#TopTen | No. 6: Friends don’t let friends listen to Stefan Molyneux

 

Last year I wrote and posted 801 posts. This was the sixth most popular: an exposé of a retarded YouTube opportunist with an oft-unlikely following …

---

Friends Don’t Let Friends Listen to Stefan Molyneux

ONE OF THE LEAST attractive phenomena in more than a decade of unattractive things is the re-emergence into what passes for polite society of eugenics and explicit white supremacy. Even in places and from people I once thought I knew. (If you’re wondering, then I probably do mean you.) With these people, the only right thing to do is to take the advice above.

Trump is partly to blame. “By launching his campaign on a ‘Mexican immigrants are rapists’’ platform,” Donald Trump flushed these things back up from the sewers and made them safe to talk about again. Turns out that dressing up economic protectionism, white supremacism and tribalism as a defence of western civilisation has flushed out many things once deservedly dead and buried, and many things even in friends (now former friends) you hadn’t realised existed.

But he’s only partly to blame for what was probably already latent, and then encouraged in some folk by the phony equation that being politically incorrect also means being noxious;  the non-thinking that says that if “they” are against it, then “we” must be for it – and anyone else is a “cuck.”  (And never mind even what “it” might be.)  What this unthinking reaction has produced is the non-idea saying the appropriate response to “their” racism is to go hard out on your own.

With some, the racism genuine (and genuinely unwelcome). With others like Stefan Molyneux, it’s more like a career move. Who’s Stephan Molyneux? He’s one of the other reasons you’re seeing more and more of this stuff around. Molyneux is a dickhead with a following that, for some reason, some of you here keep recommending.

For the record, Molyneux makes videos of himself talking. Talking interminably, most often about himself. Hardly riveting. For many years he talked about anarchy, seeking to become a big fish in this small pond. Then, seeing a gap in the much bigger phony guru market, he began telling his young followers to abandon their parents and instead devote their lives, their honour and their sacred fortunes to his cause. Which was his wallet.

His arse very publicly handed to him by a woman known as J. Ravin/“TruShibes,” he hunkered down to re-emerge as a promoter of white supremacy who, I Iament, has become unaccountably influential even with people I formerly knew and/or admired.

Strange are the things people turn to when they think that the world is on fire. Stranger still how they think eugenics and white supremacy would help extinguish and not fan it.

A fellow called Stuart Hayashi has researched Molyneux’s rantings, should you have any doubt these two vile causes are what the wanker promotes, and if you’re wondering why you’re seeing this stuff or Molyneux’s name around the traps so much I can heartily recommend reading the results of Stuart’s recent research. Hayashi identifies two premises the toerag promotes that are rarely expounded together (a strategy of deniability, you see), but when combined form the argument, such as it is:

Premise One: Your genes, as associated with your race, are the main determinant of IQ. That is, your race causes you to have a particular IQ number….
Premise Two: Your IQ number is the main factor determining whether you are economically productive or criminally violent.

From those unprepossessing ingredients Molyneux makes a very unedifying stew: We should therefore deduce, at his behest, that a person’s race is what determines whether they are economically productive or criminally violent, therefore [sic] policies should be adopted to bar the many non-white “low-IQ races” from immigrating, from breeding, and from generally being around in polite company.

These days, in the company “Moly” keeps, this no longer called out-and-out eugenics, or even white supremacy – although that’s precisely what it is. Instead it’s given euphemisms like “race realism” or “human biodeversity,” which is they way you may have heard it promoted on websites and fora in which you once participated – or from people with whom you were once friends.  And while Molyneux is just a vector for this disease, not the main source, he’s been unaccountably influential.

ONE THING RELIED UPON by these later-day apostles of eugenics is an ignorance about the basic distinction between race and culture, about which the great Thomas Sowell has written so widely and so well. Culture, explains Sowell, should be understood as “the working machinery of everyday life” and like any machinery should be open to criticism and improvement. Some cultures are more productive than others, some less; this is true, but as Sowell points out repeatedly, race itself is irrelevant. It’s culture that’s all important.

One of the eugenicists’ main aims however is to collapse this distinction between race and culture, insisting instead that only race is relevant – that the two are deterministically entwined, with IQ being the measure of superiority.

Yes, it truly is this facile. As Robert Tracinski points out, these are people who understand Western civilisation “not as a set of ideas, but as some kind of symbol of their racial identity.”

Hayashi briefly counters this odious nonsense, noting the very basic fact for example that even if you were to accept IQ as any measure of anything (about which there are huge problems) the causal arrow goes from  wealth to performing well in IQ tests, not the other way around.

He then plunges into a veritable long-drop full of excreta that Molyneux has spewed out on this topic since his dramatic rebirth, leading him to the conclusion he broadcasts almost daily, that “because skills and abilities have not been distributed evenly by Mother Nature among various ethnicities,” the only cure to the impending collapse of western countries is closed borders and racial separatism.

It is from him and the likes of him that this sort of stuff comes from.

It’s like a prepper’s version of a national policy.

Why is this important? Because like all variants of tribalism, it is deadly nonsense; yet I know the bile is unaccountably influential because I keep seeing it spewed out in places and around people I once frequented. And friends don’t let friends believe this stuff.

But if they do, there’s a very simple message for you, and it appears at the very top of this post.

Please take it literally.

Intellectual hygiene demands it.

MORE READING:

• “I take Stefan Molyneux to task for his promoting white supremacism. And I quote him to prove that, yes, that is what he is promoting.”
  Quotations from Stefan Molyneux Showing His Promotion of Eugenics, Pseudoscientific Racism, and Bigotry Against Blacks – Stuart Hayashi, STU-TOPIA
• “The fetid end of the political spectrum is rising up to support statism in the name of protecting IQ – on the basis, say the fetid-swamp warriors, that the “low IQs” will only destroy the culture and are too dumb to deserve freedom anyway. Vile enough, but does their chosen proxy even merit serious consideration? No.”
  The Intellectual Conceit of IQ Ideology – Jeffrey Tucker, NOT PC
• “It's not pretty, and it's sad that this person has any influence at all. In summary, and as a TL;DR: the left is bad, so things the left thinks are wrong by definition and opposition to the left is good by definition. [and more: “…the genius of the Trump campaign has been to convince people they’re defying the elites when they live down to the elites’ worst expectations of them.”]”
  The winner of the summarise-Stefan-Molyneux competition – NOT PC
• “Robert Tracinski ably explains the fetid sewer of support flushed out by Donald Trump – people who understand Western civilisation not as a set of ideas, but as some kind of symbol of their racial identity. They’re calling themselves alt-right; he’s identified them simply as The Other Left. Or even more simply: Yes, The Alt-Right Are Just a Bunch of Racists…”
  “White Sheets and Red Golf Caps” – NOT PC

NB: From now on, I shall be taking this post’s conclusion as my policy on commenting here at NOT PC. The principle of free speech does not demand that I supply eugenicists with a microphone. If you insist on promoting ordure with mine, then fuck off and get your own.

