So what does the “core alt-right” represent? “The one thing they all agree on,” Jonah says, “is what they call racial realism, or racialism, which is just a social science sounding term for racism. … the one thing they all agree on is that we need to organize this society on the assumption that white people are genetically superior, or that white culture is inherently superior, and that we should have either state-imposed or culturally-imposed segregation between the races, no race mixing with the lower brown people.”
If you don’t agree with that philosophy — if you’re animated more by border security, national security, and a tougher trade policy — then you’re not really alt-right, Jonah argues. ...
This comes up in a discussion between Goldberg and Hugh Hewitt that Morrissey refers to. The audio is at the link and fairly interesting, if you want to hear the whole thing.
Here's what Goldberg argues we should do:
HH: ... Now does the term alt right get used exclusively in that fashion?
JG: No, which is one of the things that we should be doing, is we should be helping sharpen the distinction, not blur the distinction. I agree with you. There are a lot of people who don’t know what the alt right is. I live in these swamps. I’ve been having these fights for 20 years. I didn’t hear the term alt right until Donald Trump came up. But I know a lot of the people behind the alt right, because I’ve been getting it, they’ve been attacking me and then saying nasty anti-Semitic stuff to me since I started working at National Review. I mean, people are like, the guys at VDARE and these other places, they’ve all coalesced around this idea of the alt right, and it is not a coalitional idea where they want to be part of the conservative movement. It’s that they want to replace the conservative movement.
HH: And they have to be driven out of the Republican Party.
JG: Yes.
HH: I’m speaking as a partisan now. As William F. Buckley led the effort to drive the Birchers out of the party, so must genuine conservatives drive out what you and I agree is the core alt right.
JG: Right.
They both understand the difficulty of doing this, but agree it's what should be done. Beyond the problem of nomenclature, I don't know if it's possible today to do what Buckley did.
What do you think about all this? The nomenclature, what should be done, etc.? I'd be interested to know.
22 comments:
If you want to know what a group stands for, ask THEM, not their political enemies.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskThe_Donald/comments/4zlktu/what_exactly_is_the_altright_campaign_everyone_is/?
Valerie
That's exactly what Goldberg says in the interview. He claims that he looks to the leadership of the movement and reads their stuff. He also says a lot of people have adopted the name without really knowing what it refers to.
He may be wrong, of course.
It's an interesting opposing view, so here's the link to the Breitbart article on the alt-right from your reddit thread, for anyone who is interested.
Fixing on the term "white culture" for a moment....
It is absolutely critical to remember that "culture" is downstream from "cult". What one worships--right or wrong--is the progenitor of 'the culture.' In that light, "white culture" is misleading, for "white" culture is not necessarily 'good.'
John Paul II referred to the 'culture of death.' He could as easily have referred to the 'culture of money,' or 'culture of sex,' all of which are evils, and practiced to one degree or another by "whites."
See (e.g.) Vox Day fight off the term "Judaeo-Christian" as a descriptor of Western culture, because of his animosity toward Jews. But also note that Jews who are unfaithful to Judaism (rightly understood) are actually in another 'culture.' Same goes for Christians unfaithful to Christianity.
Assuming that the alt-right has carefully chosen its terminology, "white culture" is just as cloudy a term as is "social justice." That's deliberately elastic.
If the "core alt-right" is defined by "racial realism," then why call them by the one name instead of the other? Indeed, why call them by any name, instead of just addressing the racial realist argument?
I have read enough VDARE over the years to know what they think the answer to that is: because race (or something like it) is real, and an attempt to answer their objections on honest and scientific terms will prove them correct.
Goldberg sounds like someone who is trying to set up a doctrine rather than contest the truth. Rather than driving them out, why not prove them wrong? It leaves them thinking that they must be right, and their assertions unchallenged. (I rarely challenge them myself, for that matter, because they're largely based on a kind of statistical argumentation that I find fundamentally suspicious as a means of investigating the world -- which is a philosophical argument I don't expect to be persuasive to many, as most people don't think in terms of epistemology but authority, and all the so-called 'social sciences' proceed this way.)
The instapundit pj thread had about 510+ comments on it.
Whites have been elastic since 1830s US, during the expansion of the Bible Belt. I listed some of my direct communication with the Genetics wing of the Alternative Right at the instapundit comment section.
This is the section that believes DNA is destiny/fate, and that whites are the only ones who can produce high culture, thus that makes them inherently superior to at least Africans. Asians and Jews are not included, and if they are, it is to blame them for being superior or to point at their sense of superiority as being justification for whites that need to feel superior.
