A Flat, Gray, Silent World: How PC and Minority-Worship Cripple the Intellect

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One of the strangest and cleverest books I’ve ever read is Edwin A. Abbott’s Flatland, a Victorian fantasy first published in 1884. It’s about what happens when two worlds collide. One is our own three-dimensional world. The other is a literally two-dimensional world called Flatland, where there are only two dimensions to move in: north-south and east-west. There’s no up-down in Flatland, because there’s no third dimension.

They can’t think in 3D

The inhabitants of Flatland, known as Flatlanders, are living geometric shapes like triangles, squares and circles. They can perceive only in two dimensions and our three-dimensional world is impossible for them to imagine or understand. Flatlanders see a 3D object passing through their world as a series of infinitely thin slices, so to them a cube can look like a square or a triangle or even a hexagon, depending on how it’s orientated. And they can’t understand how human fingers, which look to them like a disconnected series of fleshy circles, can be part of a single, undivided hand.

In short, solidity baffles them. Abbott wanted his readers to see that we humans live in a Flatland of our own. After all, if 2D is flat to a 3D being, then 3D will be flat to a 4D being. Flatlanders can’t see or understand three dimensions of space and we can’t see or understand four. But Abbott wasn’t just writing a very clever mathematical fantasy: he was satirizing Victorian politics and culture. For example, the more sides Flatlanders have, the higher their status: triangles are lowly and circles are exalted. And so arbitrary geometry determines one’s position in life.

Forbidden to perceive reality

That’s a liberal idea, of course, but Flatland could easily be updated as a right-wing satire on the modern West. The point of an update would be this: We’re 3D, but we’re forbidden to think in 3D. Instead, we have to inhabit an intellectual Flatland, a flat, gray, silent world of political correctness and minority worship. Abbott’s original Flatlanders had hearing and colour vision, at least. We don’t have those things in our politics. When we look at the world, we have to turn most of our senses off and stop using reason and logic. We’re forbidden to see unity where it really exists, because the High Priests of PC tell us that phenomena like non-White failure and non-White genetics are entirely separate and unrelated. At the same time, we’re commanded to see unity where it doesn’t exist. “There’s Only One Race — the Human Race!” “Gender is a social construct!” “Whites and Non-Whites, Men and Women are entirely interchangeable!”

And some parts of the real world are strictly off-limits to us twenty-first-century Flatlanders in New Flatland. The Scruton affair, which I discussed in “A Philosopher Falls,” is a good example of how important and closely connected facts float off into an inaccessible hyper-realm. In early April 2019 Sir Roger Scruton, whom some call the greatest living conservative philosopher, was sacked from a government committee for the alleged thought-crimes of anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and racism. Scruton himself and his many supporters have continued to bewail the unfairness and injustice of what happened to him. As Scruton wrote in a neo-conservative and highly philo-Semitic magazine called Standpoint: “Heretics like me should not be silenced by mobs.” But Scruton isn’t a genuine heretic or free-thinker, because he’s writing from New Flatland and certain facts go entirely unmentioned in his article. He doesn’t refer to Jews or his own alleged anti-Semitism even once, let alone discuss the Board of Jewish Deputies and its direct role in his sacking. And what about Lord Finkelstein and Tom Tugendhat, two prominent Jewish “Conservatives” who immediately joined the left-wing “mob” and its heresy-hunt? Read more

Psychological Mechanisms and White Interests, Part 2

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Go to Part 1.

Psychological Mechanisms that Work to Our Advantage

Implicit Whiteness. However, getting away from the Finnish example, there are also psychological mechanisms that are likely to create an increased sense of White identity and White interests in the years ahead. This should give us some hope for the future. The demographic transformation, in which it is obvious that White political power is declining as Whites head toward minority status, would by itself trigger defensive mechanisms of what I call implicit Whiteness which is the sense that one is White and behaving on the basis of being White without explicitly stating that you are White. For example, as White children get older, they increasingly choose Whites to be friends and associates in a mixed-race setting. Even though their explicit attitudes towards Blacks may be very positive, they feel more comfortable and have more rapport with other Whites. White parents move away from areas with a lot of non-Whites, especially Blacks and Latinos—a phenomenon known as White flight. When asked why they do so, they talk about seeking better schools. This may be true, but it covers up the reality that they don’t want their children in the same school as these non-Whites while shielding themselves from being called racists.

