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Tyranny and Diversity in the Ancient World

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In his Politics, Aristotle observes that diversity resulting from immigration without assimilation was a frequent cause of civil war and breakdown of civic solidarity within the Greek city-states. In this brief article, I would like to highlight how diversity in the use of foreign mercenaries and changes in the population were a frequent tool exploited by Greek tyrants to subjugate the citizenry.

The archetypal example of this was the powerful and diverse Sicilian city-state of Syracuse, which was long ruled by a string of tyrants, making for a useful contrast with the homogeneous and free city-state.  Aristotle remarked: “at Syracuse the conferring of civic rights on aliens and mercenaries, at the end of the period of the tyrants, led to sedition and civil war” (Politics, 1303a13). Furthermore, Aristotle argued that a legitimate ruler was protected by his own armed citizens, whereas tyrants used foreign mercenaries:  “Kings are guarded by the arms of their subjects; tyrants by a foreign force” (1285a16). The use of foreign mercenaries frequently led to rule devolving to a tyrant or a small clique (1306a19). 

Aristotle’s observations have largely been echoed by modern scholars. Tyrants were keenly aware of the fact that common identity and civic solidarity were threats to their personal power. Kathryn Lomas observes that “the use of itinerant populations to subvert the status of the polis is common to many tyrants and Hellenistic monarchs throughout the Greek world.”[1] Paul Cartledge observes that Syracuse became:

what Tyranny in essence was: an autocracy based on military force supplied by a personal bodyguard and mercenaries; and reinforced by multiple dynastic marriages, the unscrupulous transfers of populations, and the enfranchisement of foreigners.[2]

There is evidence that the Greeks more widely considered homogeneity to be a source of strength in a city. During the Peloponnesian War, the Athenian political leader and adventurer Alcibiades argued that Sicily would be easy to conquer, because its diversity meant its cities lacked solidarity and social trust. Instead of common civic action, the Sicilians were prone to individual selfish behavior in the form of corruption and emigration:

Sicily may have large cities, but they are full of mixed rabbles and prone to the transfer of populations. As a result no one feels that he has a stake in a city of his own, so they have taken no trouble to equip themselves with arms for their personal safety or to maintain proper farming establishments in the country. Instead, individuals hoard whatever money they can extract from public funds by persuasive speaking or factional politics, in the knowledge that, if all fails, they can go and live elsewhere. A crowd like that are hardly likely to respond unanimously to any proposal or to organize themselves for joint action: more probable is that individual elements will go with any offer that attracts them . . . (Thucydides, 6.17)

Given that Alcibiades made these comments in a successful speech trying to convince the Athenian Assembly to invade Sicily, we can assume such arguments would have resonated with Athenian citizens in general. (In the event, the Athenian invasion of Sicily proved to be a disaster. Nonetheless, as one might expect, the Athenians did find local allies among Sicily’s diverse population, notably among the indigenous Sicels. Sicily’s lack of unity however was not sufficient to make up for the general riskiness of the enterprise, notably due to geographical distance from Athens, and Spartan support for Syracuse.)

In conclusion, the importation and enfranchisement of foreigners, whether by democrats or tyrants, was a common method to subvert the political process, destroy the constitution, and subjugate the citizenry. By hard experience, the ancient Greeks learned that republican self-government is impossible without the solidarity enabled by a strong shared ethno-cultural identity and that an unarmed citizenry watched over by foreign mercenaries is ripe for tyranny.

References

Aristotle (trans. Ernest Barker and R. F. Stalley), Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).

Thucydides (trans. Martin Hammond), The Peloponnesian War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).

[1]Kathryn Lomas, “The Polis in Italy: Ethnicity, Colonization, and Citizenship in the Western Mediterranean,” in Roger Brock and Stephen Hodkinson (eds.), Alternatives to Athens: Varieties of Political Organization and Community in Ancient Greece (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 182.

[2]Paul Cartledge, Ancient Greece: A History in Eleven Cities (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 128.

An Appraisal of the SSPX from the Viewpoint of White Advocacy

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The Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) is a priestly fraternity founded in 1970 by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who was one of the very few bishops to oppose the modern innovations imposed on the Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council (1962–65). The SSPX does not have a sanctioned, official position within the Church, but it vehemently opposes any attempt to characterize it as “schismatic,” or opposed to basic and lawful Church authority. Its self-imposed mission is to preserve the kernel of the Church free from corruption, specifically the Latin Mass and the ordination of priests, and thus keep alive the old paths that produced millions of holy men and women.

