So we got to know Ilana Mercer a bit in part 1. Now, the paleolibertarian wordsmith takes full command of her keyboard and her craft, and takes no prisoners in this explosive followup. Simply put, she ain’t skeered.
Even though I’m a recovering mainstream journalist by trade, I’ve only been at dissident blogging a few months shy of four years. And here’s my big takeaway: there is no point to alternative political writing and cultural criticism unless you’re willing to ruffle tail feathers and call a spade a spade. Anything less than connecting the dots, calling out your conclusions (no matter how socially unacceptable), and vehemently smashing sacred cows is just rhetorical masturbation.
Forgive my colorful language, but really, time is of the essence, and if truth is not your game but caring about fashionable opinion is, well, I’d personally rather watch paint dry. THAT is why I admire Ilana Mercer. She writes with bang, not a whimper. She’s my kinda lady.
“A very prolific commentator …
[Mercer] is to libertarianism what Ann Coulter is to conservatism.”
— Walter Block, Austrian School economist
DISSIDENT MAMA: How did you become acquainted with historian and historian Clyde Wilson? How does a woman like you become sympathetic to the Southern tradition, calling the Radical Republicans, the Antifa of 1865?
ILANA MERCER: First, to correct myself: The Radical Republicans were far more vicious and barbaric than are the Antifa punks and thugs. After all, these Republicans supervised the genocide of some 60,000 Plains Indians from 1865 to 1890, led by General Sherman himself.
Clyde and I have a natural affinity. I believe we share a worldview of how decency and justice ought to look. Clyde is a genuine Southern gentleman, one of the last. I had always loved his work for a very particular reason: In addition to an analytical mind, Professor Wilson, who certainly has The Fire, doesn’t write dry, desiccated history; he tells history like a Southerner, he brings it to life in the writing tradition of Thomas Babington Macaulay.
The first time I had reached out to Clyde was to fact-check the 2004 column, “Hollywood’s Hateful Hooey About The South.” Sadly, we’ve never met. But we became firm friends when he was among the very few in our fractious ideological tribe to shoot back admiring and encouraging nods to my weekly column, now in its twentieth year. He also reviewed my books. He and Jack Kerwick.
Clyde, moreover, would always zero-in analytically on how this writer’s work differed from the standard libertarian line, from legal anarchism to trade deficits, to immigration, to certain logical issues (“from the fact that many libertarians believe that the state has no legitimacy, many arrive at the position that anything the state does is illegitimate”), to a form of determinism, whereby the state is blamed for the sins of man.
As to a “woman like me” and the Southern tradition: Justice is a theme in my work. My father, an old-school liberal, was a great influence vis-à-vis justice. I recall his fist coming down on the table after Waco: “They, the US federal government, murdered those people,” he bellowed, enraged. A man like dad, who abhors slavery, also abhorred Lincoln equally for his biblical blood lust.
“Gone With The Wind” I read at age 12, in Hebrew, the language in which I was educated. As a reclusive intellectual, I’m drawn to an earlier time when women like me would feel at home: when men behaved like gentlemen, and intelligent, cultured women were cherished, treated like ladies, not as rivals and enemies. I mean, even Dr. Johnson (no friend of the South’s secession), was deferential to the few heavy-hitter women of his day. I guess I just don’t much enjoy the trashy Yankee manners and mannerisms that have come to define America.
As Ashley Wilkes, Margaret Mitchell’s fictional character, put it, there was a certain symmetry and grace to life in the South. By liking that genteel aspect of the South, I do not mean to detract from the suffering of slaves. Again, I’d just be happier in, say, a 19th Century salon, with individual liberty for all and the accoutrements of modern life. LOL.
I would also call myself a Southern agrarian on many issues of philosophy.
DM: You live in Washington State. Are you near the “Soweto-style” city of Seattle? And how are things out there politically?
IM: We are in the suburbs, a small town, which is, alas, getting bigger by the day. Progress, right? (Wrong!) But I am fully aware the barbarians could advance on us, thanks to the central planners and the technocrats who run and set the libertine, lawless tone for the place. We’ll be ready. Those who are conscious ought to live with the realization that the police might not pitch up. We also know that should we defend ourselves in the USA today, we risk being destroyed by the law, by which I mean not the U.S. Constitution. That thing has long since been buried under the rubble of legislation and statute.
