In responding to comments on my foreign language study group post, I was unable to articulate the psychic benefit of learning a second language. I slept on it, was awakened to a skype call from Ukraine, spoke to my in-laws and their friends over there, and I realized what it was.
Speaking a second language gives you a second identity. Americans react to you in a certain, expected way, and you have learned to cultivate this reaction in them. You’ve never questioned it; you’ve never even known that something different was possible.
You get to be the foreigner with the cute accent, and it’s actually very good to be an American because this is the dominant global culture. You speak with the accent of all the celebrities they watch. They all watch American movies, and you have the accent of their favorite actors and actresses.
When someone is speaking a second language, they have to speak intellectually, rather than colloquially. The brain has to work much harder, and that’s a good thing. You don’t say “um um um, yeah, ya know, like, um um um.” You don’t speak in culturally pre-programmed responses or colloquialisms. It makes you more articulate in your native language as well.
Think of a foreigner speaking English, and saying something complex. You can hear him or her thinking hard how to formulate it, and they don’t get it colloquially perfect, but they figure out how to get the point across. Think of when Putin has insulted Bush, snarling Slavicly, “We don’t want the American style democracy, like they are doing in Iraq.” Think of Dracula, or any other hundreds of “foreign accented” villains and heroes of movies. A lot of the time, the accent gets short shrift. the actors don’t pull them off well, like Sean Connery in the Hunt for Red October. You get to be that “foreign accented” hero or villain, and your accent is most certainly not faked.
Also, you can go to Russia and paint verbal pictures of TNB and the consequences of Jewish influence, and call it “Amerikanizatsiya.” You can say, “Amerikanizatsiya, eto chuma, eto degradatsiya byelovo naroda.” Americanization is a plague, it is the degradation of White people. You can throw in embedded hypnotic commands to “imagine this” or “visualize that,” and your accent already has a hypnotic effect. Neurolinguistic programming, aka conversational hypnosis, is amplified when the speaker has an accent, and speaks intellectually rather than colloquially.
You get to be a new person, to every Russian you meet. It’s not just a second identity, but infinitely new identities, because speaking a 2nd language gives you an extra fresh start with every person you meet. You don’t have a lifetime of mutually programmed responses with the people who speak a language not native to your own.
Learning Russian is a wonderful idea.
I have often thought that the easiest way for White Nationalists to secede from the dominant Judeo-American culture is to start speaking a European language (other than Spanish) to one another exclusively, such as Russian, German, or French. One language for our in-group, another language for everyone else.
Language is a great divider, as our resident population of Mexicans, Africans, and Chinese proves.
While I think you’re making good points here I still don’t see the value in learning Mandarin. On the other hand I can see where proficiency in other European languages can be of considerable value, both practically and spiritually.
I’m of the mindset that we should separate ourselves as much as possible from the various non-White cultures and their tribes (materially, spiritually, linguistically, etc). In this vein, I would say that our energies are better spent advancing our own rather than understanding the other.
If anything, it would be nice (albeit impractical) if we could devise a new language that would separate our kind from everyone else in North America.
Great posts lately, Kievsky. Good luck with this language study group.
If those of you commenting don’t like Mandarin, or Russian, learn something else — the wider principle remains the same. If you don’t want to learn a foreign language at all, no one is forcing you, but all of this nay-saying and nitpicking is not a productive use of time.
notuswind,
Some in the Creativity Movement actually aim to revive Latin as the pan-European language in a manner similar to how Hebrew was revived by Zionists.
http://www.creativitymovement.net/documents/LITTLEWH.PDF
Chapter 8: Classical Latin – The Universal Language of the White Race
Thanks Robert.
What I perceive about the naysayers is that it’s a knee-jerk, pre-programmed reaction. As long as I get a few takers, I’ll be happy.
The pre-programmed reactions are part of the mental prison constructed for Americans from birth. You have to break out of this mental prison, and go try stuff. Some stuff won’t work, some will. But there’s really no point in naysaying the efforts of those are attempting to accomplish something. Time will tell what works and what doesn’t. If you “fail to see” then go to the opthalmologist and get your eyes checked.
The nit-picking is not about the idea of learning a foreign language per se, but the idea of learning Mandarin. đ
Frankly, at this stage, the way things are going, it would probably suit most Whites best to learn a trade, gain a marketable skill, and learn about firearms, survival techniques, and other practical skills.
Robert Campbell,
You completely missed my point. While I agree with what Kievsky had to say about the value of learning another language I merely wanted to stress the point that we are better off studying our own civilization (and its many languages) rather than that of another.
Why learn Chinese?
We White Rabbits are VERY CURIOUS!
We roam the earth looking for interesting stuff to play with. In the process we find many USEFUL things, and then we take them in and make them our own. Of course, we’re still White Rabbits. Race is Real.
