The Unz Review • An Alternative Media Selection$
A Collection of Interesting, Important, and Controversial Perspectives Largely Excluded from the American Mainstream Media
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What in the Hell Is a Paleo?
• October 17, 2011
• 1,000 Words • 1 Comment • Reply
Reading an online response by someone described as “National Review’s chief domestic policy analyst,” with the mellifluous, politically correct name of “Reihan Salam,” addressed to Ron Unz of the American Conservative, I was struck by a stray reference to a group that Salam’s employers have not accorded the right of recognition. Salam observes that Unz,... Read More
The Irrepressible Mencken
• June 27, 2011
• 800 Words • 1 Comment • Reply
Recently I’ve been thinking about someone whose name is attached to an organization I’m currently president of, H.L. Mencken (1880-1956). For years I’ve tried to understand why the Baltimore Sage has been branded, mostly recently in The Weekly Standard (see here and here) and in a voluminous biography by Terry Teachout, as anti-Semitic and anti-Black.... Read More
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The Patron Saint of White Guilt
• January 17, 2011
• 1,800 Words • 1 Comment • Reply
Today the American media, politicians of all stripes, and public educators will invariably fall into rapturous tones describing the black leader whose birthday is being celebrated, namely, Martin Luther King (1929-1968). King’s birthday is the only national holiday devoted to an individual American whose public observance has been commanded by Congress, and in 1983, this... Read More
The Minicon Mind
• January 12, 2011
• 900 Words • 1 Comment • Reply
My young friend Richard Spencer has observed that whenever neocon employees take “conservative” positions on social issues, they find irreproachably leftwing reasons to do so. Thus when they object to abortion, it is because its advocates and practitioners refuse to extend the egalitarian principle far enough—to the unborn. Or when minicons grumble feebly about quotas... Read More
The Attack on American Renaissance
• January 11, 2011
• 1,000 Words • 1 Comment • Reply
Richard Spencer and Jared Taylor are both to be commended for setting us straight about the non-relation between Arizona killer Jared Loughner and American Renaissance. Despite a damning report from Homeland Security linking Loughner to this publication, no evidence showing such a connection could be produced. Moreover the description of the AR “organization,” (it is... Read More
No Way Out
• December 28, 2010
• 800 Words • Leave a Comment
Jim Kalb’s critique of competing views of modernity is rather thorough, and like him, I find much to criticize in what is dissected. Most of the alternatives posed to the present liberal tyranny, Jim points out, are flawed or unworkable. Glorifying the wills of some superior individuals or an ideal community based on biological similarity... Read More
Nixon As I Knew Him
• December 16, 2010
• 500 Words • 1 Comment • Reply
I fully agree with Richard’s assessment of Richard Nixon’s legacy. And as someone who actually knew the former president, my opinion may count for something in this discussion. Despite his uniformly leftist conduct of domestic affairs, Nixon, as Richard notes, showed a refreshing realism in foreign policy. The attacks on him from neoconservative quarters had... Read More
More Canon Wars
• December 1, 2010
• 1,000 Words • 1 Comment • Reply
Keith Preston is correct that one could easily look to monarchists and authoritarian conservatives for critiques of “liberal democracy.” But for better or worse, such critics were not libertarians, and to the extent that Schmitt was unhappy with liberal democracy, it was because this hybrid regime resembled the political worldview of someone like Ludwig von... Read More
Canon Fodder
• November 26, 2010
• 1,100 Words • 1 Comment • Reply
Having looked at the “essential reading matter” for the (real) American Right posted on this website (here, here, and here), it seems to me that all the lists have at least some value. The recommenders are to be praised for recognizing the utter irrelevance of what the neoconservative-controlled press raises to canonical status, in accordance... Read More
Closing the American Mind
• November 13, 2010
• 700 Words • Leave a Comment
The responses on this website to my remarks from last month’s Mencken Club meeting impel me to offer this clarification. For those respondents who criticize me for not addressing biodiversity, I should point out the obvious. Unlike a scholar like Henry Harpending, who was one of our speakers, I am not a biologist. It would... Read More
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How the Left Won the Cold War
• November 5, 2010
• 3,200 Words • 2 Comments • Reply
