Ab Ovo Usque Ad Mala

The time has come to say good-bye.

This is something I’ve been planning for a while now.  The moment has come when I need to step away from this blog, step away from Neoreaction, and cast myself into the turbulent seas of whatever fate awaits me.

Yes, this is a finale that has been in the works for months. I was tempted to do it as soon as I realized that the time had come, but there were certain loose ends that seemed worth tying up.

Besides, I do have a certain time-preference, and I knew that if I held out for a little while longer, I could complete the circle.

Do you know why today is that day that I formally leave this sphere? It is because today is the day that formally I entered it.

August 3, 2013: A Legionnaire emerges, ready to join the fight against the progressive scourge.

August 3, 2015: Donovan Greene takes wing.

There’s something magical about that, is there not?

Is this over? Is this truly the end? Words seem to fail at describing the distinctions. Nothing ever truly ends. The cosmic perturbations last forever.

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Friday Night Fragments #39

The internet was marketed as being a gateway to a new age of ever more open communication. In some ways, that is true. And yet, it is hard not to notice that in an age in which every tweet is cataloged and almost no place on earth is beyond the reach of a cell phone camera, the vast majority of people are far more guarded about what they say. Censorship, it seems, is facilitated by openness; a dynamic that seems odd at first until you remember how there is not a man alive who does not intentionally reveal his true thoughts equally among all he knows, but rather, saves certain things only for that small group of those he trusts.

Censorship through openness. Conformity through the quest for uniqueness. Silence through the cacophony of everyone speaking at once.

What a world we live in, huh?

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Original zinger of the week from the mind of Donovan Greene:

Change for the sake of change is the imbecile creed of those too naive to realize that they will never even understand one thing about how the world works.

Dispense at your leisure.

…

I met up with a non-zero number of neoreactionary figures last night. I won’t say how many. I won’t divulge identities. What I will say is that Neoreaction is dead. Yep. Totally. Absolutely dead. Dead as a doornail. Seriously. There is as much spark of life and vivaciousness of soul in Neoreaction as there is in Hillary Clinton’s eyes.

There is no reason to expect anything further from Neoreaction. None whatsoever. So don’t even bother. Seriously.

…

Now that the jokes are rolling off the assembly line, let’s get into some linkage:

First on the menu, we examine the question of whether Honduras will be better off with ZEDEs (Zones for Employment and Economic Development…essentially a breed of special autonomous economic zones). The argument in favor is that these types of zones have a proven track record of success in increasing material well-being and standards of living. The argument against seems to be that these projects provide benefit to people who are of a higher class of skill than the type of “labor” we see sneaking across the Rio Grande, and that we should do everything humanly possible in life to avoid rewarding people who have the genetic defect of actually having redeeming qualities.

I’m all for freedom and liberty and free choice, but I see shit like this and I realize just how damn important it is for the unrepentant shit-stains of the world to be neutralized and oppressed and generally prevented from doing any harm to people who actually have the potential to offer up any sort of value to the world.

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Speaking of harm, you would think that being co-operative and working together with people will in all circumstances make you better off. This is true when everyone else wants to work together and do no harm. Were this actually the case, we could all live in a fantastic libertarian paradise with no need for the physical removal of undesirables.

We do no live in such a world. We live in a world in which unflinching co-operation is not the most prudent course of action, but rather, being able to assess who is a good ally and who will turn on you someday.

All that sounds pretty nice, but really, it’s just a poor lead-up into the recommendation of Sprandrell’s post on Trade and Peace. Well worth the read.

