A couple of months ago I bought into a twofer special at Threat Dynamics. I didn’t grow up with guns, but tactical handgun training is on a list of skills I think a man should have in the 21st century.

The guys at Threat Dynamics give you real handguns loaded with CO2, then set you up on a video range and have you do some target shooting. I guess I half expected the staff of former cops, security and military guys to be impatient with me as someone with minimal experience, but that wasn’t the case at all. My first instructor corrected a number of things about my form in a way that was helpful and easy to remember. My pal–who’s a gun nut proper–actually had a harder time because he had more bad habits to break. I learned more useful, practical shooting tips in 30 minutes at Threat Dynamics than I would have learned in years of blowing up garbage and bottles in Estacada–though there’s something to be said for that, too. I’d like to sign up for a few of their training classes at some point later this year.

After we were done at the range, they took us downstairs to The Arena, which feels a lot like a scene from a sci-fi movie set. Following a brief explanation, I stepped onto a platform with another gun. As our second instructor said, life happens in 360 degrees, and shooting at a range won’t train you for that. He projected a series of video scenarios that had me jumping around like a jackrabbit, shooting at bad guys as soon as they drew a weapon.

I can’t think of anything I’ve done recently that was more fun, and I highly recommend it. Check out their promo video below, because my description doesn’t quite do it justice.

All this place needs is a pump action shotgun class and a scenario with zombies.

Threat Dynamics

8250 SW Tonka Tualatin, OR 97062

http://www.threatdynamics.com/

The Stark Truth: Interview with Jack Donovan - January 13, 2012

To add to the efforts of those who are trying to put things in perspective, here are two of my favorite quotes involving desecration of the enemy.

“…an early missionary in New Zealand heard a Maori warrior taunting the preserved head of an enemy chief in the following fashion:

You wanted to run away, did you? but my meri (war club] overtook you: and after you were cooked, you made food for my mouth. And where is your father? he is cooked: and where is your brother? he is eaten:-and where is your wife? there she sits, a wife for me:-and where are your children? there they are, with loads on their backs, carrying food, as my slaves.’ In Maori warfare, decapitation marked the beginning, not the end, of a vanquished warrior’s humiliation.”

―Lawrence Keeley, War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage

If you cut a face lengthwise, urinate on it, and trample on it with straw sandals, it is said that the skin will come off. This was heard by the priest Gyojaku when he was in Kyoto. It is information to be treasured.

―Yamamoto Tsunetomo, Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai

For further perspective, here’s an in-depth article on Muslim desecration―including a list of hienous acts perpetrated by Muslims in 2006 alone, from expert Dawn Perlmutter.

From a strategic perspective, publicly dishonoring our own soldiers undermines the war on terrorism, invalidates our military in the eyes of our enemies, negatively affects morale, and makes us tactically vulnerable; from a ritual perspective the sacred status of the holy warrior is debased, sacrificial blood is polluted, communal rituals fail to have meaning and a sacred crisis ensues. Moral ambiguity causes more damage than weapons of mass destruction; it destroys the community from within. Authentic warrior cultures understand that to question their soldiers’ actions in war is sacrilege. The Mujahideen fighter thinks in sacred terms and every act of violence is theologically and communally sanctioned. These Jihadi soldiers are not completing a tour of duty, they are all lifers groomed from birth in a continual recruitment process comprised of a series of ritual initiations whose ultimate fulfillment is to die as a martyr in holy war.

By perpetuating the cult of Palestinian and Muslim victimhood, the Western media incites a vicious sequence of insult, protest, violence, and mutilation. Widespread reporting of incidents that offend Muslims escalates to protests that entail ritualized acts of symbolic violence (burning effigies), then to acts of actual violence (mutilation and murder) that devolve into primal acts of symbolic violence (desecrating corpses) in a reciprocal cycle of iconoclasm, idolatry, and ritual murder.

Post image from Samurai warriors fight another day.

Working with Japanese colleagues, Dr Michael Wysocki of the University of Central Lancashire’s (UCLan) School of Forensic and Investigative Sciences, has found evidence of sword and arrow wounds, ritualized coup de grace death blows, and even evidence of Samurai heads being taken as trophies by their enemies.

