Here's another brief thought on the domestic violence issue.
When I see what has happened with the White Ribbon Day campaign, I'm reminded of just how the left manages to set the framework of politics to their advantage.
It goes like this. The left makes a claim that men as a class are violent toward women because they enjoy an unearned privilege in society. The anti-domestic violence cause seems like a good one, so a lot of men unthinkingly sign on to the message.
But straight away these men are caught in a trap. Once you accept that men as a class are perpetrating an injustice and an oppression to defend an unearned privilege, you lose moral status as a man in society.
And it's exactly the conscientious, politically active type of men who can't bear to lose moral status. They will desperately want to win it back somehow. How can they do it?
The message that is delivered to them is that they can redeem themselves by breaking ranks with other men. They can continue to speak with moral authority if they separate themselves from the other men and if they identify against the tradition of masculinity.
This solves (for a time anyway) the problem of moral status - but at a tremendous cost. It means turning against your own, thereby forfeiting an aspect of your self-identity and your group loyalty.
Something like this also happens with the issue of race. Whites are told that there is no racial equality because whites have oppressed others and discriminated against others in order to enjoy an unearned privilege. Once you accept this as a white person, you lose moral status. If you want to reclaim moral status you have to break ranks and identify against your own race. But this means forfeiting a part of your self-identity and your own larger communal tradition.
So the trap is in accepting the original negative appraisal of whiteness or masculinity or whatever else the left has set itself against.
The aim, then, is to reject the original vilification of men (or whites) as a class of people. But it matters a great deal how you do this.
It's no use trying to plead with liberals that men/whites should be accepted as good by the standards of liberalism. There's little point, for instance, in arguing that whites aren't racist oppressors because they are accepting of diversity, of open borders, of mass immigration and so on. This is asking to be allowed to identify positively with something, by taking away the conditions for its future existence.
So we have to take care, initially, not to be suckered into losing moral status, and, having avoided this, not to plead for the goodness of our tradition on losing terms supplied by liberalism itself.
Good spot Mark.
ReplyDeleteI have exactly this problem at university, Mr. Richardson. This last quarter I had to take my first whiteness studies course. It went by a different name, but materials like The Heart of Whiteness and other similar works comprised the curriculum.
ReplyDeleteIn class discussions, I just focused on practical (if tests are culturally biased, why do Asians perform better than whites, etc.) and theoretical (if homosexuality is equal to heterosexuality, why can't the former survive over time without the latter?) contradictions of the general theory.
But I rarely stuck up for whites, straights or men as such. I'm still figuring out what I can do without being dismissed from the program.
Universities are hellholes Bartholomew.
ReplyDeleteYour only real choice is to keep your head down, learn what you can from non official sources, pass with flying colours, do a masters and then GET YOURSELF IN A POSITION TO TEACH THESE SUBJECTS!
The system is never going to change unless sane people can get inside and change it.
Tell every traditionalist, conservative, libertarian or other non-conformist you know to become a teacher or lecturer. Tertiary is best but even high school would do.
This is the only way this crap is EVER going to change.
And yes I have just changed my own career to try and head in that direction. We all need to do it and we all need to encourage young people with unorthodox views to do likewise.
"It's no use trying to plead with liberals that men/whites should be accepted as good by the standards of liberalism."
ReplyDeleteThis is not true because it is not consistent with the standards of liberalism. Liberalism is discriminatory. It's discriminatory because it embraces voluntary interaction. The perversion is the shift in the state's position of ensuring the freedom to discriminate (i.e. freedom of association) to protecting against discrimination.
For example, a covenant that runs with a property that denies the sale of land "to Jews or persons of objectionable nationality" is discriminatory and acceptable under liberalism. However, as Mill suggested free institutions wither in multi-ethnic societies. Thus it becomes a "moral duty" for, in this case the courts, "to lend aid to all forces of cohesion, and similarly to repel all fissiparous tendencies which would imperil national unity."
Freedom dies because national unity must prevail. Of course national unity will not prevail in a multi-ethnic polity because, to quote Mill, a national identity requires "the possession of a national history, and consequent community of recollections; collective pride and humiliation, pleasure and regret, connected with the same incidents in the past."
Thus the exclusion from a certain property, club or whatever, is viewed differently by those excluded than by the included. In one case it is despised; in the other embraced. If those who despise are able to influence political self-interest it is possible to turn state coercion to serve their own end. However, this is not liberalism, but a strategy to advance ethnic interest.
"This last quarter I had to take my first whiteness studies course. It went by a different name, but materials like The Heart of Whiteness and other similar works comprised the curriculum."
ReplyDeleteYou poor bastard. All I can say is that its sometimes helpful to know what the other side thinks. Play along but be a bit of a rebel and you'll get the chicks ;).
Yep, they sure are. But, like you said Jesse, the "system" is only a bunch of people. To change it, we just have to change or replace them. And that's exactly why we ought to get inside it, as annoying as that is sometimes.
