A few days ago, I posted my suspicions that something was up at Takimag. I had heard various rumors flying around. The Sniper’s Tower was dead. Most of the regular contributors seemed to have disappeared. Mandolyna and Christina Oxenberg had taken over the place. The site wasn’t being as frequently updated as usual.
Today, Richard Spencer announced he was leaving and that Mandolyna was taking over as editor. This is more of less what I had heard: Taki had decided to turn over the magazine to his daughter and abandon politics. Judging by the recent output, Spencer isn’t the only writer who is packing his bags. Taki has effectively destroyed his own site on a whim. I’m not sure why. Perhaps some brave soul could enlighten us?
The good news is that Richard Spencer is launching a new webzine in February that will include a lot more HBD discussion. I predict it will be more open to White Nationalism. In its final days, writers like Alex Kurtagic and Richard Hoste had begun to appear at Takimag. The new site will probably go further in this direction. I for one will be looking forward to it.
December 7, 2009
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Europe’s Minaret Moment
By ROSS DOUTHAT
They toasted to progress in Europe’s capitals last week. On Tuesday, the Treaty of Lisbon went into effect, bringing the nations of the European Union one step closer to the unity the Continent’s elite has been working toward for over 50 years.
But the treaty’s implementation fell just days after a milestone of a different sort: a referendum in Switzerland, long famous for religious tolerance, in which 57.5 percent of voters chose to ban the nation’s Muslims from building minarets.
Switzerland isn’t an E.U. member state, but the minaret moment could have happened almost anywhere in Europe nowadays — in France, where officials have floated the possibility of banning the burka; in Britain, which elected two representatives of the fascistic, anti-Islamic British National Party to the European Parliament last spring; in Italy, where a bill introduced this year would ban mosque construction and restrict the Islamic call to prayer.
If the more perfect union promised by the Lisbon Treaty is the European elite’s greatest triumph, the failure to successfully integrate millions of Muslim immigrants represents its greatest failure. And the two are intertwined: they’re both the fruits of the high-handed, often undemocratic approach to politics that Europe’s leaders have cultivated in their quest for unity.
The European Union probably wouldn’t exist in its current form if the Continent’s elites hadn’t been willing to ignore popular sentiment. (The Lisbon Treaty, for instance, was deliberately designed to bypass most European voters, after a proposed E.U. Constitution was torpedoed by referendums in France and the Netherlands in 2005.) But this political style — forge a consensus among the establishment, and assume you can contain any backlash that develops — is also how the Continent came to accept millions of Muslim immigrants, despite the absence of a popular consensus on the issue, or a plan for how to integrate them.
The immigrants came first as guest workers, recruited after World War II to relieve labor shortages, and then as beneficiaries of generous asylum and family reunification laws, designed to salve Europe’s post-colonial conscience. The European elites assumed that the divide between Islam and the West was as antiquated as scimitars and broadswords, and that a liberal, multicultural, post-Christian federation would have no difficulty absorbing new arrivals from more traditional societies. And they decided, too — as Christopher Caldwell writes in “Reflections on the Revolution in Europe,” his wonderfully mordant chronicle of Europe’s Islamic dilemma — that liberal immigration policies “involve the sort of nonnegotiable moral duties that you don’t vote on.”
Better if they had let their voters choose. The rate of immigration might have been slower, and the efforts to integrate the new arrivals more strenuous. Instead, Europe’s leaders ended up creating a clash of civilizations inside their own frontiers.
Millions of Muslims have accepted European norms. But millions have not. This means polygamy in Sweden; radical mosques in Britain’s fading industrial cities; riots over affronts to the Prophet Muhammad in Denmark; and religiously inspired murder in the Netherlands. It means terrorism, and the threat of terrorism, from London to Madrid.
And it means a rising backlash, in which European voters support extreme measures and extremist parties because their politicians don’t seem to have anything to say about the problem.
In fairness, it isn’t clear exactly what those leaders could offer at this point. They can’t undo decades of migration. A large Muslim minority is in Europe to stay. Persisting with the establishment’s approach makes a certain sense: keep a lid on prejudice, tamp down extremism, and hope that time will transform the zealous Islam of recent immigrants into a more liberal form of faith, and make the conflict go away.
