Operational Hygiene: Spheres of Activism for the Alt Right

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I was relieved to note that towards the end of 2017 after serious infighting, public arguing, and hurt feelings, not to mention cases of business rivalry gone awry, several major outlets of the AltRight addressed what is — my mind— a vital topic of internal and organizational discipline. Among the people who talked about what I would like to dub “Operational Hygiene” were Caerulus Rex of TheRightStuff.biz and Richard Spencer. In the following, I will try to flesh out this concept some more and hope to give my kind reader an idea of its importance for establishing a staunch and steadfast operational structure capable of braving the challenges lying ahead. I feel compelled to make clear that I do not intend to spoon-feed any AltRight activist or sympathizer in the United States while riding the not-so-enlightened Old World horse (as some of my similarly inclined colleagues within the European New Right have done, especially in the aftermath of Charlottesville; some still do). On the contrary, I hope to draw attention to an issue that might be of even more importance for the ossified political right in Europe and might become worth considering after it is successfully proved in the US, which is where Europeans are by and large still prone to look for ideas or guidance.

When I was asked to give a lecture in Munich in late June 2017 about what was to be learned from the AltRight’s sweeping performance during the later stages of the Trump campaign and afterwards, I chose the working title “Ethnostate, Movement, /pol/,” playfully channeling Carl Schmitt’s infamous 1933 essay Staat, Bewegung, Volk in which Schmitt, whom I consider one of my prime influences in the political realm, for the most part cheered the Gleichschaltung legislation of the early National Socialist government.[1] My ambition in the following is not to evoke a forthcoming seizure of power by the National Policy Institute or Andrew Anglin’s media-hyped troll army, but rather to stress the structural concept of the (meta-)political triad Schmitt had hinted at with his title (and in doing so, to take little to no account of its historical implications). The three catchwords I chose for my lecture were meant to represent the three spheres of Alternative Right work in order to make it more understandable for people who had never before heard of it, let alone actively followed its development online: 1.) the realm of Realpolitik, whether in collaboration with the GOP or not, aiming at a reversal of the catastrophic developments ever since at least the mid-1960s; 2.) the realm of the activities of all the people and organizations associated with the term “AltRight”, such as conferences, public speeches, tiki torch marches und so weiter; and 3.) the realm of informational warfare—trolling and memeing, and using sophisticated, but at the same time tongue-in-cheek anarchical, anti-establishment culture jamming. And while I tried to use these three spheres to outline a rugged morphology of the diffuse political and cultural landscape that is the AltRight, I found a (slightly forced) way to apply this triad to European and German political developments. This application, however, evidently works as well across the Big Pond. Read more

Capitolo 6 di Insurrezioni culturali: EBREI, NERI, E RAZZA

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Questo saggio offre una panoramica della storia delle relazioni tra ebrei e neri nel ventesimo secolo. I dati a disposizione dimostrano molto chiaramente che le organizzazioni ebraiche, come pure un numero elevato di individui ebrei, hanno contribuito enormemente al successo del movimento teso a rafforzare il potere dei neri e modificare la gerarchia razziale degli Stati Uniti. Si affronterà inoltre la più difficile questione di come interpretare le motivazioni ebraiche sottese all’alleanza tra neri ed ebrei.

È importante comprendere che gli ebrei e i neri costituiscono due gruppi molto diversi. Dall’antichità ad oggi, le popolazioni ebraiche hanno ripetutamente acquisito una posizione di potere e influenza in seno alle società occidentali. Gli ebrei ashkenaziti che dominano la comunità ebraica americana vantano il quoziente intellettivo medio più elevato tra tutti i gruppi umani e hanno dimostrato una straordinaria capacità di creare e partecipare a gruppi molto efficaci nel perseguimento dei loro obiettivi.1 Malgrado atteggiamenti antiebraici piuttosto diffusi (seppure abbastanza moderati rispetto alla norma storica), e malgrado arrivassero tipicamente come immigrati poveri, gli ebrei hanno rapidamente conquistato uno status sociale, un grado di ricchezza, potere e influenza negli Stati Uniti di gran lunga superiore alla loro importanza numerica. Il potere ebraico era già percettibile nel corso delle discussioni sulla potenziale partecipazione alla seconda guerra mondiale al fianco dell’Inghilterra; lo era perfino negli anni ’20, in occasione dei dibattiti sull’immigrazione (anche se allora gli ebrei non erano dalla parte dei vincitori). Ma tale potere aumentò drammaticamente dopo la seconda guerra mondiale, e dagli anni ’60 gli ebrei americani sono diventati un’élite capace di esercitare una notevole influenza sulla politica nazionale. Nonostante le profonde divergenze esistenti all’interno della comunità ebraica americana, si è registrato un ampio consenso su varie questioni politiche cruciali, particolarmente per quanto concerne il sostegno a Israele e la sicurezza di altre comunità ebraiche all’estero, le politiche in materia di immigrazione e rifugiati, la separazione tra Chiesa e Stato, i diritti all’aborto e le libertà civili.2

