I'll be able to get my dues in later tonight, probably about 4 or 5 hours from now

@sigruna14 Sorry, acted without thinking. Wasn't sure how to identify him and just typed out his skype username.

@John Wesley-SC I was interviewed by Eric. Also, I just paid my dues.

Hey I paid my dues on Sunday, still haven't been verified. Is there anything else I need to do first?

@John O - cool, thanks

I've been reading Spinoza's "Ethics" for my early modern philosophy class and I'm really suprised how compatible his ideas seem to be with an identitarian and traditionalist worldview, especially considering Spinoza's (((background))). Spinoza doesn't believe in free will, he believes that all actions of a body are caused either by that body's essence (nature) or by an outside force acting on the body (nurture). Despite Spinoza not believing in free will he does believe in a different type of freedom, which he defines as having one's actions be caused by one's own essence. So in so far as a body's actions are caused by its own essence it is free, and in so far as its actions are caused by another body acting on it it is not free. One of his central ideas is that the essence of a thing is to exist, and that because of this all bodies will strive to preserve themselves in so far as their actions are caused by their own essence. So if a body is not striving to preserve its own existence it is due to another force acting on it and negating the influence of that body's own essence (think how (((cultural-marxism))) and liberalism in general have turned us against our own nature). But Spinoza doesn’t think each body strives solely for its own existence, he sees each body as being made up of other, smaller bodies which are also made up of smaller bodies which are also made up of smaller bodies and on and on ad infinitum. These smaller bodies strive to preserve their own existence, but in order to do that they have to subordinate their own will to survive to that of the larger body that they make up.

Think of how your organs work together to preserve your body, if each organ placed the importance of its existence over that of the body as a whole the body would cease to function and would cease to exist, along with all the smaller bodies that make it up. This translates pretty perfectly to race, which is the larger body of which we are all a small part. In order to preserve our own existence we have to subordinate our own striving for existence to that of our race. There’s obviously a bit more to it than what I’ve put here, but this is long enough already and my understanding of his writing probably isn’t perfect in the first place so I’ll stop here.

Interesting quote in this book from Nikolai Bukharin, one of the leading early Bolsheviks, on the assumptions underlying the goals of leftism. He said, "Plasticity of the organism is the silent theoretical premise of our course of action. If we were to take the point of view that racial and national characteristics were so great that it would take thousands of years to change them, then, naturally, all our work would be absurd."

I'm reading the book for a class on the history of the Soviet Union, if you just search "Everyday Stalinism" on Amazon I'm sure you can find it. It does a really good job providing an understanding of all the contraditictions in the Soviet system and how those contradictions impacted the lives of Russians in the 1930s. It's a very mainstream work but I would reccomend it if you're interested in the period.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4oZZhpMXP4&t=3335s Some really good stuff in here

Has anyone here read the Dune series? I'm thinking about starting it over spring break.

Apparently the modern left's support for nationalism and group identity in ethnicities/races it considers to be oppressed, while at the same time viewing as evil any nationalism or group identity in ethnicities/races it considers to be oppressors, is not at all new. The Bolsheviks did the same thing. Look at the first and third paragraphs especially (note: I got the book used and the highlighting is not mine).

Wow, it is really strange how similar this is to today. The central paragraph, especially the end of it, builds on the stuff mentioned in the previous picture.

@Gene Fillmore I would suggest looking at Julius Evola's "Metaphysics of War" as well as some of the works of Ernst Junger such as "Storm of Steel" and "On Pain." I haven't gotten around to reading these books myself yet but they're very high on my list and from what I understand they deal with topics very similar to the ones you're interested in.

I've heard really good things about Junger, especially about the material he wrote in the interwar period. I'd like to get into his books over the summer when I'm free from school

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHw4MMEnmpc

I've heard it claimed often in Identitarian/alt-right circles that the ancient Greeks and Romans were much closer in appearence to modern north/north-west Europeans than the people who live in those countries today due to miscegination over time. Does anyone know what evidence there is for this claim?