Tag: Culture Wars

Civilization vs. Barbarians

The Old School Tie

Culture

This phenomenon doesn’t really occur in the United States because schoolboys don’t wear ties. Okay, I joke: it’s because school affiliation in the U.S. happens at university rather than in high school (but they still don’t wear ties).

Here’s how the thing works among the private school set, and it’s true in Britain and all its former colonies (in Britain, they’re called “public” schools, which is massively confusing to non-Britons so I’ll just use “private”, to be consistent). To be sent to an exclusive private school was a sign of both wealth and breeding (the latter more so in Britain than in the colonies, of course). The bonds one formed at school, in an age when a university degree was not a prerequisite for employment, would help one through life in no uncertain terms, because one always tried to help a fellow private schoolboy (called an “Old Boy”) where one could.

The reason for this was quite simple, and understandable. If a manager, an Old Boy from St. John’s, say, discovered that a prospective employee had been to Michaelhouse or Bishop’s, the applicant would automatically get a more favorable review than someone not wearing the old school tie: Old Boys were essentially a known quantity, having been through pretty much the same grinder that all the others had. As any employer will tell you, a known quantity is almost always better than an unknown one — a former U.S. Marine will favor another Marine for precisely the same reason, and it has to do with character rather than anything else. One of my former classmates owns a highly-successful tech company, for example. and it came as no surprise to me when I learned that his CFO was yet another of our classmates. No chance of financial skulduggery there, I bet. Unthinkable.

I once got a job because the H.R. manager saw my Old Boy’s tie and after chatting about the school for a while, she sent me off for a final interview with my future manager with barely a question. (She gave me a sealed envelope for him, and he showed it to me much later. It read simply, “Hire this man — he’s exactly what we’re looking for.”) It turned out that the H.R. manager’s young son was at St. John’s Preparatory, so she knew exactly what kind of man I was, because she wanted her son to become the same kind of man. My First from St. John’s College. along with a couple of other notable schoolboy achievements, were all she needed.

This causes all sorts of problems in today’s oh-so egalitarian society, but if we’ve learned nothing else over the years, it’s that when it comes to leadership, character matters. By the middle of the First World War, St. John’s had graduated just over one hundred and twenty boys in its history; twenty-two ended up killed on the Western Front, and one (Oswald Reid) won the Victoria Cross (posthumously). The death toll among Old Etonians, Old Harrovians and their like was equally appalling, because it was from the private schools that most of the officers were drawn. Yes, it was part of the class system; but it was also true that leadership was one of the virtues taught and encouraged — and it had been duly noted by the Duke of Wellington in a much earlier war, who said that “the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.”

And he was right. Character matters, and it seems to be that because of the harsh regimen of private school education in the past, it was inculcated as much as Latin, Greek or the Classics — and possibly even more so, because up to my time, one of the worst insults you could bestow in someone was that they were a “swot”, someone who worked hard at their studies. A “gentleman’s C” was highly regarded because it meant that one had achieved a passing grade without working too hard at it. (I should also point out that academic standards were far higher then than they are today, and a “C” back then would today equate to a B+ or even A-, depending on the subject.) I remember winning some award in a magazine for an essay I’d written, and there was considerable amusement when it was discovered that my English teacher had given me a grade of 68% (27/40) for that same essay. When he was asked about it, he shrugged and said, “His conclusion wasn’t that good.” Nobody got an A in his class, ever, so strict were his standards. What that meant was that we were forced to sweat blood to get a decent overall grade; but when we wrote our finals (graded by other teachers), most of us in his English class got distinctions for our essays.

I have mentioned that sports was a compulsory activity in all private boys’ schools of the time, and we produced our share of decent sportsmen. But when we were up against the local state (“government”) schools, we would usually get thrashed — much as, say, Harvard’s football team would fare against Michigan or Alabama — because our two senior classes of about a hundred boys stood no chance against the same pool of a thousand boys from the much-larger King Edward’s School down the road. It didn’t matter, though; as a cheer from St. Stithian’s College went, whenever they were beaten by a government school: “Your dads work for our dads!”

We at St. John’s would never have been so crass, but then St. Stithian’s was a Methodist school, after all.

