We are almost halfway toward our goal to fund 2024. To jump start our fundraiser, a small team of generous donors are matching your gifts dollar-for-dollar up to $10,843. Help us make it there! Those who fight for the Golden Age live in it today. Thank you for your support.
Please email [email protected] for information about making your gift tax deductible, or giving through foreign bank transfers.
Please allow me to introduce myself
I’m a man of wealth and taste[1]
He liked looking forward to his pleasures, to stolen exeats between the working hours. He enjoyed day-dreaming about them, down to the smallest detail.[2]
While reading Nicholas Jeelvy’s latest installment on the Groyper Wars, a commenter, one Shane, suggested viewing an “evisceration” of Richard Spencer by Nick Fuentes, which was “hilarious.” Intrigued, I clicked on the link, and found myself plummeting down the latest Dissident Right rabbit hole.
I’ve had some good burgers in my time. Uh, I . . . I love a good swiss, melted swiss cheese and mush– roasted mushrooms[3] and caramelized onions on a burger. Uh, that is hot stuff. You can get that at, at a number of different places.
I was immediately captivated by this fourteen-second clip; as were, I soon discovered, thousands of others, to count only those who chose to post some comment or meme. It had quickly become the most analyzed and commented-upon clip, per frame, since the Zapruder film.
Commenter Shane helpfully added later that “the [Daily] Stormer has create[d] a sea of memes out of it,” from the main banner to this gem. Later Anglin himself posted a collection of memes, under the title “Revolt Against the Modern Burger.”
What is the fascination with this clip? What makes it meme-worthy?
To start with, although it’s a video clip, the visuals are not that interesting. Although the comments under the YouTube videos are necessarily limited to text, even the visual memes simply juxtapose the text of Spencer’s remarks to some vaguely related image. Even the commenters often do nothing but reiterate Spencer’s remarks verbatim, as if it were a motto or pledge by which they were swearing or demonstrating allegiance to something, or a really good joke that could bear repeating over and over and just gets funnier every time.
What is it about this simple, really rather banal statement? Well, it’s the banality itself. I found myself asking, why is this man saying this? Why is he bothering to say this? I mean, in a world of five-hour livestreams, there’s a lot of dead air to fill, but still . . .
I found myself recalling my days in graduate school, studying Kierkegaard; specifically, his Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846),[4] and the story he tells to illustrate how objective truth can be akin to madness. As Elliot Kaufman tells it:
A young man escapes from a mental asylum. He quickly realizes that to evade detection, he needs to convince the mentally sound that he is one of them. He reasons that if he sticks to the objective truth, no one will doubt his sanity. Consequently, every step he takes and to every person he meets, the patient repeats, “The Earth is round. The Earth is round. The Earth is round.” He is returned to the asylum immediately.
Kaufman leaves out the detail that the lunatic places a ball in the back pocket of his frock coat, and as he walks along, the ball hits him on the ass, each time prompting his statement. But I could see no such ball hitting Spencer’s ass. The answer must lie elsewhere.
My next thought was American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman, but Bateman’s deadpan recitations of brand names are meant to shore up the vacuum of his personality with high-end brand names and status symbols; he’d never be describing a hamburger you can get “at a number of different places.”
In the darkly satirical world of Bret Easton Ellis’ cult novel American Psycho, dining out is a shared obsession among Patrick Bateman and his Wall Street cronies, who brag about reservations at Dorsia and trade stories about the sea urchin at Le Bernardin. For these moneyed, name-dropping yuppies, food is status – it’s not so much what you’re eating, but where and with whom. In fact, they’re usually too drunk or knocked out on Xanax to actually enjoy a meal; instead, they poke at grotesque creations – pasta with fennel and banana, peanut butter soup with smoked duck and mashed squash – while reciting lines cribbed from Gourmet and New York magazine (that peanut butter soup is a “playful but mysterious little dish,” Bateman famously tells his date).[5]
Mud soup and charcoal arugula, yes. Mushroom burger with swiss, no.