Or least keep it manageable. Caldwell’s book, the best on the subject to date, has a deeply pessimistic tone, but it shies away from specific predictions about the European future. Other writers are less circumspect, envisioning a Muslim-majority “Eurabia” in which Shariah has as much clout as liberalism.
But even a decadent West is probably stronger than this. The most likely scenario for Europe isn’t dhimmitude; it’s a long period of tension, punctuated by spasms of violence, that makes the Continent a more unpleasant place without fundamentally transforming it.
This is cold comfort, though, if you have to live under the shadow of violence. Just ask the Swiss, who spent last week worrying about the possibility that the minaret vote might make them a target for Islamist terrorism.
They’re right to worry. And all of Europe has to worry as well, thanks to the folly of its leaders — now, and for many years to come.
This is wonderful news.
Well nepotism usually wins out over what’s best for the company or in this case, the online mag. It really is that simple.
It can now turn into a journal for the misadventures of Mandolyna and friends.
The good news is that Spencer is creating a better site. The bad news is that he has to start from scratch.
I wonder if I’ll be forced to once again aid Spencer in elevating his perspective? If so, I’ll have to treat him with kid gloves as there is nothing that offends the vanity of an ‘intellectual’ more than being taken to the woodshed by his “inferior”. At that point he will ‘take his ball and go home’. So it is best avoided when possible, but none the less a useful skill to have in one’s arsenal.
Fortunately, Alex Linder is a marginal and despised figure in the White Nationalist movement. The damage he caused at Takimag was counterbalanced by the positive contributions of men like Jared Taylor, Kevin MacDonald, and Greg Johnson.
To: Grimoire
A major reason that ordinary White Americans won’t have anything to do with White Nationalism is because of its association in the media with losers and psychopaths. The second major reason is that WN organizations are notoriously infested with kooks and agent provocateurs.
We’re going to continue to discuss the issue. If you don’t like what we are doing, well, feel free to piss off at any time of your choosing. I don’t recall ever inviting you here. I won’t be missing you either.
http://www.toqonline.com/2010/01/richard-spencer-leaves-takis-magazine/
CC is another semi-literate pygmy with an inflated opinion of himself (National Socialism is the solution to all of White Americans’ problems according to this little spamming dweeb). MR crowd thinks he has “good instincts” and he takes that as a some sort of compliment, when in reality all it means is that he’s neither well-read or intelligent but dutifully follows and repeats their party line.
Steve-O makes a lot of statements I doubt his body or his brain could make good. An ‘intellectual’ can read all the books he wants, but if he can’t think, then I’m afraid he just ain’t got the juice.
This is an excellent piece and should be spread to every Tea Party supporter:
Tea Party: The Documentary Film
http://www.toqonline.com/2009/12/tea-party-the-documentary-film/
I heard Richard Spencer was canned after the persistent complaints to Taki by Justin Raimondo, John Zmirak, and others. They wanted Spencer to toe the PC line on race. Some Christians also complained to Taki about the neopaganism.
Ross Douthat is a coward, as are all these types:
“In fairness, it isn’t clear exactly what those leaders could offer at this point. They can’t undo decades of migration. A large Muslim minority is in Europe to stay. Persisting with the establishment’s approach makes a certain sense: keep a lid on prejudice, tamp down extremism, and hope that time will transform the zealous Islam of recent immigrants into a more liberal form of faith, and make the conflict go away.”
They are just quivering, scared, little pissants. Europe wasn’t founded on this type nor will it maintain itself listening to these types.
I heard Richard Spencer was canned after the persistent complaints to Taki by Justin Raimondo, John Zmirak, and others. They wanted Spencer to toe the PC line on race. I also heard some fundamentalist Christians complained to Taki about the neopaganism.
It is good to see Spencer going his own way. I always got the feeling, reading his work at Taki’s site, that he was much closer to us ideologicaly than he could let on. It will be interesting to see what he makes of his new site.