But even being crap at sports against other schools was instructive: learning how to lose with grace meant that we won with equal grace; and in its turn, sportsmanship was not only welcomed, but treasured. Good sportsmanship, by the way, means following not just the letter but the spirit of the rules — which is why I’m always hammering on that something may be legal, but that doesn’t make it right. (A no-class boor like Bill Clinton would never understand that, which is why he and his equally-classless wife are such terrible people. Former BritPM and Old Etonian David Cameron, while an appalling politician, is actually quite a decent man, especially when compared to the horrible Gordon Brown. The same is true of the equally-inept but privately-schooled and very likeable George W. Bush when compared to the awful Bernie Sanders.)

The Old School Tie goes deeper than that. As a rule, our dating pool was the local girls’ private schools: Roedean, St. Andrew’s, Kingsmead and St. Mary’s Schools for Girls. (I think I first seriously dated a government-school girl when I was twenty-four, and my experience was not uncommon.) Once again, it was because the girls were a known quantity: of good / wealthy families, well brought up, with ladylike and genteel manners. (Yeah, they were bitchy and obnoxious because teenagers, but it was a very ladylike obnoxiousness.) It also worked for the good. One of the Old Boys date-raped one of the Old Girls one night; word got out, and he never dated in our circle again — he ended up marrying some tart from Cape Town who didn’t know his story. The last I heard, he was miserably unhappy because he was savagely cut from the group and lost all his friends. To be called “a nasty piece of work” was pretty much a death sentence, socially speaking, and he was. The very tightness of the circle thus gave security against nonsense like that, just as it would almost guarantee that my tech-company owner friend would be inured against financial impropriety by his CFO.

So there it is: the Old School Tie, the Old Boys’ Club; call it what you may, sneer at it all you like, but the fact of the matter is that without the efforts of this tiny group of men and women over the past few centuries, society and civilization would be much the poorer.

Your opinion may vary, of course, but we don’t really care.

Quote Of The Day

QOTD

From some unknown British woman, screaming at a random Muslim guy:

“Do you wanna know why I’m being racist? In my own country? Because it’s your race that’s blowing up our fucking nation!”

You know, in a strange way, she makes perfect sense. Look, I know that “Muslim” is not a race — but it’s the Muzzies (and liberal asswipes) who’ve turned it into a racial issue, instead of a religious and/or cultural one. Every time a Muslim screams “racism” when in fact someone is taking issue with their fucking 9th-century death cult, they’re leaving themselves open to shit like this.

And as for the Muslim feeling unsafe in his own country:  how exactly do you think British Anglos (for want of a better term) feel, when children get blown up at a pop concert and pedestrians get stabbed outside the Houses of Parliament by Muslim fuckheads? (And they are, most definitely, Muslims, by the way, despite attempts at whitewashing by the liberal media.) Do you think they feel safe?  And yes: when you set yourselves up in little Muslim-only ghettoes and neighborhoods where non-Muslim women feel threatened just for wearing a minskirt, when Muslim men set up entire pedophile clubs “because these are infidel girls, so it’s okay”, then how the fuck do you think people are going to treat you? Like one of their own?

Given what Islam has wrought in Britain over the past twenty years, let me tell you:  I’m on this woman’s side more than I am on the random Muslim’s.

Bullies

Politics

Via Insty, I read this little snippet [NRO link warning] and I confess to being a little bit puzzled.

If some ugly harpy came up to me in, say, a restaurant (forget that gym nonsense), and screamed: “I find your presence in this [place] to be unacceptable, your presence in this town to be unacceptable”, I’d tell her, politely, to fuck off because her opinions are of no importance to me or anyone else. Then if she persisted in her bullshit, I’d punch her in the face because, quite frankly, she’s nothing more than a bully, and I’ve found that bullies become somewhat less bully-ish when they encounter violence coming from their intended victim.

In the case of this particular harpy, a punch in the face would not affect her appearance much, and may even be an improvement:

Why do all these liberal fanatics get that pinched, unattractive look? I call it the Perpetual Scold, which somehow manages to incorporate a wagging finger into a facial expression.

“Oh but Kim,” you might say, “she’s going to sue you for assault!” Maybe so, maybe not — there’s a good chance I could plead self-defense in the face of such a verbal attack — but whatever; I might be sued, but she’d still have massive facial injuries.

And in future, maybe her little liberal buddies might be a little more civil, even polite, lest something similar happen to them when they start berating someone with whom they disagree. (In classical terms, this approach is called “Pour encourager les autres.”) Or, as some dickhead ex-President once put it: “Punch back twice as hard.”