The Satanist

For the record, my comments about Satanism were neither meant to endorse or detract from it as a philosophical system. I haven’t considered myself a Satanist for years, but I do know who they are and what they are about. Satanists were good to me, so I have no desire to get involved in taking apart their viewpoints, but the differences of opinion should be evident enough from the kinds of things I write now.

To supplement the piece, here are a few more pictures from parties at Jerome’s old place.

The Poker Room

The Bar

The famous birthday limousine ride to Jerome's place, courtesy Jerome.

The Dogs. Loki, Brutus and Balrog.

http://www.bonobos.com/

Bonbobo mom and baby Pan paniscus at Cincinnati Zoo – ltshears @ Wikimedia Commons.

What could be more fitting–and they do promise a great fit–than a modern menswear company named after our most matriarchal evolutionary relative, the Pan paniscus or bonobo ape?

In case you’re not up on monkey business, bonobo apes have been hailed by many as a potential model for a more peaceful, feminist society. Evolutionary biologists Richard Wrangham and Dale Peterson wrote a book advancing that idea. It’s titled Demonic Males, and their thesis is that human societies have historically functioned more like chimpanzees than their peaceful cousins, the bonobos.

Chimpanzees are patriarchal, they make war, and they hunt, kill and eat other monkeys. Bonobos do a little hunting–perhaps more than was initially thought–but the status of a male bonobo is determined by the status of his mother. In fact, it’s likely that he won’t know his father or organize with other males. Female bonobos form coalitions to check male aggression, and they all engage in regular happy bisexual hump-fests.

Wrangham and Peterson suggested that this difference in social organization may have been caused by a difference in living environments: bonobos don’t share territory with Gorillas. Gorillas eat up a staple food that chimpanzees and bonobos can eat as a staple, so bonobos live in relative luxury and rarely go hungry because a snack is always within reach. They are isolated from chimps, and since they don’t compete for resources, the live in a peace of plenty.

Whether or not we know what we think we know about chimps and bonobos, it’s appropriate–though even I was surprised by the brazenness of it–that in 2007 someone decided to create a line of menswear named after the most hen-pecked species of ape. Bonobos are, in human terms, total mamma’s boys.

Dockers still wants you to wear the pants–or at least try to look like you’re wearing the pants.

BONOBOS apparently caters to the causal kitchen bitch who has stopped worrying about being a man altogether and learned to love a quiet life of peaceful emasculation.

The end times can’t come soon enough. 

I’ve added a new tab here for my “pro” Pacific Northwest pieces. I’ll try to post one short piece there a month. More, if something strikes me.

I’ve started a local link list, and I’ve been taking photos around town and uploading them to Flickr. Currently, it’s just a few old signs. The signs of small business owners tend to have a quirky, personal character that you won’t get from a blue and yellow Best Buy sign or a big red Target.

UPDATE: A pal said I should include this video, just so people don’t think I’m getting soft.

Charles Manson, Oil on Velvet. Jack Donovan (Malebranche) 2006

I started rubbing elbows with White Nationalists a few years ago.

I call ‘em “The Mighty Whites.”

I support White Nationalists. They are not all equally right about everything, but I am sympathetic to many of their general aims.

I think white people should be able to organize and advance their own interests just like every other group of people. For those of my readers who might be concerned, I want to explain why.

*   *  *

Ten out of ten minorities agree that being a minority can really blow. As an ambassador for a smaller group, you carry the baggage for all of “your kind.” As a minority, you have to work twice as hard to disprove negative stereotypes. You spend a lot of time dispelling misconceptions or explaining things. It’s annoying and tedious.

Stereotyping and prejudgment is a survival tactic. It’s natural, it’s human, and it’s not going away. The people who say they are opposed to stereotyping do it just as much as everyone else.  Have you ever listened to an “objective” atheist rant about evangelical Christians? A casual conversation with an enlightened Northerner about the South might lead you to believe that strange fruit still swings there from every poplar tree. After living in San Francisco for a few years I determined that most residents of fog city had scribbled “Thar be dragons!” over at least forty states.

Humans are tribal. We need an “us,” and those who are not us must be “them.” We form tribal bubbles, and we filter out information that doesn’t confirm our biases about others. We associate with people who look like we do, or think like we do, or believe what we believe. Most of us do this even when we are trying consciously not to.

