Tag: decline and fall

Catalonia to hold referendum

The referendum on Catalan independence will be held on October 1:

The leader of Spain’s Catalonia region, where a separatist movement is in full swing, on Friday announced an independence referendum for October 1st, in what will exacerbate tensions with Madrid. Speaking in Barcelona, Carles Puigdemont said the question would be: “Do you want Catalonia to be an independent state in the form of a republic?”

Catalonia, a wealthy, 7.5-million-strong region with its own language and customs, has long demanded greater autonomy. Separatist politicians in the northeastern region have tried for years to win approval from Spain’s central government for a vote like Scotland’s 2014 referendum on independence from Britain, which resulted in a “no” vote.

And while Catalans are divided on the issue, with 48.5 percent against independence and 44.3 percent in favour according to the latest poll by the regional government, close to three-quarters support holding a referendum.

But Catalan authorities have repeatedly been thwarted in their attempts to hold such a vote, arguing it goes against the constitution and would threaten the unity of Spain.

I don’t think “threatening the unity of Spain” is an effective argument to use against secessionists seeking independence, given that the destruction of unwanted unity is the essential point of declaring independence. To put this in perspective, Catalonia has about the same population as Switzerland, and, unlike Switzerland, actually has its own unitary language. It’s observably more of a nation than the United States.

I tend to find myself somewhat bemused by the Spanish reaction, which combines contempt for the feckless leftism of the separatists and the future prospects of an independent republic with fear that the separatists will succeed. But if all of the negative observations are true – and there is little reason to believe that they aren’t – then why not support the secessionist campaign? Why work so hard trying to stop it?

I know many, if not most, Americans would welcome Calexit or an independent New York City. Anyhow, regardless of how the Calatans vote, this is an additional indication that nothing will halt the continuing rise of nationalism around the world.

Alt-Right antecedents

As we’re preparing for the release of The Collected Columns, Vol. 2, it’s interesting to see that an observer, who commented on the conceptual development of the Alt-Right, was correct to note that the ideas were often there prior to the label being applied. Consider this 2006 column, entitled The Vanishing Conservative, which, prior to both the coining of the term and the publication of Cuckservative 10 years later, anticipates the decline of the conservative movement.

I am not a conservative. While I respect genuine conservatives and appreciate the value of conserving cultural traditions, the Christian faith, and the foundations of Western civilization, conservatives have always struck me as the political equivalent of catenaccio.

Invented by the Austrian coach of the Swiss national team, the defense-oriented system was embraced by the Italians and used in Italy for over three decades, hence the name. But over time, attack-minded strategies were developed in response, most notably Holland’s famous Total Football System, which broke down the bolted door. No manager actually implements catenaccio today and references to it are mostly ironic and situational, made, for example, when a team is protecting a lead or is overmatched and playing for a tie.

The problem with both catenaccio and conservatism is that any positive movement is largely the result of luck, not purpose. They are defensive strategies, and as any military historian will tell you; defense never beats offense, it only staves off defeat for a time. In the end, even the most intrepid defenders will weary and the gates will finally fall to the barbarians.

Although it sounds ludicrous in a time when conservatives nominally rule the airwaves, the legislative, judicial and executive branches; 2006 may well be one day viewed as a low point for the American conservative. For politics is not mathematics and it knows no transitive law. It is true that many institutions and individuals are Republican, and certainly the Republican Party is supposed to be America’s conservative party, but this does not equal conservative dominance of the political scene.

For neither the institutions nor the individuals can be relied upon to work toward conservative goals. Most of the conservative actions taken in the last 20 years can be best described as holding actions, not actions intended to lower the rising tide of central government influence or combat societal devolution.

The malaise is movement-wide. Indeed, it is debatable as to which group is in worse shape, the “conservative” politicians or the “conservative” commentariat. While the leftward drift of the administration and the Congress have not escaped notice despite the best efforts of its cheerleaders to play it down; the abandonment of principle in favor of pragmatism has caused many in the so-called conservative media to do the likewise.

Just this week, one could listen to Michael Medved playing the left’s favorite game of denouncing another commentator—me, actually—as a Nazi while watching nominal conservatives falling all over each other in the competition to be the most outraged by Ann Coulter’s precision-guided comments about the ever-grieving “Witches of East Brunswick.”

