Counter-Currents
Image by KEKM8
3,654 words
My task here is not to argue for or against the “white sharia” meme, but I must offer a brief outline of what that discussion was about before I begin.
Most proponents of the meme simply wanted to use it to advocate for a restoration of traditional gender roles within society. In reaction to the Manchester bombing, multiple “anti-sharia“ demonstrations have occurred across the country. In a demonstration held in New York on May 25, Milo Yiannopoulos invited commentator Pamela Geller and New York assemblyman Dov Hikind to join him in denouncing CUNY’s selection of Palestinian-American Linda Sarsour as its commencement speaker. The entire demonstration was thus made up of Jewish political activists who opposed the ideology of Islam. The word sharia, which literally translates as “the way,” refers to the various interpretations of Islamic laws of jurisprudence. The fear promoted by these activists is that with large Islamic immigrant populations, Muslims will establish Islamic sharia courts in the United States, as has indeed happened in various parts of Europe.
Incidentally, if you don’t recall Dov Hikind’s previous claim to public notoriety, it was his protest of the release of The Passion of the Christ, a movie depicting the final hours of the life of Jesus Christ. Why? Because “[i]t will result in anti-Semitism and bigotry. It really takes us back to the Dark Ages . . . the Inquisition, the Crusades . . .” In response to these protests, Fox Studios actually did pass on distributing the movie. This is Jewish identity activism taken to the point of trying to refuse Christians, in a country that is eighty-three percent Christian, the right to watch a movie about the most important moment in their own religious tradition – and making a fairly decent go of it, no less. Meanwhile, amusingly enough, Hikind doesn’t seem to be particularly concerned about the sensitivities of black people.
Against this background, some proponents of the “white sharia” meme hoped to indicate that they have no problem with Islam, or sharia courts, per se – as long as they’re being practiced by Arabs outside the United States rather than Arabs who are being imported in. Others just hoped to trigger liberals into revealing their own hypocrisy, because if one finds the meme offensive, then this invites the question: which part of the meme is offensive, the “white” or the “sharia“?
The first answer would suggest that the liberal has no problem with sharia as long as it isn’t whites who are practicing it (so why the double standard?); the second would suggest that the liberal does, after all, take issue with the cultural practices of the Arab Muslims they wish to import (so why import them?). Either way, it presents a catch-22 for the liberal who might actually try to explain why he takes offense.
At least some others[1] were attracted to the meme because they thought it would provide a cover for their actual misogyny. Critics of the meme were concerned that these people would, for all intents and purposes, hijack the meme’s meaning to outsiders, and they disapproved of the public relations effect implicit in conflating traditionalist, Western gender norms with things like acid attacks, as practiced in many North African and Middle Eastern countries.
Nevertheless, the “white sharia” meme marches on. And it isn’t my job to determine which way the tides will pull, but to ride the waves of the ocean as they form.
What I’d like to point out here is that “sharia” involves a whole lot more than gender relations.
It also includes bans on making riba – usually translated as “interest” – on loans. Thus, most sharia-compliant banks operate as profit-sharing ventures.
It also includes rules about food, including about how animals must be slaughtered.
It even includes rules about how to take care of a beard, how long it should be, and more.
Surely this is oppressive, right? Who would want to have to follow a proscribed set of rules for every single activity they engage in?
I actually think there are extremely important lessons for us to learn here about how to maintain a tribal identity when surrounded by people who aren’t members of your tribe.
Now, I don’t think any of us should be circumcising our children. But when Jews and Muslims practice circumcision, they’re tapping into some rather powerful psycho-dynamics. There’s something to be said for the psychology of hazing. As psychologist Robert Cialdini found in 1959, “Persons who go through a great deal of trouble or pain to attain something tend to value it more highly than persons who attain the same thing with a minimum of effort.”
In other words, because you were able to read this article for free, you actually value it less than you would have if you had been forced to pay one hundred dollars for it. Had you been made to pay one hundred dollars before reading this, your brain would have taken the easy way out by trying to convince itself that the article was worth a full one hundred dollars, just to relieve the cognitive dissonance of feeling robbed. Now replace one hundred dollars with a mutilated reproductive organ, and reading an article with belonging to a religious tribe, and you may begin to see why religions that practice it have grown to become some of the largest in the world.
Likewise, when Islam and Judaism provide elaborate rules regarding food, this accomplishes two very important things, regardless of whether the rules themselves make sense or not. First, it ensures that every time they purchase food, Muslims are paying Muslims and Jews are paying Jews to produce it. Second, it helps ensure that Jews and Muslims eat separately, away from the goyim and kaffir. Thus, for Muslims and Jews, every meal helps to reinforce the implicit message that we are different from them.