 

---

Tomorrow, I post last year’s fifth-most popular post here at EnZed’'’s fourth-most read political blog asking … are we really the world’s most prosperous place?

Hillary Clinton’s Deplorables: Stefan Molyneux

 

Rarely if ever will you see on this blog the phrase “Hillary Clinton was right” – not unless it were to be concluded with phrases such as “to resign,” “to stand down,” or “to jump off a cliff” – but she was right to condemn the deplorable “alt-right” who have taken Donald Trump to their breast, about whom others such as Robert Tracinski and Stuart Hayashi had already exposed.

Stuart has also done sterling work exposing the downright racism of a one-time anarchist who underwent an “ideological transmogrification” to make himself one of the fonts of these deplorables. Tracinski gives over his own newsletter this week to Stuart, who explains as he has before that for all his fine words, Stefan Molyneux is just an old-time racist in a new guise and with new rationalisations.

When it comes to being the main apologist on the Web for Trump and his antics, Molyneux is second only to Milo Yiannopoulos. It is therefore unsurprising that Molyneux is cited occasionally in essays contributed to ‘Breitbart News’ and frequently in its comments section…
    The podcaster’s latest turn as Trump apologist [however] was particularly flabbergasting for those of us in the liberty movement who have been familiar with Molyneux’s podcast for the past decade. How is it that a man who once consistently advocated “market anarchy”—not coincidentally, similar to Murray Rothbard’s—has rebranded himself as an apologist for a political candidate strongly associated with the expansion of government power to restrict immigration and international trade?

Insert here as answer Molyneux’s need for a new (paying) audience after exposure as a disgusting opportunistic charlatan.

With but a dwindling number of anarchists standing by him, it seemed that either Molyneux would have to end his podcast series or find a new target audience.
    Thereafter Molyneux drifted from one vaguely right-wing ideological hobbyhorse to another, briefly trying to make inroads in the “Men’s Rights Movement.” But by the middle of 2015 he finally found a new movement he could grab onto—the alt-right and its white nationalism.

“White nationalism.” Yes, it is as disgusting as it sounds. Molyneux surfed this wave just in time for his depiction of “modern society as a struggle between native-born whites and brown-skinned aliens threatening Western traditions” to be reflected in Trump’s campaign, making him a natural to cheer the orange-skinned man to a standstill – “even if these rationalisations were convincing to no one other than those already in Trump’s corner.”

Unlike Trump, Molyneux prefers to sound intellectual. To make his predictions of impending race war sound more compelling, Molyneux cites terribly old-fashioned racist pseudoscience.

Stuart cites chapter and verse to demonstrate that this dangerously puerile movement is new only in its terms and rationalisations, beneath which is the same racism and barnyard collectivism of old that views human beings simply as cattle.

That seems to be the popular appeal of [Molyneux’s podcast]—it reinforces prejudices that its audience would otherwise be ashamed to hold.

If it seems unimportant to address this movement and its spokesthings, it’s not, says Tracinski: We should “take seriously the recent resurgence of racism under new guises and with new rationalisations.” Says Hayashi:

Human beings have struggled with racism for millennia. It has been present, historically, in every major culture, and anthropologists theorise that racism, in some form, was even prevalent in the Paleolithic Era, when separate hunter-gatherer clans looked upon one another in mutual distrust and often lingering animosity. One of the greatest achievements of the United States in the late twentieth century was removing the stigma against other races and placing the stigma on racism itself. Open racial hostility became more of an exception, not the norm. It would be a tragedy if we allowed Molyneux and the rest of the alt-right to make brazen racism seem normal once again.

Yes. It would.

So let’s keep calling it what it is, even when both right and left wish to relabel and redefine what is they are both practising.

.

Time for SOLO to change its name

 

Why have I posted so many recent posts opposing or explaining the odious Alt-Right movement? Because too many people I know and once valued have become infected by its virus, and intellectual hygiene demands that be acknowledged and rebutted (or an attempt at least made).

One local place that’s become a carrier for the virus is a site that’s still confusingly labelled “Objectivist,” although it’s now clearly anything but.  It should be abundantly evident now to any visitor of Lindsay Perigo’s site “for Sense-of-Life Objectivists” that it promotes neither sense-of-life nor Objectivism -- and should not be confused by anyone for an example of either. Nor of libertarianism.

I  say all this because Lindsay and I have shared stages together, and been long-term collaborators on any number of projects over many years, and any reasonable person may assume I share all his views. I don’t. And very definitely not the views he apparently harbours today.

Mr Perigo’s admirable obsession with opposing Islamist’s thuggery has now sadly morphed, as it has become more single-minded, from being just anti-Muslim to being odiously anti-human. And repellent. After not having been there for some time, here are some examples that sprang out without even needing to dig too deep:

“We need to recognise that most existing ‘humans’ are just that: humans in inverted commas—anti- and sub-human, but existing in human form.”
http://www.solopassion.com/node/9935#comment-123072

"Yes, people are, by and large, scum. That much has become irresistibly apparent to me..."
http://www.solopassion.com/node/10060#comment-124011

"Humanity as a whole (my God, how OrthOists will hate that expression) is still *sub*-human. "Sub" must be circumvented and superseded  ... I cannot imagine it will come about without an intervening cataclysm wherein all sub-humans are Karmally wiped out by the effects of their own mindlessness, and we can start over.
http://www.solopassion.com/node/10253

Humanity “as a whole” is “sub-human,” he says routinely. This from a man who once excoriated what he then called “humanity diminishers.”

“Yes, people are, by and large, scum,” he says without irony on a site that calls itself “Sense-of-Life.” (Can you see that sentiment fitting anywhere within the parameters of that pic above?)

And who you might wonder are all these “sub-humans” for whose end he so fervently hopes? Anyone who disagrees with him, it seems. Including me, who had the temerity to suggest earlier this year that he had chosen an introductory selection of classical music not from the more dramatic moments of romantic music but from the more “tepid” end of the spectrum – I received my indirect response to my riposte that very week; “my answer,” said Perigo, “to the pig-ignorant mewlings of the sub-humans who say Romantic-era music is ‘tepid’." Which was me, except it wasn’t – accuracy too [such as this partial and highly-flawed account of a recent and rare public outing] being another casualty these days of Mr Perigo’s increasingly inward focus.

