Well, this past week the Yankees were eliminated from the playoffs. They weren’t supposed to be there anyway, so I’m not too broke up over it. Good luck, Astros. You’re due.
The Mandalay Bay attack is newsworthily un-newsworthy. Heartiste takes note: Witnesses Go Missing Or Dead After The Mandalay Bay Massacre.
Over at American Greatness, Kimball outlines the ways in which Yes, Trump is Winning. We certainly hope so. VDH analyzes The Method to Trump’s ‘Madness’. Related.
Let’s see… what else was going on?
Navigate…
Alfred Woensalaer kicks off the week with musings upon Man’s limitations. And woman’s.
As white men, we have lost ownership over our women. Unfortunately, this is entirely our own fault, for we are our own worst enemy. It was white men who pushed progressivism, white men who pushed feminism, white men who pushed women into the workplace. Emancipation was a tactic for some white men to gain the upper hand over other white men. It was very successful.
Things looks bad. To change this, Alf proposes we need the right apex Dunbar Number. How to get that is an exercise for the reader… no really. “If Trump can’t do it, I doubt you can.”
Also from Alf, the next installment of his speculative (and humorous) fiction series: The Orb of Covfefe part III: Liftoff. Just keeps you wanting more! The Committee gave this one a ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention☀ just to make sure we could keep the story going. And this too: an inside baseball look at the New Dutch Government: par for the course.
Nick Land helpfully points to Hoppe’s full address at the Property & Freedom Society Conference this year.
In case you missed it last week, Those Who Can See has up a splendid new article: Governments Are Us. TWCS doesn’t post often, but when it does, it’s always magisterial. This one drives a 3-pound axe to the forehead of “Proposition Nation” mythology.
Imperial Energy helpfully provides The STEEL-cameralist Manifesto: Summary of the Story So Far.
This Week in Generative Anthropology, Adam’s epistle is on Power and Digital Order. “Digital order” in at least two senses of the term. So cudos for that. Herein Adam dives deeper into the thought of Eric Gans, the very founder of GA. Also a more meta than usual look at GA itself…
Country Music Singer, Danielle Bradbery.
GA, of course, has never had a particularly warm reception in the academy, and its emergence almost simultaneously with victimary thinking offers as good an explanation as any. GA is interested not primarily in labeling a particular social or cultural form good or bad, but in understanding it as modeled, however distantly, on an originary scene (the prototype of prototypes) defined by the deferral of collective violence. The implications of such an approach for making sense of inter-group and inter-sex relationships are simply too triggering—GA suppresses altogether the incredibly pleasurable retroactive accusation and self-congratulation that has driven most thinking in the Humanities and Social Sciences for quite a while. But it also, as Gans points out in the excerpt above, resists the supposedly more sophisticated and objective data-driven approaches to social order, because they can never ask the question, why is there social order (and therefore “data”) in the first place? The practitioners of such approaches cannot understand the paradoxical question, what must language be in order to be what it is?
I continue to believe that GA is underexplored area for the New Social Science which neoreaction purports to be. Another ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention☀ for Adam’s always fine work here.
A new friend, Paul Roemerspacher (@ideal_nrx), is working on NRx Aesthetics as well as translating reactionary works of interest into A+ French. This week I was honored with his translation of Code de conduite à l’attention des néo-réactionnaires. Tout sonne mieux en Français!! Please give M. Roemerspacher a visit, and, if you are degenerate enough to be on Twitter, a follow.
We haven’t said much here on Catalonian separatism, but Titus Quintius at Fifth Political Theory has a very thorough rundown in Catalonia and the Problem of Separatist Nationalism. Of particular interest is Quintius’ treatment of “The Relationship of Nationalism to Leftism”.
Julius Evola, in a larger defense of the imperial principle in his work Men Among the Ruins, gives a thorough summary of how something we often associate in present contexts with ‘the right’ is actually a product of leftist involution. Nationalism begins with a revolt against imperium, often at the urging of not an aristocracy but a bourgeoisie. From a traditionalist orientation then it becomes quite clear why Catalans, Scots, and the Irish are such leftists despite being known for their nationalistic politics…
This is a poorly understood case on the so-called “nationalist” so-called right. And there is much much more on offer here at 5PT. He ultimately comes down in favor of Catalan independence, but only from a tactical perspective. Quintius earned the coveted ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Silver Circle Award☀ for the excellent research and analysis here.
