Majorityrights Central > Category: Blogs & Blogging

Two new experiences for me over the last few days have been commenting at the Guardian - twice - and at Alex Linder’s blog.

The Guardian stuff was a little tricky in terms of striking a publishable note.  But there was something very familiar about the thinking of its commenters.  A bit like Samizdata without the guns.  Or maybe This Inverted World without the race-realism (hell, when I think about it, I get into trouble every place I go).  But one of our wise and honoured commentariat said it was possible to get published on the Guardian threads, and he was right.

The second new experience was just a single comment on a very good Michael O’Meara piece at VNN.  It was his take on Le Pen’s disappointing result - superior to my effort on the same subject, I think.  Michael is a deep thinker, and I suspect that he understands as much about the desirability of a synthesis between a philosophy of the right and racial nationalism as any man in America.

Today, the VNN blog (not the main page) put up a post that read “VNNForum.com Arranging New Server:”.  VNN’s existing hoster had informed them that “The content on your sites is not something that we are able to accept or are willing to host here at cari.net.  Per our CEO your account will be terminated immediately.”

That’s something you’ll never read at the Guardian.  But you’ll never read Michael O’Meara, either.

I know several MR regulars have the highest opinion of Jim Kalb.  For me, he is one of the two most thoughtful bloggers on the traditionalist right (the other being the more politically “big C” Conservative Mark Richardson).

After a blogging lay-off of some months Jim is back in harness with some new posts at Turnabout.  I’m sure he would welcome your patronage.

Well, hopefully.  We are now relocated to a high capacity server.  So the troubles that stretch back several months, on and off, should be behind us.  There are still some unsolved mysteries that we may now never have an answer for, not least how it was that the pressure-periods seemed to be created by processes the blog did not generate.  If we didn’t, who did?

Anyway, excelsior.  One interesting factoid that arose from the investigations mounted by James and JR is that our Bluehost stats (aw and Webalizer) reveal a far higher traffic than indicated by the EE software - close to 50,000 hits a day throughout October, despite the server problems.

You are all most welcome, and I hope from now on that the blog will be operating with 100% efficiency.  That will shortly include the restoration of much functionality that we closed down to try to keep the page alive.

So, with apologies for all the problems and with every finger crossed, it’s on with the show ...

Sincere apologies to all MR readers and writers for the recurrence of the blog’s suspension by Bluehost.  The issue, as before, is overstepping the CPU limit on our server.  The solution, as before, is a transfer to a high capacity server.  That was promised a month ago.  But we missed out on the 80 slots available on that particular server, and must now wait for Bluehost to build another.

Meanwhile, the blog’s functionality will be further paired back to try to keep us under the CPU limit.  I hope the loading speed will improve as a result and not too much time will pass before Bluehost upgrade us to a server that can deliver the performance we need.

But anything, frankly, will be better than another weekend with nothing better to do than hammer nails into walls.

Apologies again.  Thanks for keeping faith with us.

John Ray has left the MR panel of writers.  In so doing he has characterised his postings here over the past several months as a counterbalance to an intrusive anti-semitism.  I don’t think that characterisation will surprise anyone.  John is as strongly supportive of the positive Jewish contribution to Western society as most nationalists are critical of the negative, but neither can value the other’s analysis.

There is, as we all know, a wider tragedy in this disconnection in so much as Jewish cultural and ethnic activism works freely upon the body politic, while its critics go not just unheard but slurred, silenced and imprisoned.  If the free speech environment at this one small blog could not break down the barrier - and I recall all too few fruitful exchanges of opinion (not just with John) - then the outlook for our people is pretty bleak.

Anyway, John has gone and it is incumbent upon me to thank him for his past interest and efforts, and wish him well with his extraordinarily diverse array of blogging activities.

We look to the future now.

There can, it seems, be too much of a good thing.  JR’s inimitable contributions on the vexed issue of physical perfection may, by their popularity, have been responsible for the CPU problems we’ve had over the past few months.

In any event, our hosting service pulled the plug on us on Friday because we were starving other sites filed on the server.  Can’t complain about that.  Bluehost have a duty to their other paying customers.

JR has now cut back our CPU consumption and we are restored to life.  It’s time to apologise to all MR readers who have been confronted by a “Site Suspended” notice over the last couple of days.  We think the situation will be sufficiently stable to allow uninterrupted operation in the short-term.  Long-term, another solution will have to be found - on which more later.

Thanks again for your patience and thanks for coming back.

GW

My thanks to reader Michael R for tipping me off about “The Real Realist”.  This guy is a new blogger, white of course, braving the rainbow nation to bring us crime news at the fetchingly named Why South Africa is Crap and that diversity we all celebrate so much, of course, at The Death of Johannesburg.

Well worth your patronage.

Notwithstanding my committment to free speech ‘n all, I think the present disagreements about JJR’s posts have exhausted their utility.  I have taken down two recent, let us say, discursive contributions on the matter.

I have also asked JJR to post less frequently and with greater consideration.  As is well known I have no objection to views critical of the majority opinions here appearing on the blog.  What counts is the quality of the argument, and that is also the stated position of JJR’s critics.

I just want to reinforce once more why conventional political analyses are to be welcomed ... why, indeed, the intellectual cross-fertilisation of nationalism and the conventional political right is desirable and central to our goals.

The following argument is bowdlerised from an e-mail I received this morning.  I hope my correspondent will not object to its employment in the present, rather extraordinary circumstances, but it encapsulates my own feelings and, in fact, goes further - into the very interesting and crucial area of the power of art and thought to motivate political beings.

My correspondent wrote of the fringe and the mainstream, stating definitively that the motive drive to get the European people out of their present danger will come from the latter.  He rejected the notion that the movement of fringe personalities such as David Duke, Don Black and the National Alliance towards the mainstream could have telling results.  Our true leadership will emerge from the mainstream, he said, as it emerged in the Polish underground movement that pre-dated Solidarity, for instance.  They weren’t fringe personalities.  They were writers, academics, politicians and patriots seeking to revive the pre-War Polish political dispensation, but they had in common that they were all pushed aside by the totalitarian system.

Only culture, my correspondent wrote, could light the way to the turning point.  But it would have to be a high and new culture - novels, films, poetry, an aesthetic for recovery and renewal that draws fully on the European genius.  By no other means could we imbue ourselves with the energy and vision for the task ahead.  It will, he said, be a long process, slow to start.  Political hotheads need not apply.

Now, that’s a serious prognosis, and it would do no harm for us to attempt the same seriousness in all the work here.  The rest is, or ought to be, tolerance and, when it’s deserved, respect.