Justifying the Extraordinary: Trump and the Debates

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In seven days time the first of four presidential debates between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will take place in Hempstead, New York State. It is probably fair to say that no such debate has been as hotly anticipated in recent memory as this one now is. The debate marks the biggest test Donald Trump has faced since the launch of his candidacy for the Republican nomination back in 2015. It represents a vital trial of the New Yorker’s presidential character, professionalism and natural wit.

Hillary Clinton, now lagging behind Trump in many national polls, will be placing a lot of her hopes on the debates. Unlike Trump, the Democrat is a natural when it comes to conventional political combat. She – and her team – will be hoping (and expecting) Trump to be suffocated by the polite constraints of traditional procedure and to show his unease by lashing out wildly at Clinton’s character, appearance, dress sense, femininity, etc. Put simply, they hope and expect Trump to suffer a meltdown.

Whilst I would love to say that Clinton’s strategy is unrealistic, I cannot, as it is perfectly feasible. Trump’s Achilles heel, as he has proven time and time again, is his volcanic and unpredictable personality, his tendency to hit back after every real or perceived slight with much greater force and immaturity than is required or appropriate. All Clinton has to do in these contests is provoke that kind of reaction. All she has to do is poke the tiger until it growls.

This is the most obvious and likely strategy for Hillary to pursue, but there are other possibilities open to her. The rabidly pro-Clinton Washington Post made the following suggestions for their preferred candidate: “Take (Trump) up on his word. He said he “regrets” certain things. Invite him to apologize to Judge Gonzalo Curiel or the Gold Star parents of Capt. Humayun Khan… Another tactic is to press him on empty and unintelligible answers. Trump rarely completes a sentence or can articulate any level of detail about his proposals. When Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and CNN’s Dana Bash tag-teamed, forcing Trump to explain what was in his health-care plan, it became patently obvious that he had a whole lot of nothing to offer. She can certainly take a page from New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s book (used against Rubio) in pointing out that Trump repeats the same platitudes. Tell us, Donald, what’s your plan to reduce crime in Chicago? Have you ever sat down with law enforcement?… There are oodles of issues (such as the nuclear triad) about which Trump knows nothing. Challenge him to spell out his stance on net neutrality, the South China Sea and student loans. In other cases — the minimum wage, repayment of U.S. debt and immigration, of course — he has been all over the lot. Force him to pick a position and explain why he has said the opposite.”

The first presidential debate will be held at Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York

Trump’s strategy for the debates is less clear at this point in time. When asked about his intended approach, the Republican has wisely dodged the question, explaining that he would prefer to not give anything away to the opposition prior to the event. We can thus only speculate.

I have a inkling that Trump’s strategy will hinge on portraying Clinton, as he has done all through his campaign so far, as ‘crooked’, dishonest, corrupt and in the pocket of the financial elite; an image he will then contrast with his own man-of-the-people persona.

The email scandal will undoubtedly be raised repeatedly, with Trump going off track and questioning Clinton directly about the thousands of inexplicably deleted messages. He will also link these questions to the issue of the Clinton Foundation and its highly suspicious ties to foreign leaders (including foreign and Islamic dictators).

The Clinton Foundation is coming under intense scrutiny for its ties to foreign regimes

This approach will carry Trump some of the way, but not all of it. He will need to have more strings to his bow prepared if he is to the win the debate outright.

To arrive at the best strategy for winning the debates, Trump would do best to look at what has carried him through the process thus far. I would say that, more than anything else, it is his credentials relating to the Islamist threat that have won over the hearts of patriotic American voters (including true liberals and Democrats). His positions on ISIS, Muslim immigration, Syrian refugee policy and other connected issues have been wildly popular with a broad cross-section of American society. Pushing hard on Clinton’s weakness on Islamism will pave the way for a very important ideological touchdown.

It is possible that in the days that remain before the November election there will be another Islamist atrocity somewhere in the world, perhaps even in the Western World*. This will serve as a timely reminder of how extraordinary the problems we (as a civilisation) face really are, and thus how inappropriate it would be to elect an ordinary candidate to solve them.

ISIS/ISIL/Islamic State

The Islamist challenge is so total and grave that all other issues melt under its heat. Trump and his team must realise this fact and base their approach on it. Sure, there are problems with the American economy which require ironing out; sure, illegal immigration from Mexico is undermining American sovereignty and nationhood; sure, the trade deficit with China is growing at an alarming rate.  But none of these issues are new or so extraordinary as to justify the American electorate taking a risk on a provocative and unconventional candidate (and that, undoubtedly, is what Trump is). Trump’s presidency is so unique and strange a prospect that he must build an equally strange and unique context in which it will seem appropriate and necessary. The only way he can achieve this, in my opinion, is with reference to the Islamist threat.

At the debates, Trump must be specific about how he will deal with this extraordinary issue. Soundbites, however popular they may be, should be avoided. It simply isn’t enough to say things like “We need to get tough and we need to get smart.” This is so vague as to be meaningless. Trump must map out a strategy for pulverising Islamism, demolishing it so severely that it will not dare raise its evil head for decades to come.

*Today, as I write, debris is once again being cleaned up from the streets of a Western city. In Manhattan, NYC, two bombs have exploded, injuring almost thirty innocent civilians. Meanwhile, in the peaceful, Scandinavian-American State of Minnesota, eight people have been stabbed at a shopping mall, the attacker allegedly interrogating potential victims as to their religious beliefs prior to attacking them.

