So what I'm proposing is to label this conflict as expression of whitening. 1] Did it really start with the renaming and removal of the iconic past? And more fundamentally, 2] was it even a real conflict? 3] Did the media capture extremes to paint the conflict in a specific light? 4] Did we see a spectacle, like some re-enactment? 5] Or was there a real process underneath it? 6] In postmodern times we have to ask these questions to understand the context of the event.
7] Why did Charlottesville’s city council vote on the removal? This was linked to the social unrest after the racist mass murder by white local white supremacist Dylann Roof. 8] But generally it's being argued the Confederates were "on the wrong side of history", and should be remembered but not revered on a pedestal. In addition not to embolden the Dylann Roofs of the world.
And 9] why did Richard Spencer say the protest and burning torches was "a way to communicate with the dead" and mentioned the "beauty of that spectacle of flames at night". The undertones of a destructive desire? Or a child's memory of the display of fireworks? He adds, as to confirm his postmodern dedication: 10] "It’s a beautiful aesthetic".
Food for thought. 11] Is it violence to re-appropriate the past and its symbols? 12] Does it even make sense to keep a losing side, a losing idea alive? As it might keep resentment burning for generations. See and try to apply this on the issues in the Middle East.
What I find amazing is how deeply *you* are wrapped up in the politics of my country. It has to be at least mentioned. And I think it also has to be mentioned that you see yourself as able to Rx these situations. This is certainly not a criticism. It is just a statement.
However, in your specific case, I do not think you can have enough insight to really grasp what is going on in that country. Yes, you have an angle, and you can certainly put out your opinion, but I discern that you don't have enough information for understanding.
About number 7. The simple answer is that any monument erected by Southerners to commemorate southern history is definitely and obviously connected to southern identity issues. The erection of many or most of these monuments functioned as a balm to the profound defeat that the white South dealt with. It does not take a great deal of excess imagination to understand why a given people (the Whites in this case who owned and controlled the South) would desire to put them up.
It follows therefor, with or without Dylann Roof I will add, that as a rising and emboldered demographic, empowered by 2 terms of a social-activist presidency who was trained in Saul Alinsky-style activism (bold, direct, absolutist, uncompromising), will naturally turn its attention to those Symbols and will desire to demolish them. On another site someone posted a picture of a monument (with no statue) that reads: 'United States troops took over the state government and reinstated the usurpers but the national election November 1876 recognized white supremacy in the South and gave us our state'. (See 'The Battle of Liberty Place monument' Wiki, etc.)
Obviously, the allusion in all of this is to a long, strange and also a determining history. If we are to apply the 'push come to shove' method of getting to the core of the issue, or the 'cut to the chase' method, we have to expose the underlying race-issue. In my own case, and in a certain sense contrary to my own education (as a Californian from the radical Bay Area), when I read Richard Weaver's 'The Southern Tradition at Bay: A History of Postbellum Thought', after having read 'Ideas Have Consequences', I was personally thrust into a project of revisionism in essence.
This was during the time I participated in the Civil War forum and which I linked you to. Weaver's perspective opened me up the issue of examining
reigning metaphysics. Weaver's view is, to put it in simple terms, that the present is the present it is --- I will insert the term 'hyper-liberal present' --- because certain radical ideas were put in motion at former historical junctures. The base-position of any conservatism must be to locate and defend a value-set that comes under attack by radically progressive moments. There is no other option. You have to come up with a position. In short (without reviewing the books or his philosophy) is that when the South was destroyed something valuable and important was destroyed along with it. (This is the
introduction to 'The Southern Tradition at Bay').
According to Weaver, this *value* has to be sought out, uncovered if you will, pulled out from the rubble, and certainly brought to light even when the South is seen and understood (by the North, by *the world*, within the present metaphysical dispensation) as being evil. In my own case, and confronting people on that historical form (Civil War Talk), I came to recognize another octave of 'hyper-liberalism' in action. When you come up against these people, you come up against a Construct.
