Keith & R.J. talk about PC culture and tribalism in America.
Articles discussed:
Hidden Tribes: A Study of America’s Polarized Landscape by Stephen Hawkins, Daniel Yudkin, Miriam Juan-Torres, Tim Dixon
Americans Strongly Dislike PC Culture by Yascha Mounk
The Threat of Tribalism by Amy Chua
Voluntary Tribalism: Why Not? by Nicky Reid
Rand Paul Warns of ‘Assassination’ Peril‘ by Gregg Re
Topics include:
The bizarre Supermicro motherboard situation, scholars have fake papers published in academic journals, scam artistry in supposed scholarship, exchange of words between Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, risky selfies killed 269 people in 6 years, car crashes killed 37,133 people in the US in 2017, self-driving car accidents, dead pedestrians, guy says he’s “ready to kill” if Kavanaugh is not confirmed, town in Bosnia bans all politicians, US unemployment rate falls to a 49 year low at 3.7 percent, 8 year-old-girl pulls 1,500-year-old sword from a lake in Sweden, Florida man tried to buy 8-year-old girl from mother at Walmart for $200,000, People of Walmart.
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit
I haven’t always been an anarchist but I’ve always been a radical. After being raised in the pro-life movement I discovered the Communist Manifesto as a 14 year old lapsed malcontent. I didn’t understand every word of it but the inflammatory anti-clerical rhetoric lit a fire in me that never went out. After spending several years as a teenage anarchist, influenced in equal measure by Subcomandante Marcos and Johnny Rotten, I turned to state socialism, inspired by the bold anti-imperialist antics of Hugo Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution. It was also around this time that I became enamored by tales of the Bolsheviks, Che Guevara, and those dastardly Castro brothers. Marxist-Leninism and Democratic Centralism made sense to a twenty-something closeted agoraphobic. Like my life it felt preserved in formaldehyde. It felt safe.
But there’s nothing radical about safe and when I came out of the closet to take my life back from mental illness and gender tyranny, I was ready to dream dangerously again. The suspiciously early demise of Hugo Chavez followed shortly by the cataclysmic failure of his signature revolution was the final straw. Chavez did everything right but when he dropped dead the revolution dropped dead with him. For me, that was the last nail in the coffin for state socialism or state anything for that matter. I was drawn back to anarchism by the unexpected triumph of the Rojava Revolution in Northern Syria and the prison writings of the man who inspired it, another post-Marxist anti-statist named Abdullah Ocalan. But I’ve remained both conscious and unapologetic of my tangled radical roots and my objectives have always remained the same, the creation of a classless post-capitalist society.
Issue #1 July 2018. Now available. Order here.
By Juleigh Howard-Hobson
With an unaffected sense of balance and variance, Tribes is more than a mere issue of a magazine. It is a thoughtful compendium of many facets of National-Anarchism. None steal center stage. None erase or confute. Even while each article is quite firmly individual, this is a cohesive publication that both explores and presents ideas about and of National-Anarchy.
By R.J. Jacob
Last week on KTP, Keith and I discussed data from a new study by an independent group of researchers showing that 80 percent of Americans see themselves as against political correctness. Shouldn’t surprise you. Most people don’t even pretend to act “shocked” when someone acts racist or sexist in public. It’s the phony rich people on TV who act like we’re supposed to care about another douchebag and his poetic justice or the next racial/gender/sexual/animal equality BS or whatever it is that we’re supposed to care about this time.
I think one of the main reasons why so many Americans dislike PC is because most Americans aren’t that naive and already know that our news broadcasts are full of shit. In fact, the very notion of talking about what the “political people” on TV are talking about has become a hobby for the more educated and comfortable classes. Most people I know are worried about their bread and butter first and foremost followed by their families. The average person who gives way to the daily grind of “succeeding at life” spends most of his free time drinking, going to the bar, talking to girls, or working out at the gym; and worries about things like family, work, sex, love, depression, trying to save money, and Facebook.
I think “progressive activists” who push PC as a central political social religion have too much free time on their hands. PC anxiety is a luxury for sure. The only people I know who act PC in real life are either lawyers or tech experts with upper-middle-class lifestyles with progressive globalist views or graduate students whose current living situation is comfortable enough to allow them to take up PC as an outward feel-good social hobby while other middle-class progressives mimic the upper-middle-class elite by watching their Real Time with Bill Maher/Anderson Cooper/Colbert Report for rich bitches while the rest of the country doesn’t really give a shit.