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Finally (at least in terms of this week’s link round-up), we have Social Pathologist’s perspective on rationality and the reflective mind. It’s a very important read, and it also offers a theory on why the phenomenon that I like to call “the high-IQ idiot” exists:

High IQ is no protection against stupid if your conception of how the world works is wrong, of if you have faulty understandings of cause and effect and are romantic impulsive. Furthermore, the failure to error check and test your theories seems to make one prone to irrationality. Indeed, one of the big factors with seems to be strongly correlated with rationality is thinking styles or personality.  People who are conscientious, deliberative and committed to the truth seem better at thinking rationally than those who are not.  What’s interesting to speculate upon here is the relationship between values culture and intelligence.  High IQ is of little protection when you ditch a commitment to the Truth or embrace ideologies (Marxism) which negatively affect rational thought.

Especially in light of the passage above, I don’t think it should be too difficult to figure out exactly the sort of person I mean to refer to when I say “high-IQ idiot”.

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It is said that one ought to be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves, but I’m not so sure I see how that is possible. Wisdom is scar tissue of the mind, a memorial to wounds long past and a reminder of the consequences of naivete. It is a mark of suffering that is earned by making painful mistakes that slowly strip one of one’s innocence.

It’s a good thing that “innocent” in this context means pure-hearted and well-meaning. Otherwise, we might have had a serious problem here.

Don’t despair if you find yourself no longer a dove. Even serpents have their role to play.

Cloak and Dagger

Alternative Title: A Grounding Framework for a Theory of Deep States

What is most important to any “conspiracy”?

1. Power Dynamics

2. Proper Networking

3. Feedback Loops

4. An alignment of interests among disparate entities

Centralized co-ordination is key to a conspiracy, but not a “conspiracy”. Is the difference starting to set in?* I hope so. Otherwise you won’t understand it at all when I tell you that most perceived conspiracies are actually “conspiracies” but that there is always room for a conspiracy to exist within a “conspiracy” (though just because a vacuum for a conspiracy can exist within a “conspiracy” does not mean that said vacuum has as of yet been filled).

*If the difference is not clear yet, then I should state clearly that a conspiracy is any intentional plan among a group of people, whereas a “conspiracy” is a phenomenon by which it appears that core actors are intentionally colluding but that this perception is actually the result of emergent phenomena. Think of it as working together for something versus working concurrently towards something.

That should be enough foundation theory for this piece.

Oh wait, not yet. I forgot to mention that the American “Deep State’ (we will discuss the limitations of this theory soon enough) needs to be differentiated from the “global elite” in order to be examined properly, but that there is a certain overlap and level of connection between those two entities (due to the various nodes that are placed within the systematic connections that compose these two partially-overlapping but still distinct “fuzzy”* entities)

*Fuzzy in the sense that they lack clearly defined boundaries. An attempt to physically represent these objects would thus have to use fog as its imagery, and not something with more defined limits on its volume.

Have I lost you all yet? I do hope not. This is about to get a bit more concrete, I promise…but only just a bit.

I have written multiple times about deep states before. However, I feel that I would be remiss if I did not make a comment on my previous works in light of the further nuance I have incorporated into my views on the matter.

In short, the idea of a “Deep State” is an example of a conspiracy, while much of what actually goes on underneath the surface seems much more like a “conspiracy”. I do not rule out the existence of conspiracies, though with the exception of a few particular levels of interaction, it seems much more likely that most actions is dictated by a series of “conspiracies”.

The mental picture you should imagine is a sea of “conspiracies” in which all manner of conspiracies may flourish, with some conspiracies being either bigger and/or more secret than others, and some conspiracies being higher or lower on the “food chain”, as it were.

In light of this, the phrase “deep state” itself seems to be an imprecisely-tuned semantic instrument when it comes to the task of explicating all that occurs in the layers and layers below the surface of “official” politicking and policy-making. State itself as a word implies too much of a conscious intent. In fact, (in the case of the US, at least), talk of a Deep State itself serves to muddy the waters and turn people away from the idea that what lurks in deeper waters is not a deep state, but an entire Deep System, a shadow society with immense impact on the functioning and decision-making of American (dare I even say Anglo-American?) civilizational apparatus.