These are indeed extraordinary times. They require an extraordinary leader. Next week in New York, Donald Trump would do best not to try and make himself seem ordinary, but rather embrace his uniqueness, tying it to the uniqueness of the times in which we find ourselves.

D, LDN

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Milo Yiannopoulos: The Good and the Bad

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Few stars are rising faster at the moment than that of conservative writer/broadcaster Milo Yiannopoulos. Virtually unknown just three years ago, the Greco-British journalist, 32, is now fast approaching the kind of iconoclastic status attained by such writers as Gore Vidal and HL Mencken (both of whom expended considerably more time and effort to achieve it).

What can explain this success?

Well – for one thing, Yiannopoulos is a quite formidable debater, and it is for this talent that he is primarily known. Type in ‘Milo Yiannopolous’ into YouTube and many of the videos returned to you will have titles containing words like ‘destroys’, ‘eviscerates’, ‘owns’ and so on… These are not exaggerations. Yiannopoulos has a unique way of making the people he engages seem naive, foolish and weak-minded. He is even – I have found – able to achieve this effect when the other person is in the right; and there is surely no greater testament to a debater’s skill than that.

Yiannopoulos is not merely good with words, he is good with emotions, presenting his side of any argument in a relaxed, self-assured and matter-of-fact style that naturally makes the arguments of the other side seem less certain, more bizarre and fundamentally weaker. In this sense he reminds me in speech of Mark Steyn in print. Both put to use the same rhetorical trick – the insinuation – quite deliberate – that they know they are right. Both treat contrary points of view as amusing, forgivable, even charming eccentricities. Yiannopoulos and Steyn are not trying to make the other side look stupid, so they have us believe, they are trying are help them understand reality – and by arguing this way, they do make them look stupid. There is surely no better way of wounding an intellectual’s reputation than to sympathise with his failures and politely excuse his errors.

Yiannopoulos’s writing, though less spectacular than his debating, still passes with ease any quality test for the journalistic mainstream. Here is a representative excerpt from an article taking down the goodwill-bloated ‘astrophysicist’ Neil Degrasse Tyson:

“Neil deGrasse Tyson is a philistine with no love of learning except for popularisations and oversimplifications that serve his political purposes… (He) constantly situates himself in the big brain league, but he has done nothing in his life to demonstrate that he belongs there — and a lot to suggest he doesn’t…. (He) claims to have been “mentored” by Carl Sagan, for instance. Yet it appears this “mentorship” boils down to little more than a couple of traded letters. If Tyson thinks that qualifies as mentorship, I wonder what he’d call my nocturnal liaisons with other men who share his skin colour. Adoption?… As dumb as Tyson is, his fans are even more preposterously thick, which is probably to be expected given that they’re all liberals. But the extent to which they hoover up and retweet his contradictory and brainless provocations is matched only by the hilarity of the occasional social justice car crash, in which the politics of grievance that Tyson likes to encourage comes back to bite him.”

But neither Yiannopoulos’s skill in writing or debating can fully explain his meteoric ascent. Beyond the mechanics of his profession, Yiannopoulos is himself remarkable. For one thing, he is gay. Indeed, if homosexuality can be graded, he is very gay; audaciously, flamboyantly so. He is also Greek, Jewish and Catholic. This exotic quality, brim-full of apparent contradiction (Gay, Jewish, Catholic, Conservative – are not words used to being in each other’s company), has combined with Yiannopoulos’s oratorical (and occasionally bitchy) style to produce a ready-made object of media fascination. Yiannopoulos gets ratings up in a way no other public commentator has since the death of Christopher Hitchens, a person with whom the journalist bears many important similarities.

Like Hitchens, Yiannopoulos expresses with intelligence arguments traditionally expressed with stupidity. Though I do sympathise with many right-wing concepts, it is nevertheless a fact of politics that the conservative side of the political spectrum attracts more dullards than the liberal side. Many – perhaps the majority – of those inclined to oppose Islam, for example, do so in a crude, yobbish style that puts off the discerning classes and fails to excite anyone else.

Yiannopoulos is successful precisely because he refines gut-sentiments into intelligent arguments. People watch Yiannopoulos debate Islam on television and scream ‘That’s what I think!” or “That’s what I’ve always said!”. He articulates feelings many desperately want to – but cannot – put into words.

So, that’s the good. Now for the bad.

Despite the considerable talents I have described, Yiannopoulos is not without his faults. He has, for one thing, consistently demonstrated a worrying lack of intellectual discipline; a tendency to seek controversy (for its own sake) over positive political impact. On twitter the writer has repeatedly engaged in pointless arguments with entirely apolitical pop-cultural figures, most recently Leslie Jones, the simple-minded comedienne and star of the much-maligned 2016 Ghostbusters remake. After a brief back and forth over various trifles, Milo made a joke implying that Jones (who is admittedly unfeminine looking) is actually a man. This comment then led to Yiannopoulos’s twitter account being deleted by the administrators of the site – (he is still banned).

Was this necessary? Did it serve a purpose? I don’t think so.

Like this author, Yiannopoulos is an outspoken supporter of Donald Trump’s 2016 bid for the US Presidency and has written countless articles explaining this support, most of which have been reasoned and compelling. But on this matter, too, he has a tendency to drift into inexplicable weirdness. Yiannopoulos often refers to Mr Trump in a sexualised voice as ‘Daddy’ and once stated that the “trashier” the Republican nominee becomes the more he loves him.

