we’re all rootless cosmopolitans now

There was an interesting remark recently on A Political Refugee From the Global Village about the displacement of Europeans from their ancestral lands. Now I don’t want to see that happen either but I think you have to ask yourself whether people in the West today even have ancestral lands.

If you have no knowledge of the traditions of your own society, no culture and no sense of history (which is the case for most westerners today) can you be said to have any actual ancestral lands? If you have no actual home town, no sense of community and no sense of a link to the place you were born (which is also the case for most westerners today) then do ancestral lands have any meaning for you?

Until a hundred years ago most people in the West still felt an emotional and even to a certain vague extent a spiritual connection to the place in which they were born and grew up. I’m not talking about ethnic identity. Just a sense of having a particular place which is home and having some link to one’s own past, one’s family’s past and the past of a community.

Today we are all rootless cosmopolitans.

Which explains why Europeans don’t care about being displaced from their ancestral lands. They don’t even understand the concept of ancestral lands. They don’t know about their ancestors. They have no past. More often than not they have no children, so they don’t have a future. What they have is an eternal present of consumption, hedonism and mindless entertainment.

The question is – if Europeans don’t care about their home and have no past or future why should anyone care about their fate? Europeans themselves don’t care about it.

The problem is that rootless cosmopolitans aren’t worried about losing their homes. They have no homes. If things go bad in one place they’ll just move somewhere else. It doesn’t matter. One place is the same as everywhere else. They’re not ever going to fight to hold on to what is theirs because they can’t even comprehend the concept. It’s not that they’re not materialistic. They’re materialistic to an extreme degree. But the material possessions that matter to them are infinitely portable. You sell your house in one city and buy a house in another city. You sell your consumer goods and buy new ones in your new city. You still have your bank account. You still have everything that matters to you on your smartphone.

To a rootless cosmopolitan home is anywhere that has a wifi connection.

Culture War 2.0 and demographics

The Culture War has been lost. There’s no question about that. One thing however needs to be borne in mind – winning or losing a war is not always the end of the story. Quite often a war simply sets the stage for a second war. This is true of purely military or political conflicts and it may well be true of culture wars as well. Culture War 1.0 is over and perhaps Culture War 2.0 is yet to be fought.

One thing that stands out about Culture War 1.0 is how easy the victory was. Social and cultural attitudes changed dramatically in a very short space of time. In 1960 marriage was the cornerstone of western society. Most people got married and most people had children and almost everybody agreed that this was the formula for happiness. Within twenty-five years the institution of marriage had crumbled. Marriage was no longer regarded as something permanent and sacred. It was now an option, and was widely regarded as being not exactly a permanent or even a very significant arrangement. What mattered was love and everybody knew that love meant sex. The secret of happiness was lots of sex. Children were seen as an encumbrance. Fertility rates plummeted. Women who considered having children to be the most important thing in life were thought of as being a bit odd and vaguely disapproved of. To feminists women who wanted children were traitors.

Twenty years ago homosexual marriage was a bizarre and laughable fringe idea. Now it’s the very bedrock of our civilisation and anybody who disapproves of it is regarded as being  an evil nazi.

What happened? The answer is very simple. People conformed. In the West we had long since abandoned the ideas that religion mattered and that there were eternal moral values. What mattered was being popular. You didn’t need to worry if your opinions were correct, you simply made sure that your opinions conformed to what was popular. Or at least to what you were told was popular.

The key point here is that if social and cultural attitudes can be changed almost overnight in one direction then logically and obviously they can be just as easily and just as quickly changed in the opposite direction. Most people will conform to what they see as the dominant ideology. The dissenting minority is then forced to conform. If the dominant ideology changes then, like magic, social and cultural attitudes change.

The objection to this is that the dominant ideology of the present day is so dominant that it is unlikely to change. To believe that is to ignore the lessons of history. The most important lesson of history is that the future is always unpredictable. If you had a time machine and you transported someone from the year 1914 to the year 1939 they would find themselves in a world that would have been entirely unimaginable in 1914. Entire empires had vanished. Entirely new countries had appeared. Strange and incomprehensible political doctrines were now considered to be perfectly normal.

