The Arts and Culture

Why Has Mahler Become a Cultural Icon?

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R. J. Stove has a delightful article on Mahler posted at the Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation:

The Mahler symphonies … get me out of here. I keep surreptitiously cheering Kingsley Amis’s verdict “Mahler lacks talent even more spectacularly than he lacks genius.” …

The leap in Mahler’s stature from near-oblivion in 1960 (when, as Britain’s Spectatornoted on January 13, “[H]is impact on the general public was roughly the equivalent of, say, [Poland’s Karol] Szymanowski today”) to deification after that date, has little or nothing to do with musical merits and almost everything to do with external considerations.

And what might these external circumstances be?

Once it became widely known that Mahler had lamented being “a Bohemian in Austria, an Austrian in Germany, and a Jew in the world,” his identity-politics credentials became the aesthetic equivalent of a nuclear warhead, lacking only homosexuality to complete his posthumous triumph.

With the exception of a few musicians enthralled with the challenge of playing his music, the people who love Mahler love him because of who he is, not because they enjoy listening to his music.

Mahler has been the subject of TOO articles by E. R. E. Knutsson and Elizabeth Whitcombe. Knutsson described the Jewishness of Mahler’s music in the context of the fin de siècle cultural scene of Vienna: “It has been arguedthat Mahler’s music has links back to the Hasidic music of Eastern European ghettos of the eighteenth century in which dance music is deployed as a remedy to misery.” An anti-Jewish critic at the complained, “What I find so utterly repellent about Mahler’s music is the pronounced Jewishness of its underlying character. … It is abhorrent to me because it speaks Yiddish. In other words it speaks the language of German music but with an accent, with the intonation and above all with the gestures of the Easterner, the all-too-Eastern Jew.”

Whitcombe links Mahler to T. W. Adorno: “Adorno claimed that the bourgeois musical world was repressing Mahler’s work because Mahler shunned ‘moderate peacefulness.’ In Adorno’s words: ‘The genuine significance of Mahler that can be discovered for today lies in the very violence with which he broke out of the same musical space that today wants to forget him’ (Mahler Today,” 1930).”

Stove’s comment does not get into the details of how Mahler became so important. I suspect that an argument can be made that Mahler’s incredible success since the 1960s has to do with ethnic networking and with peculiarly Jewish attitudes toward culture. The topic deserves a full treatment.

Mahler’s visibility these days is truly phenomenal. Leon Botstein labels Mahler “the most visible figure from the high-art classical music tradition since Mozart.” Whereas in the 1930s Adorno complained that Mahler was on the verge of being forgotten, by the 1960s the intellectual landscape had changed dramatically, bringing to the fore the intellectual movements discussed in The Culture of Critique, including Adorno’s Frankfurt School.  By several accounts, the two most important advocates of Mahler during the 1960s were Adorno and conductor Leonard Bernstein. Adorno’s campaign on behalf of Mahler did not bear fruit until his influential 1960 book Mahler: A Musical Physiognamy. An historian notes, “The effect [of Adorno’s book] on the cultivated, on many musicologists, on composers, has been immense.” The Culture of Critique shows that Adorno had a strong Jewish identity and a hostility toward traditional Western culture (viewed as inevitably leading to fascism and anti-Semitism) that colored all of his writing.  In his view, Mahler was attractive because he was the antithesis of the traditional muscial culture of the West. (The same can be said of Adorno’s attempt to promote Arnold Schoenberg; see TOO’s Knutsson and Whitcombe.)  Re Bernstein, Botstein notes that “Bernstein was Mahler’s most prodigious advocate in the seminal 1960s…. Bernstein implicitly set Mahler’s ambivalence to his fate as a Jew alongside his own proud assertion of Jewish identity and faith.”

The result was that Mahler has become a sainted icon of the new culture — another example of Jewish genius. Even if no one really enjoys listening to his music.

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Dr. Lasha Darkmoon: Multiculturalism — An Open Letter to Israel Shamir

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Dr. Lasha Darkmoon:  A few weeks Israel Shamir wrote a controversial essay called The Poverty of Racialist Thought in which he took issue with Kevin MacDonald on the subject of multiculturalism. Yesterday I received from him (in an email) an advance copy of his recent follow-up essay: Part 2 of The Poverty of Racialist Thought. He was kind enough to seek my opinion on his new essay, along with the opinions of eight other people far more qualified than myself. 

