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Post by Maolsheachlann on May 13, 2017 16:36:52 GMT
I agree. I prefer the term "race hatred", meaning hatred directed towards a particular race. "Racism" has been applied so variously and so emotively it's now meaningless. Somw of the Alt Right, mostly the commenters rather than leaders, do seem to express race hatred though. A figure like Richard Spencer would be racist in the classical sense that he advocates social policy based on race. Does this also make affirmative action racist? I would say yes.
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Post by Maolsheachlann on May 13, 2017 16:37:59 GMT
I don't accuse him of race hatred though.
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Post by melancholicus on May 13, 2017 16:51:52 GMT
One of the things I'm getting at is that discussion of race issues inescapably takes place within parameters set by leftists.
For instance, people generally are horrified by racial slurs directed at Africans, Mexicans, Jews, Arabs, etc.
But one can say the most horrific things against people of European lineage, and not only will the majority of whites (conservatives included) not even demur, they will actually agree!
I absolutely agree that 'Affirmative Action' (so called) is racist, inasmuch as it prioritizes access to resources for persons based on their 'minority' status. So it seems the quest for racial 'equality' has resulted in a new inequality, with which the many appear to be perfectly content, even though it may be to their own disadvantage.
The Alt-Right is (at least in part) a reaction to that. It has not arisen out of a vacuum.
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Post by melancholicus on May 13, 2017 17:51:08 GMT
As an addendum, you don't have to be vulgar, abusive or throw slurs around to be labeled 'racist'.
I don't talk about these things in real life, for obvious reasons. But in my experience on the internet, even a dispassionate attempt to address race issues in a sober discussion will result in over-the-top hysterics and denunciations of racism, antisemitism, prejudice, 'white privilege' (sigh) not dissimilar to the two minutes' hate of Nineteen Eighty-Four.
There is one permitted view: the leftist view (held by blue checkmarks and by virtually all media and politicians), and any dissent is anathema.
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Post by Maolsheachlann on May 13, 2017 18:33:41 GMT
On Facebook, I was told that I "ooze white privilege from my porees" because I said I thought the extent of racism was exaggerated!
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Post by rogerbuck on May 13, 2017 21:28:06 GMT
Tired and I can't comment to everything I'd like to here. But a brief response to mainly this. I think you guys may be underestimating the depths of the racism of much of the so-called Alt-Right. If you go on their online forums it's not too long before talk of violence, lynching, gas chambers, the crudest forms of anti-semitism etc kick off. I am grateful for you telling me this, Kj. Two or three quick things come to mind. First, I appreciated Maolsheachlann's reasoning above that as sickening as racism is and as much as racism most certainly CAN lead to killing, indeed genocide, abortion by its very definition already IS killing. And yet in our society the worst thing one can be is a racist/bigot but the worst thing one can be is certainly not pro-abortion. So I appreciated Maolsheachlann using REASON to show hysteria is really blinding people, possibly including this Mark O'Shea person in regards Clinton (and I hardly know who this man is - I am not very plugged into the internet at all). But although I have not seen the horrific things you are warning us of in these online forums (which I don't visit), I am really troubled by even much, much lesser things. Even these new references we see popping up like "we White people" bother me, really bother me enormously. Any "us vs them" identification based on something as materialistic as skin pigmentation is leading to the devil. Also I called this thread "New Right" rather than Alt-Right in reference to the French Nouvelle Droite or ENR (European New Right). I still don't know much about the American Alt-Right. I do know a little about the Greg Johnson you mentioned though, Kj. And what little I do know really bothered me. He seems to be drawing from the French Guillame Faye, who as far as I can see (which may not be very far!!) took de Benoist's stuff and oriented it to race in a way that de Benoit never intended. I am not interested in that. I am interested in de Benoist's powerful, erudite deconstruction of liberal PC tyranny though.
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Post by rogerbuck on May 13, 2017 21:33:22 GMT
One last thing before I go offline for the night. I said above that materialistic identification with skin pigmentation is leading to the devil ... I want to say what really matters to me here is what Maolsheachlann has well-said in a single sentence: Personally, I don't care about the white race, or white identity, but I'm interested in the preservation of national identities, and I'm also interested in these guys because they seem to be the only ones (other than traditionalist Catholics, perhaps) who are completely rejecting the PC consensus. Amen to that.
