Turning Point Trumpism

By Robert Hampton

Charlie Kirk at CPAC, where a cardboard flat = truth in advertising

Another CPAC has come and gone, and national populism was almost non-existent at this year’s conservative gala.

Even though Donald Trump became president on a national populist agenda that challenged conservative orthodoxy on immigration, foreign policy, trade, and state power, CPAC 2019 offered the impression he won on the stale conservatism of Ronald Reagan.

The major themes of CPAC 2019 were the evils of socialism (but no mention of why it’s becoming popular), the sheer awesomeness of Israel, pandering to non-whites, and the greatness of capitalism. There was only one panel on immigration, none advocating foreign policy realism, and just two speeches that delivered a nationalist message. One was from the Italian nationalist politician Giorgia Meloni, which largely went unnoticed.

The other was from conservative commentator Michelle Malkin, which did get noticed. Malkin scorched Republican leaders for failing their voters on immigration and insisted diversity is not a strength. It was the highlight of a depressing conference that banned nationalists and followed the orders of Left-wing reporters.

The low point of the conference came from Trump himself. The president gave a rambling, two-hour speech on the final day of the conference in which he voiced support for increasing immigration. “We want people to come in. We need workers to come in, but they’ve got to come in legally and they’ve got to come in through merit,” Trump said, admitting this message was different from what he campaigned on.

The reason for this alleged need to increase immigration was to satisfy the demands of “our corporations,” a sentiment alien to the spirit of national populism. Trump once promised a new movement on the Right that would push the interests of white America against the dictates of globalism. Now we’re treated to the same old platitudes. “We stand with Israel!” “Socialism sucks!” “Tax cuts rock!” It’s movement conservatism dressed up with funny tweets and quasi-populist bravado.

There’s unfortunately a group that represents this sad vision of Trumpism—sans the funny tweets. Turning Point USA was the dominant presence at CPAC, according to The Daily Beast. TPUSA’s young leader, Charlie Kirk, had a presence everywhere, including a giant cardboard cutout of himself that CPAC attendees could take a picture with. Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel praised Kirk and fellow TPUSA figure Candace Owens, saying the party needs more leaders like them. Several other speakers, including President Trump, also gave shout outs to Kirk, Owens, and TPUSA for the “incredible work” the group does.

TPUSA represents Trumpism stripped of nationalist policies and a clear sense of purpose. This is Trumpism as a personality cult advocating for low-IQ movement conservatism. It doesn’t fight for white America, it grifts off white America.

TPUSA’s mission statement claims it is a group that works “to educate students about the importance of fiscal responsibility, free markets, and limited government. Through non-partisan debate, dialogue, and discussion, Turning Point USA believes that every young person can be enlightened to true free market values.”

That hardly sounds like America First nationalism.

The group is bankrolled by numerous conservative donors and is the most prominent conservative student group at the moment. That achievement is largely due to its founder, Charlie Kirk, glomming onto the Trump family and moment. Kirk hasn’t really changed the message of the group to conform to the Trump moment outside of sycophantic praise for the president. The 25-year-old TPUSA leader is still primarily concerned with promoting the glories of capitalism and how kids just want tax cuts.

Kirk showcased this divergence from the populist zeitgeist in a debate with Fox News host Tucker Carlson. Tucker suggested America should think of itself as a family, to which Kirk loudly objected. “It is not government’s role to take care of its citizens!” Kirk argued. Carlson laughed at that claim and wondered what’s the role of government if not to take care of its citizens. Kirk only offered the government’s responsibility “to provide for the national defense”… which is taking care of its citizens.

Campaign Trump would have taken Carlson’s side. The then-candidate’s arguments against mass immigration, neoconservative foreign policy, and bad trade deals always focused on how these things hurt American citizens and it was the government’s job to right these wrongs. National Review writer Kevin Williamson attacked candidate Trump for imagining the nation as a family in his infamous 2016 essay hoping for the death of white working-class communities.

Candace Owens is the perfect symbol of the degraded Trumpism TPUSA promotes. Owens didn’t even vote for Trump. In 2016, she was a public liberal who ran a dox sitefocused on “racists.” Soon after Trump won, Candace rebranded as “RedPillBlack” and made videos on how Democrats were the real racists. Based blacks are always a hit with white conservatives, and Owens has milked the grift for all its worth. She’s a leader of the conservative movement and just launched her own show on the very popular PragerU YouTube channel.

It’s unclear what political principles Ms. Owens has besides grabbing attention and supporting whatever Trump does. The only policy she has advocated with gusto is criminal justice reform, a policy she claims would win over non-white felons for the GOP. Owens has accused Republicans who oppose this policy that would prioritize the interests of non-whites over the safety of whites of, gasp!, racism. She deridedArkansas Sen. Tom Cotton’s opposition to the policy as a denial of “opportunity to millions of black Americans.”

That statement smacks of the “identity politics” TPUSA rails against, but on that issue, the group displays remarkable hypocrisy. Judging by the group’s conferences and rhetoric, the only form of identity politics that is not okay is white identity politics. TPUSA has organized leadership conferences for blacks, Hispanics, and women and it frequently touts Trump’s dumb talking points about how much his presidency is benefitting women and minorities.

Owens is spearheading the ultimate expression of conservative non-white identity politics: “Blexit.” Blexit is a well-funded venture to convince blacks to leave the Democrat plantation. The primary pitches are: Dems R The Real Racists, low black unemployment, Kanye West, and criminal justice reform. So far, Blexit hasn’t made any inroads in the black community for the GOP. It was debuted right before the election, but, once again, less than ten percent of blacks voted Republican in 2018. The first Blexit event in January drew in a predominately white audience, demonstrating this latest endeavor at non-white pandering is a farce.

Kirk and Owens aren’t just limiting their efforts to the US. In February, Turning Point UK was launched with a bevy of minority faces fronting the group. One of the first videos put out by TPUK included a list of what they are fighting for and what they are fighting against. The things TPUK fights for are: free markets, free speech, free nations, free people, limited government, personal responsibility, and common sense. What they fight against: socialism, racism, identity politics, alt-right, alt-left, nativism, and collectivism.

In other words, they fight for the interests of corporations against genuine nationalism. The video outlining what they fight for claims they want to work with “mainstream organizations” to “build a fresh movement.” The purpose of the group appears to play gatekeeper for the British Right and exclude actual nationalists from the discussion.

TPUK’s other videos are similarly goofy, sporting such titles as, “Sorry to disappoint, but I’m not a socialist,” “The Racism of the Left,” “I’m Conservative and Gay. So What?,” and “I’m Literally a Capitalist.” Unsurprisingly, the launch of the group was met with mockery and derision by the British. Leftists mocked it on Twitter, journos called the cucky group “alt-right,” and the Conservative Party warned its young members to not associate with TPUK. The good bit of news is that the group won’t be able to play gatekeeper due to its low reputation. The bad news is that the group netted the support of prominent politicians like Jacob Rees-Mogg and has plenty of funding to continue its stupid mission.

TPUSA raised $8.2 million from July 2016 to June 2017 largely on the premise it would wean young people away from socialism and big government. However, the main consumers of TPUSA’s message are boomers. According to the data gleaned from TPUSA’s Facebook advertising, the primary demographic for the group’s terrible memes is the 55-64 age group. People under the age of 34 constitute less than eight percent of the average consumer pool for TPUSA’s ads.

It should be no surprise that this group struggles to win over young people. Its aesthetics are terrible, its message is Boomer-fried, its most famous activism put college students in diapers, and its leaders are obvious grifters. Compare the astroturfed nature to that of Identity Evropa, a bona fide youth movement that overcomes far more challenges to win over young people. That’s a group that actually expresses the Trump moment, but its leader, Patrick Casey, was banned from CPAC. Grifting is more acceptable than nationalism.

TPUSA’s continued success and influence is due to the Trump apparatus’ embrace of the group. It’s why the GOP celebrates their efforts and CPAC lets them run their event. National Review types dislike TPUSA as much as the Dissident Right does, but their distaste doesn’t seem to affect the group’s power.

Conservative youth groups have nearly always been stupid efforts to convince young people to embrace ideologies antithetical to their interests. TPUSA is just the most visible and influential expression of this trend. It would be nice if we could sit and laugh at their harmless diaper protests. Sadly, the people on the American Right with power think they’re awesome and prefer their message to the national populism of Tucker Carlson and Ann Coulter.

Trump didn’t win the presidency on TPUSA’s message. He won because he challenged the idiocy of Conservative Inc. and offered a new Right-wing alternative to the GOP’s failures. But since he won, the president has made too many concessions to the idiocy he ran and won against.

