Counter-Currents
Thou Shalt Not Lie (Except When It Supports the Approved Narrative):
A “High Cuck” Attack on Sam Francis
Quintilian
Samuel Francis
938 words
Judaism has its dual morality; Islam has its Taqqiya. Christianity, on the other hand, is distinguished by the belief that Christ is truth, and that knowing the truth is necessary for salvation. Christians, therefore, are theologically enjoined to seek the truth, and it is not difficult to see that this preoccupation with the pursuit of truth is one of the bases for the high-trust society that used to permeate what was formally called Christendom. Therefore, it is with a certain degree of sadness (but unfortunately no surprise) to witness the type of dissembling, deceit, and disingenuousness exhibited in the nominally Christian magazine First Things in its recent attack against Sam Francis, one of the foremost theorists of race realism.
In an article entitled “The Outsider” in the October issue of First Things, author Matthew Rose, a senior fellow at the Berkeley Institute, pursues the unusual epideictic rhetorical style in which he agrees with almost all of Francis’ points but disagrees with his conclusions. This style of argumentation is extremely deceptive because it concentrates overwhelmingly on the opponent’s positives and allows the writer to engage in ad hominem attacks while surrounding himself in a veil of objectivity. By a curious coincidence, just before beginning to write this article I was listening to a Jim Goad podcast in which he remarked that many of his “fans” engage in the same style of rhetoric: “Oh, Mr. Goad, you’re one of my favorite writers, but, of course, I disagree with everything you say and you are a racist, sexist, Nazi, homophobe, fill-in-the-blank, etc., etc.”
One senses in Rose’s article a certain unease, a sense that Francis is right but that Rose is just unable to bear the logical consequences of the truth that Francis has revealed. It is interesting that in this very lengthy article, Rose never systematically refutes Francis. All he does is say that Francis is wrong. Rose never offers any proof beyond risible assertions that racial differences in IQ are “unproven” or that scientific explanations of race are of “dubious intellectual merit.” It’s one thing to say that someone else is wrong; it’s an entirely different thing to provide evidence to support a claim of such.
Rose’s dishonesty extends even to his description of Francis’ book Leviathan and Its Enemies. While acknowledging that it is Francis’ magnum opus, Rose describes it as “repetitive, disorganized, and eight hundred punishing pages.” Of course, what Rose fails to mention is that the reason it was not published during its author’s lifetime was due to the fact that it was unfinished. Again, Rose only praises in order to provide cover for a subjective and non-factual rebuttal.
I’ve noticed a similar rhetorical approach in many of the organs of the controlled opposition, such as National Review, Chronicles, Reason, and The American Conservative. It is a combination of George Will prissiness (that cannot abide unclubable conservatism, let alone the Dissident Right); Oxford Union debate-style fatuousness (in which the phrase “My opponent is speaking like a Cambridge man” is considered to be a “zinger”); Rick Warren-style pseudo-Christian, New Age blather; and neocon/neoliberal/New Left aversion to anything having to do with biology or statistics. Indeed, when Rose is forced to admit that Francis has statistical evidence on his side, he tries to deflect against this by saying that Francis’ message is “buried under a mountain of policy data.”
I would like to designate the rhetorical style of the controlled opposition (or Conservative Inc.) as High Cuck (or, if you prefer, cucque haute or hoch Kuck). It is a rhetoric of failure, of exhaustion, of the inability to refute with facts. It is much more than just damning with faint praise; it is an acknowledgement that one’s opponent is correct but that one has neither the intellectual honesty nor the intestinal fortitude to make this acknowledgement public.
High Cuck is a rhetoric of deception and deflection. “Yes, Sam Francis is right, but Leviathan and Its Enemies is really long. Forget about it; just watch Sean Hannity.” High Cuck wants to appear highbrow, but it makes its appeal to the lowest common denominator. “Sure, Sam Francis can back all of his assertions with statistics, but statistics are based on math, and math is really hard. Besides, the only important statistic is that black unemployment is the lowest it has ever been. Put on your MAGA hat and cheer for the God Emperor because he’s going to outlaw illegal immigration, increase legal immigration, and all of those natural conservatives from Mexico, Honduras, and El Salvador will vote Republican for all eternity.”
