RULING THE VOID: A BOOK REVIEW

Ruling the Void
By Peter Mair
Verso, 160 Pages
Available for purchase from Amazon here

Reviewed by William Solniger

Written by the Irish political scientist Peter Mair, who died before the book was finished, Ruling The Void is a penetrating account of the steady decline of democracy in Europe. In my view, the book is far better for having been left incomplete: it stands far stronger as a negative assessment of the times than it would had the author racked his Leftist politics for some illusory and half-hearted set of “solutions” to the structural problems he describes. The book seems to have attracted far less attention than it deserves, except from certain Eurosceptics who have focused myopically on its criticisms of the European Union, ignoring the wider significance of the “hollowing of democracy” which is the book’s main theme.

Ruling the Void opens with the most damning indicator of decline: the falling level of participation in national elections. Against those political scientists who are tempted to deny the evidence of this phenomenon, Mair establishes his position beyond doubt by a thorough review of the facts: electoral turnout has certainly been falling across Europe in the last decades, not in the sense that turnout is progressively lower for every election, but in the more general sense that troughs in participation occur more and more frequently.

THE ROOT OF PROGRESSIVIST SIN

by  William Solniger

The ‘True Right’ is informed by many writers who oppose the materialist perspective which insists on reducing human conflict to a profit-and-loss struggle over economic resources. While much of modern orthodoxy insists on analysing human affairs through a “rational” prism better suited to comprehending the behaviour of food-seeking worms, these writers (who include, for example, Ricardo Duchesne in The Uniqueness of Western Civilisation) correctly stress the irrational struggle for prestige – recognition of one’s status, remembrance of one’s deeds, and above all, aggrandisement of one’s pride – as a determining factor in social conflict.

NAVIGATING "VANTARDISM": SCREW SCYLLA, KICK CHARYBDIS!

by William Solniger

The recent debate over ‘vantardism’ has shone light on a problem that the true Right desperately needs to deal with before it can hope to harness its energies effectively. Reluctant as I am to whip up an already well-stirred pot, I think that the more suggestions are advanced for the resolution of the problem, the better.

For anyone who doesn’t already know, ‘vantardism’ – as defined by Greg Johnson – refers to stupid and self-defeating attempts at ‘vanguardism,’ i.e. organising a political vanguard. As far as the true Right is concerned, this vantardism nearly always amounts to a militant insistence on shackling Rightist ideals to the corpse of Hitler’s Third Reich, accompanied by the argument that everyone who does not do the same is merely indulging in a futile and cowardly dissimulation. The fact that the latter argument has any credibility at all can no doubt be traced back to the very real cowardice and futility of the mainstream conservative ‘false Right’ – which, as we are all aware, has fought the postwar cultural revolution in the West half-heartedly, two-mindedly and one-handedly, while employing most of its energies to viciously stab in the back any comrades who dare to overstep the bounds of progressivist “respectability.”

PETS OF CONVENIENCE

She was a PoET, bitch!

by William Solniger

Some time ago – as most readers will remember – the white people of progressive America hung their sinful heads in reverence as a low-tone, monotonous jangle (such as might be made by a large hollow object falling to the ground), accompanied by a hot, angry gust of wind (such as might be let out of an artificially-inflated receptacle), reverberated with the dull sepulchral echo of state-sanctified mediocrity across their troubled land. The hollow object was Maya Angelou and her so-called “poetry”; the hot bag of air was Ta-Nehisi Coates and his so-called “case for slavery reparations”; and given that these two had been puffed up to such giant proportions by the ethos of affirmative action, none in the establishment media dared to question that the cacophony emanating from them was anything other than an oracle of Social Justice.

THE NEW NEWSPEAK

by William Solniger

It is a fairly commonplace assertion on the Right that political correctness, which is the closest thing to a moral code in Western progressivism, seeks to make “injustices,” “hatreds,” and “phobias” out of things that were previously considered perfectly normal and natural. We do not need to look far afield for the victims of this tendency: they include ethnic consciousness in Europeans, the polarity of the sexes, and – increasingly – the assumption that the sex of an individual cannot be altered by genital surgery or hormone therapy.

Less well understood is the tendency of political correctness to take up real injustices, pathologies, and hatreds, and redefine them as shining examples of “social justice."

DEGENERATE MORALITY

                     

by William Solniger

Anyone who has seriously tried to practise any sort of virtue, however meagre, will know the necessity of making a habit of it – not just “knowing” it theoretically, but engraving it into his very being by constant repetition, so that he becomes what he repeatedly does. Because of this necessity for constant repetition, virtue cannot be left to the “important things” alone, but must permeate the insignificant and trivial ones as well. This is why the Hagakure contains the advice that “small matters should be taken seriously”; and this is perhaps also the reason behind the more arbitrary and petty aspects of religious and traditional codes.

