Best Explanation Of The Alt Right

Comment: “Anybody seen this piece by Tablet? This is probably the best explanation of the Alt-Right from an intellectual perspective, including in its relationship to paleoconservatism and movement conservatism, that I’ve seen in a mainstream publication. It’s hostile, of course, but it’s very well-researched and nuanced. Steve gets a name-check, of course.”

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Homesick

Steve Sailer writes: Dr. Matt emphasizes that contemporary Americans are more stiff upper lip. Our culture doesn’t like people complaining about being homesick. For example, we emphasize to 17 year olds that they are supposed to go off to a distant college next year and live amongst strangers. Only losers go to local colleges.

Not surprisingly, lots of college freshman get depressed, but we’re not supposed to use the word “homesick” in describing them.

* Whenever I read history books on topics from 19th century and earlier that quotes personal correspondence, I’m frequently struck by the perfervid emotions routinely expressed between people who are not lovers.

* What is lost when emigrants leave their homes is unfortunately usually neglected when considering migration policy. They don’t only leave behind family, friends and community, shredding human ties and social capital in the process, they’re scarred in the process and probably doomed to never really arriving in high-trust communities where people are committed to the communities and willing to invest in their welfare.

Perhaps America’s most noteworthy freedom is the freedom from duty and obligation that its citizens feel. After leaving everything and everybody behind… so many times… uprooting for emigration, pioneering along the American frontier or relocation to chase modern ambitions of career and cosmopolitan experience, market services have liberated us Yanks to follow our bliss . instead of relying on family or neighbors in the community. The latest iteration of the dot.com fad to enable strangers to transact to provide a lift across town or a place to crash when travelling is a logical market development and probably not the last one in this line. Americans have taken reinventing ourselves to the extreme of the notion that “city air makes you free.”

At what cost came this mobility and freedom? Mr. Sailer’s grandmother in law asks an important question we should consider when reflecting on what to make of the American experience. There is no doubt about the allure of social mobility that “streets paved with gold” promised. But hardship and disappointment for so many was often more the reality than the promised fantasy. Finally I wonder if the unnatural selection that sent America the most restless unattached dreamers might be an unexamined curse?

Frequently I’m confronted with evidence of this unkind notion, “Americans don’t solve problems, we leave them behind…” Every article or report I see, “America’s best places….” “Retire here, not there…” makes me believe that so many Americans are mere “consumers” of their home community. Rather than investing and contributing their love and time to make whatever their home is better, they’re all too ready to pick up and move to whatever place looks to provide a more agreeable turnkey experience, eg. offer the greener grass, milder weather, lower tax burden, better school district, exciting bohemian lifestyle, etc. Not that I can blame them at all. I recognize this all-too-American instinct and restlessness in myself. Perhaps I’m projecting this a bit too much on my fellow citizens?

I don’t think so.

A couple weeks ago I flew back east to visit a brother who had just moved there. His new home is a few hours from the town where I (mostly) grew up and went to school. On a lark we drove down there after I hadn’t been there since I left home 20 years previously. It’s uncanny how a place I knew so well could completely empty out of everybody I knew in a few short years. I recall all the kids in school who couldn’t wait to leave… out of state… as far away if possible. Now not only are all the kids gone, the empty nester parents have left too. They only settled in the town because of the excellent schools. But once the kids were done, it was time to leave for someplace without the ridiculous tax burden necessary to finance those good schools. A peculiar unsustainable pattern follows, but not quite like with salmon, who leave the streams for the big ocean. In this case the salmon don’t much care to return to the same exact stream to spawn. Any ol’ stream will do. Whatever freedom and mobility our lifestyles have given us, I might agree with Mr. Sailer’s grandmother in law, “God damn Christopher Columbus.” For the immigrants lost a community, continuity and loyalty that as their descendants we’ve never known.

* A sad story is that of Eric Carle, the artist/children’s book author (“The Very Hungry Caterpillar”). He was born in upstate NY of German immigrant parents. In ’35 when he was 6 and a perfect little American 1st grader, grandma wrote a letter saying, “Alles ist gut!” back in the Fatherland – that Hitler fellow had made Germany great again. America was Depressed, mom was homesick, so they went back. When the war started, dad got drafted into the Wehrmacht and ended up a Russian prisoner – they didn’t send him back until ’47, at which point he was broken physically and mentally (my own grandfather was never the same after his time in the Gulag). They sent Eric out to dig trenches. As soon as he could, he went back to the US (he was a birthright citizen) but he still speaks with a German accent. I think the whole thing made him completely allergic to politics so he writes sweet childrens stories about worms and bears that don’t even have an allegorical meaning.

The same thing happened to my wife’s father’s cousin and family except they went back to Stalinist Russia in ’36 and the ones that survived didn’t get out until perestroika 50 years later.

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WEHT To The Science Reporting In The New York Times?

Comments at Steve Sailer:

* The role of Jon Mooallem at the New York Times science section is like that of the propagandists at Pravda and Red Army News who were allowed to travel abroad and/or read foreign press and report on it to the masses. Since these were the reporters most likely to realize that the propaganda the publications were espousing was entirely bogus, only the most obviously and fanatically devout communists would be selected for this role. After Nicholas Wade (the former NYTimes science editor now retired) let the cat out of the bag that Human Biodiversity is real and obvious, the powers at NYT became militant about suppressing any more public airing of the evidence. So they have chosen a reporter who is a fanatically committed leftist, someone who loves the Narrative more than he loves life itself. He would rather die than admit that the evidence supports race realism. He is the perfect choice to provide an “objective” filter for NY Times readers regarding the growing scientific evidence on human evolution, human genetic differences, and related topics.

