The wages of Takimag: Dumping cold water on revolution (or is it realism?)
Looking at issues ——including revolution——in unexpected quarters
I often read the arrogantly paleoconservative, fiercely anti-PC publication Taki’s Magazine. It keeps me mentally nimble. It’s also quite amusing at times when not utterly revolting. In fact, from time to time some essays and reportage are simply outstanding, like this piece authored by Scott Locklin on the prospects for revolution. (They Say They Want a Revolution). It’s a rather short piece by the standards of the topic, but it packs a lot of observations I found myself agreeing with, hence my desire to pass it on to you for possible comment, reflection and examination. Since this material appeared on Taki’s Magazine, and I’m betting you never heard of this place, I think I owe everyone an explanation. Bear with me as I want you to savor the environment where this essay appeared.
Taki’s Magazine, or Takimag, is a peculiar site, the brainchild of an eccentric Greek-born fascistic multimillionaire, unrepentant admirer of Reagan, Thatcher and Pinochet, and full-time social dilettante—Taki Theodoracopulos, a shorter, darker, and highly opinionated version of George Plimpton, if you know what I mean.
Takimag, which defines itself as a libertarian webzine and lists Pat Buchanan among its senior contributing authors, is not for the fainthearted and certainly not for desiccated, humorless liberals or dogmatic lefties. Those who lack those qualities will not survive long the unrelenting reactionary prose, but those who stay the course may find some rewards. Many writers, in fact, excel in style and elegant phrasing, and seem impressively well informed, but, yes, there’s a dark underside, to put it mildly, to this site: the contributors (and editors) also openly profess what can be safely described as bald-faced racism and anti-Jewish manias.
Still, while not entirely redemptive, and this is where surprise enters the picture, when they’re not ranting against Jewish people, blacks, Mexicans or other “nonwhite species” (somewhat ironic since Taki himself is rather dark-complexioned) their take on the issues of the day is often refreshing and original, not to mention erudite, even anti-status quo in the defiant Gonzo style made infamous by Hunter Thompson.
On such credentials one would like to simply dismiss this site out of hand as the perverse editorial caprice of a self-indulgent plutocrat, which it undoubtedly is, but that choice could keep you from some truly interesting, powerfully unfiltered material, including the kind of stuff that many ostensibly ‘decent” folks think all the time, whisper under their breath, but refuse to own. Or things that neither the left nor the right likes to acknowledge, like the unlikeliness of social change in our time. The quoted passage on the prospects for revolution by Scott Locklin (see below) is a case in point. I direct your attention to this passage not because it is so outrageous, but because it is, in my view, rather difficult to refute. (He also penned a commendable piece on the turmoil in the Ukraine—Pity the Poor Ukrainians. Read it if you get a chance.)
Takimag is a contrarian’s paradise, especially if you militate in the “blue-blooded” ultra right. The site openly defends white privilege and medieval privileges, but, here’s the rub, it has interesting contradictions. For example, because of its libertarian lineage, it stands opposed to all invasions of privacy and the runaway corporate state controlling America. It therefore approves of Edward Snowden and Putin, despises Thomas Friedman (calling him, appropriately, a “hack”), and perceptively describes the New Yortk Times’ preferred m.o., (in a piece penned by the founder himself, All the News Their Bias Allows), as one in which “[The exclusion] of facts, indeed stories, which do not fall within the purview of its viewpoint is the paper’s norm rather than the exception…” Unfortunately Theodoracopulos here does not use his insight to lambaste the Times for the larger crime, being a lynchpin of the current imperial system and class order, but goes instead after the paper’s liberaloid political correctness syndrome in connection with minorities. In this, like most diehard conservatives Taki refuses to look at the deeper reasons why so many blacks lead lives of criminality, desperation, and thuggery, nor why (all stories about abused welfarism aside), this dreadful condition has a helluva lot more to do with systemic poverty, self-defeatism and class than race. Indeed while few would be afraid of a professional-looking African American like Barack Obama climbing on the elevator at any hour of the day or night, a bunch of ghetto teenagers are certain to strike terror in the heart of your average middle class white. Simple realities like this elude him.