It’s easy enough to maintain the illusion of “one world tribe” when you are sitting in a polite, politically correct office, sipping a latte with a cherry-picked collection of educated and carefully groomed people  from other groups.

In the land of calloused hands and cheap coffee, folks stick to their own kind. As a blue collar guy I can relate well enough to other groups. My pap worked on the railroad his whole life, and like him, when I punch the clock I have to learn to get along with whomever the boss hires, or work just gets a lot harder.

I have a lot of experience working with Mexicans. They’re funny, happy, hard working and easy to get along with. I’m not a Mexican. I’m not one of them. We can have a laugh over something universal, but they have different lifeways and for the most part they stick together. Sure, I could learn Spanish. I make tasty carnitas and I like drinking margaritas in the sun. But, like the man said, sticking a feather up your butt does not make you a chicken. I’ll always be a gringo.

I like being a gringo just fine. I feel more at home with white folks of my class and background than I do with people from other groups. Plenty of crackers are total assholes, but at least I know how to read them better. Kipling got exemplary manhood right with “If,” and he got in-group affinity right with “The Stranger.”

The Stranger within my gate,
He may be true or kind,
But he does not talk my talk—
I cannot feel his mind.
I see the face and the eyes and the mouth,
But not the soul behind.

The men of my own stock,
They may do ill or well,
But they tell the lies I am wonted to,
They are used to the lies I tell;
And we do not need interpreters
When we go to buy or sell.

When times get tough or the shit hits the fan, I think human groups shake out pretty much the way they do in prison: race, religion, ideology, class. Helter skelter. When everyone has the same race and religion, we still find reasons to separate ourselves into smaller nationalist groups. The English, the French, ze Germans. English colonists vs. English monarchists. Jocks vs. nerds.

If you want me to hand you a set of finger paints, tell me that race is “just about skin color.” If you actually believe that in 2011, you belong at the kiddie table watching Dora the Explorer. Race is hereditary. So are a lot of other human qualities. You get some of your parents’ strengths and some of their weaknesses. Race is about your family, and your family’s family, and your family’s family’s family. Your race is part of your heritage, passed down to you from those who came before. Race, culture, history and tradition combine to give you a sense of being part of an ethnic group.

From 100 yards away, the first things you’ll notice about me are that I am white and I am male. That’s where my taxonomy starts. If I were seen committing a crime, the cops would be looking for a white male, about 5’10-5’11, bald, 200 pounds, average build, with tattoos.

If I live to be 70, in my lifetime white men will be a minority in the United States. Whites are already a minority in many American cities. White men make up 30% of the population in Baltimore, 40% in Philadelphia, 39% in Atlanta. If you want to know what it feels like to be a minority, go to those places and look for a working class job.

Even in places where whites are still a majority, like San Diego, whole segments of the workforce are dominated by certain groups.  I looked for work in San Diego a few years ago.

Here’s the General Labor section of craigslist in San Diego.

And here’s the General Labor list for Portland.

On any given day, Portland tends to have as many or more jobs in that category than San Diego. The Portland metro area has about 2 million people. San Diego has about 3 million people. There are one million more people in San Diego, but the same amount of general labor jobs get posted. In part, this is because San Diego’s population of legal and illegal Mexican immigrants creates a situation where Pedro always has a cousin who has another cousin who needs a job. Openings for a lot of jobs never go public. I see it happen all the time here in Portland, too.

There’s nothing wrong with that. Why shouldn’t Pedro try to get his cousin’s cousin a job? Why shouldn’t they help each other out? Why shouldn’t they take care of their own? Only white people are stupid enough to feel guilty about doing that. Do you think a black man is going to feel bad about helping out a brotha, even in Baltimore—where blacks make up almost 70% of the population?

Every ethnic group in America is taught to be proud of their race and ethnicity, except white people. America has black television channels, black magazines, black community organizations, black lobbying groups, black scholarships and black barber shops. Any black who wants to can go to a major city and disappear into an almost completely black community. Same thing for the varied Hispanic groups. Asians are far more financially successful, but they too are often insular and protective of their race and heritage.  All of these groups recognize that they share some common ancestry and some common interests, and they organize to assert those interests. If you take a political editorial or press release put out by an Hispanic, black, Asian or even a gay publication and replace the group name with “white,” to the average American eye it will read like it was written by David Duke or George Lincoln Rockwell.

