Kdo by měl vládnout?

Každý den, když si prohlížím internetové zpravodajství a diskusní servery, vidím, že otázka, jak by se měla rekrutovat skutečná vládnoucí elita, je ostrým bodem sváru mezi politickými komentátory. Až dosud jsem neměl osobně k problematice příliš co říci. Nechci ostatním vnucovat svůj názor. Být politikem by nevyhovovalo mé spíše introvertní povaze, je to úkol, který radši přenechám jiným. Bude lepší se tedy skutečně podívat na podstatu věci, než pokračovat v kypění debat bez znalosti patřičných souvislostí.

Zastánci Nietzscheho

Jak zde jistě každý bude vědět, zastánci a příznivci filosofa Friedricha Nietzscheho jsou jeho zanícenými obdivovateli a poněkud nezvykle interpretují teorie svého vzoru. Věří v kastovní systém kněží, válečníků a rolníků (dělníků), sami sebe jako součást úzké skupinky vyvolených, kteří by tvořili vládnoucí elity ve vysněném etnicky homogenním státě. Každý z nich věří, že každý člověk má svou niternou podstatu, panskou nebo otrockou, dominantní, či submisivní a od tohoto základu odvozují morální systém, korespondující s prvotním rozdělením lidí na silné a slabé. Tak jako Nietzsche hlásal „panskou morálku“, jeho zastánci chtějí o tom, kdo bude vládnout, rozhodovat „vyšší typ člověka“ a skoncovat s liberální demokracií.

Zastánci Thomase Jeffersona

Ve Spojených státech představují tito lidé nejpočetnější část konzervativních a národních kruhů. Z jejich pohledu je nejlepší vláda ta, která má nejmenší moc. Na americkém systému nespatřují apriorně nic špatného. Věří ve stát a lokální vládu a instinktivně oponují shromažďování moci ve Washingtonu. Jeffersonovi zastánci by rádi přičetli úpadek porodnosti a civilizační pokles korumpujícími tlaku vnějších sil, jmenovitě Židů (či Izraeli) a argumentují, že rozumná rasová politika (založená na odmítnutí imigrace, pozn. překl.) by například mohla po odstranění této rakoviny vyvést Ameriku ze společenských potíží. V jeffersoniánském systému by byla vládnoucí elita delegována lokálními volby a hromaděním národního bohatství.

Zastánci Alexandra Hamiltona

Podobně jako zastánci Jeffersona, tak i zastánci pojetí AlexanderaHamiltona stále věří v republikánskou (samo)vládu, ale na rozdíl od prvně jmenovaných preferují silný, centralizovaný stát, oslabující lidský individualismus. Namísto volného obchodu, požadují „America First“, tedy víceméně soběstačnou obchodní politiku. Zastánci Hamiltona podporují silný veřejný sektor a regulovaný trh s cílem zabezpečit rovnocennou distribuci bohatství. Věří, že ústavní reformy mohou zbrzdit, nebo zastavit kulturní a etnický úpadek západní civilizace. Vládnoucí elitu by formovaly volby a akumulace bohatství v soukromé sféře.

Libertariáni

Libertariáni jsou podmnožinou zastánců Jeffersona, kteří věří v minimální stát. Tvrdí, že jediná funkce státu, která by měla příslušet státu, je ochrana práv jednotlivce: čili policie, armáda a soudy. Libertariáni odmítají veškeré pokrokářství devatenáctého století ve jménu individuální svobody. V ideálním libertariánském státě by se vládnoucí elita legitimizovala skrze participaci na tržní ekonomice a jako vládnoucí moc by byla omezena striktní Ústavou.

Fašisté

Fašisté (zahrnující nacionální socialisty a další různorodé odrůdy fašismu) požadují autoritativní stát v čele s mocným vůdcem s pokud možno absolutní mocí. Rádi by se zřekli liberální demokracie a nahradili ji vládou hierarchizované, režimu věrné byrokracie. Tato koncentrace moci a síly by byla užita ke zbavení se pro fašistický stát nežádoucích elementů (různých politických odpůrců, etnických skupin – Židů, atp.). Vládnoucí stav by se delegoval z vládnoucí strany, jejíž představitelé by zároveň tvořili lídry establishementu.

Platonisté

Nemohu najít lepšího slova, ale „Platonisté“ jsou v zásadě ti, kdo obhajují pravidla, stanovená Vládcem. Vládci budou vybírání na základě svého chování a morální hodnoty.

