Two Cheers For Trump Advisor Mike Anton—He Has The Right Enemies
A major London bookmaker, Ladbrokes, has given odds of 11–10 that Trump will resign or be impeached — almost even money. Of course, this is not in the least surprising given that Trump is loathed by the entire Establishment, Left to Right and is now being victimized by “Deep State” operatives in the intelligence community installed by previous administrations.
In the grand scheme of things, Trump is something of a miracle. In his case, an oligarchic system designed to pick candidates who would continue what is in effect a bipartisan campaign against the Historic American Nation failed, spectacularly.
Much of the recent hysteria has focused on three high-level Presidential advisers to the president: Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, and Mike Anton.
Anton, now the senior director of strategic communications at the National Security Council, has given the clearest indication of his attitudes. Written under the pseudonym of “Publius Decius Mus” (a Roman consul who sacrificed his life for the success of his troops) his September 2016 essay “The Flight 93 Election” is in tune with Alt Right themes—with some important exceptions,.
Anton’s essay caused a stir on the Right, but it was pretty much ignored by the Left until he was unmasked by The Weekly Standard on February 2 [Decius Mus Unmasked] because of his usefulness in smearing the Trump administration. Since then, it’s been hysterical condemnation.
Fundamentally, Anton claimed that Conservatism Inc. had completely failed because it refused to acknowledge that the long-term effects of importing a Third World population would be the end of conservatism. Conservatives Inc. types are “beautiful losers,” as Sam Francis described them — garnering huge sums of money but quite content with their sinecures while the movement as a whole is “headed off a cliff…The whole enterprise of Conservatism, Inc., reeks of failure. Its sole recent and ongoing success is its own self-preservation.”
Conservatives, according to Anton, are
the Washington Generals of American politics. Your job is to show up and lose, but you are a necessary part of the show and you do get paid. To the extent that you are ever on the winning side of anything, it’s as sophists who help the Davoisie oligarchy rationalize open borders, lower wages, outsourcing, de-industrialization, trade giveaways, and endless, pointless, winless war.
Perhaps the most amazing thing about Neocon and Conservative Inc. hostility toward Trump was that it was obvious to everyone what a Hillary Clinton presidency would mean—as Anton said, it would be
pedal-to-the-metal on the entire Progressive-left agenda, plus items few of us have yet imagined in our darkest moments. Nor is even that the worst. It will be coupled with a level of vindictive persecution against resistance and dissent hitherto seen in the supposedly liberal West only in the most ‘advanced’ Scandinavian countries and the most leftist corners of Germany and England.”
Yes indeed. A Clinton presidency would have been the end of outlets likeVDARE.com and Occidental Observer, with a revamped Supreme Court more than ready to let the likes of Elena Kagan restrict free speech critical of immigration and multiculturalism, as we already see throughout Western Europe and on college campuses throughout America. The Leftist case against free speech has already received a great deal of attention by academics, so it’s just a matter of time before this way of thinking reaches a majority on the Supreme Court. Clinton’s presidency, especially with a compliant Democratic Congress, would have resulted more such Leftist Supreme Court justices.
And of course, it would have resulted in a huge immigration surge and amnesty for illegals, eventually electing a permanent Leftist Democrat voting majority.
For the Left, anyone not on the page with the transformation of America is a “Nazi.” As Anton noted caustically:
The Left was calling us Nazis long before any pro-Trumpers tweeted Holocaust denial memes. And how does one deal with a Nazi—that is, with an enemy one is convinced intends your destruction? You don’t compromise with him or leave him alone. You crush him.
Naturally, “crushing” includes sucker-punching people like Richard Spencer and other forms of physical violence, not to mention ostracism and job loss.
Anton’s conclusion:
So what do we have to lose by fighting back? Only our Washington Generals jerseys—and paychecks. But those are going away anyway. Among the many things the “Right” still doesn’t understand is that the Left has concluded that this particular show need no longer go on. They don’t think they need a foil anymore and would rather dispense with the whole bother of staging these phony contests in which each side ostensibly has a shot. (My emphasis)
Conservatives were on the point of losing by the time of the “Flight 93 Election” because the Left controls the Main Stream Media, and because conservative “leaders” bend over backwards to be acceptable to them. But, above all, it comes down to immigration. Anton wrote:
The ceaseless importation of Third World foreigners with no tradition of, taste for, or experience in liberty means that the electorate grows more left, more Democratic, less Republican, less republican, and less traditionally American with every cycle. As does, of course, the U.S. population, which only serves to reinforce the two other causes outlined above. This is the core reason why the Left, the Democrats, and the bipartisan junta (categories distinct but very much overlapping) think they are on the cusp of a permanent victory that will forever obviate the need to pretend to respect democratic and constitutional niceties. Because they are.