Consistent, non-SJW liberals – like Gilad Atzmon, and perhaps Milo Yiannopoulos – imagine that they can eliminate these kinds of tendencies from human relations entirely. Rather than instill tribal identities in whites, they sincerely think they can drill them out of everyone else. But no matter how long you condemn the remaining tribalists in a universalistic society, as long as there is even one group practicing tribalism, that group is going to be able to reap the advantages of both tribalism and universalism at the same time, and thus gain an inherent advantage against everyone else. It’s an inherently unstable situation – like a one-off prisoner’s dilemma. The more successful you are at weeding out the tribalists, the stronger the incentive to adopt tribalism becomes.
The Alt Right alternative is to suggest that maybe we’re better off learning to work with human nature, rather than deluding ourselves into thinking we can fundamentally alter it according to our whims. If we don’t exploit these innate human tendencies ourselves, someone else will. And if exploiting these tendencies is able to make a group stronger, then whatever group has fewer moral qualms than our own will end up dominating. One way or another, innate human tendencies will reign supreme. The question isn’t whether that will happen, but simply whether that group will be us.
At the same time that the “white sharia” meme began generating controversy between the various sub-sectors of the Alt Right, a particular holiday was approaching. As you may know, our Muslim brothers from very genetically distant mothers are currently celebrating the holy month of Ramadan.
During the month of Ramadan, Muslims are required to abstain from all food and drink from dawn until dusk. One wonders: is that even healthy? And what about athletes, who need to stay in peak physical shape?
It turns out that it is quite healthy. Blood sugar levels become normalized. “Good” cholesterol levels rise – while “bad” cholesterol levels fall. Systolic and diastolic blood pressure levels fall. And as far as athletes go, “few aspects of physical fitness are negatively affected, and only modest decrements are observed.”
But Ramadan fasting absurdly requires a prohibition on all liquids, including water, during fasting hours. This is completely unnecessary for achieving any of the benefits of fasting for general health, fitness, or cognition – and dehydration is a serious problem that does effect both physical and cognitive performance negatively.
When we study performing athletes in a fasted state who aren’t dehydrated, we find that “there are minimal impairments in physical performance” even after three and a half full days of nonstop fasting.
As nationalists, we care about the health of our people. The National Socialists in Germany led the world’s first anti-smoking initiative. Indeed, the very first scientific studies to ever link smoking with lung cancer originated in Germany in the late 1930s.
Worldwide, the movement towards organic farming actually began in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Germany – and according to Corinna Treitel, Director of the Department of History at Washington University in St. Louis, “We associate organics with promoting social justice, ending world hunger and so on. But it was the Nazis who first elevated organics to the level of state action. Several top Nazi leaders, in addition, ate almost exclusively organic food . . .” Bakeries were required by law to serve whole-grain bread, and by the end of the Second World War the SS controlled a whopping seventy-five percent of Germany’s mineral water production.
When normie conservatives complain about “health Nazis” while fighting valiantly for the right to smoke and let kids guzzle extra-large sodas, it isn’t really hyperbole. The Nazis were serious about raising the health, fitness, and well-being of the German people, and they weren’t particularly concerned about whether or not they were violating some abstract notion of individual rights – conceived as something independent from the health of the tribe as a whole – on the way to achieving that.
It’s time to introduce White Ramadan.
We want to be smarter than our enemies.
It turns out that intermittent fasting – that is, eating within an eight to ten hour window and going completely without calories (coffee, tea, and water are fine) for fourteen to sixteen hours in between – is an extremely powerful method for staving off cognitive decline.
At a biological level, intermittent fasting slows the process of aging in the brain. Some number of hours after the intake of calories and protein triggers various growth processes, the body starts ramping up a process called autophagy. In this state, the body and brain begin breaking down weak cells.
You may remember a popular meme from some years ago that went like so:
In an episode of “Cheers,” Cliff Clavin, the trivia-spouting, quirky, irksome mama’s boy mailman is seated at the bar describing the buffalo theory to his buddy, Norm Peterson, the beer loving heavyweight bar stool sitting perpetual patron.
Cliff expounds his “Buffalo Theory” to Norm:
Well, you see, Norm, it’s like this. A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo. And when the herd is hunted, it’s the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members.
In much the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells. Now, as we know, excessive intake of alcohol kills brain cells. But naturally, it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine.
And that, Norm, is why you always feel smarter after a few beers.
While this is obviously nothing more than a joke, this actually is basically how autophagy works in the brain. Amyloid-beta, for example, is a kind of “junk” material that accumulates within the neurons of the brain and ultimately causes Alzheimer’s. By keeping the brain in junk-cleaning mode for longer, fasting drastically reduces the risks of neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer’s, dementia, and Parkinson’s disease.
