Alex Kurtagic’s current TOO piece (It’s not the arguments“) is an argument for the importance of solid funding for the success of any media venture, TOO included. The basic idea is an important one to discuss — that high status confers influence. Indeed, the importance of high status is a critical ingredient of theories of influence in sociology, and psychologists have argued that attraction to high status is part of our evolutionary heritage.
We see this repeatedly in the key institutions throughout the West, including the media and the academic world. Jewish influence basically stems from their influence on all of the high ground of the culture. The revolution of the Left was a top-down revolution that began in the most prestigious academic and media institutions and then spread to the lower reaches of the media and the K-12 educational system.
For all its espousal of egalitarianism, the academic world is a hierarchical system in which the highest levels are rigorously policed to ensure ideological conformity because any leak in the system would mean that non-conformists would benefit from institutional prestige. This, of course, is exactly why John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt caused such a panic attack in the ranks of the Israel Lobby. Mearsheimer and Walt weren’t just two easy-to-ignore guys from some college no one heard of; nor were they members of an easily marginalized group, such as Arabs. They were well-known and academically productive professors from prestigious institutions — the University of Chicago and Harvard respectively. This resulted in a full-fledged smear campaign emphasizing “shoddy scholarship” (typically made by Jewish activist organizations or others without the least experience as scholars) and charges of being anti-Semites on a par with the authors of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. When all else fails, …
Another example is E. O. Wilson, the Harvard biologist who in 1975 stunned the academic left with the publication of Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. Wilson included a chapter applying evolutionary thinking to humans — a topic that had been expunged from the social sciences ever since the triumph of Boasian anthropology in the 1920s. Wilson was already well-known as an entomologist and ecologist, and his position at Harvard gave him immense authority.
The Left went into full-fledged moral panic mode, led by high-profile attacks from Richard Lewontin and Stephen Jay Gould — both of whom were also at Harvard and were discussed in Chapter 2 of Culture of Critique as examples of leftist Jewish intellectuals who undermined evolutionary and biological approaches in the social sciences.
The Israel Lobby and the Left won these battles ultimately. Politicians are loathe to cite Mearsheimer and Walt, and it is unthinkable that they could attain positions in the government where they could directly influence US foreign policy. Tamer versions of evolutionary psychology are tolerated, but arguments related to ethnic interests (Salter), the reality of ethnic and racial differences (Jensen, Lynn, Rushton), and my writing on Jewish influence on culture have been expunged from the mainstream media. I have sometimes thought that my ideas would be more influential if I held a position at Harvard. But the reality is that occasional lapses from decorum have been managed quite effectively.
The result is that Whites are intellectually and culturally insecure. Any cultural confidence they have must buck the tide of elite opinion which is constantly telling them they are racists who owe whatever success they have in life to “White privelege” or other inventions of the Left. As I noted elsewhere, “one of the greatest triumphs of the left has been to get people to believe that people who assert white identity and interests or who make unflattering portrayals of organized Jewish movements are morally degenerate, stupid, and perhaps psychiatrically disturbed. Obviously, all of these adjectives designate low status.”
The revolution may well begin because of the rage of non-elite Whites. But it won’t be successful until the elite bastions of anti-White opinion are breached. And that will not be an easy fight to win.
Facing the Future as a Minority
Was the Immigration Act of 1924 Illiberal?
They know that an argument linked to high status will succeed, while one linked to low status — no matter how correct — will fail.
Indeed the 20th and 21st century has seen the triumph of Jewish ideas – Freud, Marx, Multicultalism, with a special slot preserved for Zionism, anti-nationalism, anti-Christianity, anti-beauty…
No where is this ‘high status’ success of bad ideas more prevalent than what passes for ‘art’ these days.
who undermined evolutionary and biological approaches in the social sciences.
The more and more multiculti fails the more removed these ‘high status’ ideas are from reality yet people still stick to them.
I was walking through an evolution exhibit through a Natural History museum -( an exhibit meant to drive home the idealogy of Evolution not the science) all the sudden, literally there is a plaque stating that though we separated 150,000 years ago and have some nominal differences in skin color we’re all the same, no changes, no different capabilities…
Kevin,
You could install a gate to Amazon like they have it at VDARE to get commission. While i am not going to donate to TOO any time very soon (I pay for my website where i translate and post many TOO articles for Russian nationalists, and I donate to nationalist organizations in Russia), I have a $750 worth shopping list at Amazon, and i gradually buying those books. And I guess many readers will gladly do the same. So it could be a small money source for TOO.
I’ll donate 25-40 euros a month from now on. You’re doing a great job.