This is where I began to learn that one's 'notion of self' is intricately tied to a specific 'metaphysics' and, if challenged, can lead to a crisis within the self. By challenging or confronting certain views you challenge and confront people at the level of their persons, their being in a certain sense. What I learned there is that to confront this Construct is no easy feat. There is no sense in bickering with them because that, in itself, does not and cannot go far enough and cannot reach them. I mean, the personality battles, with some introduction of Idea, are interesting, necessary and valuable, but what is required is a complete restructuring of idea at a more profound level. This of course leads into the larger, the overarching, metaphysical definitions.
That led, of course, into Shakesepare studies and to Basil Willey's 'Seventeenth Century Studies' and then on to Lovejoy's 'The Great Chain of Being'. It became evermore apparent that to understand The Present, and certainly myself in this present, and all people around me, and then more particularly the Genius Forum because it had resolved to propound the pathway to the 'most important questions' and it was my fate to arrive, to participate, and like you to have the glory of meeting The Talking Ass), that to understand this Present I would have to understand better the 'determining metaphysics'. To make a long story short, my present position within Identity Politics and 'white identity' all links back through these metaphysical studies. But I would say that I owe a great deal to Richard Weaver.
Again, there is so much material that would need to be explained and, as always,
tltr becomes the block, but I associate 'white identity politics' and 'white civilization'. Just as the South was destroyed (a war, a defeat and an occupation), so too in our present the same machine rushes forward. It can be summed up for conversational purposes as The Americanopolis. I would suggest that the reason *all of you* who are not Americans have your eyes all focused on this Americanopolis is because it leads the hyper-liberal charge. It appears to be strangely central to everyone's concerns. (I do understand that concern for the superpower is natural and inevitable).
I am deliberately jumping ahead sharply and quickly. It has become my view that to confrong 'hyper-liberalism', and this is distinct from classical liberalism, one has to confront a large edifice of Idea that has so penetrated perception and understanding that it has become 'reigning metaphysics'. To turn against Time in this sense, to become a counter-current to it in the sense of Men Against Time, requires a metaphysical shift within oneself. This is not something that occurs from one day to the next. In my own case --- a slow learner aparently! --- I can trace 10 years of effort. But I would not say this is abnormal. I would say that to establish/reestablish the sort of conservatism I would define (ie a metaphysical platform and not 'conservatism' in the popular and shallow sense) requires something akin to 'the reconstruction of the self' or what the self in an essential sense accretes around it. These are generational shift, and a generational shift is upon us.
I actually have the feeling that David, Diebert and Danny-boy have fallen to the side of the
demands of this Project. Diebert, the 'articulate fool' of the Forum, will surely have a whole war to fight in opposing these terrible statements that I have just made. And this comes about, IMV, because Diebert most and best articulates the postmodern swamp we all find ourselves in and which we are desperate to resist. This postmodernism, despite the humorous fact that I link Deebs to it as 'resident postmodern spider' is really the Web that we have to deal with, or that is dealing with us. We are in it and we gargle in its choirs (to steal a line from a Dylan song).
I am intersted in and involved in a project of constructing, or recovering, an identity posture for European and pan-European people. If that is 'white people' then so be it. If I need to construct, quite literally, a racialist posture then so be it: I will do this. In fact this is what is being done. This is what
MUST be done. To say this, of course, sounds utterly outrageous --- impossible! --- and all I can say is that every element of it, every facet of it, must be carefully defined and explained. It can be done, of this I am now convinced.
I submit
this in fun, more or less, but I do want to say that I do not intend to be educated in this school. There is much more here than meets the eye, this I can assure you. I will reverse all the tenets of this schooling by proposing and asserting a counter-doctrinal stance. I will actually construct a sound base for the notion of 'supremacy' by holding to, articulating, and explaining hierarchy-of-value and hierarchy-of-meaning. This is part of the recovery-process in the recovery of metaphysics.
These statements, off the cuff, rapid-fire, are initial statements, initial shots fired if you will, and every element in them, every assertion, has to be carefully defended and explained point-by-point. It is a fraught endeavor and it is a veritable feat.
And now with The Golden Lion as Chief Strategist (I am disappointed David but I accept your decision brother!) we can really get to work!