Konzervativní nacionalisté

Konzervativní nacionalisté věří v silnou, obrozenou vládu Christianitas. V podstatě to znamená, že požadují stát, postavený na hodnotách Evangelia. Někteří konzervativní nacionalisté preferují republiku, jiní monarchii, někteří teokratickou diktaturu. Ve všech případech je vládnoucí vrstva úzce spjata se zbožností.

Monarchisté

Požadují vládu krále a dědičné aristokracie. Vládnoucí vrstva je odvozena z královské krve.

Anarchisté

Chtějí zcela odstranit jakoukoli vládu. V jimi navrhovaném stavu není žádná vláda, politika neexistuje a stejně tak žádný mechanismus pro selekci elit. V beztřídní společnosti jsou si všichni teoreticky rovni.

Kde stojím já?

Po tomto výčtu nezbývá než zformulovat vlastní odpověď na vytyčenou otázku.
Politicky někde mezi Hamiltoniány a Platonisty. Domnívám se, že vláda může být dobrým silovým prostředkem v situaci, kdy potřebujeme mít silný stát k odvrácení invaze masového přistěhovalectví. Republikánský systém je osvědčený model pro zajištění kontinuity a mírovou výměnu moci. Myslím, že bychom nebyli moudří, kdybychom se těchto jistot vzdávali ve jménu některých vratkých idejí, vyjmenovaných výše.

Nejhorší aspekty republikanismu však spočívají v obchodovatelnosti s ústavními principy. Osobně například nevěřím v rovnost volebního práva. V mé osobní, hypotetické, ideální republice, by bylo případnému rozšíření volebního práva vyhověno jen za určitých podmínek. Volič by musel být inteligentní, kompetentní a mít určité morální minimum, postačující k tomu, aby využil privilegia generovat svou volbou vládnoucí elitu. Také vládnoucí vrstva by měla více moci než „lid“.

Z morálního (nikoli tedy politického) hlediska mě v těchto otázkách ovlivnil Alasdair MacIntyre. Stejně jako on, i já věřím, že morálka má smysl vždy pouze v určitém kontextu etablovaných tradic. Na světě máme celou řadu morálních řádů, každý z nich má vlastní historii, každý z nich vzešel z odlišných předpokladů a odlišných počátků. Je nemožné snažit se najít společný jmenovatel ideální vlády mezi nesouměřitelnými tradicemi a sdílenými morálkami jednotlivých společností.

Myslím, že současný stav západní morálky se stal obětí katastrofy, popsané MacIntyrem v předmluvě knihy „After Virtue“: ovládáme pouze malé části našeho koherentního morálního systému, termíny, které ztratily svůj kontext, když se jednou stali hodnověrnými a že racionálně uvažující jedinci jsou odkloněni do nihilismu tímto zmatkem. Nejsou zde žádné univerzální, objektivně platné morální principy analogické zákonům vědy. Namísto toho se morální filosofie stala praktickou vědou a popřela tak své poslání, o kterém hovořil Aristoteles: je to návod k tomu, jak realizovat daný ideál dobra. Jinými slovy, věřím tomu, že morálka (na jakémkoli stupni a v jakékoli společnosti), je redukovatelná na dobro. To je ale pro jinou diskusi.

To byly mé odpovědi. A jaké jsou vaše?

Who should rule?

Logging on this morning, I see that this has once again become a burning issue among the commentators. So far, I haven’t had much to say about the topic. I don’t aspire to rule over anyone. Becoming a politician isn’t a good fit with my introverted personality type. It is a task that I would prefer to leave to others. We have already had one commentator storm off the site because of a controversial turn in this discussion. It is better to discuss the matter now (in its own definitive blog entry) than to have it continue to spill over into unrelated threads.

Nietzscheans

As everyone here knows by now, NeoNietzsche is a passionate admirer of Friedrich Nietzsche and subscribes to a peculiar interpretation of his theories. He believes in a caste system (warrior, cleric, peasant) and sees himself as part of the elect few who should rule in a White Nationalist ethnostate. Following Nietzsche, NN believes everyone has an essential orientation, master or slave, dominant or submissive, and that different moral systems correspond to this primordial mammalian division. As an advocate of “master morality,” he would abolish liberal democracy and confer elite status upon the “higher types” who are naturally born to rule.

Jeffersonians

In the United States, Jeffersonians are the most numerous in White Nationalist circles. In their view, the best type of government is the one that governs least. These people don’t see anything essentially wrong with the American system. They believe in state and local government and instinctively oppose the consolidation of power in Washington. Jeffersonians like to attribute our racial decline to the corrupting influence of outside forces, namely the Jews, and argue that racial sanity would quickly return to America after the excise of this cancer. Under the Jeffersonian system, elite status would be conferred through local elections and the private accumulation of wealth in a capitalist economy.