The following address was delivered to the HL Mencken Club‘s annual meeting in Baltimore, October 22, 2010. I’m often asked why there is need for an independent or non-aligned Right. Aren’t Sean Hannity, Sarah Palin and Rich Lowry covering all our bases? Why should we create a movement on the right when FOX and those... Read More
Red Velvet
• October 14, 2010
• 1,500 Words • Leave a Comment
Richard Spencer’s references to Alex Knepper and his erotic activities while working as David Frum’s assistant bring up what is not an isolated embarrassment. It betokens what may be a widening problem for the neoconservative camp and given the influence of the neoconservatives, for the entire authorized Right. (Fortunately our side will not be involved,... Read More
The Inspiration of Joe Sobran
• October 3, 2010
• 1,100 Words • 1 Comment • Reply
The death of Joe Sobran on September 30, after several years of failing health, could not have come as a total surprise to any of his friends. News about his deteriorating condition and the need for divine intervention was steadily provided by Fran Griffin, his alter ego of many years, his longtime publisher, and, not... Read More
PCU
• September 16, 2010
• 1,100 Words • 1 Comment • Reply
Let me begin by registering my agreement with Professor Charlton. It does not surprise me to learn that this gentleman teaches medicine, not social work, English composition or “women’s studies.” I expect serious thinking from someone who trains physicians — as opposed to embattled feminists or Black Power advocates. In my years in the academic... Read More
Dreaming of a Culture War
• September 13, 2010
• 1,300 Words • 1 Comment • Reply
Fjordman’s comments about multiculturalism, which were originally published on the website Gates of Vienna, are so full of dubious assumptions that it is hard to know where to start one’s critique. But having produced copious scholarship on the subject of his literary exercise, I feel driven to question Fjordman’s conclusions. Western societies, he explains, can... Read More
The Outreach to Nowhere
• August 28, 2010
• 1,300 Words • Leave a Comment
A respondent to my comments about the leftist mindset of the GOP and movement conservative journalists stated an opinion that I’ve heard numerous times before. This view seems to me counterintuitive as well as undemonstrated: Republican strategists, and cooperative journalists, are flattering minorities and running down the ancestors of Southern Whites in order to appeal... Read More
Goldberg Variations
• August 20, 2010
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A column by Jonah Goldberg published in the dead-tree National Review (August 30) “A Muslim Gay Bar by the Mosque?” typifies the utterly infantile quality of our current movement conservative discourse. Goldberg writes in glowing defense of Fox News celebrity Greg Gutfeld, who had just advocated (presumably in a serious way) the creation of a... Read More
A Convenient Doctrine
• August 12, 2010
• 800 Words • Leave a Comment
A young libertarian friend of mine Thomas Woods is, no doubt, making a fortune on his latest book, Nullification: How to Resist Tyranny in the 21st Century, recently published by the Republican-affiliated Regnery Press. Those who are promoting this work are for the most part GOP publicists and FOX-news celebrities. The relevant historical part can... Read More
Eternal Obsessions
• August 6, 2010
• 1,200 Words • 1 Comment • Reply
Although Richard Hoste seems to be the polar opposite of Larry Auster, both of them are equally driven by Jewish fixations. Auster considers anyone who fails to meet his fastidious standards of Jewish nationalism and anti-anti-Semitism to be a closet Nazi. Hoste by contrast can’t rein in his hatred for Israel and for anyone who... Read More
The Israel Question
• July 28, 2010
• 800 Words • 1 Comment • Reply
A question I’ve been thinking about for some time is as follows: Where on the American political spectrum would it be proper to place strong supporters of Israel, including American partisans of Israel’s present nationalist government? What complicate this question are the support patterns for the Israelis and the Palestinians. They cut across conventional ideological... Read More
White Lies
• July 20, 2010
• 600 Words • Leave a Comment
Richard Hoste seems to differ from my view that the Right (used, of course, in a very broad sense) could in no way benefit from misrepresenting MLK as a small-government conservative. Richard believes that if we continue to tell blacks the noble lie, which the neoconservatives and Glenn Beck have worked so hard to spread,... Read More
The Lynch Squad
• July 15, 2010
• 600 Words • Leave a Comment
