Those Who Vomit Up The Teachings Of The Left

There is a short colloquy in the movie Dragonheart that has stuck with me over the years. In the movie, Bowen is a knight that lives and breaths the code chivalry; and Einon is a prince, a former pupil of Bowen, who has become evil. In a fight between the two, Bowen tries to remind Einon of the noble code he had been taught.

Einon: Lay down, Bowen! You're the sad remains of dead systems and dead beliefs!
Bowen: They were your beliefs!
Einon: Never! Never mine!
Bowen: [heartbroken] But... you spoke the words...you spoke them from your heart!
Einon: I vomited them up because I couldn't stomach them! Because I knew it was what you wanted to hear!
Bowen: Lies! Liar! I taught you!
Einon: You taught me to fight, that's all! I took what I needed from you. You taught me to fight! [stabs Bowen in the shoulder, disarming him] You taught me well.

I think of Einon's words whenever I hear or read about the Alt-Right: that the Alt-Right is the result of Leftists and the Cuckservatives forcing a non-reality down the throat of the younger generations, and these younger generations have vomiting it up, but they don't believe it.

     I've written before of the insidious influence presented by the Cultural Marxists and the Frankfort School of moral relativism. In a June 2018 post, I noted that in the past the Cultural Marxists had relied on our passivity and goodness--essentially a "live and let live" attitude--to advance their cause.

But today, with the march through the institutions complete, we are seeing a shift from appealing to our goodness and generosity, to threatening us should we speak out. Thus we see social justice warriors attempt to shame us into acquiescence and passivity. Don't speak up, or you will be labeled a bigot, racist, deplorable, or some other label. 

I concluded:

      The left has mostly won: abortion is firmly the law of the land, two-parent families and stable marriages are so far in the past that most of us cannot remember when it was the norm, Christianity has been driven from the public square and most Christian religions are now in the process of self-destructing in order to avoid the "sin" of offending a special snowflake or victim group. The left can shame the right all it wants, but the opposite is denied. The only thing left for the cultural Marxist is to destroy "whiteness"--the vestiges of Western civilization and the hold-outs among Christians. And to ensure continued passivity, we that are of European descent are told we are guilty of some irredeemable sin, and that we just need to shut up and listen ... and confess our guilt.

       The first step in this is to reject the idea of white guilt. There is no such thing. One of the basic Biblical teachings is that the child is not answerable for the sins of the parents. So, even if Western civilization was not the second best thing to have ever arisen (Christianity being the first), there is still no need for guilt, apology or reparations. SJW's always lie, as Vox Day has written, and its time to stop passively accepting their lies, but actively reject it and defend rightness.

    Philip Carl Salzman, writing at Minding the Campus, asks the question, "Where Does the Impulse to Vilify America and the West Come From?" He notes that it seems to go back "to the idea of 'cultural relativism,' first articulated in the 1930s by foundational anthropologist Franz Boas and his student Ruth Benedict. Instead of judging other cultures in terms of one’s own values, the anthropologist should suspend his or her own value perspective in order to understand the world in terms of the culture studied." It didn't stop there:

But the idea of cultural relativism did not remain static. Rather, it was taken up and expanded to mean moral relativism, in which someone from one culture cannot make a valid moral judgment about someone or a culture with a different morality. In 1946, the American Anthropological Association went so far as to reject the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights on the grounds that it reflected Western values and was thus ethnocentric. Then relativity was expanded to epistemological relativity, which means that a way of knowing in one culture is not more valid than a different way of knowing in another culture. Thus, for example, science is deemed to have no more validity than individual subjectivity, or prophets, or witchcraft doctors, or chicken oracles. Cultural relativism was a major step in undermining our cultural basis for judgment

     A second source, according to Salzman, was feminism. He explains:

     The Women’s Movement of the 1960s, consequent to the arrival of the birth control pill, modestly strove for equality for females. ... But in less than a decade, the Women’s Movement became second-wave Feminism. Along with a change in label came a change in orientation, from striving for a universal value to partisanship on behalf of females vis a vis males. Quickly that feminist partisanship became female supremacism and a war against men. ... Men were characterized not as supportive fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons, employers, and mentors, and fellow citizens, but as insensitive, brutal, toxic, and evil. The most recent slogans of feminism are “men are trash,” now set to music, and “kill all men,” also set to music.

