Monthly Archives: February 2017

Robert Stark interviews Constantin von Hoffmeister Reply

by • Left and Right • Tags:

The Stark Truth

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Robert Stark, co-host Pilleater, and Rabbit talk to Constantin von Hoffmeister. He is an advocate of National Futurism and blogs at Oge Noct

Topics:

Constantin’s National Futurist Manifesto
How Futusim captures the Faustian Promethean nature of Western Man
Taking a materialistic over spiritual outlook toward identity
The Italian Futurist who wanted to re-create the glory of Rome in a futurist setting
The Dada movement, and Constantin’s flirtation with the idea of National Dadaism
The concept of Eurosiberia and Imperium Europa
National Bolshevism, Eurasianism, and Aleksandr Dugin
The European Migrant Crisis, and why Constantin is pessimistic about his home country Germany’s future
Why Constantin views Islamization as Europe’s primary threat, but America as a rival
How the election of Trump has improved Constantin’s views about America
Constantin’s support for Israel and Secular Arab Nationalism as a bulwark against Radical Islam
The Cultural effects of Communism on East Germany and Eastern Europe
The Faustian Imperial Nature of Brutalist Architecture
Le Corbusier’s Plan To Overhaul Paris
Using Le Corbusier’s ideas to redevelop decaying suburbs into garden cities
The glitzy Neo-Brutalist Architecture of John C. Portman Jr, and his inspiration from the Champs-Élysées
London’s Architecture, Ernő Goldfinger’s Brutalist towers, Centre Point and the BT Tower
The Bauhaus White City in Tel Aviv, Israel
Art Nouveau, Art Deco, and Mid-century modern
The Palace of the Soviets proposal in Moscow
The Russian Futurist movement
1970s Soviet futurism
New Arbat and Cyberpunk in Moscow
Constantin’s experience in India, and Le Corbusier’s Chandigarh, India
Constantin’s Poetry

Unraveling Political Theory: What is Neoconservatism? Reply

by • Left and Right • Tags:

Tim Bryant and I discuss the neocons.

In episode 3, Keith and Tim examine what is commonly referred to as neoconservatism, which is an ideology that has come to dominate the politics of the Republican Party for the last couple decades, particularly during the George W. Bush presidency. Unbeknownst to many conservatives is the historical foundation upon which neoconservatism was built, specifically how its roots can be traced back to communism and in particular Trotskyism. What makes this so interesting is that many conservatives see themselves as being rabidly outspoken against communism, yet the truth is that many of the leaders they’re voting into power to represent theRepublican Party are in fact ideologues with communist roots.

The Last Vagabond

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.

With this urge to better understand the root of many of the common political ideologies present in the world, The Last American Vagabond has decided to team up with Keith Preston in a new podcast series in which the who, what, where, when and how of different political theories will be explored.

As mentioned in the previous episode, neoliberalism is the economic engine driving globalism. Similarly, neoconservatism is the muscle enforcing globalism around the world. Without brute force to backup these globalists’ policies, many nations would resist them and not conform to the western consensus. The neocons flex their muscles most notably by interventionist wars, such as in Iraq and Afghanistan while George W. Bush was president. These imperialist endeavors are often justified by claiming that they are spreading “freedom/democracy,” defending their ally Israel, fighting a holy war against Islam, and most notably, that America is exceptional and it’s our duty to take care of the entire world. At their core, the neocons are interested world domination with America as the undisputed leader.

Neoconservatism

More…

Immigrants Want You to See These Chilling Photos of US Detention Centers Reply

by • Immigration, Police State/Civil Liberties, Uncategorized
The police state must be opposed in all of its manifestations.
By Tom Cahill
USUncut.Com

U.S. immigration authorities rounded up hundreds of undocumented immigrants across six states in the last week, which begs the question — where do they go?

The detention centers maintained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) are home to some of the most inhumane prison conditions in the entire country. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which operates under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security, has very little accountability for the conditions of its detention centers, since the people being held are not U.S. citizens or legal immigrants, by default stripping away most of the Constitutional rights guaranteed for prisoners.

