I listened to a fascinating Counter Currents podcast about a recent “Twitter Drama” between C. A. Bonds and Bronze Age Pervert. I had never heard of C. A. Bonds, and I’ve never read Bronze Age Pervert. But the situation includes two issues in my wheelhouse that are worth exploring. Also, Greg Johnson’s hissy fit during the podcast is a great example of the Disingenuous Right.
Greg Johnson, Imperium Press, & Nick Jeelvy on the Bronze-Bond Blowup
Briefly, C. A. Bonds has a “Patronage Theory of Politics.” He seems to have recently removed much of his online writing, but I did find this, The Patron Theory of Politics. Without going into detail, the issue at hand is that C. A. Bond speculated that Bronze Age Pervert was receiving either money or publicity from the Claremont Institute, and BAP’s fans started trolling him on Twitter about their large payments of “Thielbucks,” a reference to Neo-Reactionary sugar daddy Peter Thiel.
I’ve been writing about Peter Thiel and the Claremont Institute and their sponsorship of Curtis Yarvin for two years now. I don’t know much about BAP, but if he were being funded, or given publicity, by the same circles it would hardly surprise me.
Greg Johnson reacted with emotional fury to this suggestion, and used a phrase he used against me, “paranoid ideation.” Briefly, I once posted on Counter Currents that Donald Trump had the support of some powerful Zionist figures, such as Sheldon Adelson, and related a personal story. During the Trump vs. Clinton campaign, a friend of mine attended a cocktail party in Manhattan, attended by some high rollers, many of them Zionist fundraisers. One told her, “I hate Trump, but we have to support him to help Israel.”
For some odd reason, this triggered Johnson so hard he accused me of “paranoid ideation,” implied that I made up the story, then deleted all of my comments on Counter Currents going back months. Obviously I found this overreaction quite puzzling, but knowing that Greg Johnson is a Drama Queen of the highest order, I didn’t really think much of it, until a week later he uses the same rhetoric he used against me in this unintentionally hilarious piece:
https://counter-currents.com/2020/01/the-paranoid-style-in-white-nationalism/
Greg Johnson’s blow up in the podcast about Bond and BAP was more or less the same, and it revealed something about Johnson’s extreme disingenuousness, a character flaw that seems endemic on the Right.
First, what Johnson does is interpret Bond’s analysis in the least charitable way possible, so much so it borders on a strawman. Basically, Johnson does the opposite of what a sincere person would do:
In philosophy and rhetoric, the principle of charity or charitable interpretation requires interpreting a speaker’s statements in the most rational way possible and, in the case of any argument, considering its best, strongest possible interpretation.
Johnson claims that if someone suggests that someone is getting paid, they are necessarily also assuming that that person is lying, and that is “paranoid ideation.” This is such a disingenuous claim it is astonishing. If I were Peter Thiel, and I wanted to fund a writer, I’m obviously going to choose a writer that shares the world view I want to promote. There is no “lying” and no one made any sort of claim that anyone was, but Johnson goes ballistic making this claim. I’ve been writing about Curtis Yarvin’s funding by Peter Thiel, but I’ve never claimed that Curtis Yarvin doesn’t believe a word that he writes and he is merely taking dictation from Thiel, but Johnson characterizes the situation as exactly that.
Fortunately, his co-hosts, Nick Jeelvy and Mike from Imperium Press, push back quite hard on this. They point out that, for one, obviously censoring some voices while boosting the signal of others is a very simple and obvious way that powerful groups can decide who has influence and who does not. Indeed, Johnson himself has been heavily censored and deplatformed – how could he pretend he doesn’t understand how this works?
Does Johnson really believe that there exists no “artificial” influence on Internet platforms? He’s never heard of a bot farm? Never heard of SEO? Never thought that someone like Andrew Sullivan, who has a large audience, can lend that audience to a newcomer like Curtis Yarvin?
Johnson is far from stupid, so why is he pretending he is?
