On FB, Jack Donovan shared a post from a colleague of his whose very traditionalist views on gender and race have made him minorly controversial. The comments thread turned into an ill-tempered tempest in a White Nationalist teapot. Not unusual for that group, but still dispiriting to read. Donovan is speaking at a Washington conference on Euro-American identity this weekend, with the focus on his real interest, the fate and role of masculinity in Western culture. The Christian WNers were not happy that a sodomite was being given a platform. Not at all. It was messy.
It is not at all rare for groups of passionate outsiders to spend more energy on infighting and parsing their internal differences than on the business they purport to be in. Religion and politics, regardless of the contents of their beliefs, provide endless examples.
Passion is drawn to ideological purity; family grudges are the most intractable. I remember the hostilities among AIDS activists and organizations in the 80's and early 90's. Equally nasty. A report this past spring about the American Catholic Theological Association indicates that they would be far more hospitable to a Muslim than to an Opus Dei Catholic. And as I have often noted here, I have never heard Liberals dump vitriol on the jihadis, Osama included, the way they "hate on" fellow American conservatives.
Two thoughts.
In this episode you have one of the primary fissures among Whites who are conscious of their race's perilous condition: Christians vs Post-Christians. The Post-Christians --my word, not theirs-- include the pagan revivalists and the Nietzscheans. It's a replay of Tertullian's old question, "What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?" But there's no escaping the facts, that the West pre-dates Christianity and that for 1000 years, the West was Christendom. Aristotle and Paul. Christ and Caesar. Spartans and Franciscans. An uneasy ancestry for both sides that makes the West dynamic, volatile and unstable.
The second one is that I wonder why homosexuality is such an issue. By that I don't mean I am surprised that White Nationalists dislike it. After all, gays don't officially reproduce and declining White birth rates are dangerous. Plus, given the alliances and the effects that gays have had in the last 40 years, why would a traditionalist movement not be deeply resentful and suspicious? The Christian commentors on the thread have their Biblical issues with homosexuality and even a-religious WN types see it as a failure of manhood and a threat.
Apparently, it seems, homos are somewhat over-represented in this movement. Or at least some of its proponents seem to think so. Could that be? Could Johann Hari be right? Given that pretty well all the WN groups I have looked at on line take positions that would now be considered "fascist"* and that fascism always glorifies traditional masculinity, that might be the place where masculine-identified homos find their attraction. Ernst Röhm and the SA, etc. Donovan does not identify as a White Nationalist although his work on masculinity has attracted the attention of some of them, whom he jokingly calls The Mighty Whities.
But when White voices willing to advocate for their own people are so few, the mosh pit of the FB comments this morning was, as they used to say in the religion biz, very unedifying.
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*Liberalism defines anything to the Right of it as fascist, so it's not really hard to find yourself in that category. The Tea Party's call for less government is clearly fascist, according to this narrative. ExC has explained why. Resist egalitarianism in any way and there you are, Poof, you're a fascist.
2 comments:
If, due to some apocalyptic race war that led to Whites of all stripes living together, homosexuality probably would be a real issue, especially if White Nationalists got the upper hand on a wave of "I told you so." Bisexuals would probably get a pass, provided they produced offspring. Homosexuals, however, would probably have to sacrifice many of the privileges we have acquired over the years. Probably in the form of no economic benefits for cohabitation and increased work/decreased vacation or something as a trade-off for not having and raising children. We would essentially have to bend over backwards and put our noses to the grindstone to gain some measure of safety in such a society.
Not a terribly pleasant or enjoyable life, but hey, maybe in time, the image of homosexuals as hard-working and self-sacrificing citizens working for the betterment of the society would displace the current unpalatable ones.
P.S. And yes, I hate it when groups count coup and enumerate each other's peccadilloes instead of putting aside their differences and uniting against the far more dangerous enemy they all share. It's like the argument at the Council of Elrond in The Fellowhip of the Ring, only more depressing.
-Sean
It sounds like you've answered your own question about why homosexuality is a contentious issue for even non-religious alternative right types. The LGBT agenda is eminently hostile to Western civilization.
Personally, it never even crossed my mind that homosexuality as a practice did not necessarily entail the sort of super-effeminate, genderqueer, deconstructionist type bullshit that tends to accompany it in the popular media and the academy. Never crossed my mind.
I remember the moment, some time after I finished The Way of Men, that I found out Jack Donovan was a homosexual. Major cognitive dissonance.
There's not a real point here or a solution, just some observations. I can't pretend to know why all the vitriol.
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