Author: Keith Preston

All Posts by Keith Preston

Alt Left Support of Men’s Liberation – the Left Wing of the Men’s Movement 1

Left and Right, Uncategorized

By Robert Lindsay

Men’s Liberation was sort of the left wing of the MRA movement. Warren Farrell was pretty much a Men’s Lib type. Men’s Libbers and feminists started fighting pretty quickly because the feminists were so insane. Also because a lot of Men’s Libbers realized that feminism was a war against men. Men’s Libbers who wanted to go to women’s groups’ meetings and ally with them were banned as the feminists pushed “women-only fora” and “only a woman can comment on the problems of women.” In particular, gay men were some of the first to break off from Men’s Liberation.

Men’s Lib had a reputation for being a bunch of faggots, but that while there was some truth to this, that was not really true as most Men’s Libbers were straight, although their position on male homosexuality was very stupid. The early feminists attacked gay men a lot (Isn’t that incredible?), accusing them of being the ultimate woman-haters for bailing out on women altogether. At the same time, feminist idiots were cheering on lesbianism like they always have from Day One. So lesbians are ok but gay men are not. Screw that.

I will say though that gay men were some of the best of the early Men’s Libbers, and even today, gay men play a surprisingly important role in the left wing of the MRA’s such as the Good Men Project. Straight men have to suck up to women to get laid, so these leads to a lot of pedestalization, reality distortion and failing to see the down side of women. Gay men are estranged from women completely, so they can sit back at a distance and judge them fairly. That said, there is a faction of gay men who are misogynist kooks, and this gay “type” has always been around.

However, most gay men do not hate women at all. They just don’t want to have sex with them. Ever known a straight women who was not some sort of a fag hag? Neither have I. Straight women always love their gay pets.

So you see the feminists have been insane for a long time. Simone Beauvoir was an extreme man-hater and the SCUM Manifesto (a classic treatise in the feminist canon) was written in the heat of the 1960’s. The Redstockings were one of the first hardline feminist groups. Ellen Willis was a member. They were out of Boston. Frankly, they were insane, and this was 1969. Feminism didn’t go nuts, it was crazy from the beginning. That said there are some equity feminists we can ally with and to the extent that women are still treated unfairly, we will support their causes.

There is not much left of the Men’s Libbers, but there are some leftwing men calling themselves masculisits or even masculinists. Generally, most such men are fairly sane and most masculists also identify as feminists in a way. These are sort of leftwing MRA’s who are also sympathetic to the problems of women. In other words, these men say that both sexes are oppressed nowadays and further both sexes oppress each other and there are many injustices against men now too that women have turned the tables and predictably turned from oppressed to oppressors by enacting laws that oppress men. Humans can’t seem to do equality. The oppressed never want equality. They only want to turn the tables and lord it over those oppressing them and turn into oppressors themselves. Humans are rather lousy.

Anyway there is not much left of Men’s Libbers and it could be a movement that should be revived in my opinion. A lot of progressive men need to get on the ball. The women have turned the tables on us and are now oppressing us with a lot of new “Female Rule” type laws they put in to privilege women and attack us unfairly. They did this because feminist now is mostly just paybacks and revenge. I assume that all leftwing men are not masochists, but sometimes I wonder. If Left men are willing to sit back and let women abuse and oppress them, they are beyond hope. It will be a tough call though because most Left men are badly brainwashed by feminism.

The Various Factions, Types or Wings of the Alt Left Reply

Left and Right, Uncategorized • Tags:

By Robert Lindsay

By Ryan England, one of the main Alt Left theorists. From one of the main Alt Left groups on Facebook:

I’ve come up with colloquial expressions of subtypes I’ve noticed in my short time with this movement. Note that these are not hard fast rules or mutually exclusive categories, but rather descriptions of what seem to be motivating passions. Some perhaps approximate the Alt-Leftist ideal better than others:

“The Left Wing of the Alt Right.” Rabbit uses this phrase quite explicitly. They are most open to race realism, most opposed to mass immigration and most opposed to Islamism, but are also inclined towards some kind of economic socialism or social democracy and are otherwise put off the Alt-Right somehow or another. “Strasserites” might be a more explicitly national socialist variant of this, “National Bolsheviks” would be even more out there still.

