The dominant sense of any word lies uppermost in our minds. Wherever we meet the word, our natural impulse will be to give it that sense. When this operation results in nonsense, of course, we see our mistake and try over again. But if it makes tolerable sense our tendency is to go merrily on. I call such senses dangerous senses because they lure us into misreadings.
—C. S. Lewis, Studies In Words
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Content Warning: Hate symbols and hate speech. Note that I will probably be engaging in some pretty dark humor to keep my spirits up because this stuff is fucking depressing.
What are dog-whistles, and why am I bothering you about them? Basically, dog-whistles are coded signals that will destroy our civilization, like everything else will; and I’m bothering you about them because I have no idea whether my fan base and Natalie Wynn’s have a lot of overlap, or whether it’s mostly just me, Ganymede, Basil Fitzgerald, and my sister.
Dog-whistles are key terms, phrases, and symbols (ranging from icons to gestures to memes) that members of a group can use to signal to each other that they’re part of the group, without revealing it to outsiders. The name comes from the literal dog-whistle: it sounds at a pitch too high for human ears to perceive, but dogs hear it just fine. To work, dog-whistles have to have another meaning in mainstream discourse; if they don’t, they may be private signals but they are not dog-whistles, because they identify the user as part of something unusual even if the general reader may not know what specifically.
Of course, dog-whistles are not necessarily a bad thing. Fan communities use dog-whistles (among other signals) all the time, for the pleasure of discovering each other in contexts that aren’t fan-specific the way chat boards and conventions are. A lot of early Christian symbolism consisted in dog-whistles: St Clement of Alexandria counseled Christians who needed symbols for signet rings (an important way of authenticating documents) recommended symbols susceptible to Christians interpretations like doves, harps, ships, and fish, as an alternative to depictions of gods or instruments of violence, during a period when the blatant depiction of a cross would have exposed its user instantly. Christians living under persecution have adopted the same means of survival in later ages. The Buddhist-Shinto figure of Kannon in Japan was often used by Japanese Catholics in the seventeenth and eighteenth century as a coded emblem of the Virgin—especially since she was a patroness of mothers and was often depicted holding a child. Dog-whistles can be a necessary way to communicate while maintaining secrecy, and secrecy can save lives.
But in the early twenty-first century, they have been put to sinister use by white supremacists. Overtly racist ideologies have been unacceptable in mainstream American political discourse for almost two generations now, as have most forms of totalitarianism, especially fascism and Communism. [1] But this doesn’t mean those things have gone away, nor that they are restricted to blatantly racist gangs like the Aryan Nation or the Klan. Every group—including fringe groups like Scientologists, flat-earthers, anarchists, and guys who still think Jamba Juice is good for you [2]—includes smart, cunning members who know perfectly well that they and their beliefs will be rejected if they’re revealed outright, and are prepared to strategize accordingly.
The ideal white supremacist dog-whistle is one that allows its user (let us call him Pye D. Piper) to say something perfectly innocuous, even something that any reasonable person would probably agree with, while simultaneously sending a different, coded message to fellow white supremacists so that they know the lay of the land. This has the double benefit of encouraging the white supremacist community, and also of deceiving ordinary people into supporting Mr Piper, or at least into considering him reasonable and harmless, when really he is playing a long game to advance white supremacist goals and ideology.
For people who aren’t white supremacists planning to fuck me over—when my crime is merely that of being a degenerate old queen with left-wing internationalist ideas, ‘whose religion involves allegiance to a foreign power,’ [3] and who opposes fascism, racism, classism, capitalism, the military-industrial complex, and Brett Ratner’s continued liberty to direct films—a word of caution is in order. One of the dangerous and frustrating things about dog-whistles is that they are, in themselves, innocuous. For instance, you may have heard about the OK sign attracting criticism as a racist code-signal: it got attention during the Kavanaugh hearings, for instance. Obviously the OK hand gesture is not an intrinsically racist symbol; no symbol is; it was not originally cooked up by racists, nor does it have a typically racist history behind it. It was adopted by white supremacists precisely because it was both recognizable and innocuous, and thus, for dog-whistling purposes, absolutely perfect. (That’s how the swastika itself started out. And even today, there are contexts like Jain and Buddhist iconography in which the swastika is just itself, a shape, without the hideous meaning we associate it with here in the West.) So the mere fact that someone uses certain dog-whistles doesn’t automatically mean they’re a crypto-facist. They could be an ordinary centrist or a good-faith conservative who’s been listening to Pye D. Piper and is humming the same tune in consequence.
