A (probably correct) criticism of the Khazar theory. What a pity it´s written by an anti-Semite who wants to blame the *real* Jews for all of the world´s ills, but there you go. Of course, I´m so edgy that I linked to Keith Woods content several times before...
Far left candidate George Galloway, representing an obscure group called the Workers Party, recently won an upset victory in a UK by-election by appealing to the Muslim voters on a pro-Gaza platform. But it seems he did more than that...
How "leftist" is George Galloway really?
Writing off George Galloway ignores his dangerous appeal to both far left and right
George Galloway and the inevitable rise of identity politics
Keith Woods (the Irish Traditionalist) argues that nationalism (or something like it) is as old as the human species. Here, he takes on the claim that the Romans were multi-cultural and/or unusually prone to cultural syncretism.
In reality, Woods argues, ethnic identity based on shared kinship ties and a common culture was the norm in the ancient world, and the Romans (although perhaps somewhat peculiar) were really no different on a deeper level.
He also takes on the claim that ethnonationalism is some kind of elite conspiracy, arguing that it´s really a mass phenomenon and not simply connected to your immidiate family or place of domicile. I have previously linked to another discussion about nationalism from the same content-creator.
And yes, I know that Woods is extremely controversial blah-blah, and I certainly don´t agree with many of his other takes, but I link to his Substack article since I find it to be of general interest.
The Ethnopolitics of the Roman Empire
I admit that this is seriously above my head, but it does sound interesting and...scary. The Platonist Aarvoll argues that AI could become sentient. Since we don´t know what sentience or consciousness even is, how can we be sure that a machine can´t instantiate it?
It also struck me that perhaps the idea that machines can "never" (ever ever, even in principle) become conscious is just another form of anthropocentrism and human hubris.
Even apart from the fact that maybe computerized pseudo-consciousness could be enough to kill us off, since most humans are freakin´ stupid anyway! How many people would be able to find the AI´s kill switch? The chimps certainly never found ours...
The clip above is a 50-minute lecture by Irish Traditionalist Keith Woods about democracy (or modern “mass” democracy), arguing that it´s essentially fake. The presentation is based on the book “Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government” by Christopher H Achen and Larry M Bartels, which I haven´t read. The short story is that the so-called rational voter doesn´t exist, and neither does his/her close cousin the rationally ignorant voter. The authors quote various surveys showing that many voters don´t know the platforms of the political parties they vote for, nor their actual policies or the outcomes of these. Indeed, many voters are driven more by base party loyalty, group identities or irrational “values” rather than ideology or even general political preferences. Many potential voters are stunningly ignorant of even the most basic political or ideological issues, or even what parties are on the ballot!
I have several problems with this presentation. For instance, why should it be a *problem* that voters are group-oriented rather than individualist? This seems to be a very “American” or “classically liberal” way of looking at general elections. It´s of course interesting that not even US democracy works like this! In Sweden, by contrast, it was long *assumed* that of course most citizens vote according to which special interest group they happen to belong to. Industrial workers voted Social Democrat, farmers voted Center Party, other business owners voted Conservative, and so on. (I suppose skinheads voted Sweden Democrat?) Maybe the real problem with “mass” democracy is precisely that it claims to be something it really isn´t: a system in which rational individual voters transcend their group interests? But why is that taken to be an argument against modern democracy, per se? (In passing, Woods mentions that he isn´t opposed to local direct democracy, but of course the same problem applies there, too, unless the community is extremely small and everyone is equal – hardly likely in a “traditionalist” society!)
At best, democracy does lead to “responsive” governments by two (similar) routes: either the government arbitrates between different group interest, or one of the group interests (usually the emerging middle classes) integrate other groups into its orbits (such as the workers´ movement at one end and the traditional elites on the other). A peaceful transfer of government power is ensured, but so is a more fundamental continuity. The loyalty of the individual citizens to the system is assured by such things as freedom of worship, freedom to start your own business, the relative lack of corruption, and so on. At least in a 20th century Western society, no better form of government was ever discovered…
From this, we can also predict what might destroy a democracy. One obvious factor is that the groups in society become too incompatible. Mass immigration with attendant failed assimilation is one such example. Another is a permanent economic decline, in which groups the interests of which could previously be reconciled start fighting each other again (workers versus corporations being the most “classical” example). Ironically, a less group-oriented approach to politics might also undermine really existing democracy, as the electorate becomes more atomized, especially if the atomization is coupled with “value”-driven individualism. Indeed, atomization and anomie in an electorate then leads straight to “value”-driven collectivism instead, as the populist Great Leader uses his charisma to “unite” the splintered people again...
