What Does ‘White Supremacist’ Mean?

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America, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, racism, trump, white supremacy

White supremacy is an indeterminate but vital concept in modern political discourse, particularly in Britain and America, where it is most commonly used. As a tool of political assassination it is often successful, so feared are its present and past associations; but what does it actually mean? 

Trump, we are told, is a ‘white supremacist’, or at least has a taint of the ideology in him, or at least knows people who have. He ‘dog-whistles’ to openly white supremacist groups. His very platform is based in white supremacist doctrine, and appeals, implicitly or directly, to those who understand certain words and gestures.

But still, and alas, few if any of the media figures making these charges appear willing to spell out what white supremacists actually want, or why Trump sympathises with them, or even why it would be a bad thing if he did.

Just because something is elementary doesn’t mean it can go without saying. We need to be told what something means if we are to condemn it, and no-one at present is bothering to do this. The dull public is supposed to recoil from the term itself, shocked into skipping any effort at private reasoning.

But we won’t do that here. What is this thing and why is it bad?

According to dictionary definitions, white supremacism is any system of belief holding that white people (Europeans) are superior to other races, and that political arrangements, whether in individual countries or internationally, should reflect that. 

Some white supremacists are relatively gentle, others absurdly hard-line. Proposed courses of action range from simply acknowledging the preferability of white people in existing policy areas (such as immigration), to wiping non-whites from the face of the earth through systematic mass murder. 

Where are we supposed to believe Trump sits on this spectrum? Where are the Proud Boys? Where was Hitler? Most interestingly, where is the average person today?

Superiority can be objective or subjective depending on the aspect being considered. Beauty, for example, is more the latter, while intelligence is more the former.

Though IQ tests are imperfect, we can note by their evidence that European people are not the most intelligent race around, apparently inferior to both northeast Asians and Ashkenazi Jews. Northeast Asians are also healthier, with longer life expectancies, and more numerous, more hardworking and less violent. Black Africans are faster and more fertile, etcetera.

These facts could easily be cited as evidence against white supremacy as a ‘theory’, but that would not likely diminish its popularity. This is because what is called ‘white supremacy’ is not a theory at all. It is a tradition.

Rather than a simple and vulgar “better than you” calculation, European supremacy (and we will switch from the meaningless ‘white’ label here) is the default and historical condition of all European or European-founded countries. 

The United States, despite the declared values of its founders, was created as a European nation. It was designed to function as one, and no doubt expected to remain one as a matter of common sense and intuitive self-interest. And indeed, that supremacy would last as a quite explicit policy until about the midpoint of the 20th century, when the logic underpinning the founders’ attitudes became subject to critical analysis. The 1965 Immigration Act permitted a flow of non-Europeans into the country. European supremacy, once a banal fact, transmuted gradually into a question.

Skipping to the present, America is due to become a European-minority nation in just a couple of decades. (We are working here with ideas of purity traditional to America when counting Europeans. right or wrongly).

In anticipation of this Gotterdammerung, the cultural primacy of Europeans in America is already being actively challenged, and even where usefully extant, lamented.

To have an opinion worth hearing on this matter means choosing from three options: it’s good, it’s bad, or it makes no difference. (This is true also in Europe, Australia, Canada, and anywhere else Europeans have been a majority; all such places are facing the same challenges.)

If you think it might be bad that European primacy is fading in the West, you can expect to be accused at some point of white supremacism. And that’s OK. You are not necessarily a lunatic, a bigot, an ideologue, or even a European. You just happen to believe European countries are better with a European character. 

And why might you believe that?

Well, you might be an art-hound and understand that the most richly creative nations have European majorities. You might be gay or lesbian and understand that your enemies are most comfortable in non-European company. You might be an anti-racist and understand that European racism, though real, is at least less open and acceptable than elsewhere (try being Indian in Turkey or African in China). You might be a romantic and understand that the third world, with its caste barriers and tribal character, all but prohibits romance. And so on.

Perhaps some form of liberal white supremacy, though in need of a new name, will become more popular as the demographic transition approaches.

To close, Donald Trump may well believe that America should remain a European-majority country. I am quite sure a lot of his supporters do.

But perhaps a greater diversity of people agree with them than are willing, at present, to say so.

