|
Mangan surpasses the anti-Semites
Dennis Mangan writes:
Why Auster Spends So Much Time and Energy Attacking Alt Right
Actually, I don’t really know, I was just wondering. I did get a hoot out of this:
This is the amoral tribalism that dominates the thinking of the paleocon/HBD faction, and renders them incapable of offering anything of useful in the political and cultural sphere, because people who reduce all human values to the genetic and the tribal cannot build or defend a civilized social order. As I have been saying for the last twenty years, the neocons reduce truth to abstract universalist ideas; the paleocons/HBD’ers reduce truth to tribes and genes; both visions are false.
And Auster reduces everything to what’s good for his tribe, which he would I’m sure denote moral tribalism.
[LA replies: It is of course a mantra on the anti-Semitic right that I am a Jewish fifth columnist secretly seeking Jewish supremacy over white gentiles and the destruction of the white race. However, I’ve never seen one these anti-Semites go as far as Mangan has done and state categorically that I reduce everything to what is good for the Jews. In hooting at my analysis of paleocon/HBD tribalist reductionism while simultaneouly trying to adopt it and turn it against me, Mangan spectacularly confirms its truth. He takes into his purview nothing less than every topic I’ve ever addressed, and finds, in everything I’ve written, nothing but an agenda to help the Jews. What will he say to people who point out that stark raving lunacy of this? That they’ve misunderstood him? They they are misrepresenting him? That he didn’t really mean it? And by the way, have you noticed how almost all of Mangan’s attacks on me consist of taking something I’ve said, reversing its terms, and using it against me? It’s as though he’s incapable of generating any thoughts of his own. I sincerely grieve that I have caused, however inadvertently, the transformation a once amiable and intelligent blogger into a maniac.]
Oh, by the way, given Auster’s tirade here against Mel Gibson and his defenders, I wonder whether Auster would care to describe the difference between the treatment given Gibson versus that given Roman Polanski; since he’s defended Polanski in the past, maybe he’s got some insight.
[LA replies: This is a total lie. When Polanski was arrested last year, I, not knowing the specifics of the charges against him and of the history of the case, initially wrote that I thought it was an overreach of the law and of the statute of limitations to arrest a man 30 years after a crime in another country, and I took that position in response to several commenters who strongly differed with me. What I learned from the commenters and from reading up on the case led me within a couple of hours of the original posting to state that my initial, ill-informed comments—which I described as a “fiasco”—had been incorrect. If such a non-event as my supposed “defense” of Polanski could be seen by the anti-Semites as the burning proof that I am a “loyalty to the Jews above all else” Jewish loyalist or a Jewish agent who supports Jewish criminals because they are Jewish, what does that tell us about the other supposed Jewish outrages about which the anti-Semites endlessly obsess? Furthermore, why would anyone, other than a pathological anti-Semite, assume that the reason I initially protested the arrest of Polanski had anything to do with his being Jewish?
[Consider the nightmare Nazi-like world that the anti-Semites inhabit, and that they would have the rest of us inhabit as well—a world in which in everything a Jew or a person of Jewish ancestry thinks and does, he thinks and does because he’s a Jew, a world in which everything a non-Jew thinks and does, he thinks and does because he’s a non-Jew. Here, truly, is the racialist-collectivist post-human hell which writers as different as Ayn Rand and Eric Voegelin have been warning us about since the 1930s.]
posted by Dennis Mangan @ 4:09 PM
Here, without further comment by me, is the rest of the Mangan thread:
11 comments
At 7/22/2010 4:49 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said …
Auster is the Abe Foxman of the paleocon right.
At 7/22/2010 6:04 PM, Anonymous Paul DeReno said …
This is sort of like the monthly piss tasting update.
4/26/10: Tastes like piss.
5/25/10: Still tastes like piss.
6/27/10: Still tastes like piss.
…
At 7/22/2010 6:28 PM, Blogger Chechar said …
@ Why Auster spends time attacking Alt Right?
He started to attack Richard Spencer right after Spencer fully disclosed his views on the JQ. But Spencer had interviewed Auster about Obamacare as can be listened in Alt Radio.
At 7/22/2010 7:01 PM, Blogger Tanstaafl said …
Auster’s impulse to defend jews turns Spencer’s “America’s journalism and film establishment, with its preponderance of Jews in positions of power” into “So the Jews did it”, and Auster then disingenuously asks, “How does Spencer know that the Jews decided to destroy Gibson?”
