Interview with a transcendentalist Nazi

[infoterror]

Interview with Craig Smith, LNSG (www.nazi.org)

The Libertarian National Socialist Green party has a broad and coherent platform worthy of close survey. Yet it also uses historical references that may make one frown. To unearth the wells of its ideology, these questions were fired at the movement's initiator, Craig Smith from Texas, USA.

National Socialism is not about callow ethnic hatred and beating up immigrants. It is about a transcendent, efficient, ascendent holistic design for civilization, so that it approximates the heights of greatness the Ancients achieved... it is both pure aesthetics, and pure science. Our fundamental concept is that of parallelism, meaning that all truths run in parallel, and one cannot pick out a single vein of truth -- economics, or emotion, for example -- and use it to "symbolize" the whole of the truth.

Read More: Interview with Craig Smith, LNSG (www.nazi.org) by Paul Cooijmans

 

[speed]

The funny thing is I once had a good friend named Craig Smith, and he was also from Texas. However, he was Jewish! Seriously.

Whats next? Transcendental Nihilism? Transcendental Dialectical Materialism? Perhaps Transcendental Genocide?

 

[derek]

It scares me that these people are so articulate.

 

[JColtrane]

At least from that quote, he doesn't quite strike me as being articulate; rather, it seems completely contradictory within only a few lines! First of he wants a holistic design for civilization, but then states this completely opposite idea of parallel truths that do not integrate. He may use some "fancy" words, but if you are that incoherent you are not worthy of the title "articulate". (I must add that I am not attacking you Derek, but simply the quote in the original post.)

 

[Scourge of God]

I see that reading isn't your strong suit. His point was that there are many threads of truth constituting reality, and any time one tries to treat a single thread in isolation as if it can be used as a matrix for understanding the totality of reality (i.e. economics in Marxism or 'freedom' in liberalism), the result is inevitably the creation of single-issue philosophies with no correspondence with the whole of reality, and therefore, no utility for those who would construct a functional means of organizing society. That's not a contradiction of the call for a holistic approach to social organization, it's merely a laying out of the central problem of modern politics.

 

[JColtrane]

Nice


How exactly do you think he should integrate his two philosophies?
Here's a definition of holistic, in case you missed my point:

Holistic:characterized by comprehension of the parts of something as intimately interconnected and explicable only by reference to the whole.

It should be obvious how that is incompatible with his later statement of "parallel" truths.

 

[Scourge of God]

It's a way of organizing a metaphor, you ninny. 'Parallel' describes the nature of the connection between the different elements of truth that make up the whole of reality. The point here is that the different 'truths' are subordinate to the whole matrix of reality, but not dependent on one another.

Think of it like medieval polyphony, in which many independent melody lines, none conditioned upon any other, form the whole of the work. The significance of any given line can only be understood in reference to ALL other lines within the piece. There is no single intersection or reference point or tone center conditioning all elements of the piece. This differs from homophonic composition, where a single melody line predominates, and all other parts are subordinate to and conditioned by that melody. Human societies are like polyphony, multiple elements moving in parallel and only understood in their totality, rather than being vertically integrated from a single central point of reference, be that politics, culture, economics, 'liberty' etc.

This isn't an obscure metaphor, and if you're so tied up in its minutiae, perhaps you should find a new forum that puts fewer demands on your intellectual capacity, at least until you've boned up enough to keep up with the big boys.

 

[Justin S.]

Scourge, you've saved me from pounding out many a post...

Also, its rather amusing to see a Christian bring charges of "incoherence".

 

[JColtrane]

Right, but the original post claims to advance a "holistic society," and you have yet to show how that is compatible with the idea ofparallel truths, which appears fundamentally opposed to the process which is necessary to bring about a holistic society.

Nice Straw Man Justin. If you want to bring charges of incoherence against me, you'd better be more specific than that. :Smug:

 

[Justin S.]

What straw man? It was a case of irony; the discordance of a follower of Christianity (a nice patchwork) condemning "incoherence".

 

[Scourge of God]

Right, but the original post claims to advance a "holistic society," and you have yet to show how that is compatible with the idea ofparallel truths, which appears fundamentally opposed to the process which is necessary to bring about a holistic society.

You're not getting this at all, are you? The argument is that philosophies that fail to account for ALL aspects of reality are doomed to failure. Stop getting hung up on the phrasing, or butt the fuck out.

 

[JColtrane]

Justin: The straw man is claiming Christianity to be incoherent, which of course I don't think has been argued for, but I suppose will have to wait for another thread.

Scourge: Believe me, I'm quite capable of thinking, so take some time to understand what I am saying. In your very definition of parallel truths, you state that each different 'truth' is not dependent on another; in a holistic system, the idea is that each truth is dependent on another truth, in such a way that each part is only explicable inside the whole. There is a big difference there, and it's not about phrasing, but rather about incompatible goals and methods.