ReplyDeleteEvery generation has its fight. I guess this is ours.
As for playing along with the lefties, everyone has to do it to some extent or he doesn't pass. Haha, but I think it's too late for me to pretend to be SWPL. I guess most people probably assume that I'm a right-liberal, or a Republican, which is fine for now.
Have you ever tried to talk with people one on one, sent them links to Mark's posts, etc.? Has it ever worked?
I find the benefit of something like Mark's site is that it keeps me even minded. When all I hear is nothing but left wing stuff I get irritated, but knowing there is "right wing" stuff out there makes me feel that's their opinion this is mine. Knowing you can defend your position is a great confidence boost. Being around conservative people from time to time is also good.
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to showing other people the site I try to condense the arguments for myself and that does work. All of the time its about the presentation of the argument rather than the argument.
correction *a lot of the time*
ReplyDeleteIn his book "The Culture of Critique", Kevin MacDonald devotes many pages to an analysis of "The Authoritarian Personality", which was written by Adorno. It was part of a series called "Studies in Prejudice," produced by the Frankfurt school, which included titles like "Anti-Semitism and Emotional Disorder."
ReplyDeleteIn addition to ridiculing patriotism and racial identity, the book's purpose was to make every group affiliation sound as if it were a sign of mental disorder and defective "authoritarian personality." All group loyalties, not only to nation and race, but even close family ties are "prejudice."
It is precisely the kind of group loyalty, respect for tradition, and consciousness of differences central to Jewish identity(!) that was described as mental illness in gentiles. As MacDonald explains, the Frankfurt school never criticized or even described Jewish group identity – only that of gentiles: "behavior that is critical to Judaism as a successful group evolutionary strategy is conceptualized as pathological in gentiles."
As Christopher Lasch has written, the book leads to the conclusion that prejudice "could be eradicated only by subjecting the American people to what amounted to collective psychotherapy – by treating them as inmates of an insane asylum."
"Viewed at its most abstract level, a fundamental agenda is thus to influence the European-derived peoples of the United States to view concern about their own demographic and cultural eclipse as irrational and as an indication of psychopathology."
In the same vein, the French-Jewish "deconstructionist" Jacques Derrida wrote:
"The idea behind deconstruction is to deconstruct the workings of strong nation-states with powerful immigration policies, to deconstruct the rhetoric of nationalism, the politics of place, the metaphysics of native land and native tongue... The idea is to disarm the bombs... of identity that nation-states build to defend themselves against the stranger, against Jews and Arabs and immigrants..."
For these Jewish intellectuals, anti-Semitism was also a sign of mental illness.
Needless to say, this project has been successful; anyone opposed to the displacement of whites is routinely treated as a mentally unhinged "hate-monger," and whenever whites defend their group interests they are described as psychologically inadequate. The irony has not escaped Kevin MacDonald: "The ideology that ethnocentrism was a form of psychopathology was promulgated by a group that over its long history had arguably been the most ethnocentric group among all the cultures of the world."
"anyone opposed to the displacement of whites is routinely treated as a mentally unhinged "hate-monger," and whenever whites defend their group interests they are described as psychologically inadequate."
ReplyDeleteI must admit this is terrifying. If you want to do away with an employee for example its so much easier to send them to the psych, were there is no oversight, than go through the official process of termination. Psych is absolutely terrifying because it is an excellent way of ensuring compliance, all in the name of "helping the individual" of course. Its no coincidence that in the Soviet Union being a political dissident was considered a sign of mental illness.
It is true that much political thinking has creped into psych in the guise of therapeutic science. It is such a bullshit vague ass area that real power can be wielded through it. Also it has an insanely high status is society at the moment, from Oprah to Denton everyone wants to be a psych.
This is a colossally important issue. If you are disagreeing with the mainstream it will be stressful. These signs of stress can be used as grounds for saying you're unhinged. Combine that with saying boat rocking is itself a symptom and boom you've done away with your opposition in any sphere, "There is help for you and I think you should get it". The "helpers" stand as one of the most potentially totalitarian people around. Good old thought crime.
I don't think you can single out the Jews for this though. Psych is no longer a Jewish racket, the whole left love it.
Anonymous:
ReplyDeleteWhat you say about national, racial and ethnic deconstruction is correct, and those who have pushed it are not simply "mentally ill" (as they claim of us) but evil and mendacious. It's time we turn the tables on them and start deconstructing them.
That said, I don't understand where MacDonald is getting this stuff about the Jews. Sure, they were Marxist after the self-declared anti-Bolshevik Nazis had just tried to wipe them out. Many undermined white racial identity for much the same reason.
Wrong as they were to do it, it was understandable. Our leaders should have told them to get lost. But they didn't. Why? Because our leaders were as leftist as the Jews. And why, in a democracy, were our leaders so leftist? Because core principles of most the electorate were rather leftist too.