The sacredness of mass immigration is the mystic chord that unites America’s ruling and intellectual classes. …
This is insane. This is the mark of a party, a society, a country, a people, a civilization that wants to die. Trump, alone among candidates for high office in this or in the last seven (at least) cycles, has stood up to say: I want to live. I want my party to live. I want my country to live. I want my people to live. I want to end the insanity.
“My people”? Whatever could he mean by that? Sounds like a thinly disguised hint that Trump is a White advocate.
What to do? Here Anton reveals his fundamentally non-Alt Right perspective. He advocates assimilation and working class solidarity rather than more radical measures:
But we can probably do better than we are doing now. First, stop digging. No more importing poverty, crime, and alien cultures. We have made institutions, by leftist design, not merely abysmal at assimilation but abhorrent of the concept. We should try to fix that, but given the Left’s iron grip on every school and cultural center, that’s like trying to bring democracy to Russia. A worthy goal, perhaps, but temper your hopes—and don’t invest time and resources unrealistically.
By contrast, simply building a wall and enforcing immigration law will help enormously, by cutting off the flood of newcomers that perpetuates ethnic separatism and by incentivizing the English language and American norms in the workplace. These policies will have the added benefit of aligning the economic interests of, and (we may hope) fostering solidarity among, the working, lower middle, and middle classes of all races and ethnicities. The same can be said for Trumpian trade policies and anti-globalization instincts. Who cares if productivity numbers tick down, or if our already somnambulant GDP sinks a bit further into its pillow? Nearly all the gains of the last 20 years have accrued to the junta anyway. It would, at this point, be better for the nation to divide up more equitably a slightly smaller pie than to add one extra slice—only to ensure that it and eight of the other nine go first to the government and its rentiers, and the rest to the same four industries and 200 families.
Will this work? Ask a pessimist, get a pessimistic answer. So don’t ask. Ask instead: is it worth trying? Is it better than the alternative? If you can’t say, forthrightly, “yes,” you are either part of the junta, a fool, or a conservative intellectual.
I believe Anton’s hope that America’s different races and ethnicities will magically come together, identifying with their social class rather than their racial/ethnic identities, is a pipe dream. As Anton himself admits, such a notion goes against the entire agenda of the Left with its “iron grip” on the educational system and the MSM.
So even if Anton is right that cutting off immigration would foster assimilation, the contrary forces are pushing hard in the opposite, Cultural Marxist direction. They want their non-White constituencies to identify racially and ethnically first and foremost and they want their White constituencies to identify as a member of one of the ever-proliferating sexually defined victim classes (LGBTTQQIAAP??), or at least as just plain old guilt-ridden White liberals. The millions of poor, illiterate, low-IQ immigrants constituting the vanguard of the Left will ensure huge welfare payments and Affirmative Action indefinitely.
The fact is that the racialization of politics is the most salient fact of our time. The White population was coalescing in the Republican Party long before Trump came along and told them what they wanted to hear.
The days when the Democratic Party had a claim to the allegiance of the White working class are long gone, and for good reason: Their jobs have been shipped overseas and their wages have been impacted by the tsunami of immigrants. And unlike the elites who are able to avoid the costs by moving away, they are stuck with failing schools, dysfunctional neighborhoods, overcrowded neighborhoods and all the other consequences to public goods. The rainbow future is death for the White working class.
But, despite Trump’s appeal to the ordinary Americans, what he has been saying is absolutely not what the Washington Generals who have led the GOP wanted to hear. They were content to lose graciously while continuing to pick up their pay checks — until the plane crashes into the mountainside, at which point they would just jettison their “conservative principles” and capitulate to the progressive agenda (“the GOP must have better outreach to Hispanics”). It was all just talk anyway, talk designed to appeal to a traditional American constituency that is being dispossessed
They’re glib, and facile writers, so I’m sure the progressives will find a place for them. Neocons, who now dominate he conservative media, originated on the Left and in a very real sense never abandoned it, despite their ability to push the buttons conservatives love to hear. Their essential role has been to move the GOP to the Left on all the issues the Left holds dear—first and foremost immigration. Just as Neocons had no real qualms about a Hillary presidency, they will happily sign on to a progressive agenda as long as it is aggressively pro-Israel and anti-Russian.
So in answer to Anton’s question, “Will it work?,” I would have to say it’s definitely worth it to build the wall and deport illegals — and also end Birthright Citizenship, end legal immigration and not provide refugees or guest workers with a path to citizenship. But even with all of this, what Anton calls the junta has created so many facts on the ground that none of these will really alter the downward trajectory of White America.
No, it won’t work. But it’s one helluva start. At the very least it will wake up White America to the scope of the problem, with all that implies for the future when things get really sticky. When White America sees itself heading over a cliff, as I believe that it will given the demographic trends already in place (e.g.,White children are already a minority), the really interesting stuff will begin.