Long since underway is a drive to invert and eviscerate bourgeoisie morality. The suburbs are an instantiation of that way of life. Coming to all our neighborhoods is what Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, initiated when he sued “Huntington Beach, a coastal city in Orange County, for failing to comply with the state’s housing-supply law.” The code Kamala and Joe use is “housing for all incomes.” In your suburbs, not theirs.
DM: It seems to me the biggest character assassins of the right are supposed “conservatives,” who are subversives using the “logic” of the left and actively working against populist/conservative/paleolibertarian/trad-Southern coalition building. What say you?
IM: This has been covered. A lot of what you say has become cool, somewhat hollow, phraseology in our largely flaccid, self-cannibalizing, philosophical camp. I say this as someone who has been anatomizing, analyzing and eviscerating the prevailing neoconservative orthodoxy since 1999, and whose newspaper syndication was terminated when I came out, in Sept 19, 2002, against Bush’s war.
Since then, this column has burned as hot as a Babylonian kiln against every tenet of what friend and commentator Jack Kerwick calls the “Big Con.” Since the work is analytical, there are nooks and crannies of conservatism that I’ve exposed. Most recently it has been this camp’s congenital inability to cop to the dangerously anti-white tenor of American politics.
You ask nobly about “bridge building, strengthening alliances, creating parallel institutions, boycotting.” Well, here’s my own reality:
I’ve written a paleolibertarian weekly column for two decades, in which firmly held first principles and a reality based analysis have combined to yield a predictive bit of writing (fun, too) on the most controversial and pressing issues of the day. From race to trade deficits to anarchism to immigration to populism, as a valued reader put it, “We’ve learned to trust you.”
The latest major effort is deconstruction of the racism construct, real analytical arrows in our camp’s quiver, against the leftist proponents of racial subjugation.
• ‘Systemic Racism’ Or Systemic Rubbish?
• Was The Cop’s Knee On George Floyd’s Neck ‘Racism’? No!
• Ethnocidal ‘Critical Race Theory’ Is Upon Us Like White On Rice
• Racist Theory Robs And Rapes Reality
Yet, my most radical of tracts have found homes with outfits which the paleo community routinely disparages as “Straussian” and “Big Con”; but not with a single publication claiming my own ideological affiliation. For these publications, excommunication, and the intellectual ossification that comes with it, are de rigueur.
The intellectual oligarchs of the Old Right think that their publications create stars. Not so. The paleo publications must either reflect the reality of the writing landscape as it is, or, if they are not, they are creating a parallel universe for themselves.
My weekly column is not published and has never been regularly featured by a single paleo publication. Oh, they publish the usual syndicated material appearing in hundreds of other “Big Con” newspapers in the country, but not my high-minded, labor-intense, woefully underexposed, original column.
Some of the people the paleos disparage as “Big Con,” or “Straussians” – they, however, publish this radical column quite regularly. In doing so, this odd amalgam, among whom are very fine people (such as my editors), are publishing one of the most potent antidotes to America’s most pernicious shibboleths.
So, who, from my vantage point, shows more philosophical leadership and intellectual honesty? That was rhetorical.
Oh, occasionally a column of mine has been posted on this or the other paleo site, but that’s not the same as letting the strongest fire power we have reach our young readers week in and week out. They don’t. The paleo community huddles in atrophying intellectual attics, praising itself, hiring mediocrities that hog the space with their own meandering milquetoast output, as they disparage the Big Con using hackneyed, recycled argument.
The biggest enemies of the paleo faction are its own, not Big Con, which is defeatable with potent epistolary fire power.
You asked about cancel culture and the SPLC. Yes, the Southern Poverty Law Center has me and others in our camp on its hit list and has forced at least one D.C. outfit to expunge my column from its pixelated pages. But at least the Daily Caller had deigned to feature my column regularly before they ran scared from the SPLC. Our side, the paleo community, has not needed the SPLC to prompt it into a fright and flight response with respect to my work. It has long-since de facto canceled me. What “leadership”! Marginalizing leaders in your movement!
