From the dark forests of Alternative Right, a call to genocide

Timothy A. writes:

Alt-Right has published an article by contributing editor Colin Liddell, “Is Black Genocide Right?”, advocating the genocide of the black race. That’s pretty Alt! The good news is that at least one Alternative Right contributor, Andy Nowicki, thinks this is not a good idea.

LA replies:

The article is preceded by a photograph of a vulture standing a few feet from, and looking in anticipation at, an African baby who is obviously starving and on the point of death. The caption says: “Does the vulture perhaps have a point?”

Then the article begins:

It strikes me that one of the main things about having a good debate is how it is framed. Get that right and the chances are something good will be the outcome. However, for too long now, when we consider questions of race, especially questions concerning the Black race, we have been framing things in completely the wrong way. Instead of asking how we can make reparations for slavery, colonialism, and Apartheid or how we can equalize academic scores and incomes, we should instead be asking questions like, “Does human civilization actually need the Black race?” “Is Black genocide right?” and, if it is, “What would be the best and easiest way to dispose of them?” With starting points like this, wisdom is sure to flourish, enlightenment to dawn.

Doesn’t this show that VFR has been right all along in pointing out how sick and evil Alternative Right is? From the start of its existence, in early 2010, I condemned that magazine for its anti-Semitism, backed up by its appeal to a creepy pre-Christian paganism. However, as has been pointed out by many observers, anti-Semitism is not just bad in itself. Serious anti-Semitism is a pathology that indicates something not right in a person. People who are seriously anti-Semitic invariably are bad in other ways as well, as this article demonstrates.

Also, the article justifies the consideration of the genocide of the black race by the terrible things that blacks are doing to whites in southern Africa. The author and his editor, Richard Spencer, cannot see that their argument for the murder of all blacks overshadows and cancels any moral basis for their own opposition to the mistreatment of whites.

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Laura Wood writes:

There is no traditionalist conservatism. We are surrounded by lunatics and moral midgets.

LA replies:

Yes. There is no real conservative or traditionalist movement. It has to be created.

Brad C. writes:

I’m glad you posted on the pro-genocide article at Alt Right. I read the comments expecting there to be at least a vocal minority of critics. It took until the third page of reader comments to find someone critical of the idea of black genocide.

There used to be a decent number of defenders of Christianity and moral decency over there, but Alt Right has now become completely pagan. I doubt very seriously the future of conservatism lies with Odin-worshipping supporters of genocide.

Thomas S. writes:

It seems that complex language often masks a Satanist or Gnostic bent. They say the Devil speaks with a silver tongue, that he is a smooth speaker. Evil never sounds evil at first. “Go ahead, try the apple, it will be fine!” In the 20th century, sociology studies, anthropology studies, and gender studies all have this complex, silver tongue to their language. Yet behind this complexity of tongue, this seductive false knowledge, lies the heresy of Gnosticism.

The entire article of Colin Liddel strikes me as full of the type of obfuscating language characteristic of the gnostic social studies of the 20th century. This type of language exists to make disreputable and illogical things seem knowledgable. The “enlightenment” Liddell speaks of, is the nature of Luciferian, “light-bearing” thinking.

Examples in your quoted text include:

“It strikes me that one of the main things about having a good debate is how it is framed. Get that right and the chances are something good will be the outcome.”

“With starting points like this, wisdom is sure to flourish, enlightenment to dawn.”

Instead of just coming out and saying what he means, “Kill all the niggers!,” he cloaks his message in silver words like “enlightenment” and “framing debates,” with vague indicators like “something good will be the outcome.” Her pretends to question, when he really advocates this disreputable, low behavior. The questioning is a smoke-screen.

The basis of “open-minded” liberalism is “questioning,” having an “open mind,” and sounding smart to help socially engineer society. This is all Gnosticism, worship of knowledge unto itself, with no moral guidance! This is why we conservatives think differently, we use foundational thinking. Thus comes the term “fundamentalist.” We must counter this type of unhinged thinking in all of its forms, and seek to build fundamentals for the pro-white Western civilization movement.

Also, returning to a point you raise, what is the “moral basis” for our own opposition to the mistreatment of whites?

People have a right to defend their heritage and culture. One should only be as aggressive as necessary. African culture can grow and flourish in its own way. You already can see that in music, sculpture, athletics, and painting.

I can’t believe we are discussing this. I suppose it is a good time to say what we are for though, as a bulwark against negativity of this sort we see at Alternative Right, and any other false allies.

