07/11/2019
See, earlier: “East is East And West is West”: What The Hazony/Brog Heresy Hunt Says About July’s “National Conservative Conference”
VDARE.com Editor Peter Brimelow writes: Yoram Hazony continues his impossiblequest, trying to co-opt National Conservatismwhile trying to repress the reality of its ethnic dimension. This has gotten him into trouble with e.g. me, for the regrettable dishonesty and hypocrisy that this quest entails, and also with his fellow Jews like Gabriel Schoenfeld, who remain allergic to their host countries’ national identities even in Hazony’s neutered form.[Is There a Benign Trumpian Nationalism? (Christopher DeMuth thinks so. I think not.) by Gabriel Schoenfeld, Niskanen Center, July 9, 2019]
However, Hazony is apparently sufficiently powerful, or well-financed, to attract eager courtiers. One of them is John Zmirak a professional Catholic and long-standing VDARE.com contributor whom I’ve known for some 20 years and with whom I’ve never previously had a cross word. Zmirak inserted himself into an exchange between Hazony and Kevin MacDonald to virtue-signal against us. MacDonald can look after himself, but I append my twitter response, which speaks for itself and shows what these dark times are doing to ambitious, silly weaklings.
Zmirak has reportedly continued to twitter on, but he’s now intolerantly blocked both my personal account and VDARE.com, and I haven’t yet bothered to take the simple steps to get around it. I will ask him here, however, what I might have asked him on Twitter: how come he was so happy to work for, and has never denounced, the great Taki Theodoracopulos, whose clashes with Jews were provoking the usual accusations of anti-Semitism long before VDARE.com even existed?
Zmirak’s initial attack:
My Tweets, in reply:
Below: Emperor Henry IV kissing the Pope’s feet at Canossa.
Finally, Zmirak claims ignorance on the Kevin Macdonald front:
Below, by VDARE.com alumnus John Zmirak, The VDare Monologues, TakiMag.com, January 18, 2008, with a couple of typos corrected, and the links fixed.
So there we were, at the storied Elaine’s restaurant, Taki, R. Emmet Tyrell, Lewis Lapham, and several other luminaries… but I couldn’t help feeling (sorry, Taki) that the most important man at the table was Peter Brimelow — the courageous journalist, formerly of Forbes and National Review, author of the prophetic immigration book Alien Nation. It was mostly a social gathering, wherein the Great Greek graciously treated to a festive dinner a variety of his friends, some of whom had little to nothing in common. (When Tyrell explained why he was supporting Giuliani I nearly gagged on Elaine’s excellent anchovies — and choked back a pro-life tirade in my throat.)
Peter Brimelow was there with his lovely, relatively recent bride Lydia, and we didn’t get much chance to talk. I fairly basked in the reflected glow of their marital bliss, and reminded myself to visit them in Connecticut. But now I’m writing to encourage you to visit Peter online, at his fascinating, edgy Web site VDare. While it runs a wide variety of thinkers — some of whom I really can’t endorse — the site is mostly persuasive, and always brave. [The "of whom" are Brenda Walker, whose views on the Catholic Church’s immigration enthusiam are apparently offensive to Zmirak, Jared Taylor, whose views on whites (he’s for them) are also offensive to Zmirak, and of course, Kevin Macdonald. ]
And lately it has run two of the best bits of commentary I’ve read in quite some time:
If you’d like some perspective on the seamier side of The New Republic and its hit-job on Rep. Ron Paul, check out Steven Sailer’s hilarious exploration of the odious James Kirchick — the kind of sneering, preening Yalie that gives the rest of us second thoughts about having turned down City College. It includes a rather prurient reading of Marty Peretz’s taste in dapper young editors….
The other piece you simply shouldn’t miss is by the many-cojoned commentator John Derbyshire, who still tempts me to glance at NRO from time to time. It begins as an admiring account of the politically incorrect last testament of the popular British novelist George MacDonald Fraser — who may well prove to be the last Englishman ever to speak his mind. [National Question Note: Fraser was born south of the Scots-English border, and spent WWII in an English regiment, but he never thought of himself as anything but a Scotsman.] Just before going off to his reward, the Flashman author delivered himself of a rant against the Orwellian state of opinion in Cool Britannia which would have done the good Taki proud. Derbyshire gives a fine account — but goes on to do something else. He makes of the writer’s dying counterblast a meditation on the fact of historical change, a melancholy reflection on how fleeting are our attitudes — and how quickly fickle opinion can turn our heroes, and even our fathers into monsters. Don’t miss this piece — and while you’re at it, add VDare just below Takimag to your bookmarks. It will sometimes make you angry — and it might just get blocked by your company’s email censor — but it will always keep you thinking.
Peter Brimelow is the editor of VDARE.com. His best-selling book, Alien Nation: Common Sense About America’s Immigration Disaster, is now available in Kindle format.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.