The SSPX knows that enemies have infiltrated the Church—modernists, Jews, freemasons, and homosexuals—and have accomplished a profound and tragic transformation of the old Faith (see “The role of Jewish converts to Catholicism in changing traditional Catholic teachings on Jews“). Pope Francis with his leftist activism is not an isolated phenomenon, but simply the culmination of this maleficent penetration of the Church. It is crucial to understand that the Church we see today—wimpy and liberal—is emphatically not the Church of old. That Church is long gone, but a remnant perpetuates the old no-nonsense, masculine traditions. The SSPX is that remnant, along with patches of conservatism here and there in the New Church.

We must distinguish between the SSPX and its followers. The SSPX, strictly speaking, consists only of the priests and its few bishops. These priests offer Mass for many faithful (“traditional Catholics”), who are often mistaken for “members” of the SSPX. In this essay I will, however, sometimes lump priests and laity together under that term, or simply, “the Society.”

The SSPX is a very positive movement for Whites for several reasons. Perhaps the most important is that Society families produce White children at a rate virtually unknown anywhere in the contemporary West. The SSPX and its faithful make up one of the very few vital bodies in the entire West. By “vital,” I mean a body that is full of life and energy, from the Latin vita, “life.” And isn’t that what Whites need above all else? Life? Descendants? White children? What other group in America is “vital” in this sense? What other group in the U.S., apart from Mormons, and Mennonites, is producing large numbers of White children? Read more

Herodotus on the Challenge of Hellenic Unity

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Greek hoplite citizen-soldiers in phalanx formation

Editor’s note: This is an excerpt from a longer article on Herodotus’s account of the Greek-Persian wars. The entire article will appear in the Summer issue of The Occidental Quarterly.

There was undeniably a strong feeling of shared national and cultural identity among the Greeks. However, if one looks at the sweep of ancient Greek history, one is struck by the disconnect between the pervasive rhetoric expressing pan-Hellenic sentiment and the political reality of division and often brutal wars among Greeks. The demand of the polis for total loyalty from its citizens meant that there were few qualms about annihilating fellow Greeks, if this was in the city’s immediate interests. Furthermore, it is often difficult to determine the degree to which patriotic sentiment actually underpinned the Greek states’ resistance, as opposed to merely being eloquent rationalizations for narrowly political interests, such as Athens and Sparta’s desire not to be dominated by any foreign power, Greek or not. Indeed, Herodotus says that one city, Phocia, opportunistically sided with the allies purely because its traditional enemy, Thessalia, sided with the Persians. (8.30) The collaboration of individual politicians[1] and cities with the Persians was common. Indeed the city of Delphi itself became Medized. In short, as so often in our history, broader ethnic and civilizational interests were ignored in the face of the selfish political interests.

In the Persian Wars, the Greek allies certainly achieved sufficient unity to ultimately repulse the invaders, but one is struck at how tenuous that unity was and how exceptional even that degree of unity was in the course of Greek history. The allies, who called themselves simply “the Greeks,” in the end only made up about one-in-ten continental Greek cities, the rest remaining neutral or collaborating.

Though far less discussed than the polis, the Greeks did have a quite venerable tradition of federalism—i.e., forming leagues of city-states. Such leagues, typically combining joint temples, a common council, arbitration, military alliance, and coinage, with greater or lesser degrees of central authority—were a common feature in Greek political history. Shared ethno-regional identity was a common basis for the formation of such leagues, as in Arcadia, Boeotia, Crete, and Ionia. Athens and Sparta would, in their history, each lead their own military alliances as hegemonic cities.

The league projected the basic features of the familial religion beyond the city to a regional commonwealth: shared blood and gods sealed the alliance of cities in a league, including notably a shared holy sanctuary, just as the family household and the polis were sacred spaces. However, the league was typically not a true federal state or sovereign federation, but a coalition of cities, each with its own army and jealous of its civic sovereignty. The confederal league therefore never had the solidity of the polis. The various leagues tended to fluctuate in their effectiveness as the necessity of unity (typically to acquire military scale) was in constant tension with the centrifugal tendency of each city’s desire for autonomy. In practice, a league tended to do well if it had a hegemonic city which could impose decisive leadership or, if led by two cities, if these leader-cities were in basic agreement. Rebellion and subjugation of cities was common. The Greek leagues failed to scale beyond the region and it is not surprising that they eventually fell to the far larger powers of Macedon and the Roman Empire. The ancient Greek leagues in their fragility were not unlike later fractious confederations of sovereigns, such as the Hanseatic League, the antebellum United States, the German Confederation, or the European Union.

