Category Archives: Conservatism

‘Identity Politics’: A Term Conservatives Use To MASK Anti-Whiteness

Ann Coulter, Argument, Conservatism, Critique, Race, Racism, Republicans

Stephen W. Carson asks an interesting question on Twitter (would that intellectual curiosity abounded), relating to the column, “It’s Not ‘Identity Politics,’ It’s Anti-White Politics”:

I would appreciate your perspective though.
Do you agree that “identity politics” is a thing?
If so, what patterns have you seen in “identity politics”?

9:44 AM – 22 May 2019

Hi, @RadicalLib: I believe the term “identity politics, which originated in academia, has become a cliche, and is also now nonsensical. It is used mainly by humdrum conservatives. Why do they use it? Probably because they, consciously or unconsciously, do not want to come to terms with the fact that our politics are almost exclusively anti-white, not anti-Other more exotic identities.

It’s also considered politically incorrect or “racist” to argue that there is a dangerous, anti-white sentiment among the cohort Ann Coulter has termed “our cultural overlords.” (“It might be of some concern to the rapidly diminishing white population,” she wrote, “that our cultural overlords are so tormented by ‘whiteness.'”)

Media conservatives refuse to cop to “anti-white politics,” for fear of being called racist.

Also, most Cons are mere maze rats. Not smart, they adopt Party positions without much thought; align along the positional grooves.

But “anti-white politics” it is. Here’s what Cons do as a method:

They to pretend that it’s all about Democratic politics. Dems are dividing us, the Cons screech. Thus do the Cons virtue-signal their position as seekers of national unity. We’re all in this together.  No we’re not. As I wrote in the above column,

It’s not Identity Politics; it’s anti-white politics. For, blacks are not being pitted against Hispanics. Hispanics aren’t being sicced on Asians & Ameri-Indians aren’t being urged to attack the groups just mentioned. Rather, they’re all piling on honky.

A similar tack, taken, incidentally, by both radio talker Tammy Bruce and author J.  D. Vance on the Tucker Carlson Show, is to pivot away from race and anti-white hatred. To those who cleave closely to the contour of an argument, the pivot will seem inorganic. But to the Republican maze rat it’s rote.

To wit, Bruce was quizzed about Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke’s apology over “whiteness.” Tammy B. was expected to answer as to why men like Beto keep apologizing. (She ought to have begun by pointing out that Black men don’t apologize for existing.) Instead, Tammy pivoted from whiteness (the thing that informed O’Rourke’s apology) to … wait for this: “Humanity.”

It’s a Democrat thing, asserted Bruce, to apologize for the sins of humanity. Climate change, for instance. (At that point in the show, I scratched my head and wondered how she got from A to B.)

Incidentally, the questions posed to Beto by Republican Meghan McCain (the great philosopher) and her Republican sisters, were indistinguishable from the questions with which any black, lady Democrat would harangue the meek Beto: “Atone for your privilege, your sexism … if you were a woman, you’d not get away with being so audaciously Beto, blah, blah.”)

No. Our politics are brutally anti-white. I Wrote a book about what will come of this—and the perils of not naming the Beast. 

A RECENT RELATED ARTICLE is:  “The Demonization Of Whites By Mrs. Bill Gates & Other Dangerous Idiots.“

UPDATED (7/22/019): ‘That Shapiro Meltdown: What It Says About Him—And Conservatism, Inc.’

Argument, Conservatism, Neoconservatism, Pseudo-intellectualism, Republicans

An excellent piece on Ben Shapiro is “That Shapiro Meltdown: What It Says About Him—And Conservatism, Inc.“

