Counter-Currents
1,011 words
In our increasingly consumerist society, there is a growing desire for all things to become more quick, predictable, and satisfactory. This is perhaps most obvious in the development of fast-food and fast-food culture. A typical trip to McDonald’s is expected to proceed rapidly. Once at the counter, you don’t need to explain your order in detail. “Number four, large.” You swipe your card. You get your meal. You walk out. You get in your fast car, take the fast highway, take the fast lane, and turn on your radio to zone out to “top hits” music that was produced quickly and efficiently. The songs are brief enough to not be too boring. The verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus: all as predictable. The electronic instruments and synthesized voices go in one ear and out the other, as billboard after billboard passes before your eyes.
The role the Internet is playing in magnifying fast-consumption is absolutely mind-boggling. The fact that computers alone are revolutionizing the service industry by catapulting it into a new realm of speed and efficiency goes without saying, but the Internet has changed life forever, especially in the consumerist West. Shopping at Amazon happens at light speed; a half-hour shopping session typically involves spinning the mouse wheel and looking at thousands of items until one’s eyes glaze over. Dating apps give the user a selection of mates and dates at high-speed. If need be, a user can simply masturbate to one of the readily available free porn sites. Video after video, fetish after fetish; the user scrolls past hundreds of “actors” being bent over.
Social media plugs one into a spotlight for millions of potential “friends,” feeding the ego at an unprecedented speed. People thumb their smartphones on Facebook, viewing one “viral” video after another, produced by “content creators” who name their companies in predictably appropriate ways: NowThis, Buzzfeed, In the Now, Wired. “This is cute.” “This is sad.” “This is inspirational.” “This is weird.” “This is cool.” One after the other, minute after minute, the mind consumes and then quickly forgets. The user posts a selfie to appear on the light-speed “feed” of his or her “friends” in hopes that his many ghost friends will click the precious ego button. Perhaps afterwards, he will view some memes featuring a few lines of text, and with a chuckle, thumb away to the next meme.
What is most disturbing is that while all the generations in our society have converted to Internet life, the fact is that the majority of people were not raised with this phenomenon. We are not all “converts.” Millennials were the first to be raised by the Internet, and the results have been a severe magnification of the lightspeed-consumer mindset. Most importantly, this mentality has completely changed the means by which culture is propagated, as well as the nature of political strife. Yes, there has been a steady increase in the demand for “results” in generation after generation. But with the Internet, we have witnessed the birth of a generation incapable of pausing.
Civil argumentation, philosophy, book reading, all of these things are dead or dying. Philosophy has no place in a world that demands immediate results in response to instinctive, primal desires. Anything which makes one uncomfortable or presents a challenge is immediately discarded. Self-denial is slowly becoming immorality in the eyes of the contemporary West. To deny our instinctive impulses and primal desires is to question the notion of immediate satisfaction, and long-term gratification is becoming more and more alien. Watch how the individual who chooses not to participate in social media is treated; almost as a Martian. He is thought of as strange, or even untrustworthy. After all, only a complete weirdo wouldn’t want to be plugged into a machine pumping us full of egoism at high speeds.
The more bourgeois we are, the more common it is for this to happen. Trust-fund students who have never worked a day in their lives are commonly ignorant of a reality which ever slows down or pauses. As such, their moral codes and behaviors follow a mind raised on NowThis. A controversial idea (or speaker) is not met with open debate or inquiry; it is to be chanted at, screamed at, cried at, or attacked. The primal emotions overwhelm, and (as expected) satisfy. Speakers who have confronted these mobs ought to know better than to try and use well-constructed argumentation. One might as well be trying to teach Japanese to a dog. You’re here, you’re controversial, and they can make loud noises. The dominos for a primal masturbation of emotions are all in line. Nothing else matters.
The future is one of fast-politics. It is a primal and ugly future. The hearts and minds of the younger generations will not be won over with scholastics, philosophy, or esotericism. It will be won with primal strategies. This is why people like Milo, Gavin McInnes, Paul Joseph Watson, and their like have been so successful among the young, for better or worse. They either understand the game, or they are embedded in the game. In Gavin’s case, I assume that he understands the game, and plays its tune. Vice follows the same steps for media success: topics need to catch the eyes quickly, frames need to change quickly, and documentaries need to end quickly, with only the juiciest bits intact.