As VDARE.com Editor Peter Brimelow has said, it will come to blood. All the utopias dreamed up by the Left inevitably lead to bloodshed—because they conflict with fundamental human nature.
Despite Anton’s relatively mild views, he is now being attacked as evil incarnate by the entire Establishment, from the Left to the Neocon Right, with prominent Jewish writers leading the charge.
Leftist columnist Jonathan Chait’s assault is headlined America’s Leading Authoritarian Intellectual Is Working for Trump.[ New York Magazine, February 2, 2017] Weirdly, but typical of the Left, any opposition to immigration is labeled as “authoritarian” and “anti-democratic” — even though Anton is clearly doing his best to salvage the last hope for maintaining our institutions and social class-based politics in the face of the racialization of politics brought about by the Third World invasion. As Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban phrased it recently, commenting on the attitudes of the EU, “They have declared that the people constitute a danger to democracy.” [You will CRUSH the people’ Hungarian PM slams ‘GLOBALIST ELITE’ for open-door migration, By Charlie Bayliss, Express (UK), February 14, 2017]
Chait [Email him] characterizes Anton’s comments on immigration as a claim that America is undergoing a “foreign invasion”—assuming his readers will blanch at such an outlandish thought:
What Anton’s essay did was to synthesize and intellectualize the right-wing case against democracy and marshal it on behalf of the Republican party presidential nominee. And now that nominee has won, and his administration has appropriately brought onboard the author of authoritarianism.
Similarly, Jessica Schulberg [Email her] bridled at Anton’s defense of the America First Committee among other heresies:
A senior national security official in the Trump administration wrote under a pseudonym last year that Islam is an inherently violent religion that is “incompatible with the modern West,” defended the World War II-era America First Committee, which included anti-Semites, as “unfairly maligned,” and called diversity “a source of weakness, tension and disunion.”
Trump Aide Derided Islam, Immigration And Diversity, Embraced An Anti-Semitic Past, Huffington Post, February 8, 2017
These claims were gleaned from Anton’s earlier pseudonymous article Toward a Sensible, Coherent Trumpism Unz Review, March 10, 2016 ).
Typical of Leftist point-and splutter, Schulberg assumes her audience will be sufficiently triggered by the mere fact that Anton has uttered such heresies — no need to evaluate whether the facts support them. In fact, they do: Social science research, summarized by Frank Salter, shows that indeed diversity does create division and conflict. But, as Anton notes, “The sacredness of mass immigration is the mystic chord that unites America’s ruling and intellectual classes.”
And Anton’s point that “Islam is not a ‘religion of peace’; it’s a militant faith that exalts conversion by the sword and inspires thousands to acts of terror—and millions more to support and sympathize with terror” seems so obvious it’s not worth debating.
Most significantly, Anton argued that the America First Committee has been “unfairly maligned,” aiming to vindicate Trump’s slogan “America First.” Along with the Immigration Restriction Act of 1924 and refusing some Jewish refugees in the 1930s, the saga of the America First Committee is etched in many Jewish minds as the most egregious examples of anti-Semitism in American history. Schulberg is quite correct that some in the America First Committee, including Charles Lindbergh, emphasized Jewish involvement in the campaign for entering World War II (along with the British and the Roosevelt administration). But there is a very rich factual basis to Lindbergh’s assertion: there is no question that Jews used their substantial power in the media to push for war (see here, p. vii–xvi).
Bill Kristol set the tone for the neocons, linking Anton with that other bête noire of the establishment, Steve Bannon:
The Bannon-Anton wing of the Trump White House has a penchant for semi-conspiratorial analyses and semi-kooky prescriptions. … And for them, being responsible isn’t a virtue. Which is worrisome.
Kristol [Email him] then went full argumentum ad Hitlerum, reacting favorably to Jonathan Chait’s piece:
From Carl Schmitt to Mike Anton: First time tragedy, second time farce. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/02/americas-leading-authoritarian-intellectual-works-for-trump.html?mid=twitter-share-di …
America’s Leading Authoritarian Intellectual Works for Trump
The author of the anti-democratic case for Trump has joined the administration.
It’s very heartening that Mike Anton is part of the Trump administration. He shows a clear understanding that immigration is the fundamental problem facing any attempt to resuscitate anything resembling traditional American political culture and institutions. And he understands that if drastic things are not done on the immigration front, traditional American political culture and institutions are indeed heading over a cliff. I assume this means, at least, that he will do his best to keep the Trump administration heading in the right direction on that most critical issue.
Despite my criticisms, I wish him well.
Kevin MacDonald [email him] is emeritus professor of psychology at California State University–Long Beach. His research has focused on developing evolutionary perspectives in developmental psychology, personality theory, Western culture, and ethnic relations (group evolutionary strategies). He edits and is a frequent contributor to The Occidental Observer and The Occidental Quarterly. For his website, click here.
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