After the events of last week, and a "Patriot" complaint, I did a lot of thinking, and a lot of meditating, and a lot of ranting and raving. It wasn't until I started reading some of the responses from those on the racist right to the stabbing of Patricia Wells and the murder of Kristofer Guy King that I really went off the charts. As Bill White spun his distorted tale of the tragedy in Florida and Moudry, et.al. started to weigh in, it was a defining moment for me.In putting together the latest "Coldshot," I realized that we have reached a new plateau in the fight against hate and racism. We have entered a new era - and we just can't soft-peddle our message any longer. The subltle approach may have its' place but that place isn't in this arena.
People are being terrorized, maimed, & killed simply because of how they live their lives or what they believe and the racist right seems to think that is okay. Well, it isn't. It isn't okay by my standards nor by the standards of most of the civilized world. It has to be addressed and we have to determine that ENOUGH is ENOUGH.
TO THE LATEST COLDSHOT
We have entered a new era - and we just can't soft-peddle our message any longer. The subtle approach may have its' place but that place isn't in this arena.
ReplyDeleteThat seems to be the attitude that some of these Nazi-wannabees and Creatards are taking. Are you sure you want to go that route? Killing kids and stuff like that is just plain wrong, but using the same methods to counter "hate" just fuels it, regardless of which side it's coming from.
I don't know how else to put this, but most of the things antiracists have called victories have helped lead to things like this. Matt Hale's arrest really left the nutcases among the Creators free to do their own thing, and the collapse of more organized groups like the National Alliance left the more violent, unorganized, and fringe-type groups at the forefront of the movement.
Without the more mature leadershio that we used to have, newbies and kids are gonna flock to what they see, and right now thats NSm, and the various Creator and An factions and self-styled skinhead crews. When they keep reading and seeing on tv that being a "racist" is all about violence and Hollywood Naziism, then of course that's what they're going to emulate.
So, yeah, go ahead and play hardball, but don't be suprised at the results. Tensions are getting higher on both sides, and people are a lot more ready to "snap" than in the past few years. Some amount of "subtlety" on both sides is probably the only thing that has kept that from happening already.
Seriously, white nationalists are not going away, neo-Nazis and racist skinheads are not going away, and country boys who hate immigrants are not going away. Marginalizing these people and pushing them into a corner is just going to drive them into more violence, and into more violent and shiftless groups - bad for the victims of these guys, good for antis because of the negative news coverage.
I know it's not what you people want to hear, but the only way you're going to see a drop in "Nazi violence" is going to be for another large, well-organized, white pride group or two to regain power within the movement. Y'all don't want to see that though, because it gives us a hint of "respectability".
I think the two questions of the moment are:
1. Given the choice, would most antis rather see a smaller, but more violent racist movement, or a larger and more organized, but less violent movement?
2. Are the guys from Florida and people like Moudry & DuFresne violent assholes because they are racists, and "hate" warped their fragile little minds or did they become racists because they were assholes, and the sterotype of all racists as violent assholes made them think they'd fit right in?
Raine,
ReplyDeleteI have to respectfully disagree with you. The violence that has fuled the neo-nazi/racist movement has been there since it's inception. One need only look to National Socialist Germany. Actually, let me keep this discussion about hate groups in this country. Look at what the original Ku Klux Klan was founded on. They were a well organized terrorist machine whose trail of terror left too many bodies to count. You had the National Alliance whose ideology was behind the bombing in Oklahoma city. Or Aryan Nations who inspired The Order. These larger groups are no less violent than the fringe groups they simply have a better PR department. The end goals of the fringe groups match exactly with the end goals of the organized groups. With regards to Matt Hale his arrest was 100% positive. He was plotting the murder of a federal judge. I understand your point that some of these spin off groups may be more violent but that does not give us an excuse not to confront them. You say that tensions are high and people are ready to snap? I think things have already snapped and playing nice is not going to accomplish anything. Do you believe that I as a Jewish man can have a reasoned conversation with any of these people? Do you think they will leave the Jewish community alone if we say nothing as they target us? Maybe just maybe when they learn that some Jews hit back they will get the point? I will allow them as much respectability as I would allow cancer. In other words cut it out and destroy it or watch it fester in my body and destroy me. They do not need to be driven to more violence. They are already there. Do you honestly believe that this 17 year old boy in Florida drove them to be violent? Did Anti Racists drive McVeigh? Did Antis Ben Smith? David Lane? They don't need any excuse to be violent. People of good will, however, have an ethical duty to stand up and pull up the roots of bigotry in their community. How many more lives should be lost before we act? 1? 2? 10? Should we wait until the next terrorist attack? Should we wait and hope that they do not get large enough to carry out their stated goals? One final thing I don't want to get into the pathology of people like Moudry. He may be motivated by racism or he may be another John Gacy waiting to happen but we shouldnt wait until they are digging little boys out of his crawlspace to confront him.
