ARE WE RIGHT? (PART II)

by James Lawrence

This is the second part of a three-part article. Go to Part I.

We have explored the question of how to clearly define ‘the Right’, and found that the macro-historical pattern identified by Bertrand de Jouvenel provides us with the best rule of thumb. In de Jouvenel’s narrative, Power (the governing authority) is shown to expand itself by allying with the lowest classes of people so as to subvert the social order, which is defended by traditional authorities such as the aristocracy. If the governing authority wins this struggle, the outcome is a levelled or inverted social landscape dominated by an unconstrained Power; if the aristocrats win it, they establish a strong social order overseen by a constrained Power, whose legitimacy depends on its role as a guardian and symbol of this order.

THE COSMOPOLITAN CLASS

by James Lawrence

Thanks to the corporate purge of Alt-Right outlets after Charlottesville, my old articles on ‘Cosmopolitans’ and ‘Cosmopolitanism’ have vanished into the dankest dungeons of the Goolag. At the same time, the word Cosmopolitan has gained public notoriety after having been used by Stephen Miller to slap down the Fake News, sending them into a tizzy over the supposed “anti-Semitic roots” of this word (although I am not suggesting that Miller acquired the word from me or anyone else on the Alt-Right). The longer article on the theory of the Cosmopolitan elite probably deserves to be reposted in full, but I would like to first recap its basic ideas in a briefer and more accessible way.

GETTING MEDIAEVAL

by James Lawrence 

It is a good thing that mediaevalists know all about doing homage, going to Canossa, and suchlike. Given the direct descent of progressivism from the early-modern Protestantism, humanism and classicism that overthrew the mediaeval era, it is not surprising that most people today still view that era as a period of barbarism. But the fort of anti-mediaevalism has long lain undefended in the progressivist rear, and mediaevalists (like Regine Pernoud) are generally free to walk up and demolish whole sections of it. Claims that mediaeval Europeans did not bathe or have table manners, that the Spanish Inquisition was a terrible holocaust, or that the scholars opposing Columbus in the 1490s thought that the Earth was flat, have all gone into the urban myths dustbin.

But now along comes the Alt-Right with a few 'Deus Vult' memes, and suddenly mediaevalism is controversial again. An achingly politically-correct article notes the Alt-Right's habitual use of mediaeval themes, and casts a suspicious eye on scholars who may be using the history of mediaeval Europe as a "safe space to be white" while "resisting critical theory". Expect a rush by mediaevalists to signal their political correctness by approving a non-white job grab in their field, rehashing old canards about benign Muslim influence and Andalusian paradise, and pretending to give a respectful hearing to "we-wuz-kangz" Afrocentric gibberish about European historical figures.

CONTRA COSMOPOLITANISM

by James Lawrence

  

In common with many others in this movement, I see European racial self-defence as the foundation of the Alt-Right. This does not mean, as some would have it, that this foundation is also the pinnacle, or that the Alt-Right can be reduced to it and nothing else. But in a future where the European people have been replaced, and the civilisation of Europe no longer exists in any form distinct from the modernist anti-culture to which it gave birth, everything else good and true on the Alt-Right ends up reduced to so much meaningless blog chatter.

However, I have long been aware of a serious shortcoming in ethnonationalism, which runs through all of its discourse like cracks in a wall. On the one hand, most if not all of the ethnonationalist charges against ‘foreigners’ (blacks, Muslims, Jews etc.) are both carefully reasoned and backed up with solid facts. On the other hand, cheek by jowl with these, we find statements and assumptions about ‘our own people’ (white Europeans) that are not only arbitrary and slapdash, but do not even accord with basic common sense.

THE COSMOPOLITAN AND THE EUROPEAN

by James Lawrence

Nationalists do not like to think of identity as malleable, invented, constructed by myths, determined by personal choice, and so on. This is natural enough, because such ideas – taken to their most ridiculous extremes – are used by our anti-nationalist establishment to garland the absurd superstition of magic borders, by which non-European foreigners are conjured into "British" and "French" so as to conceal the reality of an aggressive race-replacement policy.