DM: Would you be a proponent of repealing the 19th Amendment, and are Karens (Yankee women) the problem like always?
IM: I’m on record saying, in 2005, that I’d give up my vote if all women were denied the vote. A fact recollected here in 2012:
“As always, women voted with their wombs, although married sisters were less wild for big daddy O. (Oh, how we suffer for the female suffrage! I once vowed to “give up my vote if that would guarantee that all women were denied the vote.”)
“To the pox of the 19th Amendment – it granted women the vote – add the 26th Amendment. Smuggled into the Constitution by statute, it artificially swelled the ranks of Democratic voters by millions of 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds. While they don’t work for a living, the vote grants youngsters a claim on the livelihood of those who do.”
DM: Any parting advice for us “newbies”?
IM: Use your given, real name, young lady.* Go by your name. I believe you are named for a wonderful Hebrew matriarch. I say this for obvious reasons: You are so much more than a mother. (And kids are overrated. Humor alert.)
In addition to Mercer’s weekly columns and “Barely a Blog” essays at found at her website, she’s also the author of three books: “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America From Post-Apartheid South Africa,” “The Trump Revolution: The Donald’s Creative Destruction Deconstructed,” and “”Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Culture.” You can follow Mercer on Gab, YouTube, Twitter and LinkedIn, but not on Facebook, since the keepers of acceptable opinion have banned her, which means if you want to pursue truth, you should definitely read what Mercer has to say. Censors be damned!
*Postscript: Not many of you know, but I got doxxed earlier this year by an "Internet hate expert" and then was subsequently Twitter stalked by a few of her jack-booted evangeleftist bullies, who think it's a Christian virtue to try to ruin people's lives through "cancel culture." It was pretty rough at first, having idiots who for some reason have all the power act morally superior to you and get their rocks off threatening everything you hold dear. Honestly, it died down fairly quickly, probably because I'm such small potatoes. (If I ever get in the SPLC's cross hairs like Mercer, I suppose I'll know I've "made it" at that point.) But with the expert and loving advice of a few of my wise mentors and caring compatriots, I decided not to publish the blog post I wrote about the dox, even though that was, of course, my first impulse. In fact, I didn't acknowledge or react to it at all (publicly), and instead embraced the out, quietly added my real name to my DM "about" page, and haven't looked back since. Sit and spin, haters! Yours truly, Rebecca Dillingham, a.k.a. Dissident Mama
Comments
My goodness, she is utterly brilliant and fearless! This is the sort of voice the right needs.
Yes, she has been kickin’ butt and taking names for more than 20 years, sure, changing and growing, but never bending on principles and, if anything, leaning even more to the right with every passing article and year. It doesn’t seem to happen that way for so many writers and thinkers, which makes her content even more incredible … and credible! Here’s an example of what you describe as fearless – truly a story that few would dare to write, which is why it’s one of my recent favorite essays of hers.
“Americans importing black babies”
http://barelyablog.com/americans-importing-black-babies/
Wow. She carries her brass ovaries around in a wheel barrow.
What an inspiration you ladies are!
Pauly G
Aw shucks!! Thank you, Pauly G. https://media3.giphy.com/media/5OD5IsCZT8Cys/giphy.gif
As POTUS said just a day or two ago,the Democrats to some extent,and in some segments,have gone beyond Socialism to actual Communism. At heart,Communism is about- “levelling”,as in the advocacy for, “homes for all incomes”. In 17 th Century England,amongst Cromwell’s varied supporters and soldiers,was a group that called itself,”Levellers”. They were – early Communists. [They were suppressed by Cromwell,who came from a prosperous,property-owning,Upper-Middle-Class background.]. Your critical and pessimistic comments about US Conservatives are-in my view-” SPOT ON “! A propos is this clever observation on the Web from one US commentator: “Thousands of “Republicans” are actually Democrats,but how many “Democrats” are actually Republicans? Answer: NONE !!”. As I’ve said to you before,your site is surpassing excellent and close to being “one-of-a-kind”,and to encourage you in your good works I shall once again send to you,via PayPal,a modest monetary contribution. I hope you can keep going – ” though the whole World seems to hate you ” .