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Post by Maolsheachlann on May 13, 2017 21:41:16 GMT
The thing is, Roger, I think the New Right has hardly penetrated into the Anglosphere at all. The aristocratic dimension is probably what prevents it. Maybe they are not relevant to peoples' preoccupations, or maybe they just haven't had a hearing.
It's Mark Shea, not Mark O'Shea. He's a Catholic apologist from America who had a big influence on me at one stage. Along with G.K. Chesterton and Edward Feser and C.S. Lewis, he was one of the writers who influenced my conversion. I was really struck by his vision of Catholic orthodoxy as a delicate balancing act. For a long time, my view was that the liberal Catholic left and the radical traditionalist Catholic right were two sides of the same coin. Just listen to the Pope and the bishops and you'd be grand. Private judgement was the thing to flee at all costs.
His three-volume work "Mary: The Mother of the Son" unlocked Marian theology for me and really gave me an appreciation of Catholic Tradition (in the sense of the deposit of faith outside Scripture). It's still one of my favourite books and a model of religious writing for me.
So I was really shocked and disturbed when he started making increasing left-wing noises and criticizing prolife Catholics who insisted on treating abortion as an issue on its own, rather than dragging in lots of left-wing stuff about immigration and racism and the minimum wage. Whatever argument might be made for that, I was even more disturbed when he attacked anyone with reservations about the Synods on the Family and the heretical declarations of some bishops regarding Communion for the remarried as "Francis-haters".
Apologies to non-Catholics for the Catholic-heavy content of this post, outside the religion sub-forum.
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Post by kj on May 14, 2017 9:49:41 GMT
Just a few examples of why I am very wary of the Alt-Right:
I was involved in an online debate with one of their major figures on the European scene once. It was quite civilised until he began to get irritated with my line of questioning, then one of his buddies came in and said I 'should be thrown from a helicopter'. The guy I was debating agreed and they had a 'Hur hur, aren't we tough guys' chuckle.
Another person I was friends with is an Orthodox Christian. He recently got the 'White nationalism' bug and is in the Alt-Right camp. He informed me that it was 'inevitable' that there was a major war coming where millions of blacks, Arabs and Africans would have to be killed. He still considers himself a pious Orthodox Christian, by the way.
Final example for the time being, the blogger known as Vox Day, who is considered a leading intellectual of the movement, is a Christian and has written a book against the New Atheists, recently advocated for the torpedoing of all refugee and migrant vessels in the Med. When it was put to him that this was murder, he denied it. He also considers himself a devout Christian.
These are the kind of people and attitudes you are dealing with. Also, within a millimeter beneath the surface is the usual tedious obsession with the Jews and Israel, and the 'Global Zionist Conspiracy'.
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Post by rogerbuck on May 14, 2017 10:24:44 GMT
Kj, no argument that this is sickening stuff here. Really sickening. The devil is here. And I thank you again for alerting me.
As a former New Ager though and as someone who once had a Jungian psychotherapist, I find I still can't help thinking of ALCHEMY in a psychological sense (which Jung was big into and which in essence does not seem un-Christian to me).
As a psychological idea, alchemy involves transforming the base into the pure, which involves separating out the base ... And Jung would say the answer is not psychological repression, but transformation.
This stuff you cite is horrendous. But the deep, ugly instincts here can't simply be repressed. They are now erupting in the midst of "progressive" PC tyranny and they need to be dealt with, transformed.
And I join with Maolsheachlann in feeling that at least IN CERTAIN STRANDS there is something that can be separated out and, as I said before, baptised.
Yet again, your warnings are much appreciated.
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Post by kj on May 14, 2017 10:45:33 GMT
Well, to be honest, Roger, I think you are being way too optimistic and to be frank, naive.
At the core of all that is sheer hatred. As I said before, I think ultimately those people will have to choose between their religion and their race politics. There is no doubt in my mind that they will choose their politics. Anyone who advocates race wars, torpedoing civilians etc already has.
Another little trend I've observed is that the whole 'In the eyes of Christ there is neither Greek nor Jew, man or woman, freeman or slave' is now being rigorously interpreted as a mystical, post-mortem claim. Basically they are arguing that 'in life down here, we can be as racist as we like'.
If you want serious Conservative thought you have to go to the classical philosophers, Burke, De Maistre, all the way up to people like Roger Scruton etc, not this band of social media thugs who are just dying for the violence to kick off.