As I understood this to be an open invitation to discussion, it occurred to me to send my reply to Mr Shamir for publication to the Occidental Observer. I thought the feedback from commentators here could only be beneficial to all concerned: to myself, to Kevin MacDonald and, above all, to Mr Shamir. 

Please note that Part 2 of Shamir’s article has not yet been published. This critique of mine addresses issues raised mostly in Part 1 — see the link above — but which are alluded to and further developed in Part 2.

Dear Mr. Shamir: I read your recent essay, The Poverty of Racialist Thought, with great interest. It is crackling with original ideas, many of them highly subversive, as one would expect from a controversial writer such as yourself!  The main bone of contention between you and Kevin MacDonald is obviously multiculturalism. This is a subject I’ve alluded to only briefly and tangentially in my articles, while dealing mostly with other topics. 

I have enormous respect for KMD, a man who is not only moved to pity by the plight of the Palestinians but who is also deeply concerned at the way his fellow Americans are having their traditional culture subverted and alien values thrust upon them—values which, I think you will agree, are positively satanic: namely, contempt for Christianity, sexual perversion, mind pollution and mendacity in the media, the uglification of daily life, and the systematic demoralization of the masses.    

I feel strongly, as I know you do, about the double standards involved in the fact that organized Jewry promotes multiculturalism in America while insisting that Israel should remain  monocultural and Judeocentric. It’s also of great concern that racial tensions between various ethnic groups in America should be deliberately ignited in order to distract and debilitate the different groups at the expense of the Master group — organized Jewry. It is considerations like these which undoubtedly exercise KMD’s mind and the minds of all Americans who feel they are “losing their country.”  

To portray these beleaguered White Americans  as “White Supremacists” or “racists” is, in my humble opinion,  a low and dirty trick. As disgraceful as calling critics of racist, apartheid Israel with its black record of war crimes — men like Judge Goldstone — “anti-Semites”.  

I do believe with total sincerity, however, that the use of the word “White” is a tragic mistake — from a public relations viewpoint, if no other — and that this word should be avoided if possible.  “This word ‘WHITE’ is the bugbear,” I wrote to KMD a few months ago. “If only a less abrasive and more emollient equivalent could be found.”  You echoed my own sentiments when you said to me in a previous email: “Whites are indeed a misnomer and KMD should give thought how to change it. Christians? Logos believers? Let us give it a thought and share it with KMD.” 

I have racked my brains for a suitable alternative to “Whites”, but have been unable to find one. I don’t think “Christians” would satisfy KMD  with all that that term connotes now. It has to be clearly understood that KMD does not view this matter of multiculturalism, as you and E. Michael Jones do, through the prism of religion. His training as an evolutionary psychologist gives him an entirely different perspective. It’s all about different races competing for resources in a cut-throat Darwinian environment. It’s also about the chronic conflicts that multicultural/multiracial societies have been prone to throughout history and about the psychological reality that people tend to become isolated, politcally disengaged, and mistrustful in multicultural/multiracial societies. He points out that no one has come up with a way to get rid of race as a touchstone of conflict within human societies, and he just doesn’t see that happening in the future.

Between the biological approach of KMD (genetic interests meshing with cultural constraints) and the metaphysical approach of E Michael Jones (Logos), there would appear to be an unbridgeable chasm.  

A final word on KMD’s position — a position I regard as entirely reasonable, because scientifically defensible. He believes that there are many meaningful commonalities between Europeans [“Whites”] at the genetic level. This is because they have similar genetic interests and a natural, instinctive solidarity in spite of their religious differences. That is to say, a European atheist and a European Christian have more in common ultimately than a European Christian and an African Christian. It follows from this that a marriage between a European atheist and a European Christian, which helps to produce children of pure European stock, is to be preferred to a marriage between a European Christian and an African Christian — a marriage that could only result in miscegenated children or “half breeds” — children who would not only be genetically removed from their parents but totally alien to their grandparents. 

In an ideal world, Mr Shamir, all such children would turn out to resemble Dumas père or Pushkin. Proud to be what they are and uniquely valuable in God’s variegated world. In the real world, however, they face many serious problems. If they were happy with their pigmentation, why the incessant and growing demand for skin-whiteners? Even in India there is color prejudice. Indeed, it is India that produces the best skin-whiteners and exports them all over the world. That tells you something.   

There is also the delicate question of IQ. If the IQs of Whites and Blacks were equal, and if this could be adequately proved, there would be no problem. But if Whites are much smarter than Blacks, as is often alleged, then intermarriage can only result in a general diminution of IQ. When diversity entails a general deterioration of intelligence and culture, this surely has to be deplored. This “diversity” is celebrated in America by the Jew-controlled media but, curiously enough, is abominated in Israel. Losing one’s racial identity is apparently good for Whites but bad for Jews. I have to say it: these double standards suck.   

