Monday, July 25, 2011

Cultural Genocide

As expected the European establishment is using the attack by Breivik to further suppress debate and criticism of the growing Islamic problem within Europe. They already deploy legal punishments for criticizing Islam (witness the trial of Geert Wilders) as well as other forms of intimidation. It is times like these that we should remember Kipling’s words:
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools ...
Many of my online friends and colleagues have seen their words used as excuses for a vile act they would never have imagined let alone condoned. There was no ambiguity in their words that lent them to such usage. The problems in Norway are real. The solution devised by Breivik was diabolical. It has no grounds in the works of the authors he cites. Indeed, many of the authors, in their comments section, have continually told the “let’s nuke ‘em” crowd to get lost. They were never welcomed in the halls of reasonable debate.

There are some ideas in Breivik’s 1500 page compendium that are unique to his thought. They shed some light on his desperation and delusions. This can be seen in his charges against the Norwegian establishment (section 3.2 and 3.5):
Aiding and abetting to cultural genocide against the indigenous peoples of Europe. Cultural genocide is a term used to describe the deliberate destruction of the cultural heritage of a people or nation for political, military, religious, ideological, ethnical, or racial reasons[1]. According to the ”United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples”[2] the cultural Marxist/multiculturalist elites of Europe (all category A, B and C traitors) are committing cultural genocide against the Indigenous Peoples of Europe.

The most basic human right is to defend oneself against deliberate cultural attacks or even an institutionalized cultural genocide of unprecedented historical proportions. It’s not just a right but a duty for all Europeans to defend oneself against such atrocities through armed struggle.
The term cultural genocide is key. This insidious concept is fully operative in Breivik’s mind in the way it was intended by the left--as morally equivalent to physical genocide. Let’s examine their usage before we see why Breivik makes it a driving factor.

David Nersessian writes in the journal of the Carnegie Council:
Collective identity is not self-evident but derives from the numerous, inter-dependent aspects of a group’s existence. Lemkin’s original conception of genocide expressly recognized that a group could be destroyed by attacking any of these unique aspects. By limiting genocide to its physical and biological manifestations, a group can be kept physically and biologically intact even as its collective identity suffers in a fundamental and irremediable manner. Put another way, the present understanding of genocide preserves the body of the group but allows its very soul to be destroyed.
It is very popular in Arab literature with regard to Palestinian Arab culture. Hanan writes:
In many ways, cultural genocide (which is also referred to as "ethnocide", "sociocide" and "deculturation") sets out to achieve the same goals as a physical genocide. As Professor Stuart Stein from the University of the West of England has pointed out, "the same objective, the eradication of a group of people differentiated by some distinct traits, such as ethnicity, race, religion, language, nationality, or culture, can be achieved just as effectively in the mid-to-long-term, by gradual processes, as it might be by their immediate physical liquidation."
Also see this article for another example.

Cultural genocide is a double anti-concept. It is meant to pre-empt valid terminology and distort the debate. The concept of genocide is an insidious replacement for mass slaughter. The notion implies that the slaughter of large number of individuals is worse if the group is demographically homogeneous. By implication the slaughter of a heterogenous group is less severe. Americans, for example, can’t be victims of genocide. When have we seen the jihadi attacks of 9/11 refered to as genocide? The notion of genocide makes the collective ontologically primary. Individuals matter less.

Cultural genocide compounds the error. The mere passing away of a culture, by choice or by time, is raised to the significance of mass slaughter! Thus, when Breivik sees his country changing, it is genocide pure and simple. This kind of talk is poisonous. It’s no longer a nostalgic loss of old folksy customs that many feel when their children adopt new ways. It’s not the threat to fundamental philosophical values, which in a liberal order requires debate and refutation. It’s genocide: extinguishing a collective being. Breivik is striking out against a collective enemy regardless of individual complicity in this imagined crime. Reading between his lines you can hear: we must kill them before they kill all of us!

