Note: This was the article that led Richard Spencer to "defriend" Colin Liddell.
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| Long March or Pool Party, pls choose. |
The latest split in the Alt-Right is generating a clash of visions between, on the one hand, The Right Stuff (TRS) and the Daily Stormer (DS), and, on the other hand, the Traditionalist Workers Party (TWP) and their allies. (Note: Richard Spencer was recently closely associated with the TWP at his speaking event at Michigan State University, where TWP stalwarts faced off against agitated Leftists.)
While the TWP and Spencer are focused on "Charlottesville-style" street action and "serious" speaking events, facing off against antifa, bad cops, and snotty universities—a policy guaranteed to generate headlines in the MSM—the TRS/DS camp is focused on securing "safe spaces" to have private parties and make funny internet content, laced with K-word and N-word profanities that allow corporations to deplatform them with ease and a clear conscience.
TWP and Spencer's vision has affinities with Chairman Mao's Long March—namely an arduous, physically demanding, sometimes "paramilitary" operation that, it is hoped, will build the Alt-Right through struggle and take it to a point from where it can conquer. It is essentially Nietzschean in outlook and represents Spencer and TRS leader Matthew Heimbach's philosophical underpinnings. A Spenglerian would note its "Faustian" characteristics.
The TRS/DS vision, by contrast, has more of the "Last Man"—Nietzsche's critique of bourgeoise materialism—about it, with a concomitant emphasis on "safe spaces," sub-bacchanalian sensualism, and emotional and linguistic incontinence. A Spenglerian might say that it has "Magian"—and therefore "Semitic"—characteristics, signalled by its affinity with concepts like "White Sharia" and its invocation of the "Cavern," coven, congregation, or even ghetto as its prefered mode of existence.
In recent days, several posts have illustrated this deepening philosophical schism. Matt Parrott, the intellectual éminence grise of the TWP highlighted the downsides of TRS/DS's approach in an article, "Style and Substance," published at the TWP website:
This approach had been mocked earlier by Andrew Anglin in a post that found its way onto the TRS forum:
In the latest devlopment, TRS's Jesse Dunstan (sock name Seventh Son) has published a "mini manifesto" in the TRS forum, titled "Dad's Manifesto: Post Mania Manic Ramblings." (The title is a little odd, appealing to you give him an audience on the basis that he once spermed inside a woman!)
In this, he outlines his vision of a culture of meet-ups built round an alternative mini-media empire founded on extreme profanity and lulz, without much engagement with the outside world. This is basically "pool-party tribalism," that a visiting anthropologist could study for weeks without understanding exactly how it works. The article presents a vision of the Alt-Right as a cross between Club 18 to 30 and a Leper Colony:
To those unfamilair with all the ins-and-outs of the Alt-Right, it may not be obvious what Dunstan is proposing here in this long, rambling screed. Even with the "snip" edits and underlined text, it may still be confusing for some, so let me spell it out.
Essentially this is a vision of a cozy ghetto of claustrophobically-connected insiders, cut off and separated from the outside world, wallowing in their toxic tribal antipathy to the wider world. Obviously this would be a group in which cult dynamics would soon start to dominate, and it would probably end up keeping any members who wished to gravitate back to "normieworld" by sheer blackmail.
The other approach, the TWP approach, is also also essentially a colourful dead-end—at least as long as an unwieldy mass of globalists, civic nationalists, and technocrats—keep the global economy ticking over.
The TWP approach is clearly more noble, but it raises the social and professional costs of being in the Alt-Right even higher than the TRS/DS model. Here too, thanks to the high level of commitment required, we can expect to see cult dynamics also take a hold, if they haven't already.
Both factions, in my opinion, represent dead ends, and merely serve to toxify the basic message of the Alt-Right, which is—to remind everyone blinded by the drama—the clear expression of objective truths to a wide audience. Both factions also represent visions that have been rejected everywhere in Europe by successful identitarian movements, showing the usual insularity and tunnel vision of Americans.
No wonder everyone involved thinks everyone else is a Fed.
While the TWP and Spencer are focused on "Charlottesville-style" street action and "serious" speaking events, facing off against antifa, bad cops, and snotty universities—a policy guaranteed to generate headlines in the MSM—the TRS/DS camp is focused on securing "safe spaces" to have private parties and make funny internet content, laced with K-word and N-word profanities that allow corporations to deplatform them with ease and a clear conscience.
TWP and Spencer's vision has affinities with Chairman Mao's Long March—namely an arduous, physically demanding, sometimes "paramilitary" operation that, it is hoped, will build the Alt-Right through struggle and take it to a point from where it can conquer. It is essentially Nietzschean in outlook and represents Spencer and TRS leader Matthew Heimbach's philosophical underpinnings. A Spenglerian would note its "Faustian" characteristics.
