The following book was written by an author who lived under soviet tyranny and he makes many parallels to current state within USA. I don’t think this topic is a balloon, I think it is helpful to explore the psychological conditioning that enables whites to ignore their own genocide and destruction of country and future. It also lends some ideas to how this may play out in a future soviet-style collapse, where nobody believes the “official dogma” any longer, but are forced to pay lip service in order to survive, until the entire system implodes. Sound familiar? Are we not all looking forward here, for a way out of this hole, anticipating and hoping to influence the future? Because the soviet tyranny fell, we can be hopeful that our own homegrown tyranny will also collapse. I believe we all want to play a part in making this happen. I am intrigued by the parallels…and the differences.
Homo americanus: Child of the Postmodern Age
Tomislav Sunic
http://www.amazon.com/Homo-americanus-Child-Postmodern-Age/dp/1419659847
(an excerpt from review:)
Sunic touches on the topic of white guilt that has plagued America for far too long. In his chapter, E Pluribus Dissensus: Exit European Americans, he describes some of the logic used to keep southern whites in a constant state of guilt and self-hate, and how similar actions have been used elsewhere as well:
“The end of the antebellum South can serve as a laboratory for studying the guilty feelings that European people have been subject to in early postmodernity. The social malady consisting in self-hate started in America after the Civil War, only to be re-enacted a hundred years later all over Europe and postmodern America. In early postmodernity, Europe and America participated in the same joint guilt trip that can only be atoned by financial gifts and excuses to non-Europeans. . . .
.. ” As someone who has lived under communism and has seen firsthand the workings of state terror, Sunic is in a unique position to describe the current slide of America into what he aptly terms “soft totalitarianism.” This regime is maintained less by brute force than by an unrelenting, enormously sophisticated, and massively effective campaign to contain political and cultural activity within very narrow boundaries. Dissenters are not trundled off to jail or beaten with truncheons, but are quietly ignored and marginalized. Or they are held up to public disgrace, and, wherever possible, removed from their livelihoods.”
#1 by shari on 09/09/2007 - 11:08 am
Perhaps “guilt” might have been a hook early on, but now it seems like it’s sheer vanity that props up anti-white, political correctness. Our paper loves stories about those “making a contribution.” Young woman in Senecal, teacher in Kashmir, international celebrations in grade schools, on and on. Inevetablely, it’s “very smart” doing well, or from a doing well family, individuals that are featured. You HAVE to be sort of doing well to do these things. Otherwise you are full time occupied with just keeping your own boat afloat.
I’m afraid that I don’t know anyone who seems concerned with being marginalized or loseing a comfortable position because of conscience. They seem convinced that they are very fine people. Where’s the guilt?
#2 by Hardric on 09/09/2007 - 3:01 pm
There’s guilt and then there’s fear.
I was talking to someone on the phone and when I eschewed the BS and spoke frankly, I sensed some fear and panic in their voice. I wasn’t even using crude language, just calling a spade a spade.
#3 by woundednietzsche on 09/09/2007 - 4:22 pm
Shari, the persons you describe are absolving themselves of their guilt. They are focusing their energy and largesse on helping OTHERS, and these days others means non-white. Building houses for people in Guatemala, adopting children from third world pits, celebrating cultures that spit back at you. Guilt makes them feel uncomfortable if they are not giving it away, outside their tribe. They could be giving to their younger sister’s family, their next door neighbor, investing back into a business they could leave to their children or someone closer to home, but it would not be the same, that’s not REALLY giving. They have much to make up for and a lifetime of giving…to others.
Being marginalized or losing your livelihood? Ask the civil servant who goes to see an unauthorized historical researcher speak and then naively allows himself to be interviewed afterwards. Ask the local politician who expressed himself “anonymously” on a forum and then finds his picture and name on the front page of the local section along with a big fat headline that includes one of the following brands of heresy: Racist, Nazi, Homo-phobic, Anti-semitic, Hater. Go ask the thousands of corporate executives and workers who have had their careers destroyed by uttering a single politically incorrect phrase or even better, trying to resist promoting under-qualified affirmative action employees in their department. Better get your guilty white ass on the Diversity Committee or you won’t be climbing any higher around here (you unreformed cracker.) I’ve seen this and much more, haven’t you Shari? But maybe you are speaking of one’s thoughts. We can think all day long, but its our voice and actions that will change the world. The smallest action bests the grandest intention and remember, you are not responsible for breaking the system, just helping the system realize how broken it already is.
#4 by woundednietzsche on 09/09/2007 - 4:26 pm
Shari, the persons you describe are absolving themselves of their guilt. They are focusing their energy and largesse on helping OTHERS, and these days others means non-white. Building houses for people in Guatemala, adopting children from third world pits, celebrating cultures that spit back at you. Guilt makes them feel uncomfortable if they are not giving it away, outside their tribe. They could be giving to their younger sister’s family, their next door neighbor, investing back into a business they could leave to their children or someone closer to home, but it would not be the same, that’s not REALLY giving. They have much to make up for and a lifetime of giving…to others.
Being marginalized or losing your livelihood? Ask the civil servant who goes to see an unauthorized historical researcher speak and then naively allows himself to be interviewed afterwards. Ask the local politician who expressed himself “anonymously” on a forum and then finds his picture and name on the front page of the local section along with a big fat headline that includes one of the following brands of heresy: Racist, Nazi, Homo-phobic, Anti-semitic. Go ask the thousands of corporate executives and workers who have had their careers destroyed by uttering a single politically incorrect phrase or even better, trying to resist promoting under-qualified affirmative action employees in their department. Better get your guilty white ass on the Diversity Committee or you won’t be climbing any higher around here (you unreformed cracker.) I’ve seen this and much more, haven’t you Shari? But maybe you are speaking of one’s thoughts. We can think all day long, but its our voice and actions that will change the world. The smallest action bests the grandest intention and remember, you are not responsible for breaking the system, just helping the system realize how broken it already is.
#5 by shari on 09/09/2007 - 4:26 pm
Well, maybe then, it’s fear of having to face genuine guilt, not the politically correct kind. Fear that you actually are selling out your own children, while being a good member of the community and doing well, probably does haunt some.
#6 by shari on 09/09/2007 - 5:07 pm
I think that I am mixing too many into the same catagory. There is a difference between being afraid and being full of it.
#7 by shari on 09/09/2007 - 6:47 pm
Woundednietzsche, Yes,I have seen people forced into taking a sensitivity course or fired for something they couldn’t have helped. I live in a university town, though I’m not part of it.
What I can’t understand is this bragging. Someone’s daughter, early 20’s goes traipsing to Africa. Pictures of her with African “friends.” Why do they act so vain? This, she’s so smart and caring, attitude. I would be worried sick.
I also have a situation with relatives. One couple both make six figures in acedemia. Sister and brother-in-law strapped all their lives and numerous health problems. The only help they get is a free subscription to Sojouners magazine. Is this because the well off family feels so guilty for the world? Or do they want the appearance of being HIGHLY moral in spite of doing so well?