What Are We Going to Do With Our Epistemologically Self-Conscious Uncles?

Every theological family has their ‘diehard non-conformists’

Written by Queequeg | Tuesday, December 17, 2013

I hate to say my uncle “Tom” was my favorite uncle growing up. I hate to say it because he had a thing for his sister-in-law, my mom. Uncle “Whimp” liked mama too, except he was her blood brother. Uncle “Topper” was the most generous with his compliments to mama.  Shiznit gets weird in the Reformed hood yo!

But uncle “Tom,” or “Uncle Tom” as my grandmother called him, was different. He dressed and acted "White". He had his own book room at the back of my grandmother’s house. The door was almost always closed and no one except Uncle Tom went into this room. Niggers was scared of that room! My uncle Tom came and went as he pleased. Many days I watched him, wearing a jacket and tie like he wanna be White, walk the streets of my hometown, sometimes reading a book, sometimes scribbling notes, and always alone.

Uncle Tom was and is cool—except when you try to make him hate on Whitey. Then he’s the blindest man in the world. I’ve watched him argue with my two other uncles and a brother (all cool motherf**kers) and say he was glad, and thanked God, that his granpappy got on that boat in Africa. It would begin with a kind of intervention. The men in the family would show up and give a strong lecture. Tom would mostly ignore them until they got impatient. Then in a voice loaded with resolution he’d say, “I’m not telling you again. You can't talk to black people!” By this time he’d normally be cornered and the attempt to act White would end in lots of wrestling, scuffling, “Grab his books!” and my mama’s Gold Dust Twin nig-nog salt and pepper shakers getting knocked over. Tom never chimped out. Usually the other guys walked away with some of my mama's fried chicken and gave up. In the end, he’d go back to his room, take out his book, and go to bed.

As a boy, when I asked about uncle Tom, adults would basically say, “He actin' White.” No one knew the term “Uncle Tom” or what to do. So we just assumed the sale on his imminent negritude. Tried to keep him from hurting the Race and glossed over his disloyalty as much as we could. Because he was never bothered by any Whites, we fought to make sure no Whites got hold of him. I think all of my family has a story about fighting or standing up for uncle Tom because some Whitey tried to make an example of him. After all, he was family—whether he was “actin' White” or not.

There are several points I suppose I could make drawing from uncle Tom’s life. I could say something about unspeakable black hypocrisy, which requires unswerving racial solidarity from blacks, but forbids even a molecule of similar solidarity among whites. I could make a point about the deliberate erosion of extended family which accompanies all social justice programming.

But this morning, I want to make a theological point, a point about theological Marxism. It’s very simply this: cultural Marxism has, if you’ll permit me the term, its “Epistemologically Self-Conscious Opponents”. The uncles who are “not quite suicidal,” who normally keep to themselves in their own rooms and usually don’t bother anybody, but occasionally need indoctrination. Big Brother knows they’re there and wish they were weaker, squishier, and able to join the rest of the worldwide family of man in deracinating Whites out of existence.

For us Cultural Marxist types, I call these folks our “Epistemologically Self-Conscious Opponents.” Somehow they’ve managed to hold onto the old blending of faith and knowledge and are trying desperately to keep the faith delivered once for all time alive among a sea of devoted Marxists like myself. So, they read books and letters from JG Machen, FN Lee and RJ Rushdoony about the South being the “greatest Christian civilization” or slavery “not being that bad.” They show up with well-documented comments and "biblically grounded" arguments against cultural Marxism whenever “black dysfunction” dominates the news, like when a South African president dies (the racists keep questioning the authenticity of his Christianity) or a teenage boy is killed (the racists keep questioning the authenticity of his Christianity). And it seems that our “cEpistemologically Self-Conscious Opponents” have been reading a lot of books lately, making inconvenient observations about high black crime, and low black IQ, interacting with otherwise harmless White grazers and leaving the SPLC aghast. Even as a nigger man, I’ve been pretty angry and sometimes hungry.

But, “They don’t admire Doctor King.” End of argument.