(Given that there are thousands of people who lost loved ones in the September 11 attacks who Coulter did not criticize, it is more than a little disingenuous to pretend that her criticism is somehow inappropriate or misplaced. And just what is the statute of limitations on celebrity-victim status anyhow?)

Indeed, what with Michelle Malkin pushing FDR’s internment program, Ben Shapiro, Sean Hannity and numerous others pushing Woodrow Wilson’s foreign policy, Larry Kudlow pushing Richard Nixon’s monetary policies and the editors of National Review harboring a Harry Truman-style crush on the United Nations, one has to wonder if a liberal media is redundant these days.

The word “liberal” once meant something very different than it does today. It rather looks as if the concept of a “conservative” is in the process of undergoing similar etymological evolution. Regardless, it appears the bolted door has been unlocked and is hanging open on loose hinges.

Of course, my understanding then was not what it is now. In the original column, I referred to the nonexistent “Judeo-Christian ethic” rather than “Christian faith” and to “civilizations” rather than “Western civilization”.

Ironically, conservatives left behind by the Alt-Right now often defend Judeo-Christian churchianity in the place of genuine Christian values.

Immigration is uglification

Miss “Helsinki” and the runners-up

Miss Russia

Immigration is also literal enstupidation as well as war, as per Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld. The great irony, of course, is that immigration is also, contra its dishonest defenders, a net negative for the economy.

Imperialism boosts an economy, both overall and per capita. Immigration causes it to grow overall in terms of GDP, but to decline on a per capita basis. Immigration is one of the two reasons that wages have fallen since 1973 and has contributed to the inability of  the GDP growth rate to return to the level of the 1950s and 1960s.

Self-determination in Spain

Catalonia threatens instant secession if Spain prevents an independence vote:

Spain’s Attorney General José Manuel Maza is set to examine the legality of a plan outlined by the regional government of Catalonia to activate immediate secession from Spain if the central government in Madrid stops it from holding a vote on independence – something it is planning on doing in September or October of this year.

The independence mechanism is detailed in a secret draft version of legislation being prepared by the Generalitat, the Catalan regional government, and to which EL PAÍS has had access.

The text ignore issues of enormous importance including if Catalonia would be an EU member

Speaking about the document on Spanish national broadcaster TVE, Maza described the text as “surprising” and “strange” in a country governed by “the rule of law,” but refused be drawn on legal issues related to the document, saying he had not yet had time to study the draft. He said however, that he would meet with fellow prosecutors on Monday to examine its legal status.

The document aims to work as a provisional Catalan Constitution that, according to the text, would be in place during the two-month period that the parliament would have to begin a process that would culminate in the “parliamentary republic” of Catalonia.

“If the Spanish state effectively impedes the holding of a referendum, this law will enter into effect in a complete and immediate manner when the [regional] parliament has verified such an impediment,” the draft legislation reads.

Catalonia has been on a collision course with the Popular Party (PP) government in Madrid for months now, due to its insistence on holding an official vote on its future. The central government is fiercely opposed to any such referendum, or indeed independence for the northeastern region, and already maneuvered to prevent such a plebiscite from taking place in November 2014. However, officials in the regional government still organized a vote – albeit an unofficial one the result of which was not recognized by international observers – which saw citizens vote in favor of a breakaway from the rest of Spain.

I think the huge list of secessionist movements across Europe has to do with two things. First, the EU. Since the EU is now the true governing power, the regional governments see no reason to tolerate the national governments divvying out the goodies. Catalunyans see no reason to let Madrid have the first crack at everything.

Second, NATO. Because the national governments have farmed out their militaries to the USA, they have considerably less power over the regional governments than they did prior to WWII. Put those two things together, and it means both the carrot and the stick have been removed as incentives for inter-regional unity.

Neither of these two reasons apply to the USA, but even so, if the much older unions of Great Britain and Spain are being shattered, what are the chances that the imperial US union, which was imposed by force 150 years ago, is going to survive for much longer, especially now that 80 million foreigners are culturally enriching it?

The drugs won

Louise Mensch‏@LouiseMensch
To all my dear Muslim brothers and sisters in Manchester and across the U.K., we got your back. Neither terrorists nor Nazis will divide us.

Mein Gott in Himmel…. this is why you never trust a cuck. Well, they’ve chosen their side, anyhow.

