by I Bismuth

STAR Date 6530993002.362083825051397 (See Footnote)

As I crossed Richmond Lock Footbridge I saw a smart suit loitering on the silly side of the railing. Its wearer, youngish, male and pale, was frowning at the river, and one by one was nodding out the seconds, a jumper on his final countdown.

“Good afternoon,” I said as I reached the launch pad. “It’s not a bad day, is it?”

The countdown aborted, he looked over his shoulder.

“No, it’s not a bad day—as last days go.”

“But the forecast for tomorrow is not so good,” I said.

Perhaps this was not the most tactful observation I could make.

“Of course,” he went on, ignoring it, “I have no right to assert it’s not a bad day as last days go. What do I know about last days? I have no personal experience of them. Like everyone else’s last day, this is my first.”

He sighed at the river, preparing to start again from ten.

“May I ask you a personal question before you go?” I said.

“You are not a man who makes a religion of minding his own business, are you?”

“I just want to know why you decided to drown yourself.”

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We are unions, students, teachers, veterans, first responders, families, the unemployed and underemployed.  We are all races, sexes and creeds.  We are the majority.  We are the 99 percent.  And we will no longer be silent.

This is a claim on the OccupyWallStreet website.  Here’s another:

Our nation, our species and our world are in crisis. The US has an important role to play in the solution, but we can no longer afford to let corporate greed and corrupt politics set the policies if our nation.

We, the people of the United States of America, considering the crisis at hand, now reassert our sovereign control of our land.

For now, the Occupy focus is on activist organisation.  A cynic would expect that the end of the road is approaching for the anti-capitalists and anarchists who have got it this far.  Already, the unions are moving in.  As a breed, so to speak, progressive but still mostly mainstream journalists are waiting to pronounce the defining words.  But it is too early to say how the ideological platform will develop and around what it will coalesce, besides opposition to economic oligarchy.

If as a movement Occupy retains its radicalism, and is not drawn into the system, and does not decline into a constructive engagement with the Democratic party as the Tea Party movement has through its engagement with the GOP, then there is an historic possibility open to it.  It could, through the agency of its more radical intellectuals, formulate and evangelise a revolutionary alternative to neoliberalism in a post-market age.

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This short essay is a reply, though not a direct one, to a (now deleted) question from GT on the thread to my piece Nationalism and the Money Power:

You would leave “the rest to the market”?  Which market is that?  The capitalist state market controlled by the few?  The state capitalist market controlled by the few?

It is also a response to Leon’s recent commentary with its, for me, non-tractable Austrian presumption.

Since I have tied both arms and legs to the hazy notion of an ontological nationalism - a philosophy which might be described as “a European reality” - I really ought to use it to feel for a nationalist alternative to that sterile, old liberal contest of the free market versus interventionism, as it was used (to PF’s chagrin) in the challenge to our so very free friend Perry.

Economy is the process of exchange, a market the means of exchange, and money the unitary value of exchange.  All forms of politics seek a realisation of some kind through exchange itself, for it is a radically transforming medium.  Nationalism’s realisation - at least, an ontological nationalism’s - is or would be, technically-speaking, the increase of the ethnic genetic interests of a people.  That can be a genetically qualitative or quantitative goal.  But its realisation will plainly require something beyond the conventional economic goals of maximal stability and freedom and a meritocracy of opportunity and prosperity, which are universals to all Western economic models.  To be worthy of the name, a nationalist political economy must be characterised by a small number of other, quite particular and inter-related goals that certainly don’t arise under a 21st century liberal regime.  These include:

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Long-standing readers of MR will know that, over the years, we have enjoyed not just warm but quite heated relations with Perry de Havilland’s uber-libertarian blog, Samizdata.  Having placed a comment of the usual incendiary kind on the thread to a Telegraph article titled Greece is slipping into the abyss, who should come along to bludgeon me with his critical-rational logic (or is it rational-critical, I never know) but Samizdata founder Perry de Havilland.

OK, so you don’t actually need to know what follows and, yes, I am being self-indulgent.  But Perry was one of the first people to ban me.  So he stands at the head of a small army of mad on-line liberals who have trespassed against me in that way, and he’s the only one I know by name, damn it!  At the very least, he deserves to be turned into a foil for an explication of our Weltanschauung.  Thus:

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The Telegraph’s on-line readers love nothing more than to maul government immigration policy, and love to maul the past government’s immigration policy above everything.  Threads of 2000 comments or more have become unremarkable with immigration articles.  Philip Johnston - a relatively brave journalist - has notched up a modest 1080 comments in 48 hours with his piece titled The Left is rewriting Britain’s immigration history.