But generally, irregardless of Russian intervention, I've seen this viral program play out before. In Islam, they believe they are superior. In black culture/communities in the US, they believe they are superior. It's a way to fight off facing the fact that they are inferior and that they have problems, which they don't want to solve. For Islam, it is the lack of modern military and economic progress or power. If Islam is supreme, then why has Allah allowed the West to advance in military and economic affairs? Islam should have the entire world as its slaves, all of its GDP, and most of its nukes, that is what it means to be Superior under God. Same problem for blacks. Because they are inferior, they have to find excuses like institutional slavery or keeping blacks from acting white, to justify why the black race is superior... yet also inherently broken socially in US ghettos managed by gangs loyal to Demoncrats. But they have to vote Demoncrat else their Massa stops feeding them with EB cards, so they can't blame the Demons, they have to blame the racist Republican white boys instead. That is how the know they are Superior.
So now we see this being applied to white cultures, again. Not uniformly, but using the same methodology. Whites are now oppressed, for whatever reasons, and they believe, because of their technological ascension or white freedom inheritance, that they "deserve better". Now the only reason why they deserve better is because of this inheritance, which were stolen by "cucks" and "Arabs" and basically "non white invaders". That's why whites suffer under welfare, that's why whites are being oppressed, that's why whites abort their children and can't get a higher birth rate than 2.0 replacement, and that's why whites are losing out, playing nice, with Islam and socialism. So obviously the answer is to return to the eugenics philosophy of the 1830 slave lords in the US, and resurrect the glory of the white race.
For blacks, it is once again time to fight and resurrect the glory of their black race. For Ossetians, it is once again the time to fight and resurrect the glory of their steppe raiding and supreme warlike ways, that will defeat the effete Georgians.
About the only people who have any experience in what happens when this blows up, are the Japanese and the Orthodox non reformed religious Jews in Judaism. The Jews did a lot of things based on their "supremacy" beliefs against Rome in 70 AD Nero time and in Hadrian's time.
A lot of these cultural and tribal supremacy beliefs are weapons used to destroy said culture and tribe, because a lot of times they try to win in a war, and fail. Japan failed. Germany failed. Jews failed, got exiled for 2000 years (now's that pretty long to teach them a lesson, they must be stubborn). America is the exception to the rule then? Was the South the exception to the rule back when Civil War 1 was fought due to slavery, and slavery was due to the white supremacist beliefs of the slave lords and Southern Baptists? It's no different, just history and human power struggles repeating themselves. Vox Day believes this is a fight about/against evil, but the smarter he and others are, the easier they become to manipulate. By Lucifer. By former KGB. By just basic human nature and gered.
https://voxday.blogspot.com/2016/08/playing-buckley-card.html?showComment=1472330882633#c7374261657791346097
The direct argument thread itself, for people who want to read the Genetics wing argument.
And it is true what Grim mentioned, a lot of Alt Right people love confrontation and contest, and see shrinking away from it, as a sign of weakness. They, as with the Left, do not see signs of weakness as an invitation for them to sit down and shut up. No, it's an invitation to crush the enemy, as most warriors would think.
Humans are laughably predictable, and will go to hell as many times as they can renew the generation rolls and forget the past. [This one was because of character limits]
The racist alt-right isn't going to 'replace' anything. They are going to remain a fringe. It's only social media that makes them seem bigger or more important than they really are.
If the VDARE people (and I've ended up reading enough of their stuff over the years to understand what they think) actually had any sort of pull, things just wouldn't look the way that they do now.
The funny thing I find in all this is that these people think that somehow they're real 'white culture'. You can almost always tell that the people talking this way are Americans. No Europeans I know use such a term. They always refer to their own national culture and occasionally will refer to 'European' culture. America either doesn't count, or is basically an enemy.
And even more funny is that all these American racialists or whatever they are, pretty much actually hate the 'high culture' they supposedly care about so much.
Grim, from Goldberg's description in the broadcast, he's been engaging the racialists for a couple of decades, and their form of rhetoric seems to be wishing he'd been around for Hitler to gas. So, I don't think he's concerned with proving them wrong because they seem to be immune to such things. Now he wants to separate them from voters who are really just anti-establishment, but not racialists, but who seem to be attracted to the racialists' "burn it down" rhetoric. The more they find common cause with the racialists, the more likely some of them will become racialists.
I don't know if his claims are true, but my few brief brushes with the racialists pushes my sympathies to Goldberg.