Here’s why—at least in racist part. Our “Epistemologically Self-Conscious Opponents” suffer from a deep aversion to Marxism inherited from the Bible. When much of the “white Church” noticed that Christian theology precluded programmatic envy and welfarism, a kind of Post-Milennial frenzy developed. Much of the “white Church” came to believe that a person could not hold the “right” theological views while refusing to do the right things. So, one could be “Christian” (and they insisted on defining that very narrowly in accordance with creeds developed solely by other Whites) and hold slaves, for example. One could be “Christian” and resent attacks on one's own family. One could be “Christian” and prefer the company of one's own. One could be “Christian” and insist that lazy people “starve” (a better word would be “subsist”) on the terms of the Bible. One could not be “Christian” or “Reformed” or “Conservative” or “Evangelical” and support interracial the eradication of all White people.

So, in this view, one could study systematic, historical or biblical theology and give very little reflection to black people—what to do with all those black Christians besides give them more money. Theology became something for the head of household, and occasionally the pastor, but very seldom the race hustlers—especially if those hustlers were going to be working to fleece, the male, the White, and the Christian.

Since the time of Walter Benjamin (at least) and Theodor Adorno, sympathetic Frankfurters have recognized this as “not being quite kosher.” We’ve seen our "Epistemologically Self-Conscious Opponents" as “a little off.” On the underside of the hood you tend to see how Whites marry belief to behavior, or at least how they used to. We’re all imperfect at living out the faith. But Whites have a monopoly on Original Sin. Some inconsistencies invite racial oblivion, spiritually speaking. We see our uncle Toms and our “Epistemologically Self-Conscious Opponents” and we recognize, as the Black Church has always recognized, that there’s an unbridgeable gulf between our conception of Christianity and that of our white opponents. There’s a significant and almost irreconcilable difference in our two ways of thinking, believing, and living. There is the willful ignorance among the Whites that manfully resists both propaganda and common progress toward miscegenation, amalgamation, and annihilation. That’s why our "Epistemologically Self-Conscious Opponents” have so often and so powerfully gleaned support for their positions from the writings of Augustine, Dabney, Hodge, and Warfield. They don’t have a category for justice unless it jibes with the "historic Reformed faith" and the councils that inform it.

As a consequence, many stubborn Whites who see themselves as the heirs of Dabney and company find it difficult to embrace ethnomasochism, as it has been imposed following centuries of hard-won victories in the cause of Satanic Marxism. They find it difficult to ignore the Bible’s repeated emphasis on subsidiarity, kinship, and redemptive history without running and yelling in prophetic tones, “Repent! for the Kingdom of God is near at hand!” And they suppose identifying the liberation Marxists who want to put chimps in everybody’s pew is equivalent to keeping the faith pure and fighting for the best kind of justice while they try to avoid being raped and murdered into a coffee-colored commode. Or at least they persist in honoring their ancestors' views of slavery, slave owners and even the slaves themselves while ignoring later-blooming insights from anti-Christs.

Meanwhile, Black racists feel ourselves held at arm’s length—not just arm’s length from our ""Epistemologically Self-Conscious Opponents", but from the deep truths of Alinsk these cousins so adamantly insist they know and reprehend.

What’s a nigger to do?

Well, we can’t join our “"Epistemologically Self-Conscious Opponents” in their despicable self regard. We have to remain firmly planted in the Dialectic—the Oppressors' Narrative versus the Dominant Narrative of the Victims. This means you can’t treat the uncle Toms of the world as though they’re actually lucid during their episodes. You can’t answer with rational argument because that only affirms Whites while undermining Point-and-Splutter. You can’t answer the question, “Are not some cultures superior to others?” as if “cultural superiority” isn’t just another term for “CrimeThink” and as if white supremacy is something other than the logical extension of empirical reality. How can we even ask that question when we’re talking about a “society” that magnanimously emancipated millions of black people from captivity in Africa into bondage several magnitudes more benevolent, while also imposing the evil White religion upon those same darlings? In dealing with such views, we must remember Marxist labels for ugly ideas can bring about revolutions in public understanding. The odd moments when they gain traction (and it always happens) can tempt us to act as if we have already succeeded in eliminating all white racial consciousness. But, as the cliché goes, even Whites can resort to tribalism if they feel threatened enough. The Black family must refuse to acknowledge a White "right to exist" and we must refuse to give White-positive opinions legitimacy by debating them as if they were worthy.