Hamiltonians

Like the Jeffersonians, the Hamiltonians still believe in republican self government, but prefer a strong, centralized state to a weak one. Instead of free trade, they want an America First trade policy. Hamiltonians support a strong public sector and a regulated market economy to ensure a more equitable distribution of wealth. They believe a few constitutional reforms will be sufficient to reverse our racial decline. In their ideal White ethnostate, elite status would also be conferred through elections and wealth accumulation in the private sphere.

Libertarians

The libertarians are a subset of the Jeffersonians who believe in a minimal state. They believe the only function of the state is to protect individual rights: military, police, courts. The libertarians would scrap the entire ediface of twentieth century progressive reforms in the name of liberty. In a libertarian White ethnostate, elite status would be conferred through participation in the market economy, as government would be hamstrung by a strict constitution.

Fascists

The fascists (this includes National Socialists and related species of fascism) want an authoritarian state headed by a dynamic leader with near absolute power. They would dispense with liberal democracy entirely and replace it with a racialized bureaucracy. This concentration of power would be used to rid the fascist ethnostate of Jews and other undesirable elements. Elite status would be conferred through rising in the party and pleasing its established leaders.

Platonists

For lack of a better word, the “Platonists” are White Nationalists who advocate rule by a Guardian caste or order. These Guardians would be chosen through breeding and merit. Exemplary Whites imbued with an unusual dedication to their race would enjoy rights and privileges that other citizens would not.

Christian Nationalists

The Christian Nationalists believe a strong, rejuvenated Christianity is a necessary component of a White ethnostate. In essence, they want an ethnostate based on Christian moral values. Some Christian Nationalists want a republic; some a monarchy; some a theocratic dictatorship. In all cases, elite status would be strongly connected to religious piety.

Monarchists

The monarchists want a king and hereditary aristocracy. Elite status would be conferred through the possession of royal blood.

Anarchists

The anarchists want to dispense with government entirely. In their proposed ethnostate, as there would be no government, politics would not exist and there would be no mechanism for selecting elites. In theory, everyone would be equal in this classless society.

Where I Stand

So, after all this, what is my answer to this question?

Politically, I stand between the Hamiltonians and Platonists. I think that government can be a force for good and that White Nationalists will need a strong central state to repel invasions by our multitude of enemies. The republican system is a proven model for ensuring continuity and the peaceful transfer of power. I think we would be unwise to dispense with it in pursuit of some of the more outré, untested ideas discussed above.

The worst aspects of republicanism can be dealt with through constitutional reforms. For one, I don’t believe in universal voting rights. In my ideal republic, the franchise would only be extended after certain conditions are met. Voters would be required to demonstrate they are intelligent, competent, and moral enough to enjoy the privilege of selecting our leaders. I also believe that the Guardian caste should have more sway than the average citizen. A real electoral college could be set up in which the Guardians could exercise a veto over bad popular selections.

Morally, Alasdair MacIntyre has been the major influence on my views. Like MacIntyre, I believe that morality is only logical within the context of established traditions. There are a number of moral traditions out there, each of them with their own history, each of them having different premisses as their starting point. It is impossible to properly reason across these incommensurate traditions.

I believe our moral discourse has been the victim of the catastrophe described by MacIntyre in the Preface of After Virtue: we only possess fragments of a coherent moral framework, terms which have lost the context which once made them plausible, and that rational people are diverted into nihilism by this disarray. There are no universal, objective moral principles analogous to the laws of science. Instead, moral philosophy is a practical science like Aristotle always claimed it was: it is a how-to guide for actualizing some given ideal. In other words, I believe that morality (at some level) is reducible to aesthetics. That’s a topic for another day.

These are only my answers. What are yours?

From Occidental Dissent, October 20, 2009

The middle class is not an income bracket. It is a group of people who share values that strengthen the individual. Their strength makes the middle class the most difficult class to rule.

Displacing the middle class has been the trend of recent history. Globalism concentrates wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer people, which starves out the mid-tier of society. Particularly since the end of WWII , Western elites have focused on breaking the mid-tier’s ability to resist their own disenfranchisement.

In his Republic Plato recognized the power of middle class principles. Family loyalty, community participation, self reliance and prizing education are all things that help the individual resist the will of the State. Plato knew that a class of virtuous citizens needed these qualities in order to prevent the state from slipping into tyranny.

Plato also noted that would-be tyrants attack virtuous citizens in specific ways: they bring in foreign helpers to undermine the cultural homogeneity of the state; they set up slave militias to use against their citizenry; and they start propaganda campaigns specifically designed to wipe out middle-class values. When these attacks are successful the tyrant sets up a government which Plato called “The Tyranny of Slaves.”

