#granted the factions in that country are all more or less on the right spectrum anyway which we had just discussed before

[juvoci]

9 January 2021

This blog can be read in its entirety on JUVOCI.com.

9 January 2021.

11:03 AM.

Okay, so in the last blog post, for 8 January 2021, I left alot of cliff-hangers.

Firstly, I didn’t quite finish the Thought Leader idea.

Secondly, I didn’t quite finish the Philosophy is Dumb and What is Philosophy ideas.

But before we get into either of those, I’m going to go on another tangent (as I do), because I just commented on someone’s Reddit post, and it seems relevant, so I want to post my response here. I’ll post the screenshots below.

This was the Reddit post. It was posted in the CircleJerk sub-Reddit. Obviously, it’s a joke. A sarcastic joke. But I took this sarcastic joke as an opportunity to express a real solution to some of our problems. Here it is:

Stop taking EXTREME and ABSOLUTE positions on COMPLEX topics.

“All Cops Are Bastards”? Obviously, this is not true. There are many police officers out there who simply want to use their elevated power to protect their communities from agents of chaos who wish harm upon innocent people. These cops do indeed exist.

Not all cops are bastards. Some of them? Yes. Most of them? Maybe, I don’t know. All of them? Certainly not.

Taking extreme and absolute positions on complex topics is a recipe for disaster. It’s a childish and immature and lazy way to approach the world. We can do better than this.

And I just want to mention, because I can see the trolls licking their lips. Yes, the question was a sarcastic joke, and my answer was a serious statement. I am fully aware. 🤡

11:29 AM.

Okay, now, let’s get back to the Thought Leader stuff, because that’s important.

The importance of Thought Leaders, and what it takes to be one.

Let’s define Thought Leader again, but in a different way this time. A Thought Leader could be compared to an “Influencer”. When Serena Williams or LeBron James or Coryn Rivera or Steph Curry or Lindsey Vonn or Michael Phelps endorse a brand such as Nike or Adidas or Puma or whatever... these brands gain an elevated reputation. “LeBron James wears Nike sneakers? Damn! Nike must make good sneakers!” And so Nike sales increase.

Jordan Peterson, for better or worse (I’m still undecided about him, though I do think that he’s genuinely a good guy and has a good heart, despite his viewpoints), is a Thought Leader. When Jordan Peterson says Marxism is on the rise, this is dangerous, we need to take this seriously and rebel against it... literally thousands of people will begin distributing his message online and IRL (in real life). Jordan Peterson quite literally has a microphone which broadcasts directly into thousands of people’s ears. (Well, not literally literally, but you get my point.) This is, in some sense, the definition of a Thought Leader.

In some sense, I’m already a Thought Leader. Many of the ideas I express are unusual, esoteric, not mainstream. But my reach isn’t very big, so I’m not leading many people.

11:45 AM.

So now that we’ve defined Thought Leader (again), let’s discuss why I want to be a Thought Leader (or at least grow as a Thought Leader), and what train of thought I actually want to lead.

In the last blog post, I mentioned Peace and Love. This is foundational. This is where it begins. If we don’t exercise Peace and Love, we cannot even really engage in conversation. The only reason I can honestly and freely engage in conversation with you is because we are at peace. If we were at war, this would not be possible.

Now, of course, just like everything else, Peace is a spectrum. At the high end of the Peace Spectrum, even arguments cease to exist. Individual beings simply express themselves and everyone who is listening simply listens. In such a circumstance, this being is expressing their truth, and everyone is listening with open minds, open hearts, without judgment. This is sort of... an idealistic scenario.

But this “idealistic scenario” isn’t necessarily what we need right now, because humanity does indeed have some complex problems which need solving, and simply opening our hearts to everyone’s subjective truth isn’t necessarily going to solve those problems. Instead, we must share our ideas, experiment with those ideas, find the best ideas, and act on them. In other words, we must share our ideas and then debate those ideas, in order to find the best idea.

Problems arise when ego interferes. People become attached to their ideas. They want credit. They want to be the savior of the world. People become so attached to their ideas that they ignore better ideas. This is why I like the Philosophy of Infinity and the practice of Infinite Openmindedness.

Recognize that your pet idea is just one idea in a sea of infinite ideas, and it isn’t necessarily the best idea. Recognize that you might be wrong. Recognize that other people have lived complex lives, likely (more or less) as complex as yours; and other people are capable of intelligence, just like you; and other people are smart, sometimes smarter than you. Recognize that a Competitive and Free Market of Ideas will create an environment where the best ideas rise to the top, breeding better ideas. If we can all enter the Chamber of Debate, and leave our egos at the door, we will discover the greatest truths by merging our individual minds into a smarter collective mind.

So, to summarize, Absolute Peace is the eventual goal, but Peaceful Debate is what’s needed now.

Peaceful Debate means that we respect each other’s life experiences, we respect each other’s viewpoints, we live and let live, we don’t violently attack or insult other groups simply because they disagree with us.

“If you disagree with me, that’s fine. You can live on your land, and I’ll live on mine. We will go on with our lives, in peace. I won’t blow you up or shoot you down, and you won’t do so to me either. Yes, we may disagree, but we won’t raid each other’s homes and destroy each other’s families... simply because we disagree.” This is a more evolved standpoint.

12:03 PM.