Given the fragility of the league, moderns will be less surprised to learn that despite the Greeks’ strong sense of identity, it rarely occurred to them to seek to achieve political unity. This was not so much due to lack of imagination—Plato and Isocrates did make concrete proposals for Greek unity at the expense of barbarians—but due to the sheer impracticalities of federalism in an age before telecommunications. In the premodern world, as Montesquieu later remarked, scale was only possible for monarchies, not for republics.[2] Read more

Homage to the Post-First World: My Wanderings in Europe: Warsaw

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I’m in Warsaw for the 99th Anniversary of Polish Independence. At least I think that’s what this is about. All I know is that Poland is the backdrop and I’m here to meet my friends – no my comrades – yes, that’s what they’ve become to me. We’ve come for the march from all over Europe.

Don’t get me wrong, we’re all for Poles being proud of being Poles and defending their White Christian heritage, but they seem to be doing just fine without us anyway.

Most of us have come from countries that are much worse off. For us, this is a practice run on friendly territory for people with our views. Poland seems to be the only White country in the world left where some form of nationalism is tolerated.

Anyways, I’m staying with the Swedes and every night is a binge-drinking session followed by a narrowly avoided barfight with a random drunk Pole.

I mention this because the Poles really do seem hell-bent on starting fights with random tourists. Read more

The Bestial of British: How Non-Whites Enrich a Stale Pale Nation

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Where would Britain be without its communities of colour? For one thing, journalists would have much less to write about. The obscure northern town of Rotherham has achieved world-wide infamy thanks to its hard-working Pakistani rape-gangs. The southern city of London isn’t obscure, but it had fusty associations with stale pale males like Charles Dickens and stale pale institutions like parliamentary democracy.

Vibrancy and violence

Mass immigration has changed all that: in the twenty-first century, London vibrates with murders, gang-rapes and acid-attacks. A Black Londoner called Theodore Johnson has just hit the headlines after being convicted of killing his third “partner.” That’s some achievement, particularly at the age of sixty-four, but Johnson isn’t as remarkable as the Black Londoner Delroy Easton Grant, a serial rapist who specialized in attacking elderly women.

Black enrichers, White victim

These high-achievers originally came here from the small island of Jamaica, which has supplied many more murderers and rapists to Britain since our traitorous elite allowed mass immigration to begin after the Second World War. As the twentieth century closed, Tony Blair and his Jewish immigration minister Barbara Roche began to source our violent criminals from the entire Third World, with entirely predictable consequences. Blair and Roche are now long out of office, but their treachery goes on giving. At the end of December, a London newspaper wrung its hands and listed “the names of the young people we lost to violence in 2017.” A feast for phoneticians then followed:

Djodjo Nsaka (19), Quamari Serunkuma-Barnes (15), David Adegbite (19), Abdifatah Sheikhey (19), Karim Samms (16), Abdullahi Tarabi (19), Jordon Wright (19), Mahamed Hassan (17), Elijah Dornelly (17), Joao Ricardo Gomes (18), Abdirahman Mohamed (17), Osman Sharif (16), Mahad Ali (18), Joshua Bwalya (16), Soban Khan (18), Daniel Namanga (19), Jermaine Goupall (15), Abdul Mayanja (19), Corey Junior Davis (14), Saif Abdul Magid (18), Aren Mali (17), Michael Jonas (17), Kacem Mokrane (18), Jason Isaacs (18) (London youth violence: These are the names of the 24 teenage boys killed in stabbings and shootings in 2017, Get West London News, 29th December 2017)

Read more

Securing Our Future: The Wall & Border Security

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One of the most foundational and principal tasks governments have had for over 2,000 years has been to secure and maintain its borders. The once great Western Roman Empire, spanning centuries, fell not because of a superior rival or total through war as so many others have. Rome fell as a result of barbarians slowly encroaching upon her borders. Border security has been discussed in the US for decades, and has seen even more feverish discussion since Donald Trump threw his hat into the political arena, bringing the issue to the forefront of the political landscape.

Something about the discussion of border policy and security always seemed somewhat disingenuous to me. There is an almost absurdity that creeps around the topic. A sort of dramatic irony lurking in the shadows, an irony I was never able to put into words. That is until I happened to stumble upon a documentary about strife in Africa where I saw something incredible — African warlords, with 60-year-old AK-47s, that are able to secure territorial borders, while the most well-funded military in human history cannot stop low-skilled Mexicans from invading the USA. This is, of course, a deliberate policy decision.