“The Tyranny of Slaves” can only come about if enough people adopt slavish values — thereby allowing themselves to be manipulated by the despot. Slaves don’t take personal responsibility, they wait to be handed what they “deserve.” They don’t respect elders, are insolent, intemperate and extravagant. What’s worse, they don’t value reason and logic; they are only moved by emotion-based sophistical arguments. Slaves need a tyrant to rule them. They are people who seek instant gratification, do not consider consequences and are prone to senseless violence. They are mankind debased.

When he wrote the Republic, Plato was describing recent history and what he had seen happen in Athens during his lifetime.

But the pattern has been repeated many times since. Rome’s power was built on its army, which was made up of many landholding farmers. Wealth came after military success; land ownership was concentrated; and the new landlords replaced Roman farmers with a polyglot of slaves. Since that event the empire had to rely on Northern European conquests for soldiers and the City became the international cesspool that Juvenal describes in The Satires.

A similar thing happened with England’s yeomanry. Brooks Adams describes their displacement during the sixteenth century in his book The Law of Civilization and Decay.

But the bad guys don’t always win. An inspiring example of the middle class resisting tyranny is the struggle of the Germanic farmers with Arminius against Publius Quinctilius Varus in the Teutoberg Forrest. When Arminius tried to impose his own dictatorship, the farmers broke him too.

Since Plato’s writing, other philosophers have built on his observations. Plato naively thought that he could get rid of internecine conflict by extending the family relationship across an entire class — in other words, communal property and no nuclear family. Aristotle realized that only ownership made people care for things: traditional families were crucial to the well being of the middle class. In Politics, Aristotle suggested that abolishing private property would be ideal for the slave class, because the resultant discord would make them easier to control.

Plato’s and Aristotle’s work became especially relevant during The Enlightenment. Philosophers turned their thoughts towards how to reconstruct society.

The Marquis de Sade, a vicious French revolutionary, noticed that when people are bombarded with sex and stripped of family relations, they are distracted and isolated; this makes them totally at the mercy of the State. He recommended plenty of smut in the theater in order to convert the French into “revolutionary citizens.” See his Philosophy in the Bedroom.

Gustave le Bon, a French philosopher writing in the 1890s, saw that when groups of people are very diverse they have few feelings of responsibility towards each other and are more easy to manipulate. (See The Crowd.) The American Conservative‘s Steve Sailer noticed this too in his January 2007 article “Fragmented Future.”

1940s intellectuals inherited a good understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of society — and how to manipulate them. They started out as Marxists but became disillusioned with Marxism because the lower middle class in Germany in the end opted for National Socialism instead of communism. The response of these intellectuals was to develop theories based on psychoanalysis in which the middle class and any sense of social cohesion were pathologized. From their point of view, the problem was the family itself.

At the center of this onslaught on the middle class was a group of refugee Jewish intellectuals from a communist think-tank in Frankfurt called the “Institute for Social Research.” They are now commonly known as “The Frankfurt School.” The most prominent members of the institute were Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse.

Herbert Marcuse

A perfect example of Frankfurt School thinking was Herbert Marcuse’s use of Plato’s idea of “The Tyranny of Slaves.” Plato saw the “Tyranny of Slaves” as the ultimate treachery and akin to patricide: a tyrant uses slaves to oppress his own people — the people who gave the tyrant birth.

Marcuse turns the idea of “The Tyranny of Slaves” on its head. According to Marcuse (following Freud), Western Culture was founded by a band of sons who wanted to sleep with their mother and killed their oppressive father (patricide). In guilt, the sons reestablished the tyranny of the father and the result was European Man. Marcuse speculated that Western tyranny will be broken through a cathartic event: minorities and women would rebel, crushing Western Culture and ushering in a fuzzy utopia that is liberated from logic and reason. This utopia will be led by Frankfurt intellectuals. Marcuse calls this catharsis the “return of the repressed.”

The Frankfurters attacked middle class values from every angle. They attacked the foundations of the Western educational system: reason became a symptom of “oppression,” what was “logical” was whatever supported the Frankfurter’s politics. Science was only useful if it could be twisted into propaganda. The Classics became unfashionable.

In reality, the Frankfurters were agitating for an education system that would dumb down the populace and make them less able to identify their own interests.

The Frankfurters adopted de Sade’s social destabilization techniques. Sexual perversion became “freedom”. Loving your race, family and culture became “authoritarian”— unless of course you were non-white. Mentally healthy people were those who rejected their family and looked with eager eyes toward the “return of the repressed.”