In sum, readers of TGP who have waded into the turgid prose of venues like The American Spectator or National Review may anticipate a sense of deja vu when visiting Takimag, but this would be a mistake. Takimag, self-described as a libertarian webzine of “politics and culture”, while unapologetically rightwing, remains something of a hard to handle urchin in many quarters, including many of its natural allies (which it often embarrasses due to its open racism and antisemitism). As a site that has elevated political misanthropy and contempt for those who worship on the altar of political correctness to an art form, the authors often succeed in pissing off and insulting a substantive portion of humanity, along with a broad swath of ideological and cultural fads. Not infrequently, some of the shrapnel hits those that well deserve it. This kind of topical mayhem suits the founder of the site, feisty socialite reactionary (and legendary enfant terrible) Chronicles magazine about Lehman Brothers CEO Richard Fuld that “he’s a very homely, simian-looking Jew who couldn’t punch his way out of a nursery.”[7]
THE LION (OF ISRAEL) SLEEPS TONIGHT
After being in a coma that lasted longer than the Holocaust, former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (born Ariel Scheinermann) has departed the Holy Land for points unknown. Referred to variously as “The Lion of Israel,” “The Bulldozer,” and “The Butcher of Beirut,” Sharon is widely perceived as one of the most bullish and impenitent peddlers of Zionism-at-gunpoint that the world has ever witnessed.
Although George W. Bush called Sharon “a man of peace” and John Kerry eulogized him as a “man who sought to bend the course of history toward peace,” Ronald Reagan once allegedly made a diary entry referring to Sharon as “the bad guy who seemingly looks forward to a war.”
In later years Sharon denounced “terrorism,” but he’d made his bones in 1953 when he helped blow up 45 houses and kill 69 Palestinian villagers, most of them allegedly women and children. Sharon also played integral parts in the Six Day War, the Yom Kippur War, the erection of the West Bank barrier, and the bulldozing of Palestinian settlements. He is also thought to have passively allowed the 1982 slaughter of hundreds of Palestinian and Lebanese Shia by Christian militia members who reportedly mutilated and disemboweled infants, women, and the elderly.
“I think Sharon will be seen in history as the one who has perpetrated the most cruelty on the Palestinians,” said Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi. (Takimag, The Week That Perished, Jan. 13, 2014)
—PG
signs of independent-minded youth, the exceptional among them are either rotting in jail, working on their startup ideas, or going expat. The average among them are drugged, cowed, atomized from their communities, and presently useless to themselves and others.
Veteran Marine and libertarian radio host Adam Kokesh is the most prominent American right-wing figure currently making actual revolutionary noises. After spending a few nights in jail, he changed his mind about his peaceful march on Washington with loaded rifles and is now calling for an “open source” demonstration in all 50 state capitals. In other words, he is a loon who has no idea how to organize a movement against looming tyranny any more than the incompetent grubbinses at Occupy Wall Street did.
Modern governments are good at pacifying their citizens. The present system uses plenty of old-fashioned Soviet-style repression, jailing large fractions of the populace pour encourager les autres, depriving thought criminals of their livelihood, and overtly controlling the sparse mass media that remains. They also use the old British imperial techniques of pacifying restive populations with pornography, social atomization, importing workers to pit against the native populace, psychoactive drugs, and cheap entertainment. While the people are obviously not content, they are pacified, and for the system to continue on its present trajectory, that is enough. The Ottoman Empire wasn’t terribly popular, either, and it lasted 400 years.
In the US, most people wouldn’t put themselves through the most trivial inconvenience for any reason. Which militia group would feed, house, or protect their fellow citizens in an actual crisis? Will Paultards give a disgraced comrade a job to support himself and his family, or will they leave him to starve on the “free market?” How many conservative apparatchiks or blog apes have a dozen or a hundred allies he can depend on in a fistfight, let alone a revolution against the most powerful government in human history?
Keyboard and barroom revolutionaries are plentiful. The actual requirement for any sort of revolution in the country is a Hezbollah or Golden Dawn type movement: a group that provides government services without being the government. The closest thing we have to a political vanguard in the US at present is the group bringing the blessings of gender-neutral restrooms to the republic. Even if you believe in that sort of thing, it is hardly a threat to the powers that be.
They Say They Want a Revolution, Jan. 6, 2013)
APPENDIX
Bernard-Henri Lévy
About fifteen years ago I received a very polite letter from Belgium asking me to list three of the most pompous and self-important people in the UK. It came with a self-addressed return envelope and stamp. The writer was known as l’entarteur, a man who would approach the pompous and vainglorious and shove a pie in their face. He would never insult the victims nor use foul language—in fact, he always remained silent—and he assured me in his letter that he used only the finest ingredients and freshest milk in his pies.
