Radical Egalitarianism vs. the Heroic Spirit of the West

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Related to Alain de Benoist’s interview on the Big Mother-Therapeutic state, I recently received an email commenting on a recent Red Ice interview where I talked about two of the major trends in European culture, the Indo-European heroic warrior culture of aristocratic-egalitarianism and the northern hunter-gatherer culture of individualist-egalitarianism. My correspondent writes:

It seems to explain many casual observations that I made.

For example: why  we can’t  rent a horse to run full gallop? And not only in California but also in Nevada, Utah, and Arizona. Apparently this is because of the disdain which herb gatherers feel for the nomadic horse which symbolizes oppression for them. One can retort that it is because of the lawsuits for injuries. But what motivates the lawyers? Mere greed? It could also be hatred for horse and horseman. And why do the people let it happen? I should add that the only place  in the USA where I could gallop was Tennessee. And you actually said in your interview that the South is different.
Why can’t we solo Mount Rainier? [Actually, it is possible to solo Mt. Rainier, but it requires written permission from the superintendent.] Messner soloed Everest. But in this great country on God’s green Earth we are not even allowed to solo Rainier. Genuine concern for our safety?  Or, perhaps, this is the wish of the duck hunters [egalitarian hunter-gatherer types] to pull down anyone who stands out? You spoke at length about this trait in your lecture.

And why was Snow Summit closed for downhill biking for over five years?  I could continue for an hour, but this may get boring.

I have written several articles on extreme sports as a context for implicit Whiteness (e.g., here and here). Putting this all together, the nanny state described by de Benoist and my correspondent has the effect of suppressing a critical aspect of traditional European culture — death-defying deeds in pursuit of personal glory. This restless Faustian spirit of the West is linked to exploration, invention, military exploits, and conquering the unknown.  Read more

Big Mother and the Therapeutic State

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Gustave_Doré-L'Enfance_de_Gargantua

‘Pantagruel  with his father Gargantua and mother Gargamelle” (watercolor); by Gustave Doré (1832–1883)

Translated from the French by Tom Sunic.

Below is the interview Alain de Benoist gave recently to Boulevard Voltaire.

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Q: “Eat your five servings of fruit and vegetables every day!”; “Do some sport!”; “Quit Smoking!”; “Drink one glass, but not two!”; “Buckle up when driving!”;  “Do not eat too much fat!”; “Do the proper garbage recycling!” After Big Brother, have we now arrived at Big Mother?

A: Starting with the nineteenth century the welfare state has been progressively put in place in order to compensate for the disappearance of organic and community solidarities which, with the rise of individualist ideology, have become dissolved.  Today the welfare state it is morphing into a sort of “therapeutic state”— if we were to borrow an expression by Christopher Lasch. This therapeutic state can be defined as an unholy alliance of the medication process and the state, setting up all sorts of unjustified obstructions to our freedom. The authority is becoming more and more maternal, albeit maternal in a way of a possessive mother eager to maintain its subjects in total dependency. The unilateral relationship with the state replaces the ancient social bonds. This hygienic control augurs social control. Medicine itself, when taking part in the control of populations, becomes totalitarian.

Alain de Benoist

Alain de Benoist

The dominant human type of today is the immature narcissist, ignoring all realties other than his own, and who, above all, wishes to satisfy all his cravings. This infantile type of a human being, predictably of liberal-libertarian orientation, is perfectly in line with a system which, as Marx wrote, drowns everything “in the icy waters of egoistic calculation.” What follows is a therapeutic civilization centered on the “Me” only. Pierre Manent  rightly stresses that liberalism means primarily renouncing to apprehend human life in terms of its own good and its own finality. In a society ruled by the entertainment industry in which nobody asks himself about the meaning and significance of his presence in the world, body-care of the Self becomes the alpha and omega of human life.  Not only does it signify being of good health, but also “feeling good about oneself,” and thus forgetting one’s own finitude. While expecting immortality in this world, the dream of eternal youth grips all those who have never become adults, and who conceive now of their life as a maternal fusion defying any symbolic order, while thriving  in a culture of the present tense that has expelled any meaning of historical continuity. Henceforth society functions according to the principles of mimetic rivalry, as a form of “ego rivalry” (in Freudian terms), i.e., with  the Self  being stripped off of its “id” and its  “superego,”  convinced now it is the center of the universe. This only facilitates the war of all against all. Read more

SwedishSurveyor: White Flight in Sweden

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A new study from Linneuniversitet confirms that Sweden is becoming more and more segregated along ethnic lines as a direct result of mass immigration from the Middle East and North Africa. Those who move first are highly educated and/or have a high-income giving credence to my post from last year.

