essay question,

What kind of attributes makes a successful individual? How can you improve your own habits to better exemplify a fair and strong leadership role in your future?

This isn’t the first time someone has suggested a scholarship for White males. In 2004, Jason Mattera — then an undergrad at Roger Williams University, now the editor of the conservative-movement organ Human Events — led an effort to found a “Whites only” scholarship at his college. (The University of Rhode Island followed suit a couple of years later.) The scholarship was only for $250 and was clearly meant as political high-jinx, in the line of “Affirmative Action Bake Sales.”

Whatever might be going on in the Texas hinterlands, the authorized Beltway Right is not about to assert its European/Anglo-Protestant identity. Indeed, its standard refrain goes something like,

Well, Justice Sotomayor, what if I had said that a wise, White man, with the depth of his experience, would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a Latino women? You’d denounce me. And rightly so!

The argument is that in pursuing ethno-politics, liberals are not post- or anti-racist enough.

It’s worth noting that Mattera, who’s Puerto Rican, was the recipient of a $5000 scholarship from the Hispanic College Fund, which he didn’t decline despite his devotion to color-blind justice. Apparently, scholarships for Whites are satire; scholarships for Puerto Ricans are real.

Another sincere effort in forging European identity occurred in 2000, when the European American Issues Forum, then led by Louie Calabro, convinced a school district in Northern California to declare April “European American Heritage Month.” Calabro stressed that Whites deserve a whole month because of the “many inventions” they’ve contributed over the years

The late Sam Francis, a one-time Washington insider whom it wouldn’t be inaccurate to call a White Nationalist, recognized early on that such an effort hardly represented the reawakening of the Old America. Francis argued, “whether they realize it or not, the European-Americans who pushed the heritage month through the school board have just signed the death warrant of what was once known as ‘white civilization’ in California.”

They have agreed that they no longer define the civilization of the state and that they have now devolved into just one more little brick in the ethnic and racial mosaic. Francis continues:

If the European-Americans don’t realize that, Raymond Tom, the district’s Chinese-descended director of state and federal programs, does. “They’re recognizing immigrant groups, and European Americans are an immigrant group to America,” he says. “Kids think white is America. We have to understand that we’re all American. Asian Americans, African Americans are all part of America. We’re all newcomers to this country. Not one group owns it.”

You can see how Tom plans to make use of the heritage month. By acknowledging that European Americans are merely one more immigrant group, the heritage month forfeits the claim that America is a nation of European heritage. Having once forfeited that claim, the largely European-derived institutions that make American civilization what it is lose their claim to legitimacy. It’s more than “many inventions” that Europeans contributed, you see. What they really contributed was the whole concept.

We could start counting with the language that comes from Britain and its Germanic forebears, go on to the basic judicial and political institutions (juries, the right to bear arms, voting, the rule of law), education (universities, most of what we still study in the curriculum), and religion (Christianity may originally come from the Middle East, but it didn’t last there; the only place it’s ever endured has been Europe and its extensions). That’s just for starters. Inventions, in fact, — from airplanes and vaccines to electric potato peelers — are pretty far down the list.

The new non-European-Americans will no doubt keep the inventions, but why they would want to retain the European cultural, linguistic, political, educational, and religious traditions of a civilization and a people of which they are not a part is not clear. And the more they displace European-Americans, the less they’ll want to keep what their predecessors left. If European-Americans are no longer the majority in the state, they will no longer be able to define the civilizational framework of the state; and if they no longer define the civilizational framework of the state, other races and peoples will rush into the vacuum to define it themselves. (Samuel Francis, “‘European-American month’ forfeits claim to define civilization,” Townhall, May 16, 2000)

It might be tempting for White Nationalists to claim that though the efforts of the European American Issues Forum and the Former Majority Association aren’t perfect, they’re a step in the right direction. But, again, to think this is to imagine that there’s a progressive “White consciousness meter” leading from libertarianism to White scholarships to the Ethno State. But, again, things don’t really work that way. White Nationalism isn’t on the “far Right” in the post-Civil Rights, post-mass immigration American political spectrum. It’s off the chart and represents nothing less than a radical, revolutionary challenge to the egalitarian consensus. Glenn Beck is just as far away from us as are academic multiculturalists.

Bohannan, FMAE, and EAIF might do a service in bringing to the fore Liberal hypocrisy, but they are hardly representative of a self-assured Western consciousness; they are, in fact, more reminiscent of entitlement-mongers like Al Sharpton — poor, little oppressed White people will apparently now plead for handouts from the welfare state. The European history put forth by the EAIF is, in turn, not a history of conflict, development, and tradition, but a list of White Inventors — which could be given to education administrators in hope of Thomas Edison being taught alongside such world luminaries as Harriet Tubman. It is “White advocacy,” safely confined to the domain of the state and political establishment.

What makes the agenda of Bohannan and EAIF even more pathetic is that they are bound to fail. To put forward “White History Month” or “White Scholarships” is to assume that that “multiculturalism” is actually about, well, multi-culturalism; that is, it is to deny that multiculturalism is primarily and essentially anti-White and anti-Western.

On a Monday, a Multiculturalist might encourage non-Whites to develop racial consciousness (even when such consciousness is completely contrived, such as when Japanese and Indians join hands in “Asian” student associations.) On a Tuesday, the same person might insist that race itself is a social construct, created by British colonialists and that all peoples must unite as “global citizens” in the face of economic injustice.

Such an ideology is, of course, wildly inconsistent and contradictory. But what holds it all together is its implicit enemy — the White middle class, in particular, and the Western Christian tradition, in general. An honest multiculturalist — one who desires a pluralist America that includes White identity — might exist, but I’ve never met one.

This reality won’t change in the slightest were Whites to become a minority in the United States, much as it hasn’t changed in “majority minority” states like California and Texas. If history continues on its current trajectory, Whites could comprise 10 percent of the American nation, and political commentators would still wax on about the “Whites Only” water fountains of the 1950s and how Affirmative Action is still necessary due “institutional racism.” The Anglo-Saxon Protestant might literally become an endangered species, yet he will be featured prominently on stage and screen as heartless plutocrats in charge of corporations and government, incessantly plotting to reinstitute apartheid and Jim Crow laws.

Imagining that Whites could ever have a seat at the table in multiculturalist America amounts to something worse than defeatism.

 

 

]]> Richard Spencer District of Corruption Fri, 10 Feb 2012 18:31:53 +0000 http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/district-of-corruption/making-nice-with-the-evil-party/ http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/district-of-corruption/making-nice-with-the-evil-party/

Readers of The Drudge Report might conclude that America’s prominent Catholics leaders are heading an anti-Obama revolution.

 

 

The reality is that outside the recent contraception controversy, these same people have marched lock-step with the president’s agenda, as well as that of “The Evil Party.”

Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, called Alabama’s anti-illegal-immigration law (HB 56) “morally reprehensible.” Joseph McFadden, the Bishop of Harrisburg, upped the ante. McFadden, who plans to celebrate Mass in Spanish, told his flock that embracing the growing immigrant Latino community was an opportunity for everyone to enrich their lives: “It’s not a matter of saying ‘Welcome to God’s house.’ We have to allow ourselves to see them not as strangers, but as brothers and sisters.”

McFadden also called the state of immigration laws in this country a “crime,” as well as ineffective. He said the church would work toward pushing legislation that would help illegal immigrants: “The church doesn't want to encourage people to break the laws, but we have to realize that the law is broken.”

It should also be pointed out that the general tendency for Catholic schools to be enthusiastic supporters of “voucher” programs (such as the one introduced in Pennsylvania) will most likely lead to countless more contraception scandals. Such programs, which allow low-income students to attend private schools at tax-payer expense, are often portrayed as “free-market solutions”; in fact, they are schemes whereby private schools can gain access to government money. Funding always has strings attached, and schools shouldn't be surprised when the government feels it has the right to intervene in their internal affairs.

 

]]> Ellison Lodge District of Corruption Thu, 09 Feb 2012 19:03:15 +0000 http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/euro-centric/the-coming-battle-of-britain/ http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/euro-centric/the-coming-battle-of-britain/

This article was originally published on the website of Civil Liberty, an organization in the UK dedicated to fighting the tyranny of political correctness.

 

David Cameron's stint as prime minister has been dominated by four main political narratives:

1. Britain's opposition to the ongoing Franco-German centralization of Europe
2. The maintenance of financial credibility
3. The "Big Society"
4. The question of Scottish independence

The government's inability to stem the rising tide of immigration and the ongoing economic and social chaos this is spreading throughout the land has, in the absence of a potent British nationalist party, largely fallen off the political stage.

But back to the four main political narratives, it is easy to see a synergy between these. The "Big Society," essentially the concept of volunteerism writ large as an alternative to the state doing everything, is an aspect of the government's attempt to curtail public spending in order to maintain financial credibility. This in turn is linked to Britain's supposed opposition to Euro centralization, which is how the main EU countries are dealing with similar problems created by their public sector bloating.

Of course, it could be pointed out that the "Big Society" is nothing more than aspirational hot air and a political device to offload onerous responsibilities, while also stealing easy credit for successful private, charitable, and communal initiatives.

Likewise, Cameron's opposition to the Evil Merkozy that lies at the dark heart of Europe is, on deeper analysis, rather hollow; certainly as long as voters are denied a referendum on Europe, and Pan-European institutions, such as the European Court of Human Rights continues to interfere in British affairs. Also, although the Euro may be temporarily weakened it is clearly not dead. There is a very real sense that once it recovers, the pound and Britain’s partial economic independence will be the next item on its ongoing project of financial gleichschaltung.