Also be aware that their concern for the white race and culture is strictly for the white people and Europeans who agree with them; anyone who disagrees gets the helicopter or the gulag treatment.
I'd rather be left in peace to lead my own life under a PC tyranny that ultimately doesn't touch my core beliefs than be under the yoke of violence those people are aiming for.
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Post by rogerbuck on May 14, 2017 11:32:57 GMT
Thank you for that honesty about your perception of my possibility naivety and optimism, Kj. You may be right. But I do wonder if we have our wires slightly crossed though. Re: If you want serious Conservative thought you have to go to the classical philosophers, Burke, De Maistre, all the way up to people like Roger Scruton etc, not this band of social media thugs who are just dying for the violence to kick off. Also be aware that their concern for the white race and culture is strictly for the white people and Europeans who agree with them; anyone who disagrees gets the helicopter or the gulag treatment. That sounds horrible. May I stress again that I began this thread with mainly reference to the European New Right and may I point you to my big capital letters though here: I join with Maolsheachlann in feeling that at least IN CERTAIN STRANDS there is something that can be separated out and, as I said before, baptised. "In certain strands", I re-emphasise ... again I do not really know this "band of social media thugs" you refer to. (I try to avoid social media!) No, I am interested in people like the founding figure of the European New Right Alain de Benoist and not, as I said above, this Guillame Faye - Greg Johnson racist offshoot of the ENR. Another thing this thread is demonstrating is something I suspect we might agree on - because Ireland is so part of the Anglosphere and modern internet culture, perhaps all it is hearing now are these American Alt-Right thugs as you call them! It all makes me wonder if there is real work to be done bringing continental European perspectives to Ireland to balance the Anglo-American tide (or tidal wave). To that end, I am going to return to de Benoist, pasting in more stuff from his MANIFESTO (mentioned above). Let me say that the style of this manifesto is a relatively short series of TERSE, DENSE, COMPACT statements that may strike some as difficult or mere assertions. For myself, I find these terse, compact statements very helpful. I hope you will at least agree that this is not "social media thuggery". Again I add bolding and white space and invite you and/or others to read carefully to see if you can see what I'm getting at with the European New Right ... And here is a single dense sentence that, I think, is worthwhile unpacking and pondering:
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Post by kj on May 14, 2017 11:45:56 GMT
Sure, but de Benoist is hostile to Christianity and Catholicism. Also, the guy doing much of the translations of his work into English is another Jew-obsessed character with ties to the Alt-Right.
Whether you can pick and choose what you want from them is another matter. Maybe, maybe not.
And the quotes, yes, fine, but there is nothing new or deep in that. Burke and De Maistre said all that from Day One of the Revolution. People can bang on about how much they dislike Liberalism and Modernism all they like, but as I said before, that's very easy, what's challenging is to present a coherent and realistic alternative.
Plus the big issue for those who dislike the current state of affairs is to persuade the vast majority who view it all as largely positive that they have somehow lost something of value.
I also think there is a massive danger of strawmanning contemporary society and idealising the past. There seems to be a tendency to say 'Everything was lovely until the French revolution and then it all went pear-shaped'.
But that is just a fantasy. Pick up any book on any period of European history: it is always full of strife, conflict, turmoil, battles for ideas etc. As Leszek Kolakowski said, every age is an age of transition.
And also, if you are a Catholic I think you need to be mindful of Christian thinking on history. Christianity was always opposed to the world; in many way the Middle-Ages and Church domination was an aberration. Jesus and the world do not go together. Perhaps Christians have been spoiled and complacent, always assuming history would be 'on their side'. It could be plausibly argued that their position now is far more realistic.
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Post by Maolsheachlann on May 14, 2017 12:55:52 GMT
As for the ideas of the New Right being as old as De Maistre, well, I don't think that necessarily invalidates them. As Samuel Johnson said, men more often need to be reminded than instructed. It's old hat to you, but millions have never even thought of these things. Such ideas also have to be applied to new situations and expressed in new ways.
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Post by kj on May 14, 2017 14:23:20 GMT
Vox Day was an unaffiliated Christian. Now he is a Baptist, I believe. I don't think he was ever Catholic.
And the medium and the downgrading of the message is important. "Whites are great; Blacks, Arabs, Africans and Jews are evil, inferior and a threat" isn't what Maistre, Burke and Co said, and which is ultimately all the Alt-Right are saying. It all reminds me of the Nazi perversion of natural science. But anyway....
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