Addendum: Crypto-White-Nationalism, Neoreaction, and J. Arthur Bloom

In a recent essay, I defended a tweet wherein I implied that J. Arthur Bloom, an editor for both the Daily Caller and Front Porch Republic, is a closet white nationalist—or, at the very least, a fellow traveler of some variety.

Now, Bloom has added a meandering update to his initial critical blogpost, effectively doubling down on his suggestion that my suspicions are nothing more than wild conspiracy. Most of the update is ad hominem posturing,[1] with Bloom digging through my last 5 months of tweets and blog posts to try to find any random tweet that he thinks might discredit me so that he can avoid dealing with the substance of my arguments. Needless to say, I think he comes up empty, but I will spare readers the tedious exegesis that would be required to directly respond to Bloom’s analysis-free attempt at derailing.

The most substance one gets out of Bloom’s is a denial that he has any sympathy for at least certain segments of the far right:

I don’t think I’ve ever quoted Evola, am disgusted by fascism, I wrote a critical piece about some of the people he mentions, and run a highly pro-Israel opinion section at TheDC.

The denial seems categorical but Bloom is perhaps choosing his words a bit carefully—albeit not too carefully given that he quoted Evola only five months ago. Setting that mistake to the side, note, first, that being supportive of an ethno-nationalist state like Israel doesn’t do much to bolster Bloom’s case that he’s not a white nationalist of some variety. Indeed, white nationalists will happily endorse black nationalism if that entails black people exiting the United States. So it isn’t obvious that supporting a specialized Jewish homeland beyond America’s borders is particularly exculpatory. Indeed, it is hard not to hear in this response echoes of the old joke: which is worse, the anti-Semite or the philo-Semite? The anti-Semite, because at least he isn’t lying. 

With respect to Bloom’s insistence that he loathes fascism and certain white nationalists, I take his words at face value. However, again, that doesn’t get Bloom very far given his own insistence that one might both be skeptical of fascism and certain white nationalist movements while still supporting white nationalism. In fact, it seems clear from the context of the previously-linked tweet that Bloom is suggesting that he is the one who is sympathetic to white nationalism, despite his distaste for both Richard Spencer and Aleksandr Dugin.

So not only does Bloom’s denial fall flat, it seems to neatly align with other seemingly clear—albeit subtle—endorsements of white nationalism on his part. However, it is worth moving beyond these particularities to expand upon one argument from my previous essay.

One thing that I mention in said essay is that Michael Goldfarb, editor of the neoconservative Free Beacon, independently came to the exact same conclusion about Bloom that I did. Given Goldfarb and my serious differences in ideology, it is hard to dismiss our shared conclusions as either conspiracy or some sort of pathology of leftism. Indeed, it is hard to see how one could provide a remotely plausible explanation of our concurrence that doesn’t implicate Bloom in some way.

The seemingly best candidate for an exculpatory explanation is that both Goldfarb and I are hostile in our own respective ways to Bloom’s ideology and coincidentally settled on the “white nationalism” accusation as a means by which to marginalize him. (One might wonder why, of all the representatives of paleoconservatism, we decided to pick Bloom as our target. The particular choice of Bloom as our scapegoat seems inexplicable, but for the sake of argument let us grant to Bloom that this is a plausible story.)

The problem with even this most-charitable-of-interpretations is that even people explicitly sympathetic to white nationalism appear to have also arrived at the conclusion that Bloom is a closet white Nationalist. Thus, fringe-right blogger Nick B. Steves writes:

I’m on Daily Caller Opinion Editor and mutual Twitter-follower J. Arthur Bloom’s reading list, along with a few more of my regular reads. I see Bloom as a fellow traveler with significant alt-right and paleo-right sympathies. His coolness to Richard Spencer and White Nationalism in this piece earned him some not entirely undeserved suspicion in reactionary circles, many of whom operate on a strict principle: “Pas d’ennemis a droit, pas d’amis a gauche.” Still, in my many interactions with Bloom, he seems to both understand and sympathize with various reactionary principles and critiques. He is also responsible for publishing Laliberte’s and Morganston’s DC pieces. He’s in a useful position for us and our cause; and I believe he is more than a useful idiot.

Steves then links to a tweet by white nationalist Mike Anissimov wherein the latter suggests that, due to Bloom’s open sympathy for “neoreaction”—an ideology congruent, if not strictly identical, with white nationalism—Bloom would soon be purged from the media.

So, in addition to a neoconservative and left-wing antifascist suggesting that Bloom is a white nationalist, you also have someone who supports white nationalism who has come to believe the exact same thing. (One notes that Steves is as unconvinced as I am that Bloom’s Daily Caller piece is an indication of hostility toward white nationalism).

Another interesting thing about Steves is that he happily corroborates the opening section of my previous essay where I suggest that white nationalists go undercover in order to subvert mainstream opinion. This assumption is tacit in the above blockquote, but is made explicit in another essay titled “Neoreaction’s Darkest Power,” which candidly characterizes “neoreaction” as a rebranding of white nationalist ideas. First, Steves notes that any perceived endorsement of white nationalism—at least in its traditional trappings—will immediately discredit the endorser in all but far-right contexts:

Long, long ago things like kings and czars, slave-holders, white-hooded optimates (and later white-hooded white trash), wife-beaters, brown-shirts, skinheads… When [the Progressive] sees stuff that looks remotely like this, his memetic immune system activates. He will not listen to anybody who remotely looks white nationalist. 

In my previous essay, I noted that the obvious solution to this problem was for white nationalists to go undercover. And, indeed, Steves suggests that they have done just that, repackaging their white nationalism—or, at least its core ideas—in the form of “neoreaction:”

Neoreaction defeats the natural defense mechanisms of the Progressive by not looking remotely white nationalist. Or Nazi. Or even remotely working class. Neoreaction may even have gay or Jewish friends. He might have gone to Ivy, or been so privileged he didn’t need to. These ideas might be a bit odd, vaguely libertarian, but older and far more exotic, and oh-so interesting, and such high verbal IQ, and (therefore) quite clearly harmless. This is how our Neoreactionary Alchemist strikes, he puts these carefully crafted, putatively harmless memes into the Progressive while his defenses are down. Moldbug was the first and greatest master of this. 

So Steves—a prominent figure and outspoken proponent of neoreaction—admits that the movement is white nationalism’s core ideas dressed up to avoid detection by those hostile to the ideology. And, given Bloom’s enthusiasm for neoreaction, Steves—like both Goldfarb and me—has come to believe that Bloom is sympathetic to core white nationalist ideas but is trying to obscure this fact so as to maintain his position of influence within the DC media elite.

But of course, absent explicit confirmation from Bloom, Steves might be just projecting, falling victim to the same conspiratorial delusions that have overtaken both Goldfarb and me. Fortunately for us, there’s this:

So there you have it. Steves suggests in an essay that neoreaction is a way of masking the identity of white nationalist ideas so as to introduce them into the mainstream. And, Bloom—who has been using his connections to actively promote neoreaction—explicitly endorses the essay by “liking” it. As far as documentable crypto-white-nationalism goes, it doesn’t seem to get much more clear-cut than this.

[1] …with Bloom at one point mocking me for what he takes to be pretentious language. Glass houses, J. Arthur!