This was largely a result of the First World War but wars are not the only ways in which everything can be changed in ways that could not have been predicted. Demographic change is another. Whether demographic change is a good thing or a bad thing is not relevant here (I think it’s a bad thing) but it’s likely to continue for the foreseeable future. Thirty years from now the United States will be a different society. It will be a very hispanic society. There is no way of predicting exactly how that will play out but it will cause major political changes and could lead to significant social and cultural changes. Will the social attitudes of an hispanic United States be the same as the social attitudes of the U.S. today? Maybe, maybe not. It depends on the extent to which those numbers can be turned into cultural power. It also depends on the extent to which the hispanic segment of society conforms to the ruling ideology of liberal atheism. Could hispanic immigration fuel a religious revival? Even a Catholic revival? Who knows.

Then there’s western Europe. Islam is going to be a much bigger presence thirty years from now. Again the question is the extent to which this will translate into political and cultural power. There’s also likely to be a race between, on the one hand, a growing secularisation and on the other hand the likely emergence of powerful strains of political Islamism. Will a Britain with a much larger Muslim population continue to conform to its current ideology of rainbow unicorn feelgood soft totalitarianism? Again the answer is maybe, or maybe not.

In my next post I’m intending to address the question of soft cultural power in more detail.

why white nationalism is a non-starter

Among the various groups who comprise the motley crew of political dissidence in the modern West the most notorious are the white nationalists. Their dream is of white ethnostates. There are many reasons why this notion is, perhaps unfortunately, totally fanciful and it’s worth looking at a few of them in detail.

First off white nationalists tend to blame immigrants for all their woes. It’s all the fault of the Mexicans or the Somalians or the Muslims or whatever. White nationalists often seem to have trouble comprehending that these immigrants are not invaders. They have not fought their way through our heavily fortified defences nor have they defeated our armies in the field. They have been brought here by our own leaders. They are here because our political leaders, business leaders, our media and our church leaders have decided that they should be here. In other words the fault lies with our own elites.

The second problem is that white nationalists do not understand how elites function and maintain themselves in power, and they do not comprehend the make-up of the alliances that keep allow elites to maintain their power.

The elites are predominantly white but they have zero white identity. Their entire identity is bound up with membership of the elites. For the elites class trumps race or ethnicity.

The elites are by definition a small group and to remain in power they need loyal servants. In the case of contemporary western globalist elites they get support from two sources, the Coalition of the Fringes and the wannabe elites. The Coalition of the Fringes is a term coined by Steve Sailer to describe the alliance of victim groups who provide the elites with the votes needed to maintain power whilst  retaining the appearance of democracy. Blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, the LGBT-whatever crowd, etc.

Since these groups seem to have few apparent interests in common how is the Coalition of the Fringes held together? Blogger Spandrell explains it with his theory of bioleninism. These groups are entirely dependent on the existing power structures. Without those power structures they’d have zero status and no money. They are loyal because they have no choice. They have nowhere else to go.

The key to Spandrell’s theory is that the elites don’t care that these followers are often of very limited competence if not entirely incompetent. What the elites want is not competence but loyalty. The absolute loyalty of people who have no other options.

Many of these people are white. The LGBT-whatever crowd are still mostly (although not entirely) white. They are white but they have no white identity. They identify as LGBT-whatever. The extremist feminists who live off the government and make up another part of the Coalition of the Fringes are still mostly (although not entirely) white. They are white but they have no white identity. They identify as feminists.

As well as the Coalition of the Fringes there are the wannabe elites. Academics, schoolteachers, bureaucrats, senior military officers, low-level media types etc. They are also entirely dependent on the existing power structures. Without those power structures they’d be without status and money. These groups are mainly white but again with zero white identity. They have thrown in their lot with the elites. They adopt what they perceive to be the values of the elites.