The Cromwell info is interesting. Huh, so the “Puritan Moses,” who I wrote about here, suppressed his radical supporters once they got too uppity and threatened his fiefdom. Go figure – typical progressive.
“Thousands of “Republicans are actually Democrats, but how many Democrats are actually Republicans? Answer: NONE!” I hadn’t heard that commentary, but indeed, that so perfectly encapsulates the two-party ruse and the “big con” as it were.
Thanks so much for your support, both in the form of kind comment and generous donation. I surely do appreciate it. Every dirty Lincoln penny counts. Hey, I’ll even take Mandela coins! 😉
She carries her brass ovaries around in a wheel barrow.
DM (Miss Rebecca – pleased to know your complete handle!):
Miss Ilana is among my weekly Must-Reads, and I miss her when she’s not at the usual haunts (e.g. WND, Reckonin’, Unz, etc.) due to taking a well earned break or what have you. Indeed, as noted, she pulls no punches! I’m reminded of a recent sermon series wherein the preacher made a point of differentiating mere nice-ness from kindness. Lord knows, we’re dying from the former, and desperately need the latter to save us!
Thanks to both you ladies for doing your part!
As ever, gratitude and blessings,
David Smith
PS – It seems only fair to give you my name in turn!
David a.k.a. DD,
Nice to meet you for realz! I’m so glad you enjoyed the interview. Thanks a million for reading, commenting, and offering up your words of encouragement (as always). Stay kind, never nice, my friend.
Great interview. I’m a huge Mercer fan.
Thank you for reading and commenting.
A very good interview overall.
From my perspective, the most interesting response comes from the question: “It seems to me the biggest character assassins of the right are supposed “conservatives,” who are subversives using the ‘logic’ of the left and actively working against populist/conservative/paleolibertarian/trad-Southern coalition building. What say you?”
“The paleo community huddles in atrophying intellectual attics, praising itself, hiring mediocrities that hog the space with their own meandering milquetoast output, as they disparage the Big Con using hackneyed, recycled argument. The biggest enemies of the paleo faction are its own, not Big Con, which is defeatable with potent epistolary fire power.”
That whole section was great, but I felt the above quote deeply.
To state my own background, I would put myself in the paleolibertarian camp and I identify much with LewRockwell.com and Mises Institute types. From my viewpoint, paleolibertarians and paleoconservatives seem to have similar problems. Our general pessimism has led us to being politically inert, and our perfectionism has made genuine coalition building very difficult. This usually means that we tend to start our own blogs and our own podcasts rather than coming alongside already established institutions. Both groups tend to leave established institutions rather than fight to preserve it, and then when we leave, we are also very poor marketers of our own ideas (for example, consider the overall quality of the Cotto-Gottfried podcast among the paleoconservatives and consider the current plight of Bastion Magazine).
In terms of the output of both groups, we convey that we are much more concerned about the truthfulness of our claims rather than building our institutions and convincing the public (this is one of my concerns with the Abbeville Institute for example). I think it is a sign of weakness on our part that the writings from both of our groups are not picked up by other publications. If Daniel McCarthy can write for the New York Times and Caitlyn Johnstone can write for the LRC blog, then I don’t think we can blame Big Con for the problems with the paleo camps. We are ultimately responsible for our lack of success
Overall, this is a very different attitude than my friends and family on the Left tend to have. While it is true that the Left currently has institutional power, it has not always been the case. While it is true that the communist Left can be so ideologically minded that they eat themselves, it’s been my experience (as a man who came from the Left and who has family members on the Left) that there is much more optimism on their end. When leftists quote MLK who said “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice”, they genuinely believe that (with their interpretation of justice of course) and it is part of the reason why they continued to push for their vision of society. This was the optimism that I had when I left the Left during my college days, but since I’ve come to the paleo world, I’ve seen a much more defeatist and escapist attitude.