Now, I have no moral objection to any of this, but surely such unseriousness runs the risk of undoing the good work the journalist has done elsewhere. Once again I ask, is it necessary? Does it serve a purpose? Does Milo wish to be a neo-Orwellian truth-teller or a contestant on Celebrity Big Brother? Christopher Hitchens or Pete Burns? One cannot combine the two aspirations indefinitely.

The atheist Voltaire once remarked that the only prayer he had ever offered was ‘O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous’. I can well imagine Islamists and Leftists offering this same plea to the Almighty in view of current political circumstances. On the issue of Islam – as on many others – we are so far in the right that a misstep on our part is probably the best the opposition can hope for. Milo and others would do well to bear this in mind.

On balance, I am of the opinion that Milo Yiannopoulos can be a very effective soldier for the anti-Islamist cause. His oratorical skill, humour and minority-status make him a very difficult target for the Left to hit with their favoured weaponry. They cannot possibly call Milo, a gay man of partially Jewish descent, irrational or paranoid for worrying about the advance of ISIS. They cannot possibly accuse him of being a Nazi, a White nationalist, or a possessor of ‘privilege’ (the Left’s favourite buzzword of the moment). Milo’s exotic qualities form a wall of confusion around his arguments, giving them a better chance of being considered for what they mean rather than as an extension of who formed them.

And while there are those who will object outright to the inclusion of an actively gay man in the conservative movement, one must strive to remember that the threat of Islam is so broad that it will necessarily require an equally broad coalition to prevent its success.

If you find the right’s embrace of Yiannopoulos strange, you’ll be even more surprised by what the future holds.

D, LDN.

Civil War on the American Right

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The rise of Donald J. Trump over the past 12 months has impacted almost every area of American political life. But nowhere is his impact more apparent than on the culture of American Conservatism – the political right; a culture that was – prior to the billionaire’s rise – ostensibly united in thought and action, but which has since split into combatant political blocs.

On one side of this divide is the Paleo Right (PR), Trump’s own favoured niche, which stresses what is good for the American Republic itself over what is good for the world. On the other is the Neo Right (or neoconservative right), which stresses more the cause of liberty and democracy abroad than the condition of America at home. These two camps have sat awkwardly together for over two decades now. It was always inevitable that they would split. It just so happens that the chisel is Trump-shaped.

Both schools of thought have much to recommend them. The Neo Right has played a vital role in preserving the Pax Americana against the threats of Islamism, Communism and Dictatorship. Israel, Japan, Ukraine and Georgia, as well as many other democratic states in undemocratic neighbourhoods rely on the American Neo Right for their prosperity and security. Democrats in non-democratic countries look to the NR for moral and financial support. The net effect of the Neo Right is positive. Few conservative movements have been so charitably international.

Prominent Neo-Cons: Condoleezza Rice, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld

The Paleo Right, meanwhile, has safe-guarded (or where they have failed, attempted to safeguard) the uniqueness of America, battling against moral and social subversion from within, and maintaining America’s spirit of patriotism and peculiarity. They are motivated by core social issues like abortion, gay marriage, keeping prayer and the pledge of allegiance in public schools, the need to defend the sacredness of the Star-Spangled Banner, and so on. Foreign affairs is to them a secondary concern, if a concern at all. They tend to favour a non-interventionist policy in regard to the Middle East, even while being generally supportive of Israel and other pro-Western regimes. Paleo rightists objected (and were right to object) to the war in Iraq, and have no desire to repeat the experiment with Iraq’s elephantine neighbour. They favour a strong, advanced military, but believe the army should be retained for life and death confrontations, as opposed to constabulary duties. Many Paleos also nurture an obsession with civil liberties, viewing the US government as semi-tyrannical and bloated out of constitutional design. On this matter, too, they are providing a vital voice of caution which all should heed.

Paleo-Con icon Pat Buchanan

As I said, it is a wonder how these two inclinations managed to sit politely together for so long. Now that they have parted, it seems unlikely they will re-unite any time soon. If Donald Trump clinches the White House, the Paleos will have control over the GOP for the next 4 to 8 years.

Neo Rightists are not taking this development well. Fox News – which despite its tangential forays into abortion and homosexuality – is a solidly Neo Right entity, has been thrown into a frenzied identity crisis. The over-publicised ‘spat’ between Donald Trump and Fox Anchor Megan Kelly is just a symptom of the underlying divide. Fox, just like every other part of the conservative establishment, is uncomfortable with Trump’s candidacy and secretly wishes to stall or destroy it.

Fox coverage of candidates Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz has been tainted with bias from the very beginning. With the partial exception of Sean Hannity, most anchors have treated Trump with rubber gloves, as if handling radioactive waste. Trump was never being paranoid or irrational in protesting this treatment.

Megyn Kelly

The Neo Right is substantially more powerful than the Paleo Right in material terms. Most conservative TV networks are Neo Right, as are most Think Tanks, magazines and newspapers. This is the legacy of the long period of uncontested domination of the conservative universe by academic, economic and intellectual elites that is now being ripped to pieces by the Trumpsters. This is why (to the untrained eye) Trump supporters appear to be ‘anti-intellectual’. If the conservative era is to switch from Neo to Paleo, there is a lot of hierarchy to tear down in the process. This is intellectual and ideological regime change. It was always going to be messy.