But then it hit me: the Fleming Effect! It was Kingsley Amis who coined the phrase, describing it in The James Bond Dossier[6]as “the imaginative use of information, whereby the pervading fantastic nature of Bond’s world . . . [is] bolted down to some sort of reality, or at least counter-balanced.” When applied to guns or hydrofoils, the reader feels assured that he is in the hands of an expert; but when applied to more mundane matters, such as food and drink, it becomes controversial: many readers feel Bond comes off as a snob or know-it-all.
The Fleming Effect comes a cropper especially when dealing with America. Fleming supposedly had contempt for America in general, but was still fascinated by its exotic details. Unfortunately, he’s often out-of-date; his gangsters talk like they’re in ‘30s Warner Bros. films, while his “negroes” speak in a Steppin’ Fetchit dialect so lovingly transcribed as to be unreadable.
But it’s here where Spencer comes up, as Fleming often finds the most mundane details of life in these United States as worthy of comment as a fine English fowling piece.[7]
For example, in “007 in New York” (later reprinted as “James Bond in New York”), an exceptionally minor story from 1963, Bond looks forward with some relish to enjoying dinner at the Plaza (today’s Trump Plaza, of course), where on a previous visit he had already taught the chef how to make . . . scrambled eggs.
This is so important that Fleming gives us a footnote, detailing the exact method, which I shall also provide you here and now:
Recipe for Scrambled Eggs “James Bond” from “007 in New York”
12 fresh eggs
Salt and pepper
5-6 oz. of fresh butter
Break the eggs into a bowl. Beat thoroughly with a fork and season well. In a small copper (or heavy bottomed saucepan) melt four oz. of the butter. When melted, pour in the eggs and cook over a very low heat, whisking continuously with a small egg whisk.
While the eggs are slightly more moist than you would wish for eating, remove the pan from heat, add rest of butter and continue whisking for half a minute, adding the while finely chopped chives or fines herbes. Serve on hot buttered toast in individual copper dishes (for appearance only) with pink champagne (Taittinger) and low music.
I would have loved to watch the face of the head chef of the Plaza as Bond detailed this recipe.[8]
And, to return to the return of Richard Spencer, I can certainly see his face, and hear his voice, delivering this bulletin. And indeed, Fleming did not neglect the humble burger, although unlike Spencer he seems to have been maddeningly vague on the details:
In the 1950s, however, the hamburger was still sufficiently exotic and regional, at least to visitors to the USA, for Ian Fleming to include it in James Bond’s quintessentially American meal, along with soft shell crabs and ice-cream with butterscotch sauce, at New York’s St Regis Hotel in Live and Let Die (1954). In the text, Bond consumes what are described as ‘flat beef Hamburgers’. He clearly has more than one, but how many (two? three?) is uncertain. And are Bond’s burgers encased in buns? Again, we don’t know, although I suspect that the burgers are presented without the usual trimmings. The recipe here is adapted from Mary McBride’s Harvest of American Cooking, published in 1957, just a few years after the publication of Live and Let Die. It’s possible that Bond’s burger or, rather, the burgers that Fleming is likely to have eaten during his visits to the country, tasted something like this.[9]
Spencer, in short, seems to be unconsciously channeling Fleming’s Bond at his most pretentious and, simultaneously, most banal; becoming in the process as eminently meme-worthy as Bond himself. In fact, I thought I would try my hand at a little Fleming/Spencer pastiche:
Bond scanned the menu. He liked these American “burger” places and had sternly vetoed Felix’s suggestion that they stop at Kentucky Fried Chicken (Bond refused to call it “KFC,” he hated the whole modern obsession with speed and abbreviation). “When I’m on the job, I only order one burger, but it must be very large, very good, and very hot.” Felix smiled and shook his head; he knew he was in for another epicurean lecture. “The cheese must be Swiss, or a very good Jarlsberg at least, and the mushrooms must be roasted, never sautéed – it bruises them. You can only get a good one at a number of different places.” “What to drink, James, Coke or Pepsi?” Bond fixed Leiter with a cold, implacable stare from his damnably blue eyes. “Do I look like someone who cares?” Felix shrugged, and Bond gathered up both of their large, plastic-coated and slightly greasy menus and folded them while mentally preparing how he would instruct the waitress.