Closely aliened with cultural genocide is his notion of indigenous cultures. In section 2.78 he writes:
Rhetoric related to “indigenous rights” is an untapped goldmine which has currently been deluded and sidetracked due to “rhetorical contamination” from the US. If you use “white nationalist” rhetoric you are instantly placed in the same category as Hitler. This is not the case with rhetoric related to indigenous rights as this rhetoric is usually related to the Aboriginal or Native American struggles. Some of the reason why many nationalists reject the “indigenous” argument is because it is generally used by a group who has been defeated.
He sees his struggle as an indigenous rights movement for the collective survival of his group. He admits this tribal model is distinctly European and won’t apply to America. In the “Euro-US divide” he says:
However tempting to discuss US nationalism/conservatism, I’m not going to. The reason is that the fundamental factors vary too much. The European Americans aren’t the indigenous peoples of the US, the Native Americans are. In addition; there are more than 60 million Muslims in Western (25-30) + Eastern Europe (35) while only 9 million in the US.
His politics is what the left commonly calls “Identity Politics”. It has little grounding in the [classical] liberal thought which is common in the anti-jihadi writers that he cites. They are first and foremost alarmed by the illiberal nature of Islam. Breivik agrees with the problem but has adapted a collectivist solution that is obviously his own. He has stepped off into an imagined war of all against all. He is alone in this war as he deserves to be.

Let us not for a moment accept the guilt by association that is directed against the thoughtful critics of one of today’s greatest problem: the threat of Islam. This problem has to be discussed. If this becomes an excuse to suppress the debate even further, illiberalism will have won once again.

Update: Caroline Glick defines and defends the essentials of a liberal order. She ends with:
If the Left is ever successful in its bid to criminalize ideological opponents and justify acts of terrorism against their opponents, their victory will destroy the liberal democratic foundations of Western civilization.
I'd add that this would play right into Breivik's hands. So would Daniel Pipes, as he explains here in his last six paragraphs.

Update: Wikipedia notes Breivik's use of the concept of cultural genocide: "In the pre-trial hearing, February 2012, Breivik read a prepared statement demanding to be released and treated as a hero for his 'pre-emptive attack against traitors' accused of planning cultural genocide. He said, 'They are committing, or planning to commit, cultural destruction, of which deconstruction of the Norwegian ethnic group and deconstruction of Norwegian culture. This is the same as ethnic cleansing.'"

19 Comments:

Blogger Always On Watch said...

I couldn't agree more with your last paragraph, Jason.

And those words from Kipling really do resonate.

I've spent all day today in an attempt to get my thoughts together for a post at my own site. My target date is Thursday.

Yes, I've been posting and blabbing away at IBA ever since Saturday. But it's more free form over there, and all the discussion helps me to wrap my mind about what I want to say.

I do think that Breivik was desperate -- and very possibly hopped up on steroids (according to what purports to me his own words that I found online).

He has stepped off into an imagined war of all against all. He is alone in this war as he deserves to be.

Maybe, maybe not. That remains to be seen, IMO. I hope that you're right on that one. How much anger is afoot all over "invaded" Western nations?

7/25/11, 7:00 PM  
Blogger -FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

A thoughtful piece that deserves wider circulation and consideration.

The one thing that surprised me by the entire story, however, is the extent of Socialism in Norway. How the killer's thoughts could have avoided being corrupted by all this Left-wing collective illiberal thought is hard to imagine. It is de rigueur in the universities, today.

7/26/11, 7:50 AM  
Blogger AmPowerBlog said...

Excellent piece. Digging into this guy's writing even more indicates an adoption of postmodern cultural identity theories more associated with progressives. The institutional left and its MSM enablers will hate such reasonable arguments, because they eviscerate what is the perfect ideological meme with which to destroy their enemies. But you're right, more discussion of the killer reveals a very complicated personality that doesn't fit neatly into extant ideological frameworks.

7/26/11, 11:36 AM  
Blogger Always On Watch said...

Linked at my site in my lengthy post today.