Chris Morgan, of Black Ribbon Award, has some history and analysis of Twitter absurdist @dril: @dril Versus The Volcano.
Anatoly Karlin brings us his trademark Russian nationalism, examining a Reuters poll of ‘experts’, which found that Moscow is the safest megacity for women. Whether this has anything at all to do with Moscow being the last megacity where Europeans form a very solid majority is left as an exercise for the reader.
He also looks at data for a possible trajectory towards a world of 1,000 nations. Definitely RTWT, because there is every chance that this is precisely the world we will see, and maybe sooner than we think.
Last up from Karlin is the state of the altsphere, which looks at site visits for a number of alternative media websites, including Social Matter. Purely interesting data, and a good bit of perspective, as even the most popular alternative media sites are absolutely dwarfed by the MSM sites by two orders of magnitude. We appreciate him including us. We’re small. But mighty.
C. Neville-Annesly has a brief note on God as the Perfect Sovereign.
Malcolm Pollack offers an ‘A’ For Effort to our present diversitocracy.
By way of Isegoria… Razib Khan: Secularization is a thin culturally conditioned dusting atop a religious cognitive substrate—not like that’s a good thing either; achievements of the Seasteading Institute; DNA from both wolves and dogs brings big advantages; and more from Techniques of Systems Analysis here, here, and there.
Finally, this week’s missive from Cambria Will Not Yield: The Day Is Far Spent.
This Week in Jim Donald
Jim took some well-deserved rest this week.
This Week in Social Matter
Michael Perilloux’s Golden Age kicks off the week at Social Matter. He interviews the very impressive and thoughtful Canadian Mark Christensen in Episode 3: Northern Dawn And Canadian Reaction.
In time for the centennial of the Miracle of Fátima, Wolfgang Adler presents another lesson on Portuguese History, Fátima, And The Necessity Of Church-State Unity. A very different sort of Social Matter article, but a welcome one. Acutely, Adler sees Fátima as a sort of French Counter-Revolution. He concludes that the mandate Our Lady gave to the Church has not been taken as seriously as it ought to have been. Adler earns another ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention☀ for his excellent research and analysis.
Then in the first Full Panel Ascending the Tower podcast in… well a coon’s age… DeMarco, Gray, and I are joined by Nathan Duffy and Michael Pascal Episode XVIII, Part 1—“St. Augustine Is Whiter Than I Am”. It was a great discussion. You can tell this by how little Anthony and I got to talk.
For Friday, the West Coast Guys on Myth of the 20th Century podcast: Episode 40: Uncle Ted’s Cabin. That’s Ted Kacyznski, of course… who saw the Cathedral very early and accurately.
Finally, poetry for Saturday Poetry & Prose: from newcomer Richard Taylor, Sellasia (I, Cleomenes).
This Week in Kakistocracy
First up this week, Porter has a few words of congratulations for Sebastian Kurz, Austria’s new chancellor, in The Stand. And what a stand it is, the advocates of European life against the great necropoles of the EU and its “values”:
Europe is probably not going to peacefully coexist with two diametrically opposed philosophies living cheek to jowl. You don’t negotiate anodyne trade treaties while still struggling over which people will occupy your home. That’s the fight that matters. I’m glad to have young Mr. Kurz join it.
He also pens a piece in defense of outrage porn: The Joy of Desolation. Rebutting a reader who was eager for some advice on keeping positive and seeing purpose in life beyond despair at the decline, he writes:
For me, good habits have always blossomed from negative concerns. That’s why I keep a stack of outrage porn always close. I have a greater ambition for me, my children, and my civilization than to be someone else’s meal pellets. While working against that bleak possibility isn’t always fun, you do get in excellent shape from the effort. And that’s about the most positive thing I can think to say.
Indeed. There’s a difference between finding the closure of catharsis in lament and letting it motivate you to other ends.
