by Greg Johnson
Furthermore, Harrington’s concern for homogeneity is expressed in his opposition to Cromwell’s decision, made in the same year of the publication of The Commonwealth of Oceana, to permit Jews to settle in England, arguing that “To receive the Jews after any other manner into a commonwealth were to maim it; for they of all nations never incorporate, but taking up the room of a limb, are of no use office to the body, while they suck the nourishment which would sustain a natural and useful member.” As a solution to the Jewish question he urged England to provide them a homeland in Ireland (Panopea), where they would be permitted to establish plantations similar to those of the Protestants and given full toleration to practice their religion.272
Although the ideas presented in The Commonwealth of Oceana and popularized through the Rota Club were largely metapolitical, and Harrington took no active part in the politics of the period, his work was considered subversive by the establishment. The initial print run of the book was seized by order of Cromwell and only overturned through a personal appeal made via one of Cromwell’s daughters. Harrington’s treatment when the monarchy was restored in 1661 was far worse. He was arrested on a charge of conspiracy against the government and imprisoned without trial for several months. The traumatic experience caused Harrington to lose his mind. He never recovered and spent the remainder of his life as an invalid, dying in 1677.273
SORTITION IN THE UNITED STATES
Sortition was not implemented in the American colonies that would later become the United States. Geography was certainly a factor, as it was impractical at that time to gather the scattered rural populations together in meetings to draw lots, as was favored by Harrington and practiced in Venice.274 However, by far the most likely explanation was that the colonists were ignorant of it. Machiavelli and Harrington advocated sortition, but neither devoted any time to explain the rationale lying behind sortition in their constitutions. They had personally witnessed sortition and operated on the assumption that its merits were self-explanatory. But an American colonist, having no practical tradition to draw upon, can be forgiven for failing to understand its merits, especially when voting by secret ballot was emerging as the default mode of representation in the colonies, which seemed an answer to the corruption endemic to the electoral process.275
The secrecy of the ballot was designed to eliminate corruption in elections by preventing third parties from exercising any undue influence over the voter, who would be alone to vote according to his conscience and answerable only to God. However, without drawing lots to randomly select nominators, as was the case in Venice, this meant that corruption was merely transferred to the nomination and scrutiny process itself. Here powerful individuals or groups, through a mix of patronage and intimidation, could ensure that the only serious candidates who presented themselves to the electorate favored their interests.276
Despite ignorance of the use of sortition in political institutions, in 1682 the colony of South Carolina adopted sortition as a method of selecting members for jury service. Selecting juries by sortition prevented jury packing by unscrupulous lawyers and shared the burden of jury service equally across the community.277 This innovation, implemented entirely for practical administrative reasons, has had the unintended consequence of undermining the ability of powerful elites to use the criminal justice system as a tool to crush their political opponents. In continental Europe, it is a court-appointed judge (by nature a creature of the establishment) who holds the power to convict; in Britain, North America, and Australia the power lies in the jury, which may choose not to co-operate in the persecution of a dissenter.
SORTITION & WHITE NATIONALISM
The white ethnostate exists at present only as a metapolitical idea in the minds of radical White Nationalists. Great intellectual efforts have been made, and will no doubt continue to be made, to describe how the political utopia will come about and what form it will take once it has been achieved. As already indicated, the problems associated with democracy as it is currently practiced in the West are caused at root by trying to achieve democratic representation through mass voting in elections that are inevitably corrupted by partisan interests of one stripe or the other.
The varied solutions offered by White Nationalists either do not properly address the apathy of the average man, or they tend to disavow any element of popular accountability in their proposed constitution, favoring the dictatorship of the one or the few, which leads to other problems and objections.
The political potential of sortition has been examined in both theory and practice, and what follows is an outline of an ideal constitution presented by Keith Sutherland in his book A People’s Parliament
, which White Nationalists should seriously consider as the solution to the existing “democratic” regimes.
In A People’s Parliament, Sutherland argues for a modernized version of James Harrington’s constitution of Oceana. Primarily designed with the contemporary United Kingdom in mind, however, the constitution could be a template for any ethno-state. Sutherland argues for a mixed constitution; a monarch (or a President) should be given the right to nominate government ministers subject to scrutiny by a House of Lords, who would be largely appointed for life, and approved by a House of Commons selected entirely by sortition.