7/26/11, 4:51 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Jason,

Its nice to see you blog again. I wish you would do it more frequently as you were one of the better classical liberal / Randian oriented bloggers on the subject of Islam.

But I want to comment on this excellent blog post by asking: are you not aware of the entire Paleo-Right wing movement in America? You should be, you once linked to a Larry Auster blog post. Auster is the epitome of the Paleo/Racialist philosophy that Breivik believed in. And Auster is not alone. There is a large and growing internet movement oriented around a racial defense of America. Are you not familiar with Steve Sailer and the "Human Bio Diversity" movement? There is a growing army of young evolutionary steeped blogers that argue that race is culture and it is largely genetically driven.

Are you not familiar with blog sites like:

* View from the right
* Dennis Mangan
* Whiskey's Place
* Roissey
* Stuff Black People Don't Like
* OneSTD (one standard deviation)
* V-Dare

etc.

My point is that Breivik's philosophy is not a de minimus phenomenon. There is an entire section of conservatives - call them "Traditionalists" or "BioConservatives" - that subscribe to the view in the words of Larry Auster "that race matters" and that race drives culture. In short, there are many people out there that agree with Brievik in principle but just don't believe in killing people. But the racialist conservative movement is a growing one.

I'm suprised this is shocking to you being that you linked to Larry Auster. Did you not understand what Larry Auster stood for? He makes no attempt to hide it, indeed he even brags about it.

-- Jack

7/26/11, 8:19 PM  
Blogger Jason Pappas said...

Thank you, Jack. I don’t subscribe to Auster’s “traditional conservative” views. I thought his views followed Russell Kirk’s preference for tacit tradition as opposed to “abstractions”, of which I’m clearly not sympathetic. From what little I read (after reading his writings on Islam), it appears that Auster's epistemology leads him to an ethnographic transmission process that results in his race-based orientation. I’m not clear on the details and could never get a clear answer from him on crucial questions but it is clear that his kind of conservatism, while of historic interest, is disappearing (or so I thought) and I subsequently ignored it.

You list a few others. The only one I vaguely remember is VDARE. I believe a few VDARE writers used to post commends at Donald Douglas’ blog although they seem to have disappeared since Prof. Douglas posted his picture on his blog. Perhaps they’ve lost hope that he’d be sympathetic.

It's clear from your list that there is a movement that I didn't realize existed on this side of the Atlantic. Thanks for the heads up.

7/26/11, 9:45 PM  
Blogger Jason Pappas said...

Talking around the web, I think one of the confusions about Breivik arrises from his attempt to tie himself into the cultural preservationist sentiments of conservatives while he actually accepts a more radical premise of “identity politics.”

Conservatives obviously want to conserve the important cultural heritage of their nation. But they do so by education, art, and other voluntary efforts aimed at the next generation. Because of their commitment to liberty and voluntary transmission of cultural value they want to limit immigration. Most seek to limit it to the assimilation rate although admittedly some go further.

Identity politics and multiculturalism seek to shielded “protected groups” from “cultural genocide.” The assimilation of non-Western peoples is condemned as “cultural genocide”. Asking a foreign-born citizen to learn the nation’s language is condemned as “cultural genocide.”

The use of the word “genocide” halts any attempt at assimilation. You can’t advocate “some genocide”. If assimilation is genocide, it is evil. Small nations like Israel and Norway can trivially be annihilated by open immigration within a generation especially if assimilation is condemned as genocide.

Breivik signs on to the identity politics of “cultural genocide” and applies it to “indigenous” populations. Thus, he sees the growth of an anti-Norwegian ethos not merely as a loss of transmission of a culture to the next generation that voluntarily chooses to adapt new ways (as a conservative might) but as a genocidal war. He accepts the establishment’s ideology of tribal warfare but feels they are traitors to their tribe.

The American media sees Breivik as an extreme form of cultural preservationist which takes the secondary dimension as primary. Like the Norwegian Labor Party, he is a warrior against “cultural genocide” with the difference that the establishment sees “genocide” against an imported demographic group while Breivik sees “genocide” against the "indigenous" group. Moderates that demand a limited immigration policy and assimilation are marginalized and lost in the debate.