More importantly, for our discussion here was the rise of a "feminist ideology":

... Feminist ideology generated feminist strategies, which included special consideration and benefits for females. For example, women were to be given preferences in college and university admissions, in employment, and in government, as well as disputes over child custody. Feminist law professors championed laws benefitting females, at the expense of males, such as redefining both undesired advances and violent rape as “sexual assault.” Feminists argued that any consensual sexual congress that a female regretted was rape. Males, as always, hoping to curry favor with females, supported or remained silent about the feminist attacks on equality and fairness.

      The feminist view of American culture ignored its basic values of freedom, equality, and democracy, claiming that American culture was a “rape culture.” Nor was American society deemed to be one of free citizens enjoying equality of opportunity to gain standing and prosperity. Rather, feminists adopted the Marxist model of society featuring a hierarchy of classes in which the higher class exploits and oppresses the lower classes. Feminists exchanged the Marxist economic classes with sex classes, the male patriarchy oppressing the subordinate females, discriminating against females at every opportunity. The alleged sexist American society was thus characterized as fundamentally unjust and corrupt, and salvageable only through the overthrow of the patriarchy and its replacement by feminist supremacy. As females make up half of all Americans and half of all voters, a movement claiming to represent all women could not be ignored, and, as we have seen, could not be resisted.

 According to Salzman, this same ideology was adopted by other interest groups:

      The Marxist feminist model of American culture and society was quickly adopted by minorities aiming to improve their positions by claiming victimhood. African American activists replaced the feminists’ claims of sexism with racism, and patriarchy with white supremacism. ...

      The campaign of homosexuals, including gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and other varieties, for acceptance and equal legal status framed American culture as heteronormative, and bigoted against LGB++ individuals. It, too, adopted the Marxist model, with heteronormative oppressors and LGB++ victims. Trans activists claim to be victims of oppression by the biologically literate, and demand that they could be whatever sex they wanted to be, and that this become sanctioned by law.

Native American and [especially] Canadian First Nations activists claim to be victims of non-natives. ...

      All of these minorities claim discrimination against them because of their origin or characteristics and identity. As proof, they point to “underrepresentation” in relation to their percentage of the population. Their argument is that in every field or organization, they should be represented at least in the same percentage as their percentage in the general population. The cover label for this demand is “diversity and inclusion.” The justification is labeled “social justice.”

     These claims reinforce the Marxist identity politics vision of America as a bigoted, sexist, racist, oppressive society run by evil white male supremacists. The white majority is thus regarded as tainted, and the rights of individual members of the white majority are disregarded in favor of benefits for the “underrepresented.”

* * * 

     While feminist and minority claims have not been ignored, because equality is a central value of American culture, feminists and minority activists have greatly exaggerated their victimhood and the evil oppression by men and by the white majority. Partisan activists and their supporters strive to gain power for their group, as well as power and status for themselves. Those on the political left see the campaign for “social justice” as a path to greater government centralization and power. The call for “social justice” is often joined by a condemnation of capitalism and a plea for socialism. The left’s tendency for totalitarianism is seen in the increased control of thought and speech, for example, in universities’ “diversity and inclusion” apparatus, including “bias detection” committees and re-education committees, a la Communist China.

       The great success of “woke social justice” ideology can be attributed in part to the capture of America’s education system by grievance partisanship. From the grievance fields of women’s studies, black studies, indigenous studies, Chicano studies, etc., “woke” ideology and virtue signaling spread rapidly to anthropology, sociology, political science, English, and other “humanistic” disciplines, social work, and education. From radical “social justice education faculties, “woke” feminist, anti-American teachers spread across the land to shape the minds of America’s children. But no one was quicker to adopt grievance “social justice” than university administrators, who have hired thousands of “diversity and inclusion officers,” including at the highest levels of administration for salaries up to half a million dollars a year, to police thoughts and speech among students and faculty. A sideline is enforcing Obama administration Title IX demands that they persecute male students that any female complains about. With their “social justice” police force in place, administrators have gone on to establish racial segregation in housing, eating facilities, and university salaries, and well as to admit, fund, hire and promote on the basis of sex, gender, race, and ethnicity. Every American criterion of merit, universal values, democracy, and due process has been thrown out by just about every university administration.

       Thus, in order to advance partisan interests, feminist and minority activists have distorted facts of history and sociology to portray America as a wicked and evil country. At the same time, educationalists have striven to divide Americans according to sex, race, sexual preference, and ethnicity, while canceling the rights of members of the American majority.

