If we were living in normal times, Milo Yiannopoulos is somebody I'd do my best to know nothing about. However, given the melee at Berkeley, I decided to watch Tucker Carson interview him.
I think I first became aware of him during the Gamergate controversy. I also have some peripheral awareness of him in connection with Ben Shapiro.
From what I can tell, Milo is basically an opportunist. He probably values Dionysian freedom. Beyond that I doubt he has a serious political philosophy.
I'm guessing what makes him tick is that he's an aging homosexual. That fosters a carpe diem outlook. He's been able to tap into a segment of the youth culture, but his hipster appeal is threatened by the fact that once age catches up with you, that constituency will turn to someone younger and prettier. Age-wise, he's already at the outer limits of that market niche. Kinda like thirty-something actors who play teen dramas. You can only keep that up for so long.
What's mainly of interest is another front in the culture wars. It's not secular progressives v. social conservatives, but secular progressives v. the alt right, or manosphere, or overlapping groups.
It's a clash between different groups, all of whom are alienated from "traditional" values. To some degree, Christians are watching this civil war on the sidelines, because it's basically a fight between competing secular factions.
One dangerous development is leftwing goon squads got up in black fatigues like the Fedayeen, physically attacking people who show up to hear Milo, Ben Shapiro, &c. Why don't the police arrest them?
The alt right is a toxic mix of white supremacism and antisemitism, with a dash of chic Nietzschean rhetoric, yet it's no worse than the social justice warriors for feminism, transgenderism, ecoterrorism, euthanasia, &c. Pick your poison.
You've tagged Milo pretty well but failed, in my view, with the alt-right. Their excesses exist but their virtues far and away exceed the social justice fascist goonism crusades.
ReplyDeleteAlex is correct. The Christian Alt-Right is not anti-semitic or racist, we just couldn't give a quantum of an iota of a fig newton when liberals and cuckservatives call us for adopting realist positions that don't include Piper-esque exhortations to embrace becoming a white minority in America. We are trying to make America a White Christian majority nation again and prefer to win rather than embracing 'principled' defeat.
ReplyDeletei) The alt-right reactions to Ben Shapiro and David French were racist and/or antisemitic. We could debate how representative that is, but it's there for all to see.
Deleteii) I don't know how you're planning to make America a white Christian majority nation again. In general, white Americans don't have big families any more, and less so than some other ethnic groups. How do you intend to reverse those demographic trends?
iii) Why are you trying to make America a white Christian majority nation rather than a Christian majority nation?
The alt-white reaction to Ben Shapiro was to call him out for obviously putting his commitment to Jewish interests and Israel over Christian conservatism. There's your irony: it's fine for Jews to have in-group preferences but pointing them out is anti-semitic and 'racist' when white non-jews do it.
DeleteInstead of talking about how we're going to do it, the first step is to agree that it would be the ideal situation.
iii) Because white American Christianity is the Christianity of the Founding Fathers. Third World immigrants, Christian or not, bring their culture with them. Europeans brought German, Dutch, English cultures but they had far more in common that we have with Christians from Liberia. This is obvious.
Cure yourself of Magic Dirt theory. It is foolish to believe that Christian people from all over the world will magically assimilate American values the moment they set foot on our shores. The Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution for white people; We The People were white people. We can have immigrants - no one is arguing for an ethnostate (which apparently is fine for the Jews but racist for us); but to even question why whites should want to maintain their own homeland is ridiculous.
i) As an Orthodox Jew, Ben obviously isn't committed to Christianity. However, he was highly critical of Trump because Trump has no conservative credentials, much less Christian credentials in particular. It wasn't Jewish v. Christian, but conservative v. Trump. You're recasting the issue.
Deleteii) His alt-right critics literally portrayed Ben as a hooked-nosed Jews.
iii) No, I don't agree that making America a white Christian majority nation again would be the ideal situation.
In terms of moral and theological priorities, it should be unnecessary to point out that culture takes a backseat to Christian commitment. I have far more fundament affinity with Michael Nazir-Ali, Korean-American Christians, Chinese-American Christians, &c., than I have with Austin Petersen, Angela Merkel, Milo Yiannopoulos, Daniel Dennett, &c.
It sounds like saved-by-race Harry needs to review what Christian peculiar peoplehood and dwelling in the tents of Shem imply vis-a-vis ethnic and national loyalties, and where his progenitors stood spiritually prior to having been evangelized. Christians from MENA were hammering out the Creeds and resisting false religion while Harry's ancestors were sacrificing humans to false gods.
DeleteHarry Cassandra
Delete"Because white American Christianity is the Christianity of the Founding Fathers."
There's no such thing as "white American Christianity". There are whites who happen to be Christian as well as Americans who happen to be Christian. But Christianity is separable from any particular ethnicity or nationality. Christianity is a universal religion.
Perhaps you mean Christianity combines with preexisting societies to produce a distinctive cultural synthesis. True, but by the same token, that has ever so many permutations.
"It is foolish to believe that Christian people from all over the world will magically assimilate American values the moment they set foot on our shores."
As far as that goes, American values should assimilate to Christian values. That's the standard of comparison.
"The Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution for white people; We The People were white people."
The text of the Constitution doesn't single out white folks in contrast to, say, Chinese or East Indians.
"but to even question why whites should want to maintain their own homeland is ridiculous."