Like you, I would love to see broader coalitions with those who identify themselves the Right. Moreover, with our current president, we have been blessed to have a temporary stay from a full dose of absurd leftism. My concern is that our internal problems have made us reactionary and shortsided. We ought to love, to promote, and to defend our institutions and its leaders.
Just my $0.02.
Excellent interview. But you know what R. L. Dabney had to say about Miss Mercer’s position on giving up the “sacred franchise,” right?:
What then, in the next place, will be the effect of this fundamental change when it shall be established? The obvious answer is that it will destroy Christianity and civilization in America. Some who see the mischievousness of the movement express the hope that it will, even if nominally successful, be kept within narrow limits by the very force of its own absurdity. They “reckon without their host.” There is a Satanic ingenuity in these Radical measures which secures the infection of the reluctant dissentients as surely as of the hot advocates.
The women now sensible and modest who heartily deprecate the whole folly, will be dragged into the vortex, with the assent of their now indignant husbands. The instruments of this deplorable result will be the (so-called) conservative candidates for office. They will effect it by this plea, that ignorant, impudent, Radical women will vote, and vote wrong; whence it becomes a necessity for the modest and virtuous women, for their country’s sake, to sacrifice their repugnance and counterpoise these mischievous votes in the spirit of disinterested self-sacrifice.
Now a woman can never resist an appeal to the principle of generous devotion; her glory is to crucify herself in the cause of duty and of zeal. This plea will be successful. But when the virtuous have once tasted the dangerous intoxication of political excitement and of power, even they will be absorbed; they will learn to do con amore what was first done as a painful duty, and all the baleful influences of political life will be diffused throughout the sex. -R.L. Dabney, Women’s Rights Women
I remember Ilana Mercer from way back in my old VFR (View from the Right) days. She was the subject of a number of Mr. Auster’s articles as I recall, but I don’t remember that she ever “entered the fray” in that venue when the ‘hot topic’ of eliminating the female franchise occasionally got ginned up amongst the regulars at the site.
I always have a little private chuckle when I argue for repeal of the 19th Amendment (and elimination of the kiddie vote – what Dabney called the “baby vote” – t’boot) and almost invariably – when I’m not being (openly) lambasted for being a misogynist pig, president and founding member of the “He-Man Woman Hater’s Club” and a piece of human trash my mother should rather have aborted in “the cause of generous devotion, and of duty and zeal” – the staunch defenders of the female franchise (male and female alike) answer with some form or other of Dabney’s very prediction in the above quotation, essentially arguing, in Dr. Dabney’s words, that since ignorant, impudent, radical women do in fact vote, and vote wrong or “with their wombs” as Mercer puts it, this makes it an absolute necessity for modest and virtuous women, for their country’s sake, to give up their principles and “counterpoise” the mischievous votes of ‘the sisterhood’.
If I’ve heard that argument once I’ve heard it a million times in one form or another. It takes on different forms and various shades of color depending on who is making it, but it’s the same old tired argument that Dabney destroyed before it ever became a popular refrain.
But anyway, I don’t want to be too hard on anyone. I did like the interview and most of what Miss Mercer said in answer to your questions. She’s also right, IMHO, that you ought to write under your own given name. Lots of us have a story to tell like yours of being “doxxed” and having the hyenas come after us. Your last guest on the podcast said something to the effect that there aren’t any real unreconstructed persons out there. Well, alls I can say to that is that it is what we like for everyone to think. 🙂
Dabney nails it … as always. And we can blame women. Lots and lots and lots of womb-voting women. But ultimately, women would have never been given the vote if altruistic men had just told the suffragettes to go make a sandwich. Same goes with feminism: if manly men had not put up with it (wives working outside the home, putting off motherhood, maybe having no babies at all, letting their wives go by hyphenated last names or keep their maiden names altogether, dating and/or marrying baggage-filled women of the slut culture, letting chivalry go by the wayside, encouraging their daughters to go to college for 10+ years earning multiple degrees instead of having babies, telling them they can “have it all,” etc.), we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in now. So in addition to repealing 19A, I would also recommend disenfranchising soyboys and any man who calls himself a feminist – that is, if I really thought voting mattered in our retarded 2-party system.
