LET IT BURN: THE CONSERVATIVE BLOGOSPHERE'S PENCHANT FOR IMPOTENT OBSERVATION

by Max Suebian

Like many people, I was largely unaware of the "blogosphere" until 9-11.

Like virtually all of the cookie-cutter conservatives I know, I was initially swept up by the Neo-Conservative agenda, and wholeheartedly supported George W. Bush's declared intention to bring democracy to the world... even if that meant down the scope of a predator drone.

It's easy to deride now, but having watched, with my wife, as the second plane slammed into those towers on that balmy September evening at my home in Sydney, for at least an hour afterward, I was certain the United States would respond with a nuclear attack, either on Iran, Iraq, or a good portion of the Arab world.

I frankly didn't want another 9-11 at the time, and wasn't exposed to much in the way of viable diplomatic alternatives. The only other game in town (which I was aware of) were the leftists, and they were alternating between screeching, whining and weeping tears of empathy for the terrorists who were "driven" to kill thousands of people.

I wasn't of a mind to listen, and just went with the flow.

The flow, in my instance, was The Drudge Report and Glenn Reynold's Instapundit. After the "I can't stop watching the cable news 24/7" phase had finally worn off, they were my first and last "check-ins" of each day.

It has to be said, they both deserve their traffic. Whatever your views of their individual opinions, they're exceptionally good at what they do. Over years they've refined their style, honed their methods of critique, and earned the loyal following of hundreds of thousands of readers. They earned mine, for a good, long time.

It was only late last year, as I finished Victor Davis Hanson's Mexifornia: A State of Becoming did I find myself in the mood to explore the subject further. Australia was deep in the boat refugee crisis, which had been brought on by a slackening of immigration laws by the Australian Labor Party, which fortunately was decisively slung out of office just recently. My country has experienced considerable trouble with its migrant Lebanese population, particularly the Muslims, who have proven utterly impervious to any and all efforts to assimilate them.

Having finished the book, it was natural to migrate to the internet, which I did; gradually at first, but soon I found my daily check-in list was expanding. Swiftly added to this was Colin Liddell and Andy Nowicki's fantastic Alternative Right, Kevin MacDonald's Occidental Observer, and many others. Pretty soon I found myself feverishly soaking up everything I could, from the writings of Evola, Guenon and Spengler, to the outstanding oratorical performances of Alex Kurtagic, Gregory Lauder-Frost, Roman Bernard, Jonathan Bowden, Tom Sunic, Jared Taylor, Matt Parrott and many others.

My earlier favourite sites began, around this time, to suffer by the comparison. I became aware that ultimately, as concise as Matt Drudge's summary of events are, as pithy at Glenn Reynolds' spare writing style is, and as skillful as they both undoubtedly are at tapping in to the media zeigeist, neither they nor any of their comrades appeared to have a clue what was to be done. They're superlative cataloguers of leftist political and financial malfeasance, astute assessors of the social decay wrought by decades of cultural Marxism, and wry critics of affirmative action and the professional victimhood utilised by the various occupational minority groups. But nothing more.

Added to this is their complete awareness that the conservative political parties of North America, the UK, Europe and Australia have largely failed to curtail leftist excesses in any of the major fields of contest. They concede--time and again--that (for example) the American Republican Party is riddled with spineless weaklings, unprincipled hucksters, RINOs and Janus-faced betrayers who say one thing to get elected--particularly on hot-button issues like immigration--and then launch bipartisan bills to achieve the exact opposite.

Ace from Ace of Spades HQ has on many occasions sworn publicly that he has--really and truly this time--utterly abandoned all support for the Republicans. He's an eloquent guy. When he launches on one of his marathon rants, he's one of the few scribblers I know of who won't see "TL-DR" in the comments section underneath.

Yet for all his eloquence, he, like the others, have no alternatives. They have no fresh ideas. No new perspectives. In a no-doubt understandable expression of frustration, Ace will often say--in regard to the Democrat's desire to remodel America and the seeming inability of the GOP to stop them--"let it burn".

If America collapses, the mainstream right blogosphere will have been forever proven correct and the left's socialist notions eternally discredited. It's an easy wish to idly make when one doesn't have children who might someday require running water or emergency services. But it doesn't address anything.