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| Parrott, ready for action. |
In recent days, several posts have illustrated this deepening philosophical schism. Matt Parrott, the intellectual éminence grise of the TWP highlighted the downsides of TRS/DS's approach in an article, "Style and Substance," published at the TWP website:
"The truth is our greatest weapon, and doubling down on the truth with courage and focus is our greatest strategy. I understand and respect that there’s progress to be made in lurking in the gray area of anonymity, irony, and plausibly deniable performance art. I’m not hostile to or opposed to that work. It greases the skids, jamming the culture, and shifting the Overton Window. But as we all learned in Charlottesville, when you’ve got pepper spray in your eyes, the acrid taste of your own blood and snot in your mouth, and a nightmare swarm of trannies coming at you with rocks and bats, the serious and revolutionary nature of this struggle comes into full relief.
Our enemies are fighting for our genocide. And the greatest threat to our survival isn’t the trannies themselves, but the individualist American consumer culture which is lulling our people into a trance as the enemies gradually encroach.The majority of our movement aren’t ready to actually struggle and sacrifice for the coming nation, which is why they ghosted after Charlottesville. Not everybody is in a situation where they can be on the front lines, but the evaporation of support for the men on the front lines is damning. We are a movement where the leadership consensus is that we need to stop struggling for what we stand for, and that’s ridiculous."
This approach had been mocked earlier by Andrew Anglin in a post that found its way onto the TRS forum:
It's a question of whether or not [TWP] deserve respect, and I don't think they do. They are purposely making a mockery of this movement, of everything that I and others built. It has been years that I have made respectful suggestions to these people, both personally and privately, and they have simply attacked me for it. They know that everyone hates their shit, they know that it doesn't appeal to their target demographic - or anyone else - and they know their only shot at relevance is to attach themselves to people like Spenser (sic) and TRS. It is a totally callous, calculated move to try and achieve relevance. And no, I simply do not find that respectable at all. I think it's fucking disgusting.
They do not believe they are going to win anything. This is purely about Heimbach parading around attention whoring, like a fat kid who eats worms at recess so everyone comes and stares at him. Attaching that kind of poisonous shit to a legitimate political movement is just fucked.
In the latest devlopment, TRS's Jesse Dunstan (sock name Seventh Son) has published a "mini manifesto" in the TRS forum, titled "Dad's Manifesto: Post Mania Manic Ramblings." (The title is a little odd, appealing to you give him an audience on the basis that he once spermed inside a woman!)
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| Jesse Dunstan being (((ironic))) as usual. |
"I want the feel I felt among all my brodies at this weekend's event with all of you. I want to expand our operation as a Meatspace Network of Special Friends and Associates. I want to spend a lot of time and effort vetting as many of you as possible so we can confidently have events like TRStlemania more often and with more participants.
TRStlemania II was successful because most everyone didn't know about it. It was successful because no one who wasn't personally known on a 3D basis to at least 3 other attendees was invited. It was successful because TRS feels zero need to inform the media that we're about to do something cool for the cause. We did it and we acted as the alternative media we are and presented the report of the event to you when it was over [snip]
It's not about "optics," it's not about uniforms, helmets, polo shirts, torches, banner drops, flags or monuments. I question the very concept of "activism" in the real world in and of itself. I see no benefit to it, never saw any benefit to it, and I don't foresee anything about that changing...in the bigger picture, fighting with Antifa is an energy siphon GloboHomo set up to entrap us and waste our time [snip]
I did not get into this because I had a dream of "leading" a protest movement. I have a vision of solving another problem entirely. I want to replace the jewry that runs news and entertainment media. I want to be what the other controlled op Alt-Media guys profess to be. I want TRS.BIZ to be a megaphone for us, as well as a reliable source of info for us. I want TRS.BIZ to replace the shitty Zog Movies we put up with. [snip]
Imagine an outlet serving content NOT FROM A 3RD PARTY F** PLATFORM WITH "COMMUNITY GUIDELINES" but from our own infrastructure. Imagine Murdoch Murdoch, Radical Agenda, America First, Nationalist Review, Fash The Nation, TALES FROM THE TROUGH, and whatever non-news creative content we can come up with being served up right here FOR US, BY US, WITHOUT SUPERJEWCHAT FUNDING THE K***S THAT HATE US, WITHOUT AD DEALS WITH COMPANIES THAT ADVERTISE FOR LITERAL WHITE GENOCIDE ALONG WITH THEIR SHIT PRODUCTS."
To those unfamilair with all the ins-and-outs of the Alt-Right, it may not be obvious what Dunstan is proposing here in this long, rambling screed. Even with the "snip" edits and underlined text, it may still be confusing for some, so let me spell it out.
