Richard Spencer
"We Own the Alt-Right."The Milo Phenomenon is now
all over the news:
The obscene, sodomy-celebrating, and nasty provocateur; rising GOP star; and Breitbart contributor, Milo Yiannopoulos, was recently invited to be the keynote speaker at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Fortunately, his invitation was quickly rescinded when an interview with Joe Rogan from ten months ago came to light in which Yiannopoulos gleefully recounted performing a sex act on a Catholic priest when Yiannopoulos was 14-years-old–a sexual act that Yiannopoulos insisted did not constitute pedophilia.
[Full article here]
Alt-Right[1] founder Richard Spencer has posted his commentary on Milo Yiannopoulos who used to be (or still is?) a follower of Spencer's Alt-Right movement. The video is at Altright.com's
youtube page under:
Milo Goes Up in Flames.Below, I've excerpted from the long commentary (25 minutes long) on the points where Spencer discusses in
moral terms the perverted sexual behavior of Yannopoulos.
As a side note, I have wondered why Spencer spent a rambling 25 minutes to discuss Yiannopoulos. I believe it is because of his inability to make a moral
judgment on Yiannopoulos' behavior, and therefore his roundabout way to try to deem the behaviour as unacceptable. It is one thing to
recognize the moral (or immoral) nature of someone's behaviour, it is quite another to
judge it right or wrong.
I list and discuss the excerpts below.
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Excerpts from the commentary:
- What Milo is saying..."is totally indefensible."
- "Speaking as a
father, I just simply cannot abide what he said. Milo just needs to recognize the fact that no
normal person is going to accept what he said. It makes our stomachs turn."
- "The fact is this [pedophilia rings that Yannopoulos was privy to] is criminal. This is not OK
legally speaking."
- "Look the fact is, if you witness something like that...you're legally and morally at the very least, I'm not a lawyer but you are at the very least morally obligated to say something and to try to stop that, or at the very least to take that information to the authorities."
- "This is just not acceptable. No-one is going to defend Milo. I'm sorry Milo no-one is going to defend you on this."
- "When someone is being attacked and there's a scandal, I almost want to defend them, because I know just how unfair the media is. I faced this myself with Hailgate. Everyone knows the punching incident, and I appreciate the people who defended me."
- "If this were any other scandal, I would not pile on. I do not like piling on. But in this case you, I have to pile on."
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In the 25-minute recording, Spencer vacillates between legal obligations, fatherly responsibilities (he has a toddler daughter), societal decorum, the unfair media, and normal behavior. Authorities (law and order), legality (lawyers and judges), normality (what one doesn't do in civilized society, at least publicly) are the issues he brings up in an attempt to explain why it is wrong to have pedophilia rings. He tries to frame his responses around morality or moral obligations, but he never specifies
what morality and
what moral obligations.
Spencer's hurt feelings of being insulted by the media ( "I know just how unfair the media is"), as though the media are really the cause of his and rejections, is the narcissistic reaction of someone who has no-one else to turn to but himself. "They attacked me because they are unfair (and evil)" says the narcissist, rather than search for something wrong in his approach.
Spencer is an atheist. As an atheist, there is nothing that tells him, other than his own perceptions, logic and observations, and societal "norms" what is moral and what is not moral.
Below is an excerpt from on a recent interview Spencer had regarding his atheism.
From
The Friendly Atheist Blog at
Patheos[2]:
Spencer has previously described himself (8:12) as a “cultural Christian,” but he told me in a private interview (over Twitter) that he is in fact an atheist. He also said the separation of church and state is “an utter illusion.
”Here’s an
excerpt from the discussion:
McAfee: Are you religious? Do you support the Separation of Church and State?
Spencer: I’m an atheist. The “separation of church and state” is an utter illusion. The state and religion state [sic] deeply connected.
McAfee: So, despite your lack of religion, you do think religion and government should be connected. Is that right? Do you think a secular government would fail?
Spencer: A truly secular government could never exist. Sovereignty is a magical thing. For a political order to function — for it to accomplish its tasks, including war-making — the population must *believe* in it.