And at the same time that it does all this, intermittent fasting also increases the rate at which new neurons in the brain are created. Among other things, this actually reduces depression by boosting the activity of a protein known as BDNF – the same protein that conventional antidepressants take four to six weeks to begin activating. Studies in mice find better learning and memory in fasted mice – and we know that fasting increases neurogenesis in the hippocampus in humans, which is the center of memory in the human brain as well.
We want to live longer than our enemies.
At the same time that intermittent fasting causes the brain to start cleaning out junk, it also causes the body to start cleaning out cancerous cells. In case you didn’t know this, literally everyone has cancer all the time – in the sense that everyone has cancerous cells constantly forming and multiplying inside their bodies. You, as you read this, and I, as I write this, literally both “have cancer” right now. But we don’t say that a person “has cancer” until those cells get out of control. Yet, they’re always there – “preventing cancer” is just a matter of keeping the body on top of fighting them while the population of cells is still small. Intermittent fasting makes sure this happens, and as a result, people who practice intermittent fasting have drastically lower rates of cancer.
In fact, intermittent fasting is one of the only known, guaranteed ways to extend lifespan in general. In every known species ever studied so far, intermittent fasting extends lifespan – often beyond what was believed to be the maximum possible lifespan for that species. On average, the research found that in any given species, intermittent fasting will likely extend lifespan by about thirty percent – and again, it does this by acting directly on the very biological pathways of aging themselves.
And we want to be more physically prepared than our enemies.
Those with fascist sympathies are generally fond of something attributed to Socrates:
No man has the right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training. It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable.[2]
Of course, people have different goals for fitness. If you’re skinny and your goal is simply to get YUGE regardless of mental or long-term physical health, intermittent fasting isn’t the most efficient way to get there. It won’t prevent you from getting there, by any means – a cursory search through Martin Berkham’s archives of client reports at LeanGains will show plenty of skinny guys gaining significant amounts of muscle on his intermittent fasting protocol. And I’m proof of this, myself: I put on some forty pounds of muscle over the course of a couple of years without gaining any fat at all. Squeezing all of my calories into an eight-hour window ultimately made it easier for me to take in the amount of calories that I needed, by teaching me how to eat a lot more in one sitting (and undoubtedly by training my stomach to stretch, as well). But it obviously doesn’t make your job easier at first.
Let’s be real, though: you’re not planning on deadlifting seven hundred pounds in real life. If you’re already a big dude, intermittent fasting will unequivocally help you cut fat while keeping and building muscle. And if you’re scrawny, you’re not likely to get YUGE without steroids, anyway. But pro bodybuilders are known for dying early from heart failure. Steroids, no doubt, play a role in this, but the other factor is that even without using steroids, the traditional “bulk” stresses the heart by forcing it to work overtime to circulate blood throughout the body’s newly increased mass, including both the fat and the muscle. If you can gain strength and muscle without putting on so much “bulk,” then, this is unequivocally healthier all around.
If YUGE GAINZ really exist purely for the A E S T H E T I C S, and they come at the expense of long-term cognitive and physical health, are they worth it? What are the A E S T H E T I C S actually for, anyway? To appeal to women? Women don’t even find the pro bodybuilder look attractive – and even those that do don’t want those men for relationships. If your main interest is in taking advantage of the degenerate American landscape by getting SWOLE so you can screw thots, you aren’t in the right place. If your goal is to help save our people by building a family and then staying in mental and physical shape long enough to outlive our enemies while passing on knowledge and wisdom to your children and grandchildren, then intermittent fasting is an extremely powerful tool that will contribute more towards helping you achieve these goals than any other single practice will.
In any case, massive gains still absolutely can occur with intermittent fasting because gains have more to do with training intensity and total calorie intake than they do with timing. Brad Pilon of Eat Stop Eat coaches clients to gain significant amounts of muscle even with weekly twenty-four hour fasts. Followers of the Warrior Diet have achieved the same results by fasting all the way through entire days and then consuming a single nightly maximum-calorie meal. Both of these protocols are more extreme than the LeanGains style I recommend: fasting for sixteen hours per day and eating within an eight-hour window. Adherents who follow even these strategies properly have no difficulties gaining mass as long as they strategize their calorie intake intelligently enough.