What is significant about these political narratives is not the actual level of achievement, which is minimal or non-existent, but the extent to which Cameron has dominated them and turned them to his political advantage, even in the case of the "Big Society." Although this has an increasingly hollow ring with the British public, it still allows the PM to posture as a compassionate anti-statist.

Cameron is apparently on top of all these political narratives except the last one, the issue of Scottish independence. This is the joker in the pack, both because of its complexity and unpredictability and because of its potential to far outweigh all the other political narratives put together.

Scottish independence is the game changer

While the Euro-stropping, "Big Society" posturing, and budget balancing bickering will all fizzle out in the usual political and technocratic compromise zone and slide slowly into the swamp of political amnesia, Scottish independence could be a real game changer.

There are several aspects of this issue that do not get much publicity but probably should. First of all, there is no doubt that both the EU and David Cameron would benefit enormously from it.

Although the EU has been badly winded by recent financial events, the vested interests involved mean that it will probably weather this storm and emerge even stronger and more set on its long term goals of European economic and political integration. It should be noted that this tendency seems to progress regardless of whether European voters are electing centre left or centre right politicians, and there is every possibility that even if 'far right' or even 'far left' candidates were elected in significant numbers a similar modus operandi could be maintained as the EU seems to have power political and economic benefits that appeal to any ruling class.

Scottish independence would strengthen the EU hand vis-à-vis Westminster, reducing England to a smaller and weaker entity, and one that would also be demoralized from the loss of a vital component of its identity and power. In cultural semantic terms, the name "Britain" is the name of a conquering entity that has straddled the globe and proved invincible. The vestiges of this greatness are still what power the vision of a Britain independent from the EU. The name "England," by contrast, is historically that of a smaller, weaker entity, rather easily conquered by Dane and Norman, and only saved from the Spaniard by the vagaries of the weather. At least that's the mythic image or perception, and such factors will work like a Fifth Column to reduce the resistance to the warm, all-enveloping embrace of Europe.

Given that the EU would benefit from Scottish independence, we must expect some tangible support for it at some stage.

What form this will take is hard to predict, but possibly it will take the form of economic guarantees when the unionist campaign raises questions of Scottish economic viability in the absence of the Barnett Formula.

The second main point, that David Cameron would benefit greatly from Scottish independence, is perhaps more counter-intuitive but just as rational. This is based on the widespread loathing for the Conservative Party that has existed in Scotland since the tenure of Margaret Thatcher. In addition to her de-industrializing economic policy that hit Scotland (and my family) particularly hard, her personification of bossy, middle-class, Margot Leadbetter, WI-style Englishness did not go down particularly well in a society that has always been dominated by a tough male, working-class ethos.

People see Scotland as a Labour country and this is easily 'proved' by the results of almost every Westminster election over the last several decades, but the recent rise of the SNP, which is politically more centrist, reveals the true story. The main reason that Scots have voted overwhelmingly Labour in the past has simply been because it was the most effective way to hurt another party that was indelibly linked in the Scottish mind with domineering Englishness.

The political side effects of Scottish independence

Scottish independence would have powerful effects on each side of the border. With Scotland freed from Westminster, there would be much less reason for Scottish voters to vote Labour. This would effectively result in the collapse of Labour in Scotland. Of course, the SNP, having fulfilled its historical purpose, might also face a serious drop in support as a range of new parties rose up to take advantage of the new political ecosystem.

In England, the removal of approximately 50 Labour MPs to the one Tory that Scotland still sends to Westminster would have a cataclysmic effect on Labour's prospects of ever winning outright power again.

A large part of the support that a major political party receives is not because of agreement with its policies, but because it has the capability of winning. Voters are rather like London-based Manchester United fans. As long as Man Utd are the big club, these fans, with no real connection to the city of Manchester, will continue to associate themselves with the success of the club, but once the club starts losing championships these fans quickly move on. The same phenomenon can be observed in politics. Americans tend to vote overwhelming Republican or Democrat because these two parties are the only ones that can grant access to representation through the extremely undemocratic American system.

The Labour Party is essentially the expression of the class politics of the early 20th century, but has managed to trade on the electability created by those limited conditions to draw out its political life long past its sell-by date. The very name of the party, which has an unpleasant, antiquated ring for voters in a post-industrial society, reveals this very clearly. The sudden removal of its contingent of Scottish MPs from the political equation would very likely deliver it a death blow.

With the Labour party removed or truncated to midget proportions, British politics would start to resemble the present governing coalition, while in the remaining White working class areas we could expect to see a post-Griffinite BNP or a new English nationalist party hoovering up votes on an identitarian basis of both race and class.

Given that the Tory Party would benefit from Scottish independence, we must expect some tangible support for it at some stage.

This is despite Mr. Cameron's professions of unionism. What form this will take is hard to predict, but possibly it will take the form of Mr. Cameron earnestly entering into patronizing Lord-Snooty-style debates with that wee ghillie Alex Salmond. With Cameron and the Eurocrats secretly or not so secretly on Salmond's side, the unionists are probably marching to the political equivalent of the Second Battle of Bannockburn!

Roll on 2014!!

]]> Colin Liddell Euro-Centric Wed, 08 Feb 2012 01:01:37 +0000 http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/zeitgeist/half-time-in-america/ http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/zeitgeist/half-time-in-america/

Many watch the Super Bowl just for the commercials. And from a social observer’s point of view, the ads are more important than the big game in revealing social mood and national character. The Super Bowl is the most watched event on television, and among the lower classes, its popularity is likely close to universal. In most cases, this results in the most vulgar, insulting, and stupid advertising imaginable...

In the past two years, though, I’ve been more impressed by the Chrysler corporation’s serious, filmic dramatizations. Instead of avoiding the stigma of Detroit—and, more subtly, the 2008-09 bailouts—Chrysler has dared to embrace it. The company  depicts itself and its city as having “almost lost everything” and “been to hell and back,” and thus more rough and tough and experienced in the ways of the world than those pretty boys in Stuttgart and Tokyo. Chrysler is attempting the ultimate “soft sell”—the name of the company and its products go unmentioned—while everyone else does the most egregious “hard sell.”

           

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hard—Buy this compact Fiat, you wimpy Beta, and maybe it will have pity sex with you.

           

Soft—We are all Detroit now.

Last year, Chrysler presented something like Detroit qua “Negro Fascism”—certainly a gutsy play for luxury-car buyers! This time around, Clint Eastwood was hired as the narrator, and he didn’t disappoint, putting on a gruff and leathery persona that might intimidate Dirty Harry. Ironically, the sell was even softer.

The message was this: Clint admits that many watching the game are unemployed or underemployed (i.e., not in the mood to buy a new car). He then promises that, much as Detroit made an inspiring comeback in returning to industrial-powerhouse status, America, too, should remember that its best days lie ahead.

Since most people have never actually been to Detroit, Chrysler can get away with such a pitch. The reality, as Paul Kersey points out, is that while the Big Three automakers might be able to produce solid products, Detroit never made a comeback; indeed, its game is over.

Much will be made about the Clint Eastwood's "Halftime in America" commercial during the Super Bowl. Few will point out that the city in which his 2008 movie Gran Torino—Highland Park—was set in has already had the lights turned out in it:

Highland Park, home of Henry Ford’s first moving assembly line, was once a well-off enclave of 50,000 residents. Ford left long ago, and Chrysler’s corporate headquarters moved away in the 1990s. Now it has fewer than 12,000 residents—half the size it was just 20 years ago.

So for this city, a shrunken tax base and financial crisis have been long in the making, and the recent national downturn has only made matters worse. More than 42 percent of Highland Park’s residents live in poverty, unemployment is high and the median income here is nearly $30,000 below that of the state.

“To understand our street lighting situation is to understand the wealth that Highland Park once had; it was a situation where we had the best of almost everything and an abundance of lights,” said Rodney Patrick, whose father insisted on moving his family to Highland Park in the early 1950s because of its advantages — its status, in his words, as the shining city on the hill. “But we don’t have the residents to have the luxuries we had when we were a city of 50,000.”

Highland Park is 93 percent Black, mind you. 

Almost all of America’s formal industrial cities—the destinations for the Great African-American Migration out of the South—have become, in a word, miserable.

But then “Half-Time in America” isn’t just about Detroit and the rust belt. Indeed, it's about a much broader social consciousness regarding the future of the United States. 

In 1984, the Reagan-Bush election team announced that it was “Morning in America.” Socionomically speaking, for the GOP middle-class base, this meant that run-away inflation was over; the Dow Jones was in a secular bull market; companies were hiring; and Americans could feel proud again.

             

“Half Time” is something like “Mourning in America.” In terms of the Kübler-Ross Stages of Grief” schema, it suggests that, collectively, Americans are somewhere between Depression and Denial.

Chrysler must have recognized that it couldn’t advertise its cars with a “We’re #1!” rock anthem. It must be true to the time. But “Half Time” is, nevertheless, a world of illusions and wishful thinking. A nation-state doesn’t “come back” from public and private indebtedness amounting to 350 percent of GDP—from a financial oligarchy bent on stripping the country bare—from a demographic transformation into a Third World nation—and more.  To reformulate F. Scott Fitzgerald, there will be no second half for America. The sooner the Founding stock comes to grips with this fact—and begins charting a different destiny—the better.