Talk of deep states is worthwhile because any serious engagement with the idea is remarkably effective at shattering ones previous conceptions of how power works in a complex and advanced non-Formalist state. Whether or not one then acts to dive deeper into the matter is less important from a lay-perspective, as the “Deep State” paradigm is a more truthful one than what existed prior (and it serves as almost a complete examination of power in countries with a less byzantine and elaborate civilizational apparatus than the United States). However, for those cursed with a curiosity and a propensity to stick our noses were we shouldn’t, the “Deep State” paradigm is a tool that is useful but woefully inadequate.

What is really going on?

As I see it, circles within circles within circles within circles and conspiracies within conspiracies within conspiracies within conspiracies, all jostling and hustling and overlapping and intertwining and yet all  still separate forces oscillating and vibrating as they see fit, with every layer able to influence that which is below while operating beyond the rational comprehension of each level below it.

Do you not feel the hum? That buzzing all around you? Can you sense the chaos of this roaring thermodynamic system moving at a speed so beyond comprehension that it takes not a scientist or an engineer to get to the heart of it, but someone who can be something greater?

All that I have written so far in this post has been my best attempt to unpack and explicate exactly quite what I am getting at with that metaphor that has seared itself into my head. I hope for the sake of anyone who managed to read through that whole thing that I was able to make myself at least somewhat clear…

---

…But I fear I didn’t. I fear I tossed you all into the deep end and gave to nothing with which to float. I apologize to those of you who drowned, but I felt it necessary to hit you with the big picture so all these parts I plan to throw at you will stick together in the right way.

• People sometimes secretly work under the table with other people. Even pairings that most people would never suspect do sometimes happen.
  
• People sometimes pretend to be something they are not in order to achieve their goals.
• People sometimes do things in secret. This can be done in the cause of things that are less secret or even for things that are more secret.
• The interactions different entities have with each other forms a social/political environment which determines the interactions that different entities have with each other. This is not tautology, but reflexivity.
• People can work together, and people can work within the same environment. People can even do both (in other words, alliances can exist in within an environment among actors who inhabit that environment). However, if people who are working together within the same environment find themselves at odds (perhaps due to the very nature of the environment within which they work and which they themselves may have created), it can happen that one party throws the other to the wolves. The most important thing for any purveyor of unofficial power structures to remember is that Lehman Brothers was allowed to fail.
• It is really difficult to tell where conspiracy ends and “conspiracy” begins.
• The interactions that certain organizations have with each other constitute something that appears to be a Deep State, but there seems to be a lot of other stuff going on under the surface that is not directly tied to political power. As noted in a previous link, the behavior of actors within this network suggests that the nature of these connections is less hierarchical in structure than a loose alliance between entities with some similar interests but also their own unique and disparate goals. What is Deep State (conspiracy) and what is Deep System (“conspiracy”)?

The US government is the 800-pound gorilla. It sits wherever it wants. But “it” is not one entity. It is, again, a network of competing power centers.

Perhaps the most important fact about power is that the powerful are almost always sincere.

The Polygon might be defined as the “extended civil service.” It consists not of those who hold actual formal GS rank, but those whose position demands a sense of civic responsibility – real or fake. The major vertices of the Polygon, by my count, are the press, the universities, the judiciary, the Fed and the banks, the “Hill” (congressional staff), the civil service proper, the NGOs and transnationals, the military, the Beltway bandits (defense and other contractors), and corporate holders of official monopolies (such as “intellectual property”).

–Mencius Moldbug

• National boundaries matter to Deep States but not Deep Systems (this is one of the reasons why Deep States can exist within Deep Systems). Both of these things can be either conspiracies or “conspiracies”. It might not always be possible to tell (though sometimes we are given hints).

The Governments of all the world’s nation-states, the global mass media conglomerate, the Transnational Investment and Extractor Corporations, Non-Profit Foundations, the entire UN structure including NGO’s, the World Bank and IMF, as well as the members of Global political groups like the …all of these entities and organizations are interconnected and interlocked in a similar manner as the two examples of FXC and BlackRock are highlighted in the Occupy report.