The secret of all of these methods is that once you adapt to them, not only do they become incredibly easy, they feel amazing. Most of us can’t imagine skipping a meal because we know we would become “hangry” – a portmonteau of “hungry” and “angry” – as a result of low blood sugar. But the experience of being “hangry” isn’t inherent in skipping a meal. It comes from being dependent on sugar as a fuel source, and then depriving your body of that fuel. You adapt to the process of fasting in exactly the same way you adapt to the process of lifting weights: the more you expose yourself to a difficult stimulus, the easier handling that stimulus becomes. Specifically, relying on the burning of body fat for energy while in the fasted state trains your metabolism to use fat for energy more efficiently. And since fat as an energy source burns more slowly than sugar, this eventually contributes to producing a calmer, more level mood that is no longer dependent on the ups and downs of fluctuating blood sugar levels to provide the body and brain with energy. Perhaps this is why studies on intermittent fasting find that it results in reductions in irritability, tension, anger, and fatigue along with improvements in self-confidence and positive mood – all things that our people could desperately use. As mentioned earlier, Muslims fasting during Ramadan see general benefits for heart health, including reduced blood pressure, which also ultimately results in a subjectively lowered sense of stress. Research on intermittent fasting finds that it has effects on the cardiovascular system that are actually similar to the benefits of exercise itself.
There is nothing more stereotypical of Boomers who blindly trust their government and rely on outlets like CNN for their news than belief in the meme that “breakfast is the most important meal of the day.” As it turns out, the studies behind these claims were bogus – to be more specific, they were observational studies and not controlled studies, and the way the media interpreted them was bogus. Some of them were based on groups which, in the words of the researcher himself, “appear to represent people ‘on the run,’ eating only candy or soda, or grabbing a glass of milk or a piece of cheese. Their higher BMI would appear to support the notion that ‘dysregulated’ eating patterns are associated with obesity, instead of or in addition to total energy intake per se.” In other words, if the alternative choice people made was grabbing a candy bar out of a vending machine, then sure, people who ate oatmeal at home would have had outcomes that were superior.
Rejecting this meme is one potent way we can try to expand our reach towards “normies.” We can show them – in arenas beyond the political – that when we reject the supposed mainstream consensus, we know what we’re talking about. We can show them that joining us in rejecting those myths could carry incredibly significant tangible benefits for their personal lives as well. And if they don’t believe it now, they’ll have to believe it two or three decades hence when researchers specifically recruit members of the Alt Right to study our longer lifespans and drastically lowered rates of cognitive decline in old age. As a practitioner who has achieved a high state of physical health and fitness while practicing intermittent fasting (see here for a recent photo of me), I fantasize about a world where we come together away from the breakfast tables and TV sets as we begin our days with action – where we come together in the afternoons to have “breakfast” (literally, “breaking the fast”) and talk about what we’ve achieved so far. But whether you share my specific vision or not, rituals like these are what we need. And it would sure as hell be a healthier practice to reinforce the uniqueness of our community than chopping up our children’s dicks.
If you’re interested in learning more about the Cassielite madhhab of white sharia, or getting help adapting it to your personal schedule and circumstances, feel free to contact me. I’ll be happy to share anything I know.
In closing,
رمضان أبيض مبارك!
[3]
Notes
1. Of course, the editors of Wikipedia here might add, “[who?].”
2. A paraphrase from Xenophon’s Memorabilia, 3.12.7.
3. Ramadan abyad mubarak – Happy White Ramadan!
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22 comments
We have “white Ramadan”
It’s called Lent.
The punk shocker thing you guys do.. Make it muslim and that’ll shock em’. It’s professional assholerism.
Christian Law is much stricter, Healthy, Just and logical than Islamic Law and Jewish Law.
but you guys will embrace anything as along as it’s not White and Christian.
Any bullshit will do.
Christian Mutaween T.
Allowing that which is good and prohibiting that which is harmful for White people for the last 2,000 years.
I wish alt-right dropped the ‘white ramadan/sharia’ garbage. Ether find a proper name for our laws or drop it all together. Using references to arabic vocabulary is just wrong. The same applies to kek, some egyptian divinity. Don’t we have our own European symbolism we could use. King Richard, Odin, Woden and many other European traditional icons would be far more appropriate and certainly far more honorable. But no, we have to go to the middle east to find our symbolism. I am missing something. Are we really so stupid?
Mr. Cassiel,
I have been quite concerned about the popularity and propagation of the “White Sharia” meme on the Alt Right, and I also think that the “White Ramadan” meme is not ideal and rather “problematic.”
I have been reading my wife’s family history lately and made a very interesting discovery, namely that many of my wife’s ancestors had extremely long life spans, e.g. one of them lived for 96 years (1560 – 1656) another one for 98 years (1654 – 1752).
They were all Puritans.
The ironic thing is, that Puritanism is the real, original, authentic “White Sharia,” and I actually believe that feminism is one of its modern-day, although mostly corrupted, expressions/manifestations.