It appears that Trump’s 2020 message will have more in common with TPUSA than Carlson. Middle America will be treated to the tired message of tax cuts, more aid for Israel, “socialism bad,” and more immigrants for corporations. And Charlie Kirk and Candace Owens will be right there with Trump as he abandons Trumpism to tout TPUSAism.

National populism is still the most viable right-wing ideology in America. It just needs a new champion — or for its old champion to come to his senses.

Trump's Betrayal Of White America

                               By Alex Graham

         

“Unlike other presidents, I keep my promises,” Trump boasted in a speech delivered on Saturday to the Republican Jewish Congress at a luxury hotel in Las Vegas. Many in the audience wore red yarmulkes emblazoned with his name. In his speech, Trump condemned Democrats for allowing “the terrible scourge of anti-Semitism to take root in their party” and emphasized his loyalty to Israel.

Trump has kept some of his promises. So far, he has kept every promise that he made to the Jewish community. Yet he has reneged on his promises to white America – the promises that got him elected in the first place. It is a betrayal of the highest order: millions of white Americans placed their hopes in Trump and wholeheartedly believed that he would be the one to make America great again. They were willing to endure social ostracism and imperil their livelihoods by supporting him. In return, Trump has turned his back on them and rendered his promises void.

The most recent example of this is Trump’s failure to keep his promise to close the border. On March 29, Trump threatened to close the border if Mexico did not stop all illegal immigration into the US. This would likely have been a highly effective measure given Mexico’s dependence on cross-border trade. Five days later, he suddenly retracted this threat and said that he would give Mexico a “one-year warning” before taking drastic action. He further claimed that closing the border would not be necessary and that he planned to establish a twenty-five percent tariff on cars entering the US instead.

Trump’s failure here is his alone. Closing the border could be accomplished with a simple executive order. It has happened before: Reagan ordered the closing of the border when DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena was murdered on assignment in Mexico in 1985, for instance.

Trump’s empty threats over the past two years have had real-world consequences, prompting waves of migrants trying to sneak into the country while they still have the chance. His recent move to cut all foreign aid to Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador is another empty gesture that will probably have similar consequences. The funds directed to those countries were used for programs that provided citizens with incentives not to migrate elsewhere. (The situation was not ideal from an isolationist point of view, but a wiser man would have built the wall before cutting off the aid.)

The past two years have seen a surge in illegal immigration without precedent in the past decade. Since late December, the Department of Homeland Security has released 125,565 illegal aliens into the country. In the past two weeks alone, 6,000 have been admitted. According to current projections, 2019 will witness around 500,000 to 775,000 border crossings. Additionally, about 630,000 illegal aliens will be added to the population after having overstayed their visas. By the end of the year, more than one million illegal aliens will have been added to the population:

These projections put the number of illegal aliens added to the U.S. population at around one to 1.5 million, on top of the 11 to 22 million illegal aliens who are already living across the country. This finding does not factor in the illegal aliens who will be deported, die over the next year, or leave the U.S. of their own will. As DHS data has revealed, once border crossers and illegal aliens are released into the country, the overwhelming majority are never deported.

In February, Trump signed a bill allowing the DHS secretary to add another 69,320 spots to the current H-2B cap of 66,000. On March 29, DHS began this process by announcing that it would issue an additional 30,000 H-2B visas this year. The H-2B visa program allows foreign workers to come to the US and work in non-agricultural occupations. Unlike the H-1B program, a Bachelor’s degree is not required; most H-2B workers are employed in construction, maintenance, landscaping, and so on. The demographic most affected by the expansion of the H-2B program will be unemployed working-class Americans. This flies in the face of Trump’s promise to protect American workers and stop importing foreigners.

Trump has indicated that he has plans to expand the H-1B visa program as well. “We want to encourage talented and highly skilled people to pursue career options in the U.S.,” he said in a tweet in January.

Trump’s betrayal of American workers is perhaps best encapsulated by the fact that one of the members of the advisory board of his National Council for the American Worker(which claims to “enhance employment opportunities for Americans of all ages”) is the CEO of IBM, a company that has expressed a preference for F-1 and H-1B visa holders in its job postings.

Trump has been working on legal immigration with Jared Kushner, who has quietly been crafting a plan to grant citizenship to more “low- and high-skilled workers, as well as permanent and temporary workers” (so, just about everyone). Kushner’s plan proves the folly of the typical Republican line that legal immigration is fine and that only illegal immigration should be opposed. Under his plan, thousands of illegal aliens will become “legal” with the stroke of a pen.

There is a paucity of anti-immigration hardliners in Trump’s inner circle (though Stephen Miller is a notable exception). Trump has surrounded himself with moderates: the Kushners, Mick Mulvaney, Alex Acosta, and others. There are more former Goldman Sachs employees in the Trump White House than in the Obama and Bush administrations combined.

The new DHS secretary, Kevin McAleenan, who was appointed yesterday following Kirstjen Nielsen’s resignation, is a middle-of-the-road law enforcement official who served under Obama and Bush and is responsible for the revival of the “catch-and-release” policy, whereby illegal aliens are released upon being apprehended. It was reported last week that Trump was thinking of appointing either Kris Kobach or Ken Cuccinelli to a position of prominence (as an “immigration czar”), but this appears to have been another lie.

Trump’s failure to deliver on his promises cannot be chalked up to congressional obstruction. Congress. As Kobach said in a recent interview, “It’s not like we’re powerless and it’s not like we have to wait for Congress to do something. . . . No, we can actually solve the immediate crisis without Congress acting.” Solving the border crisis would simply demand “leadership in the executive branch willing to act decisively.” Kobach recently outlined an intelligent three-point plan that Trump could implement:

1. Publish the final version of the regulation that would supersede the Flores Settlement. The initial regulation was published by the Department of Homeland Security in September 2018. DHS could have published the final regulation in December. Inexplicably, DHS has dragged its feet. Finalizing that regulation would allow the United States to detain entire families together, and it would stop illegal aliens from exploiting children as get-out-of-jail free cards.

2. Set up processing centers at the border to house the migrants and hold the hearings in one place. The Department of Justice should deploy dozens of immigration judges to hear the asylum claims at the border without releasing the migrants into the country. FEMA already owns thousands of travel trailers and mobile homes that it has used to address past hurricane disasters. Instead of selling them (which FEMA is currently doing), FEMA should ship them to the processing centers to provide comfortable housing for the migrants. In addition, a fleet of passenger planes should deployed to the processing centers. Anyone who fails in his or her asylum claim, or who is not seeking asylum and is inadmissible, should be flown home immediately. It would be possible to fly most migrants home within a few weeks of their arrival. Word would get out quickly in their home countries that entry into the United States is not as easy as advertised. The incentive to join future caravans would dissipate quickly.

3. Publish a proposed Treasury regulation that prohibits the sending home of remittances by people who cannot document lawful presence in the United States. This will hit Mexico in the pocketbook: Mexico typically brings in well over $20 billion a year in remittances, raking in more than $26 billion in 2017. Then, tell the government of Mexico that we will finalize the Treasury regulation unless they do two things to help us address the border crisis: (1) Mexico immediately signs a “safe third country agreement” similar to our agreement with Canada. This would require asylum applicants to file their asylum application in the first safe country they set foot in (so applicants in the caravans from Central America would have to seek asylum in Mexico, rather than Canada); and (2) Mexico chips in $5 billion to help us build the wall. The threat of ending remittances from illegal aliens is a far more powerful one than threatening to close the border. Ending such remittances doesn’t hurt the U.S. economy; indeed, it helps the economy by making it more likely that such capital will be spent and circulate in our own country. We can follow through easily if Mexico doesn’t cooperate.

It would not be all that difficult for Trump to implement these proposals. Kobach still has faith in Trump, but his assessment of him appears increasingly to be too generous. It is hard to escape the conclusion that Trump is not actually interested in curbing immigration and reversing America’s demographic decline. He is a con artist and a coward who is willing to betray millions of white Americans so that he can remain in the good graces of establishment neoconservatives. At the same time, he wants to maintain the illusion that he cares about his base. As Ann Coulter has put it, “He’s like a waiter who compliments us for ordering the hamburger, but keeps bringing us fish. The hamburger is our signature dish, juicy and grilled to perfection, you’ve made a brilliant choice . . . now here’s your salmon.” Nearly everything Trump has done in the name of restricting immigration has turned out to be an empty gesture and mere theatrics: threatening to close the border, offering protections to “Dreamers” in exchange for funding for the ever-elusive wall, threatening to end the “anchor baby” phenomenon with an executive order (which never came to pass), cutting off aid to Central American countries, claiming that he will appoint an “immigration czar” (and then proceeding to appoint McAleenan instead of Kobach as DHS secretary), and on and on.