READ MORE

Jeffrey Tucker on the Problems of the Alt-Right 2

by • Left and Right, Uncategorized • Tags: , ,

Watch Derrick Broze’s interview with Jeffrey Tucker here.

I disagree with Tucker’s treatment of Richard Spencer at the Students for Liberty conference. It should be possible for libertarians, anarchists, left-libertarians and Alt-Rightists to engage in civilized debate and discussion. Tucker also exaggerates the Trumpian threat with the Nazi comparisons. Trump represents a neo-Nixonian threat, not a neo-fascist threat. But some of the potential conflicts between the nationalistic collectivism of the Alt-Right and radical anti-statism, left or right, that Tucker discusses are legitimate.

Watch Tucker’s confrontation with Spencer and Spencer’s response below.

I hope Julie Borowski’s offer to host a debate between Spencer and Tucker materializes. That should be interesting.

Preventing Civil War in the United States Reply

by • Activism, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Fourth Generation Warfare, Left and Right, Secession, Strategy, Uncategorized • Tags:

Bill Lind has a proposal that is very similar to certain ATS positions.

By William S. Lind

Traditional Right

Low-level Fourth Generation war has been underway in the U.S. for some time, largely in the form of gang activities. That is likely to continue, as will occasional terrorist incidents. This low-level warfare is a problem, but it does not threaten the state.

However, the Left’s reaction to the election of Donald Trump as president points to a far more dangerous kind of 4GW on our own soil. Trump’s election signified, among other things, a direct rejection of the Left’s ideology of cultural Marxism, which condemns Whites, men, family-oriented women, conservative blacks, straights, etc. as inherently evil. Not surprisingly, those people finally rebelled against political correctness and elected someone who represents them.

READ MORE

Bizarro World is Here 5

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Left and Right, Uncategorized

From Andy Nowicki:

Gender traditionalists are wildly cheering a woman standing up to male chauvinists. Feminists are harrumphing over this gesture and defending social customs that require women to be submissive to men…

In other news, conservatives are angry with the CIA and view the American deep state as villainously treacherous, while liberals are rooting on these very same treacherous deep state machinations, all the while hoping for a military coup to oust a democratically-elected leader….

In still other news, right-wingers are foreign policy peaceniks feeling mellow towards Russia, while left-wingers feel that those dirty Russians are everywhere, and are aiming to undermine our American values, and that those sneaky devils can never be trusted and probably should be bombed off the map..

In still other news, hyper-PC types are rioting over a gay Jew who loves to miscegenate with well-hung black men, while the same gay miscegenating Jew is loved by people who hate PC.

I’m not sure if anyone realizes just how weird things have gotten.

Idaho Bill Would End Taxation of Gold and Silver Reply

by • Economics/Class Relations, Uncategorized

By Jp Cortez

The Framers of our nation established that gold and silver are money, but federal taxing authorities in recent decades have required taxpayers to pay taxes on this form of money when its exchange for Federal Reserve Notes results in nominal capital “gains.”

But that problem may soon be mitigated, at least in Idaho.

A prominent Gem State state representative has advanced legislation to remove state income taxes when Idaho taxpayers sell their precious metals.

House Majority Leader Mike Moyle introduced House Bill 206 on February 23rd to amend Idaho revenue statutes, providing “that capital gains and losses on precious metals bullion and monetized bullion sales be added to or subtracted from Idaho taxable income.”

