The Weak and Cowardly Men of the Online West

On March 26, 2019 By admin

• Breaking News

The world was shocked to learn of the brutal murder of 50 Muslim worshippers two weeks ago in New Zealand. It was less surprising, but no less revolting, to find that the shooter was yet another product of the darkest pits of the internet—a rootless 8chan loser on a self-proclaimed mission to drive all non-whites out of what he regards as European-descended countries such as New Zealand. People sighed at discovering yet another Daily Stormer degenerate who thinks white people are being intentionally replaced by shadowy grandmasters but can’t look at his own childless, failed existence and notice the part he himself is playing in the decline of the West.

The conclusions and violent actions of individuals like accused New Zealand shooter Brenton Tarrant must not be dismissed as crazy or random. As Murtaza Hussain wrote insightfully at The Intercept, Tarrant’s perceptions and actions are the outgrowth of years of rhetoric that’s portrayed immigrants as “invaders” and the paranoiac tendency to point to numerically small minority communities with high birthrates as somehow to blame for declining European and white birthrates. Popular right-wing online figures such as Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux have done this routinely. It is, of course, a stupid theory, but its very illogical and reactionary nature somehow makes it even more convincing to lost young men with axes to grind. Tarrant’s manifesto could have been lifted straight from Infowars, except that it contains a slightly stronger hate of capitalism and doesn’t focus on Satanism.

The Australian Tarrant traveled the world, but lived on the internet, an increasingly common and frankly dangerous phenomenon. He believed in the “Great Replacement” theory first posited by French writer Renaud Camus and since taken up in fervent fashion by white nationalists and the alt-right, as well as more mainstream proponents in the White House and Congress. The sick irony is that Tarrant typified the kind of dissolute, weak lifestyle he claimed to oppose.

Indeed, he is a prime example of the kind of rootlessness, moral relativism, victimization, cowardice, and weakness that is dragging the West down. He advocated “accelerationism,” essentially wishing to make things worse so a fascist system could arise from the ruins, similar to the rhetoric espoused by groups like Atomwaffen Division. The reality, of course, is that widespread disorder in the West would only lead to the corporatist, liberal establishment Tarrant so hates gaining more power by pledging to restore the peace.

His manifesto praises another deranged coward, Anders Breivik, who ruthlessly murdered the teenage sons and daughters of Norway’s liberal establishment on an island in the summer of 2011. Breivik was supposedly trying to trigger a backlash against the do-gooder types in charge of Norway and its refugee and immigration policies. He failed utterly to provoke such a backlash and inspired revulsion among the majority of people. Still, like Serbian war criminals and Nazis, he has his admirers: losers and online obsessives such as Tarrant. They’ve somehow reached a place so sunken that they think murdering European teenagers is a bold stand against the erosion of white Europe. In his manifesto, Tarrant claims that his attack will reverberate in the future, “creating the atmosphere of fear and change that is required” to bring about the removal of non-whites. Specifically, Tarrant claimed he wanted to avenge the murder of Ebba Akerlund who was killed in a terrorist attack in Sweden in 2017. So he murdered innocent Muslim children in New Zealand? It is as imbecilic as it is sick.

Tarrant already has his own de facto apologists, such as the ignoble, egg-headed Australian senator Fraser Anning. There’s also the incels of some festering online haunts like Kiwi Farms, whose founder Joshua Moon is refusing to disclose posts made about Tarrant around the time of the attack to authorities, calling New Zealand an “irrelevant” nation and a “shithole country.” Moon had previously been let go as an administrator of 8chan over allegations of spreading pedophilic content and has been linked to a number of school shooting hoaxes.

Like the Pittsburgh synagogue killer Robert Bowers, Tarrant descended into the bowels of the internet and came out even more deranged than he went in—and ready to kill. Rather than seeing the powerful example of solidarity, community building, and unity that the Muslim ummah has for Westerners—particularly those in non-Muslim majority nations—Tarrant saw only ethnic enemies. Rather than seeing the faces of honorable men, women, and children from all walks of life at Al Noor and Linwood mosques, he saw only demons. Rather than hearing beloved grandfather and former Afghan refugee Mohemmed Daoud Nabi greet him with “hello brother” at the door, he heard only his own internal soundtrack of deadening hate.