David

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Keeping a Level Head

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America, Defend the modern world, Europe, guardia civil, laura ingraham, news, tucker carlson

The current pandemic has been greatly disruptive to every person, country, culture and relationship on Earth. It has also been transformative, in that governmental responses to it have brought out secret orientations and sympathies that would otherwise have remained hidden, even to those now possessed by them. Libertarianism, for example, has seen its stock rise dramatically, while whatever appetite there was for authoritarianism and law-worship has declined, or developed anew in others places and forms, with different affiliations.

I have seen friends of many years collapse into wacky thinking and conspiracy, panicked out of their once sturdy minds. Just the other day my mother regretfully informed me that one of her work colleagues has come to believe in the psychotic explanations of David Icke; that 5G produced the virus, directly and by design, as part of a grand plan to enslave and microchip the world. Here in Spain, I have witnessed several people – typically older women – argue with police officers when asked to wear a mask, or to pull them up to cover their noses. Elsewhere, I know people who overestimate the virus as being worse than the 1918 Spanish flu, with one friend, admittedly drunk, going so far as to suggest it will cull half the planet. I know still others who suspect that China let slip, accidentally or otherwise, the creation of a military research laboratory in Wuhan. And so on.

My own experiences have been trying. The first few weeks of the lockdown here were disturbingly un-European. I can easily recall members of the Policia Nacional, with their black guns and batons, shouting at people on the street without a reason to get back to their apartments – “Venga! Vamos!” On one occasion I was myself interrogated for being outside. My explanation – that I was unaware the supermarket had changed its hours that day – was treated with authoritarian contempt. “Es cerrado! Vamos! Vamos!”

Having lost my father at Christmas, the virus erupted before I could catch my breath and added to a sense of personal apocalypse. I couldn’t help but feel anxiety, as well as anger and indignation. And I wasn’t alone.

“We are becoming Chinese!” my girlfriend complained of the drastic security measures. “China is going to win. This is not Europe.”

Days into the lockdown the supermarkets were stripped bare. People jostled for bags of muesli and boxes of milk; phenomena very new to me, and which seemed unreal, movie-like, strangely exhilarating. I rather enjoyed the ‘prepping’ aspect of it all; the feeling that I had secured everything I needed was a rush, no doubt the legacy of an earlier and more eventful evolutionary stage; but this too would give way when the same frustration returned.

I felt then and continue to believe now that the lockdown was an overreach of governmental power. During those long, boring months I was immensely grateful for the telejournalism of Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, who were among very few mainstream figures willing to question the wisdom and desirability of the policy outright. Both of them endorsed things that were silly and untrue, of course, most notably several fringe studies overstating the potential of hydroxychloroquine, which went on to cause great public confusion; but their willingness to question the heel-clicking technocracy of other media was refreshing and allowed for some to retain their sanity.

It seemed commonsensical to me that lockdowns were best targeted at vulnerable populations, not at every man and his dog. Those most at risk should have been encouraged to stay at home, along with anyone who could not live independently of them. Others should have been given the compromise our governments now offer us – namely, that we can go about our business if we wear masks and wash our hands.

I am pleased to see most Spanish people going along with the new rules (the exceptions tend to be non-native). The virus is very real, after all, and despite frequent claims to the contrary, far deadlier than the seasonal flu.

Keeping a level head as the world melts down is a royal art; far more difficult than one would think in advance of the fact. The number of educated people I have seen lose their wits as a result of this pandemic is depressingly high. But our governments and media have also faltered, and let them not insist otherwise. Contradictory information has become so commonplace as to seem unremarkable (the advice regarding masks, etc). So we have all failed in our own ways.

When the vaccine arrives, it will meet with substantial protest and dissent, overlapping streams from wildly different Facebook subcultures, naturopathy through to QAnon.  But I believe a return to something like normality is nonetheless possible. It isn’t only health that matters here. Governments must be pushed back behind their proper limits. Ultimately, that may prove as difficult as extinguishing the virus itself.

It is certainly as important.

David

Kamala Harris: Kiss Up, Kick Down

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America, Civilisation, Defend the modern world, joe biden, kamala harris, MLK, trump, us election 2020

Kamala Harris is the downside of America. In her, the strengths of the national ethos are exposed as potential weaknesses; its hymned greatness is shown as entirely dependent on the character of the people within it; this because Harris has used everything America celebrates itself for – equal opportunity, racelessness, individuality, ambition, audacity in the pursuit of power and money, etc, – and demonstrated how such values are essentially harmful without virtue and a strong national identity to limit their abuse.

It is quite possible that I am talking here of the future vice president. Indeed, considering the un-vitality of her running mate, it is possible I am talking of the future president. Can either scenario be imagined without a shudder?

