James mailed me a link to Dienekes Pontikos’s copy and paste of this study by researchers in the psychology department at Northwestern university.

The study is interesting for two reasons.  First, it is pleasing to see the emergence of gene studies into the racial phenotypes of individualism and collectivism.  This, of course, is a live issue for us but as always much depends on its handling - which brings us to the second reason.  The two lady researchers have linked causal pathogens to the pressures producing collectivism, which has the effect of rather neatly pathologising the individualism of Europeans as anxiety-ridden and presenting Asiatic indifference as calm!

The ladies concerned are:

Dr Joan Chiao, an assistant Professor of Psychology working in the Brain, Behaviour, Cognition and Social Psychology programmes.  She is also affiliated with the Asian American Studies programme, among others;

Kate Blizinsky, a grad student interested in - wouldn’t you know it - the neurology of stress and well-being.

Speaking purely as a know-nothing racist white man, I find the dynamic opposites used in this study misleading from the European perspective.  To my cavalier mind, the individualism of Europeans is not polarised in that evolutionary human way against the collectivism of East Asians, but against the Europeans’ own weak cooperative nature.  We Europeans cannot and do not seek to collectivise, and lose ourselves therein.  That is an affront to our nature.  I strongly contend that if Europeans ever “slough off their anxiety” and so evolve away from individualism, it would not be towards indifference.

I am reminded from long ago of a couple of television programmes on military confrontations with East Asians, one being Slim’s campaign in Burma and the other the forced retreat from Gloucester Hill in Korea.  What those two programmes left me with was the negligible (not to say pathological) value which, respectively, the Japanese and Chinese soldiers attached to life.  In both programmes, the British ex-soldiers described them as vermin throwing themselves into the fire of the enemy.  These were not men, for they did not behave in any way the Brits knew men to behave, and killing them was not difficult or a cause for regret.

We Europeans can cooperate on the basis of our natural values, but it takes a certain effort.  It is not our default position.  We definitely cannot “do” blind collectivism like the East Asians, and I don’t accept that the polar opposite to East Asian collectivism is our innate individualism.  It might be something closer to the chaotic assertiveness endemic among Sub-Saharan Africans.  Perhaps a third leg to Africa - ending no doubt in West Africa - would make the research more complete and enlightening.  It certainly seems to me that more racial space and a greater degree of subtle thinking is required of anyone seeking to split this psychological log.  But what we have in this study is a Chinese woman who probably doesn’t comprehend very much about us, and a Jew whose “interest” would, in some hands, lend itself well to the tribal delights of pathologisation.

So with that (perhaps unfair) caveat, here are the money quotes:

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Today, Tom Sunic circulated the following article about a conference that took place on Tuesday in Zagreb.  The article appeared at Javno.com, which describes itself as a multi-media news portal.  The day on-line news media in the English-speaking world print material like this the revolution will have been won, and the former media-owners will be kicking their heels in a condo in Eilat.

The conference nods toward the same neo-Gramscian path that de Benoist’s GRECE promulgated during its vigorous, early phase.  It is taken for granted by all three speakers that the problem of intellectual radicalism on the European revolutionary right remains one of numbers rather than talent, and organisation rather than output.  That’s not at all how it is in the Anglo-American world, though.

GW

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“POLITICAL HEGEMONY OR CULTURAL HEGEMONY?”
The Center of Cultural Information

Speakers:
Zlatko Hasanbegovic (author, publisher)
Jure Vujic (author, expert on geopolitics)
Tom Sunic (author, political theorist)

On Tuesday, October 27, 2009, at 7pm, in the packed hall of the Center of Cultural Information (KIC), Zagreb, Croatia, a conference was held with the title “Cultural Hegemony or Political Hegemony.”?

The three speakers were a writer and publisher Zlatko Hasanbegovic, a writer and expert on geopolitics Jure Vujic, and Dr. Tomislav Sunic, author of the book “The European New Right”  (Europska Nova Desnica), which has recently been published in the Croatian translation by the publishing house Hasanbegovic. The three speakers presented a synopsis of the phenomenon known as “cultural hegemony,” which originated and was developed by the former Italian Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci.

Every political system, including the democratic one, is based on a given cultural hegemony, which presupposes the dominance of political ideas of some social elite, or elites, but also implying the consent of social groups at lower strata of the society. In order to win or maintain cultural hegemony, control of the media, education, and public communications, as well as use and abuse of various mechanisms of “soft power”- as is the case today with “fun-making society”-  must be constantly upheld and updated.  All of these conditions shape public opinion.

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by The Narrator

One of the interesting side affects of contemplating, writing or commenting on the issue of Europe and her people’s identity is the general awareness it awakens in one in regard to the wide world around us. Accepting the reality of race and its impact on actions and events makes the world smaller in the sense that it becomes more understandable.  But simultaneously it becomes much larger than it might initially have been thought. And with that realization comes the need/urge to explore that larger world whose depth and richness so exceeds by every measure the shallow rubric of “one race, the human race”.  The promoters of that particular monotony, having locked themselves away in the dark corridors of their egalitarian universities/dungeons to listen only to their own echoes, would never accept nor could ever comprehend the true diversity of the world.