]]> Richard Spencer Zeitgeist Mon, 06 Feb 2012 22:57:34 +0000 http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/euro-centric/the-once-weres-and-the-could-have-beens-of-europe/ http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/euro-centric/the-once-weres-and-the-could-have-beens-of-europe/

Vanished Kingdoms—The History of Half-forgotten Europe
Norman Davies. London: Allen Lane, 2011. 800 pp, £30 hb

When I visited the Naval Museum in Madrid several years ago, I took away as a souvenir a facsimile of a coloured 1756 naval manual illustration entitled Banderas que las naciones arbolan en la mar. It shows ninety different flags that might conceivably be met with upon the high seas by Spanish sailors—ranging from the personal standard of the Hapsburgs and the banner of the Papal States to the presumably more frequently encountered flags of Brabant, Corsica, the English East India Company, Flanders, Pomerania, Riga, Stettin, Zeeland and many other names now relegated to history’s footnotes.

Almost none of these once brinily-billowing banderas would now be encountered on any seas by anyone. The illustration is a piquant evocation of a looser and more colourful Europe—a hint of all that has faded into dull desuetude in the two-and-a-half centuries since. But it is also a salutary reminder of the complex counter-narratives that underlie accepted realities, and seethe beneath the veneer of the nations we think we know.

My maritime metaphor echoes Norman Davies’s introduction to Vanished Kingdoms:

This book . . . garners the traces of ships of states that have sunk, and it invites the reader, if only on the page, to watch with delight as the stricken galleons straighten their fallen masts, draw up their anchors, fill their sails and reset their course across the ocean swell.

Sometimes the most compelling history is the kind that falls between the cracks of the chronicles and subverts fondly-held foundational myths. The ‘official’ history of Europe is variegated enough to give any number of historians lifetimes of employment, but now the 72 year old Slavonic specialist Davies has produced fifteen case studies dating from the fifth to the twentieth centuries to suggest that a great deal of what we take for granted about Europe’s past is “narrative colonization” which ought to be unlearned. He ends with a short chapter, “How states die”, which seeks to formulate “a typology of vanished kingdoms”.

This all makes for an engrossing, evocative and original contribution to European historiography. There will be few who will not unearth some new insight to challenge conventional, convenient versions of events—the flattering histories which Napoleon famously dismissed as “a fable agreed upon”. The “Europe of a hundred flags” wished for by the Breton nationalist Yann Fouéré is more like a Europe of a thousand flags. “The past is not only a foreign country that we half-knew existed” Davies observes—“it is hiding another concealed country behind it, and behind that one, another, and another, like a set of Russian dolls”.

Davies is a melancholic and romantic, and his intellectual interests have been influenced by his Welshness, chapel-going and early encounters with Heraclitus and Gibbon. He also possesses a Polonism so pronounced that he has (unjustly) been accused of understating historical Polish anti-Semitism and downplaying Jewish suffering during World War Two. This may have cost him a tenured position at Stanford in 1986, something he clearly still broods upon, despite claiming on his (typo-full) website that

. . . he remembers the episode stoically—as evidence of academic small-mindedness and of [the] fate awaiting anyone who confronts entrenched opinions and prejudices.

It cannot have helped that he is strongly anti-communist. His website entry on his 2006 book Europe at War explains his view that communism was the moral equivalent of nazism:

[T]he war in Europe was dominated by two evil monsters, not by one . . . The liberators of Auschwitz were servants of a regime that ran still larger concentration camps than those they liberated . . . The outcome of the [war] was at best ambiguous. The victory of the West was only partial, its moral reputation was severely tarnished and, for the greater part of the continent of Europe, ‘liberation’ was only the beginning of more than fifty years of further totalitarian oppression.

The most recent of his shipwrecks of history is the Soviet Union itself. There were many factors responsible for the USSR’s dissolution, but the problems were fundamental:

[T]he Soviet system was based on extreme force and extreme fraud. Practically everything that Lenin and the Leninists did was accompanied by killing; practically everything they said was based on half-baked theories, a total lack of integrity and bare-faced lies.

He maintains that Gorbachev was probably taken by surprise by the events he expedited—and observes that glasnost, which was invariably rendered in the Western press as “openness”, actually means “publicity”. The subsequent inglorious events traumatized all Russians, and even now feed nationalistic dislike of the oligarchs and the Balt, Turkic, and Chechen separatists of Russia’s near abroad—and of course America. Putin’s rhetoric about the alleged glories of the USSR is coloured by “a strong sense of bafflement” and “pangs of corporate guilt” that he and other insiders did not forestall this degrading dissolution.

Davies leads the Western reader surefootedly across the little-known landscape of the eastern continent, making sense of entangled narratives and being fair to all. He commences each chapter with descriptions of these places as they look now, from their topography to the chief historical sites, before haling us back across the centuries with tales of ancient alarums, excursions, raiders, crusaders, forgotten wars, futile resistances, burned villages, slighted cities, and mounted tribes moving restlessly forever across that exhilarating vague vastness between Teutonia and Tartary, Europe and Asia. This area which has too few defensible frontiers for its own good has seen the most atrocious crimes, mountains upon mountains of skulls heaped up by successive tsunamis of Tartars, Mongols, Cossacks, Teutonic Knights, Communists, and Nazis powered by greed, ideology, religion, race-hatred, or sheer love of killing.

Other essays with an east European theme include one on Litva, the Polish-Lithuanian “Grand Duchy with Kings”, at one time the largest of all European states covering much of what is presently Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine and Poland, and that lasted more than five centuries. We are taken through Litva’s crepuscular chronicles from the time Viking (locally called Varangian) explorers started to hazard the region’s headwaters, pushing ever further inland through a primevally-forested country populated by wisent, konik, elk, and lynx, some of which still persist in a precious fragment of this forest along the Polish-Belarussian border. The Varangians conquered existing Slav settlements like Kiev or established new fortress-fords at places like Novgorod, and traded or fought all the way down to the Black Sea and eventually Byzantium, where for five centuries the Emperors of the East maintained an Anglo-Scandinavian Varangian Guard as both elite fighting regiment and personal corps. Semi-legendary kings ruled over a huge, indeterminate territory—Ukraina means “On the Edge” in Slavonic, and these wild steppes needed to be protected by self-defence communities of Kozaks (a Turkic word meaning adventurer or freebooter) because they were so prone to incursions. Although Orthodoxy made rapid advances from the 9^th century onwards, the ruling caste long remained pagan; Grand Duke Gedminas legendarily founded Vilnius after dreaming of an iron wolf howling from a hill overlooking three rivers, and when he died in 1342 his obsequies were entirely pagan, his body being incinerated along with his favourite servant, favourite horse and a group of German slaves. But they cleverly allied with Catholic or Orthodox dynasties according to the political winds, and this pragmatism, as well as Litva’s relative remoteness, helps to account for the Duchy’s durability. In 1386, Prince Jogaila was elected king by an assembly of barons on condition of accepting Christian baptism and permanent union with Poland, and for almost 200 years afterwards “Jagiellonians” steered their ship as a joint Polish-Lithuanian venture, now intermarried with the Angevin and Hapsburg European mainstream. Even after the Jagiellonians had gone, the Duchy was often fortunate in its statesmen, but by the early 17^th century it was trapped between Muscovy pushing from east and south and Sweden from north and west, and the king-grand duke was forced to flee into exile. There was time for one last great figure, in the shape of King John III Sobieski, whose hussars broke the Turks outside Vienna in 1683, but by then the Duchy was riven by internal disputes and weak leadership. The Great Northern War of 1700-21 between Russia and Sweden took place largely on the Duchy’s territory, and from then on it became the plaything of Russia, Prussia and Austria—the “international bandits” as Davies calls them, who carved it up between them while Voltaire and other “wisecrackers of the Enlightenment” chortled. There were last desperate attempts to assert independence and expel foreign troops, notably in 1794 in Warsaw. Russian forces under the leadership of Suvorov massacred the population of the Warsaw suburb of Praga, and the General sent a message to Catherine the Great reading simply “Hurrah. Praga. Suvorov”—to which she answered, equally laconically, “Bravo Fieldmarshal. Catherine”. On 25 November 1795, the last of the offices of state ceased functioning and the last king-grand duke, Stanlislaw-August, abdicated, after which he was exiled to captivity in St. Petersburg. This sad ending has been reprised severally since thanks to the area’s unlucky proximity to Germany and Russia. Time after time, even more than other areas of Europe, this unhappy region has witnessed what Zbigniew Herbert would call “the abrupt change of life / Into archaeology”. Even now, the former provinces of Litva—now Poland, Belarus and Lithuania—all claim to be the legitimate heirs of the legacy, even arguing over Adam Mickiewicz, whose 1834 epic poem Pan Tadeusz commences:

O Litva, My homeland, you are like health /

How to gauge your worth, only he can know /

Who has lost you. Today I see your full beauty /

And describe it, because I long for you.

