Category Archives: History

UPDATED IV (4/4/019): Did Stefan Molyneux Fail To Properly Credit Ideas From My Book, ‘Into the Cannibal’s Pot’?

Energy, Ethics, History, Ilana Mercer, Intellectualism, Logic, Morality, South-Africa

The implication in this Southern Poverty Law Center article is indeed that, in a 2015 video, vlogger Stefan Molyneux liberally used the material from my book, “Into The Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America From Post-Apartheid South Africa,” published in 2011.

The authors at SPLC hate me just as much, so they don’t care to harp on unethical use of material they had traced to me (“Into The Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America From Post-Apartheid South Africa”), if there was any. Still, their facts imply that no attribution was made or  direct credit given to me for a Molyneux podcast based on the rather idiosyncratic ideas that came from a chapter in Cannibal titled “APARTHEID IN BLACK AND WHITE: A Strategy for Survival” (pp. 65-70).

Writes the Southern Poverty Law Center:

In 2015 Molyneux published a video wherein he quoted an unnamed historian who claimed that “Apartheid wasn’t an expression of racism but concern over the survival of the white population.” The source for this quote is Ilana Mercer, a paleolibertarian writer and pro-Trump activist. Mercer’s 2011 book, which forms the basis for Molyneux’s YouTube video, is entitled “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa.” The tome received a glowing review from Jared Taylor’s American Renaissance website. “Apartheid was never based on a theory of racial supremacy; rather, it was a survival strategy for the badly outnumbered Boers,” the review reads. This is a mirror image of Molyneux’s sleight of hand: a decontextualized racism is deemed immoral but it is argued that Apartheid makes sense. The real message Molyneux and Taylor are delivering to their audiences is that the application of racial discrimination in South Africa was essential to ensure white survival (read: dominance) and that force and laws should be applied to keep different races apart.

Of course, the ideas in my chapter, “APARTHEID IN BLACK AND WHITE: A Strategy for Survival” (pp. 65-70), are not quite those expressed by the second-handers.

In any event, one gets accustomed to such lowly practices in this business. But if this is indeed true, and Stefan Molyneux had failed to fully credit this author for ideas that are nearly verbatim from “APARTHEID IN BLACK AND WHITE: A Strategy for Survival” (pp. 65-70)—then this is a new low.

Citing one’s sources is the very essence of ethical thinking and writing. If you don’t, you can’t claim to be an ethical thinker, much less a thinker. You lose all credibility.

It’s also so unmanly—and oh so very common. Yuk.

UPDATE I (11/27):

As was said, “Citing one’s sources is the very essence of ethical thinking and writing. If you don’t, you can’t claim to be an ethical thinker, much less a thinker. You lose ALL credibility.”

Ever wonder why Stefan Molyneux, and many men on the so-called hard right (some of whom came well after me), have never asked me (one of the few people who knows the ins-and-outs of apartheid South Africa) on their shows to speak to matters South African (or to any other matters)?

A LOT OF men are simply uncomfortable with certain women. (Hint: Young blondes showcase them better and are easier to best.) As a result, libertarian men (or mini-men) end up mouthing crass, historically wrong, right-wing talking points, on their shows, about my birth place. Coming from libertarians, this laxness is a disgrace.

At least credit your sources if you don’t want to engage the writer! Before Into the Cannibal’s Pot, nobody spoke about South Africa in any meaningful way in the US, other than the praiseworthy WND reporters, and one or two others liberally credited in my book. You see, I cite my sources (primary and secondary) religiously. Again, many of the johnny-come-lately sorts whom the Mini-Men aforementioned (or hinted at) interview on their limited shows speak a load of right-wing crap about South Africa.

Still and all, some ideas are too idiosyncratic to be generic—which is the case with a hell of a lot of what’s in Into the Cannibal’s Pot.

UPDATE II (11/28): “The Art of the Ego: Review of Stefan Molyneux’s Stupid Book”

If you can get past the author’s redundant liberal preening (it sullies a solid piece), Alexander Douglas makes short work of Stefan Molyneux’s short-on-logic book.