I can’t speak for Spencer, but if Auster would like to see the evidence he can review the links and quotes I have provided in Gibson vis-a-vis Polanski. I also just posted a lengthy comment there concerning Auster’s reaction to Gibson vis-a-vis Polanski.
At 7/22/2010 10:40 PM, Anonymous Hunter Wallace said …
If you are familiar with the theory (i.e., Lawrence Auster is a Jewish tribalist who prioritizes “fighting anti-Semitism” over White racial and cultural preservation), then you can successfully predict his actions.
You can know what he is going to say about any given topic or article with near certainty before he even hears about it himself.
At 7/22/2010 11:15 PM, Anonymous Cannon’s Canon said …
A better parallel to Mel Gibson would be Charlie Sheen. Less than two years ago, Sheen’s voicemails to ex-wife Denise Richards were publicized, in which he called her a cunt, liar, coward, and yes, nigger. The pattern domestic abuse allegations are there, the N-word and C-word are there, and the popularity is there.
But, the William Morris Agency that quickly dropped Mel Gibson continues to represent Charlie Sheen. So, what’s the difference?
At 7/23/2010 3:38 AM, Anonymous John Fitzgerald said …
Why should Auster be reasonable? There is a reason they have to live in other peoples countries you know.
Never read the guy but good on him for supporting his own people.
I,m all for Salter’s Universal Nationalism, every people should have their own country, even White people.
At 7/23/2010 7:02 AM, OpenID m4monologue said …
Amazing to see a “Christian” refer to other Christians as gentiles as in “the kind who literally blames everything bad in the world on the Jews, or at least everything bad that happens to white gentiles.”
White gentiles?
Whose god is Auster serving, cause it certainly isn’t mine? I’ve never referenced any other Christian as a gentile and, the only people I know who do use that term are Jews.
Like I said. Time for Auster to decide. Christian or Jew.
I’d take a Pagan like Hoste over Auster any day of the week. At least Hoste doesn’t refer to me as a “white gentile”.
Pat Hannagan
At 7/23/2010 8:15 AM, Anonymous Richard Hoste said …
a Pagan like Hoste
No!
At 7/23/2010 7:12 PM, Anonymous Scott said …
Why Auster Spends So Much Time and Energy Attacking Alt Right
Actually, I don’t really know
It’s because Alt Right attacks liberalism, and Auster is a liberal. Like every good liberal, he is a zealous proselytizer of the injunction “Thou shalt not discriminate against any group, nor shalt thou seek to separate yourself from any group.”
But, like every liberal, he makes some unprincipled exceptions to his morality. Specifically, he considers it okay to want to separate from and discriminate against blacks and muslims.
At 7/24/2010 8:01 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said …
Whose god is Auster serving, cause it certainly isn’t mine? I’ve never referenced any other Christian as a gentile and, the only people I know who do use that term are Jews.—M4 Monologue
I think of the Gods as the same. Otherwise a lot of what Jesus said wouldn’t make any sense.
And I certainly know a lot of … uhhh … non-Jews who use the term “gentile”. I do anyway.
[end of Mangan thread]
- end of initial entry -
Dave T. writes:
In fairness to Mangan I am not sure why you go after Alternative Right as frequently as you do. It’s at least somewhat puzzling because the majority of your criticisms are usually directed against the antisemitic Hoste and don’t apply to the other contributors. To wit, do you really substantively disagree with the likes of Burton, Gottfried, Turner, Hackard, Locklin, Girin, Nowicki, Ford, Kalb, E. Wright, Schiff, Trifkovic, and Kouprianova? Heck, I have a hard time believing that you really disapprove with what Spencer writes most of the time. Maybe you’re not aware of what these other people have written because you don’t regularly follow the website.
My take is that the website isn’t perfect but with the exception of Hoste and Donovan it’s still pretty good. You can’t engage a large multi-contributor website like Alternative Right and expect to agree with everything.
LA replies:
The fact that Alt Right might publish many articles I would not object to or would agree with is irrelevant to this issue. A movement is judged by what it does about the extreme elements in its midst. If it accepts them and supports them, it is responsible for them.
It’s the same when we disagree with any belief system. Any belief system, no matter how false, is going to have some elements that are true. In fact, it’s impossible to make a statement, no matter how false, that doesn’t contain some elements of truth. The true elements do not cancel out the false.