As I was turning on TV earlier in the week (my wife keeps the set permanently on FOX), I heard Glenn Beck complaining about the Black Panthers. Viewers were then shown a picture of a presumed Klansman in a truck carrying a noose. Supposedly this is what the Black Panthers were planning to do, by... Read More
Dead Letter
• July 9, 2010
• 1,200 Words • Leave a Comment
In a commentary for Chronicles (unavailable online), Tom Fleming makes an argument about the increasing irrelevance of the Constitution that I find mostly irrefutable. According to his argument, which is clearly non-neocon in origin, it is futile to try to depend on a tradition of government that arose in radically different circumstances from our own.... Read More
A Woman for Our Time
• June 29, 2010
• 600 Words • Leave a Comment
Listening to Elena Kagan as she was speaking before the Senate Judicial Committee, I was struck by how perfectly she fits her time and place. An overweight Jewish lesbian, whose career seems to have been put on fast track by her political supporters both inside and outside the media and someone who if she held... Read More
Overcoming Hipster Liberalism
• June 28, 2010
• 700 Words • Leave a Comment
Having read Jim Kalb on hipster liberalism, I find there is much in his essay I agree with and even more that I disagree with. His description of the self-absorbed individual who yaps constantly about equality but has no moral center applies to most academics of my acquaintance. This description also pertains to the college-age... Read More
Glenn Beck: The Lunatic Shill
• June 21, 2010
• 700 Words • Leave a Comment
Richard Spencer’s discussion of the neoconservative gestalt popping out of Glenn Beck’s program puts a number of things in perspective. For several years now I’ve been hearing Beck’s tirades courtesy of my wife, who tunes in on his attacks on the Obama administration. While listening to Beck in recent months, while trying to work on... Read More
Inglourious Basterds
• June 17, 2010
• 900 Words • 1 Comment • Reply
Last night my wife got me to go to a movie that she assured me was highly recommended. The flick in question The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, which in Swedish is entitled Man som hatar kvinnor (“The Man Who Hates Women”) enjoyed the equally high approbation of a Republican friend of mine, who saw... Read More
Varieties of Smear
• May 28, 2010
• 600 Words • Leave a Comment
In electronic conversations Tom Piatak, Grant Havers, and I attempted to figure out why Jonah Goldberg posted his recent idiocy, proclaiming the Civil Rights Act to be a bulwark of economic freedom and scolding Rand Paul as an ally of Southern bigots. One not necessarily wrong but insufficient reason for this rambling diatribe is that... Read More
Jonah’s Fascism
• May 27, 2010
• 800 Words • Leave a Comment
Having read Jonah Goldberg’s turgid tome on the fascist danger spawned by American Progressives and Obamaites, and having listened to his rants against “big government” on Glenn Beck’s therapy hour, it seems to me that his column today, against Rand Paul as an enemy of property rights, raises doubts about Jonah’s “antifascist” persona. As everyone... Read More
Civil Rights Kowtow
• May 26, 2010
• 700 Words • Leave a Comment
I’m shocked to hear about Rand Paul‘s recent caving-in to the liberal-neocon establishment. From the evidence it would seem that our minimal-government senatorial candidate from Kentucky regrets he could not have marched with MLK during the civil rights demonstrations of the 1960s. Never mind the fact that vocal opposition to King and to both his... Read More
How to Succeed at Conservatism (Without Really Trying)
• May 17, 2010
• 900 Words • Leave a Comment
My young friend Richard Spencer is thinking about a career change, and he wisely asked my advice about what he can do in order to be invited on FOX as a regular contributor. Although Richard has loads of charm and sex appeal, he nonetheless lacks the kind of worldview that’s essential for one to become... Read More
Putting Whitey in His Place
• May 11, 2010
• 1,300 Words • Leave a Comment
Just as I was forgetting how much I loathe the GOP, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell brought me back to my senses. Although McDonnell had previously declared April to be “Confederate History Month,” he apologized in a revised proclamation for having failed to mention the enormous evil of slavery. His mea culpa contains this characteristic PC... Read More
Settling Scores
• April 20, 2010
• 1,100 Words • Leave a Comment
Lest someone misrepresent what I’ve said about Jews and Israel, let me restate the positions that I’ve taken more often than I care to recall. I am not (repeat not) against the Jewish state of Israel. I have apparently upset some readers by suggesting that Israeli sympathizers in the U.S. and in Europe should recognize... Read More
Middle American Morons?