Not bad, eh? Alas, there’s not much market today for Bond novel parodies.[10]
To return to Richard, however: The final, real genius of his little monologue is that it’s banal in not only content but form as well. What pushes it over the top – and still triggers a laugh from me – is the deflationary conclusion: You can get that in a lot of places. He sounds like the novel Bond when he’s actually describing some exclusive dish at some exotic locale: shark chowder at Puss-Fella’s shack off Bay Street in Nassau; but then it just thuds back to Earth with, “You can get that in a lot of places.”
It’s really quite brilliant, though accidental; the sort of thing “you just can’t make up.”[11] While I guess it’s not worth wading through any more five-hour podcasts to find more such jewels, we have this one!
And, lucky for Spencer, we do. You may have noticed that Spencer has been a bit out of the news lately, and mentions of him that do occur tend to be a bit, um, negative. In public life, he can walk the streets without fear of being sucker-punched, and in his favorite restaurants, instead of the heartening “We don’t serve Nazis like you,” it’s “Do you want fries with that?”
While his political calculations may have come to naught, sheer luck – O, Fortuna! – may have granted him a reprieve. Finally, Spencer is famous for something other than “Hail Trump!” His off-the-cuff burger review is the “Hitler rants” of the Dissident Right.
They say there are no second acts in American life, but Richard Spencer – the Fitzgerald, if not the Gatsby, of the Alt Right – has done it. While his deliberate, cunning plans made him a hated figure across the political spectrum, this accidental moment of surreal banality may have transformed him into the man we love to hate.[12]
Notes
[1] “Sympathy for the Devil” by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards; performed by The Rolling Stones, Decca single, 1969.
[2] Ian Fleming, “James Bond in New York” (1963; reprinted in Octopussy and The Living Daylights [Las Vegas: Thomas & Mercer, 2012]), p. 93.
[3] Who the hell says “roasted mushrooms”? Does he mean sautéed? Are the mushrooms stuck along a stick and flamebroiled, like shish kebab? Or pan-roasted in the oven?
[4] Want to share the fun? Read along with Prof. Ralph Henry Johnson’s textbook, The Concept of Existence in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1972). There are a number of Scandinavian jokes along the lines of “What happened to the escaped Danish lunatic? He’s now the Mayor of Oslo,” with various substitutions.
[8] Fleming was apparently obsessed with scrambled eggs; only three Bond novels do not feature someone, usually Bond, eating them. “Scrambled Eggs James Bond” helpfully provides a rundown. “In How To Write A Thriller, Fleming mentions that so frequent was Bond’s consumption of scrambled eggs in an early draft of Live And Let Die that a proof-reader pointed out to him the security risked [sic] this posed to Bond, writing that whoever was following him need only walk into a restaurant and ask, ‘Was there a man here eating scrambled eggs?’
“Although Fleming reduced the number of times the dish is mentioned in his second book, it is still a dish James Bond enjoys frequently. The first morning after arriving in New York in Live And Let Die, Bond calls room service after he wakes to order scrambled eggs, bacon, orange juice and coffee.
“And later, on the train to Florida, he and Solitaire dine on scrambled eggs and bacon with sausages (along with salad and Camembert and dry martinis). Then, after discreetly slipping off the train in the early hours in order to escape the ever-watchful gaze of Mr Big, they order the dish again. At a Jacksonville diner Bond orders them both scrambled eggs, orange juice and coffee for breakfast.