The flimsy rationales for why it is not acceptable for white groups to speak or organize in the same way are based on notions of white majority, white privilege and white cultural dominance. However, whites are no longer a majority in many places, and as any of the “99%” will tell you, average white people aren’t running the show. The white country club set doesn’t give a damn about what happens to most of us.  A lot of them have realized that “diversity” policies work in their favor—especially when they want to export jobs, hire cheap labor or avoid expensive lawsuits. And, thanks to the “arc of history” civil rights narrative that the media loves to promote, rich white people can shit on poor white people and feel like they are doing God’s work.

A multicultural, multiracial, melting pot society that forbids only one ethnic group from preserving its  culture and organizing to further its own interests is criminally hypocritical. I have a low tolerance for swindling and deception, and the amount of double-talk and outright lying employed to maintain that hypocrisy is despicable.

So many white people have prejudices against other groups of people, choose to live in white neighborhoods, prefer their children to date other whites, and surround themselves with other white people. Some even (privately) make racist jokes.

When asked about race, these same self-righteous whites will dutifully denounce racism, white privilege, and white identity in all its forms—just like their expensive professors told them to.  They come off like Patrick Bateman in American Psycho, who recites the social causes of the day to keep people from guessing he’s a completely opportunistic sociopath who will tell people whatever he thinks they want to hear.

Any white person who talks about being white like it is anything other than a cross to bear, or even half-heartedly suggests the idea of organizing as a white group, or even points out a “hate fact” like the black-on-white crime rate will be publicly shamed, excluded and  can easily be fired from his or her job.

Social courage isn’t the highest form of courage, but it’s something.

Being a white anti-racist is the easiest thing to be in the world. It’s like being a papist in Vatican City. There’s nothing brave about it. It’s the status quo. You’re just doing what you’ve been told to do, whether it makes sense or not.

Challenging the deeply entrenched anti-white bias of multiculturalist orthodoxies is heroic by comparison. I may not agree with everything that every white nationalist says—they have their own noble lies—but I applaud any white man or woman who is willing to stand up for their own people and challenge some of the greatest lies of our time.

*   *  *

I am not a white supremacist.

I don’t feel the need to try to prove that my team is objectively better in every way than every other team. Sure, there are probably some bell-curve type differences between the major races. I am also sure I can find a person of just about any race who is better than me at just about anything. Whether white people are superior or not isn’t the point.

The point is that white people are my people. We’re an ethnic and racial group with a common heritage. Because stereotypes aren’t going away, because humans are tribal, and because we’re a group that is well on its way to becoming just another minority, we have every right to organize as a group and take care of our own. I’m pro-white because I am pro-me. I’m pro-my family. I’m in favor of remembering my ancestors in a positive light. I support the preservation of my people’s history and culture, and I resist the revisionism of groups who wish to skew history to favor the interests of others. I know that the accomplishments of great white men are not my personal achievements, and I know I can’t trade on them as if they entitle me to special treatment, but these things are just as important to my identity as the histories of other people are to their identities.

*   *  *

I believe that people should form groups that suit them and exclude others if they believe it is in their benefit to do so. On that note, I can tell you that not all of the Mighty Whites want me around. Every so often, some hysterical prig sallies forth from his Arthurian fap den to proclaim me a he-man woman hater, a Satanist, a sodomite, and a threat to the cause. I’m flattered that they think I’m a big enough deal to sink their battleship, but if that’s the case, they are already well and truly fucked. I am pro-white and I support WNs because I’m white and because I think they are right about a lot of things—not because I expect them all to send me love letters. That said, most of the WNs and pro-whites I’ve dealt with have been decent, straightforward, polite and helpful.

*   *  *

I am pro-white, but race is not my favorite issue to write about. Race is not what I spend the majority of my time thinking about. If anything, I know too well that it distracts people from the bulk of my work.

My work is about men. It’s about understanding masculinity and the plight of men in the modern world. It’s about what all men have in common. My research and thinking in this area have led me to the conclusion that men are tribal. Women are tribal, too, but women logically tend to favor material security over tribal loyalty. Most men feel more alive, more confident and more comfortable in their own skins when they have a sense of belonging within a group of men.