We need a collective purpose, a collective goal. Humanity is a train-wreck right now. America, and her ideals, has been a global leader for decades, and now America is a clusterfuck.

Too many things get lost in translation between countries. Too many people and corporations are “beating the competition” rather than “working together to find the best solutions”. Too many people are power-hungry and egoic and not seeing the bigger picture. Too many people are afraid and confused and fearful of death; and when people are afraid and confused, they sometimes act defensively and violently.

Too many people are overwhelmed by the constant bombardment of media and information, much of which is not only pointless but is also damaging to one’s peace of mind. Too few people have taken the time to meditate and contemplate deeply the true nature of the universe.

Too many people are without mentors, without guidance. Too many people have so many questions, but no one to answer them.

This is why I want to be a Thought Leader. The world needs guidance, direction, stability, understanding, structure, philosophy, wisdom. But there doesn’t seem to be enough people distributing these things.

Wisdom hasn’t gone mainstream yet.

And will it ever go mainstream? This question has literally been debated for thousands of years. Ancient philosophers have written, including those who authored The Kybalion, that “the Truth is reserved for the brave few” and “the masses will never know the Truth” (or something along those lines).

But I’m an idealist. I disagree. I say: “Why not?” Why can’t we have the world we desire?

“But, Juvoci, you said” (in the last blog post) “that some people desire war!”

Yes, I did. But the desire for war is, in my estimation, a more superficial desire than the desire for peace.

I believe that, deep down, EVERYONE simply desires PEACE and HAPPINESS.

And those who pursue war, only do so because, deep down, they believe it will lead to PEACE and HAPPINESS.

In other words, people who wage war believe that war is the only option, the last resort, our only chance, for a peaceful world.

Of course, this is not the case, and is in fact completely wrong, completely opposite of the truth. This is the definition of evil, of devilry.

War only leads to more war.

When you wage war against someone, a grudge is formed. When you destroy a culture, destroy a family, destroy a people, they don’t forget, they get angry, they get depressed, and they label you “the devil”, they slowly and quietly rebuild their power, and then they come back to bite you.

And then you may say: “But what if you eradicate them completely so that they cannot ever return?” Sure, but then your people will remember what you did to those people. “Remember what our empire did to those people we destroyed? That was kind of messed up.” And then there is a deep collective regret in the population which must eventually be repented and made-up-for, lest the society be eaten alive from within by its own shame and guilt of its own violent history. And the cycle continues...

Just like, in your own personal life, you cannot purify, you cannot cleanse your soul, until you’ve repented for the evil you’ve done. Until then, your soul, your spirit, is broken, shattered, split.

The neuroticisms of a culture, a society, a nation, seep into the hearts of its citizens, and destroy it from within.

The most powerful thing that a leader can grant... is peace. Not dominance, not power, not wealth... peace.

But then there are the questions: What of that evil which lurks in the shadows? How do we defend against it? If we focus only on peace, won’t we be blind-sided by a secretive malevolent faction? If we focus only on peace, we won’t fund our militaries, and then we will be vulnerable to evil forces, right?

And this is true. Although I wish this were not the case, I cannot deny it. If we don’t keep our guard up, to some extent, then evil could once again overcome us.

Just as the sage must constantly remind herself of the Truth, society must remind itself of Evil. History repeats itself, so remember history.

So what does this mean for military funding?

On a material level, it means two things.

Firstly, we must prioritize defense over offense. Don’t develop military technology for the sake of attacking and conquering. Develop military technology for the sake of protecting.

Secondly, we must redefine our enemy. America’s enemy is not Russia or China. China’s enemy is not America or Japan. Australia’s enemy is not Russia or North Korea. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera...

No, Humanity’s enemy is Chaos, Insanity. Humanity’s enemy is Ignorance, Violence, Immaturity, Ego. This is how we must redefine our enemy.

But let’s bring this, once again, to a spiritual level, a metaphysical level, to a level beyond materiality.

Ultimately, we are talking about FEAR. “What if Evil grows stronger while the rest of us are focusing on Peace? What if we detract from military funding and leave ourselves vulnerable and get destroyed by an evil faction? What if? What if? What if...?”

These are questions of fear.

FAITH over FEAR.

This is where my Thought Leadership re-enters.

We must all subscribe to a philosophy of Faith over Fear.

Now, this is easier said than done, obviously. And I’m not trying to claim that I’ve fully succeeded in this realm. I never claimed to be perfect. But it’s the direction I try to move in, and it’s the direction that I’m encouraging you to move in aswell.

What is Faith over Fear?

This is getting into some pretty deep spiritual and metaphysical areas, but I’ll do my best to explain, especially because many people who read this, who haven’t dived deeply into spirituality and metaphysics, might not exactly understand what I’m saying. But I’ll give it a shot.

Faith is a fundamental force of the universe. Now, I’m not talking about Christian Faith or Islamic Faith or Jewish Faith or Buddhist Faith or whatever. No. I’m talking about pure Faith. I’m talking about Faith as a fundamental, pure, force.

In fact, Faith is so fundamental to the Structure of Reality that, at a certain point, it becomes physical, it becomes material, it melds and merges into the physical world. Don’t believe me? Keep meditating.