“Shockingly, 15% of men in their early 20s have not had a single sexual partner since turning 18, mostly “InCels” (Involuntary Celibates),[5] for other young men first dates have become easier than ever thanks to dating apps, but meaningful relationships are like a sip of water to Tantalus. College campuses are in the grip of a new post-Christian puritanism that decries “rape culture” and claims that all men are potential rapists who must be reined in, a rather Calvinist view of the masculine soul.” – https://counter-currents.com/2016/10/what-the-alt-right-isnt/
“Roosh’s moral axiom here is that there should be no limits on sexual choices. (Although homosexuality is bad, because that provides him with a convenient ad hominem.) Roosh does, however, offer a novel version of pearl-clutching liberal indignation, for instead of arguing that proposing limits on sexual behavior makes White Nationalists “no better than Hitler,” he argues that we’re really no better than feminists […] The feminists, however, are right about Roosh. If a woman is too young, dumb, or drunk to have consented to sex, then she was raped. The fact that this is treated as debatable proves what an airless basement — what a cultish echo-chamber — Return of Kings really is. ” – https://counter-currents.com/2016/02/yes-roosh-white-nationalists-want-to-control-sexual-behavior/
We don’t need to borrow terms, definitions and practices from Muslim or any other culture, in my opinion. We need to look to our ancestors and their asceticism/prudishness for guidance and inspiration.
It is strange to me, that many Alt Righters seem to embrace “White Sharia,” but reject Puritanism, when Puritanism is the real thing and the authentically white/Western ideology and practice, whereas Islam is a foreign code of conduct not compatible with white Western man and his soul.
Personally, I have never perceived feminism as a threat, an annoyance for sure, but compared to Islam it is only of minor concern to me. In my experience, most feminists, deep down inside, are prudes. Once one understands this personality type/trait, it is much easier to communicate and interact with these persons, and they can actually be won over quite easily for one’s causes, e.g. eugenics/Planned Parenthood, Third World population control, etc.
To me feminists are to a certain extent even entertaining/funny, because they are so over-the-top histrionic, etc. Islam and Muslims on the other hand are deadly serious and seriously deadly.
‘As Weev recently observed: “There’s an obvious lesson to take away from this: do not associate with any Moslem. No good white will ever convert to Islam. Whites who profess Islam have cut themselves off from their race and serve the most savage and foreign of all possible gods. Get away from these people, because the proximity of any Moslem is a risk to your continued existence.
All “based” Moslem converts are unwelcome on The Daily Stormer, and urged to go become roommates with /r/The_Donald posters or Antifa from now on.”
Just for the record, I agree with all this (as well as the critiques offered below). At the start of the essay, I just wanted to do justice to an outline of why people either supported or opposed the meme without injecting my own partisan opinion in to that analysis, to give people a birds’ eye view and let them draw their own conclusions.
This was an essay concept I’d been wanting to write for some time, promoting intermittent fasting within the alt-right. I even had the opportunity, recently, to sell Spencer on some of its virtues (he seemed to be genuinely intrigued).
There’s also a brilliant book which I highly recommend called Biohistory which discusses the cycle of civilizations’ rises and falls, and it contains direct scientific experiments on the contribution of ‘scarcity’ rituals like fasting and sexual restriction to the epigenetic activation of pathways that promote either civilization-sustaining, or civilization-destroying, psychologies and behaviors. The book also makes a very troubling prediction that Islam, rather than democracy, may be the real “end of history” if we don’t come to understand the underlying variables and act on them now. The YouTube channel has a very easy to digest collection of four seven-minute videos summarizing much of the thesis, and both the academic and popular versions of the book are free for public download over at http://www.biohistory.org.
In any case, it was mere coincidence that both Ramadan and the white sharia meme took hold at the same time I was preparing to write this article (and my discussion with Spencer in particular inspired me to want to get some of these points down in print). I thought that appropriating the meme in this way would be seen as an obvious act of ironic humor—KEKM8’s lead image even has June Cleaver from the 1950’s show Leave It To Beaver wearing a burqa, with Beaver Cleaver wearing a kufi. Personally, I laughed out loud the first time I saw it. And I figured all of this put together would make the meme look about as silly as I think it really is. So I wouldn’t have invented the meme myself; but once it’s already there, I figure: why not try to use it to promote the good?
I’d like to reiterate the point in the essay where I summarized the concerns of critics of the meme—which I am in fact personally most sympathetic to.*** My closing remark after summarizing these objections is an explicit recognition that I’m merely engaging in what another commenter here called “professional assholery:” “Nevertheless, the “white sharia” meme marches on. And it isn’t my job to determine which way the tides will pull, but to ride the waves of the ocean as they form.”
