Culture and Cultural Appropriation

 Culture

And Cultural Appropriation

by

R.E. Prindle

 

A current issue is cultural appropriation.  One imagines that that means that each culture has certain attributes that are exclusively for their own use.  Distinct somethings different from all other somethings.  On the surface it is a laughable assumption not too different from race, indeed, perhaps identical to it.

Perhaps contingent on the concept is that of ‘diversity.’  Diversity is essentially a concept belonging to the White race that classifies others by race.  Thus Diversity occurs in a White country when blacks, browns and yellows are resident within it, carefully separating those groups in compact indivisible unassimilable components.  Its assumption seems to be that White races are the norm and when colored races mingle with the White races that is called ‘diversity.’

With diversity  then come the notion of distinct inalienable cultures.  While the culture of the White races is universal that of the colored races is strictly particular to each race.

These concepts are in direct collision with the fact that when various cultures and races come in contact with each other they naturally meld.  Darwinian rules apply.

Historically in the US and Europe the White races have been eclectic.  Following scientific rules when Whites see something useful to their own culture or better they adopt it .  Thus, in the US where immigration has been part of the White culture, when immigrants enter the US they become a part of White culture.  White and Black influences can’t be separated, White and Jewish influences can’t be separated etc.  Therefore all those cultures become part of White culture.  Stone Mountain and the Stars and Bars are as much a part of White culture as are Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement.  You can no more separate the Civil War and Reconstruction from White peoples’ memories than you can separate Brown vs. The Board Of Education and Martin Luther King. 

At this point Cultural Appropriation enters the equation.  Blacks claim Martin Luther King as their very own exclusive property and King can only be mentioned in terms of which the Blacks approve.  Scientific investigation is annulled and forbidden.  From this writer’s point of view this is Black peoples’ problem. I, and I hope other Whites, are not going to allow certain memories to be severed from our very vibrant culture.

So, with Jews.  Events in their cultural history have a significance that can’t be part of universal culture.  That is their problem.  However the relationship of Jews to non-Jews is a different situation and it can be explored and examined by others.  Thus Whites have a different view of the Jewish relationship to Europe and Europeans than Jews do.  There is no reason for Whites to abandon their cultural interest to please the Jews.

And so it goes with Mexicans, Asians and whoever.  No culture has the right to deny other cultures their cultures.  Difficulties must be fairly ironed out.

At the present time the culture of the White races is the universal culture to which all cultures and races appropriate key facets of their own culture.  English is the lingua franca of the entire world.  Western styles of clothing and dressing have been assimilated throughout all societies.  Western, or White or Aryan, economic systems are the sole viable economic systems on the planet.  Freeways are universal.    Ford’s automobiles are the standard terrestrial mode of transportation.  In fact, it is a Western world.

If one stands up all world leaders for a group portrait they all will be identical except for skin tone.  So, the world has appropriated Western culture.

As the world then has adapted a unique culture what can be appropriated by whom?  At this point the notion of cultural  appropriation seems laughable.  Certain races have even attempted to appropriate certain words for their own use even.

American Negroes for instance have attempted to appropriate the word ‘nigga’ as exclusive for Black use.  Thus while Negroes can use the word freely, if White people, ‘Westerners’ use the word it is a punishable offence.  Jews, Moslems and others have devised the terms in which they can be mentioned and the means of expression.  The others can only use terms of praise but any justified criticism becomes racist, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic.  The world in compelled to choose to honor and elevate all races but their own.  It is not enough to be neutral.  Therefore one must become Judeophiles, and Islamophiles and Negrophiles, Sinophile or else perish.

This is quite a turn of events since 1954.  The world turned upside down that year.  All cultural norms were disturbed.  While the US Constitution guarantees freedom of speech, in point of fact recent cultural mores negate the Constitution.  In fact, speech is circumscribed.

While White culture rules the present, White people are denied the dignity of having created it.  That creative effort is now decried as White Supremacy as though White Supremacy were a bad thing that can be disposed of, as it were.  As White Supremacy, as it goes, ruled the world for the last few hundred years that means that non-Whites feel inferior.  Now by as act of magic the roles are reversed.  To erase any evidence of that prior inferiority history must be rewritten, the actual facts discarded and alternate facts created.

