It is now legal to openly carry swords in Texas because heck, why not. They’re handier for opening champagne bottles than a Glock, much more intimidating than a phallocarp, and advertises the cartoonish absurdity of the entire state legislature.
Texas: a great big state full of posturing macho rednecks.
I’m sure you’ve all noticed this: white nationalism is commonly characterized by the media as a primarily economic issue. This is the party line from the New York Times; they’re constantly banging on about how Trump voters are just desperately poor (not true), and reporting on interviews and focus groups with disaffected moderates where they hear them complaining about employment and regulations and immigrants competing for their jobs (because, apparently, young Republicans dream of someday working in a poultry slaughterhouse).
Another victim of this desperate aversion to actually pointing out endemic racism is the New Statesman. Writing about some new right wing scheme called The Anglosphere Project in 2000, you might get the impression that this movement is defined by its stance on free trade, entrepreneuralism, and market policy — it’s all very wonky.
For the moment, it remains semi-subterranean, new, a little shocking – like the ideas of rolling back the power of trade unions which the Tories were rehearsing in the mid-1970s; or the attack on comprehensive welfare systems which the US policy-thinker Charles Murray was testing out around the same time; or the foretelling of the collapse of the Soviet Union which analysts such as Zbigniew Brzezinski were putting into public debate, to general disbelief, a little later.
This idea, or rather cluster of ideas, has similar origins – in the Anglo-American intellectual right, a milieu at once self- confident, vengeful, well funded and very sharp. It is based on the belief that the transatlantic right needs some kind of coherent internationalist vision to set against the corporatist European Union. The answer is what the science-fiction writer Neal Stephenson has called the Anglosphere. The US, Canada, Britain, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and much of the West Indies, it is pointed out, enjoy a common language, a common culture, common legal traditions and, above all, common entrepreneurial instincts. Can these countries create a loose association of some kind? Mexico, though it does not meet all the criteria, would have to fit in, since it is already part of the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) – which is central to the Anglosphere project, both economically and politically. Norway might fit in, given that it is negotiating with Nafta. Japan, backward-looking and over-regulated, would not.
You should be suspicious, though. The Anglosphere Project was founded by John O’Sullivan, a Thatcherite, Conrad Black, the Canadian version of Rupert Murdoch, and Robert Conquest, a right-wing historian, now deceased.
I don’t know whether it has evolved in the last 17 years, or whether the real motivation was lurking beneath the capitalist veneer all along, but if you check out Project Anglosphere right now, it’s a hotbed of seething racist buzzwords. They are all about our “heritage”. We must defeat “diversity” and “multiethnicity”. Repeal “multiculturalism” now.
In this turbulent era an amoral, ruthless Globalism and it’s resulting pathologies threaten the very existence of the Anglosphere. In response nationalists are on the march. Our principles guarantee social stability, cultural coherence and genuine unity – unlike globalist ideologies such as Multiculturalism which guarantee intractable social conflict. It is becoming increasingly apparent that ethnic, religious, political and sexual violence are the toxic fruits of ‘Diversity’ extremism. Only Nationalism has the necessary antidotes and political will to heal the deliberately induced polarisation and fragmentation of the Western world.
It’s an anti-immigrant white nationalist organization. I suspect that that’s what it was all along. But gosh, whining about the North American Free Trade Agreement is a nice distraction from the underlying motivation of the group.
It also has something in common with other far right groups: it’s primary business seems to be churning out propaganda, especially internet-digestible memes. Oh, look, they have black friends!
It’s even more blatant on the @ProjectAnglo twitter feed. Nothing but memes. They follow Ann Coulter, VDARE, Paul Joseph Watson, Katie Hopkins, James Delingpole, and a few cartoon frogs. You want to see the ugly underbelly of the internet, though, all you have to do is look at who is following them. Here’s a sampling of the profiles of typical pro Anglo Project supporters.