~Josh
I don't know why the Oklahoma bombing gets drug into the racial Bullshit. Tim did the bombing as payback for the unwarranted murders at Ruby Ridge & Waco. You know that anniversary is coming in less than a month. I wonder if anyone has any plans for the 20th???
ReplyDeleteSteve Holsten,
ReplyDeleteYou're too stupid to understand the link between white racist and the OKC bombing.
I'm sure you will be celebrating the birthday of Adolf Hilter on April 20th.
This
is what Steve Holsten & other white racists want for America
Here are some more photos of what Steve Holsten wants to happen to blacks, jews, and many others in America.
ReplyDeleteThey are quite horrible to view but it is what Steve Holsten and other nazis stand for. That is why white supremacists are the total scum of the Earth
Photo 1
Photo 2
Photo
3
Photo
4
Steve Holsten is the scum of the Earth
You can aslo view some images of human experimentation, Jewish ghetto life in Warsaw, Poland, and nazi mass-executions here:
ReplyDeleteHolocaust Images
Harry: "You're too stupid to understand the link between white racist and the OKC bombing."
ReplyDeleteWith all due respect, it wasn't William Pierce who put a rifle in Tim McVeigh's hand and taught him how, and who, to hate and kill.
Gore Vidal said it best:
A journalist, Richard A. Serrano, has just published One of Ours: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing. Like everyone else, I fear, I was sick of the subject. Nothing could justify the murder of those 168 men, women, and children, none of whom had, as far as we know, anything at all to do with the federal slaughter at Waco, the ostensible reason for McVeigh's fury. So why write such a book? Serrano hardly finds McVeigh sympathetic, but he does manage to make him credible in an ominously fascinating book.
Born in 1968, McVeigh came from a rural family that had been, more or less, dispossessed a generation earlier. Father Bill had been in the U.S. Army. Mother worked. They lived in a western New York blue-collar town called Pendleton. Bill grows vegetables; works at a local G.M. plant; belongs to the Roman Catholic Church. Of the area, he says, "When I grew up, it was all farms. When Tim grew up, it was half and half."
Tim turns out to be an uncommonly intelligent and curious boy. He does well in high school. He is, as his defense attorney points out, "a political animal." He reads history, the Constitution. He also has a lifelong passion for guns: motivation for joining the army. In Bush's Gulf War he was much decorated as an infantryman, a born soldier. But the war itself was an eye-opener, as wars tend to be for those who must fight them. Later, he wrote a journalist how "we were falsely hyped up." The ritual media demonizing of Saddam, Arabs, Iraqis had been so exaggerated that when McVeigh got to Iraq he was startled to "find out they are normal like me and you. They hype you to take these people out. They told us we were to defend Kuwait where the people had been raped and slaughtered. War woke me up."
As usual, there were stern laws against American troops fraternizing with the enemy. McVeigh writes a friend, "We've got these starving kids and sometimes adults coming up to us begging for food.... It's really 'trying' emotionally. It's like the puppy dog at the table; but much worse. The sooner we leave here the better. I can see how the guys in Vietnam were getting killed by children." Serrano notes, "At the close of the war, a very popular war, McVeigh had learned that he did not like the taste of killing innocent people. He spat into the sand at the thought of being forced to hurt others who did not hate him any more than he them."
The army and McVeigh parted once the war was done. He took odd jobs. He got interested in the far right's paranoid theories and in what Joel Dyer calls "The Religion of Conspiracy." An army buddy, Terry Nichols, acted as his guide. Together they obtained a book called Privacy, on how to vanish from the government's view, go underground, make weapons. Others had done the same, including the Weaver family, who had moved to remote Ruby Ridge in Idaho. Randy Weaver was a cranky white separatist with Christian Identity beliefs. He wanted to live with his family apart from the rest of America. This was a challenge to the F.B.I. When Weaver did not show up in court to settle a minor firearms charge, they staked him out August 21, 1992. When the Weaver dog barked, they shot him; when the Weavers' 14-year-old son fired in their direction, they shot him in the back and killed him. When Mrs. Weaver, holding a baby, came to the door F.B.I. sniper Lon Horiuchi shot her head off. The next year the Feds took out the Branch Davidians.