Why is pedophilia immoral? What is wrong with loving little children? After all pedophiles can argue that their behavior is a form of love. Unless it is a "rapist pedophile," most pedophiles are attracted to one (or two or three) children and maintain long term interactions with them. The young children become attached to them.
Legally society can decide that having sex with 5 year old children (who can say "yes" and "no," and make decisions) is perfectly acceptable and that it is not a crime.
Spencer is repulsed by pedophilia as a father of a young daughter. That is his frame of reference: disgusted with - and ready to tackle - anyone who would approach his child thus. What about men who don't have children? From what depths are they to channel the emotion of repulsion of a man having sex with sons or daughters who are not theirs? And how about fathers of older children? In fact, most fathers are protective (both of their daughters
and sons) way into the children's adulthood, and only marriage gives them the peace of mind that their son or daughter isn't being "abused."
Society is held together not just by legal codes but by spiritual references. Spencer and the growing number of atheists are counting on a Christian society that produced these laws, behaviors, and civilized relationships, and that maintains (or can maintain) a functioning and
good society. Laws, since they deal with right and wrong, and have a moral basis, have to be based on a spiritual reference. In Spencer's ideal world, such laws to protect him and his family would exist in a world without God, but he would not discard the Christian spiritual framework. Such is the hypocrisy of atheists: they
will acknowledge some authority higher than man when they are threatened by nefarious forces. In Spencer's case, it is the realization that there is a pedophile out there advocating sex with children as young as his own daughter.
I've written about this
here,
here,
here,
here, and
here.
I write in
In Defense of Judeo-Christian Tradition::
It is unprecedented that people come outright and say "I am not religious." Previous generations wouldn't even know how to articulate these thoughts. What is even more irritating is the "but" that many of these people add. "Although not religious, I’m a defender of the so-called Judeo-Christian tradition." What does that even mean? As in "I will abstain from participating in one important element of Western tradition, but I will support it anyway?"
People can be overwhelmed by the beauty and poetics of the Bible, just as one can admire the poetry of Shakespeare. But, how can they, if they are so drawn to this book, not feel the mystery and transcendence of it as well? Where does that "tremendous literary achievement" lead to? Just for us to feel its tremendous literary achievement? Isn't there just something a little more than that?
Such is the ways of our modern world, where atheists sit around talking about the literary achievements of the Bible, as though they are great connoisseurs, and yet not have an ounce of reaction to its bigger picture.
It is Christianity which firmly and soundly built the society that was able to remove pedophilia from its midst, and which carved the laws which could punish the transgressors (the criminals).
Like all atheists, Spencer is an cultural opportunist. He latches on to what would make his life, his milieu, his relationships humane. The world created through God is good as long as one can get rid of pedophiles who would prey on one's daughters, but there is no logic to God's existence and therefore there is no God.
Here are a few of the infantile (I'm not denigrating Spencer here, I am just saying that his arguments are based on some kind of immature grievance that "God didn't answer my prayers"):
- Atheism offers the best explanation for the physical forces that cause natural disasters.
- Atheism offers the best explanation for the presence of unjustified pain and suffering in the world.
- Atheism offers the best explanation for God's silence in the face of adversity.
- Atheism offers the best explanation for divine hiddenness.
And so on. The full article (twelve points in all) is
here.
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Notes:
1. Alt-right is a term that appeared in November 2008 when Paul Gottfried addressed the H. L. Mencken Club about what he called "the alternative right". In 2009, two more posts at Taki's Magazine, by Patrick J. Ford and Jack Hunter, further discussed the 'alternative right.' The term is commonly attributed to Richard B. Spencer, president of the National Policy Institute and founder of Alternative Right magazine.
The alternative right has alternately been called libertarian nationalism, "neo"-paleoconservatism, "evolutionary" conservatism, "scientific" conservatism, and the post-religious right. [
Conservapedia]
2. Patheos is a non-denominational, non-partisan online media company providing information and commentary from various religious and nonreligious perspectives. [
Wikipedia]