As far as my real name goes, recently bought dissidentmama.com (instead of .net), so I think I’m going to be keeping the DM brand for a while, especially since I’ve spent nearly 4 years building it, but also not shying away from the “real me.” 🙂
Thanks for sharing your always-insightful thoughts!
Yeah. I don’t blame women in particular; your question to Miss Mercer and her answer had to do with repeal of the 19th Amendment and where she stood on the issue, so that is what I was speaking to in the above comment. I blame northern ideologues – fanatical Yankee Abolitionists, just to be clear. Anyone who believes emancipation of black Africans in the old South was the end goal of Yankee fanatics (men, women and children alike) when they made war on the South and the Southern system, is either a lunatic ideologue himself/herself, and/or an historically illiterate buffoon who shouldn’t be allowed within a country mile of a voting booth.
Notwithstanding all of the above, we’re in perfect agreement that the 2-party system is retarded, and participating in it (voting) with the belief and expectation that your vote really matters is, well, not very smart. The system isn’t just retarded though, it’s evil. But that’s another subject for another day.
You and I, we are kindred spirits.
https://media0.giphy.com/media/XGOKTEoHSgduavRvVc/giphy.gif
I think I enjoyed this comment more than your interview, and I liked the interview quite a bit.
Now the propaganda targeted at white women is to select black men as sexual partners. I suppose this is in part an attempt to keep white women from ‘going conservative’ once they eventually marry. Maybe it is also an attempt to rein in black male violent crime (by marrying them off to Karens)
Of course it is also meant to reinforce the egalitarian mantra that we are all equal (except the scum who disagree that we are equal of course) and mass immigration from the third world is no different than longstanding American families having children.
Women voting was a bad idea, but so was men without property voting. I say burn the tax code, and if we must have a tax, bring back the poll tax and make it high so that most people can’t afford it. This would certainly mean that I could no longer vote, but I would gladly make that ‘sacrifice’! Lol
https://media0.giphy.com/media/S8IPVUEMj1JhCHQj8l/giphy-downsized-medium.gif
“The obvious answer is that it will destroy Christianity and civilization in America”
Christianity won’t be destroyed, but it may have to weather another dark age. The United States of America will most certainly break up into independent political bodies at some point, but I regard this as a good and not a bad thing.
“Now a woman can never resist an appeal to the principle of generous devotion”
Dabney must have never driven in rush hour traffic in Houston. I’ve found that women are the least generous drivers, because they are least likely to let you in front of them even if it’s your turn in the ‘zipper’ pattern on an on-ramp. They are also the most likely to be on their phones while driving.
Well, when Jesus told Peter that “upon this rock I will build My Church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it,” He was, of course, referencing the Church, not Christianity per se, so I’m not so sure that “the Church” will prevail here, mainly because America really has no cohesive “church” to speak of. Even within American Orthodoxy, there are multiple jurisdictions and much friction due to leftist subversion and hierarchs kowtowing to the govt for all sorts of insidious reasons. So to me, there is no guarantee that hell shall not prevail in the US, while the Church, the one built upon the rock, will most certainly survive elsewhere. Now, if there’s some type of collapse or secession, that’s a different story. Once the faithful remnant can separate from the anti-Christs running the empire, perhaps then. But of course, God only knows.
A very good article all around.
For me, the most interesting portion of the article involves her answer to your question: “DM: It seems to me the biggest character assassins of the right are supposed “conservatives,” who are subversives using the “logic” of the left and actively working against populist/conservative/paleolibertarian/trad-Southern coalition building. What say you?”
Her entire answer to this is fascinating, but the following response resonates with me:
“The paleo community huddles in atrophying intellectual attics, praising itself, hiring mediocrities that hog the space with their own meandering milquetoast output, as they disparage the Big Con using hackneyed, recycled argument. The biggest enemies of the paleo faction are its own, not Big Con, which is defeatable with potent epistolary fire power.”