But sure, the above might not strictly speaking be “predictions” at all, but rather statements made after the fact!
With that, I close this little discussion.
Not sure if anyone wants to listen to a two-hour presentation by Irish Traditionalist Keith Woods about why Ted Kaczynski was wrong, but if you do, well, see link above.
The most interesting part of the slide show might actually be that Woods doesn´t sound particularly Traditionalist. But, as somebody else pointed out, Traditionalism is forever new. And forever heterodox...
Irish
Traditionalist and (perhaps) fascist Keith Woods argues against the idea that
fascism is “capitalism in decay”, an idea usually associated with
Marxism-Leninism. It´s not entirely clear what Woods´ alternative thesis is,
though. It´s also intriguing that he doesn´t mention the Strasser brothers,
instead focusing on Joseph Goebbels (and Mussolini).
Naturally,
the “socialist” rhetoric and populist appeal of both German Nazism and Italian
fascism are mentioned. Woods argues that Mussolini´s regime was independent of
the big business interests. German industrialist support for Hitler and the
Nazis peaked around 1930, and had actually went down by 1933. Many backers of
the Nazis were White Russian émigrés (i.e. White Guards), who were “feudal”
more than capitalist and supported Hitler for ideological and geopolitical
reasons (anti-Semitism, anti-Communism, etc). Woods argues that Henry Ford in
the US (who apparently provided the NSDAP with funding) acted out of
ideological conviction. He actually *lost* money due to a boycott of the Ford company.
That
fascism can´t be an expression of “decaying” capitalism is also shown by the fact
that the fascist movements sought to modernize the economies of their respective
nations, and indeed often did so after taking power. Thus, the German economy experienced
economic growth under Hitler, not “decay”. In general, fascism appealed to groups
inside nations *with* “decaying capitalism” (or semi-feudalism) as a strategy
to *overcome* it.
Despite the narrators clear pro-fascist (Nazbol-ish) sympathies, still an interesting take on things.
Keith Woods, an Irish Traditionalist, discusses the connection (if any) between "Woke", capitalism, Christianity and Gnosticism. Note also the interface between trans-genderism and trans-humanism, the latter to be introduced through technology.
"Woke" gives capitalism, technology and fake individualism a quasi-religious veener, while really destroying true spirituality.
Can´t say I vibrate with the collectivist traditionalism of Woods, but he does make some interesting points here. The main take away is that "Woke" is here to stay and will continue to be succesful precisely because of its aggressive quasi-metaphysics and its alliance with global capital.
This seems to be the weakest part of Woods´ analysis, since it´s difficult to see how Woke capitalism, or any capitalism really, can be sustainable in the long run...
Keith Woods discusses a number of sociological studies and meta-studies which strongly suggest that ethnic diversity lowers trust and destroys traditional working class (and perhaps lower middle class) communities in the Western world. Note also that diversity seems to lower political and civic engagement!
One aspect not covered is that immigrants (or native Blacks in the US) often want to live in predominantly immigrant (or native Black) neighborhoods, which of course is further proof that most people most of the time prefer their own kind...
"Bowling alone", the book mentioned, is a classical study of the decline of American working class communities, but weirdly I have never read it!
Keith Woods attacks really existing Green politics from a Traditionalist and far right perspective, under which environmentalism is tied to nationalism, anti-capitalism, anti-immigration stances and "pantheist" religious metaphysics.
Anthropocentrism is rejected in favor of seeing Nature as sacral and the cosmos as hierarchic. At one point, he calls contemporary Green politics "liberalism with carbon taxes"!
Even apart from his *obviously* problematic TOS, Woods is too utopian for my jaded metaphysical tastes. The alternative to eternal "progress" is a myth of eternal return to a traditional past that never really existed, not even during the Satya Yuga...
Keith Woods discusses "the factions of the dissident right", most of them quite small and Internet-based. Interesting! Speaks for itself.
Edward Dutton (the Jolly Heretic) argues against the idea that the far left (or far right, for that matter) is "Gnostic". I tend to agree. The pseudo-Christian meme or metaphor seems more relevant here.
A short YouTube clip on Plotinus and Neoplatonism. Contains interpretations that may surprise some people...
Keith Woods is a Traditionalist who sometimes posts interesting content on his YouTube channel. In this long presentation (one hour and a half), he summarizes a book by Azar Gat, "Nations", which I unfortunately haven´t read. He also mentions a number of other writers.