All aspects of this rising new movement against the status quo need to understand how the future is to be won, and for better or worse, adapt to the contemporary strategies of political and cultural strife. Sophistication will not win the future. Philosophy will not win the future. Esotericism will not win the future. The future will be won with effective memes and viral videos. If you as a member of this movement can’t stoop to this level, you’re not here to save Western civilization. You’re here for yourself. The time has come to break the emergency glass, make use of every method, take no prisoners. Learn how to appease the unpaused, and the future is yours.
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15 comments
You’re right about the new reality that millennials live in; anyone who doesn’t live as a hermit in the woods can see it. And also, I would never deny the necessity of embracing this change and utilizing social media – obviously, as I’m writing this in a comments section. However, I’m not sure who you’re really addressing this to, since clearly the Alt Right is already doing this. How many times has it been said that Trump was “memed into office?” Clearly, the Right is doing this better than anyone else at the moment, at least in the US.
But as for what you say at the end, I think we need to clarify what it is we’re fighting for. Sure, let’s use social media, but only alongside other efforts. What sort of “white civilization” will emerge in a world where “sophistication, book reading, civil argumentation, philosophy, and esotericism” aren’t just neglected but are allowed to disappear? Certainly no sort of civilization worth saving. Is the point of our struggle merely to preserve a future for people who might look like us, but who otherwise have no souls, depth, or character? If that’s the case, then the younger generations deserve to go extinct. Which would be inevitable, anyway, since there’s no cool, fast way to raise a child or successfully govern a society. We have to fight for a new type of European man, not just the outer trappings of whiteness concealing a dehumanized monster pulled out of a shopping mall. I’m not trying to be some fogey who thinks that we have to recreate the past, which is impossible anyway, but as supposed revolutionaries who believe in the worth of our civilization’s traditions and values, we can’t simply accept everything as it is. The status quo that you’re describing was brought about by neo-liberalism. We are opposed to neo-liberalism, therefore we can’t simply accept the world that it has generated, or else we’ve already lost. That’s not to say that we can’t use the tools of neo-liberalism to create something else, in keeping with our own values, however.
I really don’t believe this is the inevitable future, anyway. When they’re young, newer generations always look catastrophically flawed in the eyes of their elders. But as they get older and are forced to accept responsibilities, they invariably change and mature, becoming more like their elders, and thus civilization keeps on ticking. I don’t think millennials will be any different in this regard.
Thank you, John
You expressed my sentiments on the article exactly but much better than I could have myself. As somebody who studied philosophy for many years, I wouldn’t want to live in a world which doesn’t have it. Of course, we need the memes and viral videos but not everybody can do them. I’m certainly too old to learn how to do this stuff. I completely support the people who can do them, however. I have contributed one scholarly philosophy article to counter-currents and I hope to contribute more. That is my contribution to the alt-right.
I have to agree with Morgan here, who has saved me the effort of having to post on this article. There is no “one way” to do racial activism. Personally, I loathe the whole Pepe-Kek, TRS, undercuts, sneering Roissy Alt Right, but if that attracts younger people, great, that can be one element of the whole. But it cannot be the entire whole. My opposition to the Alt Right is not opposition to the existence of the Alt Right style (and it is more style over substance) but rather the Alt Right pretensions of being one and the same as racial nationalism.
I have been saying this for some time now.
Nerds have became the power mongers. How will the normies adapt to this truth?
I honed my skills as a troll on YTMND. Now I “meme” naturally.
I hate the autistic millennial who believes that a “Plato,” a “Socrates,” or even a “David Foster Wallace” is going to save us. No it’s not. These millennials are a bunch of pretentious LARPers.
We are at the point of the meta-meta-game.
However, I do believe in healthy ways of self-improvement, like learning to read, write, lift weights, and respect history. Too much of it is the folly of the upper-middle class having an extremely high expectation of the upper class who are decadent. The upper-middle class becomes ideologues that try and fulfill a fake sense of perceived aristocracy. Again, they are nothing but LARPers.
“Philosophy,” “Esotericism,” “Deconstruction,” and “Postmodernism” won’t work.
Reality will.
Greg writes on FB that this article makes the point that CC is doing it all wrong. I’d disagree. There are any number of meme pages and pop-Alt-Right pages one might visit, but CC provides rare depth and thoughtfulness. I’m pretty ADD myself, but one of my favorite articles in racial realist/WNist writing is this lengthy piece by Thoresen on eugenics and Progressivism: https://counter-currents.com/2016/06/racism-eugenics-and-the-progressive-movement/
Memes can grab recruits’ attention, but recognition of the true value and legitimacy of White Nationalism is, I find, solidified by well-structured pieces that take one on mini-journeys through history and philosophy.