“GamerGate Leftists” – Named from an article I read a while back claiming that most gamergaters were left-leaning, are another type. These types need not be big on GamerGate per se, but being anti-feminist and anti-SJW is huge with them as is civil and cultural libertarianism. I found a number of these posting on anti-SJW pages. They come to the Alt-Left either because of a belief in Leftist economics, though they are usually not that far Left.

Guys who believe in some regulation and a social safety net. Think YouTubers like Sargon of Akkad or the Amazing Atheist, though they don’t use the term Alt-Left to describe themselves. These kinds are defecting less from Richard Spencer and more from Milo Yiannopoluous. I used GamerGate’s colors in the design of my page’s logo and banner, in an attempt to attract these types.

“Red Enlightenment” I refer to as those most passionate about rationalism, skepticism, empiricism and in some cases, transhumanism and futurism. Generally a scientifically minded and technocratic sort of socialist or social democrat.

“True Liberals” Anti-racist and feminist supporters who think the whole thing has gotten out of hand and are concerned for the SJW’s lifestyle puritanism and opposition to free speech. They are more pro-feminist and pro-social liberal than the gamergaters though. “The Democratic Party of the 1990s” someone once remarked to me, to which I replied, “There were no liberals or leftists in the 1990’s except myself.”

“Brocialists” Socialists or social democrats with a penchant for men’s rights and anti-misandry. I seem to have drawn a number of these to my page, and a few of my moderators fall into this category. Hillary Clinton supporters have accused Bernie Sanders of using these as his base of support.

“Red Templars” Especially and specifically anti-Islamic. Get a lot of these from Sam Harris and Bill Maher’s followings. Unlike the left wing of the Alt Right types, these sorts are more standard liberals otherwise.

“The New Old Left” Would dispense with race, culture and identity all together, if they could and make Leftism mostly about economic Leftism. The Realist Left page and the blog Social Democracy for the 21st Century are like this. Farther left you’d find /leftypol/ on 8chan and some Marxist/Anarchist groups that reject IdPol.

I would say that I fall into a number of those categories. Brocialist for sure. I am not sure who exactly these Brocialists even are, but anything like the original Men’s Liberation groups that arose alongside Women’s Liberation might be ok for me.

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On Dissolving the American Empire 1

Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Uncategorized

32760_sci_fi_apocalypse_destruction_post_apocalyptic_washington_dc

Ronald Olden

Libertarian Alliance

The difficulty with America is that it tries to do too much. It’s one thing to become involved in a full scale war like the Second World War when the protagonists are Nation States and a decisive military outcome can be achieved. But it’s quite another thing to attempt to micromanage, by brute force, the internal politics of countries about which you know virtually nothing.

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Thoughts on the American Empire 1

Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy

american-empire

Kevin Glick

Libertarian Alliance

“The world has been made worse by having the Americans try to rule it, and it will be made even worse once they give up and walk away.” (Sean Gabb)

That’s an interesting perspective, and one with which it’s difficult to argue. While it is technically correct in pointing out that America long ago made the conscious decision not to build an empire, I think it’s incorrect to conclude that this decision has remained in force up to the present time. The evidence certainly indicates otherwise.

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On Left and Right, Libertarianism, and The Donald Reply

Uncategorized • Tags:

By Keir Martland

Libertarian Alliance

On Left and Right, Libertarianism, and The Donald
By Keir Martland
20th September 2016

Permit me a long and rambling introduction. I spent much of August reading, and in some cases re-reading, the works of the distributists, particularly Hilaire Belloc [see my short essay on The Servile State]. The way distributism is often presented is as a “third way” between socialism and the current economic order. I say “the current economic order” because we don’t have laissez-faire capitalism and we are far from it. Rather, what we have is a dirty mixture somewhere between state control and state-privileged corporate control of the means of production and much else, which some call crony capitalism or corporatism.

Distributists like the great Joseph Pearce argue that both socialism and “capitalism” are forms of proletarianism, the former by political means and the latter by economic means.