In many ways, I agree with her sentiment here. In terms of my background, I would identify as a paleolibertarian (even though I have many paleoconservative friends), and I’m heavily influenced by LewRockwell.com and the Mises Institute. I would say that both of our groups have similar problems. First, I would say that both of our groups have become so pessimistic about the future that we have become politically inert. In many ways, we have become reactionary and we do not articulate our long-term vision very well. Second, I would say that both of our groups have struggled to define what is most important to us, and that often means that it is very hard to promote coalition building. Or said in another way, we are much more prone to start our own blogs and podcasts individually rather than attempt to tie ourselves to pre-existing institutions where common ground may exist.
I think that the combined effect of these processes has made our own institutions insular. Our political strength is strongly connected to the strength of our institutions and to the leaders that we promote. I think that an honest assessment of our groups would show that we often labor in relative obscurity not solely because of the ostracization of Big Con. At times, we are often poor promoters of our ideas (for example, consider the Cotto-Gottfried podcast or the Abbeville Institute podcast) and at other times, we don’t build off of momentum (for example, consider the current state of Bastion Magazine). However, there is some hope for our institutions based upon recent attempts at marketing and exposure (such as Abbeville Institute’s renewed effort in YouTube promotion and the Mises Institute’s marketing towards college aged students). Ultimately, we must bear the responsibility for the current state of our institutions and our imprint upon the political landscape. Like Ilana, I don’t blame Big Con for our lack of success because the reality is that I first heard about these movements from them. Or said in another way, if Daniel McCarthy can be a contributor to the New York Times and if Caitlyn Johnstone can be a contributor to the LRC blog, then I don’t think that we can lay the blame of our current coalition building primarily at the feet of Big Con.
From my experience, these attitudes do not pervade the Left as much as the Right. Many of my friends and family who are on the Left have a much more optimistic view regarding the success of their movement, and I think the major reason for this is because of the health of their own institutions. Many of us complain about the success of leftism within corporate media, big business, and academia, but this didn’t occur overnight. As you know, cultural ascendency has taken many years to achieve, and it has come from a strong support base. When leftists quote MLK in saying that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice”, that’s a core conviction and it is part of their motivation for why they continue to fight (for their own warped definition of justice). I admire the Left’s fighting spirit, but since I left the Left and joined the paleo camps, I’ve noticed a much more defeatist and escapist attitude among us.
For that reason, I’m very happy to see men and women on the Right refuse to back down from the cultural degradation that we are seeing. I remain very optimistic about the future of our coalition building, but I’m hoping that we become more forthright in supporting, in loving, and defending our own (since no one else will). I’m very saddened to hear that Ilana Mercer feels de-facto cancelled by her own community, but I’m sure that others share her feelings (possibly yourself).
Just my $0.02.
That is the most articulate and intelligent “response” I have read on the internet in a very long time. You have given me much to think about.
Gabriel,
Thanks for your insights. Lots to take in here, and like William, I may have to marinate on some of it. But I will say this: personally, I do not feel cancelled by my “community,” but then again, I don’t really have a community per se. I have my longtime mentors Drs. Clyde Wilson, Don Livingston, and Boyd Cathey, who have been nothing but gracious, patient, and supportive of my efforts, even when I was a newbie. They share wisdom and teach me when I seek their advice, but they also listen to my perspective, which is often a little different from theirs (being of a different generation, being a mom with kids still at home, being a former leftist, etc.) I guess they would be my Southron compatriots, among others like my friends Paul C. Graham and Carolina Contrarian. But I would also call a Southron ally James Edwards, who some folks may consider off-limits due his controversial radio show and guilt by association, so to me, that may be part of the problem – holding some people at arm’s length or even throwing them under the bus because people somehow still think that’s going to save them from the gulag. Yeah, it won’t.
I also roll in a lot of different circles because of my political and spiritual evolution over the years – right-leaning libertarianism, Orthodox, trad Catholic,conservative Protestant, monarchist, paleocon, normie con, Christian homeschool to name a few. Because I’m such a square peg, perhaps people may find me difficult to categorize or maybe they think my writing is too “edgy,” so they may not reach out or respond when I try to build a bridge. Not sure. But I don’t think that’s a cancel in my case; rather, it’s a just the state of the world.