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit
When I first learned that I had been published on Attack the System, a site notorious for being something of a safe space for national anarchists, I was both confused and intrigued. Intrigued because the national anarchists have a rather unsavory rep among their fellow anti-statists as being a kooky breed of quasi white supremacists. And confused because I happen to be an aggressively queer Marxian syndicalist. But also being a hard-luck, technologically challenged, writer who’s shit is often too radical even for the fringe, I decided I could hardly look a gift horse in the mouth. So I said fuck it, why not?
Then something very strange happened. The national anarchists turned out to be human beings and they seemed to legitimately dig my shit. So I put them to the test. I sent them all of my posts, not just the ones I thought wouldn’t offend their traditionalist sensibilities. I sent them candid posts about my own complex gender identity. I sent them posts referencing my past dalliances with communism and my continued admiration for the Black Panthers. I sent them posts in which I openly and gleefully derided the very notions of biological race and gender. I didn’t write these posts with the national anarchists in mind, it just happened to be the kind of shit I write about and I made zero attempt to shield my new audience from it. To my surprise, not only did every single one of those posts get published, they were a hit. Attack the System even went so far as to make me an editor, which was particularly kind considering that I can barely edit my own work, let alone anyone else’s.
Recently, AttacktheSystem.Com has generated a surge of traffic due to a range of projects we have been associated with. For those who are unfamiliar with ATS, I would suggest reading our Statement of Purpose, along the following three articles first in order to find out what we’re about.
Anarchism or Anarcho-Social Democracy?
Liberty and Populism: Building an Effective Resistance Movement for North America
Philosophical Anarchism and the Death of Empire
The first article was written circa 2000/2001 during the peak of the anti-globalization movement. The other two were written circa 2003/2004 following the beginning of the Iraq War. While some of the content may be slightly dated, these core ideas remain the foundation of our outlook.
Many of our newer readers are coming to us from the anarchist movement. Let’s just say we offer an alternative perspective to the “anarcho-MSNBC” line that is presently dominant in the North American anarchist milieu. Make up your own mind.
Some political commentators actually worth reading or listening to:
Jimmy Dore, Chris Hedges, Ben Norton, Caitlin Johnstone, Glenn Greenwald, Tucker Carlson, Brian Becker, Pat Buchanan, Rania Khalek, John Kiriakou, Abby Martin, Robbie Martin, Adam Proctor, Eugene Puryear, Aimee Terese.
From Marxists to paleoconservatives, they offer a range of alternative perspectives to the FOX-CNN-MSNBC axis of bullshit.
By far the best article on Russia-gate to date.
By Paul Grenier
Telos
Are the divisions that fragment the United States primarily driven by some deep flaw in its political life, or was the United States doing just fine, thank you very much—until Russia came along during the 2016 presidential race and started sowing division and dissension?
Framed that way, the question answers itself. Whatever some state-sanctioned Russian actors may have done to pester the American political process, it is obvious that America’s deep divisions exist for reasons having essentially nothing to do with Russia. They long precede the last election.
Even if Russia’s interventions into American electoral politics turn out to be more significant than they presently appear, this cannot change the more fundamental reality that our confrontational posture, including vis-à-vis Russia, is by no means something external to the United States’ Lockean liberal political concept.
That there is something intrinsically confrontational about that political concept, at least in the sphere of foreign affairs, has been suggested by, among others, Richard Sakwa. For Sakwa, the post-Soviet settlement with Russia was undermined almost from the very start by a monist worldview in both the United States and Brussels that would brook no alternative perspectives. The result has been a de facto monologue between “the West” and post-Soviet Russia rather than a genuine, transformational dialogue.
Similarly, John Mearsheimer calls out ruling elites in the United States for their “liberal intolerance” and their failure to take seriously the possibility that other sovereign states, including Russia, might have a different perspective regarding everything from culture to their own vital interests. This habit of nearly hermetic intellectual self-enclosure on the United States’ part helped precipitate the still-ongoing crisis in Ukraine.[2]
In Russia-gate, this same closed system of confrontation and self-enclosure appears once again in a new form, one rooted in domestic U.S. processes, and with Russia’s relation to the matter being almost wholly instrumental. If there is something novel about Russia-gate, broadly considered, it would appear to be the striking lowering of standards for reasoned argument and proof.
In short, Russia-gate should interest us not for what it can teach us about Russia (almost nothing) but for what it can teach us about ourselves.
