Matthew Lyons is a leftist writer of  the "watchdog" variety and has in the past worked as a co-author with Chip Berlet. He currently operates a blog called "Three Way Fight" which previously featured a critique of AlternativeRight.Com from a hard left perspective. More recently, Lyons published an extensive critique of the ideas and work of yours truly on the socialist New Politics website. I have since produced a three part response. See Part One, Part Two, and Part Three. Lyons has posted a very brief reply to my reply. Readers of AltRight may find the exchange interesting or at least amusing.

Recently it was revealed that all sexual assaults involving rape in Oslo in the last five years were committed by “males of non-Western background.” The figures released by the police showed that in the five years between 2005 and 2010, there were 86 rapes, in which 83 of the perpetrators were described as having a “non-Western” appearance. The remaining three cases involved unknown attackers, but, given the identity of the other 83 attackers, it would be reasonable to assume that they, too, were non-Whites.

The women attacked were, of course, overwhelmingly Norwegian.

At the beginning of 2010, 151 000 persons or 3.1 per cent of the Norwegian population had a refugee background, with Iraqis (19,768) and Somalis (17,665) forming the largest groups. Of course, no one is surprised anymore that a remote, historically White country like Norway should now have a burgeoning non-White population. The CIA Factbook figure based on a 2007 estimate put the total non-White population at only 2 percent, so the latest figure marks an alarming rise.

On the Norwegian TV news report that mentioned the rapes, one of the victims, a young blonde girl mentioned that her attacker was a man of Pakistani origin who claimed he had the right to do exactly as he wanted to a woman, “because that is how it was in his religion.”

So, how does such an unnatural situation arise, where a supposedly democratic country allows its young women to be raped by an imported population that has no connection and no cultural affinity with the host country?

To understand this aberration we have look deep into the problem of our so-called “democracy” and how we are represented by our leaders. Whether we have ever passed through an actual period of true democracy (something that could be defined as a period when the government actually did more or less what the people wanted), it is clear that we are now living in a post-democratic world, where governments find ways to impose policies, such as refugee policies, mass immigration, rising taxation, the end of the capital punishment, gay marriage, massive overseas aid, and wars that the vast majority of people, even in their mass media-brainwashed state, simply disagree with.

[The tenth in a series on inclusiveness. Read parts I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, and IX.]

I've said that inclusiveness has a religious quality. To say it is a kind of religion is not to say it works well as one. Religion defines the place of man in the world, but inclusiveness reflects the modern outlook, which has difficulty dealing with such issues. It likes unitary theories that lead to clear conclusions, so it tries to dissolve the world into man or man into the world. Neither makes sense, so moderns--including liberals--oscillate between the two and settle on neither.

Cartesian egos

At bottom, liberalism views the individual person as the Cartesian ego--a disembodied subject with no qualities other than the ability to have experiences and make choices. If we accept that understanding, and view the external world from the radically subjective standpoint that results, it becomes something we construct from our sensations for the sake of our goals.

Such an understanding affects our attitude toward the world. It makes every particular tie to things outside ourselves seem an intrusion that has somehow gotten hold of us and is dragging us down. The result is a compulsion to destroy attachments that make claims on us. Hence the need for sexual liberation, abolition of social roles, mass third-world immigration, multiculturalism, and so on. Society must be destroyed as a network of particular persons and relationships in a particular setting and turned into an abstract neutral schema for the satisfaction of desire.

The role of the other

The matter cannot rest there, because the Cartesian ego is so odd philosophically. It is not part of the world of experience, and it is unclear how something with no positive qualities could be embodied. The result is difficulty understanding our place in the world. Am I the only reality, because the subjective outlook is so privileged, or am I not real at all, because I have no enduring tangible qualities or connections? With respect to ourselves, such difficulties lead to insecurity, narcissism, and identity crises. With respect to other people, they lead to an obsession with the non-Western other.

Non-Westerners are defined as such by the fact they do not have the free-floating Cartesian ego as their self-understanding. Since they do not view themselves in that way, they can be seen as embodied and part of the world of experience. That gives them a very special though ambiguous significance. From one perspective the Cartesian outlook turns whites into abstractions who hardly exist at all, while nonwhites remain vibrant concrete realities. From another, it makes nonwhites a colorful background--part of the Stuff White People Like--that accessorizes the narcissism of white liberal Cartesians. There is no way within the liberal outlook to choose between the two, so particular liberals flop back and forth depending on mood and circumstances.