Bruce B. writes:

I kept the bookmark to Alt-Right on my home computer and glance at it occasionally (I lost most of my interest when Paul Gottfried, Jim Kalb, etc. ceased being posted there). I happened to look at it recently and saw the Liddell article you reference. I only read some of the article. The impression I got was that it was satirical. I understood it as saying that advocacy of the genocide of our kind in that part of the world is common, and that if the roles in such advocacy were reversed, this is what it would look like. Shocking, that is.

I won’t read that site from work so I can’t reread it right now and confirm my first impression. Either way I think it’s stupid to write things like that. We’re marginalized enough when we write un-PC things in careful, dispassionate language. Why make it worse by writing outrageous things?

LA replies:

What do you mean, “We?” I am not part of any “We” with that evil website. And for you to describe their genocide-promoting article as merely “stupid” is wrong.

Joe S. writes:

Am I the only one who sees the article as an attempt at irony that fell flat, in reaction to the actual violence and genocide being carried out against whites in South Africa, rather than a sincere proposal?

LA replies:

Can you honestly say that the photograph of the black baby dying, with the vulture looking on, and the caption, “Maybe the vulture is on to something,” was meant ironically? When people invoke the death of other people, any claim to irony flies out the window.

You remind me of a former acquaintance of mine who ten years ago, after Patrick Buchanan wrote a column in which he said that the Israelis were “the mirror image of Hamas and Hezbollah,” said in defense of Buchanan that he was just joking.

Buchanan was demonizing Israel at a moment of maximum crisis (following a year of terror attacks to which it did not respond, and then, after the attacks became unbearable, sent its forces into the West Bank to dismantle the terror networks), and this person, out of a desperate need to defend his hero Buchanan, said that he was just joking.

There is nothing funny about declaring people to be the equivalent of the terrorists who are seeking to kill them. But when one identifies with a person (in this case Buchanan) or a cause (in this case paleoconservatism) more than one cares about truth, that’s the sort of thing one ends up saying.

MG writes:

Ever since I read Mencius Moldbug’s observation that even far-right thinkers follow the maxim, “No friends to the right,” I see it everywhere. I’m sure you know that respectable “conservatives” think of you and your work the same way you think of Liddel and his. We rightists are too quick to declare any commenter or idea more extreme than we are irredeemably evil, and it weakens us.

Whenever possible, the respectable left plays good-cop-bad-cop with its extremists and even its monsters, and this has been a very strong strategy. When good-cop-bad-cop looks like a losing play, they downplay, excuse, or ignore their extreme elements. They’ve been winning the memetic war for the last century or more; we could learn something from them.

LA replies:

I completely reject your argument. This has nothing to do with the Alt-Right article being “more to the right” than I. It has to do with its being wicked and evil.

And I specifically reject your moral relativism. You are saying that any person or entity labeled “rightist,” no matter how bad his positions, should be endorsed by other rightists, because rightists must stay together. “Rightist” solidarity trumps right and wrong. If a “rightist” promotes genocide, I should go along with that. Do you realize what you’re saying?

And by the way, have you not noticed that there are plenty of people to my left that I attack, which the “no friends to the right” analysis that you are applying to me would implicitly deny?

Chris C. writes:

You wrote:

Can you honestly say that the photograph of the black baby dying, with the vulture looking on, and the caption, “Maybe the vulture is on to something,” was meant ironically?

Yes, that is exactly how I read it. It seemed obvious enough to me. I think your dislike of Richard Spencer and Alternative right may have short-circuited your irony/satire detector. [LA replies: So what you’re saying is, if I had come upon the same article with the same photograph and caption at some right-wing website that I had never seen before, I would have had no problem with it. It’s only because it’s at Richard Spencer’s site that I see something bad in it. This is the typical example of the personalist and material-determinist thinking that debases the mind of the right. This is not about me. This is about the article, which speaks for itself.]

Of course, the writing doesn’t meet the consensus gold standard of satire (“I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled … “) but the intent was clear. [LA replies: Jonathan Swift’s “Modest Proposal” makes obvious that it is satirical, while Liddell says clearly that blacks are the enemy and they need to be destroyed. Since Alt-Right does view blacks as the enemy, it follows that Liddell is serious. By contrast, no one would think that Swift actually has an agenda against babies.]

Liddell follows up in the comments:

I still think a few people need to brush up on their reading and comprehension skills. The article is not about Black Genocide and is not about advocating the same. It’s clearly about White Genocide and the fact that this is routinely ignored. The whole reason for the title and cursory mention of the idea of “Black genocide” is simply to highlight how people have been wired by our culture to perceive only Black tragedy and victimization, while ignoring White tragedy and victimization. I hope not too many people are disappointed by this clarification.

