Richard Hoste says that Islam is not a threat; Serge Trifkovic replies

If Richard Hoste were simply another Darwinian anti-Semite blogger in the Darwinian anti-Semite wing of the blogosphere, he would merit little notice. What makes him attention-worthy is his role as an editor and leading contributor at Richard Spencer’s Alternative Right, an impressive looking web magazine founded with fanfare earlier this year with the announced mission of sparking a new right-wing movement to save America and the West. Ironically and disastrously, there is little discernibly new about Spencer’s “new” right. For one thing, it is largely centered on one of the oldest, creakiest, and stupidest belief systems in the world—anti-Semitism, along with its chief current incarnation, anti-Israelism. (For more on the organic connection between anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism, see former leading Holocaust denier Mark Weber’s article last year in which he declared that Holocaust denial is no longer necessary, because anti-Israelism has become a far more effective and popular means of waging war on the Jews.) A related irony is that notwithstanding Spencer’s youth (he is about 31), his mind is not young, but seems to have been formed through the influence of the ossified and broken-down paleocons, anti-Semites, anti-Israelites, anti-Christians, and pagans who have served as Spencer’s intellectual mentors. Consider for example the role at Alt-Right of Paul Gottfried, the most prominent Jewish paleocon, a man who openly admits that he takes anti-Israel positions and supports anti-Semites as a way of wreaking personal revenge on the neocons who, Gottfried believes and never stops reminding us, prevented him from getting a prestigious university position 25 or 30 years ago. Is there anything new, anything “alternative,” about the resentment-driven politics that characterizes Gottfried and so many other paleocons?

The knee-jerk-paleocon quality of Spencer’s thought process is further shown by the fact that in the video in which he announced the founding of Alt-Right, he chose as his ideological foil David Frum, a once leading neocon who in the last couple of years has dramatically moved to the left and become an anti-conservative. Indeed, Frum is now so ideologically isolated, and his positions so odd-ball, that he can hardly be considered in any other light than that of his own oddness. Certainly the regular conservatives and neoconservative no longer regard him as one of them. Yet Spencer seemed quite unaware of this widely noted development, and in his video he treated Frum as the representative neocon, to whom Alternative Right was the alternative. In other words, the young Spencer was living in the past, going after a hoary paleocon hate-object who in reality was no longer appropriate for such a role. It occurs to me that Spencer is the paleocon version of a Young Fogie.

The lack of newness in Spencer’s thinking is also demonstrated by the prominent place he gives Hoste, a cartoonishly crude anti-Semite who proves the charge that anti-Semites believe that everything bad in the world is the fault of the Jews. Thus last week Hoste astonishingly wrote that Lindsay Lohan is not the morally corrupt, relentlessly determined outlaw and self-destroyer that the world sees, but a “Nordic innocent” violated and undone by an Israeli lesbian.

Two days later at Alternative Right Hoste surpassed himself once again, criticizing Serge Trifkovic for saying that Islam is a threat to America. In Hoste’s view, only the Jews have reasons—tribalist reasons—to fear Islam, and therefore Trifkovic’s hostility to Islam makes no sense.

Here is Trifkovic’s blistering reposte to Hoste.

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Richard W. writes:

You’ve pretty well destroyed Hoste. Now others at his own mag are piling on. Gottfried has been given a good shot over the bow too, as you’ve pointed out the fundamental pettiness of his war with the neocons, and the “Men’s editor” has been revealed as a semi-closeted homosexual.

Remind me not to p* you off !

I’d like to think that Spencer, being young, can be saved. Perhaps I’m the naive and idealistic one. When I was 31, I was (A) a lot more engaged in politics than most of the people I hung out with, (B) brash, and (C) wrong about a lot of things. I said things I now look back at and wince in recalling. But, at least I was in the game and didn’t freeze my beliefs but kept sincerely looking and reading, and I like to think I’ve become at least a littler smarter in the intervening 20 years.

Of course I didn’t go starting a magazine, but that’s both much to his credit and somewhat to his shame. It does offer some good content, but it’s hard to take seriously due to the overwhelming mindlessness of much of it.

Anyway, if he’s still reading you there is still a lot of hope for him. So maybe give him just a bit more room that the rest of his crew??

In connection with the above, see Alt-Right piece on Mel Gibson.

July 22

Charles T. writes:

Thank you for calling attention to Dr. Trifkovic’s reply to Richard Hoste at Alternative Right. Hoste has, in his article at least, taken the side of defeatism; notwithstanding his weeping and gashing of teeth over the suicide of the West, he admits he has no solutions, by writing these concluding, discouraging words:

What options are left? I have no good answers, and neither does anyone else.

With friends like this, who needs enemies? If Mr. Hoste thinks we are already defeated, he needs to keep it to himself.

Trifkovic, on the other hand, crafts a very salient point about the competing religions and political philosophies that Hoste can only rant about. His prefaces his point with these words about our foes:

For all the outward differences, Swedish feminists share with Mr. “Hoste’s” mullahs the desire for a monistic One World. They both long for the Great Gleichschaltung that will end in Strobe Talbot’s Single Global Authority, post-national and seamlessly standardized, an ummah under whatever name. (Secular materialism and Islam have the same goal: global domination.)

Trifkovic immediately follows this statement with these words:

The Christian vision of Triune God is the enemy to both. All authentic Europeans and their overseas cousins should revive it and stick with it, not only because it is true—which it is—but also because it has been inseparable from their culture and civilization for over two millennia.

Trifkovic is not only a scholar, he is proving he is a leader, a field general if you will. He is providing not only words of confidence, but is offering a solution, a plan of action that the people of the West can take. And, of course, that action is rediscovering and embracing the Christian faith personally and nationally.

I have been reading Trifkovic’s book, The Sword of the Prophet, and he makes the same point in chapter two:

The proponents of an “Ecumenical Jihad,” from President George W. Bush and Professor Forte to a Christian conservative like Peter Kreeft, share two fallacies. Their faulty understanding of Islamic theology leads them to imagine that “Allah” is more or less interchangeable with the “God’ of other monotheists. Their incomplete understanding of the phenomenom of secular globalization leads them to seek an equally monolithic counterweight on the side of faith. In reality, the only effective resistance to secularism will come from old identities revitalized and reaffirmed, not blurred and compromised. To survive, Christians need to rediscover theological firmness and doctrinal clarity

Trifkovic does not hesitate to link survival of the West with Christianity. The Christianity he speaks of is not the sentimental Christianity which pervades America, but a Christianity that knows its doctrines and holds them dear despite the circumstances.

Islam is a complete system that completely dominates the life of its adherents in every detail and seeks to force its way on non-Muslims. Secular materialism is an atheistic religion that seeks domination as well. Christianity is also a complete system for all of life and, as Dr. Trifkovic points out, has been the life-blood of the West for over two thousand years. I agree with Trifkovic, that our best hope for resisting Islam and secular materialism is to rediscover and embrace the doctrines of the Christian faith. I am grateful for his boldness in continuing to proclaim Christianity as essential to our survival.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 21, 2010 09:29 AM | Send