If we didn’t journey forth with our curiosity and creativity, we wouldn’t really be White Rabbits, would we?
Admiral: Learning all that other stuff (Mandarin included) won’t be worth a damn if we don’t start learning talking points and get on a consistent message.
Start here: http://www.whiterabbitradio.net
More on “foreign” languages and their benefit:
Ezra Pound wrote (somewhere) that there were three “necessary” languages for any European: English, Italian and Chinese. Being as he was an American, English was a no brainer, and for a lot more reasons which all of you probably know. Italian? My guess is that it’s so close to Latin and lots of Euro “Kulchur” is embedded in that language. Maybe he was just “prejudiced”. But Chinese???
From my study I think Pound realized that Chinese is one of the only languages which is REALLY DIFFERENT, at a level of how the mind processes the world. Check out the written language and how it “represents reality” and you’ll see why he was so fascinated. Moreover, Pound’s translations of Confucian texts seem to have led him to his “Fascism”. Or maybe his “fascism” made Confucius resonate? Which way was it? LOL
In my experience, learning a language that’s “really different”, such as Chinese, is not so much about becoming “chinese-like” as getting a very good vantage point from which to discover your OWN language and how it affects your perception of the world. If you’re limited to your own language, you will have a hard time seeing the “thought categories” unique to your culture … they’ll appear so “natural” that they’ll disappear. You won’t be able to see them! But from a “foreign” vantage point, much will appear which was formerly “invisible”. That gives you a kind of power.
An example: Some people here refer to the Chinese language as “Mandarin”. That’s OUR word for a certain dialect. The Chinese don’t use that word. They use a NUMBER of different morphemes to point at their language. “Mandarin”, in “putonghua” means “Man Da Ren”, which translates as “Manchu Big Person”, or “Manchu Noble” or something like that. How did that happen to become the naming of THEIR language in OUR language? To solve that puzzle, consider that the Qing dynasty was the Manchu dynasty, and that the “real Chinese” of the time considered it “Alien”, and considered the preceeding Ming as the last “real Chinese” dynasty. And so on and so forth …. Sounds like “they” were confronting a problem not unlike our own! But you cannot “see” that w/o getting inside their language and their thought categories.
More recently I’ve spoken with Chinese people causually in San Francisco who refer to me as “Lao Wai” or “Guailo”. Those translate to “foreigner” in ways that could be polite of “offensive” depending on your point of view. The speakers have been HERE for DECADES … yet they refer to ME as a “foreigner”?? That’s very FUNNY! I usually have a little fun with them by pointing out that … HERE … THEY are the foreigners (guailo). I’m sure you can imagine the stupefied look in their face.
Yes, language can be fun.
Notus,
1) I wasn’t addressing you, per se. I was primarily referring to the other threads on this, actually.
2) Learning one language doesn’t preclude learning another.
3) I said in my comment that “the wider principle remains the same,” regardless of which language one is engaging. If you prefer to learn a European language, learn a European language.
I don’t see any area of disagreement.
Old Raven ~ I just discovered White Rabbit and listed to the first program. Very good. I’m familiar with Bob Whitaker. Is this his project? I’m curious about who is behind this and why they’re doing it. Impressive.
About language. Many of the guys who post here, I think, are young(ish) introverts, computer geeks, and aspiring intellectuals, so it does not surprise me in the least that learning Mandarin is the best they can come up with.
Learning Mandarin means you can sit all day in front of your computer, read lots of texts, and engage in pseudo-sophisticated conversation with foreigners (Chinese no less!) using cutting-edge technology, which has the added benefit of a “cool” factor. What a perfect hobby for an introverted computer geek! Learning Chinese is probably an item on The Stuff White People Like list.
But encouraging young Whites to learn Mandarin is doing them a huge disservice. Of course, there will be a few eggheads who will go for it. But for the vast majority of our young White people, as I keep saying, it’s far better to learn a trade and gain a marketable skill. Read the Classics. Read the classics in the WN canon. If you must learn a foreign language (and for the record again I do think it’s beneficial), learn a European language.
And get out from behind your computer and engage the real world. Become an activist. Go out and make some friends–not with Chinese people halfway around the world–but with your fellow Whites down the street.
Horus the Avenger sounds condescending. He talks down to people. I kept asking myself: do intelligent people need a mantra?
The need for a mantra does not depend on one’s intelligence.
Listening to the program, I pictured Horus as some Ty Webb character sitting in a wood-panelled library, sipping cocktails in his robe, a UVA pennant on the wall and a leather sofa. But that’s just me.
My opinion of Horus the Avenger is that he’s a prosthetic voice for Bob Whitaker. Whitaker is getting on in years, and probably isn’t up for hours of energetic talking like that.
Whitaker is brilliant and worth listening to (through H the A) and reading his BUGS blog.