And how about those he labels “OrthOists,” you ask, of whom he’s often so critical? It’s hard to know since neologising at the expense of clarity is an unfortunate Perigo fetish, but I think (this week at least) it must mean anyone who subscribes to the views espoused by Ayn Rand instead of those emanating from the fever dreams of the conspiracy theorists and worse with whom he now converses daily in his comments section of his site, where most of his site’s work is done.

So vast amounts of weirdness and worse, and not just from his regular commenters and bloggers, many of whom are expicitly white nationalists under whose influence, it appears, Mr Perigo is now…

…leaning explicitly towards eugenics…

"There is no such thing as a right to breed.  Breeding is an imposition upon the bred without the consent of the bred. It's a form of initiating force. Then, Objectimorons will tell the involuntarily bred they have a duty to stay alive simply because they've been bred. This is rational??!! Benevolent??!! In this shitty world of Peter Keatings??!! ... The most important thing as far as the survival of Western Civilisation is concerned, aside from stopping Islamofilth immigration, is stopping The Filth from proliferating. In most cases, it's the only thing The Filth knows how to do. The Filth must be thwarted."
http://www.solopassion.com/node/10253#comment-125444

"Anyway, there should be a new party proposing licenses to breed and to vote, wresting education from the child-molesters, along with my Not One Muslim immigration policy. I'd like to call it something provocative like the Western Civilisation Party."
http://www.solopassion.com/node/8744#comment-125979

…denying universal rights …

"We don't have a right to life just because we're alive and have a human body, though that's what the OrthOist position amounts to..."
http://www.solopassion.com/node/10253#comment-125418

…expressing unrestrained support for the likes of Pauline Hanson …

"Move Over Brexit! Yoooooooge Setback for Filth in Australia!: Move over Brexit! Pauline Hanson, reviled by Filth, has just won a seat in the Australian Senate, and will possibly pick up two more once this weekend's election results become more clear... I personally delight in contemplating how horrified Obleftivists across the ditch in New Zealand will be at this advance for civilised values and human freedom.”
http://www.solopassion.com/node/10270

…and political assassination.

“If ever Obama were to be targeted by an Omar Mateen [i.e., the mass-murderer], that would be poetic justice. I have no hesitation in saying that Obama is one ‘faggot’ whose martyrdom at the hands of the murderous bigots he has enabled would constitute Karmic justice ….”
http://www.solopassion.com/node/10259

Lest you think any of this is intended as humour, it isn’t.

As for reason, in his view it is apparently now an impotent force in the world with none of the power the “Filth” has to move it. So reason is impotent, and evil a force in the world – and a single obsession has become a near universal reason- and humanity-diminishment.

And yet in all his years of opposing and writing about Islamic thuggery, his decade-long singular obsession, his thinking has never matured beyond “Death to Islam.” No solutions at all, zero, beyond “not one Muslim,” a policy enthusiastically embraced at the fever swamp. As if it were possible to simply ban or bar or wipe out 1.5 billion people from existence.

And a man who once cheered Ronald Reagan demanding a Soviet Premier “tear down this wall” can now be found seriously insisting that America must “build a wall” itself, and not just along its Mexican border but along its Canadian border as well !

True story.

Furthermore, Mr Perigo has explicitly repudiated Objectivism, which he now calls "Obleftivism" (whatever that means). Instead, while repudiating the philosophy that the very masthead of his site trumpets and by which he attracts unaware readers, he is now promoting something he calls "Authenticism" -- which in all the years he’s been talking about it has never bothered to fully define apart from arm-waving about most humans not possessing rights (which humans? "Filth?" sub-humans? people with whom he’s had a disagreement?) and putting humans' animal side before their human. And his own personal cultural and highly unphilosophical heroes now hail from the explicit alt-right, including internet bores Stefan Molyneux (a white nationalist known to SOLO’s visitors as “Molly”), Paul Joseph Watson (who helps runs conspiracy sites like “InfoBores” and “Pathetic Planet”) whom Perigo calls “my new hero,” and Milo Yiannopoulos etc., [Milo for President! enthuses Perigo] as too do those with whom he now converses on his website -- which wears the banner of an Objectivist site while repudiating the philosophy.

So as sense-of-life goes, yet alone commitment to reason and just basic intellectual hygiene, there’s every reason to shun the site and demand he change the name, if not yet his direction.

Because, you know, Mr Perigo is free to adopt whatever repellent views and associates he chooses. But just basic intellectual honesty demands he not label those views and the site they frequent as something they are not.

Time to change the name and just go full retard. (Or, if it’s not too late, to reconsider.)

But since, like the pic at the top of the page, this one at the bottom also represents almost everything to which the site formally known as SOLO now stands opposed (including the grin), I thought I’d finish with this:

.[Pics by ObjectivismForIntellectuals and PlanningForLiberty]

.

Clinton’s attack on the alt-right, and 7 differences between them and libertarians

 

Who or what is the “alt-right”? Answer to that very soon, but to the delight of that antediluvian bunch of self-described white nationalists previously confined to the more fetid parts of the internet, the Republican nominee has been forthrightly spreading their memes [read here for background] and in a major speech last week the Democratic nominee has now put them firmly on the map.

Clinton’s attack on this movement she says has “taken over” the Republican Party is “in no small part part, aimed at telling moderate Republican voters and GOP-leaning independents that their values aren’t truly represented by the nightmare ideology otherwise known as Trumpism.”

He may be the GOP nominee, but he has perverted and distorted Republicanism into something so twisted and horrifying, so unlike anything else we’ve seen in modern times, that they shouldn’t feel bound by party loyalty or political habit to stand by him.

The attack is calculated to drive a wedge between these traditional Republicans and the candidate and his team whom they would otherwise be beholden to support.

This crowd of racist-right circle-jerkers being attacked however couldn’t care less about political calculations. The only thing for them worse than being calculated about is not being calculated about. So even if they’re being insulted, they’re a happy bunch of Trumpanzees.

Hoping to collect votes from both Republicans and Democrats appalled at their party’s respective nominees is Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson, who’s been running a very strong “I’m-the-sane-candidate” strategy against the loony tunes winging their way either side of him.