While Trump has failed to keep the promises that got him elected, he has fulfilled a number of major promises that he made to Israel and the Jewish community.

First, he moved the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Trump claimed that the move would only cost $200,000, but in reality it will end up being more than $20 million. The construction of the embassy also led to a series of bloody protests; it is located in East Jerusalem, which is generally acknowledged to be Palestinian territory.

Second, he pulled the US out of the Iran nuclear deal. Netanyahu claimed on Israeli TV that Israel was responsible for convincing him to exit the deal and reimpose sanctions on Iran. (Both Trump and Netanyahu falsely alleged that Iran lied about the extent of its nuclear program; meanwhile, Israel’s large arsenal of chemical and biological weapons has escaped mention.)

Third, he put an end to American funding for Palestinians. This coincided with the passing of a bill that codified a $38 billion, ten-year foreign aid package for Israel. Trump also authorized an act allocating an additional $550 million toward US-Israel missile and tunnel defense cooperation.

Fourth, he recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights (in defiance of the rest of the world, which recognizes the Golan Heights as Syrian territory under Israeli occupation). Trump’s Golan Heights proclamation was issued on March 21 and was celebrated by Israel.

Trump’s track record on Israel shows that he is capable of exercising agency and getting things done. But he has failed to address the most pressing issue that America currently faces: mass immigration and the displacement of white Americans. The most credible explanation for his incompetence is that he has no intention of delivering on his promises. There is no “Plan,” no 4-D chess game. The sooner white Americans realize this, the better.

Donald Trump The Long Con

                                By Quintilian

         

Anybody want to buy a used MAGA cap? Grilling season starts next month, and I hope that Ann Coulter takes me up on my offer to stop by with remaindered copies of In Trump We Trust. They should burn fine in my fire pit as we roast wieners, drink martinis, and lament the passing of a future that was never to be, like those jetpacks and flying cars from Popular Mechanics circa 1957. Donald Trump’s betrayal of his voting base concerning immigration is so profound and disheartening that if I were a teenage girl I might be listening to “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do” nonstop on auto-replay, but since I pride myself on my toxic masculinity, my thoughts run more to Patrick Henry: “Julius Caesar had his Brutus, Charles the First had his Cromwell – and may George the Third learn from their examples.” But Donald Trump will not learn from their examples – not because he can’t – but because he has no intention of doing so.

I held out hope for a long time – probably longer than I should have – that I would not need to pen these words, but the overwhelming evidence can only lead to one conclusion: Donald Trump is nothing more than Jeb Bush with a trophy wife. Hindsight is indeed 20/20 vision, and nowhere is this seen to greater effect than in a reassessment of the first two years of the Trump administration. Why all the appointments to positions in the Executive Branch of individuals who publicly oppose Trump’s alleged domestic and foreign policies? Why was Kris Kobach never offered a cabinet position? Why are there more Goldman Sachs alumni in Trump’s administration than in the Obama and Bush II administrations combined? Why is Mitt Romney’s niece the Chair of the Republican National Committee? The answers to all of these questions are simple and the same: Donald Trump is a NINO – a nationalist in name only. He talks a good game, but his actions are strictly GOP/Uniparty establishment globalism. Donald Trump isthe GOP-e, a newer, cruder, flashier version of the old GOP-e, but the GOP-e nonetheless.

The hostility exhibited toward Trump is in reality an argument about style, not substance. The Percy Dovetonsils types in the old GOP-e, like George Will, Rob Portman, and Lamar Alexander, might lament Trump’s lack of an Oxford stutter or interest in the finer points of polo, but they can’t complain too much about what Trump has actually delivered: record-high illegal and legal immigration, corporate tax cuts and deregulation, a hands-off approach to antitrust, continued erosion of free speech, and a new war on the horizon in Venezuela to replace the war that’s winding down in Syria. If the members of the loony Left weren’t so loony, they’d realize that Trump’s their guy. There isn’t that much difference between the results of Donald Trump’s actions and the desires of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s policies. Open borders, deplatforming, loss of civil rights for whites – you name it. Sure, Trump still says he’s for the Second Amendment, but what value is a promise from Donald Trump? Hey, everything’s negotiable, including beliefs and morality. Remember, it’s the Art of the Deal. It should give one pause that the book that reveals the true inner nature of Donald Trump was ghostwritten. What Gertrude Stein said about Oakland, California applies every bit as well to Donald Trump: There’s no there there.

Those poor souls who continue to view Trump as the Great White Hope God Emperor need to come to grips with the fact that Donald Trump has played all of us like fools. There’s no “Plan,” there’s no 4- or 5- or 6-D chess game, and there’s no great magician offstage pulling the strings. What Donald Trump has actually been engaging in during his presidency is far simpler, but even more subtle. It’s called the Long Con, a grifting enterprise that can last years. Think of Bernie Madoff, think of a bigamist who juggles five unsuspecting wives for twenty years, think of Elizabeth Holmes and the Theranos con. Donald Trump is the political equivalent.

Trump wanted to be President, and he’s a clever fellow. He quickly realized that opposition to immigration was a winning ticket, and he stuck to his position and it paid off. There was only one problem, and it only becomes evident in retrospect: Trump never believed in his own agenda. It was just a storyline, like the storylines that are developed by the writers of reality shows. A good story needs a protagonist and an antagonist. Trump set himself up as David going against the swamp’s Goliath, but it’s as fake as the “feuds” in the WWE. In the end, the script always reaches its predetermined conclusion. In Trump’s case, he needed to jettison his anti-immigration stance while simultaneously appearing to support it. He deliberately put people in his administration who sabotaged his policies while demeaning those (like Jeff Sessions) who actually supported his alleged agenda.

Simply put, Donald Trump is a huckster, a master of the Long Con. He is without a moral center and possesses no shame. He has betrayed his base of support, the millions of white Americans who have endured physical and verbal abuse just for wearing a MAGA hat. He has turned his back on his supporters, some of whom have lost their jobs when it became known to their employers that they support Trump. He has done nothing to restore the First Amendment rights of his supporters when they have been banned from social media. He has done nothing to curb the power of the globalist oligarchs who continue to outsource American jobs abroad to cheaper and less qualified foreigners. Trump’s immigration sellout is a slap in the face to all the forgotten men and women who continue to be forgotten. Trump’s duplicity, mendacity, and treachery towards the people who elected him to office is so vile and revolting that it beggars description. I personally know an elderly woman on a fixed income who in 2016 scrimped and saved from her already meager food budget just so she could send five dollars to the Trump campaign because she believed that Trump was the first person in her lifetime who spoke for the needs of the white working class. In this instance, Trump’s immigration sellout is nothing less than a cynical exploitation of an elderly person, a sweet and innocent soul who probably skipped a couple of meals because she wanted to do something to support a man she thought would bring about a better world for her grandchildren. How is Donald Trump any better than Bernie Madoff? Madoff just conned you out of your money. Trump has conned white Americans out of a better world for their children and grandchildren.

It was always difficult to reconcile one’s support for Trump. The tweeting got old fast, the whoring showed a lack of taste as well as a lack of morals and self-control, and the Brooklynesque braggadocio and vulgarity has never traveled well west of the East River. Yet, there was always the idea that if we just held our noses a little while longer and gave him another break, Donald Trump would produce results. Because he’s a winner. He’ll tell you that, and so will his ghostwriter.

Well, Donald Trump isn’t a winner. But he’s not exactly a loser, either. What Donald Trump really is is a liar. He lies constantly, and he lies about everything. His mendacity knows no bounds. He is reprehensible and vile. He is a gamma male with an alpha male mouth. He is a huckster, a con artist, a grifter, a side-show hawker, a snake oil salesman. By his actions, he has abused, taken advantage of, and exploited his working class base of supporters. He has delivered nothing. Indeed, he has made matters worse. In the next century, when the remnants of what used to be Western civilization are hiding in caves in order to preserve the last few books and artworks from destruction by the marauding barbarians, Donald Trump’s betrayal of his base will be spoken of in terms once reserved for Benedict Arnold and Judas Iscariot.

Donald Trump does not deserve impeachment. The only punishment fit for Donald Trump is eternal damnation in the Ninth Circle of Dante’s Inferno. And the even sadder thing is that Trump stands a very good chance of getting reelected, because the Democrats are even worse.