More…

Against the “Anti-Fascist” Creeps 4

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

A Review of Alexander Reid-Ross’ “Against the Fascist Creep”

by Keith Preston

Image result for against the fascist creep

Academic Gloss for the Antifa

For decades, a minor cottage industry of professional “anti-racists” and “anti-fascists” has existed for the purpose of perpetually sounding the alarm about the imminent threat posed by supposed “far right extremists.” The most well-known and influential of these is the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has raked in millions of dollars largely by frightening elderly liberals and Jews old enough to remember the Holocaust with hobgoblin tales about the supposedly persistent rise of neo-Nazism in America. The fundraising tactics of the SPLC are nearly identical to those of televangelists soliciting funds from elderly Christians by spinning tales about the supposed infiltration of the public schools by gay pedophiles. If one reads the literature of the SPLC and, for example, the publications of religious right organizations such as Focus on the Family and Coral Ridge Ministries, parallel themes will soon become noticeable. While the SPLC and a similar organization, the Anti-Defamation League, are the major league players in the “anti-fascism” industry, there are a number of minor league players as well ranging from the Ford Foundation-funded (how is that for irony?) Political Research Associates to AK Press, a small publisher oriented towards the “antifa” sector of the wider “anarchist” milieu.

Image result for nerds fighting

More…

Keith Preston: Donald Trump acts before he thinks Reply

by • Immigration, Uncategorized • Tags: , ,

PressTV. Listen here.

Donald Trump’s immigration policies have proven that the US president acts without thinking first, an analyst in Virginia says.

Keith Preston, director of attackthesysten.com, made the remarks while discussing a slew of directives by Trump that have plunged the country’s immigration system into chaos.

In late January, Trump introduced a travel ban against people from Iran, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia Iraq and Libya. All refugee admissions, except for Syrian refugees who were banned indefinitely, were halted for three months under the executive order, which has been halted upon a federal judge’s order.

Trump has also signed a directive to begin the construction of a controversial wall on the border with Mexico, while hiring thousands of new enforcement agents to carry out more deportation raids.

Preston said the refugee crisis south of the American borders took place in the 1980s, when people tried to flee US-backed wars in Central America, including Guatemala and El Salvador.

The crisis deepened “in the 1990s, when NAFTA—the North American Free trade Agreement—was imposed,” he argued. “That had the impact of destroying Mexican agriculture and then that created mass unemployment among Mexican agriculture workers, so they started migrating north to the United States.”

Preston said Trump was more focused on the issue of crimes committed by immigrants rather than the economic impact of immigration on the US economy.

“There is a question of practicality,” he said. “One real issue that the Trump administration has demonstrated is that they often act before they think.”

“We saw that with the seven [Muslim] nation travel ban. That was an executive order that was issued very hastily, very rapidly, and was not crafted in such a way as to address serious problems that would come up naturally when trying to impose something like that,” he explained.

“There is also the question of who is actually going to be impacted by this? Is it only going to be convicted criminals, or is it going to be their families?”

The human resources required to arrest immigrants and the due process during their detention were some of the other matters that Trump had not taken into consideration, according to Preston.

“I suspect that the more the Trump administration tries to ratchet up these kinds of actions the more political conflict there is going to be,” the analyst concluded.

Paradox of the devil’s advocate Reply

by • Uncategorized

By Aleksey Bashtavenko  of Academic Composition 

“On Liberty” is widely regarded as a classic of political philosophy. Therein, John Stuart Mill argued that there is a fundamental similarity between scientific and political discovery. As Karl Popper evinced, scientific discovery must be falsifiable. In other words, science does not prove what is true, it only shows what is false. As a result, there is an evolution of knowledge where scholars routinely challenge each other to produce the strongest possible theories. By definition, science is an empirically informed academic metier and because of that, scientists can often refute one another’s findings by simply showing how they are not compatible with the tangible reality. As dull and monotonous as laboratory work may seem to the students of humanities, its saving graces are not to be underestimated.

On the other hand, theology and ideology are grounded in abstraction rather than experimentation. Just like scientists, theologians and political thinkers are passionate about their beliefs and that is why they are willing to devote a great deal of effort to justifying them. In stark contrast, the practitioners of the abstract disciplines cannot subject their views to a critical test in an environment where it is determined whether their views are compatible with reality. Due to this, theologians and political thinkers are much more vulnerable to the confirmation bias than the bona fide scientists.

