In Defence Of Mike King, And Of Alcohol

New Zealand mental health awareness campaigner Mike King copped mountains of abuse for saying that “alcohol has prevented more young people from taking their own lives than it makes them take their own lives.” This provoked outrage from the usual wowsers, psychopaths and control freaks. But there is great truth behind this hard-earned wisdom.

I worked as a bartender for eight years. In that time I saw alcohol ruin many people. I was assaulted several times and no doubt the alcohol I sold contributed to countless acts of domestic violence. It might have caused a million dollars of physical health damage, and a million dollars of lost productivity from hangovers or absentee days.

It also had some great effects.

In those eight years I saw a lot of people who were barely hanging on come through the doors. People who were deeply depressed, stressed, anxious, even despairing. And I saw that, for a lot of these people, the promise of getting a buzz from alcohol was helping to keep them going. The daily life was unpleasant, but it could be endured because, after it, a good time could be had with a few drinks.

Some of the patrons would even admit as such. For them, a drink was the finish line of the day, time to celebrate and say Yes to life again. I am certain that the alcohol I sold prevented several million dollars’ worth of depression thanks to providing the sociability that led to great mirth and great memories for hordes of people. The average bartender, in my experience, does as much good for mental health as the average psychiatrist.

Mike King has been close enough to suicide to know that, when you’re on the edge, it’s often small things holding you back, like an occasional moment of mirth.

This might be impossible to understand for anyone who has never been mentally ill. But if you have ever felt enduring suicidal ideation, you may have also discovered that getting drunk can stop those thoughts for a while. I have broken multiple bones, and the suffering of suicidal ideation tops them all. It doesn’t take much of it before one starts thinking about a permanent solution. Alcohol can provide blessed relief from such thoughts.

Sometimes, when your mental health is so low that you know you can’t endure the suffering forever, the promise of the next drink can be what’s stopping you ending your life. Just the simple knowledge that solace can eventually be had, in the form of a pint, can be enough to keep taking one step after the next. Drinking alcohol can reclaim enough power over your own mental health to make you say Yes to life again.

Mike King understands this, because he’s been low enough to need to find reasons to stay alive. He ought to be respected for the insight that he has brought back from the psychiatric underworld. Instead of ripping down someone who has stood so close to the edge, we ought to listen (if with scepticism). This is especially true for people with no personal experience of depression.

This defence is not intended to excuse my own conduct. For many years now, I have hardly used alcohol at all – only for celebrations once every few months, and even then in moderation. I am therefore not a drinker but neither am I an abstainer. I argue that this middle way, plus my bartending experience, makes my opinions more objective.

I also have extensive experience with antidepressant use – I have taken five different ones, off and on, for 30 years. What people need to realise about antidepressants is that they, at best, only mildly alleviate depression, and even then they work as a background substance. You can’t take an antidepressant as an emergency fix for an acute suicidal mood. If you’re going to attempt suicide in the next half an hour, and only an antidepressant or alcohol can save you, alcohol will be by far the most effective short-term fix.

That’s not to say alcohol is a long-term fix; in the long term, drinking alcohol will make you more depressed. Not only is it an actual depressant, but it causes an astonishing range of physical health ailments (see Prof. David Nutt’s Drink? for more).

Alcohol is definitely a second-rate drug. But the popular claim (often repeated in the mainstream media) that it only causes harms, and has no benefits, is ridiculous. In any case, most people who chimp out on it could have been encouraged to use weed or MDMA, if only either were legal. Most of the harms of alcohol would be ameliorated if people had access to less harmful recreational drugs, because those would serve as exit drugs for alcohol users to transition away. It’s hypocritical to complain about alcohol harms while also criminalising all the exit drugs from alcohol.

The ideal arrangement would be a properly-funded mental health system, which would include training people in trauma-based therapy and de-emphasising the biomedical model, and a sensible drug policy based on scientific evidence of relative drug harms.

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Why Globalism Is Defended With Such Fanaticism

Most VJM Publishing readers will have realised already that it’s not possible to reason with Abrahamists. Abrahamists have their religious beliefs and would give up their own children before they gave up those beliefs. Fewer readers will have observed that it’s similarly impossible to reason with other globalists. But this is for the same reason – because globalists, of all kinds, are fundamentally religious.