… Molyneux’s first few chapters outline some basic principles of logic. His explanation of ‘logic’ is as terrible as you might expect from someone with neither qualifications nor natural talent (see this review). Molyneux is one of these people who thinks that (barely) being able to do the First Figure Syllogism is ‘knowing logic’?—?the logical equivalent of the Astonishing Human Calculator who can add single-digit numbers in mere seconds or Sir Andrew Aguecheek who can speak languages without book. The really telling thing, however, is how Molyneux deals with his own ignorance. …

… Here is what he says about abduction, for example … Now, many people don’t know what abduction is. Nothing wrong with that. And you might find yourself in an exam, where you’re asked to define abduction, and maybe you missed that lecture, or you drifted off, or you just can’t remember. Then you might just write some bullshit, hoping to get a few marks. Perfectly acceptable behaviour. But if you’re writing a book on reasoning, and you remember that abduction is a form of reasoning but you can’t quite remember what it is?—?can you imagine in that circumstance just writing down some bullshit and hoping to get a few marks? Wouldn’t you just google it or something? Imagine being so devoid of intellectual humility. …

… It does help to show that, while logicians have no claim to be any better at informal reasoning than anyone else, there is such a thing as being godawful at informal reasoning. I’m not sure I knew that before looking at this book. But Molyneux is as bad at reasoning as he seems to be at everything else. Yet somehow, through some Dunning-Kruger pathology, he seems to regard himself as good enough to educate others. He is desperately in need of education himself, although I wouldn’t blame you if you preferred to put him ‘through the fist’ (“There are only two ways to resolve disagreements: through The Argument, or through the fist”). …

Myself, I’ve never been able to get through anything Molyneux writes. Other libertarians, systematic thinkers all, have said the same. My favorite, David Gordon, calls Molyneux’s arguments “often preposterously bad.”

“A (Tiny!) Bit More on Molyneux,” also by Alexander Douglas, delves into the problems of logic.

UPDATE III (11/29/018): On crap output and arrogant overreach. As someone who labors over every sentence she puts out (to the best of my abilities, which are respectable but far from infallible), these points, as made by a professional logician, are good.

Alas, and as noted by Tocqueville in the 19th century and Solzhenitsyn in the 20th, conformity of thought and anti-intellectualism are powerfully prevalent among Americans (the kind who follow Stefan Molyneux type Svengalis) .

Molyneux on logic just humiliates himself. And frankly it’s irritating to have spent years of hard study trying to master some elementary logic and then have some pontificating fraud claim the right to lecture others without doing any work at all

“An Open Letter on Jordan Peterson and Stefan Molyneux” By Alexander Douglas.

UPDATE IV (4/4/019):

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UPDATE (11/3/018): NEW COLUMN: If The Disunited States Of America Is To Survive …

America, Constitution, Culture, Democrats, Founding Fathers, History, Ilana Mercer, IMMIGRATION

NEW COLUMN is “If The Disunited States Of America Is To Survive …” It’s currently on Townhall.com, WND.COM and the Unz Review. And, it’s on American Greatness, too.

And excerpt:

“We are one American nation. We must unite. We have to unify. We have to come together.”

Every faction in our irreparably fractious and fragmented country calls for unity, following events that demonstrate just how disunited the United States of America is.

They all do it.

Calls for unity come loudest from the party of submissives—the GOP. The domineering party is less guilt-ridden about this elusive thing called “unity.”

Democrats just blame Republicans for its absence in our polity and throughout our increasingly uncivil society.

These days, appeals to unity are made by opportunistic politicians, who drape themselves in the noble toga of patriotism on tragic occasions. The latest in many was the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre of Oct. 27.

In the name of honesty—and comity—let us quit the unity charade.

The U.S. is not united. Neither is America a nation in any meaningful way. It hasn’t been one for a long time.

Consider: In the late 1780s, Americans debated whether to nationalize government or keep it a decentralized affair. The discussion was one in which all early Americans partook, nationwide.

Think about the degree of unity that feat required!

The eternal verities of republicanism and limited government were understood and accepted by all Americans. The young nation’s concerns centered on the fate of freedom after Philadelphia. (The Anti-Federalists, the unsung heroes who gave us the Bill of Rights, turned out to be right.)

Around the time The Federalist Papers were published in American newspapers—Americans were a nation in earnest.

For it takes a nation to pull that off—to debate a set of philosophical and theoretical principles like those instantiated in these Papers, Federalist and Anti-Federalist.

The glue that allowed so lofty a debate throughout early America is gone (not to mention the necessary gray matter).

