Tuesday, May 29, 2018

The First-fruits of Chinese and Southern Cultural Inweaving

Most peoples in the world experience only the toxic/destructive cultural products of the [u]nited States:  a Big Mac, a filthy sitcom, or a planeload of bombs. 

Thankfully, there are others going about this work in more wholesome, peaceful ways.  Abigail Washburn is one such person.  Her songs are a lovely blending of Southern Appalachian banjo music and Chinese musical traditions. 

One of the standouts from her work is ‘Red and Blazing’:


Other good tracks include

‘Banjo Guzheng Pickin’ Girl’

and ‘Song of the Traveling Daughter’

We look forward to seeing what else Southern culture can bring forth as it befriends other cultures from around the world.

--

Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!

Friday, May 25, 2018

A Pro-Southern Immigration Policy, and a Few Thoughts on ‘Blood and Soil’


One vitally important reason why the Southern States should leave the Union is immigration policy.  The first thing that comes to mind for most folks is Latin American immigrants, which is important, but that is not what we have in mind just now.  We are speaking here of a more imminent danger, of immigration from other States and regions of the Union.  It has already decimated Maryland, northern Virginia, and Florida and now threatens other places in Dixie like Texas and North Carolina like a loosely suspended axe:

At first, Rick Scot was hesitant to trade in West Hollywood for a new home in North Carolina. Working as a vice president at a Fortune 500 company in a state with a low cost of living was tempting, yet he wondered: What would it be like to be an openly gay man living in the South?

Friends assured him that this rapidly growing Southern city was a progressive, affirming place for gays and lesbians. So he and his husband, Jeffrey, bought a home in a quiet suburb and settled down. Only afterward did they find they'd landed on a fault line in the deepening divide across the South over LGBT discrimination.

"I have friends and colleagues who won't come here," Scot, 47, said last week at a town hall meeting on North Carolina's controversial new law, House Bill 2, that prevents cities from enacting their own anti-discrimination laws. It also restricts transgender bathroom access throughout the state.

Charlotte is one of a growing number of liberal Southern cities that finds itself locked in a bitter political standoff with state governments increasingly dominated by Republicans. Throughout the nation's most conservative region, socially progressive pockets — urban hubs such as Charlotte that seek to liberalize laws on LGBT rights and other issues — are clashing with predominantly rural state governments that heed the traditional religious values shared by the bulk of their citizens.

"The South is still the Bible Belt, but the gulf between urban and rural interests is deepening," said Michael Bitzer, a professor of political science at Catawba College, a liberal arts college in Salisbury, N.C.

 . . .


Like Hungary’s Victor Orban stopping Muslim migrants from entering his country despite the E. U. bureaucrats’ complaints, Southern governors need to ignore federal orders and do what is right for the good of their peoples:  Block any and all Dixie-phobes from entering their States from New England, Los Angeles, etc.

***

This episode in North Carolina also serves to highlight what we said last time:  Race isn’t the most important factor in culture.  We would gladly trade every one of the ‘white’ Rick Scotses in the South for ‘black’ Anthony Herveys any day:

Anthony Hervey was born in Water Valley, Mississippi in 1965. He grew up in Oxford, served in the military for a short period, then went on to the University of Mississippi, where he studied sociology and Afro Studies. He then traveled to London, England where he studied Race & Ethnicity at the University of London and served as an intern in Parliament. Hervey loved to debate and was often seen in London debating on economic, political and social issues, which drew large crowds.

In 2006, Hervey wrote a book titled “Why I Wave the Confederate Flag, Written by a Black Man.” He had been an outspoken supporter of Confederate symbols for many years, argued against the changing the Mississippi’s state flag, and often protested poverty at the base of the Confederate Soldiers Monument in Oxford.

 . . .


Source:  Michael Martin, https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/killed-for-the-flag/, opened 24 May 2018

This raises questions about the idea of a ‘blood and soil’ country.  Alexander Dugin examines that slogan below:

“Blood and Soil” – “Blood or Soil?”