Christianity started out as a low-status religion, per many commentators, including James Russell in his book, Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity.
The ancient world of Greece and Rome had been undermined by war , empire and immigration. Greco-Roman religion was in decline, especially after the Stoics recommended individualism and universalism. Alexander the Great operationalized these ideas in his conquests , mostly of Persia. The idea of Universalism was therefore introduced into the ancient world.
Christianity entered the scene amongst the anomie of large Roman cities filled with slaves and ex-slaves, immigrants, urban poor, and generally the detritus of empire. (We have the same problem today…Empire sending to the home country (England, Spain, France, the US) its low functioning types, from the Hmong, to the Pakis, to the cute little Equadorans taking over the parks of Spain, etc.).
So Christianity appealed to folks suffering from dislocation, deracination, lack of work. Generally this is called anomie, lack of norms. Societal norms are best established by continuity of family, community, nation/race, territory, and localism generally, including local gods, per Greco-Roman antiquity.
An agrarian order (non-urban) also functions socially as a stabilizer. When things in general FEEL good to folks, there is little or no need to start thinking about a better life after death. Fully socially integrated people, plus normal conditions of work and reasonable assurance of the future seems to be all that people need, if living in a stable environment.
For example, Chinese and Japanese traditional society has yet to bother with Christianity and the afterlife. Ancestor worship, (a very good idea), nation/community worship (Confucian and Shintoism) has somehow satisfied the Far East, and Buddhism in its variants is not after-life oriented.
Russell further argues in his scholarly Germanization…that the Germanic tribes (not Germany) fundamentally altered the Christianity of the Roman Empire and the Catholic Church, retaining a Northern orientation that has been a source of much Christian dispute.
Getting back to status, the issue is how status is achieved, not status itself.
Obviously success in the secular world is what it is. However, Ideas and political positions are not simply tied to worldly success and its signs.
A genetic argument, a Darwinian argument, would look first at that which contributes to individual and group survival, and that which subverts it.
The White race appears to have a genetic predisposition to be open to strangers, per KM’s and others’ discussion of our unique evolutionary history of hunting and gathering in small groups in the North. This kind of existence favored relative openness to other small groups for trade, exogamy, and social contact. Today, that trait does not serve us, it plagues us.
The idea of equality was invented by Greeks, taken up by Christians to more or less degree, and in the last couple centuries has exploded in the liberal protestant churches, especially the Unitarian Universalists who go back to the early 19th century, and Vatican II amongst the Catholics.
Darwin and the Darwinians enjoyed a fairly large scientific and social standing up until about 1920. There was status and acceptance to some large measure. One measure was the racialism of the Left , both in Europe and the US. This racialism was in part due to protection of jobs for Whites in Europe and North America, and generally was part of the “racism” of the century or so of Imperialism which did see the various native populations as inferior.
“White Man’s Burden” is exemplified, for example by Schweitzer in Africa who was frankly racialist but believed in helping the benighted blacks. Christian missionaries , starting with the Spanish Conquest of the Americas, did not see their targets as equal in any way except before God.
What happened , besides the Jewish campaign to break down the immigration barriers in the US through a cynical deployment of the race equality myth, was that 1776, 1789, and the “democratic revolution” took hold of the White race and to some degree the Chinese (talk about anomie ca. l925 in China) and various other third world types…and here we are.
The “democratic revolution” historically has been championed by the lower status lower social orders, with a few intellectual leaders.
Status is itself problematic. For example, intellectual, religious, scientific pioneers may be low status within their general society/culture, but relatively high status within a sub-group of like-minded. Furthermore, status might not enter into the equation much at all when love/affiliation provides social support thru a small group, or even just a handful of individuals.
In terms of the general social order getting receptive to our particular heresy, they will become more receptive when they experience , shall we say, hammering by blacks, mexers, liberal pols who are grabbing their money to spend on the uneducable, criminals, invaders, and jobs flying overseas, etc.
The time has arrived for the beginning of the counter-revolution. Our ideas of Darwinism, race inequality, organic hierarchy, will become attractive AFTER the field is softened up (like artillery) by reality. I talk to people all the time about this stuff…and they reluctantly begin to entertain our ideas.
Joe
AK:”Jewish influence basically stems from their influence on all of the high ground of the culture.”
Except Jews make terribly uninspiring leaders and neglectful elites because they do not identify with the non-Jewish masses — all they do is hoard and ‘parasitize’ nations until they are drained for everything they are worth and the culture is ruined. Once that occurs Jews simply find a new host.
Every nation which has become dominated by a hostile Jewish elite has ultimately been ruined…the modern USA and UK are no different because as of now they are clearly on the path of Jewish-induced ruination.