Faith is the reason you wake up in the morning. Faith is the reason you’re able to walk on solid ground. Faith is what keeps the entire universe in motion. Faith is a fundamental force. We can call this concept FFF or F-Cubed. The fundamental force of faith. Maybe the FFF thing is dumb. I don’t know. Whatever, moving on. Lol. (If you’ve made it this far in the blog, take a moment to breathe and relax and recognize that nothing is like super serious necessarily.)

But, yeah, Faith is super important. Pure faith. You exist because you believe in your existence. Without that fundamental structure of belief (which is another way of saying Faith), your entire being would collapse and disintegrate into a vortex of chaos and structurelessness. Don’t believe me? Well, I wouldn’t recommend experimenting with this concept unless you’re truly a Master of the Mind... because this can be dangerous territory.

So why am I talking about Faith now? Because Faith over Fear. Faith is the antidote to Fear, and Faith is your savior.

Yes, Evil could be out there, plotting your demise. Yes, the Universe could implode suddenly and instantaneously, destroying everything and everyone you’ve ever known. Yes, an asteroid could land on New York City, killing millions. Yes, some rogue country *cough* could drop an atomic bomb and decimate Humanity. Yes, danger, danger, danger, fear, fear, fear, possibilities, possibilities, endless fearful possibilities.

But can’t you see? It goes on and on and on and on and on. The mind can think of infinite reasons to be afraid, to fear evil.

But here’s where Spirituality and Metaphysics swoop in and save the day...

FEAR CREATES EVIL.

Yes, literally, Fear creates Evil. No, even further... Fear is Evil.

As Franklin D. Roosevelt (allegedly) said (I wasn’t there): “We have nothing to fear but Fear itself.” This quote is actually quite wise. Well, it’s, like... almost wise. The only reason it isn’t completely wise is because it implies that we still have to fear something.

But the point is (or at least, the Truth that I see in the quote) that Fear is the enemy. And, from my experience with spirituality, Faith is the antidote to Fear. In other words, when your being is aligned in Faith, your “enemy” ceases to exist, because all is one and all is you and so all is in Faith.

These are pretty deep ideas; and if you don’t understand exactly what I’m saying, don’t worry. Just stick with me, and eventually you will understand.

:)

1:06 PM.

Okay, so, I feel like I’ve kind of beaten that topic to death. Let’s give it a rest for a little while. Let’s get back to that point about Philosophy.

In my last blog post, I said that Philosophy is dumb. But, obviously, I need to elaborate on this, not only because this statement will probably offend some percentage of people, but also because it’s a pretty vague statement.

So, what exactly do I mean? And why exactly am I saying this?

Firstly, let’s define Philosophy. Yesterday, I posted in two sub-Reddits (the Philosophy and AskPhilosophy sub-Reddits) asking the simple question: What is Philosophy?

Both of my posts got banned from those sub-Reddits. This is strange, and doesn’t make any sense to me. If your sub-Reddit is about Philosophy, then one of the most important questions on that sub-Reddit should be... What is Philosophy?

Duh?

But, for some reason, the moderators of those sub-Reddits thought such a question should not be on their sub-Reddits and so they removed it. And now, in my mind, these two sub-Reddits have lost some respect and credibility.

But, whatever, maybe that’s a signal that “What is Philosophy?” is a dumb and unnecessary question.

Perhaps I can define Philosophy simply by explaining why I think parts of it (not all of it) are dumb.

To me, Philosophy becomes dumb when it becomes about using big words, and how many philosophical terms you know, and arguing about the nature of reality, and choosing one side or one philosophy and being an ardent advocate of that one philosophy or opinion or perspective.

These aspects of “the Philosophy world” are dumb to me because they miss the point. Reality is infinite. The universe is infinite. There are infinite perspectives. Everyone’s life is different, and everyone’s unique life experiences lead them to believe certain things about reality.

You might be a staunch Atheist, but if one day you went to sleep and woke up in a garden where Krishna explained to you the metaphysical workings of the universe, and you existed in this garden for thousands of years, exploring the world of spirituality, before finally, eventually, after those thousands of years, returning back into your human body, to this human life... you might have second thoughts about your staunch Atheistic beliefs.

So who are you to say that someone who identifies as Hindu and has had a similar spiritual experience with Krishna is wrong? And likewise, who are they to say that someone who identifies as Atheist and hasn’t had any spiritual experiences, like you (the staunch Atheist)... is wrong?

See? Nobody is wrong. Everyone just has different life experiences.

So, whatever your Philosophy is, it isn’t right or wrong. It’s just one perspective of infinite perspectives.

A lot of philosophy is just preaching. Just rattling off complex names and concepts and big words, just arguing pointlessly about abstractions.

Real Philosophy is about listening. This is, if I am to make a distinction here, the difference between Philosophy and Wisdom. Philosophy literally means love of wisdom. But perhaps Love of Wisdom isn’t always the same as Wisdom itself, in the same way that you may “love” your spouse, but not necessarily treat them well, or know them well.

Arguing with people on Reddit (or any other forum), for example, about why your Philosophy is right... is a pretty deformed version of Philosophy, in my opinion. If you want to grow as a philosopher, if you want to grow more wise, spend more time listening and asking questions, rather than preaching. Then, if someone asks you a question, you can expound your knowledge.

Philosophy has been dubbed “a science” by many individuals and institutions. But one of the problems with modern Science, in my opinion, is over-categorization.