I, a millennial, skimmed through this article. The irony is so thick you could cut it with a knife. Anyway, I think any discussion of this topic should really afford Andrew Anglin a brief mention. The last paragraph sounds like he could have written it — with a different style, but nonetheless, I think these are his animating ideas.
This article was brought to you by the letter G, and the number 1488.
In 1997, when the internet was in its infancy, William Ophuls wrote of “electronic barbarism”:
“[F]our decades of television seem to have fundamentally transformed the consciousness of the American public, especially the younger generation. In 1968, according to journalist Kiku Adatto, the average sound bite in network newscasts lasted 42.3 seconds; in 1992, a mere 8.4 seconds. But to perceive the wold in less than ten-second sound and image bites is to begin to think in the same fashion: anything long, boring, difficult, unpleasant, or complicated becomes intolerable. And all sense of perspective disappears: on television, where the time is always now, the political score is kept on a weekly or even daily basis, and ‘instant analysis’ of the problem of the day takes the place of real reflection. Even newspapers and news magazines have had to accommodate this radically shortened and attenuated attention span by making stories briefer and employing bright colors, splashy graphics, and other attention-grabbing techniques borrowed from television. However, the print media are probably fighting a losing battle. Not only are there many complete illiterates who cannot read at all, as well as a large number of functional illiterates who cannot read anything complex, but also a large number of poorly educated aliterates, especially among the younger generation, who no longer read in the old way: they have not been trained to do so, and their thinking habits have been corrupted by television. In short, ‘vidiocy’ is rampant.
“Although the problems of American education have many causes, the transformation of the rhythm and texture of the students’ minds by television is certainly one reason why achievement at every level has declined. For example, the written vocabulary of the average elementary school student today is less than half what it was in 1945; and university teachers report a marked decline in analytical skills among their students in recent years. A genuine education is of necessity a long, difficult, complex, and sometimes boring process whose ideal outcome is the ability to see issues in context, depth, and perspective — none of which is compatible with a short attention span, an overwhelmingly present orientation, or a desire to be entertained. In other words, a real education demands a character structure entirely opposed to that of the media milieu, which has become the mainstream culture.”
“In fact, the long-term effect of television is to undo the work of civilization. As Oswald Spengler pointed out, ‘the liberation from the visual’ is one of civilization’s great achievements, because it permitted higher-order thought. Television, however, mimics experience so effectively (relative to print media) that it all but drives out thought: viewers mistakenly believe that they have been magically transported to the scene and are emotionally gripped rather than mentally stimulated. In addition, advertising is basically about magical self-transformation, so the effect of adspeak is to encourage magical thinking in general — that is, to make our minds more primitive (in the pejorative sense). Moreover, the ultimate effect of a flood of brief images is to wash out the sense of past and future and to induce an overwhelming present orientation — which
is, again, to make our minds more primitive. Finally, if the goal of civilization is greater consciousness, a position held in one form or another by virtually everyone from Plato to Freud, then television is indeed the enemy of civilization: to use Freudian language, it fosters more Id and less Ego, more unconscious emotional reaction and less of the reality principle. In effect, television is psychoanalysis in reverse. Thus not only has the polity been deprived of the information it needs to understand or solve its problems, but it is even beginning to lose its ability to think constructively about them. We are making political decisions on the basis of a ‘reality’ that is increasingly unreal.”
These observations on television can be extended to the internet and social media. “Fast-politics” can be regarded as profoundly impolitical. Those with short time horizons and short attention spans lack hindsight, foresight, and insight; they can be obsessed and yet easily distracted and diverted; they can be active, indeed hyperactive, and yet be lacking in real agency; they are agitated rather than agitators.
The concluding paragraph of the article above really goes off the rails when it states: “Sophistication will not win the future. Philosophy will not win the future. Esotericism will not win the future. The future will be won with effective memes and viral videos. If you as a member of this movement can’t stoop to this level, you’re not here to save Western civilization. You’re here for yourself.” The idea that “the future will be won with effective memes and viral videos” is so silly as to require no refutation. Such messages and media may be necessary, but they certainly aren’t sufficient. The idea that if one doesn’t “stoop to this level” one is some kind of idiot is insulting and incorrect. George Lincoln Rockwell’s article, “From Ivory Tower to Privy Wall: On the Art of Propaganda,” is far more sensible. Basically, Rockwell advocated using a range of media to reach a range of target audiences. It is foolish to privilege a particular media, genre, style, or intellectual level so as to discount others. All these things have different functions and different places. We shouldn’t regard our personal likes and dislikes as a basis for cultural policy. As individuals, we should work with the media with which we can work effectively. As a movement, we should use all the media we can use effectively, and we should make full use of the wide range of abilities and interests of our people, thereby engaging them in work and engaging the audiences they can reach through their work.