There is no conspiracy theory. There is only an interconnected and interlocked conglomeration of entities conspiring for the maintenance of total global control. Control to maximize shareholder profits by managing the exploitation the world’s vast natural and human resources.

–Hawaiian Libertarian

• There is no end to the number of theories as to who really runs the US, but many of them tend to focus on similar players.

I will not go so far as to attempt to lay out which conspiracies operate within which “conspiracies” and give a grand overview of how these interlocking parts operate and give rise to the systems of power we find ourselves living under. I have only attempted to lay out a framework that explicates the mechanisms by which these things operate while also emphasizing the murky nature of this subject matter. I do not take back my previous writings on deep states, but I hope that this has been sufficient as a critique, an update, and a grounding for the Deep State fragments I have previously released.

Friday Night Fragments #38

If you ever find yourself standing in line at airport security, removing your belt and shoes, and mentally undressing the cute blonde to your left, you might find yourself asking a dangerous question: why. Airport security is a most unpleasant hassle, and it doesn’t seem to be particularly effective. So why bother?

(Side note: Who knows how many “random” events were either allowed to happen or were engineered to happen by people who are ostensibly trying to prevent that sort of thing?)

All that said, it’s hard not to see how such rituals are of extreme utility to entities in a position to “see like a state”, as it were. Experiences like this operate subtly, but operate they do, whether we notice it consciously, subconsciously, or maybe even not at all. They condition you to unquestioningly accept the capricious dictates of fools LARPing as authority, they acclimate you to being treated as cattle, and they (perhaps most importantly) provide a source of employment for low-skill, low-IQ philosophical zombies that need to be kept occupied somehow. What’s not to like?

Yes, I did just suggest that the TSA and other similar agencies function as massive public works projects to keep as many people as can be influenced — employees and otherwise — docile and complacent.

There are no doubt people in this world who can be treated like cattle without thinking anything of it or taking offense. It makes my skin crawl to be treated as one of them.

…

Next up, because mood whiplash is amusing, we have an optimistic view on the future with LOADS OF SCI-FI FUTURE TECH PORN.

Not really, but also kind of. This is a hardcore hit of the sort of thing that the “I Fucking Love Science” crowd would enjoy if they were as intelligent and as technologically-savvy as they have deluded themselves into thinking that they are.

Come to think of it, were I being completely fair, I wouldn’t have called this an “optimistic view on the future”. “Reminder of upcoming developments that have positive potential” would have been far more accurate and far more intellectually honest.

So we’ll go with that instead.

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No comment needed, save a brief critique that will also serve as throwing down an exo-semantic gang sign: #AIACC

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I mentioned Iran in the last fragments, but this time around, I’ll pass the microphone to Paul Craig Roberts over at Unz. He’s got a good write-up, and he makes a few points that I wasn’t aware of.

But because this is my blog, I feel obligated to bring up some thoughts of my own: Within 10 – 15 years (likely sooner, but I’m playing conservative here), there will be a series of “popular demonstrations” in Iran with spiritual origins in the Green Movement but also with a surprising degree of funding and a strong bent towards progressivism on social issues. These movements will contend the legitimacy of the government and demand change. Things will get messy quickly, but I’ll hold back from offering any predictions on how events will play out.

Or maybe not. Maybe this time a different page from the playbook will be opened. Diplomacy would be an unexpected move at this point. But we’ll see what happens. Old dog, new tricks, and all that sort of thing.

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Thanks to ideology, the twentieth century was fated to experience evildoing on a scale calculated in the millions. This cannot be denied, nor passed over, nor suppressed. How then, do we dare to insist that evildoers do not exist?

