Is Donald Trump a Fascist?
By Ross Douthat, Dec. 2 2015 (LINK to article)
Let's face it, calling someone a "fascist" is just a way of dismissing and condemning them as a "baddy", by associating them with all the evils and horrors of Nazism. Those doing the accusing are usually primarily concerned with asserting their own moral superiority as a "goody".
I'm not an expert on fascism, but it seems to me that it can't have been all bad, as it is now portrayed, anymore than communism was. Both movements had 10s of millions of supporters, many of them very passionate in the belief that they were fighting for a good cause.
In the aftermath of WW2, fascism was equated with Nazism and dismissed as evil, while many in academia continued to view communism with sympathy. Clearly, with Stalin, things had gone badly wrong, but the ideas behind communism and socialism were not all bad. Far from it. But no such sympathy is ever shown towards fascism, not least, because there is a strictly enforced taboo against doing so. Anyone who does is immediately accused of being a fascist sympathiser themselves.
I think this was - and continues to be - a huge mistake. We (especially academics from whom others take their lead) massively overreacted to the horrors of Nazism, and as the Editorial Board wrote in a recent editorial, The Price of Fear, "In the reaction and overreaction to terrorism comes the risk that society will lose its way".
This, I believe, is what has happened in respect to fascism, which I elaborate on in this BLOG on The West's Overreaction to Nazism.
P.S. There is a very good biography, it seemed to my lay eye, of the British fascist leader, Oswald Mosley, which is long out of print and whose author, Robert Skidelsky, and publisher seem to have no interest in seeing back in print, presumably because it portrays Mosley in too objective and sympathetic a light. Certainly, he was no British Hitler. According to this biography, the violence which often accompanied his rallies was usually initiated by the Left, which doesn't fit the established narrative of it always being the fascists who were responsible for the violence.
Dominated as it is by the Left, academia only seems interested in demonising fascism, by equating it with the obvious evils of Nazism, rather than in understanding it in its historical context, as they do with communism and socialism.
Thursday, 3 December 2015
America is Suffering from Gunoholism
On Guns, We’re Not Even Trying
By Nicholas Kristof, Dec. 2 2015 (LINK to aryticle)
To a European like myself, it is tempting to dismiss America's gun problem as just weak will, but I have come to realise that America is in fact, metaphorically speaking, a "gunoholic", the reasons for which, as with alcoholism, lie deep in the history and very nature of American society itself.
Europe has its own, equally serious, problems, of course, the causes of which also lie deep in the roots of our civilisation, which are also the roots of American civilisation.
As in the case of individual alcoholism, the first obstacle to overcoming it is to recognise and admit to oneself that one actually has a serious problem that one needs help with. America reminds me of a successful businessman, or woman, who is also an alcoholic, but refuses to face up to it, not least, because it hasn't prevented them from being successful at making a lot of money, notwithstanding the difficulties it makes in their relationships with others and the damage it is doing to their liver, which is leading them to an early death.
If America is to help and cure itself, before it suffers organ failure, it (especially its academics) must seek help from a human-evolutionary perspective on the origins and nature of western civilisation, which will take them to the root cause of the problem, which is about more than just "gunoholism". It will be a difficult, painful and frightening journey, but it's the only way to effect a cure and avoid the premature demise of western civilisation.
See BLOG in which I elaborate on this issue.
By Nicholas Kristof, Dec. 2 2015 (LINK to aryticle)
To a European like myself, it is tempting to dismiss America's gun problem as just weak will, but I have come to realise that America is in fact, metaphorically speaking, a "gunoholic", the reasons for which, as with alcoholism, lie deep in the history and very nature of American society itself.
Europe has its own, equally serious, problems, of course, the causes of which also lie deep in the roots of our civilisation, which are also the roots of American civilisation.
As in the case of individual alcoholism, the first obstacle to overcoming it is to recognise and admit to oneself that one actually has a serious problem that one needs help with. America reminds me of a successful businessman, or woman, who is also an alcoholic, but refuses to face up to it, not least, because it hasn't prevented them from being successful at making a lot of money, notwithstanding the difficulties it makes in their relationships with others and the damage it is doing to their liver, which is leading them to an early death.
