Alt Right did not pass a “shit test”

Savitri Devi once said that she could never love a man who loved her more than he loved his ideals.

—Greg Johnson

My family was destroyed when my father became mentally and emotionally as codependent with my mother as a medusa attached to a snail (see the first comment below this article). My father never had any physical or mental illness: he simply chose the most abject form of marital codependence toward his spouse as his lifestyle. I mention this because these days at the blogsite Alternative Right the admins, contributors and some of the commenters behaved if not like my father, at least like typical feminized western males.

Of the article “The Woman Question in White Nationalism” by Greg Johnson, a reply to a feminist article, and a couple of feminized article follow-ups at Alternative Right authored by males, I only want to quote Karsten’s comments:

(Gentlemen’s club)


There are some very good things at Alt Right, but Janelle Antas’s feminist article [here] was the worst thing at that site in a while. It smacked of the worst kind of entitlement and stereotypical female self-centredness: “This movement isn’t to my liking, so it has to change to suit me.” That is standard, shopworn feminism, and the author’s defenses were laughable—saying that she’s not a feminist, even though she uses a standard feminist stratagem. “If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck,” as the saying goes.

If anything, her article gave an indication that if there is a lack of women in WN [white nationalism], that’s a good thing—or rather, if there is a lack of women such as she (i.e., self-centred women with a sense of entitlement that a movement must change to suit them), then that’s a good thing.

How predictable that rather than thinking that the absence of women in WN indicates something lacking in the majority of women—no, she sees this as evidence that there is something lacking in WN!

Focussing on attracting women (or any minority) is the standard recipe for how a movement kills itself. It’s how traditional conservatism was distorted into the abomination known as “neoconservatism.” First, it too asked, “Where are the women?” and became pro-feminist. Then “Where are the Jews?” and became philosemitic. Then “Where are the blacks?” and became “anti-racist,” and so forth, until this more “inclusive” conservatism had nothing conservative about it, and was just another kind of leftism.

It was the Janelle Antases and their equivalents among Jews, blacks, and other minority groups that destroyed the Old Right, because they whined and whined and wanted the Right to change to suit them, and sure enough, it did, until all of its principles were gone.

A great society is not founded by women or run by women. A great society is founded by men and run by men, and women are the wives and mothers. That is simply the nature of the species—men are concerned with principles, with ideals, with the race, and women are at their core shallow materialists concerned above all with their own personal gratification and security and well-being. (I speak generally, of course—just as one speaks of any minority in general terms. There are always statistically irrelevant outliers.)

The national socialists understood this, as they did everything else. That’s why there wasn’t one, single youth movement. There was one for boys, and one for girls, owing to the fact that the genders are different and have different interests. But the leadership of the movement was, and had to be, male.

That this is even a question for debate is a measure of how far left, even “radical traditionalists” have drifted. “Misogyny”? That is simply the modern slur for a clear-eyed recognition of gender differences, one that the majority of the public, from king to peasant, would have clearly understood in past centuries.

Don’t focus on attracting women. Win power, and the women will come, as they always do. That one famous line in the movie Scarface is as true in general political terms as it is in personal terms: “First you get the power, then you get the women.” Which is not to say that you get women by power; rather, simply that once there is power, women come of their own accord. That’s basic biology.

♣

Miss Antas may do good work in her roles as Mr. [David] Irving’s secretary and in whatever admin she does for her imprint (although what really has she done?). But the narrow-minded ideas in her essay would be poison for radical traditionalists to adopt, for the reasons that I outlined in my [previous] post.

Someone can “do good things for the cause” as a secretary, or whatever, but be utterly ill-equipped as a thinker.

Let’s not indulge in affirmative action here and give any special consideration to Antas, or any other woman, just because she’s a woman. I recall a previous essay by Antas at Alt Right that basically consisted of her saying that she felt bad because people were insulting her and hurting her feelings, but she would make lemonades out of lemons. (I’m not even making that up—that was the tenor of her article.) If a male writer had submitted a piece as trite as that, there’s no way it would have been published, likely not even at Alternative Right.