Science creates categories upon categories upon categories, dividing and dividing and dividing. Now, don’t get me wrong, there isn’t necessarily anything wrong with categorization. In fact, there isn’t even anything necessarily wrong with over-categorization.

In some sense, excess categorization is the natural evolution of language and quantifiable knowledge. As our understanding of the world becomes more and more nuanced, we naturally will create more and more terms and thus categories for explaining and identifying it.

The problem arises when we begin identifying with our identifiers. When a scientist or philosopher says “I am a Materialist” or “I am an Existentialist” or “I am a Stoic”, they are missing the point of Philosophy and Science, in my opinion.

This is the problem with Identity. When you identify with one finite piece of an infinite reality, you inherently limit yourself. Better to have as small of an identity as possible, and simply observe reality. To me, this is what Philosophy and Science are truly about. Egoless observation of reality, in the name of Truth.

2:02 PM.

Okay, I’ve been writing on and off for awhile I’m gonna take a break and do something else. Be back later, maybe.

:)

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This blog can be read in its entirety on JUVOCI.com.

[antoine-roquentin]

Africa’s oldest liberation movement will start its fifty-fourth national conference on December 16, 2017. By the time the delegates leave four days later, Jacob Zuma’s second and final term as South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC) president will have come to an end.

He will remain president of South Africa, at least in theory. There’s recent precedent in the ANC to recall the national president if they are no longer party president. It was after Zuma himself ascended to the helm of the party at the fifty-second national conference in Polokwane in 2007 that Thabo Mbeki was forced by the party to step down as South African president.

Zuma’s future may be uncertain, but his legacy is not.

His presidency has been marred by the state-sanctioned massacre of thirty-seven striking mine workers at Marikana, the near nonpayment of the social grants that 30 percent of the nation relies on to stay alive, the death of more than 140 psychiatric patients as a result of reckless cost cutting, and the politically motivated assassinations of more than sixty people over a two-year period in KwaZulu-Natal province.

Yet these events hardly register in accounts of Zuma’s tenure, so steady is the rate of new scandals. The gross mismanagement of state-owned enterprises and the capture of state resources by private individuals through Zuma’s networks of patronage have given the president’s opponents new ammunition.

Recently, Zuma prompted the resignation of a senior official in the national treasury after he tampered with the national budgeting process, an unprecedented move for a president. Zuma claims his actions aimed to provide free higher education, but some suggest that his initiative may further burden the already creaking social-grants system and may well deliver South Africa into the arms and terms of the International Monetary Fund. So much for the “radical-economic transformation” Zuma’s defenders still say is on the horizon.

Division will be the real legacy of Zuma’s two terms in office. The fault lines tearing apart the ANC are only widening in the lead-up to the conference. The strong revolutionary grounding of the party’s student wing, the South African Students Congress (SASCO), is comparable to the once-radical ANC Youth League, which has steadily reduced its politics to debates over factionalism and party succession.

Zuma’s polarizing effect has also worsened schisms beyond the ANC, splintering South Africa’s traditionally powerful labor movement and reducing the Communist Party to confusion.

The only self-identifying left-wing political party with any electoral clout, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), has largely limited itself into an anti-Zuma platform insofar as it has occasionally joined ranks with the center-right opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA), to spite Zuma’s ANC. In some instances, this alliance has ground local service delivery to a halt.

Radical platforms remain at the grassroots. Many farm workers in the Western Cape province, for instance, have joined the Commercial Stevedoring and Allied Workers Union (CSAAWU) — a relatively small union that employs militant class politics in its struggle against some of the most powerful commercial agricultural interests in the country. Abahlali baseMjondolo, South Africa’s oldest social movement, continues to mobilize for more equitable access to land, housing, and services with tremendous success, even in the face of state repression and political assassinations.

But a credible left alternative on the scale needed to challenge or replace Zuma — one that might find solutions to South Africa’s economic crisis more generally — remains elusive both within and beyond the ANC.

The liberal consensus argues that the path from where we are to where we need to go will depend almost entirely on which of the two frontrunners succeeds Zuma. Both of his would-be successors, the former head of the African Union, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, and the country’s current deputy president, Cyril Ramaphosa, claim to be “protecting the democratic revolution.” But each remains loyal to a status quo that has kept most South Africans in economic precarity long after the end of apartheid.

As a result, ordinary South Africans have a truncated political spectrum that stretches from Zuma to a host of different not-Zumas. Even the upcoming ANC conference is shaping up in those terms, and he isn’t even running.

But much as the end of Zuma’s term is welcome, his successor will not end the suffocating socioeconomic crisis. South Africa’s problems are structural. While Zuma may have worsened them, they preceded him and they will succeed him, too.

South Africa’s deepening crisis is not a question of personality politics. But if the end of Zuma’s leadership doesn’t represent an end to the economic crisis, then what’s at stake at the upcoming conference? Answering this question begins with a bald profile of the most urgent concern that his successors will face — the structure of the economy.

Since the fall of apartheid, South Africa has steadily cemented itself as the world’s most unequal society. The top 1 percent of earners take home 17 percent of all income, and the top 10 percent earn 60 percent.

The picture gets even worse when it comes to wealth inequality. The top 1 percent own 67 percent of all wealth in South Africa, while the top 10 percent own 93 percent, giving the country a wealth Gini coefficient of 0.95.