American settlers weren't seeking a white homeland. Some of them were seeking freedom to practice their faith. Some of them were seeking economic opportunities. And so on.
And, of course, American wasn't vacant. You had millions of indigenous people-groups.
Christians being more concerned with skin color than theology is mind boggling.
ReplyDeleteSteve wrote:
ReplyDeleteiii) Why are you trying to make America a white Christian majority nation rather than a Christian majority nation?
Exactly. Also, if the goal was to make it Christian again, one way is to target one of the fastest growing group in the US, viz. the Hispanic/Latino community. Many of them are already Catholics, so they're halfway there. I've always thought that we Evangelicals should be focusing our evangelism on them. Many of them are already in governmental positions both local, state and federal. Just this last presidential elections there were two high profile conservative Latinos candidates (Cruz and Rubio).
I expect we'll have a Hispanic POTUS within the next 50 years. Maybe in 8 years if Rubio fulfills his senate term and doesn't run for POTUS in 4 years. Imagine if Latino Evangelicals helped bring Evangelicalism (and from my perspective also Pentecostalism/Charismatic movement) awakening to Mexico as well. The Protestant work ethic could eventually transform Mexico's economy that building a wall may become a non-issue in that Mexicans may not feel the need to cross the border to financially survive.
I lean toward Postmillennialism, and if the Lord's return is hundreds or thousands of years from now, I highly doubt America (the country I love and was born in) will continue to exist as we know it till then. In keeping with the trend of every other empire, America will likely collapse, be replaced or be so transformed that it'll be unrecognizable. The only hope for America's survival till the return of Christ is for Christians within it to be committed to Christ and Christianity over ethnicity. Christians need a long term global vision. One that will outlast any country.
IMO we should serious wonder about the genuine salvation of any professing Christian who places his race or ethnicity on par with his commitment to Christ and Christianity. IMO Anyone who places his race above his Christian commitment is almost certainly a self-deceived false believer.
As a Christian who is also a white person, I am allowed to notice that white people and their ways are under attack by the Left, and I am allowed, in addition to evangelizing, to defend against this attack.
ReplyDelete*
America was “white dominated” for most of its history, meaning that it was a normal nation in that it had a majority people who ran things in what they believed to be the best way. It was and is the Left which has attacked this system, pushing for a multiracial society which is de facto anti-white, and not out of any good motives.
Of course, whiteness was not an important issue until recent times, because Americans were mostly white, and acted in their own best interest with respect to the non-white (and other minority) peoples in their midst. Minorities were required to respect the ways and the laws of the majority people who were white and mostly Protestant. It is only because of the leftist assault against whites that whiteness became important.
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Christians, including white people, are allowed to work for goods other than, and in addition to, Christian evangelism. The multiracial society at which the Left aims is fundamentally unjust in that such countries necessarily devolve into balkanization, i.e., ethnic warfare. And there is the fact that force is being exerted on white people to give up their traditional cultural items and ways [e.g, Shakespeare, Western classical music] so as to make foreigners “feel better.” Being allowed to enjoy them in your private life but being forced to give them up in public is actually making them disappear. America 2017 is radically different from America of my youth.
There is also the question of identity. Just who exactly are we? If America becomes fully Balkanized, i.e. multicultural, will the nonwhite peoples continue to feel solidarity with all the other peoples of America? The available evidence says that most people will feel solidarity only with members of their own group. The only people who try to live up to the ideal of a multicultural nation are a large subset of whites and tiny minorities of nonwhite people groups.
Noticing these facts is called “racist” by the Left, but they are facts nonetheless.
So Christian whites are allowed to defend themselves, not just as Christians, but also as whites. Fighting against mass immigration and the legalized punishment of whiteness which inevitably come with it are acceptable activities for Christian whites. Especially since the outcome of the culture war is not foreordained.
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Skeptics, of course, will deny that contemporary liberalism is anti-white in any way. But the actions of the Left are unmistakable, and when they think conservatives are not listening leftists make their anti-white program clear.
I agree with you regarding discrimination against whites. That said, there are different ways to divvy up the influence:
Deletei) Race and ideology are separable. Members of different races and ethnicities can and sometimes do share the same ideology while members of the same races and ethnicities can and often do have diverse ideologies.
ii) One of the dominant formative influences in American culture was traditional masculinity. But that's not a racial distinctive.
Conversely, feminism has had a major liberalizing influence in society, in the education establishment, welfare state, and jurisprudence, yet that hails from white females elites.
iii) Another liberalizing influence has been from Polish and Irish immigrants. Their European Catholicism has greatly changed the political and cultural landscape in America, and not for the better. Yet that's caucasian.
iv) I don't know how you class Hispanics. The dominant culture in Latin America hails from Spain and Portugal. That's European. It's just as "white" as Greeks and Italians.
v) As to "who exactly are we?" that's certainly an important question for national unity. But culture is too fluid to be the standard of comparison. I'd make that Christianity. Of course, there are competing definitions of Christianity, but that's where to focus the debate.
vi) I personally identify to a great extent with traditional British and European high culture. But many or most white Americans do not. Moreover, my own tastes are eclectic.
I'd add that Paul Linebarger is a good example of someone who blends Eastern and Western cultures to produce his unique science fiction. That's the opposite of Aryan cultural purity.