For his part, Reynolds will make some Randian remarks here and there, link to the Cato Institute and that's about it. Matt Drudge doesn't seem to insert himself at all into his site, aside from selecting which articles will or won't be seen by a bajillion people that day.

Ace, Glenn, Matt, the list goes on and on... They're entertaining, witty and they do a good job of informing people about what the mainstream parties are doing wrong. But they offer little in the way of alternatives, and they'd rather burn their sites to the ground than explore issues like those exposed by Professor Kevin MacDonald, as to how immigration in the United States got to the sorry state it is now in. They're intellectual prisoners in that way; caged in by their unwillingness to stop offering immunity to their own special, protected groups. Nothing will change, they know this; under leftist parties, the west will sink fast in the abyss, under conservative parties, we'll all still be sinking, just a little slower.

Drudge will be rich, Glenn Reynolds will be kinda famous, and Ace will be some eloquent guy that some people will remember.

What I saw in VDare, Alternative Right and The Occidental Observer, was a sincerely altruistic group of vibrant thinkers, seeking to sway opinion through their writing, public advocacy, media engagement, publishing enterprise and private conventions. None of these men were content to just write columns to watch the hits accumulate.

John Morgan relocated himself and his Publishing firm, Arktos, to Goa, India, and has, through skill and hard work, established it as the principle publisher of the Identitarian Movement and the European New Right, and other alternative viewpoints which otherwise would go unpublished.

Closer to home, I am sad to report that Australia can boast little in the way of large scale organised groups intent on addressing the mainstream political and metapolitical landscape. There are some organised libertarians, however their stance on immigration and other social issues are not conducive to our interest. Australia does, happily, have some marvellously brilliant individuals, whose work has benefited White people throughout the western world.

I speak of men like Professor Andrew Fraser, who has bravely and ably chronicled depressing developments in Australian multiculturalism through letters and articles to Australian newspapers, VDare, The Occidental Observer and Alternative Right. He suffered appalling treatment at the hands of his employers as a direct result. He has also written and published a book, The WASP Question.

Dr. Frank Salter is an academic and former researcher with the Max Planck Institute and has consulted broadly with both public and corporate groups. He is the author of several books, as well as dozens of peer reviewed publications, monographs and reviews. A talented and eloquent speaker, he has given lectures on topics from "Urban rioters and tribal warriors: A self-organizing phenomenon" to the "Ethological Aspects of Command". Fascinated with hierarchies and interpersonal dominance characteristics, he has studied ethnic mafias, and terrorist organisations. Among many others, he has reached the conclusion that "...shared ethnicity is extended kinship at the genetic level, that members of an ethnic group are related in the same way that members of a family are related, though less strongly."

The list of names goes on, and it's simply not possible to list them all here. What is significant is that each and every one of them takes (at the very least) that one vital step beyond simply punching keys on a keyboard and publishing the result on a webpage. They may complain, but they then immediately set about deciding the best course of action, collaborate actively and go about doing whatever it is that is in their power to affect change.

It is worth noting that when they do this, they automatically incur the wrath of "anti-racist groups" such as the SPLC and others, who will compile dossiers on them, write unpleasant things about them, and generally attempt to "expose" them as "haters" or "bigots".

As Matt Parrott has rightly said, these are just names, and what is the risk to an individual when, in reality, most of the opportunities they might have once expected no longer exist. Well, many people aren't as brave as Matt, and to them, the prospect of being denounced as a racist is a pretty intimidating thing.

Individual loopy commenters on leftist blogs might claim Matt Drudge, Glenn Reynolds or Ace are "racists," but it's safe to say that no international liberal organisations will be looking to get them fired from their jobs. They won't have to run the gauntlet of screaming, spitting, punching protestors to get into their hotel rooms or conventions. They won't have to forsake far more lucrative employment opportunities to do what is right.

Matt, Glenn, and Ace will just go on typing every day, complaining about what is and what isn't. They'll do their insect work of impotently chronicling the texture of the encroaching chaos, but without analysing its structure and pointing out the obvious solutions. They and theirs will continue doing this right up until the moment the power goes out and the darkness is broken only by the fires of doom.