The Birchers got some things right about the Left, other things wrong.
I was wondering why they didn't get much influence over time.
The Republican tendency to use social, religious, and Lawfare to clean house, is a tribal trait. But it's not going to be enough for them to out debate or out last the evil of the Leftist alliance. Nor counter Islam's power.
Just hiding the ugly step children and making sure nobody talks about them, may be effective for a time, but eventually the monsters have to be dealt with. If Western civilization is based on truth, then kicking out Birchers using BUckley subversion, really doesn't provide much long term benefit. Same as trying to outlaw or suppress the KKK. That's not very useful for liberty. Preventing people from lyching people, such as the KKK lynching Republicans, is a good thing. But that also includes preventing X from Lynching the KKK... but for some reason, foolish humans think that if they belong to Tribe Good, they can do whatever they feel like to Tribe Evil.
Grim, from Goldberg's description in the broadcast, he's been engaging the racialists for a couple of decades, and their form of rhetoric seems to be wishing he'd been around for Hitler to gas.
Goldberg is making an intellectual fail pit there, by allocating the David Dukes, Iranians, Islamic supremacists, and Alt Right movement content creators in the same bag, based on "anti semitism". As I mentioned before, the Semitic people include the Kurds and the Arabs. So unless Duke also hates Arabs when he meets with them to talk about wiping out the Jews, they aren't anti semitic. It's only anti semitic in the nazi German definition, because they needed a way to lump Religious Judaism Jews with non religious Jews.
The Jewish people have been gifted with some level of intelligence, perhaps greater than the norm technologically, but their arrogance as a result of their human made laws replacing divine laws, is excessively dangerous in analyzing strategic and logistical elements.
Fighting so called "anti semitic" attackers of Jews, is not the same as dealing with the origins of the Alternative Right or the anti Left Coalition in the US and online.
I'm sure some elements overlap, like David Duke's people. But that's true of the Leftist alliance as well. Fringe groups have a lot of overlap with mainstream coalitions, because ideological differences are not that important online.
In fairness, I've neither seen their argument with Goldberg to judge the tone -- nor seen Goldberg make a sustained statistical argument of the type I'm suggesting they'd take as a science-and-evidence-based argument.
Steve Sailer, for example, is always quoted by his opponents outside of his statistical arguments. I find the mode of argumentation deeply questionable, but I don't question his devotion to the math. I've never seen Goldberg make a comparably mathematically literate argument on any topic.
I doubt the usefulness of engaging the debate in a way. To concede the field is to concede the conclusions, to some degree, since a statistical analysis of these questions requires a presupposition of the categories they are taking as real. Since the question is whether or not the categories are actually real, a method that treats them as real is going to tend to ratify even accidental regularities within a category as evidence for the reality of that category. And, of course, the categories are broad enough that accidental regularities should be expected.
But that's an epistemelogical and meta-scientific argument against their project, not a refutation of their data. I think that they believe they're right on the data, based on some serious mathematical work. I don't think Goldberg is up to challenging them there, and even if you find the writer who is, I'm not convinced that you won't end up convincing him or her of the validity of their project. The structure of the argument will tend to suggest that they're right to at least some degree; I just think that's baked into the kind of statistical investigation they are doing.
To concede the field is to concede the conclusions, to some degree, since a statistical analysis of these questions requires a presupposition of the categories they are taking as real. Since the question is whether or not the categories are actually real, a method that treats them as real is going to tend to ratify even accidental regularities within a category as evidence for the reality of that category.
I notice there's a difference between people who take new genetic research as the Gospel of their atheist supremacist beliefs, vs those that independently derived the same or similar conclusions concerning genetics, without using corrupted data or world political scientific status quo consensus based research. There's no guarantee that human scientific arrogant credentialed funded by government special interest do gooders, were right about Mark 1 genetics, nor is the current updated model of Mark 2 genetics, significantly better than the flawed previous model.
As one comparison for the average person, physics went through several models of the atom. More than 3, to be precise. And we're on an even "better" but still incomplete model, using quantum mechanics, called the Standard Model. All of it is attempting to describe how matter functions at the most basic or smallest level. Genetics and DNA, is a scale of difficulty human knowledge is still severely limited on, about the equivalent of electromagnetics during Tesla's time. There's no way for normal humans in the masses to tell the difference between a con artist talking about invisible power like wind blowing on the fields, vs Tesla, who was also seen as a rather eccentric crazy mad scientist. They can only adhere to their social status quo, their scientific status quo, their Authorities, and their Experts, who all end up flawed one way or another. Tesla's flaw was that he was born in that century rather than this one. They didn't have the luxury or power to fuel the infrastructure and logistics needed to make induction power a reality. Which is to say, the Wireless Charging tech used in phones today. He might as well have been talking about making super soldiers using Frankenstein methods, back then, it would have been received with more popularity.