Another equally engrossing east European-themed essay is “Borussia: Watery Land of the Prusai”, where we are introduced to previously unknown tribes emanating from what would one day become East Prussia, fleetingly recalled from the Mazovian memory-hole before sinking back into their immemorial lagoons, making us wish we knew them better—Varmians, Pomesgasanians, Natangians, Sambians, Skalovians, Nadruvians, Bartians, Sudovians, and Gallinians. We hear of the Wars of the Schmalkaldic League and the fate of the alchemist Conte de Ruggiero, hanged in a gilded gallows, wearing a toga made of gilt paper—and are tantalized by the possible fate of Konigsberg’s/Kaliningrad’s fabled Bernsteinzimmer (“Amber Room”), fifty-five gol and crystal-decorated amber panels weighing a total of six tons presented to Peter the Great, missing since 1944, according to assorted legends languishing in a Saxon mine, in a sunken German battleship, concealed in Moscow or concreted into the foundations of Soviet-era buildings. (German donations helped to pay for a new Amber Room opened in 2003 in St. Petersburg’s Catherine Palace.)

Then there is “Rusyn—The Republic of One Day”. That serio-comic “One Day” started at 5am on 15 March 1939 when the Wehrmacht rolled into the rump of Czechoslovakia and the Slovaks declared independence. The Ruthenian “Czechoslovaks” of Carpatho-Ukraine decided they might as well emulate the Slovaks, and by 6.30 pm they had declared a democratic republic, announced that the official language was Ukrainian, hoisted a flag of two horizontal blue and yellow bands and announced a touchingly vainglorious anthem, Shche ne vmerla Ukraina (“Ukraine has not yet perished”):

Ukraine has not yet perished, nor her glory, nor her freedom,
Upon us, fellow Ukrainians, fate shall smile once more.
Our enemies will vanish like dew in the sun,
And we too shall rule, brothers, in a free land of our own.

But the following morning, Hungarian troops had crossed the border and annexed the little country. Rusyn paramilitaries fought on for a few days in the mountains, with hundreds executed after capture, but geopolitics told against them. In 1944, the Hungarians were briefly replaced by the Germans before the Red Army swept through and incorporated Carpatho-Ukraine into the Ukrainian SSR, repressing its distinct culture (ironically, today’s Rusyn autonomy movement is sometimes said to be financed by Moscow).

Davies’ forays into western and southern Europe are equally diverting. We start with the myth-encrusted Visigoths of Tolosa (Toulouse), and are introduced to the minutely described 5^th century King Theodoric II, whose knees were “the comeliest and least wrinkled in the world”, who “prays with assiduity…but one suspects more habit than conviction” and was married to Queen Pedauco (“Goose-foot”—whose knees were presumably more wrinkled than her spouse’s).

We go to Spain before Spain ever existed, to pay our historical respects to the now-subsumed Aragonese, led by aristocrats like “Wilfred the Hairy” who defied fellow “valley viscounts” and the Moors from fortified hilltops.

We follow the meteoric career of Burgundy’s Charles the Bold, from the 1466 “high” of murdering all the inhabitants of Dinant to his 1477 downfall in what is now Switzerland, his naked corpse “frozen into the ice of a pond . . . split to the chin by a Swiss halberd, the body many times pierced by Swiss pikes”.

In the chapter on Sabaudia (Savoy), we are told of the time when the present Savoyard (and therefore Italian) royal claimant Vittorio Emanuele endeared himself to his virtual subjects by fatally shooting a man after shouting at him Voi, italiani di merda (“you Italian shits”).

In the discussion of Napoleon’s client state of Etruria, it is gratifying to renew acquaintance with Talleyrand’s citric aperçu on the judicial murder of the Duc d’Enghien, last of the French Bourbons—C’était pire qu’un crime; c’était une faute (“It was worse than a crime; it was a mistake”).

We are taken to Rosenau in southern Germany, to be regaled with just a few of the multiple ironies of Anglo-German history; during World War I the Britain ruled by descendants of Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha underwent night bombing raids from giant Gothas planes named in honour of the selfsame dynasty. Like a pawkily proud Welshman, Davies takes mischievous pride in underscoring just how German is the “British” royal family, infinitely more closely related to the un-Home Counties-sounding Anhalt-Zerbsts or Pfalz-Zimmerns than to William the Conqueror, Henry VIII or even the Stuarts.

Still on a Cymric theme, there are anecdotes of Sinn Féin’s negotiator Eamon de Valera being humiliated by the British PM David Lloyd-George speaking to his secretary in Welsh more fluent than de Valera’s Irish—and a revisionist view of the history of Alt Clud, the “Kingdom of the Rock” in what is now south-eastern Scotland, which was rather much more Welsh than it was Scottish. Closest to home of all are his reflections on the future of the UK, which he suspects is destined to fail as all other states eventually fail—and probably soon.

There are criticisms that could be made of Vanished Kingdoms. Davies arguably makes too much of the Aragonese selling as slaves the Moorish population of Menorca in 1287, which he calls “a milestone in the grim history of European slavery”. But while this was clearly not an edifying event, it was merely one example of a trade that had always existed, and in which the Moors joined with at least equal enthusiasm (the luckless Menorcans were themselves sold in North Africa’s slave markets, which operated until the 19^th century).

A few assertions seem over-confident, such as that Moors remained numerically predominant in much of Spain even after the Reconquista—but how can he, or anyone, know this for certain? The concluding chapter on “Why states die” feels curiously cursory after the richness and subtlety of the bulk of the book, just eleven occasionally banal pages that skim far too quickly over the musings of St. Augustine, Hobbes, Rousseau, and more recent theorists of state death. He cites “implosion, conquest, merger, liquidation and ‘infant mortality’” as causes of collapse, but scants over some other threats, such as the gradual loss of a previously unifying culture or population replacement through immigration (for example, a recent Scottish survey suggests that one fifth of Scotland’s population does not regard itself as “Scottish”, which has implications for Scottish independence). There are some small typos and inconsistencies, but it is only fair to note that I worked from an uncorrected proof copy and doubtless most of these were later edited out.

Yet this highly original book is about editing in rather than editing out, and the effect is eminently addictive—revivifying Europe’s unquiet dead to walk and talk again for a time, salvaging their sunken vessels and sending them scudding briefly again across history’s charts, while we their inheritors plot our future course across a sea of troubles.

]]> Derek Turner Euro-Centric Thu, 23 Feb 2012 11:52:00 +0000 http://www.alternativeright.com/main/the-magazine/in-the-house-of-pound/ http://www.alternativeright.com/main/the-magazine/in-the-house-of-pound/

CasaPound is an Italian political movement that takes its name from the American poet and Fascist sympathizer, Ezra Pound. Although it is inevitably referred to as "extremist," "racist," and "neo-fascist," the movement, which was founded in 2003, is in fact more complex and interesting, especially from an alternative right perspective. It takes a holistic and grass roots approach to politics, focusing on culture, community, and a variety of activities for its members, as much as on traditional street politics. This is an interview I did by email with Gianluca Iannone, the movement's leader, in early 2011 for an article I was writing.

 

CasaPound is still not so well known in the English-speaking countries, even by those active in right wing politics. Could you introduce your movement to our readers and describe it? How big is CasaPound? How many members and how much support do you have?

First of all, linking CasaPound to the right wing is a bit restrictive. CasaPound Italia is a political movement organized as an association for social promotion. It starts from the right and goes through the entire political panorama. Right or left are two old visions of politics, we need to give birth to a new synthesis. CPI has more than 4000 members all over Italy but the supports and sympathy we gain days after days is far larger… Just think that the Blocco Studentesco, our student organization, obtained 11,000 votes in Rome and the Province for the students’ elections.

Please tell us a little about yourself personally and your background.

I was born in August 1973 and started political activism at 14 in the Fronte della Gioventù (Youth Front) in Acca Larenzia, one of Rome's downtown neighborhood. Since then I have never stopped to be part of this world. Journalist since 1999, I worked for TV and radio stations and also wrote for national newspapers on international conflicts, literature, cinema and music.

Why did you become politically active? Was there some event, action, or person that triggered your political activism?

To tell the truth, there is not one thing in particular. I think it was just fate.

What are main policies and objectives of CasaPound, both short-term and long-term?

CPI works on everything that concerns the life of our nation: from sport to solidarity, culture and of course politics. For sports, we have a soccer teams and academy, we do hockey, rugby, skydiving, boxing, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, scuba diving, hiking groups, caving, climbing. For solidarity, we have first aid teams, we do fundraising activities for the Karen people, and we provide help to orphans and single-mums. A phone line called "Dillo to CasaPound" (tell it to CasaPound) is active 24/7 to give free advises on legal and tax issues. On the cultural ground, we host authors and organize book presentations; we have an artist club, a theater school, free guitar, bass guitar and drum lessons, we created an artistic trend called Turbodinamismo, we have a publishing company, dozens of bookshops and websites. Politically we propose various laws like the Mutuo sociale (social mortgage), Tempo di essere Madri (Time to be a mother) or against water privatization and so many more. Speaking about CPI is never easy because all these things are CASAPOUND. All of these represent our challenges and projects for now and the millennium.

Do you have any significant links with groups or parties outside Italy?

No.

The first thing that strikes people in the English-speaking countries is the name of your group, which, of course, refers to the famous American poet Ezra Pound. How important are Pound's ideas to your movement? Why have you chosen to include his name in your movement’s title?

Ezra Pound was a poet, an economist and an artist. Ezra Pound was a revolutionary and a fascist. Ezra Pound had to suffer for his ideas, he was sent to jail for ten years to make him stop speaking. We see in Ezra Pound a free man that paid for his ideas; he is a symbol of the "democratic views" of the winners.

Ezra Pound is also a name routinely associated with Anti-Semitism. Some will automatically see the invocation of his name as a rallying cry for Anti-Semitism. Could you clarify CasaPound's position with regard to the Jews and Israel?