The main thesis is that nations aren´t a product of modernity or an "imaginary community", but have much deeper roots. This isn´t just a matter of definition, since Woods argues that something we moderns would recognize as nations existed already in pre-modern times. A nation is essentially an ethnic group with a strong sense of political community, cultural identity and historical continuity, often expressed in the form of statehood. Ethnic groups in their turn have even deeper roots, which go all the way back to our evolutionary beginnings. Woods seem to believe that sociobiology in its Wilsonian form (group selection) is largely true, and that this constitutes the ultimate origins of nations and nationalism.
The rest of the presentation is an extended argument against the idea that "nations" didn´t exist before circa 1800. Multi-ethnic empires did of course exist, but they were usually dominated by one specific ethnic group, around which the others tended to cluster. The Habsburg empire (which wasn´t) isn´t the historical norm. One common argument against pre-modern nationalism is that nationalist ideology emerged among the elites, and wasn´t diffused in the general population until modern times. The common people in pre-modern society had, at best, a purely local identity.
Woods points out that this is simply hogwash: there were mechanisms for spreading elite national culture even in pre-literate societies in the form of myths and stories (the wandering Norse bards come to mind here). National and international religions also show that all loyalty or identity can´t have been local. (Once again, I´m reminded of a Scandinavian example: the medieval churches were often financed, controlled and defended by the peasants.)
It´s also interesting to note that the Icelandic sagas, with their all-Icelandic ethnic or "national" identity, were written at an island marked by constant feuds and political instability, yet Icelandic-ness was taken for granted even in this chaotic situation (the opposite of what you except if all identities are local or clan-based). And why do common people react more negatively to foreign conquerors than to native elites? The theory that nationalism didn´t exist during, say, the Middle Ages seem to suggest that the peasantry should hate both elite groups equally.
Woods then points to ancient Greece, Egypt and China as examples of early nationalism. The Egyptian case is interesting, since Egyptian identity remaind firmly in place even when the Pharaonic state had collapsed, suggesting that it wasn´t a purely elite phenomenon entirely dependent on a strong political structure. The common people in Egypt must have had a strong feeling of Egyptian-ness and counterposed it to Semitic, Nubian or Persian identities.
Another obvious example are the Jews - ironically so, since secularized modern Jews often oppose nationalism, fearing its anti-Semitic potential. I agree that there are indeed strong "nationalist" sentiments in the "Old Testament" and the "Apocrypha", certainly from the time of Ezra onwards, including the Maccabean Wars and the forced conversion of the Idumeans.
This is just some of the highlights. Recommended. Then, reflect over what this could mean for the near and far future of humankind...
Is the left a Gnostic death cult? Somewhat surprisingly, Irish Traditionalist Keith Woods answers "no" to the question. Very interesting content!
Apparently, it´s a popular notion in some Christian circles that the contemporary left (including trans-humanists and, judging by context, trans-people) are a "Gnostic death cult". This modern form of Gnosticism is said to resemble the ancient original in its hatred of the material world, with the modern version trying to transcend it through genetic engineering, AI, and the like. This reminds me of the idea that the Axial Age (said to begin perhaps 2,500 years ago) replaced immanent-animistic paganism with religions preaching transcendental salvation from a material world seen as hopelessly flawed or even evil. The Upanishads, Buddhism, Christianity and Gnosticism are seen as examples of this, but so is the modern idea of progress, which also wants to "transcend" an imperfect world.
Woods, by contrast, believes that these resemblances are purely superficial. Trans-humanism isn´t about transcending anything, it´s simply the usual individualist-hedonistic-materialist worldview taken to its logical extreme, where "the freedom of choice" (really the freedom to choose your own hedonistic pleasure) is extended into infinity through science fiction technology. In contrast, Gnosticism was about true transcendence, not just in the (obvious) sense that they wanted to "leave this world", but in the sense that the Gnostics weren´t seeking to satisfy their desires, but reach an entirely different plane of being altogether as pure spirit.
Woods interprets Gnosticism as a hierarchic worldview, in which humanity is seen as forever split into three different classes, with the vast majority of "hylics" being completely mired in matter and beyond redemption. Also, while every human has a telos (goal or purpose), everyone doesn´t have the same telos. Thus, men can´t become women, humans can´t become animals, and so on. The denial of an objectively definable telos leads straight to an anarchic view of "individual rights", where everyone (seemingly) can become everything he wants, and get all his non-teleological desires satisfied.
The clip also contain a discussion on Ascenders and Descenders, Plato and Aristotle, and so on. Surprisingly much material for a relatively short presentation!