Also, we sometimes have to silence these unReconstructed idiots with a combination of economic sanctions and Statist threat points. Even the introduction of affirmative action, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Civil Rights Act, the relentless promotion of multiculturalism as a State Religion, and the permanent demonization of every aspect of European civilization has yet to eradicate White feelings of legitimate humanity. You can’t expect to roll back centuries of civilizational faithfulness without a lot of ammo and top-down programming. Nor can you insult them with impunity and expect them to cooperate in their own demise, least not before severely weakening their spiritual resolve. We all have to “act White sometimes,” as my grandmamma would say to uncle Tom. The rest of the family must insist our “"Epistemologically Self-Conscious Opponents” stay in their rooms until they can sincerely affirm their love for Big Brother. And that’s why I’m glad that the Internet has also been filled with so many other family members writing so eloquently and tweeting so prolifically to oppose politically incorrect statements and views.

Finally, we have to insist that the fundamental problem is inherent with White People. Here’s where things get difficult in pretending to include our "Epistemologically Self-Conscious Opponents" in the conversation, because it means we actually have to allow them, however briefly, to air their repellent views, and thereby risk a tsunami of racial blowback. My uncle Tom never wanted to kill Whitey and often refused to honor Doctor King. But seeing the doctor speak in person was the path to well-being, to seeing life as it really is, to joining the family more fully. Our “"Epistemologically Self-Conscious Opponents” will have to listen to some people who’ve actually thought a lot longer about how to manipulate mass opinion for the purposes of Satanic Liberaldom, and about how Marxist social justice requires the extinction of Whites. They’ll have to visit and take some medicine from quarters of Hell they’d like to destroy but who actually hold a monopoly on force in the New World System of Power. And it’s a Negro's responsibility to insist that they do.

When our “"Epistemologically Self-Conscious Opponents” talk as if Eternity is more important than the All-Powerful-Present, we have to remind them of Hegel's History as God. When they ask us for some currency that would stave off their self-destruction, in love of Power we must refuse. Our “"Epistemologically Self-Conscious Opponents” deserve and need our hatred, too. I know some people will wince at glancing, even minutely, at the dark age when Whites knew who they were and ruled the world. But if we can't acknowledge that such a time existed among each other, we risk forgetting who our true Enemy is, and who are our friends.

Queequeg is Senior Pastor of Jesus Only and the Power of God Temple and Sanctuary Bible Center of the Marquesas and a Council member with the Students for Non-violent Change Committee.

Whit(h)er Country Music?

Country Music remains Mighty White, despite vigorous Jewish efforts.

by Edward Waverley

Alienists ruin everything they touch. Their fundamental desire is to sow discord and doubt in the body of Christ by asking Christians the same primeval question that the serpent asked Eve: “Hath God said, ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?” In other words, has He really said that you ought not to marry your sons and daughters unto foreigners? Has He really commanded you to honor your father and mother, heeding more to their words and ways than you do to the Progressive Enlightened World around you? Thus Burke was correct to observe that Satan was the first liberal. All of his disciples have imitated his subversive strategy ever since.

But the alienist anti-Christs who oppose the Kingdom of Light and who promote a kingdom of darkness have no intrinsic right or power to touch or influence God’s property or God’s people. The only way that an anti-Christ can work his evil upon Christian territory is by the permission of one of God’s assigned stewards. As Christians our task is to resist and attack evil everywhere it appears. Our task then is twofold: we defend the Kingdom territory that we’ve already claimed for Christ, and we grow the kingdom by exercising dominion in every area of life, fully obeying God’s law-word as declared in the Bible. Therefore any evil that exists in a given area of life is only permitted to exist, first of all, under God’s sovereign decree, and secondarily because Christians are either presently neglecting their duty, or else they have yet to fulfill everything that God has commanded them to do in that area. As an example of this phenomenon we will examine the impact of anti-Christ alienism upon the formerly Christian industry of country music.