If America is to help and cure itself, before it suffers organ failure, it (especially its academics) must seek help from a human-evolutionary perspective on the origins and nature of western civilisation, which will take them to the root cause of the problem, which is about more than just "gunoholism". It will be a difficult, painful and frightening journey, but it's the only way to effect a cure and avoid the premature demise of western civilisation.
See BLOG in which I elaborate on this issue.
Wednesday, 2 December 2015
White Guilt in the Service of Political Power
What We Fear When We Fear Terrorism
By Ross Douthat, Nov. 30 2015 (LINK to article)
By Ross Douthat, Nov. 30 2015 (LINK to article)
"American xenophobia: We fear attacks from a nebulous or specifically-Islamic “Other” more than we fear violence by angry white men . . . , because Americans still identify with whiteness/maleness/Christianity too closely to fully imagine “white Christian terrorism” as something to be feared . . . This is a mostly left-wing argument . . "
Indeed it is a mostly left-wing argument, behind which lies an ideology of white racial self-denial and self-contempt, which began as an understandable overreaction to Jim Crow, Apartheid and, of course, Nazism, with their ideology of racial supremacism, before being transformed into an instrument of socio-political intimidation, rewards, punishments, manipulation and control, just as medieval church ideology once served.
What makes this ideology so powerful and pernicious is that is serves the age-old strategy of “divide and rule”, dividing society into a morally superior, now supposedly "colour-blind", elite and the morally inferior, naturally (human nature being what it is) less colour-blind, masses, who must submit to the authority of and domination by their "moral superiors".
It plays the same power-political role that medieval church ideology once did, whereby "original sin" (disobedience of divine, i.e. priestly/state authority) is replaced by "racial prejudice" (the natural human inclination - like original sin - to identity with members of one's own tribe, race or ethnic group, which was wrongly made responsible for the Holocaust and equated with the evils of Nazi racism), which only submission to priestly/academic/state ideology and authority can save us from eternal damnation for, not as heathens and heretics, as in the past, but as "bigots" and "racists".
As in the past, we are being bullied by an elite of "moral supremacists" who demonise different aspects of human nature to their own, personal, advantage, and which academics don't recognise, because they themselves are some of the biggest bullies.
As in the past, we are being bullied by an elite of "moral supremacists" who demonise different aspects of human nature to their own, personal, advantage, and which academics don't recognise, because they themselves are some of the biggest bullies.
Tuesday, 1 December 2015
My Race-Related Story
This was my response to the following invitation to
Share Your Story. As part of our Op-Docs series Conversations on Race, we want to hear your experiences confronting issues of race in your life. We invite you to share your stories, some of which we will feature on a page of readers’ contributions.
Mine is probably not the kind of race-related story you want to hear, but I’ll tell it anyway.
I was born in the London suburb of Wembley in 1949, when everyone was white. Not that I noticed this at the time. It was just the way things were and one took it for granted. If there had been any non-white kids or teachers at my primary school, I’m sure I would have noticed, but I didn’t. All the faces in all my class photos are white. And it was the same at secondary school. I remember as a child noticing the first non-white people I saw on the street, a black person or someone in Indian dress striking me as most unusual and exotic.
As I grew older I couldn’t help but notice the increasing number of non-white people there were. At first a small minority, but ever increasing, until suddenly they seemed to have become the majority, and indeed they had.
I went back to my old primary school a few years ago and as I looked into the playground I found myself trying to pick out the odd white face amongst all the non-white ones. The combination of the familiar (all the building and roads are still much the same) with the unfamiliar (a different race of people) caused me to come over dizzy. What on Earth had happened?
When I put this question to my MP he dismissed my concerns with distain. To him I was a “bigot” and “racist” who had failed to move into and “celebrate” the new era of DIVERSITY.
But what is "Celebrating Diversity" other than Orwellian newspeak for native Britons like myself (and white people everywhere) to celebrate our own ethnic displacement (white flight), replacement (we have now been reduced to an ethnic minority in large swathes of our major cities) and ultimate demise . . ??
