ANTHONY D. SMITH: CULTURIST HERO

Anthony D. Smith (1939-2016) is a culturist hero.  Alongside, Samuel P. Huntington  (1927 – 2008), Smith inspired me as I wrote ‘Culturism,’ in 2006.  Many will recognize Harvard’s Huntington for his having created the ‘Clash of Civilizations’ model.  But, though he taught at the London School of Economics, very few know about or appreciate Smith’s ‘ethno-symbolism’ model of nationalism.

Leftist controlled academia sees the nation as an, ‘imagined,’ ‘construct,’ that was invented by the West in the 18^th century and subsequently exported to the rest of the world.    This view, (not incidentally), portrays nations, (like masculinity, literature, race – and all else the left discusses), as illegitimate and oppressive.

Smith, by contrast argued that nationalism’s power comes from the myths, memories, traditions and symbols of their ethnic heritages. The characteristics of ethnic communities, by his definition were:

1.     An identifying name or emblem.

2.     A myth of common ancestry.

3.     Shared historical memories and traditions.

4.     One or more elements of common culture.

5.     A link with an historic territory or ‘homeland.’

6.     A measure of solidarity, at least among the elites.

Among symbolic building blocks of nationalism, Smith includes songs, images, literature, art, history, monuments, buildings, tomb styles, myths, belief in a golden age, religion, states, films, the dead, heroes and the virtues they inspire, feeling chosen, language, redemptive hopes, coercion, clothes,
 traditions, habits, laws and institutions. [i] 

While mainstream historians reasoned, if all this is needed to sustain nationalism, it must be false; Smith reasoned that if all this was needed to sustain nationalism, we had better get to it!   He wrote that, as nations were universal, essential and a source of identity, maintaining them gives historians, artists, archeologists, linguists, philosophers and others a culturist mission – reify the nation!

Smith helped invent the distinction between ‘ethnic’ and ‘civic’ nationalism.[ii]  Interestingly, he noted that Western European nations developed towards civic nationalism in rebellion against absolute monarchs; Whereas Eastern Europeans veered towards ethnic nationalism to challenge empires.  And, whereas he acknowledged that ethnic nationalism could create refugees, he also acknowledged that it was the firmest basis for a nation. 

Of potential interest to alt-right readers, Smith considered biological ethnic purity a myth based on his reading of ancient migration, endogamy patterns and cultural openness.  He looked at how the British, for example, looked Roman predecessors in the 16^th century, to British, Saxon and Danish ancestors in 1685, and Germanic roots under Burke.[iii]  For Smith, ethnicity was the subjective belief that those in the nation were part of a continuous ethnic group.  But, DNA based or not, that the French, for example, think of themselves as a people, is the main basis of their ethno-state.

But, Smith's main achievement was to stand up to an entire academic myth!  He said, nations are not just 'imagined' products of modern nationalist projects, designed to centralize an economy.  No!  The French culture pulls on real and long-lasting myths.  If modern nation builders said, the French culture is rooted in Confucian belly dancing, it wouldn't have flown.  They built on pre-existing, long memories of Charlemagne, Roman, Greek and Christian heritage.   The French ethno-state is real and merits veneration.

Smith denounced global culture an oxymoron.  And, as a nationalist, he questioned the viability of ‘European culture’ as a basis for solvency. His questions about the DNA and subjective nature of ethnos are still cutting-edge.  But, going beyond questions, Smith called for culturism in arts and academia.  And, by championing ‘ethno-symbolism’ – in the heart of academia – he led by example.  Anthony D. Smith is an inspiring culturist hero.

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[i] Smith, Anthony, D., “Nationalism and Modernism,” (London: Routledge, 2003), 138.

[ii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_D._Smith

[iii] Smith, Anthony, D., “Myths and Memories of the Nation,” (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 71.

CULTURISM, RACISM, WHITE and CIVIC NATIONALISM

                          

Why did Dr. Press lie about race in the book, 'Culturism'? Because he wished to move straight to discussing culturist policies that can save the West.

So, how does acknowledging race and IQ impact culturist policy?

Watch this video for the answer! 

CULTURIST JOHN INTERVIEW

Enjoy this 28 Minute / 20 Question interview.  It summarizes culturism succinctly. 

David Bowie: The Culturist View

To make a culturist critique is to tie an event or person to larger cultural trends. David Bowie (1947-2016) symbolizes the West’s recent progressive cultural apex. After all, he led the charge into gender bending and then married a black Muslim woman. But, these acts stand in stark contrast to the West’s developing tsunami of masculine cultural protectionism.

