Donald Trump and the Return of Liberalism 14

Let me give you a definition of the word ‘liberal.’…Franklin D. Roosevelt once said…It is a wonderful definition, and I agree with him. ‘A liberal is a man who wants to build bridges over the chasms that separate humanity from a better life.’ – Richard Nixon

Richard Nixon was our last liberal president. – Noam Chomsky

“Imagine a president who expands affirmative action, actively promotes school desegregation, enacts important new laws in social welfare, environmental protection, occupational health and safety, and consumer protection, supports comprehensive health insurance and a system of guaranteed income for all citizens, and whose Justice Department opposes the RICO Act on the grounds that it gives the government powers that are much too broad and sweeping for prosecuting criminals. In 2011, such a president would be considered far to left of Barack Obama and far to the left of almost everyone in Congress. Forty years ago, such a president was called Richard Nixon.”-Matthew Lyons (“Right-Wing Movements 101“)

Image result for donald trump liberal

Now that Donald Trump has won an upset electoral victory and will be assuming the office of the presidency in a couple of months, I am going to offer the unconventional and, certainly to many people, counter-intuitive opinion that it was Donald Trump rather than Hillary Clinton that was the most left-wing of the two major party candidates.

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King Midas in the Post-Modern Age: Sales of Indulgences in Academia 4

By Aleksey Bashtavenko

Academic Composition

“Do we not hear the noise of the grave-diggers who are burying God? Do we not smell the divine putrefaction? —for even Gods putrefy! God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him! How shall we console ourselves, the most murderous of all murderers?” Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

 

Image result for sale of indulgences

The Latin etymology of the word “religion” emphasizes the act of bringing the community together. In almost all European languages, the word that translates to English as “religion” derived from Latin ligare which meant to bind . As early as 1200 B.C, this word commonly described a sacred lifestyle, commending obedience to divine authority . Above all, religiosity centered on a paternalistic covenant between mankind and God where the former prided themselves on their capacity for total surrender to the higher power. Such circumstances immediately prompted the question of how such a supernatural force can be identified, and more importantly, who can guide mankind to its relationship with God. Although prophets such as Abraham or Moses were revered for having reported to encounter God directly, the mortal sinners were expected to interact with God through a vicar.

In the Catholic tradition, the pope was deemed to be God’s direct representative and in the Eastern Orthodoxy, the tsar served a similar purpose. Under these circumstances, it was presumed that to defy the patriarch of the church was to rebel against the Almighty Himself.

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Thinkers Against Modernity: A New Book from Keith Preston 4

Available from Black House Publishing.

The prevailing sentiment of contemporary intellectuals is that the human condition has never been better. History is regarded as lengthy episode of oppression that human beings have gradually but steadily fought to overcome with considerable success. Evidence of these successes that are commonly offered include increased material consumption, better health and longer life expectancy, technological development and, above all, the ongoing triumph of “democracy” and “human rights.”

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My Take on the “Muslim Travel Ban” Reply

by • Uncategorized

A number of people have for my views on the so-called “Muslim travel ban” imposed by the Trump administration. Here goes:

Statistically, the evidence shows that right-wing terrorists have been slightly more violent in the years since 9-11 than Islamists, at least in the US obviously. But the meaning I take from this data is that the neocons and other hawks are blowing the Islamic terrorism threat way out of proportion, while liberals and the Left blow the right-wing terrorism threat out of proportion. Both groups need these false narratives to be true for ideological reasons.

The neocons and other hawks want a permanent war against Islam and the Left wants a permanent war against whitey, so there always has to be some looming threat on the horizon. The real violence is the US comes mostly from inner city gangs that murder each other over drug dealing disputes, from fights and domestic violence that spirals out of control, and from the mentally ill or lone nuts like Adam Lanza, Dylan Roof, or Omar Mateen.

September 11, 2001 was a singular but spectacular incident that has predictably kept plenty of people up in arms ever since. The OKC bombing in ’95, which killed about 150, had the same impact on the Left. I remember how after OKC the Left was saying many more such acts were just around the corner. But over 20 years later there’s been no such thing. The same thing happened with 9-11. I remember people talking about how there was going to be nuclear destruction of US cities and terrorism with bioweapons and all kinds of stuff. But 15 years later there’s only been a handful of incidents like Orlando, San Bernardino, and Ft. Hood that were perpetrated by lone nuts or small groups of friends acting as freelancers.