Muslims have faced intense persecution for centuries, and continue to around the world, from Syria to Kashmir. Despite their numbers, the faith continues to be undermined and attacked by authoritarians and tyrannical fanatics from Egypt to China. Tarrant himself admired the authoritarian China, a full-blown surveillance state teeming with the “corporatism” he claims to despise, because it is a “non-diversified country” (it is also placing millions of its Muslim minority Uighurs in concentration camps). Tarrant also claimed to be an “eco fascist,” despite his love for China, where the environment is regularly despoiled to meet state production targets. It’s as ideologically incoherent as it is morally repulsive—the outgrowth of an online education gone wrong.

To have Muslims feel increasingly unsafe in Western countries is tragic indeed and should be intensely countered by goodwill and neighborly affection. Islam itself brought together various warring clans and nations under submission to God, and many of those killed in the New Zealand attack came from across the Muslim world. As the Quran says, “Remember the favor of Allah upon you, when you were enemies and He brought your hearts together and you became, by His favor, brothers. And you were on the edge of a pit of the Fire, and he saved you from it” (3:103). Tarrant wanted to drive apart what Islam had brought together, but he failed.

As the comedian Jeremy McLellan has noted, background investigations into Tarrant showing he was bullied and fell into a vicious spiral online are cheap journalism. When was the last time a Muslim terrorist was labeled an “angelic boy”? The truth is that many of us were bullied but never grew up to murder rooms full of innocent people, or even consider doing so. How off-track do you have to be to think that killing worshippers at prayer will turn the public more against them than against you? Only an idiot who spends his life online could believe such a thing. Tarrant’s 87-page manifesto says that white Westerners who convert to Islam are race traitors—but it is Tarrant who is the traitor.

The New Zealand shooter is a coward and a failure, like others of his ilk. His obsession with the “Great Replacement” theory is self-referential. People like him are replacing themselves—with pure nihilism and bitter futures. They can blame the Jews, globalists, or vague shadowy conspiracies, but at the end of the day it’s their fault for wallowing in victimhood. The figure hunched over his computer watching violent porn and ironic memes about mass murder is not a harmless joke. The anger of the lost boys should not be taken lightly by pundits or security analysts, since it demonstrates a lack of success and powerless rage that can manifest itself in unpredictably insane ways. Such lost boys need a very firm line in the sand and very hard boundaries. They were never taught respect or basic manliness. To prevent future attacks, we need to rebuild a society with purpose and instill men with positive masculine virtues that lead them to protect men and women—not kill them.

Nobody will mourn when Tarrant dies. But all of us mourn for the innocent people killed by his weak hand, ask that they be accepted by God as martyrs, and vow to oppose savages like him until the very last. The true victims are those who have had to face the absolute worst of humanity. Let all of us now try to show its best.

Paul Brian is a freelance journalist. He has reported for BBC, Reuters, and Foreign Policy, and contributed to The Week, The Federalist, and others. You can follow him on Twitter @paulrbrian or visit his website www.paulrbrian.com.

Celebrating the Texts of Those ‘Dead White Males’

On March 26, 2019 By admin

• Breaking News

Columbia University is distinctive for continuing to teach the Western canon to its students. The Core Curriculum, commonly referred to as “the Core,” is compulsory for all Columbia undergraduates; it includes mandatory courses in Western music, philosophy, literature, and art. Over the years, however, the Core has been heavily criticized, primarily by a small number of radical student activists who denounce what is in their view a racist curriculum unduly dominated by the writings of “dead white males.”

Every few months, some race-related incident in the news compels Columbia’s administrators to come out and justify their pedagogical approach to the canon. Self-conscious and apologetic in tone, the arguments they offer tend to be unconvincing.

A pair of essays published in Columbia’s student newspaper last December demonstrate the cognitive dissonance that characterizes the Columbia establishment’s defense of its own curriculum. One was written by Joanna Stalnaker, chair of the Western literature course (titled “Literature Humanities”); the other by Emmanuelle Saada, chair of the Western philosophy course (titled “Contemporary Civilization”). In their pieces, the professors set out to explain the purposes of their respective courses.