To associate Ezra Pound and anti-Semitism is an absolute twist. It is the same for CasaPound, it has no sense. It is true that we are against Israel politics towards Palestinians, against the bombing of civilians, and the embargo on international help. To say so does not mean to be anti-Semitic, it means analyzing facts.

You are also known for anti-usury rhetoric. Most sensible people oppose excessive usury, but are you opposed to all usury? If not, where does constructive credit end and destructive usury begin?

Usury is the worst thing. It is the head of the octopus. It is it that initiated the wars that are starting around the Mediterranean Sea, which generates illegal immigration and destruction. It is it which creates unemployment, debts. It is it that threatens the future of our children, which make them weak and ready for the massacre.

My impression of CasaPound is that it is very much a grass roots organization that operates successfully in the "arena of street politics," with marches, parades and events that build identity and community, rather than through conventional elections. In Anglo countries right-wing street politics backfired in the past, allowing the mainstream media to paint very negative images of the National Front in the 1970s and the BNP later. Because of this the BNP now avoids the street as a political arena. Your group's success suggests that the street is a much more acceptable political arena for the right in Italy. Why do you think this is? What are the differences that make this possible?

First of all, England was never a fascist state. This creates a big cultural difference. Also, as I said before CPI works on dozens of projects and with various methods: from conferences to demonstrations, distribution of information, posters. The important thing is to generate counter information and to occupy the territory. It is fundamental to create a web of supporters other than focusing on elections. For election, you are in competition with heavily financed groups and with only one or two persons elected, you can't change anything. Politics for us is a community. It is a challenge, it is an affirmation. For us, politics is to try to be better every day. That is why we say that if we don't see you, it is because you are not there. That is why we are in the streets, on computers, in bookshops, in schools, in universities, in gymnasium, at the top of mountains or in the newsstands. That is why we are in culture, social work and sport. That is a constant work.

Because of the differences between Britain and Italy do you think it is better for the right-wing in the UK to avoid street politics? In this context, what is your view of the English Defence League, a group that obviously sees the street as its arena or forum?

I think that the EDL is going on the ground of the clash of civilization. For me and Casa Pound, this provokes a kind of disgust. If the British right is reduced to this, then let's speak about soccer, it will be better.

]]> Colin Liddell The Magazine Sun, 05 Feb 2012 13:59:11 +0000 http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/malinvestments/the-college-bubble-that-isn-t/ http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/malinvestments/the-college-bubble-that-isn-t/

Foseti:

If I’m reading Charles Murray’s thesis [in Coming Apart] correctly (and it’s certainly possible that I’m not, since I haven’t read the book), I think there’s an argument within his thesis that the education bubble is not in fact a bubble.

There are two points to Murray’s argument that I’m concerned with here.

1) Murray argues that America is increasingly efficient at sorting people by cognitive ability. As such, you can live basically your entire life among people within a narrow range of cognitive ability similar to your own.

2) The closer you are to the top end of this intellectually sorted landscape, the better your life will be, by virtually every measure of success.

Let me draw some conclusions and add some premises.

I would suggest that colleges are the mechanism by which the sorting described in 1) is accomplished. The main function of colleges is not education or signalling, or whatever your favorite theory is. Their main function is to sort people into groups based on cognitive ability. (Note that this theory explains why people would be willing to pay $40,000 to attend certain schools that are not necessarily top-tier – it’s worth it, as long as it gets you in a different cognitive ability grouping than the state school alternative).

I would also suggest that this sorting service is a very valuable service – and it is getting exponentially more valuable over time, as society becomes more efficiently sorted and the benefits of being in a high-ability group become more pronounced.

Therefore, the increases in college tuition that we continue to see are justified by the increasingly valuable service that colleges are providing. Unfortunately, it’s a service that: nobody wants to discuss; and that colleges will adamantly deny they provide. Perhaps everyone will continue to moan about an education bubble while shelling out $50,000/year for their kid to attend a college, much like they currently moan about lack of diversity in the public schools in their hometown which they moved to because it has good schools.

Gary North: 

Where religion is involved, people rarely change. College education is part of a religion: salvation (healing) by formal education.

The voters believe in tax-funded K-12 education. It gets worse. The budgets increase. The test scores fall. Yet voters just refuse to give up. They think one more reform will do the trick. It won't.

This same faith is transferred to college. Nothing changes for the better. Year after year, decade after decade, student performance falls and costs rise. This is what state funding always does. There is no negative feedback system that says: "Stop!"

To speak of college as a bubble is silly. A bubble does not pop until months or years after the funding ceases. There is no indication that the funding for college education will cease.

Until there is a rebellion against tax-funding of all education, beginning with kindergarten, college costs will rise and performance will fall. The horror stories will continue.

We get what we pay for. We especially get what we pay for with our tax money. What you see is what you get: a self-policed monopoly, a self-serving bureaucracy, and entrenched resistance to change imposed by representatives of the people who are funding the system. "Academic freedom" has always meant the same thing, from Prussian universities in 1820 until today: tax-subsidized intellectual kidnapping of children.

We do not get bubbles. We get quagmires.

 

]]> Richard Spencer Malinvestments Sun, 05 Feb 2012 06:29:08 +0000 http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/untimely-observations/the-dark-side-of-game/ http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/untimely-observations/the-dark-side-of-game/

The concept of “Game” has been much discussed over the last few years in the altRight blogosphere. For those unfamiliar with Game, it is perhaps most commonly defined as the (crimson) art of picking up women. But at a deeper level, it involves accepting that there are genetically determined rules of attraction and that both women and men are hard wired to compete in the sexual marketplace.

Pick Up Artists (PUAs) manipulate these rules to score with lots of women through a sort of sexual jiujitsu whereby women are made to chase the men who desire them. Entering the best known of the Game blogs—Chateau Hartiste (formerly known as Roissy)—is to enter a world of “alphas,” “negging,” “white knighting,” “day game,” and other terms unfamiliar to most people.

As if this is not controversial enough, Game presents other insights such as the fact the women lie about and for sex, women universally desire alpha males over beta males, women very easily cheat with alpha males, and other unflattering aspects of the female psyche.

For the most part, the young altRight male writers realize there is much truth to the Game concept—but stop short of advocating what they perceive as a hedonistic lifestyle.

Paul Kersey, the talented and prolific young writer of Stuff Black People Don’t Like, puts it best:

I tried to live the Roissy lifestyle, well, I did live that lifestyle. The stories I could share... and I have nothing to show for it.…

Chasing after girls is fun, just as going on that first date with a girl is an enjoyable experience where endless vistas of possibilities potentially await you.

But on a day like Father's Day, I remember how my siblings and I would run into my parents room and give my dad breakfast in bed and the joy he'd have in his eyes.

Roissy (a writer I enjoy reading) and a lot of people believe bedding a ton of random chicks is a revolutionary act in a world dedicated to promoting and celebrating abnormalities. It's on this Father's Day in 2011 that I realize the truly revolutionary act is being a committed father.

As someone who became a father later in life, I can second this emotion. Most people cannot see a hedonistic lifestyle though to the end. Eventually, age takes its toll and clubbing and picking up women loses its appeal as friends and siblings have children and “something to show for it.”

But a second—and deeper—meaning of Game relates to the balance of power between the sexes. PUAs such as Roissy, Roosh, Ferdinand Bardamu and others realize that feminism is more than just an annoyance. This hate-filled ideology has dramatically skewed family life and the legal system in most of the West—and has destroyed countless lives.

An example of how deeply and uncritically feminism has infested every aspect of society appeared in—of all places—Details magazine. A perfect specimen of SWPL trendiness, Details is mostly read by metrosexuals eager to be told what music they should be listening to, what clothes they should wear, and what restaurants they should be dining in to stay au courant.

But the June 2011 issue of Details contained an article called “The Stigma,” which told the tale of Kevin Driscoll, a young Oregon man falsely accused of rape.

In January 2009, Driscoll, 30, had a one-night stand with a woman he picked up at a Redmond, Oregon bar. The sex was consensual and he figured he would never see her again. But a few days later, while driving with his fiancé, he was pulled over by several police cars and arrested on charges of first degree rape.

This was the beginning of an ordeal that would cost him his fiancé, his job, his house, his savings, his reputation, and most of his friends.

During the interrogation, police acted as if he was already guilty. For two and a half hours they grilled him, though Driscoll kept insisting—to no avail—the sex was consensual. He was cuffed and charged with three counts of first degree rape and several other charges and his bail was set at $1 million.

A few days after his arrest, Driscoll lost his $80,000 a year job at the Federal Aviation Administration. Then his fiancé left him. His name and address were all over the local news.

He was targeted in prison, where rapists are deemed the lowest of the low. Several inmates attempted to fight him in the halls and showers. The 6’5, 230 pound Driscoll was able to handle himself. But what would have happened to an average sized man?

Eventually, a judge reduced his bail to $50,000 and released him under the condition he move in with his mother. His mother had to quit her job to supervise her son. Most of his friends had deserted him.

Driscoll thought he caught a break when his brother recovered security tapes from the night in question. The tapes showed that the woman engaged in sex acts with yet another man in the group that had come back to party at Driscoll’s house. The man later testified that he also had sex with the accuser that night.

The tapes blew major holes in the woman’s case, but a judge refused to let them be shown, citing rape shield laws, another blessing of feminist justice.

