Midsummer

Midsummer is coming up. Time for a break.



Make sure to look 7:00 and forward, for a traditional, and typical! :-), Swedish Midsummer celebration.

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Redefinition of citizenship

The discussions, over at GoV, about first the Jews in Bolshevism and then about Kevin MacDonald, triggered the following comment from Armance:

The major flaw that I can see in Kevin MacDonald's work is that it lacks a comparative study of the Jews with the behavior of other ethnic or religious minority groups in the West: because doing a comparative study of minorities, I think one will notice obvious similarities. Particularly in our times, when minorities are encouraged to feel "oppressed" and "discriminated", you will notice that almost all minorities, and particularly their representative organizations, develop an obvious bitterness and hostility towards the majority of the population and their host nations.

So, I would like to see a study of the Jewish organizations in Europe and the USA compared to the Muslims in the West (CAIR, etc.), Hispanics in America (La Raza), Blacks in the US and Gypsies in Eastern Europe, etc. I think all of them tend to have the same behaviour, particularly when encouraged by PCism (and George Soros's institutes and foundations).

This inspired my to write a longer answer, where I line out many of my ideas regarding a future need for a redefinition of citizenship:

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Armance,

Good point. I still, however, think that the main flaw of Kevin MacDonald and his kind, is the sheer obsession with the Jews, and their utter detachment from reality. As I have already written:

Jews never succeeded well in looking after their best interests. Jews act according to their nature, not according to what's in their interest. All conspiracy theories about Jews fantasize about how the Jews are extremely clever in controlling things at a global level to turn it into their advantage. This is nonsense of course.

However, next to this I agree with you that the lack of comparative study is the major flaw of Kevin MacDonald. But of course we shouldn't expect that from him since his purpose is not an honest investigation in the first place. Omission and skewed perspective is one of the prime tools of propaganda deception (cf. the MSM).

When we find such similar traits as you mention (at a group level) from such disparate groups as Jews, Muslims, Blacks, Gypsies, etc., it clearly depends on us and not on them (see Russia for a point of reference were things are very different regarding such matters). So instead of dubbing each of them special interest groups, with special protection -- and encouraging them to feel "oppressed" and "discriminated", resulting in bitterness and hostility towards the majority of the population and their host nations -- we should reverse this PC regime all across the line, i.e. including for the Jews. Trying to keep the Jews as an exception for PC protection will only fail.

Once having gotten that out of the way, it would be easier to speak soberly about the actual differences between these disparate groups. Where Jews have a much higher ability for assimilation into a nationalistic Europe. But none should be admitted in as a group! We have to end this "social contract" multiculturalism entirely. People should individually be admitted organically into the ethnic nation. A nation is a higher order family. And a family is first of all based on an ethnic core. But a family also allows for organically including outsiders (e.g. through marriage or adoption), as long as the ethnic core is not threatened. This is in the nature of the concept of a family, and also of higher order families.

This does not only apply to the many good Jews, that are among our most trustworthy allies, but also to e.g. people of Muslim background (better known as ex-Muslims) who stand of for our culture better than the Westerners themselves.

I'm assuming in my reasoning above that due to the utter recklessness of our "Enlightened" elites, in handing out passports for free en masse, that our concept of citizenship will have to be reconstructed. There is bound to come a discontinuity on that point, our elites have invested deeply into that with their recklessness. I assume further that we will look farther back in history to find a stable base for a new concept of citizenship, that is before the French Revolution.

Apart from those of other ethnicity that are individually included as citizens, there will be those who remain in the West as residents, i.e. with substantially less political rights, i.e. they will have no power over political affairs. At this level however, we have to judge at group level. Jews are fine, while Muslims are not. Blacks have a long history in America, and will no doubt remain as residents.

I'm very fond of this old fashioned concept of citizenship, where less than half of the people in a country are citizens with access to political affairs. Best in test through millenia of history! So much more humane and balanced than all these utopian ideologies with roots in the French Revolution, which never can take a moderate position but only flip between extremes, and which always ends up in mass murder (or mass suicide) one way or the other.

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Takuan Seiyo as Takuan Seiyo as Kevin MacDonald

As Baron Bodissey put it: the reader response to “Road Rage” post at GoV prompted Takuan Seiyo to write this: Critique of the Culture of Kevin MacDonald. Rather surprising choice to be "promted" to criticize Kevin MacDonald based on that thread, since i) Kevin MacDonald didn't participate, and ii) no one in the thread came of with ideas like MacDonald's. Instead the many intelligent commenters of GoV in that thread sounded like Takuan Seiyo in what he writes in his very good article, most of which I agree with, especially his criticism of Kevin MacDonald, something I brought up several times myself.