To give KMD his credit, he honestly believes that if we identify on the basis of religion that does not take account of ethnicity at least implicitly, as E. Michael Jones does vis-à-vis his Catholicism, the White race will eventually be destroyed. I think KMD is right to be concerned that the race that gave us Dante and Shakespeare, Leonardo and Botticelli, Mozart and Beethoven, may soon become extinct as a result of malevolent immigration policies designed to serve the interests of one group and one group only: organized Jewry — the group you yourself castigate and criticize in veiled terms as “predators” and “the Masters of Discourse.” 

I’ll conclude this critique by saying that this is an infinitely complex subject. I don’t pretend to have all the answers. I  see through a glass darkly, only too conscious of my intellectual limitations. You will therefore pardon me, I hope, if I’ve said anything foolish or inappropriate. I have no wish to offend anyone. 

Kind regards and blessings, 

Lasha Darkmoon.

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Dr. Lasha Darkmoon (email her) is an academic, age 31, with higher degrees in classics.  A published poet and translator, she is also a political  activist with a special interest in Middle Eastern affairs. ‘Lasha Darkmoon’ is a pen name

Merlin Miller: Review of "Edge of Darkness"

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Merlin Miller: Edge of Darkness is an important and timely political thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat.  Originally produced as a British mini-series, this story has been modernized and set in Boston.  Director Martin Campbell, who helmed the original, as well as several recent hit films, including, Casino Royale, brilliantly executes with a cast and crew tailor made for their roles.   

Mel Gibson Stars in Edge of Darkness

Mel Gibson Stars in "Edge of Darkness"

The story is about a veteran homicide detective, Thomas Craven, who must solve the murder of his own daughter, Emma (who dies in his arms), and the conspiracy that led to it.  As Craven, Mel Gibson is back with a performance that reminds us why he is one of the all time greats. He hasn’t been in front of the camera since 2002’s Signs, but what a return this is!  His powerful performance grabs and doesn’t let go.  Even though his intense blue eyes have been intentionally muted with wardrobe and lighting to create a disheveled and distraught character appearance, he still captivates.  As a widower, who has now lost his only child, Craven has but one goal left and that is to find and exact vengeance on her killers.  

Initially believed to be the target himself, things don’t stack up for Craven and he discovers that his daughter led a life that he knew nothing about.  Throughout the film, use of memory flashbacks of Emma as a little girl, and apparitions of her lost spirit, provide love connections, which are beautifully and hauntingly effective.  The chemistry, between father and daughter, is wonderfully developed by Gibson and Serbian-Australian actress, Bojana Novakovic.  As a nuclear physicist intern, Emma worked for an energy and research firm that held government contracts.  She became aware of sinister efforts by her corporate employer (played with arrogant perversity by Danny Huston) to produce nuclear weapons that could be used and then blamed on Jihadists.  This future “false flag” operation had the secret support of elements of our own government.  Emma’s efforts to “do right” and protect our true national interests were betrayed by those she thought she could trust, including a US Senator. 

As Craven investigates with increasing despair, he uncovers key parts of the conspiracy with the enigmatic assistance of a government clean-up agent (and assassin), Darius Jedburgh, wonderfully played by Ray Winston.  Although his delivery was difficult to understand at times, Winston’s understated performance is central to the story and his scenes with Gibson are riveting.  At one point, Jedburgh philosophically states to an inquiring Craven, “…you just never can connect A to B.”  Craven responds “How do you know?” to which Jedburgh replies “Because I’m usually the guy that stops you from connecting A to B.”  But Jedburgh is “terminal” (as he says “we all are”), and this takes him through a soul searching process, where he will ultimately be tested to either do his assigned job or do the right thing.  This is a decision many of our government servants may be asking themselves today.  

The themes of honoring family (Jedburgh regrets never having had one and Craven has devastatingly lost his) and protecting our freedoms are tightly woven into this story’s tapestry.  A memorable and repeated line, “Everything’s illegal in Massachusetts”, speaks tellingly to current and historic patriots.  And Craven’s threat to the Senator, “You had better decide whether you’re hangin’ on the Cross, or bangin’ in the nails,” speaks to our unfortunate loss of faith and increasing corruption. 