Johnny Marr‏@Johnny_Marr
Manchester stands together.

Supreme Dark Lord‏ @voxday
In what, a suicide pact? St. Breivik, pray for us.




Mayor Andy Burnham‏ @MayorofGM
 Please join us for a vigil at Albert Square at 6pm tonight.  We are grieving today, but we are strong.


A vigil. What a brilliant move! Exactly the right tactic. No one will be expecting that!

CNN‏@CNN
“Manchester will stand strong and stand together” after Ariana Grande concert attack, says Mayor Andy Burnham.

It’s so great to see Manchester’s mayor fighting Islamic terror with candles, tears, and declarations of strength and unity. Victory is certain!

I put a poll up on Twitter.

If a Muslim happens to drive a truck through the Manchester vigil tonight, what would be the correct response?

  • Laugh
  • Cry
  • Hold another vigil
  • Pray to St. Breivik

22 dead at UK concert

“A number of confirmed fatalities” reported by police at a bombing at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, UK.

How is this cultural enrichment an improvement on a traditional ethnostate, exactly?

Now they are reporting 20+ 30+ 19 22 dead.

I just did a Darkstream on the topic: Immigration Kills. Whether we will or no, the Killing Season has fallen upon the West. And the post-Christian West cannot honestly say it does not deserve it.

UPDATE: “US officials briefed on Manchester incident say UK officials suspect it was caused by suicide bomber.”


ENOCH POWELL WAS RIGHT.

Paul Joseph Watson@PrisonPlanet
U.S. officials tell NBC Manchester attack was carried out by a suicide bomber. Horrific.

Supreme Dark Lord‏ @voxday
That’s civic nationalism for you. It’s over, Paul. You’ll join the Alt-Right sooner or later. It’s inevitable.

The triumph of oligarchy

Michael Lind has an intriguing and deeply historical article on what he calls the New Class War in the American Affairs Journal.

If I am correct, the post–Cold War period has come to a close, and the industrial democracies of North America and Europe have entered a new and turbulent era. The managerial class has destroyed the social settlements that constrained it temporarily in the second half of the twentieth century and created a new kind of politics, largely insulated from popular participation and electoral democracy, based on large donors and shifting coalitions within a highly homogeneous coalition of allied Western elites. Following two decades of increasing consolidation of the power of the managerial class, the populist and nationalist wave on both sides of the Atlantic is a predictable rebellion by working-class outsiders against managerial-class insiders and their domestic allies, who are often recruited from native minorities or immigrant diasporas.

Will the result of the contemporary class war among managers and workers on both sides of the Atlantic be a revival of fascism? In some countries in Europe, populist nationalist parties have emerged from tiny fringe fascist parties, or have attracted their supporters. But talk about Weimar America or Weimar Europe is based on a misunderstanding of history, which blames fascism on populism. In reality, despite their populist trappings, most interwar fascist movements were favored by military and economic elites as a way to block social democracy and communism.

It is not the Weimar republic but the banana republic that provides the most likely negative model. In many Latin American countries, politics has traditionally pitted oligarchs versus populists. A similar pattern existed in many Southern states in the United States between the Civil War and the civil rights revolution.

When populist outsiders challenge oligarchic insiders, the oligarchs almost always win. How could they lose? They may not have numbers, but they control most of the wealth, expertise, and political influence and dominate the media, universities, and nonprofit sectors. Most populist waves break and disperse on the concrete seawalls of elite privilege.

In the American South, most populist politicians gave up or sold out. In some cases, like that of Texas governor and senator W. Lee “Pappy” O’Daniel, a country music singer, they were simply folksy fronts for corporate and upper-class interests all along. The few populists who maintained some independence were those who could finance themselves, usually by corrupt means. Louisiana governor Huey Long could battle the ruling families and the powerful corporations because he skimmed money from state employee checks and kept it in a locked “deduct box.” In Texas, anti-Klan populist governor James “Pa” Ferguson, along with his wife Miriam “Ma” Ferguson, who was elected governor after her husband was impeached on the slogan “Two Governors for the price of one,” sold pardons to the relatives of convicted criminals. As billionaires who could finance their own campaigns, Ross Perot and Donald Trump could claim, with some justification, to be free to run against the national establishment.