When you walk out into the light of day and embrace the world as it is, what one begins to grasp, for example, is that to say ‘a tree is a tree’ is a bit of a misleading and tragic casual, modern, nomenclature. A pine tree and an oak may both be called trees, yet only the dull of mind, heart and understanding would not see that they are in may ways as different as one species is from another. And if you cannot understand or are not willing to see and accept those differences, then for you a pine tree does not exist. It does not live and it does not die. It does not grow needle like leaves instead of the lush leaves of the oak and it does not bear the cones that adorn many a Christmas wreath. What a small and pitiful worldview that must be.

For those of us who have accepted and embraced the world as it is, the world is alive with color and meaning. It is full of characters, opposing ideas, varying places and interesting people. For us, Germany is a place second and a people first. The same is true of England, Scotland, France, Japan, Mongolia etc. These are not simply zip codes but living organisms. They have as distinct a history and personality as the individuals who collectively compose them. And that is an important point that those who embrace reality understand. A people do not inhabit a nation, they compose one. If the people of Ireland were to pack up and move, en mass, to central Asia, then Ireland would be in Asia and not on that little island next to Britain.

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A translation by Fred Scrooby

The following article, which appeared at the end of September at Robert Steuckers’ Euro-synergies, was written by Jean-Gilles Malliarakis, a well-known commentator in radical-right circles in France.

THERE’S NO LACK OF RATIONAL ARGUMENTS FOR DRAWING CONCLUSIONS ABOUT ANKARA’S CANDIDACY

Today I close the dossier on the Turkish question, my small book, a little heavier than anticipated.

As I write this, intending to get it finished, seemingly unbeknown to the Europeans important changes are shaking up debate in Turkey itself.  Involved are probably real developments, in part.  The current majority party, AKP, and the alliance of forces which it represents, are making their moves for essentially national reasons.  But the program for reform was developed at the end of June with the candidacy for membership in the European Union explicitly in mind, with a view to making it presentable.  This was repeated by Prime Minister Erdogan and Abdullah Gül, President of Turkey. 

Thus did we see a diplomatic offensive aimed at the Armenians, promising them the future reopening of a border whose shutting has completely closed off their country.  There’s been vague talk of normalizing the status of religious minorities (the latter are so small in number, one wonders how they could possibly be a threat to touchy Turkish Jacobinism) — thus are their representatives taken hostage to use as agents of Turkish diplomacy, in the tradition of totalitarian countries.

The most important advance is said to have been proposed to the Kurds.  After the head of government had received certain Kurdish leaders, from August 25 to September 22 there is said to have been considerable antagonism between the political leaders and the Chief of Staff of the Turkish Army, General Basbug.  In August Gen. Basbug had stated that the Army could not accept, and would therefore oppose, any plan that was in violation of Article 3 of the Constitution which declared that Turkey was a single and indivisible state and its language was Turkish.  The Kemalist and nationalist opposition joined in chorus to decry government betrayal.  There could be no clearer threat of a coup d’état as has been a recurrent event in this country’s political life since the 1946 adoption of democratic pluralism.

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This entry is for MR readers who would like to post their reactions to Nick Griffin’s QT performance.

The programme, which was recorded earlier this evening, was reported as the lead item on BBC News at ten this evening.  Edited highlights on the BBC website are here.  It looks and sounds very like a lynch party, which is perhaps not surprising.  Whether there were any BNP members in the audience to support Griffin I don’t know.  I suspect that there were, and that none of them were permitted to ask searching questions of the other panellists.

Anyhow, it’s time for the real broadcast.  So, see you after that!

UPDATE: QT AND THE BNP BELOW THE FOLD

Thanks to Dan’s find and to Dasein, we can now embed all parts of the programme so readers outside the UK can see exactly what it is we are talking about!

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Simon Darby has posted yesterday’s Sky News interview with Nick Griffin.  The interview was part of the media adoption of the anti-BNP campaign by the Conservative Party’s proxy, Nothing British.  Not that there is anything British about Nothing British:

Nothing British is an anti-racism campaign seeking to promote gentle British values of tolerance, fair-play and respect for one another.

The centrepiece of its campaign has been a set battle between two retired British Army Chiefs of Staff, General Sir Mike Jackson and General Sir Richard Dannatt, and Griffin’s little band of irregulars.  Jackson, we are told, was moved to speak out by “racist insults made by the BNP against Lance Corporal Johnson Beharry, the black Victoria Cross holder”:

“I heard complaints that the BNP were being extremely offensive about Johnson Beharry, I looked into it, and found out that was indeed the case.  I thought it was pretty appalling that a brave man like that should be insulted in this way.

Jackson and Dannatt, along with others, put their names to this almost unbelievable nonsense:

“The values of these extremists - many of whom are essentially racist - are fundamentally at odds with the values of the modern British military, such as tolerance and fairness.”