Sutherland prefers that the constitutional head of state be a hereditary monarch rather than an elected President, arguing that the key advantage of having a head of state selected by birth means that the head of state views the nation as his own personal property, and given that he can be confident that he will be succeeded by his children, he is incentivized to look to the long-term interests of the nation to ensure the long-term survival and prosperity of his dynasty. This can be contrasted with an elected head of state who does not own the nation but merely rents it for the time he is in power, and, therefore, for his own personal interests, he will maximize his personal income and that of his supporters in the short term through methods which will only impoverish the nation over the longer term. Also an elected head of state will more likely be tempted to make his mark on history by engaging in reckless foreign adventures. The monarch, whose place in the history books is fulfilled by succession alone, will feel less of such psychological compulsions.278
The monarch would not, however, be a tyrant, and his constitutional powers would be limited to nominating the heads of the various government ministries, whose nominations would have to be ratified by a vote in a House of Commons, which would be taken following expert scrutiny of the candidate by the House of Lords. Hidden agendas would be exposed, and any nominee who proposed to take actions contrary to interests of the people would never be appointed in the first place, or, if he went rogue later, he could be summarily dismissed from his post by co-ordinated actions of the two houses. Giving a monarch the right to nominate government ministers would replace the current system in which government ministries are little more than a political spoils system where offices are handed out primarily on the basis of political loyalty and only secondarily on competence.279
The House of Lords should be remodeled as a place of informed advocacy, whereby “Lord Advocates” carefully scrutinize bills presented by government ministers and private members bills initiated within the House of Lords. In accordance with Edmund Burke’s truism that there is no independence of mind without independence of means, Sutherland argues to ensure their independence, advocates should be appointed for life and receive a salary for the debates that they attend. They should represent all fields of national life such as industry, trades unions, education, law, religion, military, and culture, and all ideological groupings should have their advocates. Sutherland has not outlined how such a representative balance would be achieved as this goes beyond constitutional theory and into the world of power politics. In practice the first lord advocates are going to be appointed as a result of deals struck inside the political coalition that forges the new constitution. The process of replacing retired advocates with new ones will also be ad
dressed at that point.280
Sutherland argues that political parties would continue to have a limited role in order to represent group interests. He favors a small number of advocates to be elected periodically by a system of proportional representation, although they would only represent a small fraction of the entire chamber. The party with the largest number of votes would be permitted to make legislative proposals which would be scrutinized by the rest of the chamber and then ultimately voted upon by the House of Commons, which is selected by sortition. These political parties may fool the electorate at the polls with their policies, but they would be unable to steamroller through unpopular legislation by stealth as they would need to win the argument in the chamber and then obtain the approval of the House of Commons.281
The primary democratic element in Sutherland’s constitution is the House of Commons, whose chamber would be selected entirely by sortition and would have the final say on all government business. Sutherland argues that ordinary citizens should be selected at random by sortition in order to form a citizen jury. This jury, operating similar to a jury in any criminal trial, though much larger, will play a passive role in the legislative and appointments process. These citizen jurors will be well-informed, as they will not be allowed to vote until they have listened to the entire deliberation and every Lord Advocate who steps forward to participate in the debate. Furthermore, their vote will be by secret ballot to ensure that their judgment is not swayed by any influential third party. Having voted, the jury is dismissed, and a new citizen jury selected by sortition in time for the next bill, in order that the House of Commons remains an exact portrait in miniature of the nation at large.
Like a traditional jury, service in the House of Commons would be compulsory, and ordinary citizens could realistically expect to serve on such a jury once in their lives. Furthermore, Sutherland argues that candidates entered into the jury pool should be vetted for intelligence and wisdom in advance, and he proposes using a psychometric test such as an IQ test in order to remove those who fall below a certain minimum threshold (the aim not being to select a cognitive elite but just to remove the retarded). Wisdom comes from life experience, and therefore only citizens between the ages of 40 and 65 should be entered into the lottery pool.282
The mixed constitution Sutherland advocates is basically sound. However, White Nationalists may also wish to consider the advantages of removing the electoral element entirely, and instead of using political parties to represent group interests, allow citizens to propose laws directly through public petitions in which a certain number of signatures will cause the bill to be debated and voted on by the two houses. Political associations will doubtless thrive outside the parliament, but they will not be dominated by the group-think mentality that drives the career politicians in political parties today.
If the White Nationalist movement adopted support for sortition in a constitution similar to that proposed in A People’s Parliament it would give it many advantages. It allows White Nationalists to engage in a critique of modern liberal (plutocratic) democracy as thorough and damning as the Old Right would without endorsing the Old Right antidote of dictatorship and their associated police states. Instead White Nationalism can offer a radical solution, which is far more democratic and yet possesses aristocratic elements that can deliver far-sighted, efficient, and competent government.
Also it would recognize that the White Nationalist movement is an ideological house with many rooms, and, while united in combating white genocide through mass non-white immigration and forced assimilation, it remains divided on other issues that are of secondary importance like drugs, homosexuality, religion, welfare, and whether the current banking system should be replaced by gold or social credit. Instead of pretending that these divisions are going to be resolved in the foreseeable future, the movement should instead adopt the Sutherland constitution to allow the divergent parts of the movement to co-operate in the political arena without having to enforce consensus and silence opinion on these factional secondary issues. These issues can be addressed once the constitution is in place and the various factions will be able to appoint their own advocates who will have the opportunity to argue the logic of their case before a citizen’s jury.
