By Bo Sears

MR readers will be aware of the work our organisation, ResistingDefamation.org, undertakes and the strategies we employ to combat the flow of routine media slurring and negative depiction of white Americans.

White boy, white privilege, wasp, nerdy, white flight, redneck, hillbilly, cracker, white trash, geek, white bread, lily-white, typical white person, goober, Yankee dog, white resentment, acting white, and Wonder Bread hardly scratch the surface.  But this is a surface beneath which lurks a deep and arrogant hostility and a moral supremacism that we are absolutely determined to scratch.

To that end, and as has been pretty widely discussed elsewhere, we launched a counter-action this month with a full-page ad in a major print medium in Santa Clara County (the fifth largest industrial county in the USA).

Metro is a free weekly advertiser, but enormously popular and widely distributed. It’s distribution is second only to the San Jose Mercury News which has, itself, almost become a thinner tabloid.

The ad, which was headlined A river of sludge from the San Jose Mercury News,  offered white American Metro readers the chance to get a handle on the problem:-

At ResistingDefamation, we believe that a slur-free society is possible, and we have established free two-hour seminars to teach about this river of sludge and how to combat it.

Well, over 220 email responses have followed.  So we are sorting them and setting up 27 sessions to service demand!  We’ll have desktop computers, an after-hours cop, and up to 10 people present at each seminar.  We’ll cover negative stereotypes and slurs first and in that order, then 90 mins of discussion, etc.  The seminars start this week.  They have excited a good deal of comment, but not in the daily newspaper.

The ad will be re-tooled and re-run every month until Christmas.

We did send the actual page from the hard-copy edition to the eighteen top corporate officers in Colorado so they know about it.  And we complained to the county Board of Supervisors about our having to do this when they have an Office of Human Relations which is supposed to do these things.

Not that we don’t think we can’t do a far better job.

“Underlying the change from traditional geopolitics to security as a governance issue is the long-term decline of the state. Despite state resilience, this trend could prove unstoppable. If so, it will be essential to replace dominant state-centric perceptions and assessments [what the author terms “stateocentrism” - gt] with alternative judgments acknowledging the reduced role and diminished effectiveness of states.”

“The first option seeks to quarantine and contain disorder and chaos as far from the United States as possible. The second option seeks to quarantine the United States itself, thereby protecting it from the most serious consequences of an inexorable trend. A third option, lying somewhere between these extremes, offers a more selective and differentiated strategy.”

Fundamental, moderately interesting ideas some of us have considered for a long time.  The author is quite focused on the growth of organized crime and even ventures into the concept of tight, ethnically-organized transnational crime groups.  I’m sure he realizes that Thought Crime lies in that direction, however.

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Every few days I pay a call to EU Commissioner Margot Wallstrom’s blog, mostly to enjoy whatever shouting match between the ‘philes and ‘sceptics has broken out.  Margot, a Swedish lefty, is Vice President in charge of Institutional Relations and Communication Strategy, and one of only two Commissioners brave enough to operate a comment blog (the other is Environment Commissioner, Stavros Dimas).

Margot’s latest post is headed Irish referendum result, and dated yesterday.  In it she blithely informs us that the outcome of last week’s referendum:-

... was not a vote against the EU. It seems that even Sinn Féin and many other No campaigners in Ireland argued that a better deal could be secured for Ireland, not that Ireland should leave the EU.

This is pretty telling.  She burbles away for a bit, and then delivers herself of this observation:-

Surveys in the coming days, including one by the Commission, will examine the Irish result, looking at the reasons why people voted Yes and No. This will give us more information and a basis on which to analyse the implications in a more considered manner.

Strip away the EU politician’s reluctance to speak plainly, apply a cold douche of cynicism, and what we have here is a plainly stated intention to buy the Irish public off and make them vote again.