Harris has lived half a life on the principle of kiss up, kick down. She has been inflexibly conservative and generously liberal, switching hats based largely on career interest – a strategy that has left many blown-apart lives scattered in her wake.

She has cynically taken on the character of an African-American despite being Indo-Caribbean (and, not that she can help it, the descendant of slave-holders). She even announced her presidential candidacy on a day set aside to commemorate the noted ‘pussy-eater’ Martin Luther King, thereby making clear her identification with the more politically lucrative side of her ancestry, as well as her intention to squeeze it for all it’s worth.

Since then, she has been love-bombed by every liberal interest group in Washington and stands drenched in the encouragement of billionaire dollars. Her platform tends to align almost perfectly with those who have invested in her. (Harris’s own convictions are missing, presumed mythical.)

A model of woke dishonesty, the senator is a timely reminder that demographic change will not wash out the charismatic sleaziness of American politics; only alter the appearance of the actors.

Excited liberals may find out too late that womanhood and melanin are not virtues, and that when they are presented as such, it often means all else is rotten.

David

Some Thoughts on Donald Trump

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America, Ann Coulter, Defend the modern world, Donald Trump, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, Twitter, United States, us election

Donald Trump lies. A lot. Media commentators complain about this, not because they’re corrupt, though they are that, but because he lies. A lot. I didn’t think hard enough about this when I wrote in support of his candidacy in 2016, or at least not hard enough about how much it might annoy me.

Truth is the most important concept in human thought, in life itself. Without it fixed securely in view, we are ever heading in the wrong direction. I hate dishonesty more than any political figure or doctrine; and so to advise the reader to vote for Trump again would need to be justified differently.

Most of Trump’s lies are entirely unnecessary. He has a fanatically devoted base, as well as a functioning cult of personality. He has no need to lie. He knows what his base want, and he wants it too. The feelings of the opposition should be of secondary importance.

But that isn’t the way Trump works. Those who warned previously of his narcissism and insecurity were not exaggerating. He wants praise from everyone. He would like as much to be regarded as a great feminist as a great conservative. The ‘great’ part is all that matters. As the exasperated Trump advocate Ann Coulter pointed out recently, “It’s all about him.”

Lying as a public figure makes it difficult for friend and foe alike. To speak in defence of a Trump pronouncement too often proves a wasted effort. As soon as you have finished agreeing with him, he retracts the point, or even denies saying it at all. There is comedy in this. And it’s not always funny.

Trump ultra-loyalists, who find nothing degrading in tidying up his babble into coherence it doesn’t merit, embarrass themselves rather too much. When there is no Trump regime to speak of, or to defend, their reputations will be in tatters – and quite rightly.

So what to do with the ‘mad king’ who nonetheless faces the right way on most of the vital issues facing a great country? I am not American, so this is not my responsibility, but I feel compelled to say what I think I would do.

A few points:

I do not believe any resident of Honduras has a God-given right to American hospitality. Immigration law should be enforced. A wall would help, but doesn’t seem likely to come.

America has too many problems within its borders to go on military adventures without good reason.

Europe, which is my responsibility, can ultimately benefit from Trump’s isolationism. It is high time European powers set about building a military force capable of defending our beautiful continent. We cannot rely – and should never have relied – on American military charity. While we should be as friendly as possible with our natural ally, we must be our own guarantor.

Kamala Harris, who is obviously more dynamic than her senior running mate, is the personification of money politics. She offers a return to a corrupt norm, never desirable in the first place.

Finally, though Trump’s lies are infuriating and demonstrate a real lack of respect for his supporters, old media forces are ultimately more damaging to truth than he is.

Only Trump’s most intoxicated supporters believe he tells the truth all the time. But the slippery and clever deceptions of the mainstream press are held as credible by the majority of educated people. They do not lie outright, as Trump does, but they do evade certain topics, keep attention off uncomfortable but important realities, de-platform dissident men, and drive at untruth, even if not all the way.

In conclusion, Trump may well be the best option on the ballot this time around, but that should depress, not enliven. I look forward to a time when someone more professional and straightforward promises the same renewal.