Those who believe in liberal democracy can look on this kind of political order only with dismay. Most of the time, coteries within a nepotistic elite run things for the benefit of their class. Now and then, a charismatic populist arises, only to fail, sell out to the establishment, or establish a personal or dynastic political-economic racket. Formal democracy may survive, but its spirit has fled. No matter who wins, the insiders or outsiders, the majority will lose.

This is broadly in line with my own expectations, but it tends to contradict anacyclosis and the Ciceronian political cycle, which sees tyranny following democracy rather than aristocracy. Of course, an elite that has learned the importance of keeping its head down may have had the wherewithal to simply skip that aspect of the cycle in favor of the amorphous vampire squid ink of the corpocracy and rule by artificial  judicial persons, each of whom can support thousands of oligarchic insiders like a legal form of Lovecraft’s Nyarlatothep.

The section on Hobson’s predictions is almost alarming in its prophetic accuracy. It’s long, but definitely read the whole thing. I’ve seen what I personally call “the pirate class” in operation myself, descending upon every promising young corporation and seeking to either drain it dry or personally profit by offering it up as a sacrifice to a larger entity.

The insanity of the imperial USA

This is a solid analysis of the lunacy of US imperialism and its intrinsic weakness:

When the leader of some imperial territory or vassal acts against U.S. interests, or even just gets strong enough that they might, U.S. assets stir up “popular movements”, “moderate rebels”, and “refugee” crises, or subvert their internal operation with NGOs, diplomats, and “grassroots” activism. Or, if that isn’t working, in case we have all forgotten 2003, the U.S. military directly invades in the name of “human rights” and “democracy”, neither of which need to ever materialize for this to work. One way or another, the leader in question ends up deposed.

The occasional genocide, mass rape, persecution of Christians and actual moderate minorities, enormous expense, damage to civilization, loss of historic sites, damage to our reputation, loss of the cultural and material produce that order would bring, destabilization of regions and populations that later need to be bailed out at our own material and demographic expense, and hostile mass-migration into the lands of our own people, which are the byproducts of this indirect form of rule, are overlooked as necessary collateral damage, unfortunate random happenstance, or, when the victim is of our own white race, even celebrated.

Why does this happen? Why are we, good people most of us, caught up in an evil empire? It’s easy enough to blame traitors and Jews and the devil, but the problem goes deeper.

The root of the problem is the principles by which the empire is administered. To start with, we don’t call it an empire, we call it “the international community”, composed not of vassals, provinces, states, territories, colonies, and protectorates, but of “sovereign” “democratic” “nations”.

In other words, we don’t even have language to talk coherently about the empire, which means it’s hard to think about it; we can’t issue orders to our “sovereign” subordinates, have no widely understood imperial authority, and can’t extract straightforward imperial tax, but still have to administer an empire. So, American foreign policy grabs the next-best mechanisms available to it: rebel groups, NGOs, subversion, “human rights” and associated leverage and inconsistencies, petrodollar shenanigans, exports of easily subverted democracy, weaponized mass-migration, and so on.

The worldview attempting to govern the empire and build coherent sub-states fails, because it doesn’t dare recognize what it is actually doing, and doesn’t dare use the “enemy” methods of effective statecraft that actually work. Instead of clear rights and duties of imperial provinces, states governed by clear chains of command and authority, and open negotiation for tribute and protection, we are forced to use destructive, clandestine methods to govern our empire, which in turn create the evilness of the empire.

Obviously, the people in charge of it are the bearers and purveyors of this destructive ideology, but they are not senselessly evil; there is a twisted logic to it all that is generated from the deep structure of modern political thought. Replacing the elite would be insufficient to fix our problems without a new imperial and political ideology. Any replacement elites, though they might go in with the best of intentions, would have the same incentives and would develop the same characteristics and ideology, if the formal structure of the thing stayed the same.

If we had a different imperial ideology, it would be possible to allow the components of the empire a much greater degree of peace and leeway to do what is right, while simultaneously exerting more efficient and fine-grained control over those aspects for which it is in our interest to do so. And we would no longer have to bear the negative by-products of a destructive and evil imperial operating system.