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More Than 200 Inauguration Day Protesters Face Felony Rioting Charges Reply

by • Uncategorized

Look for Jeff Sessions’ Department of Justice to come down hard on these folks. But at least they will have finally achieved their dream of living in a multi-cultural society where same-sex relationships are the norm.

By Alex Pfeiffer

The Daily Caller

Thanks to Washington, D.C.’s felony rioting statute, 230 anti-Trump protesters will face up to 10 years in jail for rioting.

Activists race after being hit by a stun grenade while protesting against Trump on the sidelines of the inauguration. REUTERS/Adrees Latif

Police stand near a limousine which was set ablaze during a protest against U.S. President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the inauguration in Washington, D.C., U.S., on January 20, 2017. REUTERS/Adrees Latif

 

Robert Stark interviews The Adventure Kid Reply

by • Left and Right, Uncategorized • Tags: ,

Stark Truth. Listen here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Robert Stark and Co-host Pilleater talk to rhe Adventure Kid. His Moniker is based on the erotic manga series Adventure Kid. The Adventure Kid describes himself as a Locofoco, Jeffersonian, Red Tory, Christian anarchist. and Socially Conservative Socialist

Topics:

Robert and Pilleater discuss the films The Amazing Panda Adventure, and The Crush with Alicia Silverstone
Pilleater’s youtube interview with The Adventure Kid
The Adventure Kid’s interest in Anime, and the avant garde anime of the 70’s and 80’s vs. the “disneyfied” anime of today
The Anime Angel Cop, which has fascist themes
Batman: The Animated Series as the Adventure Kid’s ideal utopian society, and the Art Deco, Film Noire, aesthetic
Art, Architecture, Peter Moruzzi’s book Classic Dining: Discovering America’s Finest Mid-Century Restaurants
Old School R & B, Bobby Brown’s Korean love interest in New Edition’s If It Isn’t Love, and “Death and the Maiden” (The Verlaines song)
Alt porn, Porn stars Nina Hartley, Mia Khalifa, Nadia Ali, Bailey Li, Priya Anjali Rai, and Robert’s favorite erotic model Emily Bloom
Avant Garde filmmakers Gaspar Noé, Harmony Korine, Alejandro Jodorowsky, and John Waters
Kerry Bolton’s Artists of the Right, Wyndham Lewis, and Italian Futurism
The origins of the Alt-Right in Avant Garde Culture
How The Adventure Kid’s views have evolved since starting out as an SJW Obama supporter
The Alt-Right, Alt-Left, Anarchism, and why the Adventure Kid does not want to be pinned down to one movement, and considers himself a man of multiple movements
The Adventure Kid’s interest in Counter-Currents and Keith Preston’s Attack the System
Bill Kauffman, the America First movement, and the early 20th Century Populist Movement including Robert M. La Follette
The Adventure Kid’s Black Identity, assimilationist vs. Black Nationalist, Afro-Asianism, and how that relates to his interest in the Alt-Right
Social Conservatism and Christianity
The Adventure Kid’s Left leaning views on the Environment, Drug Legalization, Banking, and Healthcare
Donald Trump, and why the Adventure Kid supported him primarily because of trade and immigration, and where he is disappointed with Trump
Economic automation, Robots as a solution to mass immigration, and the need for a basic income

Why Anarchists and Libertarians are just a Microcosm of the System Reply

by • Anarchism/Anti-State, Left and Right, Uncategorized

Some interesting thoughts from an anarchist on Facebook.

“My fear was that jokes about helicopter rides would be escalated into calls for outright genocide, which is actually starting to happen.

Some “anarchists” or “alt-right” have begun the dehumanization process of a group of people by generalizing them all as “degenerates.”

If anyone is familiar with history, this is the same thing Hitler started doing to the Jews, except he based his dehumanization tactics on an ethnic\religious group rather than a political group.

This mentality shakes me to the core, because I have maintained the idea that anarchists could keep their perspective and dignity—and that their beliefs were the opposite of murder and mayhem. But it seems like their dignity and decency has been perturbed by recent and apparent culture wars.

With that said, this is not to justify people on the economic left who choose to vandalize or destroy property. It is not to condone this childish, aggressive behavior. Indeed, I rail against this aggression and weakness of philosophy as well. However, I honestly had higher expectations of people who promote modern, libertarian anarchism. I thought they knew the dangers of dehumanizing others and trumpeting violence against economic groups as the answer. I thought they could move beyond this urgency to shed blood.

It turns out they were weak minded and desirous of warfare. Turns out they were not really freedom lovers, but hate mongers hellbent on tasting the blood of their enemies.