The concept of honor as I understand it cannot exist without some sense of tribal membership, whether based on race or religion or class or some other form of identification. In both old New York City and old Japan, groups of firemen used to fight each other.

Honor requires a group of men who will judge you, who will threaten you with exclusion and shame, but who will also push you beyond your comfort zone and reward your efforts with respect and loyalty. Manliness and honor are hierarchical. Honor is incompatible with enforced “equality” and it is incompatible with enforced inclusiveness.

*   *  *

I don’t know if what I’ve written here qualifies me as a White Nationalist or not. I’m in no hurry to become a card-carrying member for any organization or movement.  As a writer, I’m just trying to be honest, to say what I mean and mean what I say. That takes me to some unusual places and puts me in touch with unusual people. I’m OK with that.

First Published at The Spearhead, 12/11/2011

When Cynthia Cockburn and Ann Oakley wrote about the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women this year, they decided to skip writing about violence against women.  Instead, they criticized the “culture of masculinity”—and men, generally—for perpetuating all forms of violence.

Feminists have nursed a perverse obsession with what men think and do for decades. They’ve had to, because the success of the feminist program has always been completely dependent on what bell hooks called “the will to change.” The female strategy has always been to nag and manipulate until men stop doing what men want to do and start doing what women want them to do.  Men caving and giving women what they want is as natural as salmon swimming upstream. It’s painful to watch but almost everyone does it eventually.

Industrialization, birth control, globalism and a First World shift to managerial and service economies allowed women to push past old boundaries and upend the balance between the sexes.

First Wave Feminists marched for the vote and property rights.  Feminists love marches, walks, and long candlelight vigils on the beach. Second Wave Feminists shouted “I am Woman” and stomped around for more exciting employment opportunities and the Gaia-given right to kill their babies.  Third Wave feminists stripped off the polyester pantsuits of yesteryear, got painted up like trash and went genderqueer.

Forth Wave feminism, already well underway, is a female coalitionary effort to control male behavior through public policy while wielding the threat of state-sponsored violence.

Feminists have long dreamed of a gender-neutral world of peaceful security, pleasure and plenty.  For years, they held to the idea that men and women were essentially the same and that traditional ideas about gender were as“lightly linked to sex as are the clothing, the manners, and the form of head-dress that a society at a given period assigns to either sex.” Patriarchal male culture could be blamed for all of the evil in the world, and our ancestors were all peaceful goddess-worshipping pansies.

Now that St. Margaret Mead has been all but discredited, only pink-haired stoners believe in peaceful prehistory, and “SCIENCE” keeps validating both tradition and common sense, feminist gender theory has run aground on the rocky shores of reality and punctured the hull of her Big-Boned Barbie cruise ship.

Feminists have needed to change directions to stay afloat, so they have slowly been conceding that men and women are, in fact, different. Today’s feminists brag about the things women do better than men.  The traveling sisterhood of the New Girl Order is proud that women have the kinds of traits that 21^st century employers say they want.

Cynthia Cockburn and Ann Oakley want to you to understand that women are more peaceful than men, and men are more violent than women.

Men aren’t always content to march with candles; men are more likely to riot and loot. Oakley and Cockburn noted that 92% of the UK rioters this summer were male, and all of the rioters charged with violent offences were male. Cockburn and colleague then reported that men were responsible for 87% of traffic offences and 81% of speeding offenses. Citing prison statistics, they suggested that if men committed crimes leading to custodial sentences at the rate women did, their nation could save about £3.4 billion every year.

Cockburn and Oakley concluded with some conflicting commentary about testosterone and violence.

First, Cockburn and Oakley explained that, according to SCIENCE, testosterone is associated with status-seeking, but not necessarily with violence.

I’ve read the same studies and this may in fact be true. They failed to address the logical progression of status competition. As I’ve written, violence is golden because while it may not be the only way to resolve a given conflict, it is a definitive way to resolve a conflict. Violence beckons from the end of a path of escalation. You can beat me at checkers 30 times in a row, but somewhere in my frustrated gut I know that if I stand up and shoot you in the face, I win.  Game over. Violence is “the nuclear option.”