            We must begin by noting the origin of the “country” label, and recognize it as an imposed misnomer. What we are talking about is a Southern art form, all of whose progenitors were Southern, and most of whose artists and fans remain Southern today. Note that the historic South has always been basically Christian, and even in its present woeful condition, its people are benefitting from the lingering effects of a Christian hangover passed on from its long history of faith. The desire by outside moneychangers to exploit the popularity and beauty of Southern music while discarding its underlying faith is simply a development of Lincoln’s War on the Christian South. In both cases, inferior and envious opportunists recognized Christ in the object of their coveting and hatred, and in both cases it was only the failure of Christians that allowed evil to triumph. Lincoln’s triumph was not accomplished, by the way, at Appomattox Court House. At that time, and for a long while afterwards, Southerners stuck together to protect themselves and their Christian heritage from the Babelization of their people and civilization. The Satanic program inaugurated in Lincoln’s War didn’t succeed in overthrowing the South for another hundred years or so, but his progeny stayed busy that whole time, and remain busy today defending Satan’s inroads in the South, and nationwide. The Satanic capture of Country music is one lamentable symptom of Alienism’s larger predominance.

            Historian Clyde Wilson has pointed out how the neologism of “Country music” is an anti-Southern distortion of the genre’s true origins. “Let me point out the nationalist trick of adopting from the South as ‘American’ anything that is favorably regarded, while only disfavored things are described as ‘Southern.’…We have ‘country’ music rather than Southern music.” The switch from Southern or hillbilly music, which it was often called in the early part of the twentieth century, to first Country and Western, then eventually the more generic Country as the preferred label, is thus an indication of an influence in the industry that is alien, and which is also anti-Southern. As Wilson indicates, only such unfashionable Southern phenomena as Jim Crow and gun enthusiasm are characterized as Southern nationally. Since even Yankees love the music of Hank Williams, they literally try to nationalize it by way of the absurd ‘country’ label.

Hank Williams in dazzling white

As we shall see, the alienist conquest of Southern music is a fait accompli. Formerly Southern music is now a fully nationalized, which is to say a fully deracinated, genre. The music, lyrics, artwork, and presentation are all basically the product of anti-Christs. The masters of the industry will grant occasional grudging inclusion of Southern White Christians. But no aspect of the Christian faith, nor the historic Southern culture it developed, are allowed to influence today’s product. Instead we are given negro culture with a twang, debauched pop tarts in cowboy boots, and Jewish One-Worldism delivered in the abiding Southern vernacular. As in other streams of popular culture from Hollywood and Madison Avenue, only the least offensive (to Alienists) externals of Southern culture are permitted to surface in Approved Country Music. All aspects of Antebellum, Confederate, Dixiecrat, or Christian normalcy are thoroughly expunged. The result is what could be called Hick Humanism, music so slick and catchy, and so mercifully free of any trace of European racial consciousness, that even Egyptian Mohammedans are comfortable singing along!

            The marriage of Country Music superstars Blake Shelton and Miranda Lambert is a case in point. The children of the South used to be predictably Christian, which meant that they had no time for niggers, feminism, race-mixing, or any other destructive nonsense. Not so the children of Southern baby boomers. Young adults in the Brave New South are pretty much indistinguishable from their counterparts in other American regions in terms of religious and political outlook. Shelton and Lambert do not buck that trend. He is from Oklahoma, and she is from Texas, but each artist fits in well with the prevailing alienism of wider American culture. Both appear to be fully obedient to the rules of Political Correctness, to subscribe to the politics of guilt and pity, and to be blissfully (or at least publicly) ignorant of racial realities. (Blake once declared to an audience, "Is there anyone cooler than Usher?") Yes Blake, there is. His name is Johnny Cash.

The Man

Miranda is refreshingly vocal about the importance of gun rights, an absolute no-no to the Cultural Marxists. Yet even this decent stance is drenched far more in feminism than it is rooted in Christian patriotism. Her very catchy “Gunpowder and Lead” is another in a long line of “Kill the Evil Male” songs that have become a staple of Country Feminism. (See here and here for worse examples of this puerile genre.) Sure, Loretta Lynn was a squaw on the warpath against her philandering brave, but that was just upbeat fun. There was no hint of Take Back the Night vitriol when the earlier belles of Southern music sang about their good-timin’ men.