Those that refused or were incapable of doing original research or deductive reasoning of DNA effects and causes on human behavior, merely are pulled along by the frontier of science, which is itself a dark, foggy, realm where most people have no idea where it is going or even if it is going anywhere at all except in circles. If the world says research into these topics will "advance" humanity, and people are just following along like good zombies, then it is no different than the "research" the Soviets and the Nazis did on humans in order to advance their version of the Enlightenment, which is a Dark Enlightenment or corrupted Enlightenment.
Whenever a bunch of humans start jumping on the band wagon of what's popular, I begin to question whether any of them have a single original thought in their heads, besides "Obeying Orders". One of the reasons why the Alt Right is popular amongst white Americans is because if white Americans could fix their poverty, welfare, marriage, drug, and other social suicidal birth rate disorders, they wouldn't need Political Lords to begin with. It is this state of psychological and individual weakness, that allows the whispers of deception to take hold and sink deep roots.
The structure of the argument will tend to suggest that they're right to at least some degree
The statistics are merely the gloss on the cake. It is easier for the masses to comprehend and thus argue for. Somebody has to give the supporters something to quote, otherwise the culture cannot sustain its propaganda offensive.
If one wishes to deconstruct the Alt Right's foundation philosophy, they should come at it from a rather unorthodox attack lane. Which is not something people stuck with the status quo world views, like NRO, can do.
The Alt Right, at least the content creators and charismatic economically independent individuals, pride themselves on transparency and on furthering the Western Enlightenment and culture, which is better, more powerful, and superior than its competition in say Arabia or Africa (Japan isn't mentioned vis a vis China's pollution).
Trying to hold them to those rules to break them, probably won't work, since they stick to those rules as a defense against the irrationality and the threats of the Left/Islam. Succeeding in beating them using their own rules, would be one bit of evidence they could not refute however. Islam won't accept you as equal or superior to them, until you beat them in Jihad. Black BLM Assassins + Black Panthers won't accept you as equal or superior to them unless you beat them in terms of their toxic masculine gang culture: i.e. Physical intimidation, strength, and lethality.
Just like any tribal, they aren't going to accept you just because you try to look like them or mimic their customs. They will test you. Goldberg's been stuck on so high an intellectual plane as "Liberal Fascism", that he falls into various pit traps designed expressly for those types of people.
http://www.vdare.com/posts/blonde-hair-blue-eyes-and-sex-selection-new-genome-technique-reveals-brits-evolving-over-last-2000-years-to-look-more-like-rosie-huntington-whiteley
http://www.vdare.com/posts/the-forward-human-biodiversity-the-pseudoscientific-racism-of-the-alt-right
A lot of them are similar to when scientific consensus deemed fat unhealthy and had all kinds of recommendations for nutrition. None of which reached the heart of the cause itself, it was merely correlation stacked ontop of causation.
While correlation is evidence, it is too little of the universe for me to rely upon as a bedrock or keystone. Also if it is true that these successors of the Left's eugenics and of Margaret Sanger and of the Nazi fake Aryan supremacy beliefs are updating their views, in the 1990s, then this movement is a lot longer lasting than the internet communities. Whether the internet communities and have hijacked the Genetics movement or vice a versa, whether they are being manipulated or controlled by Russian disinformation, are all very good questions.
The Leftist alliance did their diligent work in suppressing any views of eugenics, which also froze future research. Now this backlash is reaching past the stop gaps.
This is indeed what happens when people stifle criticism and open transparency, just as crippling the Tea Party gives rise to some "alternative" party. A Thousand Factions in US Civil War 2 and counting.
Grim: ... even if you find the writer who is, I'm not convinced that you won't end up convincing him or her of the validity of their project. The structure of the argument will tend to suggest that they're right to at least some degree; I just think that's baked into the kind of statistical investigation they are doing.
So how are we supposed to engage them? You may be right that Goldberg is trying to set doctrine rather than win the argument, but it doesn't seem that there is any way to genuinely engage their argument without buying into their circular reasoning and conceding even before you start. I don't know if Goldberg is right, and I'm not suggesting any course of action right now, but if a group is both wrong and unreachable, sometimes you just have to excommunicate them.