One aspect of the film that may undercut its effectiveness was a dependency on the ultimate honor and integrity of the media. In sympathy for a female reporter, who showed respect and was less predatory than others, Craven sent her Emma’s secret discs, which revealed the conspiracy.  If we still trust in the mainstream media, then it could be a satisfying ending.  Unfortunately, trust in media today is justifiably even lower than trust in our politicians.  But this reporter was local and working for a less controlled media, so perhaps truth can prevail.  This truth dependency is somewhat reminiscent of “Three Days of the Condor” in which the Robert Redford character’s survival rests in the possible publication of his story in the New York Times.  If we had our doubts then, what are we to think now? 

The production credits for this revenge thriller are first rate, and give the film a realistic and gritty “film noir” quality.  The camera flows smoothly, with visual intensity, and the editing and scoring keep us on an emotional roller coaster.  With such a compelling script and top-notch performances, this film has broad commercial appeal, but also works on other important levels.  With its truth-seeking attitude and yearning for traditional values, Edge of Darkness, is an uncertain journey through evil and darkness.  And like Craven, Emma, and Jedburgh, we are left wondering if we, as a people and nation, can rediscover what is important and return to a world of light. 

Merlin Miller (email him)  is a motion picture producer/director and founder of Americana Pictures.  A graduate of West Point and USC film school, he is building a quality alternative to Hollywood. His article, “Americana Pictures: Restoring the Dream” appeared in TOO in April, 2009.

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Kevin MacDonald: Michael Colhaze on Art

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Kevin MacDonald: I want to welcome new writer Michael Colhaze to TOO. His current article — written with elegance and passion — is a worthy successor to Lasha Darkmoon’s earlier TOO articles on the pathologies of the art world. Colhaze points out that becoming a famous artist is like winning a lottery where only psychopaths need bother to enter:

Among thousands of candidates, both academics or naturals, all waiting eagerly for a hint from the established Modern art Mafia, now and then one is chosen. Since he is, just like his many contenders, about as gifted as a bedbug, nobody with a sane mind would assume that considerations of artistic merit ever played a part. What counts is a rigorous talent for self-representation, unfettered by the smallest grain of aesthetics or ethics, an inborn and unlimited vulgarity, and the stated objective to be the most ruthless Judas Iscariot to the Fine Arts that ever set foot on our sacred earth.

This lottery of the psychopaths has special import for Colhaze because his son is entering into the field of art. It must be especially difficult for a parent to deal with the prospects of a son entering a field where artistic talent is not rewarded and where success is determined by a whimsical elite whose only prerequisite is psychopathy among the lucky few whom they promote.

Similar thoughts, with slight variations (e.g., a son who wants to become a professor in the humanities or social sciences where cultural Marxism is de rigueur), must be on the minds of many parents who realize that the prospects of their children are severely compromised in a culture gone mad.

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Legalized Pornography and Demographic Genocide

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Reginald Thompson:

“A primary cause of low fertility in the Greco-Roman world was a male culture that held marriage in low esteem.” -Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity

A problem with legalized pornography is that if you allow pornography to become too widely consumed, its degraded vision of women will eat away at the capacity of men to fall in love with members of the opposite sex.   This reduced capacity for romantic love will make the men of a society less interested in the joys and challenges of stable pair bond based reproduction. Pornography encourages recreational sex rather than marriage and  children.

Also, pornography will discourage men from participating in stable pair bonds by tricking their Limbic Systems into thinking they’re getting so much sex that there’s no need to settle down.

Given that stable pair bond based sex is by far the most valuable from the standpoint of increasing the birth rate, I decided to do some research on whether legalized pornography correlates with a country having reduced fertility.

From Wikipedia I found a list of 45 Countries where it was possible to assign their pornography laws to one of three categories: Pornography Banned, Semi-Legalized Pornography, or fully Legalized Pornography.

Then I looked at the 2000 TFR Rates for these countries as provided by the CIA World Factbook:

N    Total Fertility Rate

Pornography Banned         19            2.73

Pornography Semi-Legal     5            1.69

Pornography Fully Legal   21            1.67

As can be seen, there’s a stunningly large gap in fertility between countries where pornography is banned and countries where it is wholly or partially legal.  In fact, the gap is great enough that even with a sample size of only 45 countries, the Mann-Whitney test of the difference between two means gives a P Value of only .000005.

Could this discrepancy be driven by White countries almost all having legal pornography while having low Fertility for other reasons?

No it couldn’t, as the discrepancy is almost exactly the same even after we throw the White countries out of the equation!