How valid are Neo Right objections to Donald Trump? Let’s go through a few of them.

Charge 1: Donald Trump is insufficiently supportive of the State of Israel.

On the subject of the Middle East, Donald Trump has said he thinks it unhelpful to frame the conflict as being between ‘a good guy and a bad guy’. Whilst I disagree with the spirit of this quotation (Hamas certainly qualifies as a ‘bad guy’ in my opinion), it seems more rooted in a sense of fairness and pragmatism, than in any bad will towards the Israelis or Zionism. Trump’s beloved daughter Ivanka is Jewish (by conversion) and Trump has spoken of her adopted ethnicity with pride and understanding. There is no direct evidence that Mr Trump has an anti-Semitic bone in his body. Rumours about his keeping Hitler’s collected speeches by his bedside have never been corroborated outside of delirious chat-rooms. Until they are, we should treat them much like we treat rumours that the Earth is a pancake.

Pro-Israel donors obviously prefer Marco Rubio because he is so malleable. Rubio will do whatever his backers tell him to do. This is not meant as an anti-Semitic dog-whistle. It is a fact of politics that donors influence policy, and not only foreign policy. The Koch Brothers, as the left never stops bleating on about, have enormous influence over social and economic issues. Donors – of all varieties – hate Trump because they can’t buy him. Donors also invest in media networks. Media networks hate Trump because they are told to. I adore America. But let’s call a spade a spade here. Trump is battling against a corrupt political establishment.

Ivanka Trump

Charge 2: Donald Trump is not pro-free market.

Donald Trump has stated his determination to bring back manufacturing jobs from Asia and Mexico. When asked how he intends to accomplish this, the GOP front-runner explains that he will impose taxes on US companies that outsource jobs. This is not a violation of the free-market, nor of the regular rules of capitalism. It is a common sense measure to maintain prosperity for the American working class. It is also no different to what China and Mexico have done for several decades without American complaint.

Charge 3: Donald Trump is anti-mass immigration.

Guilty as charged. Donald Trump has been admirably clear on the subject of open borders. He opposes the idea, top to bottom. He wants to build a wall, and make Mexico pay for that wall. He wants to put a freeze on Muslims entering the United States. He also wants to deport the illegal immigrants already resident in the country, only allowing to return those who have clean criminal records and a professional command of English. This should be the default conservative position. No objections to this policy make for any sense.

The Neo Right’s love of open borders isn’t quite treachery, but it is moral and ideological confusion. Yes, Muslim immigration should be avoided as a special case, but this doesn’t mean the entire non-Muslim world is suitable for Western settlement. We have a good thing going here in the Western, Modern world. Allowing in people from regressive or intolerant cultures (of which Islam is only one example) is counter-productive. It jeopardizes what is precious to us.

Other objections to Trump by the Neo Right are similar to those made by the Political Left. The idea that Trump is akin to Mussolini is wildly popular on both sides of the ideological aisle. What evidence is there to support this idiotic claim? Some point to the enthusiasm whipped up at Trump rallies, but then if this is a crime, we’d better convict the Dallas Cowboys, Manchester United and Oprah Winfrey while we’re at it.

Viral photo from Trump rally

People are so refreshed by Trump’s style that they are overjoyed by his message. Joy is not an offence. Emotion might be rare at formulaic rallies with tedious politicians, but Trump is anything but formulaic or tedious. There is real contagious enthusiasm being generated by this man. Politics is being rejuvenated.

The patronising distaste with which the media and economic elite view the pleasures and aspirations of ordinary people is scandalous. People are people. Americans are Americans. All deserve to be heard, appreciated and spoken to, whatever their race, faith or economic category.

If Donald Trump wins the nomination, the Republican Party will never be the same again. The Neo-Con racket – the art of calling oneself a conservative whilst being left-wing on everything except foreign policy – will have been exposed and replaced with a straight-shooting honesty more in line with the fine history of the Grand Old Party.

D, LDN

“They Could be ISIS”

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With one curt reply, Donald Trump solved the conundrum of how Western leaders should react to the Syrian Immigration crisis. Instead of fumbling about for the right excuse, or degenerating into platitudinous psychosis, Trump met the contempt of the Left with a shield of toughest reason.

Should Trump become President in 2016, the Syrian refugees now headed to America (under Obama’s policy of general cultural surrender) will, he said, be made to leave. He gave no detail as to where they will go, but he was decisive (his jaunty, masculine tone never trembling) that they will go. Why? “They could be ISIS” he explained, and much to the chagrin of liberal press infiltrators, the audience receiving this news erupted into thigh-slapping approval.

“They could be ISIS” is such a straightforward, commonsensical rationale that the Left will surely pick at it ruthlessly in the weeks to come. Liberals, after all, don’t like common-sense; it’s far too reminiscent of the working classes they so despise (and pretend to represent). Liberals prefer (and will only listen to) lengthy, pseudo-intellectual theses from bespectacled East-Coast vegans (or even better, granola-crunching Scandinavian Leftists) composed in order to justify or extend the reach of government. Common sense just won’t cut it. Common sense doesn’t even have formal accreditation.