It is not a coincidence that in the last two weeks there have been two journals of the controlled opposition which have published articles denouncing the Dissident Right. First, there was Paul Gottfried’s lamentable article in Chronicles, and this week we have the attack on Sam Francis in First Things. The First Things article is quite curious, because why should the Left and its controlled opposition bring attention to a political theorist and historian who has been dead for almost fifteen years, and who almost no one is aware of outside of Dissident Right circles? The answer is, quite simply, that our ideas are gaining traction and can no longer be ignored. In the coming months, I expect to see more and more articles written in the High Cuck style. It is going to be a wonderful sight as George Will takes to the vapors, and the editors of National Review and Reason find they must make repair continually to their Victorian fainting couches.
Know the truth (of Sam Francis), and the truth shall make you free.
8 comments
The First Things piece mixes some good background on Francis with some outright lies (like Sam attempted to defend slavery), some half-truths (Sam was anti Christian) and some head-scratchers (Sam started turning to race only after Buchanan and paleoconservatism failed to gain traction).
The column that got Francis fired from The Washington Times merely went after Ralph Reed for apologizing to blacks for the “sin” of slavery. Of course, Sam merely pointed out that slavery was universal and is not considered a sin in Christianity. The bible is rife with slavery.
Sam was not a believer but realized Christianity was a part of the West and that most of our people are or were believers. He certainly went after modern Christianity of the Ralph Reed/Rick Warren stripe.
Sam was writing race realist columns at least since the late 1980s in Chronicles and then in his syndicated columns. I first became aware of him in 1992 when he favorably reviewed Paved With Good Intentions.
What is going on with Chronicles anyway? Chilton Williamson just left a month or so ago along with some other longtime writers. Rockford Institute merged with some other group. Been reading it since early 90s and don’t understand why it has changed.
I agree with the author that White Nationalism (or at least anti-Anti-White-ism) is gaining traction (entirely sub rosa, of course) and this is a causal factor in these recent attacks on ‘white nationalism’. The basic approach is to try to prevent the natural progression from anti-Anti-White-ism into White Nationalism.
It means WN has moved beyond the ‘ignore’ stage and into the ‘ridicule’ stage, which is progress.
The reason Cuckservative Inc wants to attack Sam Francis is because he’s dead and cannot defend himself (as if they would actually allow that).
On the other hand, all press is ‘good press’ and there may be some readers of First Things etc who never heard of Sam Francis and may become curious. Which is a good thing.
High Cuck is a great gloss – will use. Sobran & Auster are likely candidates for the posthumous firing squad. The fact that the tea-pinky Right is afraid to take shots at living pundits who can fire back is a fact we can use to red-pill more of their target audience. These guys are slipping – inevitable given the decline of their human capital.
“you are a racist, sexist, Nazi, homophobe”
They say that like those are bad things!
1. I’m not any more racist than the National Association for the Advancement of COLORED People. I’m not any more racist than the National Organization of LA RAZA (or whatever it’s calling itself this week.). And I’m not any more racist than the American JEWISH Congress!
2. I’m not any more of a Nazi than AntiFa are Communists!
3. And finally I’m not any more homophobic that the GAY and LESBIAN Alliance Against “Defamation”!
I’m also not Jim Goad. But I’ve been a fan of his since about 1997. When I bought his book Redneck Manifesto!
Note to self: Invest in pearls. Expect a rising demand, as cucks, like Will, Romney, Rich Lowry, David French and the various Bushes, need something to clutch in the coming years.
In all fairness, it should be noted that the Fleming-era Chronicles continued to publish a monthly column by Sam Francis when no other periodical would go near his work. Indeed, reading Francis’ work in that magazine played a major role in red-pilling me.
I’m an FT subscriber, and read the article several weeks ago, when the magazine arrived. I, too, was immediately shocked at its “schizophrenia”: Rose does an excellent job summarizing Francis, whom I was reading as far back as the late 80s, but a horrible one critiquing him. And I don’t say that simply as a huge Francis fan. Rose does not engage with Francis’s ideas at all, even after just having presented them. He acts as though they’re self-evidently absurd, when most are either undeniable, or at least sufficiently well argued, but not necessarily dispositively so, to merit considerable further investigation (I’m thinking about what I consider to be Francis’s over-reliance on Burnham’s “managerial revolution” thesis to explain the decline of the Old Right).
I think Rose is worried about the potential of the White Dissident Right to rise in influence among less knowledgeable conservatives. About a year and a half ago, he wrote a piece for FT critiquing the alt-right, which included a slight discussion of CC (which I think he probably reads regularly). The piece was again pretty good as exposition, but then drew predictably unthreatening conclusions. I think Rose wants to burnish his rep as a “go-to” guy for criticism of the White Right from an alleged “traditionalist conservative” perspective.
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