For Timothy McVeigh, the A.T.F. became the symbol of oppression and murder. Since he was now suffering from an exaggerated sense of justice, not a common American trait, he went to war pretty much on his own and ended up slaughtering more innocents than the Feds had at Waco. Did he know what he was doing when he blew up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City because it contained the hated bureau? McVeigh remained silent throughout his trial. Finally, as he was about to be sentenced, the court asked him if he would like to speak. He did. He rose and said, "I wish to use the words of Justice Brandeis dissenting in Olmstead to speak for me. He wrote,'Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or ill, it teaches the whole people by its example."' Then McVeigh was sentenced to death by the government.
Those present were deeply confused by McVeigh's quotation. How could the Devil quote so saintly a justice? I suspect that he did it in the same spirit that Iago answered Othello when asked why he had done what he had done: "Demand me nothing: what you know, you know: from this time forth I never will speak word." Now we know, too; or as my grandfather used to say back in Oklahoma, "Every pancake has two sides."
In fact, Vidal's masterful essay on McVeigh needs to be read by everyone.
As does this short essay by McVeigh written not long before his execution.
The demons you fear are the demons you create.
Thanks for your thoughts, Raine. But, I have to sort of echo Josh. These smaller factions have always been out there - as a matter of fact, many have been nothing less than an extension of these groups.
ReplyDeleteNo one has to "drive" them to violence - they are already all about violence. What I am saying, when I talk about the gloves coming off and not taking the "subtle" approach any longer is that we need to be vocal, visible, and vigilant. Writing letters to the Editor and working "behind the scenes" is a good thing - but that alone is not going to win this fight.
We have to stop this craziness and say Enough is enough. They don't have the right to take away my rights. And they damned sure don't have the right to commit violence against anyone.
Attn, Schwartzo the KIKE. I don't celebrate anything having to do with Hitler. Hal said it best "Hitler died, get over it" April 20 means nothing to me besides the tragidies happening on that date that I'm about to mention. April 20 was the day that McVey used for his deed and the Columbine kids used it as well. I just hope that more evil doesn't happen that day.
ReplyDeleteHaven't read it yet. The last book of his that I read was "The Golden Age", a few months ago.
ReplyDeleteStevo - April 19th was the date for OKC and Waco.
ReplyDeleteYeah - and April 5th, was when Matt Hale got sentenced to 40 years.
ReplyDeleteAnd if anyone really believes that Hal said that in reference to Menendez - I have news - he would not be hanging around anywhere for a very long time.
ReplyDeleteIncidently, when is Hal going to rally in those 10 cities he promised? It's almost April and he hasn't done one damn thing. Par for the course of the little man.
VB ~ I don't advocate violence against anyone at any time. We don't need to be violent toward anyone of you. You can be dealt with quite easily - and quite expediently - hide and watch.
Steve Holsten spewed:
ReplyDeleteHal said it best "Hitler died, get over it"
Then Hal gladly goes to nazi rallies and speaks behind the Nazi flag. Hal is a full fledged nazi and so are you. You even said that the NSM is standing up for white people.
So don't lie and give us this crap that you and Hal aren't nazi's. You are.
Michael Blevins threw up and said:
Nikki,sounds like you are talking about pre emptive strikes
That is what Hal Turner is saying on his site all the time. Kill, kill, kill... but for you to do it, not him. Are you calling him a liar or you must think Hal is full of shit also. By the way, Hal is full of shit and even you know it.
And Tim McVeigh sold copies of Pierce's book and was associated with militia groups from many states and white supremacist groups in Oklahoma and Missouri and probably more.
Von-idiot, I would like to use this quote by Josh in this thread.
ReplyDelete"People of good will, however, have an ethical duty to stand up and pull up the roots of bigotry in their community."
I'm all for getting my hands dirty and not with violence as you so stupidly think we are all about. It's call taking the fight to you. You'll be seeing a lot of us this summer. COUNT ON IT.
Turner just went down.