Next up, Porter describes leftist ideology in a way familiar to many of us in A Painful Passcode. That is, as a religion that requires one to hold absurd beliefs as a badge of status and test of loyalty. As Spandrell would say, “point deer make horse” . But Porter doesn’t fail to bring up the human costs incurred by the denial of reality:
This theory of subjectivity in our physical sex is all an act of ridiculous pretense. One that is probably intentionally insulting so as to filter the right-wingers who can’t bear to feign belief in it. And though the premise is pompously absurd, that doesn’t mean many credulous imbeciles won’t be badly harmed in its embrace…
What follows below is someone else’s screen capture and concluding comments of one of these accounts. It is of a man who mutilates himself in the expectation of becoming a woman, but is dismayed to learn he is instead merely a mutilated man…
…it speaks, with unintentional sincerity, to the wretched creatures caught in the liberal security fence. The ones who actually believe the lies they are required to repeat. Just remember, some of these lies end up requiring thrice-daily dilations. And those are the kind you never forget.
Lastly, Porter comes back to the topic as he so often does, of immigrants and work in No Steel Unscrubbed:
Another example, perhaps as much counter-intuitive as contradictory, is the premise that the hardest working people come exclusively from the most destitute societies…
I’m starting to wonder if “hardest working” isn’t perhaps a designation society can only reach in its rubble.
We could say that a good work ethic is necessary but not sufficient for civilization. Hunting and gathering takes a tremendous amount of hard work; left unmentioned by the establishment are the qualities of creativity, innovation, and striving for telos. Those are the sole property of Silicon Valley and climate change scientists.
This Week in Evolutionist X
Speaking of canids, Evolutionist X starts off with Peak Dog vs. Degenerate Dog? Her case-in-point: Huskies. At least they look very different. There are many, many breeds that have degenerated over the last century. Some cannot be born without veterinary intervention. (Interveterination?)
Speaking of Free Speech: Free Speech is Downstream from Territory—which is tantamount to power. And since freedom is (and only is) power, this makes perfect sense.
Black girl decolonizing the space around the president of Evergreen State College (without irony apparently)
You get Free Speech when you control a space.
Let’s take a look at this video: Black girl decolonizing the space around the president—Evergreen State College. Normally, the president of a college owns that space. But as you can see, this black student has decided to claim his space, and there is nothing he is willing to do to stop her. He has relinquished his space. He has surrendered.
The world “decolonize” is specifically chosen to signify the removal of white people, who own the land Evergreen State is built on by virtue of having conquered it.
And anyway physically preventing black girls from “de-colonizing” is rayciss. Mrs. X snagged an ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention☀ for her fine socio-political analysis here.
For the indispensable Anthropology Friday, it’s Outlaws on Horseback: The Starr Clan, Bill Cook, and Cherokee Bill
Finally in Mrs. X’s Homeschooling Corner series: Math Philosophy.
This Week at Thermidor Mag
Another very busy week over at our sister publication Thermidor. Jake Bowyer starts the week off strong with A New Strongman in Brazil and America’s Future? Bowyer introduces Jair Bolsonaro, rising Right-wing politician in Brazil and harbinger of things to come in America.
Bolsonaro proves that Brazil is far from lost, and furthermore, Bolsonaro’s success could be seen as a ray of hope for those nationalists who stay up at night worrying about America’s coming demographic apocalypse. However, the story of Brazil should be a napalm bomb to the Republican Party and all those “conservatives” who value the constitution and their fly-by-night principles. The constitution will not save America (it certainly hasn’t preserved our liberties), and promising tax cuts and limited government will certainly not save America. Future conservatives in this country will look more like Jair Bolsonaro than Ted Cruz
or Rand Paul.
K. R. Bolton is up next with The Murder of Tradition. Bolton surveys a number of figures critical of the idea of “Progress” including Carl Jung, Alexis Carrel, and Konrad Lorenz.
Giambattista Vico, a precursor to Spengler, tried to warn about this superficiality of intellectualization and its rejection of tradition—including religion—at the time of the Renaissance, the much-lauded beginning of the epoch of the West’s decay. Ibn Khalud attempted the same when there was still something left of the Islamic civilization, on the verge of becoming fellaheen, as Spengler called such spent civilisations, or historically passé.