Confusingly however, many commentators mistake libertarians for these alt-right meatheads focussed on “white identity politics, many nascent libertarians themselves have found themselves seduced by the siren songs, and “more than a few” alt-rightists even claim some relationship to libertarianism – or once had one before sadly shedding their libertarianism later on.

What are the differences in outlook between alt-right ideology and libertarianism? Jeffrey Tucker reckons they come down to five – five different views on history, humanity, order, on trade & migration, and on emancipation & progress:

1. The Driving Force of History
Every ideology has a theory of history, some sense of a driving theme that causes episodic movements from one stage to another. Such a theory helps us make sense of the past, present, and future…

Ayn Rand argued that what drives history most fundamentally is ideas, of which reason and liberty are the most potent, but are by no means inevitable.

There is only one power that determines the course of history, just as it determines the course of every individual life: the power of man’s rational faculty—the power of ideas. If you know a man’s convictions, you can predict his actions. If you understand the dominant philosophy of a society, you can predict its course. But convictions and philosophy are matters open to man’s choice. There is no fatalistic, predetermined historical necessity.

Libertarian Murray Rothbard reckoned the specifically libertarian story of history is of that liberty against power. “I see the liberty of the individual not only as a great moral good in itself,” he said, “(or, with Lord Acton, as the highest political good), but also as the necessary condition for the flowering of all the other goods that mankind cherishes: moral virtue, civilisation, the arts and sciences, economic prosperity. Out of liberty, then, stem the glories of civilised life.”

The alt-right reject this outright. On the question of liberty versus power, they come down completely on the side of power.

The movement inherits a long and dreary tradition of thought from Friedrich Hegel to Thomas Carlyle to Oswald Spengler to Madison Grantto Othmar Spann to Giovanni Gentile to Trump’s speeches. This tradition sees something else going on in history: not liberty vs. power, but something like a more meta struggle that concerns impersonal collectives of tribe, race, community, great men, and so on.
    Whereas libertarianism speaks of individual choice, alt-right theory draws attention to collectives on the move. It imagines that despite appearances, we all default in our thinking back to some more fundamental instinct about our identity as a people, which is either being shored up by a more intense consciousness or eroded by a deracination and dispossession from what defines us. To criticise this as racist is often true but superficial. What’s really going on here is the depersonalisation of history itself: the principle that we are all being buffeted about by Olympian historical forces beyond our control as mere individuals. It takes something mighty and ominous like a great leader, an embodiment of one of these great forces, to make a dent in history’s narrative.

Hence the union of white identity politics (an inversion of the identity politics of their political opponents) and the wistful longing for their “man on horseback” to wall out the barbarian hordes.

2. Harmony vs. Conflict

A related issue concerns our capacity to get along with each other. Frédéric Bastiat described the free society as characterised by a “harmony of interests.” In order to overcome the state of nature, we gradually discover the capacity to find value in each other. The division of labour is the great fact of human community: the labour of each of us becomes more productive in cooperation with others, and this is even, or rather especially, true given the unequal distribution of talents, intelligence, and skills, and differences over religion, belief systems, race, language, and so on.
    And truly, this is a beautiful thing to discover. The libertarian marvels at the cooperation we see in a construction project, an office building, a restaurant, a factory, a shopping mall, to say nothing of a city, a country, or a planet. The harmony of interests doesn’t mean that everyone gets along perfectly, but rather than we inhabit institutions that incentivise progress through ever more cooperative behavior. As the liberals of old say, we believe that the “brotherhood of man” is possible.
    The libertarian believes that the best and most wonderful social outcomes are not those planned, structured, and anticipated, but rather the opposite.
    To the alt-right mind, this all seems ridiculous. Sure, shopping is fine. But what actually characterises human association is deep-rooted conflict. The races are secretly at war, intellectually and genetically. There is an ongoing and perpetual conflict between the sexes. People of different religions must fight and always will, until one wins. Nations fight for a reason: the struggle is real.

The libertarian understands that when force is barred from human interaction and all human interaction is voluntary, that each other individual is a net benefit to us, For the alt-righter however, every other human being is a threat, especially those who are “not like us.”

Hence their inevitable racism, a “barnyard” form of collectivism  -- “ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage—the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors. Racism;” explains Rand, “claims that the content of a man’s mind (not his cognitive apparatus, but its content) is inherited; that a man’s convictions, values and character are determined before he is born, by physical factors beyond his control.”

Hence for them society is irretrievably divided “vertically” on racial lines, over which each tribe is determinedly in conflict. Ludwig von Mises captures this parallel brilliantly in his identification that, “Nationalist ideology divides society vertically; the socialist ideology divides society horizontally.”

As Tucker observes, “Here, as with many other areas, the far right and far left are strangely aligned.”

3. Designed vs. Spontaneous Order
    The libertarian believes that the best and most wonderful social outcomes are not those planned, structured, and anticipated, but rather the opposite. Society is the result of millions and billions of small acts of rational self interest that are channelled into an undesigned, unplanned, and unanticipated order that cannot be conceived by a single mind. The knowledge that is required to put together a functioning social order is conveyed through institutions: prices, manners, mores, habits, and traditions that no one can consciously will into existence. There must be a process in place, and stable rules governing that process, that permit such institutions to evolve, always in deference to the immutable laws of economics.
    Again, the alt-right mind finds all of this uninspired and uninspiring. Society in their conception is built by the will of great thinkers and great leaders with unconstrained visions of what can be. What we see out there operating in society is a result of someone’s intentional and conscious planning from the top down.
    If we cannot find the source, or if the source is somehow hiding, we imagine that it must be some shadowy group out there that is manipulating outcomes – and hence the alt-right’s obsession with conspiracy theory. The course of history is designed by someone, so “we” might as well engage in the great struggle to seize the controls – and hence the alt-right obsession with politics as a contact sport.
    Oh, and, by the way, economics is a dismal science.

4. Trade and Migration
Of course the classical liberals fought for free trade and free migration of peoples, seeing national borders as arbitrary lines on a map that mercifully restrain the power of the state but otherwise inhibit the progress of prosperity and civilisation. To think globally is not a bad thing, but a sign of enlightenment. Protectionism is nothing but a tax on consumers that inhibits industrial productivity and sets nations at odds with each other. The market process is a worldwide phenomenon that indicates an expansion of the division of labor, which means a progressive capacity of people to enhance their standard of living and ennoble their lives.
    The alt-right is universally opposed to free trade and free migration. You can always tell a writer is dabbling in alt-right thought (or neoreactionary or Dark Enlightenment or outright fascism) if he or she has an intense focus on immigration or international trade as inherently bad or fraudulent or regrettable in some sense. To them, a nation must be strong enough to thrive as an independent unit, an economic or cultural sovereignty unto itself.
    Today, the alt-right has a particular beef with trade deals, not because they are unnecessarily complex or bureaucratic (which are good reasons to doubt their merit) but because of their meritorious capacity to facilitate international cooperation. And it is the same with immigration. Beginning at some point in the late 19th century, migration came to be seen as a profound threat to national identity, which invariably means racial identity.