Abrahamists all believe that the god of Abraham will one day conquer the world. Their hearts are set on this and they want it more than anything else. It’s central to their identity and self-esteem. As such, they have a psychological need to believe that they’re always moving towards this goal. This explains why Abrahamists get so mad when you suggest their prophecies aren’t happening or will not happen. Such a suggestion is a direct attack on the power of Yahweh himself.

For Communists and Marxists, the belief in a destined victory is just as strong. Marx prophecised that the working classes of the world would unite across national borders. This prophecy is equally as central to the Communists as End Times prophecies are to Abrahamists. It is clung to with just as much fervour.

If a person would tell a globalist that mass immigration is bad, it is for that globalist like a Muslim being told that jihad is bad. It’s to be told that one’s desired ideology should not propagate itself. This is a direct attack on their identity. To attack immigration is to attack the religion of the globalist.

For Christians, Rabbi Yeshua is how utopia is achieved. Therefore more Rabbi Yeshua is always good, and no aspect of it can ever be bad. Anyone who criticises Rabbi Yeshua is the enemy. Being a universal good, Rabbi Yeshua can be rammed down anyone’s throat without any shame.

For globalists, immigration is how utopia is achieved. Therefore more of it is always good, and no aspect of it can ever be bad. Anyone who criticises it is the enemy. Being a universal good, immigration can be rammed down anyone’s throat without any shame.

This explains why immigration is reflexively defended by anyone who is part of the Western power apparatus. Immigration is the vehicle in which we will arrive at the promised land. Only through immigration can the primary threat – white identity – be defeated. White identitarianism caused World War II and time did not exist before then. Our foremost danger is that Hitler might come back, and the more immigration the less likely this becomes.

Globalists also attack their enemies with the same religious fanaticism that one sees in Abrahamists, and for the same reasons. To the globalist, the nationalist is the goy, the infidel, the kafir. Everything that is good in the world demands the destruction of this enemy. Just as Abrahamists are raised to hate outsiders and habitually dehumanise them, globalists encourage each other to hate nationalists. Whereas the infidel’s disbelief and the kafir’s shirk are blamed by Abrahamists for the misery of society, the globalist blames racism.

If the main opposition to mass immigration is white racial consciousness, then it follows that white racial consciousness is the enemy, and anything that can be done to lessen it is a good thing. This is why Marxists like Paul Hunt made such a big deal out of VJM Publishing selling ‘It’s Okay To Be White’ t-shirts on TradeMe. White identitarianism jeopardises the globalist project: the more people identify with being white, the less they identify with the imported bioslop, and the more they resist its importation.

This is why fanatical resistance to white identitarianism and nationalism is part of the globalist attitude: it’s considered the biggest obstacle to the multiracial promised land, belief in which is religious. Thus this resistance appears in all globalists, whether Abrahamists, Communists or Capitalists.

Unfortunately, this strategy has completely backfired. In any environment, people identify with the qualities that cause them to stand out. So in white environments, white people generally identify with their profession. But in multiracial environments, as in prisons, white people generally identify with their race. Accordingly, white identity is strengthening even as the proportion of white people is declining.

This could have been predicted by anyone who has met South Africans: they are the most racially besieged white people on the planet, and are also the white people with the strongest racial consciousness. White racial consciousness is also very strong in big, multicultural cities like London, Paris and Los Angeles, although it wasn’t 50 years ago. It will inexorably strengthen, as white people, looking around for what they meaningfully have in common with others, settle on whiteness.

The inevitable end result of this process of strengthening white national consciousness is a climactic final battle between the globalists and a confederation of nationalists. Nationalist parties are rising all over Europe, and the globalist establishment would much rather ban them – and risk civil war – than concede power. Such an end result could manifest anytime.

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Economic Zone Mentality

Social observers in places like New Zealand, America, Australia, South Africa, Argentina etc. have noticed that the mentality of the New World is different to the Old World when it comes to co-operation. Although individuals in the New World are at least as friendly as individuals in the Old, the societies of the New World are much nastier. How to explain?

The usual story is that people in the New World are rugged, pioneering settlers and homesteaders. Although they might be willing to lend a hand personally, they are suspicious of government assistance, which they see as a loss of independence. People in the Old World, in comparison, are a bit soft and lazy. Hence they vote for a generous safety net.

In truth, New Worlders vote for low levels of government assistance because they are afflicted with something known as Economic Zone Mentality.