We can say the same about Cato, and many others faced by the “progressives” of their own civilization when entering upon the epoch of decay. “Progress” is one of the great illusions of our time, just as it was in the analogous epochs of other civilization over the course of thousands of years. If Jeremiah or Cato or Herodotus were to be transported to this time in the West, they might laugh or sneer at the banal slogans of our “progressives” and “moderns”, and reply: “I’ve seen it all before… and it does not end well”.
A back-to-back double-header for Reactionary Wunderkinder® N. T. Carlsbad this week. First up comes Communalists and Constitutionalists, a contrast between, well… communalists and constitutionalists, using Luxembourg and the Swiss Confederation as exemplary cases.
Such communalism thus represented a community of armed proprietors, combining individual management of one’s stock while being subject and participant of a collective control over the means of production as a whole. One’s personal status began to decline in importance relative to one’s amount of land, allowing a patrician class to emerge. Above all, communal association was natural and holistic, not a product of volition or individual contract.
The Committee deigned to declare this one an ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention☀.
Carlsbad next adopts a more acerbic tone to critique Right-wing free speech-absolutists in The Communist Origins Of Modern American Free Speech. Carlsbad reviews how the Left has ever advocated “freedom of speech” merely as an instrument to achieve its own goals.
Rather than whining about anti-white shitlibs trying to take away your racial heritage embodied in the law (which it turns out was actually an invention of radicals, often Jewish ones too) of spewing bile without consequence —the suppression of which is simply government doing its necessary work of enforcing orthodoxy, how about you instead #MakeMcCarthyismGreatAgain? While you still can, of course.
He is, of course, quite right about free speech. But loses points here for being a smartass.
Europa Weekly talks about Peter Hitchens on The Peculiar Case Of Mr. H. The Obituarist.
Jake Bowyer rounds out the week with California Burns, in which he discusses the decline of the Golden State over the past 50 years and pays special attention to the appropriately named politician Scott Wiener.
This Week Around The Orthosphere
Cologero has a deep and fruitful discussion on Justification and Postmortem States.
The new issue of the always beautifuly Regina Magazine is out. This month: Epic Ireland.
William Wildblood criticizes the notion that Jesus Was Left Wing
At The Orthosphere proper, in Sybarites, Scholars, and the Buffoon Who Got Himself Taken Seriously, J. M. Smith lays out a small sample of people throughout history for whom the decay of civilization was a concern.
Bonald writes a four-part essay sympathetic to common criticisms of “Western Distinctiveness” as rapists of nature, dogmatic, fundamentalist zealots, hypocritical puritans, and enemies of democracy. This is all Bonald at his best—chock full of bon mots. I plucked this from the second:
Identifying a scapegoat is the only kind of causal analysis of interest to the social mind. A few weeks ago, walking through campus, I saw an advertisement for a public lecture, something along the lines of “Extreme weather: who is to blame?” To which my first thought was “Witches!” I’m sure it wouldn’t occur to any of my more enlightened peers that to phrase meteorological questions in this way is the mark of a primitive, superstitious mind.
If the Catholic Church is ever to pull itself out of its current degradation, she will have to purge herself of all sentimentality, and she will have to do so mercilessly.
The vignettes are comparatively short (i.e., in a sphere where Moldbug is paradigmatic); taken together, a Chesterton-like masterpiece. And the ☀☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Award☀☀ winner.
Responding to some facile critique of free will, Briggs writes the seductively titled Do Not Read This Article On Why You Don’t Have Free Will
“We have the strong impression that we choose when we do and don’t act and, as a consequence, we hold people responsible for their actions.” It is well to hold Frith responsible for writing this. Or would he like his paycheck be sent to another?
Reporting from the academic front, Briggs also warns of SJWs Coming For Mathematics. Well, to be fair, its just Math Education, not actual Math. Yet. Then, Hollywood scientism, FBI neo-nazos, doctors ascertaining gayness, and a trans history triggering, all in this week’s Insanity & Doom Update VIII.
Also at Briggs: We Are Not The Government—Guest Post by Kevin Groenhagen.
Mark Richardson writes about the importance of Building up our houses by passing life virtue lessons from the elder women to the young girls.