I beg to differ Joe. Christianity came in from the top down. From the get go when Jesus was a babe in the manger and the “three wise men”turned up from the Persian Empire bearing gifts one of the gifts was gold. You don’t seriously think that these three men with their entourage turned up with a chocolate gold coin for the child. The God-man was set for life and although he was brought up properly by his royal parents, Mary through Nathan son of King David and his foster father Joseph through Jeconiah, son of Solomon he didn’t have the worries that our TOO writers have.
Deracination (or adulterated) was never an issue. Again from the get go the Man from Galilee would talk about Judeans, Galileans and Samaritans. Not to mention sheep, dogs and beasts of the field. Sure we are all equal in the sense that everybody bleeds but nowhere in the Bible does it even hint that everybody has either the same gifts or capabilities. You are certainly right about the approaching reality!!!!??
Hmmm. Have you ever wondered why the New Testament genealogies of Jesus Christ are for Joseph’s side of the family—not for Mary’s side of the family. Even though we know that Judaism is passed from mother to child.
One thing the Jews haven’t been able to change about America is that anyone can make money.
I contributed a small recurring donation for this blog. It has to be small because I’m set to do the same with a few other projects, and I’m a humble earner.
“The greatest instrument of political authority is the ability to give names and enforce definitions.”
– Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 1651
Status is subordinate to power. As KM’s examples of E.O. Wilson and Mearsheimer and Walt show, power revokes status at its pleasure. Even someone as high up in the status hierarchy as James Watson was quickly brought low when his remarks displeased power. Without the support of power, status can’t be obtained at any price, for power is the ability to confer status.
When was the last bottom up revolution in Western history?
Jack Cade’s revolt.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Cade
While I totally agree that money is good, I disagree that TOO needs moneybags to attract great writers. Quality minds are attracted to quality issues. The main reason I read TOO is that the writers are SO good. The line up is much better than anywhere in the mainstream media. At least two writers, Alex and Sunic, I would characterize as superb prose stylists.
Have you ever read any of the neocons? These are second rate writers. Dry, full of platitudes, trite. Their influence stems from their access and relationship to power.
Randy says:
February 22, 2010 at 7:47 PM
When was the last bottom up revolution in Western history?
That’s actually a great question.
And though I don’t want to speak for you Randy my guess is that your answer was implied in the question, ie; there has never been a bottom up revolution.
In other words it was a rhetorical question designed to make a point that we must always depend on a top down revolution.
On the other hand, it may have simply been a sincere question.
Either way, and like I said, it’s a good question.
And the answer to it is,
When the masses appeared on the stage of World History.
This is one of the great themes of the novels of Sir Walter Scott.
And less than a hundred years after Scott died Ortega y Gassett penned his classic, The Revolt of the Masses.
But there were some ideas out there that helped to mobilize the masses and they did come from elites. Non the less, it did morph into a full blown revolution of sorts that took on a life of its own.
I mention it to point out that there’s no avoiding the fact that we have to acknowledge both, the elite and the masses, and the influence and claims of both as they concern us, Whites.
In short, and as I’ve said many time and will probably have ocassion to say again – we need to learn how to talk to each other.
I think that the elites should offer their ideas to those outside of the elite without watering down their ideas, or talking down to their readers.
Elites I think should avoid an elites only club but rather present themselves as an elite part of an organization of people whose interests they in some way speak to and serve. Otherwise, quite frankly, what’s the point?
For this reason I think Alex Kurtagic should avoid formula’s like
financial security = intellectual honesty.
So, for you poor, struggling Whites out there with intellectual interests, forget it. Leave it to us middle and upper middle class Whites to save the day, and your ass.
I also think he should avoid idealizing the word “Status.”
After all, there is another side to the story.
Financial security and status loom large among the Hostile elite and they are the most spiritually shallow and intellectually dishonest people in the world. A lot of good their money and status have done them.
Yes, status is important.
Yes, it should not be brushed aside.
But as I said, there’s another side of the story and status can come in many forms.
For example, in the world in general and America in particular the Underdog can confer great status.
I mean, just look at the Jews. They got to where they are playing the Underdog card, if you will.
For some time now in letters (I still write them) and emails to family and friends I have refered to Jews today as the story of a David who became Goliath and still thinks he’s David.
Why?
Because the Underdog confers high status.
For this reason, and at a time when we are trying to build something, which surely must imply a bit of reaching out to others who are on our side but may be different from us in some ways, namely poor or struggling (and in many cases exactly because they are White and shut out from the mainstream), do we really want to convey the image of being intellectually sharp but spiritually superficial, and worst of all, snotty?