Xenophobia is one side of a single coin, on the other side of which is love of one’s own and the familiar. I don’t hate the immigrants (some I have got to know and like very much), most are nice people, but they are not my people.
I don’t blame the immigrants for coming here (who wouldn’t choose Britain over a poor-world country?), but feel betrayed by the British state itself, which I and my fellow countrymen made the fatal mistake of identifying with, as our nation, and trusting.
I didn't hear back, so I guess I was right about it not being the kind of race-related story they wanted to hear about.
Monday, 30 November 2015
The West's Overreaction to Nazism
Western civilisation, especially in America, is to a large extent defined and shackled by its OVERREACTION to Nazism and the Holocaust, something which, without realising it, the NYT itself warns about in an editorial response, The Price of Fear, to the Islamic terror attacks in Paris earlier this month (LINK to article)):
“In the reaction and overreaction to terrorism [evil] comes the risk that society will lose its way.”
By far the most important example of this was the overreaction to Nazism, which has gone virtually unrecognised for decades, not least, because of its very profoundness, magnitude and all-pervasiveness, and because of the personal, professional and power-political self-interests that quickly became bound up with it.
The Nazis took the natural ethnic/racial basis of national identity and nationhood to criminally insane extremes in their efforts to exploit it for their own evil, power-political purposes. In overreaction to this we, i.e. our parents' and grandparents’, went to the opposite extreme of denying the natural ethnic basis of national identity and nationhood altogether, along with the very existence of race itself, which we are now obliged to believe, is just a “social construct”, only of importance to bigots and racists.
Only race is not a "social construct" (except when you try dividing closely related peoples from the same subcontinent into different races, as the Nazis insanely did), but real and important. Not in the way that racial supremacists, like the Nazis or supporters of Jim Crow or Apartheid, believe it is, but because central to any deep and meaningful sense of both personal and group, i.e. genuine national, identity.
The Nazis also hijacked the half-baked ideas of social Darwinism, which they abused to rationalise and justify their insane racial ideology, eugenics and euthanasia programmes, and wars of aggression, which also resulted in a massive overreaction on the part of a previous generation of academics, who made a taboo of the whole subject of applying Darwinian logic to the human situation, society and civilisation.
This was a tragedy we are still suffering under, because how else are we understand ourselves, our society, civilisation and situation if not from a human-evolutionary, i.e. Darwinian, perspective? Are we not, like other animals, a product of Darwinian evolution? Such a perspective reveals profound insights into the nature of society and the state, which academics have been unable to view objectively or dispassionately, because of their own dependency on it, and which are crying out for our urgent attention.
There will be understandable fears that to remove the taboos would once again lead to the abuse of Darwin’s ideas, which, of course, can’t be ruled out, but we can guard against it by being proactive in developing a rational and humane Darwinian ethics of our own, which is what we urgently need anyway.
Extricating ourselves from these overreactions and taboos is going to be difficult, because over more than half a century they have become deeply imbedded in the very fabric of academia, which is looked upon as a moral and knowledgeable authority, just as the church once was, whose values and attitudes are hugely influential and difficult even to challenge, let alone change.
Challenges to church authority were often condemned, not because they were considered unjustified, but because of fears of the consequences, not just for the church, but for society at large, which, it was feared could descend into anarchy; however, if those fears had been heeded by everyone the Reformation might never have happened and the Catholic Church would have kept its iron grip on western society, much as Islam has kept its grip on the Muslim world.
States Posing as Nations Can't Save Us
What the Paris Climate Meeting Must Do
By the Editorial Board, Nov. 28 2015 (LINK to editorial)
The "nations" the Editorial Board makes multiple references to and clearly sees as the primary problem solvers are not genuine nations at all, but mercenary "patron states" deceitfully posing as nations, in order to legitimise themselves, their ruling elites and the immense power they wield and abuse, to their own personal advantage and that of favoured (especially wealthy and academic) clients, at the expense of society at large.