The famous Russian philosopher, religious thinker, and publicist Konstantin Leontyev voiced an extremely important formula: “There is Slavdom, but no Slavism.” One of the main geopolitical conclusions of this wonderful author was contrasting the idea of “Panslavism” to the “Asiatic” idea. If this juxtaposition is carefully analyzed, we discover a common typological criterion which allows us to better understand the structure and logic of the geopolitical occult war of the Order of Eurasia against the Order of the Atlantic.

Despite an eclectic combination of terms in the concept of “Blood and Soil” by the German ideologist of a National-Socialist peasantry, Walter Dare the problem is formulated differently on the level of the occult war of geopolitical forces in the contemporary world, namely, “blood or soil.” In other words, the traditionalist project of preserving a people, state, or nation’s identity is always faced with an alternative: either take the “unity of nation, race, ethnos, and unity of blood” as the main criterion or “unity of geographical space, unity of borders, unity of soil.” The entire drama rests precisely in the necessity of choosing one or the other, and any hypothetical “both” remains but a utopian slogan which does not resolve, but obscures the problem. 

The genius Konstantin Leontyev, a traditionalist and radical Russophile by conviction, clearly put forth the dilemma: “Russians need either to insist on the unity of Slavs, on Slavism (“blood”), or appeal to the East and realize the geographical and cultural proximity of Russians to the Eastern peoples connected with Russian territories (“soil”).”  In other terms, this question can be formulated as a choice between recognizing the supremacy of “race” (“nationalism”) or “geopolitics” (“statehood,” “culture”). Leontyev himself chose “soil”, “territory,” the peculiarity of Great Russian imperial, religious, and state culture. He chose “Orientalism”, “Asianism,” and “Byzantinism.”

Such a choice implied the prioritization of continental, Eurasian values over narrow national and racial values. The logic of Leontyev naturally led to the inevitability of a Russo-German, and especially Russo-Austrian union and to peace with Turkey and Japan. Leontyev categorically rejected “Slavism” or “Panslavism”, thereby arousing the indignation of many of the late Slavophiles standing on the position of either “blood above soil” or “blood and soil.” Leontyev was neither understood nor listened to. The history of the 20th century repeatedly proved the extreme importance of the problems identified by him. 

Panslavism vs. Eurasianism

The thesis of “blood above soil” (in the Russian context, this means “Slavism” or “Panslavism”) first revealed all of its ambiguity during the First World War when Russia, having entered a union with the countries of the Entente, i.e., with the English, the French, and the Americans in an effort to liberate its “Slavic brothers” from the Turks, not only started to fight against its natural geopolitical allies – Germany and Austria – but also plunged itself into the catastrophe of revolution and civil war.  The “Slavism” of the Russians in fact turned out to work for the “Atlanticists,” the Entente, and the “neo-Carthaginian civilizational type”, which embodied the trade-based, colonial, and individualist Anglo-Saxon model. It is not surprising that the majority of those among the “patriotic Panslavists” from Tsar Nikolay II’s circle were employees of English intelligence services or simply “Atlanticist agents of influence.”

It is curious to recall an episode from the novel of the Russian patriot Hetman Petr Krasnov, From the Double-Headed Eagle to the Red Flag, where, in the midst of the First World War, the main character Colonel Sablin is asked: “Tell us frankly, who do you believe to be our true enemy?” He unambiguously responds: “England!”, but this conviction does not prevent him from honestly and courageously fighting precisely for English interests against Germany in paying his debt of absolute and unconditional loyalty to the Tsar. 

The hero of Krasnov’s article is an ideal example of a Russian Eurasianist patriot, an example of the logic of “land above blood” which was characteristic for Count Witte, Baron Unger-Sternberg, and the mysterious “Balticum” organization consisting of Baltic aristocrats who  remained loyal to the royal family to the very end (just as the Tekin Prince and his division, described in Krasnov’s novel, remain loyal to the Tsar amidst widespread betrayal). The extent to which the Asians, Turks, Germans, and other “foreigners” in 1917 faithfully served the Tsar, the Empire, Eurasia, “soil,” and the “continent” can be contrasted with how the “Slavs” and “Panslavists” quickly forgot about “Constantinople” and their “Balkan brothers,” left Russia, abandoned the Fatherland for the countries of Atlanticist influence, the Western Ocean, Water, and betrayed not only the Homeland, but also the great Idea of Eternal Rome, the Russian Third Rome, and Moscow. 