And due to what makes dog-whistles work, the better-known a dog-whistle is, the less likely it is to represent a real white supremacist as opposed to someone who ran across it in perfect innocence and happened to repeat or reuse it for whatever reason. The list below may easily be obsolete within months, if it isn’t already. So, yeah, be aware that this could make you a little paranoid, and be careful not to tar and feather people too readily.
Here follows a non-exhaustive list of dog-whistles. I’ve arranged them into symbols, terms and slogans, and gestures; I’ve also given a brief run-down on the basic description, the origin of the thing (if I know anything about it), and how it’s used today (as far as I’m aware, and with the proviso that these uses can and will change as soon as outsiders start to recognize the dog-whistles for what they are).
Shit gets gross after this. Please be aware.
Description: A cross shape with equal-length arms that are each bent at a right angle, all the bends pointing in the same direction.
Origin: A common device in art throughout Eurasia for tens of thousands of years; in some cultures it represents the sun. Formerly called the gammadion or the fylfot in English.
Use: Expired. The Nazi use of the swastika is so generally known that it doesn’t keep anything secret. Variations on the swastika and similar symbols may still see some usage, like the Thunder Cross and the Hands of Svarog (shown below), which some neopagans use.
The Black Sun
Description: A set of concentric circles with twelve Sig runes radiating from the center.
Origin: Though drawing on older symbols (including the swastika), the black sun shown here is first recorded as a design element in the 1936-1942 remodeling of Wewelsburg castle. Heinrich Himmler had purchased the castle in 1933 to serve as an SS center.
Use: Current. As a relatively simple geometric pattern, it’s easy to spot when you’re looking for it and easy to miss when you’re not. Its use has been complicated slightly by the fact that the Church of Satan has also employed the black sun; so, uh, give them the benefit of the doubt that they might just be Satanists, I guess.
Description: A cross (usually with all four arms equal in length) with a halo or ring around the center; the arms may or may not extend past the ring.
Origin: Ringed crosses are a fairly obvious shape, but their best-known use is as symbols of Celtic Christianity, in which haloed crosses were extremely popular. Wheel crosses also resemble the usual guiding lines for firearm sights; the Zodiac killer used a form of the wheel cross as his personal sigil.
Use: Current. Thankfully, genuine Celtic stuff employs more specific forms like bell-flared cross arms, and elaborate decoration like trefoil knots.
Description: A cross (typically black) with equal-length, curve-flared arms, usually with an outlining band around its edge.
Origin: One of many heraldic forms of the Christian cross; the iron cross is a particular variant of the croix pattée, which always has equal-length, flared arms, but the flaring can take different forms (e.g. the Templars’ cross had small, angular flares at the end of each arm). The iron cross is a traditional military decoration, going back through Germany’s history and into the Kingdom of Prussia.
Use: Current.
The Odal Rune
Description: A diamond shape with its two lower sides extended into crossed arms.
Origin: One of the letters of the Elder Futhark, the earliest rune alphabet. (The Younger Futhark of Scandinavia and the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc are both descended from the Elder Futhark.) The Odal or Othala rune represented the o sound, and was named from the Common Germanic term ōþala, which could mean ‘lineage, descent’ or ‘inheritance, property, estate.’ Cf. Blood and Soil below.
Use: Current. Not many people outside certain fan communities and scholarly fields recognize any Germanic runes, and are likelier to assume that they’re references to Lord of the Rings than neo-fascist cosplay. Neopagans, especially those who follow Odinism or Asatru, also use this rune and many others as an inheritance from pre-Christian Germanic culture.
The Sig Rune
Description: Similar to a backwards, capital N with the vertical bars extended (thus resembling a stylized lightning bolt).