But this commonsensicalism is nevertheless the correct attitude for a prospective Presidential candidate to adopt. In politics, the issues are only as complicated as you choose to make them, and the Syrian immigrant debacle is at heart quintessentially simple. A country filled with hundreds of thousands of violent barbarians is busily issuing forth a stream of undocumented, unidentifiable strangers into the civilised world. The organisation responsible for the destruction of that source country has pledged its willingness to plant operatives in that human stream; their ultimate intention being to wreak a comparable havoc on Europe, as they already have on their own soil. When one considers the pastimes presently popular in ISIS-controlled territory (head-lopping, virgin rape, forced marriages, limb amputation among various others…), it is therefore the height of intellectual clarity to prevent the human stream from penetrating the borders of civilised nations.

I didn’t need to write any of that, of course. Trump made the same point with perfect austerity – “They could be ISIS”. As a statement, it can hardly be improved upon.

Still, if it helps the block-headed leftists better understand the point, perhaps Trump might in future use the analogy of contagious disease. If the human stream issuing from Syria was rumoured to contain carriers of Ebola or Bird Flu, the borders of the civilised world would surely re-appear as if by magic. It is the accepted responsibility of government to prevent the spread of disease where it is possible to do so. Why should this be treated any differently?

Islamisation is markedly worse than any organic malady. Once a country has been Islamised, that is usually how it will stay for many centuries. Ask the Albanians, the Bosnians or the Berbers. Unlike the treatment of a medical condition, overturning a cultural transformation is impossible without revolution, violence and chaos. Collected together, the number of historic deaths related to Islamic conquest – that is, from both Islamising and de-Islamising – runs into the wild millions.

And Islamic conquest is exactly what ISIS plans for us. If they need to move their wolves into position clad in wool, they will do. If they need to shed a few phoney tears for the Western press, they will do. Hell, they’ll almost certainly sacrifice children to the sea in order to forward this vile enterprise.

Any policy able to defend us against this process must be considered.

D, LDN

The Infuriating Rationality of Japan

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First, know this – I am very keen on Japan. Two of my favourite novelists (Yukio Mishima and Haruki Murakami) are Japanese. I watch a lot of anime, eat a lot of sushi and often dream of visiting the megacity of Tokyo. At University, I shared a flat with a Japanese woman in my 2nd year and learnt a few sentences of the beautiful Japanese language. I also believe that the inherent cognitive power of the Japanese people will play a major role in defining the future of humanity.

Now, let’s talk about immigration. Japan, as you’ll be aware, maintains one of the strictest immigration policies in the Western World (yes, I would consider Japan part of that definition). A consequence of this policy is that Japan’s population is largely homogenous, the only exceptions being a few scattered Korean communities in larger urban areas. Despite the Japanese population shrinking with every passing year (the result of a shocking reproductive retirement among Japanese families), no immigration is desired – or even thought necessary – by people, media or government. If Japan shrinks in population, it shrinks in population, so the elite regards it. It needn’t be a disaster. Japan will stay Japan, whatever the future scale of that entity may be.

Given these striking ideological feathers, Western right-wingers tend to hate and love Japan simultaneously. They love Japan’s commitment to preserving itself, its orderliness and technological excellence. And they hate Japan for largely the same reasons. They hate the fact that Japan gets to be a first-world country (perhaps the only first world country) with a rational policy of cultural self-preservation and conservative economics. While right-wingers are free to call for these things in the West, they know that their suggestions will always go unheeded. Japan, by contrast, simply lives these values, almost without debate. And – most importantly of all – no one ever seems to criticise them for it.

No-one ever points out the disharmony inherent in the fact that Japanese people are free to move to Britain and become ‘British’, and yet no British person can move to Japan and become ‘Japanese’. Japan gets off the hook every time. No-one, including the international Left, calls them out on it.

When the Syrian ‘refugee’ pushers at the UN called on countries around the world to take in a fair share, little fuss was caused when Prime Minister Shinzo Abe politely declined the poison capsule, stating that he would rather focus on issues native to his own culture. There was no accusation of racism on his part. Once again, Japan – almost like (if you’ll allow this) a ninja – dodges the bullet. Why? What? How? Why is Japan permitted a level of applied rationality other cultures can only dream of?

I can foresee a time in which Japan is even more deeply resented than at present. As European states swirl down the toilet bowl, the rational and reasonable states will be subject to envious contempt. To the irrational, rationality is infuriating.

D, LDN

In Praise of Black People

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I’ve just finished reading a lengthy article on the ethno-nationalist website American Renaissance (Jared Taylor’s organisation) entitled ‘What I don’t like about Blacks’. It was written by a Black intellectual named Zora Wheatley and is presented as a polite and self-deprecating rebuke to Jared Taylor’s (uncharacteristically diplomatic) essay the prior month – “What I like about Black People”.

Here are three defining paragraphs from Wheatley’s article:

“The discontent you feel with yourself and blackness as a whole can be crushing. You discover that aside from the tall African tales of Alex Haley, Underground Railroad figures, and peanut proprietors, there’s not much there (in terms of Black historical achievements). And on top of that, these historical footnotes arise from a new world that is leaps and bounds beyond the stone-age existence in which your ancestors were found. As (Black academic James) Baldwin put it, ‘It is quite possible to say that the price a Negro pays for becoming articulate is to find himself, at length, with nothing to be articulate about.’….

“Mr. Taylor finds the way blacks speak English entertaining, and I would agree in part, though most modern black English is so dumb and vulgar that I wouldn’t be surprised if clicks and grunts will be making a comeback….