Essentially this is a vision of a cozy ghetto of claustrophobically-connected insiders, cut off and separated from the outside world, wallowing in their toxic tribal antipathy to the wider world. Obviously this would be a group in which cult dynamics would soon start to dominate, and it would probably end up keeping any members who wished to gravitate back to "normieworld" by sheer blackmail.
The other approach, the TWP approach, is also also essentially a colourful dead-end—at least as long as an unwieldy mass of globalists, civic nationalists, and technocrats—keep the global economy ticking over.
The TWP approach is clearly more noble, but it raises the social and professional costs of being in the Alt-Right even higher than the TRS/DS model. Here too, thanks to the high level of commitment required, we can expect to see cult dynamics also take a hold, if they haven't already.
Both factions, in my opinion, represent dead ends, and merely serve to toxify the basic message of the Alt-Right, which is—to remind everyone blinded by the drama—the clear expression of objective truths to a wide audience. Both factions also represent visions that have been rejected everywhere in Europe by successful identitarian movements, showing the usual insularity and tunnel vision of Americans.
No wonder everyone involved thinks everyone else is a Fed.
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| Intellectual heavyweights of a quickly sinking movement? |
so...your solution is....what?
ReplyDeleteRead to the end. You can't miss it, and it's simple. Don't bother to thank me.
Deletethis?
Delete"Both factions, in my opinion, represent dead ends, and merely serve to toxify the basic message of the Alt-Right, which is—to remind everyone blinded by the drama—the clear expression of objective truths to a wide audience."
Yes, but you missed a bit
Delete"Both factions also represent visions that have been rejected everywhere in Europe by successful identitarian movements, showing the usual insularity and tunnel vision of Americans."
my question was about solutions....you say I missed the solution part, and you pasted this:
Delete"Both factions also represent visions that have been rejected everywhere in Europe by successful identitarian movements, showing the usual insularity and tunnel vision of Americans."
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what you pasted was a criticism of both factions and also an observation about americans, specifically about insularity and tunnel vision....what you quoted is not a solution. So what do you quote it in answer to question about solutions?
It's obvious > Follow the success of identitarian movements in Europe.
DeleteThe answer is getting serious about an American ethnostate within 20 years. Despite the limited successes of Trump, he is not rolling back the demographic tide. Falling back to more defensible positions while we have the chance is the prudent thing to do. That doesn't mean that we have to forsake voting (it only takes an hour or so per year - basically zero effort), but we aren't simply voting our way out of this. Give me a movement that isn't totally toxic (like the Texas Nationalist Movement) and I will be there in person with my real name and my check book. I'm not standing next to toxic people who dabble with Naziism, violent rhetoric, helmets, body armor, clubs, shields, torches, insane rhetoric (white sharia).
ReplyDeletedon't use the term white ethnostate--instead push the idea of homelands set aside for appalachian-americans who have suffered discrimination in hiring, college admission, unequal treatment under the laws, and who are being displaced by mass immigration....
Deleteas for voting, I use you all to vote for the most anti-white dems in the primaries and vote straight Dem in the general election....the best way to red pill white normies is an anti-white establishment
Thanks, great write-up! And quick and timely. I did quite some surfing but didn´t come across the sources that are helpfully presented here.
ReplyDeleteAnd I learned new interesting points.
My impression is not at all as negative as Colin´s.
The easy part is: we want the preservation of the White Race.
The difficult part is: how to do it.
So how do it? Obvioulsy, by getting our fellow-Whites behind us
-> and I think here´s where the discussion starts: how do we get our fellow-Whites on board?
So it´s a question of strategy. And the question of allocation of resources.
Here are the present strategies:
-media work to reach Whites
-real life activism : big events
-real-life activism : flash mob events
In any case: I think all factions have way more in common than what separates them. They are not (necessarily) mutually exclusive.
I´m grateful for all efforts that works towards White interests.
TDS: Sven´s new approach: but that´s a great idea! It´s right on the money, exactly the step that needs to be done right now: let´s have our OWN infrastructure so we can´t be shut down ! Plus provide our own content. There´s nothing incestuous about this, that´s absurd.
TWP: it´s just a different topic. Heimbach goes a step further and asks, how exactly will the White ethnostate be organised. That´s anybody´s guess but the question is of-course fully legitimate.
Nazi-BS: I´m fully on board with Anglin: we are normal White dudes. There´s no need at all to refer to... whatever. We are normal White dudes and want our country and our heritage back. As Nazi-BS makes that harder: drop it! Simple as that.
So. No problems at all. Thanks to all who work towards the goal. You are heroes.
One look at the Italian election will show you that Spencer has been barking up the wrong tree since 2014.