In reality, the Frankfurters were promoting diversity because it disrupts community — just as Le Bon had observed. Diversity is strength for oligarchical elites, it is not strength for subjugated people. Cultural and ethnic diversity undermine community and open societies up for tyranny.

After the Frankfurt revolution society would supposedly be freed from private property and the State would provide for everyone’s needs. Being “reified” citizens we would be happy rutting with egalitarian abandon and living our atomistic lives. Ulysses: nil, Lotus-Eaters: one.

The Frankfurters knew full well that distracted and isolated people are weak and the perfect material for the slave class. Single mothers, abandoned children, institutionalized men and the neglected elderly are all dependent on the State and will do as they are told — if they want their benefits.

The Frankfurt school was well connected to the government, particularly the US occupation administration in Germany after World War II. The resources of the Office of Strategic Services and its successor, the CIA, were used to broadcast the Frankfurter’s morally weakening message across the globe.

In 1949 John McCloy (the American High Commissioner for Germany and CIA heavyweight) arranged a special posting for Max Horkheimer at Frankfurt University. Horkheimer had written that an outpost in Frankfurt would be necessary to monitor the effects of American ‘anti-prejudice’ programs on Germans. In 1950 McCloy funds supported the reestablishment of the Institute for Social Research, directed by Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno.

Many Frankfurt intellectuals found a home away from home in the American university system. After serving with the OSS/CIA they returned to the “Ivory Tower” and were given plush jobs. Herbert Marcuse went to Columbia University, Harvard, Brandeis and the University of California at San Diego; Leo Lowenthal (Office of War Information section chief) went to the University of California, Berkeley — from where their protégés continue to assert, repeat and spread the Frankfurt School contagion.

Frankfurters were given jobs analyzing television and radio content to make sure it had the right messages. Their suggestions in art and music were promoted at Allied-funded cultural events in Europe like the “Congress for Cultural Freedom” — the main organization of the anti-Stalinist left. The Congress was organized in 1950 by Michael Josselson with help from Melvin Lasky and Nicolas Nabokov. Sidney Hook and other New York Intellectuals were central figures. The Rockefeller-funded Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA) was closely linked to the Congress. MoMA was a private conduit for promoting socialist-inspired art that the 1950s US Congress would not support.

The Frankfurt School and the New York Intellectuals developed a common front with non-Jewish elites in the Cold War struggle to attain the intellectual high ground against Stalinism. But it was an alliance made with the devil, because, as Kevin MacDonald has shown, the ideology promoted by the non-communist left came to be institutionalized as the ideology of Western suicide. The New York Intellectuals and the Frankfurt School—both movements dominated by strongly identified Jews — developed a widely disseminated theory, based on psychoanalysis (itself a Jewish intellectual movement), in which concern for ethnic displacement and the rise of minority power were indications of psychopathology. White people with no allegiance to their family, their country or their race were seen as the epitome of psychological health.

The Frankfurters and the New York Intellectuals had a great respect for Western Classical Literature. (This was typical of other Jewish-dominated anti-nationalist intellectual movements described by Yuri Slezkine.) Shakespeare and the other Western classics would survive the revolution of the non-communist left, but the rest of Western culture would have to go, as would the predominant racial group — White Europeans. They had read Plato and Aristotle very carefully, and for the most part accepted these writers’ conclusions. The Frankfurters were also familiar with De Sade and Le Bon — and recognized their relevance to Plato. From a synthesis of these ideas sprung a system for attacking the middle class.

It will not be lost on the reader that the time period in question was also the beginning of the “Civil Rights” movement; the “Sexual Revolution”; and massive third-world immigration to the West. What has been the effect of these things on our society? Are we as a people more or less able to defend our own interests and hold our government accountable? Plato would answer “less.”

From The Occidental Observer, August 3, 2009

. . . Do we not live under daily threat of wanton violence perpetrated against the civilized by the savage, who wish to reduce everything to savagery because civilization measures for them their own productive sterility and so inspires them with bloodthirsty invidia against real achievement?

Is travel not now arduous, humiliating, and risky compared to forty years ago? Are public servants not surly and useless? Is art not debased? Are not criminal gangs effectively in control of huge swaths of the urban environment and police forces unable ensure public safety? Is our politics not corrupt and soulless, a kind of large-scale bribery and Caesarism under the mendacious rubric of democracy? Are we not haunted by the depletion of fuel and with it energy and prosperity? Is wealth not disappearing as we live and breathe? Are we not therefore less free and is our situation not much less civilized than in previous generations? . . . Read the whole article