Obviously, serious discussion becomes quite difficult at the height of the commenting action, when posts are flying in like artillery rounds on Vimy Ridge.  But when the numbers of posts and recommends are high, it does allow a certain judgement to be made about political appetites.

One such judgement concerns the popularity or otherwise of the, I presume, MI5 operation, the English Defence League, and of that anti-nationalist, Breivikian thing, anti-Jihadism in general.  Judge for yourself.

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From yesterday:

I know, a boring and predictable post.  But no matter how often I encounter the sheer brazen audacity of these repellent, racist creatures who, time and again, interfere against the interests our people, I still experience one of those lost-for-words, head-shaking moments.  Of course ... a Jew.  It has to be a Jew.

For the uninitiated, in England there is a practise among mainly Irish travellers (or gypsies) of buying up a few acres of agricultural land and invading it very quickly and en masse, laying concrete, putting in drainage and power, and occupying the site without planning consent.

Naturally enough, this causes much anguish among the local community, as they find their way of life infected by theft, filth and hostility from the newcomers.  It becomes impossible to move home.  It becomes unbearable to remain.  The local authority, having embarked upon the battle to evict the gypsies and reclaim the site, finds itself confronted by a cynical, human rights-savvy opponent accessing public funds to fight the public interest.  Years sometimes pass this way.  At Dale Farm, it’s been ten!  And now, Dr Jonathan Oppenheim - “one of the worlds leading physicists” - is doing his very best to prolong the agony for the real victims of the Dale Farm affair.

... his greatest contribution has been at the High Court where he has been pouring over planning law books and papers to help advise on the case. Yesterday the travellers successfully extended an injunction which prevents them from being evicted until next week.

“The eviction of Dale Farm is becoming increasingly untenable,” he said. “We are proving that the residents had a reasonable expectation that they would get planning permission because everybody around them was getting it.

“We say that the prime reason they are not being allowed to stay is because of fear against them.”

Of course, the “unfounded” and “irrational” European “fear” of the “other”.  Every Jew who has used that stratagem is projecting.  They can’t help it.  They must trespass against the host.  It’s their sociobiology.  As it’s ours, eventually, to see the pattern and call a halt to it.

The last, volatile twenty-four hours on the trading floors and in the political councils have confirmed for anyone interested in knowing the fact (and many are determined not to know it) that political internationalism is in deep trouble.  The European political class appears to be unable to do any more than kick the can down the road.  We are probably still two months away from knowing for sure whether any kind of definitive package can be put in place to prevent the Greek government defaulting on debt repayment, or whether such a default would necessarily drag in Portugal, and Portugal Spain.

The Euro could not survive such an eventuality, and the European process could not survive the loss of the Euro.  It’s something Eurosceptics knew about from the outset, of course, and have been telling the world ever since.  But notwithstanding its predictive power and support among the voters, Euroscepticism remains a minority interest at the top of the main parties, in governments and government departments and, inevitably, in the European nomenclature.  It is a political conviction fatally divorced from office.

There ought to be an opportunity here for political nationalism.  This is the time to talk about economics.  So what would a nationalist economic policy look like in these times?  I’ve been posting the following list, or parts thereof, on various UK national daily threads, just to introduce a few people to the kind of revolutionary ideas that nationalists ought to be exploring.  I’m not sure that any nationalist party could seriously propose very much of it at this stage.  It’s more than a wish-list, though.  The components hang together, and a successful overthrow of the Money Power is the only basis on which our racial goals can be achieved.

1. Ring-fence retail banking and protect private savings and company assets.  Consign the rest to its fate.

2. End the fractional reserve system.  Encourage savings in the private sector and investment in the business sector.

3. All capital elements of credit extended under the fractional reserve system to be repaid by digitally-created transfers, the outstanding interest to be repaid as a short-term loan.

4. Repay the bond and guilt markets on the same basis, ending the national debt crisis, and freeing the economy from the fixation on GDP and endless growth.

5. Repatriate the legal right of government to issue currency, and invest it in the economy free of interest, using capital projects, the welfare system and general government expenditure to do so, not the banks.

6. End race-replacement immigration, repatriate/relocate the Third World in England and all its seed.

The nett effect would be to give the nation, the land, and the politics back to the true people, and that is the ultimate good.

The market would take care of the rest.