5. Emancipation and Progress

The libertarian celebrates the profound changes in the world from the late Middle Ages to the age of laissez faire, because we observed how commercial society broke down the barriers of class, race, and social isolation, bringing rights and dignity to ever more people. Slavery was ended. Women were emancipated, as marriage evolved from conquest and dominance into a free relationship of partnership and consent. This is all a wonderful thing, because rights are universal, which is to say, they rightly belong to everyone equally. Anything that interferes with people’s choices holds them back and hobbles the progress of prosperity, peace, and human flourishing. This perspective necessarily makes the libertarian optimistic about humanity’s potential.
    The alt-right mind can’t bear this point of view, and regards it all as naive. What appears to be progress is actually loss: loss of culture, identity, and mission. They look back to what they imagine to be a golden age when elites ruled and peons obeyed. And thus we see the source of their romantic attachment to authority as the source of order, and the longing for authoritarian political rule. As for universal rights, forget it. Rights are granted by political communities and are completely contingent on culture. The ancients universally believed that some were born to serve and some to rule, and the alt-right embraces this perspective. Here again, identity is everything and the loss of identity is the greatest crime against self anyone can imagine.

It should be obvious from Tucker’s analysis that where libertarians view each of us individuals with the power to think and choose, the Alt-Right views each of us instead as part of a “tribe,” our identity irretrievably given us at birth and needing “leadership” to be grafted into its proper whole.

So while libertarianism is indivualistic, the alt-right is demonstrably collectivist. This on its own should stop the mainstream media from lumping us all together. (Yeah right.) And make no mistake, says Tucker: the alt-right knows exactly who its enemies are, and we libertarians are among them. 

To Tucker’s five main differences I would add two more: two contrasting views on The Power of Reason and The Impotence of Evil.

Following Rand, Libertarian Objectivists recognise both the power of Reason and the impotence of Evil – recognising reason to be not just the driving force of history but man’s unique means of survival and flourishing, and evil (being its negation) being essentially parasitic, unable even to survive without mooching on those it would seek to destroy. (This is just one reason a religion like Islam essentially resides in the moral, cultural and historical vacuum created by others, and always has.)

The Alt-Right however consciously reject this thesis. For them it is not man’s mind that has power in the world but his blood. They repair instead to the notion that “intelligence,” culture and all values are simply a product of race, over which none of us has any control; and they see themselves as the true guardians of “white culture,” which is beset on all sides by evil hordes who cannot be reasoned with yet who somehow possess the power and the means to destroy us.

Evil itself has power therefore, and humanity itself becomes our enemy.(“Humanity as a whole is still sub-human” says one former NZ Objectivist, who desperately need to be “wiped out” by some “intervening cataclysm” so that “we” can start over.)

The irony is that in talking up the power of those forces they feel are arrayed against them, so powerful that they must be banned, barred, wiped out and walled out, they implicity stress both power of evil and the impotence of reason to address its challenges; they argue for the power of the culture they damn and the weakness of the culture with which they identify to stand up to those forces. In other words then, the culture they protect they view implicitly as weak and cowardly, and the “intelligence” that they so fitfully measure has no power for them to ultimately move the world.

In that then, the alt-right is not just a racist movement of un-reason, it is one of irredeemable cowardice.

UPDATE:

Objectivist Amy Peikoff discusses the Alt-Right with Stuart Hayashi, who’s recently been analysing Stefan Molyneux’s brand of “race realism”:

 

 

.

Friends don’t let friends listen to Stefan Molyneux

 

One of the least attractive phenomena in more than a decade of unattractive things is the re-emergence into what passes for polite society of eugenics and explicit white supremacy. Even in places and from people I once thought I knew. (If you’re wondering, then I probably do mean you.)

Trump is partly to blame. “By launching his campaign on a ‘Mexican immigrants are rapists’’ platform,” Donald Trump flushed these things back up from the sewers and made them safe to talk about again. Turns out that dressing up economic protectionism, white supremacism and tribalism as a defense of western civilisation has flushed out many things you thought were long sunk, and many things even in friends (now former friends) you hadn’t realised existed.

But he’s only partly to blame for what was probably already latent. Also to blame is the phony equation that being politically incorrect also means being noxious;  the un-thinking that says if “they” are against it, then “we” must be for it – and anyone else is a “cuck” -- or the non-idea that the appropriate response to “their” racism is to go hard out on your own.

With some it’s genuine (and genuinely unwelcome). With Stefan Molyneux, it’s a career move. Who’s Stephan Molyneux? He’s one of the other reasons you’re seeing more and more of this stuff around. Molyneux is a dickhead with a following, that for some reason some of you keep recommending. For the record, Molyneux makes videos of himself talking. Talking interminably, often about himself. Hardly riveting. For many years he talked about anarchy, seeking to become a bigfish in this small pond. Then seeing a gap in the much bigger phony pastor market he began telling his young followers to abandon their parents and instead devote their lives, their honour and their sacred fortunes to his cause. Which was his wallet.

His arse very publicly handed to him by a woman known as J. Ravin/“TruShibes,” he hunkered down to re-emerge as a promoter of white supremacy who, I Iament, has become unaccountably influential even with people I formerly knew and/or admired.

Strange are the things people turn to when they think that the world is on fire. Stranger still how they think eugenics and white supremacy would help extinguish and not fan it.

Stuart Hayashi has researched Molyneux’s rantings, should you have any doubt this is what the wanker promotes, and I heartily recommend his post if you’re wondering why you’re seeing this stuff or Molyneux’s name around the traps so much. Hayashi identifies two premises the toerag promotes that are rarely heard together (a strategy of deniability, you see), but when combined form the argument, such as it is.

Premise One: Your genes, as associated with your race, are the main determinant of IQ. That is, your racecauses you to have a particular IQ number….
Premise Two: Your IQ number is the main factor determining whether you are economically productive or criminally violent.