In any case, it is a concept sorely neglected in the present day, as relativism provides the ultimate excuse to force all forms of virtue to bend and flex in the wind of particular circumstances and situations. But someone who cannot practise virtue inflexibly and habitually is very rarely able to practise it at all. Contrary to the belief of almost all of our contemporaries, someone who is accustomed to telling thousands of gentle lies and half-truths in everyday life cannot simply put down his habit of dishonesty to think about “important things” like life, the world, and himself; and this is similar to the truth that, despite much fantasising to the contrary, someone who is accustomed to avoiding confrontation in small matters of honour will rarely be able to draw his courage from its rusty scabbard on an occasion when he really needs it.

DRESS LIKE A REACTIONARY

by William Solniger

In this era where we are all assailed from all sides by more reading material than ever before, yet seem to act upon almost none of it, it is a rare and welcome occurrence when an article on the internet actually changes some small part of one’s philosophy of life. Thus it is with high distinction indeed that I credit Theodore Dalrymple’s article, Slobbery as Snobbery, for changing my mind on the subject of clothing.

THE TRIUMPH OF NEGATIVITY

by William Solniger

A common theme on the radical Right is the dilemma over whether to pursue mass political campaigns in the service of our goals, or devote time and effort to organising and educating a smaller group which can separate itself from the sewer of Western culture so as to act freely in the future. On the whole, the overriding tendency is to reject mass political action as unworkable or premature. This is true not only of those who hope to see a restoration of Traditional values in the West, but also of those who confine themselves to the sphere of nationalism and ethnic self-defence.

While I tend to agree with the diagnosis that political action is premature, it is important to note that this is the case only as regards converting the masses to some positive political movement offering a particular solution to the crisis of the West. Converting them to a negative rejection of the current system is another matter entirely, and it is this possibility that I wish to explore.

A VERY ORDINARY GOD

"Look at me! I'm magnificent..."

by William Solniger

So: the Isla Vista killer, Elliot Rodger... In choosing to cast my hat into this already overcrowded ring, I am not particularly interested in refuting the feminists and other progressivists who are standing upon this tragedy to bloviate about “rape culture,” “misogyny,” and “white racism.” If – as the saying goes – wrestling with a pig in muck is an unwise endeavour even if you win, it is surely even more unwise to grapple with the end of the pig which produces flatulence, and all the more so in the knowledge that the strength, odour and direction of this flatulence will be the same whether the pig has digested an Hispanic neighbourhood-watchman or an Eurasian psychopath; instead, the only wise option is to keep a dignified and healthy distance from the pig-sty.

IS ETHNIC REPLACEMENT 'UNDEMOCRATIC'?

by William Solniger

On the traditional conservative Right, it is a commonly-heard refrain that the introduction of mass immigration and multiculturalism into European nations – hereafter referred to in less euphemistic terms as “ethnic replacement”, for that it what it amounts to in practice – was and is fundamentally undemocratic. For example, we have the view of Patrick Buchanan, who states that:

“What is most significant about [ethnic replacement in the USA] is that the American people never voted for it and do not want it. It is being imposed from above, anti-democratically, by a regime that refuses to enforce our laws and is now at virtual war with the American people.”

SANE REVISONISM

by William Solniger

On the True Right, as indeed everywhere else, there is probably no topic more controversial than the question of revising the establishment view of the Second World War. However, the critical importance of the Second World War makes it inevitable that any movement of European revival will have to take up a position on it sooner or later. For what it’s worth, mine is as follows:

1. The establishment view of the Second World War, which upholds the present evil and unjust order in Europe and legitimises the ethnic replacement of Europeans, must be revised;
2. This revision must not proceed in the direction of whitewashing or ‘rehabilitating’ the justifiedly black reputation of Nazi Germany.

VICTORY THROUGH POLARIZATION, conclusion

Machiavelli of the modern age: Saul Alinsky

by William Solniger

(continued from part 1)

It is perhaps more difficult now than ever before to offer white Europeans new (or restored) values, identities, flags, causes, and heroes. Radical traditionalists who try to do this soon find themselves battling upstream – against the decadent Western “culture” that breeds apathy, irony and inertia; against the mass media that rushes to stigmatise any rightist cause that seems to be gaining momentum; and, significantly, against the leftist discourse of critique (taught in some form to every one of the legions of young people on the humanities-degree conveyor belt) that exists to “deconstruct”, ridicule, and otherwise smear shit over everything traditionally European.

VICTORY THROUGH POLARIZATION, PART ONE

by William Solniger

In a previous essay entitled “Resisting Egalitarian Humbug,” I introduced the concept of ‘kakistocracy’ (rule of the worst) to describe the type of elite which rules under the political formula of universal egalitarianism, and is commanded by both the logic of that formula and its own self-interest to incessantly attack its host society. I identified the modern “secular church” of progressivism with this type of elite, and noted that it shares a significant degree of common purpose with the more formal power- and wealth-holding elites of government and business.