* I’d argue that the more traditionalist sect of the alt-Right stems from the works of the Catholic French Counter-Enlightenment philosophers like Maistre and Bonald, and more recently, G.K. Chesterton while the atheist and neo-Paganist sects stem from the philosophy of Nietzsche (specifically, the idea that “God is dead” and it is up to man to create morality). Both are united in an honesty and clarity of purpose as well as a common enemy. Furthermore, both views are far more consistent than the Enlightenment doctrines asserting certain “truths to be self-evident” which are clearly not self-evident; the alt-Right rejects Rationalism (though not rationality nor science) and utilitarianism.
The greatest difference between the alt-Right and the Enlightenment philosophies is in the idea of “self-evident truths.” The traditionalist sect asserts morality derives only from God. The atheist/neo-Paganist view is that morality is man’s power over man. The philosophies stemming from the Enlightenment state that morality is “self-evident.” The alt-Right is concrete, the Enlightenment is not.
* Another possibility is that Dr. Zuckerberg finds herself unaccountably attracted to Aryan Richard Spencer-type men, just as her brother is attracted to feminine East Asian girls.
* The basic substance of her missive is that only scholars like her can interpret the classics for the masses. Because she was taught the “sophisticated” way to understand and apply the writings of our ancients, she retains the sole ability to accurately assess their historical significance. She may even be of the school that feels one should only read the classics in their original language.
Essentially she is arguing from a pre-Reformation clergy position on interpreting the Bible. The bible should be printed in Latin only and taught only by priests. It is only those men, the clergy, who can be a portal to God because they were taught by the sophisticated academics of their time.
I imagine she is incapable of this type of self-reflection.
* The alt-right is not a tightly led organization, it’s rather a loose conglomeration of several different strains of thought. Something like the Dark Enlightenment, which usually includes cultural absolutism (i.e. some cultures are worth more than others), Darwinism and HBD (the sexes are innately different for biological reasons, same thing for races, ethnic groups, social classes), some corrections of liberal retconning of history (e.g. how far to the right people like Lincoln or Churchill would be, were they still alive), discoveries or rediscoveries of some more esoteric earlier authors as well as some more esoteric or rightist contemporary authors (like Evola or Ezra Pound or Alain de Benoist), and only some of these reject the Enlightenment.
It’s also possible to reject some parts of the Enlightenment without rejecting the whole thing (the Enlightenment itself was just a loose conglomeration of several different strains of thought, some of whom were at each others’ throats all the time), and that’s precisely what many people are doing, so I’m not sure what your complaint is here.
Besides, of course race was seen by people before Darwin – racism is certainly possible without Darwinism or IQ studies. You can simply acknowledge that different races exist (based on your lying eyes), and then start from there. And some people are loosely sympathetic to the alt-right without much thinking about genetics research or modern science.
* Methinks Dr. Zuckerberg doth protest too much.
It seems to me that liberal academics have a guilty conscience. They are intellectual elitists par excellence who nevertheless increasingly find themselves leading a coalition of relatively downscale constituent blocs. Indeed, they don’t just lead those downscale constituencies; they ostentatiously venerate them. People with IQs well into the triple-digit range will hold up a Michael Brown as a victim-hero of our age.
There’s a lot of cognitive dissonance to this kind of faculty lounge elitism, and this psychic tension is resolved by attacking the Middlebrow Menace of generic white guys. As always, it’s about the Blue Tribe defending its cultural hegemony against the Red Tribe, with the minorities Dr. Z celebrates being essentially beside the point. They’re props to be used for bashing uppity young white men with higher-than-normal agency and intellect who are curious about their people’s heritage.
In the case of Dr. Zuckerberg, there may also be the old ethnic angle at play here. I recall Steve writing before about the awkward relationship Jewish intellectuals have to European (and particularly German) traditions. Jewish success in the arts and sciences is an outgrowth of the European Enlightenment. It’s not something that arose spontaneously on the shtetl or in the Holy Land.
So a Jewish classicist like Dr. Z obviously loves European civilization and its cultural patrimony, but at the same time has at least a vestigial sense of being victimized by that civilization. Again, there is psychic tension, and, again, it is taken out on middle-class Middle America.
* I’ve moved past the argument stage with these people. I want a divorce. We simply have incompatible views of the world. No amount of discussion will solve that.
Americans are stuck in a horrible marriage because we can’t get out of the mortgage and move to separate homes, so we grumble through the days with the occasional full-on screaming match. It can’t last. At some point, one side would rather burn the house down than spend another hour in this nightmare, especially if they feel as though they’re going to lose the house anyway.
* At first I bristled at the usual anti-white-male stuff, but by the end of the article I actually came to like this Zuckerburg sister. I sort of feel bad for her, I feel like at some level she gets it. She has moments of being fair to her enemies and sees merit in some of their arguments.
She’s cute too, and apparently a good cook.