White people are the most individualistic people on earth — a topic central to my forthcoming book Western Individualism and the Liberal Tradition: Evolution, History, and Prospects for the Future. This means that we are less ethnocentric and less embedded in extended kinship networks that are so common in Africa and Asia. Individualists are less naturally ethnocentric, and the left has created a culture that punishes Whites for expressing ethnocentrism while encouraging non-Whites to be ethnocentric. Because the media is dominated by the left and because even the conservative media is terrified of appearing to advocate White interests, explicit messages that would encourage Whites to become angry and fearful about their future as a minority are rare. Indeed, the media rarely, if ever, mentions that Whites are well on their way to becoming a minority. And this for good reason: Whites in the United States and in Canada who are given explicit demographic projections of a time when Whites are no longer a majority tend to feel angry and fearful. They are also more likely to identify as Whites and have sympathy for other Whites.[1]

In other words, explicit messages indicating that one’s racial group is threatened are able to trigger ethnocentrism. This is especially important because many Whites live far from the areas of their countries undergoing the demographic shifts. Their day-to-day life of living in an essentially White environment hasn’t changed much while the population centers throughout the West—places like New York, Stockholm, London, and Paris are changed beyond all recognition from what they were 50 years ago. An obvious inference to be made is that pro-White activists should use explicit messages emphasizing these transformations. They should also note what is happening when Whites give up political control, as in South Africa, where many Whites live under siege conditions behind high walls and security systems, the government has endorsed programs that confiscate land from Whites and, crime, including particularly vicious murders of White farmers, is rampant. Read more

Psychological Mechanisms and White Interests, Part 1

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Turku Castle

Editor’s note: This is a talk given at the Awakening Conference in Turku, Finland, April 6, 2019. 

There are obviously many challenges for White people in the West, starting with the fact that throughout the West the media and academic culture are absolutely dedicated to importing new peoples into lands traditionally dominated by people of European descent. In every case, this transformation has been a top-down phenomenon, as described mainly for the United States in my book The Culture of Critique, in the UK by Andrew Joyce, in Australia by Brenton Sanderson, and in Sweden by .M. Eckehart. By this, I mean that there was never a popular movement demanding more immigration anywhere in the West. In general, these changes occurred as a result of activism by specific groups—my view is that Jewish groups were critical in every case. These activists have had ties to elite institutions in the media, the academic world, powerful institutions like the EU, and the political process. The policies they advocated aimed at changing government policy in a context where there was no public discussion of the long-term effects this would have on native populations. And in every case, the mainstream media has had a record of promoting immigration and preventing discussion of the negative consequences, either now or in the future, to native populations. This is because, quite obviously, these changes do not benefit native populations. It’s one thing to import temporary workers for real economic needs.  It’s quite another thing to make them voting citizens, particularly when they typically have quite different interests in public policy on immigration and on the economic policies related to the availability of public goods like free healthcare, education, and welfare benefits. Most want free stuff. In the U.S., 63% of non-citizens and 50% of naturalized immigrants (i.e., the ones who become citizens) access welfare programs. The great majority of non-European immigrants have come from countries with lower IQ—a trait that is not easily influenced by changed environments. I would be interested in seeing a similar analysis for Finland.

The result of these shifts is that in most Western countries the traditionally dominant populations will be replaced within the lifetimes of many of the people who are alive today. In the United States, maybe even an old guy like me, White Americans are projected to become a minority at least by 2040 and likely sooner. Moreover, we are already at a tipping point because the Democrat Party, which is entirely in favour of replacing the White population, gets around 45% of its votes from non-Whites, so that even though many Whites have deserted the party in recent years, the growth of the non-White population combined with a still-significant number of Whites voting Democrat means that it will be impossible for Republicans to win national elections in the near future—indeed, as early as 2020. Add to that the fact that many Republicans favor high levels of immigration and because Pres. Trump has been unable or unwilling to fulfil his campaign promises; far too many Republicans are agents of big business and want to import cheap labor—and they are deathly afraid of being called a racist if they resist immigration. Illegal aliens now residing in the US have a huge incentive to have children because of birthright citizenship—people born here are citizens, so their parents can claim welfare and other financial support; again 63% are on welfare. It’s not surprising that they don’t want to leave. Read more

Aristotle: The Biopolitics of the Citizen-State, Part 4

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Law versus Decadence

Like Plato (left), Aristotle hoped that an inspired lawgiver could establish an enduring good government.