Horizontal transcendence

The problem often takes a religious form. The absorption of traditional religion by inclusiveness reflects in part an effort to maintain religious values in a scientistic world. In such a world God is unthinkable, so people fall back on themselves. Their concerns and desires are what they know--indeed, they are That Than Which No Greater Can Be Conceived--so why not treat them as divine?

The problem is that radical self-centeredness is not a satisfactory religion. We need a moral and spiritual order beyond ourselves that enables us to place ourselves and make sense of our situation. One possible solution is horizontal transcendence: standing in awe before other people as ineffably and unclassifiably other, disclosing to us a reality that cannot be reduced to our own purposes and categories, and imposing peremptory moral obligations on us through their needs and desires.

On such a view, those most radically other than ourselves become natural exemplars of the holy. However, the solution is unstable because in fact the non-Western other is evidently no more holy than we are. One can respect someone's good qualities and human dignity, but it is silly to overlook whatever flaws and limitations he has, or take him more seriously than ourselves or those to whom we have a more immediate connection.

Once again, the outcome is a messy compromise, this one between self-involvement and sentimentality about third-world peasants. Something of the sort is a very common solution among spiritually-inclined liberals, especially those among them who find it natural to express their souls in peasant-themed home decor, fashion accessories, and cooking styles.

Professor Gottfried’s discussion of the reading lists suggested thus far by several AltRight contributers, including myself, provides a wonderfully comprehensive yet concise summation of what ought to be the first principles of any sort of Right worthy of the name. I share most of the political and philosophical presumptions Paul enunciates: natural inequality of persons at both the individual and collective levels, the inevitability and legitimacy of otherness, the superiority of organic forms of human organization over social engineering, rejection of vulgar economism, and a tragic view of life. However, what I am most concerned with is how these first principles might be applied within the context of the cultural and institutional environments we actually find ourselves in at present.

Perhaps this explains Paul’s puzzlement at the supposed scattered and ideologically fractured nature of my suggested reading list (I’ve already responded to this question briefly in the comments section). As I suggested at the onset of my previous post, I am not primarily concerned with providing an enunciation of first principles of my own. For one thing, there are others beside myself who are far more qualified to do so (such as Professor Gottfried himself, for instance). Instead, I am more oriented towards institutional analysis and its relevance to the core individual issues that we should be addressing. This is why I organized my list into sections dealing either with institutional matters such as elite theory, the New Class, and mass democracy, or with issues of vital importance such as foreign policy or the role of corporations and the related culture industry in fostering and propagandizing for PC. This is why C. Wright Mills, Max Horkheimer, and James Petras can be on my reading list alongside James Burnham, Ernst Junger, and Charles Maurras.

Paul’s concern about the supposed lack of a unifying principle in my own list also raises the question of what specific unifying principles can be found among the alternative Right in general. As Jim Kalb has stated: “In America today, Catholic trads, constitutionalists, libertarians, and HBD fans all count as conservative, I suppose because they all object to the omnicompetent PC managerial state and take a more laissez faire and less radically egalitarian approach to a lot of issues. But how many books would they agree on? A somewhat coherent canon implies a somewhat coherent movement, and that's not where we are.” Indeed, at times there seems to be as many philosophies represented on the alternative Right as there are individuals who participate in the alternative Right.

It would appear that the common thread among alternative Rightists is opposition to the first principles of the Left. As my colleague Troy Southgate explains, the Left’s first principles are “universalism, egalitarianism, totalitarianism and a belief in the linear interpretation of history” and that “our main bugbears are democracy, egalitarianism and globalisation, which must ultimately be countered by elitism, natural hierarchy and an affirmation of our European heritage and identity.” This common opposition to leftism, particularly in its present day “cultural Marxist” manifestations, would explain why the alternative Right includes, on religious matters, Catholic traditionalists, proponents of Orthodoxy, Protestants, atheists, pagans, Nietzscheans, and Evolans. It would explain why our ranks include both proponents (e.g. Austrians) and critics (e.g. Catholic distributists or the European New Right) of capitalism, and proponents of political systems ranging from authoritarianism to anarchism to monarchy to theocracy to constitutionalism to ethno-states. I regard this genuine diversity to be a sign of strength rather than weakness. An authentic competition of ideas is indicative of an intellectually healthy movement.