“That was the moment I lost all hope,” Driscoll said. “How could any human take this much information and throw it aside?

The first trial ended in a hung jury. A second jury later cleared him of all charges. A main piece of evidence was an interrogation tape showing a shirtless Driscoll with no scratches or bruises on him. “If she had done all that fighting and scratching, why didn’t he have any marks,” commented one female juror after the case.

All told, Driscoll spent $120,000 defending himself and remains $50,000 in debt. His mother was forced into bankruptcy as she had to quit her job and supervise her son while out on bail. He lost 35 pounds and rarely sleeps more than 4 hours a night due to his ordeal.

Not a thing happened to his accuser, who still drives happily around town in a Mercedes. She apparently panicked at the thought of her boyfriend finding out she was cheating on him, so she made up a story that could have cost Driscoll a life in prison.

How many women make up stories like this? Some men’s rights groups claim that about half of rape accusations are false. Even if the number lower, what does that say about the nature of women? What does it say about a society that assumes men accused of rape are guilty? Why are there never any charges against the false female accusers?

Driscoll lived through every man’s nightmare. But what about the ones who are not so lucky?

We can see the typical female compassion to this destruction of a life in a letter printed in the September 2011 Details from a harridan named Eleanor Grakauskas:

The justice system is severely flawed, and being accused of a crime one did not commit is horrible. However, Kevin Driscoll may not be a rapist but he is certainly an idiot. Someone should remind Driscoll that the hell he lives in was all his own doing. He has no one to blame for his poor choices but himself.… Driscoll needs to stop focusing on how he is a victim and accept responsibility for his role in this nightmare.

Got that? Not a word of compassion for a man whose life was ruined and almost destroyed completely. Not a word of blame or anger against the false female accuser. Not even a thought that she was also cheating on her boyfriend. Driscoll “may not be a rapist,” but he is responsible for what this woman did to him.

Game is needed because of the likes of the false accuser and her enablers such as Eleanor Grakauskas. These specimens are inhuman, and people who think like them set the standards of sexual justice in society.

Game lays bare the fact that women are not sweet, innocent beings just longing for a nice relationship with a good guy. Devious urges, sharp jealousies, and the will to sexual power lurk in the hearts and minds of women.

As more men grasp the concepts of Game, they are learning about the true nature of women as well. If it helps them score with girls, that is fine. But if more men learn about the warped balance of sexual power in society then we can perhaps begin to deconstruct the cancer of feminism that infects the entire culture and legal system and threatens the lives of all men.

 

]]> Peter Bradley Untimely Observations Sun, 05 Feb 2012 04:35:28 +0000 http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/exit-strategies/little-miss-american-empire/ http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/exit-strategies/little-miss-american-empire/

Growing up, I remember being informed by various female school teachers and former Flower Children that “if women were in charge,” there’d be no more wars (among other things), because...you know...women are about caring and sharing and the only reason why there’s violence in the first place is because of testosterone and penal rivalries...und so weiter...

There is, of course, a kernel of truth to such claims. No doubt, Paris abducted Helen out of a blinding lust that all men, and only men, can understand. That said, anyone who has ever witnessed female relations in High School recognize that the fairer sex is more than capable of vindictive violence. (Mencken quipped that the definition of a misogynist is a man who hates women as much as women hate one another.)

Whatever the case, the Obama administration’s foreign-policy team offers all but definitive proof that women have the gene for bellicosity. Obama’s intellectual guiding light, Samantha Power, has written tomes scolding Washington for not intervening militarily enough over the past century. Hillary cackles over the brutal death of a foe. And then there’s Susan Rice, Obama’s UN ambassador, whose sepia skin tone might led one to believe that she has more than one reason to oppose the war-making ways of “The Man.”

No so! Today, China and Russia wisely vetoed a resolution that would, quite likely, have been a precursor to regime change in Syria (much like the Libya adventure began as a UN mandate for a no-fly zone last March). Rice reacted to this offense much like a bitchy HR manager who feels compelled to lecture her cubicle-dwelling underlings after “SOMEBODY took my Pad Thai leftovers from the fridge…I don’t know who it is, but I have suspicions!”

“The United States is disgusted that  a couple of members of this Council continue to prevent  us from fulfilling our sole purpose,” U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice said. “For months this Council has been held hostage by a couple of members,” she said, referring to Russia and China, who she said had been “delaying and stripping bare any text to force Assad to stop his actions.”

Without referring to Russia by name, she said the vetoes were “even more shameful” given that Russia has continued to sell weapons to to Syria.  She called the vetoes “unforgivable” and said “any further blood that flows will be on their hands.”

ABC News

 

]]> Richard Spencer Exit Strategies Sun, 05 Feb 2012 03:41:32 +0000 http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/district-of-corruption/mitt-newt-and-ron/ http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/district-of-corruption/mitt-newt-and-ron/

Matt Parrott joins Richard to discuss the vulgar spectacle of the Republican primaries and what it means for Radical Traditionalists.

]]> Vanguard District of Corruption Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:31:12 +0000 http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/untimely-observations/scientifically-proven-right-wingers-are-dumb/ http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/untimely-observations/scientifically-proven-right-wingers-are-dumb/

With juvenile delight, the Huffington Post reports today the findings of a recent intelligence study: racists are dumb.

The report states:

Are racists dumb? Do conservatives tend to be less intelligent than liberals? A provocative new study from Brock University in Ontario suggests the answer to both questions may be a qualified yes.

The study, published in Psychological Science, showed that people who score low on I.Q. tests in childhood are more likely to develop prejudiced beliefs and socially conservative politics in adulthood.

I.Q., or intelligence quotient, is a score determined by standardized tests, but whether the tests truly reveal intelligence remains a topic of hot debate among psychologists.

Dr. Gordon Hodson, a professor of psychology at the university and the study's lead author, said the finding represented evidence of a vicious cycle: People of low intelligence gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, which stress resistance to change and, in turn, prejudice, he told LiveScience.

Why might less intelligent people be drawn to conservative ideologies? Because such ideologies feature "structure and order" that make it easier to comprehend a complicated world, Dodson said. "Unfortunately, many of these features can also contribute to prejudice," he added.

Dr. Brian Nosek, a University of Virginia psychologist, echoed those sentiments.

"Reality is complicated and messy," he told The Huffington Post in an email. "Ideologies get rid of the messiness and impose a simpler solution. So, it may not be surprising that people with less cognitive capacity will be attracted to simplifying ideologies."

But Nosek said less intelligent types might be attracted to liberal "simplifying ideologies" as well as conservative ones.

In any case, the study has taken the Internet by storm, with some outspoken liberals saying that it validates their suspicions about conservatives and conservatives arguing that the research has been misinterpreted.

Besides a hundred-year-old photograph of mostly out-of-shape Klansmen, a few things should jump straight out.

Firstly, notice the paragraph in red, containing an opinion that directly contradicts the thesis of both the article and the originating study: the second shortest, its low-key phrasing and location, just before an altisonant final paragraph with links to external websites (the second of which contains an anemic and muddled conservative quibble), has been clearly engineered to de-emphasise that contradictory opinion.

Secondly, and following from the first point, the article self-servingly ignores the fact that egalitarianism is a simplifying ideology, analogous to the worst anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, since it blames everything that goes wrong for coloured peoples in the West on White ‘racism’.

Thirdly, the study itself is ideological, for it equates prejudice with Right-wing ideology, when egalitarianism is probably the strongest form of prejudice in modern Western society. No egalitarian is ever willing to entertain any science or data that contradicts his prejudices on race or gender or anything else, let alone listen to any dissenting opinion: all such studies are biased, all such data lies, all such opinions racist or phobic.

Fourthly, remarks about socially conservative views show the level of narcissistic myopia that characterises the Left. In contemporary society, it is the liberal-egalitarian view that is normative and socially conservative, since for long now that has been the official establishment view and also the safe, socially acceptable position being conserved. Racial consciousness and traditionalism is the radical, anti-establishment position.

The existence of such biased, politicised studies and their concomitant reporting in the media are simply weapons in the establishment’s political arsenal.

The core message is: ‘only morons people disagree with us, so don’t openly disagree with us unless you want to look like a moron'.

Their aim is to encourage conformity and smooth the way for their rainbow dystopia.

 

 

]]> Alex Kurtagic Untimely Observations Thu, 02 Feb 2012 19:24:37 +0000 http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/untimely-observations/patriotism-and-prejudice-in-oz/ http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/untimely-observations/patriotism-and-prejudice-in-oz/

The Herald Sun has reported, just in time for Australia Day, that those who fly Australian flags are more racist than those who don’t. The study was conducted at an Australia Day fireworks celebration last year in Perth, where 513 people were interviewed and asked about their views on a variety of immigration and values related statements.

This study has been cited all around Australia and I’ve even seen some global news sources carrying it, despite the fact that it doesn’t really pass academic rigor and the “conclusions” are really just assumptions, possibly based on the researcher’s own biases.

A self-selecting sample of Australians who live in Perth, attend fireworks displays, and agree to an interview are hardly representative of all Australians. The researcher, Professor Farida Fodzar of the University of Western Australia, specialises in race relations, a field of sociology/anthropology that sets out to imagine racial conflict and racist motivations where there are none. If there were no racism, she’d be out of job, after all.

