Culturist Lessons from Rio's Carnaval

I am in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for carnaval - the biggest party in the world. Drums and costumes, imagination and dance, pervade the megalopolis.  Taking part in this celebration has provided me with some valuable culturist insights. 

Culturism is the science and art by which nations protect, promote their traditional majority cultures.  It is the opposite, therefore, of multiculturalism, where nations are to deny they have a majority culture and promote other cultures within their borders.

Carnaval is a great culturist tool.  The costumed drum and dance troupes, usually including over 3,000 people, are largely drawn from poor neighborhoods; this creates community cohesion.  Ultimately, people of all races and classes get involved.  In the end, this televised explosion of light, color and fun, unites all Brazilians by making them proud of their vibrant culture.

Art can help bind a nation.  When possible, culturism should be fun!! And, to be effective, it should invite wide participation.

Walking home from one of the massive carnaval-related events tonight, I stopped at a food cart.  A 30-something brown-skinned woman took dough and cut it way too slowly, then she put meat on it, wrapped it, and dropped it in a frying vat.  While waiting I spoke with a local man in Spanish. 

He probed, “The US is very capitalistic, eh?”  “Well,” I replied, “you couldn’t just set up a stand like this in the US.  You’d need a business license and the food server would need certificates.  We couldn’t be drinking beers on the street like this.”

We regulate street-level economic activity far more than other nations.  Allowing more sidewalk shops and street food vending in the US would give people easy access to self-employment.  This would make the transition from welfare to work much more feasible. 

My walk home from the carnaval street party took me between neighboring wealthy homes and ghettoes called ‘favelas.’  Favelas consist of improvised brick mountainside homes stacked on top of each other.  In America building homes means adhering to byzantine codes. The favela homes can be rented and sold. Loosening building codes could raise levels of home ownership.

Rio’s favelas are safe now, but they used to be ruled by brutal drug gangs.  These same drug gangs launder money through supporting carnaval.  The police and military battled these forces and won.  Brazil’s heavily armed police still have a heavy presence in the favelas.

Governments must forcefully combat bad people for good people to have a decent quality of life.  Sometimes this requires armored cars and heavy artillery.

READ THE LAST PARAGRAPH HERE!!!

The Man Who Wasn't There - The Culturist Review

The Coen Brothers' 2001 masterpiece, The Man Who Wasn't There, is a critique of the emptiness of modern life. It follows a barber (Billy Bob Thornton) who is barely connected to the events and people in his life; he doubts the basic assumptions of the 1950s society that surrounds him and finds them strange. And, while it is obvious that he, as the title character, is 'the man who wasn't there,' I would like to posit an alternative suspect – Jesus is the man who wasn't there.

Whereas others around him "just talk" the barber seeks answers to life's deepest questions – in hair. He wonders where it comes from, "it just keeps growing," he observes laconically. When he may be dying in a car accident, his possible last thoughts are about "the hair" (as he objectively calls it). After death, he wonders, "What keeps it growing?" Herein, we have a deep thought about the afterlife, the soul. He is blindly striving towards religion.

Being a noir film, the barber blackmails someone, kills him when the blackmailee attacks him, and is sent to death row. From there he tells us death takes you out of the maze, you see life whole, there is peace. As death approaches, he takes a higher perspective, looks up and sees that quintessential symbol of the 1950s, a UFO, in the sky, right where God should be; this marvel of the scientific age takes his confession. This is one of the obvious moments that hints that, in this film, the man who isn't there is Christ.

The Coens' black-and-white noir portrays the emptiness of "modern man" (as the barber gets called during his defense trial). Thus, the film implies that modern man should have a larger meaning and moral compass. Please follow me as I diagnose, and propose a cure for, the emptiness in modern Western society; it is a matter of life and death!

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Culturism and the League of Nations

The League of Nations’ had a body devoted to protecting minority rights in the newly configured states following World War I: ‘The Minority Question Section.’  In 1945, its director, P. De Azcarate, wrote a book about it, ‘The League of Nations and National Minorities: An Experiment.’  The League of Nation’s proto-multiculturalism experiment proved difficult.  The reasons teach us valuable culturist lessons, even today. 

The League of Nation’s ‘Minority Section’ tried to enforce multiculturalism on the principle of “equality.” Here, Mr. Azcarate is very perceptive.  He sees two types of equality: “Negative equality,” protects the minority against unfavorable discriminatory treatment;  “Positive equality” requires funds to maintain minority cultures via minority language schooling and such.

Negative equality, the League found, can be difficult to adjudicate.  Azcarate tells of Yugoslavian police targeting minority Macedonians.  The Macedonians complained to the Leagues’ Minority Section.  The discrimination was real.  But, the Minority Section found that the ‘Macedonian National Committee’ engaged in “terrorist and revolutionary” activities funded by the neighboring state of Bulgaria.[i]  States violating negative equality rights is understandable when hostile foreign neighbors fund terrorists in your territory. 