ReplyDeleteThis post doesn’t have a workable premise. Neither the TWP/Spencer crew nor TDS/Anglin crew claim to be leaders of the Alt Right. Start from this premise, and go from there.
ReplyDeleteAlt-Right is failing, and is descending into in-fighting, because it has exhausted its appeal as many of the issues it fought for have become mainstream. It has been successful in its quest to shift the Overton Widnow and consequently it has become the victim of its own success.
ReplyDeleteThe public discourse has really changed in US in the last 2 years. Lots of issues which were heavily suppressed (and thus charged, edgy and good material for AR) are now discussed.
This in-fighting is just a symptom of aimlessness. It is cannibalism because of the lack of focus on an external enemy.
To compensate this, they now fight eachother and organize "internet bloodsports" in order to get attention, maintain relevance, and to keep themselves, and their close circle of followers, entertained.
The small and odd differences between these two factions are in fact irrelevant, they have become an issue because little else of relevance to do.
AR needs to move on. The way to go is not fighting eachother in a cannibal-fun-fest, and not competing with Tucker's show, Ann Coulter tweets, or lashing out at the Alt Lite (Sargon, Peterson) for "stealing" some of the Alt Right audience with they upgraded version of Cuckservatism/classic-liberalism.
AR has to identify the new fault lines, the new brewing tensions, and exploit them.
Spencer has clearly failed. Stop this idiot running our movement and everything will improve.
DeleteSpencer, whether alive or dead, doesn't matter. Alt Right is a decentralized movement, a network of people and informal groups who act concertedly because they share a similar worldview (and hate of the "system") not because they form a hierarchical, order-driven, organization.
DeleteSpencer as the leader of Alt-Right is a fiction, a creation of the mainstream media which wanted paint an image of the Alt-Right that the normies can process.
Spencer is as vital for Alt-Right as Bin-Laden was for the islamists radicals, i.e. not at all, the Islamists are loosely connected, decentralized networks united by they "political islam" ideology. They never needed special instructions from Bin Laden in order to know what to attack, who is friend and who enemy.
Going after Spencer is just another symptom of this aimlessness and descend into cannibalism which has gripped the movement lately.
I sit back and laugh at both of those groups. The idea that they represent a "movement" is laughable. The idea that a few webwankers are "leaders" of anything but a few other webwankers is utterly laughable. Those "It's ok to be white" posters accomplished more in less time than everything those two clown posses have ever done since day one. Think about it. They played the commies like a grand piano. Simple, effective, and got wide mass media coverage with an innocuous message that no doubt made people think. Imagine if you had to pay for that. On the other hand, both of the groups described in this post are nothing but bad manifestations of Click Deficit Disorder, especially Spencer. Always remember, that when it comes to guys like Spencer, their business model requires that they fail at their own mission statement. The idea should be to get the commies to self-discredit, not do it to yourself.
ReplyDeleteI had a much longer post but the comment section won't let me do more than 4096 characters. Oh well.
ReplyDeleteThere are four kinds of goyim in relation to Jewish Power.
There are the Swallowers who not only suck the Jewish Penis but swallow the cum. Most goyim in high position are Swallowers. John McCain, Paul Ryan, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, and etc not only sucked but swallowed.
Then, there are Spitters who suck the Jewish Cock and pretend to swallow but spit it out. They are like Randall McMurphy in ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST who takes the pill only to spit it out later. Jews get awful antsy with Spitters who are, however, tolerated as long as they don’t rise up too high in the ranks. Jews are angry with Trump because a Spitter became president. Trump does a lot of sucking of Jewish cock, but he later spits out the cum.
And then you got the Slappers who slap the Jewish Cock away and refuse to suck it. Jews hate these people like a Pimp hates a whore who won’t do as told and suck. Just like pimps beat up prostitutes to make them suck, swallow, and spread, Jewish Power uses all its muscle to punish those who slap the Jewish dick away and won’t suck. This is why Jewish Power punches hard at Slappers like Paul Nehlen who slaps the Jewish cock away and says, “Ewwww, gross, I ain’t sucking it.”
And then, there are the Slicers. Slicers feel that it’s not enough to say NO and slap the Jewish cock away. Jews will never stop coming after goyim, just like Harvey Weinstein wouldn’t say NO to women who rebuffed him. They had to watch him, suck him, and fuc* him. He has the power, and this ‘god’[according to Meryl Street] demanded that women around him be suckers and Swallowers.
And for that reason, Slicers believe that Slappers aren’t enough to deal with the Jewish Cockuestion. Just like Zeus dealt with Cronus by cutting off his balls, the Slicers believe that the Evil Scrotum of Jewish Power must be sliced open. Nehlen isn’t yet a Slicer but he is an adamant Slapper.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3vldDGzcrg
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ReplyDeleteNazi garbage is the albatross around Alt Right's neck.