Stalnaker opens her case on unobjectionable grounds. She claims that there is value to having all undergraduates read the same body of texts. Given that the cultural background of the student body is diverse, the classroom experience that results when everybody engages the same books while bringing to bear their different cultural experiences will be intellectually nourishing and exciting. This is a fair enough position, but it does not necessarily provide a reason to read the Western canon. If the Core exists only so as to allow undergraduates to read the same texts, then those texts might as well be a diverse collection of the world’s great cultural traditions. Privileging the Western tradition, as the Core currently does, would remain unjustified.

But let us set that problem aside and examine what Stalnaker means by “engaging” the texts of the Western canon. For her, the form of that engagement is what’s key. “To engage with the Core,” she explains, “is not necessarily to embrace it: engagement can take the form of a course paper or [an]…op-ed that identifies gaps and exclusions in the syllabus and offers critical responses to them.” A substantial part of the reason why the canon is worthwhile, then, is that studying it allows us to better understand its shortcomings. Indeed, Stalnaker goes on, “Courses like Literature Humanities and Contemporary Civilization provide a venue for debating the very notion of Western civilization and the gaps, exclusions, and fictions it entails.”

The logic of this argument self-defeating. If the Core exists solely for students to knock it down, then its demise is a foregone conclusion. Columbia cannot sustain the teaching of a curriculum that it openly acknowledges to be racist and otherwise problematic, because if it is those things, then why bother teaching it all?

A fascinating though regrettable consequence of Stalnaker’s argument is that it reduces the canon debate at Columbia to a curious binary: radical students who would like to see the Core abolished on one side, versus the Columbia establishment that hopes to preserve the Core on the other. The former insists that the Western canon propagates white supremacy and should therefore not be read; the latter counters by agreeing that while, yes, the canon is characterized by “gaps, exclusions, and fictions,” it is still worth engaging with it, the better to subvert and criticize it. Those who believe that the canon ought to be read simply because it is our patrimony as residents of a Western nation are rendered voiceless in the discussion. Such a perspective is not considered legitimate. Instead, the debate takes place almost entirely between different factions of the Left, each of them holding a basically disparaging view of the canon. In the meantime, everybody else is forced to spectate from the sidelines, waiting as the Left resolves what’s merely an internal disagreement.

Professor Saada’s defense of Contemporary Civilization (the Western philosophy course) largely reinforces the binary parameters of this debate. Although she begins by correctly noting that it is important to read the canon because its texts, from the Bible to The Wealth of Nations, have shaped the world in which we live, her view nonetheless seems to be that those texts have primarily shaped it for the worse. The bulk of her essay is thus devoted to proving that one can wield the writings of the Western tradition as a weapon against it. Hence, part of the course’s purpose is to allow one to, as she puts it, “[understand] the processes of interpretation and erasure that allowed those authors to be identified as contributors to a singular, dominant tradition. And [the course] involves evaluating what this process marginalized or discounted, from whole categories of people to ideas.” One example of such exclusion is the “systematic erasure by European writers” of Islam’s contribution to Western philosophy.

Saada adds that the course she chairs helps foster a deeper understanding of “the imperial and racialized worst of Western civilization.” Further, the course elucidates “the contributions and limits of the [classic] liberal tradition to understandings of race and gender,” explores how racism and classism were “not deplorable tangents” in the thought of men like Locke and Aristotle but rather “integral parts of their philosophies,” and explains “how sexism and racism have been woven into “‘Western civilization.’”

In sum, even in the words of those defending the canon at Columbia, the purpose of the Core is to teach students the processes by which the West generated some of the most revolting practices and beliefs in human history.

Of course, the form and content of the Columbia establishment’s justification of its curriculum do have to be understood in context. It is, after all, students on the far Left whom that establishment seeks to persuade; the defense of the West must therefore be articulated in terms palatable to the Left. And yet, notwithstanding the context, the trouble remains that the Left’s case for the canon—or at least this particular variety of it—isn’t very compelling.