But even as the Ctr-Left more tightly squeezes its fist, the more dissenters are squeezed out between its fingers, and this is apparent in the phenomena--and, perhaps, new paradigm--sometimes termed the "Alt-Right."

    The Alt-Right has been demonized by the Left as "racists" and "bigots" because they recognize it as a legitimate counter-culture force, and want to place it beyond the pall so that it won't be the subject of legitimate study or interest. But the Left's efforts have only had mixed success because, as a cultural phenomena, there is no specific leader or certain set of beliefs. I have referred to it previously as "evidence based politics" because of the general Alt-Right belief in "truth" as obtained by rigorous scientific evidence and/or past experience. The latter characteristic is what casts the Alt-Right as a form of conservatism, although it has nothing to do with the modern Conservatism Inc. of Rockefeller or Buckley.

    One of the first serious attempts to understand the Alt-Right was Allum Bokhari's and Milo Yiannopoulos's article, "An Establishment Conservative’s Guide To The Alt-Right." The pair dismissed the connection to Neo-Nazism, noting that one of the characteristics of the Alt-Right was its intellectualism: "The alternative right are a much smarter group of people — which perhaps suggests why the Left hates them so much. They’re dangerously bright."

The origins of the alternative right can be found in thinkers as diverse as Oswald Spengler, H.L Mencken, Julius Evola, Sam Francis, and the paleoconservative movement that rallied around the presidential campaigns of Pat Buchanan. The French New Right also serve as a source of inspiration for many leaders of the alt-right.

But, perhaps not unsurprisingly, the Alt-Right is also associated with the "[t]he so-called online 'manosphere,' the nemeses of left-wing feminism," and Red-Pilled philosophy. But Yiannopoulos was demonized and demonitized (the same thing in these days of social media), and since then, no serious attempt by the broader media to objectively report on the Alt-Right has been attempted. Until recently, that is.

    In August 2019, The Claremont Review of Books published an article by Michael Anton with the title, "ARE THE KIDS AL(T)RIGHT?". Anton's focus was the book, Bronze Age Mindset ("BAM") by an author calling him or herself “Bronze Age Pervert” ("BAP"). As Anton observes:

Self-published in June 2018, BAM quickly cracked the top 150 on Amazon—not, mind you, in some category within Amazon but on the site as a whole. This for a book with no publisher and no publicist, whose author is not even known. 

Anton gives a lengthy review of the book which I won't repeat or even attempt to summarize here. I would recommend that you read the review. But some of his concluding thoughts are worth repeating:

      The reason this book is important is because it speaks directly to a youthful dissatisfaction (especially among white males) with equality as propagandized and imposed in our day: a hectoring, vindictive, resentful, levelling, hypocritical equality that punishes excellence and publicly denies all difference while at the same time elevating and enriching a decadent, incompetent, and corrupt elite.

      BAP would say—indeed does say—that this is where the logic of equality inherently and inevitably leads. He even goes so far as to deny that the American Founders meant a word of their rhetoric. I think this is impossible to sustain as a historical matter, but on the larger philosophical question it is possible that the founders meant every word but were still wrong. It’s fair to say, however, that BAP’s followers take for granted that the idea of equality is false. They even have a derisive term for it: “equalism.” They dismiss the language of the founders, of rights, of the American political tradition as “Enlightenment,” which—rest assured—they don’t mean as a compliment.

     And I have more bad news for my fellow conservatives: the talented kids who’ve found this book aren’t listening to us. It doesn’t matter whether they aren’t listening because they found the book, or they found the book because they aren’t listening. The fact remains that all our earnest explanations of the true meaning of equality, how it comports with nature, how it can answer their dissatisfactions, and how it’s been corrupted—none of that has made a dent.

      This—of course—doesn’t mean that we should abandon our understanding. Truth is truth, and if we’re right, we’re right. But it does mean that we need to acknowledge a serious rhetorical deficiency that we’ve not even begun to learn how to overcome. In the spiritual war for the hearts and minds of the disaffected youth on the right, conservatism is losing. BAPism is winning.

   In an interesting course of action, BAP has publish a response to the review. If you want the highlights, read "Bronze Age Pervert: Response To Michael Anton" at Malcolm Pollack's site, but the whole of BAP's response is published at The American Mind under the title, "America’s Delusional Elite Is Done." Again, you need to read Anton's review to get the most out of BAP's response.