From those unprepossessing ingredients Molyneux makes a very unedifying stew: We should therefore deduce, at his behest, that a person’s race is what determines whether they are economically productive or criminally violent, therefore policies should be adopted to bar the many non-white “low-IQ races” from immigrating, from breeding, from generally being around.

This is not called out-and-out eugenics, these days, or even white supremacy – although that’s what it is. It’s called things like “race realism” or “human biodeversity,” which is they way you may have heard it promoted on websites and fora in which you once participated – or from people with whom you were once friends.  And while Molyneux is just a vector for this disease, not the main source, he’s unaccountably influential.

One thing relied upon is an ignorance about the basic distinction between race and culture, about which Thomas Sowell has written so widely and so well. Culture, explains Sowell, should be understood as “the working machinery of everyday life” and like any machinery should be open to criticism and improvement. Some cultures are more productive than others, some less; this is true, but race itself is irrelevant.

One of the eugenicist’s aims is to collapse this distinction between race and culture, insisting instead that only race is relevant – that the two are deterministically entwined, with IQ being the measure of superiority.

Yes, it truly is this facile. As Robert Tracinski points out, these are people who understand Western civilisation “not as a set of ideas, but as some kind of symbol of their racial identity.”

Hayashi briefly counters this odious nonsense, noting the very basic fact for example that even if you were to accept IQ as any measure of anything (about which there are huge problems) the causal arrow goes from  wealth to performing well in IQ tests, not the other way around.

He then plunges into a veritable long-drop full of excreta on this topic that Molyneux has spewed out since his dramatic rebirth, leading to the conclusion that “because skills and abilities have not been distributed evenly by Mother Nature among various ethnicities,” the only cure to the impending collapse of western countries is closed borders and racial separatism.

It’s like a prepper’s version of a national policy.

Why is this important? Because I keep seeing this stuff in places and around people I once frequented. And friends don’t let friends believe this stuff.

But if they do, there’s a very simple message for you, and it appears at the very top of this post.

Please take it literally.

Intellectual hygiene demands it.

MORE READING:

• “I take Stefan Molyneux to task for his promoting white supremacism. And I quote him to prove that, yes, that is what he is promoting.”
  Quotations from Stefan Molyneux Showing His Promotion of Eugenics, Pseudoscientific Racism, and Bigotry Against Blacks – Stuart Hayashi, STU-TOPIA
• “The fetid end of the political spectrum is rising up to support statism in the name of protecting IQ – on the basis, say the fetid-swamp warriors, that the “low IQs” will only destroy the culture and are too dumb to deserve freedom anyway. Vile enough, but does their chosen proxy even merit serious consideration? No.”
  The Intellectual Conceit of IQ Ideology – Jeffrey Tucker, NOT PC
• “It's not pretty, and it's sad that this person has any influence at all. In summary, and as a TL;DR: the left is bad, so things the left thinks are wrong by definition and opposition to the left is good by definition. [and more: “…the genius of the Trump campaign has been to convince people they’re defying the elites when they live down to the elites’ worst expectations of them.”]”
  The winner of the summarise-Stefan-Molyneux competition – NOT PC
• “Robert Tracinski ably explains the fetid sewer of support flushed out by Donald Trump – people who understand Western civilisation not as a set of ideas, but as some kind of symbol of their racial identity. They’re calling themselves alt-right; he’s identified them simply as The Other Left. Or even more simply: Yes, The Alt-Right Are Just a Bunch of Racists…”
  “White Sheets and Red Golf Caps” – NOT PC

NB: From now on, I shall be taking this post’s conclusion as my policy on commenting here at NOT PC. The principle of free speech does not demand that I supply eugenicists with a microphone. If you insist on promoting ordure with mine, then fuck off and get your own.

.

Who’s to blame for Trump? Conservatives are to blame for Trump.

 

“In the wake of Donald Trump’s ascent to dominance in the GOP, conservative leaders blame Republicans for the calamity. But they shouldn’t,” argues Craig Biddle. The should look to their own intellectual failure.

Donald Trump represents the end of the road for American conservatism as an intellectual movement. But you already know this. If indeed there was ever anything intellectual about the movement at all.

He is what happens when you shun any intellectual defence of the positions you claim to support: of individual rights, of freedom, above all of capitalism. The tragedy is that if conservative standardbearers had only recognised  it, an across-the-board philosophical defence virtually across-the-board was virtually handed to them on a plate.

But it wasn’t wanted, because it wasn’t faith-based.

Such is the intellectual shallowness of the conservative movement.

Not just not wanted, it was viciously attacked. Not just ignored, these rotten conservatives elected to systematically lie about the philosophy and its fountainhead. Having evaded and avoided it, they repaired instead to their threadbare mysticism and their anti-intellectual faith-based arguments for their Frankenstein form of crony-capitalism. And look what they have now delivered: a Jekyll-and-Hyde candidate.

Donald Trump is now the standard-bearer for the Republican Party because when conservative leaders—who, by their chosen profession, had a responsibility to identify, convey, and apply a viable philosophy to support rights, freedom, and capitalism—were handed a philosophy that clearly could do so, they ignored or maligned it. And they did so for decades.
    Republican presidential candidate Trump is a product of conservative leaders’ evasions. He’s their Frankenstein. He’s their fault.
    Have other factors contributed to the rise of Trump. Yes, many other factors have. But conservatives’ evasions are the fundamental cause. If conservative leaders had embraced rather than ignored or misrepresented Ayn Rand’s ideas, conservative efforts to defend freedom, capitalism, and the American ideal would have been anchored in an irrefutable moral and philosophical foundation; thus, America would now be—or would at least be headed in the direction of—the rights-protecting republic it is supposed to be. In such a context, a vulgar opportunist such as Trump couldn’t garner political support from any sizable portion of the population. Instead, he’d be using ‘the best words’ to complain about the difficulty of ‘cutting deals’ without the coercive power of eminent domain.
    So the point here is not that no other factors have contributed to the political ascent of Trump. Rather, the point is that the fundamental cause of his ascent is the evasions of conservative leaders…
    There is no quick fix.

READ: How Conservatives Begat Trump, and What to Do About It – Craig Biddle, OBJECTIVE STANDARD

[Image: DonkeyHotey]

.

The winner of the summarise-Stefan-Molyneux competition

 

I keep being sent “recommendations” to follow a fellow called Stefan Molyneux. I’m not sure why. He appears explicitly opposed to virtually everything I value.