This is the kind of vibe I get sometimes from Kurtagic and from Richard “I Hate Proles” Hoste.
But let’s talk about the world of status-seekers and the statusphere they live in.
The best example on a personal note is a man I know who always wanted to be a History teacher and possibly a football coach, and continue being a lifeguard in the summer.
But his father, a plummer, was status obsessed, and insisted his son become a lawyer. So his son became a lawyer, graduating number 2 in his class at the Law school of an Ivy league college.
Naturally, by the time he bought his first house he had a trophy wife to put in it. He was the symbol of status, via the American Dream.
By 45 he collapsed from a massive heart attack and barely made it.
Last time I saw him and asked him how he was doing he said what he always says now to people who ask, “Still waiting for the other shoe to hit the floor.”
Wow.
It’s also worth pointing out that he made his bundle by doing high-tech ambluance chasing with a Jewish partner.
He not only had to make his money in a cut throat kind of way, but much worse, he turned his back on what HE really wanted to do with his life.
Yes, status is ok.
I certainly wouldn’t say no to fame if fortune if it came.
But not at the expense of losing my soul. No way.
Of course I realize that there is so much more that could be said on this interesting topic and I hardly think my few comments here are exhaustive. But it does give one enough of an idea on how careful we should be with the way we use that word.
I enjoyed reading Kurtagic’s article – his best so far, IMO.
I have to add, though, that there are certain key issues and approaches in the writings of both Kurtagic and Sunic that have a peculiar Eastern European twist, possibly not accessible to mainstream Americans. Some of these issues strike me as sublimely foreign: the unsophisticated emphasis on status, simulacra (the “semiophere”), surface phenomena, a certain hostility to philosophy, just to mention of few. A lot of people tend to forget or ignore the enormous differencies between east and west in Europe. Certainly, the enormous differencies between the US and Latin America are too obvious to be denied.
In short: North-South in America is like West-East in Europe. In the corrupt societies of eastern Europe, it makes perfectly sense to say that intellectual honesty is something that can be purchased. It also makes increasingly sense in the now multiculturalized West, but it’s not a natural part of our instincts.
There are ways to breach and cleanse the elite institutions in the US, but they will likely require methods that the snotty white middle class (WN and non-WN) will find too indelicate to employ.
The white revolution will be a movement of the working class and upper class. The white middle class, comfortable and compromised, obsessed with vulgar status-seeking and IQ, has shown itself again and again to be incapable of real action.
Geiseric says:
February 23, 2010 at 2:49 AM
Geiseric says:
February 23, 2010 at 4:24 AM
Excellent posts!! Excellent points!
Especially the East-West distinction. It put everthing into perspective.
Of course I still very much love reading both Kurtagic and Sunic but simply failed to identify the obvious, which you pointed out in your posts.
Richard Hoste is another story all together. I find his constant use of the word Prole, and his open and unapologetic tone in denigrating White people he doesn’t approve of, as irritating, pretentious, bogus elitism.
Yes, he’s smart. Yes, he has some points to make, some things to say, but his tone is an irritating distraction, and ends up coming off as a second-rate Paul Fussel, only less friendly. Anyone who’s ever read or met Paul Fussel knows what I’m talking about.
Anway, the only writer I know who could pull off being insulting and funny and educational at the same time was Mencken, and Hoste is no Mencken either.
But are we trying to build something here or not?
Do we need each other or not?
Thanks, Pitbullexpress. I only pointed out the tip of the iceberg, but it’s good to see that there’s no need to explain the obvious and not-so-obvious.
“But are we trying to build something here or not? Do we need each other or not?”
That’s the question. Part of the answer is that eastern Europeans have a centuries-long experience living in multi-ethnic and multi-cultural societies. This is a potentially valuable experience, but part of the problem is that this has produced a kind mindset that is deeply foreign (sometimes even hostile) to the traditional Western mind. To racial preservationists, I’d also like to point out that eastern European populations ARE different from north-western Europeans in terms of gene-pools, especially considering their long-term co-mingling with non-Europeans from the Middle East (5-600 years of Turkish rule, for example).
I would like to use this article to begin confering High status among us to the group I refer to as Exposed Whites, as well as high status to the Elites among us willing to acknowledge them.
These are Whites with none of the socio-economic safety nets, but with a lot to offer.
These are the Whites who have been victimized and abused terribly and in many different ways. Such treatment has conseuqneces. And their offenders from family, to society, to culture, to history, and back again, blame their victims for what they in effect has caused! So Exposed Whites know great injustice and unfairness on top of the original abuse.