These "patron states" are institutionally incapable of doing what only genuine nations would be capable of, but which the Editorial Board vainly demands of them. We were warned about the inherent non-sustainability of consumer capitalism more than 40 years ago, but instead of slowing down in preparation for a radical change of course, world leaders, complying with the demands of their "patron states", put their foot on the gas and consumer capitalism into turbo mode.
If we are to save ourselves from the self-destructive forces which threaten our survival, we must recognise and develop an understanding their source in the perverted Darwinian nature of the state itself - and not be too slow about it. See BLOG in which elaborate.
By the Editorial Board, Nov. 28 2015 (LINK to editorial)
The "nations" the Editorial Board makes multiple references to and clearly sees as the primary problem solvers are not genuine nations at all, but mercenary "patron states" deceitfully posing as nations, in order to legitimise themselves, their ruling elites and the immense power they wield and abuse, to their own personal advantage and that of favoured (especially wealthy and academic) clients, at the expense of society at large.
These "patron states" are institutionally incapable of doing what only genuine nations would be capable of, but which the Editorial Board vainly demands of them. We were warned about the inherent non-sustainability of consumer capitalism more than 40 years ago, but instead of slowing down in preparation for a radical change of course, world leaders, complying with the demands of their "patron states", put their foot on the gas and consumer capitalism into turbo mode.
If we are to save ourselves from the self-destructive forces which threaten our survival, we must recognise and develop an understanding their source in the perverted Darwinian nature of the state itself - and not be too slow about it. See BLOG in which elaborate.
West's Fatal Addiction to Compulsive Work Ethic
Addicted to Distraction
By Tony Schwartz, Nov. 28 2015 (LINK to article)
This is an excellent and important piece, many of the negative aspects of which I recognise in myself and others.
Why are we driven to distraction? And isn't reading also often just a distraction?
Distinguishing between what is compulsive and what isn't can be difficult, and compulsive isn't always bad. Charles Darwin was a compulsive collector of things, without which he would not have become the renowned scientist he did.
I'm reminded of the hilarious film, The Gods Must Be Mad, in which the compulsive activity of white South Africans is contrasted with the much healthier activity of indigenous Bushmen.
On the other hand, is it not this very compulsiveness which drove Europeans to create western civilisation?
The Germans are particularly compulsive when it comes to work (I know, because I lived in Germany for many years), but it has played no small role in making them so wealthy and "successful". Sometimes I felt like tapping them on the shoulder and pointing out that they had succeeded in rebuilding their country after the war and could now relax a little, but it would have had no effect. Their work ethic is compulsive, distracting them from, what exactly? Themselves? Reality?
Trouble is, we have made a virtue of a compulsive work ethic, seeing the material wealth it results in as some absolute good.
We tend to admire East Asians, because they can be even more compulsive and driven than "successful" white people are, but perhaps we should question
By Tony Schwartz, Nov. 28 2015 (LINK to article)
This is an excellent and important piece, many of the negative aspects of which I recognise in myself and others.
Why are we driven to distraction? And isn't reading also often just a distraction?
Distinguishing between what is compulsive and what isn't can be difficult, and compulsive isn't always bad. Charles Darwin was a compulsive collector of things, without which he would not have become the renowned scientist he did.
I'm reminded of the hilarious film, The Gods Must Be Mad, in which the compulsive activity of white South Africans is contrasted with the much healthier activity of indigenous Bushmen.
On the other hand, is it not this very compulsiveness which drove Europeans to create western civilisation?
The Germans are particularly compulsive when it comes to work (I know, because I lived in Germany for many years), but it has played no small role in making them so wealthy and "successful". Sometimes I felt like tapping them on the shoulder and pointing out that they had succeeded in rebuilding their country after the war and could now relax a little, but it would have had no effect. Their work ethic is compulsive, distracting them from, what exactly? Themselves? Reality?
Trouble is, we have made a virtue of a compulsive work ethic, seeing the material wealth it results in as some absolute good.
We tend to admire East Asians, because they can be even more compulsive and driven than "successful" white people are, but perhaps we should question
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