   I'm not going to try and provide a full summary of BAP's response (you can read Pollack's post if you want a summary) nor reproduce his article. But here are a few of the important point. First, BAP asserts that:

What you are witnessing, I would like to tell the readers of Claremont, is the unraveling of the postwar American regime—or what is mendaciously called by its toadies the “liberal world order”—in a way that is far more thorough than the disturbances of the 1960’s, and with consequences that will be far more dire.

He also notes that:

The “altright” doesn’t exist and has nothing to do with the media representations of it—really attempts to redefine it and control it—as a form of “white nationalism,” “skinheads,” the various public figures they’ve tried to anoint as its leaders (only to make them ridiculous and tear them down), or even—and here is what is crucial to understand—just “white males” or the just “right wing.” The same phenomenon is taking place on the left, and there is much more crossover than older people realize: there is much more involvement also by nonwhite youth and particularly by Latino, Asian, and multiracial youth in this phenomenon than people want to admit. I’m not saying this to run away from a charge of “racism,” but to try to show you that you can’t, and won’t be able to, contain what is happening now by typecasting it as an “angry young white male” thing. That is wishful thinking on your part, if you believe it.

And this makes sense if you have ever followed the discussions from Red Pilled sites. Rather, BAP explains:

What is going on now is a widespread rejection of the ruling authorities and their beliefs, on the part primarily, but not only, of the American youth at large. This is similar to the rejection of communism by dissidents and youth in the Soviet bloc in the 1970’s and 80’s, and driven by similar causes.

For instance, BAP writes, "The anti-male and anti-White rhetoric of the new left is extreme. The racial attacks on whites in particular approaches exterminationist propaganda seen only in, e.g., the Hutu against the Tutsi in 1990’s Rwanda." And he gives numerous examples. And this is also where he damns the main stream Conservatives:

Whether out of loyalty to the generally leftist social sphere in which the conservative intellectual establishment lives, or out of simple fear, mainstream and traditional conservatives have completely discredited themselves by failing to oppose the violent racial hatred and other forms of unprecedented insanity coming from the new left. I haven’t even yet touched the conservative powerlessness when it came to stopping the destruction of the family; or the new push for the sexualization and grooming of children on behalf of transsexualism and other supposed “sexual identities.” This one crucial matter extends the appeal of the “frog people” far beyond that of any one racial or ethnic group.

And worship of the God of GDP isn't cutting it either.

Many seem to think that success for example in a white collar job is the key to solving this problem of discontent with the new American regime. But strangely enough today it is the large corporations, Big Tech, high finance and other white collar institutions that promote the most restrictive and aggressive leftism. 

 He continues:

       The problem Anton or other conservatives must face isn’t that my audience, or the “youth” in question doesn’t accept the principles of the American Founding, but that the left and thereby a large part of the establishment rejected these principles long ago. The left has been saying exactly what they plan to do for decades. They want to destroy your country, instill a death wish in the white population, set majorities against market-dominant minorities, atomize everyone: the British plan in Malaysia and a few other places but now applied domestically within a country. 

      But the conservatives didn’t do anything, or anything effective, to counter the left—this is the problem. Many conservatives would rather blame people who point out the left’s explicit intentions. If Hillary Clinton says that Merkel is her role model a year after Merkel made the youth of Germany a minority in their own country, and if we point this out and support any candidate who might prevent this unprecedented madness, it is mainstream conservatives who call us Nazis and worse simply for pointing out the left’s stated goals. 

     I would be ready to concede that I wouldn’t have an audience, or a much smaller one, if this was the America of the Founding or even that of the 1980’s. Your problem isn’t my audience, but that your analysis and words and ideas are so far from reality that you don’t even see the reasons why I have this audience in the first place. 

     The left completely abandoned Americanism in the 1960’s; at this point they’ve also abandoned biological reality. Vitalism is all that is left against their demented biological Leninism. Encouraging health, normality, and physical nobility against their celebration of deformity, obesity, and sexual catamitism must be one of the basic functions of conservatism in our time. It is one of the reasons my message is powerful among many who are fed up with the left’s gospel of wretchedness: what is your plan to take that on?

Related Posts:

• "Reject Passivity"
• "Secret Combinations"
• "Micah 5:8 and Civil War"
• "Book Review: The Devil's Pleasure Palace by Michael Walsh"