Gli ebrei convenivano ampiamente sulla solidarietà e sul sostegno per i movimenti mirati a rafforzare il potere dei neri americani, perlomeno fino agli anni ’70, quando i neoconservatori ebrei – una piccola minoranza in seno alla comunità ebraica – cominciarono a prendere le distanze da alcune delle forme più radicali della legislazione volta a promuovere gli interessi dei neri, chiedendo la limitazione del welfare e di alcune delle forme più radicali dell’azione positiva e dei diritti di gruppo per i neri. Tuttavia, in linea con la maggioranza delle organizzazioni della comunità ebraica americana, i neoconservatori sostenevano la rivoluzione per i diritti civili degli anni ’60.

I neri hanno un profilo storico e razziale completamente diverso. Nel Sud, i neri erano ridotti alla schiavitù e, in seguito all’emancipazione, la segregazione razziale diede luogo a una gerarchia razziale ben definita. Anche nel Nord i neri erano relativamente poveri e privi di potere, tuttavia, se valutati in base al QI, i neri hanno goduto lo stesso grado di successo occupazionale dei bianchi dalla fine della prima fase del movimento per i diritti civili – intorno al 1960. Da allora, secondo una valutazione del QI, è molto più probabile che un nero occupi un posto di lavoro che richiede un alto QI rispetto a un bianco avente lo stesso QI. Per esempio, in uno studio basato su dati del 1990, i bianchi che ricoprivano incarichi professionali vantavano un QI medio di 114, rispetto alla media di 94 per i neri con posizioni analoghe.3 Il QI medio dei neri è 85, una deviazione standard sotto la media degli americani bianchi e almeno due deviazioni standard sotto il QI medio di 115 degli ebrei americani.4

In linea con questa disparità in termini di QI e di successo ottenuto, le relazioni tra neri ed ebrei sono sempre state a senso unico. Gli ebrei hanno svolto un ruolo decisivo nell’organizzare, finanziare e promuovere le cause dei neri, ma i neri non hanno avuto alcun ruolo nella conduzione degli affari della comunità ebraica.5 Read more

Ben Stiller and Keeping the Faith

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The year 2000 was a busy one for actor Ben Stiller.  Starring first in Keeping the Faith, which is the focus of today’s analysis, Stiller went on to take the lead role in Meet the Parents, which I recently reviewed here.  As we saw in my review, Meet the Parents, while ostensibly a comedy, it’s also infused with hostility on both sides, as the lone Jew Greg Focker (Stiller) enters into the domain of gentiles, a situation intrinsic to diaspora Jewry. It is, literally, Focker’s “ordeal of civility.”

Keeping the Faith is an entirely different beast. In this film the contrast between the White goy world and the Jewish world could not be starker, for two of the three main characters are a blond Catholic priest and a rabbi. (Notice that in flashbacks to their childhood, the Catholic boy with blond hair always wears light clothing; in contrast, the young Jewish boy wears dark clothes.) Further, the shiksa lust is front and center, as the rabbi dates (and will likely marry) a very, very goyish woman. What makes this film absolutely fascinating, however, is that these contrasts and conflicts are treated openly, compassionately, intelligently and — gasp — honestly. Certainly, see this film, since Hollywood rarely offers such a balanced and insightful look at how Jews interact with and affect their host culture — it even shows us what many Jews think about us, including their negative thoughts.

Here is the cast: Ben Stiller stars as Rabbi Jacob “Jake” Schram. Edward Norton is Father Brian Finn. And Jenna Elfman is Anna Reilly. As children, they went to school together in New York City, but Anna moves to California with her family and loses touch with her two male friends. Later, she returns to New York on business and resumes contact with these two men, who are now men of the cloth.

Before addressing the film, however, I simply must discuss the identity of the actor and director of Keeping the Faith, Edward Norton. In this film, he plays, quite frankly, a mildly effeminate man, though that’s neither here nor there, since he’s a priest. Read more

Warrior-Hero of the West: Erich Hartmann, the Blond Knight of Germany, Part 2

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Erich Hartmann with wife Ursula and daughter Isabel (b. 1957)

Go to Part 1.