So I will ask any “anarchist” who have these Freudian murder fantasies a few questions: what can you do for peace instead? How can you deescalate an increasingly volatile situation without stoking the fire? How can you reign in your growing desire to hurt others? How can you better relate to others even if they are unhinged and ready for violence? How can this be resolved?

My hope is that these people talking loosely and non-jokingly about extermination can come to terms with their impulses, and we can find better ways to solve the current cultural crises.

I don’t want to see this escalate anymore.”

And my response:

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The Heat Comes Down on the Antifa? Reply

by • Uncategorized

Apparently, the heat has started coming down on antifa.

“We want to reiterate: Philadelphia Police tried to stop this event.

They were trying to shut down a free, open-to-the-public speaking engagement about antifascism with author and political scholar Matthew Lyons. Lyons went on anyway and spoke to a standing room only crowd regarding his most recent work, “Ctrl-Alt-Delete: Antifascist Report on the Alternative Right.” So many people turned up for the talk we ran out of room, and those who could fit inside got to learn about the rising tide of alt-right ideology and fascist activity. We hope that the cops watching and filming us through the windows enjoyed the talk as well; they obviously have an intense interest in fascism.

This behavior should sound the alarm. The state is poised to crack down on communities simply based on political ideology. Radical spaces, groups and associations are being targeted. Philly Antifa and antifascists everywhere are being threatened. We will not accept a world in which it is possible to silence a public talk at a bookstore. We must work together now to resist this blatant repression.”

Oh, the irony.

2nd American Civil War Reply

by • Left and Right • Tags: ,

By Colt

Survivalist Boards

For those of you who don’t know me, I have extensive history and connections in leftist activism from previous movements, but I’m essentially a pariah now because I split with them when the the SJWs seized power from the older relatively moderate activists and went full authoritarianism. None the less.. I’m still in all those social circles and I see the discussions going on behind the scenes.

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Trump’s Border Patrol Defies Judge, U.S. Senator at Dulles Airport as His First Constitutional Crisis Unfolds Reply

by • Left and Right, Strategy, Uncategorized

Is the state fracturing within itself? I always thought the end of the empire might come when some total nutcase got elected president and essentially ran the system into the ground. Meanwhile, C4SS director and ATS uber-critic Goofy Gillis is going totally off his meds over Trump (although I actually agree with much of what he is proposing).

By Betsy Woodruff

The Daily Beast

Late Saturday night, in the jam-packed baggage terminal for international arrivals at Washington Dulles International Airport, dozens of lawyers and hundreds of protesters watched as the first major Constitutional crisis of the Trump presidency played out. 

The day before, Trump signed an executive order barring people from seven majority-Muslim countries from entering the United States. But many people traveling to the U.S. from those countries—including legal permanent residents of the U.S.—were already in the air and couldn’t turn around. As a result, airports across the country turned into lawfare zones, with cadres of volunteer lawyers squaring off against bureaucrats in the Customs and Border Protection agency. Late-night rulings from federal judges made a legally unprecedented situation even more dramatic, with all three branches of the federal government—congressional, executive, and judicial—warring with each other. At stake: the lives and safety of people trying to legally enter the U.S.

At about 7:30 p.m., a boisterous crowd of several hundred pro-refugee protesters had circled around the “International Arrivals” baggage claim at Dulles—flanked by police who cleared a passageway so people getting off planes could get through. Protesters waved signs saying refugees were welcome (some signs read “Welcome” in Arabic), denouncing President Trump, and calling for Christians to show Christlike love to people fleeing terrorism. They carried “Welcome Home” balloons and they sang songs. 

And there were chants, including “Let them see their lawyers now!” 

There were dozens of lawyers, brought together by the International Refugee Assistance Project. A handful actually practiced immigration law, and dozens more with non-immigration backgrounds—bankruptcy, litigation, you name it—showed up to try to help. 

Early in the evening, a huge piece of news broke: Two federal judges, Ann Donnelly of the Eastern District of New York and Leonie Brinkema of the Eastern District of Virginia, had made rulings that would stall the implementation of Trump’s anti-refugee executive order. 