Furthermore, none of the questions actually ask about racist views. Fodzar and the media are equating patriotism with racism, which is incorrect. Patriotism is the love of and devotion to one’s country. Racism, in this context, is intolerance of others based on their race. Patriotism has nothing to do with racial intolerance in and of itself, though one who is patriotic may be intolerant of those who are undermining the country they love, regardless of the race of those people.

Let’s break down some of the findings of the study which were reported in the above linked article:

Professor Fodzar said the team found that of the 102 people surveyed on the day who had attached flags to their cars for the national holiday, 43 per cent agreed with the statement that the now-abandoned “White Australia Policy” had “saved Australia from many problems experienced by other countries”.

She said that only 25 per cent of people who did not fly Australia car flags agreed with the statement.

Under the “White Australia Policy”, which was non-official government policy until after World War II, non-Europeans were barred from migrating to Australia.

It’s no secret that multicultural/multiracial societies have serious problems resulting from conflicting values and lifestyles. It’s not outrageous that some people might think that the net loss from the conflict caused by racial and cultural diversity outweighs any potential or imagined gain. However, such views do not necessarily make one “racist”. And indeed, it’s entirely possible that many of those who believe that the White Australia policy was a good policy were direct beneficiaries of it themselves.

The survey also found that a total of 56 per cent of people with car flags feared for Australian culture and believed that the country’s most important values were in danger, compared with 34 per cent of non-flag flyers.

If a flag-flyer is a patriot (and if one isn’t, why fly the flag?), then a concern for preserving Australian values is legitimate and expected. The values of yesterday are not the same as the values of today and anyone with open eyes can see them changing right before us. A patriot who loves his country and sees it changing into something unrecognisable will be understandably concerned and upset.

But this doesn’t make one a racist. The implication of the word “racist” is usually that the racist is white. It’s rarely spoken, but always assumed. In fact, a non-white Australian could just as easily be concerned about the decline of important Australian values as much as any white Australian. But even if the person in question is white, race still isn’t necessarily a factor. Most of those leading the drive to destroy traditional values are themselves white, so here it is a conflict of ideology, not race.

Thirty-five per cent of flag flyers felt that people had to be born in Australia to be truly Australian, compared with 22 per cent of non-flag flyers.

Again, not a racist view. Australian immigrants come from every corner of the globe, with the United Kingdom leading the top of the pack. The question here is one of supposed dual loyalty or lack of loyalty to one’s adopted homeland, but not one of race. In America, people who hold this view are called racists and the accusers get away with it because almost all immigrants to America these days are non-white and it makes a convenient red herring in the immigration debate. But despite an end to the White Australia policy, Australia still has significant European immigration and a quarter of Australians are foreign born.

Twenty-three per cent of flag flyers believed that true Australians had to be Christian, while 18 per cent of non-flaggers agreed with the statement.

This is just an example of how non-academic this study is. Not only does Christianity have nothing to do with race, but a 5% difference in opinion may well be covered by the margin of error. We’re not told what that margin is, but considering the sample is small and non-representative, it’s likely that the margin of error is 5% or even higher. We don’t know, but this point seems to be thrown in only to denigrate Christians.

An overwhelming 91 per cent of people with car flags agreed that people who move to Australia should adopt Australian values, compared with 76 per cent of non-flaggers.

This is a statement that even the Australian government endorses. In order to be granted permanent residency or citizenship in Australia, one must sign a declaration promising to adhere to and uphold Australian values. Refusing to do so is grounds for denial. In fact, most governments of the world that allow mass immigration at least pay lip service to integrating immigrants. In order to integrate, it necessarily follows that one must share things in common with one’s host population. In any case, the vast majority of both flag flyers and non flag flyers agreed that immigrants should adopt Australian values.

Only this could be said to have a slight tone of racial or cultural superiority, but it’s unfair to assume that racism is the motivating factor in those holding this view. It’s not inconsistent with the idea that immigrants should try to fit in with an Australian way of life and some may rightly believe that the ways of some immigrants are totally opposed to Australian ways.

Neither are we given any information on the people who agreed with that statement. Some of those who agreed with the statement may themselves be migrants who have made a great effort to adapt to the Australian way of life and expect other newcomers to do the same. One cannot simply assume this belief is based on racism, as people may have a wide variety of reasons for thinking migrants should assimilate.

It does not even mean one is opposed to immigration. In fact, many of these flag flyers might be so enamored with the Australian government’s immigration policies that it has inspired deep patriotism and pride in their country. If the question of whether or not one supported immigration in general was asked, it wasn’t reported upon.

Fodzar is simply engaging in Australian-bashing for publicity’s sake. Her research is shoddy and her conclusions appear baseless. Her conclusions about “racist” attitudes come from a whopping 102 people, about whom we have been given no demographic information. She went into the study with preconceived notions and came out with useless data that serves to validate what she and her ivory-tower colleagues already believe, while they look down their noses at ordinary people who aren’t as “enlightened” as they are.

Flying the flag of one’s nation should be considered a positive thing and patriotic attitudes should be desired from the populace for any number of reasons. If Fodzar (who was born in Brunei) is offended by patriotism for her own adopted country or views it with negative connotations, perhaps she should reconsider her citizenship.

]]> Jaenelle Antas Untimely Observations Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:44:45 +0000 http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/zeitgeist/meat-market-failure/ http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/zeitgeist/meat-market-failure/

All across the nation today, 17 and 18-year-old males will be signing and faxing in their letter of intent to play college football. Tuition, books, room and board, a food stipend, and unbelievable exposure to big-time alumni connections for future job prospects accompany each scholarship.

That chance to compete for a starting spot right away; the chance to shine and win a Heisman Trophy; the chance to wear the coolest, flashest uniform and be seen on ESPN, ultimately having the opportunity to make it to the NFL. For two-to-three years prior, the best high school football players have received hundreds of letters from some of the top college football programs detailing why they should consider playing at Notre Dame, the University of Southern California, Alabama, Texas, or Oklahoma. 

They have received phone call after phone call; text after text; and in-house visits from coaches and recruiters representing these schools, not to mention the on-campus visits with all expenses paid by the school in attempts to entice these talented athletes to spend four years (at least, hypothetically) representing the university or college on the gridiron.

Big money is devoted to recruiting: in the Southeastern Conference (SEC), the University of Tennessee spent an average of $1.15 million a year on recruiting from 2005 – 2008. The return on investment hasn’t exactly panned out, unless you count a high arrest rate as a some kind of off-the-field victory. And a pitiful graduation rate—well, unless you include White players—for those highly sought after, Black recruits, the majority of who have no business attending the university save for their perceived athletic superiority.

Thus far, one writer has documented the insanity surrounding the recruiting business. In Meat Market, Bruce Feldman shows us the insane lengths that the football coaches at the University of Mississippi will go in trying to secure the top high-school (or junior-college) talent in America.

Worse, he shows how an entire industry has grown around recruiting high-school players, and the financial windfall investors and businessmen have made. Knowing that die-hard fans, students, and alumni of your Georgias, North Carolinas, Auburns, and Ohio States will dish out big money to follow the latest rumors of who might be signing on to represent their school, many a fortune has been made by the people behind Rivals.com, Scout.com, and SuperPrep.com.

With the possible exception of auctions and porn, not other business is better suited to the Internet than college football recruiting.

Jim Hackman, a Seattle-based entrepreneur, founded Rivals.com in 1998. His plan was for every program to have its own team site with a reporter covering recruiting, and an active message board. Better still, the team sites would be connected, to share relevant information pertaining to a certain recruit.

With three years, Rivals.com went bankrupt.

In 2001, Bobby Burton, a Texan who’d been the editor-in-chief of National Recruiting Advisor, a magazine geared toward recruiting, scarfed up Rivals. He and his two partners repackaged the network by beefing up their recruiting database to include everything from a recruit’s 40-yard dash time to his GPA to which schools were recruiting him. For $9.95 a month, a fan could learn about the players his team was recruiting, what the kids thought of their official visits to Old State U., and download highlights of the players.

Hackman, meanwhile, turned around and created a competitor to Rivals called Scout Media, which he later sold to Fox for a reported $60 million.

The two networks, hubs to hundreds of satellite sites such as Gatorbait.net, Irisheyes.com, and OMSspirit.com, hit a nerve just like fantasy sports did a decade or so ago.

Evidence? On Signing Day in 2007, Rivals.com claimed a staggering 75.4 million page views—almost five times the number MSNBC.com had drawn on its Election Night coverage a few months earlier.

It would be wrong not to mention the professional recruiting services that college football programs spend tens of thousands of dollars upon a year to stay abreast of the top talent at the high school level. The California JC Report (cost: $800 a year); The Texas Film Service, providing information on every high school in the state (cost: $5,000 a year) to Thomas’ LRSSports; to scores of other services, many run by former coaches and players, all willing to barter information on potential recruits for hundreds to thousands of dollars in return.

But again, just look at the insane number of subscribers that Rivals and Scout have to services that merely provide the athletic metrics (40-yard-dash time, bench press, squat, etc.) of a 15, 16, 17, or 18-year-old, who, more than likely, will end up signing with another school or fail to qualify academically:

Rivals.com and Scout.com fiercely struggle over Web users, subscriptions and exclusive naming rights to high school allstar games. Both offer college sports news, but recruiting—on national sites and affiliated team sites operated by individual publishers—is their bread and butter. They both charge $9.95 for monthly subscriptions separate from free content, and each generated more than $10 million in revenue during 2004.

Rivals.com claims more than 150,000 subscribers; Scout.com says its subscriber base stands at more than 200,000. Now ESPN.com is joining the fray.