Men are brought up to think that failure or success depends on their own efforts, their character, their strength. But the fate of some marriages is decided not by the actions of the husband, but within the mind and soul of the wife. The marriage rests on her ability to manage her thoughts and emotions, so that she does not dwell on the negatives, or hold on to grievances, or seek to belittle, or slide between a sensitivity to being patronised and a feeling of superiority.
Then Richardson documents Another step in the descent of liberal culture which includes horned drag queens reading books to children and homoerotic public service messages in public subways.
Richard Cocks writes the following essay for the Sydney Trads regarding Aesthetic Knowledge and why beauty is objective. An excellent essay and an important read.
Dalrock reveals a modern method of theological discernment in He had to check his theology with the boss.
This Week in Arts & Letters
Richard Carroll remains the sphere’s most dedicated reader and commentator on the Western Canon. This week it’s Plato’s Dialogues: Greater Hippias, largely setting upon the question of beauty and how to measure it. Definitely worth your time as it is an ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention☀.
Also at Everything is Oll Korrect!, expert commentary on (Protestant) John Milton’s Sonnet XIX: “When I Consider How my Light is Spent”.
At Imaginative Conservative, a timeless essay on The Conservatism of John Quincy Adams—the almost unwilling revolutionary; a Chesterton Fence if there ever was one: Why Were Confederate Monuments Built? And, filed under Musical Archeology: How Should Beethoven’s Fifth Be Played?
Chris Gale has the Who?-Whom? on Silence in the church. More poetry from Hilda Doolittle” “Helen”; and from Thomas Hardy: “The Ruined Maid”. As well as the obligatory Sunday Sonnet, by way of Hilaire Belloc.
Heather Mac Donald out of the gate first at City Journal with Standing on the Shoulders of Diversocrats and whom that’s gonna harm. Tierney goes inside air traffic control football in Well-Heeled Fliers Against Air-Traffic Reform—a study in perverse incentives. A War on Poverty That Would Work which begins with the idea to not reward it. For the 10 Blocks podcast some major debunkage with The “Science” Behind Implicit Bias. And a critique of Ken Burns’ recent (and much hyped) Vietnam War series, which Mark Moyar characterizes as A Warped Mirror.
This Week in the Outer Left
A lot of the focus from the left this week was on the recent Austrian election, so let’s talk about it. For those with better things to do than pay attention to elections, the ÖVP (center-right) came in first, with the big center-left party, SPÖ, getting one of its worst results ever. To the horror of the left, the actually right-wing Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) came in a very, very close third, and will likely be the junior coalition party with the ÖVP. That should offer some nice context for all the oy veying from the leftists.
The Awl invites us to meet Sebastian Kurz. Getting the basic biographical fact out of the way, Austria’s new chancellor is 31 years old. This gets repeated at great length by all of these leftist sites. This piece presents Kurz as an opportunist, taking Freedom Party talking points as a path to power, but not actually believing in them. That is likely the case, if we’re being honest. There is a certain amount of hand-wringing over a youth vote for the right-wing, which I find quite entertaining. Check this out:
Whether any of Kurz’s more extreme campaign promises come to fruition depend once again on the efficacy of a parliamentary democracy distinguished largely by its ability to gridlock itself. What is certain, however, is the depressing current in European (and, yes, worldwide) politics. In more and more countries, in order to be electable, the shrewd politician today must appeal to the powerful far-right Millennial male demographic—a sentence that makes me nauseous to even type.
“Powerful far-right Millenial male demographic” Hey! Some of us resemble that remark!
Jacobin also addressed Austria’s right turn, but with some actual numbers about how well the rightish parties did among young voters.
Authoritarian right-wing populism has now become a truly hegemonic, cross-class project. 74 percent of blue-collar workers voted for one of the two right-wing parties, as did 64 percent of entrepreneurs. Shockingly, the FPÖ won among voters 16 to 29 years old with 30 percent of the vote. Add Kurz’s 28 percent, and you have a 58 percent majority for authoritarian right-wing populism among young people. The only demographic that liked the Social Democrats were pensioners. This is what deep, right-wing hegemony looks like.
