A few days ago, a disgusted conservative friend sent me a link to the awful BNP hit piece by Peter Hitchens in The American Conservative. He asked me to comment on the matter. Unfortunately, nature intervened and a severe freeze in South Alabama disrupted my internet service for several days.
The article speaks for itself. Hitchens attacks the BNP from a neocon perspective: they have fascist roots, John Tyndall was a Neo-Nazi, they’re anti-Semitic, some of them deny the Holocaust, they bring the British Right into disrepute, they draw off votes from real conservatives, they are ethnonationalist, etc. Hitchens even does a little bit of chest thumping over his Jewish ancestry.
This piece of trash wouldn’t have attracted much attention if it had been published in Salon, The Weekly Standard, or The Huffington Post. Why would the leading paleoconservative magazine publish something like this though? It runs against the grain of everything Pat Buchanan has written for years now. Isn’t TAC his project?
I’ve read several comments at paleocon sites that suggest Buchanan is no longer associated with TAC. Scott McConnell is the editor. Ron Unz is the publisher. At least that’s my understanding. I haven’t been able to verify any of this.
A blogger called Bede has commented on the Hitchens article at Conservative Heritage Times. Most of the paleos over there had a similar negative reaction. This suggests there is more overlap between us than the extremists in both camps would like to admit.
Paleoconservatism was based, from the late 80s until the internet became more relevant in the 2000s, at Chronicles and the Rockford Institute that published the magazine and a couple of newsletters. I had a subscription from the early 90s until just after Sam Francis died.
It was sometimes explicit about race, but more often than not it was implicit. Most editions had articles about immigration, the plight of white Southerners, European nationalist movements – Haider, Le Pen, Lega Nord, etc, – the neocons/Israel lobby and, of course, the Bosnian Serbs. (Pat Buchanan once joked that editor Tom Fleming was a Serbia Firster. Auster also ridiculed Fleming’s Serbia ‘obsession’). Fleming himself sometimes vented about black racialism or the idea that immigrants should have the same rights as the descendants of George Washington and other old stock settlers. However, they were also into religion, especially Catholicism, opposition to gay rights and feminism, economic issues, regionalism, globalisation, and geopolitics. I think a lot of paleos have always been concerned about race, it just was never their only or even main concern. Also, if one’s only contact with white racialism came from frothing haters with a Nazi fetish it was easier (certainly more comforting) to connect one’s own racial feelings with regionalism and nationalism (ie a kind of ethnocentrism rather than racialism).
Sometime in the 90s Fleming seem to have a falling out with paleos who gave race a greater priority. (Apparently, E Christian Kopff, one of the main writers for many years, left the magazine over Fleming’s attitude to race). He complained at least once about reader letters demanding more racialism and there became more of an emphasis on religion, regionalism, etc. During this time circulation dropped.
Every December issue had a Statement of Management and Circulation (or some similar title). My first issue, December 1991 showed that the total paid circulation was close to 13,000. By 1998 it had dropped below 8000. My last December issue was 2004 and it had dropped to just over 6000. After Francis died (2005) it probably took a huge hit. The drop in paid subscriptions indicate that a good number of paleos have always been concerned about race. It is also likely that the longer they read Chronicles the more they started to re-arrange their priorities.
It is also likely that the longer they read Chronicles the more they started to re-arrange their priorities.
What I mean by that is many of us had read enough to realise that with Western civilisation and its people seriously threatened paleo arguments about tariffs, obscure poets, and the constitutionality of the Civil War no longer mattered very much.
The paleos have an escapist tendency to get lost in the past. Clyde Wilson writes almost exclusively about the Civil War. Thomas Fleming is always writing about Antiquity and the Middle Ages. John Zmirak used to write about Austria-Hungary under the Hapsburgs.
A recent example:
http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/index.php/2010/01/04/church-and-state-a/
For a few months during an early stage of my racial awakening a few years back I was largely within the sphere of influence of paleoconservatism. The Chronicles web site was one of my main web resources. It didn’t last and can’t last for any man who keeps searching for real solutions to the problems we face. During this time I mistakenly subscribed to AmConMag site unseen – in part due to Buchanan’s (then) affiliation with it – but cancelled it after reading the first issue. McConnell was ranting about “racism” needing to be purged from the Right.
That was the final straw in leading me to purge the effeminate poison of conservatism from my system.
Today, the finite resource is white-people themselves.
A very interesting observation, I’ll probably be swiping that.
I also started my political journey within the sphere of paleoconservatism: reading The Death of the West and Pat Buchanan columns. The paleocons seemed to be the only show in town willing to seriously tackle free trade and third world immigration. David Horowitz was writing about affirmative action and reparations for slavery at the time.
Within a year, I had found Stormfront, VDARE, and the National Alliance. I started reading Sam Francis and tuning into William Pierce’s ADV radio show. My own research into America’s racial decline led me to the Jewish Question.
Denise,
Douglas Reed’s “Controversy of Zion” is an excellent source for framing the JQ in a Christian context. Reed doesn’t have that creepy soulless vibe that R.P. Oliver and Dr. Pierce exude. More importantly, it frames the life of Christ in what I believe to be its true context, as a rebel against the Pharisees whose lessons serve as a path out of bondage.