Recent scholarship, resting on the general consensus in western society, chafes at the prospect of any ‘negative’ discrimination.  But, negative discrimination, such as that preventing Jews from being allowed to hold certain positions, used to be a norm for western states.[ii]  As a Jew, I consider these prohibitions unreasonable overkill.  But, I understand the logic.  I would not want a Muslim to be Britain’s Minister of Defense or Secretary of State for Education.  Even Azcarate himself noted that it was sometimes reasonable to limit minority access to, “public posts, functions, honors, military ranks, etc.”[iii]

READ THE REST HERE!

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[i] Azcarate, P. De, “League of Nations and National Minorities: An Experiment,” (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1945), 68.

[ii] Fink, Carole, “Defending the Rights of Others: The Great Powers, the Jews, and the International Minority Protection, 1878 – 1938,” (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2006).   

[iii] Azcarate, P. De, “League of Nations and National Minorities: An Experiment,” (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1945), 142.

A Hindu Role Model for Britain - The Culturist RSS

British culturist should learn from Hindu culturists. Hindus have been promoting their traditional majority culture in India, as well as combating traitorous Muslims, since the 1890s.  In particular, we should emulate their organization named the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), meaning the ‘Association of National Volunteers.’  The RSS is said to be the largest voluntary organization in the world.

The RSS is a grassroots culturist educational organization. Culturism is the science that acknowledges, promotes, and defends traditional majority cultures. As such, culturism is the opposite of multiculturalism – which denies traditional majority cultures’ existence and status. Thus, as culturists, the RSS teaches about Hindu culture and promotes the fact that India is a Hindu nation.

The RSS was started by Keshav Baliram Hedgewar in 1925.  The occasion?  During the annual Ganesha festival, Muslims complained that restrictions against music in front of mosques were not being enforced.  In the face of Muslim intimidation, Hedgewar led troops of young men playing music in front of the mosques. 

Hedgewar noted that Hindus were too easily cowed by the Muslims.  The RSS was started to instill Hindu consciousness and strength into the timid Hindus.  Thus from the beginning the all-male RSS included physical exercise, military drills, marches and weapons training along side Hindu ideological inculcation.[i]  The youth wear uniforms. 5 – 6 million members of the current Indian population have been educated by the RSS. 

This video shows what the RSS looks like in action:

READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE HERE

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[i] Bhatt, Chetan, Hindu Nationalism: Origins, Ideologies, and Modern Myths, (Oxford International Publishers, Ltd., Oxford, 2001), p. 119

Culturism and Cultural Relativity - Domestically

Culturism: The philosophy and science that acknowledges, promotes, and defends traditional majority cultures.  

Some people hesitate to use and spread the words ‘culturist’ and ‘culturism,’ because they think they imply cultural relativism.  In a previous article, I showed that while scientific culturism doesn’t take sides internationally, western culturism does.  This article will look at culturism domestically.

Multiculturalists believe in cultural relativity.  They believe that Britain is neither Islamic, nor Thai, nor Hindu, nor English; it is a neutral space where lots of random cultures happen to co-exist.  British culturists recognize the fact that Britain has a traditional majority culture.   As such, culturism – unlike multiculturalism - is against cultural diversity domestically.

Volumes have been written on the content of western culture.  Here, suffice it to say that our culture has its roots in Athens and Jerusalem.  That is it is Enlightenment based and Judeo-Christian.  And, each western nation will have its own particular cultural heroes (King Arthur and Shakespeare in Britain, for example).   But, western culture is a specific and coherent culture.  It is not Islamic.  We do not celebrate Muhammad. 

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Burn After Reading, The Culturist Review

The Coen Brothers' film, Burn After Reading (2008), is about what happens when our Christian God leaves public life – the government fills the vacuum and people become 'morons'. The film speaks directly to Liberty GB values, culturally. For fun and profit, culturists need to watch this film, study it.

In the opening scene we come from a God's eye view of Earth to the CIA headquarters. Therein, John Malkovich gets fired from his job as a CIA Balkans analyst. He says his firing is a crucifixion and stands with his hands out wide. He is Jesus. In the very next scene he's being asked about picking up "cheeses" (Jesus) because the Pharaohs are coming to dinner. Fun stuff.

The political messages are subtle but strong. On a boat at sea, Malkovich tells his silent father (God) that he quit his job because it is not the same as when he (God) was "in State." Malkovich's Jesus character guesses that perhaps it is the end of the Cold War (when we were fighting Godless communists). Now government seems to be "all bureaucracy and no mission."

Read the rest of the film review HERE