John Stuart Mill was fully aware of this problem and he was quite disconcerted by the dogmatism of political philosophers and theologians alike. In light of the absence of comprehensive falsifiability of purely abstract ideas, it is all the more important to subject them to the most rigorous standard of proof possible. To do that, it is imperative for even the staunchest of believers to play “devil’s advocate” by forming the strongest possible arguments in defense of their own views. Only by virtue of such an exercise it will be possible for believers to regard their worldview as the “living truth” rather than as the dead dogma.

Mill went so far as to claim that although the Catholic Church was one of the most oppressive institutions of his day, the clergy always made it a point to play the devil’s advocate before inducting one of their peers into sainthood. By engaging in this exercise, the Catholic elites were able to find plausible reasons on which their beliefs were predicated and in turn, this strengthened their convictions. On the other hand, Christians of lesser distinction participated in rituals without understanding their significance and predictably, their beliefs degenerated into a “dead dogma”.

Today, liberal professors of humanities outnumber their conservative peers by a ratio of 12:1. Instructors of such disciplines who even  dare to question the orthodoxy face grave, if not career-ending consequences. In such scholarly milieus previously famed for their objectivity and scholarly neutrality, the act of questioning the liberal orthodoxy is just as risky as being openly gay was in the 1950s. Consequently, the academic environment has become an echo chamber where the ideological orientation of the academic left has become a dead dogma rather than a living truth.

In light of these developments, the professors of the humanities should not be surprised that even many of the moderate Democrats have refused to support Hillary Clinton. When they abandon their pedagogic duties in favor of their mission to indoctrinate students into the view that represents the consensus of the elites of their group,  they deprive even their staunchest supporters of opportunities to become true believers in their cause.

Mutualism: The Philosophy of Anarchy Reply

by • Anarchism/Anti-State, Economics/Class Relations, Uncategorized • Tags: , ,

By Will Schnack

Evolution of Consent

This was composed for a speech given to the East Texas Freethinkers
on February 18th, 2017 in Tyler, Texas.
____________________________________

Mutualism is an anarchist social philosophy first established in print by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. While often considered to be the father of mutualism (something I have repeated and am apt to do again), Proudhon was actually more of its first philosopher, because mutualism already existed to some degree, long before Proudhon would write about it in his works. Proudhon had spent time among the workman’s associations in Lyon, France, where he witnessed fraternal organizations and guilds functioning in mutualistic manners, involving member control from voluntary participants. When he wrote in favor of mutualism, he probably had these cooperative associations in mind. Nonetheless, Proudhon can be considered to be the first philosophical exponent of mutualism as a school of thought.

Along with being the first philosophical proponent of mutualism, Proudhon is the first to call himself an anarchist. Yet, again, the sentiment against government and the state long preceded Proudhon. Some have traced it back to Ancient Greek or Chinese thinkers, such as Zeno or Lao Tzu. Others suggest that others much closer to Proudhon’s time were the first, such as William Godwin or Josiah Warren. Proudhon maintains the title of the first anarchist simply for being the first to call himself such on record.

READ MORE

 

Unraveling Political Theory: What is Neoliberalism? Reply

by • Economics/Class Relations, Law/Justice, Uncategorized

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.

With this urge to better understand the root of many of the common political ideologies present in the world, The Last American Vagabond has decided to team up with Keith Preston in a new podcast series in which the who, what, where, when and how of different political theories will be explored.

The Central Metaphors of the PC Left Reply

by • Political Correctness/Totalitarian Humanism, Uncategorized

By Aleksey Bashtavenko of Academic Composition 

Politicians, scholars and political pundits are almost unanimous in their belief that their political views are entirely objective. As such, they often maintain that those who disagree with them are either misguided, ignorant, plain obtuse or worse. They are entirely oblivious to the fact that much of their political reasoning is motivated by the subconscious biases that shape their temperament. In light of this premise, George Lakoff argued that our political attitudes are defined by the “central metaphors”, which are shaped by the process of socialization. Hence, our earliest interactions with family members tend to define the core attitudes that constitute our political temperament.