I fear the Labor Party will double down on fighting “cultural genocide” of Muslims by suppressing all talk for assimilation into Western culture. This may backfire and inspire more Breiviks who adopt the “identity politics” of “cultural genocide.” The only difference is “which culture” is being annihilated by a process seen as morally equivalent to genocide.

7/27/11, 9:13 AM  
Blogger Always On Watch said...

I fear the Labor Party will double down on fighting “cultural genocide” of Muslims by suppressing all talk for assimilation into Western culture. This may backfire and inspire more Breiviks who adopt the “identity politics” of “cultural genocide.”

I've been thinking that, too, albeit not as cogently as you have expressed.

In my terms....When the people find that there is a disconnect between their will and government policy, anger and rage can mount. In fact, one of the reason that I have been trying to get people to wake up is that I fear what will happen when they don't wake up -- and I don't mean only subjugation to Islam, either.

I do worry about the swing of the pendulum.

7/28/11, 6:33 PM  
Blogger Dag said...

I too am concerned about the outcome of our victory. We might not like ourselves if we win by going so far that we disgrace ourselves in our own eyes. It's a delicate balance one must consider.

7/29/11, 9:44 PM  
Blogger beakerkin said...

Brother Jason

Nobody I know of supports the slaughter in Norway. However, many of including centrists like myself have been annoyed with them for sometime.

Those on the left cry about McCarthyism and yet they are 100%
behind all types of guilt by association. I find a crazed reader linking me with blogs I never read and claiming I am the first Kahanist with Hindu family.

There are plenty of good reasons to hate Marxists. However, this does not infer support for butchery.

Where are the familiar people who said why do they hate us when crazed religious loons incinerated our fellow NYC residents in the name of Allah?Where are those who talk of humiliating checkpoints as a rationale for butchering Jews.

A sick man made the chickens come home to roost. He should be executed for his crimes.

Those of you who didn't know lefties were sanctimonious know it now.

7/30/11, 10:22 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

This is an interesting discussion. I'd like to add more to it. Here is the best summation of Breivik that I have encountered:

Breivik, seeing personally the results of Norway's disastrous multiculti-immigration policy and radical leftist agenda, combined with his reading of conservative critiques of the leftist multi-culti agenda, comes to the conclusion that leftist multi-cultural elites are in the grip of a demonic utopian fantasy and are waging a genocidal war against the European native population that will, if not stopped, destroy Norwegian and European civilization and its native white race and leave the remnants as miserable dhimmmis crushed under Muslim overlords. Breivik believes conventional politics is ineffective at stopping the leftists and only lulls opponents of leftism by giving them the illusion of resistance while the leftist program proceeds with its genocidal program. Breivik concludes that violent means must be employed as part of an effective resistance. Because Breivik is a warrior type of personality he begins planning a violent program of resistance and putting it in action.

Breivik was an anti-Leftist. He hated the Left so much, he decided to slaughter them in bulk. His hatred of the Left stems from his *Cultural Conservatism*. And here I think it is important to understand that Conservatism and Classical Liberalism are NOT compatible. Breivik killed because he feared that Europe was in danger of losing its white majority, its common culture (which he identified with Christianity), and because of its decadent sexual mores (read his discussion of his mother and father - its fascinating).

Now, there is legitimacy to all of these concerns; and I say that as someone who is not a racial conservative. But Europe is committing suicide through its combination of welfare-statism, regulation-collectivism, immigration (especially Muslim immigration - there are 60 million (!!) Muslims on the European continent - how can that ever turn out well?) and the entire subjectivism and moral relativism of post-modern Leftism. Breivik saw this, but what he ultimately killed for was not an individualist oriented society but a culturally conservative, white ethnic society.