Press TV. Listen here.
The US has long been seeking global domination but some countries won’t allow that to happen, says an American analyst.
Keith Preston, director of the attackthesyestem.org made the remarks while discussing Russia’s jab at Washington that its “dreams” of becoming the world’s sole superpower would never come true.
President Donald Trump said on Saturday that the US was pulling out of an arms control treaty with Russia, known as the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), which bans ground-based medium-range missiles.
That same day, Russia said there was an ulterior motive.
“The main motive is a dream of a unipolar world. Will it come true? No,” a Russian Foreign Ministry source anonymously told RIA Novosti state news agency.
Preston told Press TV on Sunday that Washington has long sought becoming the world’s sole superpower and failed.
“The trump administration’s efforts to withdraw from the particular treaty in question are simply a manifestation a water pattern, which is this idea of global American hegemony” Preston told Press TV Sunday.
When it came to this grand objective, there was no difference of opinion between America’s both major parties, the analyst noted.
In doing so, Washington prefers utilizing the United Nations and other international organizations “because they think this creates a great revere of legitimacy,” Preston added.
Neoconservatives also sought the same goal through promoting an “assertive nationalism” that required bypassing international organizations and exerting direct control over world affairs.
“There is virtually nothing new about this,” the analyst said, noting the past US administrations had also adopted this policy which dated back to the Cold War era.
But, according to Preston, that goal seems far-fetched as of now because there are countries that would not give in to America’s bullying, the analyst concluded.
A friend tells me today’s Women’s March on the Pentagon only attracted a few hundred people. Meanwhile, thousands will come out to protest Trump, Kavanaugh, the Alt-Right, or “hate.” The American Left makes me want to puke.
By Michael Howard
American Herald Tribune
At this point we can only assume that the Turkish version of events regarding the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi is true. As always, I’m open to being proved wrong, and it’s certainly incumbent upon Ankara to release the audio evidence of which they claim to be in possession (though this, should it come out, will naturally be dismissed by the Saudis as fabricated or doctored), but the list of plausible alternative scenarios currently stands at zero. Khashoggi went into the Saudi consulate and was never seen again. If he had merely been kidnapped and jailed, we’d have heard from him by now. He would have appeared on Saudi state television and delivered some kind of scripted statement like Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri did last November. The House of Saud appears to prefer this time of year, autumn, for abductions and assassinations.
This research more or less confirms the findings of the “Hidden Tribes” researchers with some slight variations.
By Carl M. Cannon
Real Clear Politics
“Every difference of opinion,” Thomas Jefferson warned in his first inaugural address, “is not a difference of principle.” Speaking to his countrymen after an election every bit as bitter as the one that put Donald J. Trump in the White House, Jefferson was trying to soothe the reigning animosity between the nation’s two dominant political parties. “We are all Republicans,” he added. “We are all Federalists.”
Not anymore. In 21st century America, any notion that election results end the argument, however temporarily, is an anachronism. So, too, is the conceit that a nation this large and diverse is divided neatly along “50-50” lines, with half of America’s 253 million adults supporting Democrats, and the other half backing Republicans.
Today, slightly more than one-fourth of registered voters in the United States have political views and social attitudes placing them in the camp of the “Resistance” — to President Trump and the Trump-era Republican Party.
This is one of the five American “tribes” identified in a sweeping new public opinion survey conducted by RealClear Opinion Research, a new service offered by RealClearPolitics. The survey of 2,463 registered voters, conducted Sept. 18-28, was overseen by John Della Volpe, co-founder of SocialSphere Inc., a public opinion and analytics firm based in Cambridge, Mass.
The research that is cited in this article, along with the “Hidden Tribes” report that came out recently, seems to confirm what I have long suspected, i.e. that “political correctness” is the ideology of the mostly white, educated, affluent, left-wing of the upper middle class. This is probably one of the more interesting parts of this article:
“In fact, white liberals are well to the left of the black electorate on some racial issues.
Take the issue of discrimination as a factor holding back African-American advancement. White liberals are to the left of black Democrats, placing a much stronger emphasis than African-Americans on the role of discrimination and much less emphasis on the importance of individual effort.
Among white liberals, according to Pew survey data collected in 2017, 79.2 percent agreed that “racial discrimination is the main reason why many black people can’t get ahead these days.” 18.8 percent agreed that “blacks who can’t get ahead in this country are mostly responsible for their own condition,” a 60.4 point difference, according to a detailed analysis of the Pew data provided the Times by Zach Goldberg, a doctoral candidate in political science at Georgia State University.