God help the white race!

The Assange Outrage

                            By Jef Costello

         

A little more than two years ago I published a piece on this site titled “I Keep Forgetting that I’m Not an American.” The occasion was Wikileaks’ release of “Vault 7” and the reaction from establishment Republicans. Vault 7 consisted of thousands of documents revealing the CIA’s ability to compromise smartphones and smart TVs, as well as Web browsers and even cars. As I mentioned in my essay from 2017, I greeted this news with elation: “The bastards have been exposed!” So-called “conservatives” greeted it with cries of “treason!” It was, as I discussed at length, an occasion for me to remind myself that I’m a revolutionary, not a “conservative” – and that, deep down, I don’t want to protect or fix the United States. I want to topple it and replace it with something better.

Now, with the Julian Assange’s arrest on April 11, it’s déjà vu all over again, and this time the hypocrisy from establishment goons is even more naked, obvious, and positively obscene. It’s a golden opportunity to measure the reach of the Deep State’s tentacles, and to see very clearly that those we thought were maybe, sorta on our side really aren’t. Further, as his Right-wing critics have been observing for some time, those tentacles now seem to have choked the wind out of the hapless Mr. Trump. Assange’s arrest is a real test of Trump’s mettle – a test he is already failing.

The basic facts are that on April 11, the Ecuadoran government invited the Metropolitan Police into its London embassy to arrest Assange. Assange had been given asylum by Ecuador and had been living in the embassy since 2012. His troubles started in November 2010, when Sweden issued an international arrest warrant for him, seeking to question him on allegations of sexual assault. It was widely believed at the time that these charges were likely “trumped up” –concocted by the Swedes and the Americans to “get Assange” on something, anything, and possibly extradite him from Sweden to the US to face charges in connection with his publication of classified American documents. Assange surrendered to London police in December 2010 and was released on bail. When he lost his fight against extradition, Assange was granted asylum by Ecuador and allowed to live in the embassy. Ecuador’s then-President Rafael Correa clearly thought that Assange was being railroaded, and he was doubtless correct.

The ostensible reason for Assange’s arrest is that he violated the terms of his bail by secreting himself in the Ecuadoran embassy and refusing extradition. But what many people do not know is that Swedish prosecutors later abandoned their sexual assault investigation into Assange, and actually applied to revoke their own arrest warrant in May 2017. In short, Assange has now been arrested for refusing extradition in accordance with a warrant that has been voluntarily withdrawn by Sweden, which has found no basis on which to charge him with anything. Yes, yes, yes: he did break the law in refusing to present himself for extradition. But does anyone believe that that is reallywhat this is about?

On the same day that Assange was arrested, an indictment against him was unsealed, issued by the Eastern District of Virginia. Assange will now likely be extradited to the US to face trial. The charge? “Conspiracy to commit computer intrusion.” This is not all that big a crime, and carries a maximum five-year sentence. Assange’s attorneys, however, fear that once he is extradited, more serious charges will be unveiled. For the record, there appears to be no evidence that Assange hacked into US government computers or stole any documents himself. That crime was committed by “Chelsea” Manning, whose thirty-five-year prison sentence was commuted by President Obama. Assange merely published the documents, which is not a crime. Incidentally, for this reason, Obama’s Justice Department had declined to charge Assange.

In the current indictment, Judge Michael Snow said that Assange is “a narcissist who cannot get beyond his own selfish interest.” Assange may very well be a narcissist, but it’s not entirely clear when being a narcissist became a reason to prosecute someone. By the way, a small detail that seems to have been lost in all this is that Assange is actually an Australian citizen (and also, from 2017 until his arrest the other day, an Ecuadoran citizen as well). One might expect Australian authorities to be concerned that one of their most famous citizens is being extradited to the US for trial on highly questionable charges, but Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has stated – bizarrely – that the case has “nothing to do with Australia,” and is “a matter for the US.” The Swedes, Brits, and Aussies are only too happy to cooperate with the US in bringing down Assange – not out of love for Uncle Sam, but because people like Assange threaten what Hillary Clinton once revealingly called “the World Order.” It doesn’t take Noam Chomsky to figure that one out. Incidentally, why exactly did Ecuador rescind Assange’s asylum? Do you suppose it might have something to do with the $4.2 billion loan Ecuador received from the US just the other week?

Assange has been either loved or hated. Notoriously, however, those who love him tend to wind up hating him, and vice versa. There’s no mystery in this. Those who love him tend to be those who think Wikileaks is serving their interests. But when he ceases to serve their interests, the very same people do an abrupt about-face and issue denunciations. When Wikileaks released hundreds of thousands of damning documents concerning the Iraq War, Assange was the darling of the Left. “Conservatives” responded by saying that Assange was a criminal who threatened American security and needed to be arrested and extradited, or even assassinated (perhaps by drone strike).

All that changed in 2016. On July 22 of that year, Wikileaks released around twenty thousand e-mails and eight thousand files from the Democratic National Committee. Among other things, these documents clearly demonstrated that the Democratic primaries were rigged against Bernie Sanders, and in favor of Hillary Clinton. On October 7, 2016, Wikileaks released e-mails and documents sent or received by Clinton campaign manager John Podesta. These included excerpts from private speeches given by Clinton. In one of these, she stated, “My dream is a hemispheric common market with open trade and open borders.” Other revelations included e-mails proving that CNN had leaked debate questions in advance to the Clinton campaign.

Overnight, the former darling of the Left became part of the “vast Right-wing conspiracy” and an agent of Vladimir Putin. One spokesman for the Clinton campaign said that “[b]y dribbling these out every day WikiLeaks is proving they are nothing but a propaganda arm of the Kremlin with a political agenda, doing Vladimir Putin’s dirty work to help elect Donald Trump.” It was an obvious ploy: The Democrats sought to change the subject from the content of the e-mails to how they were discovered and released – while never disputing that the e-mails were genuine. This fact was astutely noted by Putin himself, who denied any role in the matter and said, “The hysteria is merely caused by the fact that somebody needs to divert the attention of the American people from the essence of what was exposed by the hackers.”

Meanwhile, Republicans – who had formerly called for Assange’s head on a spike – seemed suddenly smitten with the man. In 2010, Sean Hannity had declared that Assange was “at war” with the US. In 2016, Hannity had nothing but praise for him. The following year, Hannity interviewed Assange, and said that he believed “every word he says,” because “nothing he has published has ever been false.” In 2010, Sarah Palin described Assange as an “anti-American operative with blood on his hands.” After the release of the Podesta emails, she began praising him.

Newt Gingrich exhibited a similar about-face. In 2010, he called for Assange to be treated as an “enemy combatant,” then changed his tune after the release in 2016 of the DNC documents. Oh, what a difference a little more than two years makes! After Assange’s arrest, Gingrich appeared on FOX News and appeared to have reverted to his earlier position. Stated Gingrich, “If you believe in national security, if you believe in the security of the United States, he’s a villain.” Hannity, to his credit, has stuck by Assange. (No word yet from Palin, but who cares?)

The most odious flip-flop, however, has now come from Donald Trump. Asked just the other day for a reaction to the indictment against Assange, Trump responded, “I know nothing about Wikileaks. It’s not my thing.” Media outlets immediately went on the attack, accusing Trump of hypocrisy – and at least this time, they got things right. Video was played of Trump on the campaign trail in 2016 saying, “It’s been amazing what’s coming out of Wikileaks.” At one campaign stop, Trump declared, “I love Wikileaks!” This prompted cries of “Lock her up!” whereupon Mr. Trump produced some papers and began reading some of the details about the Clinton e-mails that had been published by Wikileaks.

Yes, it’s true that Trump is distressingly inarticulate, and that by “I know nothing about Wikileaks” he could have meant “I know nothing about the charges.” Maybe. But if that’s the case, one still has to ask if this was really the best the man could do. It may very well be that Trump won the election because of Wikileaks, and he has clearly expressed his gratitude to them in the past. Now that the US Justice Department is about to extradite and try Assange essentially for the crime of being a journalist, could we not expect Trump to step up and do the right thing? Or at least say the right thing, even if he does nothing? Apparently not.