The result? An accumulation of injustices for which someone, somewhere down the line, will one day have to pay.
So far, with no voice, the suffering has been terrible, and lonely.
In short, many Whites are simply taking it out on themselves or those around them without even a clear idea of what has and is happening to them. I have been watching this go on for years now and it’s a sickening site. Heart-sickening. And I know of what I speak since it’s a position I have barely managed to escape myself having been entirely victimized by.
These are the Whites who inspite of such treatment are left alone with the their suffering and STILL try to do whatever they can to experience their own sense of value via contact with the cultural riches of the West.
I know I’m not the only one just as I know we have yet to mobilize into a coherent group, or collective of individuals, who knows how to identify and talk to each other.
We are rich with experience and loaded with a justifiable sense of outrage, and not simply at the Hostile Elite, but at the elitists of those who claim to speak for Whites but have as yet to even acknowledge our existence. The fact that Exposed Whites are largely ignored by Protected Whites means that the former feel, with considerable justice, that they are morally superior, and they know they are poorer – always an explosive and socially dangergous situation. One that could easily short-circuit any movement and stop it dead in its tracks before it even begins.
We are the gold buried in the mountains and high status would be immediately confered to those elites who helped uncover us and help put us to good use.
But if you read these websites you’d never know we exist.
We’re just all “Whites” with a lot of PhD’s writing lots of brilliant articles that pretty much amount to, “and look what they’re doing to us Now!”
In one way, that’s ok. This is, after all, part of a process, not an event.
It’s going to take some time. But clearly, we’re arriving now at a new stage in our development and really need to take an inventory, a careful and caring inventory, of what we have, and of who we are.
We don’t need to sentifmentalize our individual and collective struggles.
They are moving all on their own. But they do have to be acknowledged!
Without this acknowledgement from those claiming to be our “elites” you will simply lose us and soon after, yourselves, as we all find each other swallowed up by the Politically Correct, Multicultural Police State, the Liberal-Left-Neocon Leviathan that surrounds us all, united or not, at this very moment.
Geiseric: “To racial preservationists, I’d also like to point out that eastern European populations ARE different from north-western Europeans in terms of gene-pools, especially considering their long-term co-mingling with non-Europeans from the Middle East (5-600 years of Turkish rule, for example).”
Well, why don’t you try to prove it scientifically? To the best of my knowledge we Russians are not distinguishable from Nordics according to this piece of data http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2687795/pdf/gb-2009-10-1-r7.pdf
see Fig.3
But you must have something I missed so far, right?
“I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: ‘O Lord make my enemies ridiculous.’ And God granted it.”
— Voltaire
I think that white racial preservationists should spend considerably greater time and energy exposing the obvious hypocrisy and moral duplicity of the Liberal egalitarian side, in a manner consistent with Voltaire’s prayer.
Take the Kennedy clan in Washington.
There are a number of weak points in their history that could “enjoy” a little exposure!
First, the family made its fortune by defiantly breaking the laws of the land, and, specifically, an Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. They were essentially a criminal family, whether the law in place (Prohibition) was wise or otherwise!
Furthermore, unless I am uninformed, the Kennedy clan has stayed within the White Race in their marriages, while promoting Martin Luther King Jr. and his open endorsement of miscegenation (King actually stated that rejection of miscegenation would lead inevitably to genocide of the rejected race — a ridiculous statement in itself). Where is the racial diversity within the Kennedy family’s marriages?
Added to this, the Washington Kennedy elites have openly defied the clear teachings of the Catholic Church which they claim membership in! One of Ted Kennedy’s last acts in this life was to have a letter hand-delivered to the Pope, while his politics were in direct and vigorous open opposition and rebellion to the Church’s teachings on abortion! If Ted really had believed that his Church was wrong on this fundamental moral issue, then he should have joined another denomination where the moral standards would not conflict with his liberal positions.
Racial preservationists must make liberal Whites look absolutely ridiculous and dishonest and traitorous to their own — their extended family in their race. Succeed in making a public laughing-stock of white Liberals, while ever avoiding their errors and keeping solid intellectual integrity, and the tide just might slowly begin to turn in our favor.
@RF: If you by science are referring to population genetics (a science still in its childhood) there are enough research showing considerable genetic distance between Slavic and Germanic populations. In this context, I was referring to south-eastern Europe, not Russia. The Russian nation constitutes a highly heterogeneous gene-pool, with significant non-Indo-European elements (Turkish and Finno-Ugric, for example).
It should be “Turkic”, not “Turkish”.
http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2005/06/strong-differentiation-between-germans.html
http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2008/01/russian-y-chromosomes.html
Geiseric, Thanks for good links
Have you solicited Pat Buchanan for a donation? He’s a millionaire many times over with no children.