A more compelling argument for the canon would have to start by advancing a far more balanced account of Western history. Stalnaker is right to note that the West has historically excluded entire categories of people from the benefits of citizenship; Saada, in turn, is right to call our attention to the West’s record of racist oppression. Entirely missing from their essays, however, are such terms as “democracy,” “national self-determination,” “civic equality,” “reason,” “scientific innovation,” “free inquiry,” “abolitionism,” “individualism,” “human rights,” and “the rule of law.” More conspicuous in their absence are the contributions of the West to our modern notions of all these things.

To borrow from something Christopher Hitchens once wrote in a very different context, what Stalnaker and Saada describe as the main legacy of the West is only “what Western [leftists] don’t like and can’t defend about their own system,” but in doing so they give insufficient credit to what the West has produced by way of “what [leftists] do like about it and must defend: its emancipated women, its scientific inquiry, its separation of religion from the state.” Supporting the canonical texts of the West is much easier if one grants that Western history contains not just great moral abominations, but also great moral triumphs.

Without a doubt, almost no writer—no matter how positive his or her disposition toward the West might be—will dare claim that Western heritage is without its faults. An assertion like that would be ignorant at best and bigoted at worst. Even Niall Ferguson, often described as a cheerleader for the West, concedes as much. “No serious writer,” he writes, “would claim that the reign of Western civilization was unblemished.” But, he goes on, “The West was Janus-faced, capable of nobility yet also capable of turpitude…. Competition and monopoly; science and superstition; freedom and slavery; curing and killing; hard work and laziness—in each case, the West was father to both the good and the bad.”

Ferguson does conclude that “it was just…[that] the better of the two brothers ultimately came out on top”—a conclusion with which people could reasonably disagree. But it is a nonstarter to deny the achievements of the West or to reduce its legacy to one of conquest, racism, and sexism. Assessments of Western thought and history that only reference its accomplishments are rightly seen as chauvinistic. So why is it deemed acceptable to focus, as Saada does, only on the reprehensible ideas it has produced? Intellectual fairness demands that we be rigorous and take into account both the positives and the negatives.

In the last analysis, however, the most convincing argument in favor of the canon cannot rest on whether the “balance sheet” of the Western legacy is good or evil. Rather, it must take a cue from Burke and point out a simple fact: the Western legacy, for those of us who live here at least, is our own. Just as students in the Muslim world should study the Koran and the history of Islam, and just as students in China should study the Chinese classics, so too should students in the West engage with our own heritage—because it is ours. Whether that heritage is “net good” or “net bad” is a secondary concern. More important is possessing the knowledge needed to trace the genealogy of the ideas in the world around us, to understand the history of the intellectual trends (from Christianity to the Enlightenment) that created our surroundings, to have a point of comparison between our current circumstances and those of the past societies that most shaped the present.

If the Columbia establishment (and other university establishments facing similar challenges) persists in its refusal to offer a nuanced portrayal of Western history, and if it furthermore refuses to infuse even a minimal amount of cultural Burkeanism into its defense of the Western canon, then it will continue to be steamrolled and backed into a corner by student activists. As noted above, Columbia cannot long maintain that the West is fundamentally racist and wicked and that the texts it has produced are nevertheless worthy of being preserved. If one accepts the premises of critical race theory, in other words, it becomes very difficult to resist its conclusions.

To their credit, those who presently staff the Columbia establishment seem genuinely committed to preserving the canon. But for them to succeed in making their case, certain stands must be taken, certain arguments must be sharpened, and certain falsehoods must be refuted.

Christian Gonzalez is originally from Venezuela, but was raised in Miami, Florida. He now studies political science at Columbia University. He can be reached at cag2240@columbia.edu.

The Politics & Policy Daily: The Barr for Obstruction of Justice

On March 25, 2019 By admin

• Breaking News

What We’re Following Today

It’s Monday, March 25.

‣ Senator Tom Udall, a Democrat from New Mexico, announced that he will not run for reelection in 2020. “The worst thing anyone in public office can do is believe the office belongs to them, rather than to the people they represent,” Udall said in a statement.