“Finally, after arriving in Jamaica Bond eats scrambled eggs and bacon for breakfast with Blue Mountain coffee along with the tropical additions of paw-paw, red bananas, purple star-apples, tangerines and guava jelly.”
[9] Piz Gloria, site of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, is not one of many places you can get the burger à la Spencer or Bond; despite the “007” branding (literally), I suspect this is more like the Blofeld Burger.
[10] Such as 1962’s Alligator, by the same chaps at the Harvard Lampoon who later gave us Bored of the Rings; Amis rather liked it (op. cit., p. 64).
[12] Well, actually the subtrope of “Laughably Evil,” as defined by John Cleese: “The strange thing about comedy is that if an awful character makes people laugh, people feel affectionate towards him. It’s insane because if they had to sit next to him for five minutes at a dinner, they would absolutely not be able to cope with him. They would loathe him. But because he makes them laugh, they think, deep down, he’s alright.”
Yes, interesting that Bond for all his food and drink talk never cooks anything (he does mix his own drinks now and then). I suppose it’s some kinda class thing — Bond is always instructing cooks (like the one at the Plaza above) or bartenders (Casino Royale); the first martini he’s served in the film series, in Dr. No, the room service guy says “As you instructed”. I note that I included that in my pastiche as well.
There’s also a macho thing; at some point “real men” weren’t supposed to know how to cook. Always seemed odd to me, as that would seem to be an essential survival skill for the he-man. In practice, one was supposed to have one or two simple dishes ready to prepare if the servants were off, or you had a bird over — scrambled eggs, I suppose. When they moved out to the suburbs and had BBQ grills or pits outside, men were allowed to charbroil steaks as a hobby.
Harry Palmer was in such ways a “new man” of the 60s. I always liked how Ipress File opens with Harry making coffee with his French press — it must have seemed like a Bond gadget to audiences back then.
This reads like a classical 4chan copypasta. The funny thing about this quote is that he’s not really recommending a burger. If he did that, he would have told us where to get it.
1) Was this even necessary or worth it? 2) Regarding Footnote 3, he probably didn’t mean this, but if you pull mushrooms out of the pan after a quick saute, that’s one thing. Leave them in considerably longer until they deepen to a much richer, more deeply browned state: that’s a form of roasting. Somewhat like sweating vs caramelizing. (Or is this too along the lines of Bond and Spencerian pretentiousness?)
(Or is this too along the lines of Bond and Spencerian pretentiousness?)
Possibly it (sweating VS caramelizing) is the concern of someone who has never had to worry about getting enough to eat – mushrooms or anything else. Try raising or growing food yourselves (the substantial components, not a few radishes) from scratch – while having a whole lot of other responsibilities in your life.
When you finally dig in, after a period of serious hunger, you will probably not care all that much about cooking methods. Everything on your plate will taste wonderful.
It’s funny. If any aristocrat had said this a couple of hundred years ago I would have laughed but with Spencer’s spotty face I can’t bring myself to say anything but a depressed sigh. Is this the genes of a WASP elite? Lord save us.
It was a very pretentious attempt at having a common touch. But it came across as a scripted product endorsement and ended with a fizzle when he forgot the script. It is so cringe inducing because it has the opposite of its intended effect–Richard Spencer probably now seems more out of touch than he really is. Only someone with great vanity, little self-awareness, and even less understanding of modern social media could have blundered into a such a humiliating episode.
I also lack that kind of awareness sometimes, which is why I am glad I am not in Richard Spencer’s shoes. Behaving appropriately when on camera is not as easy as it seems.
To be fair he didn’t really commit a major gaffe here. It’s just funny and memeable at this time because I think because we all have the recent episode about ruling over octoroons in our minds and it’s good juxtaposition. Memes arise in relation to things that are latent in the subconscious.