Speaking of Assange’s being a journalist, since his arrest, members of the establishment media have repeatedly insisted that Assange is not, in fact, a journalist at all. A representative tweet comes from Alexia Campbell of Vox: “Assange is no journalist. We know who he works for.” Yes, that’s the narrative: Assange is a “Russian agent.” And this view is by no means confined to the Left. “Julian Assange is Not a Journalist” was the headline of a National Review story, published on April 12. “He’s a tool of Russia,” the piece went on to say. Even FOX’s “The Five” got in on the act, also claiming that Assange is not a journalist. (The Five’s resident blonde bimbo, whose name escapes me, even suggested that Assange may not have any rights in the matter at all, since he’s not an American citizen.) This has the appearance of a coordinated effort to discredit Assange’s strongest defense: that in publishing leaked documents, he was simply acting as a journalist.

Until recently, journalists praised other journalists who had the “courage” to publish leaked or stolen documents. One of the most famous cases of this was the The New York Times’ publication of the stolen “Pentagon papers” in 1971. Almost universally, journalists defended the right of The Timesto do what it did. But that was before the publication of stolen documents helped get Donald Trump elected. Nothing reveals the political agenda of the establishment media more clearly than their rush to condemn Assange for acts they’ve always defended. Getting revenge for 2016 is far more important to the press than defending freedom of the press. As Tucker Carlson put it the other night, “The guardians of speech are now the enemies of speech. The people charged with policing power, are now colluding with power.” And need we comment on the irony of these discredited hacks gassing about who is and who isn’t a “real” journalist?

As Tucker also pointed out, everyone in Washington has some reason to hate Julian Assange. Now it’s payback time. The Left is especially delighted in Assange’s arrest, since it’s an opportunity to punish someone for Hillary’s loss. The schadenfreude is sickeningly obvious. On The Tonight Showthe other evening, Jimmy Fallon spent part of his monologue ridiculing Assange’s appearance in footage of him literally being dragged out of the Ecuadoran embassy. (Bearded and haggard, Assange had aged visibly in the years he spent in seclusion.) In a segment later in the show, he described Assange as looking like “a mall Santa on the other side of a nervous breakdown.” In a remarkable example of synchronicity, an hour later on his own show, Seth Myers described Assange as looking like “Santa Claus with a manifesto.”

It seems even Assange’s cat is considered fair game. The Washington Post has published a bizarre piece about the cat, which seems as if it is at least partly tongue-in-cheek. (The Independent republished the story, and you can read it for free here). It is true that Assange kept a cat while living in the Ecuadoran embassy, and that the cat enjoyed its own Internet following. The story reports conflicting accounts of what happened to the cat (it was given to a shelter, Assange gave it to his family, etc.), though it appears definitely to no longer be in the embassy. The piece, while amusing, quickly becomes an opportunity to get in a few catty digs at Assange. A self-styled “expert on cats” is quoted as saying, “It seems quite possible that the cat may not have been particularly attached to Mr. Assange anyway. I would guess that it’s missing the embassy more than it’s missing him.” It is further intimated that keeping the cat was “PR” on Assange’s part.

 

In “Checkmate,” an episode of the classic anti-establishment series The Prisoner, Number 6 devises a simple test to tell the difference between who is a fellow prisoner and who is a “guardian.” The Assange case gives us such a simple test. The reactions of journalists tell us which of them is a “real journalist,” and which is an establishment shill. The reactions of politicians tell us which of them actually supports a free society, and which of them supports the surveillance state. Their reactions also tell us which of them is a true critic of the globalist behemoth, and which of them only wants to prop it up. Make no mistake, Assange is slated for sacrifice at the altar of the “World Order” as a warning to all those who would defy it. The Assange case is also a test for Donald Trump: Did he really mean what he said about the “Deep State,” or was that just a lot of hot air? Is Trump still at war with the establishment, or has he been thoroughly co-opted by it? How this case unfolds over the coming months, and how our leaders and shapers of opinion continue to react, will be very interesting.

Mel Gibson's Apocalypto

                            By Alex Graham

               

Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto is set in present-day Los Tuxtlas, Mexico in the year 1511 and depicts the final days of Maya civilization through the eyes of a man named Jaguar Paw. The main theme of the film is summarized by the Will Durant quote displayed at the beginning: “A great civilization is not conquered from without until it destroys itself from within.”

Apocalypto is hard to find: it is not sold on iTunes (except in New Zealand & Australia) or offered by any major streaming service (except Amazon in the UK). You can either torrent it or purchase the DVD. A low-quality version is also available on YouTube. Given the extent to which Mel Gibson is reviled by Hollywood Jews, one wonders whether the film’s limited availability is not coincidental. One would expect a recent blockbuster film by a renowned director to have a wider distribution.

The plot of Apocalypto is straightforward, and there is not much dialogue. It is not a cerebral film, despite its weighty social commentary; it is a blood-soaked and brawny visceral action-adventure film. Gibson was influenced by Cornel Wilde’s survival film The Naked Prey.

The film does not fall short of its epic ambitions, and its success is a testament to Gibson’s vision and his technical mastery as a filmmaker. Even his many enemies have to admit that he is one of the most talented directors alive today.

Apocalypto’s opening sequences depict village life among Jaguar Paw and his tribesmen, showing them hunting in the forest. The dialogue is in the Yucatec Maya language. The viewer gets a taste of their primitive customs: they are shown eating organs, running about flailing their limbs, etc. After a short while, the village is raided, and all adult villagers are either murdered or taken captive.

The captives are led on a long march to an unnamed city. Along the way are signs of the ecological destruction that contributed to Maya civilization’s decline. They pass by one forest that has been razed to the ground entirely. They also encounter a diseased girl who prophesies the demise of the Maya.

Upon their arrival in the city, the females are sold into slavery, and the males are brought to a pyramid in order to be sacrificed to the god Kukulkan. The inhabitants of the city are decadent, corrupt, and neurotic. There is a large gap between the poor and the rich, with laborers coughing up blood as they pound rock on the one hand and the extravagantly dressed, plump upper class on the other. The high priest is a sadistic executioner and a charismatic demagogue pandering to the restless mob with bread-and-circuses spectacle. He stabs his victims and holds aloft their still-beating hearts while the mob cheers. The victims’ heads are then tossed down the pyramid, and their headless bodies are dumped in mass graves.

Jaguar Paw is nearly sacrificed but is spared after a solar eclipse convinces the high priest that Kukulkan’s thirst has been sated. He manages to escape, and the rest of the movie is an extended chase scene. It is long, but the skillful camerawork and throbbing score give it momentum and a gripping immediacy. The chase does not end until the raiders meet Jaguar Paw on the shore and spot conquistadors on the horizon.

The dichotomy between the primitive tribesmen and the decadent city people illustrates the extremes of the excesses of savagery and the excesses of civilization (luxury, neuroticism, etc.). Faced with the choice, Gibson’s sympathies lie with the former. The savages at least have a sense of honor: when one of the captives spots a sickly city-dweller wailing in the streets, he tells him to “die like a man.” Yet there are limits to their primitivism, evidenced by their inability to progress beyond an animal-like state. This is most obvious at the end of the film when the splendor of the Spaniards’ ships is juxtaposed with the tribesmen. Perhaps Gibson is making a statement about the necessity of achieving a balance between barbarism and civilization.

There are a few deviations from historical accuracy in the film. The large-scale practice of human sacrifice was more characteristic of the Aztecs, and victims of Maya human sacrifice were typically of higher status. The ships at the end would place the film in the early sixteenth century, but the setting and costumes are generally more reminiscent of the Late Classic Period (c. 600–900). But such quibbles are of secondary relevance; the greater themes of the film would be valid even if the setting were fictional.

One thing the film gets right is that the burning of trees in order to facilitate the conversion of limestone to mortar was a likely factor in contributing to the Maya’s demise. Every major monument was covered in lime mortar, and the increasing scarcity of wood exacerbated the internecine conflicts that were already ravaging the empire. Other contributing factors included overpopulation, drought, etc. (it is one of the most debated questions in archaeology, and there are dozens of theories). By the time the Spanish arrived, most Maya cities had been abandoned, and Maya civilization had been in decline for centuries.

Gibson has compared the environmental destruction and overconsumption in the film to the consumerism of modern society. He has also likened the Iraq War to a form of human sacrifice (I am reminded of Adjustment Day).[1] It is clear that Gibson believes that modern Western civilization is likewise in a state of decline and that overconsumption, decadence/softness, and corruption are among the causes of this. He rejects the Whig view of history espoused by modern liberals: “People think that modern man is so enlightened, but we’re susceptible to the same forces – and we are also capable of the same heroism and transcendence.”[2] The title of the film itself comes from the Greek for “I reveal” and alludes to Gibson’s view that decline is followed by the uncovering of a new order in a cyclical process.