* The Polish national communist press employed a really cool guy as a foreign correspondent in the 1970s-80s. What was his name? Witold Something?

He’d go to third world countries that the Soviets were promoting and report back that they sucked, but in such a polished style that nobody could quite convict him of heresy.

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JTA: Israeli prof accused of harassment returns to UCLA classroom, prompting protests

Whoever heard of an Israeli committing sexual harassment? I’m shocked.

LOS ANGELES (JTA) — UCLA students vowed to resume their protests Wednesday against Gabriel Piterberg, an Israel-educated historian, over charges by two of his female students of repeated sexual harassment.

Piterberg, a graduate of Tel Aviv University who served in the Israeli army, until now was more widely known as a fierce critic of Israel and its founders.

When Piterberg appeared at his Monday morning class — for the first time since settling a sexual harassment case with the university — he was greeted by chants of “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Piterberg has got to go,” according to the Daily Bruin student newspaper and members of Bruins Against Sexual Harassment.

A photograph taken in his classroom shows a message on the blackboard reading, “If a tenured professor sexually assaults his own students it’s abuse of power.”

Some 20 minutes after the start of the class a student stood up and left, after which Piterberg dismissed the other students and also canceled his scheduled afternoon class. Protesters said they would return and continue their disruptions during Piterberg’s scheduled Wednesday classes.

In 2013, two female graduate students accused Piterberg, 61, of harassing them over many years by making sexual comments, pressing himself against their bodies and forcing his tongue into their mouths, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Piterberg, who has declined all requests for interviews, has formally denied the charges, but in a 2014 settlement with the UCLA administration he accepted a $3,000 fine, a suspension without pay for one quarter and agreed to attend a training course against sexual harassment.

He was also removed from his position as director of the Gustav von Grunebaum Center for Near Eastern Studies at UCLA and was forbidden to meet individually with certain students except during office hours, and then only if the door remained open.

The settlement did not prevent Piterberg’s return to his teaching post, triggering widespread complaints that the university had been too lenient in the case. A group of 38 history professors sent a letter to UCLA Chancellor Gene Block that stated, in part, “Students, staff and faculty must contend with the presence of an admitted harasser in our midst,” and noted that Piterberg had expressed no remorse for his actions or for the damage he had inflicted on the history department.

According to his resume, Piterberg served in the Israeli army in the early 1980s, and saw action against PLO forces in Southern Lebanon.

He was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, but grew up in Israel. After his army discharge, Piterberg studied and received academic degrees – all with highest honors – from Tel Aviv University in Middle East history and political science, and a doctorate from Oxford University, where his research focused on the history of the Ottoman Empire.

Subsequently, he taught at England’s University of Durham and at the Ben Gurion University of the Negev. In 1999, he joined the UCLA history faculty, advanced to full professor in 2008 and was named director of the UCLA Near East Studies Center in 2013.

At seminars and in specialized scholarly publications, Piterberg early on earned a reputation as an unrelenting critic of the creation and existence of Israel. He has described himself as “not only a non-Zionist, but in certain ways also anti-Zionist.”

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Are Warm Socks Racist?

Comments at Steve Sailer:

* There’s something of a joke among world travelers and ex-pats that “hygge” is Danish for “hook up.” When a Danish girl takes you to show you “hygge,” it means you’re getting laid. The Danes are remarkably sexually liberal once you’re accepted but that’s a steep climb. I’ve never been in a country with such a sharp dichotomy between stranger and friend, or one that was so coldly unfriendly to strangers.

* People who criticize Hygge, probably were not happy children. They did not have parents who let them roast hotdogs in the fireplace, make fondue in the pot that has been in mom’s kitchen since the 60′s; and learned to play the all important card games. Hygge is pretty universal as far as “I’m stayin’ in, and getting into my jammies early.”

* Quite aside from the obvious angle of this being an attack on traditional European culture, I think there is something more going on, in addition to that.

Hygge is obviously something that doesn’t fit well with neoliberal values, which are about being restless, insecure, and thus turning to consumerism to fill that empty hole.

Hygge is about being happy, satisfied, content, not hustling, not on the make, satisfied with small comforts – in the original NYT article, a Danish person was quoted as saying the Danish are so happy because they take satisfaction in small things. Sounds almost Buddhist, although really all spiritual traditions counsel this approach, including most of the Hellenistic ones.

Well, that is obviously a threat to capitalism and indeed the whole modern way of life!

One thing I have discovered about people committed to capitalism and the neo-liberal way of life is that they are deeply, deeply, threatened by anyone or anything that seems to call into question their values. You must subscribe to their notion of the good life as being about buying stuff, gadgets, and working really hard to buy stuff and have gadgets, and under no circumstances must you be allowed to be satisfied with small comforts that make you happy!

When I first started developing an interest in non-materialistic spiritual traditions the hostility and mockery I met with from the hard working neoliberal types was astonishing to me – I didn’t expect sympathy, but I expected indifference at worse. They would pity me as the poor soul who missed out on the point of life – to work really hard to buy stuff, according to them.

But no. What I got instead was something resembling rage. Clearly, I was challenging a very brittle facade they were trying to maintain – they knew on some level that they were missing out on the best things in life, and they responded with rage at my deviation from their accepted norm, which reminded them of what they had given up.

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