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) – the first person to be called a ‘culturist’ practicing ‘culturism,’ – asserted that the West cycled from expansionist, flexible, (progressive), ‘Hellenism’ to contracting, law-abiding, tough, ‘Hebraism.’ The Hellenic periods lack discipline, the Hebraic ones lack ‘sweetness and light’. In his time, Arnold saw his England as being too Hebraic and France as too Hellenistic.

We in the Alt-Light / Alt-Right fringe, foresee a coming reckoning that may involve considerable violence. Currently, the West is experiencing a Hellenic peak; soon we will adopt the Hebraic traits of hating foreign cultures, and again accept that successful cultures usually see violence as an honorable duty. Bowie’s death represents the death of the expansionist Hellenic period, and so the dawn of the Hebraic contraction.

Many will say, ‘Good Riddance’ to Bowie and celebrate the death of his spry decadence. And, yet, it behooves us brutal enforcers to remember that for which we fight: Celebrations of individual potential is the Western jewel of great price. Islam remains purely brutal. Asia celebrates conformity to the strictures of the natural order. The West alone celebrates our individual potential, our flexibility of mind and person.

Bowie personified the Western belief in each man having, as he said, the “Potential of a Superman.” Famously, he repeatedly transformed himself. He was a space alien, a rock star, a vaudevillian, a soul singer, and more. He married outside his race and culture. His extreme attack on the limits of identity embodied the Western sense of freedom.

If Alt-Right folks reply that he violated Roman ethics, I would remind them that Nietzsche (1844-1900) gets stereotyped as a Hebraic brute, idolizing “Blonde beasts of pray.” Yet, Nietzsche denigrated unambitious intellects. We need to suspect popular depictions. Bowie was a much more profound artist than the media portrays for the masses.

A review of Bowie’s catalog shows a nearly complete absence of love songs. His music was self-consciously intellectual. ‘The Cygnet Committee,’ echoes Edmund Burke by having God argue against the French Revolution. 'The Supermen' visits the loneliness a Zarathustra character must face. Musically, his absence of references to mundane love in his catalog parallels Nietzsche’s disdain for the merely human.

Bowie’s darkness defied today’s liberal utopia. His “Thin White Duke” character lauding “The European banner,” triumphal crowing about his music as "Genocide” and calling himself the “Fuhrerling” would not pass PC scrutiny today. Even his celebrated Ziggy character was doomed and so spoke to corruptibility, rather than optimism. As Nietzsche should not be blamed for WW I, Bowie’s cannot take the blame for the shallow sexuality promoted in his name.

Though they married in a church, Bowie married a Muslim. He lived in an era of Hellenism, in which such moves seemed safe. Increasingly, such relationships will provoke violence. The same can be said of his youthful gender – bending. But, this was all congruent with his quite serious searching for an individualistic identity. As with Hamlet, confronting our station, and as with Nietzsche, probing our potential, could be said to be the quintessential Western ideals.

We need to reject liberal decadence. Yet, as a culturist strategy, we need to celebrate Western artistry. Yes, the era of contracting Nietzschean brutality, that Arnold’s model predicts, is coming. But, we’ll need inspiration to re-emerge from it. In the darkness, we must not reflexively denounce the uniquely Western bent towards ‘sweetness and light.’ Botticelli, the Church liturgy, and even Bowie’s artistry are examples of culturist potentials for which we must brutally fight.

AN ACADEMIC BOOK RECOMMENDS WAR IN EUROPE!

Peter Turchin’s, ‘Ultrasociety: How 10,000 Years of War Made Humans the Greatest Cooperators on Earth,’ necessarily implies that the West needs a popular war within or near its borders. He reluctantly confesses, “A reactionary catchphrase of the 1970s used to go, “what this generation needs is a war,” a deplorable sentiment but one that in terms of cultural evolution might sometimes have a germ of cold logic.”^[i]

THE STORY OF MAN AND WAR

Turchin’s main project is to explain the existence of civilisations.  To this end, he tells the story of social cooperation’s rise and expansion.  Being an evolutionary anthropologist he starts by describing chimpanzees use of violence to maintain their group cohesion and hierarchy.

But, by the Pleistocene era, (2 million – 10,000 BC), evidence indicates that man, (homicide aside), was largely peaceful and egalitarian.  Why?  Stone weapons!  Upstart bullies could be pounded in the head with stones during their sleep.  So weapons enforced egalitarian cooperation.

At the end of the Pleistocene era, because the weather became stable, populations boomed. At this point, you get brutal unequal chiefdoms.  TAhe standard model says that agriculture created the archaic states.  Turchin convincingly argues that this is not true, war did.

