Lew Rockwell & Racist Commentary
My comments on the late Sam Francis have generated an interesting collection of strange and sickening email. I wrote,
On the other hand, the people who write for lewrockwell.com might think about their having been associated by Rockwell with a sleazy and windy bag of hatred and racism such as the late Sam Francis, of one of the few groups more odious than the League of the South, the Council of Conservative Citizens, widely known as the public face of the KKK in the South.
That led to a remark from the, shall we say, white nationalist website VDare “that Sam, even in death, could stimulate hysterical outrage amongst his opponents.” (I find strange the stance that the views of a highly opinionated person, who slandered and traduced not only his intellectual opponents, but billions of people on the grounds of their “race,” should be exempt from criticism after he has died. But we can set that aside for the moment.)
Enter “Arthur Pendleton”
I received as a result a number of emails bemoaning the allegedly “imminent genocide of the white race” through “dysgenic breeding,” “racial mongrelization,” “liberal sewage,” and so forth. What was most interesting was an email testifying to the impact of Lew Rockwell’s ministry on college students. It was from someone named Arthur Pendleton and was quite revealing. (I don’t recall meeting Mr. Pendleton, nor do I recall “blathering” about “historic preservation Nazis,” although I do find people who steal property from others annoying and offensive and have said so in the past.) In any case, Mr. Pendleton offers his personal testimony to the impact that Lew Rockwell has on some (thankfully not all) impressionable students.
From: [mailto:arthurpendleton@yahoo.com]
Sent: Monday, February 28, 2005 6:15 AM
To: tomgpalmer@tomgpalmer.com
Subject: Sam FrancisSister Palmer:
Many years ago, I had the privilege of attending an IHS seminar week held in California. I generally enjoyed myself, learned a great deal, and met many interesting intellectuals, albeit ones I thought distinctly inferior to those grouped around the legendary Murray Rothbard and the then relatively young Mises Institute, whose similar program I had attended the previous year.
Stangely, I also distinctly recall you, especially for one comment. You kept blathering about “historic preservation Nazis”, persons about whom you seemed ‘exercised’, to say the least. I thought to myself at the time, “This man is a true fanatic. America is racing towards socialism [even in the alleged free-market heyday of Reaganism], not one major government program has been dismantled, ‘civil rights’ totalitarianism and huxterism is getting worse by the hour, gun control is waxing, the culture is a moral cesspool, and the nation is being colonized and conquered by racial aliens … and this fool is berating my aunt! [yes, she is a fine, Constitution-loving, Old-Stock American who happens also to spend some of her time working to preserve architectural treasures and classic Americana]”. Even the staunchest libertarian, if he’s a sober man worthy of consideration, must acknowledge that not all statist depredations are equal, and that, in a postwar era of constantly creeping domestic communism, some putative ‘offenses’ against absolutist conceptions of property rights are hardly worth notice, let alone bother.
Well, the years passed, my immature early libertarianism was gradually replaced by an historically informed Old Right sympathy, and you were appropriately forgotten. Alas, until now. I have come across your slanders of the recently deceased paleoconservative Sam Francis, and am appropriately shocked, though not so much by their poor taste (libertarians, except for the paleo variety, tend to be rather uncouth — and everyone knows about ‘bitchy queers”), as by the implicit, ludicrous assumption that someone of your meager abilities and limited erudition is capable, let alone worthy, of judiciously assessing a man and thinker of the aliber of the late Dr. Francis. That courageous and brilliant man was simply the greatest political analyst of our age, whose inimitable writings contain at least the seeds of a revolutionary reappraisal (unfortunately, never systematically developed by Sam) of the whole course of post-Enlightenment political theory in the West.
You, on the other hand, are a “little man”, a typical carping liberal whose writings, some of which I’ve now looked over (they are hardly worth more than a look-over), are at best restatements of illustrious forebears, with nary a scintilla of the originality of insight that Dr. Sam brought to even the most insignificant of his throw-away columns. Long after your genes and memory have disappeared into the expanding mongrel morass that so excites you, the great Samuel Francis will be read and treasured by Occidental men as a leader of that very select company who saw our epoch in all its filthy reality — and who had the courage to write what they witnessed and understood. Sam was made of far sterner and more honorable stuff than you, fairy-boy, and I think, at some primitive level, you know it.
You use libertarianism to excuse your perversions, and “political correctness” to hide your treason. You are a fool and a disgrace.
Arthur Pendleton
I like that line about my genes disappearing into “the expanding mongrel morass that so excites you.” Nicely done. Lew Rockwell must be so very proud.
I have attended left wing and neoconservative conferences where I certainly disagreed with much, if not all, of what was being said; but I still felt “quite comfortable” at those events. So I don’t see how Ms. Renouf not going into convulsions at the Mises Event she attended (assuming she even attended it in the first place) would mean anything.
This horse has been beaten dead. It’s clear to everyone with an ounce of sense that Lew Rockwell and his ilk are racist loons and that libertarianism to them is a just the means to the end of racial segregation that they so cherish. One only need google “lew rockwell” and “sam francis” to find evidence of that.
Tom is one of the smartest guys I’ve ever met. He’s one of my favorite people. And I’ve met some pretty smart people. I think he should return to posting stuff that advances the discussion about liberty. When he writes on serious issues, be it a review of Cass Sunstein’s latest book, or a critique of Jeff Friedman’s criticism of libertarianism, I learn something. These exchanges are not terribly illuminating. Please, Tom, tell me something I don’t know. Don’t tell me that Stephan Kinsella is an idiot. I’ve met him. I know that.