Inequality between countries is generally much starker than inequality within countries, but not so in South Africa. It is the only country on the planet where the national levels of wealth inequality mirror global rates. In other words, the richest people in South Africa are among the richest in the world, and the poorest are among the poorest.

While the world’s developed nations were widely distributing resources for much of the postwar period, stimulating aggregate demand and growth, the South African apartheid state oversaw the most sophisticated legal and economic structures of racism the world had ever seen.

This structure — which excluded most South Africans — created severe economic issues. Only around 20 percent of South Africa can be considered middle class. The government’s own figures show that more than half of South Africa’s population is poor, and one in four struggle to pay for food. Independent estimates suggest that poverty levels approach 70 percent and that half of the population is chronically poor, meaning they aren’t likely to move out of poverty.

This poverty still largely reflects the racial categories legislated during the apartheid years. A great majority of black Africans live in poverty, while only 1 percent of whites do.

This kind of rancid poverty and inequality makes sense once you look at the unemployment figures. This year alone, more than one in every three people was out of work. When we include underutilized labor, this number grows to almost 40 percent. 

An increasing percentage of those out of work are now experiencing long-term unemployment, and employment rates remain as racially untransformed as poverty. 

Furthermore, the economy radically favors the top 5 percent. Around half of South African workers now earn less than $1.44 per hour, which will become the country’s first national minimum wage on May 1, 2018. The top 5 percent on average earn fifty times more than the lowest paid group. 

Incomes have soared at the top end of the economy and crashed at the bottom. As wages for the top 5 percent grew 40 percent, pay for the bottom 5 percent fell 17 percent. 

Despite strong labor legislation, workers at the bottom remain vulnerable to noncompliant bosses. For example, almost 40 percent of domestic workers reported earnings below that sector’s minimum wage.

Between 2010 and 2017, the percentage of workers whose salary increases were determined only by their employer rose from 45.2 percent to 55.9 percent. This arrangement keeps wages low and prevents workers from having a say over their salary — not to mention their other working conditions.

The state has led the few successful initiatives to address South Africa’s chronic socioeconomic problems. Public-sector employment has increased at a faster rate than private-sector work, and the extension of previously whites-only social security to the entire population has done the most to reduce poverty and inequality.

But even these meager gains are now under threat. Reports suggest that Zuma’s national budget will cut funding for housing and social grants. More broadly, the ANC is adopting austerity measures and considering privatizing some state-owned enterprises.

The task of dismantling the liberal consensus that South Africa’s calamity is a personnel crisis rather than a structural one has become urgent. Jacob Zuma is not South Africa’s only problem. South Africa faces more of the same, regardless of who emerges as the ANC’s fourteenth president on December 20.

[noramoya]