Origin: Another rune, but unlike the Othala rune, this one is derived from the Armanen runes of Austrian occultist Guido von List. An apostate from Catholicism who devoted himself to neo-pagan mysticism and racism—‘Ariosophy’ was his name for it—he claimed to have received a new formulary of the runic system in a vision (sure), expounding eighteen reformed runes, of which the eleventh was Sig. A pair of Sig runes was one of the insignia of the Nazi SS, partly because they looked like an angularized pair of s’s, and partly because the Nazis associated the rune’s name with the word Sieg, ‘victory.’
Use: Somewhat current, both independently and as an element in the black sun above. However, it is recognizable enough in doubled form as an element in a Nazi flag that it’s not likely to be used as often.
The Man Rune
Description: Similar to a capital Y with a third branch extending straight up.
Origin: Why hello again, totally unhistorical Armanen runes! Derived from the Algiz rune of the Elder Futhark, with the same shape but a different phonetic value. Often known as the ‘life rune,’ as far as I can tell on the basis of ‘literally no gorram reason whatsoever.’
Use: Current. This one is particularly insidious due to its similarity to a wide variety of totally innocent symbols. The Yr rune, which is the inverted form, is also used occasionally, and is, you guessed it, often known as the ‘death rune.’
Guys, if you need a hug you can just say so.
Origin: A reference to the Fourteen Words, a slogan concocted by white supremacist David Lane: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” A more forthcoming alternate is “Because the beauty of the White Aryan woman must not perish from the earth” and my God you people, chill the fuck out. Nobody’s trying to make white women stop existing. As you so creepily demonstrate, white women are popular.
Use: Current. Making numbers look harmless is super easy. May be combined with 88, explained below.
Origin: Alphanumeric code for AH, i.e. Adolf Hitler; likely also an allusion to the 18 Armanen runes.
Use: Current.
Origin: An allusion to David Lane’s 88 Precepts, a white nationalist manifesto; also alphanumeric code for HH, i.e. Heil Hitler.
Use: Current. Frequently combined with 14 as 1488, 8814, or 14/88; Lane claimed that the number 1488 was a key element in his (SIGH) Pyramid Prophecy, which apparently espouses literally every conspiracy theory: Aryans built the pyramids, the King James Bible is a Hermetic code text foretelling Lane’s own birth and work, and Francis Bacon was secretly Shakespeare.
Origin: An ethnonationalist catchphrase cooked up by the Nazi party (German: Blut und Boden). Used to express the idealized, racially ‘pure’ and geographically rooted ethnostate.
Use: Expired, as it’s a giveaway to anyone with more than a slight acquaintance with Nazi history. The rioters at Charlottesville in 2017 chanted it, along with “White Lives Matter” and “You will not replace us.”
Origin: A newer alternative to “white genocide,” coined when that phrase started to seem too dramatic. Basically this denotes a key concept in white supremacist ideology: that majority-white countries are being taken over by immigrants (optional extra: BECAUSE OF JEWS), who will hog all our resources and/or intermarry with whites, thus diluting and ultimately eliminating “the white race.”
Use: Somewhat current. It’s getting recognizable enough to act as a regular whistle instead of a dog-whistle, and is likely to expire soon accordingly.
Origin: Sounded better than “I’m really racist.” The phrase denotes a belief in (ugh) so-called “scientific racism,” the notion that there are empirical grounds for (i) classifying people into biologically different races that are (ii) typically ranked by intelligence, and considered superior or inferior accordingly. There’s also “sex realism,” which sounds better than “raving misogyny.”
Use: Nearly expired, I think. It is pretty transparent. The concept is often reached without the catchphrase, usually by starting with an ostensibly positive, widely-held stereotype about a non-white ethnicity (“Look, you’d agree that Asians tend to have higher IQs, right?”) and then … well, I was going to say ‘deteriorates,’ but it ain’t exactly starting fresh.
Origin: White nationalists love to think of themselves as defending Western civilization against the incursion of foreigners, especially brown and/or Muslim foreigners. (The fact that a lot of the brown foreigners, namely Latino immigrants, are as Western as anybody in the US and more Western than some, gets lost in here—I can’t think why.) More importantly, Western culture has in fact accomplished great things in addition to horrible things, so it’s an easy way to lure centrists, good-faith conservatives, and many liberals. If the white nationalist in question is a Christian, expect the Jewishness of Christianity to be downplayed or (in extreme cases) outright denied—though support for Israel as an (ethno-)state probably won’t be; if the white nationalist in question is an atheist or a neopagan, expect the Jewishness of Christianity to be played up as a reason to object to it, along with its deeply-rooted rejection of racial hatreds and its encouragement of “slave morality.”