Nonetheless, OD has evolved into the most indispensible site on the net for our cause and I hope and pray it continues full-steam into the new decade. Keep up the good work HW, you efforts are greatly appreciated!
David,
Anything else?
I heard Spencer’s publishing of Jared Taylor, Richard Hoste and others upset Justin Raimondo and John Zmirak. They complained to Taki. Also, the neopagan articles upset some fundamentalist Christians who complained to Taki.
(1) Ross Douthat: A large Muslim minority is in Europe to stay.
No, it’s not. There’s nothing permanent or irreversible about current immigrant population groups in Europe, or N. America for that matter.
(2) Spencer is much closer to us ideologically, and maybe his new venture will give him more freedom to branch out and explore more pertinent issues.
Zmirak has been gone for the better part of the last year. Raimondo has nothing to do with Richard’s departure.
Godspeed and all the best to Richard Spencer.
Ross Douthat is an asshat.
Why is Douthat so sure that non-white immigration to Europe is irreversible? That’s really the final line that needs to be crossed before I would consider someone a true ally of mine. We need to push the debate towards repatriation.
CC, from one semi-literate pygmy to another, keep following your instincts.
I think Richard Spencer is smart and talented and I suspect like others do that he is close to us ideologically. I am hopeful that his new project will be a force for WN and aid us in our cause. However, I am not completely sold on him yet. He is supposedly a miscegenator. His current girlfriend is a Russian with significant (Mongoloid) Tatar admixture/ancestry.
Randy #13:
The Admiral #19:
Tanstaafl #22:
Heartily seconded, all three.
Thomas Fleming at Chronicles has been taking not so veiled shots at TakiMag, Spencer, Gottfried and the young neopagans for a while. He was troubled by the neopaganism and Nietzscheism because he sees both as hostile to Christianity and conservatism (which they are). I think Fleming complained to Taki. He wrote in a comment to a post that Taki never goes online and was not aware of the direction the site had been moving.
Spencer was not canned. He left because Taki decided to take the site in a new direction.
Will Takimag really started to suck at the end with exception of Richard Hoste, Steve Sailer, and Alex Kutagic. I personally believe that the magazine overall direction will be it being a Daily Beast clone in the worst case scenario, or maybe a Slate clone in the best case scenario. I think Takimag will still embrace general alternative right politics but tow a political correct or at least reserved stance on race. My thought is that Taki is going to try to make a mainstream publication that advocates alternative right politics that do not offend the masses with an entertainment value add to the mix. Basically an online tabloid for the alternative right, with some informative value. My only good proof for this is that Taki announced the creation of his magazine on the Huffington Post. Several times there were articles about how the right needs a Slate or Huffington Post type online publication on Takimag. I personally think this was what Taki wanted but could never achieve at first. I have always believed that Taki really wanted to be an Ariana Huffington of the alternative right, but could never gain the respect that he wanted because of his association with unpopular people like white nationalists and human biodiversity advocates. This is an universal characteristic of the alternative right. They deny race to achieve popularity.
Here is some evidence to my thesis:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eat-the-press/2007/02/08/taki-speaks-and-starts-a_e_40755.html
Not the greatest piece of evidence, but shows that Taki was influenced by the Huffington Post from the very beginning. Nominal similarities between the two online publications are dead give ways. Both have the owners name in the title, and have same format too, with Takimag having no news updates. I often felt that Takimag was really just an sophisticated clone of the Huffington Post for the alternative right.
Lastly, Richard Spencer mention of more emphasis on Human Biodiversity pretty much means that this new magazine will have all white nationalist stuff that is leaving Takimag as it becomes the Taki Post and be on Richard’s new magazine, with additional material. I can not wait. With the Vdare redesign and Richard’s new online magazine, theoccidentalobserver, and occidentaldissent, this year is going to be awesome for online journals and news.
No one under the age of 35 pays any attention to Thomas Fleming or Chronicles.
No one wants to read Mandolyna or Christina Oxenberg either.