Don’t deceive yourself. The US is an empire that is held together by force and has been since 1865. The lack of a formal emperor doesn’t mean that it’s not an empire nor does its false veil of “democracy”; the US is observably less democratic than the Athenian and British Empires were. And the complete inability of the electorate to even acknowledge what the empire is means that it’s not even possible to discuss what it should, and should not, be doing.

Moreover, the empire is divided and schizophrenic. As the author notes, this has not escaped the attention of the other two global powers, China and Russia. There is absolutely no chance either of them, or a number of the lesser powers, are going to be inclined to follow the imperial USA’s lead, as it is inevitably leading to decline, collapse, and war. Indeed, if they are smart, they will gently assist the empire as it moves even deeper into self-destructive madness, in self-defense if nothing else.

More cause, more effect

The ever-astute Pat Buchanan knows how the trends are flowing:

You’ve written much about your worries about how demographic changes will negatively affect the nation. What do you think is the political effect that will come from this? We are currently seeing the rise of the alt right, left-wing violence…

If you see more of the cause, you will see more of the effect. How dumb can these people be. Take a look at what’s happening in Europe. You have secessionist movements in more than half a dozen countries. You’ve got nationalism across Europe, you’ve got ethno-nationalism, you’ve got pro-Russian governments rising, autocracy is more attractive to people.

People got to take a look. This isn’t because a couple of guys have been preaching something for a few years. We’ve been predicting it. It’s the events that matter. They decide things. When we ran with these issues in the 90s, you had tremendous support, but the thing people said was what we’re doing right now isn’t that bad so let’s stick with this.

If you don’t address the causes you will get the same results,  and I don’t understand people who don’t realize that.

This is precisely why I have been pointing out that the continued rise of the Alt-Right to ascendance is not merely likely, it is inevitable. Mainstream conservatism not only has no answers for the problems caused by demographic changes, it is part of the problem.

I can’t stress this enough: civic nationalism has failed in the USA. The second immigrant wave destroyed the political foundations of the state, and now the third immigrant wave has destroyed even the semblance of a nation. It’s not even remotely possible to dispute this any longer; those who continue to try will only sacrifice their own credibility and become increasingly irrelevant.

As I mentioned to a friend yesterday, my observations tend to be on the early side of the trends. If we were to compare this to the global financial crisis, we’re probably at around 2003. Right now, people can see the equivalent of the rise in housing prices, but they can’t yet grasp its link to the global financial system. In the same way, people can see the tens of millions of immigrants, their children, and grandchildren, but they can’t yet grasp their link to the dissolution of the nation-state.

But they will. They absolutely will in time.

We are the Mayans

Roosh observes that the Enlightenment is a philosophical suicide pact:

Nature does not care about education, “high quality” offspring, college degrees, equal rights, cleanliness, sustainability, philosophy, or the environment. It cares about fertility and might, and the species or race that is most fertile and most powerful will be rewarded with the bounty that the Earth provides. The people who are able to take over the planet in sheer numbers, regardless of its intelligence or manners, will come to rule the world, just like how homo sapiens came to overrun the more intelligent Neanderthals by breeding at a far superior rate. The most intelligent race on the planet can use their smarts to fortify themselves in caves as the more numerous barbarians take over the planet, even if they’re nothing more than mindless zombies.

Rational thinking from the enlightenment era, when taken to its logical end in proving that families, divinity, and traditional standards aren’t necessary, along with the notion that the individual is God, leads to the suicide of society. Rationale, in it’s beautifully cherished civilized form, leads to the end of any race who participates in it, while the stupid barbarians with IQs of 95 or lower, who follow a two-thousand year old book that implores them to conquer and chop off heads, continue to multiply and take over more lands.

We are the mistakes of nature. We are the grotesque. We have been condemned for replacement, forsaken by God for enabling over one billion abortions in just a few decades while we attempt to change the rules of nature, to declare man woman and woman man. Our goal is not one of spiritual enlightenment but of achieving the most vile feats of degeneracy.

Because of our cultural and biological sterility, I believe we have been fated for destruction.

I don’t think it is necessarily too late yet. There is no need yet to give in to the temptation of despair. But barring a sweeping Christian and cultural revival, it appears that yet another civilizational cycle has reached its peak and a return to the pagan and barbarian darkness is in process.

We are the Atlanteans. We are the Mayans. And our legacy is likely to be little more than strangely advanced archeological curiosities that will one day be discovered and puzzled over.