I. Introduction

II. Race this, race that, whatever.

III. Rock is not dead. Please stop saying that

I. Introduction

To help make a better world, some organizations to donate to are Southern Poverty Law Center (https://www.splcenter.org/), Western States Center (https://www.westernstatescenter.org/), etc.

Richard Spencer was a guest on the No Jumper Podcast, hosted by Adam22, i.e., Adam Grandmaison, but this episode co-starred Destiny, born Steve Kenneth Bonnell II. The episode, segment, what have you, featured a cordial discussion between Spencer and Destiny (Bonnell) with Adam22 essentially “officiating” but he was fairly hands off. I am not here to hate on Adam22 or Destiny. Adam22 can run his show however he wants, but I think a little harder “psychoanalysis” of Richard Spencer would have been good, because Adam22 often does that with other non-political musician guests.

While Destiny to me comes off as a cultural relativist, left leaning liberal, i.e., he’s essentially a hipster capitalist, the thing about Richard Spencer is he is a Nazi, or supposedly a now “reformed” Nazi.

I am surprised that Adam22 who often has pornstars on his show (not hating) didn’t ask if Spencer had sex with Tia Tequila (who descended into Nazism herself as the I hate to say it, token Asian female sex object who always seem to get a pass from Nazis, Incels, etc.).  

Sure, I believe in forgiveness and if he can be reformed considering he led many into the Alt-Right “Third Position” political pipeline, then this could be a net positive to society since many might start breaking out of regressive, racist, misogynist, and down-right hateful rhetoric. Yet, I do not think that we should let Spencer out of the “jail of public opinion” until he does way more than write blog posts or go on podcasting tours. It will take decades to undo the damage he has done.

I just don’t know how to trust the guy. Is he an informant now? Should be helping to dox his wealthy patrons or those in positions of power who supported his racist beliefs? Is he just putting on a mask, tying to get back into the mainstream?

For example, Christian Piccioloni was a hardcore Nazi but later rejected his ways and without much thanks has hosted seminars to help de-radicalize Neo Nazis. He is the founder of the Free Radicals Project, a global network working to prevent extremism, which sadly as I look up in 2023 may be closed. His books include White American Youth: My Descent into America’s Most Violent Hate Movement–and How I Got Out and Breaking Hate: Confronting the New Culture of Extremism.

Regardless, I am still very suspect about Richard Spencer. Sure, he said somethings I feel are promising and rational such as his criticism of libertarian types who think we can sustain our American Way of life while also being isolationist. I also thought it was great he gave President Biden kudos considering Biden is trying to repair America’s broken image from the Trump Era. Leadership isn’t always about “strongmen” but it’s about networking, calling in favors, doing favors, diplomacy, giving hook ups to your friends, grooming each other’s egos, etc.

Yet…this is the same guy who was singing Dixie Will Rise Again and “Russia is our Friend” before the Tiki Torch March at Charlottesville, VA.

He was married to a woman, Nina Kouprianova, of Georgian descent but who lived in the former Soviet Union, and she had ties to infamous theorists, Aleksandr Dugin, who in his Fourth Political Theory, criticized the West and had outright called for the destruction of the West. It could be argued that Russia’s psychological warfare campaign was inspired by Dugin’s mix of fascism with postmodernism. His goal, or rather the Kremlin’s goal was to promote every toxic idea within the USA with inexpensive online strategies such as bot accounts so we would destroy ourselves from within. Now in 2023 as Russia fumbles its war with Ukraine its easy to see why Russia stooped to such cheap, toxic, albeit effective online warfare methods, i.e., the Russian military has been overhyped. The military of Venezuela but with nuclear weapons, which it won’t use, because every other power will use its weapons on them. Ukraine is now in a war over Putin’s ego. A scary dude.

Dugin was an associate of a Russian Nazi, oh, sorry, a National Bolshevik (Nazbol), Eduard Limonov, who interestingly has ties to Matt Taibbi, currently famous in 2023 for his links to Elon Musk and the faltering “Twitter File” expose which was getting assistance from the anti-Leftist Pro-Zionist journalist Bari Weiss – even though the relationship between Taibbi and Limonov could be simply seen as a reporter having interviewed a subject. Note that Taibbi did do good journalism about the death of Eric Garner at the hands of New York police, so he has done good work, but it seems Taibbi has fallen into this larger loose MAGA network that still lingers in the background. Taibbi’s descent into this “MAGA” adjacent network, i.e., the “anti-woke, Pro Trump” camp is because him being from Russia was fearful of war, yet, instead of pointing fingers at Putin, Taibbi along with people like Jimmy Dore and people at the Grey Zone such as Andrew Maté constantly pointed the finger at the USA and NATO.