• April 15, 2010
• 600 Words • Leave a Comment
Although Richard Hoste provides stimulating fare, by identifying the Blue States with the cognitively gifted and the Red States with the dullards who didn’t make it into the big cities, his argument is nonetheless flawed. Let me begin by noting that the New York Times ran a story today about the Tea Party activists, who... Read More
The Myth of “Judeo-Christian Values”
• April 13, 2010
• 1,600 Words • Leave a Comment
Reading Larry Auster’s website over the years, I find there is much in his spirited commentaries that I agree with. Larry’s attacks on liberals and neoconservatives, his stress on the enormous overlap between these two only minimally different groups, his focus on the immigration issue, and his critical examination of the government’s war on traditional... Read More
“Conservative Renewal”
• April 6, 2010
• 700 Words • Leave a Comment
What strikes me as indicative of the phoniness of the “conservative renewal” now being preached by FOX-news, Sean Hannity, and the rest of the movement noisemakers, is its inseparability from the group that ran this country between 2001 and 2008. It is hard to watch the GOP-peanut gallery parading as redeemers of the Right, without... Read More
Obamacare Is a Civil Right
• April 2, 2010
• 700 Words • Leave a Comment
Richard Lowry may be the most culturally illiterate journalist now plying his trade. In a column from several years ago, he seemed unaware of who fought whom in the Spanish Civil War. And he has now exceeded his previous record for silliness. In his latest syndicated effort, he informs us that “liberals’ are guilty of... Read More
The Trouble with Ann
• March 25, 2010
• 700 Words • 1 Comment • Reply
I find myself ambivalent about an issue that perhaps should concern me more than it does. The FOX-news contributor and Republican controversialist Ann Coulter was kept from speaking at the University of Ottawa by protesting leftist students. She had been warned before her trip by the university’s provost, Francois Houle, that “freedom of speech is... Read More
Neoconned
• March 15, 2010
• 1,700 Words • Leave a Comment
Richard Spencer is right when he says that he couldn’t think of any significant issue that the Alternative Right and the established conservative movement would hold in common. What he might have added is that he couldn’t think of any significant issue over which the conservative movement and the GOP would disagree; or any major... Read More
Mapping the Human Phenome
The DSM may help.
• March 8, 2010
• 2,100 Words • Leave a Comment
In Kingsley Amis's novel Stanley and the Women, the protagonist's son begins to exhibit strange, unpredictable, violent behavior. Stanley, the protagonist, consults a psychiatrist, who gives him some waffle about "affective disorders" and the like. Frustrated, Stanley goes for a second opinion to an old friend, a doctor who has seen everything and is old... Read More
Hate Watch
• March 2, 2010
• 1,000 Words • 1 Comment • Reply
Having just read the Hate Watch bulletin of the SPLC about the cancellation of the American Renaissance conference, scheduled for February 15, I came away with heightened contempt for the “conservative movement.” I don’t blame the two DC hotels that refused to host the conference for the recent fiasco, or even the Four Point Sheraton... Read More
Libido for the Stupid
• February 28, 2010
• 1,800 Words • Leave a Comment
After the appearance of Sarah Palin’s ghost-written Going Rogue in November 2009, the former Alaska governor saw her celebrity soar. Her book sold over 600,000 copies within 36 hours of the time it went on sale. And even that paradigmatic liberal Oprah Winfrey worked hard to have Sarah on her TV programs. FOX News went... Read More