David

America’s Black Neurosis (part one)

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America, Black people, Defend the modern world, mutt's law, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, racism, slavery

The presence of sub-Saharan Africans in the United States has never not been a subject of controversy, and will likely never cease to be one. No-one is indifferent to them, or of the kind of calm opinion about them as about any other group. The left cannot help seeing them not as ordinary citizens, but as a cause to be fought for, or as children to be adopted, guided or used.  The right cannot fully relax while they are granted the privileges of equality, allowed the freedom to wander delinquently into their suburban dreams. The very far-right appear sadistically happy about racial inequality. They wish to see black people on the other side of a wall from themselves, and doubtless to be able to see over that wall, to watch with a grin as the formerly uppity savages attempt to reconstruct what they once took for granted. Even the centrists, for all their professed stillness of mind, enjoy the racial controversy in other ways.

Indeed, the very humanity of black Africans is up for private dispute, even around the loveliest dinner tables. The ‘racism of low expectations’ prevails almost everywhere (if you doubt this, ask your most educated liberal friends for their opinion on the excremental poetry of Maya Angelou, say, or on the violence in Chicago. Anything short of disdain for the first and horrified condemnation of the second can be taken as evidence of a lower standard.)

Despite centuries of discord and moral debate, European-Americans have still to find a way of dealing with the presence of Africans within their society. And so much greater is the severity of this issue in the US that it seems to stem from nationally peculiar causes. Though problems exist everywhere with race and difference, there is simply no comparison between the anti-black racism of Europeans and that of non-black Americans. Something there has become unique.

Go even to 4chan, a bubbling pot of crude tribalism, and you will find Europeans tiring of the anti-black emphasis of those with American flags atop their posts. Reference is made on the Politically Incorrect forum to ‘Mutt’s Law’, a satirical principle holding that the longer a thread, on any topic, grows, the likelier it becomes that a Mutt (American) will refer to black men or interracial sex.

Almost everything that arouses intense dispute in American politics can be sourced back to the presence and status of black people. Universal healthcare, for example, might be accepted as commonsensical by white Americans were the racial profile of their country like that of Iceland. Put another way, if a white American conservative moved to Iceland permanently, it is unlikely they would end up criticising the island’s health system as ‘communism’ and seek to tear it down in the name of ‘liberty’. They would probably prefer it, regarding it simply as kindred people taking care of each other. But America is not Iceland; its taxpayers are far from equal, and so universal healthcare is conceived of as a massive transfer of wealth from whites to non-whites, in particular (and particularly offensively) from whites to blacks.

The gun debate in America, likewise, has a rather obvious racial undertone. Who can really call it a coincidence that gun sales shot up after the election of the first black president in 2008, or that such sales respond more dramatically to BLM protests than to real world overreaches of government authority? Obama was not a radical president. Nothing so interesting. But he wasn’t white. He enjoyed the support of a large non-white coalition. And thus the response.

But why is there such an intense obsession with black people in the US to begin with? Racism is diverse. The US hosts every type imaginable. So why are black Africans still the priority of its unique racial complex?

Part of the explanation derives, as might be anticipated, from the institution of slavery.

When thought about lucidly, there is something odd about loathing a people you have victimised. If a person considers slavery, with its flagellation and branding and rape and coerced reproduction, a natural sympathy should arise for the victim, and nothing but sympathy. Black people were treated horribly by many slave-owners (though by no means all), and the institution is loudly condemned in light of modern ethical standards.

But though there is sympathy for the victims of slavery, a great many Americans, including some of the most sympathetic, nonetheless hold black people in contempt for having submitted to it.

Slavery in the United States shouldn’t have worked. Its unwieldy scale, primitive means of enforcement, extremely lax security and obvious violation of declared national values, should have led swiftly to glorious insurrection. But that didn’t happen. It worked. For four hundred years.

This produced an instinctive disgust for black weakness. The obedience and fearful submission of slaves created a confused hatred of whatever in their nature allowed for such degradation. What is it about them, wondered many, that makes them so submissive? Why aren’t they fighting back?

It is possible to trace from this sentiment much of the later paranoia over blood purity. Who knew just how much of the dreaded blood was required to be remove a man’s will to resist, to nullify his self-respect. One could not be too cautious.

This contempt has survived into the present day. I have seen innumerable online comments angrily chastising modern day black people for their ancestors’ obsequiousness. This would explain a little of why anti-black racism is so different to anti-Asian or anti-Arab or anti-native racism. Unlike in those cases, there is a perverse kind of remorse in the hatred of black people in America.

