Episode 78 of my podcast is now posted here (with copious links) and on YouTube. Recent years have witnessed the arrival of many new blogs on the Right, and one of the best is The Z Blog. I had the opportunity to speak with the Zman last week, a delightful experience I hope you will also enjoy. (Listeners who wish to comment on the interview may do so here.)
We began with a discussion of how he found himself associated with the Alt-Right, and as with so many others—me, for example—his journey began with the expulsion from the “official” Right of Pat Buchanan and Joe Sobran (later to be joined by Peter Brimelow). Those expulsions coincided rather neatly with the takeover of the conservative movement by the neoconservatives, whose influence (as recent events demonstrate) continues unabated, despite the fact that everything they touch turns to ashes. I was only half-joking when I suggested that the noble Roman practice of proscription be revived to deal with this menace. Indeed, proscription might not be sufficient, and another Roman tradition, damnatio memoriae, might need reviving as well.
I was surprised to learn that the Zman lives in Baltimore, generally regarded as one of America’s least agreeable cities. Cities like Baltimore are trapped in a vicious cycle. As the best and the brightest depart, dysgenic breeding results. As long ago as 2002, La Griffe du Lion estimated that the mean IQ of Baltimore blacks had fallen to 76 (“0.6 SD below the African American average nationally”), and the mean IQ of Baltimore whites had fallen to 86 (“nearly a full standard deviation below the national white average.”)
Others topic broached include globalism and how it has devolved capitalism into a form of strip-mining, how journalists have become courtiers, the value of firing fired and taking a punch and which “official” conservatives are “gold-plated phonies” (George F. Will and Kevin Williamson are at the top of his list).
It would be remiss of me not to mention a particularly valuable section of the Zman’s work, “Essential Knowledge,” wherein he discourses upon “the topics, concepts and skills that modern educated persons should know.”
Episode 77 (posted here with links and here on YouTube) is called “Feels Bad, Man.”
Therein, I give the blackpill case against Donald Trump (which I had earlier detailed in this space), with my co-host Kevin Steel dissenting. Now, I am not an angelist, so I harbored no illusions that Trump would keep all his promises, but the cruise-missile strike on Syria left me gobsmacked. For all the talk of “misdirection” and “4D chess” coming from the Donald’s most fervent admirers, this attack resembles nothing so much as the destruction of the Sudanese pharmaceutical factory by Bill Clinton in August 1998. It seems a disturbing precedent has been set; whenever POTUS suffers a little local difficulty, some number of hapless foreigners must die. Of course Clinton’s destruction in Sudan did not suffice to drive Monica Lewinsky from the news, and a pointless attack on Serbia—which I dubbed the War of Clinton’s Pants—followed seven months later.
The good news of the Trump Administration—and it is great good news—is the evidence collected by Ed Rubenstein which demonstrates that the enforcement of immigration laws is returning American jobs to Americans. That aside, the Trump Train has slowed to a crawl. The return of the recent Presidential obsession with the Middle East and North Africa is especially distressing given that the only thing accomplished in over a quarter-century of military intervention is the strengthening of Islamic militancy. Readers are directed to Adam Curtis’ outstanding 2015 documentary Bitter Lake for an explanation of how America’s pro-Saudi foreign policy has expedited the spread of Wahhabism with all the horror that entails. (Watch on YouTube here.)
Episode 76 (posted here with links and here on YouTube) is an interview with an Alt-Right Jew who calls himself The Rebbe.
He makes the bold claim that Right-wing ire against the Jews is misdirected because most of our Leftist Jewish enemies are Jews in name only. Specifically, he argues that modern Jewry has succumbed to the heresy of the Sabbateans, the heretical sect that originates with Sabbatai Zevi (1626–1676) and Jacob Frank (1726-1791).
The Rebbe makes a good case (which you can read in greater detail on his blog), but it runs into the No True Scotsman problem. The meaning of terms changes over time. (Consider what “liberalism,” “conservatism” and “capitalism” once meant compared to what they mean today.) And the natures of religions change. Every major Christian church (with the possible exception of the Orthodox) has surrendered to Modernism. Catholics are taught that “gates of hell shall not prevail” against Christ’s Church, but that is an article of faith, not an historical argument. So even if The Rebbe’s shocking indictment were to be proved, it might not make any difference. In the meantime, it is always good to have allies, and conservative Jews are a good ally for the Alt-Right to have.