JESUS ASKED HIM , “WHAT IS YOUR NAME ? AND HE REPLIED, " MY NAME IS LEGION, BECAUSE THERE ARE MANY OF US INSIDE THIS MAN." - (Mark 5: 9) "In the wake of the murders of nine African Americans at Emanuel AME church in Charleston on June 17 by a self-proclaimed white supremacist, there was a burst of media interest in the scale and scope of white supremacist groups and networks within the U.S. What stands out in this recent media coverage, and in scholarship bearing upon both contemporary and historical trajectories of white supremacist movements, has been the tendency to view white supremacy—the idea that white people are inherently superior to people of color—as a relatively marginal or “extremist” dimension of American socio-religious culture. I argue instead that white supremacy is a much more central part of American socio-religious culture than generally acknowledged and that its investigation cannot be limited to “lone wolf” racists such as the 21 year-old in Charleston—nor confined merely to networks of explicit white supremacist organizations and activists. Rather, behind the individually embodied form of white supremacist evil in the Charleston atrocity lay a much broader malevolent network—analogous to the numerously possessed demoniac man in the Gospel of Mark. While white supremacist activity classified too broadly could result in attributing greater reach and influence to this worldview than it actually possesses within the U.S., identifying it only with a few outlier individuals and groups minimizes both the quality and the quantity of white supremacist ferment. Explicit white supremacy gained a noticeable following beginning with the emergence of the Ku Klux Klan in the years following the Civil War. By the 1920s, as many as six million people across the U.S. were estimated to be members of the Klan and subscribers to its agenda of resisting black social progress through terror and a hate-mongering rhetoric centered upon white exceptionalism and black depravity. The American Nazi Party, birthed in the 1950s, and its various off-shoots over successive decades have also had a wide following, although their actual numbers have remained sketchy. During the post-Civil Rights Movement period, a large number and variety of U.S.-based hate groups and “patriot” groups emerged, with known hate groups numbering 537 by the mid-1990s alongside 858 “patriot” groups (including militia groups, common law courts, and political or citizens groups) totaling more than a million members. Also by the mid-1990s there were reported to be more than 2,000 hate group web sites, 150,000 to 200,000 subscribers to racist publications, approximately 100 operative telephone hate-lines, and one hundred fifty independent racist radio and television shows airing weekly to millions of sympathizers. With the dramatic expansion over the last two decades of internet coverage and of cable and satellite media outlets, electronic access to hate group and white supremacist group content has skyrocketed—even as the numbers of those groups have themselves noticeably increased. For example, the number of known hate groups is reported to have increased from roughly 600 in the year 2000 to 930 in 2014. Moreover, major television networks such as Fox TV have ushered hate content and white supremacist content into the media mainstream, featuring racialized rhetoric that ranges from disparagement of blacks to harsher forms of racist venom—as in the case of frequent guest, Ted Nugent, who said of undocumented immigrants “I’d like to shoot them dead” and who publicly proclaims “working hard, playing hard…white shit kickers” as the “real” Americans. Fox talk shows reach tens of millions of persons on a weekly if not daily basis, and while the commentary on Fox may not be always explicitly white supremacist in nature, it often embodies a cloaked racial chauvinism. It is the cloaked versions of white supremacist constructions (in the form of racially-coded hate-mongering) that must be taken into account when assessing the scale and scope of white supremacist operations within this country. These cloaked narratives are frequently rehearsed by right-leaning mainstream leaders who troll for political support from across the right-wing spectrum, emboldening the racist right in the process while signaling a willingness to provide sympathetic if not surrogate leadership on behalf of white racist objectives. These surrogates and sympathizers have included a host of contemporary Republican elected officials who have openly campaigned in white racist venues, welcomed their campaign contributions, and symbolically and sometimes substantively embraced white racial tyranny. Ronald Reagan often is cited in this regard, who, as the Republican presidential nominee in 1980, launched his general election campaign with a speech on “states rights” in Philadelphia, Miss.—the national headquarters at the time of the Ku Klux Klan and the place where three civil rights activists were murdered in 1964 while investigating black church burnings. The coded message could not have been clearer—“states rights” was the rallying cry of the confederacy, intent as it was on maintaining the right of whites to enslave blacks, and Philadelphia, Miss., was the infamous place where 100 years later whites provided high-profile confirmation of their ongoing willingness to shed blood to maintain brutal oppression of blacks. Beyond Reagan, other Republican presidential candidates signaled racist sympathies through, for example, routine campaign stops at Bob Jones University, a fundamentalist Christian college in South Carolina that barred black enrollment until 1971. The university also prohibited interracial dating (thereby connecting itself to murderous traditions of white preservation against black defilement) and only rescinded the policy in the year 2000 when George W. Bush’s campaign visit to the university brought long-overdue national attention to this Republican callousness. More recently, three Republican senators, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Rick Santorum (all currently running for US president) received campaign donations during the last several years from the head of the Council of Conservative Citizens, a white supremacist group reported to have served as an inspiration for the 21-year-old white supremacist arrested for the nine murders at Emanuel A.M.E. church in Charleston. By exposing connections between explicit white supremacist views and what have been broader and often cloaked white essentialist narratives, a fuller picture emerges of white supremacist mindscapes and landscapes within the U.S. Defending Slavery with Religion These white essentialist narratives within the U.S. actually trace back to colonial New England, where Puritan colonists operated with a very narrowly construed understanding of who possessed settler and legal rights. Although this mainly took the form of religious intolerance of everyone who was not Congregationalist, the primary emphasis on religious rather than racial markers resulted from the degree to which the religious space, especially during the 1600s, was contested within New England. Race prejudice was just as real but far less contested due to the fact that it represented a struggle not between relative social equals (as in the case of religious contestation between white Protestants factions) but, rather, between white colonial forces and their subjugated African and Native American contemporaries who were considered “inferiors.” And as historian Perry Miller notes, “encroachments, especially of inferior upon superior” were “never seriously called in question” in New England before 1730. Even in 1730, if anything was called into question it was class distinction—because no serious challenges of race orthodoxies would gain strength until the onset of the abolitionist movement in the late 1700s. The combining of racially implicit Puritan essentialist doctrines with southern racial hierarchical ideas paved the way for much harder forms of race ontologies within the slave South during the 19th century. With abolitionism gaining momentum in the early 1800s, the slavocracy—with southern clergy in the forefront—responded with a variety of defenses of slavery. One of the more prevalent defenses was to argue, in characteristically Calvinistic terms, that social station is predetermined by God. According to 19th century pro-slavery advocates of this position, whites, on their part, were divinely-entrusted with superior qualities necessary for carrying out a range of Godly purposes, with the purpose most often cited being that of Christianizing and civilizing the benighted slaves. Typical of this genre were views expressed by a Methodist minister in North Carolina, Washington S. Chaffin who asserted, nature has “drawn lines of demarcation between (blacks) and (whites) that no physical, mental or religious cultivation can obliterate.” Because of what he considered to be a tendency by blacks toward “barbarism,” Chaffin believed that blacks “required the continual supervision of the white man to hold him in check.” The consequence of enslavement, he said, was that slaves were provided with conditions “more conducive to his happiness than any other the African has ever known.” The same kind of moral superiority of white slaveholders and moral deficiency of slaves was articulated in a 1978 publication by Rousas John Rushdoony, a prominent representative of the new “Christian scholarship” popular among contemporary white evangelicals. He writes: “Granted that some Negroes were mistreated as slaves, the fact still remains that nowhere in all history or in the world today has the Negro been better off. The life expectancy of the Negro increased when he was transported to America. He was not taken from freedom into slavery, but from a vicious slavery to degenerate chiefs to a generally benevolent slavery in the United States.” While clergy were among the leading proponents of 19th-century white supremacy, the 20th century witnessed the coming-of-age of an assortment of rank-and-file white supremacists. The emergence of many of these groups paralleled the galvanization of desegregationist and anti-racist forces from the mid-century forward. A group regarded by advocates and critics alike as the ideological backbone of the contemporary white supremacist movement is “Christian Identity,” which asserts “White, Anglo-Saxon, Germanic and kindred people [are] God’s true, literal Children of Israel” and that all non-white peoples (with emphasis here on Jews and blacks) are part of a demonic “seed line” intent upon destroying the chosen white seed line.” Christian Identity is regarded by close observers of this activity as having revitalized and unified the far right. The condemnation publicly expressed toward the 21-year-old charged with the racially-motivated murders in Charleston, while providing reassurance about America’s growing consensus against racial tyranny, is still a far cry from condemnation of white supremacy and racial tyranny in all its explicit and implicit forms. Although the murderous actions in Charleston were committed by an individual, these actions were rooted in much broader white supremacist mindscapes and landscapes. As North Carolina NAACP President William Barber pithily observed after the arrest of the 21-year-old murderer: “The perpetrator is caught, but the killer is still at large.” By now, most Americans likely are aware of the name of the accused in the Charleston murders. I choose, however, not to speak it so as not to individualize his evil nor divert attention from the larger configuration of evil of which he is part. But if we were to call him by name—it would be “Legion.”