Violence is not merely a criminal or “anti-social” action. The use of force against criminals is merely the violence of the many against the one, disguised by the pretense of “justice.”

The same logic of escalation plays out in state vs. citizen conflicts. Even the most soft-spoken regime must carry a big stick. For instance, a gay liberal mayor can ask some protesters nicely again and again to stop camping in the park, but if they refuse again and again, eventually some kind of physical action—however “non lethal”—will be required to restore order.  Likewise, if kids are going to sit in the road and block traffic, eventually you have tobreak out the pepper spray and “negotiate” more aggressively.

There may be more chemical links between maleness and violence, but since Cockburn and Oakley are willing to accept that testosterone increases status competition, one could simply say that:

Male violence is the continuation of status competition by other means. (h/t Clausewitz)

After saying that testosterone doesn’t have to increase violence, for good measure Cockburn and Oakley suggest ways that male testosterone can be influenced.

Here’s the whole quote:

Testosterone, the male hormone, the “metaphor of manhood”, is portrayed as driving men inexorably towards aggressive behaviour. Yet studies show that testosterone is related to status-seeking but not directly to aggression. Many other factors are influential. Testosterone levels are increased or diminished in both males and females by diet, activity and circumstance. The opportunity to interact with guns, for instance, appears to increase testosterone, while men’s testosterone levels fall when they are involved with the care of children.

The case we are making is that certain widespread masculine traits and behaviours are dangerous and costly both to individuals and society. They are amenable to purposeful change. The culture of masculinity can be, and should be, addressed as a policy issue.

Some researchers believe that the average man’s testosterone level has plummeted over the past 20 years.  According to the MAYO clinic, normal testosterone levels help men maintain healthy bone density, fat distribution, muscle strength and mass, red blood cell production, sex drive and sperm produc tion. Testosterone can be increased naturally through weight training, and while most men experience a gradual decline in testosterone after age thirty, evidence suggests that weight training can help men can keep their levels higher for longer and possibly stave off some of the negative effects of aging. Unusually low testosterone levels in men are associated withcoronary artery disease, aortic atherosclerosis, metabolic syndrome, obesity, diabetes, and depression.

Policy initiatives aimed at pacifying men by lowering male testosterone are a kindler, gentler alternative to castration, with the same net effect.  Men will have lower sex drives, lower sperm counts, and they will more often be fat, depressed and diabetic.  Feminist dreams of sleek, gender-neutral utopias will inevitably lead to more doughy bonobos and chunky Chaz Bonos playing out their endless manic-depressive melodramas in a big bean-flicking circle of sterility, sickness and desperation.

As far as I can tell, we’re half way there already.

It is true that Cockburn and Oakley did not state outright that male testosterone should be reduced as a matter of public policy. After addressing sex differences and testosterone, Cockburn and comrade slid back to the safety of Second and Third Wave feminism and recycled, blank slate rhetoricabout changing the “culture of masculinity.”

However, if feminists recommend policy-based cultural and behavioral changes that lead to reduced testosterone, they achieve the same sickening, emasculating end. Fourth Wave feminism is about wielding the principal’s paddle—state power—as women attempt to mother males into helpless and obedient second class women. The feminists of the 1970s made moralistic arguments and pleaded for fairness and equality, but as women came to power their impatience with maleness and the reality of sex differences was evident.

The changes Cockburn and Oakley seem to recommend have already been made. The average man in the UK is not armed, and has probably never fired a handgun. In America, any hint of male interest in violence is frowned upon in the classroom. Christina Hoff Sommers brought an institutionalized anti-male bias in education to national attention over a decade ago, but little has changed. Males who show what in Mark Twain’s day would have been seen as a normal interest in fighting and combat are recommended for counseling or flagged as problem children. Boys with high energy are routinely diagnosed with “ADHD” and drugged. 8 year-old boys are suspended from school for possessing 4-inch toy guns made for action figures. A 7-year old was recently accused of sexual harassment for kicking a bully in the nuts. Professional feminists like Cockburn and Oakley are paid to advise schools and speak to young people about sexism and sexual harassment. Public and private universities run “My Strength is Not For Hurting” campaigns and seminars. Feminist Jackson Katz is even paid to teach the freaking Marines about “toxic masculinity.”