So even if by some magical process all the non-whites could be made to disappear you still would not have the utopian white paradise that white nationalists dream about. The white elites would not suddenly discover a sense of solidarity with working class and rural whites. The white elites would continue to hate and despise and fear the non-elite whites and the non-elite whites would continue to hate the elite whites. And you’d still have a society that reflected the values of the elites. You’d still have a decadent degenerate society of atomised individuals with no sense of common purpose.

White nationalists for the most part are so focused on race (and on Jewish conspiracies) that they fail to understand any of this. They fail to understand that their fantasy really is a fantasy. One of the few ho does get it is James Lawrence. His essay Contra Cosmopolitanism is very much worth reading.

Don’t get me wrong. I do sympathise with some of the aims of white nationalists and I do think ethnostates are generally preferable to multicultural states. And I would certainly love to see an end to immigration. I just don’t think the idea of white nationalism based on white racial solidarity is workable.

Meanwhile white nationalists frighten off the normies and make it difficult for any reality-based dissident movement to gain traction.

Coming Apart French style

Interesting piece, The French, Coming Apart, from City Journal about French geographer/housing consultant Christophe Guilluy.

Housing is something that the dissident right all too often overlooks (apart from Steve Sailer who has always understood that it’s a crucial issue). The Left used to worry about housing but nowadays they’re not interested.

Guilluy describes the ethnic cleansing of working class native French from major cities like Paris. One of his strengths is that he understands that neither class cannot singlehandedly explain the destruction of countries like France but nor can race. You have to comprehend both class and race.

In cities like Paris the ethnic cleansing of native French neighbourhoods is not seen as a problem by the elites. That’s not because the victims of the ethnic cleansing are ethnically French. It’s because they are working class. As far as the French elites and middle class are concerned those working class people are no longer needed so they should just die.

Guilluy also talks about the fact that there is now not one bourgeoisie but two. That should have led to tensions within the elites but it hasn’t because the old money sort and the new tech economy sort are united by their hatred of the working class and their desire for cheap labour provided by immigrants who will work for starvation wages.

He has an interesting explanation for the fact that both old and new bourgeoisie consider themselves as being leftists. They are “the ‘glass-ceiling Left,’ preoccupied with redistribution among, not from, elites.”

The article is very much worth a read.

Hat tip to Nourishing Obscurity for finding this piece.

being both a victim and an oppressor

A comment to my previous post noted that “SJWs have plenty of historical and even contemporary stuff to portray East Asians as victims.”

This raises a really interesting point, particularly in regard to America. East Asians in the United States certainly get victim privileges. Given that on average they’re doing better than white people that might seem strange, but if massively privileged white female college students can portray themselves as victims and can get away with it then anyone can do it.

On the other hand when South Koreans, Japanese or Chinese are living in their own nations they suddenly cease to be victims. Suddenly they become oppressors because they aren’t diverse enough. The liberal media whines about Japan’s refusal to replace its Japanese population with a properly diverse population of non-Japanese. China gets the same treatment. The South Koreans have already embraced national suicide (their birth rate is so low that within half a century there won’t be any South Koreans to worry about) so they are not given such a hard time.

This is all part of the weird mix of outrageous racism and grovelling antiracism that characterises modern America. A Chinese person in the U.S. is a victim of white racism and colonialism, but China is a threat to America’s world domination so China as a nation is regarded with suspicion and fear.

It’s pretty much the same with Islam. Muslims in the U.S. are a protected victim class and are therefore virtuous. But Muslim nations refuse to accept American world domination (or more to the point Muslim nations are an inconvenience to Israel) so Muslim nations need to be bombed back into the Stone Age. Muslims in their own countries are evil. Muslims are only good when they live in other people’s countries.

Of course it goes further than this. To white American liberals blacks are sacred – as long as those white liberals don’t have to live in the same neighbourhoods as blacks or send their kids to schools with blacks.

One can’t help getting the feeling that American antiracism is pure hypocrisy. Which of corse would explain why Americans get so strident on the subject.

disappointment in Sweden

The Swedish election is another disappointing result for nationalists. The Sweden Democrats seem to have gained around 17-18% of the vote. They have made gains but 17-18% is still a miserable result.