The silence about this matter in the paleosphere is revealing. Nothing at Chronicles. Nothing at Conservative Heritage Times. Nothing at Amconmag. Nothing at R.S. McCain.
I know there are paleos reading this thread. Is this being discussed anywhere else? A Google blog search gets two hits: Occidental Dissent and TOQ Online.
“No one wants to read Mandolyna or Christina Oxenberg either.”
Especially in the Paleo-community or White Nationalist community. While do not think that Takimag will become an absolute disater under Mandolyna, it is not likely going to survive as an alternative right online publication. The alternative right has always been serious intellectual movement, and not some passing fad. White Nationalism at least has population of laypeople who would appreciate an entertainment magazine with white nationalist focus. Most of the alternative right believes that there is lay population with similar ideological interests. However, the alternative right is to much of an intellectual elite to have a market for a entertainment magazine catering toward their interests. Daily Beast survives because most liberals are pretty stupid when comes to matters of politics. Same with Slate and the Huffington Post. Mandolyna and Christiana Oxenberg are part of the wrong ideological community. The Alternative Right foundations as an ideological community are basically intellectuals who could fit into the current right’s political zeitgeist. This community has never had lay population. Ron Paul and others merely gain mainstream appeal by finding other largely communities who sympathize with their view point. The white nationalist movement has at least an actually populist appeal. I know many common white people who the white nationalist message would appeal to. I think the alternative right is too intellectual for the mainstream and that the movement suffers the inadequacy of no real lay population of believers. An entertainment magazine for the alternative right will fail, without it truly being horrible. My long piece was not support of Takimag new direction but analysis of its probable future. I hate to think of a Takimag being a Dailybeast or a true clone of Huffington Post. Takimag, however, for better or worst is the Taki Post or maybe what should be called the Mandolyna Post.
No one under the age of 35 pays any attention to Thomas Fleming or Chronicles.
Yeah. Too bad for Serj cause he is an asset on Islam.
Yeah. Too bad for Serj cause he is an asset on Islam.
Serge Trifkovic left Chronicles a while back.
“Spencer was not canned. He left because Taki decided to take the site in a new direction.”
Any word on what the new direction is?
All the paleoconservatives I know (and I know many) are largely in agreement with racialists on the issue of race, but they are just not as open about it. Still, they are natural allies. The “strategy” of CaptainChaos/Alex Linder to attack paleos has as much foresight as Napoleon’s strategy of invading Russia.
I would venture a guess that there is about a 0.0% chance Spencer’s Web site will give genuine pro-White views a fair hearing given his connections to establishment figures.
“He is supposedly a miscegenator. His current girlfriend is a Russian with significant (Mongoloid) Tatar admixture/ancestry.” – Freyr
Can you offer any evidence that Nina Kouprianova is Tatar and not simply an ethnic Russian? Jesus H. Christ. This constant speculation without any evidence whatsoever makes us look like morons.
Kasimir,
LOL! I hope to one day find this friend of a friend in the movement who’s constantly supposing all these things. Is there some salaried guy in a cubicle at the SPLC headquarters who just sits there pondering up random baseless rumors all day?
I would like to jump out in front of the whisper campaign and admit that, being of Appalachian extraction, I probably do have some fractional Amerindian admixture. I also look a bit Jewy, though I don’t believe I have any Jewish ancestry.
HW,
If you’re still looking for writing material you might want to check out the latest exchange between Auster and Moldbug at VFR. The argument is about whether America should be reformed [Auster] or dissolved [Moldbug & Kevin V]. This exchange, in microcosm, represents the clash in viewpoints between conservatism and a budding revolutionary nationalism.
Stephen Elliot @ 9: MR crowd thinks he has “good instincts” and he takes that as a some sort of compliment, when in reality all it means is that he’s neither well-read or intelligent but dutifully follows and repeats their party line.
What party line is that, Stephen? Don’t you know that MR is not a herd of political cattle … never has been, never will be? Don’t you know the subjects you pass judgement on? Is intellectual laziness the latest must-have accessory among those who lay claim to being “well-read” and “intelligent”?