I think there’s a place for nibbling with soundbites and hammering with a philosophy.
I think this article is guilty of the correlation = causation fallacy. An increase of hysteria by the left does not necessarily mean high speed internet is infantilising all of us. More likely, those who are the sort of person to spin their life away on a one armed bandit will be candy crush fans and those who don’t into such idle pursuits will use the internet for other things, like cutting their teeth as a writer for counter currents. If who we are is so easily molded by the presence of readily accessible novelty, then the Identitarian slogan and platform of “become who we are” is undermined.
Social media is alternatively a way of keeping up with the news, a discussion space or a distraction, and when whites find themselves with better things to do they turn off the distractions and press on, lest they feel the guilt of in their genes of not adequately preparing for the long winter. Millennials are often given to the niche culture of the web, and will sink immense amounts of time squirrelling out esoteric information on everything from Team Fortress 2 to Adolf Hitler. Long, information heavy content is as popular as ever, hence the high subscriber count for Millenial Woes and the rate at which Mein Kampf has been flying off the shelves these past few years.
Normies are normies, and they don’t live the life of mental combat and being an internet ideologue. Most people simply don’t want to think hard about complicated abstracts and who can blame them. White Nationalists should meme having a mid-life crisis early, to get it out the way, and solving it by joining the fight they didn’t realise they were in.
To echo a couple of other people, “Western civilization” that is all about one-liners and short bits isn’t worth saving. It’s weird how this article actually makes a very good case for that. Living my life surrounded by shallow retards isn’t what I have planned.
There’s time and place for short bits and repetitive slogans, sure. But there’s also place for more than that. The moment this stops being true is the moment we can accept we’ve been destroyed.
There’s nothing sustainable about our world today. By that I don’t mean centuries. There’s nothing that’s even going to last a few decades. I firmly believe our system is going to be over by the late 2030s at most.
I don’t claim to know what is sustainable. That’s future prediction and I won’t engage in that. I don’t have easy answers, and that of course makes me useless in modern America as well.
There was and will always be an intellectual elite. The people who will rebuild the West will be recruited from this Brahmin class. Do CC not intentionally target the 120+ IQ crowd?
A variety of different approaches are required. I find the introduction to notable Intellectuals found on CC one of its most attractive aspects. However this will always be a minority position in society at large.
The West thrives and builds on strife it always has, the multicultural challenge will be met regardless of the actions of CC. Challenge will force change and a new mindset. In many ways a great gift to pull us out of our complacency and strengthen our minds and will.
The more important project is to avoid despotism, materialism and spiritual destruction. Only the educated mind can truly be free.
Interesting theory that the Internet is doing to political ideology what fast food joints did to food. Of course not all food has become fast food and political theory will still be debated at higher levels, but it’s probably true that the ultra concise dimension of communication, such as the meme, short video, etc, is becoming more influential.
On the bright side, consider that the (((print media))) and (((academia))) are losing influence.
10/10 best article 2017.
Would read and share again.
You should write a no-fap article.
This article sloganizes a solution by which our cause should seek to hijack the bus, admitting that most of the passengers are and will continue to be utterly retarded. What is absent is how to secure a sustained individual and group existince outside of this doomed system of techno-social control, but I think such consideration is implicit. The center really cannot hold, because there ain’t one.
It would seem a better and more effective solution to disable or destroy the internet itself. If this can be imagined hypothetically, then huge social and political advantages will be realized in preparing and organizing for such an eventuality.
I’ve long thought the internet simply can’t last. It’s a huge convenience, a game-changer, certainly, but it is also way more toxic and volatile than television ever was. (Of course, the “airwaves” were public property at one time, laughable and quaint as it seems now.)
The value of preparing oneself psychologically for general collapse cannot be overemphasized, though scenarios can be pointlessly over-fantasized. Your avegrage drooling, self-involved consumer already can’t deal with political and social realities, so it isn’t difficult to imagine how he/she/ze/it would wilt under the pressures of, say, a war or severe collapse here at home, with the attendant uncertainty, scant services, dwindling resources, and sudden void where all that self-affirming consumerist ego-reinforcement once was. I admit, I almost look forward to it — not only because it is the kind of diabolical thing I regard with abstract pleasure, but also because it is a levelling eventuality that seems logical, even called for. It has been earned.
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