–Yes, we’ve found a so-called “tipping point” at around 3-4%, says Emma Neuman, research economist at Linneuniversitet. When the non-European immigrants are that many in a residential area then the native Swedes start moving out.

According to Emma the effects were stronger in the 1990’s. Back then the tipping point was somewhat lower. According to Forsking & Framsteg this could be interpreted as people becoming more tolerant. Perhaps, or the odd million immigrants since then has limited the supply of white neighborhoods.

-The effect doesn’t revolve around immigrants generally. Immigrants from European countries give no move-effect, instead it revolves around non-European immigrants. It is reminiscent of the phenomenon white flight in the USA where whites move away from neighbourhoods where many blacks move in.

Acceptance of diversity is in direct proportion to your distance from it

Read more: http://swedishsurveyor.com/author/swedishsurveyor/

Greville Janner update

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Janner bklt front+back outside cover

The Lord Greville Janner affair shows no signs of winding down despite the best efforts by the authorities to kick it into the long grass. Each week brings new revelations about the former President of the British Board of Jewish Deputies, who is suspected of at least 22 cases of child sexual abuse.

Up until now the scrutiny has mainly focused on how, although said to be too ill with dementia to be tried, the 86-year-old founder of the Holocaust Education Trust was able to take part in parliamentary debates, collect a hundred thousand pounds in expenses, and was compos mentis enough to sign over his property deeds to his children thereby putting them out of range of any damages litigation.

The Director of Public Prosecutions decision not to prosecute was equally baffling given that there are well-established and regularly used court procedures for dealing with suspects who have lost their faculties. The DPP’s decision is now to be reviewed. Read more

https://youtu.be/-FyMrWbkL7Q

Kevin MacDonald – Evolutionary & Genetic Basis for Pathological Altruism – Hour 1

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The History of the League of Empire Loyalists and Candour

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candourThe History of the League of Empire Loyalists and Candour
by Hugh McNeile and Rob Black
Published by the A.K. Chesterton Trust; 150 pages

One of the most remarkable aspects of the collapse of the British Empire was the relative lack of people who seemed to care about it. Resistance to the process was extremely muted, both from the Empire’s elites and the mass of its people. This was baffling considering its two-hundred-year stretch of global dominance, its enormous impact, and the millions of people around the world whose interests were directly tied to its existence.

The sheer inexplicableness of the event tends to throw up either glib and dismissive explanations, or dark and dastardly ones that seem more like paranoid conspiracy theories. In short, either the Empire was done to death by secret cabals and nefarious networks or it was simply on the wrong side of history — and accepted that fact with an all-too-easy grace and sense of resignation.

Today it is difficult to get a sense of what really happened. Mainstream history, of course, has its narratives worked out — Britain was exhausted after its war with Germany and Japan, attitudes to race had been transformed, and the “Winds of Change” blew in shortly afterwards followed by the “Winds of Multiculturalism.” Thanks to the alternative history now possible due to the internet, this narrative now faces some opposition, but because the period is rather remote, such opposition usually comes from those with a particular axe of their own to grind.

A better way to get at the truth is to focus on those few who were most concerned about the demise of the British Empire, and to consider their experiences. In this respect one of the best books is Hugh McNeile and Rob Black’s The History of the League of Empire Loyalists and Candour, published last year. Read more

The Culture of Critique in France: A review of Anne Kling’s books on Jewish influence, Part 5

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Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

“The Right to Difference”: Balkanizing France

Just as Jews in the U.S. have a leading role — in Hollywood and pop culture generally — in defining what is “American,” so have French Jews pushed to redefine Frenchness away from an ethnic or even an assimilationist definition, towards a Balkanized France in which Jews may live and operate as a separate group with no unified majority against them. They market this under the slogan “the right to difference,” which the LICRA has called its “philosophy.” As the LICRA’s DDV publication argued in 1978: “Any society which requires or pushes for assimilation is a racist society. Democratic secularism [laïcité] is the coexistence of all minorities in equality and fraternity. It is not the abolition of ethnic differences and specificities.”[1]

The LICRA claims that requiring immigrants to conform to French norms is to impose self-hatred upon them. Effectively, the LICRA is arguing that not only must the French allow themselves to be colonized by others but that the new arrivals should impose their non-European cultures. In 1981, the LICRA’s DDV magazine claimed:

To block the fascist demand of assimilation and national homogeneity, we must practice difference and pluralism. … These are the only effective barriers against a return of Nazism and of its French avatar: Vichy.[2]

And in the same publication in 1985: “To be anti-racist is not to demand the other to become oneself, it is to accept him as he is, to enrich oneself at his contact, to go towards him.”[3] One buzzword used to glorify the resulting Balkanization is that of “interculturality.” Read more