Handed Over to the Russians

At war’s end, Hartmann was based in Bohemia. Here began his personal tragedy. His commanding general ordered him and Hermann Graf, as famous holders of the Diamonds and much desired by the Russians, to leave their unit, fly west, and surrender to the British. Hartmann and Graf decided to ignore this order because there were thousands of German civilians fleeing the Russians attached to their unit; some of these civilians were relatives of the airmen. They felt responsible for these unfortunate refugees.

On May 8, 1945, Hartmann’s unit destroyed their remaining planes and moved west. They surrendered to American forces at Pisek, fifty miles south of Prague. The Americans plundered them thoroughly (Erich’s detailed logbooks were lost here and never recovered) and penned them up in a barbed-wire enclosure. Eventually 50,000 Germans, civilians included, were collected there. For eight days the Americans provided them with no food, other than a few handouts from individual GIs; they also lacked any sanitary facilities.

Take a moment to imagine that.

The Americans eventually told them they would take them into Germany to be processed. U.S. forces trucked a large group of Germans, including Hartmann and his men, away. To the east. They soon stopped in a meadow surrounded by Russian troops, and the Americans ordered the Germans to get down. The Americans had secretly agreed to turn over to the Soviets any personnel they had captured east of a certain line that had been allocated to Russian occupation.

The Russians were obviously drunk. They immediately separated the German women from the men, in full sight of the Americans. They held the German men at gunpoint, and began savagely beating the women, dragging them away, and stripping off their clothes. The Americans were horrified and protested strenuously; gunplay seemed likely between the “allies.” Some of the Americans drew their weapons; many more Russians drew theirs. There was a standoff until an American captain radioed HQ, received an order to leave the Germans to their fate, and that was that. The Russians had free rein for their barbarism. They dragged the women away and mercilessly gang-raped them, from the elderly down to girls of six or seven, then strangled, shot, or beat many of them to death. Thirty or forty Russians assaulted each victim. The German men were in a state of indescribable agony. Some of them tried to intervene—Hermann Graf even attacked and walloped a Russian—but they were beaten back or shot. They could not save their women; they could only watch in horror. Hartmann was sickened to see that the Russians even continued to rape the deceased. The Russians “passed around bottles of vodka and sang songs, as if they were having a party,” he said years later. He added, “I had never hated before, but I did then.” (Heaton and Lewis 75-6) He was mightily relieved that his wife was back home in Stuttgart. Next morning Hartmann woke to a fresh horror: many Germans had committed suicide rather than go on.

That was Hartmann’s introduction to Russian captivity. It was a scene that was duplicated everywhere in Germany where Russian boots trod. Read more

Warrior-Hero of the West: Erich Hartmann, the Blond Knight of Germany

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Erich Hartmann was not a figure of world-historical importance, striding across the earth like a colossus. He was not a statesman or conqueror, nor a paradigm-destroying scientist, nor a virtuoso writer moving the masses. He was a simple airman of the Second World War. Yet, the way he performed his duty, with courage and honor—and deadly efficiency—made him the highest scoring ace in history and one of the genuine heroes of Western history. Erich Hartmann is a splendid example of the qualities peculiar to Western Faustian man, such as an acute sense of individuality, iron willpower, and utmost daring. For a few moments let us leave this modern world with its depressing role models, and look back in time to feast our hearts on the story of a great man, full of character and intelligence, a man whose greatest triumph ironically came after the fighting had ended.

Early Life

Hartmann was born April 19, 1922, in Wűrttemberg, Germany, in the heart of Swabia, a region renowned for its hardheaded, frugal, inventive, and proud people, whose number also includes Hegel and Erwin Rommel. Erich’s father Alfred was a doctor with a broad outlook on life, and his mother Elisabeth was capable, adventurous and beautiful. She apparently gave Erich his very blonde hair—and a daring spirit.

Young Erich was an excellent and fearless athlete. He commented humorously much later that his father thought he was “a kind of dare-devil, or an idiot” (Heaton and Lewis 9). His father wanted his boys to become doctors, and Erich assumed he would eventually follow that line, but really he just wanted to fly. From an early age he dreamed of emulating the aces of the Great War. His mother also wanted to fly, so she earned a pilot’s license and took her two sons flying with her. Later the family started a glider club and Erich was in his element: the air.

Erich went through school without enthusiasm, but passed his courses without difficulty. When he was seventeen he spied the future love of his life: Ursula Paetsch. He pursued her single-mindedly, going so far as to pummel a rival, and won her over with his customary directness, sparking a lifelong love affair.