After surviving the Holocaust, the Jews did what they thought was best to avoid going through another one. I don't blame them for that. And finally, they never amounted for more than 3-5% of the American electorate, and certainly fewer of the Australian.
The disproportionate influence of Jews in the rise of Bolshevism is well known, well before the Nazis came to power.
ReplyDeleteChurchill:
"There is no need to exaggerate the part played in the creation of Bolshevism and the actual bringing about of the Russian Revolution by these international and for the most part atheistical Jews. It is certainly a very great one; it probably outweighs all others. With the notable exception of Lenin, the majority of the leading figures are Jews. Moreover, the principal inspiration and driving power comes from the Jewish leaders. Thus Tchitcherin, a pure Russian, is eclipsed by his nominal subordinate Litvinoff, and the influence of Russians like Bukharin or Lunacharski cannot be compared with the power of Trotsky, or of Zinovieff, the Dictator of the Red Citadel (Petrograd), or of Krassin or Radek -- all Jews. In the Soviet institutions the predominance of Jews is even more astonishing. And the prominent, if not indeed the principal, part in the system of terrorism applied by the Extraordinary Commissions for Combating Counter-Revolution has been taken by Jews, and in some notable cases by Jewesses.
The same evil prominence was obtained by Jews in the brief period of terror during which Bela Kun ruled in Hungary. The same phenomenon has been presented in Germany (especially in Bavaria), so far as this madness has been allowed to prey upon the temporary prostration of the German people. Although in all these countries there are many non-Jews every whit as bad as the worst of the Jewish revolutionaries, the part played by the latter in proportion to their numbers in the population is astonishing."
"Following World War II, leaders of...Jewry explained antisemitism as an aspect of racial prejudice in general, a problem attributable to pathological individuals who engaged in discrimination [therefore liberalism or freedom of association, an ideology that protects the freedom to discriminate, is a disease] and whose behaviour influenced the attitudes and prejudices of the public. This interpretation suggested an appropriate strategy: interrupt the syndrome of prejudice through the force of law, thus prohibiting discriminatory practices and, at the same time, setting a standard of non-discrimination for the law-abiding population. A universalist philosophy led to tactical alliances with other minority and liberal organizations, designed to confront discrimination against any...group and to generate a constituency for legal reform."
ReplyDeleteDoing what Jews thought best for Jews is a strategy to advance ethnic interest, however, it is not liberalism.
..."their fears must not be allowed to distort or shrink...traditional freedoms."
No, I don't agree with an analysis which makes the Jewish aspect primary.
ReplyDeleteThe seeds of modernism were sown a long time ago - centuries ago.
The difficulty for us is that we are at an end point of a long historical development, one that predates the Frankfurt school by many generations.
*Sighs* It is a mistake to talk to the Jews as a coherent or collective body. Many Jews embraced Marxism/communism because it offered them an internationalist perspective from which they could escape from the limitations of race or nationality, which were of more relevance if you were Jewish. Many however did not embrace Marxism and were resolutely bourgeois or conservative. Jewish people featured in a disproportionate number of leadership positions of the party in the early days because it was made up of middle class intellectuals of which there was a large pool of jews to draw from.
ReplyDeleteJews are generally more deracinated than many other ethnic groups. They are more middle class and while some of them are religious orthodox or conservative many of them are liberal/individualist and consequently don't act as part of a coherent collective group.
One final point the Balfour declaration promising possible Zionist sovereignty to Jews in Palestine was drawn up in the early days of the Russian revolution as an attempt to encourage the communists to stay in the war. It was thought this would influence the high percentage of jews in the leadership of the communist party. The communists, jews or otherwise, of course couldn't give a shit about nationalist Zionist sovereignty in Palestine.
"Jewry explained antisemitism as an aspect of racial prejudice in general, a problem attributable to pathological individuals who engaged in discrimination [therefore liberalism or freedom of association, an ideology that protects the freedom to discriminate, is a disease] and whose behaviour influenced the attitudes and prejudices of the public."
ReplyDeleteThe holocaust may have been pushed hard by Jews but it was not only them. The left argued that the holocaust was an inevitable result of nationalism, traditional obedience, war and industrialisation and this has become the dominant view. The whole "racial hatred" thing of modern life is a strong political force but again it is pushed by every ethnic group with a grievance (real or imagined) and cannot be landed purely in the lap of the jews.
I want no part of an identity based either on my whiteness or my maleness.
ReplyDeletePlease keep the anti-semites away?
ReplyDeleteThey have no place anywhere near a site like this.
Sadly conspiracy theories do tend to capture the weak minded.
When the people in the system get replaced it should be by level headed conservatives or libertarians, not by insane folk from the black lagoon.
""I want no part of an identity based either on my whiteness or my maleness.""
ReplyDeleteYou must be fun at dinner parties! LoL