Finally, it is worth noting that even in the absence of a White Nationalist movement obtaining power, the adoption of sortition into the constitution of any majority-white nation can only help the cause of white survival as the anti-white movement is largely a top-down phenomenon pushed by our elites which have created a hegemony so powerful as to largely silence public opposition. The masses are passive, and ordinary whites do not want their countries filled with Third World immigrants, yet at the same time fear and apathy induced by the current system ensure that they are too demoralized to take any action to stop it. If sortition is used to create a citizens’ jury in which decisions were made by secret ballot, the ordinary people would be a great block to further anti-white policies and create a powerful feedback loop receptive to pro-white policies.
Counter-Currents/North American New Right
June 14, 17, 18, 20, & 21, 2013
CINEMATIC NIGHTRIDER?
RACE IN THE FILMS OF D. W. GRIFFITH
ANDREW HAMILTON
Film pioneer David Wark Griffith, a native Kentuckian of Anglo-Welsh descent called by Jewish film historian Ephraim Katz “the single most important figure in the history of American film, and one of the most influential in the development of world cinema as an art,” has long been lionized in nationalist circles as pro-white, and portrayed by the Left as a sort of demonic “racist,” because of his silent classic The Birth of a Nation (1915).
I watched a number of Griffith films, including a selection of his early shorts, to gauge for myself how well this ideological consensus accords with the facts. Together, Birth and Intolerance alone required 6 1/2 hours to view. I suspect that many who write about D. W. Griffith and The Birth of a Nation, positively or negatively, have not actually watched his films.
Nevertheless, it is useful to analyze Griffith’s work from a racial perspective because he is such a central figure in the history of cinema, and his alleged “racism” has become a key charge in the Left-wing indictment of everlasting white bigotry. One can consult numerous conventional sources for reliable information about Griffith’s many cinematic innovations. But none of them will be honest about race.
A SOUTHERNER IN NEW YORK & HOLLYWOOD
D. W. Griffith was born and raised in Kentucky and regarded himself as a Southerner. He grew up listening to exciting tales of the Civil War and Reconstruction told by his father and his friends, all of whom were veterans. His father’s Confederate mini-biography can easily be read on the family tombstone.
Griffith grew up and made his films during a period of reconciliation between North and South. It wasn’t until after WWII that anti-Southern bigotry began to permeate American society—a veiled expression of the anti-white racism of the postwar New Class.
Following a decade-long struggle as an often penniless stage actor and playwright, Griffith began acting in motion pictures in 1907 at the Edison Studios, founded and owned by inventor Thomas Edison. Edison invented modern motion picture equipment—cameras, projectors, and viewers—and constructed the world’s first movie studio (1893). His earliest films were synchronized talkies. Celluloid film rolls were manufactured by George Eastman to Edison’s specifications on 35 mm stock with four perforations on each side of the frame, a standard that remained in effect thereafter.
In 1896, Edison’s Vitascope, which projected films onto a large screen before an audience, was unveiled in a program of 12 short subjects, one of which was hand-colored, during a vaudeville show at a top New York City theater. This marked the beginning of a new art form and a great new industry—motion pictures.
In 1908, after a year with Edison, Griffith moved to the Biograph Company of New York City, where he did his most important early work. Biograph was Edison’s chief rival at the time.
In the early days, American motion picture production was centered in New York City and nearby New Jersey.
During its sixth season, Biograph advertised in a trade journal that its films were shown in the principal music halls and vaudeville houses of the world. A list of predominantly vaudeville theaters playing Biograph films from coast to coast was provided, including several Keith and Orpheum theaters and, abroad, the Folies Bergère in Paris, the Winter Garden in Berlin, and the Palace Music Hall in London.
From 1905–1915 motion pictures, always short in duration by today’s standards, were primarily shown in makeshift movie theaters called “nickelodeons” because they charged a nickel for admission. (Nickelodeons were not coin-operated machines, but actual theaters.) It is estimated that by 1910 as many as 26 million Americans visited nickelodeons every week. Many of Hollywood’s Jewish moguls began their careers as operators of highly profitable nickelodeons.
To early viewers, motion pictures weren’t “silents,” they were “move-ies” (moving pictures). It was the advent of radio, an aural medium, as a widespread home entertainment alternative in the mid-1920s that began draining audiences from theaters. Hollywood studios were forced to adapt by refining preexisting technologies of sound film to create the “talkies,” and thereby remain competitive.
Beginning as a writer and actor at Biograph, Griffith quickly became involved in more and more aspects of production. In 1908, at age 33, he directed his first movie, a 12-minute short. For almost two years Griffith personally directed all or most Biograph motion pictures. Thereafter, as the firm’s new general director, he superintended all studio production and directed its most important films through October 1, 1913.
During this period, 1908–1913, Griffith directed some 450 films, most of them short subjects 12 minutes to 30 minutes long, a pace of output rarely if ever equaled. From the beginning, Griffith questioned everything about film. He instinctively realized that telling a story with a camera was completely different from photographing a stage play.