My point is that without Rand and the better elements of the Classical Liberal tradition, the only challenge to the Left comes from CONSERVATIVES and conservatives at root agree with Breivik in all substantive areas. But they do not know how to challenge the Left epistemologically or ethically. So Breivik really is a Conservative phenomenon.

In my opinion there will be more Breiviks; both in Europe and here. And I can't say that this will be shocking. The Left is EVIL and many people loathe Leftism to the depths of their souls. I know I do. I consider it a mark of sanity to have contempt for the Left and a mark of weakness if you don't. But there will be crazy people like Breivik who will express themselves through a murderous rage. When this happens, look for the Left to move for outright totalitarianism and attempt to criminalize all non-leftist thought. Many of them want that now.

We live in dangerous times.

--Jack

8/3/11, 4:04 PM  
Blogger Jason Pappas said...

Jack, there are many points to make with regard to all the issues raised in your last comment. First let me ask where did you get that quote in italics? It’s an excellent summary.

The question I attempted to answer (as did the writer of the above quote) is what radicalized Breivik? I’m using radical in the colloquial sense of resorting to desperate violent means. He believes that liberal society is dead and buried by a multi-cultural oppression that commits a genocide of his kind. Such urgency requires, in his mind, the utmost application of force.

The conservative counter-jihadi writers are shocked by Breivik because part of what they are trying to conserve is the remnants of a liberal order rooted in debate and rational persuasion--in the face of a growing illiberal Islamic advance. They oppose just this kind of ethos. I see no signs that any major counter-jihadi writer believes that a liberal democracy is no longer possible or that one can save liberal democracy by establishing a fascist-nationalist order.

Now, you raise another interesting point about the weakness of the conservative position, particularly in its European variants, to maintain an important bulwark against the raise of a collectivist type of nationalism. That has been historically true and deserves a substantial treatment in its own right, which I'll postpone for now. But even if we provide the best defense of liberal values that doesn’t preclude delusional thinkers believing that “all is lost” and “anything goes” to strike back at tyranny.

One of my interests in the radicalization process stems from by high school days in the 1960s when I watched as “wide-eyed flower children” grow into “rock-throwing protesters” with few if any qualms. We can, of course, acknowledge the rejection of individual rights as part of their mindset but few of their leftist brethren became so radicalized. There is something similar in how Breivik psyched himself into such a radical frenzy. There is some urgency that becomes an unbearable emergency that allows for the suspension of normal civilized rules.

I believe the concept of “cultural genocide” enabled him to cross that line. Interestingly enough I asked several left-leaning acquaintances about my line of reasoning. Can you guess the result? They emphatically defended the concept of “cultural genocide” without reservation! I was stunned that they didn’t reject Breivik’s principles but only noted that “the numbers weren’t there” in the sense that the Muslim population is only 2-4% of the nation.

I asked if any forced cultural transformation is “cultural genocide”, including the federal government’s elimination of southern Jim Crow culture? One fellow said “yes” and in the case of Jim Crow it was a good “cultural genocide.” I’m sure he’d say the same about the demise of capitalistic America.

8/6/11, 10:23 PM  
Blogger Dag said...

Brevik was cunning in his minor way, realising that the children of the elite are like the children of any collective, not individuals in themselves but mere place-holders in the collective, replaceable by any other place-holding being, Muslim or ethnic Norwegian or both. To the elitists who lost children it probably does matter at a personal level; but to the collective it matters not who was killed, only that the collective was assaulted. The known result is an outpouring of sentimentality and false rage against a different "group" of counter people. Some are attacted directly, such as Fjordman, by name, but mostly it matters not who died, who lived: it matters to the collectivists only that the "right wing" is responsible for the carnage. Anyone will do, so long as the labels are right enough. Breivik got it partly right, that any group of elite Left children dead is good enough.

His complete failure is in that he had no back-up plan, no vision beyond his own gnostic ego, that he alone would transform the world by Will. He'll have a lifetime to think that over.