Erich was blessed with an admirable character. (Actually, since people build their characters from the choices of their free wills, Hartmann was responsible for his own character, which is more virtuous. Temperament or natural disposition is what people get naturally; character is formed.) His biographer Raymond Toliver describes Erich as highly intelligent, with a will “almost fierce in its drive to prevail and conquer” and says he was “an incorrigible individualist in an age of mass . . . conformity.” Hartmann, he continues, had a blunt style of honesty that often mounted to a “devastating” lack of tact. Finally, Hartmann possessed “consummate coolness under stress” (Toliver and Constable 5, 12). All this corresponds very well with the characteristics possessed by Western Faustian man as described by, among others, Ricardo Duchesne. Read more

Richard Dreyfuss and “Once Around”

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Recently I wrote about the thoughtful comedy Keeping the Faith, which, in my view, does a remarkable job of exploring the conflicts involved in Gentile-Jewish relations. Stiller’s other Gentile-Jewish comedy from the same year, Meet the Parents (2000) in that Meet the Parents showed more open hostility between Gentiles and Jews. 

This theme of conflict between the two camps has been dealt with by many authors, including John Murray Cuddihy, whose Ordeal of Civility admits in the title that Jews living among Gentiles is not always a picnic for those involved. (By the way, though the full title of the book suggests it is Jews who endure an ordeal, the body of the book shows that it is more Jews who visit various ordeals upon the goyim, a fact which many Jewish reviewers at the time noticed, while Gentiles were either silent about it or missed it.) 

In the academic sphere, one modern book which courageously addresses modern relations between the two groups comes from the Harvard Ph.D. Albert Lindemann. His book Esau’s Tears: Modern Anti-Semitism and the Rise of the Jews (Cambridge, 1997) came at an important time for me and informed much of my understanding of The Jewish question. (Read Kevin MacDonald’s TOQ review here.) 

Until discovering that book, I don’t believe I was aware of the biblical character Esau, let alone Jacob. Over the last two decades, however, the archetypes of Esau and Jacob have become important for me because in so many ways their interactions accurately represent the strained relations between Europeans (portrayed as the brawny, hairy Esau) and Jews (portrayed as the trickster Jacob). When we meet them in Genesis 25, we learn that the Lord said unto Rebecca, “Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels . . .”  In that biblical story, Jacob, the younger brother, had sown seeds of discord by betraying his brother and father, setting the stage for thousads of years of discord. I find it fascinating that Jews created this foundational myth.  Read more

Where’s Nordic-Boy?  A Game for Our Time

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A couple of weeks ago, I went to a performance of a touring New York-based modern dance company.  I had been looking forward to going.  I was in a dance company decades ago, but I’ve lost touch with dance over the years, and the prospect of this reconnection with something that at one time was a big part of my life had great appeal.

As it turned out, overall it was a superb performance.   One problem for me, though, was that while the woman were as I remember them when I danced, the men seemed feminized, the best word I can think of to describe it.  It was a unisex presentation that evening, tilted distinctly toward the feminine.   Women were women, and men were women.  In truth, it made me uncomfortable.

I asked myself, is what I’m seeing an artistic reflection of a larger social/cultural pattern, men becoming women-like?    Is this artistic expression, this example, to any extent contributing to changes in male gender identity and behavior in other, non-artistic, realms—that is to say, to the idea that the way to be a man involves, in good part, in great part, emulating women?  What will young boys in the audience who are interested in becoming dancers conclude about what it means to be a male dancer?

During intermission, I looked through the program handed out to everyone in attendance that evening.  It was about fifteen pages, slick paper, well-done, put together by the performing arts center that had sponsored the dance company’s performance.  It included pitches for the center’s education and arts activities. “Our education programs strive to engage learners of all ages in the creative process, nurture artistic skill development, cultivate lifelong appreciation of the performing arts, and make the performing arts an integral part of school and community life.” “Here at [the name of the center], we remain deeply committed to nurturing the artists and audiences of today and tomorrow!”

That sounded good to me.   I wish as a youngster I had been exposed to the arts.   Baseball, yes; dance, no.  I came to dance as an adult, which is possible with modern dance.  It isn’t with ballet.

A couple of pictures that accompanied the written material in the program–one having to do with the center’s education programs, the other with its arts programs—caught my eye.  Speaking of boys, their virtual absence in the pictures jumped out at me.

 

What’s this about? I asked myself.   What would a boy looking at this think?   That art isn’t for him?   Would the parent of a son conclude that art isn’t appropriate for a boy?–or a real boy anyway; the boy in the second picture with the lightened hair combed forward looked a bit soft to me.  Why were these particular pictures chosen?   How conscious was this selection?   I flashed on Christina Hoff Sommer’s book, The War Against Boys.  “War” is too strong a word for what’s seems to be going on here, but I do suspect that how boys are getting along wasn’t at the top of the care-about list of the people choosing these pictures, and that these pictures wouldn’t have been the reverse, almost exclusively boys. Read more