We need to see more of it from conservatives, but unfortunately, conservatives seem to have this ingrained politeness and deference when treating political adversaries, and especially so if they’re women. (I know I do; believe me, I’d punch Professor Fair in a mood of utmost sadness and reluctance.) But we need to get over this reticence because gawd knows, the Left has none.

Update: The folly of my reaction has been pointed out to me in Comments, and I am advised that mockery would be a better course of action. So:

“I find your presence in this [place] to be unacceptable, your presence in this town to be unacceptable!”

…would be met with:

“Hey… it’s not my fault that you can’t get laid, you bitter, ugly bitch.”

Then, if she were to attempt to strike me, I’d go with Plan B (see above).

Putting In The Asterisks

Culture, Politics

Via Sarah at Insty comes this thoughtful piece:

Yes, an intolerant minority can control and destroy democracy. Actually, as we saw, it will eventually destroy our world.
So, we need to be more than intolerant with some intolerant minorities. It is not permissible to use “American values” or “Western principles” in treating intolerant Salafism (which denies other peoples’ right to have their own religion). The West is currently in the process of committing suicide.

I’ve often pondered this issue. If we assume that the Constitution isn’t a suicide pact — by no means a certain assumption, by the way — then yes, of course we can attach asterisks to certain socio-political movements (e.g. Nazism, Communism etc.) which rely on the tolerance of the typical Western-style democracy (and in the case of the U.S., the tolerance entrenched in its Constitution), and use that tolerance to further their own brand of intolerance. As an example, note that a considerable percentage of U.S. Muslims support the idea of Shari’ah law as first an adjunct to, and then a replacement for the existing U.S. legislative system. And in the name of “tolerance”, or “cultural appreciation” (or whatever term liberals use to disguise “eventual submission”), we should allow such ideas to become not only acceptable, but accepted?

No.

Here’s a little thought for the Intolerants to ponder. Even our Constitution is not written in stone; it can be amended — admittedly with considerable difficulty —  but there is nothing to stop a majority of members of Congress, and a majority of states, from creating an amendment to the First Amendment which says, simply, “except for [Islam / Nazism / fill in your brand of intolerance].” Here’s an example of such an action, a funny one but still one that is absolutely possible:

Our “group” here in the United States is one which supports tolerance. But if you think for one moment that we are incapable of expelling an intolerant sub-group, think again.

One of us is going to have to change their outlook and philosophy, and we’ve probably changed ours enough — or too much (which is what I think). Beware of mistaking gentleness for weakness, of tolerance for submission. Start acting like citizens of the United States, accept the principles of our Constitution, or risk losing your place at the barbecue. It can happen. Pray that it doesn’t.

The Pursuit Of Happiness

Culture

The problem with “happiness” is not just that it’s a personal issue: it’s largely an unresolved personal issue. As individuals, if asked whether we’re happy, we might just say “Yes” without really thinking about it. Then we think about it — not always a Good Thing, by the way — and might realize that we’re not really happy, because someone else seems happier than we are, therefore we’re not as happy as we could be.

Worse still, we think we’re somehow entitled to happiness. We aren’t. Here’s writer Tom Utley:

“If you think of life as a series of duties — and of happiness as an undeserved blessing, rather than a right — you are likely to be much happier than if you think happiness is yours by right.”

He’s absolutely correct. If we think about it — this time, a Good Thing — we can come to realize that performance of that series of duties brings its own happiness: not the joyous ecstasy kind of happiness (which I think too many people seek, thinking it’s the ideal), but the quiet contentment of a job done to the best of one’s ability.

Raising children is an excellent example of one kind of duty which, when performed properly, brings to the parents not just satisfaction of a job well done, but a profound sense of contentment, nay even joy.

Yet we live in times when almost all the leaders of Western Europe are childless, and have never experienced that joy. When they have never held their own child in their arms, watched them walk unsteadily across the room, or marveled as that child does something remarkable, is it any wonder that such people are beset with inner conflict and ignorance of what most people need to be happy?

I’m not suggesting that bearing children is the sine qua non of happiness, of course; yet it would be foolish to ignore that fact that as procreation and survival of the species are so deeply ingrained in the genetic code, that the individual’s success in the accomplishment of so basic, so elemental a need must surely bring at least a foundation of happiness to a man or woman?

And that’s just one of the “series of duties” of which Utley speaks. There are many more — a man’s duty to provide for his family, a woman’s duty to look after her children, a duty to protect the family from harm, a duty to protect one’s community from harm, a duty to provide support to one’s true friends… the list goes on and on, and the beauty of all these duties is that they are largely self-generated, and the fulfillment thereof creates a different happiness for each individual.