Mark Kormes describes for example a recent “podcast” by the creature on Donald Trump (who the Molyneux supports) and Objectivist opposition to his candidacy. As Mr Kormes says, the podcast is very revealing of his mentality

It's not pretty, and it's sad that this person has any influence at all. In summary, and as a TL;DR: the left is bad, so things the left thinks are wrong by definition and opposition to the left is good by definition. [and more: “…the genius of the Trump campaign has been to convince people they’re defying the elites when they live down to the elites’ worst expectations of them.”]

Allowing yourself to be defined by your opponents is neither good strategy nor good intellectual hygiene – yet, you might recall, it is a signal “tactic” of the so-called alt-right of whom the Molyneux is apart, who (with their white sheets and red golf caps) “dress up economic protectionism, white supremacism, and tribalism as a defense of western civilisation.”

Mr Kormes summarises the fatuous pro-Trump/anti-Objectivism points made by the Molyneux in the podcast:

• *If Objectivists were actually for open borders, they'd support them in Israel too, but being bought and paid for by their neocon donors, they don't. Donald Trump is not bought and paid for by neocons.
• *People respond to incentives, and so Third World immigrants are clearly here for the free stuff. That's why Democrats invite them in, and anyone who supports open borders is thus a suicidal de facto Democrat who wants America to be overrun by Third World immigrants. Donald Trump is not a Democrat and does not want America to be overrun by Third World immigrants.
• *We should charge the rest of the world money for the right to trade with us, send us immigrants, and benefit from our military--anything else is anti-American and self-sacrificial. Donald Trump clearly loves America.
• *Objectivists who support open borders and racial equality and are concerned about abuses by police are trying to win "cool points" from leftists and the mainstream media--likely in order to satisfy their neocon donors--though this is a futile effort because leftists want America to be overrun by Third World immigrants and will be satisfied with nothing less than the destruction of Caucasian capitalist America and making any concession to them is suicidal and will win no such "cool points." Donald Trump doesn't care about "cool points."
• *The alt-right aren't racist at all--just heroic anti-leftists. To attack the alt-right is trolling for "cool points" from the left, which will never be forthcoming. One must join the alt-right or one is a leftist dupe who doesn't want to fight back. Donald Trump welcomes their support because he fights back.
• *Feminism rules our culture and makes us irrational because women are usually emotionalist. Feminists hate the alpha male and yet are sexually attracted to him. Donald Trump is a big-time alpha male.
• *Alpha males are hated by our culture unless they are relentless leftists. Non-alpha males are "cuck" conformists who just want the feminists who run our society to sleep with them. Donald Trump has no trouble with the ladies--he is no "cuck."
• *If the right had any balls, they'd have endorsed the "Bell Curve" and all the other data out there showing the brown races are stupid. Even if it's not racial/genetic causes but environmental causes that give those Third Worlders low IQs, we must keep them out of the country or it will swell the welfare rolls to the breaking point. This is simply science--science mandates closed borders, and to support keeping them open is suicidal and irrational. Donald Trump wants to build a huge wall along the Mexican border--he has balls and is not suicidal.
• *Rational discussion requires people to critically discuss whether brown people are stupid and women are emotionalists and not use words like "racist" or "sexist" because doing so is PC leftist talk that silences important discussions based on well-researched facts like the stupidity of brown people and the emotionalism of women. Donald Trump doesn't care about the PC left and unlike Cruz is not religious, so he is a rational man.
• *The way to win over Trump supporters if you think Trump is bad is to listen to their views and give them what they want. To tell them what they want is impossible and/or destructive is a great argument for Trump. The people can't ever be wrong about their desires, and they want Trump or, if not Trump, Trumpism. Therefore, since people respond to incentives and the customers want Trumpism, anti-Trump people must find an alternate way of satisfying the people's demand that immigration be stopped and good jobs brought back to America. Donald Trump is not a PC leftist conformist who wants to destroy America--opposition to him is proof that one is a PC leftist conformist who wants to destroy America.

Did I say fatuous? I don’t even think the “arguments” make that standard.

So, in short, I won’t be spending any time with the Molyneux. But thanks so much for the invitations.

RELATED POSTS:

• Yes, the Alt-Right Are Just a Bunch of Racists – Robert Tracinski, THE FEDERALIST
• The Racist Moral Rot at the Heart of the Alt-Right – Ian Tuttle, NRO
• What is the difference between multiculturalism and genuine racial tolerance? – OBJECTIVIST ANSWERS

Tibor Machan: Racism versus “Bigotry”

In tribute to our recently departed friend, I thought I’d begin posting a few of the many columns Tibor Machan wrote for our Free Radical’ magazine back in the day. He had a knack for writing very simply, but leaving you seeing the world differently thereafter…

Racism versus “Bigotry”
by Tibor Machan (2007)

In a recent guest column for The New York Times, Robert Wright compared the insulting remarks of former radio talk show host Don Imus to the anti-Muslim tirades of conservative columnist Ann Coulter. He appears to be treating these as very much the same kind of thing and concludes that the fault line between blacks and whites won’t be as significant in the future as that between Americans and Muslims. As he put it, “And if anything, I’d say that the second fault line is the more treacherous. America has already done things abroad that are helping to make the ‘clash of civilisations’ thesis a self-fulfilling prophecy. Let’s not make that kind of mistake at home.”

When Don Imus insulted the Rutgers University women basketball players, he was uttering what arguably are racial slurs. These are insulting primarily because they attribute character traits to people based on something no one can do anything about, namely, one's membership in a racial group. No one’s race may be rationally held against him or her since anything one cannot make a choice about cannot be morally or otherwise faulted.

When Ann Coulter insults radical Muslims, by contrast, she is uttering what arguably are criticisms or attacks on the self-chosen traits of people of a given faith or viewpoint. Such traits are something over which individuals do have a choice, so they can be held responsible for them. Such criticisms and verbal attacks are akin to criticising or attacking Nazis, members of the KKK, Communists, Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, or Christians. No one is born these but chooses to become a member (at least in his or her adulthood).

So Imus's and Coulter's cases are incomparable. Hostility against radical Muslims as radical Muslims could be misguided but it is of a different category from hostility against blacks as blacks.

Of course, there is a not so hidden controversy beneath the surface here, one that has to do with whether human beings have the freedom to choose their beliefs, their membership in a religious, philosophical, political or other community based on a viewpoint. As a former Roman Catholic, I often hear it said that I cannot depart the faith as a matter of my own free will—I am stuck in it, like it or not. Even citizenship is often regarded something one obtains by virtue of being born in a certain place, although here it is problematic to argue that one cannot shed one’s nationality. Many people switch theirs, as I did mine when I emigrated from Hungary and eventually took up American citizenship by taking an oath before a judge—along with 50 some others—back in 1961 in a court house in Washington, D.C. Yet, some might well argue that here, too, various forces pushed me to become an American citizen and my choice is but an illusion.