Use: Current as hell, and it pisses me off, since I treasure Western culture even while I recognize its many flaws and sins. This one is a great dog-whistle for white racists, because as long as Western culture doesn’t become irreclaimably identified with white nationalism, there will always be an innocuous way to interpret “defenses” of it.
Origin: Sounded better than “I’m really, really racist.” The name comes from the French group Bloc Identitaire, a nationalist movement with a patchwork of right-wing ideologies (though generally united by their hostility to Islam). A number of white nationalist organizations, such as the American Identity Movement (formerly Identity Evropa) and the National Policy Institute (hi, Richard Spencer!). Racists of all kinds do tend to be preoccupied with ethnic identity, pretty much by definition, and white supremacists are no exception.
Use: Current—I think. It’s hard to tell.
Description: One hand is raised, usually at an angle and from the shoulder, with the palm facing down and the fingers together.
Origin: The Roman salute actually does go back to ancient Rome; even white supremacists don’t get every historical detail wrong (just most of them.) Mussolini adopted it for the Fascisti, and Hitler liked it enough to import it for the Nazis.
Use: Expired—kind of? It is immediately recognizable, and therefore much of its use as a private code signal is gone. Yet, for some reason, it remains easier to claim that using the Roman salute is “just being edgy and ironic” than it is to claim that bandying a swastika around is “just being edgy and ironic.”
The Volksfront Gesture
Description: A V-shaped hand sign, along the lines of the Vulcan salutation but without the thumb, often held over the heart.
Origin: Basically a gang sign, invented by the white supremacist group Volksfront. Volk is the German word for ‘people, nation,’ and since these are or should be the same thing as ‘ethnicity’ in white nationalist ideology, the word’s a popular one.
Use: Current, possibly; I don’t claim to have picked up on it. But of course it’s like the black sun symbol: plain as day if you’re looking for it, inconspicuous if you’re not.
Description: Thumb and forefinger together in a circle, with the other three fingers extended.
Origin: As a gesture, this one’s obviously much older than its appropriation by ethnonationalists; it’s also a perfect example of the bottomlessly ambiguous atmosphere that crypto-fascists use to both communicate with each other, and at the same time gaslight the people who suspect them. Its association with neo-Nazis and the like is obviously arbitrary, which makes it easy to dismiss as just an example of left-wing paranoia. Moreover, it is, or seems to be, recent—as recent as 2017. It’s unclear whether the gesture became associated with white supremacism by their own design, through a 4chan prank, or by their own design which they then covered up through a 4chan prank. The Christchurch mosque shooter has famously flashed the OK sign in court, I guess because shooting a bunch of innocent Muslims, praising Trump for inspiring white nationalists worldwide, and donating hundreds of Euros to an Austrian neo-fascist didn’t sufficiently establish his racist street cred.
Use: Expired? Current? Honestly this one could be anywhere on the map, it’s so muddied.
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If you are involved in a hate group, you need to get out now. These two sentences are composed entirely of links to various groups that can help you escape.
Like I said above, this list is not exhaustive, nor could it be since dog-whistles are constantly in flux. But I sort of feel like vomiting, so I’m done for now.
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[1] Yes, I'm aware that there are non-totalitarian, non-Stalinist, non-statist versions of Communism. No, I haven't yet read Horkheimer, Bakunin, Goldman, Zetkin, Gramsci, Grindelwald, Sluterevski, and OH MY GOD GET OFF MY LAWN. [2]
[2] If you caught the dog-whistles, congratulations, and all hail Party Monster and Dark Mother.
[3] Thanks for that gem, Locke.
I’m sorry you harbor such hatred for us, Gabe. For what it’s worth, some of us are your fans.
ReplyDeleteIf you meant that you are a fascist or a white supremacist, and that it is because of one or both of those qualities that you're a fan -- then I am both bewildered and horrified that you find something in my writing that seems in any way sympathetic to fascism or racism. I hope I can say truthfully that I do not hate any person; all are ikons of my Savior. But I make no secret of my utter revulsion from every form of totalitarianism and racism, especially any that encourages enmity with the Jewish people, which is hatred of God and of the Mother of God.