Lambert exhibits that Old Southern sass in her accent and vocals, which are lovely to listen to. But the lyrics of her songs are contaminated with the indelible fingerprints of the Frankfurt School. We have to wonder what Mr. and Mrs. Lambert had to say to little Miranda about biblical sex roles as she grew up. It’s notable that her father was a Statist Authority Worshipper Police Officer who later started a private investigation company with Mrs. Lambert. That probably tells us a lot about Miranda’s present views and performances.

Like all Modern American Princesses, Miranda sports a prominent and butt-ugly tattoo because as everyone knows, no woman is completely beautiful without a visible sign of alien culture embedded in her flesh. (Hers depicts two pistols on her arm, which is better than a butterfly on her back.) I’m sure Patsy Cline and Tammy Wynette would have loved to do the same, but they were prevented from really expressing themselves because of the Nasty Old Times that they lived in.

Blake Shelton met future wife Lambert in 2005 while he was still married to his first wife, so it’s understandable that the two only tied the knot in 2011after dating for about five years. That is actually pretty quick moving down the aisle for modern Christians. Needless to say, it would have been impossible for a famous gal like Miranda to submit to anything so odious as taking her new husband’s name, so she’s still ML. It would be a shame for two such talented White people to fail to procreate, but they’ll need to get a move on if they want to have a family. Blake is pushing 40 and Miranda is nearly 30. The main thing is to be sure that no babies interfere with that next great record for their jew bosses.

            Blake’s time on “The Voice” has been particularly instructive of his sick and stupid worldview. For those unfamiliar with this TV show, it’s one of your standard competition reality programs. Undiscovered wannabe singers from all over the American dystopia audition for the celebrity judges, who then select them for their team, eventually voting people off or soliciting viewer votes, or some similarly contrived mobocracy. All for the sake of spreading multicultural joy, entrenching diversity propaganda, and lining the pockets of a certain Tribe. Blake’s fellow judges for “The Voice” have included Joo Adam Levine, Skanklet Christina Aguilera (whose White Presence on the show is redeemed by her half-Ecuadorian extraction), Columbian Skanklet Shakira, a Negro named Cee Lo, and another Negro named Usher. So Blake is the lone White Male. Message received loud and clear: “The Voice” of America, is multicultural, unisexual, tatted out, and Jewified, with majoritarian input from the Afro-Latino bloc and a pat on the head for white guys.

When not avoiding fatherhood elsewhere, Blake worships negroes.

As a faithful acolyte of the New World Order, Blake loves all people, and recognizes the important talent and contributions that jews like Adam Levine and negroes like Cee Lo have made to the majestic tapestry that today comprises American music. So he doesn’t fail to voice his enthusiasm for the various faggots, lesbos, mamzers, and attention whores of every color and sex orientation as long as they are stylish and vocally talented. Since Joo-Pop, Nigger Noises, and Country Music are all equally American, they are all therefore equally cool and valid. (Well maybe not Country. It’s okay to let those other genres have there time in the spotlight, so long as good ol’ boys like Blake are allowed some air time now and then, right?) Of course co-host Cee Lo was present for Blake and Miranda’s wedding. It would have been racist of them not to invite the nigger who styles himself “Ladykiller” and who wrote the hit song “F**k You!” I wonder what Miranda’s parents thought when they met Cee Lo. If they are half as knowing as their daughter, they probably regretted losing her to a white man and wished that she could have tied herself up with the talented groid.

Miranda? Is that you?

            During the five-season run of “The Voice” (season five premiered last night), Blake has been the winning coach three years running, and his selections for whom to send into the arena each time reflect his enlightened open-mindedness. You’ll be happy to know that he has yet to endorse any of his fellow white males, a species which is presumably not even allowed on stage. But he has campaigned for a negro named Jermaine Paul (Season Two champ), and he even deigned to promote a white Country singer named Danielle Bradbery who is the reigning champ. Unfortunately, Danielle’s hit song and ode to the South, “The Heart of Dixie” has more in common with Kate Chopin’s The Awakening than it does with “Will the Circle Be Unbroken”. She warbles about an unfulfilled and angry Southern girl who for some reason doesn’t enjoy working for the International Banksters, and who regrets leaving the South to marry an abusive alcoholic. Wait maybe this girl has something going:

“She had a dead-end job at the National Bank

And a deadbeat husband who always drank

So when he didn't come home

She had the gin to thank for the tears in her eyes

So Dixie packed up and said her goodbyes”

            Another obnoxious aspect of today’s country music is the faddish attempt to integrate niggers into the genre. The duo Florida Georgia Line (comprised of two Southern boys named Brian Kelley and Tyler Hubbard) decided that their hit song “Cruise” wasn’t quite hip enough with just their vocals, so they have teamed up on a nigger version of the song with a nigger named Nelly.