N    Total Fertility Rate

Pornogrpahy Banned        17             2.85

Pornography Semi-Legal   1              3.11

Pornography Legal              6              1.79

But what about the possibility that Muslims countries almost all have illegal pornography while at the same time having higher Birth Rates for other reasons?

That can’t be what’s driving the result either, as the correlation remains nearly as strong even after throwing out all the Muslim countries:

N    Total Fertility Rate

Pornography Banned        19            2.35

Pornography Semi-Legal    5            1.69

Pornography Legal             10            1.63

At the same time there might be more subtle differences between countries where pornography is banned and countries where it is not that could be partially driving this result.

The real question from a practical standpoint is whether legalizing pornography in a country will drive down fertility. If that is the case, we can rightfully conclude that reversing the legalization of pornography in a country would be of great benefit to its Birth Rate.

From the CDC I found tables showing the Total Fertility Rate for America in the years 1940 to 2000.

Then I decided to look up the Total Fertility Rate for the 5 years before and 5 years after two key Supreme Court rulings that made it essentially impossible to arrest an American for distributing or possessing obscene materials, and which opened never before seen floodgates of pornography.

Jacobellis v. Ohio    Stanley v. Georgia

TFR For 5 Years Before          3.53                           2.62

TFR For 5 Years After              2.77                           2.04

As can be seen, America’s Total Fertility Rate suffered a profound decline in response to the Supreme Court’s two most important rulings in favor of the pornography industry.

Also, when I put whether a year came before or after Jacobellis v. Ohio and Stanley v. Georgia as Dummy Variables in a Multiple Regression, together they explained a staggering 77% of the variation in American fertility from 1940 to 2000!

I think the implications of these findings to White Advocates should be loud and clear: The use of pornography by Whites should be fought tooth and nail, and the banning of pornography in White majority countries and states should be set as a central long-term goal.

Notes: Jacobellis v. Ohio was a 1964 ruling by the Supreme Court that the exhibitor of a film judged obscene by the state of Ohio could not be prosecuted. This had the effect of making it nearly impossible for States to punish people for disseminating pornography.

Stanley v. Georgia was a 1969 ruling by the Supreme Court that invalidated all state laws forbidding the private possession of materials judged obscene. This effectively gave everyone in the country the legal right to buy and hold as much pornography as they could their hands on, thus creating a state of affairs never before seen in American history.

Reginald Thompson is the Pen Name of an Advisor to an International Software Company. He lives on the American East Coast and is proprietor/manager of a recently created Blog called Statsaholic.

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More on the academic culture of the left

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Kevin MacDonald wrote this week in his blog, “Kevin Lamb’s TOO review of William Tucker’s book on Raymond Cattell is a microcosm of how far the academic world has sunk.”

Don’t I know it! Frankly, even if I had a good shot at getting a decent academic job at an American university, I don’t think I would take it, for the same reason MacDonald wrote about in a previous blog: “My fate in life is to work at a university. What that means right now is to be completely immersed in the culture of the left.”

The hostility toward White men and Western culture that I noticed got very strong about 1995 is just too much for me. Absolutely everything I’ve observed since only confirms it’s gotten worse — much worse.

For instance, the leading journal in my field recently eulogized a former President of the American Studies Association: “When Emory became an assistant professor at Princeton in 1972, he joined an overwhelmingly White and male academy, one steeped in privileges of tradition and exclusion.” That’s White folks for you. It’s all about exclusion and privilege.

One wonders if he approved of the rate and degree of change during his watch.

The same journal also has a long essay by one Jodi Kim (I assume she’s Korean American) about (White) Americans adopting Asian babies. Representative sentence: “It is also a highly racialized and gendered process implicated in the United States’ imperialist, capitalist modernity and indeed its foundational or constitutive projects of racial formation and ‘nation building’ both domestically and internationally.” Please go back to Korea if you hate your adopted country so much.

Or this: “The films make visible how the conditions of possibility of transracial adoption surface at the disturbing nexus of the successive forced migrations engineered by US and Western capitalist modernity, cold war imperialism in Asia, the White heteronormative bourgeois nuclear family ideal, and the long-standing imperialist desire to ‘save’ the world.”  Tranraical adoption is part of Western imperialism engineered by evil “heteronormative” (!) White people trying to “save” the world?  Okay, let’s send all the non-White children back to their Asian homeland.

And this all comes within the first two pages.

Interesting footnote from the essay: “Since 1954, over 200,000 children have been adopted from South Korea, including 150,000 sent to the US and the remainder to Europe.”