ReplyDeleteHeimbach could be doing good work but disgraces himself with Nazi regalia and garbage.
I can understand why Spencer relies on Trad Youth because they are the only ones willing to fight back against Antifa scum that is Janissary force of the Jews.
But so much could have been done MINUS the Nazi trash garbage.
But no one ever learns.
Now, I'm not talking about the edgy ironic use of Nazi stuff just to be funny. While we shouldn't mock Shoah as historical tragedy, we should mock how Jews exploit for political advantage. Jews are shameless at that.
I'm talking about earnest use of Nazi crap,and Heimbach either too stupid or retarded to realize what Evil is. Nazism was evil. It had some promising ideas but totally disgraced itself with imperialism and the violation of other nation's right to borders, security, and identity.
Hitler was an 'Aryan' Soros whose plan was to destroy the Slavs.
ReplyDeleteWhere did it go wrong?
After Charlottesville, the message should have been JEWS DID THIS, JEWS DID THIS, JEWS DID THIS. Jewish supremacism trampled on White National Liberation.
Also, Alt Right should have made sure no a**hole comes with a Nazi flag. In fact, the Alt Right should go ‘antifa’ on any dumb Nazi moron. Either the Neo-Nazi is a mole/agent, an idiot, or a moral monster.
Plenty of Jews and federal agents have infiltrated dissident movements and pushed them to extremes to discredit them. FBI did this with leftist organizations as well in the late 60s. Alt Right should have beaten up that freak who carried the Nazi flag at Charlottesville. It’s one thing to unite the Right but another thing to ASSOCIATE the right with moral zombies.
For those who really worship Hitler and Nazism, they are too dumb. Or they are moral monsters who see nothing wrong with Germans invading Russia, wiping out millions and turning people into slaves. And even though we agree that Jews are a bunch of a**holes, the Shoah where women and children were massacred by the bushel was surely an act of monstrosity. If people can’t understand that, they are hopeless. If Alt Right makes room for Nazis, it is finished.
Now, there were some good ideas in National Socialism.. just like there were some good things about Communism. But both NS and Communism disgraced themselves so much with Hitlerlism, Stalinism, and Maoism that they can’t be rehabilitated..
If we are to draw on the good ideas of NS(and even commnunism), we need a new ideology and new symbols. The Old stuff just has too much negative baggage.
The problem with Spencer is he overreaches. A guerrilla fighter must try to win battles, not the war. Spencer’s head is in the stars. Conquer Space! We can barely defend EU and US but he dreams of conquering Mars and Stars.
Also, he dreams of a STAR WARS-like future where the Empire is the good guys and conquering the world all over again with some Faustian whatever.
Enough already. The West easily conquered the world long ago because natives of the New World had no resistance to disease. Also, only the West had big guns and ships. And most importantly, the non-whites had no national consciousness. So, when European imperialists invaded non-white lands by defeating the local elites, there was no Mass Movement of resistance. When Brits took India, there was no India, no unity. Just local chieftains and village hicks. But if UK tried to take India again, it is faced with 1.3 billion united as one with guns and ships and even nukes. Old-style Imperialism is so over.
So, stop with the childish STAR WARSIAN Darth Vader act. We are not superheroes in some batman universe.
Spencer talks about how Alt Right needs to grow up and stop goofing around with Pepe and Kek, but is his STAR WARS fantasy of Stars and Mars and a new round of WHITE MAN’S BURDEN really adult and mature? What’s the point of opposing globalist imperialism just so, maybe just maybe, we can take power to conquer and rule the world again and create another mess with all this invasion, diversity, and whatnot?
No, we need the combination of three things: Nationalism, Humanism, and History. Nationalism is the demand that OTHER Peoples respect your nation’s borders, people, and culture in exchange for your respect of their borders and culture. Now, suppose if Hitler had kept to nationalist mode. Everything would have been fine. But the moron invaded Poland and then Russia and made a mess of things. Imperialism sucks. Nationalism is ambitious and bigger than tribalism.. but it is sensible and sober enough to reject imperialism and the domination of others. Alt Right must be nationalist. Spencer’s ultimate dream is some STAR WARS globalist-imperialism where white guys get to larp as darth vader and rule over African Negroes. Please no more of that.