It was, however, a bit of “professional assholery” performed with the best of intentions: pointing out that there’s a reason religions like Islam are able to dominate (“hazing” principles combined with a near-constant implicit reinforcement of an us-vs-them dichotomy), and arguing that this is something we can learn from and benefit from ourselves by taking advantage of the underlying principles in ways that are less absurd and barbaric—while promoting the adoption of a specific ritual towards this end that I think would be of great benefit to our people for both the physical and cognitive health benefits (the most stRiki-Eiking finding here to me is that intermittent fasting and related practices are the only guaranteed way to expand an organism’s total lifespan – on average by a whopping additional 30%) as well as for the psycho-ritual benefits already discussed.
Finally, do note that at the same time that many on the Right will critique this essay for its appropriation of Islamic terminology, the Left would be all too happy to crush all of us entirely over the fact that it also discusses the domestic policies of Nazi Germany with a tone other than abject horror.
***
Thank you very much for your in-depth reply, Mr. Cassiel.
I actually have been practicing intermittent fasting for a quite a while myself. I started doing it intuitively/instinctively, without knowing about the science behind it, etc. Later when I came across tutorials/introductions of/to it on Youtube et al., I realized I had already been doing it. It is a relief to me and good to know, that our bodies are so “independently intelligent” and know what they need and require to stay healthy and alive; we just need to listen to and pay attention to them.
I very much appreciate everything you are doing, Mr. Cassiel, for the Alt Right movement and for our civilization and our people.
Not to unnecessarily use/appropriate more non-Western terminology/language, but for lack of a better term in our vocabulary, I personally consider you to be an “avatar,” Mr. Cassiel, and the Alt Right movement can count itself extremely lucky to have a high-caliber/quality human being/individual such as yourself ally with it.
Humbly yours in gratitude.
I plan to do everything in my power to stand up to that estimation of myself. Which includes never letting it get to my head, which could potentially cause stagnation!
“Which includes never letting it get to my head, which could potentially cause stagnation!”
This is the correct mindset to have, Mr. Cassiel. Great!
In my opinion, Benjamin Franklin was an “avatar” as well. There actually have been many, many “avatars” (divinely inspired/guided human beings) throughout history; some or most people alternatively simply call them geniuses or label them “gifted/special,” etc.
I guess “avatar” is a pretty loaded term, and I did not mean to put any unnecessary pressure on you in any way, my apologies if I (unintentionally) did so. You are correct, not all “avatars” manage to fulfill their earthly missions, due all kinds of different factors, lack of humility surely being a potent and common cause of failure. Having “avatar” potential/giftedness is no guarantee of success.
There is a great piece on Benjamin Franklin here on Counter-Currents, that might interest you and it also applies to this discussion, in my opinion:
Benjamin Franklin on Sex, Marriage, & Family
“Benjamin Franklin had a remarkable mind, perhaps the most powerful among the founding fathers. Reading his papers, and accounts of his life, quickly persuades one that his IQ was very high.
I checked some websites on the Internet, and found estimates ranging from 160 to 175. Unfortunately, none of the sites adequately established the basis for their famous-people IQ estimates, or otherwise cited sources or described the methodologies used to calculate their numbers.[…]
The family attended Old South Church in Boston, a Puritan (Congregationalist) church.” – https://counter-currents.com/2012/08/benjamin-franklin-on-sex-marriage-and-family/
Benjamin Franklin was also an avid astrologer (see quote and link below). I don’t know if you have looked into and studied astrology, Mr. Cassiel? But it might be a helpful tool for you to better understand and discover your (hidden) talents and gifts. I believe the Alt Right movement could also benefit from “consulting the heavens” for all sorts of things, e.g., to determine the most auspicious times when to hold conferences/meetings, release articles, publish books, etc.
“Courteous Reader: Astrology is one of the most ancient Sciences, had in high Esteem of old, by the Wise and Great. Formerly, no Prince would make War or Peace, nor any General fight a Battle, in short, no important Affair was taken without first consulting an Astrologer, who examined the Aspects and Configurations of the heavenly bodies, and mark’d the lucky hour. Now the noble Art (more Shame to the Age we live in!) is dwindled into contempt; the Great neglect us, Empires make Leagues, and Parliaments Laws, without advising with us; and scarce any other Use is made of our learned Labors, than to find the best time cutting Corns, or gelding Pigs, – this Mischief we owe in a great Measure to ourselves: The ignorant Herd of Mankind: had they not been encourag’d to it by some of us, would never have dared to deprecate our sacred Dictates; but Urania has been betray’d by her own Sons: those whom she had favored with the greatest skill in her divine art, the most eminent astronomers among the Moderns, the Newtons, Helleys, and Whistons have wantonly condem’d and abus’d her, contrary to the Light of their own Conscience.” – http://www.starsoverwashington.com/2015/07/benjamin-franklin-and-ancient-science.html
I hope my comments were not too far out-there and esoteric.