So Seiyo's article is good, but the rather tone-deaf aspect of it was how it was "prompted". Since the commenters in that thread sounded like Takuan Seiyo himself. Except for the ones, of course, that thought that the ones sounding like Takuan Seiyo reminded them of Kevin MacDonald. Curuiously enough, Takuan Seiyo himself belongs in both these catatgories:

1. Takuan Seiyo sounds like Takuan Seiyo
2. Takuan Seiyo thinks that people that sound like Takuan Seiyo reminds him of Kevin MacDonald.

[End of post]

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Ape Genius -- who's mindlessly aping?

Ape Genius is a fascinating documentary by National Geographic. Watch it here (5 parts). It shows intellectual and even cultural skills by apes that we wouldn't expect. In terms of making and using tools and weapons, intelligently solving puzzles, learning to operate complex machines, in learning to understand language and symbols, and even in cooperation and the sense of social fairness. Surprisingly they seem to have many of the essential skills needed to build a real culture. The narrator says "Their mental rocket is on the launch pad. Why isn't it taking off?" But the documentary answers that question too, by pinpointing the significant mental gaps that -- in spite of their great abilities compared to any other animal -- inhibit the apes from building anything like the human society.

There are many interesting things to be discussed based on this documentary (and I recommend you to watch it entirely, why not straight away before reading on?) but I will focus on a specific experiment here, by the end of the documentary, which tells more about human nature than about apes. The instructor shows how to operate a puzzle-box, by tapping, slotting and poking with a stick, and then finally a treat, a gummy bear, can be fetched from a slot at the front of the box. Watch it here (at 7m35s), and continue here. In the first version of the experiment, apes and human children act exactly the same way, copying every step of the instructor and successfully getting the treat.

Next the original opaque puzzle-box is replaced by an identical one, but with see-through walls. The instructor once again shows the procedure, but it is now evident that all the tapping and poking is meaningless and that the treat can be taken from the slot in the front immediately. What happens? Well, the apes cut to the chase and take the treat immediately. As it is said in the documentary "Apes don't just mindlessly ape, they also understand something more about cause and effect". The human children however continues following the same procedure they have been taught, even though it's obvious that all the tapping and poking is meaningless. The apes do not mindlessly ape, but humans can easily be made into doing that, however.

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This does not imply that humans understand less of cause and effect, only that there is something that is much more important and dear to them than following the logic of cause and effect. And that is to follow the authority, and thereby following their social group. For a human the loyalty to the authority and the commitment to the social group is more important than the obvious reality before their very eyes. Watch how very proud the children are of exactly following the instructions shown by their mentor.

The documentary continues to show how this aspect of the human nature has been a great strength in building an advanced civilization. While apes are very good at learning by imitation, the concept of teaching each other does not exist among the apes. Among humans the teacher-learner relation is at the core of our life form. This a very special relation, and the social bond (and the impact of symbols) is stronger than the impact of reality. Through our ability to teaching/learning we can carry on our knowledge from generation to generation, in a cumulative way, and reach heights unreachable for the apes. The documentary continues to show the fundamental importance of pointing among humans, a communication ability that apes completely lack. Watch the example of the instructor pointing at the cup with the treat under it, where the apes never get the message; they simply do not understand that communication is going on. While human toddlers, even before they can speak, always get the message and take the right cup. Apes act as individuals and follow their impulses and the reality they observe. Humans, wired towards communication, follow the directions of their master before anything else. This is both our strength and our weakness; it's simply our nature.

So apes do not mindlessly ape, but humans can easily be made into doing that. Whatever an ape does, it has to have an objective purpose, given reality and his biological interests. For a human, however, the social purpose of following the authority and the group is sufficient; the objective purpose is actually secondary. For the ape this severely limits his ability to build a sophisticated culture, based on symbols and intellectual achievements. For the human it opens up all sorts of possibilities, including the building of a symbolic world for the collective mind, that is a virtual Platonic cave, where the shadow figures displayed by the masters are observed rather than reality.

The example with the see-through puzzle-box shows that just about any story can be sold to the human mind as long as his respect for the authority is intact. As long as the respect for the authority is kept intact, humans can be trained to believe virtually anything, no matter how contradictory and counter-reality it is, no matter how much it counters her biological and social interests. And the more we get detached from reality in our way of life, the further this can be taken. In the Industrial Age we have seen this developed into far-going utopianism and conceptual delusions, making the Westerners strongly committed to their own civilizational suicide.

I'd say that this is the most important aspect of the human nature -- our inclination and commitment towards mindlessly aping by the direction of our authority -- to take in account in order to understand how our civilization can be at the absurdly Orwellian point that we are in now.

We need to understand why we are in this predicament -- the fundamental reasons for it -- in order to understand how to being able to change it. So take this aspect of the human nature in account if you want to understand the conditions for real change.

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Traian Ungureanu: "Enough is enough!"