A second astonishingly disingenuous claim Johnson makes is that if someone like Bond claims that someone like BAP is being funded or boosted by powerful interests, that is really just jealousy. This is also absurd. For instance, I recognize that Yarvin is far smarter, and a far better writer, than I am. I’m certain that his ideas are far more compelling than mine. Even if Yarvin was not being funded by Thiel and the Claremont Institute, and even if he wasn’t boosted on day one by Andrew Sullivan, I have no doubt that Yarvin would still be far, far more popular than I am.
Johnson’s claim that patronage has no influence on those being patronized is disingenuous in the extreme. Consider the concept of “access journalism.” If I’m a journalist who is getting quotes and tips from General Milley, I know that if write a negative article about him, I’ll lose my access. So, either I self censor, or I’m simply out of the game. If I were an op-ed writer for the New York Times, I’m going to know by the culture of my workplace that I will be rewarded for expressing certain opinions, and punished – possibly fired – for expressing other opinions. So the patron can have an influence merely by selection.
Noam Chomsky’s writing about the press was attacked by mainstream journalists exactly as Johnson is attacking Bond here. Chomsky simply pointed out that people who did not hold the opinions of the powerful would simply never be selected as journalists in the first place – his critics called him a “conspiracy theorist” for suggesting that, Johnson would no doubt accuse him of “paranoid ideation.”
Since Greg Johnson is clearly very intelligent, it is not that he doesn’t understand these things. So, why would Johnson be so disingenuous about such a rather banal analysis, that patrons have influence on those they patronize, and that those who gain influence in a society do so because they are backed up by some power?
Well, Johnson has done a little psychoanalysis on me, so I’m going to do a little psychoanalysis on him.
Just a few months ago, Johnson explained that due to being financially deplatformed, he was relying on a smaller number of donations from more wealthy people who could donate a larger amount. So perhaps this analysis causes this extreme emotional reaction from Johnson because he immediately takes it as a personal attack on him, even though the analysis clearly is not. Perhaps the lady doth protest too much?
Second of all, one might suspect that Johnson’s allergy to second guessing people’s motivations is because of his personal situation. Being gay, in the Right, is difficult because one has to stay in a sort of “closet.” One has to engage in “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and “neither confirm nor deny” that one is gay, which surely must be frustrating. So, if someone were to wonder, “why is Claremont Institute, a neo-conservative think tank, funding and popularizing writers like Yarvin and BAP” this triggers Johnson emotionally, leading him to accuse people of “paranoid ideation” because peering behind closet doors, inquiring into hidden influence, are lines of inquiry Johnson has often been on the receiving end of.
But still, Johnson’s utter disingenuousness is astonishing. But then, I remember, he’s a right-winger, so it goes with the territory. Clearly, disingenuous people are attracted to right-wing politics.
I agree completely with Johnson’s comment that having someone “slightly to the left of us” in the mainstream is a good thing, not a bad thing, and it’s “our” job to then bring them all the way. But Johnson – again, completely disingenuously – simply ignores the well known tactic of co-option.
The tactic was expressed by legendary Republican operative Lee Atwater in this infamous interview. While this interview has been greatly mischaracterized by Democrats, Atwater makes the point clearly:
Atwater: As to the whole Southern strategy that Harry S. Dent, Sr. and others put together in 1968, opposition to the Voting Rights Act would have been a central part of keeping the South. Now you don’t have to do that. All that you need to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in place on the issues that he’s campaigned on since 1964, and that’s fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, you know, the whole cluster.
Questioner: But the fact is, isn’t it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps?
Atwater: Y’all don’t quote me on this. You start out in 1954 by saying, “Ni**er, ni**er, ni**er”. By 1968 you can’t say “ni**er”—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, “We want to cut this”, is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Ni**er, ni**er”. So, any way you look at it, race is coming on the back-burner.
Atwater is describing quite clearly how the GOP got the Southern vote NOT – as the Democrats claim – by appealing to racial interests but instead how they could ease out racial appeals by abstracting them away. You first have a population completely in tune with their own racial interests, but by the end of it, they wind up voting for a slate of issues that has completely avoided addressing their racial concerns. They get a pro-white dog-whistle, but they vote for anti-white policies. This is standard issue GOP politics, and this is the co-option people are concerned about.