Anyways, Spencer was accused of domestic abuse, but I don’t feel comfortable commenting on this, yet, his wife did launch a Go Fund Me account to get away from him [See Article Link: Richard Spencer’s Wife Launches GoFundMe Page to Leave ‘Abusive Marriage’ by David Richardson (2019) of The Observer. https://observer.com/2019/01/richard-spencer-wife-nina-kouprianova-divorce-gofundme/]

If he is truly trying to reform, then sure the possibility of losing his family would be hard for anyone, yet, if he isn’t reformed, then I could care less (or, it could be a case where Nina still has problematic views and Richard is trying to change, but I have no clue). Sure, people can change, yet, it’s hard for me to believe that a grown man with beliefs like Spencer’s somehow changed in less than 5 years from the when Trump first won the Presidency.

I suspect he just is tired of being blacklisted and wants back into the mainstream. Either he was iffy about his beliefs all along or he’s not being entirely honest now, or maybe an act of God happened and set him straight. It’s hard to tell without him being grilled properly.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Bill Maher has him on soon.

You can watch the podcast yourself to help No Jumper (subscribe), but if I had to summarize Spencer’s remedy for the perceived ills of society, his newly found political views seem to now be a Jordan B. Peterson, Joseph C. Campbell, and Carl Jung type with a need for mythology and universal – some might even say subconscious – archetypes as a mode of giving people purpose such as utilizing the “heroic archetype”, i.e., the naïve hero who has to find his or her power, face strife, but then meet and beat his or her nemesis.

However, Adam22 when asking Spencer what the “enemy” should be, Spencer breaks character and laughs and says “Islam”.

But Spencer isn’t wrong in saying we need a higher calling. But, why can’t it be transcending this version of capitalism? Or, transitioning to green energy? Or, spending more money on healthcare, free time, etc.? Why does it have to be a football game of cultures? This clash of civilization notion? I get that in certain ways Islam, at least extreme versions, is not very compatible with Western liberalism, not because Islam is evil but rather the West might not be its “thing”, and I would argue that religion, as opposed to any other identity factor (race, sex, etc.) is more dangerous because it’s an idea that often seeks to eradicate other ideas, but this goes for Christianity as well. It seems we need a truce and boundary drawn.  

In other words, Spencer is advocating for dialectics, which simply put, based on my understanding, is when opposites, i.e., a thesis and antithesis are in eternal struggle, and sometimes they merge to create a synthesis, but then later that synthesis splits off an starts the cycles all over and in perpetuity (eternal recurrence). In order words to “evolve” there needs to be tension, yet, the issue with this is that tension is or may be manufactured, meaning what we think is a threat is only so because we taught to believe that. And, since someone or some force may be constructing an “enemy” this sheds light that history for example is essentially the construction of those with power, hence the main goal is power, yet power like popularity does not necessarily mean “truth” in the objective sense of the word.

Spencer admitted to being a Nietzschean or a former one in the talk. What that term of Nietzschean has become to be known as in popular culture, even though Nietzsche was much more complex than the guy who said, “God is Dead”, means without objective “grand narrative” truths, where subjective truths war with each other trying to assert their will, i.e., their will to power over others.

In a Nietzschean world, the world is often depicted in media – particularly in science fiction such as cyberpunk, e.g., Neuromancer by William Gibson – as a society dictated by corporations where culture is recycled, post-truths are prominent, and there is hard to distinguish real from fake, i.e., the notion of simulation and simulacrum (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation). Regardless, I am suspicious still of Richard Spencer.

He’s shifted the outwardly blatant racism of the Alt Right which was highly inspired by postmodernism, chaos, memetic warfare, and disorder, but now wants a…nicer, more inclusive manufactured narrative that still has a lust for tension and conflict.

He sounds like Ozymandias from Watchmen by Alan Moore trying to mastermind some alien invasion to unite us all. Commendable in theory, but Ozymandias also killed…a lot of people to achieve that…

Destiny in the discussion also seems to have pointed out Spencer’s “need for enemy”.

II. Race this, race that, whatever.

On another note, there was a lot of discussion about race, and of course it was in part channeling, I hate to say it, but, this white boy fear of not having a voice or thinking they are unfairly held to a double standard such as how black people can say Black Power, but white people can’t say White Power. Destiny said what I would have said as a black person. Even though I don’t go around saying Black Power or that I’m proud to be black, I get why black people say it because…we don’t know where we come from. I was raised more on Robin Hood and stories of Knights more than anything stories of ancestral Africa.