In order to give you some more background on where the Romanian MEP candidate Traian Ungureanu stands on Islam, here is an article he wrote during the Danish cartoons affair. It was published in the newspaper Cotidianul, one of the most popular dailies in Romania. It's one of his prime pieces, reminding us well about who they are, who we are, and what it's all about. And Traian is not holding back his words. It's a pleasure reading it. Many thanks to Armance who translated the article. So here you're sent by time warp back to early 2006:

For the laughter of the civilized world
By Traian Ungureanu

It mutilated children. It found in the subway the common citizen, commuter in his way to the office, and disfigured him. It humiliated women. It persecuted fearful minds and brought to the point of desperation noble souls. For all these reasons, the fear and the horror have suffocated in us the healthy life of our conscience. But all this has happened until a day of Friday, the 30th of September 2005, when a Danish newspaper had a simple and strong idea: the daily “Jyllands-Posten” published a series of cartoons on Islamic subjects. The prophet is sitting on the top of a cloud and is shouting, overwhelmed by the endless queue of suicidal terrorists who arrive in Heaven after finishing their job: “Stop! We’ve ran out of virgins!”

Yesterday, after 5 months of indoctrination [since the cartoons had been first published], the crowds set ablaze the Danish embassies in Damascus and Beirut. In London, mobs of families with mothers in burqas, scary fathers and children diapered in suicide belts protested in the centre of the city. Their slogans: “Fuck freedom!”, “We promise you the real Holocaust”, “The enemies of Islam must be beheaded”, and a question as an offer: “Do you want again bombs in the subway?” Libya has closed its embassy in Denmark, and Saudi Arabia has called back home its ambassador. All the Islamic world, from Jakarta to Tripoli, has an outburst of fury, but has enough lucidity to follow two goals: apologies for an insult and a law of obligatory respect for the Islamic religion in the West.

Enough is enough! These sinister clowns have made too much fools out of themselves. What does this fury planned in the capitals of the Arab world want to impose on us? The concern for the good reputation of the prophet? But for that we have, all over the civilized world, laws which the Arabs should worship 5 times a day. Because it’s these laws which establish – in Denmark, in France, in England or in Romania – the right of every Muslim to worship their prophet in mosques that the believers built incessantly and without restrictions. But it’s also the laws of our countries that establish – in Denmark, in England or in Romania – that nobody has the right to silence someone who wants to ridicule, to gossip or to contradict. This is our European spirit: polite, but at the same time addicted of debates. Some of them might be pleasant, some of them not. Who wants the dark discipline of the moral police who forbids the jewels in shape of crucifixes and confiscate Bibles should leave Europe immediately (the same Europe where they learned very well to use a passport and to take advantage on the social benefits). If Europe is not good enough, they are free to feel as gods in Saudi Arabia or Iran.

I repeat: what do these apocalyptic buffoons want from us? Do they believe that they can hide into vandalism the tyranny from their own homes? More than that: Islam lives an era of offensive delirium. In Damascus, the regime took action and succeeded to blow into pieces the Lebanese ex-prime-minister. In Teheran, a fanatic has three hands, one of them to keep the vote ballots which brought him into power, the second to hold the Quran and the third to use nuclear weapons. His trick won’t deceive us. We know which hand is the false one. In Gaza, Hamas has won the elections and the Ministry of Terrorism is going to have the best team of experts. And from all these sources is flowing, in combination with oil, a hatred that is eager to stop the world from her movement and to put a burqa on her face. All these beasts of a deformed humanity want to change the values of the countries that welcomed them. The war of the Danish cartoons began because the Islamic mindset is willing to move the censorship from the Arab jailhouse to the heart of Europe.

They are the ones supposed to learn us how to live. Their visiting card is the 2002 Report of the UN Agency for Development. It reveals that in the last thousand of years the whole Arab world has translated into their language as many books as are translated in Spain in only one year. The furious ones under the green flag are actually very insecure. They know very well inside who is to blame in front of their prophet and who triggered the outburst of laughter from the pages of the Danish newspaper. Nobody ridiculed so well and so powerful the holy things as the Muslim demagogues who made of Islam a knife to behead people and a factory of bombs. We were afraid too much and the humour has liberated us. All that we needed was the pages of a Danish newspaper to go back to normality and to re-discover our sense of humour. Europeans have an unmatched civilization also because we know how to laugh: from Rabelais and Caragiale [a Romanian satirical playwright] to Hasek, the Czech who made fun as a genius of the First World War. We have re-found our specific and our humour, the one which makes the difference between us and the barbarians. Drowned in oil and economically impotent, big-mouthed and filled with weak states, the Islamic world is now a subject of laughter up to the next galaxy. When someone is making a fool of himself to such an extent, all that a person with some common sense can do is to laugh.

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