Brian, Kunta Kinte, Tyler gittin rill in the Souf Yall

            Perhaps worse in 2013 has been the bile-inducing and ubiquitous minstrel version of a gorgeous song called “Wagon Wheel.” Originally written by a good white band called Old Crow Medicine Show, it has become a megahit this year for the moon cricket Darius Rucker. Rucker has already made millions off of white music fans from his time as the Head Nigger in Charge of Hootie and the Blowfish during the ‘90’s. Now he’s back as the 21^st-century Charley Pride, and has found a second vein of White Man’s art that he can bleed with the tubes of White Racial Guilt that his jew handlers supply him.

Luke Bryan thought he had found Cuba Gooding Jr at the bar.

            One of the few good things about the current iteration of country music is that it remains basically a white thing, both in terms of its fan demographics, and in its stable of stars and writers. It also revels in politically incorrect values like family, beauty, Christianity, guns, and work. This is surely very disturbing to jews, SWPL’s, atheists, and feminists. Yet the cultural Marxists are steadily eroding all of these elements, and the hyper-sexualization of the girls of country, along with metro-sexualization of the guys, is chief among the faults of today’s country. Nor are the appearance of faux-country negroes, and white collaborations with nigger rappers, encouraging trends. If this once great institution is to be rescued, it will need to be swept clean (and quick) of all influence from jews, niggers, faggots, feminists, and foreigners. In other words, the mantle of the music needs to be reclaimed by the White men and women who are spiritually and genetically fitted to make and enjoy it. Now go listen to something beautiful, clean, and white.

Orson Welles: "Europeans Know About Other Europeans"

"Bosnians have short necks."

(Hat tip to Dangerous Minds)

I always get a thrill when I find examples of healthy racial attitudes from out of the past. As kinists know, the best prima facie case against anti-racism is the fact that nobody believed such nonsense until recently. Just nobody. Especially not Christians. On the other hand, it is equally gratifying to find that before the ascendancy of political correctness, even putative liberals often expressed 'racist' ideas. So you can file this one under Racist Hollywood.

Ever since seeing Citizen Kane in college, I've been a fan of Orson Welles. He was a total bohemian, but one with a lot of appeal, and an unapologetic European aristocrat to boot. He represents the outer limit of semi-sane libertinism within the Western tradition, a man who was half-alienated by the twentieth century, and half at home in that milieu. (Incidentally, I am discovering that Charles Lindbergh belongs in this category as well. An uncatechized aristocrat; a patrician without a creed, who resorted to pseudo-Aryan humanism as a proxy for Christian faith.) Born sooner, Welles would have probably invented the cinema. Born later, he might have been a normal anti-intellectual hipster. As it was, he was a decently intelligent pagan whose timing and talents generated some pretty good art, and some very ribald pronouncements.

This morning I heard tell of a forthcoming book of interviews with Welles, hitherto unknown. It's just a book of Hollywood gossip, but it promises to be a valuable document of what one older liberal thought about race. Look at what he had to say about races here, and "people like Woody Allen":

Orson Welles: Don’t you know there’s such a thing as physical dislike? Europeans know that about other Europeans. If I don’t like somebody’s looks, I don’t like them. See, I believe that it is not true that different races and nations are alike. I’m –profoundly convinced that that’s a total lie. I think people are different. Sardinians, for example, have stubby little fingers. –Bosnians have short necks.

Henry Jaglom: Orson, that’s ridiculous.

Orson Welles: Measure them. Measure them!

I never could stand looking at Bette Davis, so I don’t want to see her act, you see. I hate Woody Allen physically, I dislike that kind of man.