As the story develops, a lot of people are going to get very angry.  Bruno Waterfield, in the Telegraph gets their first:-

Exclusive to readers of this blog is some leaked Brussels polling that will add weight to the argument, gaining ground in the corridors at the moment, that Ireland should hold a second referendum on the Lisbon European Union Treaty.

A key political finding of an internal and preliminary European Commission analysis of weekend telephone polling has focused on the finding that 75 per cent of No voters “believe the Irish Government can renegotiate exceptions”.

...  The polling found that most, 40 per cent, of those who rejected the EU Treaty did so because they did not understand or were not “familiar” with it. The No campaign successfully fought on the slogan “would you sign a contract you had not read” after senior Irish politicians admitted they had not read an “unreadable” EU Treaty.

One fifth of No voters sought to “protect Irish identity” and another 17 per cent rejected the Treaty because they mistrusted “politicians/gov’t policies”. Ten per cent of the No-side were concerned about neutrality. Another 10 per cent wanted to keep their Commissioner - an issue which became deeply controversial during the Irish referendum. Eight per cent wanted to protect Ireland’s low corporate tax system.

... The issue of a second Irish referendum is on the EU agenda. There is talk of a menu of guarantees (tax, abortion, etc) that do not substantially change the Treaty text or require reopening full negotiations between the EU’s 27 member states. Plans to cut the number of commissioners can also be shelved.

No does not mean No.

So a re-run of the Nice solution is falling into place.  A period of

reflection

stitching-up will now follow, leading to a lengthy sell to the Irish public in advance of the second ballot in September or so.

How will it go down?  That’s the question.  Will the numbers accepting the bribe outweigh those angered by the sheer bloody arrogance of the EU oligarchy?

I rather suspect they will.

By Dennis Kastros

This article will be examining the nationalist movement from the perspective of the New Right (and that is a metapolitical approach) and the means by which it promotes itself and the imagery and language it uses.

As the imagery, language and propaganda used by a movement is the primary means by which it propagates itself, it is imperative that the manner in which any movement or ideology expresses itself can capably and efficiently invoke the desired response and create a perception of the movement in others which was initially intended. Difficulties arise because the means to achieve certain goals quite often contradict each other and there are many compromises which must be taken. For example, in order to create a message which will be reached and understood by a large number of people, a trade off often has to be made with the content of the message by omitting ideas or oversimplifying them. In order to target one particular demographic, issues may need to be addressed which may not be of as much concern to another demographic

Other conflicts can arise when there is a difference between what a particular movement wants to achieve, and with the main concerns of the general public. This often results in attempts to justify the movements aims by attempting to demonstrate how the movements primary concern tie in with the concerns of the general public. Nationalists for instance will argue that their particular style of nationalism will also result in certain economic benefits and will remove other economic and social pressures.

One example of another dichotomy and apparent contradiction is whether to promote nationalism as a reaction to contemporary problems, or as a new social and national order which is not necessarily a reaction to a particular crisis. Both these approaches have their merit and usefulness and the nature of both approaches will be further elucidated.

Reactionary nationalism

Reactionary nationalism can be loosely defined as nationalistic sentiment which has been created in response to a particular social change or crisis. It is important to differentiate between reactionary nationalistic sentiment which has arisen in response to a particular experience, and nationalistic sentiment which has always more or less existed in a dormant form but has been aroused in response to a perceived problem. These two situations, while superficially appearing similar, that is to say, both individuals have become more politically active in response to a situation, are still fundamentally different. The difference lies in the psychology of the individuals and the motivation which has spurned them to action.

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Martin Hutchinson treated his readers at Prudent Bear to a dose of blue collar reality this morning, mourning the technological manufacturing future that a generation of American politicians, financiers and businessmen threw away for short-term gain.
GW

GE’s announcement a week ago that it would accept offers for its appliances business marked the death-knell of yet another US manufacturing business, one among so many in US manufacturing’s long and seemingly unstoppable downtrend since 1980. That decline may seem an inevitable historical trend, and Wall Street’s analysts would claim that the US economy can prosper just fine without it. Yet impartial analysts of the putrefying corpse of US manufacturing capability are forced into an inescapable question: did it die of natural causes or was it murdered?

