Maurice Bardèche’s Vision of the Future, Part I

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Translator’s Preface to Maurice  Bardèche’s Nuremberg or the Promised Land, edited for TOO

Maurice Bardèche’s Nuremberg or the Promised Land was the first extended critique of the Nuremberg Trial. For a Frenchman to criticize that trial and especially the French role in it in 1948 took great courage: the book was banned in France, copies of it were seized, and Bardèche in 1952 was sentenced to a year in prison, although he spent only a few weeks there before being pardoned. His criticisms of the Nuremberg Trial have since been repeated by many others. In fact, just two years later in a subsequent work, Nuremberg II ou les Faux Monnayeurs (Nuremberg II or the Counterfeiters), Bardèche was able to cite a long list of others who had likewise criticized the fairness of that trial. Nuremberg or the Promised Land may with some justice be viewed as a polemic. Bardèche himself in effect admits it: “I needed to write it: that is my only excuse for this indiscretion.”

But if it is a polemic, it is also very far from being a mere rant. Most of the book is in fact a painstakingly logical “criticism of testimony,” specifically of the testimony produced by the French delegation at Nuremberg in support of the charge that during the occupation the Germans had tried to exterminate the French or, more exactly, had had a “will to exterminate.” The charge is absurd and Bardèche easily demonstrates its absurdity. But its absurdity is what makes him so upset: he cannot forgive the French delegation that it will allow a future “German historian” to show that “France lied.” Bardèche concentrates upon this part of the trial, however, not because the French were responsible for it and he is French but because it deals with events that he and his readers know firsthand and hence can judge whether the treatment of them at the trial was fair or not.

Bardèche’s book is a classic. It is of interest today primarily because of what it says about the future. Throughout the first three quarters of the book the discussion of the trial is interlaced with somber warnings and ominous admonitions to the reader: “One is proposing a future to us, one does so by condemning the past. It is into this future also that we want to see clearly. It is these principles that we would like to look at directly. For we already foresee that these new ethics refer to a strange universe, a universe with something sick about it, an elastic universe where our eyes no longer recognize things.” Read more

Why Are Some Democracies More Equal Than Others?

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Almost any time neoconservatism is discussed, whether in a positive or negative light, it is treated as a kind of hegemonic monolith that has not changed since the last generation of its adherents began gaining prestige in the 1970s — or even since it began taking form decades earlier. Obviously this is a mistake, but sorting out its various “waves” is a task for another time (and likely a task for Paul Gottfried).  In an attempt to eschew the complex pedigree of neoconservatives in the last half-century, I will, for the moment, only discuss the post-9/11 variety of neocons.

The terrorist attacks of September 11th proved to be a crystallizing moment for neocons. Since the end of the Cold War, they had lacked not only political power, but more importantly — a driving purpose. While vainly trying to unify under an “anti-Clinton” banner, they meandered into intellectual self-indulgence in an attempt to regain the drive they had possessed while battling the USSR. Not content to rest on their laurels, odd proposals to re-capture “national greatness” came about, similarly, bizarre calls to invade Africa popped out of thin air. Like their Trotskyite forbearers, they became a fairly insulated bunch that spoke to few people outside their own circles, and were happy to theorize and pontificate amongst one another, with their thoughts steadily drifting away from any tangible political reality.

In 2001, when Bush Jr. came to power, they did too, but they still lacked a unifying goal. When a new, seemingly existential, threat crashed its way to the crosshairs of global attention, all of this changed. Digressing slightly, I will admit that pinning down a precise program or doctrine to the neocons can prove somewhat difficult. Part of this comes from their willingness to shape shift — such as their jump from Democrat Scoop Jackson’s 1972 presidential bid to Ronald Reagan’s cabinet less than a decade later. Another more important difficulty comes from the fact that it has become somewhat fashionable for neoconservatives to deny their own existence. It reminds me of a Marxist adage I hear from time to time: “An ideology is hegemonic when its adherents deny its existence”. Jonah Goldberg penned a whole three–part series of articles shortly after the Iraq War began that claimed no such thing existed — this is hilariously disproven by how many neocons openly and proudly label themselves as such. Read more

More evil from Heidi Beirich

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Our friend  Heidi  Beirich of the  SPLC has another  outrageous gem about me (“Long Adored by Anti-Semites, California Prof Now Glorifies Violence“). A couple of factual issues: I am not a “co-host” of David Duke’s program and have never used the phrase “Zionist gun-grabbers,” although I have noted that Jewish publications have pointed to the central role of Jewish activists and  organizations in the gun control movement.

Worse, she sent an email to university colleagues stating I was a  Holocaust denier. As everyone knows, I have I never endorsed Holocaust denial or permitted Holocaust denial ideas to be published in outlets that I control. She is perfectly well aware of this (perhaps accounting for avoiding that charge in her article). As usual, it’s guilt by association.