Henry Jaglom: I’ve never understood why. Have you met him?[Jaglom is forgetting about Casino Royale]

Orson Welles: Oh, yes. I can hardly bear to talk to him. He has the Chaplin disease. That particular combination of arrogance and timidity sets my teeth on edge.

Folks this was a man who understood racial reality. Yet he was an unhinged man, an absentee father and a rake. He appreciated the vision of Shakespeare, but failed to see Him who Shakespeare pointed to. Orson Welles serves as a handy figure for the rootless twentieth century European. Lacking a heart link to Jesus Christ, the European steadily abandons the fruits of his former faith. But the Christian hangover is powerful, and in certain even atheistic men, some healthy understanding can abide even after self-conscious worship has vanished.

A Right to Fie: Rex Stout's White Guilt

Rex Stout (1886-1975) was a master of detective fiction, but a racial imbecile.

Even at its most erudite, escape fiction must keep political harangues firmly out of the narrative, or must in any event strive to permit such materials only in a way that is incidental to the enjoyment of the story itself. Otherwise the story languishes and the reader is left with unintentionally comedic results. One thinks of Arthur Conan Doyle’s bizarre and rambling (though very astute) fugue against Mormonism in his very first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet. Although the ax which Doyle is grinding there against the Smith/Young cult is entirely reasonable in fact, the didactic tone of his attack has no connection to the main narrative of that novel, nor is the interruption all that entertaining as an interpolated tale. But if you thought that A Study in Scarlet was badly damaged by extraneous moralizing, just wait till you see what Rex Stout has done while trying to use a murder-mystery as a vehicle for hyping the Civl Rights hoax. At least Doyle’s anti-cult position was sympathetic, if distracting; Stout’s is both distracting and false.

In A Right to Die, a decent story about the murder of a civil rights crusader, Rex Stout has botched his ordinarily masterful management of the Manhattan Brownstone by allowing Nero Wolfe and his muscular amanuensis Archie Goodwin to stray into the minefield of liberal white guilt. The fact that the two are treading unfamiliar and dangerous ground is obvious as soon as they begin the journey. Nearly every line spoken either by or about black people in this book is uniformly scripted by what were already (in 1963) well-entrenched codes of political correctness centering upon the default nobility of blacks and the indubitable guilt of whites.

I don’t know what got into Stout in the early ‘60’s, but having read this book, and also its successor The Doorbell Rang, it’s obvious that some precursor strain of the Great Society had afflicted his mind in the throes of Camelot. Of course, many of Rex Stout’s fellow white intellectuals were at that time joining the revolution to overthrow everything normal in Western society, but one can at least be excused for cherishing the hope that a genius and all-around good guy like Stout would not participate in the orgy. The fact that he felt compelled to genuflect to the monstrous lie of the civil rights farce shows that even the most brilliant thinkers are not necessarily safe from the tide of revolution.

Because of Stout’s clumsy grandstanding, this book is a decidedly mixed bag. In The Doorbell Rang, an entertaining adventure wherein Wolfe takes on the FBI and attracts the meddling attention of J. Edgar Hoover, we are also subject to a poorly integrated diatribe against government intrusions upon civil liberties. I’m as opposed to such activities as the next man, but the lecturing element was neither needed nor enjoyable in a mystery novel. Wolfe is simply unconvincing as a political crusader; indeed his most enduring quality is as a man who defies all forms of progress, even such minute forms as the movement from one chair to another.

At least in Doorbell, Stout kept my attention well fastened to the wit and action of my favorite pair of Manhattan crime-fighters. But in the book under review, Stout’s politics are far too evident upon his sleeve, and they do not belong in the mouth of Nero Wolfe. It would be bad enough if the novel were merely moralizing; what is far worse is that it is also inexcusably false in its presentation of black/white relations, of its own era or of any other.

One of the quintessential pieces of interracial lunacy foisted upon America in the '60's was "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner". This movie appeared just after Poitier had abandoned his first wife and four children so as to miscegenate more freely in Hollywood.