[oldguardaudio]

PowerLine -> The hate group, the Southern Poverty Law Center – Antifa “grows as left-wing faction”

Powerline image at HoaxAndChange

powerline at HoaxAndChange.com

Hey Libertards spend you time doing what you talk about, Feed some homeless or something. at HoaxAndCahnge.com

Daily Digest

Statue of Limitations (2)

How to Watch an Eclipse—Or CNN

Report: Bannon to be ousted

Antifa “grows as left-wing faction”

Restatement on comments

Statue of Limitations (2)

Posted: 18 Aug 2017 11:50 AM PDT

(Steven Hayward)

Further to my comments the other day about the issues emerging from Charlottesville, a few more observations, and interrogatories:

It is understandable that Democrats would be agitating to remove Confederate-honoring statues. After all, it is their history that they need to make go away. You know, things like this:

I won’t vouch for the accuracy of the histogram below (after all, it was produced by a hate group, the Southern Poverty Law Center) of when Confederate monuments went up, but the reading given that they went up during the ratcheting up of Jim Crow in the Progressive Era, and then again during the Civil Rights Era, misses that those two eras correspond to the 50th and 100th anniversaries of the Civil War, which puts a slightly different cast on things. On the other hand, the Progressives—especially Woodrow Wilson—were deeply racist. (How about this one from Wilson: “The white men were roused by a mere instinct of self-preservation—until at last there had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of the South, to protect the Southern country.” So when is Princeton going to get around to dumping Wilson’s name from its graduate school?)

(Click to embiggen.)

While it is sensible to object to the mindless eradication of history, especially at the instigation of a braying mob, I’m not sure conservatives should be standing in the breach against a set of monuments erected by Democrats. To the contrary, it is tempting to say exactly this: “The time has long been past when we should have removed these Democrat monuments.” In this regard, see David Goldman’s excellent cri de coeur from a couple days ago:

I can accept the idea that Robert E. Lee was a decent man. Decent men fought for causes even more wicked than the Confederacy. Would the Germans erect a monument to Field Marshal Rommel, a professional soldier murdered by Hitler? Of course not. They are left to mourn their dead in private. America had a different sort of dilemma. We fought the Civil War to preserve the Union, including a South that was only sorry that it lost. In the interests of unity we tolerated (and even promoted) the myth of Southern gallantry, the Lost Cause, and all the other baloney that went into D.W. Griffiths’ “The Birth of a Nation” and “Gone With The Wind.” We allowed the defeated South to console itself with the myth that it fought for “states’ rights” or whatever rather than to preserve a vile system of economic (and sometimes sexual) exploitation. Meanwhile the freed slaves had a very bad century between Appomattox and the Civil Rights Act of 1965. Don’t expect them to look with understanding on the supposed symbols of “Southern heritage.”

I thought one of Trump’s better moments in the campaign was when he said to black voters in Detroit, “What have you got to lose?” Detroit, Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland, etc., have been governed by Democrats for decades. How’s that working out for you? Taking down statues is the epitome of cheap grace. (Aside: I see Nancy Pelosi now wants Confederate statues taken down in the U.S. Capitol. Wasn’t she the Speaker of the House for four years? Why didn’t she do it then?

Abe Lincoln on dems and slaves at HoaxAndChange.com

Will anyone in the media ask her this question?)

On the other hand, polls show a majority of American oppose taking down the statues, perhaps out of ignorance about the Confederacy. I’d have preferred to add monuments, starting with Frederick Douglas, rather than removing monuments

But it is easy to see why Steve Bannon is sitting back smiling about all of this. Let the liberals wallow in their identity politics, and let the left revive the violence of the Weather Underground. The Spencerites are a problem that the right needs to deal with, but the agitated left can be relied upon to produce much more public violence than neo-Nazis. Somewhere Richard Nixon is smiling. Antifa helps Republicans. No less a leftist icon than Noam Chomsky agrees:

“As for Antifa, it’s a minuscule fringe of the Left, just as its predecessors were,” Noam Chomsky told the Washington Examiner. “It’s a major gift to the Right, including the militant Right, who are exuberant.”