Again, thanks so much for all your contributions to the movement, Mr. Cassiel.
A really excellent article and follow up responses to comments, Mr Cassiel.
Your treatment of intermittent fasting is very enlightening – and I appreciate the links you’ve provided. I’m also in complete agreement with the idea of interest free banking.
With all that said, I have to agree with other comments here about the use of Islamic tradition as a vehicle to communicate or promote these ideas. There would seem to be a number of other, Western traditions that could be used to promote such concepts.
As you’ve identified, National Socialist Germany is one. Gottfried Feder wrote extensively about the corrosive effect of interest in the economy. More recently, non-Muslims Margrit Kennedy and Anthony Migchells have both developed these ideas further.
As a western alternative to Islamic banking, the Swedish JAK bank currently offers interest free (and not-for-profit, as opposed to Islamic profit driven) banking.
Healthy living has had any number of Western advocates. An interesting one – and one that’s had little treatment on the alt-right – is the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift (the other KKK). While explicitly rejecting nationalism and militarism, the Kibbo Kift embraced Western symbolism, promoted healthy, outdoors lifestyles and ultimately morphed into the social credit green shirt movement. While many on the alt-right will struggle with the Kift’s pacifism and apparent globalism, in the context of 1920 these can be seen as an understandable reactions to the horrors and fratricidal waste of WW1.
So, while there may not be a ready made western theology which completely captures all the cultural norms we favour, it’s clear that Islam doesn’t serve that purpose either. Personally I think we can look to our own heritage to find all the inspiration we need to build healthy, productive lifestyles.
Thanks again for a great article.
I actually fasted for 8 days, with drinking only high quality green tea. I lost 9 kilos during that time and never regained them afterwards! You can even train with weights during fasting, which will practically eliminate the risk of muscle loss. The first two or three days of a week-long fast are rather hard…but afterwards, you will start feeling quite well! I cannot recommend enough practicing moderate Weight Lifting: it really changed my life, improving enormously both my physical and psychological health.
Awesome!
And yes, this is an important point that I know Brad Pilon of Eat Stop Eat emphasizes a lot: training a muscle group by lifting your 5-rep max (the heaviest weight you can only lift about five times per set) before and even during a fast will drastically reduce catabolism from that specific muscle group during the fast. Using the muscles biochemically signals to the body, “hey, these are important; we need to keep these!”
I actually agree: see my comment above.
I didn’t take it from Anglin. If he did originate it, I wasn’t even aware, because I’ve never read TDS. This was an attempt to discuss serious matters; as I said in the comment just referenced:
“Nevertheless, the “white sharia” meme marches on. And it isn’t my job to determine which way the tides will pull, but to ride the waves of the ocean as they form.” I wouldn’t have invented the meme myself; but once it’s already there, I figure: why not try to use it to promote the good?”
If you paid attention to the content of the post, I had very good reasons to mention Ramadan: because I wanted to discuss the cultural survival of religions with strict rules for behavior, and because I wanted to use them as a case study in the health benefits even of fasting with arbitrary and illogical rules for how the fasting is to be conducted thrown in. I’ve indicated no traits that would suggest I plan to make white sharia a running gag beyond a single article. So why not move forward with me and take in the actual topic of the post?
Am I? Do you have any solid evidence that this one article is going to create “an over-arching meta-sociological narrative” all by itself? If so, I had no idea that my writing was that powerful, and I suppose I owe thanks to you for alerting me to that so I can take care not to make any attempts at humor again in the future. Most of the reactions everywhere the article has been shared on Facebook have been laugh reacts – as was my attention. Most people who saw the employment of the meme in this article got the humor. That doesn’t look like some devious “meta-sociological narrative” taking hold. In fact, the only people who’ve been critical of the article are people who’ve been tone-deaf to the attempted humor and taken it seriously. I agreed with you about the meme as a whole because I agree when it comes to unironic use of it. This wasn’t an unironic use. It was ironic humor, and almost everyone else reading it understood that, which makes your fears of narratives taking hold all because I wrote a single article look very unfounded.