For thousands of years, after agriculture became widespread, people continued to do hunting and gathering as well.  Those with these blended economies were free and equal. And these folks’ had much better diets than those who only did agriculture. So agriculture does not explain the rise of states.  

Using math, history and evolutionary logic, Turchin argues that one group switching to a centralised hierarchical state system could dominate and enslave the others.  Once one group had switched, others had to do so or be beaten. So hierarchical cooperation was born and brutally enforced. War made people do agricultural, not vice versa.  Societies’ roots are in war.

But, starting about 500 BC, Turchin explains, military horse use decisively tilted the military advantage to whoever could field the largest army. Large armies require big population bases. Hierarchical archaic states' control via violence limited their size and created internal disunity.

Universal monotheistic religions enabled larger societies.  Zoroastrianism, Christianity, Buddhism, and Confucian taught rulers to treat their subjects with care.  In turn, these religions legitimised supporting the king. But these egalitarian ethics, again, were there to create larger populations in order to win wars.   

THE CULTURIST CRITIQUE

Turchin ends his book asking a huge culturist question, “How do we develop the science of cooperation?”^[ii] His answers are all skewed because he ignores cultural diversity. 

In arguing that modern ethics all evolved to the same end, (making big populations for war), and so are the same, Turchin undermines Western pride. When nations are proud, (Imperial England), they spread; when ashamed, (the West under multicultural philosophy), they contract and crack. 

Yes, Mr. Turchin, war makes societies via cultural innovation.  But, that does not mean all cultures are the same.  

His failure to note cultural diversity also leads him to assume that military conflict is a thing of the past.  War deaths have been declining for five hundred years. So, going forward, he concludes, we’ll only have economic competition.  But, as he enthuses, global cooperation only arose in 1945.^[iii] And, really, the 'ultrasociety' still does not exist.

No sane society would bet its life on Islam forever forgoing violence and adopting 'universal' values.

CULTURIST POLICY IMPLICATIONS

In showing how ethics facilitate empire, Turchin tells us that Spain could only keep its Middle Ages multi-ethnic empire together via fervently acknowledging its shared Christian Catholic identity. And, eventually, religious schism undermined the Spanish empire.^[iv] This means multiculturalism destroys societies so the culturist policy of promoting assimilation is safer.

But, ultimately empires collapse because their wars happen on distant front lines.  When, in the empire’s capitol city, “ . . . survival is no longer at stake, selfish elites and other special interest groups capture the political agenda. The spirit that ‘we are all in the same boat’ disappears,” and inequality, disunity and social collapse follow.^[v]

In reviewing the scientific literature, Turchin concludes, “The evolution of cooperation is driven by competition between groups.”^[vi] Again, he assumes going forward competition will only be economic.  But, if not, the ‘cold logic’ of his formula wherein the absence of war undermines cooperation, means we need war and we need it close to home.  And, for the West, there is only one plausible enemy close to home: Islam.

CULTURIST CHOICES

As a culturist, I have long argued that Western governments must: a) Drop their guise of cultural neutrality, acknowledge Western culture and legally protect it; b) Stop Muslim immigration both for safety and to create an enemy; c) Deport any immigrant who advocates Sharia for lying during naturalization; d) Stop Saudi mosque funding on our soil.

I advocate these non-violent culturist policies because violence is unnecessary, would undermine our legal system, cause property damage and possibly end in defeat. But, Turchin’s thesis, war creates states, strongly suggests that we would best reach our culturist goals via violent confrontation with enemies on or near European soil.

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^[i] Turchin, Peter, Ultrasociety: How 10,000 Years of War Made Humans the Greatest Cooperators on Earth, (Chaplin: Beresta Books, 2016), 42.

^[ii] Ibid. 230.

^[iii] Ibid. 5.

^[iv] Ibid. 203.

^[v] Ibid. 42.

^[vi] Ibid. 93.

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THE TEN COMMANDMENTS of PROPAGANDA: THE CULTURIST REVIEW

by Brian Anse Patrick

Arktos Publishing

Reader please know that since this publishing of this article, Dr. Patrick has passed on.  This review is printed in honor of his memory.

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I love the opening lines of Brian Anse Patrick’s book, The Ten Commandments of Propaganda. Published by Arktos, the book immediately tells the reader they’ve already been propagandized via the author evoking the Biblical Ten Commandments. Effective propaganda, Patrick explains, draws upon collective cultural memory.  His book is full of platitudes we really need to hear if we’re to be successful culturists and end multiculturalism.

STRENGTHS OF PATRICK'S BOOK !!

The Ten Commandment’s footnotes give the book an academic feel. But, this short book reads really well. Patrick says he moved academic points to the footnotes in order to make the book more user-friendly. And, his strategy of listing one propaganda commandment per chapter makes it easy to revisit the book, which increases its usability. Speaking of which, let’s move on to . . .