The Atlanticists and racism

In Germany, the adoption  of the idea of “blood over soil” resulted in equally dire consequences. Against the patriotic German Russophiles and Eurasianists such Arthur Mueller van den Bruck, Karl Haushofer, etc. who insisted on the “supremacy of living space” [4] in the interests of the continent as a whole and the idea of a “continental bloc”, the leadership of the Third Reich was eventually won by the Atlanticist lobby which exploited racist theses and, under the pretext that “Englishmen are Aryan relatives of the German ethnos”, sought to focus the attention of Hitler on the East and suspend (or at least ease) combat operations against England.

“Pan-Germanism” in this case (like the “Panslavism” of the Russians in the First World War) only played into the hands of the “Atlanticists.” It is entirely logical that the major enemy of Russia, who constantly strove to drag Hitler’s Germany into a conflict with the Russians and the Slavs (for “racial” reasons of “blood above soil”), was the English spy, Admiral Canaris. The extreme importance of the problem of “blood or soil” lies in that the choice of one of these two terms at the expense of the other allows one to identify, whether implicitly or indirectly, an “agent of influence” of this or that geopolitical world view, especially when the matter at hand is the “right” or “nationalist” camp. The essence of the “geopolitical conspiracy” of the Atlanticists (just as the Eurasianists’ one) includes the entire spectrum of political ideologies from the extreme right to the extreme left, while always leaving specific traces of “geopolitical agents of influence.” In the case of the “right,” the signal of potential Atlanticism is the principle of “blood over soil” which, among other things, allows attention to be diverted from fundamental geopolitical problems towards secondary criteria. 

Source:  http://www.4pt.su/en/content/great-war-continents, J. Arnoldski, trans., opened 24 May 2018

It is not dedication to the white race, black race, etc. that will save the South, but the common devotion of all Southerners of all races to a common Christian creed, to the unbroken Apostolic tradition of the Orthodox Church, and to dedication to the land of Dixie and her way of life.

We may learn from the ensample of St Alexander the Unsleeping (+430) and his multinational, multilingual community of monks just how powerful the Grace of the Holy Ghost is in creating unity and harmony amongst kin-groups that seem too different to live together peaceably:

 . . .

Alexander was perplexed as to how the admonition Pray without ceasing (1 Thess. 5:17) could be fulfilled by frail human flesh, but after three years of fasting and prayer, God showed him a method. He organized his monks into four groups according to whether their native language was Greek, Latin, Syriac or Coptic, and the groups prayed in shifts throughout the day and night. Twenty-four divine services were appointed each day, and the monks would chant from the Psalter between services. The community henceforth came to be known as the Akoimetoi, the Unsleeping Ones. (Similar communities later sprang up in the West, practicing what was there called Laus Perennis; St Columban founded many of these.)
  Always desiring to spread the holy Gospel, Saint Alexander sent companies of missionaries to the pagans of southern Egypt. He and a company of 150 disciples set out as a kind of traveling monastery, living entirely on the charity of the villages they visited. Eventually they settled in some abandoned baths in Antioch, setting up a there a monastery dedicated to the unceasing praise of God; but a jealous bishop drove them from the city. Making his way to Constantinople, he settled there with four monks. In a few days, more than four hundred monks had left their monasteries to join his community. The Saint organized them into three companies — Greeks, Latins and Syrians — and restored the program of unsleeping prayer that his community had practiced in Mesopotamia. Not surprisingly, his success aroused the envy and anger of the abbots whose monasteries had been nearly emptied; they managed to have him condemned as a Messalian at a council held in 426. (The Messalians were an over-spiritualizing sect who believed that the Christian life consisted exclusively of prayer.) Alexander was sent back to Syria, and most of his monks were imprisoned; but as soon as they were released, most fled the city to join him again. The Saint spent his last years traveling from place to place, founding monasteries, often persecuted, until he reposed in 430, 'to join the Angelic choirs which he had so well imitated on earth.' (Synaxarion)

 . . .

Source:  John Brady, http://www.abbamoses.com/months/february.html, entry for Feb. 23, opened 24 May 2018

May God grant to Dixie a St Alexander of her own one day soon.

--

Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!