   How to Watch an Eclipse—Or CNN

Posted: 18 Aug 2017 10:45 AM PDT

(Steven Hayward)

Power Line’s mobile news production crew is hitting the road today for eastern Oregon to take in the total eclipse Monday morning, and you can look forward to complete coverage here on Monday. (I’ve packed one video camera, two GoPros, two still cameras, and Power Line’s Drone Force One, though I am unclear just how I’ll be able to get the drone to circle the sun during the eclipse.) In the meantime, Remy Munasifi offers a handy guide to watching the eclipse—or CNN:

   Report: Bannon to be ousted

Posted: 18 Aug 2017 10:28 AM PDT

(Paul Mirengoff)

Maggie Haberman of the New York Times reports:

President Trump has told senior aides that he has decided to remove Stephen K. Bannon, the embattled White House chief strategist who helped Mr. Trump win the 2016 election, according to two administration officials briefed on the discussion.

The president and senior White House officials were debating when and how to dismiss Mr. Bannon. The two administration officials cautioned that Mr. Trump is known to be averse to confrontation within his inner circle, and could decide to keep on Mr. Bannon for some time.

Bannon has been twisting in the wind for some time. News of his ouster will surprise no one.

Bannon didn’t help matters when he granted an interview to left-wing journalist Robert Kuttner of “The American Prospect” in which he seemed to ridicule the idea that the U.S. has a viable military option against North Korea. Bannon stated:

Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that ten million people in Seoul don’t die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don’t know what you’re talking about, there’s no military solution here, they got us.”

File this one under Michael Kinsley’s definition of a gaffe.

Though my view of Bannon is mixed, I’m sorry to see him go. I think he provided an important counterweight to those with whom he clashed — Gary Cohn, a Democrat, Dina Powell, H.R. McMaster, and Jared Kushner. All of them, in various ways, seek to moderate President Trump on policy matters. Who now will speak up for substantive hard-line conservative and nationalistic positions?

NOTE: Haberman’s article also includes this passage:

A person close to Mr. Bannon insisted the parting of ways was his idea, and that he had submitted his resignation to the president on Aug. 7, to be announced at the start of this week, but the move was delayed after the racial unrest in Charlottesville, Va.

   Antifa “grows as left-wing faction”

Posted: 18 Aug 2017 09:44 AM PDT

(Paul Mirengoff)

Are the violent Antifa thugs a fringe movement or an increasingly important part of an emerging left-wing coalition? I want to say “fringe movement.”

However, the New York Times reports that Antifa is growing as a left-wing faction. And Mark Lance, a professor of (I kid you not) justice and peace at Georgetown University, says “I’m seeing more concrete productive discussion between anti-fascists and others on the Left these days than ever before in my life.” Lance predicts that Antifa “will become integrated into an emerging coalition that includes Sanders supporters, democratic socialists, dreamers, the Movement for Black Lives, environmentalists, [and] Native American organizers.”

I can’t tell you that the professor of justice and peace is wrong. I think he’s right when it comes to Black Lives Matter.

The New York Times mostly indulges the fiction that the Antifa thugs are merely engaged in protecting cities, towns, and college campuses from hordes of fascists, though it admits that in some cases they have taken on “ordinary supporters of President Trump.” The antifas, of course, see no distinction between fascist hordes and ordinary Trump supporters.

Nor do they see a distinction between someone attending a speech by an extreme right-winger and someone engaged in violence against the left. As one prominent Antifa thug said of those on the other side of the political spectrum, “their existence itself is violent and dangerous, so I don’t think using force or violence to oppose them is unethical.”

Stalin couldn’t have put it better.

We can only hope that the New York Times and the professor of peace and justice are wrong. We can only hope that Stalinists will not be integrated into the emerging left-wing coalition of Sanders supporters, democratic socialists, environmentalists, etc.

   Restatement on comments

Posted: 18 Aug 2017 05:42 AM PDT

(Scott Johnson)

As I have mentioned a time or two before, we seek to maintain a tone appropriate to civil discourse on this site. It is a tone that comes naturally to most of our readers and commenters. I set forth our guidelines for comments, most recently, here.

Posting comments on Power Line is a privilege, not a right. I review comments for abuse and vulgarity. Most of our commenters have no problem speaking in polite company. However, every day I now moderate comments by commenters who are routinely vulgar. Some commenters appear to be incapable of expressing themselves without recourse to words such as “ass” or “asshole” or “dumbass” or “bastard” or “shit” or “bullshit” or “fuck” or “balls” (of the anatomical variety) or the like and their many colorful variants. “Libtard” is not acceptable here. Inserting asterisks or dashes to mask obvious vulgarities doesn’t cut it.

Our departures from the gospel according to President Trump are not to be deemed an occasion on which to abuse the contributors to this site or the site itself, for that matter. Disagreement is welcome. Abuse is not. Commenters who disparage us in personal terms — for example, “Paul, you are an idiot” — will be banned. Commenters who assert that we are “shilling” for some line or other will be banned. If you seek to disparage John or Paul or Steve or me personally, you are free to do so on a site of your own.

Those of you who employ vulgarity or abuse us personally are cordially invited to take your business elsewhere. If you don’t, we will resort to the expedient of banning you from the comments without notice.

   PowerLine -> The hate group, the Southern Poverty Law Center – Antifa “grows as left-wing faction” PowerLine -> The hate group, the Southern Poverty Law Center - Antifa “grows as left-wing faction”