ReplyDeleteIt will be interesting to hear what excuses he will come up with. I think he has used all of them in the book.
ReplyDeleteWillow said:
ReplyDeleteIt will be interesting to hear what excuses he will come up with. I think he has used all of them in the book.
But the memory span of the boneheads only goes back a few weeks. My cat does better. Here is the cost for Hal Turner to run his show for 2 hours assuming 300 listeners.
24kps / 8 = 3KB/S = 9MB per hour x 2 hours x 300 listeners... 5.4 gigs of bandwidth... goes for about 6 bucks, probably less.
That's how much money Hal saved tonight by not having his show.
$6
Not enough for one sniff of coke.
Attn Filthy Hook Nose KIKE Schwartzo, nobody rattled your cage. If we want anything out of you; we'll knock it out of you. You lie so damn much that nobody knows when the truth could be coming from your hole. You were going to have Von & I committed multiple times to Nut houses for 72 hr observations, but it never happened to either of us. You were going to have my son pulled from home so many times, but he's still right here. You lie when the truth would be better. All we now see in you is that you're a big blow hard who is nothing except a useless Turd.
ReplyDeleteYou know nothing about Hal's expenses. So you can shut the Fuck up and run on along.
STFU Von Blubber! Go take some fucking Seroquel, and forget about it!
ReplyDeleteDamn, some ole Turd has the Faggot desires for Von...
ReplyDeleteSteve,
ReplyDeleteI can assure you that you can't do a thing against me physically or verbally.
I never said that I was going to commit you for 72 hours or take your son away but I do think by the way you act here, that perhaps the removal of your son would be a good thing for the child.
Blevins has spent enough times in short term psych wards in his life.
And I do know Hal's expenses because I've priced it myself. If you weren't so stupid, you could figure it out yourself also.
Don't forget to write Hal another check sucker... er I mean, steevo.
Fuck off KIKE Imposter. One Shit Head like him is enough. Go on back over to Nimbusters and obsess over Woger...
ReplyDeleteVonbluvens has always tried to go down this slippery "violence" slope with me. I assume it is his sick mind projecting his fantasies onto me. I am not calling for any violence Blevins. I have already called your handler, Bill White out. He of course was not man enough to stand face to face with me. Stefan on NS Germany I decided not to use that as an example, because I want to keep the focus on hate groups in America. You know damn well the KKK was violent and bigoted from the founding. What attracted Mcveigh to the National Alliance in no way negates his personal responsibility nor does it negate the collective responsibility of the National Alliance. Stefan if one wants to hold racist views they are free to hold them however, they should not be free to promote programs that would deny the civil rights of others. With free speech comes responsibility. Stefan I do not feel I have an ethical right to sit back. It is a duty to confront evil when ones sees it. National Socialism is an ideology which would see me dead as well as most of the people I care about. I have no choice but to step up.
ReplyDelete~Josh
Josh Hoyt: "Do you think they will leave the Jewish community alone if we say nothing as they target us? Maybe just maybe when they learn that some Jews hit back they will get the point?"
ReplyDeleteHarry F Schwartz: "This is what Steve Holsten & other white racists want for America"
"Here are some more photos of what Steve Holsten wants to happen to blacks, jews, and many others in America."
EB: "You can aslo view some images of human experimentation, Jewish ghetto life in Warsaw, Poland, and nazi mass-executions here:
"Holocaust Images"
Josh Hoyt: "National Socialism is an ideology which would see me dead as well as most of the people I care about. I have no choice but to step up."
Meanwhile, in the real world, the one where there aren't any impending pogroms against poor, defenseless, marginalized, ghetto communities like the Upper West Side; the Hamptons; Beverly Hills; the gold coast of Florida; Potomac, MD; McLean, VA; Bethesda, MD; etc. ...
***************
Hear that sound?
What sound you ask?
All right -- you got me. There is no sound. Not a fucking pip yelp cry or scream from any of the bigger libloggers concerning recent reports about US troops massacring Iraqi civilians, among them children. I spent this morning searching through various liblogs, and unless I totally missed it, there was no mention, much less condemnation, of the killings in Haditha and Balad. And now we have reports that US troops may have killed some 20 worshippers at the Mustafa Husayniyah in Baghdad -- but don't tell this to the online libs. You might distract them from anticipating the final results of the all-important Koufax Awards.