While I generally agree with the choice of works that Richard and Jim have suggested for the canon of the Alternative Right, I have a habit of orienting myself towards strategic and practical considerations as the first order of business. I regard the key to understanding the dilemma our civilization currently faces as rooted in a particular set of institutional concerns: the nature of our present elites, the managerial revolution of the early to mid-twenteith century and the consequent rise of the new class, the growth of mass democracy, the therapeutic state, the infestation of the social sciences with Cultural Marxism, and the triangular relationship between mass consumer culture, the advent of the mass media, and the ideological synthesis of neoliberalism and Cultural Marxism whose internalization by the masses is fostered by that same media. With these concerns in mind, I have come up with a reading list of my own consisting of relevant works. Some of these are familiar classics of the Right. Others are more obscure works of immense quality. Some are more recent scholarly or journalistic pieces, and still others are works from the Left from which we can learn. Here it is:

Elite Theory:

Vilfredo Pareto-The Mind and Society, The Rise and Fall of the Elites, The Transformation of Democracy, Sociological Writings

Georges Sorel-Reflections on Violence

Gaetano Mosca-The Ruling Class, (Mosca and the Theory of Elitism by Ettore Albertoni)

Robert Michels- Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy

James Burnham-The Machiavellians

Joseph A. Schumpeter- Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy

C. Wright Mills-The Power Elite

William Domhoff-Who Rules America?

Thomas Dye-Top Down Policymaking

Floyd Hunter- Community Power Structure: A Study of Decision Makers

New Class Theory:

Lawrence Dennis-The Dynamics of War and Revolution, Operational Thinking for Survival

Max Nomad-Aspects of Revolt

James Burnham-The Managerial Revolution

Alvin Gouldner- The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class

Milovan Djilas-The New Class

Mikhail Bakunin- “The International and Karl Marx”

Mass Democracy:

Jose Ortega y Gasset-Revolt of the Masses

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn-Leftism, Leftism Revisited, Liberty or Equality, The Menace of the Herd

Bertrand de Jouvenel- On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth

Louis Ferdinand Celine-Journey to the End of the Night

Charles Maurras- Ou le Mythe d'Une Droite Révolutionnaire

Maurice Barres-The Cult of the Self, Novel of the National Energy

Han Hermann Hoppe-Democracy: The God That Failed

Alexis De Tocqueville-Democracy in America

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon-The Solution to the Social Problem

Max Stirner-The Ego and Its Own

H.L. Mencken-(anything by Mencken is worth reading)

Albert Jay Nock-Our Enemy, The State

Ernst Junger-In Storms of Steel, Eumeswil

Anthony de Jasay-The State

Gerard Radnitzky-From Philosophy of Science to Political Philosophy

Friedrich August von Hayek-The Road to Serfdom

Hilaire Belloc-The Servile State

Joseph Sobran-(anything by Sobran is worth reading)

Cultural Marxism/Totalitarian Humanism/Therapeutic State:

Thomas Sowell-A Conflict of Visions

Thomas Szasz-The Therapeutic State

Samuel Francis-“James Burnham, The New Class, and the Nation State”

Stephen Baskerville- Taken Into Custody: The War Against Fatherhood, Marriage and the Family

Sean Gabb-Cultural Revolution, Culture War

Rousas John Rushdooney- The Messianic Character of American Education

James Burnham-The Suicide of the West

Robert Putnam- Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, "E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century”

Bill Bishop-The Big Sort

Corporations and the Left:

Gabriel Kolko-The Triumph of Conservatism (Libertarians have often cited this work as an illustration of how corporations promote and foster statism. It would be interesting to conduct a study expanding upon the “Kolko thesis” to explore the question of corporate support for PC.)

Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer-Dialectic of Enlightenment (This famous work from the left-wing Frankfurt School suggested that a “culture industry” shapes public consciousness and social values through the mass media and advertising. It would be interesting to use this model and invert it to examine the matter of how a “culture industry” does indeed exist and how this culture industry serves as a massive propaganda apparatus for PC.)

Foreign Policy/International Relations:

George Kennan- Around the Cragged Hill: A Personal and Political Philosophy

Carl Schmitt-Nomos

Martin Van Creveld-The Rise and Decline of the State, The Transformation of War

William S. Lind-(Lind’s scattered essays on fourth generation warfare are well worth seeking out)

Pat Buchanan-A Republic, Not an Empire; Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War

James Petras-The Power of Israel Over the United States

I’m happy that Jim Kalb has gotten the conversation started about the “conservative canon” in preparation for next year’s HL Mencken Club meeting.

I’ve never felt at home in the American “conservative movement.” Sure, I agree with conservatives that income taxes are too high and Big Government is bad etc. etc. etc. But that’s the easy stuff. I’ve always sensed that, deep down, movement conservatives and I are informed and motivated by drastically different worldviews. No more have I felt this way than when I encounter various movement certified “reading lists.”

The lists of recommendations usually strike me as decent, if deficient and myopically skewed towards writers whose views are consistent with contemporary Christianity and Republican egalitarianism.  (The best of these “to read” list is Chilton Williamson’s Conservative Bookshelf).