For the last 30 years, Wall Street’s insouciant attitude appears to have made sense. US manufacturing has slowly declined, as operations have moved to lower-wage centers in the Third World. However the US economy as a whole has continued to thrive, as financial services doubled its share of Gross Domestic Product and grew to provide 40% of the earnings on the Standard and Poors 500 share index. Prosperity was heavily skewed towards the very rich, but the majority of Americans continued to enjoy a general, if halting improvement in living standards.

The collapse of the financial services bubble has however called into question three of Wall Street’s most cherished beliefs about manufacturing:

·  First, Wall Street believes that financial services and other services can take the place of manufacturing, and that the United States can remain a prosperous economy thereby.
·  Second, it believes that manufacturing tangible products is an intrinsically low-skill and uninteresting operation, so that the US would do much better to specialize in “symbol manipulation.”
·  Third, it believes that the decline in US manufacturing was and is inevitable, so that decline would have happened whatever strategies management had adopted, and whatever resources and attention it had devoted to manufacturing activities.

The inevitability of manufacturing’s decline is in some ways the most interesting question, which has not been addressed much elsewhere. Most large-scale events of this nature appear inevitable in retrospect, yet if examined in detail can be shown to have been triggered by a series of decisions that could have gone the other way.

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One of the pleasures of our politics is the wondrous clarity it affords in assessing the interests and, often, ethnicity of those professing European ethno-suicide.  When the facts are known and the assessment is in, it can be very difficult to resist taking a wee bit of advantage.

Now, of course, it goes without saying that I observe to the letter the Rules of Posting at Comment is Free, especially the one about creating multiple identities (my previous five - all banned - in no way imply contempt for this Rule, naturally).

Anyway, some non-liberal poster going by the name of Recititive obviously caught a whiff of something rotten in a conversation between an interesting rightist with anti-immigration and libertarian credentials, and a penchant for mysticism, styling himself “withdrawn” and an academic sociologist, I would say, called Lester Jones.  The headline article to which both were responding was an average-to-simplistic offering about identity by Genevieve Maitland Hudson - plainly a deliciously English “identity” herself:-

Identity is a contemporary buzzword. It has filtered into public consciousness in a wide variety of contexts. A quick search of this very website on June 13 produced 27,139 hits for articles which featured identity, including a special report on “Islam, race and British identity”, an interactive guide on “Multicultural Britain: the world in one country” a story about the redesign of the union flag to include a Welsh dragon and a number of reports on the controversial issue of ID cards. In each case, identity featured as the central conceptual focus of the article. Identity, both individual and collective, is everywhere. This reflects the extent to which it has become unavoidable for the alert citizen, a subject that we are expected to consider and reconsider daily in regard to others and ourselves.

The everyday meaning of identity is never entirely fixed but there are successful definitions that have particular influence in particular contexts. There are two general definitions of identity in the articles featured in the Guardian. The first appears in articles on ID cards and identity fraud and encapsulates the notion of an individual’s possession of official characteristics, a recognised legal identity to which a bundle of rights (political, economic and social) can be attached. The second is primarily concerned with culture and is often tagged with a national, ethnic or religious complement, “British identity” and, “Muslim identity” being by far the most common. In both cases, identity is construed as a recognisable object, a specific something with a given content that can be tagged with an appropriate label. This in itself is not uncontroversial, though it is not questioned as often as it ought to be.

And so forth.  Not incredibly illuminating.

The thread is a good one, and opens with what appears to be a cracking and beautifully reactionary first entry - a link to this fluttering world of identities.  Unfortunately, it transpires later that the guy was not being critical at all.

Four comments in “withdrawn” appears, grumbling about “the chattering classes discussing multiculturalism”, which he expands a few comments later with:-

The article confuses personal identity and multiculturalism.