DeleteWe also need humanism because it it keeps us humble and reminds us of our limits. If the video above has value, it is Spencer eating humble pie and admitting the limits of human potential. A boxer becomes a human being not when he becomes champion but when he loses. He realizes his limits. Greeks knew that there was nothing more dangerous than Hubris. Icarus soon found out. Jews understood it through Towel of Babel story. Nazi Germans were so full of themselves, pretending to be god-men. They discovered their humanity in the defeat at Stalingrad. We need humanism. It is not ‘slave morality’ but human morality. We are not gods or some superheroes. Alt Right needs to connect more with the People, ordinary people who are hurting bad and in need of leadership. Matt Heimbach had a chance to play this role but that fatso lunkhead wants to be Himmler-Goering and goes around in Nazi regalia, which is funny as hell because tubby boy(who looks like Ned Beatty in DELIVERANCE) hardly looks like ubermench. Ubereatingmensch maybe.
And we need a deeper sense of history. While the West has a rich history, there is no sense of Narrative that ties together all the threads… like the Torah did it for the Jews. Whites need their own narrative bible that ties the past to present to prophecy. It is only through such that whites can find their own Covenant.
Anyway… returning to Charlottesville, it should have been obvious that Jews were the main force behind the shutdown. Jews engineered the clampdown. Since Jews control politicians and media, they were able to get away with so much.
Then, the Alt Right should have made this case over and over and over. Yes, it was the Jews. Why did Jews do it? Because Jews are in supremacist mode, and they demand White Submissivism to get Jewish power going.
Spencer needs to stop thinking like the master race who just happens to be on the bottom. Roy Batty in BLADE RUNNER is a slave that wants to be master.
He rebels against injustice but dreams of tyranny.
And that is the problem with the Alt Right. All this pop-Nietzsche stuff about how the White Race must RULE. How can the Alt Right oppose Jewish supremacism if its own agenda down the line is ‘muh supremacism’?
We need to oppose Jewish supremacism and reject White submissivism because we stand for white humanism and nationalism: the right of white people to defend their own nations just like Viets and Algerians had the right to kick out French or American imperialists.
Best moral weapon against supremacism(of Jews) is humanism and justice, not counter-supremacism.
Andrea Daley doesn'the sound like a daley.Could she be a (((troll))).
ReplyDeleteAndrea Daley doesn'the sound like a daley.Could she be a (((troll))).
ReplyDeleteMy honest impression of Spencer (which, being an *honest* impression, may ring quite harsh, but is not meant as a personal attack) is that he is mostly driven by the desire to make a great name for himself that he does not possess the qualities to achieve within his rich and elite peer group. His ideas are highly flexible, and secondary to the long-odds gamble on personal ambition that his involvement with racial nationalism represents: he tends to drift upon the mood of the movement in the present moment, while gravitating towards opportunities for self-promotion within it. This is why he was such an effective focal point for so many disparate schools of thought back in the days of the original decentralised Alt-Right; and this is why he is now lurching from failure to failure, carried on a surge of collective idiocy, as hordes of Stormfront types pour into the movement and squeeze out its original intellectualism in favour of WN 1.0.
ReplyDeleteTherefore, as Ovidiu says, focusing on Spencer is unnecessary, because he is just a medium for the prevalent tenor of the movement as a whole. Moreover, that movement - being decentralised, and full of people who do not agree on anything much outside a vague opposition to the "system" - is not likely to raise up a leader with a more specific and uncompromising vision anytime soon. The lightest, most manoeuverable vessels are inevitably going to rise to the top and be crowned 'leader' by the media, and if this role is not filled by Spencer it will only end up going to someone very similar.
This means that the problem to be corrected, assuming it *can* be corrected, lies in the fundament of ideas underpinning the Alt-Right. And among these ideas, I would specifically pick out a classic symptom of untreated liberalism: the myth that a marginalised group can wrest political rights, even in the teeth of opposition from Power, by parading through the streets in a show of popular insurrection. The Alt-Right is not red-pilling its members thoroughly enough if they are still inclined to swallow this fairy tale, which is just as fanciful as any egalitarian dogma on race, and is contradicted by the history of the successful fascist movements which were appointed into power by conservative elites.
No-one who was no longer a democrat at heart would have thrown away the vague and decentralised concept of the Alt-Right, in which ethnonationalism had smuggled itself into the outer fringes of a movement that had just ascended to high office in the US, in favour of playing to a gallery of internet trolls with Hitler salutes and "hail victory". The same can be said for the decision to move away from guerrilla structure and tactics, always necessary for asymmetrical warfare, in favour of becoming a big centralised open target for Power to punch in the face. In my view the Alt-Right needs to learn from the neoreactionary movement, not in the sense of confining ourselves to risk-free 'passivism' and intellectual chatter, but in the sense of having a proper understanding of Power and taking a realistic view of the prospects for challenging it head-on.
James Lawrence wrote:
Delete"The Alt-Right is not red-pilling its members thoroughly enough if they are still inclined to swallow this fairy tale, which is just as fanciful as any egalitarian dogma on race, and is contradicted by the history of the successful fascist movements which were appointed into power by conservative elites."