Critics who object to the unfavorable depiction of the Maya are missing the point. The film does not purport to depict the Maya at their height. Gibson and his co-writer deliberately chose to depict the Maya rather than the Aztecs precisely because they wanted to make a film about the fall of a great civilization, and the Maya were the more advanced of the two. The artistic and scientific achievements of the Maya during the Classic Period heighten the dramatic import of their downfall.

The distinguishing features of a civilization in decline are generally consistent across geography and time, and the parallels to the modern West are clear. We were once conquerors, but now we are the conquered. But, if Gibson’s view holds, a new beginning will someday emerge from the ruins of our dying civilization.

Notes

1. https://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/story?id=2670750&page=1

2. http://doubleexposurejournal.com/in-focus-mel-gibson/

What's In A Home?

                            By Buck Daniels

        

I took an interest in architecture a few years back, after reading Crawford’s The World Beyond Your Head. The book described the effects of the arrangement of space on how we perceived and acted in the world. The effects of arranged space could be negative—the distraction of eye-catching advertisements and flashing lights—or positive—the machine-like feeling of cooking in a well-stocked and well-organized kitchen. But this observation has some profound implications in the realm of morality and identity, because to whatever degree we have control over our character beyond our genetic limitations, we are what we pay attention to. The organization of space dictates a great deal of the distribution of our attention, curating the options from which we might choose. For example, if my room has a computer and no books, then it is unlikely that I will choose to read Aristotle’s writings over playing Skyrim or doing something else, because the option to read Aristotle was not presented to me by my environment. I did not “jig” my room properly for that.

In the academy and in the church, this is still a somewhat controversial subject. Since Plato and Christianity, many have held that the soul—“free will,” or your “true self”—is disconnected entirely from the material world. They essentially argue that there is no necessary connection between the physical, mundane world, and how you spend your attention. In the empirically-driven world of marketing, however, this is not even a question. Just as an example, you can walk into a Home Depot, and you will see that the racks for power tools, lumber, and other “men’s sections” are painted orange, while the paint, interior décor, and other “women’s sections” are painted white. The environments are optimized to make the customer feel at home in the places they are most likely to buy things. Retailers spend millions of dollars on research so that they can place things just so, getting the music and colors just right, and generally to arrange the space so that people will behave in the manner that they want—to spend money. If commercial revenue is any indicator of success, then the reality of the connection is undeniable.

This principle is not limited to the optimizing sales. Sometimes, it can be used more maliciously. At the University of Iowa, the away-team locker room is painted a shade of Pepto Bismol “drunk tank” pink, based on research showing a calming, pacifying effect on prison inmates. A possible price to pay when you’re away from home, and you don’t control the space.

But what does “home” feel like? Is purely a matter of hanging up pictures you like, or does it have something deeper to do with the architecture and interior design? Could we be at home in a large yurt or an African rammed-earth house, provided we got the right lamp-shades? Witold Rybczynski’sHome: A Short History of an Idea begins with a description of complete interior-design packages put together by Ralph Lauren, designed to emulate the feeling of a rugged hunting lodge, a classic English lounge, a French countryside house, or a Bahama villa. Presumably, they are reasonably capable of inducing the nostalgic feelings they aim for, but it is hard to imagine any number of throw-pillows and drapes making an igloo feel like an English lounge.

Perhaps the more important point is that nostalgia is all that the superficial trappings of “home” can do, and “nostalgia” is not home. Literally, it is the “longing for home,” coming from nostos, “homecoming,” and álgos, “pain.” They are reminders of what home used to be, cues for the architectural associations that make us feel at home, but without the real thing. A real “home” is a building in which the space is ordered specifically and personally for those who live there. While pretty interior décor is often a result of a building being a home, décor does not itself make a space “home.”

As Rybczynski demonstrates, the concept of “home” that we yearn for today is a European one—specifically, Dutch, French, and English. The European home reflects the values of domesticity, privacy, and comfort. But will it remain so? If the qualities of a European home reflect European values, and if the market for architecture becomes more diverse as people from all over the world with different family structures and different architectural preferences move in, what will happen to our homes?

We can already see the beginning of the answer now, in the newer suburbs.

The modern suburban house is designed for everyone, and for no one in particular. The primary value is not in whether it feels like “home,” but in resale value, to a market of any number of possible buyers, from any number of cultural backgrounds. Most people move in and out in less than a decade, and so they are looked at as monetary investments, rather than spiritual ones. They are for arranging our finances, not our attention, or our time, or our family, in the way that architecture—in its ideal application—can be utilized. In short, our houses are no longer homes, but fungible units of exchange, like dollars. And like dollars, because they are moving around (or rather, we are expected to keep moving around; “if you don’t like it, go somewhere else”), the cost of personalizing homes has increased. Many people don’t even seek to own their homes, content simply to rent. There, the possibilities for truly feeling at home, for making your space into a home, diminish.

And without a home, our ability to organize the space around us, and by extension, our time and our attention, diminish. It is ceded to others, like Home Depot. Or the University of Iowa.

Alain de Botton’s The Architecture of Happiness corroborates this, and notes how the subject of architecture has been viewed with increasing disinterest in recent years. The distaste for architecture is not new, of course, and Botton quotes some old examples of Stoics and Christians who rejected the value of architecture in nearly absolute terms:

The Ancient Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus is said to have demanded of a heart-broken friend whose house had burnt to the ground, ‘If you really understand what governs the universe, how can you yearn for bits of stone and pretty rock?’ (It is unclear how much longer the friendship lasted.) Legend recounts that after hearing the voice of God, the Christian hermit Alexandra sold her house, shut herself in a tomb and never looked at the outside world again, while her fellow hermit Paul of Scete slept on a blanket on the floor of a windowless mud hut and recited 300 prayers every day, suffering only when he heard of another holy man who had managed 700 and slept in a coffin. (pp. 11-12)

The modern skepticism of the importance of architecture is, of course, less spiritual in its nature, but it can sometimes have a moral tinge to it. Talk of bigotry or “gentrification” hang in the air, reminding people not to be too vociferous in asserting their preference for an architectural style that make them feel more at home than whatever the “new Americans” are buying. But the greater threat is actually economic in nature, as one would expect in a globalized marketplace:

Ask the property development company what sort of houses will go up on the doomed field, and you’ll be sent a waxy marketing brochure showing five different house types, each named after an English monarch. The Elizabeth II boasts chrome door handles and a stainless-steel oven; the George V has a fibreglass-beamed dining room and a Neo-Arts and Crafts roof; and the Henry VIII is, inevitably, a Neo-Tudor loyalist.

If, after browsing through the elegant presentation material, we still felt inclined to question the appearance of these buildings, the property developer would almost certainly retaliate with a familiar and apparently invincible argument: such houses have always sold rapidly and in great quantities. We would be sternly reminded that to scorn their designs would therefore be to ignore commercial logic and attempt to deny others a democratic right to their own tastes, bringing us into conflict with two of the great authoritative concepts of our civilisation, money and liberty. (pp. 259-60)

Greg Johnson has argued that we need a homeland in the same way that we need a room of our own, a space in which we can truly relax, and in which we can have the best odds of fully self-actualizing. The logic of having a home applies in equal measure to having a homeland. Even as more and more people are declaring themselves to be nationalists, countless others act as if having a nation of your own is not just unnecessary, but immoral. At the very least, many believe that the nation is outdated and irrelevant. These people believe that nations are pointless sources of division, are just baggage in a globalized economy, and are pretty arbitrary anyway. Better to be free, and shed your national identity like a snake leaving behind its old skin. Better to be homeless. A citizen of the world.

But shedding one’s nation does not make you more free, because our decisions are not divorced from the space around us. Choosing to rent rather than to own your own home gives your landlord the power to arrange the building in a manner that suits his needs, not yours. Renters are not free to add or remove a wall, to install a skylight for more natural light, or to play music at whatever hour suits your personal schedule.

With this in mind, why would anyone assume they could retain something as unique as the freedom of speech in a nation in which they are merely renters?

Haruki Murakami’s masterpiece The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle described a character, an old war veteran-turned-shaman who told the future of the protagonist. Inside his house, in the place traditionally reserved for a Shinto shrine, a television was constantly blaring. This, I fear, is the symbolic future of architecture, of homes. Not Japanese, not European, but for all and for none. The hollow homes. After all, Shinto is unique, peculiar to a people, while television is universal. If people remained stationary, then perhaps the market could provide for different needs. But in a moving multicultural world, the only economically viable architecture is the universal. And the universal can never be home. What is universal is not private. What is universal is not domestic. What is universal is not comfortable.