There is no universal definition of happiness. Happiness is how each individual defines it and where he chooses to find it. I would take this even further: that when we are unhappy, it’s often because we have allowed other people to define the terms of our happiness, and allowed them to dictate where we may find it.

To end this little thought, take a look at this picture:

It’s a very old one of a family picnic, taken in a simpler era — sometime in the early 1950s, I think —  but as simple as the activity is portrayed, I defy anyone to deny that at this particular moment, every single person in that picnic is unbearably happy. It may not last, and probably won’t: the father may have problems at work the next day, the wife may have some household accident, one of the little girls may get bullied at school the next day, whatever. But at this particular moment in time, there is happiness. Moreover, it is happiness that hasn’t been mandated or defined by any authority or even by society; it is happiness that didn’t need to be pursued, only found.

May your happiness, may all your happinesses be that simple, and enjoyable.

Here We Go Again

Politics, Two-Minute Hate

Buckle your seatbelts, folks: this one is going to make the Pussification rant seem like a ladies’ tea party.

Over at some website I’ve never heard of, a guy named Spencer Quinn has some nice (and some not-so-nice) things to say about Your Humble Narrator (and you really need to read the whole article before you read any further). I feel I need to respond, and in so doing, I’ll set the record straight and make my position on some of his discussion points perfectly clear.

My problem with the alt-Right is the same problem I have with libertarians: as commenter “Pat Buchanator” once put it at Instapundit: “This is how it always is with libertarians. No matter how appealing that quart of vanilla ice cream looks, there’s always that tablespoon of dog shit mixed in that turns you off.” Thus it is too with the alt-Right and me:  we start off with some common ground — quite a lot, actually — and then the conversation reaches that “Oh, bloody hell! Why did you have to go and spoil it?” moment, when Teh Crazy comes out of its hole.

My common ground with the alt-Right is this: like them, I think that Western civilization and culture is the greatest thing that ever occurred to mankind. It has elevated our society from brutishness and beastliness into civilization, quite possibly to the zenith of thought, achievement and prosperity. Just taking the period from Ancient Greece to the Internet, it is difficult to imagine how life would exist today were it not for Western culture — the sciences, economy, music, arts, literature, morals, manners and mores, the whole damn thing. Western civilization, in other words, is absolutely worth maintaining, prolonging, venerating and all that.

And here’s the first little roadblock that the alt-Right throws in my way: their distaste, and even hatred for Jews.

I have no idea why that is. Pound for pound, the Jews have contributed as much or more to Western civilization than any other group — it’s even called the “Judeo-Christian tradition”, FFS — and to discount this contribution deliberately, to me, shows a shallow intellect at best. (At worst, Hitler, but I’m not going to go there.) Of course, I know that many Jews are socialists, communists, progressives, one-worlders, and all those things that are not only themselves distasteful, but are contradictory to Western thought. Ending slavery in the Western hemisphere (an action performed solely by Western nations, lest we forget) is not the same as allowing Western culture to be perverted or submerged by inferior cultures — and let’s be perfectly honest, when compared to Western culture, all other cultures are in general absolutely inferior to ours. To say otherwise is to be ignorant of history, or to be able to consciously deny the fact of the matter despite all evidence to the contrary. Judaic culture, by the way, is not inferior to, say, Western culture and civilization because in no small part, theirs is almost indistinguishable from that of Western Europe because of their commonality. That Israeli liberals seem perfectly prepared to help bring about the destruction of Eretz Israel was always a mystery to me until it was explained to me (by one of my good friends, an Orthodox Jew) that these liberals hate the state of Israel because it is culturally closer to Western European democracy than it is to Eastern European socialism. And the liberal Israelis have camp-followers all over the world: in Europe, Britain, the United States and anywhere that Jews can be found in any numbers. Does that mean “conspiracy”? Sure, if you’re a moron, because there are many, many Jews who are conservative, too — but somehow, the Conspiracy seems to have passed them by? Not credible.

So: am I pro-Israel? You betcha. I’m even more supportive of Israel when I look at the nations of assholes who want Israel destroyed.

Do I think that a lot of Jews are liberal assholes? You betcha, again. (Don’t even ask me about Jews and their support for gun control, unless we also mention JPFO, who also seem to have missed the memo.)

Am I prepared to become an anti-Semite because of The Great Jewish Conspiracy? Think again, Adolf.