Now, to make myself clear from the outset: I am not a distributist. While very sympathetic to their general outlook and their analysis of the current economic order – and who can argue with their vision of an ideal economy and society, being one based on independence and the widespread ownership of capital? – I wince at their tendency to sound openly anti-market. Indeed, rather than making a strictly libertarian case against state-privileged big business, which is made by the likes of Kevin Carson, some distributists instead can tend to favour big government almost as an end in itself. Rather than recognising that, while “small is beautiful”, some firms can grow large naturally, they seem to endorse coercion against all firms above a certain size whereas the libertarian answer to this question is just to remove state privilege. Some big businesses will undoubtedly suffer, but some will survive. But what my reading made me think about was something along the lines of “the third way.” I will return to this idea later in the essay.

As a further set of introductory remarks, I should make it clear that I do not at all buy into the Whig interpretation of history, and especially not Fukuyama’s End of History hypothesis, whose truth has until recently been almost universally accepted.

According to Fukuyama, beloved of Irving Kristol incidentally, Western (and often imperialist) “liberal democracy” has won the struggle for humanity. Liberal democracy is the end-point and we can “progress” no further beyond it. Therefore, the lessons of history have no relevance to the 21st century, and we are more politically “advanced” today than ever before. In the same way scientific knowledge is accumulated over time, with erroneous views discarded and useful theories retained, so too has our knowledge of how to run a society progressed through the ages. Like a student at one of the new universities, we have had indiscriminate sex with all manner of persons. Some gave us a dose of the clap while some didn’t. Now we are in our thirties and we are settling down, having met “The One.” Miss Right happens to be liberal democracy and we are happy to stick with her “till death us do part.”

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Marilyn Manson: Why I’m Not Voting for President Reply

Uncategorized

Rolling Stone

Marilyn Manson voted for Barack Obama in 2012, but he has no intention of visiting a polling station this November. “I don’t find either candidate to my liking, so I choose to stand out of this one,” he tells Rolling Stone. “And I don’t think that’s a coward’s stance. A lot of people might say that. I just don’t really want to be a part of this piece of history. Last time, I did want to be involved in some piece of history as a voter.”

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The Need for a New Revolutionary Framework Pitting Liberty Against Power 1

Activism, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Left and Right, Uncategorized

Some thoughts on what it would take for “anarchist success” to be achieved.

anarchism-types-meme-2

A good point of reference is the history of revolutions.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, there was a wave of revolutions (American, French, 1848, etc) that essentially pitted the Enlightenment against the Ancient Regime, resulting in the growth of democratic republics and science-driven industrial capitalist societies.

In the late 19th and early 20th century, the major conflict was between industrial capitalists and proletarian labor, resulting in the eventual growth of modern welfare-managerial states, and the incorporation of the labor parties and trade unions into the system, along with the expansion of the middle class.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the basis of conflict became the traditional in-groups vs traditional out-groups (minorities, women, gays, students, youth, etc). Much of that has subsequently been institutionalized as well with the bourgeois bohemians, newly rich, new class, minority middle class, political correctness, gay marriage, etc.

It seems like that what it would take for anarchists, libertarians, anti-statists, ant-authoritiarians, etc to get their moment in the sun would be a political alignment along the lines of liberty vs. power. Regrettably, things instead seem to be going in the direction of nativism vs globalism (hence, Trump, Farage, Le Pen, etc). More often than not nativism represents state-centric nationalism than anything to do with anarchism, though I agree it’s a double-edged sword. Back in the 1990s I started realizing that right-wing populist nationalism was going to be important in the future as a response to globalization, and I started indicating to anarchists that finding common group with the populist right might be a good idea. However, the majority of anarchists have generally seemed resolutely opposed to this approach. The anarchists of the left for example have generally identified social conservatism rather than the state as their primary enemy. And the right has responded to the growing SJW phenomenon with identity politics of its own. The problem is that the identity politics of the left and right is all there seems to be. All of the different types of anarchists and libertarians argue about that stuff as must as Democrats and Republicans do, and often more intensely so.

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Keith Preston: US views Assad as the greater enemy Reply

Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Uncategorized

Press TV. Listen here.

The United States views Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as a “greater” enemy than the Daesh (ISIL) terrorist group, as the Assad government is trying to remain independent from the US and Israel, an American analyst says.

Keith Preston, editor of the AttacktheSystem.com, made the comments on Wednesday, after US Secretary of State John Kerry asked Russia to force the Syrian government into halting its airstrikes against terror groups.