(to be continued)

David

The Dark Enlightenment

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America, BBC, beef, Blog, dark, dark enlightenment, DE, Denmark, England, enlightenment, essay, face, Facebook, Internet, internet internet, Japan, lamb, magazine, manosphere, matrix, mencius, mencius moldbug blog, moldbug, neo, neo matrix, neo-reactionary, Newsnight, online, politics, pot, reactionary, red pill blue pill, right-wing, social media, Standpoint, subculture, the face, the matrix, The West, Twitter

• First published on this blog in November, 2015

If you’re one of those people not yet not au fait with the internet phenomenon/subculture referred to as the ‘Dark Enlightenment’, perhaps the best way to describe it is with reference to its adherents favourite movie scene. This is the moment in The Matrix, when Neo is offered two pills – one blue, one red. The man offering the medicaments, Morpheus, informs Neo that the pills have different metaphysical powers. One of them, the blue one, will send him back to the artificial world of the Matrix (a computer simulation) that he is already familiar with, completely ignorant of the existence of the alternate (real) world. The other pill, the red one, will make it impossible for him to go back to the sleep of unreality. Upon taking it, he will tumble down the rabbit-hole of the truth, however ugly or traumatic he may find that truth to be. As you’re probably aware, Neo boldly chooses the red pill, and so begins the main action of the film. Well, Dark Enlightenment adherents view themselves as embarking upon a comparably journey to Neo’s, and will often refer to themselves as being ‘red-pilled’. But what truths exactly are they discovering? What reality have they entered that is hidden from the majority? The answer is complicated.

It is certainly accurate to say that the Dark Enlightenment is on the political right. Its followers have little sympathy for feminism or political correctness, and on matters of race and racial difference, their views tend to align with those advanced by the likes of Madison Grant and T.H Huxley. Furthermore, one of the labels embraced by the movement since their beginnings is ‘Neo-reactionary’; a pretty baggy definition, but one that clearly denotes a rightward bent.

Some press commentators have even suggested a fascist sentiment motivates the Dark Enlightenment subculture. Jamie Bartlett (writing for the Daily Telegraph), for example, describes the bloggers associated with the movement as ‘sophisticated neo-fascists’.

“Since 2012” he writes “…a sophisticated but bizarre online neo-fascist movement has been growing fast. It’s called “The Dark Enlightenment”… Supporters are dotted all over the world, connected via a handful of blogs and chat rooms. Its adherents are clever, angry white men patiently awaiting the collapse of civilisation, and a return to some kind of futuristic, ethno-centric feudalism… The philosophy, difficult to pin down exactly, is a loose collection of neo-reactionary ideas, meaning a rejection of most modern thinking: democracy, liberty, and equality… The neo-fascist bit lies in the view that races aren’t equal (they obsess over IQ testing and pseudoscience that they claim proves racial differences, like the Ku Klux Klan) and that women are primarily suited for domestic servitude. They call this “Human biodiversity” – a neat little euphemism. This links directly to their desire to be rid of democracy: because if people aren’t equal, why live in a society in which everyone is treated equally? Some races are naturally better to rule than others, hence their support for various forms of aristocracy and monarchy (and not in the symbolic sense but the very real divine-right-of-kings-sense).”

Is this a fair evaluation? I don’t think that matters. What does matter is why men (and presumably some women) find it necessary to hive off into subcultures in the first place. The Dark Enlightenment is clearly a reaction to the culture of extreme (and unnecessary) self-censorship by the academic and intellectual mainstream. We simply don’t talk about the important facts of the world for fear of alienating a single part of it. No, the races are not equal in average intelligence. Nor are the sexes equal. The first-born child is generally more intelligent than his/her younger siblings. The tall are more successful than the short. Women are physically weaker than men. Egalitarianism is a lie. And yes, even Democracy is a stupid idea when reduced to its fundamentals. For if the majority are wrong about something, then society is every bit as doomed with democracy as it would be with a wrong-headed dictator. Etc… Etc…

But creating subcultures around forbidden truths is a dangerous game. Whenever hives of thought arise, the trust generated by basic truth-telling grants the hive-leader authority over his/her followers. Having earned their trust with real (but publically denied) facts, he/she can then sprinkle any kind of abject stupidity on top. And if any mainstream condemnation of this stupidity comes about, it can be ascribed to ‘Leftism’ or the ‘blue pill’. “They told you the races were equal, so why listen to them when they say authoritarian monarchy is bad?”… “They told you affirmative action made sense, so why believe them when they say Jews aren’t in control of the government” Etc…

Denying self-evident truths risks handing intellectual authority to some very shady people indeed. The Dark Enlightenment must be replaced with a straightforward enlightenment. No ‘darkness’ is necessary.