A last concern of Aristotle’s which is of great relevance to our time is the prevention of decadence. For Aristotle, the good of the city is reflected in the virtue of the citizens. The citizens are educated and trained in virtue by adherence to the city’s largely-unchanging basic law, set in place by an inspired lawgiver. The question becomes: how can the law ensure that virtue is maintained in perpetuity?

There are no easy answers. Nations tend to be victims of their own successes. As Aristotle notes: “People are easily spoiled; and it is not all who can stand prosperity” (1308b10). He speaks at length on how Sparta’s morals were corrupted after that martial city defeated Athens and achieved hegemony in Greece as a result of the Peloponnesian War. According to Aristotle, adherence to Lycurgus’ law did not survive material wealth and the empowerment of women.

The Greeks were less prone to excessive individualism than the modern West has been, but they often ceded to the siren song of egalitarianism. Aristotle reports that many Greeks believed that if men were equal in some respect, such as being freeborn, they must be equal overall and certainly equally entitled to rule. Many took equality as a goal, leading them to seek to both make the citizens equal and to indiscriminately extend citizenship: “some thinkers [hold] that liberty is chiefly to be found in democracy and that the same goes for equality, this condition is most fully realized when all share, as far as possible, on the same terms in the constitution” (1291b30).

While Aristotle is indeed more ‘bourgeois’ than Plato, he too is contemptuous of egalitarian excesses, which manifest themselves in democratic extremism and selfish individualism. Aristotle, like Plato, argues at length that right equality or justice means that equals should be treated equally and unequals unequally (1287a1). And again, for him, justice means the interests of the community:

What is “right” should be understood as what is “equally right”; and what is “equally right” is what is for the benefit of the whole city and for the common good of its citizens. The citizen is, in general, one who shares in the civic life of ruling and being ruled in turn. (1283b27)

Aristotle notes that some democracies are so extreme that they actually undermine the existence of their own state, and hence do not survive as long as a moderate democracy. He writes with great eloquence on that “false conception of liberty” which has so often seduced our people:

In democracies of the type which is regarded as being peculiarly democratic the policy followed is the very reverse of their real interest. The reason for this is a false conception of liberty. There are two features which are generally held to define democracy. One of them is the sovereignty of the majority; the other is the liberty of individuals. Justice is assumed to consist in equality and equality in regarding the will of the masses as sovereign; liberty is assumed to consist in “doing what one likes.” The result of such a view is that, in these extreme democracies, each individual lives as he likes — or as Euripides says,

For any end he chances to desire.

This is a mean conception [of liberty]. To live by the rule of the constitution ought not to be regarded as slavery, but rather as salvation. (1310A12)

Is this not a very concise summation of the ills of modern liberalism? I would argue that the West was already severely infected by the 1930s, before metastasizing to an absurd degree from the 1960s onwards. Thus today, liberals express desire only for ‘equality’ and ‘solidarity,’ all the while destroying the very foundations for these ends through multiculturalism and open-borders, these being zealously imposed with disastrous short-sightedness. Read more

Aristotle: The Biopolitics of the Citizen-State, Part 3

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Population Policies and Eugenics

The Spartan sage Lycurgus instituted Greece’s most ambitious population policies.

True to his communitarian foundations, Aristotle argues that population policies — notably concerning immigration, naturalization, and reproduction — are a fundamental element of statecraft and ought to be determined by what serves the interests of the society as a whole. Aristotle observes very lucidly: “The prime factor necessary, in the equipment of a city, is the human material; and this involves us in considering the quality, as well as quantity” (1325b33). The city is defined not by mere geography, but above all by the population. Therefore: “To determine the size of a city — to settle how large it can properly be, and whether it ought to consist of the members of several races — is a duty incumbent on the statesman” (1276a24). The statesman then has a duty to decide who is fit to be a citizen and to ensure the biological reproduction and quality of the citizens, thus perpetuating the city.

In line with Aristotle’s imagined foundation of the city as an extended family, the Greeks typically granted citizenship according to rules of descent. Aristotle observes: “For practical purposes, it is usual to define a citizen as one ‘born of citizen parents on both sides,’ and not on the father’s or mother’s side only; but sometimes this requirement is carried still farther back, to the length of two, three, or more stages of ancestry” (1275b22). Aristotle also defines a city in part by the possibility of intermarriage among its members. Naturalized citizens are clearly considered exceptional, Aristotle deeming them citizens “in some special sense” (1274b38).