Speaking at a UN Security Council meeting about Syria on Wednesday, Kerry demanded Moscow to take responsibility for recent attacks on a UN aid convoy and a field clinic in Syria’s Aleppo province before Syrian peace talks could be resumed.

On Monday, UN aid convoy was targeted in an alleged airstrike in Aleppo province’s Urm al-Kubra region.

Washington quickly held Moscow responsible for the attack that killed 12 aid workers and destroyed 18 of 31 Syrian Red Crescent trucks carrying UN-provided food.

“I’m inclined to think that most likely this was an American drone attack because it does fit the profile of the drone attacks that the United States is sponsoring at different places,” said Preston.

The analyst said what the attack on the UN convoy and its aftermath signified a conflict of interest between Russian and the US in Syria.

The government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad “is seen by the Russians as a bulwark against terrorism,” Preston noted, adding that Russia joined the fight to curb the growth of Daesh.

The US on the other hand “has completely opposite objectives” and views Assad as “the greater enemy.”

“The primary things that the Americans are opposed to are independent regimes in the Middle East, that is regimes that have not been incorporated into the Washington system or which are not aligned with Israel,” the analyst further explained.

“The Americas have tried to work both ends against the middle,” he continued. “They are trying to on one hand oppose and topple President Assad and at the same time, they don’t want to openly support the Daesh either.”

Instead of supporting Daesh, Preston argued, Washington has focused on training and equipping so-called moderate militants who are fighting the government.

The existing conflict of interest was what Preston said keeping Russia and the US from coordinating their airstrikes in order to avoid civilian casualties.

Brexit, Texit, and the Panarchist Case for Panarchy Reply

Activism, Secession, Strategy, Uncategorized

By DangerNixon

Ancapistan

Flag-cutout-Texas-secede

Jacob Levy recently wrote an essay airing his teary-eyed dismay that so many of his libertarian friends are cheering on Britain’s bow down from EU membership. This comes to no surprise, since BHL seems to be bent on presenting us with the “libertarian case” for anything from a swollen welfare apparatus to mandatory sex-reassignment surgery. There are a few basic theses in this article, for instance, that the EU is not a regulatory monster and that all the all other EU member states are economically freer than Britain (an assertion that not even his own citation really backs up).  One point I would like to extract from Levy’s article and complain about in length, though, is his idea of secession. Namely, Levy claims that secession obviously cannot be a libertarian position, because, uh, like, what if the new country isn’t as libertarian as the parent nation, dude? From the article:

“There’s no reason for us to start with some enthusiastic assumption that secession is always better and that more-local, more-homogenous levels of government are friendlier to freedom than larger and more pluralistic ones. Nor is there any reason to assume that removing a level of government just makes its whole system of regulation stably disappear; we need to think about what’s likely to replace those regulations at the nation-state level.”

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Exploring Free Market Anti-Capitalism: Interview with Keith Preston Reply

Economics/Class Relations, Uncategorized

By Tim Bryant

The Last Vagabond Listen here

o most people, the left and right of the political spectrum are polar opposites, which cannot be linked together due to ideological beliefs that are incompatible. On the surface, this seems to be the case, as political divisions are divergent as ever, especially in the United States. However, unbeknownst to many, including myself until just recently, there is a small faction of people who have attempted to synthesize together, both the right’s idea of free markets and the left’s idea of giving labor their full value, into an all-encompassing belief system that some refer to as Free Market Anti-Capitalism, Left Libertarianism, or Mutualism.

To comprehend the logic behind the term Free Market Anti-Capitalism, we must first begin to understand the historical context, as well as the current use of the word capitalism and socialism. The goal behind this is to allow people on both the left and right to see and appreciate how different ideologies view the term, rather than just being stubborn and only recognizing your own. We won’t solve anything and move forward until we can at least see how the other side defines such key words.

(Related Reading: Bridging The Gap Between Anti-Capitalism and Anti-Statism By Dissecting The Key Words That Divide Us)

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Sean Gabb: Against Islamophobia Reply

Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Religion and Philosophy • Tags:

Sean nails it on the “Islamophobia” question in this.

I wrote an article making a similar argument years ago.