More…

The Faux Individualism of Social Justice Warriors 1

by • Political Correctness/Totalitarian Humanism, Uncategorized

By Aleksey Bashtavenko with Academic Composition

Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People” is widely regarded as one of the best self-help books of the 20th century. Indeed, Carnegie’s work is deservedly known as a modern classic because it is founded on powerful insights about social psychology. Today, there is no shortage of seminars and business classes teaching people to embrace the potent lessons of human nature that he has uncovered. Among these notions is the idea that “nobody wants to be told what to do” and that it is necessary to make people “glad to do what you want them to do”. It is difficult to appreciate this idea without fully understanding its subtlety and the many ways in which it can become enormously effective across all social contexts.

More…

Are We on the Verge of Another Civil War? 1

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Left and Right

By Richard Kreitner

The Nation

milo protest

A decade ago, when David Armitage began working on his new book, Civil Wars: A History in Ideas, published this week by Knopf, he had no idea how relevant the subject would become. These days, it’s hard to avoid concluding that American society is tearing itself apart. Several observations and arguments in the book can be harrowing to read—that the nations mostly likely to devolve into civil wars are those that have suffered such conflicts before; that civil wars are most likely when the government is divided against itself; that politics is civil war by other means. Civil Wars ranges over more than two millennia of history, law, and philosophy, but it feels as urgent as the latest shock, as fresh as tomorrow’s news.

I recently spoke with Armitage about his book. The conversation has been lightly edited.

—Richard Kreitner

You write in the book that you began working on it after you “found the past rhyming with the present.” What were some of those rhymes that you saw, and what questions were you trying to answer?

I was on academic leave in that period when the Second Gulf War was at the height of its violence, around December 2006 and early 2007. I was in residence during that period at Huntington Library in Southern California, which holds the papers of Francis Lieber, whose name was popping up in the media discussion about Iraq around the same time. Even though he was a 19th-century Prussian, he became newly relevant because he produced the first codification of laws of war and debates about treatment of enemy combatants, subjects very much at issue at the time I was encountering his work.

Among his papers at the Huntington Library was correspondence with his boss, Henry Hallek, a Union general, about the code and, in particular, about the absence of discussion of civil war in it—a strange omission for a code of the laws of war in the midst of the what became known as the US Civil War. There was no legal definition available to him, so he had to describe and define civil war in legal terms that exactly coincided with highly ideological debates in the media and in Congress about whether or not the violence in Iraq should be considered a civil war, or instead a rebellion or an insurgency or an insurrection. As I was reading this mid-19th-century correspondence I was hearing in the news and in the papers about how hard it still was to define a civil war. That’s one of those moments when, as Mark Twain said, history rhymes. I realized that these were two data points—one from the 1860s, and one from the 2000s—which were part of a longer history of civil war that needed reconstructing.

This book is a story of paradox, from the first page to the last. Can you explain why the very idea of “civil war,” beginning with the Romans, is a bundle of contradiction?

READ MORE

Keith Preston: Trump in conflict with ‘deep state’ over troop deployment 2

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy • Tags: ,

PressTV. Listen here.

The administration of US President Donald Trump is in conflict with intelligence agencies over deploying American troops to Syria to fight the Daesh (ISIL) terrorist group, an American political analyst in Virginia says.

“Right now there’s a great deal of conflict within the American government itself; the Trump administration and what we call the ‘deep state’ or a lot of conventional intelligence services are heavily in conflict with one another,” said Keith Preston, chief editor of AttacktheSystem.com.

Some political scientists, writers and journalists in the United States have for decades expressed concerns about the existence of a so-called “deep state” or state within a state, which they argue exerts control and influence over public policy, regardless of which political party controls the country’s democratic institutions.

Under the Trump administration, the term deep state has been used by some news organizations to refer to intelligence officials and executive branch bureaucrats guiding policy through leaking or other means of internal dissent.

“We saw that [conflict between Trump and the ‘deep state’] this week with the resignation of the national security advisor, General Michael Flynn; so there’s a great deal of turmoil within the foreign policy apparatus of the United States,” Preston told Press TV on Thursday.

The resignation of  Flynn on Monday and the continuing turmoil inside the White House have deeply rattled the Washington establishment.