Greg Johnson clearly understands all of these things, so why is he being so disingenuous?
Indeed, Yarvin was extremely successful in co-opting the online right from 2007. At the time the online right was centered around Ron Paul, AntiWar.com, and its sentiments were anti-war, and increasingly, anti-Israel.
With skill that would have made Lee Atwater proud, Yarvin – with great assistance from Andrew Sullivan – spent a decade dog-whistling to that right, and slowly – but surely – turned them away from libertarianism towards the novel idea of … “monarchy” … and explained that it’s not Jews behind the anti-white rhetoric coming from Harvard, it’s actually … neo-Calvinists. Instead of cynical Zionists at AIPAC promoting war by bribing politicians with money and blackmailing them with bad press, it’s actually well meaning, but impractical, neo-Calvinists who caused the war because they wanted to help Muslim girls get an education. If you suggest that in reality, the warmongers at AIPAC have more self-interested motivations, Greg Johnson will accuse you of paranoid ideation.
The Right of 2007 was openly discussing Jewish power, AIPAC’s warmongering, and Jewish anti-whiteness. Now, the entire online Right is reading Joel Kotkin at Claremont telling everyone Jews are the biggest victims of Critical Race Theory.
I’m not “jealous” that Yarvin was so successful at co-opting the Right. I’m angered that he was, and terrified of Yarvin and Thiel ever getting their dictatorship. The fact these people are all either Jews, or funded by Jews, make it obvious that it is Jewish interests, not American interests, that are being promoted by Claremont and the Right.
Banned Hipster 
“Now, the entire online Right is reading Joel Kotkin at Claremont telling everyone Jews are the biggest victims of Critical Race Theory.”
I don’t really think is true. I think you’re too close to it. Regular people are aware of jews these days — enough of them, anyway.
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That “My fellow white men” is still used so pervasively suggests it works. Unawareness is the order of the day.
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If you live in a heavily-Jewish city or work in a profession like law, medicine, finance or entertainment, you’re absolutely going to see all angles of the Jewish character, and the unpleasant ones will be especially jarring and unforgettable.
Most people have zero personal experience with The Tribe.
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@bob saffron
That is not really my take. I don’t accept there is a “Jewish character.” The Jewish issue is a material issue, it is an issue of organization. If someone is brought up in the Jew cult, religious or secular version, they are going to be indoctrinated to hate “the goyim.” Frankly, the secular version is worse than the religious version, because the religious Jews tend to stick to themselves and define their “Jewishness” as engaging in their religious rituals. It is the secular Jews who have replaced their religion with just hatred of their neighbors – their entire “Jewish identity” is based around declaring everything “anti-semitic.”
As I’ve said a million times, I’ve known many, many, many Jewish people. I cannot even stereotype them, as it really would say more about my own social circles than them – it would just be a selection bias.
But the more a secular Jew is focused on his “Jewish identity” and Zionism, the more hatred of the goyim. The ones who were just New York Jews, raised in a Jewish family, maybe skipped Christmas, but otherwise assimilated, they tend to just be libtards like everyone else. They typically think of themselves as “Jewish” but not a “Jew.”
It is the Professional Jews, like the people who work at ADL, or in academia, that are the most problematic. Then, of course, there is the Jewish oligarchy, the one third of billionaires that are Jews, who are sufficiently organized to wield real power, unlike their “white” counterparts, who are only organized on class lines with zero “white identity.”
The real contemporary Jewish issue is they are allowed to exclude us, but we aren’t allowed to exclude them.
I find this to be an obvious and simple take, which is why I’m often surprised – but I probably shouldn’t be – that right-wingers just don’t get it. Some right-wingers deny there is any Jewish problem at all, and the right-wingers that do have only two models: Catholicism or Nazism, both defunct failures.
