Bill sent a wealth of information for my perusal yesterday. I intended to review the material in his e-mail and provide inks. But I am behind on all of my historic and fictional serials, and have three books to correct based on material just sent over from my lady editors. So, I am deleting Bill’s last name and posting the contents of is e-mail here, as what I have read so far is fascinating, and I think should be shared with our readers. The text samples Bill sent are accompanied by links and author credits. If you like these lines of inquiry please check out the balance of their work. I particularly liked Eric Raymond’s piece on Suicidalism. There was one extensive uncredited block of text that I did not include, but is well worth reading.
Thanks Bill.
James,
Hi, just a quick note of new reader appreciation. I came across your terrific blog yesterday via:
I stumbled on the Isegoria link via the Neoreactionary/Dark Enlightenment aggregator page I am semi-addicted to:
link › neorxn.com
Neoreaction is typically the intellectual domain of 20 and 30 year olds, but I am 61 and the neoreactionary writers have—as do you—much cold but refreshing water to deliver.
Since yesterday, I have collected 71 or so of your posts going back to September...for closer reading.
Thanks for fearless, crisp, challenging "looking through your eyes" insights into "Life on the Street."
Gratefully yours,
Bill
Washington, DC
PS—During the last hour, I picked Living Under Tyrone Crow as the essay (link) to share with two of my brothers...accompanied by some information about you.
James,
Hi, it really struck me how "Jeremy's" and your institutional concept of The Woman is a near perfect replica of the Dark Enlightenment concept of The Cathedral.
Selections below. I am thinking none of this might be very new to you.
Regards,
Bill
March 8, 2014
...the Cathedral, the vast complex of media outlets and academic institutions which has replaced the Church as the center of Western political and intellectual life.
In any university, in any journal of record, you will encounter the same basic assumptions about the world:
- All people are basically equal,
- ethnically diverse societies are a good thing (but mainly for Western countries)
- casual sex is normal
- cigarette smoking is not, and so on.
...This Atlantic model (Atlantic liberalism), though it works very well for Jews, certain affluent Whites, and the elite of select protected classes, also destroys community solidarity, disregards the White working class, uproots non-Westerners from their own native traditions, and encourages a remarkable hatred of Westerners who oppose it.
These ill effects alone would suggest that there are other ways of managing a technologically advanced society, not to mention the alternatives offered in the early 20th century.
Of course, many of those suffering the worst of these effects are still invested in a ‘conservative’ movement that serves to divert their attention away from decisive action and toward politically sensationalized inanities that have no productive consequence.
A Comprehensive Introduction to Cathedralism, Part 1
by Bryce Laliberte
The “Cathedral” forms a fundamental element of the neoreactionary critique of modern society, yet there is no single place which delves extensively into its theory and use since it was originally invoked by Moldbug.
Therefore, I would like to put forward a comprehensive explanation in the interest of codifying a particular use within the community, so that there is a convergence on a single unified theory.
Not, of course, that there won’t always be room for divergences of political philosophy within neoreaction, but I would like to fasten down the essential elements which mark the neoreactionary ideology from competing ideologies and those systems of thought which are, as it were, mere conservative political philosophy.
What is the Cathedral?
The Cathedral is, in short, the true ruling meta-institution of the Western world.
It is a spontaneously generated religious superstructure constituted most significantly by the civil service, the university system, and the media unified by the common cause of egalitarian progressivism.
Of course, no such organization formally exists, which is key to its power.
That it does not identify itself, and frequently obfuscates its own existence through a socio-historical narrative of Progress, is what makes it difficult to pick out and indeed can only be observed with the proper conceptual tools...
link › esr.ibiblio.org/?p=218
September 13, 2005
Suicidalism
by Eric Raymond
The most important weapons of al-Qaeda and the rest of the Islamist terror network are the suicide bomber and the suicide thinker. The suicide bomber is typically a Muslim fanatic whose mission it is to spread terror; the suicide thinker is typically a Western academic or journalist or politician whose mission it is to destroy the West’s will to resist not just terrorism but any ideological challenge at all.
But al-Qaeda didn’t create the ugly streak of nihilism and self-loathing that afflicts too many Western intellectuals. Nor, I believe, is it a natural development. It was brought to us by Department V of the KGB, which was charged during the Cold War with conducting memetic warfare that would destroy the will of the West’s intelligentsia to resist a Communist takeover. This they did with such magnificent effect that the infection outlasted the Soviet Union itself and remains a pervasive disease of contemporary Western intellectual life.
Consider the following propositions:
- There is no truth, only competing agendas.
- All Western (and especially American) claims to moral superiority over Communism/Fascism/Islam are vitiated by the West’s history of racism and colonialism.
- There are no objective standards by which we may judge one culture to be better than another. Anyone who claims that there are such standards is an evil oppressor.
- The prosperity of the West is built on ruthless exploitation of the Third World; therefore Westerners actually deserve to be impoverished and miserable.
- Crime is the fault of society, not the individual criminal. Poor criminals are entitled to what they take. Submitting to criminal predation is more virtuous than resisting it.
- The poor are victims. Criminals are victims. And only victims are virtuous. Therefore only the poor and criminals are virtuous. (Rich people can borrow some virtue by identifying with poor people and criminals.)
- For a virtuous person, violence and war are never justified. It is always better to be a victim than to fight, or even to defend oneself.
- But “oppressed” people are allowed to use violence anyway; they are merely reflecting the evil of their oppressors.
- When confronted with terror, the only moral course for a Westerner is to apologize for past sins, understand the terrorist’s point of view, and make concessions.
- These ideas travel under many labels: postmodernism, nihilism, multiculturalism, Third-World-ism, pacifism, “political correctness” to name just a few.
It is time to recognize them for what they are, and call them by their right name: suicidalism.