Look, we here at Social Matter regard voting as a bad habit, at best. That being said, I still get a cheap thrill from seeing that 30% of Austrian voters 29 and under supported a party of, to quote all the verklempt lefties, “actual ex-Nazis”. Maybe, just maybe, the kids are al(t)right.
Getting away from the vulgarity of voting booths in Österreich, we follow The Baffler down into the gutter of internet culture war and New Atheism’s idiot heirs. This one is so rambling and conspiracy-red-string-connecting-the-dots-on-a-bulletin-board that I cannot effectively quote from it at all. RTWT, but for the really appropriate context for it, check out an old piece from Scott Alexander called I Can Tolerate Anything Except The Outgroup, and it should be readily apparent that this piece is pure Blue Tribe attack against the Grey Tribe. How dare those… nerds *spit* endanger the Blue Tribe’s project of cultural hegemony, when it is so close to finishing off the last remnants of the Red Tribe?
This Week… Elsewhere
Zach Kraine has some very perceptive thoughts about Playing their economic game. Dissidents are out in the cold economically as well as intellectually and morally: The solution an exit in place:
What’s needed is a sort union or co-operative syndicate for small businesses. It’s well known that multinational corporations have a hold on the market. Which leaves the small businessman out in the cold. But with a union, the chances of being a valid contender increase.
We agree. But keeping such a syndicate in “submarine mode” is absolutely imperative.
A new (to me) blog: The Universal Dissenter. I have no idea how I stumbled upon this guy, but he’s pretty good this week On Orthodoxy and Religion. God isn’t so much “infinitely complex” as infinitely simple, however. But that’s a debate for those better acquainted with Aquinas than me. This bit was particularly inspired:
The good man will value his own civilization, culture, and religion above that of all other groups and their respective practices and systems. This is not because one’s civilization, culture, or religion is objectively superior to that of others. Rather, it is objectively right (healthy) that a man should believe that his people and their respective structures are superior to that of all others. The evolutionary dialectic of meta-history and the religious models that man projects onto the true God will determine who is objectively correct in religious dogma. In other words, religion itself is selected in an evolutionary process which will determine who is most correct in belief. This strongest spiritual race and religion will outlast and survive all others as the objectively correct structure of belief. In this way, all people have an obligation to uphold the dignity and consistency of their respective religious practices and to fight for the future of their religion and spiritual race.
Heartiste links a pretty spectacular bit of pro-European propaganda.
AMK is all over the place as usual here in Christian patriarchy, Islamic patriarchy, and “predatarchy”. But his predictions of the selection effects of abortion, birth control, and porn ring quite plausibly true. Also there: China is even poorer than Mexico.
American Dad has a great post on the Real Circle of Life. Complete with a photo. Of Bambi.
Dannato was really good here on The Scarcity of Social Capital in Western Societies:
The irony of a mass commercial society is its scarcity of social capital on all levels of human relations.
It earned a nod from The Committee: an ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention☀. RTWT!
Benjamin Welton is back up over at Zeroth Position with The Case For Judicial Corporal Punishment. He takes aim—well-deserved—at the Prison Industrial Complex, which is just about the only real beneficiary of America’s obscene incarceration rates. We’ve made the case before around the sphere, but never this well or completely. This too was an ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention☀.
Also at Zeroth Position a welcome and highly relevant book review: The Art Of Invisibility.
Unorthodoxy gets a lift from some old Spandrell and discusses some of late iterations (and iterators) in the de-reification of names.
This Week in Meaningness, David Chapman considers Fake Insights like walking on coals and math puzzles.
This Week in the Next Level: Al Fin explains how to Mind the Brain.
Blessed Karl of Austria makes an appearance in The Queen and the Emperor: 1917.
Well folks, that about all we had time for. A slightly slower week than usual. We’re under 5k words and have a little over 100 links. Plenty of good stuff to be readin’. Many thanks to TWiR Staff stalwarts: Egon Maistre, David Grant, Aidan MacLear, and Hans der Fiedler for their hard work and invaluable contributions. Keep on reactin! Til next week: NBS… Over and out!!
The post This Week In Reaction (2017/10/22) appeared first on Social Matter.