Why don’t you (or anyone else here who considers himself suitably able) put your “intelligence” to the test at MR? Any thread on which you feel the “party line” must be challenged will do – I don’t mind and I’m sure CC doesn’t either.
But, of course, you already know what the outcome would be, don’t you? And that you must, and will, avoid.
CC said something interesting in his reply to you @ 10. He drew a distinction between “thinking” and “studying”. This is the distinction between him and you – annoying though that must be for you – and between MR and OD. Indeed, since February 2008, when I changed the purpose of the blog:
http://majorityrights.com/index.php/weblog/comments/on_traction_and_a_farewell_to_a_political_friend/
… it is also the distinction between MR and TOQ. It is the distinction between the slow and difficult creation of new intellectual territory and the analysis – in perpetuum, as it happens – of the existent. It is the distinction between the avowedly revolutionary and the beseechingly evolutionary. It is the distinction, in my view, between how to change the global fate of European Man and how to fail to appreciate what is really involved in such a mighty undertaking.
You see, the cost to my people, your people, of people like you thinking you can think when you can only study will be literally catastrophic if you are ever permitted to get near positions of leadership in the WN movement. That is why Alex Linder took it upon himself to attack Gregg Johnson and Hunter. He isn’t interested in the former’s sexual life, and he doesn’t hold it against Hunter that he has suffered a long-term illness. He is interested in advancing a radical solution to our collective ills. It isn’t my radicalism, and it isn‘t my solution. But, more to the point, it wasn’t Sam Francis’s and it isn’t Kevin MacDonald’s, Greg Johnson’s or Hunter’s. Alex thinks – and I agree, as anyone who reads that MR link will understand – that an appeal to the conservative mind, whilst it might have short-term political benefits, is bound to produce nothing of tangible value because the conservative mind is incapable of effecting the change we seek. Conservatives are not revolutionaries, any more than the GOP is not an indelibly neoliberal and anti-racist party (it‘s bought too, but let‘s set that aside). I know more than any of you, because I spent three years finding it out at MR, that conservatism cannot hold on to racialism’s fingertips against the leftward gravitational pull of the liberal polity.
It just cannot do it.
Now, in Alex’s terms – again, not mine – a revolution is the replacement in toto of the political Establishment. So, if the initiative which eventually emerges from TOQ’s secret conference last, what, August merely entails moving WN closer to, or attempting to influence, the more “daring” end of the conservative spectrum, it does not even begin to address the scale of problem that white America faces. Understand, please, that whilst a revolution may never materialise, and, therefore, the work done will contribute nothing to its cause, it does quantify correctly. Because an attempt to radicalise conservatism fails in this respect, it can only produce loss of focus, accommodationism and disillusion.
Consonant with his historical exemplars, I think Alex made a conscious decision to “attack the conservatives” – to play the man and not the ball. The conservatives plainly object, as anyone would. But since secrecy attaches to what they are planning in the name of white America, Alex cannot wholly be blamed for that.
We are Europeans, after all. My people, in particular, have a long and honourable tradition of telling elites with plans for us where, precisely, they can insert them. A little openness in August, a little respect and brotherliness, might have produced a more cordial outcome – not agreement across the revolutionary evolutionary fissure, perhaps, but a willingness among the revolutionaries for the experiment to be tried on a limited time-scale, and in the understanding that its assured failure will mark the last attempt by the people involved to lead us in that direction.
@notuswind,
Left a responsive comment at “Soren Renner” thread that has not appeared, at this point, as I, or the thread, am/is being “moderated”.
Please comment at the first “superhuman” post, if *this* comment appears, and look for a response at STFTD column.
Thanks,
NN
In defense of Stephen Elliot [at 9], I too have noticed CC’s increasingly pedantic style. CC seems to be under the impression that intellectual maturity is a matter of enhancing one’s vocabulary and changing the style of one’s prose, the trajectory of which betrays the influence of MR (which is not necessarily a bad thing). Posturing of this kind is rather tiresome.
I prefer the old CC, the one who spammed the hell out of the TakiMag comments section. He spoke plainly and passionately back then.
