Whenever the name "Richard Spencer" appears in print it is always as "white supremacist Richard Spencer."
But my question is: what does Richard Spencer call himself? I'm glad you asked. Here is La Wik:
Now, of course, this is a very bad thing, because if Richard Spencer is allowed to call himself an identitarian that puts a rather bad spin on what we have all learned to call "identity politics."
Because, as someone recently remarked, if you liberals are going to go all-in on identity politics, sooner or later whites in America are going to play the identity politics themselves.
But, as they say, whites will probably sign on too late to avoid being thrown on the ash-heap of history. Because most cornered rats don't realize they are cornered until they are well and truly cornered, and that means it is really too late to fight your way out of the corner.
But what is "white supremacy?" I'm glad you asked. La Wik.
I mean, what would you call the current leftist academic culture that favors left wing over everything and consciously discriminates against anything else? Academic supremacy?
As I understand history, even the fascists and Nazis were not movements of confidently superior Italians and Germans. Instead they were experiencing after World War I what seemed to them to be a real danger of national annihilation. In fact, they thought of themselves as corned rats. My favorite quote is that of a woman in a train in Germany in 1920 in the middle of the post-WWI hyperinflation. She said, as I recall, how can this be happening to Germany, the most advanced country in the world?
I like to suggest that Germany invented just about everything in the modern era, from modern philosophy to relativity and quantum mechanics and nationalism, as in the most advanced country in the world. Oh, and the Germans invented Nazism, from a congeries of Romanticism and Nationalism. Yeah, the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Recently, with the Harvey Weinstein episode we have had a flood tide of "toxic masculinity." What is that? OK, back to La Wik, which explains the "concept of toxic masculinity as used in the social sciences":
Hey kids, I think that is a bit of a problem. But it goes with the normal day-to-day stigmatization of any non-leftist political actor as a racist, sexist, homophobe.
I must say that it is an astonishingly successful tactic. You can marginalize and stigmatize just about anyone by pasting a lefty pejorative on them. And it works! What is not to like, if you are a lefty?
OK. But what about the rest of us?
I would say that the first thing in political discourse would be to give people the decency of letting them define themselves, in their own terms, so that their ideas can succeed or fail in the cockpit of political combat.
So pasting a lefty pejorative on someone is No Fair.
But, of course, it is impossible for lefties to do this, because with the left politics and power is everything. Lefties are going to save the world with politics and political power, bending the arc of history towards justice.
And politics is always about us and them. "We" are always the good guys, gathering the good people together in a protective association against "Them," the bad guys.
From the point of view of the non-left, this is a problem.
The problem is that in politics you end up becoming like your adversary. The problem is that in order to end the left's use of pejoratives to marginalize and stigmatize ideas and people that are opposed to them, you have to find leaders like Donald Trump who can fling the pejoratives right back in the lefty faces with the best of them.
And then the lefties amp up the pejoratives, because "activism" and political rhetoric are the only things they know. So where will it end?
At this point I usually cite Crane Brinton and his Anatomy of Revolution. He argues that amped up ideological warfare is a necessarily temporary period, as he rehearses the ideological frenzies of the British Puritan revolution, the French Revolution's Reign of Terror, the Bolshevik Great Terror in the 1930s, and the recurrent upheavals of Mao's Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution. Eventually they collapse in exhaustion in the so-called Thermidorean reaction, because people cannot be kept forever in an ideological frenzy, any more that armies can be kept fighting on the front forever. Eventually people need to get back to wiving and thriving.
It's nice to think that all this rubbish about white supremacy and toxic masculinity will subside and be thrown on the ash-heap of history.
Trouble is that, like in the previous ideological frenzies, a lot of ordinary people are going to get drowned in the undertow. And it might be you. Or worst of all, me!
But my question is: what does Richard Spencer call himself? I'm glad you asked. Here is La Wik:
Richard Bertrand Spencer (born May 11, 1978) is an American white supremacist... Spencer has stated that he rejects the label of white supremacist, and prefers to describe himself as an identitarian.So that's all right. Or alt-right.
Now, of course, this is a very bad thing, because if Richard Spencer is allowed to call himself an identitarian that puts a rather bad spin on what we have all learned to call "identity politics."
Because, as someone recently remarked, if you liberals are going to go all-in on identity politics, sooner or later whites in America are going to play the identity politics themselves.