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Responding to the Fascist Creep 2

by • Activism, Left and Right, Strategy, Uncategorized

An interesting interview with an “anti-fascist” that references the concept of pan-secessionism. Here’s the relevant excerpt:

Without understanding the way that those ambiguous ideas are applied in different milieus, like with national anarchism and autonomous nationalism and those sorts of things, radicals can fall for easy platitudes. Pan-secessionism is another great example. When radicals start talking about the need for separatism without a clear, cosmopolitan follow-up strategy, they leave ourselves wide open to their influence and the insinuation of fascism and the ability for fascist ideas and movements to gain ground in the radical milieu and also in the broader subcultures and in mainstream cultures. When they start talking about ethnic separatism—particularly white separatism, whether de jure or de facto—they’ve basically given up the field.

I think that people in the radical milieu are very disconnected from the impact and effect that they have and their ideas actually have on the mainstream. People often look to radicals to get a sense of direction, particularly vis-a-vis subcultures, so if fascists are given a pass to influence subcultures then the mainstream is far more likely to accept them piecemeal on the basis of accepted ideas and attitudes which are very deleterious. For example, you’ve probably heard of people who you might have thought of as a left wing or a radical saying things like “I don’t believe in equality” or “equality is nonsense” or “I don’t believe in freedom,” or that kind of thing. These kinds of statements seem geared to impress people or shock them or both, but does all that really work for us?

While pan-secessionism is a tactical concept, not an ideology, and has nothing to do with either fascism or anarchism or even national-anarchism per se, it is interesting to observe how these “anti-fascism” hysterics actually help to build the wider ARV-ATS program, largely by serving as the de facto promotional division for our tendency. We’re easily ten times more “famous” because of these people than we would be without them and, as they say in the entertainment business, “there ain’t no such thing as bad publicity.” These guys are the satanic rock protestors of the present era.

These folks are mostly oriented towards the jihad against “straight white cisgendered Christian male” hegemony, or whatever the latest rendition of this perspective includes while ATS is oriented towards the actual overthrow of states, ruling classes, and empires. However, I am for the building and expansion of all forms of anarchism, and oppositional subcultures generally, including the ones that are non-ATS affiliated and which may even be vehemently anti-ATS. To the degree that these guys are contributing to the delegitimization and fracturing of the system generally, they are contributing to our cause.

An “Open Source Insurgency” Against Trump? Reply

by • Activism, Left and Right, Strategy, Uncategorized

I can’t say I have any problem with any of this either. Much of this article is predictable anti-Trump hysteria. Last night, I asked a long time friend of mine, a lifelong Communist from France in his 60s, what he makes of the US Left’s “Trump is a fascist” hysteria. His response was, “They don’t know what their talking about.” Pretty much. But notion of “Trump as a fascist” may be a useful Sorelian myth or Platonic “noble lie” if it motivates the liberal-Left coalition to go into full oppositional mode on the liberal end and create chaos in the streets on the far left end. Fracture, fracture, fracture…

By Kevin Carson

Center for a Stateless Society

In movements like the struggle for economic justice or against the authoritarian state (Occupy, Black Lives Matter, etc.), we usually see arguments for “diversity of tactics” made by radicals against liberal criticism of black block tactics like smashing windows and things of that sort. There’s still a lot of that kind of criticism, obviously — for example liberal reactions to the smashing of Bank of America windows, torching of limosines and whaling the almighty tar out of neo-Nazi celebrity Richard Spencer. But lately, since Trump’s election, I think there’s been at least as much criticism — much of it quite contemptuous — from Leftists dismissing liberal tactics like peaceful marches, factual corrections of Trump’s lies, denials of legitimacy, etc., as ineffectual (“This is not how you beat fascism”). And I think appeals to diversity of tactics apply just as much to the latter case as to the former.

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Looking for the Left Wing in Rural, Predominantly White Areas Reply

by • Activism, Left and Right, Uncategorized

I can’t say I have any particular problem with this. While there’s nothing particularly radical or revolutionary about what is being described in this article (it’s just standard left-liberal, social-democratic reformism with predictably cliched stances on every issue), I’m all for the blue tribe developing a stronger presence in the red zones, just as I am for the development of a stronger red tribe presence in the blue zones, not too mention an insurgency by the urban lumenproletariat against the localized manifestations of the system. Fracture, fracture, fracture…

By Spencer Sunshine

Color Lines

Everyone is familiar with the election map that shows the two Americas: a vast swath of red stretching across the country with a few blue patches clinging mostly to the coasts. This unbroken red block has been the cornerstone of what’s looking like a catastrophic political future for people of color, LGBTQ folks, immigrants, health care, reproductive rights, civil liberties, Social Security, the environment, and the list goes on.