The movement’s various Indices Librorum Prohibitorum, on the other hand, have seemed to me deeply philistine.

Paul Gottfried told me that he was actually asked to suggests titles for a “Ten Most Harmful Books” lists put out by Human Events. His editors were expecting him to suggest Das Kapital and Mein Kampf, but Gottfried proffered The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom instead, for the charge of perverting American conservatism. (It didn’t make the cut.)

Dr. David Yeagley, an author, composer, and blogger, joins Richard to offer an American Indian's perspective on white guilt and patriotism.

Another crazy story from the Middle East/South Asia.

Kabul, Afghanistan (TML) – The Muslim world is full of violent, graphic and alarming stories of “honor killings,” in which young woman are killed by male family members for dishonoring the family.

"Honor rape,” in which the gang rape of a woman is used as a tool of social punishment, is spoken of less.

Almost unheard of is an “honor killing” or “honor rape” of a man.

But the northern Afghanistan province of Jowzjan is grappling with just that, after the sons of the region’s governor and police chief were found having sex with two women almost a month ago in the Dasht-i Leile desert, north of the provincial capital Shiberghan.

According to local media reports, a man named Yama, the 30-year-old son of the Jowzjan governor, and his friend Hashmatullah, the 28-year-old son of the provincial police chief, were seen by local herdsmen having sex with 24-year old Shokreya and 22-year-old Jamila.

The herdsmen allegedly stole the men’s guns and money and gang raped them in retribution for the “dishonor” they had committed by having sex with the two young women.

“The farmers tore the clothes off the two young men with sickles and raped them,” a local official told Pajhwok Afghan News. The herdsmen later described to local organizations that the attack was an “honor rape.”

As the story goes, the two men were left naked in the desert, only to return home covered by the women’s burqas and unable to sit down due to their injuries. The two women were reportedly unharmed, but told to leave the area within two weeks.

Muhammad Hashim Zare, the provincial governor, has refused to comment on the case, but his spokesperson Mahboobullah Zare has claimed that the governor is being targeted as part of a political smear campaign.

Brig. Gen. Khalilullah Aminzada, the police chief, has claimed that his son was not in the desert at the time of the alleged incident, and blamed the accusations on local farmers.

The response to this is usually to just chalk it up to Islam.  But how powerful of an explanatory force is this?  I’ve only heard of “honor rape” occurring in Afghanistan and Pakistan, though never in Egypt and Somalia.  On the other hand, those two African countries practice female genital mutilation, while Muslims in South Asia don’t.  How can Islam be responsible for both FGM and honor rape at the same time, when some Muslims practice one but not the other and most partake in neither, but nobody does both?

My theory: Islam makes you immune to globalization.  You distrust the infidel West, are confident in your society and refuse to change your culture to conform with modern norms.  Thus, all kinds of arcane practices abhorrent to the Western mind survive even though they have nothing to do with Islam.

China, for example, got rid of foot binding in the early twentieth century, probably after their elites started encountering other peoples who found it repulsive.  Had they been Muslims, the forces of reaction would’ve been stronger and maybe prevented this reform.  Modern professional Muslim haters would see foot binding as yet another piece of evidence in the case against Islam.

This is relevant to the Alternative Right as many of us curse the homogenizing of the world that globalization is bringing about and like the idea of different cultures confidently asserting themselves against international liberal activists.  But undoubtably cultural relativism has a dark side and barbarism is too common to be the fault of any one faith.

What proximate test of excellence can be found except correspondence with the actual equilibrium of force in the community -- that is, conformity to the wishes of the dominant power? Of course, such conformity may lead to destruction, and it is desirable that the dominant power should be wise. But wise or not, the proximate test of a good government is that the dominant power has its way.

[The fourth in a series on inclusiveness. Read parts I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, and IX.]

The demand for inclusiveness is often attributed to emotion, but something so systematic and persistent can only be based on principle.

No one explains very clearly what the principle is, so it's evidently something taken for granted. The peremptory nature of antidiscrimination, together with the irrelevance of practical considerations, confirms that its basic principle must be quite fundamental.

As I will argue in what follows, the basic principle that leads to inclusiveness is the view of reason that critics refer to as scientism or scientific fundamentalism. That view has been with us since the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, and has slowly been transforming social understandings and relationships in its own image ever since.

The process through which it has been doing so, sometimes called modernization or rationalization, is still going on. The abolition of traditional and natural patterns of human life in the name of diversity and inclusiveness is a current manifestation of that process.