ᚹᚺᛁᛏᛖ᛫ᛈᚱᛁᛞᛖ, Nationalist,ProLife,Protector of Western Civilization’s EuroCentric Heritage, Identity & Traditions, ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ,ᛟPutinᛟLePenᛟCharles Martel
Right Wing Meme Squad. Supporter of ethnic cleansing- pls no bully meh.
🐸 Alt-Right. American Nationalist. Pro-White. Reactionary. #HailVictory
Rising sea levels can be attributed to Libtard tears, not global warming! I follow back to any Trump supporting patriots. I fully support Obama for prison!
Trigger the tards!! Wish my dad’s were Joe Rogan, Lawrence Krauss, and uncle Jordan b Peterson, aunt Camille Paglia, Princess Kenny. Kekistani Sith Lord
I really hope Krauss is embarrassed by the company he’s keeping there.
But the main point is that the economic jibber-jabber is just a mask over the real reason these people are pro-Trump and pro-America and pro-Britain — the truth is that they’re really just xenophobic, hate-mongering bigots who’ve found that complaining about free trade (not that there aren’t good arguments on that matter) is a sneaky way to virtue-signal to their fellow jingoists and start a racist asshat club. That’s what they are.
I guess the iconography is just right for a Hymn for the Hymnless.
A study basically asked people ““Can you be good without god?”. The answer, unsurprisingly, is that a heck of a lot of people think you can’t.
A recent study (of more than 3,000 people in 13 countries) published in the journal Nature Human Behavior echoes Voltaire’s maxim. Looking at intuitive thinking—presumptions drawn by individuals through unconscious biases—researchers led by Will M. Gervais, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky, discovered that most individuals intuitively conclude that a serial killer is more likely to be an atheist (approximately 60 percent) than religious (approximately 30 percent).
The article has a lot of good rebuttals from atheists like James Croft, Monette Richards, and Maggie Ardiente, but let’s cut the crap. This survey isn’t actually going to answer that question. Of course there are good atheists and good Christians, and also bad atheists and bad Christians. All that survey can do is determine that the subjects have been methodically lied to by their religion.
The question should be, “Can you be good with god?”, and the results determine that religion is great fertilizer for bigotry. I’d also argue that the example of the most notoriously godly people in America further demonstrates that with great faith comes great greed and exploitation.
Here’s Joel Osteen’s house.
Never mind his behavior towards his fellow human beings in the wake of Hurricane Harvey. I ask you, what kind of corrupt, selfish person needs the kind of conspicuous consumption being shown off here?
Tezcatlipoca, god of hurricanes
It happens every time a natural disaster occurs: the ghouls creep out of their crypts and get national press coverage for their rationalizations. One example: Rick Stedman, generic Christian pastor and apologist, has emerged to ask a stupid question.
When hurricanes like Harvey devastate so many lives, where is God?
That’s a really good question—one which I’ve heard whenever a hurricane, tornado, or tsunami wreaks havoc—and it deserves an honest, though maybe surprising answer.
No, it’s not a good question. Where is Harry Potter? Where is Dread Dormammu? Where is Aquaman? These would also be stupid questions, because they are fictional characters, and we know exactly where they are: in the pages of books and comic books. They’re not going to emerge when a catastrophe strikes.
The only people who ask that question are religious apologists. It never occurred to me, for instance. This is the kind of question people ask when reality comes up and smacks their mythologies in the face, and they have to figure out an excuse for why their all-powerful superhero didn’t show up to help out. The rest of us…nope, we have known all along that nature isn’t necessarily our friend, that good and evil don’t apply in the cosmic scheme of things, and we have no expectations of beneficent super-beings feeling obligated to ride to our rescue.
As you might expect, though, Stedman is going to give us his stupid answer to his stupid question, and — big surprise — it’s not going to be surprising at all. His excuse is that his God was there, expressing himself in the charity and kindness of human beings in the face of adversity, because, apparently, people are incapable of recognizing the importance of their friends and neighbors and family, or even strangers, unless they are possessed by a supernatural entity. Whenever you see someone doing something nice, that’s God, not actually that person acting ethically. I think it might be part of that odious Christian doctrine that says we’re all evil sinners who deserve Hell, except Jesus somehow ‘saved’ us. How the idea that goodness is a manifestation of God could be compatible with Christian versions of Free Will that say our actions are our choice, so evil is our problem, not God’s, I don’t know.