Irish Traditionalist Keith Woods is skeptical of recent claims that some engineer managed to create a "sentient computer". Woods believes that there is a qualitative ontological difference between the human mind (think qualia, intentionality and embodiement) and a computational algorithm.
Thus, the claim that AI can be sentient (or "intelligent") is really based on reductionist materialism. It´s also connected to the absurd dreams of trans-humanists. While computers and robots may indeed become even better at computation in the future, sentience or intelligence simply isn´t possible in machines.
To Woods, this is a good thing. Humans are embodied organic beings by nature (and, I presume, in and of Nature), and will remain that way, despite the fevered dreams of trans-humanist cornucopians and believers in a "Singularity"...
Keith Woods is a Traditionalist and (perhaps) Third Positionist who does extensive commentary on YouTube. In this clip, he discusses "the death of God" from a broadly Traditionalist perspective.
Woods argues that while it´s true that the crisis of modern man (or Western man) is at bottom metaphysical and spiritual, not simply political or cultural, simply going back to whatever brand of "traditional" Christianity suits your fancy best is *not* a solution. Rather, Christianity itself led to the "death of God", Protestant Christianity in particular.
Christianity has strong affinities with materialism, individualism and a progressive-evolutionary mode of thinking. "God" is simply another being in the universe, albeit the strongest and most important one, indeed he is really a kind of human individual magnified into infinity. This infinity is interpreted as eternal time, rather than as a state outside time and space altogether. Immortality is seen as individual and somehow "physical", making it a materialist concept. Woods even likens the resurrection of the body to trans-humanism! There is also a progression in time and space to constantly better individual states, a concept similar to modern evolutionism.
Woods believes that Christianity got these ideas from Judaism, the first materialist religion. It´s most consistently expressed in Protestantism, which is really explicit materialism plus God as a kind of cosmic ruler on top of the material world. It was easy for the Enlightenment materialists and scientists to simply do away with God as a "unnecessary hypothesis", while keeping the materialist side of the equation. Further, Protestantism lacks an esoteric dimension, due to its "literalist" approach to the Bible and the creeds. It´s pure exotericism. Its view of faith is not based on a supersensible intuition of higher spiritual truths and realities, but rather a completely blind faith in a series of exoteric propositions. The German romantics tried to return to a more authentic spiritual worldview by the route of pantheism, but in the end, they lost to the positivists and other materialists. Since most Western people today accept the materialist worldview on a deep level, converting to Christianity simply won´t change much. It won´t be a qualitatively different perspective.
What is the alternative? Woods points to Traditionalist writers Guénon and Schuon, and also to Advaita Vedanta. God isn´t a "person" but the very ground or principle of Being. Truth, Goodness and Beauty are direct emanations from the Divine, making the entire universe "organic" and united with God on a very fundamental level. Our existence is meaningful and completely dependent on God. The afterlife isn´t a state of eternal individuality (which Woods identifies with individualism), but rather a mystical merger with the Divine outside the categories of time and space altogether. Presumably, this "organic" view of the world also has other implications, since Woods in other clips talks positively about deep ecology, attacks overpopulation, believes in the reality of "race", etc.
The Catholic Church fused the organic view of God with "pagan superstition" during the Middle Ages, when Thomas Aquinas attempted a synthesis of Aristotle, Pseudo-Dionysius and the Bible (with its Jewish errors). With the Reformation, the Jewish-materialist aspect once again became predominant, and its implied at several times that modern Catholicism isn´t much better than its Protestant competitors.
Presented here for discussion purposes only.
Keith Woods is an Irish Traditionalist and Third Positionist with his own YouTube channel. In the clip above, he offers a kind of "pseudo-Marxist" analysis of revolutions and civil wars. It´s almost an hour long, but Woods makes many interesting points. Nominally, the clip is a polemic against Tim Pool, the independent reporter who visited Sweden a few years back and was chased by a masked immigrant gang in Rinkeby, a supposed "no go zone" in Stockholm. Pool seems to be a "recovering liberal" who probably voted Trump in 2020. In reality, the clip isn´t really about Pool at all, but a more general critique of the Alt Right and populist right. Last year, many on the far right worried about or welcomed the supposed possibility of a civil war in the United States, triggered by the BLM riots and the contested elections, and this kind of thinking obviously had a great impact on the people who stormed the Capitol on 6 January this year. The general increase in political polarization is often mentioned as another factor in the process leading up to civil war and/or revolution. To Woods, this kind of thinking is counterproductive. It´s both adventurist and "liberal" at the same time, being based on the idea that angry people will join together as individuals, with whatever grievances each may have, and somehow change public perceptions of things, perhaps with the help of provocative in-your-face protests. However, no radical change can or will happen this way, for a wide variety of reasons.