The ancient Greeks were obsessed with their ancestry and lineage, following aristocratic and hereditarian assumptions. Aristotle says that “good birth, for a people and a state, is to be indigenous or ancient and to have distinguished founders with many descendants distinguished in matters that excite envy” (Rhetoric, 1.5).[8] Following the widespread Greek assumptions that both nature and nurture mattered, he writes that “it is likely that good sons will come from good fathers and that the appropriately raised will be of the appropriate sort” (Rhetoric, 1.9). Aristotle furthermore lists shared blood as one of the forms of friendship, an eminently adaptive view: “The species of friendship are companionship, intimacy, consanguinity, and so on” (Rhetoric, 2.4). Read more

Aristotle: The Biopolitics of the Citizen-State, Part 2

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The ekklesiasterion, or assembly meeting place, of Messene, where civic debates were held

Aristotle’s Republic of Virtue

From these biopolitical premises, Aristotle wholeheartedly agreed with the communitarian ethos which the Greeks took for granted. As the philosopher explains: “the goodness of every part must be considered with reference to the goodness of the whole” (1260b8) and “a whole is never intended by nature to be inferior to a part” (1288a15). Indeed, Aristotle’s definition of a community-centered notion of justice may well be incomprehensible to many moderns: “The good in the sphere of politics is justice; and justice consists in what tends to promote the common interest” (1282b14). How many political discussions today — whether about abortion, gay marriage, immigration, economic policy, or whatever — refer to the common good rather than to solipsistic arguments about individual or sectoral ‘rights’ and ‘fairness’?

Aristotle is decidedly more ‘bourgeois’ and less spiritual than Plato. He has far less to say about the role of religion in the good society, this being practically an afterthought. He seems to hope for, at best, a stable and moderate regime, one respecting the interests of both rich and poor, founded upon an enlightened citizenry composed of independent landowners and responsible citizen-soldiers. But Aristotle also had an elevated notion of what politics should be about. In his own time, he contradicted those who believed that the state exists only as a kind of contract between individuals, meant only to guarantee their security or to enable them to chase after coin.

For Aristotle, man fulfills his nature as a rational being through philosophical contemplation and active citizenship. But only a minority have the intellectual gifts necessary to do this, and furthermore, as a practical matter, the work of servile subalterns is necessary to secure the necessary leisure to pursue philosophy and politics. Hence, Aristotle notoriously endorses a doctrine of natural slavery: barbarians and the morally defective are incapable of freedom and hence are only fit to be slaves of better men, thus enabling the latter to fulfill our human potential. Natural slaves are those who, either as individuals or as entire peoples, are so poorly endowed in reason that they may only participate in it as the servants of superior men. Aristotle observes: “what difference, one may ask, is there between some men and the beasts?” (1281b15). The recognition of inequality, enabling the creation of a just community and hierarchy, is no less central to Aristotle’s ethics and politics than those of Plato. Read more

Aristotle: The Biopolitics of the Citizen-State, Part 1

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The texts that have come down to us from Antiquity were written for a time and place very different from our own. Their very origins are often mysterious, and yet, their concerns often speak to us very directly. We do not even know how Aristotle’s Politics, his main political treatise, were edited. They appear to be the philosopher’s fossilized lecture notes, which he would have used when teaching in his Lyceum, or were perhaps drafted to enable students not present to read them privately.

By their nature, the Politics are an excellent introduction to ancient Greek political practice and philosophy, and one which can be fruitfully read even by young minds. Aristotle’s pedagogical method, presenting the apparent data (phainomena) and various opinions of learned men (endoxa) is particularly helpful: he provides an almost encyclopedic overview of the opposing viewpoints which were prevalent and of the practices of the various ancient city-states. We get a strong sense of the issues and debates which were already agitating our people. Aristotle’s insights concerning the nature of responsible citizenship and the dangers of excessive egalitarianism and diversity remain relevant to this day.

Aristotle’s political thought — at least in the surviving works — does not soar to the eugenic and spiritual heights of Plato. However, Aristotle’s moderate and pragmatic brand of politics is much more palatable to someone raised in modern liberalism, while at the same time being a better introduction to the communitarian and aristocratic political ethics of the ancient Greeks. What was really unique about the Greek experiment of the city-states was the practice of citizenship. Never before and rarely since, even within the Western world, has a substantial body of the people been so involved in their own collective self-government. We would be mistaken however in equating citizenship in the ancient polis with that of the republicanism of the Enlightenment, let alone of the postwar liberal democracies.