Norway is an ethnic nation invaded by Medieval barbarians intent on transforming the nation into an Islamic outpost. The elite encourage this in a false religious fervour to create a utopian society upon which they can, like Philosopher Kings, look down at and smile benignly at their cleverness and high morality. No flawed xenophobia, a world instead of all peoples and all cultures under their command, living in peace and harmony, happy and secure and obedient, Walden Norway of the well-behaved.

But an ethic nation, unlike a non-ethnic nation, is a nation of family, of relatives bonded by blood and marriage. The average Norwegian is likely as mixed ethnically as any other ethnic nation, but such is the result of marriage and time, not a sudden and hostile invasion of rape and pillage and murder. I am who I am because, in part, Norwegians took summer vacations to the south to rape, rob, and kill. In a thousand years we might all think of the Muslim invasion of Norway in the same disinterested way we look at the Viking invasion of Britain. Or we might think today is far more important to us that whatever might come in a thousand years.

If Muslims came to Norway and settled and intermarried and became ethnic Norwegians, then they would be the same as Flemish weavers in Scotland, not reviled to this day as are Vikings, or worse, the Normans, whatever good we might have from that. Today is our day, and history is not something any of us can care too deeply about if it is we who are and those a thousand years from now are our judges. Who knows, it could well be that a German victory in any struggle in the Twentieth Century would be seen as the high point of history in Europe a thousand years from now. We do not live like that. We live our lives today. Muslims can as easily assimilate into Europe today as they have no doubt over the centuries to the point that no Norwegian can tell who is what nor care. But a violent invasion demands a violent resistance.

Breivik was a fool. He acted alone and stupidly, thinking himself beyond the masses. Family matters. One can deal with a strange in-law; but a rampaging rapist is not a son-in-law. He is a threat and an enemy and deserves to be attacked and expelled in whatever suitable fashion. Breivik did nothing to further that task in Norway. I spit.

8/7/11, 12:59 AM  
Blogger Jason Pappas said...

I tend to think in terms of culture rather than family but a similar conclusion holds. If one wants to establish a transformation of a culture, i.e. have the population buy-in to your values, one doesn’t do it with a sledge-hammer. Without winning the intellectual war, war is futile.

John Adams noted "The Revolution was effected before the War commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people ..."

8/7/11, 9:20 AM  
Blogger Dag said...

I seldom concern myself with the issue of ethnicity because my mind is often turned to the issue of revolutionary Modernity, though the two are not at all incompatible. Ethnicity is an obvious, undeniable physical reality; whereas revolutionary Modernity is a mental construct, a matter of will and conscious choice.

I cannot will myself into being Norwegian. Nor can I will myself into being Nigerian. I have no connection to speak of in either case. It is genetic. In this way, transgendered people are not genetically what they might wish to be due to surgery. That is the realm of phantasy. On the other hand, all I need to be Australian is will and conscious choice, genetics having nothing to do with it, regardless of my genetic heritage. One can be a full member of a polis, a city, by choice, but one cannot be a matter of ethnikos by day-dreaming. To reach for the impossible is, in Miltonian terms, a rebellion against the order of Heaven. Such is the fundamental flaw of the Left: that all things are within the control of a gnostic elite of Philosopher Kings whose greater will leads them to gnosis, to the state of being demi-gods. all things are subject to the control of the brilliant, and the rest must obey their gods. This hubris of the Left is not sustainable, as it were. Reality prevails, no matter how many people are destroyed to grease the wheels of the phantasy machine of recreating man in the gnostic's mind. Fight it all they like, man cannot be remade in the image of some men.

Non-ethnic nations have this problem beat by being non-ethnic. Ethnic nations have to deal with other ethnic members by assimilation into the ethikos over time. This is not a moral problem. To claim that all nations must be "multi-cultural" is a matter of gnostic moral over-reach on the part of ideologues.

8/7/11, 11:28 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Jason,

I just saw your response. Thank you.

First let me ask where did you get that quote in italics? It’s an excellent summary.