The US government as well as the governments of Europe are choosing not to enforce our borders. They are choosing to instead use our tax dollars to help fund the invasion. This raises several questions, what does our military actually defend, other than the government’s ability to replace the founding stock of the nation? How would a foreign occupation look any different? Men storming the gates, securing territory, installing their own people as government officials, murdering and raping the native population, and looting coffers. Every aspect of our lack of borders and immigration policy is far more akin to a nation being invaded by a hostile army, and less of a rational policy choice made by people with the concerns of their citizens in mind.

US citizens spend a little over $600 billion on the military, or an average of $12,000 per tax-paying household.[1] For that $600 billion what do we get? Around 1.3 million active-duty military personnel, 15% of which, about 193,000 are deployed overseas.[2] None of those people are protecting US borders, or the borders of our European cousins, for that matter.

I believe I have a plan that will actually work. The United States-Mexico border is less than 2,000 miles long. There are 1,760 yards in a mile. If we were to deploy an armed member of the US military every 100 yards along the border, it would take 35,200 people to line the border. Having soldiers take 8-hour shifts, it would require 105,600 soldiers to cover every 100 yards of the entire length of the US-Mexico border, just over half the number of military personnel that are actively deployed overseas right now. Read more

Jewish Leftist Activism in Children’s Fiction

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“From the very beginning—that is, from the publication of the first book specifically for children — the intent was to mold and shape the mind to accepted standards of behavior.”
Saul Braun, The New York Times, June 7, 1970.

This article is the product of research originally conducted for a recent article titled “Jews, Obscenity, and the Legal System.” Given the significant amount of material discovered and the uniqueness of the subject matter, I decided there was enough material for an article devoted to children’s literature. During research for the obscenity essay, I consulted the American Library Association’s list of “Top 100 Banned/Challenged Books: 2000–2009” with a view to assessing the nature and extent of the Jewish presence. The first fact to become apparent was a marked Jewish over-representation in the production of books deemed controversial or perverse by parents, schools, and other institutions. Jews are notoriously shy of the census, but are probably somewhere between the 2.2% of the U.S. population suggested by the Pew Research Center and a maximum of around 5%. Even accepting a grain of truth in the apologetic argument that Jews are disproportionately attracted to literary professions (to say nothing about motive), one might very generously expect a Jewish representation of around 10 books on the ALA’s list.

However, my biographical checks on all authors on the list, some of which were indeterminate, revealed that 22 books on the ALA’s list were penned by 17 Jewish writers.[1] Jews are thus significantly over-represented in producing contemporary literature deemed oppositional by the surrounding culture, and are even more radically over-represented when older, White-authored, entries such as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (now often opposed as ‘racist’) are taken out of consideration. Since the majority of entries on the list were children’s books, and taking into account my previous discoveries concerning Jewish manipulation of demand for ‘diverse books’ in the school system, it occurred to me that children’s literature is an important, but sometimes neglected, front in the cultural conflict we see played out daily. This article is therefore intended as a brief introduction to some of the most pertinent personalities and themes in the area of Jewish Leftist activism in children’s fiction.

A great deal of Jewish radical activism in the cultural sphere comes under the umbrella of the general relationship between Jews and the Left. This relationship can historically be understood as involving Jewish innovation of, or support for, social, cultural, and political causes likely to weaken the cultural structures of the host society and make it more amenable to Jewish interests. In the chapter titled “Jews and the Left” in The Culture of Critique (p. 50 )Kevin MacDonald cites Stanley Rothman and S. Robert Lichter, who remarked in their Roots of Radicalism: Jews, Christians, and the New Left (1982): “Whatever their situation…in almost every country about which we have information, a segment of the Jewish community played a very vital role in movements designed to undermine the existing order.” MacDonald argues that superficial divergences between Jewish religion and radical agendas are negated by the fact many ethnically Jewish radicals have persisted in adhering to a strong Jewish identity, and have often explicitly pursued Jewish interests. MacDonald writes (p. 51): “The hypothesis that Jewish radicalism is compatible with Judaism as a group evolutionary strategy implies that radical Jews continue to identify as Jews.”

I argue that the material presented in this essay should be seen firmly within the same theoretical framework proposed by MacDonald. For example, several of the Jewish writers under consideration here are homosexuals, radical socialists, and feminists. A common apologetic from “Jews on the Right,” is that such figures are anathema to Judaism, or that as adherents of the Reform movement etc., they are unrepresentative of “true Jews.” The contention here is that the situation is quite the opposite, and I stress that many of these writers are demonstrably committed to Jewish tradition and the Jewish group. Read more