It seems simpler to me to cut out the imaginary phantasmal middle man and credit human beings themselves with the good and evil they do, but then, I’m not soaking in Christian dogma.
Then there’s also a purpose to God unleashing hurricanes on us:
In a world that assumes there are no objective rights and wrongs, tragedies recalibrate our moral compasses and remind us that some things are always right.
See, God killed those people and destroyed their homes and livelihood sorta like how he tortured Job: it’s a test to help them see what is right and what is wrong. It really makes it crystal clear that when someone kills your dog and your aunt, turns your home into a mudhole, blows up your workplace, and spews chemical poisons all over your neighborhood, it reminds us that there is an objective good and evil, and if your moral compass is properly calibrated, you ought to realize that the omnipotent agent (if there is one) who spawned that death and destruction to wake us up to the nature of what is good and evil is Himself an evil mofo, and we ought to stop making excuses for him. Right? If your moral compass is still so fucked up that you scribble out apologias the deity you love, then presumably you are now in need of a colossal natural death strike on your home to straighten you out.
I don’t think even that would help Stedman, though. He’s drunk so much Kool-Aid he’s oozing Purplesaurus Rex and Incrediberry out of his pores. Look at this bullshit:
Families wept over the death of loved ones, just as Jesus wept near the tomb of his friend Lazarus. Could our tears and sorrows be reminders that death was not part of our original design, that we were created to be like God—immortal?
I have never in my life grieved over the death of a loved one because it reminds me that, oh yeah, I’m supposed to be God-like and Immortal, and gosh, the loss of this loved one sure is a painful prod to make me think of how I got stiffed out of my Cosmic Destiny by that Eve chick. I’m not crying for them, it’s for getting cheated out of my supernatural inheritance.
Jebus, but I despise Christianity.
And then he has to top it off by sniping at evolution.
(Think about it: if atheistic materialism is true, don’t you think we would have become used to death in 3+ billion years of life on planet Earth? Wouldn’t we have settled the case that human deaths are par for the course and shouldn’t trouble us more than the death of a plant or pet?)
Any time a Christian says something along the lines of If evolution is true, then…
, you can predict that they’re going to say something that reveals the depth of their ignorance.
It seems to me that if evolution would predict anything along those lines, it would be that successful lineages would evolve mechanisms to promote survival and to resist death, even inevitable, ubiquitous death. Getting “used to death” is such a weirdly narrow anthropomorphism, since most organisms are going to lack the awareness that is behind the concept of “getting used to”, and because we would expect that successful organisms would resist death.
But then, maybe this is part of the Christian experience. They get used to the unutterable boredom of having to sit through miserable church services every week, so they imagine that is what life is all about — getting accustomed to the intolerable. That’s what they think their imaginary afterlife is all about, too…an eternity of repetitive, predictable slavery. They expect they’ll get used to it. Rick Stedman will help them!
Today is International Vulture Awareness Day.
I’m trying to figure out how to celebrate it. My wife is away all day, but when she comes home for dinner, maybe I should serve up some roadkill? Someone has to have a better suggestion.
Isn’t it neat how language evolves? Received Pronunciation isn’t how British people speak and have spoken for all time.
But if Shakespeare’s accent had hints of Classical Pirate to it, doesn’t that mean the Romans in all those movie dramas should be sounding less hoity-toity, and more like Robert Newton snarling his ‘arrr’s in that exaggerated West Country accent? It certainly would add a very different flavor to the stories.
“I came, arrr, I sawr, I conquerrrrred, aye.”
It’s a marvel. Look at it. It’s polite, it doesn’t call me any names, it’s an appeal to pragmatism (of a sort), and it’s even got paragraphs. Gosh but it’s nice. Most importantly, he could make a valid argument that this is precisely the strategy the atheist movement is trying to follow!