            • Shapiro was expecting to promote his new book The Right Side Of History: How Reason and Moral Purpose Made The West Great, the latest in the long series of Beltway Right slop defining the West and/or conservatism as post-Enlightenment prattle about “individualism” or “liberty” or “Judeo-Christianity” or anything other than a people (white, by the way) with a real culture and civilization.
            • Shapiro expected to appear in his traditional American role as gatekeeper, eager to condemn populist nationalism and to portray himself as an “intellectual conservative.” But Shapiro’s popularity, such as it is, depends on titillating a conservative audience. Like every would-be celeb in Conservatism Inc., he must simultaneously push and enforce boundaries. This inevitably leads to problems.
            • [B]aiting transgenders is edgy on campus, while safe (for now) within the general conservative movement.
            • Shapiro claims to be part of the “Intellectual Dark Web” (IDW), which has emerged as sort of faux Dissident Right. And in a 2016 interview with one of its supposed members, Dave Rubin, Shapiro declared,”Of course, there are legitimate racists and we should target them and we should find them and we should ruin their careers because racism is unacceptable.”
            • Shapiro has a platform precisely because he is allowed to have a platform. He complains about campus protests and online abuse he suffered during the 2016 campaign, but I can confidently predict that Ben Shapiro will never lose his Stripe account, his PayPal account, his checking account. He will never lose his Twitter—while his critics (some undoubtedly abusive but definitely not all) mostly have.
            • He is “New Media” only insofar as he is promoted by Legacy Media, and because any competition to his right, including the grassroots activists who drove the 2015-2016 Trump insurgency, is being persecuted and purged by Big Tech.
            • Neil was right when he identified the lack of intellectual energy coming from the Beltway Right. Again, partially this is because most of the incisive critics have been deplatformed, cut off from financial resources, or simply intimidated via direct threats. Yet it’s also because the Beltway Conservative Movement is fundamentally a product of corporate donors. Not surprisingly, they aren’t coming up with anything except the usual calls for tax cuts and deregulation.
            • Ben Shapiro has no stake in political success, no skin in the game. His job is to remain in the political sweet spot of triggering the hysterical campus left, while gatekeeping for the Beltway Right. This allows him Main Stream Media access, fundraising, and bookselling opportunities, while repeating the same tired slogans like it’s still the Reagan years.He and those like him love to mock Leftists for staying in their safe spaces. But as we’ve now seen, once Shapiro is out of his Conservatism Inc. safe space, he really has nothing to say.

      MORE @VDARE: “That Shapiro Meltdown: What It Says About Him—And Conservatism, Inc.“

      UPDATED (7/22/019):

      “While Shapiro finds Trump supporters “vile” and “disgusting” for chanting “send her back,” he himself openly advocated for ethnically cleansing all “5 million Palestinians and Israeli Arabs” from Israel in a column titled, “Transfer is not a dirty word.”

      https://twitter.com/PrisonPlanet/status/1152941294714597381

Comments Off on UPDATED (7/22/019): ‘That Shapiro Meltdown: What It Says About Him—And Conservatism, Inc.’

Written by on

COLUMN: Bernie’s Degeneracy: That’s Democracy For Ya

Conservatism, Democracy, Democrats, Egalitarianism, History, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Nationhood, Political Philosophy

COLUMN: “Bernie’s Degeneracy: That’s Democracy For Ya” is now on Townhall.com.  An excerpt:

BERNIE SANDERS, the senator from Vermont, said he thinks “everyone should have the right to vote—even the Boston Marathon bomber … even for terrible people, because once you start chipping away and you say, ‘Well, that guy committed a terrible crime, not going to let him vote,’ you’re running down a slippery slope.”

Bernie is right about a “slippery slope.” But the befuddled Bernie is worried about the wrong slope.

Denying the vote to some and conferring it on others is not a “slippery slope.” It’s exercising good judgment.

Insisting that the vote in America belongs to everyone, irrespective: now that’s a slippery slope, down which the slide is well underway.

As it stands, there are almost no moral or ethical obligations attached to citizenship in our near-unfettered Democracy.

Multiculturalism means that you confer political privileges on many an individual whose illiberal practices run counter to, even undermine, the American political tradition.

Radical leaders across the U.S. quite seriously consider Illegal immigrants as candidates for the vote—and for every other financial benefit that comes from the work of American citizens.

The rights of all able-bodied idle individuals to an income derived from labor not their own: That, too, is a debate that has arisen in democracy, where the demos rules like a despot.

But then moral degeneracy is inherent in raw democracy. The best political thinkers, including America’s constitution-makers, warned a long time ago that mass, egalitarian society would thus degenerate.

What Bernie Sanders prescribes for the country—unconditional voting—is but an extension of “mass franchise,” which was feared by the greatest thinkers on Democracy. Prime Minister George Canning of Britain, for instance. …

… READ “Bernie’s Degeneracy: That’s Democracy For Ya” on Townhall.com. 

America Was Never Meant To Be A Raw, Ripe Democracy

Conservatism, Constitution, Democracy, Federalism, Founding Fathers, Natural Law

In the context of last week’s column against democracy, it’s important to remember that, “the reason the American democracy has been more successful than others is precisely because “the fathers of the American Republic devised an instrument of government unparalleled as a conservative power for ordered liberty.” (“The Conservative Mind” by Russell Kirk.)

Everything in the American Constitution was wisely designed to constrain raw democracy. A “great part of that accomplishment results from the wise conservatism of the Federal Constitution,” which avoids “the peril of a single assembly,” recognizes “the rights of several* states and the necessity for limiting the power of positive legislation.”

However, warned Kirk, the father of American conservatism, “[I]f there is a weak point anywhere in this “artificial reservoir,” “the mighty force which it controls will burst through it and spread destruction far and near.”

(“The Conservative Mind” by Russell Kirk, p. 335)

And so it has.

* The meaning of “several” in this sentence is “individual,” I believe. 

** Image is of the guillotine, French democracy in action