I agree that good arguments are not enough. Our side should raise money and enlist the support of “high-status people”. But I don’t think the “left” relies on prestige to stay in power. It relies on intimidation and abuse of power. They maintain a political lock on institutions by appointing their political friends, and by censoring dissent in the media. Few white people think highly of the charlatans who say that diversity is strength. Most people realize the emperor is naked, but if a public figure speaks up against the leftist nonsense, he may lose his job. It is said that some people recite politically correct garbage so as to win status points. It may have been true in the past, but I think a much more powerful motivation today is the desire to keep their jobs and avoid trouble.
Power doesn’t necessarily confers prestige. Prestige is based on accomplishments and a person’s real value. We used to think that people in positions of authority must have some competence or would not have been appointed. That was enough to give them prestige. But it has become more and more apparent that our present leaders are irresponsible and that the selection process doesn’t work.
Armor: “Prestige is based on accomplishments and a person’s real value.”
Yes, but that’s a train of thought unknown in many parts of the world. In many non-Western cultures, people focus on the visible results, the semiotics if you like. If a guy drives a new Mercedes Benz in some parts of eastern Europe or, say Latin America, he simply IS a high-status guy. Very few people in non-Western countries are interested in knowing anything about the story behind (HOW did he get the money to buy that Mercedes etc). In short: Signs/symbols of high status = high status.
Geiseric,
Thank your commenting on my article. I am glad you appreciated my arguments. I only fear you are attributing to me a mindset that is, in fact, foreign to me. I’ve never been to Eastern Europe, except for once in 2003, when I spent two weeks in the Ukraine conducting field research for a book about nationalist Black Metal. When I talked about intellectual honesty being a function of financial independence, I was not talking about purchasing honesty. I was referring to the fact that many of the people who privately share our views on matters of Whiteness and race relations often publicly pretend they don’t because they are on a company payroll and therefore they are financially dependent on their employer’s willingness to continue to employ them. In an earlier article I argued that we need to create business opportunities (and status systems) within our side because that would help insulate Whites from the economic sanctions stemming from voicing pro-White views, and would therefore enable them to speak honestly and without fear.
Regarding the new Mercedes Benz being equated with status, that attitude is not unique to Latin America and Eastern Europe: that attitude is typical of the nouveau riche, which is also a Western phenomenon (see lottery winners, self-made businesmen, etc.). One supposes that there is little or no old money left in the former Communist bloc, while it is well known that there was never an formal aristocracy in Latin America, so the relationship between money and status must necessarily be stronger in those parts of the world. Similarly, and for obvious reasons, the relationship between money and status is stronger in North America than it is in Western Europe, although there has been a tendency towards convergence since the last world war.
@Alex Kurtagic,
I realize that you’ve never been to Eastern Europe, as you say. That doesn’t necessarily mean that your mindset is untouched by the cultural heritage of your ethnic background.
In a European context, the traditional asceticism and “essentialism” of the capitalistic and individualistic north-west is very different from the ostentatious mindset of large parts of eastern Europe and Russia.
The point is that both in religion and general culture, eastern Europe has a more “external” semiotic approach to reality. The attitudes attributed to the noveau riches, cannot explain these huge differences on a macro-level.
Your emphasis on “status” strikes me as a very eastern European point of view. Most people in the West – as suggested by many comments here – would tend to emphasize “ethos” instead of “status”. If X has a new BMW and a huge house in an eastern European country, he/she is automatically a high-status person. There’s no need for “ethos” in an ostentatiously dominated semiosphere.
Geiseric,
I don’t mind having my ideas challenged, but I would rather be challenged on the basis of what I have actually written. I never made the argument you have attributed to me.
Also, ethos and status are not polar opposites of a dychotomy: ethos confers status.
@Kurtagic,
I’m not trying to challenge your ideas per se (I actually agree with some of them). I disagree on the status issue. “Status” is narrower than ethos. Most of the attacks on Kevin MacDonald have been attacks on his ethos, not his status. This is also a well known strategy in election campaigns etc. Ethos means a lot in Western societies. Status means a lot in non-Western societies. Not exactly breaking news.
Geiseric,
My discussion of status stems from an evolutionary reading of human social behaviour. Evolutionists argue that the invention of status as a sociocultural value has roots in evolutionary biology, and I find their argument (summarised early on in my piece) compelling.
