What makes the paleocons tick?

Robert C. writes:

I must say the comments and blog posts that I read at Mangan’s, Hoste’s, and Chechar’s blogs are amazing to say the least. It seems that this portion of the right wing are becoming more anti-Jewish and anti-Israel and not concentrating on things I would think would be more important to them such as the national debt, immigration, demographic transformation, the degradation of our culture, etc. It seems that these people just think Jew, Jew, Jew … Where are the people who will defend America and the West? Where are those who defend the white race? I know Jews tend to more liberal and leftist than most groups and the ones prominent in politics reflect these views, but why so insane? Why do we have to deal with posts on the Jewish question again? It feels like a rerun of a bad movie. There used to be more interesting and enlightening posts on these sites. Even Alternative Right would be more interesting without this obsession.

LA replies:

I think the answer is that the paleocons’ basic stance toward reality is not love of the good, but hatred of a society and a world that has gone wrong and that they cannot stand. The primal paleocon hatred is of Lincoln, for defeating the South and saving the Union. The second paleocon hatred is of the United States itself, because it exists as a result of Lincoln’s defeat of the South. Their next hatred is of modern statist, globe-bestriding America, which they see as Lincoln’s fault. Then come neocons, Jews, Israel, who are all implicated with statist, globe-bestriding America.

For some paleocons, the hatred goes back even further, to the founding of the Constitution itself.

Their lack of any larger idea of the good is perfectly expressed in the way the paleocons typically express their positive belief. Over and over, you hear them say something like this: “I believe in hearth, home, and kindred.” This is their affirmation of the particular and the local as distinct from the universal and the massified. But the problem is, it’s not enough. “Hearth and kindred” boils down to one’s family, neighbors, and locality. It has no reference to a political order, no reference to a cultural order, no reference to transcendent moral order, no reference to philosophical truth, no reference to a nation. This is most assuredly not the older conservative vision of a Russell Kirk or a Richard Weaver, but a primitivized form of conservatism that is indistinguishable from amoral tribalism. As I’ve written before, the paleocons’ thinking is deeply tribal. It always is expressed in terms of, “Who is on my side, who is not on my side?” It is never expressed in terms of the true and the good.

So it comes down to this. Toward everything that is larger than their “tribe,” however they conceive their tribe, they have no love. They have no love of the world, but only the desire to get vengeance on what, in their minds, has ruined their world. Such a mentality looks for the cause of the ruin. And the cause which is always most ready at hand is the Jews.

- end of initial entry -

Van Wijk writes:

Robert C. wrote: “It seems that these people just think Jew, Jew, Jew … Where are the people who will defend America and the West? Where are those who defend the white race?”

In this case they earnestly believe that Jewish influence is the primary threat to the survival of white people, and so think that they are in fact defending the white race. At a recent thread at Mangan’s, a few became very upset when I did not accept that Jewish influence was a far greater evil than black-on-white violence or encroaching Islam. They will suffer no dissent when it comes to their ideology, and will instantly label any who doubt this ideology as “philo-Semites” or “Jew-lovers” (to list a few of the milder labels). Really, the motivations and allegiances they attribute to their enemies are so laughably juvenile that I almost suspect they are a parody. Unfortunately, this obsession over Jews will tend to override everything else, and I believe they will eventually find common cause with those who share their obsession. At the very least, they will downplay or dismiss the real threats to the West in order to focus on the Jews. See this quote from Chechar’s homepage:

“Originally counter-jihadists helped me to start comprehending Western suicide. I have since moved on from philosemitism to concentrate on the ultimate goal: Euro-white preservation.”

LA replies:

You are right of course. My reply to Robert was just one angle on the subject. They do believe that. But what puts people in the mindset that they are ready to believe that? One possible answer is the answer I gave Robert. Another is that anti-Semitism is a standalone software program, existing eternall through the centuries, acceessible to anyone who has the psychological dispositions to be responsive to it. Once a person plugs in that program and begins to play it, it has the same set of effects every time and all his thought processes begin to operate in the familiar manner commanded by the program.

Posted June 6

Robert C. replies to LA:

I must say that I would think even an atheist would have a higher view of the truth. What indeed is so wrong with the West that even these people won’t defend it and want to preserve it? The West has many problems even to the point of a deep sickness of the soul. However, it represents who we are and encompasses home, family, faith, hearth, etc. Why not reform it and defend it?

Full disclosure, I am in many ways a paleocon and an isolationist and reflect these views, but who in his right mind thinks that the Jews are the main or only cause for the fall of the West or the White Race? These Jews who are mostly liberal and leftist are not exactly helping the West or White Race to survive but they are not main cause of its death. The White Race is being attacked by Muslims, Mexicans, etc. abroad and being attacked at home by leftist fools and knaves with their ethnic and racial bully boys motivated by political correctness, diversity, and multiculturalism and more at home. These people are insane. With people like this, the West does not need enemies.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 04, 2010 06:08 PM | Send