Thread by @bronzeagemantis

OK short thred on this latest example of how and why the classics racket in America has been an almost 100% kosher operation t.co/QuIGFAeBU8

2/ When you look at Zuckerface's book, it's easy to dismiss it because it's so bizarre. The lesser sibling of some tech dork is having a hysterical shtetl yenta fit about surely blond "racist" teens getting inspired by Plato to sacrifice 6 billion livers to Wotan. Who cares?

3/ In fact the Zuckerface sister is part of a bignose concern, even an obsession, going back decades. It's obvious on the left with the many Marxist and pseudo-Marxist ("critical theory" etc.) schemes to deconstruct or debunk Greek antiquity. But the same goes for the "right"....

4/ And in fact the entire industry and racket of classical studies, the study of antiquity, has been almost entirely hijacked by this group, especially in America. You see it in big ways and small, for example the fraudulent sentantiq account that poses as a neutral archivist...

5/But in nearly every area of commentary, historical writing, academia, and popular "culture" where the classics or Greco-Roman antiquity is touched upon, this group is attracted like flies to the milkpail in springtime...so then the question is why?

6/ This thred may go on for a while, and mayb I only start it tonight. There are many reasons this happened, including the motivation of this group to get a stranglehold on the interpretation of antiquity, about which they are EXTREMELY touchy. But this isn't the whole story....

7/A big reason why this happened is the inadequacy of Anglo scholarship in this area. Around 1900 nearly ALL the scholarship of any note was in German, and if you were a scholar at Oxford you generally had to work in German if you studied anything Greek.

8/ The Germans in the 19th Century considered themselves spiritual and maybe even physical descendants of the Hellenes. Before German unity, the Hellenic ideal was felt even to be reflected in the political arrangement of the German states, and of every aspect of the culture

9/ Anglo-American scholarship generally had nothing to add, and I believe 19th c German philology is still unmatched in its erudition, insights, methods and science of study of texts. This died out for a number of reasons and after 1950 there was nothing to replace it in America

10/ There are many interesting tangents to this, but the point is that much of mainstream commentary was boring, moralistic, and somewhat stupid. It was designed to promote a Whig-Protestant view of historical progress and was quite naive. This weakness was easily exploited

11/ As to the left-wing reinterpretations, I won't spend too much time on them, because their program of subversion is obvious to you already. They are all intellectually derivative off Marxism. Marxism sees all ideas, all culture as superstructure of economic conditions...

12/ It hardly matters if replace "economic" with some other underlying condition or even motivation; race, gender, class is the famous trio, but the interpretation of culture in terms of sexuality and so on is just a restatement of Marxism, "Marxism by other means"...

13/ And you must understand that Marxism isn't itself fundamentally about economics or history or dialectical materialism or any of things it claims to be about. It is as Lowith said, a secularization of Judaism and attempt to overturn Western civilization (see also esp. Cuddihy)

14/ You see an especially naive, blatant statement of real purpose of this kosher-left concern with the classics in the work of Agamben, so important for critical theory crowd, who sees Auschwitz as the "secret" founding principle of Western civilization/thought since beginning

15/ And in many ways this is the great fear that motivates many of the attempts to redefine the classics and to gain a monopoly on their interpretation: they fear that national socialism in some form IS the revival of antiquity in modern age. They fear this even if not true

16/ The fear is there, whether they know it or no, because of the entire phenomenon of German Hellenism...of Wagner also in this movement, of the "tragic spirit" that Nietzsche speaks of, and especially of politics conceived as aesthetics, of the State as a work of art....

17/ Whether national socialism is a betrayal of that vision, an adulterated form, an abortion, doesn't matter ...it's a risk they and Anglo-Jewish commercial civilization feels is too great. Therefore the great angst over control of Greek antiquity and its interpretation...

18/ Indeed a nationalist Germany led by people like e.g. Junger or Ernst von Salomon, without the excesses, mistakes of Hitler & co. would have been far MORE dangerous to them. It's not a path they ever want reopened again...this is not to say it's a conspiracy I'm talking about

19/The other side of it is particular purely to the faction I'm talking about. You must understand that the religion itself is conceived as antagonistic to universal Hellenistic civilization--Western civilization--and everything it stands for. This began with the Maccabees

20/There is indeed no record of any Jewish kingdom at all before the Maccabees, which is I believe the first book of the Bible and the time when the history of Israel was falsified. Almost the entire peoplehood is conceived in opposition to the Greek ideal

21/ Hanukkah is a celebration of military victory of Jewish particularism over cosmopolitan Hellenistic civilization. Every time a menorah is displayed during this time of year, it is an open insult toward their enemy. Absurd and masochistic that it should be put on WH lawn

22/ Religious men, however, aren't relevant to any of this. Many are very conservative and only care for their own traditions, but they're about as relevant to public life as the Amish are. When secularized, the only element that remains is the ancient antagonism to the West

23/ this antagonism is INTENSIFIED. This is why Hanukkah, which was never important among the religious, takes such great importance in American Jewish secular life. Above all ofc it's a rejection of Christmas, but is also reminder of bigoted defiance against Western civilization

24/ the animus against Christianity, which is itself a continuation of Hellenistic civilization, I'd argue isn't primarily religious, but a holdover of the ancient enmity against Rome. This antagonism, again, continues and is even intensified when religious motivations disappear

25/The proof that the primary motivation is civilizational strife (or "ethnic," from their point of view since they reject civilization) you can see if anything about Indo-European origins comes up. Here a certain desperation and obsessive-impulsive behavior sets in, for example:

26/David P. Goldman or Asia Times "Spengler" who devoted at least one entire article trying to disprove that Indo-Europeans ever existed, using absurd analogies. But every member of this faction I've met at any level of society has displayed intense hostility to the idea...