White supremacy ironically made us “black”. We were not calling ourselves black until we were told by a white supremacist system with no regard for tribal or ethnic differences that we are “black”. White people have an easier way of finding their national and/or ethnic identity. It was essentially impossible for African Americans to do so for nearly 400 years. That is a long time with no connection to your roots.

For example, I find it funny that, we can celebrate the Irish driven Saint Patrick’s Day or the Mexican driven Cinco De Mayo or the German driven Oktoberfest with fun, beer, food, and joy, but the moment February hits in the United States people use Black History Month as a way of trying to accuse black people of “reverse racism”. That is really telling, however, as a slight rebuttal, there are elements of black rhetoric that are toxic, polarizing, self-segregationist, and downright stupid.  

III. Rock is not dead. Please stop saying that

Anyways, some other topics they talked about was music.

Hate to say it but they all sounded like Boomers. Hell, I probably sound like one.

It is easy to think that music now is bad, but maybe we are all just old. My almost 40 years old brain is like carved wood compared to a teenager which is like a wet sponge. They feel things differently whereas old cats like me now might just be…numb. It is easy for older people to judge same way how my parent’s generation could never wrap their head around most of the MTV generation.

And, I am getting tired of this notion that “Rock is Dead”.

You know who cries about “rock being dead”. Lames like conservative, trans-obsessed yet transphobe Matt Walsh. I am sorry this isn’t 1997 with the band Semisonic releasing Closing Time.

I grew up listening to rock music more than rap music (I shock white people all the time) because I had conservative black parents, so sneaking rock albums, something they had no clue about was a way I listened to popular music. My parents did not like the sexism and violence especially on young black men. I don’t think rock died but rather it blew itself up, atomizing itself into a hyper-masculine, vagina drying, angry metal music with no groove, no style, no organic sense of cool. Sorry, Machine Gun Kelly supposedly representing rock’s “come back” is corny…. Though, Meaghan Fox is bad rock video vixen but not with MGK.

Rock went off the deep end, but now it is back in a calmer and more personal place. Why does rock need to “take over the world again”? The world is better without Motley Crue or Kiss to be honest (they could be a little…corny), or rather they are better appreciated as past forms of music in nostalgic eras.  

When people complain about “rock being dead”, what they are really saying without saying it is…they want music where…white men are key and central, particularly since white people in rap are often made to feel like “culture vultures” by gatekeepers on the hip hop side of the house. We live in a world where Gucci Mane when he was fat and gross was considered a…sex symbol. We have kids with face tattoos with guns. Corporate America exploits people.

I get it. I think it is unfair that certain black personalities shame white rappers, when white people help drive music sales and in many ways were always a part of the culture, going back to the break dancing, rap battle days. Were white people predominating in this scene? No, because it was largely black or Hispanic, but you can’t say that early rap didn’t have white fans or those trying to move the genre forward, especially behind the production board. Without those white allies, many rappers never would have made it into a studio.

Yet, back to my point, I think there’s yearning for a “great white hope” to lift up the “sad boy” white guy because he has been beat up by “mean angry blue haired feminists” “black people”, etc. But I find this interesting because even in this “emo” state, people still feel sorry for white people. I would argue that nothing really has changed, besides the fact that the white male isn’t the default center of attention anymore, yet, he is still there and relevant.

By the way I am not hating on white people or white dude at all, yet, it is almost fashionable to feel sorry now for white men and even as BLM was popping off years ago, I knew we would land here, i.e., a woe as men for the white guy mentality so that aesthetic, whatever it is truly is, could reassert cultural dominance from the ashes of our sympathy and the inevitable “fuck ups” of the Far Left (the shaming whitey talking points of “woke” angry Communists, indifferent if they’re helping to grow the Far Right with their unforgiving rhetoric).

Regardless, I don’t think rock is dead at all, and if anything, it went back to its roots and away from the commercialization that has taken over rap, yet, rap even though it is essentially an extension of promoting neoliberal capitalism, is also…not that bad. It’s still a fun genre that makes you feel cool, however, I can only handle it in doses because I realize that art should be treated as fantasy, yet, rap is bent on maintaining “realism” even if it means its brightest stars getting murdered.

#rocknroll #race #culturalstudies #nojumperpodcast #podcast