But, as they say, whites will probably sign on too late to avoid being thrown on the ash-heap of history. Because most cornered rats don't realize they are cornered until they are well and truly cornered, and that means it is really too late to fight your way out of the corner.
But what is "white supremacy?" I'm glad you asked. La Wik.
White supremacy or white supremacism is a racist ideology based upon the belief that white people are superior in many ways to people of other races and that therefore white people should be dominant over other races.But is that the doctrine of Richard Spencer? Or is Richard Spencer merely a cornered rat trying to find a way for whites to fit into the identity politics framework advanced by our liberal and lefty friends? Or is Richard Spencer just like everyone else, he likes his kind best.
I mean, what would you call the current leftist academic culture that favors left wing over everything and consciously discriminates against anything else? Academic supremacy?
As I understand history, even the fascists and Nazis were not movements of confidently superior Italians and Germans. Instead they were experiencing after World War I what seemed to them to be a real danger of national annihilation. In fact, they thought of themselves as corned rats. My favorite quote is that of a woman in a train in Germany in 1920 in the middle of the post-WWI hyperinflation. She said, as I recall, how can this be happening to Germany, the most advanced country in the world?
I like to suggest that Germany invented just about everything in the modern era, from modern philosophy to relativity and quantum mechanics and nationalism, as in the most advanced country in the world. Oh, and the Germans invented Nazism, from a congeries of Romanticism and Nationalism. Yeah, the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Recently, with the Harvey Weinstein episode we have had a flood tide of "toxic masculinity." What is that? OK, back to La Wik, which explains the "concept of toxic masculinity as used in the social sciences":
According to [Professor Terry] Kupers, the term toxic masculinity serves to outline aspects of hegemonic masculinity that are socially destructive, “such as misogyny, homophobia, greed, and violent domination”. Kupers states that other aspects of hegemonic masculinity such as “pride in [one’s] ability to win at sports, to maintain solidarity with a friend, to succeed at work, or to provide for [one’s] family”, are not part of the concept of toxic masculinity.Excuse me, Wikipedia, liberals, and all the lefty ships at sea, but from my corner terms such as "white supremacy" and "toxic masculinity" have nothing to do with social science; they are left-wing terms whose purpose is to marginalize and delegitimize non-lefty people and ideas.
Hey kids, I think that is a bit of a problem. But it goes with the normal day-to-day stigmatization of any non-leftist political actor as a racist, sexist, homophobe.
I must say that it is an astonishingly successful tactic. You can marginalize and stigmatize just about anyone by pasting a lefty pejorative on them. And it works! What is not to like, if you are a lefty?
OK. But what about the rest of us?
I would say that the first thing in political discourse would be to give people the decency of letting them define themselves, in their own terms, so that their ideas can succeed or fail in the cockpit of political combat.
So pasting a lefty pejorative on someone is No Fair.
But, of course, it is impossible for lefties to do this, because with the left politics and power is everything. Lefties are going to save the world with politics and political power, bending the arc of history towards justice.
And politics is always about us and them. "We" are always the good guys, gathering the good people together in a protective association against "Them," the bad guys.
From the point of view of the non-left, this is a problem.
The problem is that in politics you end up becoming like your adversary. The problem is that in order to end the left's use of pejoratives to marginalize and stigmatize ideas and people that are opposed to them, you have to find leaders like Donald Trump who can fling the pejoratives right back in the lefty faces with the best of them.
And then the lefties amp up the pejoratives, because "activism" and political rhetoric are the only things they know. So where will it end?
At this point I usually cite Crane Brinton and his Anatomy of Revolution. He argues that amped up ideological warfare is a necessarily temporary period, as he rehearses the ideological frenzies of the British Puritan revolution, the French Revolution's Reign of Terror, the Bolshevik Great Terror in the 1930s, and the recurrent upheavals of Mao's Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution. Eventually they collapse in exhaustion in the so-called Thermidorean reaction, because people cannot be kept forever in an ideological frenzy, any more that armies can be kept fighting on the front forever. Eventually people need to get back to wiving and thriving.
It's nice to think that all this rubbish about white supremacy and toxic masculinity will subside and be thrown on the ash-heap of history.
Trouble is that, like in the previous ideological frenzies, a lot of ordinary people are going to get drowned in the undertow. And it might be you. Or worst of all, me!
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