DeleteIf, however, you mean only that you are a nationalist -- one who (despite whatever your friends and allies may think) entirely rejects racism in all its forms, *including* segregationism and isolationism -- then, while I remain bewildered, I am not horrified. But if, for reasons I can't really guess at, you value or respect my ideas, I urgently beg you to renounce your association with nationalism, an ideology that has invariably led to ecclesiastical corruption and political bloodshed.
Does it have to be “because of one or both of those qualities”? At what point does correlation between causative? Suffice it to say I do value and respect your ideas and know other who do as well, and while I’m not sure there’s a direct causation...certainly your whole ethos seems to jive pretty well with ours.
ReplyDeleteBut I respect you enough to recognize that people who take your “line” on this question don’t usually like to let their com-boxes become a “platform” for advocating certain “peculiar” beliefs, so I won’t try to have that conversation here, though you’re welcome to email any time.
I will just say I’m surprised at how little empathy you show here. One reason I respect you is your (usual) ability to (insistence on, even) look at people who hold a variety of views with good will and assume the best and honestly try to get inside their head and imagine how they might have come to sincerely hold those views so that you can understand even if you don’t agree.
But in this case it seems we’re all just monsters who arrived at our beliefs-in-conscience out of some sort of free malicious choice to embrace irrational hatred or whatever caricature you hold about us. And that’s disappointing from someone who is usually so empathetic.
It doesn't have to be due to either of those qualities, no. If it's not, I am extremely relieved.
DeleteBut when you say that my ethos seems to jive with that of white nationalism, I remain bewildered. I mean, I'm an anti-totalitarian anti-racist pro-immigrant leftist Catholic pacifist fag with nothing but contempt for President Trump; what's the ethnonationalist ethos here? Is it the poems? Is it the Latin? Is it the vampire novel? Hell, is it the red site background? I'm a student of Western civilization, yes; but one of the essential parts of studying any civilization honestly is recognizing its flaws, and the West has more than its share, especially regarding race relations, slavery, and colonialism. If we profess any semblance of Christianity at a cultural level, then we must be prepared for cultural penance, too.
Whatever it is that's attracting this fandom, let me state clearly, for you and any ethnonationalist fans that I have: I'm a slutty little socialist fag with a Jewish Mother and an Asian religion, and my mud-blood does not wash out. If you stan me, you stan that.
You are quite right that I neither want nor intend to give racist, nationalist, or fascist ideas a platform on my blog -- and I sincerely thank you for recognizing and respecting that. I would say, though, that (while written with my usual flippancy) it wasn't my intention in this particular post to explore origins or assign blame, as far as these ideas go. I can and do believe, very easily, that many perfectly well-intentioned people espouse these beliefs. To the extent that they are sincerely innocent, that will stand them in good stead before God on the Last Day. What it will not do is:
- Make their ideology true.
- Keep them from hurting people, either directly or indirectly.
- Absolve them of responsibility to continue seeking truth, especially if they are Catholics, who have authoritative documents like the Catechism to tell them that these ideologies are wrong.
- Absolve them of responsibility when they begin to see (or worse, refuse to see) the consequences of their ideology being put into action.
People don't have to become monsters to do monstrous things; a strange paradox, but a true. Pontius Pilate was a very ordinary government official, and strictly speaking Caiaphas was correct when he said that "it is expedient that one man should die for the people."
So as far as personal empathy goes, I hope I have it; and as I am intending to write quite a number of antifa-oriented posts, yes, that is likely to come up. But I do not have and will not feign the slightest sympathy with white nationalist ideology in any form at all, nor shed many tears over the hurt feelings of a movement that has already effected the deaths of Heather Heyer, Jakelin Caal, and Felipe Gomez Alonzo, of eleven Jews worshipping peacefully in their Pittsburgh synagogue, fifty Muslims gathered in prayer in Christchurch, and my nine black sisters and brothers in Christ murdered in cold blood in Charleston. Do not confuse compassion with being a literal Quisling.
