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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   32319 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023

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Gregory Hood illustrates why White Nationalism as it currently exists within the continental US should not be taken seriously as an intellectual movement.

This essay is a load of psuedo-marxist nonsense written from a place of deep historical ignorance that is presumably aimed at disaffected white progressives.

The obvious problem with advocating a for "a white homeland" is that the homeland already exists, it's called Europe. Of course the problem with Europe from the point of view of an American White Nationalist is that Europe is full of Europeans. Funny how that works out. The alternative of course is to move to a state like Iowa or Vermont which is >90% white but living in one of those States doesn't confer the status or "validation" that guys like Hood so desperately crave. A white guy wearing a nice button-up in Iowa is just another white-guy. It doesn't convey the separateness from the laboring class that it might in a far more stratified place like Coastal California.

I don't know much about Hood's background, or whether he would consider himself a "Berkely Marxist", but in any case his writing strikes me as representative of that genere. The choice to place the start of history at the end of World War II is such a common rhetorical trick that it has become something of a 'tell'. The reason that American Marxists might wish to avoid discussing history prior to World War II (and prior to June 22nd 1941 in particular) in anything but the broadest strokes is left as an exercise for the reader.

Hood wants his readers to believe that "World War II is the foundation of our entire civilization." because it is convenient to the narrative that he is pushing. The problem of course is that this patently and obviously stupid. Any story of World War II and the societies that waged it that doesn't at least acknowledge the aftermath of World War I is going to end up an as incoherent mess. It would be like starting the story of the Illiad with Hector already dead. Similarly, you can't meaningfully discuss the story of the US as a nation, without acknowledging it's founding conditions as a frontier colony. Or the bloody crucible of the American Civil War from which so much of our industrial might and martial ambitions arose.

Of course, Hood is not interested in meaningful discussion. What Hood (and I suspect you) are really interested in is this bit here...

Whites of all economic classes are being displaced or prevented from moving up the socioeconomic ladder. Smart, ambitious, young whites are the ones who are hit hardest, and that’s traditionally who you want as a revolutionary class. -emphasis mine.

And thus, the mask comes off and the wannabe Bolshevik under the skin-suit is fully revealed. I catch a lot of flak on this forum for pointing out that much of the so-called "Dissident Right" is really just the "Woke Left" under a different name, but it's right there in their own words for anyone with even a modicum of intellectual honesty to see.

"The 14 words" get bandied about a lot in these discussions but I find it telling that those who go on about them the most often seem the least inclined to actually build or secure anything resembling that future. It begs the question "Who's Children?". The funny thing is that in my personal life I am what the white nationalists say they want. I am teaching my kids to read and enjoy the classics. I am teaching them to, hunt, fight, cook, and work as part of a team. I go out of my way to be active in my community, to build relationships with the other folks at my church, my job, the gym, my local sports bar etc... In short, I am working to secure a future for my children. Or at least give them a sturdy foundation upon which to secure it for themselves. What are you doing?

I think the two world wars together were the end of an epoch. The way the west saw herself before, the way she thought about her artwork, her place in history, her religion, etc. changed pretty radically starting right around the world wars. In the before times, it was just simply taken for granted that the West was the civilized part of the world and that our ideas were simply better. Our religion (which was either Catholic or high Protestant) was true and to be spread, we were going to science the fuck out of pretty much everything and build utopia.

The thing is that following the two world wars, we gradually gave up on all of that. Our ideas like democracy, limited government, western philosophy, and the modern scientific method were all, one by one, discredited. We are quite literally the first culture I’m aware of that worries that our kids are too in love with their own civilization. That worries that our kids are reading too much of our own literature.

Now cards completely on the table, I’m more of a western chauvinist than anything. I look at what the west has achieved in the last 500 or so years, and I think it deserves very high praise. 500 years ago, we would be having this discussion via letters delivered by horse and buggy. And that would have been anywhere on the planet. Our philosophy and science is the bedrock on which all of the technology that allows people to argue on the internet (without being arrested), allows people to live so well that most people expect to live into their eighties and childbirth is generally safe, allows us to visit the moon and build giant space telescopes. To lose this not only means slowing progress, but possibly losing the ability to keep the progress made.

I think the two world wars together were the end of an epoch. The way the west saw herself before, the way she thought about her artwork, her place in history, her religion, etc. changed pretty radically starting right around the world wars.

I can see this in the context of western Europe (France and Britain in particular) but I don't think it holds in regards to the US. Victory in World War II isn't the end of an epoch for so as much as it is a culmination. The path we set out upon back in the mid 19th century has been shown to be the correct one.