Real revolutions and civil wars are the result of economic hardships, immense geopolitical pressures, or structural problems such as the inability of an ancien régime to keep up with economic modernization. Above all, it´s the result of elite action. Woods has a very elite-centric perspective, in which the masses or the workers are always bystanders when powerful economic and political interest groups are fighting it out. Even the Russian revolution is an example of this, the Bolsheviks being supported by Wall Street bankers and the German secret service. A more immidiately obvious example is the American Civil War, when an industrial capitalist class fought a slavocracy, both being based on fundamentally incompatible modes of production. Even genuine populist revolutions - Woods considers China, Cuba and Iran examples of such - are really elite-driven if you look carefully. In Iran, the shah was challenged by modernizing students and middle class elements to his "left", but also by more traditionalist clergy, merchants and guilds to his "right", who believed modernization had gone too far.
But what about the United States and, by extension, global capitalism? Woods doesn´t see any fundamental conflicts between different elite groups in contemporary American society. Quite the contrary: the system is "antifragile" and extremely good at integrating new groups into the capitalist-oligarchic system. There is no conflict between Wall Street bankers, old money families and the upstarts in Silicon Valley. The US system can even integrate foreign elites into its orbit. While this may be "bad for America", it´s good for the elite groups, both foreign and domestic. There is no contradiction between modernization and old structures. Rather, globalist capitalism is what drives modernization in the first place.
The elites also have fundamentally the same values - Woods doesn´t say so, but I presume he means the peculiar blend of neo-liberalism and "woke" left-liberalism which characterizes the present phase of globalization. As for Trump, he was essentially a hoax. The 2020 election was a choice between a "Jeb Bush platform" (Trump) and some guy who was vice-president in 2008, in other words, business as usual as far as US politics are concerned. Most of the supposedly "polarized" and "radicalized" voters simply fell in line behind the standard "lesser evilism", anarcho-communists voting Biden (probably a reference to Noam Chomsky and Antifa), hard line populists voting Trump (despite having criticized him as a "sell out" for four years). The center is so entrenched that not even the relatively mild leftist Bernie Sanders can become the Democratic nominee!
BLM wasn´t a harbinger of a civil war or break down either, since the movement is funded by the elites, is under complete elite control, and thus could be ended at precisely the moment the elites wanted it to end. This is further proven by the fact that the local police and mayors often stood down in face of the protests and riots, obviously because they were part of the script. Even the demand to "abolish the police" isn´t really a radical anti-system demand, since it´s either not implemented at all, or if it is, simply strenghtens the federal police at the expense of the local police forces. This in turn is part and parcel of a general trend towards super-centralization in society as a whole. Nor is there an economic depression on the horizon: the stock exchange is booming, and while small and medium-sized businesses are destroyed, elite control is entrenched further up the hierarchy, while the federal government prints new money on a massive scale, without any particular inflationary strain on the economy.
Woods wonders why the Capitol rioters on 6 January didn´t take seriously the possibility that the whole thing was a Deep State set up, since they usually portray the very same Deep State as evil and extremely influential. I think Woods *does* consider the storming of the Capitol to be a provocation, in the sense that gullible populists were fooled into a trap by some elite group using their attack as a pretext for another Patriot Act. Overall, the far right populists are simply part of "the spectacle" (a Situationist term).
Not even a wholesale collapse will necessarily change things for the better. Some collapses are managed by powerful elite groups, and even if the collapse would happen for some external reason, the people that stands most to gain from them are budding oligarchs (think Russia under Yeltsin) who end up controlling most of the remaining post-collapse resources. Instead of a new populist utopia, we end up with a kind of "catabolic capitalism" that thrives on the conditions of collapse.
Woods´ alternative to all of the above isn´t entirely clear from the clip, but he implies that antifragile alternative institutions and communities must be built, and that this will prove more important in the long run than another "mass movement" that tries to take on the centralized state on the basis of whatever transient discontent exists at the moment. Other clips on his channel indicate that he does believe in a collapse of modern civilization at some point in the future, perhaps due to resource depletion and overpopulation, so the alternative communities are presumably intended as a defense against that future development. Before that happens, however, we might end up with something Woods calls "neo-feudalism". How his traditional alt-community will survive the neo-feudal clutches is, alas, less clear...
Still recommended.