“One of the things that I don’t like about blacks (is) their tendency to lay claim to the building and resulting greatness of the West. Picking cotton, tilling soil, and whipping up sweet potato pies were helpful and important in their own way, but were nothing like the establishment of private property rights or the implementation of Enlightenment-era ideals in the New World, which guided the nation for generations. It would be akin to a Native American claiming that, because his ancestors shared corn and turkey with early European settlers one fine November day, they are as important as the descendants of those white settlers who would fight the British and build the America in which we live today.”

Though I admire greatly the intellectual detachment and personal bravery it must have taken to say these things about her own ethnic group, I must disagree with Ms Wheatley’s argument entirely.

It is sadly accurate that most Black contributions to history were enabled by contact with Europeans (and their technology), and that before this, Black history was a long and largely blank expanse of time. But since that great encounter with Europe, and the subsequent incorporation of Black people into European culture, Black accomplishments have been multitudinous and often dazzling.

Perhaps the reason racists feel comfortable in denying these achievements is because they are not various and widespread but concentrated in a few particular areas, compact and neat enough to kick under the nearest cupboard and pretend not to have seen them. One can then focus on the map of absences – the absence of a Black Darwin, Brunel, Newton or Shakespeare etc…

But this is incredibly unfair and intellectually dishonest. Every racial group and culture has a speciality – something they do better than anything else. Austrians are better at composing music than they are at writing. English people are better at writing than they are at painting etc… A speciality should never be considered a limitation.

And what are the Black specialities? Well, the obvious starting point is music. Since the abolition of slavery, there has appeared no musical discipline that cannot be traced back to Black innovation. Rock n’ Roll, Jazz, Soul, Blues, Southern Folk, Disco, Hip-Hop, Swing – all of these are Black inventions, and very influential ones at that. They have changed our tastes, fashions and social norms, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. They have all been cheerily received by other races, understood and celebrated by all the varieties of mankind.

In the connected field of entertainment, Black people have also proven sublimely capable. Through their extroversion and wit, African-Americans have conquered the fields of comedy, film and presentation. Every facet of modern Western humour is informed by Black sensibilities. Their urban parlance has penetrated deeply into our vocabulary and can never be excised from it.

And in Sport, Black athleticism inspires the mind and spirit, dazzling, humiliating and surpassing our view of human capability. Through their determination, Blacks have even conquered sporting disciplines for which they have no natural advantage, like golf and tennis. And whatever sports the future may withhold, Black people will surely eventually dominate these too.

I write this in part to clarify my earlier posts about Black demography. We in Europe reserve the right to maintain a cultural balance favourable to our traditions, but this does not (or need not) imply a dislike of Africans themselves. Despite the contemporary plagues of violence and anti-aspirational politics afflicting the Black community, the fact remains that over the last two centuries, this great and gifted race has scaled the peaks of the Western world. Let that never be forgotten.

D, LDN.

Invasion of the Boat People

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asylum, asylum seekers, BBC, boat people, Boats, boats calais asylum seekers, boats people, calais, Cameron, channel tunnel, Counter-Jihad, david cameron swarm, debate, Defend the modern world, Facebook, France, Immigration, invasion calais, Multiculturalism, Muslims, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, sea, seawater, swarm cameron, Twitter

So, the invasion forces of Africa have now reached the shores of France and seem intent on entering the United Kingdom. As I write, and as even the Prime Minister is now publically lamenting, tens of thousands of Black Africans (mostly Muslim) are attempting to force their way into Southern England, with methods ranging from clinging to the side of lorries, to hiding in cargo boxes and sacks of fruit, to launching primitive boats onto the English channel and rowing up to the English coast.

In Kent, the quiet and genteel ‘Garden of England’, local authorities already describe their agencies as being ‘overwhelmed’ by the hordes of foreign children, homeless, hungry and without a word of English. A local official reported that the number of asylum seekers is “unprecedented” and ‘will cost tens of millions’ to process them, even if their claims are eventually turned down.

Of course, we have no right to be surprised by any of this. When the boats first started coming all those wasted years ago, we knew full well where their cargo desired to end up. No African crosses the Mediterranean to enjoy the marbled romance of Italy, or the cathedrals and sophistication of France. They all want to get to Britain, the pop-cultural lieutenant of America, with our social security, football teams, television, music and cinema. These self-starved, Chelsea-shirt-wearing illiterates don’t just want to live in the ‘West’, but in a country (even city) of their choosing. More than anything else, this pickiness proves their claims of asylum are entirely phoney. If the invading migrants simply wanted to eat and be free from government abuse, Austria would have been tolerable enough for them, to say nothing of Germany, France, Portugal, Italy and Spain.

So what to do? How does Britain get out of this? These questions are only as morally complicated as we choose to make them. The law makes the solution beautifully simple – none of these people have any right whatsoever to enter – let alone reside in – the United Kingdom, and we should deport them as quickly and efficiently as we can arrange. That’s it. No further discussion or thought required. That is what the law demands and what the citizens of this country desire and should be able to expect.

As has now been widely reported, most of the current swarm (and yes, the Prime Minister was right to use that term) are from Eritrea and Somalia, two disastrous attempts at nationhood and each the source of much global disquiet. How could a nation as developed as Britain conceivably profit by the infusion of such material? An Eritrean of 15 years will always be an Eritrean. A Somali of 21 years will always be a Somali. While it’s true that the offspring of such migrants would have the option of being British (it would depend on a secular upbringing and eventual apostasy, not merely the location of birth), that is a delayed reward, and in any case an uncertain one. We don’t need any more Muslims in the UK. We surely have far too many to begin with. End of.

