Recently, I've been feeling increasing qualms about my positive words (no matter how qualified) for the Alt Right.
More than anything else this is because of their anti-semitism. Anti-semitism has always been the prejudice that bothers me the most. I'm not talking about faux anti-semitism. G.K. Chesterton was not an anti-semite, though he said some stupid things. I think the recent Kevin Myers controversy, where an Irish columnist lost his job because he suggested Jewish people were good at making money, was ridiculously overblown. When I complain about the Alt Right, I'm talking about real, ugly, deliberate anti-semitism-- blaming Jewish people for everything, wanting them all to go to Israel, using the "k" word, etc. I detest all this.
I feel rather homeless when it comes to political and cultural persuasion right now. Shouldn't Catholic be enough? Not really, because the overwhelming mass of Catholic discourse right now is hopelessly politically correct, insipid and banal. I can barely remember the last time I read a Catholic article or saw a Catholic video that stimulated me in any way (with the exception of Roger Buck, and a few others). I wrote this article on the subject for the Irish Catholic. (One of only two articles I've had there.) It got quite a few shares and someone mentioned it in a letter to the editor.
I'm not a Traditionalist, and I feel like an interloper in Traditionalist discussions. I can't induce that level of preoccupation with the liturgy. And I'm someone will go to Mass every day that it's reasonably convenient.
Cultural libertarianism is OK, but it tends to be atheistic and anti-religious. Milo Yiannapoulous is an exception in this regard. It also tends to be purely negative.
This is my quandary. It's barely exaggerating to say that I'm as much in opposition to the ruling ideology of Western society, at this time, as a Soviet dissident would have been in the Soviet Union. I'm impatient with the accommodationalism of mainstream conservatives and the mainstream churches, including the One True Church. I'm sick of man-bashing, multiculturalism (as an ideology), boundaries-are-bad-ism, irony, utilitarianism, and all the rest of it. I feel completely alienated from it all.
But I also don't want to spend all my time thinking about it. I wish I knew of more commentators, writers, etc. who reject political correctness etc. without having to talk about it constantly. Who simply talk about other things-- films, books, social customs, history, etc. etc-- but without the PC attitudes you get everywhere else.
Intellectually and culturally, I'm bored out of my skull.
Below are a few places you might look for a fair proportion of not-boring commentary, or properly Catholic commentary, as you like. Apologies if you know them all!
ReplyDeletePeter Hitchens' blog
San Crucensis
First Things Journal
The Josias
OnePeterFive
Thanks for those. I'll give them a go. I'm an old habitué of Peter Hitchens's blog and I sometimes look at First Things, but I don't know the others.
DeleteDo you have any thoughts on Orthodoxy? I've noticed a few Catholics who were drawn to the Latin Mass, considered themselves traditionalists, then converted to Orthodoxy. I get the sense that since saw the NO as inadequate they found something in the Latin Mass, then after having issues with the pope, amongst other things, it was onto Orthodoxy. One thing that they had in common was that they grew outside the faith. It just seems like a Protestant church hopping until they found one "just right." It's ironic to me.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that the problems in the Church right now stem from lack of fidelity to doctrine, and admirers of Orthodoxy often seem to prize it for its relative lack of interest in doctrine as opposed to praxis. I've heard that's inaccurate, but I'm not sure what the truth is. It's the Catholic faith or nothing for me.
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