If a website said some things you agreed with, but also promoted, say, child sacrifice and white slavery, would you say, “Well, most of the things this website says are good, so I’ll give it a pass on the child sacrifice”? Of course not. The support of child sacrifice would indicate something evil and unacceptable about that site, and you would not give that website a pass on the evil and unacceptable thing.
Now you may reply, “Child sacrifice or white slavery is too extreme an example to serve as an equivalent for opposing Israel or being anti-Semitic.” But that reply does not change the fact that there are things that are evil and objectionable in themselves and that deserve to be opposed, regardless of the fact that the people doing the evil thing are also doing something we may regard as acceptable or good. You may draw the line at a different point than I would, and that’s something we can reasonably discuss. But as long as you agree with me that there is a line, a line that cannot be crossed, then you also agree with me that there are situations in which a person’s doing things we agree with does not excuse him for doing objectionable or evil things.
LA continues: In connection with the above, for some months now Mangan has argued that my support for Geert Wilder’s statement that he would not support people who did not support Israel’s existence against the Islamic and leftist campaign to destroy her, meant that I am more loyal to Israel than the U.S., and that I should therefore leave the U.S. and move to Israel. His underlying logic is that some anti-Israelites are American patriots, and that my rejection of supposed American patriots for their anti-Israelism means I am more loyal to Israel than the U.S.
But let’s see where this logic goes. Suppose there were self-described American patriots who were, say, Holocaust deniers. Would Mangan say that unless I supported those Holocaust deniers, I was more loyal to Israel than the U.S.? (I don’t know, maybe he would.) Suppose there were self-described American patriots who called for the extermination of all Jews, as the late William Pierce did. Would Mangan say that unless I supported Pierce, I was disloyal to America and should move to Israel? (My guess is that he would not say that.) Or suppose there were self-described American patriots who supported white slavery, or the legalization and official endorsement of man-boy love, or any number of other evil things? Would Mangan say that unless I supported those evil things I was not loyal to America? (Clearly he would not say that.) Obviously, then, there are things that would lead Mangan to dissociate himself from certain people, even if they called themselves patriots. And he would dissociate himself from those evil people not because of his supposed “tribalist loyalty” to the intended victims of those evil people, but because of the evil in itself. Thus certain people’s support for certain evil things leads us to reject those people. But what Mangan has done with his argument about me and Israel, just as he did with his suggestion that I “defended” Polanski out of Jewish solidarity, is to abstract from the situation everything except the tribalist/determinist aspect: if a person of Jewish ancestry says he will not support people who side with the Islamic and leftist campaign to destroy Israel, it cannot be for any principled reason; it can only be because he is a loyalist of the Jewish tribe against the white non-Jewish tribe.
Thus what Mangan is really saying is that anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism are legitimate aspects of American identity that cannot be opposed by true Americans. Which connects with what I said a few months ago in the entry, “The Paleocon / Anti-Semitic Complex.” I argued that while not all paleocons/HBD’ers are anti-Semites, and that while disagreement with discrete anti-Semitic arguments s is allowed in the paleocon/HBD community, the one thing that is not allowed in that community is criticism and rejection of anti-Semitism itself. From which I concluded that anti-Semitism is the ultimate ruling idea of the paleocon/HBD community, even for those paleocons and HBD’ers who are not themselves anti-Semitic.
In the same way, white guilt is the ultimate ruling idea of the white liberal community. Membership in the liberal tribe does not require a white liberal actively to espouse white guilt, but it does require him not to take a consistent and principled stand against the belief in white guilt. If he took such a stand, he would cease to be seen as a member of the liberal tribe.
Dave T. writes:
I certainly agree with the principle that there are lines that should not be crossed and when they are it should modify our behavior regardless of good qualities that we might otherwise perceive.
But I fail to see how this applies to our situation because Alternative Right is a webzine with many different contributors and not a movement per se. It is a boutique of different sets of ideas that have been excluded from the American Right’s regular discourse, and I believe that Spencer has described his project in just this way in one of his podcasts. I think this can be clearly seen in the very open arguments that have transpired between the different contributors who are outside the mainstream American Right for different reasons, like the recent one between Hoste and Trifkovic.
The upshot of this analysis is that if my characterization is correct than it doesn’t even make sense to say that you (or I) disagree with Alternative Right on such and such an issue because (for all I can tell) Spencer’s webzine doesn’t take an official stance on any issue.