In the email she also called me a “White supremacist”—leftspeak for Whites who think that Whites, like all other human groups, have interests. I am waiting for a statement by the ADL and the Jewish Studies Department that Jews have no moral or practical reason to attempt to remain a demographic majority in Israel. And a statement from the SPLC condemning American Jewish groups that support apartheid in Israel.

My blurb for Kyle Bristow’s book was confined to the main point of the book which is a fictional account of the Salutrean hypothesis (which has its scientific defenders) and the suppression of this idea by the forces of political correctness. Being a busy person, I did not read the passage she complains about and certainly don’t endorse violence against Mark Potok despite his evil behavior.

And if you look at the offending article “Heidi goes to heaven,” Heidi’s death is simply a setup for the satire, nothing more. There is no plot in which she is assassinated because of her (loathsome) activities. Her death is the result of a defective bomb  built by a “greasy wannabe terrorist … who asked the $PLC to lay out one hundred grand for a so far undisclosed false flag ploy, but knew as much about building bombs as pigs about flying.”

In order for the satire to work, she had to die somehow; the accidental detonation of a bomb certainly didn’t raise any red flags with me.

However, we at TOO certainly don’t want to tread on the sensibilities of sensitive souls like Beirich. I am advised that  Colhaze may bow to this pressure and revise the article to have her die of a  surfeit of donuts—which somehow seems more plausible anyway and has the virtue of being self-induced.  Read more

Are Whites Pathological? Yes and No: Part 2

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Go to Part One.

Part one of this writing examined the status of White people from an individualistic, in contrast to an aggregate, perspective.  Part two explores the implications of that analysis and depends on the reader’s familiarity with the material in part one.

White analysis, advocacy, and action need to be grounded in the multiple realities that comprise total reality.  In this writing, aggregate- and individual-based analyses yielded different, and, seemingly at least, contradictory, truths about the White circumstance.  Yet another frame of reference to bring to bear on this concern is the moment-to-moment experienced existence of actual White people — you, me, and every other White person alive now, as well as those who have already completed their journeys through life and those not yet born.  From that, call it, existential perspective, there are as many White realities and there are, or have been or will be, White people.  Living, breathing, mortal White people don’t live their lives in the collective or in the abstract.  They fashion particular lives within their particular circumstances, and that undertaking turns out well for them or it doesn’t.  Whether it is immoral or shortsighted, it is understandable that individuals will do what they can, including with respect to racial matters, to ensure that they and their loved ones do well — gain status and power and material wealth and all that can provide — both now and in the future. Read more

Are Whites Pathological? Yes and No: Part 1

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Kevin MacDonald recently noted,  “Whatever blame for our situation that we [Whites] place on others, the bottom line is that we are allowing the unfolding disaster to happen.  It is unprecedented for a civilization to voluntarily cede political and cultural hegemony to others, particularly when so many of these people harbor hatreds and resentments toward our people and our culture.”  Whether or not the kowtowing going on with Whites at the present time is unprecedented — it very well may be; I don’t know history well enough to make a determination on that — it is certainly a remarkable phenomenon.  If it continues, it is social and cultural, and even demographic, suicide.  I am pressed to think of another issue facing Whites that demands analysis, understanding, and action more than this one.  White pathology, a term Dr. MacDonald employs in his analyses, has a disease connotation for me and doesn’t quite hit the mark as a label or metaphor for what’s happening.  I am more comfortable with misguided, self-destructive or shortsighted, somewhere in there — I think we are closer to being dumb than sick — but pathology works well enough for my purposes in this writing to employ it along with other descriptors.

Professor MacDonald has pointed out two contributing factors to White pathology: individualism and the negative impact of Jewish elites:

There are doubtless a great many factors accounting for the general willingness of Whites to allow themselves to be pushed aside and to voluntarily become a minority amid a sea of non-Whites, most of whom hold historical grudges against them.  My general view is that these cultural transformations are the result of a complex interaction between preexisting tendencies of Europeans toward individualism interacting with the rise of a Jewish elite hostile to the traditional peoples and culture of Europe.

He has also pointed out how Whites’ attraction to moral universalism does them in:

While the West pursues its utopian fantasies with great moral fervor, the rest of the world continues as it has always been — except that they are now colonizing us.  .  .  .  Attempts at erecting utopias will ultimately result in huge psychological tension as people are expected to swear allegiance to universalist abstractions even as they see their neighborhoods invaded by non-Whites, even as their jobs are outsourced to foreign countries or taken away by immigrants, and even as they see the political and cultural power of their own group declining — in a word, displacement.  In these circumstances, the more selfish and particularist emotions centered around family and ethnic group inevitably bubble to the surface to compete with the universalist abstractions.  In the contemporary world these abstractions are being imposed on us by elites — including the Jewish component.