Your last comment, if anything, confirms one of my main theses – that the enemy have focused their attacks on Kevin MacDonald’s status. Kevin MacDonald’s ethos (ἦθος) has been for them merely a source of exasperation, but their motivation has been, in fact, his being sophos (σοφός, wise) and their target has been, very evidently, his status. Notice that they have generally avoided debating him: the thrust of the campaign against him has been, not to disprove his arguments, but to get him fired. Why? Because (1) as far as they are concerned, his ideas are so wrong as to be beyond argument; (2) they fear that debating them will confer him legitimacy; and (3) they fear that his position as a tenured professor at a mainstream university will confer legitimacy and prestige to his ideas.
Attacks on Kevin MacDonald’s character have been subservient to the aim of stripping him of his professional and social status. The hope is that, once stripped of status, his arguments will carry less weight outside his core support base. Were it primarily a question of ethos, then it would have been sufficient for the enemy to dub Kevin MacDonald an anti-Semite. But they have already gone nuclear on the ethos front and yet not stopped there. Morevoer, a low-status anti-Semite would not worry them in the least: in fact, they would very much like that.
Now, it has been noted that Kevin MacDonald’s most acerbic enemies are Jewish. Jewish culture is an Eastern culture. If what you say about Eastern societies is true, then this would only provide additional support to my view that they are preoccupied with, and are therefore focusing on, stripping Kevin MacDonald of status.
Note also that Kevin MacDonald himself has stressed the importance of status in our particular context.
In your article you pointed out the (increasing?) irrelevance or insignificance of logos – a relevant point, IMO. You then blamed the left for having occupied “the positions of power”, enjoying “the status of legitimate orthodoxy” etc.
What you fail to see (or at least mention) is that this status is based on moral hegemony, on an established ethos of moral universalism.
Status, according to you, “is a cultural invention that responds to a biological need to maximise life chances and reproductive success. Status signifies power, for status both derives it and confers it, and power affords access to resources. The greater the power, the greater the access to more and better resources. Included among the latter is, of course, women.”
One of the problems with this simplistic version is that socioeconomic status tends to be negatively correlated with lifetime reproductive success in modern Western societies. The costs of producing high-quality offspring are atypically high in the competitive economies of industrialized societies. Both in Imperial Rome and in early modern Western Europe, fertility reduction occurred first and foremost among the wealthy classes. In monogamous cultures, there is no direct correlation between social status and reproductive success. Just think of US presidents (the probably most prestigious high-status position in the Western world) and their ethos-based authority. Neither do you mention the time and energy invested in advertising social power. Status is nothing without ethos.
“In other words, they waged a war of status, and if they became proficient debaters and persuaders in the media, in universities, or in the political campaign trail, they remained focused on the status of their opponents and their opponents’ ideas. Hence, the liberal use by the Left of degrading, shut-up words like “racist”, “Nazi”, and “anti-Semite”; the creation of negative White identities in educational textbooks; and the outrageous promotion of anti-White stereotypes in advertisement and Hollywood films. These words, identities, and stereotypes do not constitute evidence or logical proof of anything: They are simply an attack on an opponent’s status.”
They are first and foremost attacks on the opponent’s ethos, his moral capital. All the ugly words you mentioned, are part of a ethos-directed strategy – an attempt to weaken the credibility and authority of competitors.
“Professor MacDonald’s enemies hope that if they create around him visible signs of marginalization and ostracism, of his having a low social status, his ideas will become déclassé, and will therefore scare people off associating themselves with them.”
These attacks have been ethos-attacks, not status-attacks. MacDonald is presented as “evil”, i.e. immoral, criminal, dangerous etc. In the academic world, Kevin MacDonald’s ethos is based on his numerous high-quality publications, in short: his scientific accomplishments. As long as he has the formal competence (PhD), his ethos would not be diminished even without his present status as a tenured professor.
“One of the problems with this simplistic version is that socioeconomic status tends to be negatively correlated with lifetime reproductive success in modern Western societies.”
The quote you are responding to does not include the prefix “socioeconomic”. I talk simply of status. Also, a sentence later I added: “In complex societies this primal process is sublimated in many different ways”. I also added: “Often, the process will become obscured, even distorted, by intellectual activity.”
And when I talked about the Left, I never claimed that their status was a result of wealth or wealth ostentation, as you seem to suggest in your earlier comments. I wrote “The Left understands that humans are more strongly motivated by status than by rational persuasion, and that, therefore, it is status that offers the key to winning a debate, not science or logic or reasonableness: They know that an argument linked to high status will succeed, while one linked to low status — no matter how correct — will fail.”
At this juncture you will want to substitute “ethos” for “status”. But remember what I said in my third comment: “ethos confers status”. My use of the word status in the excerpt above implies that status signals ethos, because ethos confers status. My argument would not make sense without this implication.