In the same vein, in Nick Griffin’s Channel 4 interview yesterday, “the Fifth Lord Bethell ... a Tory toff” leading the Nothing British campaign delivered himself of the novel opinion that:

Nick Griffin claims to be sharing values with British military armed services. That’s just not true. The armed services stand for courage, fairness and decency …

Once there was a time when the British military cleaved to the function of executing successful operations as ordered, and nothing else.  Now, if we are to take these Tory proxies at their word, it is a willing social engineer in the greater battle for anti-racism.  Are they right?

Well, let’s look at how this truly manic perversion might have translated to the battlefield, in the form of the award of that VC to Johnson Beharry.  Were his actions in the early hours of Mayday in 2004 consonant with the very highest standards of military virtue for which the VC was inaugurated in 1856? Or has the Establishment merely built up Beharry as yet another peerless negro?  Well, you be the judge.  Here’s the rather over-long citation:

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A RENT-SEEKERS NIRVANA

By Martin Hutchinson

Goldman Sachs’ income from trading and principal investment rose 90% in the third quarter, while allocated remuneration per employee soared 46% to $527,000 in the first nine months of 2009. Good luck to them, but it shows once again that they and to a lesser extent the rest of Wall Street, are currently playing a different game to the rest of us. The question is, how best to restore the operation of a competitive free market.

Investment banking has changed radically over the last 30 years, and it’s not clear that either regulators or the market fully understand the modern sources of its income. Trading, a fairly peripheral activity 30 years ago, has come to dominate the investment banking income statement, with income arising for investment banks both through acting as intermediary and through “proprietary trading” for their own account.

The immense and unstoppable proliferation of derivatives is the principal factor that has brought this about. After all, total outstanding derivatives contracts at the end of 2008 had a nominal principal amount of $514 trillion, more than ten times Gross World Product. You don’t need to skim very much off the top of a pot of cream that size to make your practitioners very rich indeed. A decade ago, defenders of the derivatives revolution could reasonably claim that the economic value and risk of those contracts was a tiny fraction of the total outstanding. Today, when we have seen multiple examples of credit default swaps paying close to 100% on billions of dollars of obligations, that claim has become laughable; the fraction of risk involved in that $514 trillion isn’t as tiny as all that.

The intellectually curious must wonder what purpose all this activity serves. Defenders of derivatives and trading in general mutter the magic words “hedging” and “liquidity” and expect their questioners to fall back abashed. However there aren’t $514 trillion of exposures to hedge; indeed in a $50 trillion world economy there aren’t even $50 trillion of exposures to hedge. Hence at a very conservative estimate 90% of all derivatives activity serves nobody beyond the dealer community.

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The curious and unnecessary legal action that John Wadham and the EHRC took against the BNP is washing through the media now, and will soon disappear into the mist.  Much of the coverage is disarmingly silly.  Which tends to suggest that the entire endeavour was impetuous and ill-considered, and offers the Fourth Estate nothing to go at.

The party will hold its conference next month, change its constitution, say thank you for the publicity and gird its loins for the election in May - where it will suffer from David Cameron’s Conservative revival. 

Inside the party nothing will really change.  There will be no huge influx of dark faces.  Those that do join and attend branch meetings will be politely patronised at best or sent to Coventry at worst.  They won’t be able to vote for two years, anyway, or - I believe - stand for office for four.  They will, by their presence, refute the party’s crazed anti-racist critics.  The UAF fanatics will become frustrated and confused, and the anti-BNP hate-fest will become more difficult to sustain.

Meanwhile, the Tories will big win in May.  But the honeymoon period will fade into memory and the polls will turn bad, as they always do.  Labour will re-invent itself under its new leader.  If they are not too Jewish, Cameron’s little circle of advisors may even ponder quietly whether it isn’t actually quite a good idea to relax all that mad-keen anti-racism of the opposition years.  The BNP could make a mighty useful anti-Labour tool in the latter’s northern heartlands.  And if too many people start voting for it, a little touch of the Sarko tiller will always sort it out.

The BNP, meanwhile, will have a new puzzle to solve.  How does it fight a party of the middle-class right?  Should it continue to build its power base in the white working-class north?  For the first time the people who have said all along that it must be a party of the entire country, appealing to the educated middle-class (which is also the political class), will be listened to.  The van-driver blokishness will moderate.  Bright people, untainted by the ill-repute of the past, will materialise.  Ideas, finally, will circulate.  The old party servants, men of good instinct and true heart who bore the wild hatred of the world upon their shoulders with real dignity during all the years of weakness, will be asked to perform one more service.  They must make way unselfishly.

Nationalism will cease to be a vague patriotic impulse signified by flags and army veterans, except to those who can only think in such confines.  It will have come of age in Britain - in time, one hopes, for the general election of October 2014 and the vital breakthrough to representation at Westminster.

And the wiser members will look back and thank John Wadham for getting it so very wrong.  Or so I believe.