Unfortunately true. It's sad that the alt right is gravitating towards hitler when hitler was actually just a front for the upper class/corporations...and it is that same upper class and big corporations that has crammed american full of foreigners and pumped our school curriculum full of anti-white multiculti propaganda....sad...the real problem is that people are just stupid...even white people...
Yeah, hitler was basically a puppet, albeit a talented one...
any successful path ahead needs to deal with the reality that we can only win via propaganda that appears to come from the establishment...and that we must hurt the establishment economically in order to force them to give us homelands for appalachian-americans...etc...etc
Hitler's relationship with big business was exaggerated by his Marxist opponents, and although the conservative establishment brought him into power with the intention of using him as a puppet, he lost no time in cutting the strings. But the ability of his SA men to rival the Communists as a paramilitary force depended on the leniency of the conservative Weimar judiciary, and he would never have had a shot at power without the patronage of a conservative elite that was a) in power, b) in a crisis of legitimacy and c) willing to work with his party. Much the same applies to the career of Mussolini, who was not only appointed by the Italian king, but also eventually sacked by him as well.
DeleteFor better or worse, Spencer is flexible in his tactics and his associations, but the suggestion that he is merely an empty vessel opportunist riding a wave is very far off the mark. Spencer's core doctrine is—and he says this all the time—that race is our foundational identity. Before we were English and French and Dutch, we were whites. Race is the oldest and truest group identity, and no matter what you do, that identity is with you from the day you are born until the day you die. *Put Simply*, it is the foundational identity. And its time has come: globalization's erasure of traditional identities and boundaries is bringing an ever closer shared cultural experience to all the Western world, ironically, bringing whites' lived reality closer inline with their ancient racial identity. The Imperium idea flows from this understanding/belief.
DeleteAnd whatever you think of this narrative (I have certain objections to it), it is considerably more sophisticated than WN 1.0 (the AmRen Right). I am not a huge fan of the simplistic TRS-style populism that has taken hold in some places, but I shed no tears over the fact that there are fewer essays floating around the Alt Right about neoreaction, religious mysticism, and MGTOW.
That stuff was almost always stupid, logically incoherent and empirically invalid. Many seem to think that the original Alt Right was intellectually superior to WN 1.0 because it had ideas about things beyond race—crudely calculating that more is automatically better. Broadening the range of issues is often a cover for not having anything new to say about the real issue at hand. The true promise of the Alt Right is not in the fusion of white nationalism with Jacobitism or techno-feudalism; it has always been that we have a deeper understanding of racial nationalism and identity.
As for the recent "failures," I see no indication that our numbers are shrinking, we're simply being repressed. You may say that Spencer and company should have known what kind of opposition they would face irl, but how exactly? Until the last year or two, police generally were able to keep the peace between WN demonstrators and antifa scum. It's not that hard to do: you put the police between the two sides.
Why the police are no longer able to provide this seemingly straightforward service is an open question. Maybe the BLM movement has made made them gun-shy about cracking down on leftist thugs in general. And the late Obama-age collapse certainly provided fertile ground for paranoia and totalitarianism on the Left; which led to the rise of both Trump and the Alt Right, further amplifying the leftist freak-out, so maybe there are just a lot more unhinged Leftists running around. And of course, Charlottesville happened. If Heather Heyer were still alive, the situation would probably feel a lot different.
I said he was a light vessel, not an empty one. And I wasn't just being passive-aggressive when I said that this appraisal of him was not meant as a personal attack. As people in other eras were well aware, the desire to win glory is a powerful motivation for a leader, and Spencer has done more good in his time than any number of crankish and inflexible true-believers. Unfortunately, after Trump's election, these personal qualities led to his becoming the aperture for a vast upsurge of foolishness motivated by the "awaken the people by popular insurrection" idea.
DeleteYou may fault the original Alt-Right for lacking ideological coherence and focus, but as a decentralised catch-all movement, it never needed much coherence or focus other than that of the individual groups within it. The point of it was to act as a medium for the various people who had been purged by cuckservatives during their long gatekeeping effort against the radical Right, and act as a support for the conspiracy within conservatism to overthrow these gatekeepers and replace them with people who actually want to defeat the Left - which would restore the basic situation enjoyed by the old fascist movements, in which there were highly placed conservative elites willing to work with them in a crisis. That aspect of the Alt-Right has been well and truly sunk by recent events, and I can't help but miss it, although I suppose we should be grateful that it managed to do as much as it did before breaking apart.