“Status is nothing without ethos.”
I have never held or expressed the opposite view. This is perfectly obvious. Why would, otherwise, the Russian oligarchs that were given asylum in the United Kingdom be universally despised, despite being among the richest men in the country? If I held the view that you have attributed to me, I would be baffled by this. But I am not and I have never been. To me it is evident, as it is to everyone else, that these men are despicable on account of their questionable character.
“They are first and foremost attacks on the opponent’s ethos, his moral capital. All the ugly words you mentioned, are part of a ethos-directed strategy – an attempt to weaken the credibility and authority of competitors.”
Since ethos confers status, attacks on Kevin MacDonald’s character (ethos) have been subservient to the aim of stripping him of his professional and social status. The hope is that, once stripped of status, his arguments will carry less weight outside his core support base. Were it primarily a question of ethos, then it would have been sufficient for the enemy to dub Kevin MacDonald an anti-Semite. But they have already gone nuclear on the ethos front and yet not stopped there. Morevoer, a low-status anti-Semite would not worry them in the least: in fact, they very much welcome that, because that would contain his appeal within his existing circle of supporters – among those who have already been persuaded. Why? For two reasons. First, because, if ethos confers status, then low status signals lack of ethos; second, because humans are less persuaded by logical argument than by the status of the person deploying the argument.
“These attacks have been ethos-attacks, not status-attacks. MacDonald is presented as “evil”, i.e. immoral, criminal, dangerous etc. In the academic world, Kevin MacDonald’s ethos is based on his numerous high-quality publications, in short: his scientific accomplishments. As long as he has the formal competence (PhD), his ethos would not be diminished even without his present status as a tenured professor.”
Kevin MacDonald’s status is founded on his ethos: on the number and quality of his publications and the status of the journals where he has been published and on his scientific accomplishments. If stripped of his professorship (for example on grounds of moral turpitude), his ability to persuade those outside his core support base (i.e., those who have already been persuaded) will be limited by his lost status, as, in people’s eyes, he would no longer be speaking as a formal academic. And, as your comment implicitly concedes, this ability would be further limited were he also to lose his PhD status. Also, one wonders: had Kevin MacDonald not been a tenured professor, but, say, a clever unemployed skinhead without a university degree, would the enemy have been as concerned about him as they are now?
You appear to see ethos and status as in a dychotomy, where as, in fact, one is a function of the other. It would seem to me, therefore, that the latter position is more typically Western than the one you have expounded here.
Thank you for your comments.
“The quote you are responding to does not include the prefix “socioeconomic”. I talk simply of status.”
If you by status mean something else than socioeconomic status, what exactly are you saying? You stated that status is “a cultural invention that responds to a biological need to maximise life chances and reproductive success,” and that “status signifies power … The greater the power, the greater the access to more and better resources. Included among the latter is, of course, women.” Especially since you wrote this “from an evolutionary reading of human social behaviour.” Status is to my knowledge always socioeconomic status in an evolutionary context.
“And when I talked about the Left, I never claimed that their status was a result of wealth or wealth ostentation, as you seem to suggest in your earlier comments.”
I don’t remember having made any such assertions vis-a-vis the Left. On the contrary, I stated that their authority has been based on a moral hegemony, i.e. basically their ethos.
“My use of the word status in the excerpt above implies that status signals ethos, because ethos confers status. My argument would not make sense without this implication.”
If ethos confers status, this only confirms what I’ve been trying to say several times here: the attacks on KM have mainly been ethos-attacks. What you seemed to be saying in your earlier comments (and article) was that status confers ethos.
“Since ethos confers status, attacks on Kevin MacDonald’s character (ethos) have been subservient to the aim of stripping him of his professional and social status. The hope is that, once stripped of status, his arguments will carry less weight outside his core support base.”
Most of the attacks on KM have not been aimed at stripping him of his social status. Different strategies have been played out, but the dominant one has been to weaken his credibility, his ethos, not to get him fired. What you (at least indirectly) seem to say is that status confers ethos (“if ethos confers status, then low status signals lack of ethos”). If KM had been fired from his position as a professor, that would weaken his ethos because it is bad for anyone’s reputation to get fired.
“You appear to see ethos and status as in a dychotomy, where as, in fact, one is a function of the other. It would seem to me, therefore, that the latter position is more typically Western than the one you have expounded here.”
I’ve never asserted any dichotomies. I have emphasized the primacy of ethos instead of status. This is a typically Western perspective. You have emphasized the primacy of status – which is a bit exotic, I’d say, in a Western, postmodern context.