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Other than Curtis Yarvin, master propagandist, I don’t know who any of those people are, but I’m a big fan of Bronze Age Pervert. I like the closeted homoerotic-“cum”-homosexual bodybuilder shtick. And I know for sure that he reads your blog because he’s cribbed some of my lines. Hi, BAP. You will submit before my awesome sexual powers!
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You’re a much better writer than “Mencius Moldbug” and Greg Johnson is just a waspy faggot, and as such, he’s never going to see the real problem with the Jews. I recommend you read about Comenius, Dury, and Hartlib. You’ll never understand why these “neo-calvinists” (what a STUPID name for it, it shows you someone condescending to his audience, or else he just isn’t all that bright) are as thick as thieves with the Jews and have been for SO LONG until you see the roots of the problem in Anglo-American history.
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@JPS
> the roots of the problem in Anglo-American history.
Basically, this is the complaint of a jilted lover. Jews stopped collaborating with the Catholics and the Holy Roman Empire and started collaborating with the Protestants and the British Empire.
This is warmed over EMJ/Michael Pinay stuff, and you are engaging in the same kind of mystification as Yarvin.
The problem is not “neo-Calvinism.” The problem is not Judaism, Protestantism, or Catholicism. Someone could just turn this narrative around on you and start saying to read up on Catholic Charlemagne and all the privileges he gave to Jews:
> He realized the advantages to be derived by the country from the business abilities of the Jews, and gave them complete freedom with regard to their commercial transactions. Some Jews seem to have occupied prominent places at his court. Thus, Charlemagne had for his physician one named Ferragut. A Hebrew named Isaac was a member of an embassy sent by Charlemagne to Harun al-Rashid, probably in the capacity of dragoman.
https://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/4250-charlemagne
The issue isn’t religious, it’s ethnic. Or, that is the issue for me, at least.
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“Basically, this is the complaint of a jilted lover. Jews stopped collaborating with the Catholics and the Holy Roman Empire and started collaborating with the Protestants and the British Empire.”
“Just jealous” of being dominated by Jews, eh? Why are Americans “constitutionally” incapable, in more than sense, of doing anything to overthrow Jewish power? Why does it take somebody with a surname like Lindbergh? Ever consider your outlook might have to do with your German ancestry? Obviously it does have something to do with the evolution of the American cultural political system. Jews didn’t just show up in the late 19th and take over in the early 20th Century. There was something innate to the American system, to American history, that made it unavoidable, no matter how much someone like Henry Adams might blow a gasket over it as it was happening. Bernard Baruch’s father was a surgeon for the Confederacy, and of course there was Judah Benjamin, so it wasn’t just a north-south thing either.
Here’s what Richard F Burton says about opinion in Europe, which he is contrasting with attitudes in Britain (and attitudes more or less promulgated by the British and spread about the world by them):
“It remains now only to touch upon the future prospects
of the Jewish race. This important consideration is still subject to two widely different opinions.
The first, which may be called the vapid utterance of the so-called Liberal School, speaks as follows: “In this century we are battering down the ponderous walls of prejudice which nations and sects have erected in past times, for the separation of themselves from their neighbours, or as a coign of vantage from which to hurl offensive weapons at them. Roman Catholic and Jewish emancipation have been conceded, though tardily, and we may fairly hope that in the next generation our political, social, and commercial relations with our fellow-men will be conducted without regard to their religious belief or their ethnological origin.” The trifling objection to this “harmonious and tolerant state of things” is that, though the Christian may give up his faith and race, the Jew, however readily he may throw overboard the former, will cling to the latter with greater tenacity, as it will be the very root and main foundation of his power.