Recently, China has become the main source for such adoptions. Why? As a footnote tells us: “Almost all transnationally adopted Chinese babies are abandoned girls.” Golly, who’s the bad guy in this tale, the Whites who adopted them or the non-Whites who abandoned thousands of babies?

I’m not surprised by such writing, though, since it is so routine in the humanities in America. Over a decade ago, for example, I read social scientist Derek Freeman’s account of debunking Margaret Mead’s Franz Boas-inspired book. The title of Freeman’s account is The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead: A Historical Analysis of Her Samoan Research. Here’s a telling story about the sad state of social “science” these days.

In an earlier book, Margaret Mead and Samoa: The Making and Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth, Freeman ignited a firestorm in the world of anthropology by challenging, in one professor’s words, “the Mother-Goddess of American Anthropology.” From the publication of that book in 1983, Freeman “was subjected to a highly emotional and, at times, flagrantly ad hominem campaign that reached its apogee in Chicago during the Eighty Second Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, when . . . there was a special session (to which [he] was not invited) devoted to the evaluation of [his] book.” Descriptions of the meeting from those who attended ranged from “a sort of grotesque feeding frenzy” to “I felt I was in a room with 200 people ready to lynch you.”

Whatever happened to dispassionate search for truth and the advancement of science?

Another excellent point MacDonald makes concerns both the brother- and sisterhood of victims, and its hierarchy with Jews at the top:

What’s striking is that Jews and other non-Europeans wear their ethnic identity and sense of victimhood proudly and explicitly. The Whites typically have their own sense of victimhood — as gays or as women. In my experience, the heterosexual White males become adept at effusive expressions of guilt in order to be accepted into the system. In this culture of victimhood, all the rewards go to those who make alliances with other victims.

Zoom in on another tribute in our field’s journal to a fallen multiculturalist, a person who can best be described as the patron saint of American studies. I really don’t think you readers need this pointed out, but the author hates the idea that America has any White identity at all. She is writing in tribute to a fellow Chicana, “internationally recognized cultural theorist, creative writer, and independent scholar Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa.”

Remember, this is the leading journal in the field. That means that publishing there is the route to tenure and recognition. The route to tenure is to wallow in one’s victimhood, and in the victimhood stakes, this woman is thrice blessed — female, non-White, and lesbian: the diversity trifecta all in one person.

I quote at length only to give you a feel for what is going on in the academy these days:

I was introduced to your borderlands theory at the same time that I left the El Paso/Juárez border, never realizing how your work would impact my own scholarship in a field that I, at first, found as White as a midwestern winter. 

On May 21, 1980, almost exactly twenty-four years before your death, you wrote “Speaking in Tongues: A Letter to Third World Women Writers,” in which you visualized other women of color engaged in the radical act of writing and theorizing about our own lives, contemplating our raced/sexed/gendered/ classed realities and histories, and reclaiming our right to write. “Forget the room of one’s own,” you wrote, “write in the kitchen, lock yourself up in the bathroom. Write on the bus or the welfare line, on the job or during meals, between sleeping or waking.” . . . 

First, I should admit: I knew nothing about either you or the field until 1985, when I began my Ph.D. in American studies at the University of Iowa. Once there, I was dazed by cold and culture shock. From what I gleaned in my classes, “doing” American studies meant reading White male historians, White male literary critics, and great White male literature, trying to find the immanent “American” mind and character—a concept so riddled with problematic assumptions about what “American” meant that I was ready to pack up my bags and run for home. 

I can’t tell you the intellectual malaise I wallowed in that first semester, feeling for the first time in my life like a cultural alien in a White wilderness. Little did I know I was in the throes of what you called the nepantla state, “that uncertain terrain one crosses when moving from one place to another . . . to be disoriented in space is to experience bouts of disassociation of identity, identity breakdowns and buildups.” Little did I realize I was experiencing my first rite of passage as an academic border crosser. 

And then, you came to town. I couldn’t believe it, a tejana fronteriza dyke like me, speaking the same three tongues I speak. Lenguas de fuego, you named them, tongues of fire—the queer tongue, the decolonial tejana tongue, and the forked tongue of the border. You were finishing up with Borderlands/ La Frontera: The New Mestiza (a doctoral dissertation, if I ever saw one) and were trying out some of your theories—La Facultad, the Shadow Beast, the Coatlicue State, Mestiza Consciousness—on a multicultural college audience in Iowa City. Even among all those maricones and tortilleras (who knew I would find such queer Latinidad in Iowa?) your lecture settled over us like cosmic dust from another planet. The Whites in the room, even the liberal ones wearing Guatemalan shirts under their parkas, shifted uncomfortably in their seats; the more honest ones stared at you as though you’d just dropped a crop circle in their cornfield. 

