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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   32320 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023

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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?

Let’s review the tape and see if that’s true.

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.

That’s just one very clear example of how many claims you made about “what kind of guy Hood is.” And, as previously noted, it’s a totally bogus claim, because Hood did in fact move to a very white and very low-status state. Do you want me to pull all of the other claims and go over each of them in detail? And point out how they’re load-bearing elements of the argument you’re making? Or do you just want to take the L on this one?

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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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