Thus, while the true facts are that in space science while the developers  were almost universally White men, we are told, and the propaganda  is spread, that the success of the US space program depended on a brilliant Black female mathematician.  Without the brilliant Black woman the whole space program would have failed.  Thus both Blacks and women are elevated over White men into the genius behind the program.

To question this propaganda is to be ostracized.  Never mind that this Black woman must have culturally appropriated White mathematics and language she cannot be investigated or criticized.

And so it goes.  What actual culture will emerge from these distortions of reality will probably not be good.  Unless one considers Colored Supremacy a good.  To paraphrase Williams Jennings Bryan:  Shall the world be crucified on a cross of Color?

Why Socialism Always Fails

by

R.E. Prindle

 

Back before 1917 there were a bunch of Socialist punk conspirators called Bolsheviki who were led by a punk called Vladimir Lenin.  These punks mainly clubbed around Switzerland talking about Social Justice and other incomprehensible stuff  and how they would create the Workers’ Paradise if only they got the chance.

Well, during WWI the dumb Germans gave them their chance, put them in a few sealed cattle cars and shipped them from Switzerland to the Finland Station.  When they got to St. Petersburg, later called Leningrad, then again St. Petersburg, they really didn’t know what to do except hang around but for one punk with the unlikely name of Trotsky.  Trotsky got the ball rolling and the Bolsheviki took over.  They were now in control of the biggest, richest country in the world.  But, they were still at a loss of what to do except throw people in jail and kill them.  In their zeal for Social Justice, as witnessed by all those prisoners, they forgot one thing- it takes a lot of money to make things work.

None of them had ever had any money so they probably didn’t know what to do to get it unless they stole it, their usual method.  So, they had this great big country but they didn’t have a clue.  Well, there’s only two ways to get money and that is to borrow, work for it, or steal it.  Is that three ways?  Really?  Well, three then.  They didn’t know how to do the middle part so that left borrowing and stealing.  That’s two.  Isn’t that what I said?

There weren’t any socialists with money around so the only people with money were the capitalists.  Some called that planning; others called it theft.   They were a happy prosperous lot, already driving around in Cadillac cars, Fords for the hoi polloi otherwise known as workers, and flying airplanes. 

The Bolsheviki tapped the first source.  The Kuhn Loebs and the Rothschilds of the world were only too anxious to funnel millions their way.  However, let us not overlook the fact that it takes more than millions to run the biggest country in the world.

The Bosheviki had already destroyed the Russian economy because the word economics smells of Capitalism. So they looked around and discovered the accumulated wealth of things in Russia.  For a few hundred years  the Russians had been making money and buying things so they had lots of stuff like famous pictures, diamonds and jewelry and fur coats, the churches were loaded with artefacts so to these Bolsheviki who didn’t understand making money to buy this stuff, this stuff looked valuable, the real thing.  Same as money, right?  Guess what they did.  They stole it.  The greatest heist of all time.  This was sensational.  They looted the people who had the stuff and drove them out of the country.  There went the productive people of Russian society.

Now they had warehouses of this stuff.  Warehouses and warehouses, thousands of used fur coats and this other used stuff.  Second hand.  But, you can’t run a country because you possess heaps of decorative crap.   They had to sell those stolen goods to get at the cash.  Who had the cash to buy this junk?  You guessed it!  People in the so-called Capitalist countries.  So these criminals had to set up fences to turn this stuff into cash.  They recruited, amongst others, some American (loosely defined) shlub to help move this crap by the name of Armand Hammer.  Imagine the Bolsheviki found a guy named Arm and Hammer.  What a coincidence.

So Armand Hammer packed a bunch of stolen pictures, sounds like the Nazis doesn’t it, under his arm and beat the bushes of the US finding people to buy this stuff, really nice pictures too.  He didn’t have much trouble.  The Mellons, the Edward G. Robinsons lined up to get these bargains.  So it was all over the world.  The Smithsonian bought some, other museums bought this stolen artwork and they knew where it came from too.  When it came to diamonds even the British monarchs bought some of the Russian crown jewels, those of the Czars.  What a wonderful time to have a few spare dollars hey?