There just isn’t really any actual nationalist groundswell in western Europe. Any party that is identified primarily as a nationalist/anti-immigration party is going to see its support max out around the 15-20% mark, which means permanent political irrelevance.

Of course when there are other factors in play, such as establishment parties that have become so corrupt that the stench can no longer be disguised, then things can change. Outsider parties then have a chance. But nationalism and an anti-immigration stance are simply not going to win you an election.

People are stupid and they are short-sighted and they are selfish and they will happily vote for civilisation-destroying policies as long as they think that they personally have enough money to be sheltered from the results. Appealing to a love of one’s country or a loyalty to one’s culture or a concern for the future just doesn’t work. In a capitalist/consumerist society people just don’t care about that stuff.

This is why I believe that nationalism and anti-immigrationism have a better chance if they’re combined with some policies that ordinary people actually do want. Maybe offer people not just decently paid jobs but jobs with a future. Housing they might actually be able to afford. Genuine security for their old age. Maybe take on the predatory mega-corporations that increasingly wield not only unlimited economic power but unlimited political power.

You know, offer people the sorts of things that mainstream moderate left parties used to offer. It’s just a thought.

reviving cultures and unscrambling eggs

I saw a comment recently that seems to sum up a popular viewpoint on the alt-right. The gist of the comment was that it doesn’t matter if our culture gets destroyed because a destroyed culture can easily be revived. The commenter went on to argue that on the other hand the effects of immigration cannot be reversed. You can’t unscramble the egg.

In my opinion it’s actually the other way around.

A dead culture cannot be brought back to life. But undoing the effects of immigration is only difficult if the political will is lacking. It has been done, many times. There is the example of the ethnic cleansing of Germans from eastern Europe after 1945, or the population exchange in 1923 in which Greeks were expelled from Turkey and Turks were expelled from Greece. Unscrambling the egg is possible, has been done and can be done.

Once you lose your culture however it’s gone forever. You’ve lost everything that made you you. If you lose your culture it just doesn’t matter what happens after that. For example if German culture is overwhelmed by American culture then Germany ceases to exist. After that point the colour of the inhabitants of that geographical region of the American Empire formerly known as Germany doesn’t matter in the least.

I understand concerns about mass immigration and I share those concerns. I’m totally opposed to mass immigration. I’d like zero net immigration for my country. Immigration is an important issue. But it’s not the most important issue. Cultural integrity is more important. If you look at Britain their problem is not immigrants. Their problem is that they have thrown away their own culture. They have committed cultural suicide. That process began in 1945. At this point even if they stop all immigration it won’t help because Britain can’t be saved because it no longer exists.

And white nationalism cannot work and it cannot help because it ignores culture. Culture is the one thing that really matters.

can we survive Christianity?

A horrifying quote from a recent post at A Political Refugee From the Global Village.

The former bishop of Caserta, Raffaele Nogaro, said recently
“Morally and as a man of faith I would be willing to turn all churches into mosques if it were useful to the cause and if it helped to save the lives of poor and unhappy men and women, because Christ did not come to earth to build churches but to help men regardless of race, religion, or nationality.”

We already knew that most of the leaders of most of the established Christian churches have abandoned Christianity in favour of secular liberalism but this quote is interesting since the bishop doesn’t even bother to try to hide the truth.

We have to ask ourselves, can our civilisation survive Christianity as it is now?

growth and why it’s not a good thing

We’re thinking vaguely about moving house. Where we live now used to be on the extreme semi-rural fringe of Sydney. Now it’s just another commuter suburb. The problem is that the infrastructure hasn’t kept pace with the population growth and the traffic is now nightmarish. It’s no longer a quiet peaceful sleepy place. Now it’s noise, bustle, chaos.

All this is ultimately fuelled by the Australian government’s insane immigration policies. Incredibly high population growth is pushing city people further and further out.

The problem is, if we do move where do we go? If we go a bit further out then within five years or so the endless suburban sprawl will have caught up with us again. Moving right out into the actual countryside, the real rural Australia, isn’t really an option. Rural communities are mostly dead or dying, sunk in an endless cycle of despair. Which again is largely the result of misguided and vicious government policies.