I never said you didn’t read article. But you are beating a dead horse at a dead end. The title of the article isn’t going to change. I’ve already expressed that I basially agree with you – on everything except your lack of appreciation for the fact that the memeing here was humorous. We’re on the same side. If you didn’t know it before, I’ve stated directly here in the comments that I have no plans to refer to the white sharia meme unironically in the future. I wasn’t accusing you of not having read the article, I was merely inviting you to discuss its substance. Because the stylistic presentation is what it is, and I already agree with you about everything else – so why keep beating a dead horse just to register your disapproval? It’s already been registered.
No joke is ever going to make 100% of an audience laugh. But enough people did get this one for me to feel confident marking it down as an overall success. You don’t think it was funny? Okay. Your feedback is once again noted, and now I’d like to move on to more productive conversations, because one way or another this one isn’t going to change anything. It won’t change this article, because this article is already written. And it won’t change my future plans to invoke this meme, because I have none.
I haven’t told you to shut up, and I hope this comment will clarify that if I’ve made you feel that way. I haven’t intended to sound like I’m complaining that you disliked the presentation; I simply wanted to clarify my own points of agreement and disagreement for the sake of continuing mutual discourse. I told you I had no future intentions of carrying on the “white sharia” meme because I genuinely wanted you (and others who perhaps felt the same way about it here) to know. For what it’s worth, I have control over what comments do or don’t show up in my articles, and I’ve been voluntarily accepting yours because I wanted to, whereas if I wanted to be petty and silence fair criticism I could have just left them off in the void. But I’m taking the responsibility of being someone who is becoming invested in being part of this thing seriously, and I’m not going to leave someone out in the cold if I can help it just because they disagree with this or that minor point. With all of that said, the only point here on which I have an actual complaint is the point where I suggested we move on to discussing the substance of the article. Your objection having been registered, and there being nothing else left to gain from continuing to reiterate it, I think that was fair of me to request, and I don’t think it deserved a negative response.
“It also gives our enemies fresh ammunition to use.”
Hmm…. Does it really, though? I find it hard to think that many people – whether inside or out – will ever really take the meme too seriously. I imagine the Daily Stormer will continue to be taken as – or as little – seriously as it is at present, whatever particular memes they might adopt or avoid at a given time.
I don’t think the meme is particularly good for us, but as far as whether or not it’s harmful, I think there’s a valid point at least to the “catch-22” argument I made in the article: either prong of explaining what it is that makes it offensive (the “white” or the “sharia?”) has the potential to cause blowback on the liberal/leftist, so unless we act absurd with our use of the meme (and in my view this was its biggest potential problem: the people pushing it acting in ways that would alienate outsiders), I don’t think there’s much for them to latch on to.
A friend who is outside of the loop on this stuff read this and said “the memes go over my head, but you explained it well enough that I didn’t need my own background in it”. That’s really my only evidence so far of someone ‘uninitiated’ getting an impression based on this article.
So what, specifically, is the fear? I just want to put my finger on it. Within the alt-right, a top concern is that it seems inauthentic to adopt aspects of foreign cultures when there are aspects of our own that could be as readily employed. But I don’t think this scares off the average normie – I’d dare suggest it may even help reach the liberal-leaning normie, who could come to see that respect for foreign cultures’ best elements and an ethnonationalist don’t have to stand in conflict with one another. Coming from a leftist background myself, I aim to make whatever reachable subset there may be of this audience my target niche. And I plan to write more in the future about how a healthy people with a guarantee against the ills of demographic displacement has room to authentically respect foreign cultures (and for an upcoming anthology which may become my first official publication.
http://vocaroo.com/i/s1QKhxWUEX8m
The Manchester Man of the Knights Of The Round Britcast takes an impromtpu detour from Xianity and conjectures on the common origins of Islam, Judaism, Xianity, and the bad effects of the last for Whites.
1m 38s, 385kb
An informing read is ‘Why the Jews Love Christianity’ by Ralph Perrier, aka Revilo P. Oliver.
Interesting article!
What I think is important to is to cut away some of the intake of animal protein. I recently saw a British documentary on the tv and scientist had been researching why African-Americans had so cancer at such a higher rate than their brothers in Africa. The Africans ate little meat but more vegetables, nuts and grains and no processed food. African-Americans ate plenty of processed food, much animal proteins and little of nuts, vegetables and grains. Might be something to think about.
The link to the Swede Martin Berkhan does not work in the article.
http://www.leangains.com/
White sharia is a good exoteric normie meme. The problem with older WNs is that they just don’t understand irony or its utility.
If a meme needs this much explanation, it is a bad meme.
“this much explanation”
Are you referring to my comment or the article? White Ramadan is definitely not a good meme.
Nice boomer post. So, which failed WN 1.0 organization did you belong to? Or were you an unaffiliated “lone wolf”?
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