So here we are, entering the fourth year of this bloody madness, with reports of Americans committing war crimes, and stateside liberals remain mostly silent, preferring to tell us how much more virtuous they are compared to Republicans. I recently caught a clip, via Crooks and Liars, of Markos Moulitsas, Mr. Daily Kos himself, appearing on CNN's laughably-titled "Reliable Sources"; and Kos beautifully played the smug, self-absorbed liblogger that is more common than not on his side of the Web patch. He spoke about wanting a liberal Noise Machine to counter the right's endless propaganda. And I wondered what exactly would Kos and his friends do with a Noise Machine -- pimp for Dems? Well, duh. What else? Well, whatever they choose to blast from the thing, it sure won't have much to do with mass murder in Iraq. If libloggers can't get angry over images like this then what the fuck are they supposedly doing online?
To be fair, it seems that the majority of the American public, while expressing misgivings about this whole Iraq thing (without fully knowing the history that led up to this disaster), really couldn't be bothered to care about more dead Iraqis, much less what is happening in that region. So perhaps American liberals are merely playing the mainstream card. A crude generalization? When was the last time you and a neighbor, or a co-worker, or a relative, had a serious discussion about the war? I don't mean trading Isn't-it-awfuls -- I'm talking about a real, heartfelt exchange. Do you hear or see anyone in public mentioning it, pro or con, apart from Support The Troops yellow ribbon magnets on their mini-vans? When, while standing in a check-out line, you are forced to listen to another person's cell phone conversation, how often is the war a topic? As I said last year, whenever I tried to bring up the war with other parents at my son's school, they wanted nothing to do with it, averting their eyes while changing the subject. Too depressing, they whispered. Yeah. Too depressing. Imagine that.
Fact is, unless we are somehow directly affected by this madness, like those countless thousands of Americans who've lost loved ones or have seen them come home minus limbs or peaceful minds, the bulk of the US will go to great lengths to ignore what's happening in Iraq. As Justin Raimondo recently put it:
"Today, Americans look on the Iraq war as little more than a form of entertainment, a series of flickering images darting across their television screens, disturbing but no more real than the latest horror movie. Although we are not quite as bad as the Romans – yet – in that no one seems to be enjoying the show all that much (save, perhaps, for Max Boot and Michael 'Creative Destruction' Ledeen), we are inured, like our Roman antecedents, to the moral meaning of what we are seeing, numbed by our own powerlessness and a paralyzing indifference. Infantilized by a culture of narcissism and insulated by our enormous wealth, we place a comfortable distance between the actions of our rulers and ourselves. The atrocity stories coming out of Iraq seem unreal, as if they are happening in another dimension, and certainly we bear no personal responsibility for the crimes being committed in our name.
"Or do we?"
Good question. And I think the answer is obvious.
Stefan said:
ReplyDeleteHal is back
Just on cue.
To Nicole:
I thought your podcast was the best yet. You pointed out very well that while nazi's cry the 1st amendment for themselves, they want to deny it for everyone else.
The nazi's want the freedom of assembly but want to deny the freedom of assembly for those who want to be around someone of a different race.
The nazi's cry about their rights but want to stomp out the rights of almost everyone else.
Your voice reminds me of a younger Diane Rehm from NPR. Keep up the good work.
Stefan: "If they were hoping for any amnesty program I think they just shot themselves in the foot. Hopefully their rioting will awaken most Americans so that tougher immigration laws can be passed and that boarder can finally be sealed."
ReplyDeleteHuh? Admittedly, I haven't been following this issue as closely people living in the SW have, but didn't Bush already sign the amnesty for all those illegals into law? Or was that something else?
I just finished reading this, literally minutes ago, and I read this one a couple of days ago.
I'd be curious to see what your take is on both of these pieces.
IMO I don't think an actual, literal, Israeli-style wall is a realistic solution. Most Americans outside of the SW would be appalled at the very idea. Cutting off the social safety net for illegals, and getting tough on the folks who knowingly employ them is much better.
Then again, depending on how far down the road one is looking, and what one is hoping to achieve, maybe "the Old Man" was right -- "worse is better."
Harry, thank you very much. I admire Diane.
ReplyDeleteVonbluvens spewed:
ReplyDeleteNikki, you should know what your principle informer is involved with.
Did you know he was a wife beater or are you going to overlook that because of ideology?
1) Your proof on this?