You are wrong about atheism
You missed the point here. The point is not to worship people like Dawkins and Harris. And to put civility above principle. It’s more pragmatic. White unity is important because whether you admit it or not, it’s white people that have power in America. Congress is mainly filled with older white men.
So that means the most important people in the Atheist community should also be white people. If you want to fight for social justice, it’s white people that will make the difference, not black people or minorities. White atheists leaders will need to convince other white people to put pressure on white politicians. White politicians don’t listen to black people. They’re irrelevant.
So the point is that it makes sense that the atheist community is mainly white people. Bringing in minorities is pointless, as they lack power. So fighting against sjw’s and identity politics is prudent as white people are tired of sjw’s and identity politics. This is a way of bringing more white people to the movement. But remember white people are conservative by nature, so to gain social justice in the best environment will take time, even decades.
Therefore it is important that black people stay polite and don’t ruffle feathers. As right now they are causing too much fuss and slowing down progress. Bringing in more black people to atheism will be bad for blacks. They will only be loud and get in the way. They will alienate white people and white people in power because they call people racist and bigots.
This is why we don’t want Dawkins and Harris to be taken down. They speak to white people in a way black people cannot. They just have to wait and be patient.
Just one question.
Isn’t it true that most Americans are religious and conservative by nature, so atheists should also follow this tactic of not ruffling feathers and avoiding alienating people of faith while we wait patiently for them to give us something?
Otherwise, it’s adorable how he blithely unites atheism and white nationalism. Doesn’t even have to think about it. I wonder how common this kind of thinking is?
I think it’s a portrait of my mood right now.
I’ve been letting my hair grow. I’m currently at the shaggy unruly stage, way over the collar but not yet long enough to tie it back, so it’s kind of annoying. I could lie to you and say it’s because I like the look, or that I’m trying to recover the illusion of youthful virility (that ship sailed long ago), or it’s out of admiration for AC Grayling, or that I’m finally accepting the Biblical rumors that it can be a source of strength, but none of that is true. I think I’ve developed a mild tonsurephobia.
“Phobia” is too strong, though. It’s more of an aversion; I’m not afraid of barbers, I’m not worried about getting a haircut, a professional snipping away with scissors is not a concern. It’s more that every time I consider making an appointment, I veer away and decide it’s not necessary. Let’s not bother right now, OK?
My last haircut was last November.
I decided to try this other barber in town, a long-established fellow I just hadn’t gotten around to. I walked into his little shop and was brought up short: it looked like there was a corpse sitting in the barber chair. We’re talking Crypt Keeper here. Ancient, pale, wrinkled, cadaverous, bald. And then he opened rheumy eyes and in a phlegmy voice, told me “he’ll be right back”. It turns out one of the local senior citizen’s homes shuttles their residents to this barber, and the guy was like 95 years old, had almost no hair, but he still cared enough about his appearance to get a regular trim of what little he had. That is entirely admirable, and certainly there is nothing wrong with the elderly getting a haircut, and this gentleman was commendably active and alert and friendly (except when he’s napping while waiting for the barber to get back from an errand) despite my initial impression, but…holy intimations of mortality, Batman. I feel an entirely irrational dread now everytime I think about visiting the barber.
Then…it was last November, remember. I had another reason to develop an irrational association with events of that month. I also associate that orange abomination who came to power then with his pink cotton candy floss of a hairdo. His obsession with that fake pile of creepy fibers on his head repulses me. Hair care? You can get carried away.
And then there is the Nazi haircut, that high side fade that has become the recognizable tonsure of the “alt-right”. There’s the Trump sons’ greased up slicked back hair, the used car salesman/sleazy banker look. This is a bad year for hair styles. It’s as if barbers and hair salons are in a conspiracy to make all their clients look like ugly fascists.
So it has come to this, and here I am. If you expect to see me and encounter something like a dishevelled, graying werewolf, you’ve found the right person. Don’t be afraid, I don’t bite. At least, I don’t bite unless you’re wearing a MAGA hat.
It’ll probably be this way at least until the next election.