But you know how it is with fenced goods.  They go for a fraction of their value.  Even with loans the proceeds weren’t enough to run the country.  The Bolsheviki got desperate.  They formed the NEP.  New Economic Policy.  Oh, oh, that word that smacks of Capitalism.  But now, guess what?  Work worked.  The country began to prosper.  But then the Bolsheviki realized that they were dabbling in Capitalism so they knocked that crap off right away and the country sank back into absolute poverty.

So that’s why Socialism will never work.  Because Socialists don’t understand the function of money.  They think money just exists like water.  If you have a barrel of water it gets used up and no more water.  That’s ow money worked, they thought.  There’s only so much and greedy Capitalists have discovered ways to capture all the money leaving none for the poor.  They never think of refilling the barrel.  And that friends is why Socialism always fails.  Socialists aren’t very bright.

A Note On Slavery and the Decision to Remove Lillian Gish’s Name by Bowling Green University’s Theatre

By

R.E. Prindle

 

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/06/12/gish-j12.html?fbclid=IwAR3xSq7_9y_kBJMZ-Bwmb96TE_nieFLbAz9M-BDK5_sX0p9-itHWe7lKaQU

 

 

According to the article linked above Bowling Green University has discriminated against its alumna the great actress Lillian Gish by erasing her name from the campus theatre honoring her because some Black students objected to her appearance in D.W. Griffith’s great movie The Birth of a Nation for racist reasons.  The movie was one of the greatest cinematic achievements.  It dealt with the period of American history known as Reconstuction.  That period has been one of the most, if not the most, distorted periods in US history.

Reconstruction began when President Abraham Lincoln was murdered by Abolitionist fanatics because he wouldn’t treat Southern Whites as subhumans and submit them to subhuman and barbaric measures.  Instead he wished to treat the war as a misunderstanding and wished to reintegrate the South into the Union which he had so ardently and with so much bloodshed wished to preserve.

Having removed the President the fanatics did impose draconian measures on the Southern Whites which elevated the Blacks over them essentially making the Whites slaves and putting the Blacks’ foot on their neck.  This situation would have continued well beyond 1877 but for the reestablishment of sanity by President Hayes.

The criminal period of Reconstruction was well remembered by Southern Whites.  The most prominent voice of the Southern view of this history was the novelist Thomas W. Dixon Jr..  Today the Left and David Walsh, the writer of this article, condemn Dixon as a terrible racist.  For the Left the term racist is a catch all for anyone of whom they disapprove much like the old Conservative catch all, Communist.  The term racist should be treated by all reasonable people the same way.

Dixon was not a racist, he was a competent writer and capable historian.  He was an ardent anti-Communist after the 1917 Revolution when US Commies began the attacks to discredit all writers who refused to follow the Party line.  Twenty years of defamation later Thomas Dixon’s reputation was destroyed.

Hodding Carter in his history of Reconstruction of 1959 titled it The Angry Scar. And so it was and is.  Reconstruction did not end in 1877 it was merely interrupted.  It re-emerged after 1954 and the Supreme Court decision Brown vs. The Board of Education and continues ferociously today.

The movie Birth of a Nation was an attempt to heal that Angry Scar.  It attempted to present the real, the true, story of Reconstruction and the real reason for the creation of the first Ku Klux Klan.

There are those who, for whatever reason, wish to distort that history and complete the destruction of Southern Whites and, indeed, Conservatives in general, who they see as sub-human, that President Lincoln wished to prevent.  These people are now known as the Lunatic Left.  They are a racist bunch favoring Black Supremacy.

Thus, their condemnation of Lillian Gish on the insane charge that she accepted a role in the movie and then subsequently did not condemn it or Thomas Dixon, David Wark Griffith and The Birth of a Nation.  There is nothing to condemn in any of the three.  There is much to condemn in Communism and Communists and anyone who speaks well of it and them.

While we can never put the past behind us it is important to maintain a balanced view of what our ancestors endured to the best of their abilities.  Yes, slavery is a terrible thing, then and now, and the attitude is resurfacing on the Left.

Agricultural slavery which not only Negroes endured but also Whites, both worked cheek by jowl in the fields in the early days of Negro importations, was benign and even beneficial compared to the industrial slavery endured by workers in the North.

In addition, there was no slavery more horrid than that endured by English mine workers in nineteenth century England.  Yes, we should and must condemn slavery and curse the legacy not only of agricultural slavery but industrial slavery in all forms, whether endured by the Black race, the White race or any other race.