It appears to have been flushed down the Internet memory hole, but a few years back there was a quite funny meme consisting of the below-linked photograph with thought bubbles above each person as follows:
Brimelow thought bubble: image of Ronald Reagan
Derbyshire thought bubble: image of a young Asian woman
Taylor thought bubble: ‘they look Hwhite to me’
Sam Dickson thought bubble: image of a frosted donut
Richard Spencer thought bubble: image picturing himself as Bond in tuxedo with gun
Spencer might not be a great leader, but he is certainly a brave man that has risked his money and personal safety for Our People. He deserves some recognition for that.
I do not know the writer of this piece, but I get the feeling he has a personal grudge against Spencer.
Maybe the writer is a Groyper, which is ironic considering Greg Johnson is one of the few people in the movement that uses the term “White Nationalist”. Isn’t that bad optics?
As long as self-appointed movement leaders don’t run at elections, there is no objective method by which we can judge their performance. And if we don’t criticize them, the playing field will be taken over by lunatics and worse.
I think the key to the mesmerising effect of this video is Spencer’s narcissim. He honestly believes that even the most mundane events of his life are of epic proportions and great importance.
Spencer’s old Alternative Right site was one of the things that ‘red pilled’ me. I forget how I stumbled across it, I think some time around 2011 or 2012. I enjoyed the podcasts he did with Andy Nowicki and Colin Liddell.
I get the impression that if Spencer had stuck to doing podcasts and finding good writers to promote, most people on our side would continue to respect him. But somewhere along the way he became convinced that he was going to be the movement’s Fuhrer. It’s been sad seeing the course of his career. But I’ve never met the man in person, so I didn’t have any idea what he was like behind closed doors until his Octoroon rant.
Totally agree.
I used to enjoy those old podcasts and of course the old alternative right site.
0
0
Comments are closed.
If you have Paywall access,
simply login first to see your comment auto-approved.
Note on comments privacy & moderation
Your email is never published nor shared.
Comments are moderated. If you don't see your comment, please be patient. If approved, it will appear here soon. Do not post your comment a second time.
20 comments
Contrast Bond with ‘Arry Palmer, as played by Michael Caine, and his culinary talents: http://cookwithnoname.com/index.php/2015/06/03/why-the-cook-with-no-name/
Yes, interesting that Bond for all his food and drink talk never cooks anything (he does mix his own drinks now and then). I suppose it’s some kinda class thing — Bond is always instructing cooks (like the one at the Plaza above) or bartenders (Casino Royale); the first martini he’s served in the film series, in Dr. No, the room service guy says “As you instructed”. I note that I included that in my pastiche as well.
There’s also a macho thing; at some point “real men” weren’t supposed to know how to cook. Always seemed odd to me, as that would seem to be an essential survival skill for the he-man. In practice, one was supposed to have one or two simple dishes ready to prepare if the servants were off, or you had a bird over — scrambled eggs, I suppose. When they moved out to the suburbs and had BBQ grills or pits outside, men were allowed to charbroil steaks as a hobby.
Harry Palmer was in such ways a “new man” of the 60s. I always liked how Ipress File opens with Harry making coffee with his French press — it must have seemed like a Bond gadget to audiences back then.
I always
This reads like a classical 4chan copypasta. The funny thing about this quote is that he’s not really recommending a burger. If he did that, he would have told us where to get it.
“Shit was so cash”
Poor Richard….
1) Was this even necessary or worth it? 2) Regarding Footnote 3, he probably didn’t mean this, but if you pull mushrooms out of the pan after a quick saute, that’s one thing. Leave them in considerably longer until they deepen to a much richer, more deeply browned state: that’s a form of roasting. Somewhat like sweating vs caramelizing. (Or is this too along the lines of Bond and Spencerian pretentiousness?)
(Or is this too along the lines of Bond and Spencerian pretentiousness?)
Possibly it (sweating VS caramelizing) is the concern of someone who has never had to worry about getting enough to eat – mushrooms or anything else. Try raising or growing food yourselves (the substantial components, not a few radishes) from scratch – while having a whole lot of other responsibilities in your life.