D, LDN

Does It Have to Get Worse to Get Better?

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America, America 911, BBC, Civilisation, Counter-Jihad, Counterjihad, Defend the modern world, Demographics of Europe, EDL, English Defence League, Eurabia, Europe, France beheading, ISIS, ISIS Beheading, Islamic State BBC, Islamic State Wikipedia, Islamification of Britain, Islamophobia, Kuwait Mosque, Muslim, No to Turkey in the EU, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, Tunisia attacks

• First published on this blog in June, 2015

An argument beloved by the extremes of the right-left spectrum proposes that the short-term success of the opposing side is ultimately good for their own; in other words, that the dystopia they intend (ultimately) to make impossible has first to occur before it can be permanently forbidden.

In our case, this would be to say that the Islamisation of Europe has to quicken, the terror attacks multiply and the general abuse of our population intensify if we are to prevent a future in which such events cannot be opposed at all.

I suppose as arguments go, this one has a whispering, seductive quality to it. To a youthful and excitable temperament especially, easily thrilled by the idea of civil unrest and bad news, it will seem an obviously fine idea, since it guarantees (in fact requires) action and blood, broken glass and the rumble of boots.

But does it really hold water?

Well, today, following a Ramadan sermon by the shaggy beatnik “Caliph” Al-Baghdadi, terrorists have attacked civilians in three different countries. In Tunisia, Gunmen massacred at least 37 tourists relaxing at a beach resort. In France, some poor soul has been murdered, his head left – covered in Arabic script – on a spike. And in Kuwait, the perennially despised Shia have been blown up while praying in a Mosque.

All of the attacks are thought to be the actions of the Islamic State.

This triptych of evil certainly says something about the expansion of IS’s reach. And I think we can all agree that it qualifies as things ‘getting worse’. But have we been empowered by this day of carnage? Are we in a stronger position now than yesterday? I’m not so sure.

Most of the people intelligent enough to understand the reality of Islam already understand it. Faced with the daily progress of Jihad, you would have to be blind, deaf, mute and stupid to resist the conclusion that Islam is violent. And once that main point is understood, further outrages become progressively less shocking.

For this reason I doubt today’s events will have changed anybody’s mind. At least in the West…

In the nation of Tunisia, I think some progress will be made in the coming weeks. Although the point is often exaggerated by eager multi-culturalists, the Tunisians really are a more liberal, relaxed, ‘European’ people than their neighbours. Images of the city afflicted by today’s massacre (Sousse) remind me of destinations in Sicily and Greece. Only the captions below reveal their African location.

As one would expect, this reputation is jealously guarded by Tunisian liberals for whom an event like today’s must be infuriating. While they are in this mood, and should they stumble across this site, I would like say the following – The elimination of Islam from your country is the only failsafe cure for the misery that oppresses you. You have a beautiful Mediterranean homeland, one that many Westerners could be made jealous of. Be bold and change your allegiance while you still have a culture worthy of the name.

As for us in the West, the ‘things have to get worse before they get better’ argument is contradicted (repeatedly) by reality. Van Gogh’s stabbing didn’t bring us any closer to a solution. Lee Rigby didn’t. Rotherham didn’t. Charlie Hebdo didn’t. Today’s events won’t either. The attention span of the average Westerner is diminishing with every fresh atrocity, just as one would logically expect it to.

To rouse people into direct and decisive action will take initiative. It is no use waiting around for things to reach rock-bottom, and then like a phoenix, bounce back to a previous vitality. That is simply not realistic.

If you have the gift of organisation, organise a protest. If you have the gift of eloquence, write letters, start a blog or compose a petition. And when it is asked of you to state your grievance and preferred solution, be open and unafraid about it. Tell them you wish to preserve the Britain of comedy, poetry and freedom, and resist a Britain of Salat, Sawm and Jihad.

Keep the faith in victory too. When the future exerts its terrible pressures, our house shall stand. Theirs shall fall.  

D, LDN.

The Second American Revolution

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2016, acceptance, America, America 911, American Liberty, Barack Obama, BBC, Blog, Civilisation, Coffee, Defend the modern world, Donald Trump, donald trump president, Facebook, ivanka, Martin, melania, politic, political internet, politics, politics usa, president trump, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, trump, trump 2016, trump president, trump rally, trump wins, trump wins election, Twitter, United States

Well… there we are then. I’ve predicted the outcome of two major votes this year and been wrong about both of them. I’m not sure what to say. Perhaps there is nothing to say, other than to warn the reader never to take advice from me on lottery numbers or business investments.