Of course many right-wingers see the incredibly high rate of population growth as a wonderful thing. Population growth must be a good thing because it propels economic growth, and everyone knows that economic growth is always a good thing. I’m afraid I don’t share these views. I don’t think economic growth is particularly wonderful. Mostly it’s illusory anyway. It might be terrific for the corporate sector but I can’t see that it makes life any better for most ordinary people. In any case in Australia our economic growth is based to a large extent on an insane real estate bubble which has brought no actual benefits to ordinary people. In fact it’s made housing completely unaffordable unless you’re a wealthy overseas investor.

There are also the environmental arguments. Now don’t panic, I haven’t become a convert to the global warming cult. Global warming is a scam. But there are other environmental concerns that do have some validity. What mostly concerns me is the human environment. I’m worried by the social and moral unhealthiness of urban life and the psychological deadening of living entirely in artificial overcrowded overstressed urban environments.

Fetishising economic growth is popular among self-described conservatives but endless economic growth is not really a conservative value. It’s certainly not my idea of a conservative value.

the problem of Britain, the problem of nationalism

The western world as a whole is in a state of crisis but while things are bad everywhere they seem to be particularly bad in Britain.

All western countries today have problems with their elites but Britain is unique in having elites that are not merely treacherous and corrupt but motivated by seething hatred of their own society, their own culture, their own heritage. Britain’s rulers, its political establishment, its elites, are united in one thing – they all believe that they have a duty to hate Britain.

This hatred seems to have permeated the whole nation. Quaint old-fashioned beliefs, like believing in a duty to love your own country, are virtually unknown.

Even Britain’s “far right” “nationalists” don’t seem to love Britain. Their loyalties seem dubious at best. They might hate immigrants, and some immigrant groups in particular, but that’s not really enough of a basis on which to build actual nationalism. To build a genuine powerful populist nationalist movement you have to have something a lot more positive to offer. Opposing immigration and multiculturalism certainly can be, indeed must be, vital parts of such a nationalist movement but they are not enough. You need to capture people’s imaginations. You need to give people something worth sacrificing for, because people want something that is worth sacrificing for.

There is no sign of this kind of positive nationalism in Britain. Even Brexit was essentially a negative thing. Brexit was important and worthwhile but it wasn’t accompanied by any real enthusiasm for a new positive direction.

Why don’t Britons love Britain?

I’m inclined to think that at least part of it was the shock of losing the Empire and being reduced to the status of an American vassal. The whole idea of British-ness suddenly became pathetic. Britannia no longer ruled the waves. The sun had well and truly set on the British Empire. Britain’s last attempt at an independent foreign policy in the Suez affair ended in humiliation at the hands of the U.S. and Britain thereafter accepted its rôle as Washington’s lapdog. If you were a member of the British ruling class it must have seemed that there was simply nothing left worth ruling over.

There’s an interesting awareness of this in one of John le Carré’s best-known spy thrillers. The British spy who has sold out to the Soviets is not motivated by personal greed and he’s certainly not motivated by any belief in communism. During World War 2 he realised that Britain was becoming an American puppet state and he decided that by serving Britain he was really serving the United States, and he decided that he’d rather serve the Soviets than the Americans. I found that motivation to be oddly plausible.

The British ruling class may have developed an ambivalent attitude towards their new American masters, a mixture of fawning admiration and bitter resentment. And therefore an ambivalent attitude themselves, despising themselves for their servile obedience to Washington and perhaps dealing with this by despising their own country for being so weak. British nationalism seemed to be a futile waste of time.

It may also have affected the ruling class’s attitude towards the working class. The British ruling class always hated and feared the working class but at least in the days of Empire they felt that the poor served a purpose. The Empire always needed cannon fodder. Without the Empire the working class seemed to be a useless menace.

I don’t claim to have definitive answers but I do think we need to ask ourselves why our elites became so hostile, and why the British elites took that hostility to their own nation to such extremes.