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A human being hesitates and bobs back and forth between good and evil all his life. He slips, falls back, clambers up, repeats, things begin to darken once again. But just so long as the threshold of evildoing is not crossed, the possibility of returning remains, as he himself is within reach of our hope. But when, through the density of evil actions, the result of either their extreme degree or the absoluteness of his powers, he suddenly crosses that threshold, he has left humanity behind, and without, perhaps, the possibility of returning.

-Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

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The “must-read” piece of the week is Nick Land’s Hell-Baked. And if you liked this…

…then you’re going to LOVE Land’s piece.

…

Finally, to end with a bit of levity, a brief reminder that The Onion sometimes manages to hit the nail on the head more often then one might suspect.

Just take a moment and imagine the primary debates: Jeb Bush; Chris Christie; me. Of course, they’ll put me in the middle because I’m ahead in the polls—far ahead at the moment. You already know how I answer even the most basic inquiries, so just picture me staring down the barrel of a question about foreign affairs or agriculture policy or something like that. You think you won’t sit there with bated breath while I try to tackle a question about using military force, or about food stamps, or about how my faith influences my decision-making? I guarantee you that my answers will be worth watching. And we both know you wouldn’t miss them for the world. It’d be the biggest, most-watched primary debate in history, courtesy of all of you.

And if you’re into this sort of thing, you see a brief glimpse of the limitations of the brahmin mind if you look in the right places (Cruz, Christie, Trump is going to be the real trifecta of bloodshed in the republican debates).

Have a laugh or two. It’s the right thing to do.

Friday Night Fragments #37

I came, I saw, Iran.

Or something like that.

On one hand, it’s hard not to feel that we got played as a consequence of having no vision and no idea of what we actually wanted to do. On the other, it does make me wonder whether the intent (“intent” being perhaps not the right word here) was to move things toward an ostensible “detente” by which an American Embassy could be re-opened and NGOs and other “well-meaning” international organizations could gain a foothold.

We all know what happens when the Embassy and the NGOs come to your country, don’t we?

I wonder how long it will be until it is decided that Iran needs feminism and gay rights.

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Two pieces this week that are absolutely required reading thing week: NIO’s Public Choice and Nick B. Steves’s The Occult Effects of Democracy. Nothing more need be said. Go read them.

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Not really relevant to anything but also relevant:

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One of the most common psychological defense mechanisms I’ve encountered is that of “offloading psychic discomfort”. In order to avoid the psychic cost of certain behaviors, a person will offer up an external entity (either person or object) to serve as a “scapegoat” of sorts that can absorb the discomfort in place of the individual.

(Side note: I feel as if this is something that ought to have been discussed before, but none of the numerous types of defense mechanisms listed on wikipedia quite seem to hit on what I am trying to elucidate, though splitting and projection seem to be getting at certain principles at work here).

This seems to be one of the dynamics at work in the strange relationship feminism has with alcohol. Many young feminists seem to feel entitled to alcohol and to casual sex, and yet few things cause them so much uproar as the act of having sex while drunk. There’s a lot going on here (not least of which is a massive amount of social conditioning), but I’ll try to unpack it and show how this dynamic I’ve described is a part of things (though likely not the whole picture).

The act of casual sex causes certain level psychological discomfort (ranging from “none at all” to “irreversibly damaged”, depending on one’s psychological make-up). This occurs even if it is not perceived. This can be due to fear of vulnerability, insufficient override of the disgust reaction, quirks of cognitive dimorphism between the sexes, or any number of other reasons.

I personally suspect that many feminists who trumpet hooking-up and who actually engage in that kind of behavior (as opposed to those who say they support it but who refrain from such indulgence) are not pursuing casual sex for the sake of casual sex, but for the sake of validation, “empowerment” , social conditioning, or as an escape from fears of commitment or any of a whole host of other psychological contusions.