The second is the Judophobic or Roman Catholic view of the supremacy of Jewish influence in the governments and the diplomacy of Europe. It openly[Pg 63] confesses its dread of Judaic encroachments, and it goes the full length of declaring that, unless the course of events be changed by some quasi-miraculous agency, the triumph of the Israelite over Christian civilization is inevitable—in fact, that Judaism, the oldest and exclusive form of the great Semitic faith, will at least outlive, if it does not subdue and survive, Christianity, whose triumph has been over an alien race of Aryans. “Gold,” it argues, “is the master of the world, and the Jewish people are becoming masters of the gold. By means of gold they can spread corruption far and wide, and thus control the destinies of Europe and of the world.” For the last quarter of a century the dominant Church in France seems to have occupied itself in disseminating these ideas, and the number of books published by the alarmists and replied to by Jewish authors is far from inconsiderable. Witness the names of MM. Tousseuel, Bédarride, Th. Halliz, Rev. P. Ratisbonne, and A. C. de Medelsheim, without specifying the contributors to the Union Israëlite and the Archives Israëlites of Paris—a sufficient proof of the interest which this question has excited, and of the ability with which it has been discussed in France.”
Now the Habsburg empire was particularly a disaster when it comes to Jews (and we can still see the problem operating today in Eastern Europe), but this didn’t confuse people in the Habsburg Empire. Leon de Poncins re-published an old tract about the effects the Jews were having there and it is quite interesting, especially in regards to problems we see in Eastern Europe today. Large regions heavily populated with Jews had long been within its borders. Nevertheless, people understood the problem, and when push came to shove, people resisted.
“But these are generalisms which require the specification of particulars. Where, however, the field is so extensive, we must limit ourselves to the most running survey of Europe and the Holy[Pg 64] Land. Throughout this continent the career of the Jew is at once thriving and promising. The removal of Jewish disabilities in England and the almost universal spread of constitutionalism throughout Europe have told mightily in favour of the Jews. An essential condition of all reform is that the reformer never can say, “Thus far will I go, and no farther.” In sporting parlance, he took off the weight from a dark horse, and the latter is everywhere winning in a canter. The father kept a little shop in the Ghetto; the son has palaces and villas, buys titles, crosses, and other graven images utterly unknown to the Mosaic Law, and intermarries with the historic Christian families of the land. The great, if not the only, danger is that in the outlying parts of Europe, where men are not thoroughly tamed, and where the sword is still familiar to the hand, the Jew advances far too fast; nor is it easy to see how his career can be arrested before it hurries him over the precipice. At this moment Hungary is a case in point. The Magnate, profuse in hospitality, delighting in display, careless of expenditure, and contemptuous of economy, sees all his rich estates, with their flocks and herds, their crops and mines, passing out of his own hands, and contributing to swell the bottomless pocket of the Jewish usurer. But the Magyar is a fiery race; and if this system of legal robbery be allowed to pass a certain point, which, by-the-bye, is not far distant, the Jews[Pg 65] must prepare themselves for another disaster right worthy of the Middle Ages. And they will have deserved it.”
The people in Europe were more or less tied to “constitutional” government imposed steadily by the Freemasons who were backed sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly by British Imperial power. And that is how the situation has gradually become beyond intolerable, to the point that western survival is threatened. It’s not to say that the old governments were good or even tenable. Nevertheless, the British and later the Americans played a paramount role in the enforcement of this “constitutional” government throughout Europe.
Do I believe wasps are constitutionally capable of resisting Jews? It is hard to believe it will ever happen, but stranger things have happened.
Someone who doesn’t have a firm connection to a more traditional society will never understand what has been lost in our society. Most Americans are only subconsciously aware of the contribution of Catholicism to the culture of the United States historically. People idealized the America of Kennedy administration not because of what it really was, but because it symbolized the so-called “simpler time.” There was a time when America was simpler and much healthier and Catholicism played a large role in that. America wasn’t always some modernist “hipster” paradise (hell). Right-wing homos (as if one word they say should be taken seriously by anyone) yearn for they days of antiquity, because their organic connection to our history is fundamentally compromised, they cannot identify with it because of their proclivities. Wasp society wasn’t all bad, but it is fatally flawed, we wouldn’t be in this position if it wasn’t for their religious sensibilities, that are at the root of our problems. Or maybe the problems are innate to their race? That seems like a stretch.