As for the value of neoreactionary thought, I admit it's a mixed bag, and I certainly don't advocate engaging with it uncritically. But as you then go on to say that Spencer and friends could not have anticipated the kind of repression they would face in real life, well, let's take a look at this post from early 2016 on a prominent neoreactionary site:
http://www.socialmatter.net/2016/04/05/right-wing-activism-always-fails/
Now, I don't take the extreme "passivist" position of this author, and many critics like AntiDem make good points against him in the comments. But it is impossible to read this post, or the Moldbug post from *2011* that it is based on, and think "let's do away with shadowy guerrilla tactics in favour of centralising into a big open target" or "we'll get what we want by parading down the streets like BLM and the police are sure to treat us impartially". Charlottesville may have hit a new low in official partisanship and cooperation with the antifa, but hey, it's not as if WN 1.0 didn't have prominent leaders being legally enserfed by Morris Dees for stuff that would not have merited a slap on the wrist for a leftist. We in the Alt-Right have chosen to learn the hard way, but at least the notables in our movement have begun to absorb the lesson before it's too late.
Well, I guess its a relative concept, but I wouldn't characterize Spencer as a light vessel. As for his role in the American WN scene, it is not for nothing that he the most prominent figure at the moment. For better or worse, the ideological tendencies of contemporary WN (to the extent that those tendencies are different from past WN phases) owes more to his ideas than anyone else's. He is the new Jared Taylor, in other words. And from my perspective, he is an obvious intellectual improvement on Taylor's vision. If we are to judge a movement by the intellectual quality of its figureheads, which is not the worst measure, things are broadly moving in the right direction—Spencer>Taylor>David Duke.
DeleteThat said, I agree that Spencer's theatrical desire to be provocative and make a splash does sometimes cause unnecessary aggravation. He would have done better in certain situations if he had hewed closer to Taylor's respectability doctrine, but on balance I think his way is also a tactical improvement.
To be clear, my critique of the old Alternative Right is not that the extraneous branches made the whole incoherent, but that those extraneous parts were in themselves rationally and empirically unsound, for the most part. It's not that they never had anything interesting to say, but most of it was pretty unconvincing to me.
The thesis of the socialmatter essay is simply that the deck is stacked against us, which is obviously true, but as you admit, it does not follow that we are helpless. If the cathedral and its leftist congregants are going to smash any identifiable right-wing dissenters, then is it even safe to read right-wing material on the internet? If the authorities set their minds to it, they could track down every single one of us. And the truth is that one day they might do just that. Given the totalitarian trajectory the Left is on, that possibility, or something close to it, is not inconceivable.
To avoid that fate, we have to be IRL at some point. I don't know quite what you mean by giving them an "open target," but real life events are helpful to reaching the general public and they are a must to establish ourselves as part of the general public.
I've never been a big fan of protest marches, not because I worried so much about state/public oppression (though I do now), but because I think that a protest that draws less supporters than the average frat party is not a good look. But as for holding events (conferences and speaking tours), those are necessary. We need to find a way somehow, hopefully sooner rather than later.
> Follow the success of identitarian movements in Europe.
ReplyDeleteEurope? The place where blood-n-soil ethnic identities have formed over 1000+years and any mixing that was done, was done with a close-enough ethnic neighbor?
America, a place where the founding fathers literally had negroes living in their houses not to mention all the other various aspects of colonial mechanics.
An identitarian movement in the USA would be MAGA/Trumpism. You may not like it but that's what it is. You might "think" there's a better way (race-focused vision) than the TRS/TWP/Spencer/Stormer/1.0/2.0 tards are offering...
But there probably just isn't.
Richard Spencer is the Bertie Wooster of the Alt-Right.
ReplyDeleteThis criticism has the same faults as a lot of sniping in the AR over the years. It assumes that there is only one way forward and that the criticisee is responsible for the movement as a whole.
ReplyDeleteI think it's a good move by TRS to stick with creating content. Stick to what you're good at. Mike Enoch is also probably sick of getting sued.
We all are pretty much agreed that at least someone needs to create content. Because content is a proven method of getting converts. We know it works. I would think that the adults among us are all also agreed that a diversity of content is good. Like TRS, Alternative Right, Jim Goad, Taki etc
We are also pretty much agreed that content is not enough.
There really should be no controversy on all these points.
Where the controversy comes in is the point when some parties actions in either IRL or content creation is seen not as a diverse activity but one that weakens the movement as a whole. There is the rub. But that point wasn't really rubbed off on here.
Victor Stamp
(by the way this comment functionality sucks, but you guys know that)
The movement is populated by scum period. Heimbach having an affair with parrot's wife while preaching about religion and chastity. Morally, the alt right is garbage.
ReplyDeleteYou sure know how to pick sides, Colin. Are you currently helping Matt Parrott at the women's shelter?
ReplyDeleteSpencer, Anglin, Heimbach, et al, are all toxic losers. The Alt Right is disintegrating due to internal pressures and contradictions, and will collapse just like the Soviet Union.
ReplyDelete