''I presented the Rivals model to ESPN in 1995 and offered to build it for them,'' Scout.com chief executive Jim Heckman said, laughing. ''Their answer was, 'There's just, at best, a few thousand people interested in recruiting. We're not interested.' Pretty much everybody didn't understand how big this was.''

Scout and Rivals have changed college football. The talent evaluations they perform (rating recruits on a scale of 1 – 5, with 5 being the best) have turned college football programs into sharks looking to secure commitments from the elusive Five Star star athletes who can come in and make an impact immediately.

Recall that Scout and Rivals start to evaluate high school talent as early as freshmen year of high school. Also note that college football coaches of old, before the days of the Internet and recruiting services, relied on networks of coaches and alumni to provide game tapes of potential recruits.

It’s with this thought in mind that we point out that of the top 100 Scout and Rivals high- school prospects (and those players selected to the play in the prestigious Under Armour All-American game, almost 90 percent of them are Black athletes.

Why is this?

Former Auburn University coach Pat Dye wrote in his autobiography, In the Arena—interestingly written, in part, as a response to allegations of racism from Black recruit Eric Ramsey—this about Black athletes:

Another thing I found, I already knew: we live in an age, and it will probably last forever, where the black kids in this region make the difference in football. If there are 10 college prospects in Alabama, seven are gonna be black.

Looking at the current rosters of Auburn and Alabama, Dye’s comment seems to hold true. Both schools boast overwhelmingly White student populations, but both have a disproportionate amount of Black athletes (to the general Black male populations of the school). This holds true for most major schools.

Remember that Rivals and Scout start to evaluate talent as early as the freshmen and sophomore year of high school player, providing star ratings to young men still developing and maturing. Or are they?

In Jon Entine now-classic study Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We’re Afraid to Talk About It, he spends the majority of tome talking about why Blacks are better athletes than whites. In passing he notes, curiously:

It’s hardly an irrational leap to suspect that precocious infants will end up as athletically skilled adults, however. Blacks and white do develop different body types at an early age. Numerous studies have found that by age five or six black children consistently excel in the dash, the long jump, and the high jump, all of which require a short burst. By the time boys are teenagers, blacks demonstrate a significantly faster patellar tendon reflex time—the knee jerk response—and an edge in reaction time over whites.

Put simply, Black athletes mature faster than White athletes. In Race, Evolution, and Behavior: A Life History Perspective, J. Phillippe Rushton includes a chapter on Speed of Maturation, which points out that study after study concludes Black people go through puberty well before white people, reaching full sexual maturity at astonishingly young ages. Could this be the reason former Florida State football coach made this remark regarding the paucity of White high-school talent?:

An athlete is an athlete, but, dang it, there just seem to be more black athletes than white," says Florida State football coach Bobby Bowden. "We've got a [white] phenomenon on our team, a quarterback named Danny Kendra, whose vertical jump is 39½ inches—more than anybody else we've got. He bench-presses 425 pounds, and his leg press broke the school record. He runs a 4.5 40. But there ain't many like him. And my thinking is that there's a whole lot more blacks who can do that than white guys.

Why does this matter? Why mention race at all in a discussion of college football recruiting?

Mike Freeman’s Bowden: How Bobby Bowden Forged a Football Dynasty provides the answer. His chapter Law and Order establishes that the majority of the at-risk students that college-football programs recruit are these Black athletes who have matured physically faster than white athletes, though their mental acumen will forever see a gap remain (as noted by graduation rate racial disparities, despite the same amount of tutoring). Bowden built his reputation, like that of Penn State’s Joe Paterno, on the backs of academically challenged, athletically gifted Black athletes.

This presents a problem: though athletically gifted (thanks to a genetic clock that allows them to mature faster), Black athletes perform inadequately in the classroom. Many boast embarrassingly poor high-school GPAs and standardized-test scores and require special admission to be enrolled into the schools like Florida or Florida State. Though the white athletes being evaluated at Scout and Rivals haven’t reached physical maturity, they perform far better on the academic side of the ball. This is one of the primary reasons the U.S. Military Academies (Army, Navy, and Air Force) have remained so White, when most other big-time college football programs field majority Black teams: put simply, potential Black recruits don’t have the intelligence to get accepted or complete the work once enrolled at these schools.

So the question must be asked: Is there a bias at the big-time college football programs toward Black athletes, since the recruiting services have started evaluating players at ages when the early physical maturation of Blacks give them a pronounced advantage over White players? Well, yes there is.

Tom Lemming, one of the pioneers of evaluating high school football talent, told Michael Lewis in his book The Blind Side that White high-school athletes were discriminated against by college scouts and coaches because they couldn't possibly be as a fast as black athletes. He said the same thing to The Chicago Sun Times, By Taylor Bell; he said the same thing to the South Bend Tribune.

Consider that two of the top receivers in the National Football League (NFL), the Green Bay Packers Jordy Nelson and the New England Patriot’s Wes Welker, went virtually un- recruited out of high school. Welker—who was Oklahoma’s High School Player of the Year his senior season—got a scholarship to Texas Tech. Nelson had to walk-on at Kansas State. Both are White athletes.

Consider that arguably the best linebacker in the NFL, the Packer’s Clay Matthews, was a walk-on at the University of Southern California and didn’t even see the field until his senior year. In the October 2011 issue of Muscle and Fitness magazine, Matthews let slip a crucial point:

There’s this kid you know. A high school senior. Plays football hard, but he’s nothing special on the field. He’s around six feet in cleats, maybe tops out at 200 pounds after dinner, and he’s neither fast enough to be anyone’s idea of a bit-time, blue-chip prospect.

“I knew I wanted to play at USC from when I was a kid,” he [Matthews said, though he’d have to walk-on for this dream to occur] said.

“I told him to go for it,” says Charlie Wegher, who’s coached football at Agoura High for the past 18 years, “but honestly, I didn’t think he’d get a chance to play much because USC doesn’t typically have those kinds of kids.”

So Matthews wasn’t a Rivals or Scout “Five Star” athlete, a “can’t miss” prospect with an NFL-ready future stamped on him before he even played a down of college football, like the many high-school athletes who will be signing with big-time colleges and universities around the nation today. 

He was one of “those kinds of kids.” Meaning one of those often overlooked White kids from the suburbs who hasn’t physically matured yet, at least compared to the seemingly extra-ordinary Black athletes that Rivals and Scout have evaluated as the top talent of the 2012 high school crop.

Something tells me there is a market for undervalued White players that aren’t highly sought after commodities by the big-time schools only on the prowl for academically marginal Black athletes to use and abuse for football glory.

Knowing that the New England Patriots Bill Belichick has built a franchise based around undervalued White talent, the smaller college football programs, without massive budgets to spend on hyped high-school athletes, and which hope to keep up with the Michigans, Oregons, LSUs should start considering cultivating White athletic talent that has been overlooked by recruiting services in favor of the low-hanging fruit we should just call “Darwin’s Athlete’s.”

For one thing, signing undervalued White high school talent will require less of an investment in academics and an even less amount of money to pay for their unnecessary legal teams (consider the high rate of arrests for Black players at UGA, Florida, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Penn State).

Another thing, if you’re a fan or alumni of one of these schools, you can spend less time on one of the recruiting services like Rivals or Scout, which has gone “all in” on the belief in Black athletic supremacy—truly, one of the most common “social constructs” of our time.

Until a service comes along to evaluate undervalued White players, you have to wonder how many talented suburban players or fly-over country athletes (like Welker and Nelson were) aren’t being courted by big-time schools tomorrow. How many potential NFL linebackers like Matthews, who haven’t physically matured yet, are out there and devoid of a scholarship offer? All because they are one of “those kinds of kids?” Not one of Darwin’s Athletes. Just some white kid.

As Tom Lemming said, “hundreds.”

]]> Paul Kersey Zeitgeist Wed, 01 Feb 2012 23:39:09 +0000 http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/hbd-human-biodiversity/liberals-rediscover-iq/ http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/hbd-human-biodiversity/liberals-rediscover-iq/

Whenever the subject of intelligence testing comes up, especially in the context of racial and ethnic differences in intelligence, or disparate outcomes in education, liberals can always be counted upon for their skepticism towards the entire subject of IQ testing. They will usually claim that the tests are either biased or don't measure anything real - as in "IQ measures the ability to take an IQ test". This is of course ironic, since individual differences in intelligence as measured by IQ testing is the most established and robust finding of modern psychometrics, and liberals constantly proclaim their devotion to science, only inbred conservatives being opposed to scientific findings. 

But liberals become IQ believers when something like this happens: Low IQ & Conservative Beliefs Linked to Prejudice.

Some of the quotes from the article show how a study like this operates. For instance:

Social conservatives were defined as people who agreed with a laundry list of statements such as "Family life suffers if mum is working full-time," and "Schools should teach children to obey authority."

I guess smart liberals believe that a mother working outside the home full-time couldn't possibly have any downside for family life, and that their indoctrination of schoolkids in things like environmentalism, global warming, and the essential evilness of America's past don't constitute teaching children to obey their authority.

The essential point to make here is that the average Democratic Party member is very likely not as intelligent as the average Republican, since the Democratic Party contains more minorities, who on average score lower on IQ tests than whites. But once you point out something like that, liberals go into IQ denial.

]]> Dennis Mangan HBD: Human Biodiversity Tue, 31 Jan 2012 18:02:13 +0000