If there is a place for women in the cause, then they must earn their place by merit (e.g. Leni Riefenstahl). For example, there was a female author who published a poem here recently (I can’t recall her name) that was a powerful and beautiful lyric. She could have a place as a bard of WN. But I doubt she would publish a self-serving, myopic essay like Antas’s.

And that’s the point. When women come along who, on the basis of merit, can contribute something to the movement, let them. Antas’s piece (and I would decry it just as much if it had been written by a feminist-leaning man) is an example of the familiar ploy by which feminists get weak-willed men to change a movement or a society or a culture to suit women’s wishes and tastes—to the detriment of that movement or society or culture.

Antas wasn’t calling for a place to be made for Joans of Arc. Joans of Arc need no special provisions made for them to enter. Antas’ essay was saying that the structure of the movement must be feminized. It’s no different from a Jew saying that the movement must be made more Jew-friendly. It’s a self-centred agenda that poisons the movement.

In fact, when a movement or society rejects the kind of affirmative action approach that Antas advices, that’s when women do emerge who legitimately have something to contribute—like Riefenstahl as a director, or like the Brontës as writers. No special privileges for either, just because they were women.

If Antas wants more women in WN, then let her help influence more women to be worthy of WN, not try to tell WN that it needs to distort itself to mollycoddle women and make them feel appreciated. Let her tailor a WN society/publication specifically to women’s tastes, as a supplement to what already exists (that would be constructive), rather than taking cheap shots at the current elements of WN and its members (which is merely a destructive act).

♣

I would like to add two things.

1. I do not agree with Citizen Renegade on everything (certainly not with his anorexia fetish), but he’s absolutely right in pointing out that women, or at least a certain kind of immature women, (which is to say, the majority of women today), perform what he calls “shit tests.” In other words, such a woman will make an unreasonable, petty demand on a man, and paradoxically, if the man concedes to her whim, he loses the test, because she loses respect for him for being a pushover.

But if he does not concede to her whim, but stands his ground and points out how silly she is being, he actually passes the test, because he has proven his manhood to her, his ability to stand up to her when she knows she’s being unreasonable.

In essence, Antas’s article (and more broadly, its premise) is like one big shit test for the entire radical-traditionalist (or WN) movement. No exaggeration. The men who governed Western society in its times of greatness would pass this test, by telling her “No, you’re being ridiculous,” and going on and running society how it should be run. It will be a measure of WN’s ability to restore a great Western culture if it likewise passes this test and doesn’t bend to a petty female whim, or if it becomes a pushover to her whining and scolding.

2. Here’s the poem that I referenced earlier. This is the kind of woman we want in the movement, the kind who expresses such sentiments.

Note the difference. One emancipated, modern woman whines and scolds the men in the movement that she supposedly wants to join—but only on her terms, and which must alter to suit her wishes. But a very different woman pens a splendid lyric extolling the glory of her European heritage.

Which type of woman do we want in the movement? The answer is the poet, of course.

And actually, we will welcome the emancipated, modern woman too, once she expels the entitlement poison that modern society has infected her with and becomes a true ally, not a de facto fifth column for feminism.


Alex Kurtagic replied…

My thoughts on this issue can be found in my article for Alternative Right, Women as a Measure of Credibility.


Karsten replied:

I’ve been a fan of much of your work, Mr. Kurtagic, and your “Wanted: Something to Dream” essay remains the best thing Alt Right has ever published. My praise for it likely still exists in its comment section. But on this point, you’re as wrong as wrong could be. Amazingly so.

I never thought I’d see a worse litmus test for what constitute a worthwhile ally in the first for radical traditionalism than Jared Taylor’s “no anti-semites” rule, but this may indeed have reached a new bottom:

This means that defectives will also most likely be male. Said defectives poison the discourse through their cathartic (and often anonymous) expressions of bitterness toward women.

