Richard Spencer and the lambs of Christ

I radiate between the view that Richard Spencer is an asset for the American intelligence services and the view that he is a deeply stupid narcissist—it’s difficult to tell, though I lean towards the latter. I lean towards the latter because Spencer’s “grand idea” was to form a think-tank to influence Washington in a white nationalist direction—except that was pure narcissism, all he did was copy what already existed in Washington and imagined himself delivering little masterclass seminars about a little glossy brochure called Prospects and Challenges: White Americans in the 2030s. He didn’t get that think-tanks don’t exist to do what they purport to do—“influence and formulate policy using expertise”—but rather exist to facilitate networking and status cultivation within a pre-existent power nexus (and that power nexus has no interest in a “white nationalist” think-tank because that is de facto beyond the bounds of the democracy—so to start one was pointless from the get-go).

Spencer believes the system works as purported—so, for example, if neoconservative policies are implemented it’s because congressmen went to seminars and were “convinced” by the glossy booklets and speakers with PhDs. That’s not how politics works at all—although a narcissist who just likes the idea of being Director of Public Policy or some such made-up title at a think-tank would think that. In a similar way, Spencer’s other grand idea was to have a big protest with radical rightists—the “Unite the Right” march—that, in turn, got someone killed and discredited the whole revival of the radical right under the banner “the alt-right”. An outcome that was entirely predictable for anyone connected to reality, i.e. who knows what people attracted to the radical right are like and how the left reacts to them when they march (as any study of history would reveal). Yet the event was filled with drama and interest, as women like, and so it pleased Spencer.

In the tweet, Spencer has a pop at the Trumpites because he is so encased in his cod Nietzschean anti-Christian narcissistic shell that he cannot perceive reality. The J6 protesters were meek and mild—and that’s no insult, just reality. If the left had carried out that protest Congress would have been burned down—as anyone can work out if they watched the American left at work over the Floyd riots. All the J6ers (a few of them) did was to smash a few doors down—then they walked about in a slightly dazed way, not unlike the naïve and star-struck Jefferson Smith in Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, in awe at their admission to “the place where the people come to worship democracy”. They even, rather meekly and mildly, stayed within the roped-off parameters laid out for them—Spencer acknowledges that in a subsequent tweet, says that they were almost “unconscious”; really, he laments that they were not ferocious—that they didn’t burn it down, as the left would have done.

Nobody was killed or injured, except one protester. Yes, a policeman died—Sicknick, i.e. “a sick policeman”, “the nick” being jail (it’s all in the names, magic)—yet he was not killed by the protesters, as has been made out, but rather succumbed to some pre-existent medical condition as often happens when people are confronted by high-stress situations (and especially so given the notorious unfitness of the American police, who doubtless, especially at the Capitol, rarely need to exert themselves). So the whole protest amounts to a few broken doors and windows—a mild protest when compared to, say, Kenosha.

To keep strictly to the English meaning, the protesters were not “meek”—a meek man would stay home from all protests and drink a nice cup of tea instead; however, the phrase within the highly Christian context it is used (on Fox News, about “evangelical” protesters) should be taken biblically and the biblical English is not a great translation in this respect. The Greek word in the Bible really means “manly self-restraint”—so not total abnegation (and not, as Peterson Pharisaically interprets it, “to be a strong man who is extremely dangerous but never draws his sword”). I say the protesters were “meek” in the correct Greek sense because they displayed general restraint except at a particular necessary moment where they broke down the doors and windows (in quite a restrained manner)—to exercise manly restraint doesn’t mean never to use force, Jesus himself used force in the Temple despite being otherwise restrained (meek).

Spencer just says this because he can’t bear anything remotely Christian—although that is what primarily actuates the very race he wishes to save (but he’s more at home in a decadent liberal think-tank than in rural America, I suspect). He’s a “Nietzschean literalist”, just like the “biblical literalists” he probably feel superior to—he can’t see that the people who instantiate “master morality” most strongly today are the traditional Christians. Spencer just understands “Christian = bad”. Nietzsche would agree with what I have just said, since Nietzsche knew ancient Greek very well—and he would understand, though it is paradoxical, that the people less imbued with “slave morality” in the current context are the J6 “evangelical” Christians.

Nietzsche was a Machiavel and praised virtù—effective masculine action; and today effective action to overturn the left in America requires “evangelical” Christians; for the Machiavel nothing is off the table to be effective, whereas Spencer is just an ineffective believer. Nietzsche would agree with me—and that would be because Nietzsche didn’t have his head completely stuck up his own ass.