If men already have far lower average testosterone levels than they did a few decades ago, and males still act like males, how much more enforced cultural retraining will be necessary for feminists to be satisfied?

In light of obvious and persistent differences between the sexes, will feminists simply give up on their dream of a gender neutral world, and work towards a cultural harmony of the sexes instead of an artificially imposed “equality” of apples and oranges?

Not likely.

If men and women are different, the new feminism will simply conclude that men must be “fixed.”

For feminists, the answer to any problem with feminism is always more feminism.

One of my most popular essays, Violence is Golden, was read this week on the New Shooter’s Podcast – “For new shooters on learning about shooting, guns and gun culture.”

#9-Defensive Rifle & Shotgun Training With John Farnam  

Sounds like it should be worth a listen. Glad to get my work out there and read by self-defense and firearms enthusiasts.

Sundays with Safran

If you want to hear me half in the bag — like a boss — arguing with an Australian Jew, an Anglican priest and a young, naive representative of Sydney Gay Mardi Gras, you can download the most recent episode of Sundays with Safran. It’s some kind of weekly Australian radio show on an ABC affiliate network. They called me on Thanksgiving to talk about blood-brotherhood, Androphilia, and how I am pushing my ideals  (specifically: acting like men, not prancing “poofters”) on other blokes.

04/12/2011
This week: David Marr, author, broadcaster, journo extraordinaire talks about censorship what makes Australians panic. Pria Viswalingham, doco writer, director and presenter talks about, ‘Decadence: Decline of the Western World’. Jack Donovan, author of ‘Blood Brotherhood’ talks about alternative rites for gay men other than weddings. Daniel Mudie Cunningham, creator of the Juxebox Installation at MONA talks about funeral songs for Religious Song of the Week.

+ download mp3 (30.6 MB)

FKIN

I’ve started posting at FKIN, my pal Max’s blog. I like the rhythm and feel of Max’s work, and he’s honored me with the responsibility of posting his war dispatches from the Middle East.

Obviously, he won’t be able to be specific about certain things for security reasons, but I am looking forward to his sketches and thoughts about fighting in Afghanistan as an infantry officer. I think his stuff is going to be worth reading; it’s not every day you have someone so articulate sending notes from battle. His first two dispatches, basically travel logs, are now posted.

I may make some posts of my own on his blog  if I get a wild hair up my ass.

At the moment, I’m working on a piece for The Spearhead that I like, and after taking a month off I’ve returned to editing and rewriting my book on masculinity.

OWS is creating some news and some controlled chaos, and that is probably a good thing.

As a political movement, it is more about crowd psychology than anything else. The OWS folks don’t know what they want, and as a collective they don’t even seem to understand what they are against.

For instance, there are tons of signs and blog posts about “Corporatism.” They don’t even know what it means. Look it up. Corporatism is probably closer to what they want than what they are protesting.

Corporatism, also known as corporativism, is a system of economic, political, or social organization that involves association of the people of society into corporate groups, such as agricultural, business, ethnic, labor, military, patronage, or scientific affiliations, on the basis of common interests.^[1] Corporatism is theoretically based upon the interpretation of a community as anorganic body.^[2][3] The term corporatism is based on the Latin root “corp” meaning “body”.^[3]

In 1881, Pope Leo XIII commissioned theologians and social thinkers to study corporatism and provide a definition for it. In 1884 in Freiburg, the commission declared that corporatism was a “system of social organization that has at its base the grouping of men according to the community of their natural interests and social functions, and as true and proper organs of the state they direct and coordinate labor and capital in matters of common interest.”^[4]

One of the main types of corporatism is economic tripartism involving negotiations between business, labour, and state interest groups to establish economic policy.^[5]

Corporatism is related to the sociological concept of structural functionalism.^[6] Corporate social interaction is common withinkinship groups such as families, clans and ethnicities.^[7] Aside from humans, certain animal species are known to exhibit strong corporate social organization, such as penguins.^[8][9]

Corporatist types of community and social interaction are common to many ideologies, including: absolutism, capitalism,conservatism, fascism, liberalism, progressivism, reactionism, socialism, and syndicalism.^[10]