And this bloodshed is not exceptional, as both recent and less recent history demonstrates. It caused the First World War as well as the Second. It's where ethnonationalism always, always, always goes -- because no matter how much Richard Spencer and co. say that they're isolationists and that they don't know exactly how a "peaceful ethnic cleansing" would work, the truth is that there is no such thing as a peaceful ethnic cleansing; it cannot be done. The only thing you can do, and the thing that ethnonationalists always land on accordingly, is to forcibly expel any minorities that you can pry off the ground (in direct violation of the Torah's injunction to love the stranger), and when you reach the ones that can't be pried up, to kill them.
I can very easily believe that you yourself hold whatever exact beliefs you do, and are part of whatever communities (defined or vague) you're part of, for reasons that seem sensible and just to you. I say with complete conviction that you've been lied to. You, and maybe the people who brought you in, have been sold a lie about the aims of this movement's leadership and about the means that that leadership is prepared to use. Look up the work of people like Christian Picciolini, Sammy Rangel, Natalie Wynn, Frank Meeink, and Daryl Davis.
DeleteProbably you don't feel like hearing this right now; but I'll say it anyway, hoping that you remember it. However deep you've gotten, it is not too late to get out. And the time to get out is now. Your God will forgive you and welcome you home.
Well, I’ll hold my tongue on some of those gross misperceptions and libels, because to answer them would constitute “advocacy” and I really don’t intend to debate that in this forum.
DeleteBut to answer your primary curiousity about “why me,” I think I can say a few things that speak to your writing more than to my opinions on reality.
Firstly, I’m not sure why you bring your homosexuality into this. Plenty of “us” are gay. I think it is pretty clear that, as one of my friends says: “the hidden spiritual meaning of homosexuality is racialism,” which is to say “the love of one’s own kind” and that there is a reason for the paradox that the unfecund homosexual is usually the perfect “victim” of and for our race!
Isn’t white queerness (and you, good sir, in scandalously eccentric particularity!) the ultimate proof that “White People *Are* Diverse,” “White Light Is The Rainbow Already,” etc etc? Basically, aren’t you the very proof that in the end “White People invented modernity” and “White People invented pluralism”?
Second, I’ll just say this: for all your token “leftism”...isn’t your basic *style* of thinking essentially “alt right” in the best “dark enlightenment” sense of the word?
I mean, your willingness to embrace religiosity and not throw the Middle Ages out the window simply do not ingratiate you with any version of “the left,” which by nature is obsessed with orthodoxies and eats its own. The letter of your law may involve an indiosyncratic flirtation with “anarchism” or “socialism” (which never turn out to be anything of the sort when you actually try to articulate them in detail), but the spirit of your law is absolutely heretical to the victimary foundations of modern leftism, but quite at home with the deep philosophical foundations of the new far right.
To sum it up: your literary idol is a man who literally mapped Europe onto a body.
Wake up, Gabe: you are as white as Steve Urkel.
I might be prepared to accept the charge of unfairly misrepresenting your personal version of nationalism, if, and only if: (1) you explicitly disavowed fascism; (2) you explicitly disavowed any and every notion of "ranking" races or ethnicities; and (3) you explicitly disavowed segregationism in any form, including the foundation of a white homeland or ethnostate. I would remain profoundly opposed to any nationalism, even one that defined itself in those terms -- the vulnerability of the Eastern Orthodox Churches to nationalism in its "baptized" forms was one of the things that made me gravitate toward Catholicism rather than Orthodoxy when I had left Protestantism behind. But I would certainly concede that a nationalism which categorically disowned (1), (2), and (3) was not in fact the kind of nationalism that my post was addressing in the first place, and would therefore be no real grounds for offense to you.
DeleteI gather from your words and your admissions that you aren't repared to do that. And whether my impression of you there is correct or not, it remains true that there is a substantial movement of white ethnonationalists who reject (1), (2), and (3), and my post was about them. The actual history of nationalist movements and governments to date -- e.g. Afrikaner, Serb, French, Turkish, Italian, Spanish, pan-German, Russian, Japanese, Israeli, and pan-Arab nationalisms -- have, in observable, documented fact, consistently resulted in mass human rights abuses up to and including genocides.