Preston said there seems to be a conflict between the Trump administration and the deep state over the goal of the Western military intervention in Syria. Trump seeks to eliminate ISIL and keep President Bashar al-Assad in power, whereas some intelligence and military officials are pursuing the opposite goal.

CNN reported on Wednesday that the US Defense Department may recommend that the United States deploy regular combat troops to Syria to fight Daesh terrorists.

US combat troops

“It’s possible that you may see conventional forces hit the ground in Syria for some period of time,” CNN quoted a Pentagon official.

During the presidential campaign, Trump had openly supported deploying a large contingent of US troops to Syria.

The US has already sent several hundred of its special operations forces to Syria. However, their operations have been limited to what the Pentagon describes as training and assisting Kurdish fighters in their battle against Daesh (ISIL) and other terrorist groups.

When authorizing the limited deployments, then-US President Barack Obama had stressed that conventional ground troops were not an option.

The US and its allies have been carrying out airstrikes against alleged Daesh positions in Syria and neighboring Iraq since 2014.

Unraveling Political Theory: Cultural Marxism 1

by • Left and Right • Tags: , ,

Listen here.

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.

With this urge to better understand the root of many of the common political ideologies present in the world, The Last American Vagabond has decided to team up with Keith Preston in a new podcast series in which the who, what, where, when and how of different political theories will be explored.

In this episode Keith and Tim Bryant take a look at Cultural Marxism, which is the transformation of the political left from a party focused on the eternal class struggle in society of labor workers vs. the elite owners of capital, to a party focused on cultural infiltration in order to weed out the “oppressors and oppressions” within society. Stemming from the commonly held belief that the workers of the world were bought off by the elite capitalists through consumerism, the left thought it was no longer fruitful to keep fighting capitalism. Instead, their new method of redefining Western society was to be carried out by infiltrating the culture and remaking it in the image of an equal world free of the old cultural and economic values.

A New (Left) Low for National LP Chair Nick Sarwark 2

by • Activism, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Electoralism/Democratism, Left and Right • Tags: ,

By Ryan Ramsey

Recent riots in Berkley, California have brought increasing attention to the global left wing terrorist organizations known collectively as ANTIFA. They justify their violence based on the idea they are fighting fascism.  Who is not against fascism, right? Thus, the riots and murders are understandable. This logic holds about as much water as the idea the Patriot act was patriotic because patriot was in the name. You can paint a turd any color, it doesn’t change the taste. Antifa are violent thugs, and the patriot act raped a number of our civil liberties in a very UN-patriotic manner. In the words of John Adams, “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”

This immutable law of nature is a source of neverending irritation to the leftists attempting to hold back the Libertarian Party from its  destiny to shift the paradigm of American politics. That destiny is to create a force edging us towards freedom with  each election cycle, rather than a constant inch toward Marxism. Nick Sarwark, National Chairman of the Libertarian Party, is the poster boy for the Cultural Marxist idiocy that keeps us relegated to single digit election returns in a country where 25% or more of the population supports our policies. If we took the national platform and removed all the items.

More…

Vulgar Anti-Vulgar Libertarianism 1

by • Uncategorized

Kevin Carson defines vulgar-libertarianism as follows:

Vulgar libertarian apologists for capitalism use the term “free market” in an equivocal sense: they seem to have trouble remembering, from one moment to the next, whether they’re defending actually existing capitalism or free market principles. So we get [a] standard boilerplate article… arguing that the rich can’t get rich at the expense of the poor, because “that’s not how the free market works”— implicitly assuming that this is a free market. When prodded, they’ll grudgingly admit that the present system is not a free market, and that it includes a lot of state intervention on behalf of the rich. But as soon as they think they can get away with it, they go right back to defending the wealth of existing corporations on the basis of “free market principles.”

Vulgar Anti-Vulgar libertarianism is the view that one is being anti-vulgar while espousing views that marginalize the freedom of entire groups. Take note the recent hit piece on C4SS against Milo Ylannopulos https://c4ss.org/content/47911

More…