2) You've mentioned in the past that Hal Turner was a wife abuser also. Seems you have certainly overlooked this these things because of your ideology? It was you who kept playing that audio clip of Hal verbally abusing his wife.
Of course you've sold your morals a long time ago Levins.
Speaking of which, how's the divorce with Bernie going?
And what is it with Bill White's hacking and coughing at the age of 28?
ReplyDeleteIf I were to run him on an ambulance, I would assume he had Hepatitus-B and would wear a Hepa mask while treating him.
So would any EMT or Paramedic in the field if they took proper BSI (body substance isolation) protections.
Attn: Filthy Hook Nose KIKE Schwartzo, don't you ever get the Fuck tired of running your hole about WN? Your Faggot desires & obsessions of Bill & Von are shining brightly once again.
ReplyDeleteYou must've already shot your wad over Hal for the day.
LOL, EB.
ReplyDeleteSorry about mistaking someone else's post for yours.
But you did pretty much the same.
Everything below the "**********" in that post wasn't my own writing but Dennis Perrin's. I even included a link to his post and put his writing in italics to differentiate it from my own.
FYI, from now on just remember that this is how I post. I you want to reply to me about something I've written, go ahead and do so. If you have a problem with something someone else has written that I've posted in part or in whole, follow the link (I always post a link, credit where it's due) and email the author.
Stefan,
ReplyDeleteI was just listening to that jerkoff ignoramus Jim Bohannon's show, and his guest was Tamara Jacoby, a Jewess from the "arch-conservative" (read neoconservative) think tank, the Manhattan Institute. She was basically arguing that illegal immigrants are a boon to the economy and that employers don't pay them cut-rate wages to work jobs that citizens and legal residents would do for normal wages.
God... the hubris, the dissemblance. I don't think there was even one caller who agreed with her, but still hers is the voice of the "conservative" establishment.
On the topic of immigration (and, actually, the American political landscape in general) I can think of few more important reads than Michael Lind's essay from the June '95 issue of Harper's, "To Have and to Have Not". Here's some relevent excerpts:
***************
Not all nonprofessional jobs can be expatriated to Mexico or Malaysia, and a great many low-skilled services---from truck driving to nursing and sales and restaurant work---still must be performed in America. Accordingly, on a third front of the class war, the American gentry support a generous immigration policy. Enlarging the low-skill labor pool in the United States has the same effect as enlarging the labor pool through the expatriation of American-owned industry. From the point of view of members of the white overclass, of course, this is good news---if mass immigration ended tomorrow, they would probably have to pay higher wages, fees, and tips. In the 1980s, during the "Massachusetts Miracle," the state's unemployment rate fell to half the national average, 2.2 percent. As a result of a tight labor market, wages for workers at McDonald's rose to more than $7 an hour. So unfortunate a development prompted a study from the Twentieth Century Fund in which author Thomas Muller took note of the awful consequences: "In many areas of the Northeast, a scarcity of clerks in the late 1980s caused a noticeable deterioration in service.... This is not an argument that long lines or flip behavior by salespeople will fundamentally affect America's well-being, but they do constitute an irritant that can diminish the quality of our life [emphasis added]." In a seller's market for labor, it seems, there is a danger that the help will get uppity.
"As the number of working mothers increases," Muller wrote, "such [household] help, once considered a luxury, is becoming more and more a necessity. Were it not for recent immigrants, nannies, maids, and gardeners would be a vanishing breed ..." Although the vast majority of Americans still do not consider the employment of "nannies, maids, or gardeners" to be a necessity rather than a luxury, the 1 percent of the population that employs live-in servants (c.f., the recent difficulties of Zoe Baird, Kimba Wood, and Arianna Huffington) cannot enjoy an appropriate degree of comfort without a supporting cast of deferential helots. Our own overclass Americans are as dependent on Latina maids as were the members of the nineteenth-century Northeastern establishment on Irish "Bridgets" and the antebellum Southern planters on house slaves. (In this connection, J. P. Morgan's definition of the leisure class, which he saw as the bulwark of civilization, is instructive: "All those who can afford to hire a maid.")