Ymar: Goldberg is making an intellectual fail pit there, by allocating the David Dukes, Iranians, Islamic supremacists, and Alt Right movement content creators in the same bag, based on "anti semitism".
Really? Where? Certainly not in the article or interview I linked. He says he's tried to discuss the issues with people on the alt-right and they sent him photoshopped images of him being gassed in the Nazi gas chambers and that sort of thing. He didn't talk about all the rest. He just discussed his personal experience.
So how are we supposed to engage them?
You could try reaching out to people who do statistics in a serious way, explain the problem, and see what they'd suggest. It might be possible for someone steeped in the math to find a solution to the structural problem. Perhaps they'd have a way of identifying accidental regularities.
Philosophers would tend to take the regularities as possible accidents, and try to prove the causality. But statistics has a well known problem doing that: correlation is not causation, but correlation is generally all you can find with statistics. You need some other discipline to identify the causal relationships. Right now, we lack the scientific knowledge to do that kind of work: these arguments are all about "epi-*" phenomena like "epigenetics." "Epi" means 'it's around here somewhere, I'm sure of it.'
So we can't do the science, and the statistics requires assuming the categories in an unhelpful way. The best I know to do, for now, is to point out the problem.
He says he's tried to discuss the issues with people on the alt-right and they sent him photoshopped images of him being gassed in the Nazi gas chambers and that sort of thing.
He's saying the editors, writers, and content creators at VDare did so?
What about the geneticists, eugenicists, David Dukes, and VoxDays, did they all send him images of him being gassed when he wanted a debate?
If Goldberg can't tell the difference between Content Producers online and Content Consumers online, he's got a bigger problem than the current one.
To put it another way, Trum is a content producer, he creates controversies to capitalize on them. The twitter crowd that allowed Trum to get away with hating Megyn Kelly and character assassinating her because Trum said he "couldn't care less about her", are the content consumers.
I don't know if Goldberg is right, and I'm not suggesting any course of action right now, but if a group is both wrong and unreachable, sometimes you just have to excommunicate them.
That's the reason why Christianity is broken right now as well as was the case for State Christianity after the Council of Chalcedon.
Those who don't know their history, repeat their history. Even if they know about it, they still repeat it.
That's not including the issue of whether someone has the power of the Pope King in America to use their moral authority to excommunicate anyone. The Catholics can excommunicate the Luthers all they wish, it's not going to make the Papacy Godly.
Right now, we lack the scientific knowledge to do that kind of work: these arguments are all about "epi-*" phenomena like "epigenetics."
All humans have to do is to replicate God's work and use genetics to create and modify lifeforms and their future behavior. Shouldn't be a problem for the atheists that think God is dead.
SM Stirling's Draka, btw, is looking more and more like a prophecy, rather than military sci fi.
He's saying the editors, writers, and content creators at VDare did so?
If you want to know, go read him. I've linked it. I'm not here to defend or represent him, but to discuss his ideas. If you can't be bothered to educate yourself enough to do that, you're just wasting everyone's time.
He's always wasting everyone's time. That's what he does.
In what way is SM Stirling's Draka stories prophecy?
You want prophecy, read Huxley.
If you want to know, go read him. I've linked it. I'm not here to defend or represent him, but to discuss his ideas.
Of course I read his article before I read your post here. What you were talking about wasn't in the section that was transcribed about the Alt Right however.
If you want to discuss his ideas, then quoting him would be more accurate than paraphrasing him. Thus if I want verify whether you are right or wrong, I want you to actually quote the things you've read, rather than trying to paraphrase them in a favorable way for your own argument.
I think Tom, you need to stop wasting my time. Because if you actually wanted to discuss his ideas, you wouldn't paraphrase them nor would you react to my counter by saying I need to read him.
He says he's tried to discuss the issues with people on the alt-right and they sent him photoshopped images of him being gassed in the Nazi gas chambers and that sort of thing.
You made the claim, then provide the quotes to prove it. If you don't want to prove it and you want me to prove it when it isn't my line of argument, then indeed you are wasting my time by claiming to talk about ideas. You aren't talking about ideas, you're talking about some personal motivation you're hiding, Tom.
He's always wasting everyone's time. That's what he does.
Since people here don't read what I write nor do they understand it, how is it I am wasting your time, EB? In point of fact, I would think the first question you posed to me, about when have I ever killed anyone, would be the very definition of a time waster.
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