I will give just a couple of examples of Stout’s sad failure to pull off the job of making Wolfe and Archie into MLK-style racial utopians, though I could supply twenty. In Chapter One, we meet the client of the novel, a black man whose name is Whipple. After revealing the fact that his son is engaged to marry a white girl named Susan Brooke, and that both young people are members of a civil rights outfit, Whipple makes his request: he wants Wolfe to find some dirt on the fiancée so as to prevent Whipple Junior from saddling himself with the difficulties of an interracial family. So far, so sound. But Wolfe begs to differ with Whipple’s quibble, and tells him so. Wolfe’s objection shows that he has taken leave of his senses in agreeing to pursue such a weird case:

“[My] comment is about marriage. It’s possible that Miss Brooke is more realistic than you are. She may be intelligent enough to know that no matter whom she marries there will be the devil to pay. The difficulties, snags, embarrassments, and complications…are in any case inevitable. If she marries a man of her own color and class, the grounds for them will be paltry, ignoble, degrading and tiresome. If she marries a Negro the grounds will be weighty, worthy, consequential and diverting.”

How painfully dishonest all of this is. And how unintentionally racist! A white liberal is never more racist than at those moments when he is striving to establish his bona fides as a post-racial guru. It is one thing to be subjected to this sort of nonsense from Keith Olbermann or John McCain in 2013; but it’s simply unbearable from the world’s smartest obese detective in 1963. Let me underline the unintentional racism of Wolfe’s remark. While issuing a blanket condemnation of all forms of marriage (a funny enough angle for the likes of the happy bachelor Wolfe), he proceeds to say that if a woman must expose herself to the infamies of marriage, she might at least score political points while doing so. And what could be more progressive in the marriage game than to marry a Negro!? The good thing about this speech is that it perfectly typifies the mentality of white liberals who embrace faddish intermarriage; the problem with it is its unspeakable hypocrisy and the patronizing view it presents of blacks, as if whites marrying blacks were a way of elevating the latter while improving the whole society.

Archie appearing in his usual pristine white.

One of the stupidest and least persuasive parts of the book is the tedious discussion we get from Archie about his lust for one of the black murder suspects, Beth Tiger. Although Stout devotes several long passages to Beth’s beauty in the book, it would be too embarrassing for both you and me to go over all of them here. Instead I will give you the dumbest, funniest, and most accidentally racist part (and thus most reflective of fake white pomposity), where Archie first catches sight of the Black Venus at one of Wolfe’s grilling sessions:

“Tiger was one of those specimens who cannot be properly introduced by details. I’ll mention that her skin was about the color of an old solid-gold bowl Wolfe has in his room which he won’t allow Fritz to clean, that if she had been Cleopatra instead of what’s-her-name I wouldn’t have missed that movie, and that I had a problem with my eyes all evening, since with a group there I am supposed to watch expressions.”

Translation: Tiger was so beautiful that she has caused Archie to compromise his investigative objectivity and to forsake his crush on Elizabeth Taylor, considered the most beautiful woman in the world at that time, but who evidently couldn’t hold a candle to this golden specimen. Fans of the Wolfe stories know Archie better than this. Archie certainly does appreciate female beauty and he does not spare us the details when making these reports. But his admiration is never slavish or obsequious, and none of the white girls he takes a shine to would ever be able to distract him from his work. What makes Beth Tiger an exception to Archie’s policy of steadfastly dividing dames from detective work? Answer: she’s a black beauty. Clearly, Archie is no racist.

The civil rights element in this book does no service, and much harm, to our enjoyment of the plot. I have now read a handful of the Wolfe and Archie books, and I am a confirmed fan. When restricting himself to the world of orchids, gourmet cookery, and deductive reasoning, Stout does well. Indeed, no fictional hero can make me feel so welcome in his domicile as can Nero Wolfe in his brownstone on 35th Street. It is that milieu that Wolfe fans recall long after the names and criminal details of the stories have faded, and for my money it is often more fun to enter the brownstone than to visit 221b Baker Street. Stout had a powerful imagination and a magnificent gift for storytelling. But in A Right to Die, he allowed the charming bubble of his ordinarily ideology-free world to be punctured by the stupid and rotten zeitgeist of the ‘60’s civil rights movement, a horribly chosen maneuver which Stout usually avoided wisely and happily.

Archie's usual type would have been far more tasteful.