As for why I bring up my being gay, when so many gay men are ethnonationalists and so many ethnonationalists profess acceptance of gayness, provided that it is at least conventionally masculine: I refer you to the memoirs of Ernst Roehm. His story is typical of the modus operandi of any small group that attempts to seize political power; get all the allies you can while you're vulnerable, then sacrifice the liabilities when you don't need them any more.
The idea that homosexuality and racism are really just two different forms of some underlying, spiritual "love of sameness" appears to me as less a sound argument about metaphysics, and more a total misunderstanding of what both sexuality and race are, bordering on the lunatic. Speaking for myself and, I think, every other gay man I have ever met in my life: we're interested in men because we like men, not because they resemble ourselves. As it is not difference merely as such but feminity specifically that arouses the interest of straight men, so it is masculinity, not mere sameness for its own sake, that draws our attention. I can allow that there are probably gay men for whom it's the sameness rather than the maleness that's important, but if so, that fetish is fairly opaque to me; and even if it weren't, I would not build a philosophy of race on it, because the sexes are not races. The only resemblance the categories "race" and "sex" have is that they both happen to be categories, and frankly, the metaphysical reality of the category "race" is -- on the most generous interpretation possible -- extremely dubious. There's often more genetic variation between two people of the same race than between people of different races.
White queerness is not really proof that "white people are diverse" for two reasons: first, queerness is found in literally every ethnicity, so it doesn't prove that white people are more notably diverse than anybody else; and second, whiteness isn't a real thing. It's a convenient category with which to summarize "people of European descent who typically have a specified range of appearance," but it isn't anything more than that: no ancient Greek, Phrygian, Etruscan, Roman, Sabine, Latin, Gaul, Vandal, Ostrogoth, Armenian, Brython, Anglo-Saxon, Slav, Finn, Magyar, or Viking would have had the faintest idea what you were talking about if you spoke to them of "the white race," because they were all different ethnic groups, and didn't view themselves as interrelated with each other any more closely than they were with Egyptians, Arameans, Jews, Phoenicians, Ethiopians, Arabs, Persians, or Berbers. Many ethnicities had plenty of *cultural* snobbery about how much better they were than everybody else; but this applied to fellow "whites" at least as much as any other group, and incorporating people of other ethnicities into one's own culture (by intermarriage or conquest) was not taboo, provided they did adopt the ways of the new culture -- ancestry didn't have to be an obstacle, still less skin color.
DeleteSo on reflection, yes, I guess you could say that whiteness is diverse, but only because it's an incoherent hodgepodge of ethnicities that come from different places, have different histories and cultures, and have all miscegenated with both each other and non-white ethnicities (in terms of both culture and race).
Your grasp of leftism seems terribly limited to me. Not only is leftism a fairly diverse group containing lots of mutually inconsistent philosophies, it's plagued with (often childish) infighting. So no, my leftism is not token at all. Unconventional, certainly, to the extent that there are leftist conventions (and there are some); but then, my Catholicism is pretty unconventional, and I'm Catholic to the living marrow.
I can agree that the Enlightenment was a largely contemptible period of history -- even the wars were boring, which is quite a feat -- but my chief reason for taking that view is that it followed through on its own principles so poorly. I'm very much in favor of reason and science and even skepticism; what the Enlightenment tended to fail at (in its atmosphere more than in any actual scientists) was applying those consistently and with appropriate caution, as opposed to running around banner-waving whatever ideas it thought would make its dad mad. My enthusiasm for Catholic history is principally because it's fascinating, not because it is unqualifiedly good; ditto my Mediaevalism. And I am perfectly prepared to say that they were right about this thing and wrong about that, on the basis of what I think is true rather than in obedience to a chronological test of any kind. But, for what it's worth, the Middle Ages were arguably one of the least nationalistic periods of Western history -- the Holy Roman Empire (and even its Early Modern successor, Austria-Hungary), which was the sentimental heart of the idea of Europe, is a case in point. When we reach even the vaguest adumbrations of the nation-state, as during the Hundred Years' War, the Mediaeval period is already practically over.
My Catholic practice, on the other hand (as distinct from my enthusiasm for the history of Christendom), is rooted in my conviction that the Catholic religion is true. And the only convictions about ethnicity that that involves me in are: that God is a Jew; and that every human being of every ethnicity is made in the image of God without distinction. If I were going to elevate any ethnicity, it would be Jewish ethnicity, but the New Testament makes it plain that I'm not to do that either.