The Wall Street Journal, ever mindful of the short-run interests of the overclass, has called for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution consisting of five words: "There shall be open borders." If the United States and Mexican labor markets were merged (together with the capital markets already integrated by NAFTA), then American investment would flow south to take advantage of cheap labor, and tens of millions of Mexican workers would migrate north to better paying jobs, until wages stabilized somewhere above the contemporary Mexican level (between $4 and $5 a day) but below the current American minimum wage of $4.25 an hour. The numbers of the white overclass would remain fixed, while the pool of cheap labor expanded, and Muller's dream of heaven would come true: every American who is not a maid or gardener might be able to afford one.
[snip]
If the notion of a neo-feudal United States seems far-fetched, consider the "feudal" elements of modern America. Increasing numbers of affluent white Americans have been withdrawing into gated suburbs, many of them indistinguishable from private cities, whose community associations provide not only security but trash collection, street cleaning, and utilities. The inhabitants have sought permission from local governments to block off public streets with gates and other barriers to traffic (a California appeals court recently ruled that seven metal gates installed by the Los Angeles suburb of Whitley Heights represented an illegal "return to feudal times"---but only after their installation had been approved by the Los Angeles City Council). Some of the richer residents within the walls seek not only permission to barricade themselves but exemption from taxes---on the argument that taxes for public municipal services on top of the fees they pay their private community associations constitute "double taxation."
Because the affluent would rather hire mercenary forces than pay for police, the number of private security guards in the United States now exceeds the number of publicly employed policemen. To help those who cannot afford to rent police officers, the right is trying to make it easier to carry concealed weapons at the mall, in the office, and on the subway; holsters and body armor may once again become fashion accessories. A chorus of conservative voices proposes the replacement of public schools with taxpayer subsidized vouchers to private schools, and the idea of replacing the national highway system with private toll roads is not a fantasy confined to dystopian science fiction. More than ten states now have projects for such roads, which would allow the happy few to drive their expensive cars on state-of-the-art computer-enhanced highways while ordinary Americans fume in traffic on crumbling public streets.
The new American urban architecture reflects the same evolution of American society from republicanism to feudalism. Downtown office complexes begin to resemble medieval castles-collections of towers connected by skyways and sealed off from the growing horde of the unemployable poor. The celebrated architect Frank Gehry specializes in what cultural critic Mike Davis calls "carceral" architecture---for example, "stealth houses" for the wealthy, hiding their opulent interiors from thieves behind plain gray walls. Gehry's 1984 Goldwyn Branch Library in Hollywood (inspired by the same architect's fortified U.S. Chancellery in Damascus, a building bristling with ten-foot steel stakes and stylized sentry boxes) prompted Davis to describe it as "probably the most menacing library ever built, a bizarre hybrid of a drydocked dreadnought and a cavalry fort."
The dream of withdrawal probably explains the enthusiasm in overclass circles for the "virtual corporation," a dematerialized entity consisting solely of a small management team temporarily contracting out work, here to Mexicans and South Koreans, there to Hungarians and Czechs, in the manner of the nabobs who lived it up in eighteenth century London on their rents from Caribbean plantations run on their behalf by thuggish overseers. This is the vision expressed by the television commercials for IBM and the American Express Card and the magazine advertisements for new computers and fax machines that show a middle-aged executive communicating with his office from a beach resort or a corporate lawyer tucking in her child via a videophone in a busy airport. Virtual capitalism thus meets the virtual family in the utopia of the American overclass: Dad will bask in the Caribbean sun sketching out marketing designs on his laptop computer while Mom keeps an eye on Baby, via satellite, as she flies from New York to Frankfurt to Tokyo. Off-camera, never seen, is the Latina maid who actually changes Baby's diapers, and, in this or that Third World shantytown of tin roofs and open sewers, the employees, or rather the independent contractors, of Dad's or Mom's virtual corporation, workers as likely as not without benefits, without insurance, without civil rights, without a voice in their governments, laboring to make products they can never afford to buy.