LA replies:
I don’t accept this argument. First, Spencer’s purpose was not just to have a boutique of various voices, but to create a new type of conservatism. Second, even if it was just a boutique, a magazine is responsible for what it publishes.
Kristor writes:
What difference does your motivation for posing an argument make to its cogency? I mean, say you were motivated to impress a girl, and to show off you argued in favor of Copernicanism. Would the fact that you only made the argument for the sake of a girl mean that your argument was invalid or unconvincing, or that Copernicanism is false? No, obviously it would not. Your motivation is neither here nor there. All that really matters is the truth, and how well you have expressed and supported it. And this is why the argumentum ad hominem is a logical fallacy. Even if it was true that you made all your arguments on account of a desire to help Jews, that would be irrelevant both to the truth or falsehood of your conclusions, and to the strength or weakness of your reasoning.
Why then do all these people focus on your genetics when you argue that anti-Semitism is wicked? Either anti-Semitism is wicked, or not. Does Mangan think anti-Semitism wicked? Let him just answer, one way or the other, and leave it at that—and let him leave off challenging your genes. After all, if he would really say that your genes compromise your arguments, he would have to recognize that his arguments are subject to the same weakness, and the same sort of challenge. What if you were to argue that Mangan says everything he says only because he is European?
LA replies:
Unfortunately, the paleocons/HBE’ers never seem to reply to this sort of argument. For example, I’ve made the following argument several times: since Steve Sailer believes that liberals take the positions they take because they seek high status, not because they think those positions are true and good, it follows (unless Sailer is made of completely different human material from liberals) that Sailer takes the positions he takes because he seeks high status, not because he thinks they’re true and good. But Sailer’s supporters have never replied to me on this point. For that matter, Sailer himself has never replied to a single criticism I have made of his intellectual positions (see, e.g., Biocentric yuppiedom versus the West; Is white surrender a function of status competition among whites?; The white status competition theory of white suicide; and Sailer’s attempt to combine race realism with liberalism; and by the way, none of the articles I’ve just listed touch on the hot-button question of Jews and Israel, an area where I have admittedly used tough language on Sailer and he would be justified in not wanting to get into an exchange with me; and some of them, such as on biocentric Yuppideom and the West, were written before I began attacking Sailer over his statements on Israel and Jews, while we were still corresponding with each other).
And I think I can make a reasonable guess as to why Sailer doesn’t reply to me even in those areas that don’t touch on Jews and Israel. As just suggested, what motivates him to take the positions he takes is the desire for status (which in his case means status in the paleocon/HBD community); and he suspects that if he engaged in a debate with me on his intellectual presuppositions, he would lose. He once said about himself (I forget where, but it may have been in his book on Obama) that he doesn’t like to lose. I thought it was an odd and revealing admission for an intellectual writer to make.
Sorry for the off-topic comment, but one thing led to another; and Sailer’s non-defense of his positions is something I haven’t mentioned before.
July 25
Markus writes:
Reading through Mangan’s latest smear on you and his readers’ moronic comments reminds me of what Rush Limbaugh once said about some group of lefties or other: these guys are straight out of the bar scene in Star Wars..
Steve W. writes: There is no reasoning with anti-Semites. Sadly, paranoia and hatred of “the Jews” is a real phenomenon on the right in this country. How prevalent it is among “average Americans” is difficult to say. Less, I believe (hope), than the ADL claims, but it exists. (Ironically, it appears to be most prevalent among blacks and Hispanics, two groups whom white anti-Semites also hate.) I find myself being repeatedly disillusioned by “the right” in this country: libertarians who support open borders, paleocons who refuse to acknowledge the jihadist threat, and social conservatives who believe abortion is a more pressing issue that the leviathan state. Not to mention the anti-Semites, who believe that a relative handful of Jews are more responsible for the evils of liberalism than the millions and millions of Christians (white and black) who subscribe to the exact same politics (and, of course, non-Jewish elites like Ted Kennedy). Moreover, I don’t see a successful challenge to the contemporary liberal regime emerging from this largely incoherent and incohesive mishmash of conservative opposition groups. Yes, Republicans will win some elections in coming years, but I am afraid that the underlying status quo is unlikely to be upset in any meaningful way.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 24, 2010 04:04 PM | Send
|