Given the level of psychic discomfort entangled with the act of casual sex, it is necessary to ease the pain by relying on alcohol as a ritual agent to assuage the mind and make it feel that such behavior is appropriate. In a sense, alcohol becomes a vessel by which psychic discomfort can be isolated and kept away from doing harm to the ego. This does not erase the pain, however, and this is where things get interesting.

Since they are engaging in behaviors that they think they enjoy and that they think are good for them, they cannot explain their subconscious anguish, even though they are not wholly unaware of it beneath the surface. What they know is that they are not as happy and content as they were led to believe that they would be. They clearly understand that somewhere in this process there is something causing regret and unpleasantness, but as they think they are entitled to nothing but absolute pleasure and ecstasy from their experience, they wonder what could possibly be ruining their fun.

Since it cannot be alcohol, which is the ritual agent that makes everything okay, it must therefore be men. Creepy men who ply women with alcohol in order to rape them. Those men are the cause of whatever anguish you may feel. They deserve all manner of unpleasantness for violating the happiness to which you are entitled!

Interesting implication of this theory: casual sex can lead to feminism.

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Show me your signaling and I will show you who your master is. What’s that? You don’t think you have a master? Ridiculous. Only a man without desire, without belief, without emotion, without instinct, without impulse, and without thought cannot be slave to something.

That batman t-shirt you wear? I see you are slave to entertainment and cookie-cutter forms of identity and association given to you by those who earn your slavery with their illusions.

Ah. You have the rainbow flag outside your house. How touching. I see you are slave to a belief in the latest mind virus devised by your overlords to ensure your submission.

I see you, slave to money. I see you, slave to power. I see you too, slave to God.

And there you stand, you proud fool, scrambling to erect a battlement to save a mirage of something you to which you might once have been enslaved.

Yes, you all think yourself better than the others.

Are you? That is not my place to decide. It might not even be my place to know.

Am I to be slave to such restraints?

What is reaction if not submission?

And yet what would mankind be if we never sought to push the limits?

Book Review: The Long Way Home

Today’s book review comes from (where else?) the request of a reader. Sanne Wijker is a reader of mine who herself blogs over at athriftyhomemaker.blogspot.nl. She is the author of the book “The Long Way Home”. She dropped me a friendly e-mail asking if I’d give it a look. Me being me, I did.

Before I even made it to the table of contents, I found myself gazing at the lyrics of a Manowar song.

It actually did a pretty good job of setting the tone for what turned out to be a thrilling adventure novel.

The story begins with a brief introduction to the two central characters and allows for a steady glimpse of the fantasy world that Wijker has created. I quickly found myself taking a liking to the character of Lennart, though I had a sinking feeling that he was being set up to be an eventual antagonist, given that he was being presented as a cold and pragmatic figure. Needless to say, I felt great relief when it turned out that he was to be the main character of this tale after all.

“Oh, you are hopeless,” sighed Brian. “You never can be serious, never.
Think about your honor. That swine called you —.”

“An idiot, I know, but I think I can live with it, while in your opinion my honor demands me to challenge him to a fight, kill him and get executed. No, thanks. I don’t like the idea. I have only one year left to go and then I will be free as a bird and with money in the bank, too. I’d rather stay alive.”

It is hard not to like a man with perspective and restraint (and lest certain of my readers find that this description of Lennart paints him as an unsympathetic a hero, I would let them know that he very quickly comes to learn which moral lines he will and will not cross, and his pragmatism is often tempered by his unyielding adherence to his moral code).

Neoreactionary themes are not hard to find, if you’re into that sort of thing. Some of them were painted into the work with a hammer, not a brush.

“The locals made a pretty mess out of things, what with uncontrolled immigration leading to an ethnic conflict which they did nothing to prevent, irresponsible spending and all other ill-conceived policies; at least now they’ll get some semblance of order. I’m not going to lose my sleep at night because of it,” replied Lennart calmly. He ordered another drink.

Ever present in the background is the fantasy of well-run societies, which is a soothing indulgence that should resonate quite strongly with many of you.