When you finally dig in, after a period of serious hunger, you will probably not care all that much about cooking methods. Everything on your plate will taste wonderful.
It’s funny. If any aristocrat had said this a couple of hundred years ago I would have laughed but with Spencer’s spotty face I can’t bring myself to say anything but a depressed sigh. Is this the genes of a WASP elite? Lord save us.
It was a very pretentious attempt at having a common touch. But it came across as a scripted product endorsement and ended with a fizzle when he forgot the script. It is so cringe inducing because it has the opposite of its intended effect–Richard Spencer probably now seems more out of touch than he really is. Only someone with great vanity, little self-awareness, and even less understanding of modern social media could have blundered into a such a humiliating episode.
I also lack that kind of awareness sometimes, which is why I am glad I am not in Richard Spencer’s shoes. Behaving appropriately when on camera is not as easy as it seems.
To be fair he didn’t really commit a major gaffe here. It’s just funny and memeable at this time because I think because we all have the recent episode about ruling over octoroons in our minds and it’s good juxtaposition. Memes arise in relation to things that are latent in the subconscious.
Missed opportunity: Our Heroes endeavor to obtain a chicken sandwich at a Popeye’s. But that’s more of a Peckinpah scene.
It appears to have been flushed down the Internet memory hole, but a few years back there was a quite funny meme consisting of the below-linked photograph with thought bubbles above each person as follows:
Brimelow thought bubble: image of Ronald Reagan
Derbyshire thought bubble: image of a young Asian woman
Taylor thought bubble: ‘they look Hwhite to me’
Sam Dickson thought bubble: image of a frosted donut
Richard Spencer thought bubble: image picturing himself as Bond in tuxedo with gun
https://kek.gg/u/35vWK
I had bad run-ins with Spencer online going back to the 00s. Never liked the guy.
That said, he has fought for the Right, and paid a price for being truthful about White dispossession and oppression.
Can we have a new rule a la Reagan: “Never criticize a fellow racial nationalist”? Or, “Direct all fire to the Left”?
I’ll have a Faustian burger with a side of pan-European fried potatoes, please.
Spencer might not be a great leader, but he is certainly a brave man that has risked his money and personal safety for Our People. He deserves some recognition for that.
I do not know the writer of this piece, but I get the feeling he has a personal grudge against Spencer.
Maybe the writer is a Groyper, which is ironic considering Greg Johnson is one of the few people in the movement that uses the term “White Nationalist”. Isn’t that bad optics?
I 100 percent agree. Criticising anyone to the right of Hillary Clinton is a stupid move on our part.
As long as self-appointed movement leaders don’t run at elections, there is no objective method by which we can judge their performance. And if we don’t criticize them, the playing field will be taken over by lunatics and worse.
Thank you. I’m glad to hear people say this. Lets not make Spencer the goat.
I think the key to the mesmerising effect of this video is Spencer’s narcissim. He honestly believes that even the most mundane events of his life are of epic proportions and great importance.
Spencer’s old Alternative Right site was one of the things that ‘red pilled’ me. I forget how I stumbled across it, I think some time around 2011 or 2012. I enjoyed the podcasts he did with Andy Nowicki and Colin Liddell.
I get the impression that if Spencer had stuck to doing podcasts and finding good writers to promote, most people on our side would continue to respect him. But somewhere along the way he became convinced that he was going to be the movement’s Fuhrer. It’s been sad seeing the course of his career. But I’ve never met the man in person, so I didn’t have any idea what he was like behind closed doors until his Octoroon rant.
Totally agree.
I used to enjoy those old podcasts and of course the old alternative right site.
Comments are closed.
If you have Paywall access,
simply login first to see your comment auto-approved.
Note on comments privacy & moderation
Your email is never published nor shared.
Comments are moderated. If you don't see your comment, please be patient. If approved, it will appear here soon. Do not post your comment a second time.
Paywall Access
Lost your password?Edit your comment