I got it from Larry Auster's blog. He didn't write it but he quoted it in approval. I am not a racial conservative and I adamantly disagree with their ideology. But, I find that they are the only ones who write on the subject of the cultural decay of the West in any kind of interesting way. Not even Objectivists go into this subject and when they do, most Objectivists are focused on the evil of religion and social Conservatism (most O'ists turn a blind eye to the evil of the secular Left). This is something I am sympathetic with but IMO most Objectivists have only a superficial understanding of both religion and Conservatism. As a result, Objectivist social/cultural commentary is currently worthless. You were one of the best Rand influenced cultural commentators around.

Auster and some other Tradtionalist oriented writers at least deal with issues like: 1) the enormous problems associated with Muslim immigration, 2) the enormous problem of third world and especially Hispanic immigration (something I wish you would write about as you seem to understand that immigration in our current context is very problematic - as you mentioned a concept of the "assimilation rate" which is a concept most Objectivists are totally ignorant of), 3) the massive wave of black-on-white crime that is happening not only in America but in Canada and England as well, (Google up black flash mobs and see all the horror stories of blacks targeting whites b/c they are white - in once incident in Milwaukee recently black pulled white people out of cars and beat them savagely), the Left's war against masculinity (this is obvious from watching TV commercials), 4) the damage caused by the anti-discrimination paradigm and its laws and all in the name of racial egalitarianism which has become a secular religion to the Left, etc..

In short, Auster is dealing with the devastation to our society brought about by post modern philosophy, Marxism and Rawlsian egalitarianism. He doesn't see it that way as to him its the consequence of "liberalism" which he believes is demonic because it is secular and therefor both inherently subjectivist and nihilistic; a conclusion which Rand's epistemology proves false.

The significance of this: Breivik cited Auster and other similar writers (like Gates of Vienna's Fjordman who now bascially has to go into hiding because of the animosity that he is being subjected too). That is why I say that Breivik was at root a cultural Conservative who was opposed, like Auster, to both Leftism AND Classical Liberalism. This is the tension within the Right and IMO only Rand's thought can solve the epistemological issues at play. And you are right in comparing Breivik to Leftists. Cultural Conservatives and Leftists are both collectivists but they differ in their collectivist vision. The Left worships egalitarian collectivism while Traditionalists favor racial, ethnic, religious, tribal collectivism. So, they are warring tribes in one sense.

--Jack

8/7/11, 1:59 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I see no signs that any major counter-jihadi writer believes that a liberal democracy is no longer possible or that one can save liberal democracy by establishing a fascist-nationalist order.

This is true if we use the word "major" to mean mainstream. But Breivik did not read just mainstream Conservative writers like Robert Spencer and Pamella Gellar. He read the racialist, cultural Conservative bloggers as well. And as I said in my earlier post, they are beginning to have an impact on the Right in general. Diana West, another mainstream Conservative (one of the best war commentators out there), has cited Auster and corresponds with him frequently.

Like I said previously, the racialists/traditionalist/Paleos have a terrible ideology but they do understand the evil of the Left and they unapologetically condemn it. Something essentially no one else does.

-- Jack

8/7/11, 2:04 PM  
Blogger Jason Pappas said...

Jack, you raise many of the issues I had originally hope to discuss with this blog but never got there, points 1 to 4 included. I also find the Objectivist literature disappointing in this regard.

I had hoped to examine the foundation of Conservative, Objectivist, and 18th century Whig approaches to defending (or defining) a liberal order. I’m not satisfied with my tentative conclusions but it would have been an interesting discussion that hopefully would help me examine my thoughts.

8/7/11, 10:10 PM  
Blogger Stanley Kowalski said...

Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, Skirmishes of an Untimely Man, #38...

Liberal institutions cease to be liberal as soon as they are attained: later on, there are no worse and no more thorough injurers of freedom than liberal institutions. Their effects are known well enough: they undermine the will to power; they level mountain and valley, and call that morality; they make men small, cowardly, and hedonistic--every time it is the herd animal that triumphs with them. Liberalism: in other words, herd-animalization.

8/14/11, 12:03 PM  

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