As for my literary idol Charles Williams, yes, he made the human body and the Roman Empire maps of one another, and of the cosmos. He also deliberately rearranged and altered a huge mass of historical facts. Because he was writing poetry, and the resonance of imagery is generally more important than historical detail in poems. I won't deny that there are hints of a racist atmosphere in Williams' work, as there are in J. R. R. Tolkien's, and to a far greater extent in T. S. Eliot's; but Williams and Tolkien, unlike Eliot, disavowed these ideas at a conscious level because they rightly recognized their incompatibility with Christianity, and recognizing the immense artistic genius of all three men (or anybody else) does not and should not mean pretending that they had no flaws. That really would be idolatry.
DeleteI'm not clear how telling me that I'm as white as Steve Urkel is meant to further your cause, either in general or in (apparently) trying to persuade me that my work really is secretly compatible with white nationalism. Then again, I have no idea what you mean by it in the first place, so I'll just let that be, except to say that comparing me to an annoying, attention-hogging nerd is pretty on point.
I will publish no further comments in this thread.
Well this was certainly informative. Nonetheless it would be paranoid and somewhat psychotic to go around hunting for fascist symbology everywhere. The rise of both fascism and radical Marxism in turn of century America mirrors the same phenomenon in turn of century Europe, only that it comes 100 years later. So, in a sense, I guess I am a Eurocentric bigot, but only insofar as I believe that twentieth century Europe can be a fascinating case study on the havoc and horror of both ideologies on culture and society.
ReplyDeleteI mean, I guess you might be a Eurocentric bigot? But twentieth century Europe *is* a fascinating, and horrible, case study in the consequences of both most forms of fascism and most forms of Marxism, and there's nothing bigoted (or even specially Eurocentric) in acknowledging that.
DeleteAs for paranoia ... yes. That is hard to curb, especially since dog-whistles are specifically designed to fly under the radar. I don't recommend actively hunting for this stuff by any means -- only being informed enough to notice it when it comes up.
I was only trying to give people an alternative sort of “Eurocentrism” to latch on to instead of the unhealthy sort. As to dog-whistles, I equate them to the Catholic principle of equivocation.
DeleteI suppose dog-whistles are a form of equivocation, yes. The difference lies in their purpose -- equivocations are usually philosophical in purpose, while dog-whistles are a pragmatic technique.
Delete"There’s an old joke about a man who walks into a bar. The bar patrons are holding a weird ritual. One of them will say a number, like “twenty-seven”, and the others of them will break into laughter. He asks the bartender what’s going on. The bartender explains that they all come here so often that they’ve memorized all of each other’s jokes, and instead of telling them explicitly, they just give each a number, say the number, and laugh appropriately. The man is intrigued, so he shouts “Two thousand!”. The other patrons laugh uproariously. “Why did they laugh more at mine than any of the others?” he asks the bartender. The bartender answers “They’d never heard that one before!”
ReplyDeleteIn the same way, although dog whistles do exist, the dog whistle narrative has gone so far that it’s become detached from any meaningful referent. It went from people saying racist things, to people saying things that implied they were racist, to people saying the kind of things that sound like things that could imply they are racist even though nobody believes that they are actually implying that. Saying things that sound like dog whistles has itself become the crime worthy of condemnation, with little interest in whether they imply anything about the speaker or not.
Against this narrative, I propose a different one – politicians’ beliefs and plans are best predicted by what they say their beliefs and plans are, or possibly what beliefs and plans they’ve supported in the past, or by anything other than treating their words as a secret code and trying to use them to infer that their real beliefs and plans are diametrically opposite the beliefs and plans they keep insisting that they hold and have practiced for their entire lives."
https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/06/17/against-dog-whistles/
I dunno, it seems the same to me. It is a form of lying and double-speak, often abused, so it would be under the same category of what Miłosz calls “ketman”. If one’s group believes they are being persecuted then they will lie in order to avoid detection by censors without abadnoning their ideological commitments. There’s nothing philosophical about that, at least, I don’t think.
ReplyDelete