By Sean Gabb

Libertarian Alliance

Against Islamophobia
by Sean Gabb
(13th September 2016)

This brief essay on the relationship between Islam and violence is inspired by and expands on a comment left earlier today by Keir Martland on the Libertarian Alliance Blog. I will not presume to call it an expression of his own view – though I suspect it largely is. But it does express a view I have held for many years, a view that I feel is worth repeating as often as it becomes relevant.

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Keith Preston: No evidence of escalation on Korean Peninsula Reply

Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy • Tags:

Press TV. Listen here.

The situation on the Korean Peninsula should be observed “in the context,” an analyst say, asserting that the test flight of two US heavy bomber jets over South Korea does not necessarily refer to any particular escalation in the volatile region, where two world powers, the US and China, have military forces.

B-1 Lancer strategic bombers took off from an American base in Guam on Tuesday and performed a low-altitude flight over Osan Air Base near the South capital Seoul.

American and South Korean fighter jets escorted the B-1s during the low-speed flight, which took place 77 km (48 miles) from the Demilitarized Zone border with the North.

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The Uselessness of Isms Reply

Anarchism/Anti-State, Uncategorized

By Chris Shaw

The constant need to define one’s philosophical and ideological beliefs through a convenient form of superstructure is something that can be found amongst all philosophies. The multiple libertarian ideologies are no different in this regard. Whether it be anarchism, left-libertarianism, classical liberalism or any other clique, fad or ism, they all share a common vapidity and a petty tribalism, which rather than allowing for a fluid, pluralistic movement which is open and understanding, prefers exclusiveness and minoritarianism.

Going into the socio-economic beliefs of these particular libertarian ideologies, we begin to see a general split into two particular isms, that of socialism and of capitalism. These are the two most useless isms that can possibly be introduced into these debates and ideological wranglings. Neither means very much in any particular way. Capitalism can be seen either as the private ownership of the means of production or as the dominance of the classes of capital over the dynamic efforts of the working classes and the potentialities of the entrepreneuriat. Personally I take the view that both of these are true as a pure socio-economic definition, and I see the state as the engine of this dominance of particular industrial and mercantile elites within markets and economies.

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Fiction, Fairy Tales, and Fiat Reply

Economics/Class Relations, Uncategorized

By Guy Christopher, Originally Published on Money Metals Exchange

Do young Americans today know anything about economics?

No, they don’t, according to a study during the 2016 presidential primary season, which says lots of other Americans don’t either.

The survey found 58% of millennials favor government-run socialism (statistically 6 out of 10), while a nearly identical number (64%) don’t want government interference in free markets.

The incompatible findings make no sense, unless… Americans aged 18-24 simply don’t understand the real meanings of either concept.

Sadly, the study says that’s true of one-third of all Americans. Not a clue. The evidence is the large following behind avowed socialist Bernie Sanders during his presidential campaign.

This lack of understanding is concerning, as the implications for individual lives and the nation’s future are significant. Witness the latest failure of socialism in Venezuela, where millions are rebelling against the government-controlled economy driving their lives into the dirt.

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New Class War Reply

Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations, Electoralism/Democratism, Uncategorized • Tags:

A must read for anyone that wants to understand present day political, cultural, and class conflict.

By Daniel McCarthy

The American Conservative

Michael Hogue

Michael Hogue

Shock gave way to relief this summer as America’s political establishment—rattled by Donald Trump’s success in winning the Republican nomination—reassured itself of his inevitable defeat come November. For a moment Trump seemed to have created a new style of politics, one that threatened to mobilize working-class voters against the establishment in both parties. But in the weeks following the Democratic National Convention, as Hillary Clinton’s poll numbers remained comfortably ahead of Trump’s, pundits discounted the risk of class war.

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The Greatness of Margaret Thatcher: An Alternative View Reply

Uncategorized • Tags:

By Sean Gabb

Libertarian Alliance

Listen here.

margaret-thatcher

The Greatness of Margaret Thatcher:
An Alternative View
Speech Given to the Property and Freedom Society
Bodrum, 2nd September 2016
Sean Gabb

When she died in April 2013, the mainstream assumption was that Margaret Thatcher had been something like the kind of person Donald Trump is hoped to be. She had humbled the left. She had brought about fundamental reforms in economic policy. She had made her country strong again and respected in the outer world. This being the assumption, conservatives went into ostentatious mourning, and the leftists rejoiced.

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