In his Nicomachean Ethics, a companion piece to the Politics dedicated to his son Nicomachus, Aristotle argues that we should have as much respect for unreflective views won from practical experience as for abstract arguments: “we ought to attend to the undemonstrated sayings and opinions of experienced and older people or of people of practical wisdom not less than to demonstrations; for experience has given them an eye they see aright” (6.11). Aristotle’s politics can in fact be considered somewhat conventional for an upper-class Greek[1] — arguing for a moderate regime based on law and a sizable middle-class of citizen-soldiers. However, as we shall see, he also rationalizes traditional Greek politics in biological terms with novel scientific foundations and philosophical ends.

Aristotle embraced the ethnocentric, communitarian, and virile traditions of the Greek polis. For the Greeks, the ideal of citizenship did not mean guaranteeing a set of arbitrary “inalienable rights” as ends in themselves or the privilege of simply doing as one pleased. Rather, they believed that the good of the individual necessarily depended upon the good of the whole, to which all had to sacrifice when necessary. Citizenship meant not rights, but participation in the setting and enforcement of duties. As Aristotle eloquently puts it, citizenship is “to rule and be ruled in turn.” In the Greek city-state, this meant varying degrees of participation in the Assembly, the courts, and political and military offices. For Aristotle, as for the Greeks in general, citizenship was incompatible with egalitarian excess, decadence, and effeminacy.

In considering the possible structures of government discussed by Aristotle, we ought to bear in mind the sheer diversity of Greek polities scattered around the Mediterranean: the commercial-democratic imperial metropolis of Athens, the agrarian and austere military aristocracy of Sparta, the multiethnic tyranny of Syracuse, traditional monarchies, the democratic federations of Boeotia and Arcadia, tribal confederacies . . . the Ancients were certainly far more tolerant of diversity in forms of government than postwar Moderns are.

The Greek city-state could indeed be extremely intrusive. By modern liberal standards, it was not just authoritarian but “totalitarian”[2] — not recognizing a private life wholly free from politics and seeing the state as having a decisive role in the formation of culture. Aristotle himself recognized that law and culture were thoroughly intertwined, as “laws resting on unwritten custom are even more sovereign, and concerned with issues of still more sovereign importance, than written laws” (1287a32). The state’s role included the definition and enforcement of positive cultural norms and customs. Economic, family, and religious life could be sharply regulated, so that all would acquire healthy habits promoting the common good. The polis’s unique system of government was possible because of the smallness and familiarity of the city — generally not numbering more than 50,000 people, with far less citizens. The citizens were bound together by ties of kinship, personally knew the leading politicians directly, and participated on a day-to-day basis in civic life, whether as jurors, assemblymen, or soldiers. For Aristotle, therefore, citizenship would not be possible if the whole Peloponnesian peninsula were a single state or indeed if the supercity of Babylon were a republic.

In practice, ancient Greek politics was defined by choosing office-holders, deciding on policies, and holding trials, as well as the more-or-less amicable debates surrounding these. Depending on the kind of regime, hereditary kings, elected councils, or even the entire citizenry gathered in assembly would decide on such matters. In domestic affairs, the state would regulate and supervise the marketplace, countryside, and marriages, as well  as expenditures on public works, the organization of military forces on land and sea, and immigration policy. They would also define the legally-recognized classes of citizens, and censor or promote various forms of culture. The more ambitious cities, such as Sparta, would seek to regulate reproduction, systematically educate the youth, and organize the citizens’ common meals, gymnastics, and military training.

In foreign affairs, the state would decide on war and peace, the formation of alliances or confederations, economic embargoes, whether to subsidize allies, how to treat conquered enemies (enslavement or extermination), the establishment of puppet regimes, and overseas colonization. The stakes were high: failure to maintain goodwill among citizens often led to gruesome civil wars and conquest by invaders, including fellow Greeks, who could be as cruel as they pleased. The polis as a system of government was a demanding one which was eventually surpassed by the great universal empires. Nonetheless, the polis  served the Greeks well for centuries, enabling their expansion across the Mediterranean; it was an unprecedented experiment in self-government. The polis allowed for an astonishing diversity of forms of governments and corresponding achievements, from the martial prowess and stability of Sparta to the economic, political, and cultural dynamism of Athens. Read more