NN,
Thanks for the update.
I was trying to correct misinformation. Whether anyone under 35 reads Chronicles is immaterial to the subject at hand. What matters is if Taki listens to Fleming. Those of us in the paleo world have been following the online war of words between Chronicles and TakiMag for some time. Fleming wrote specifically that Taki doesn’t go online. Needs help even accessing his e-mail. He was not exercising much editorial control over the site. So speculation that Taki, who just wrote an essay praising Kevin McDonald, canned Spencer because he was trying to enforce political correctness is just wrong.
I enjoyed GW preening himself for the revolutionary struggle and knocking T.O.Q. and O.D. while praising genocidal psychopath Linder – this should tell us a thing or two regarding GW’s mentality as well. Tell us, GW, what has Linder achieved, name his accomplishments? Is that the direction you’d like us to take? The path of marginalization and obscurity and perhaps a prison cell? Linder is despised even within the rarified atmosphere of W.N. He has zero influence. I don’t know whether you’ve noticed but O.D. and T.O.Q. have also rejected conservatism as a viable vehicle for our times. As to coming up with a new philosophy for our people, MR has had 5 or 6 years to come up with the Holy Grail…and hasn’t. You’re basically recycling Revolutionary Conservatism with a tweak or two and pretending that you’ve received a new revelation. Now, I’ll grant you that it’s hard being original, but what are you whining about? We don’t need a new philosophy. We already have all the moral and intellectual equipment necessary, what’s missing is the implementation phase and that won’t happened without a movement, i.e. meetings and feet on the ground. Here we could learn something from the pre-revolutionary Bolshevism or early National Socialism. We need organizational skills more than we need a “new philosophy” – or is that just an excuse to do nothing but keep gabbing on widely unread blogs? Despite your pretensions to the contrary, MR isn’t in any way better or superior or more cutting edge or original than T.O.Q. or O.D. It’s just another blog for racially conscious Whites – nothing more.
1.) Alex Linder defines “conservatism” as anything short of genocide of the Jews.
2.) Alex Linder defines “White Nationalism” as psychopathy.
3.) There is nothing “conservative” about being explicitly racial, endorsing the ethnostate, and naming the Jew. That was Alex Linder’s very own WN litmus test for a decade.
4.) Alex Linder changed his litmus test for one reason only: TOQ Online, Occidental Observer, and Occidental Dissent appeared on the scene and adopted this approach.
Linder perceived our work as a threat to his marketshare and financial contributions. So he initiated “unrestricted warfare” against Greg Johnson and Dr. MacDonald. He is a petty individual who is financially motivated, not the “crusader” he makes himself out to be.
5.) The creation of a White ethnostate in North America is a “revolutionary goal” by any reasonable standard.
6.) Any realistic appraisal of our situation must take into account the fact that in order to create the ethnostate we must win over tens of millions of Whites who now waste their time on conservative, moderate, and progressive politics.
7.) Advocating genocide, the destruction of Christianity, and trashing middle class values, while emotionally satisifying to some disturbed individuals, does not advance our long term goals.
8.) Our long term goals require a mass movement.
9.) In the planning stages, a mass movement requires a vanguard or spearhead to give it coherence and direction.
10.) Sam Davidson has an excellent recent post on this subject. A real vanguard (like a communist vanguard, as opposed to the clownish Neo-Nazi groups) is not a mass membership organization. It doesn’t seek publicity.
I’m not familar with Stephen Elliot. He must be a new commentator. I guess he came over from Majority Rights.
“So speculation that Taki, who just wrote an essay praising Kevin McDonald, canned Spencer because he was trying to enforce political correctness is just wrong.”
While do think there will be deemphasis on race at the new takimag, I still feel that the main change will be its evolution into a hybrid entertainment news magazine for the alternative right. We may still see some political incorrect articles about race and intelligence, but much less now. Taki endorsement of Kevin Macdonald was very subdued anyway.
CC and Linder got the comment section at Takimag shut down. That was one of the few places on the web where White Nationalism could be exposed to a larger audience.