Among blacks, 59.9 percent identified discrimination as the main deterrent to upward mobility for African-Americans, and 32.0 percent said blacks were responsible for their condition — in other words, blacks are more conservative than white liberals on this issue.?”
By Thomas B. Edsall
New York Times
It seems that the “exhausted majority” would be the natural constituency for ATS…if only the “exhausted majority” had any kind of critique of the state and/or capitalism (and, yes, I’m fine the Karl Hess version of capitalism).
By Michael Sean Winters
National Catholic Reporter
A column by David Brooks this week pointed to an interesting new survey undertaken by the group More in Common. Titled “Hidden Tribes,” the report, as Brooks rightly notes, “understands that American politics is no longer about what health care plan you support. It’s about identity, psychology, moral foundations and the dynamics of tribal resentment.”
Brooks’ central conclusion is correct: He thinks the core problem with American politics is that it is dominated by the two sets of rich white people who inhabit the ideological extremes, groups the report dubs “Progressive Activists” and “Devoted Conservatives.” Unfortunately for those of us on the left, the first group is only 8 percent of the population and while the second group is but 6 percent, the next closest group, “Traditional Conservatives” identifies 19 percent of the nation’s population and tends to side with the “Devoted Conservatives” on almost all issues. These are the “Wings” that set the tone and the parameters of public debate.
Attacking the state means attacking its economic tentacles.
This week, Gary Chartier joins us to discuss the libertarian corporation problem. Listen here.
A pretty basic but good critique of “vulgar libertarianism.” No, the corporate class is not our friend.
Kevin Carson joins us to discuss the depths of capitalism and if the possibility for a post-capitalism world exists. Listen here.
So says Goofy Gillis, Chairman of the Central Committee of the Peoples’ Revolutionary Antifascist Transhumanist Party (Market-Anarchist).
Me vs. Bibi.
Have you seen the reactions Israeli prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has received from social media users for trying to con the United Nations?
I bash John Bolton on Iranian television.
US National Security Adviser, John Bolton has tough words for China: adjust your behavior in trade, international, military and political arenas or else! Bolton says President Donald Trump has pledged to ramp up his administration’s pressure on China. He says the president believes China is the major issue of the century and that Beijing has long taken advantage of the international order without objections from the US. Washington and Beijing are currently engaged in a bitter trade war. The Trump administration has also accused China of trying to undermine the president ahead of next month’s congressional elections, something Beijing has denied. The US also accuses China of reckless military actions in the South China Sea.
The second part of The Brilliant’s discussion of yours truly. Listen here.
The host’s comments:
“I have been wanting to talk about the line between tribalism and nationalism for years but it is a challenge. All sides take the conversation very seriously ON THE INTERNET whereas my experience IRL isn’t quite the same. I’ve found people willing to joke and tease each other about the categories that do and don’t exist and our participation in them. I’ve found the hyperbole of tough guys, banning, gatekeeping, and racist bullshit to be quite rare in the corporal world. Not as much in the ether.
Right-anarchist Keith Preston sent me a copy of a very interesting (and disturbing) magazine called Tribes that points straight at the issue calling itself a “National Anarchist magazine.” I did a conversation with KP where I tried to tease out the issue of how you can discuss nation in any meaningful way without discussing race (or the nation state tbh) and here is what he had to say about it.
I simply described myself as a “racial atheist,” meaning I have no racial beliefs. And then he was like “But these folks do….” and I simply said that there are many people who do not have racial/ethnic beliefs in the N-A milieu, and those who do are very diverse in terms of their perspective on those issues, and that people of color were among the N-A milieu as well.
To which I’d respond, why call yourself a national anarchist at all? How is a nation defined (especially if you use it in the sense that the Tribes editorial does as in nation = tribes)? I’d then laugh at the use of the term atheist in the same breath as race. You can claim all humans are of the same biological race (and I’d agree) but to say that “Race does not exist” is laughably stupid.
But let’s not get distracted. If the post-modern definition of a nation, or a tribe, is possible, which I’m not sure it is, the place where it was articulated best was in the 80’s by the (not)anarchist, (not)utopian book bolo’bolo. Filled with a world where alco-bolos and les-bolos live together in perfect harmony. Let’s talk about this body of ideas in a context we share… which obviously doesn’t involve KP.