If you study the history of your local area, you will find that it had a much stronger sense of identity fifty years ago. There were local business, bus companies, accents, customs football teams and so forth. In other words, a local culture. Due to changes in business, film. TV and radio, that sense of place has been slowly eroded.

However multiculturalism has been imposed and is generally unwelcome but it bestows no advantage to most people, quite the reverse. The middle and owner classes generally welcome multiculturalism because they instinctively know it benefits them financially and the reverse is true for the working classes. The BNP are villified, not as fascists but as genuine class enemies.

Life being what it is, the BNP is no more than a heavily monitored arm of the security services that allows the rulers to paint all opposition to immigration as neo nazi.

Lester Jones arrives on the thread a few comments later, making it plain in addressing Genevieve that he conflates ethnic awareness with That Bastard Idea Nazism:-

Interesting article.

Your definition of the second conception of identity (that which is primarily concerned with culture) is questionable, but might more acceptably be described as an adaptable tribal identity that is effectively limited groups of humans who define themselves in opposition, and it’s this abstract concept of group identity that is so easily manipulated to disastrous ends.

In modern Western states like Britain most if not all constructed group identities have almost nothing to do with the day to day experiences of the people who cling so desperately to them, which explains why all kinds of reprehensible, or as you say “narrow and painful definitions” are so easily internalized. But where community norms and community expectations were once either a buffer against or a breeding ground for such dangerous divisive philosophies like those offered by the far right, now in a fragmented society ... people are free to create their own, or more usually be easily manipulated into connecting themselves to false and constructed environments.

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Maggie Thatcher said it of the Poles back in the late 80s: “When people are free to choose, they choose freedom.”

Alone in the EU, the Irish people had the constitutional right to choose whether to acquiesce in the drive to a European superstate or to make a stand against it.  Just as they did seven years ago in the first of their two votes on the Nice Treaty, they have made their stand.  Declan Ganley and his rag-tag assortment of no-sayers, including Sinn Fein, have won.  The political, business and media elites of Ireland have been humiliated.

The European elites, meanwhile, have received a resounding slap in the face.  The very manipulations they made to render the Treaty impossible to read for anyone other than a constitutional lawyer have backfired on them.  Many sturdy voters said they would not endorse a Treaty the meaning of which they did not understand.

Now the elites have a thorny problem.  Despite the speculation that they would simply forge ahead and ratify the Treaty without Ireland, they cannot legally do so.  No member state can ratify the Treaty unless all 27 do.

Will we see a repeat of the Nice “solution” when the Irish electorate was bought off, and an initial vote of 54% to 46% in favour of the No Campaign was turned into a 63% to 37% triumph for the Yes men?  The voting split yesterday was about the same 54% to 46%, so opt-outs on sensitive issues such as business tax harmonisation and abortion rights may well be in the offing.  It pays to be cynical about anything to do with EU integration.  But it will take an awfully shameless Irish politician to force the electorate back into the voting booths this time?

In any case, the elites’ response is for tomorrow.  Today we raise a glass to the health and good sense of the Irish.

Flemming Rose of cartoon fame ... George Pratt Shultz, 88 this year ... Dimitris Papalexopoulos, CEO of a Greek cement company ... Paul Wolfowitz, the first president World Bank to be (effectively) dismissed in its 62-year history ... There were some strange birds in Chantilly, Virginia when the Bilderberg 2008 came to town between 5th and 8th June.  Amongst all the usual political, banking, legal and multinational suspects, there were about a dozen CEOs of companies I have never heard of.

Why was Harold Goddijn of the Dutch car satnav specialist TomTom invited to participate?  RFID?

And as well as the Greek cement guy, Bertrand Collomb, Honorary Chairman of plasterboard manufacturer Lafarge, was also in attendance.  So what’s the fascination with cement and plasterboard?

It’s certain, of course, that we will never really know.

Here, anyway, is the full list of attendees as published by Prison Planet:-

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