The Tower of Babel that is 21st century America is home not to 4 million but 327 million alienated, antagonistic individuals, diverse to the point of distrust.

Each year, elites pile atop this mass of seething antagonists another million newcomers.

Democrats, who control the intellectual means of production—schools, social media, TV, the print press, the publishing houses, think tanks, the Permanent Bureaucracy—they insist mass immigration comports with “who we are as a people.”

The last is yet another hollow slogan—much like the unity riff. …

… READ THE REST. THE NEW COLUMN, “If The Disunited States Of America Is To Survive, …” is on Townhall.com, WND.COM and the Unz Review. And, on American Greatness, too.

UPDATE (11/3/018): Love my American Greatness readers. Smart and knowledgeable (not least about the “S” word):

1G25 • 26 minutes ago

One of the most thoughtful and intelligent writings I’ve seen on the internet.

” A peaceful society is one founded on voluntary associations, not forced integration.”

John McCain: “Deeply Flawed, Unstable Man Of Limited Intelligence And Low Character”

Critique, Ethics, Foreign Policy, History, John McCain, Morality, War

“THE VERDICT – John McCain was a deeply flawed, unstable man of limited intelligence and low character. In the field of world affairs and domestic politics alike, he had never had a reasonable or useful idea.”—Srdja Trifkovic.

SEE: “John McCain: The Score” By Srdja Trifkovic | September 07, 2018

Above all: What does it say about America and her values that McCain was considered one of her revered heroes and moral leaders?

Apartheid In Black And White: Survivalism, Not Racism (Part 2).

Africa, America, History, Nationhood, South-Africa, The State

NEW COLUMN is “Apartheid In Black And White: Survivalism, Not Racism” (Part 2). It’s now on Townhall.com. You can also read it on the Unz Review and WND.Com.

An excerpt:

Monomaniacal Westerners—they have one thing on their minds: it begins with an “R”—have come to think and speak of apartheid as a theory of white supremacy.

It was not.

The policy of “separate development,” as it was admittedly euphemized, was not a theory of racial supremacy, but a strategy for survival.

But first: To perceive the fundamental way in which the Afrikaner and American creeds differed early on we must first examine the former’s ideas of what a nation and a state were, respectively.

America, being a rib from the British ribcage, was built on liberal individualism; Afrikaner culture was first and foremost grounded in the survival of the Volk.

This is not to say that Afrikaners were not fiercely individualistic; they were, even more so than early Americans.

For the Boers, however, the nation encompassed “the land, the culture, the terrain, the people.” The state, on the other hand, had no such prestige for the Boers, who regarded it as just “the coercive apparatus of bureaucrats and politicians.” Against this apparatus, above all, the Boer rebelled.

The 19th century found him still resisting majority rule, by which time Americans had thoroughly submitted to it. Although the Boer’s outlook remained passionately political, his preference was for parochial self-rule.

It might be said, then, that if in the Americans the vagaries of the frontier bred an atomistic individualism, those same vagaries bred in the Afrikaner a very different attitude, namely, a keen sense of the collective and the need to preserve it. “The worth of the nation is even higher than the worth of the individual,” exclaimed one Volk philosopher.

To the existential threat which they faced on the Dark Continent, Afrikaners therefore responded by circling the wagons metaphorically (much as they had done, literally, during the 1830s) and devising the corpus of racial laws known as apartheid.

“We shall fight for our existence and the world must know it. We are not fighting for money or possessions. We are fighting for the life of our people,” thundered Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd (1958 – 1966).

Prime Minister D. F. Malan (1948 – 1954) had already used different words for the same sentiment, announcing his devotion to, “My God, my people, my country.”

Malan’s successor, Prime Minister Strijdom (1954 – 1958), believed unswervingly that if they were to survive as a group, the whites of South Africa would need to retain a position of guardianship, and that ultimately, white hegemony was indispensable for the good of all.

The Cape Town-Stellenbosch axis of the nationalist intelligentsia, which was the most influential lobby in Malan’s National Party (NP), almost without exception defended apartheid not as an expression of white superiority but on the grounds of its assumed capacity to reduce conflict by curtailing points of interracial contact. …

… READ THE REST. NEW COLUMN is “Apartheid In Black And White: Survivalism, Not Racism” (Part 2). It is now on Townhall.com. You can also read it on the Unz Review and WND.Com