While I hope it is not at the expense of appreciating the significance of collective concerns and realities, I must admit I am to a good extent characterized by the individualism that Dr. MacDonald has noted, and, indeed, I have been greatly influenced by Jewish artists and intellectuals, among them ones that inform this paper, the novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, The Virtue of Selfishness) and the developmental psychologist Abraham Maslow (Toward a Psychology of Being).  I get ideas wherever I can find them, and I don’t a priori reject an idea based on the category of person that offers it.  I’m not convinced that these tendencies are detrimental to me, but this is not the context to argue that issue, at least directly.  Whether on balance they serve me, and others, well or not, I’ll attempt here to put my dispositions in these directions to positive use.  Namely, I’m going to approach this issue of White pathology — or shortsightedness, whatever to call it — from a Rand-influenced individualistic angle, and I’ll draw heavily on Maslow’s idea of a hierarchy of needs. Read more

If neo-cons were Indian…

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pnac

June 30, 2013

The Honorable Barack H. Obama
President of the United States of America
The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President:

We write to you because we have become certain that the United States must pursue a new policy in regards to Pakistan. We are certain that Pakistan now represents the greatest threat to American security since Saddam Hussein’s Iraq before the American led invasion. America’s relations with Pakistan must reflect this new reality. We stand firm in our belief that the Pakistani government’s inability to control terrorist elements within its borders coupled with its possession of hundreds of nuclear weapons has made the state as a whole a grave threat to American security and global peace. In reviewing past strategies to quell this and other similar threats, we have concluded that no solution aside from a ground invasion and subsequent occupation of Pakistan can sufficiently guarantee the regional stability necessary for global security. We write to you in order to encourage your administration to take immediate action in this regard.

Since 2008, the American strategy employed to weaken radical jihad in Pakistan has been a combination of limited air strikes, Black Ops missions, and large amounts of monetary foreign aid. Yet over the last five years, terrorist groups in Pakistan have grown stronger, while every form of an American-friendly government has weakened. The Taliban and similar groups periodically control large parts of Northwestern Pakistan, while the rest of the nation suffers from rampant poverty, inflation, and crime. Given that the median age of males in Pakistan is twenty-two years, and that the population as a whole is nearing two hundred million people, al Qaeda and similar groups inside Pakistan are in a comfortable position to recruit en masse for their global war against the West. America cannot allow this scenario to move beyond fiction, nor can it wait to see if it will by standing idly by until the next terrorist attack. Read more

Gasbags Are Not Great: Christopher Hitchens as Crypto-Rabbi

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Georgians and Genomes

The independent socialist George Orwell (1903–1950) was, it’s said, a central influence on the neo-conservative Christopher Hitchens (1949–2012). But this claim puzzles me. I’ve been reading Orwell all my life and I’ve failed to notice that he was a tedious, self-righteous, self-important gasbag who never used one word when six not unpolysyllabic lexical items might, perchance, be of utility instead. See? Puzzling. Maybe I’m not reading Orwell right. All the same, Orwell can certainly shed light on Hitchens’ psychology. Like his fellow atheist Richard Dawkins, Hitch was a devout believer in the Miracle of Human Equality: he was sure that there is only one brain, the Human Brain, and that all human groups have an equal share in it. Bearing that in mind, please examine this passage from God Is Not Great (2007), Hitch’s best-selling diatribe against religion:

In 2005, a team of researchers at the University of Chicago conducted serious work on two genes, known as microcephalin and ASPM, that when disabled are the cause of microcephaly. Babies born with this condition have a shrunken cerebral cortex, quite probably an occasional reminder of the period when the human brain was very much smaller than it is now. The evolution of humans has been generally thought to have completed itself about fifty to sixty thousand years ago (an instant in evolutionary time), yet those two genes have apparently been evolving faster in the past thirty-seven thousand years, raising the possibility that the human brain is a work in progress. In March 2006, further work at the same university revealed that there are some seven hundred regions of the human genome where genes have been reshaped by natural selection within the past five thousand to fifteen thousand years. These genes include some of those responsible for our “senses of taste and smell, digestion, bone structure, skin color and brain function.” (One of the great emancipating results of genomics is to show that all “racial” and color differences are recent, superficial, and misleading.) (Op. cit., ch. 6, “Arguments from Design,” pg. 34)

George Orwell

George Orwell

Thus Hitchens reveals himself as opposed only to some religions, quite at home with another. To a believer in brain-equality, everything leading up to the final parenthesis is heretical in tendency, because it suggests that separate human populations can quickly evolve differences in “brain function.” In other words, different races can have different psychologies and different levels of intelligence. Realizing the ideological danger, Hitchens resorts to piety and reminds himself and his readers of PC dogma: Race Does Not Exist (amen). Orwell satirized this slavish adherence to ideology in Nineteen Eighty-Four (1948):

Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc [the ideology of government], and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity. (Op. cit., Part Two, chapter 9)

I’ve read all of Orwell’s books several times and hope to do so again. I find it difficult to read anything by Hitchens even once. Orwell was a good writer and an honest man who was not inspired by vanity and hatred. Hitchens was a bad writer and a dishonest man who was definitely inspired by vanity and hatred. This is why I am puzzled by the claims that Orwell influenced Hitchens. I can’t see it myself.

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