D, LDN.

Nobody’s Fool: Appreciating Ann.

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Adios America, America, America 911, American Liberty, Ann, Ann Coulter, Ann Coulter Fox News, Barack Obama, BBC, Britain First, Christianity and Islam, Coffee, Counterjihad, Defend the modern world, Fox News, How to talk to a liberal, Immigration, Mexico, Multiculturalism, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, Rihanna Muslim, United States

Conservative pundits in America are frequently the subject of international ridicule. Judged to be theatrically insincere, eccentric and overdosed on faith, they rarely find an audience outside of their land of origin. Glenn Beck and his style have few fans in French or German conservative circles. Sean Hannity is not a household name in Finnish or Scottish right-wing society, and so on.

I can appreciate the reasons for this. American discourse is unusually brash and provocative, often quite deliberately so. Even if it were attempted, I doubt a weak-tea BBC Newsnight-kind of discussion would attract much attention there. American media is about viewers and advertising. A viewership on the scale required by sponsors can only be earned with fireworks, red cloth and bulls.

But this doesn’t mean that some American conservatives do not have real talent underlying their cable news methodology. One pundit in particular deserves a far more cosmopolitan – or any rate more international – audience than she seems at present to attract.

Despite acres of print arguing otherwise, Ann Coulter is not a ‘joke’ or a ‘novelty act’. She is admittedly a woman, and a blonde, long-legged one at that. I don’t doubt that some of her fanbase are motivated by apolitical factors. But I am not one of them.

I read Ms Coulter’s columns for their dark humour and cutting insight. She is gifted with a rapier wit, Adderall-sharp mind and her knowledge of the gut-workings of the Washington machine is unparalleled. Let me illustrate this with some well-known quotations:

“Muslims are the only people who make feminists seem laid-back.”

“Since Adam ate the apple and let evil into the world, deranged individuals have existed. Most of the time they can’t be locked up until it’s too late. It’s not against the law to be crazy — in some jurisdictions it actually makes you more viable as a candidate for public office.”

“Liberals have managed to eliminate the idea of manly honour. Instead, all they have is womanly indignation.”

“One hundred percent of terrorist attacks on commercial airlines based in America for 20 years have been committed by Muslims. When there is a 100 percent chance, it ceases to be a profile. It’s called a ‘description of the suspect.'”

Some stuffy types might call this tone populist or dumbed-down, but that’s really quite unfair. It is actually the appropriate tone to use when discussing any kind of absurdity. When reality itself becomes self-satirical, mad to the point of losing insight, then the most accurate descriptions of it can only be phrased in comic language.

Humour is also a good means of getting a point across. Where would the anti-Islamisation movement be without the black comedy of Mark Steyn, for example? Some facts are so dark that one must one dust them in irony or laughter to make them palatable.

We are living in a world of beheadings, gays thrown from rooftops, forcible limb amputations and organised political rape. Most people would impulsively avoid knowing about these things. It’s all just too grim and defies too many human assumptions.

But we can’t ignore them. To put our fingertips in our ear canals only guarantees our destruction. The screams have to be heard. And I applaud and value people like Coulter for providing realism with the consolation of wit.

D, LDN.

Europe and the Boats.

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Africa and Europe, African migrants, Africanisation, Africans, American Liberty, BBC, Boat capsize, Boat sink in Med, Christianity and Islam, Defend the modern world, Demographics of Europe, EU, Immigration, Italians, Italy, Migrant, Muslims, No to Turkey in the EU, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, UKIP

The sinking in the Mediterranean of a boat carrying 700 migrants dominates the headlines today, with sources in the region predicting that most have drowned.

I don’t think anyone, whatever their political convictions can fail to be saddened by an event like this. Loss of life on such a scale is simply heartbreaking. Were we Africans ourselves, living lives of unendurable poverty, we too would take any opportunity  we could think of to get a better deal for our families.

The blame for the incident must thus lie squarely on the liberal policies of the EU and on the shoulders of those who uphold them. It was they who made our continent seem like a prize any African and his wife could successfully pursue (even though it shouldn’t be). It is they who refuse to safely escort all migrants back to Africa when they arrive at the shores of Italy or Malta. And it is they who fail to crack down on the human smuggling gangs who operate freely on African and European streets.

The demographic explosion in Africa is going to make this issue predominant in our political discourse for the foreseeable future. Europe will have to make very tough and internationally unpopular decisions if it is to protect itself from inundation and cultural blackout.

A majority of the migrants attempting to sneak into Europe are Muslim, though there are also Christians among them. This co-habitation has often proven difficult and on occasion, tragi-comic: Just a week ago, it was reported that a group of Muslim Africans, after their own dinghy began to leak, threw the Christians overboard after they prayed to Jesus for help.

Needless to say, we have more than enough Muslim degenerates in our midst already and these Islamic migrants should be promptly returned to Africa. There is growing evidence to suggest this mass export of humans is being sponsored by Islamist groups in North Africa in order to destabilise Europe. If this is true, those Islamist groups should be pursued by Western and allied militaries.

And in general, our governments should make it clear that we are economically unable (and therefore politically unwilling) to rehome the population of Africa. The longer our governments take to do so, the more lives they actively put at risk.

D, LDN.

Anti-Semitism: Real and Imagined.