I can understand having to get used to Horus’s style and presentation. Just give him a chance and listen to 2 or 3 of the shows, in order, before you pass judgment.
The Admiral
Learning Mandarin means you can sit all day in front of your computer, read lots of texts, and engage in pseudo-sophisticated conversation with foreigners (Chinese no less!) using cutting-edge technology, which has the added benefit of a âcoolâ factor. What a perfect hobby for an introverted computer geek!
What he said.
Language skills, in general, are important for precise and efficient interchange of ideas. Knowledge of multiple languages provides an added perspective on communication, much like a second eye offers depth perception.
One good reason to study alien languages is to eavesdrop.
‘Learning Mandarin means you can sit all day in front of your computer, read lots of texts, and engage in pseudo-sophisticated conversation with foreigners (Chinese no less!) using cutting-edge technology’
If you try to learn Mandarin from a computer you won’t learn it well.
You learn Mandarin by immersion in a crowd of native speakers.
A few minutes a day with mp3s and computer-animated texts won’t cut it.
Admiral makes good common sense real world on the ground arguments. I agree with him.
Anyone who doesn’t speak at least one foreign language reasonably well has no basis on which to pontificate about how to learn a foreign language or to advocate on which ones may be most suitable to aspiring euronationalists. German, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian and Russian have all made huge contributions in terms of literature and philosophy – as have Arabic, Persian and Turkish. As the Turkish proverb says…”A person has as many personalities as languages he or she speaks”.
Absurd. Anyone who doesn’t have at least 15 years’ right-wing political activism under his belt and at least three college degrees has no basis on which to set arbitrary qualifications on a WN blog.
Learning a trade and acquiring marketable skills must be near the top of the layer of priorities for young White Americans. Learning a European foreign language might be placed near the upper middle, especially if said Whites plant to immigrate to a foreign country where another language is spoken. Learning Mandarin Chinese (!) must come near the bottom layer. I know the wannabe intellectuals would love to be able to impress one another with their Chinese speaking abilities and deft use of Skype, but there you go.
When European civilization was expanding and dynamic understanding foreign languages and cultures was considered important. Europeans mastered Chinese and Arabic – whereas the reverse was not true. And look how that worked out for Chinese and Arabic civilizations for a few centuries.
Also, the Chinese especially, will be able to read us with our so ‘open’ society. But the reverse won’t be true.
White Americans have barely mastered English, and have not touched the classics in French, Italian and German so expecting them to take to Chinese is ,a bit much.
I would definitely like to eventually learn Russian: it is #3 in my top 5 Western languages which I want to learn; right now I have made a bit of progress toward learning numbers 1, 2, & 4.
1- German
2- Italian
3- Russian
4- Spanish
5- Latin?
I could care less about learning an East Asian language like Mandarin Chinese or anything like that; in fact, the Asians are scrambling to learn English and other Western languages because we are so more advanced than them, so why should be have to learn their language? Learning Spanish is more important than Chinese considering that pretty much the entirety of the Western hemisphere from Texas southward speaks that language, just as all of North America above the Rio Grande speaks English.
The most important non-Western language to learn would likely be Arabic since it is often spoken all over the world by Arabs and the Muslim diaspora. If I had the time I would like to learn Sanskrit though.
Kievsky, you have inspired me. This year I plan to seriously endeavour to learn German. I have two reasons for doing so: all my ancestors were “Germans” (Saxons, Swabians, and Bavarians) AND if Horus is correct about the coming German/Russian/Italian axis, I want to be prepared to relocate.
The Mantra isn’t about intelligence. It’s about hammering home THE point over and over. The point is, it’s white GENOCIDE.
Sounds good Gus. I’d recommend the following course of action in the case of German.
The complete Pimsleur, which is 45 hours of audio.
College textbooks to learn grammar, reading, vocabulary, along with 101 German verbs. I actually taught myself to read German years ago. I had a red and white book in a wavy, sixties era psychedelic font, “German for Reading” or something like that. One of the excerpts was from Mein Kampf too.
Once you are reasonably good at speaking German, find a native speaker via Facebook or something, probably a retiree or a shut in. Chat with them on Skype. Maybe you can find someone who can tell you about the war years. You assuage their loneliness, they give you lots of practice at German. Interrupt them as necessary, and tell them to speak more slowly and to explain what they are saying.
Good luck with that Gus!
Robert Campbell,
My aplogies. We have no disagreement.
Assimil is better than pimsleur.
Kievsky and Ski,
I certainly appreciate both your suggestions. You’ve most likely saved my engaging in expensive “experimentation”. I was leaning toward Rosetta Stone (and shelling out over $300).
My brother, a fluid speaker of German, has over the years tried to interest me in the language of our Fatherland, but I was studying Norwegain and didn’t want to be bothered (and confused).
Well, thanks to Horus’ and to Kievsky’s admonitions 2010 will for me be “The Year of German Studies”.