I recently received a copy of Guillaume Faye’sWhy We Fight : Manifesto of the European Resistance. Faye believes that we have been living for some time under a “pseudo-democratic” form of “soft totalitarianism” and that our economies suffer from the “combined disadvantages of both

capitalism and socialism.” I’m inclined to agree. Some people think we need more capitalism and others think we need more socialism. European socialism has long been the daydream utopia of privileged American progressives who have fond memories of ski vacations and French class trips. But Europeans are protesting, too. More socialism hasn’t worked for them. The libertarian and neo-con American Right wants more capitalism, mostly because it’s American as apple pie and hippies hate it. A “freer” market is guaranteed to result in more outsourced jobs and more selling of American companies to global organizations that are bigger than whatever “fat cats” the naive OWS movement is protesting.

Why We Fight is organized as a dictionary of ideas. I don’t necessarily endorse or agree with all of them, but in flipping through it I found a few terms that I thought were particularly relevant and well-defined. Some highlights below:

From Cosmopolitanism:

The belief that the systematic melange of cultures is preferable to the identity of each culture — the belief that comes from the prejudice that some sort of world civilization is necessary. [..]

Cosmopolitanism is nothing but failed differentialism. Its ideal of mixing cultures for the sake of creating a single world culture is essentially totalitarian. With its simulacrum of heterogeneity, there lurks a will to uniformity.

From Globalisation:

The planetary universalization of exchange, circuits of economic production and finance, along with information; the internationalization of culture.

These phenomena create an environment where globally oriented companies with allegiance to no nation or people can become unstoppable juggernauts, subverting State and popular interests. Start a union and demand better wages. Company X finds or imports people who will work for less.

It’s not about a handful of “Mr. Burns” characters — the 1% is a distraction. The real problem is that legal entities designed only to create profit are doing exactly what they were designed to do, and these supranational entities exist independently of any State that might reign them in. They are post-national Leviathans without sovereigns, mindlessly crawling around the globe and sucking it dry. The Left’s attachment to multicultural cosmopolitanism erodes barriers between nations and frees the beast to move.

From Mercantilism:

The theory according to which the market is the sole basis of order and prosperity.

International mercantilism is the official doctrine of contemporary economic thought — the official doctrine of the corporations, the banks, and the European Commission. The exchanges and profits it generates take precedence over notions of production, full employment, independence or supply. Hence, outsourcing and the abolition of tariff barriers.

Mercantilism is the default religion of the United States, and those on the mainstream right are often its most faithful defenders. The businessman is a saint to America’s Republican talking heads from Glenn Beck to Lars Larson and Rush Limbaugh. If a businessman chooses to hire illegal immigrants because Americans demand higher compensation and a higher quality of life, he may be slapped on the wrist but will rarely be accused of criminal enterprise. Americans are asked to feel sorry for him, and more often than not, they will defend him. Someone who is making money is “succeeding,” no matter what they do or how they do it. People want to be them and be around them. They want to watch television shows about them and know what cars they drive. No one judges them unless they run for public office, when the public hypocritically expects them to be knights in shining armor — knowing full well that no one gets very far in America without cheating or fucking people over or generally acting like an asshole. No, the business man “creates jobs” and “fuels the economy” and “supports all of those do-nothing losers.”

Instead of screaming at the sky and complaining about “corporatism” — which is what many of them really want — Americans and Europeans alike need to reassess their own values, the values of both the socialist Left and the free-market Right. Across-the-board commitments to Cosmopolitanism, Globalization and Mercantilism make it possible for these hungry, immoral beasts to slither across nations and devour everything worth having, leaving a scum trail of cheap technology to keep us busy and imported goods that keep us all fat and happy.

Why We Fight is available on Amazon and from the publisher at http://www.arktos.com/.

UPDATE

A reader pointed out that Faye’s “mercantilism,” too, is at odds with historical definitions of the word in much the same way that the OWS definition of “corporatism” is at odds with its conventional definition.

I liked Faye’s definition of “mercantilism” as a catch-all for a merchant-class view of the world where making money is ennobled and virtus is dismissed as a joke for low class suckers by a population of people who are delighted to swindle each other. Now I remain in search of a good word that isn’t already taken.