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@JPS
> Jews didn’t just show up in the late 19th and take over in the early 20th Century. There was something innate to the American system, to American history
You are correct. Wherever Catholicism spread throughout Europe, they brought their Jews with them. What is it about the Catholic Church and their inability to overthrow Jewish power? E. Michael Jones brags in his book, The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit, how every time the peasants tried to overthrow the Jews, all the Jews would rush to the Catholic cathedrals and the Catholics priests would protect them. The Catholic Church invited the Jews into Europe, gave them a privileged position, gave them a monopoly on finance, and protected them from public outrage and their actions.
What makes the Catholic Church so intent, throughout 2,000 years of history, of forcing Jewish rule on Europeans? The Catholics slaughtered Europeans who wouldn’t convert, made 90% of Europeans peasants, and gave Jews a high status second only to Catholic aristocrats and princes.
Why is that?
I see you want to ignore 1,500 years of Catholic-Jewish collaboration because you believe in the Judeo-Protestant-Masonic-Republican Conspiracy Theory of history, because you are a Catholic partisan. Believe me, I’ve heard it all before, and the fact you ignore 1,500 years of history shows me that you are being disingenuous.
And as for Germany … well, it was Protestant Martin Luther that finally removed the privileged status that Catholics had given to Jews. Before Luther, Jews were privileged by Germany. Even after Luther, Germany was the center of Jewish power. Why did the Germans not do anything about Jewish power until World War II?
You are just picking and choosing parts of history. Guess what? Britain built an Empire, just like Spain and Portugal, just like France, just like Germany. Jews have had, at various times, been an important part of the ruling class of all of those Empires. So why do you want to ignore all of them and focus only on the British? Because you’re an EMJ partisan, and you literally are just racist against Anglo people – just like Jews are, in fact. Fancy that.
> Roman Catholic and Jewish emancipation
Yeah – you get that? Consider the implications of that.
> The people in Europe were more or less tied to “constitutional” government imposed steadily by the Freemasons
You’re beating on your hobby horse. Why not blame capitalism? Why not blame banking? That was far more of a nexus for Jewish power than republicanism. And the Freemason stuff? Again – that is just Catholic fetishism. Masonry was just a part of the British Empire. Notice how a huge amount of Freemasonic lore came from German occultism?
> “Wasps”
A slur invented by Jews. You are far more like a Jew than you care to admit.
> Most Americans are only subconsciously aware of the contribution of Catholicism
Second worst mistake America ever made was allowing Papists in the country in the first place – as you can see, you hate America, you’re a racist bigot against me and my people. You should go to Mexico and be among your fellow Catholics.
> because it symbolized the so-called “simpler time.” There was a time when America was simpler and much healthier and Catholicism played a large role
I mean, what an obvious lie. Catholicism played virtually no role until the early 20th century, and it tended to be more negative than positive, until Catholics assimilated.
> Wasp society wasn’t all bad, but it is fatally flawed, we wouldn’t be in this position if it wasn’t for their religious sensibilities, that are at the root of our problems.
Absurd fanaticism, and just more mystification. You are part of the problem. You are no friend of me and mine, you are an enemy just as much as the Jews.
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Great article as usual.
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@Brandon Adamson
Thanks. Do you still have plans for AltLeft.com?
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Good question. The “altleft” branding was somewhat obliterated in the public consciousness with the association of the term with antifa as well as the astroturfed emergence of Red Scare and the Dirtbag Left as a system approved subculture. I’m not sure what the future holds for the site. I have about 50 domains and occasionally write for some of the others like rabbitsfoot.net.
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@Brandon Adamson
Yes, I remember when you, or someone else, put me on the original “Alt Left” list, described as “the left wing of the Alt Right.” I understand the branding changed. But it’s been five years, you could reclaim the term. Or, you could always make it an “Alt Left Watch” doing an Aimee Terese style expose of the Dirtbag Chapo grifters, who are nothing but Democratic party gatekeepers.
It’s an amazing domain name, got to be worth a lot of money. Do you get a lot of traffic from it?
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I do get some traffic to it, but it largely depends on whether one of the old articles recirculates on social media, (which they do periodically). I’m more focused on book writing than blogging currently.
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