PATRICK’S TOP 5 TIPS FOR CULTURIST PROPAGANDISTS

(1)  Know the many routes for propaganda dissemination 

Patrick tells us to get our message to journalists, editors, scriptwriters, interest groups, voluntary associations, churches, trade associations, corporations, blogs, news media, publishers, educators, researchers, leadership, mass mobilizations, etc. We need to use all of these folks’ platforms to spread our message.

Too often, myself included, we culturists just hammer away at one media source.  

(2) Build your message horizontally

When we think of propaganda, we usually think of the top down dissemination of information. Spreading horizontally means you spread a message between peers, as is done in mass movements and business meetings. The concept of starting a movement is a good one. This requires, Patrick tells us, exploiting wedges in society: rich v. poor; men against women; black against white. 

We in the West should foment a widespread disgust with Islam. And, we should get people in the streets.

(3) Simplify your message.

Stunning common sense insights pervade Patrick’s book. The need to simplify your message is important, despite being common sense. People only have mental space for small amounts of info, so we must stick to slogans and images; people remember these better than arguments. But, this cynical tactic rubs us the wrong way. We resist simplifying. That’s why, obvious as it is, Patrick’s telling us to simplify is important. 

 ‘Sloganize Today!”

(4) Moralize  

Our leaders must be thought of as ethical, righteous and moral. Simultaneously, we must paint our enemies as depraved, malicious rats. The West is glorious, Islam is evil. If you make this morality the basis for a cause, Patrick tells us, it can then become a source of identity and get people to join our groups.

Rather than focus on specific policies, we need to frame our cause as a righteous crusade against evil.   

(5)  Control the flow of information

I particularly liked Patrick’s idea of ‘interior colonization,’ wherein the government uses taxpayer money to propagandize us into giving them more money. He claims the government relies on your only having time to hear one side of the story. And effective propagandists provide their side of the story, when people need it, in a manner they can publicize. That means if we hear a rebuttal, it is on the propagandist’s terms.

Rather than just denounce multiculturalism, we need provide a culturist messages. We should be the aggressors, providing content. Our opponents should be limited to reacting to our assertions when there is time.

WEAKNESSES OF THE BOOK

SCIENTIFIC OMMISSION

Patrick uses very old schools of psychology, (psychoanalysis and behaviorism), to explain limits to the very outdated ‘rational actor’ model. But his commandments still largely refer to verbal strategies.  He needs to look at recent, germane scientific literature.

Bio-cultural co-evolution research has shown people are biased to follow those with status and the majority of the crowd around them. Evolutionary psychology explains the connection of status and testosterone. Cultural neuroscience has shown different cultural groups process considerations like empathy in differing ways and levels.  Patrick ignores all such modern scientific developments.

Ellen Dissanayake’s neuro-anthropological work argues that mother and infants rhythmic rocking and baby talk is the root of collective rituals. She uses analysis of the hormone oxytocin to show the mechanisms are the same. Such measurable, non-verbal, techniques point to the future of culturist propaganda studies. And, as others, Dissanayake’s work suggests we prioritize collective activity and minimize reasoning in our propaganda efforts.

Unfortunately, in his avoidance of science, Patrick even ignores statistics. As such we have no way of knowing if his propaganda techniques work or just sound good.

THE CULTURIST ANGLE

Ignoring the culturist angle is The Ten Commandments’ greatest failing. The book provides generic propaganda techniques. He gives no hint that the West is in a battle for its life against multiculturalism and Islam.  

In a rare show of taking sides, he discusses the American government’s use of propaganda to dominate our citizens (p.26). And, his dissection of propaganda gives us tools by which we can counter our government’s propaganda. But, countering Federal control is the closest Patrick ever comes to a reason for propaganda. The vagueness undermines our sense of war and means the examples don’t address the West’s current challenges.

Instead of science, Patrick uses historical sources. Positively, this allows him to provide many useful anecdotes and examples of propagandists in action. It thus expands our imagination. And, using historical sources leads him to consider identity and ethical perceptions more than modern scientific scholars do. This is great!  But, his history would be more useful if he considered the Social Darwinists that preceded his sources – they understood science and the urgency of the struggle for survival.

OVERALL

While biology is ignored and Patrick leaves it to us to apply his ten commandments to today’s situation, I nevertheless highly recommend this book. To save the West, we must deploy informed propaganda. Patrick’s Ten Commandments provides invaluable assistance to culturists by profiling historical culturist propaganda campaigns and the philosophical and practical roadblocks they encountered.