Unfortunately, people still feel they must be careful, when I’m like you: hoping and praying that “we become more forthright in supporting, in loving, and defending our own.” But I’m not exactly sure who is “our own.” In fact, “our ideas” are often too diverse to actually formulate a cohesive shared vision.
For instance, it is my contention that if you are a Lincolnian, there’s really no way to form an alliance even on a single issue. In other words, if you don’t get that 1861-1865 is why we’re at where we are today – a dystopian hellscape – how can we work together on abortion, for example. To me, it’s a matter up to the States, to a normie pro-lifer, they want to just get one more “conservative” on SCOTUS and that’ll do the trick to overturn Roe. Silliness. So, if you love centralization, then you are a leftist, in my book. I suppose the exception would be secession; if you’re a secessionist for real but left-leaning in some way, I could work with you because we’d want to leave each other alone when all was said and done.
Now, all this certainly doesn’t mean that I agree 100% with anyone I quote or read or interview or choose to “do business” with. But there are considerations that we people of the right have that progressives don’t. They are followers and pretty much do what they’re told; we don’t. Even when their intersectional litmus tests change by the hour, they conform, at least eventually. We don’t.
Also, who will be the ones to define our dogma? Honestly, I think America is too new and changed too fast and was based upon way too many man-centered Enlightenment ideas and too few ancient, faith-based virtues to pull off anything resembling a shared vision. Centralizing put an end to those local-canton-type empires of liberty that Jefferson talked about. Couple that with pluralism, diversity and inclusion, sectionalism, and mass immigration, and it’s no wonder we can’t agree upon a platform or enough shared principles to move the ball forward.
I would be one of those pessimists you’re talking about. I truly believe that the only thing that will make things better is for the whole “great experiment” to collapse, which will force people to build coalitions with like-minded people and then to build something worthy from the ashes. Survival is a great motivating factor to wake people from their complacent and/or virtue-signaling slumber.
Lastly, sure, I will admit that there have been a few times when I wonder “Why the heck won’t that guy invite me on his podcast?” or “Why is it like pulling teeth to get people to share my stuff?” or “How come those folks haven’t cross-published my articles before or in a long time?” or “When the hell is this thing going to make me some decent money?” But then I, a person who does have some reach and at least a tiny platform, realize that you just can’t control other people. Shocker, huh? And then I remind myself how thankful I am to anyone who ever lends me a hand, including the Abbeville Institute, My Corner by Boyd Cathey, Reckonin’, Shotwell Publishing, the Political Cesspool, Christendom Curriculum, Actual Anarchy, Identity Dixie, Lew Rockwell, Vox Day, Dixie Heritage, and Ilana Mercer to name a few, as well as a few super-cool, smaller-potatoes individual content creators, and my generous patrons and small but loyal readers … not too shabby for just four years of blogging and hobnobbing with the cool cats. So, I am blessed, but I still do wish Tom Woods would have me on for an interview. 😉 Ask me again in 21 years, after I have as much experience as Ilana or any of the other big dogs, and I may be singing a different tune. But hopefully, I won’t even be doing political writing then; I’ll just be living in my localist utopia and blogging about my grandchildren.
Sorry for the rambling thoughts. Perhaps she will chime in on your comment, too!
Look forward to meeting you in Charleston!
“The Radical Republicans were far more vicious and barbaric than are the Antifa punks and thugs. After all, these Republicans supervised the genocide of some 60,000 Plains Indians from 1865 to 1890, led by General Sherman himself.”
Give them a little time and political power. See what happens then. I’m no fan of the Radical Republicans or Lincoln, but if these Antifa punks were in charge, there’d be millions of bodies left in their wake.
And let’s not forget the 1 million killed during the WBTS, and we’re talking nearly 3% of the then 36 million US population, if my math is correct. So, 3% of our current population of 330 million is almost 10 million folks. I totally think the left could pull this off.
It certainly wouldn’t keep them from sleeping at night. Most of them seem like little entitled fairy boys LARPing as revolutionaries, but I’m sure there are some actual vicious would-be dictators among their ranks willing to end any number of lives to bring about USSA.