LA replies:

Liddell uses the claim that this is satire as a transparent cover up (transparent to anyone not willingly deluded) of his real agenda, which is, at the very least, to spread the idea that the entire black race are subhuman enemies and ought to be treated accordingly.

If a known anti-Semite said that all Jews ought to be killed, and then added that he was “just kidding,” or that he was “just trying to make a point that the world only cares about Jewish victimization and not gentile victimization,” would you believe him?

LA continues:

The denial that Liddell’s article meant what it said is similar to Richard Spencer’s claim to me (in an unposted e-mail) that since the people at his site writing, “Kike, kike, kike, kike,” were just commenters, Alternative Right had nothing to do with that outpouring of anti-Semitism.

Serious anti-Semitism is a pathology, and there is no lie that such an anti-Semite will not resort to in order to have his anti-Semitic cake and eat it.

Chris C. writes:

You wrote: “When people invoke the death of other people, any claim to irony flies out the window.”

I think you’re going to have a difficult time maintaining that line of argument. From Swift’s “Modest Proposal”:

I do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration that of the hundred and twenty thousand children already computed, twenty thousand may be reserved for breed, whereof only one-fourth part to be males; which is more than we allow to sheep, black cattle or swine; and my reason is, that these children are seldom the fruits of marriage, a circumstance not much regarded by our savages, therefore one male will be sufficient to serve four females. That the remaining hundred thousand may, at a year old, be offered in the sale to the persons of quality and fortune through the kingdom; always advising the mother to let them suck plentifully in the last month, so as to render them plump and fat for a good table. A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends; and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter.

LA replies:

Your point has already been answered. The irony in Swift is obvious. Swift wasn’t a writer with a known agenda to eat or otherwise harm children. By contrast, the Alt-right article argues with utmost seriousness that blacks threaten to destroy whites, and lays out an argument why blacks should all be killed. So where is the dividing line between what the article “really” means, and where it’s being “ironical”?

As a previous commenter said, it’s disgusting that we’re even having this conversation. But it was made necessary by commenters who were set on defending Alt-Right’s indefensible article.

Mark Eugenikos (named after this figure in the Orthodox Church) writes:

I went to AltRight (which I almost never do) and read the article. Based on its tone, I would agree with some of the other commenters that the article is an allegory or a metaphor. It’s obvious that the author, Colin Liddell, is deeply affected by the genocide of whites in South Africa, and it seems to me that he used extreme language in order to draw attention to their suffering. I could be wrong.

However, I would not have used such language if I were addressing a similar topic, and I wouldn’t have published such an article if I were the editor. I would not want to be associated with genocide in any way, even if it were just a literary device.

Regarding AltRight, I went there occasionally after it just started, but soon got tired of it. It seemed to be a hodgepodge, a collection of various viewpoints that the editor was able to get his hands on, but with no clear overall purpose or platform, except to increase traffic. And I also do not like sites that allow low-level comments, cursing at other commenters and calling them names.

LA writes:

Here’s the absurdity of defending the article as ironic: Alt-Right’s commenters themselves do not see it as ironic. Apparently most of Alt-Right’s commenters on the article are taking the article straight and supporting it on that basis, i.e., they are supporting its call for the genocide of blacks.

Paul T. writes:

My two cents’ worth: I don’t think this was Swiftian satire, but it’s also notable that he doesn’t go on to address seriously any of the three questions he raises in his first paragraph, namely:

“Does human civilization actually need the Black race?”

“Is Black genocide right?”

“What would be the best and easiest way to dispose of them?”

Having raised these questions he lets them drop immediately, focusing instead (with great and justified indignation) on the treatment of whites in contemporary South Africa.

Because of this overall incoherence it’s impossible to judge how seriously he was floating the genocide idea. I agree that floating it at all is repellent. It’s possible that it was meant as a cold, sly, Machiavellian way of letting a Satanic agenda out of its box. But overall, if I had to parse this essay, I would compare it to an outburst from a kid in a schoolyard: “You complain about white treatment of blacks? Well, look at black treatment of whites. Gonna whine about genocide? Ha! Anyone deserves genocide, it’s you! Yeah, you! How ya like that? Huh? Don’t feel so good, does, it? Hah!”

That seems to me a fair statement of the overall effect.

LA replies:

But again, according to two correspondents, one of whom has commented here (I haven’t read the thread myself), the great majority of the commenters are taking the article straight and supporting it as a call to genocide.