In this two episode block we discuss our discomfort with KP’s approach (the first two episodes focus on the nationalism question in the context of bolo’bolo, the third on the context of bolo’bolo itself) and ask how to discuss nationalism at all in a modern (ie dramaful) context.”
Listen to the podcast from The Brilliant here.
The host’s comments:
“I have been wanting to talk about the line between tribalism and nationalism for years but it is a challenge. All sides take the conversation very seriously ON THE INTERNET whereas my experience IRL isn’t quite the same. I’ve found people willing to joke and tease each other about the categories that do and don’t exist and our participation in them. I’ve found the hyperbole of tough guys, banning, gatekeeping, and racist bullshit to be quite rare in the corporal world. Not as much in the ether.
Right-anarchist Keith Preston sent me a copy of a very interesting (and disturbing) magazine called Tribes that points straight at the issue calling itself a “National Anarchist magazine.” I did a conversation with KP where I tried to tease out the issue of how you can discuss nation in any meaningful way without discussing race (or the nation state tbh) and here is what he had to say about it.
I simply described myself as a “racial atheist,” meaning I have no racial beliefs. And then he was like “But these folks do….” and I simply said that there are many people who do not have racial/ethnic beliefs in the N-A milieu, and those who do are very diverse in terms of their perspective on those issues, and that people of color were among the N-A milieu as well.
To which I’d respond, why call yourself a national anarchist at all? How is a nation defined (especially if you use it in the sense that the Tribes editorial does as in nation = tribes)? I’d then laugh at the use of the term atheist in the same breath as race. You can claim all humans are of the same biological race (and I’d agree) but to say that “Race does not exist” is laughably stupid.
But let’s not get distracted. If the post-modern definition of a nation, or a tribe, is possible, which I’m not sure it is, the place where it was articulated best was in the 80’s by the (not)anarchist, (not)utopian book bolo’bolo. Filled with a world where alco-bolos and les-bolos live together in perfect harmony. Let’s talk about this body of ideas in a context we share… which obviously doesn’t involve KP.
In this two episode block we discuss our discomfort with KP’s approach (the first two episodes focus on the nationalism question in the context of bolo’bolo, the third on the context of bolo’bolo itself) and ask how to discuss nationalism at all in a modern (ie dramaful) context.”
In episode 11 of Unraveling Political Theory, Tim and Keith are joined by founder and editor of The Last American Vagabond, Ryan Cristian, to discuss solutions; how they would each rebuild the government if given the chance, or at least how they image it would operate in a truly free society. To understand the world of politics and change it for the better, it’s paramount that people begin to study political theory and the ways in which it has manifest throughout history up into the present day. By bringing light to the origins of political and philosophical thought, the present day becomes all the more explainable because one is now able to see the logical progression of such manifestations.
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit
Exile in Happy Valley
This blog is a lot of things to me. It’s art. It’s therapy. It’s a bullhorn from which I can shout my radical diktats to a small horde of loyal followers whom I lovingly refer to as my dearest motherfuckers. Hopefully it’s a launching pad for a future revolution that will liberate poor people once and for all from the shackles of big government and big business (or do I repeat myself.) But when it all comes down to it, lets face it, I’m here to bitch. That’s why once a year I drop all artistic and political pretenses and simply make a list of all the people who piss me off the most. I call it my shitlist and 2018 has provided me with no shortage of shit. Now if I put everyone that chaps my ass on this list it would be longer than fucking Gravity’s Rainbow, so I’ll just pick a handful in no specific order to roast like pigs on a spit. So here it is, dearest motherfuckers, My Shitlist 2018.
John McCain– After a lifetime as America’s most celebrated war monger, the one thing that John could do for the world, the only act of mercy that that rapacious murder junkie should have been capable of performing is to finally do us all a big goddamn favor and just fucking die already. But no, John McCain even has to die like a fucking dick. Over a week, a goddamn week of funerals and parades and tributes and memorials and animal sacrifices and imperial orgies, all of them carefully planned by that ego-drunken light bulb factory bomber, to celebrate his foul legacy of homicide advocacy like a goddamn pharaoh. By day five of this ordeal, I was screaming at the TV set “Just give me a goddamn shovel! I’ll bury the cunt myself!!” All I have left to say to the first dead man to make this list is bon voyage you putrid butcher of civilians. Tell Satan that Armageddon’s going great.
Do the ideas of thinkers like James Corbett represent the way forward for an anarchist-led/informed revolutionary center that identifies the global power elite as the true enemy?