Some American executives have begun to follow the factories to Fortunate Isles. The Wall Street Journal and Fortune recently portrayed, with considerable sympathy, a number of rich American expatriates, among them the heirs to the Dart container and Campbell's soup fortunes, who have renounced their U.S. citizenship and begun new lives in more humane societies, like the Turks and Caicos Islands and Belize. Senator Phil Gramm last spring denounced a proposal to tax these expatriates as a measure reminiscent of "Nazi Germany," apparently secure in the belief that the old American republican ideal of civic obligation is nothing but totalitarianism in disguise. No doubt, when the overclass revolution is completed, persecuted tycoons will no longer be driven out of their hostile homeland. In America libre, it will no longer be necessary to move to Jamaica to be able to afford maids and chauffeurs on a lawyer's salary, or to relocate production to Honduras in order to pay the working classes no more than a few cents an hour (House Majority Leader Dick Armey favors abolishing the minimum wage). North America shall come to resemble Columbus's mistaken perception of it as simply one more Caribbean island populated by dusky masses born to be servants. The United States, which the eighteenth-century American elite sought to refashion as a new Roman Republic, and which the nineteenth-century American patriciate conceived of as a new and greater Britain, shall be renovated by the new white overclass as a New Honduras or a New Belize.
Until that blessed day, the bipartisan white overclass, secure behind urban fronts and suburban walls, as well as the metaphorical moats of legacy preference, expensive schooling, and an impregnable interest rate, has neither reason nor incentive to moderate its ruthless pursuit of its own short-term concerns. In a more homogeneous society, the growing concentration of power and wealth in the hands of a privileged minority might be expected to produce a strong reaction on the part of the majority. In present-day America, however, no such reaction is likely to take place. Although heavily outnumbered, the unified few rest secure in the knowledge that any insurgency will almost certainly dissipate in quarrels among the fragmented many rather than in open rebellion; during the 1992 Los Angeles riots, black, Hispanic, and white rioters turned on Korean middlemen rather than march on Beverly Hills. The belligerent guests on the never-ending talk show, urged on by the screaming audience, will continue to enact allegorical conflicts, while, off-camera and upstairs, the discreet members of the class that does not exist ponder the choice of marble or mahogany for the walls of the executive suite from which they command.
btw, EB.
ReplyDeleteThis was "the Old Man" I was referring to. The first one to actually put that revolutionary sentiment into words -- although not the first (on either the left or the right) to share those sentiments.
One can look at individuals who preceded him (Bakunin and Nechayev), contemporaries like Lenin, individuals who came after (William Pierce, James Mason, Guy Debord, Joseph Tomassi) or current figures like John Zerzan, Alexander Cockburn, Tom Metzger or Gabriel Kolko; all of whom have shared those sentiments.
Although Kolko plays an interesting semantic game by insisting that he's not for "worse is better", even though he might have just spent several sentences arguing for precisely that, without using that exact phrase.
VB - are you dense naturally, or did you bump your head? I have no "principal informer," no primary source of information either. Now, if you are referring to those within the NSM rank and file who contact me with information - well, I wouldn't consider them my "principal," but I do consider them reliable.
ReplyDeleteYou will do just about anything to promote that pitiful show of yours, huh? Well...I guess when you're a one-trick-pony, ya gotta get your strokes from some where.
Dariush the Self-Professed anti-Semite:
ReplyDeleteWilliam Pierce (Ptsy old dead fucker. Ugly skank. Wrote a bad WP action novel. Too bad he was born alive.)
James Mason (Author of Siege; heard him on Bob Larson; he sounds like he shops at Hilljack's R' Us; incarcerated?)
Guy Debord (Situationist?; Feral House has a book about him; Frenchmen make me laugh with their outrageous accents!)
Alexander Cockburn (Ouuch! His name is too painful for me to think about him for very long.)
Joseph Tomassi (Dead; one of history's shining footnotes, I'm sure.)
Trotsky (Ugly sod. He went to Mexico. The Strangler's put him in a song: "Whatever happened to/Leon Trotsky?/ He got an ice-pick/ that made his ears burn". He died with a pick stuck in his skull, I believe [I get all my history knowledge from the lyrics of bad post-punk acts])
Nechayev (?)
Lenin (Was alright until Yoko came along. I liked the fact that he had a perfectly-pointed beard, round bald pate, and his first name was Vlad.)
Gabriel Kolko (??)
John Zerzan (Nobody should have two z's in their last name, luv.)
Bakunin (Gesundheit!)
Tom Metzger (Shitkicker. Was sued for 12.8 million. His son was strangled on Geraldo. Was photographed living in a van down by a river.Looks good in a cowboy hat, though.)
Yaawwwnnn! Are you a leftist Nazi, or a racist commie? I can't keep it straight.
Ole Zodiac sounds like he is a Sodomite Faggot like Schwartzo...
ReplyDeleteEB: "incarcerated?"
ReplyDeleteWas...
Let out in 2000 if memory serves.