What is universal is not yours.

If it sounds as if I am blending two unrelated topics—architecture and nationalism—consider the argument of de Botton’s property-development manager, and the necessary moral separation made between the house and the neighborhood itself. After all, preventing your neighbor from doing whatever he likes with his house would be an infringement upon his liberty and his rights to his own tastes. Yet the primary determinant of the value of a house is determined by “comps”—comparative local listings, or homes in the same area of approximately the same age and size. This is partially because the primary reason that people move into the houses they choose isn’t the house itself, but the community. The neighborhood, in other words, is a feature of the building. Put another way, Frank Lloyd Wright’s philosophy of integrating the house with the local, natural environment is not so much a prescriptive principle, but a descriptive one. The surroundings are a part of the house, whether we designed it that way or not.

Just as the our surroundings are a part of us, whether we know it or not.

Architecture is one of the oldest forms of art—perhaps behind music, cooking, and dance. It is an immensely powerful tool of self-expression, and also of self-creation. Skyscrapers aid us in efficiently running highly effective organizations and keeping even a densely populated urban center organized. Cathedrals inspire us with thoughts of the sublime and the transcendent. And even the subtle environmental cues of the local grocery store, designed primarily to help them earn more money, also help us find what we are looking for faster, and make the experience of shopping more pleasant. But the immense power of architecture is not an intrinsic force for good. Ugly, brutalist buildings and thoughtless, messy architecture can affect us in the mirror opposite manner as a picturesque chapel or an intelligently designed office building. Worse, they can be used maliciously. Crawford described the manner in which casinos can induce us to spend ourselves “to extinction,” and the open, exotic architecture of Las Vegas is surely connected to the achievement of this end.

Ultimately, it’s better to be at home. Home gives you the best chance of living a good life. Home allows you to be yourself. But you can never truly be home in place you don’t own.

The best you’ll be able to manage is nostalgia.

The Fallacy Of Progress

                             By Kerry Bolton

            

Our “progressive” obsessions for change neglect to consider consequences. Change is demanded for the sake of a fad or a slogan: “equality,” “democracy,” “reproductive rights” . . . Even a word of caution is damned as “reactionary,” “old-fashioned,” or “fascist.” Traditions, customs, and beliefs are regarded as being as transient as the planned obsolescence of computers. The assumption by the “positivists” is that history is a straight line from “progress” and “primitive” to “modern,” and that anything or anyone who stands in the way is what Marx, in The Communist Manifesto, vehemently damned as a “reactionist.”

The “positivist” assumption was a conscious break with the past; its founder, de Condorcet,[1] was an ideologue of the French Revolution, albeit meeting his fate like many others. Marx was in the same mold. Under the impress of the same zeitgeist, Darwinism was applied to social history and economics and used to justify another type of revolution: the industrial, and nineteenth-century positivists, including Social Darwinists, confidentially saw the nineteenth century as the culmination of all hitherto existing societies. This optimism among the highest intellectual circles was cogently expressed by A. R. Wallace, who was next to Darwin in importance in propounding the theory of evolution: “Not only is our century superior to any that have gone before it but . . . it may be best compared with the whole preceding historical period. It must therefore be held to constitute the beginning of a new era of human progress . . .”[2]

As a reminder that the twentieth and twenty-first centuries are trapped in the same mental straitjacket of “progress” and, ironically, that historical perspectives have not “progressed” beyond the dogmatic assumptions of de Condorcet, Marx, or Wallace, influential academics such as Francis Fukuyama assure us with the same certainty that liberal democracy, under the auspices of the United States, is not only the culmination of all hitherto existing history, but that it is equally applicable to all humans. Moreover, once its universal dispensation has been achieved, this will be literally “the end of history,” and there will be global happiness via production and consumption, and aesthetics will have become so deadened that there is no differentiation between Beethoven and pop.[3] This description is not a spoof or satire.

What is assumed is that man, as a “higher animal,” is so detached from nature that he can mold himself into whatever form he desires, and that the method and aim are justified by a preconceived ideology that shows it to be “true,” whether as Jacobinism, Marxism, or Free Trade. Man, through “social laws,” is above all organic and ecological considerations. It is erroneous for conservatives to assume that Marxism is based on “environmentalism,” considering that the Marxist doctrine states that by changing the environment – under socialism – human nature is thereby changed. Rather, Marxism regards the laws of ecology, just as much as “biologism,” as the laws of Mendelian hereditary, and Marxist regimes tried to overcome both.[4] Hence, doctrines that insist that man is subject only to social laws and the laws of production – that is, doctrines of economic reductionism, whether of the socialistic or capitalistic varieties (both stem from the same outlook) – insist in a hubristic manner that humanity is impelled towards a Promethean conquest of all nature, and can without restraint impose its will upon the universe. What is required is an understanding of the laws of social progress that circumvent all others. How cynical that Marxists entered en masseinto the ranks of the ecological and “green” movements – initiatives of the Right – after the Marxist failure to make any headway among the “international proletariat,” that only existed in the imaginings of reading-room ideologues!

The restraint that was so condemned by Marx as “reactionism,” and meets the same chorus of hatred today by “progressives” of all persuasions, is the anchor of tradition. So far from being a regressive personality trait, it is a trait of mature wisdom, drawing on the accumulation of millennia of experience and epigenetically conveyed over generations as “culture” and “custom.” It is what is ridiculed by the “progressives” – who, in their feigned intellectualism, have discarded, obscured, slandered, or buried those who really did seek to understand the nature of being human, whether as philosophers such as Martin Heidegger, Anthony Ludovici, and Oswald Spengler,[5] or as scientists, such as the physiologist Alexis Carrel, the zoologist Konrad Lorenz, the psychologist Carl Jung, or the present-day biologist Rupert Sheldrake.[6]

Carl Jung

Carl Jung, father of analytical psychology, made the point that Western man’s psyche is not keeping pace with his technology. The levels of our unconscious are multi-layered, reaching back to primordial existence, yet Western technology has exponentially leaped ahead, leaving behind the anchorage of tradition in the acclaimed “march of progress.” Jung wrote of this:

Our souls as well as our bodies are composed of individual elements which were all already present in the ranks of our ancestors. The “newness” of the individual psyche is an endlessly varied recombination of age-old components. Body and soul therefore have an intensely historical character and find no place in what is new. That is to say, our ancestral components are only partly at home in things that have just come into being. We are certainly far from having finished with the middle ages, classical antiquity, and primitivity, as our modern psyches pretend. Nevertheless we have plunged into a cataract of progress which sweeps us into the future with ever wilder violence the farther it take us from our ranks. The less we understand of what our forefathers sought, the less we understand ourselves, and thus we help with all our might to rob the individual of his roots and his guiding instincts.[7]

The psyche becomes fractured in contending with a discrepancy between millennia of ancestral experiences and the jolt of what is “modern,” and which aims to discard such primordial wisdom as redundant. Mentally fractured individuals create socially-fractured entities still inaccurately named “societies,” with a multitude of social pathogens. Jung considered the ultimate aim of the individual to be “individuation,” the integration of the fractured parts of the psyche of the individual, and beyond that, of the collective unconscious of the race and of society.

Alexis Carrel

Alexis Carrel was a Nobel Prizewinning physiologist. He departed from the safety, comfort, and fame of life in the United States to return to his native France in a time of need to work during the war with the National Revolutionary regime of Marshal Petain. Carrel was also concerned with the degeneration and fracturing of “modern man” caused by progressivism. In his best-selling 1937 book, Man the Unknown, Carrel addressed these problems:

[M]en cannot follow modern civilization along its present course, because they are degenerating. They have been fascinated by the beauty of the sciences of inert matter. They have not understood that their body and consciousness are subjected to natural laws, more obscure than, but as inexorable as, the laws of the sidereal world. Neither have they understood that they cannot transgress these laws without being punished.