27/The reasons for this are obvious (see also Dumezil) but brings me to most interesting part of this problem, and the one I really wanted to talk about, which is the ""right wing"" reinterpretation of the classics, which is at bottom the same as the left...(thred ending soon)

28/Entire purpose of the ""rightwing"" or "trad" reading of the classics (conservative Catholics are complicit in the fraud) is on its surface to refute the left (as also "leftist natzees") and prove that the classics "aren't rayciss" but universal/timeless, about virtue....

29/But what the ""right""wing reading really wants is to claim that the West has no special claim to Greco-Roman antiquity. "You didn't build that." It's not yours, it belongs to the world. You don't exist and in fact never existed. Your ancestors misunderstood the classics.

30/You see Thucydides said his book is a possession for all time. Plato's Republic was Greek but needn't have been (?? idk...but this is something they say); Aristotle and Xenophon showed interest in the social and political organization of foreigners. Therefore...therefore...

31/Because this reading is based on a number of half-truths, as opposed to outright falsehoods (like the leftwing reading) and because it presents itself as a friend of the classics, it's more dangerous...it can seduce naive young students and conservatives....

32/But the intended end-result of rightwing reading of classics is same as that of the left. The "provincialization" or "decolonization" of the West, under the guise of anti-racism and anti-ethnonationalism. Language of Roman imperialism and ancient philosophy is repurposed...

33/In both cases "left" and "right," the kosher takeover of the classics has one message: the West as exists since Hellenistic civilization must cease, and submit itself to a new project, hardly defined, where Westerners are to prove their virtue by deferring to ethnonationalists

34/The makers of English or Roman (or Russian) or other Euro empires had universal aims and ideals. Never once did they think this meant they had to surrender power or resources to aliens, allow them to immigrate, or that the white/European race was not superior...

35/Indeed "white" and "Western" are synonymous, with "white" simply being the word outsiders gave to Westerners in the colonies. Indians called Euros "the white man" and attacked you regardless if you were a Slovak farmer in Tennessee or blueblood Anglo-Norman...

36/The fate and destiny of Western or "white man" in the colonies was a special concern of many 19th c liberals, including e.g. Joseph Conrad, which is why so much hatred and obsessive kvetching has been directed at him (Said built theory of "Orientalism" opposing Conrad)

37/the "anti-racist" project of socalled "rightwing" or trad reading of the classics is in fact anti-Western in intention. The language of universalism and the example of Rome itself is perversely abused to attack Western colonialism, imperialism and universalism as it existed

38/This is abused in same way the universalist ideals or intentions of the American Founders are abused to pretend that, e.g., the Declaration or the Constitution mean that Washington created America to be the playground of 100 million Gambian welfare cases and Azeri car salesmen

39/Behind all this is something you may not yet see, because many on "our" side have also misled you. The Jewish dispute with the West isn't what either they or you would like to think. Since at least Philo they have resented the universalism of the West, tried to modulate it...

41/Globalism as now understood has nothing to do with Western imperialism as existed before 1960 or so. It's action of particular factions/gangs--many you don't know!--who have hijacked Western institutions during Cold War and are trying to receive short-term benefit from chaos

42/Anyway as regards classics, in America and in general in Anglo world after 1950, with collapse of German scholarship, artistic traditions, it was very easy for this group to hijack and modulate founding texts of West, done largely with senile consent of the WASP establishment

43/"conservative" reading of classics--the leftwing falsehood you know already--is a convoluted attempt to get you not to think in political terms of "friend and enemy"; to make you not know that it was thought of self-confident European empire, civilization for ~2500 yrs

44/Above all, the kosher hijacking of the classics...driven ultimately by the various fears, jealousies and resentments I mentioned...has this one main goal, to prevent Western men from taking direct inspiration from ancient Greco-Roman heroes and politics, as Machiavelli did...

45/ And their main goal... to prevent a revival of Hellenism such as was taking place in 19th c-early 20th c Europe and especially Germany, with everything that was leading to...and no I don't mean Natzees, although that is the excuse they use in own minds...

46/ To this end various perverse readings are promoted, especially on the left; the Zuckerface sister hysteria is only the most obvious, and is one step away from burning and banning Plutarch or Homer...

But don't forget the more insidious falsehoods promoted on the """right"""

47/ Anyway I hope you enjoy my drunken rant on Sunday night, I'm enjoying white rum J.M with syrup and lime a socalled ti' punch u mad??

Club Tropical Excellent coming soon frands; BAP out/

punchdrink.com/recipes/ti-pun…

Big Brain Skrewlars: ACKSHUALLY ancient Greek statues were painted but paint got washed off with time leaving bare marble, perpetuating a "myth" of whiteness

Reality: yes, the paint that showed them blond-haired and blue-eyed got washed off...

@BillBloggs10 is this the thred you were asking about