I saw how the queers, the rape survivors, and the people of color responded with recognition to your idea about a certain faculty of mind that people who live in the margins develop early in life, a “survival tactic,” you called it, that teaches us to become aware of the racist, the rapist, or the homophobe in the room before that person even approaches. The African American and Latina professors, whatever their sexuality, saw themselves reflected in that beastly mirror of self-doubt and self-hate that you explained was a consequence of internalized racism and sexism. As a border dweller myself, I completely identified with your discussion on linguistic terrorism and the way those of us who are bred in the borderlands develop an ability to negotiate two languages and two cultures as a way of protecting ourselves against cultural schizophrenia. 

But when you got to the part about how identity must be fluid like the river, how we must shed our skins by entering into the Coatlicue state of death and renewal, the immersion into crisis when an old self dies and a new self awakens with a tolerance for contradictions and ambiguity and a talent for seeing through “serpent and eagle eyes”—you lost us. More accurately, you plunged us into that nepantla state.

Now ask yourself if the writer of the above — or the intended audience — can ever gain freedom from the constraints MacDonald identified. To wit: “In the humanities, it’s a lost cause. The triumvirate of the Frankfurt School, psychoanalysis, and Marxism is impervious to scientific findings and is intensely political; it will strenuously resist significant change.”

Since I’m skewering the academy in which I’ve spent so many years, let me also allude to Christopher Donovan’s current TOO article “A Window on the Warping of Whites: The Swarthmore College Alumni Magazine.”

To be honest, I share the same experience about my alma mater that he writes about Swarthmore. My school is a good second-tier private institution, one with a historically White ethnic/religious background that continues to this day. Yet it tries to go more upscale by aping the same trends Donovan highlights. In every issue they try to cram more photos of blacks and articles about Jews into the publication than I find even remotely warranted.

Yes, Donovan gets it exactly right: “What’s so amazing . . . is the totality of intellectual takeover.”

Again, this is not new. As a thirtysomething in 1992, I returned from six years of working abroad and did an unpaid internship at the leading pro-American manufacturing think tank in D.C. The other nine or so interns were college kids who just wanted to play softball with other interns during the hot Washington summer. Few of them even knew what the think tank dealt with.

When they found out about the pro-American slant of the think tank (a car maker—since gone bankrupt—was the biggest funder), they nearly rebelled.

They came from Cornell, Harvard, Bates . . . and Swarthmore.

So I think I’ll remain aloof from the American academy and earn my bread elsewhere. I don’t want to work somewhere where I’m always unfairly attacked because I was born a White male. Plus I don’t want to be around people teaching or educated at places like Swarthmore—or any other “good” university.

Needless to say, I send not a penny to any of the three universities from which I gained degrees. I’ll let others fund those glossy photos of high-achieving African Americans and “socially active” Jews.

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Ted Sallis: Taking a Initial Look at the American Third Position Party

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Ted Sallis: The American Third Position Party (A3P) is a new political party that purports to represent the interests of the white American majority.  As such, it is a refreshing change from the standard Republicrat/Democan one-party system and gives hope that, finally, the political system can be used to further our specific group interests. 

These are early days and one cannot make any definitive conclusions about A3P at this point.  However, some progress has been made, and the party has put forth some initial positions on major issues, so it is worthwhile to examine these. Readers are urged to look at A3P’s program and policies.  I have no major disagreement with their stance on crime, economy, education, etc.  Instead, I would like to take a closer look at two of their major policy initiatives. Emphasis added to all quotes. 

The following summarizes the party’s key positions on immigration:

 To safeguard our identity and culture, and to maintain the very existence of our nation, we will immediately put an indefinite moratorium on all immigration. Recognizing our people’s right to safety, and respecting the sanctity of the rule of law, we will immediately deport all criminal and illegal aliens. We believe, too, that American citizenship should be exclusive and meaningful. As such, the American Third Position will end the practice of automatic birthright-citizenship for children of illegal aliens. To restore, with civility, the identity and culture of our homeland, we will provide incentives for recent, legal immigrants to return to their respective lands. 