‣ Michael Avenatti, the former lawyer for the adult-film star Stormy Daniels, was arrested on charges that he tried to extort Nike for $25 million. Avenatti was also charged in a separate case, where he was accused of embezzlement and defrauding a bank.

Here’s what else we’re watching:

Mueller Fallout
Two days after receiving Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s final report, Attorney General William Barr presented his conclusions in a four-page letter to Congress: There was no collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign, and while Mueller himself didn’t ultimately make a determination on whether the president obstructed justice, Barr said he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein decided the evidence presented didn’t meet the bar for that crime. Here’s what’s been unfolding since:

‣ The White House Response: President Trump’s team is claiming victory and celebrating Mueller’s report as a boon to his reelection chances. “The findings of the Department of Justice are a total and complete exoneration of the President of the United States,” Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders tweeted after Barr’s letter was posted online. The president himself reacted shortly after:

(via Twitter)

‣ The $Resistance: Meanwhile, the pundits, commentators, and entrepreneurs who were banking on Mueller discovering the smoking gun that would remove Trump from office have been disappointed. With the report finalized, writes Ian Bogost, “the Mueller-industrial complex is quickly collapsing.”

‣ The special counsel’s Russia probe is over. Other investigations remain. There are multiple legal inquiries surrounding the president and his associates, including an emoluments case that might head to the Supreme Court. And many other Trump-related controversies could have been investigated by Congress instead, reports Russell Berman.

The U.S. and Israel: Speaking at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s annual conference, Vice President Mike Pence criticized recent comments from Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, saying that “anti-Semitism has no place” in Congress and questioning her position on the Foreign Affairs Committee. Omar has recently sparked controversy for comments that some perceived as perpetuating anti-Semitic tropes.

Also today: President Donald Trump, joined by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, formally signed a declaration recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, reversing decades of U.S. policy.

— Elaine Godfrey

Snapshot

President Trump smiles at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after signing a proclamation in the Diplomatic Reception Room at the White House. (Susan Walsh / AP)

Ideas From The Atlantic

The Mueller Probe Was an Unmitigated Success (Franklin Foer)
“Even if the actual Mueller report is anything like the attorney general’s summation of its contents, Russiagate will go down as one of the biggest scandals in American political history.” → Read on.

Barr’s Summary of Mueller’s Report Raises These Questions (Ken White)
“Though Barr emphasized that he and Rosenstein had been involved in evaluating the status of the investigation for months, and that they consulted the Office of Legal Counsel and other Department of Justice experts, this conclusion reflects startling and unseemly haste for such a historic matter.”  → Read on.

What the Mueller Report Has Not Answered (David Frum)
“[Trump] was the beneficiary of a foreign intelligence operation, but not an active participant in that operation. He received the stolen goods, but he did not conspire with the thieves in advance.” → Read on.

We Drew Congressional Maps for Partisan Advantage. That Was the Point. (Ralph Hise and David Lewis)
“‘I propose that we draw the maps to give a partisan advantage to 10 Republicans and three Democrats, because I do not believe it’s possible to draw a map with 11 Republicans and two Democrats,’ one of us said in 2016, as the North Carolina legislature drew new congressional maps.” → Read on.

Where #MeToo Came From, and Where It’s Going (Catharine A. MacKinnon)
“The #MeToo mobilization, this uprising of the formerly disregarded, has made increasingly untenable the assumption that the one who reports sexual abuse is a lying slut.” → Read on.

What Else We’re Reading

‣ Trump Might Not Be Guilty, But Neither Is the Press (Jack Shafer, Politico Magazine)
‣ Buttigieg Surges to Third Place in New Iowa Poll (Chris Mills Rodrigo, The Hill)
‣ Eager to Court Jews (And Fracture Democrats), Republicans Push Bills on Anti-Semitism (Glenn Thrush, The New York Times) (? Paywall)
‣ Dems Freeze Out GOP on Bipartisan Bills (Melanie Zanona and Sarah Ferris, Politico)
‣ The Ghosting of the Democratic Centrists (Josh Kraushaar, National Journal)

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