They must, therefore, learn the necessary relations of the cosmic universe, of their fellow men, and of their inner selves, and also those of their tissues and their mind. Indeed, man stands above all things. Should he degenerate, the beauty of civilization, and even the grandeur of the physical universe, would vanish . . . Humanity’s attention must turn from the machines of the world of inanimate matter to the body and the soul of man, to the organic and mental processes which have created the machines and the universe of Newton and Einstein.[8]

Carrel, like Jung, was not a materialist; he regarded the “soul” as important, if still not understood by science. Science has resolved very little of the great questions of life, wrote Carrel, and civilization was having a degenerative affect:

We are very far from knowing what relations exist between skeleton, muscles, and organs, and mental and spiritual activities. We are ignorant of the factors that bring about nervous equilibrium and resistance to fatigue and to diseases. We do not know how moral sense, judgment, and audacity could be augmented. What is the relative importance of intellectual, moral, and mystical activities? What is the significance of aesthetic and religious sense? What form of energy is responsible for telepathic communications? Without any doubt, certain physiological and mental factors determine happiness or misery, success or failure. But we do not know what they are. We cannot artificially give to any individual the aptitude for happiness. As yet, we do not know what environment is the most favorable for the optimum development of civilized man. Is it possible to suppress struggle, effort, and suffering from our physiological and spiritual formation? How can we prevent the degeneracy of man in modern civilization? Many other questions could be asked on subjects which are to us of the utmost interest. They would also remain unanswered. It is quite evident that the accomplishments of all the sciences having man as an object remain insufficient, and that our knowledge of ourselves is still most rudimentary.[9]

In a conclusion similar to that of Jung on the discrepancy between the exponential advances of mechanical and material civilization and of the human conscious and unconscious, Carrel warned:

The environment which has molded the body and the soul of our ancestors during many millenniums has now been replaced by another. This silent revolution has taken place almost without our noticing it. We have not realized its importance. Nevertheless, it is one of the most dramatic events in the history of humanity. For any modification in their surroundings inevitably and profoundly disturbs all living beings. We must, therefore, ascertain the extent of the transformations imposed by science upon the ancestral mode of life, and consequently upon ourselves.[10]

Modern civilization finds itself in a difficult position because it does not suit us. It has been erected without any knowledge of our real nature. It was born from the whims of scientific discoveries, from the appetites of men, their illusions, their theories, and their desires. Although constructed by our efforts, it is not adjusted to our size and shape.[11]

Konrad Lorenz

Konrad Lorenz, the father of the science of ethology, the study of instinct, gave a warning from an ecological viewpoint, that the abandonment of customs and traditions is steeped with dangers which are likely to be unforeseen. Culture is “cumulative tradition.”[12] It is knowledge passed through generations, preserved as belief or custom. The deep wisdom accrued by our ancestors, because it might be wrapped in the protection of religions and myths, is discounted by the “modern” as “superstitious” and “unscientific.” Lorenz referred to the “enormous underestimation of our nonrational, cultural fund, and the equal overestimation of all that man is able to produce with his intellect” as factors “threatening our civilization with destruction.”

Giambattista Vico,[13] a precursor to Spengler, tried to warn about this superficiality of intellectualization and its rejection of tradition – including religion – at the time of the Renaissance, the much-lauded beginning of the epoch of the West’s decay. Ibn Khaldun attempted the same when there was still something left of the Islamic civilization,[14] on the verge of becoming fellaheen, as Spengler called such spent civilizations, or historically passé. We can say the same about Cato, and many others faced by the “progressives” of their own civilization when entering upon the epoch of decay. “Progress” is one of the great illusions of our time, just as it was in the analogous epochs of other civilizations over the course of thousands of years.[15] If Jeremiah, Cato, or Herodotus were to be transported to this time in the West, they might laugh or sneer at the banal slogans of our “progressives” and “moderns,” and reply, “I’ve seen it all before . . . and it does not end well.”

“Being enlightened is no reason for confronting transmitted tradition with hostile arrogance,” stated Lorenz. Writing at a time when the New Left was rampant, as it is today under other names, Lorenz observed that the attitude of youth towards parents shows a great deal of “conceited contempt but no understanding.”[16] Lorenz perceived a great deal of the psychosis of the Left as a pathogen in the social organism, as it remains today: “The revolt of modern youth is founded on hatred; a hatred closely related to an emotion that is most dangerous and difficult to overcome: national hatred. In other words, today’s rebellious youth reacts to the older generation in the same way that an ‘ethnic’ group reacts to a foreign, hostile one.”[17]

What is of interest is that Lorenz saw this as a youth subculture that was tantamount to a separate, foreign ethnos, when a group forms around its own rites, dress, manners, and norms. In the biological sciences this is called “pseudospeciation.” With this new group identity comes a “corresponding devaluation of the symbols” of other cultural units.[18] The obsession with all that is regarded as “new” among the youth revolt was described by Lorenz as “physiological neophilia.” While this is necessary to prevent stagnation, it is normally gradual and followed by a return to tradition. Such a balance, however, is easily upset.[19] In the psychology of individuals, fixation at the stage of neophilia results in behavioral abnormalities such as vindictive resentment towards long-dead parents.[20] This lack of respect for tradition is aggravated by the breakdown of traditional social hierarchy, mass organization, and “a money-grabbing race against itself”[21] that dominates the Late West.

Since Lorenz wrote of these symptoms of Western decay during the 1970s, the Western social organism has continued to fracture, and as one would expect, it has been exponential – a collective rush to insanity that is ironically upheld as “healthy” by humanistic psychologists, who are themselves afflicted with the psychosis and produce papers and books “proving” that, to cite the latest “progressive” fad, one’s gender is a matter of choice. Again we confront the ideological opposition to “biologism” that kept Lysenko in a job.

Destruction of Symbols is Symbolic

There is now the presence – vastly greater than in Lorenz’s time – of actual ethnoi that have no attachment to the West, but maintain a great resentment. There is also further pseudospeciation among women in terms of radical feminism and “gays,” possessing their own manners, rites, dress, terms of speech, and even their own flags and other symbols. They are united in their hatred of the West, denigrated as “white patriarchy”; with its symbols being torn down and its heroes ridiculed as “dead white males.” The destruction of the traditional symbols of one’s forefathers is a redirected form of matricide and patricide that became a doctrine during the psychotic days of the New Left, among the “Weathermen” and Yippies and so on during the 1960s, when Charles Manson became a revolutionary hero, and Jerry Rubin rejoiced in the death of his mother – who, had it not been for cancer, he would have had to murder.[22] We currently witness the group psychosis of the New-New Left in the compulsion to destroy Confederate monuments, and the frenzied, atavistic hitting and kicking at toppled bronze statues with the frenzy of the Italian mob kicking at the lifeless bodies of Mussolini and Clara Petacci.

This vandalism of the symbols and monuments of tradition is a substitute for murder, such as is unleashed during revolution, like that directed at Confederate memorial statues; by official decree at the statues of General Franco in Spain; and the recent abortive effort to get a statue of New Zealand colonial officer Colonel Marmaduke Nixon torn down, presumably as the beginning of a process, through a colossal distortion of colonial history.[23] It is in each case an example of trying to obliterate the tradition that serves as an anchor, without which hubris leads to self-destruction. In other circumstances, these types – and they are types – would have been burning churches in Spain, or destroying ancient monuments in Iraq.

Notes

[1] Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas Caritat Condorcet, Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1955).

[2] A. R. Wallace, The Wonderful Century(London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1985).

[3] Francis Fukuyama, “The End of History?”, The National Interest, Summer 1989.

[4] K. R. Bolton, The Decline and Fall of Civilisations (London: Black House Publishing, 2017), pp. 121-124.

[5] Oswald Spengler, The Decline of The West(London: George Allen & Unwin, 1971).

[6] Rupert Sheldrake, “Morphic resonance: Introduction.”

[7] C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections(New York: Pantheon Books, 1961), pp. 235-236.

[8] Alexis Carrel, Man the Unknown (Sydney: Angus & Robertson Ltd., 1937), Preface, p. xi.

[9] Carrel, I, p. 1.

[10] Carrel, I, p. 3.

[11] Carrel, I, p. 4.

[12] Konrad Lorenz, Civilized Man’s Eight Deadly Sins (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974), p. 61.

[13] Giambattista Vico, The New Science of Giambattista Vico (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1948).

[14] Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah, tr. Franz Rosenthal (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1969).

[15] Bolton, The Decline and Fall of Civilisations, passim.

[16] Lorenz, p. 64.

[17] Lorenz, p. 64.

[18] Lorenz, pp. 64-65.

[19] Lorenz, p. 69.

[20] Lorenz, pp. 69-70.

[21] Lorenz, p. 73.

[22] Jerry Rubin, Growing (Up) at 37 (New York: Warner Books, 1976), pp. 140-142. This is followed with a few elaborations that enter new realms of psychosis. See K. R. Bolton, The Psychotic Left (London: Black House Publishing, 2013).

[23] Farah Hancock, Newsroom, September 8, 2017, “South Auckland’s Uncomfortable History.”