Derbyshire’s TAC piece on Kevin MacDonald was pretty good. It certainly wasn’t “vicious,” though he did toss in a few career-protecting suck-up comments to organized Jewry in the article. He gave MacDonald’s arguments a pretty fair hearing, and the Derbyshire review actually led to a pretty interesting five part series in the Jewish press on whether or not MacDonald was on to something. I don’t know how many people like that sort of respectful debate between anti-Semites and anti-antisemites (Gottfried and MacDonald have had some good ones too) but I sure do.
The Hitchens piece was appalling. It truly was a hatchet job. And there is something very mean-spirited about those two brothers, its like they can’t help themselves. Though he did point up to a fact that must be confronted: lots of white people opposed to the leftist anti-white agenda at the same time, for whatever reason, REALLY DEEPLY dislike racially conscious thinking by white people. And they vicerally hate anti-Semites even more. Hitchens is one of these guys.
Roach is right to say the magazine is in decline under McConnell’s leadership. Unz nearly shut the magazine down last spring, then relented and turned it into a monthly. I just don’t see where they are going. It’s not for paleocons, its for cranky middle of the road curmudgeons. Which I admit I sometimes am.
But even worse, the magazine is BORING.
The electorate in England couldn’t care less about “anti-semitism” and “holocaust denial,” let alone David Duke, who almost no one in the UK has ever heard of. The image problem that the BNP has is due the association between the far right and football hooligan types. It has nothing to do with Jews.
Right, these are going to be deported against their will to Chimpbabwe after the Restoration. Let them put their money where their mouth is. Then we’ll see what they “really deeply dislike” as we’re laughing our asses off.
“Until recently, everyone used to have its own country, and there was little competition for resources. Today, the finite resource is white-people themselves. Otherwise, non-whites would not object to racial separation.”
“…Today, the finite resource is white-people themselves….”
That’s DEEP.
“Right, these are going to be deported against their will to Chimpbabwe after the Restoration. …”
“Chimpbabwe” LMFAO 😀
Yeah, all the White ‘wimmin’ with their black and brown, (common law) ‘husbands’, and their oreo offspring, should be THE FIRST TO GO.
I just don’t see where they are going. It’s not for paleocons, its for cranky middle of the road curmudgeons.
It’s not paleocon anymore. Paleoconservatism is all but dead. If you read Daniel Larison’s foreign policy stuff it’s basically all about finding errors in Republican thinking and lots of excuse-making for Obama. Same with some of the other bloggers there. Picking apart then laughing at GOP criticisms of Obama but not distancing themselves from Democrats. There’s even a term that’s been used by some of them: Obamacons! I kid you not.
” Paleoconservatism is all but dead.”
I tend to think that they were merely ahead of their time. Buchanan was ranting about immigrants and bad trade policy a full twenty years too soon!
Sam Francis was writing about Middle American Radicals decades ago. Those folks are here now and getting organized but are called Tea Party-ers. White Nationalists need to work in getting Tea Party People into the American Third Position.
Eventually, American 3p. is going to have to find a leader who is not a lawyer or a pointyhead.
In other words, L-1 is earnest but killer boring, and L-2 is brilliant but way too abstruse to mobilize the popular masses.
A(nalyst)-66/67 is earnestly boring.
“Eventually, American 3p. is going to have to find a leader who is not a lawyer or a pointyhead”.
Agreed.
If you notice in their latest video, they are calling people out to step up to the plate into leadership. Now we all know that running for political office right now under a WN banner is not really feasible. However, this is a good opportunity to begin forming the nuts and bolts of the party. This process will take a few years at least.
The one area they are going to need to focus on is propaganda. They need to reach out to artists, writers, speakers, etc. to begin putting out some really high quality professional material that sends a clear message as to what the party stands for and to what White Americans are facing. A3P needs to put some cold reality right in White Americas faces with no apologies in a professional manner and they need a sort of “propaganda minister” to organize this.
Just getting up there with a suit and tie all formal speaking calmly and being the utmost gentlemen with respect is all and good but they need to step up their game some. Now this might be planned but if history is any indication of where this might lead, we will wind up with a snore fest fuddy duddy party of “serious” egghead intellectuals with no facial expressions.
Here’s a link to more anti-BNP hostility from The American Conservative:
http://www.amconmag.com/blog/2009/10/21/bnp-on-the-bbc/
#Amy, on October 23rd, 2009 at 2:24 pm Said:
It is unfortunate that there are people with the same views as Griffin. They should not be allowed to be in politics.
There’s a sizable contingent of people who frequent WN sites that like to say how we all need to get off our butts and start organizing in the “real” world. Well the A3P, despite its imperfections, is their chance to do just that.
Johnson and MacDonald may not be the perfect leaders of such a party but they are respectable men who are trying to advance our cause in a very tangible way. For that alone I think they deserve our support.
The American Conservative is at it again.
Ron Unz (Jew) has penned this piece:
His-Panic
His-Panic
He took this from the title of Jerry Rivers (*Hee-raal-do Rivera’s*) recent tract
At any leftist demonstration or meeting a wide variety of fringe crazies mix with the crowd and no one comments about it. Trotskyites, Maoists, black panthers and professional haters of Whites are routinely invited to the rostrom and microphone. All one big happy family!
So what if Nick Griffin stands next to David Duke and talks with him, or anybody else for that matter. Are rightists held to a higer standard of association than the left?
I am not aware of Nick Griffin being a holocaust denier, though I know he is not in favor of putting people in the can for unusual beliefs.