Perhaps Mr. Wright is of this outlook and considers one’s religious—or political, ideological, philosophical “membership”—just as unavoidable as one’s membership in a racial or ethnic group. But to argue that issue he would need to do a great deal more than to suggest that Don Imus’s remarks are akin to those of Ann Coulter’s. Because however that issue of choice is ultimately resolved—and it has been an issue since time immemorial—it would be difficult to make it credible that being of a certain race is just like being a member in a religious or political group. That’s because although in today’s technological climate one might conceivably change one’s race and color, that’s more a feature of science fiction than reality, while changes in religious or political affiliation are evident all around us.

And, of course, religious or political (or other) convictions and the ensuing ways of life are open to scrutiny and criticism and can often be rationally attacked. Some call this bigotry but it is only that when done mindlessly, without careful attention to the content of the targeted beliefs. For example, in the book Islamic Imperialism, as in many similar books, the author, Efraim Karsh, finds many objectionable feature of Islam, especially of the radical variety. And, of course, Democrats attack Republicans, libertarians attack socialists, atheists attack theists, all because they find fault with the choice to embrace these religious or political viewpoints.

Mr. Wright was, therefore, wrong in comparing Imus and Coulter. The former did something that’s morally objectionable because he ridiculed people for what they cannot help but be, while the latter has been doing something that could quite easily be justified, which is attacking a viewpoint no one needs to embrace.

---

 

 

Philosopher and polymath, communist defector and independent Objectivist, Tibor Machan (1939-2016) was one of nature’s gentlemen and liberty’s great men.

.

“White Sheets and Red Golf Caps”–updated

 

“… dressing up economic protectionism, white supremacism,
and tribalism isn't a defense of western civilisation.”

Robert Tracinski ably explains the fetid sewer of support flushed out by Donald Trump – people who understand Western civilisation not as a set of ideas, but as some kind of symbol of their racial identity. They’re calling themselves alt-right; he’s identified them simply as The Other Left. Or even more simply: Yes, The Alt-Right Are Just a Bunch of Racists:

I’m talking about the so-called “alt-right,” which stands for “alternative right,” though I can’t find anything particularly “right-wing” about them—not in the American sense, which has traditionally meant advocacy of free markets, individual rights, and the ideals of our Founding Fathers.
    Frankly, it’s a little embarrassing that we even have to debate this, but by launching his campaign on a “Mexican immigrants are rapists” platform, Donald Trump brought the alt-right out of the woodwork.

And they’re now out.

One astute observation among many: these are people who allow their opponents to define their politics:

The alt-right originated by looking at the left’s caricature of the right as racists and pro-white tribalists and saying, in effect: sure, we’ll be that. …
   The alt-right is enabling this fraud. They accept the left’s intellectual framework and eagerly take on the role of the villain that the left assigned to us. Then they have the effrontery to present themselves as big rebels against the left. What a joke.
    You could argue that the alt-right is a consequence of the left’s abuse of the stigma against racism. By reflexively denouncing as a racist everyone who disagrees with them about economics, and by making every detail of ordinary life into a minefield of hidden racial transgressions, they have burned up their own credibility. In the process, they have weakened the culture’s immune system against racism and made it possible for a young cohort of racists to repackage their odious creed as resistance to political correctness. …
    The alt-right isn’t part of the intellectual traditions of the American right, nor is it an alternative to anything. It’s just the same old white-sheet set, repackaged with red “Make America Great Again” golf caps. They’re serving as ignorant tools of the left, and they should be exposed as such.

If you maybe think he’s exaggerating…

The most important point he makes: “They want to destroy Western Civilisation in order to save it”:

The big fig leaf of the alt-right is that they want to protect Western Civilisation—by throwing out its distinctive ideas and achievements.
    The central theme of the Western intellectual tradition is about rising above tribalism to arrive at universal values. That’s a common theme that connects both secular and Christian traditions in the West. It was the whole distinctive idea behind the Ancient Greek revolution in thought…. Philosophers like Socrates launched the Western tradition by asking probing questions that were meant to sort out which ideas and practices are based merely on historical accident and social convention, versus those that are based on universal laws of human nature.
     Tribalism, by contrast, is the default state of every culture and can be found among every people in every corner of the world. There is nothing distinctively Western about it, and it runs against the whole grain of the Western intellectual tradition.
    So by reverting to tribalism, the alt-right is saying that they had to destroy Western Civilization in order to save it.

Yeah right.

To paraphrase his comment above: “This vile movement isn’t part of the intellectual traditions of Western civilisation, nor is it an alternative to it.”

RELATED POSTS:

• “…there is no reason for believing that civilisation is in any way a property of any particular race or ethnic group. It is strictly an intellectual matter--ultimately, a matter of the presence or absence of certain fundamental ideas underlying the acquisition of further knowledge.”
  “The Universalisability of Western Civilisation” – George Reisman, NOT PC
• “If ‘multiculturalism’ is taken to mean preserving the demographic makeup of distinct ethnic groups or clusters within a larger population, it actually fosters racism rather than diminishing it… ‘Multiculturalism’ of that kind is actually modern tribalism, and the label ‘multiculturalism’ is a vague diversion to hide the tribal nature of it.”
  What is the difference between multiculturalism and genuine racial tolerance? – OBJECTIVIST ANSWERS
• [UPDATE: “Most on the Alt-Right do not only reject the ‘conservative Establishment’ or some other contemporary bogeyman; they also reject the ideals of classical liberalism as such. That rejection grounds the thinking of Jared Taylor, and Richard Spencer, for instance — representative “intellectuals” of the Alt-Right, according to Bokhari and Yiannopoulos. These men — the founders of the publications American Renaissance and Radix Journal, respectively — have not simply been ‘accused of racism.’ They are racist, by definition. Taylor’s ‘race realism,’ for example, co-opts evolutionary biology in the hopes of demonstrating that the races have become sufficiently differentiated over the millennia to the point that the races are fundamentally — that is, biologically — different. Spencer, who promotes ‘White identity’ and ‘White racial consciousness,’ is beholden to similar ‘scientific’ findings.”
  The Racist Moral Rot at the Heart of the Alt-Right – Ian Tuttle, N.R.O.]

[Pic by Shutterstock.]

.11