There can be no doubt. For a glorious moment we were both the city on the hill, and the Lord's terrible swift sword.

Of course the problem with Europe from the point of view of an American White Nationalist is that Europe is full of Europeans.

This bears no resemblance to Hood’s argument. Both he and his interlocutor are celebrating the fact that Europe is full of Europeans, and their disagreement is regarding the degree of international cooperation and unity of identity/purpose that should prevail among those Europeans.

The alternative of course is to move to a state like Iowa or Vermont which is >90% white but living in one of those States doesn't confer the status or "validation" that guys like Hood so desperately crave. A white guy wearing a nice button-up in Iowa is just another white-guy. It doesn't convey the separateness from the laboring class that it might in a far more stratified place like Coastal California.

He is from New Jersey, but lives in rural West Virginia. He literally made the exact choice you’re criticizing him for not making.

I don't know much about Hood's background, or whether he would consider himself a "Berkely Marxist", but in any case his writing strikes me as representative of that genere

Hood - real name Kevin DeAnna - worked in the mainstream conservative movement for over a decade, working for conservative think-tanks in DC. That’s the milieu he came up in, and what he is now reacting against because he has seen it firsthand from the inside.

Any story of World War II and the societies that waged it that doesn't at least acknowledge the aftermath of World War I is going to end up an as incoherent mess. It would be like starting the story of the Illiad with Hector already dead. Similarly, you can't meaningfully discuss the story of the US as a nation, without acknowledging its founding conditions as a frontier colony. Or the bloody crucible of the American Civil War from which so much of our industrial might and martial ambitions arose. Of course, Hood is not interested in meaningful discussion.

Hood writes extensively about Rome, and about early American history. Just because you have no familiarity with his work doesn’t mean you get to accuse him of not knowing about or talking about these things. He does not mean that World War II is the important starting point of Western civilization; he means that it is the founding myth for the current narrative being pushed by academia and the media-political complex. The Boomer Truth Regime.

"The 14 words" get bandied about a lot in these discussions but I find it telling that those who go on about them the most often seem the least inclined to actually build or secure anything resembling that future. It begs the question "Who's Children?"

Greg Hood has, I believe, four children at last count. So, presumably those ones.

You have reduced this man to a straw-man archetype to rail against, but all of your fulminating is completely useless because it doesn’t address any of the basic facts about his actual life or work. It just makes you look ignorant and ineffectual.

You have reduced this man to a straw-man archetype to rail against

I literally know nothing about this guy beyond what writings of his I've read and what you've said here.

If anyone has reduced Gregory Hood to a straw-man, it is Gregory Hood.

  • -23

So you responded to a post, get called out for not knowing the facts, and instead of offering a new culpa you attack? I am always dubious of white nationalists but this just seems like poor argument form.

What facts? I'm not commenting on the guy's home life, I'm commenting on the guy's essay and the wider movement he is touted as representing.

  • -10

You made specific claims about the guy that if the other poster is correct are simply untrue.

You wrote an entire post about how he’s a hypocrite for not living the lifestyle you think he should be living, despite the fact that he does live that lifestyle. You accused him of being a Marxist who doesn’t care about pre-WWII history, when actually he’s a Rome obsessive, a monarchist, and a devotee of Ebola’s esoteric spiritualist tradition.

Just for once admit that you spoke overconfidently about something without doing any research at all to determine if your assumptions were correct. Can you do that? Even just this once? You made multiple easily-disprovable claims about this guy, and those claims are central to your argument.

No I wrote a post about how the specific essay linked was a load of ahistorical psuedo-Marxist nonsense, and observed that both the peddlers and consumers there of tend to be of a certain type.

  • -19

and observed that both the peddlers and consumers there of tend to be of a certain type.

But the writer in question is not of that type. Is that relevant to you at all? Does it give you any pause at all, or cause you to rethink your blanket assumption in any way?

Why do you think that matters? My closing question was not addressed to Hood, it was adressed to @cake and the wider audience.

  • -20

Because I’m not only interested in your closing question. I’m interested in the other 80% of your post that came before it. Are you going to make another attempt to defend the rest of the post, or have you now retreated the motte of defending only the part of it that didn’t make specific falsifiable claims?

The other 80% has fuck-all with who this guy is, only what he wrote. So why do you believe that your appeals to his alleged Bono Fides should change my assessment of his writing?

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and a devotee of Ebola’s esoteric spiritualist tradition

Explains why his writings make me want to vomit blood

Goddammit, now I have to leave this typo in there.

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