The first potential target who came to my mind was Edward Heath, but I immediately took his name off the list. Heath was too bloated, his face too red, and the last thing I wished was for him to have a stroke while covered in a lemon-meringue pie. L’entarteur agreed, and we started a lively correspondence. One of the candidates I submitted was not a Brit, but Algerian-born Frog Bernard-Henri Lévy, whom my Belgian buddy had already pelted with pies on at least three occasions. Four is a good round number, suggested yours truly.
One month later at the airport in Nice Lévy got blasted by l’entarteur like never before. The pie was giant size, and the cream made him look like a Yeti while he fumbled around and screamed bloody murder. Then les gendarmes interfered and arrested my friend, who offered no resistance. One thing the onlookers noticed was that the fuzz had trouble making the arrest because they were laughing so hard. Led in front of a judge, my NBF promised he would no longer throw pies on BHL (as the pompous Lévy is known in the land of cheese) and was let off with a fine for disturbing the peace. We lost touch with each other after that.
“There are those, mind you, who take Lévy seriously—French image-makers, PR hucksters, and other such modern pests—but serious people do not.”
Last week I almost got on a plane to Paris to help continue my Belgian friend’s good work, but I got lazy and went skiing instead. There is no pie big enough to make the bum BHL mend his wicked ways. His latest outrage involves Stéphane Hessel, a German-born Jew whose father emigrated to France in 1924 when Stéphane was seven. Hessel’s father was the model of one of the two lovers in Jules et Jim, the novel which later became a very popular film. Stéphane served in the French Army, became a prisoner of war, escaped, and joined de Gaulle. Dispatched to France to help organize the Resistance, he was captured, tortured, and sent to Buchenwald. While being transferred to Bergen-Belsen, he escaped again.
After the war he was named ambassador and worked with the United Nations. Honors and awards followed. Late last year—his 93rd—he published his book Be Indignant!, his defense of Palestinians under brutal Israeli occupation. The book became an overnight bestseller, moving 600,000 copies in three months. (Charles Glass Books, an imprint of London’s Quartet Books, has landed the UK rights and will publish it shortly.)
Hessel’s alma mater, the École Normale Supérieure, invited him to speak to the students. Then a pro-Israeli website objected. In comes our hero, Bernard-Henri Lévy, the multi-millionaire son of an Algerian timber tycoon, and one whose father I am sure never donned a military uniform for France or any other country. Lévy objected virulently to Hessel’s invitation, and the 93-year-old was silenced.
Well, I have not been silenced. I met the self-publicist and self-proclaimed philosopher once, and it was not pleasant. His trademark white shirt open to his navel was there for all to see—in the French Embassy, of all places—and his current squeeze, a blonde with whom I used to step out, introduced us. Lévy tried to stare me down like bullies do in sleazy clubs, but it didn’t work. I know how to handle phonies, and he’s as phony as they come. There are those, mind you, who take Lévy seriously—French image-makers, PR hucksters, and other such modern pests—but serious people do not. As a historian BHL has offered a very dark picture of French history in an attempt to draw attention to himself as an independent thinker. He is nothing of the kind and has never come up with a single philosophical proposition. In fact, he has been caught in his refutation of Kant quoting “the famous French philosopher Botul,” naively falling for a spoof perpetrated by a journalist who’d had enough of BHL’s phony pomposity.
Although I regret not having shoved a pie in his face, or a knuckle sandwich for that matter, what he did to the Pearl family deserved much more than lemon pies. BHL wrote a very bad book on Daniel Pearl’s murder but fictionalized it to the extent that Pearl’s widow and family were outraged, accusing Lévy’s ego of getting in the way of the truth. BHL’s methods are vile and, in the case of Israeli outrages against unarmed Palestinians, downright disgusting. No outrage by Israeli Zionists has ever caught his attention, but the moment the 93-year-old Hessel’s name came up, there was BHL, peacock-like, denouncing a fellow Jew who fought for his adopted country against the Nazis and suffered as a result.
Such are the joys of modern celebrities posing as hommes sérieux. BHL is a boaster and an impostor, a shameless publicity freak who has given philosophy a bad smell. We need to bake more pies. In a better world, he’d be eating knuckle sandwiches.
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As the new kid on the block here at the Greanville Post, an introduction seems appropriate.