I’ve been at a Mises Institute event. Once. It was brutal. Second-rate “scholars”. Despite being advertised as an Austrian Scholars Conference, no serious Austrians were there. But there were lots of southern secessionist types there. I’m not easily offended by outlandish statements. But Hoppe’s impromptu call at the end of the conference for a libertarian revolution was off-putting, I guess. Anyway, the Mises Institute is a joke. Its website gets no traffic. Its scholars get no attention. Wealth being what it is in this country, Lew Rockwell can earn a comfortable living by running his “institute” with 4 or 5 staff members and 20 of his friends as contributors on his blog. And that’s what it amounts to.
Compare Alexa Ratings from Mises to http://www.alexa.com/data/details/?url=www.mises.org
Cato, and you’ll see that if it get’s “no traffic” then the Cato institute http://www.alexa.com/data/details/main?q=&url=www.cato.org/ must be doing really horrible. I’ll admit that Cato has more influence than Mises, but I’m sure that if Mises had all that money from neocon foundations and big business it would be doing pretty well.
As for all these “southern secession types” there, I assume you just mean southerners; but even that is inaccurate looking at there 13 Senior Faculty members http://www.mises.org/faculty.asp , I believe that Joe Stromberg is the only native southerner among them.
Furthermore, if you look at this upcoming scholars conference http://www.mises.org/upcomingstory.asp?control=67 there are 6 lectures that have to do with the confederacy or secession loosely compared to at least 30 that deal directly with economics.
Alexa ratings mean just about nothing. Alexa ratings measure traffic from people who have Alexa toolbars installed. Mises for years has tried to get its visitors to install the toolbar. Consequently, its ratings on Alexa are abnormally high.
If Mises wants to release its real webtraffic – unique visits from unique IP addresses – that’s something else.
No doubt the anonymous poster immediately above has a point. But I’ll respond to Mr. Epstein’s remarks in any case. (At least this once….)
I’ve looked over the program he cites and there are some very fine people speaking. I know and respect a number of them. But it is a bit…odd that six out of thirty six presentations at an “Austrian Scholars Conference” are on the the debates over the Confederacy. The sessions on “Money and Banking” and the like seem quite interesting, but….the panels on “The Ordeal of Lincoln” and “The Relevance of the Confederate States of America in the 21st Century” do seem to indicate an agenda rather different from that of the great Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises.
A friend has referred me just recently to your comments from March 2 which explains why I’m writing to you on March 19. My sincere apology. First, as a long-time libertarian activist I’m must admit that I enjoy reading both what Tom Palmer AND Lew Rockwell have to say about current affairs. And I read every day both the Cato Institue website AND LewRockwell.com. I’m really sorry that you guys have been engaged in these snasty personal attacks and wasteless inter-secretarian fights. In any case, while I’m an advocate of free immigration and agree with you in general on the issue, I don’t understand how a sophisticated gentleman like yourself can call VDare a “white national website.” I mean, is Michelle Malkin a “white nationalist?” Among the participants on the site is a contributor to Forbes, several Jews and quite a few intelligent people (Steven Sailer is one of the best writers on the political right). You don’t have to agree with their views on immigration (I don’t) but to try to imply that they are a bunch of neo-Nazis? Sounds to me like a typical Justin R. MO. By the way, your Cato colleagues Ted Carpenter and Doug Bandow have been regular contributors to Chronicles magazine in which the late Sam Francis served as a senior editor. Does that mean that the two were somewhow allied with him? I don’t think so. I’m sorry to say that you sound more and more like a p/c commisar trying to ensure that every other libertarian falls in line with YOUR views on, for example, the Iraq War. From my perspective those libertarians who have backed this war have contributed more to the erosion in libery and freedom and to the growing power of the state even than those who oppose immigration (especially since the latter have only minor impact on public policy). But I’m certainly ready to listen to your views on the subject with all the respect that they and you persoanlly deserve. Please, accord the same respect to those who disagree with you and don’t stoop to the level of others. Adam
Tom, could you use tinyurl.com to shorten that long hyperlink, because this page is too wide and therefore unreadable.
Dirty secret: Mises.org “scholars” are mostly unemployable. Mouthing the Party Line and kissing up to Lew Rockwell are the only way they can get food on the table. “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.”
Yes it is pathetic and lame to most of us. But they have a market (kissing Lew’s butt for the Grand Libertaraian Vanguard Revolution of Segregation and No Black Folks Allowed!) and they serve it well.
Sam Francis, I believe, would have endorsed David Duke’s newsest book, Jewish Supremacism, which has become a best seller in Eastern Europe, selling over 700,000 copies, and is about to be published in Arabic, with endorsements from prominent Syrians. You are probably not familiar with Nidal Kablan of Syria, that country’s most prominent journalist, but I thought you might be interested in an interview Mr. Kablan did with David Duke where they talk about Jewish Supremacism. How thought provoking is it for a book like this to possibly be on the verge of selling millions in the Muslim world?
Audio file:
http://www.davidduke.com/mp3/nidalkabalaninterview.mp3
Here is an article from a Syrian newspaper on Dr. Duke’s visit.
http://www.davidduke.com/?p=458
Keep them talking. Get them upset. you’re right on the money.
[…] man, Marcus Epstein, and his revealed preferences. (You can search for his name on these posts: 1, 2, […]