America, as you’ll now be aware, has just elected Donald J Trump to the highest office in the land. And with the GOP also triumphant in both houses of Congress, for the next four years, the New York billionaire will have an almost unprecedented level of control over the mechanisms of Western government,

This is the beginning of what will inevitably be referred to by historians as the ‘Trump Era’ – a four-to-eight year period dominated by the decisions and personality of a single, remarkable man.

I am both pleased and nervous about the result. As someone who made the case for Trump (as best I could on a UK-based blog), my satisfaction with the unexpected success of the Republican is naturally tempered with unease and foreboding.

Trump is not a perfect man – far from it. Many of the criticisms made by his opponents over the past 12 months (or was it lifetimes) were perfectly valid and based in solid fact. He is often boorish, unpredictable, erratic and – in some key ways – he is inexperienced. No matter how passionate your support for his reign may be, you cannot sensibly deny that his election represents a gamble.

But it was a gamble the people of America were forced by circumstance to make. The elite, which includes the press, has lost all contact with, and respect for, the ordinary population of the United States. Unless a US citizen lives in New York or Los Angeles, he simply doesn’t matter to the decision-making class. His voice, projected at a polite volume, is muffled to a whisper by distance, farmland and poverty. On Nov. 8th, therefore, he was left with no choice but to shout, to shout so loud that windows were broken, and so they have been.

Hillary Clinton prepares to give her concession speech in New York

Those members of the global elite currently tearing their expensively shampooed hair out have no right to be surprised by what has happened. How could their disregard and arrogance have led to any other destination? Trump was and is a shock of history, but he was not an unforeseeable one.

Nevertheless, the shockwaves of the election result have been palpable. Jonathan Freedland, a normally level-headed liberal commentator, spoke for many in the London-New York-LA bubble when he wrote (in an article dramatically entitled ‘Will Donald Trump Destroy America?’) “What if (Trump) goes ahead and deports 11.3 million undocumented migrants? What if he really does ban all Muslims entering the country? What if he tries to use the powers of the state to go after media organisations that have criticised him – making life difficult for the businesses that own inquisitive newspapers such as the Washington Post, for example – as he has said he will? What if he overturns abortion rights, even imposing “some form of punishment” on a woman who terminates a pregnancy, as he once suggested? And what if he really does build that wall?… There are plenty who believe that if Trump went ahead and actually implemented his programme, he would create a different country: closed, xenophobic and at odds with some of the founding principles – religious equality or freedom of speech – that have defined the United States since its founding. The country would still exist – but it would no longer be America.”

Freedland’s words may be misguided, but his tone is surely appropriate. This really is a major turning point in American history – a second American revolution, if you will. By the time Trump has finished his work, however that goes, America will be a drastically changed place. There are so many differences between his approach and that of his predecessors that such an outcome is irresistible.

Donald Trump, unlike Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and practically every president stretching back to the Eisenhower administration, is an Americanist. He believes that America, despite its size and power, is a real, flesh and blood country – with real, flesh and blood people living in it. America is not, to him, an idea, a hope, or a ‘dream’. It is a pulsating, living, breathing reality. If one thing divides him from the presidents of the recent past, it is that his focus is largely limited by loyalty and affection to and toward the United States (and those countries like it – *I was greatly encouraged to hear Mr Trump describe the UK as a special friend this week).

Donald Trump is not a neo-con, preoccupied with the security prospects of the Saudis, Turks and Qataris. He looks at the world with the purity of the patriot; an honest, crystalline simplicity. To him, something is either good for America, or not. That seems to be his only consideration.

I do understand and appreciate that many parts of the world (and parts of America) will be unnerved by Trump’s election. This is only inevitable. Change always brings anxiety. Nevertheless, such places and people must be calm and reasonable enough to give the president-elect a chance to show his governing style before jumping to rash conclusions.

In Israel, there is some stress over President Trump’s words regarding the conflict with the Palestinians. Back in the primary debates, Mr Trump shocked the gathered by stating that it wasn’t helpful to pick a side in foreign conflicts and that he would, as president, strive to be more fair-minded. Since then, Trump has reconfirmed his intention to make a ‘deal’ on the Israel-Palestine face-off. What does he mean by this? What kind of ‘deal’ does he have in mind? We have no way of knowing, so worrying about it is a waste of time.