 

[Freanan]

I think what he wants to say is, that there are different interpretations of what is going on in the world with different attached values, ie different "paralell truths".

Still every "truth" out of this collection of paralell truths/interpretations/philosophies should be holistic in itsself, if it wants to be takes seriously and to work.

 

[Scourge of God]

Justin: The straw man is claiming Christianity to be incoherent, which of course I don't think has been argued for, but I suppose will have to wait for another thread.

Scourge: Believe me, I'm quite capable of thinking, so take some time to understand what I am saying. In your very definition of parallel truths, you state that each different 'truth' is not dependent on another; in a holistic system, the idea is that each truth is dependent on another truth, in such a way that each part is only explicable inside the whole. There is a big difference there, and it's not about phrasing, but rather about incompatible goals and methods.

Go back and read what was said again, then meditate on your inadequacy as both a reader and an interpreter of what you've read, because you've completely botched every reading you've made in this thread.

 

[JColtrane]

Nice argument. But seriously, I've talked enough. Scourge, I want to know how you would propose integrating the two philosophies he states. If truths are meant to be independent, each one contained in its own box and not saying anything about the larger picture, how could one possibly achieve something holistic? What would be the unifying idea that would tie all the parallel truths into a whole; and furthermore, once that idea is established how does it not contradict the whole idea of parallel truths? And this time, I would appreciate if you would put forth a decent argument, and not simply dismiss mine.

 

[Scourge of God]

Go back to my discussion of the idea of polyphony, and pay attention this time. The various layers of truth that make up reality can only be understood when placed in the context of all of reality. You can't understand the meaning of one skein of truth simply in correspondence to one or two others (i.e. by viewing 'politics' through the lens of 'economics' or 'economics' through the lens of 'gender relations'). You must view any one truth in the context of all other truths simultaneously, you can't abstract any of them from the others and still reach any understanding of truth in the larger sense. It's a concept called 'irreducible complexity.'

And if you can't see the consonance between promoting a holistically organized society and attacking political philosophies that try to subordinate the whole of reality to one of its aspects, then I can't really help you. It's not, as they say, rocket surgery, but if you spend all of your time arguing semantics and insisting on dictionary definitions rather than the usages of terms as they are being applied in the current discourse, you're never going to get beyond the blind men and the elephant stage.

 

[JColtrane]

That last explanation was better; I definitely see the possibility in your second paragraph and affirm it--that is, I do not think that the entire truth of reality should be relativized by one aspect. I agree that this is a problem in modern politics, and leads to irrational and immoral decisions because certain things are given far too much importance. But in order for this to be feasible in a holistic way, there must be an overarching view of reality that organizes these different parallel truths. One cannot simply add up all of the different parallel truths and arrive at the overarching idea in this manner, because there is no principle for organization. In other words, nothing would cohere: all we would be left with is a bunch of disconnected truths. Therefore, in my opinion, the picture given in the original post is incomplete and out of order: one must state the overarching idea before one can articulate how it plays out. So I'd have to say that the original post is not so much wrong as it is backwards.

 

[Scourge of God]

What, you expect reality to fit into a paragraph? The paragraph exists to set up a premise, not to argue it in depth.

You realize that very few authors put detailed conclusions in a thesis paragraph, right? That it is customary in argumentative writing to lay out general theories before addressing the specific evidence? Surely you must. So why, exactly do you expect a two sentence paragraph to provide a detailed accounting of the whole of reality?

 

[Justin S.]

Justin: The straw man is claiming Christianity to be incoherent, which of course I don't think has been argued for, but I suppose will have to wait for another thread.

I don't agree with your assessment. "Straw man" typically means the act of attributing a fabricated argument to another in the attempt to pass off the "refutation" of the facsimile as the refutation of the other's actual argument(s). (note: this need not be maliciously "intentional"; mis-interpretation/reading/re-presentation in any form is essentially the effect of the intrinsic "straw men" of inner-re-presentation. The idea of "straw man", fabrication, requires a definite grasp on the referent (correspondence) of the "real" or "original"... quite a problem! But one for another thread...[although we witnessed a good display with, ironically enough, JColtrane's posts])

I fail to see how my criticism was a "straw man" by the common definition. I certainly didn't attribute the argument of Christianity's incoherence to you! Rather, this criticism comes from the literary and philosophical canon generally (where have you been, dude?).

 

[kmik]

But Nazism is equally guilty of that... does it matter if it's class struggle or race struggle. Every theory focuses on one aspect of human life because it's impossible to come up with some sort of a general theory for civilization. It could be the will to power, evolution or economics.

Frankly, I don't really understand how this conception of truth (truths in parallel etc.) is different than that of so called 'modern society'? It's obvious, I don't understand how it could be the other way around in an actual society (not on paper)