John McNeil writes:

I don’t believe Liddell was serious about genocide (and incidentally he wrote a follow up article titled “Is White Genocide Right?” along the same lines), but I agree that it was a terrible article. Thankfully Andy had the moral courage to challenge Liddell over this. We don’t need such irresponsible and evil language in the dialog on preserving the white race.

Satire is pointless anyway. It’s not going to make whites outside of South Africa reconsider their views on the fate of the Afrikaner people. Instead of verbal gimmickry we need to continue telling the truth about South Africa. And support positive movements like Orania. Orania is the role model of any nationalist/traditionalist movement; the Oranians are able to present that they are FOR the preservation of the Afrikaner people without resorting to anti-black rhetoric. Whites outside of South Africa should give that kind of positive nationalism a try some day.

Mark P. writes:

I guess the most charitable interpretation of the alt-right article is to say the author is calling for the West to let blacks “find their own level.” Whether in Africa or in America, blacks as a population cannot survive on their own. Left to their own devices, most of their population would die horribly of starvation and civil war until it is reduced to a size their techonological development can effectively maintain.

It’s a foregone conclusion that this “letting alone” would be regarded as genocide.

Robert B. writes:

From the article:

Rather than asking about White genocide, it surely makes more sense by any objective standards of utility, morality, or progress, to ask whether there should be such a thing as Black genocide.

This is not just a tit-for-tat idea either. In the changing nature of the New South Africa, which is still essentially a collection of White-created-and-maintained institutions….

It seems it’s serious to me.

February 22

Patrick H. writes:

The article was indeed satirical in its intent, but satire can be an indication of underlying seriousness. Liddell is clearly so outraged over what is being done to whites in South Africa that he has entertained the idea of black genocide, if only in the darker, more vengeful corners of his mind—his id, his shadow. A man will often reveal his shadow by the “jokes” he tells, and if certain “jokes” keep coming out of his mouth, that says something about him. If a man keeps targeting certain people with “jokes,” it does him no good when confronted to say “I don’t hate them, I’m only joking!” The joke/retraction two-step is a classic passive-aggressive manoeuvre. The passive-aggressive man is both terribly angry and perceives himself to be helpless. Liddell is full of anger, anger that has curdled into hatred, over what is happening to whites in SA, and he doesn’t have any idea of how to stop it. Hence his inadvertently revealing “satire.” Poor man. Poor helpless, hate-filled man. I don’t envy him. [LA replies: The same is done by leftists; they call someone “racist,” and when confronted on it, say that they were only “kidding.” As though there were anything funny about the charge of racism. Or, in an instance I told about earlier in this thread, Patrick Buchanan called Israel—in the moment it was trying to defend itself from mass slaughter by Muslim terrorists—the “mirror image” of Muslim terrorists, and when Buchanan was attacked for this, a defender of Buchanan said that he was “just kidding.”]

P.S. There was another article about how to deal with the black race at alt-right, written by a bizarre eccentric named Alex Kurtagic. He argued, seriously, for a complete withdrawal of whites from Africa, leaving the dark continent to relapse into darkness, returning the population there to the Stone Age, to the “childhood of man.” This abandonment (and quarantine) of black Africa would, of course, lead to a massive reduction in black Africa’s population, which would return to what eco-armagedonists call a “sustainable” level (a very low level, given Stone Age technology). Kurtagic was not being satirical in his proposal. Unfortunately, I think he is right about what would happen to black Africa’s population if whites withdrew from all contact with blacks there. Not quite Liddell’s genocide, but pretty close. Unfortunately, the “white man’s burden” will be with us for some time. Our own cultural heritage will not allow us to abandon any people to mass death, even if that people has nothing to offer us, hates us, and tries to kill us as often as they can. There’s something tragic about the white race. Perhaps our tragedy is that our altruism is going to destroy us, and yet to abandon our altruism would be to abandon something important about us—the white soul. And yes, there’s something tragic, in this white kind of way, about Colin Liddell. He’s given up his altruistic white soul, and has turned into a savage. Despair does that to you, even if you’re a white man. It’s hard to do what Jesus said we must: love even those who hate you. You said alt-right has become utterly pagan. How right you are.

LA replies:

In the past I’ve argued that there were two logical paths the West could take on Africa: to take it over, in a kind of new colonialism administered for Africa’s benefit, or to abandon Africa completely and have nothing to do with it. I tended to favor the first option; almost all the readers in those discussion favored the second. (I’m not immediately finding links to those discussions.)

Also, I agree entirely with what you said about passive-aggressive behavior. More could be said about the subject.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 20, 2012 01:17 PM | Send