As on Israel, so on many other issues. Trump is simply a mystery to us at this point. Will he tame his fiery populism upon entering the White House? Will he go back on his promises made at his roaring rallies? Will the wall be built? What will happen to the 11 million illegal migrants currently embedded in American society? We don’t know. We can’t know. Only time will tell us.

It is my belief that Donald Trump will either be the greatest president of the past 50 years, or he will be the worst. There is no in-between with him. His personality is too spectacular, his confidence too muscled. As things stand, the former seems more likely to me than the latter.

D, LDN

 

D-Day

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Nervous? I am. In fact, to be perfectly honest, I’m not sure I’ve ever been so on edge before an election in my life. On Wednesday morning, barring some unforeseen chaos, America will have a new president elect. As to whether that president will wear a tie or a pantsuit is still anyone’s guess.

I have stopped paying attention to the polls. The last couple I saw, published only a few hours apart, predicted a Clinton victory and a Trump victory respectively. This tells us nothing except that the contest really is down to the wire.

The New York Times is, as far as I know, the only notable publication daring to predict a landslide for one particular candidate. In today’s online edition, the paper’s resident statisticians give Hillary Clinton an 84% chance of winning the election. For context, the paper notes that (according to this calculation) “Mrs. Clinton’s chance of losing is about the same as the probability that an NFL kicker misses a 38-yard field goal.”

I don’t need to tell you that such brazen overconfidence is terribly unwise at this point.

We have, whatever the media may fill time by saying, no real way of knowing what the final imbalance will be on Wednesday morning. We know only that two radically different Americas will have fought with purpled-faced passion for the right to determine the national (and, in some ways, global) future – their preferred visions as different from each other as can possibly be imagined. Perhaps not since the Civil War has there been such stark and violent disagreement between the peoples of the (ostensibly) United States.

There remains nothing more to say now other than to hazard a final prediction. Before I do, I must first make clear the difference between what I think will happen and what I am personally hoping for. These are, as I will explain, sadly out of sync.

I believe (perhaps I should say – I fear) that Hillary Clinton will edge the contest on Tuesday. My reasoning for this is based not on the polls, but on the strange logic (if it can even be called logic) of the US electoral college. As you’ll be aware, it ultimately doesn’t matter who leads the national polls. America’s presidents are elected by a much more convoluted mechanism. Based on unbiased (non-US) media analysis, the road to a Hillary victory appears at present much clearer than the road to a Trump triumph. In order to pull off an upset, Mr Trump must ‘flip’ numerous states in which the Republican support base is traditionally weaker than the Democrats’ – and do so in spite of a massive blitz of hostile propaganda in those states (Clinton’s attack ad spending in this election has resembled more the budget for a military invasion than for a political campaign).

True, a Trump victory is still possible, and we mustn’t lose hope. I was, you may remember, wrong about the outcome of the Brexit vote (along with pretty much everyone else in Britain). However, there is nothing to gain from wishful thinking, and I prefer to state my opinion truthfully.

Whoever wins on Tuesday, America has been undeniably altered by the long, gruelling contest up to this point. A forgotten and despised community – the White working class – has organised into a coherent and readily deployable political force. This force will outlive Trump’s candidacy and go on to influence many elections to come. This is bad news for both parties, but in particular for the Republican mainstream – a tired-out, uninspiring and treacherous collective more concerned with dollars and cents than with people and destiny. If Trump does indeed lose, therefore, there are still a lot of reasons to be thankful for his having stood at all.

The Democrats, even if they win, will be greatly wounded by Clinton’s effect. Almost singlehandedly, the nominee has peeled off a previously loyal base of youthful idealists, casting them adrift into the political wilderness in search of a third party able to satisfy their lust for European socialism and big government. It would be no surprise to me were these idealists to coalesce with the stray Republicans mentioned previously. Both groups do, after all, have the same complaint in kind. They both understand all too well that the elite no longer gives a damn about their welfare or identity. Never has a genuine third alternative looked more realistic than now.

I will post a celebration or condemnation of the result as soon as possible after it has been announced.

See you on the other side of this madness. Breathe slowly. It’s almost over!

D, LDN

PS: I am very interested to hear if the readers of this blog concur with my prediction. Perhaps I’m being unduly pessimistic?

Trump in Gettysburg

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Donald Trump has frequently been accused (sometimes justly) of being short on detailed policies. This speech, delivered in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, is very valuable for its detail and clarity. In it, he outlines the agenda for the first 100 days of his administration.

D, LDN