Would I stand aside if some anti-Semitic pricks started playing their little neo-Nazi reindeer games with Jews in the streets? Not only would I not stand aside, but I’d be standing between the two groups, telling the anti-Semites that they’d have to get past me first.

Ich habe Dachau gesehen.

And as long as I have breath in my body, “Never again!” will not be just an empty phrase, even if that seems to be the case with some Jews(!), who think that their tribe’s survival of the Holocaust was somehow irrelevant in today’s world.

So the minute some alt-Rightist starts with that anti-Semitic shit, I turn right off, because I will never be part of that insanity. (It doesn’t even have to be the alt-Right; over at Taki’s Magazine — which I generally love — I’ll be reading something amusing or educational, and then the Great Zionist Conspiracy gets mentioned, and figuratively speaking, I toss the magazine across the room.)

The next thing about the alt-Right that gets up my nose is their little unicorn-rainbow dream of a “White ethnostate”.  Once again, oh FFS. Let me tell you this: I grew up in a wannabe-White ethnostate, I knew White supremacists, and oh my gawd, I was even related to a bunch of them. They were all, to a man, mean-spirited, ugly people, and their system of government — apartheid — was even uglier than they were. Even though their philosophical underpinning made apparent sense — the catastrophe that was (and is) Black Africa showed that Blacks were incapable of self-government — but their prescription to protect themselves against that was horrible and ultimately doomed to failure, as events would prove. Forget that shit; I not only hated it, and them, but I rebelled against it, stopping well short of planting bombs and shooting random White people in the streets, however, because those are what we call today terrorists. Even with the best intentions in the world, I was not going to become a White Nelson Mandela (who was, lest we forget, as much of a terrorist as Yasser Arafat despite, like Arafat, becoming somehow acceptable in his later years as a head of state). As much as I loathed apartheid, I was not going to take that next step, because too many innocent people would be harmed. Remember that, because it will be important later.

Now some people, e.g. the aforementioned Mr. Quinn, have trouble reconciling my position with my somewhat trenchant thoughts set out in Let Africa Sink (I told you I’d need to republish it). They all miss the point. Let Africa Sink was written in a mood of profound sadness, pessimism and despair, and was never meant to be some kind of rallying-cry and blueprint for a bunch of sick racists. FFS: I am an African myself; I was born there, I lived there for a third of a century, and my family first arrived in the Cape in 1692. I have every right to call myself an African, as much or even more than Jesse Jackson can call himself an American. I left Africa because I saw absolutely no hope for the whole continent, not just South Africa (which, by the way, is well on the way to joining Zimbabwe, the Congo and all the other little beauty spots over there). I left because all I could see was a future of bloodshed, hatred, venality and human ruin. I have seen nothing since that has made me want to change my opinion by one iota. Africa, as a place and as a human entity, is fucked beyond words, and there is nothing, nothing that will end or even ameliorate that scenario.

Now stay with me here, because what sets me apart from the alt-Right is that I won’t — can’t — make the leap from Africa being so screwed to “Blacks are therefore inferior to Whites”. You know why I can’t? Because of Ben Carson, Walter Williams, Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas, Richard Pryor and Denzel Washington (to name but some). Even an idiot like Maxine Waters, despite being a socialist to her core, has not advocated racial violence and anti-White terrorism (so far). In other words, when Black people aren’t Africans but Americans — Americans who moreover believe profoundly that Western European culture is far better than the alternative and who therefore espouse the principles of Western civilization despite their own ethnic heritage — it is impossible for me to say that in general principle, Black people are inferior to White people. Can’t go there, even if Carson et al. are woefully in the minority in the Black community. I can’t go there even in the face of evidence that Black-run cities (or, to be more correct, Democrat-run cities) are pathetic failures and African-style hellholes of poverty, corruption and homicide. I see little difference, by the way, between the looming disaster that is San Francisco (which is not run by Blacks) and the appalling tragedy of Detroit (which is, and has been for a long time). If a majority of Blacks espouse socialism, the fault is not their ethnicity but their education. (Hell, a sizable number of White people espouse socialism, too; don’t get me started on those idiots.)