Egad. “Defectives”? Amazing. This is a classic example of a proposition that would divide an already tiny movement.

After all, who isn’t a “defective” these days, eh? Now we hear that someone who isn’t properly deferential to women is supposedly an undesirable “defective.” But then, AmRen implies that any anti-semite is an undesirable defective. The general Right believes that anyone who is “racist” is a defective. And so on.

So the position of Alt Right is that all of those cheap methods of pathologizing traditional outlooks are wrong, but this one, no, this one is true; this one really is a pathology.

How arbitrary. After all, many would decry a big chunk of the essays at Alt Right as “cathartic expressions of bitterness toward blacks” or “”cathartic expressions of bitterness toward Muslims” or “”cathartic expressions of bitterness toward Hispanics,” etc. But while we’re supposed to realize that those are mere facile, ad-hominem, leftist put downs, in this sphere (i.e., on women) suddenly the pathologizing tactic has validity? Please. Again, how arbitrary.

Rather, isn’t is possible that just as Alt Right has pointed out that some of the harshest criticisms of Hispanics, Muslims, black, etc., are true and valid, that the anti-feminist evaluations of women, in the grand tradition of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche and the Greeks, are traditional outlooks that are valid too? If a writer is not a “defective” for criticizing Jews, or blacks, or Hispanics, or Muslims, then perhaps he’s not a “defective” either for criticizing women, right?

It’s another appalling example of a phenomenon in our movement that many have lamented, and that still needs a name: the impulse to scorn anyone to the “right” (i.e. more traditional) of the person doing the scorning. To the Republicans, the paleos are the defectives to be shunned. To the paleos, the national socialists are the defectives to be shunned. And so forth.

Meanwhile, on the left, everyone more progressive than the speaker in question is usually valorized as a purer, nobler leftist, almost envied as a better progressive.

I think we, in our movement, would do well to exhibit the same kind of solidarity.

♣

Let me try approaching this a different way.

I think that where people are running into problems is that they have, for some strange reason, the idea of a unisex movement. This is where the problems start.

It’s is like asking for a unisex armed forces. It’s fundamentally wrong, and it leads to a weakened, schizophrenic entity. Such an unnatural hodgepodge results in appalling situations where, for example, a fine soldier might be kicked out of the unit just because he doesn’t treat women with due civility—despite the fact that he may have been the best warrior!

Talk about skewed priorities—instead of evaluating the soldier as a warrior, the soldier is evaluated for his ability to “get along.” It’s lunacy, and it cripples the unit and deprives it of its best talent.

That’s what this absurd, no-badmouthing-women litmus test would foster.

In a healthy society, when women participate in war, it’s not on the battlefield (Joan of Arc aside). It’s as nurses, or in their own women’s auxiliaries—in their own sphere. They participate, they contribute, but in organizations that are specific to their strengths and weaknesses. But the men do the leading and the fighting.

I could easily see a women-oriented WN site. (Think of a secular version of the fine website, Ladies Against Feminism, which is a Christian project, but has some fine material.) But that’s what it would be: It would a WN site where a majority of the writers would be women, applying the tenets of WN to women’s issues and concerns, speaking in their language. It would look like half of what Takimag publishes these days, the things that the male readers of the site groan at and ignore (e.g. celebrity gossip, or reviews of chick flicks).

Think of it as the difference, in aesthetics, between the Sublime and the Beautiful. Women-oriented WN projects would conform to the aesthetic of the Beautiful. But most current WN or radical traditionalist publications today are quintessentially masculine enterprises, embodying the aesthetic of the Sublime. And that’s their strength. This characteristic shouldn’t be diminished, but fostered. It allows men to write as men, to express warrior values.

And yes, that includes a few buddy-like put-downs of women. There’s nothing wrong with that. That builds male solidarity.