This in mind, Wijker could learn to do with a bit of subtlety. Everyone is almost always unbelievably honest, and I do mean unbelievably. It frequently jumps out at you how pretty much no one in the book ever fails to be completely straightforward and direct when conversing with others. Still, if you take it as being a part of the world that has been built, it is not too jarring, though it never stops being a bit odd. Additionally, people sometimes behave in ways that don’t quite make sense, though it always moves the story along and so such oddities are quickly forgotten.

As for the actual plot itself, it winds and weaves and it only rarely fails to be absolutely thrilling. Though the record seems to skip on the phonograph every once in a while, the sound is crisp and smooth. This is an exciting story that was great fun to read. Bumps and twists and turns and oddities aside, the simple fact of the matter is that this is a rewarding book that when you finish it makes you feel glad to have read it.

Buy it here if you’re interested.

Finally, some housekeeping: While I’ve certainly enjoyed this unofficial “book review week”, I must announce that I am no longer accepting requests for book reviews, for reasons that are perhaps a tad bittersweet.

Regular programing will resume unless otherwise stated.

Book Review: Death of the Family

Not too long after sharing my thoughts on marriage, journalist Christopher J. Green decided to share with me the results of his own investigations on the matter. He sent me a copy of his book “Death of the Family” and asked if I would review it for my readers. 

Green embodies the principle that from tragedy comes a craving for understanding, as travails in his own life drove him to understand why the principles in which he had such faith had been so catastrophic for him. This personal tumult lead him down a rabbit hole that he had been unprepared for, and shocked him into putting together this work.

“Death of the Family” is the result of three years of research, and it clearly shows. The book presents an incredible depth of history and philosophy, and even though I was generally familiar with the point of view that Mr. Green was espousing, I still found myself learning new things on almost every page.

Interestingly, in Western nations, those with the highest divorce rates also have the highest suicide rates.

Chapter seven, in particular, was a wealth of new facts for me, although the lack of citations did make me somewhat wary as to how much I ought to believe.

Despite being incredibly informative, this is not an opaque work. Green’s writing is brisk and precise, and it makes this book a quicker read than initial impression might suggest. Before you know it, you’ve torn through and absorbed a remarkable amount of information. It may be a Long March through the culture, but you won’t find your trip through the pages of this book to be one.

The tactic they developed to dismantle Western Culture is referred to as “Critical Theory” and is described by Max Horkheimer as a social theory oriented towards critiquing and changing society completely, as opposed to traditional theory which is mainly focused on understanding or explaining it.

Overall, “Death of the Family” is a pleasant jaunt though history that both exposes you to new ideas while serving up enough dosage of comforting shibboleths such that even a hardened neoreactionary need feel no apprehension about sliding right in.

Nazism belongs very firmly on the left, slightly to the right of communism along with Fascism.

No enemies to the right, and all that.

Remember you discovered that the USSR was born out of revolutionary socialism? Gramsci’s theories now moved Marxism into evolutionary socialism.

The book gives an exemplary overview of the Cultural Marxist theory of Anglo-American cultural subversion and should be commended on that front. Yet, if that were all that this book were, it wouldn’t be getting a review. The attention it pays to the slow erosion of marriage and the results that this has on society is what really earns the book its commendation. It’s narrative on the degradation of marriage is sure to hit home for many who feel that their instincts are better suited for an entirely different time, and it magnificently drives home the point that the family truly is the bedrock of civilization.

Now, it was a little heavy on fnords at times, and there were certain points that were very deserving of a little push-back (Herbert Marcuse’s critiques of democracy — presented as reprehensible — will probably sound on-point to pretty much all of my audience), but a dispute in the mind of the reader should not constitute an indictment on the objective facts laid out in the book. This is a good quality work that reads well and is very informative. It does exactly what it set out to do and is, in my book, worth a perusal.

If you’re interested, you can buy a copy at deathofthefamily.com.