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anti-Semitism, BBC, Britain, Daily Mail, Defend the modern world, Demographics of Europe, Family Guy Jews, Family Guy racism, Hatred, Immigration, Islamic terrorism, Israel, Jews, Kevin Macdonald, Multiculturalism, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, United States, War, Zionism

Ever since the rather hysterical reaction to Binyamin Netanyahu’s speech to congress and later re-election as Prime Minster of Israel, I’ve been thinking at length about anti-Semitism in the modern world, how intense it is, and where it might ultimately lead. I’ve also tried to properly define ‘anti-Semitism’ – that is, of the most serious kind, as opposed to the ethnic banter that occurs (between all groups and cultures) on a daily basis.

After all, not all anti-Semitism leads to Auschwitz. Some of it is simply laziness. I remember, many years ago, passing a London Synagogue with a friend. As we were directly outside of it, he pointed at the building and sighed “Look at that” in a low, defeated tone of voice.

“What?” I asked, adding “It’s a Synagogue.”

Frowning at my reply, my friend shifted his fingertip to the parking lot outside. “Those cars, I mean… Jags, BMWs, Mercs. You know what I mean?”

And the conversation (if it can be called that) ended there. The insinuation was obvious and was duly taken on board.

Now, is this Anti-Semitism, or just plain envy? Many people readily confuse the two, and this, I think, detracts from our ability to face down anti-Jewish hatred of the most serious kind. (My friend incidentally is a working-class, apolitical Irishman, with whom I used to bunk off school and who more or less belongs to the ‘salt of the earth’ type.)

If that is ‘casual’ anti-Semitism, another modern type is comical or ‘ironic’ anti-Semitism. In an episode of Family Guy, a Jewish high school pupil objects to being asked to dissect a pig, to which the teacher drily replies, “Believe me Neil, it’s no thrill for the pig to touch a Jew either.”

This is clearly near to the bone, but nobody upon hearing it would think of joining the KKK or ANP. This is sub-political thinking and doesn’t treat Jews with the seriousness preferred by genuine fascists.

Of course, even I have at one time or another been accused of anti-Semitism, as has anyone who forwards arguments of the political kind. I once noted for example that American Jews enjoy a dominant position in the American film industry. I found (and find) it bizarre and unnecessary to deny something so obvious. For this, I received emails of mockery and hateful accusations.

The use of the ‘Anti-Semite’ label in cases like that is irresponsible, especially as anti-Semitism of the most lethal kind appears to be enjoying a secretive renaissance. Let’s break some more taboos…

Jews have vastly superior verbal intelligence scores than Gentiles. Ashkenazi Jews are more intelligent on average than any other division of the human population. Jewish representation in the scientific, political and cultural elites of the West is massively disproportionate to their numbers. Jews have taken pains in their history (for religious reasons) to prevent integration with non-Jewish communities. The Jewish religious belief that they are a chosen tribe favoured by God has often contributed to the hostile attitudes of those who live alongside them.

Not one of these observations is powerful or scurrilous enough to unleash a new Holocaust and should not be treated like that. The ideas motivating real hostility to Jews in the modern world have nothing to do with widely known, if publically denied, facts. Rather they are the product of a uniquely complex style of conspiratorial thinking.

Kevin Macdonald, a Canadian professor of Evolutionary Psychology, should be considered the grand wizard of modern anti-Jewish feeling. His trilogy of books – The Culture of Critique, A People Who Shall Dwell Alone and Separation and Its Discontents – have encouraged millions to sign up to a hatred that had been in a period of terminal decline.

Macdonald’s basic theorem is that Jews have organised in such a way as to degrade the spirit of kinship in their ‘host’ societies, thereby preventing an ethno-nationalism that could exclude or threaten them from coming into existence. They are said to achieve this by organising cultural, political and intellectual movements that complicate or oppose White ethnic interests. Examples of this include Bolshevism, Psychoanalysis, interracial pornography and open-door immigration.

Macdonald backs up his assertions with a heavy weight of evidence and quotation, giving the ideas expressed a veneer of scientific detachment and legitimacy. Despite this, no respected figure in Macdonald’s field of evolutionary psychology takes his contentions seriously, and luminaries from other fields – including Steven Pinker and Jared Diamond – treat them with lofty ridicule.

They are wrong to be so dismissive. Macdonald’s thesis is spreading like wildfire. The explanatory promise of his ideas makes them irresistible in an age as distrustful and anti-political as ours.  On websites like 4chan, Stormfront, reddit and on innumerable blogs, the idea that Jews have damaged the prospects of White civilisation is omnipresent. I spend a lot of time on these sites (to attune myself to the popular zeitgeist) and come across arguments traceable back to Macdonald on a daily basis.

Part of what makes Macdonald’s theories so strong is the inbuilt defences he has implanted in them. His family of theories are designed in such a way as to make Jewish counter-arguments seem like a confirmation of their validity. In ‘Separation and its Discontents’, Macdonald argues that the charge of ‘anti-Semitism’ is an integral part of the Jewish project to stop Whites finding an independent voice.

I don’t know how this shadowy renaissance will pan out, but the fact these ideas remain plausible should teach us all a vital lesson: that Anti-Semitism remains a dangerously toxic and regressive element in the global system, and that if it ever reaches 20th century proportions again, it will not be due to comical or political asides, but to the semi-scientific theories of the intellectual fringe.

D, LDN.