This is good – stopping the influx, deportation of illegals, and an end to the concept of “anything goes” birthright citizenship.  Even more impressively, the possibility of repatriation of “recent, legal immigrants” is brought up – the only instance of an American political party raising the “R” issue.  I would like even more – a more comprehensive repatriation program for example, but this is a good start. Also: 

Immigration affects our culture. It affects the way we feel, act, and operate within a community. It affects whether or not we can have actual communities at all. It affects our welfare and livelihood in ways that are immeasurable, aside from the efforts we go to in protecting against it. Immigration erodes our culture and sense of identity. In cities where many cultures meet, there is an atmosphere of hostility. Neighborhoods become atomized, and a true community is never established. 

True and good, but it’s not only culture. Not surprisingly, I would like to have seen a more explicitly Salterian mention of the actual physical, demographic, biological effects of immigration.  They add: 

While we accept that ethnic minorities are, and will always be, part of America, we want our will to be observed and exercised as it should be, and as it should have been. We have a right to sovereignty and to exercise our will as a people. We want an America that is recognizable to us, one that we can feel comfortable in. We believe that this desire is not unique to our nation or our own people, and we believe that all people’s have a right to sovereignty. Accordingly, we will stop all immigration into America, except in special cases. To help restore our national identity, we will offer generous grants to recent immigrants who have a desire to return to their countries of origin. While this can be easily repositioned by a media who is hostile to our people or to a political establishment who relies on recent immigrants for votes, we only mean to create a system of mutual benefit, where the wills of both parties are observed and respected, as they should be. Wherever a recent immigrant has a need to get back home but is without the resources to do as much, we will lend a helping hand. 

I don’t know about the first set of phrases, but I understand that this party needs to navigate within the streams of the politically possible – for now – and that a too radical program at first may be difficult.  A contrasting argument would be that it’s a mistake to start off too moderate.  An initial moderate stance may “lock in” this moderation and prevent future shifts toward more radical positions since, having attracted a mass of more moderate supporters at the beginning, the party would be loathe to lose that support by shifting towards more radical solutions to the pressing problems of race, culture, and nation.  Truth be told, I’m more supportive of the latter mindset – that it is better to lay your cards on the table at the beginning and build in depth with more revolutionary support.  Of course, the assumption here is that the A3P leadership and I actually agree on these more radical ideals.  It may be that our vision is not congruent, and that the party program is what it is because that’s what the party leaders want it to be.  And, of course, A3P leadership has the right to formulate their own party’s positions as they see fit.  I merely make suggestions and offer some contrary views.

The A3P also has an excellent position on space exploration.

This is important; I am a very strong supporter of space exploration (both manned and unmanned).  This is part of Western Man’s Faustian soul, will yield important information and discoveries, and, hopefully, eventually lead to Western Man’s expansion into, and colonization of, space (assuming of course we are not first Third Worldized out of existence).  That the A3P has included space exploration as a key part of their program is therefore encouraging and demonstrates a willingness to look at long-term objectives, and also the ability to look beyond the standard “right-wing fare” (immigration, economy, crime, etc.). 

One point though is that they should go beyond space exploration and put together a broader position on overall science and Technology.  In other words they should also: encourage the development of alternative and novel sources of energy, promote advances in biomedical research (which should include not only basic research and that aimed at disease therapeutics, but also research on race and eugenics), stimulate development of advanced computing, and encourage continued and expanded research into the fabric of the universe and of reality itself (e.g., astronomy and, especially, both theoretical and applied advanced physics, cosmology, etc).  Further, Americans need to be in the lead of what can be called “global disaster abatement” – research aimed at investigating and, if possible, preventing asteroid strikes, super volcano eruptions, pandemics, environmental degradation, etc.  While some of the latter may seem like “science fiction,” that is more a function of our limited knowledge and imagination than it is to any real limitation of the possibilities. 

The A3P can also state an interest in Western cultural artifacts – an interest in opposing the current “Winter” of our High Culture, and its sewer-like degraded atmosphere, with a contrasting encouragement of Western cultural rebirth and the creation of a civilization that can make us, our ancestors, and our posterity proud.

In summary, there is some more work to be done and I hope that a bit of constructive criticism will be appreciated.  However, all in all, A3P seems at this point to be a very positive development, and I wish them well.

A major concern is that the landscape of “movement” history is littered with the scattered remnants of past projects that, initially, looked promising and generated enthusiasm, but quickly petered out due to lack of progress and direction, infighting, the action of infiltrators and agent provocateurs, diminished interest of activists with short attention spans, and the ability of the establishment to use a variety of methods to thwart nationalist progress.  We can hope that things will be different this time.

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