If so many Blacks vote Democrat instead of Republican, and end up with failure in consequence, is that a reason to think that Blacks are that inferior to Whites? Let me point out a little-known fact: without the White (Afrikaans- and English-speaking) working-class voters, South Africa’s apartheid would have collapsed decades before it did; but like American Blacks were by Democrats, they were promised jobs, job security and social advancement by the Afrikaner nationalists, which meant that the White working classes bought into the eventual promise of apartheid: separate development. The “dumping grounds” of South African apartheid followed shortly thereafter. White voters, in other words, are just as capable of adopting an evil philosophy (apartheid) as Black voters are drawn towards supporting a different evil philosophy (socialism).

And that’s another part of alt-Right philosophy that pisses me off. If I may use the rhetoric of Albert Jay Nock: suppose that you’re right; suppose that we Whites should create an exclusive White ethnostate that bars (among so many others) Blacks and Jews: how, exactly, are you going to create this little White nationalist Nirvana? How are you going to move this from a unicorn’s wet dream to ugly (and it would be ugly) reality? It sure as hell isn’t going to happen in the United States, no matter how much you want to create the White Man’s Paradise in, say, Utah or Idaho, because there will have to be some rearrangement of peoples for that to happen — and I repeat, that ain’t gonna happen anywhere in the U.S. Good luck trying that elsewhere — well, maybe in South Africa’s Orania, but guess what: you alt-Righters won’t be welcome there because you’re not Afrikaans. See how this ethnic superiority thing works?

I saw at first hand how the South African government went about creating the reality of “separateness” in a multi-racial society, and let me tell you, it was revolting, appalling, and made me want to join Mandela’s Spear Of The Nation organization, albeit only for a short while. I’ll tell that story another time, because if I do so now, it will engender a red-hot anger in me that would make Pussification seem like a scholarly discourse.

Let me tell you all: underneath all the words about “White pride”, “promoting Western European values and culture” and “cultural superiority” are some really, really ugly beliefs, philosophies and plans of action; and I want absolutely no part of them.

I know that my way of supporting Western civilization might seem weak and ineffective to the alt-Right. I prefer to vote for politicians who prefer capitalism to socialism, Western culture over, say, Muslim culture or African culture. I prefer to write about Western civilization and extol it, letting people read my stuff and thereby (I hope) being persuaded to follow my example and in turn persuading others to be likewise. I raised my children in the Western tradition, and have drawn maybe thousands of people to my way of thinking — even if only by reading my stuff, they realize that they aren’t alone in their beliefs, and that our mostly-Anglocentric Western way of life is the right one.

Most of the human condition is dealing with The Pendulum: as our societies develop, the pendulum swings from Right to Left and back again. Often, the reverse swing is overly long, and that leads to all kinds of trouble. (The French Revolution’s Reign of Terror is an excellent example, by the way, albeit an example of showing that even Western civilization can screw things up.) The alt-Right, to me, represents just such an over-correction of The Pendulum’s erstwhile swing to the Left, and frankly, I don’t find much to recommend their fantasies.

I am aware that the alt-Right may turn on me and start with the name-calling, e.g. “race-traitor” (which sounds so much better in the original Afrikaans, volks-verraaier, and which has been used on me before), or their favorite, “cuckservative” (one who is nominally conservative, but actually in thrall to liberals), and all the other cute little epithets they’ve come up with to describe those who, if they aren’t with them, must be against them.

Guess what? I am against you. I’m against your anti-Semitism, your White supremacism, and all the other bullshit that you hide under camouflage phrases and euphemisms. I know exactly who you are, and I’m not one of you.

There is no “paradox” in my philosophy; I just refuse to succumb to the temptation of ascribing societal failures to outside influences such as the “Jewish Conspiracy” or “negroid inferiority”. (Historically, it reminds me too much of Weimar Germany and pre-1917 Bolshevism.) As Quinn noted, I don’t take that extra step in “logic” that will move me over to the alt-Right because quite simply, it’s a step too far. Sorry if that puzzles you. Life isn’t a simple case of black and white, or even Black and White: it’s far more complex than that, and I’m sorry if you can’t see it.

And one last thing: in his essay, Spencer Quinn has many kind words to say about my bravery and “brass balls” (as he puts it). Do not for one moment think that any of that is going to disappear should someone decide to confront me in person. Please remember that as a young man, I once stood up against the guns and sjamboks of Afrikaner apartheid; and I’m prepared, even in my old age, to stand up to you. I am a lot meaner now than I was then, and I have a lot less to lose. That’s not a challenge, by the way; as Quinn noted, I really just want to be left alone — and in the alt-Right’s case, that means not co-opting my writings in support of your foolishness.

Sincerely,

Kim du Toit