So its no surprise that debate is raging among progressives about the White working class people who voted for Trump. Should these voters be uniformly dismissed as racist deplorables or should progressives try to appeal to them with populism?

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Political Correctness is All about Slave Morality 1

by • Left and Right, Political Correctness/Totalitarian Humanism, Religion and Philosophy • Tags: ,

I can’t believe this article actually appeared on the Psychology Today website.

By Gregg Henriques

Psychology Today

This past academic year we have seen a number of examples of political correctness “gone mad” on college campuses. We have seen many conservative speakers having to cancel their talks, we have seen Ivy League students becoming hysterical about some benign comments about Halloween costumes, and we have seen Emory students freaking out and protesting to the university president because someone scrawled Trump 2016 in chalk on the campus grounds.

As a psychologist who has a long standing record of concern about patriarchy, racism and social justice issues, I certainly am not someone who dismisses “political correctness” in its entirety. We should indeed be attentive to issues of power and privilege approach these issues with reflection. However, over the past decade, I have found myself increasingly concerned with political correctness evolving into an oppressive righteousness that are in many ways deeply misguided and incomplete and there is definitely a need to push back against it when it spills over into absurdity.

WikiCommons

Frederick Nietzsche

Source: WikiCommons

I recently (re)discovered a wonderful frame that allowed me to crisply state what is wrong with modern academic leftist “political correctness” from none other than the eminent philosopher Fredrick Nietzsche. I was reintroduced to these ideas in the context of a course I was taking on Existentialism. After detailed study of many cultures, historical contexts, and various philosophies, Nietzsche articulated the view that there are two broad moral views or moral frames of mind, that of master morality and of slave morality. Slave morality is concerned with issues of justice, fairness and protection of the weak. It is called slave morality because its emphasis and focus is on those who are powerless, controlled or in positions of minority. From my unified perspective, especially that of the Influence Matrix (see below), slave morality can really be thought of as “horizontal”, red line, or affiliative-love morality. The emphasis is on placed on equality, sensitivity and connection.

Gregg Henriques

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Donald Trump, Stephen Bannon and the Coming Crisis in American National Life Reply

by • Uncategorized • Tags: , , ,

An interesting discussion of Strauss and Howe’s “fourth turning” theory as it applies to Trumpism.

I seem to be one of the few people associated with the alt-right (at least peripherally) that’s not particularly enthusiastic about Trump, though I generally had a more favorable view of him than Hillary. The more I watch Trump and the people around him, the more I lean towards the view that he represents a ruling class faction that recognizes that the neocons have led the US towards foreign policy ruin, and that neoliberal economics are seriously destabilizing the US domestically. So they want to try to reverse some of that so that the plutocracy can actually have a functional society to rule over in the future. The liberal-left opposition coalition is opposed to this for ideological reasons, and the Deep State is opposed because their bread and butter might be threatened.

Right now, it appears there is a war going on within the state between the Deep State and the Trumpian nationalists. The Republican Party has become largely Trumpized with the neocons and moderate Republicans either having been pushed to the margins, or having fallen in line behind Trump. The best possible outcome that has any probability of happening would be one where the system continues to fracture and fragment, and where the Deep State, Trumpians, Republicans, Democrats, Alt-Rights, and SJWs all function as counterbalances to one another, where no one is able to gain a monopoly on power.

By David Kaiser

Time

During the 1990s, two amateur historians, Neil Howe and the late William Strauss, developed a new theory of American history in two books, Generations: the History of America’s Future (1991), and The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy (1997). They identified an 80-year cycle in American history, punctuated by great crises that destroyed an old order and created a new one.

Though their theory is not widely taught in colleges or discussed in the media, Strauss and Howe may well play a major role in Donald Trump’s administration. Stephen Bannon, the former head of Breitbart News who has been appointed Trump’s chief strategist in the White House, is very familiar with Strauss and Howe’s theory of crisis, and has been thinking about how to use it to achieve particular goals for quite a while. I know this because Bannon interviewed both Neil Howe and myself in 2009 while he was making a documentary film about the ongoing financial crisis. The film, called Generation Zero, discussed those ideas in some detail.

Bannon focused on the key aspect of their theory, the idea that every 80 years American history has been marked by a crisis, or “fourth turning,” that destroyed an old order and created a new one: The great crises identified by Strauss and Howe included the era of the American Revolution and the Constitution (1774-1794); the Civil War and its immediate aftermath (1860-68); and the Depression and the Second World War (1929-45). Doing the math, they predicted another great crisis sometime in the first 15 years of the 21st century.

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