Illumination in dark times
A genealogy of modern Western selfhood and a post-Western world

"Smith ... outlines a genealogy of modern Western selfhood: a radically individual, hypermasculine character that was formed during the rapid nineteenth-century expansion of the white man’s world. “Bold, conquering, and altogether assertive,” it was “dedicated to action,” hostile to reflection, indifferent to community and the environment, and guilty of possessing, Smith writes, an “undeveloped heart,” a term borrowed from E. M. Forster’s assessment of the British elite." "

" “We must alter our very relations with the world around us.” This means giving up the exalted and exaggerated idea of the West that boosts a masculinist self-image but severely constricts thought and feeling. “We should welcome our era’s uncertainties,...the not-knowing of how the post-Western story will come out.” Smith’s final warning—that “we will not survive the Western notion of the individual much longer”—should resonate today, as nineteenth-century individualism reasserts itself in the degraded Nietzscheanism of Peter Thiel and Stephen Miller." >>

* Mishra, P. (2026, April). "The Authority of Thought". Harper's Magazine.
https://harpers.org/archive/2026/04/the-authority-of-thought-pankaj-mishra/

* Somebody Else's Century: East and West in a Post-Western World by Patrick Smith. 2010 >>
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/169395/somebody-elses-century-by-patrick-smith/
#TheWest #WhiteSupremacy #masculinity #ImpulseControl #EthnoNationalism #WesternCivilization #AngloAmerican #parochialism #individualism #subjectivity #SettlerSociety #Culture #RacialInequality #war #EastWest #PostWesternWorld #DarkTimes #illumination #narrative #environment

Image: Double Bay War Memorial, Steyne Park, Sydney

Social cohesion and gritted-teeth tolerance

"In 2022, for the first time in decades, the government commissioned a review of multiculturalism, Towards Fairness. It found Australia had muddled on, but squandered its world-leading status and recommended the government create a minister, a permanent commission and department for multiculturalism. Labor MP Dr Anne Aly was appointed multicultural affairs minister in 2025."

She delivered a powerful speech last November:

"Aly declared it was time to end “the conditional form of multiculturalism, that kind of gritted-teeth tolerance that,

'You are welcome here as long as your food tastes good,

your celebrations are colourful, and

your music is present to the ears.’"

"But any questioning, any speaking out, any disruptive participation in any practice of citizenship will not be tolerated. Instead, acts of citizenship afforded to the broader community are viewed as acts of defiance when performed by the other and are met with cries of, ‘Go back to where you came from,’ and ‘Love Australia or leave it.’ " >>
https://www.theguardian.com/society/ng-interactive/2026/mar/23/social-cohesion-meaning-has-lost-feelgood-vibe

Full speech: Reimagining Multiculturalism in Australia, The Hon Dr Anne Aly MP, Minister for Small Business, Minister for International Development, and Minister for Multicultural Affairs 2025 >>
https://ministers.treasury.gov.au/ministers/anne-aly-2025

#SocialCohesion #ethnonationalism #Anglosphere #SettlerSociety #mainstream #belonging #diversity #IndigenousPeoples #CALD #hate #racism #silencing #culture #entertainment #SongAndDance #ScarilyDiverse #representation #participation #Australia #culture

#ethnonationalism Yair, son of wanted war criminal #Netanyahu, is in #Hungary standing in for his father in support of Viktor Orbán. While his father is busy killing Iranians, his son praised cultural and ethnic homogeneity, linked immigration from #Muslim countries to disorder and terrorism, and celebrated an authoritarian leader who claims to protect national “heritage.” The overlap with themes common to many neo‑Nazi and extreme‑right movements is striking.

[…] "Prime Minister Orbán shows strong leadership at a time in Europe when, sadly, that is very rare. In Western Europe, unfortunately, there are weak leaders who cause their countries to decay. They opened their countries to a flood of migrants from Muslim countries. They brought migrants who do not share the same culture and civilization. That brought a lot of public unrest and disputes imported from the Middle East that are not typical of the local population […] One result of this is terrorism, while Hungary on the other hand, under Orbán's leadership, is safe. There is no terrorism, there is social unity. Everyone shares the same Hungarian heritage and culture, and society is much more peaceful. Prime Minister Orbán has done a wonderful job, and he also defends Hungary's sovereignty vis‑à‑vis the European Union, because many countries in Europe have given up their sovereignty and handed it to unelected officials in Brussels who do not serve their countries' interests — while Orbán puts Hungary's interests first and knows how to oppose Brussels' proposals that are contrary to Hungary's interests."

One thing’s certain about Yair: he spends his time in Miami and has dodged military service while his father started multiple wars (and a genocide).

Hebrew https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/b1simb6qbl

#zionism #nazism

Sir Ian McKellen quoting Shakespeare. Words for the modern day on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXq58BbhCO4

Sir Thomas More is a play written circa 1592 in collaboration between Henry Chettle, Anthony Munday, William Shakespeare, and others. It is about the riots against an influx of immigrants in 1517.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_More
#speech #literature #strangers #riots #aliens #EthnoNationalism #hate #violence #zeitgeist

* The White Nationalist Agenda, the "missing white voter" and hate mongering
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-01/stephen-miller-donald-trumps-immigration-policy-architect/106272938

* "Jean Guerrero, Hate Monger, a book that investigated the making of Miller. Miller has been seen as a link between the white nationalist agenda and the Trump White House."
https://www.npr.org/2020/08/24/905403716/hatemonger-paints-trump-advisor-stephen-miller-as-a-case-study-in-radicalization

* The Apparatus of Whiteness, Linda Martín Alcoff »Cultural Racism« (2/3) Adorno Lecture >>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhUu9nCzxvs
#hate #immigration #WhiteRage #Whiteness #settlersociety #EthnoNationalism #TheWest #modernity #whitesupremacists #CulturalRacism #EthnoEssentialism #SocialCohesion #SocialFabric

Response to the alien: Corporeal experience between selfhood and otherness

"The topographical enquiries that Waldenfels presents assume that the Other not only has its own times, but its own locations as well."

A Topography of the Other, Studies for a Phenomenology of the Other 1, Bernhard Waldenfels >>
https://www.suhrkamp.de/rights/book/bernhard-waldenfels-a-topography-of-the-other-fr-9783518289204

Phenomenology of the Alien, Basic Concepts, by Bernhard Waldenfels >>
https://nupress.northwestern.edu/9780810127579/phenomenology-of-the-alien/
#interculturality #otherness #modernity #violence #experience #IntersubjectiveNormatively #alien #monolingualism #nationalism #foreigners #EthnoNationalism #phenomenology #EpistemicInjustice #dehumanisation #book

The fig leaves have been dropped

"The US Department of Homeland Security used the image with the heading "A Heritage to be proud of, a Homeland worth Defending" in a post on social media in August 2025."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Progress

Origins of Neo-Nazi and White Supremacist Terms and Symbols
https://www.ushmm.org/antisemitism/what-is-antisemitism/origins-of-neo-nazi-and-white-supremacist-terms-and-symbols

Image: John Gast, American Progress, The "Spirit of the Frontier" 1872
#ManifestDestiny #SettlerSociety #expansion #empire #progress #BloodAndSoil #WhiteSupremacists #EthnoNationalism #monoculture #FirstNationsPeoples #biodiversity