This essay contends that Economic Zone Mentality is a manner of approaching politics and justice that is characteristic of economic zones and not true nations, and is particularly common in the New World. It’s not necessarily selfish, but usually is, reflecting an every-man-for-himself psychology that is anathema to true civilisation.

An actual nation is like an extended family. Examples are Japan or Finland. In an actual nation, the logic is that the Establishment exists to provide for the people. The people might have to pay into the Establishment in the form of taxes, but they can expect to get out more than they put in, because the Establishment will provide services at scale. Thanks to economies of scale, members of actual nations get to enjoy high standards of living, even if they’re poor.

An economic zone is like a plantation. The people who live in it aren’t family. Some of those people are the owners, and the others are there on the graces of the owners. In an economic zone, the Establishment exists to facilitate wealth extraction. The happiness of the people who live there is not an important factor.

In an economic zone, all that matters is economic production. The logic is that the Establishment exists to take, not to give. There may or may not be economies of scale, but it doesn’t matter if those living in economic zones enjoy high standards of living. They are there to work. As a result of all this, there is massive economic inequality.

In actual nations, governments do a lot more to take care of their own people in comparison to economic zones. Welfare support is much higher in Europe than in America, Australia or New Zealand. Higher education is usually free, and when it isn’t student loans are usually interest-free. Healthcare tends to be universal. The logic is that public goods benefit the nation, and therefore are universal goods.

Actual nations take measures that are unthinkable in economic zones, such as the upcoming Swiss referendum on whether to cap the population. In economic zones, it’s well understood that the size of the economy is primarily a function of the size of the population. To cap the population, in Economic Zone Mentality, is like throwing money away. Only people in actual nations could see the merit in it.

A particular characteristic of economic zones is that production of anything non-industrial is considered worthless. Cultural production is worthless; you can’t eat literature or music. Intellectual production likewise, unless it has direct industrial applications. Spiritual production has the least value. Anyone engaged in these three pastimes is considered a thief of actual production. This attitude is the main reason why New World countries are considered cultureless by Old World ones.

In Economic Zone Mentality, a person’s job is their identity. Engineers are the highest status, because they do the most resource extraction. Healthcare workers are the lowest status, because the well-being of people is not important. And without a job, you are no-one. To be unemployed is to be a criminal. It is a violation of the social contract. In a nation, the social contract is that sometimes you give, sometimes you take. In an economic zone, the social contract is that you work in exchange for being allowed to exist.

In Economic Zone Mentality, all criminals are forgiven as soon as they get jobs, and all decent people are criminals as soon as they stop working. Crying about one person on the dole, and ignoring landlords sucking out a hundred times more unearned income, is typical.

Much confusion arises when people expect natural, national mentality in an economic zone.

In all societies, your right to criticise society comes from your social status. In proper nations, many social critics are artists, who have high social status. But in Economic Zone Mentality, artists are low status. So when Eleanor Catton won the Booker Prize, many expected that she would have earned a certain degree of respect for the achievement, and that this would have conferred some right to comment on society. But media maggots like Sean Plunket just called her a “traitor” and an “ungrateful hua” (ironically, Catton was criticising Economic Zone Mentality in New Zealand). She now lives overseas.

Economic Zone Mentality is to act as if a person’s net worth and their merit are the same thing. In proper nations, a person gets respect for being wealthy, but no more than they get for being honourable, or educated, or physically fit, or disciplined. In economic zones, a person’s portfolio value is like a scorecard. Honour, education etc. have no value in and of themselves, only to the extent that they enable resource extraction.

It’s becoming apparent to many Westerners that they live, not in actual nations, but in economic zones. Their countries are workplaces and not homes. This is why housing is severely unaffordable in New Zealand and Australia: rather than being homes for the Anzac people, these countries are workplaces for international banking and finance interests. Housing is becoming severely unaffordable in America and much of Europe for similar reasons (Europe didn’t start with Economic Zone Mentality, but is developing it as it becomes more multicultural).

The end result of Economic Zone Mentality is to turn everywhere into a pile of slag and garbage. The only solution is to develop and support genuine cultural initiatives.

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The Fifth Rejection Of Alternative Centrism

The Fifth Rejection of alternative centrism is the rejection of stupidity. The Fifth Rejection is the contention that an excessive focus on justice leads to stupidity.

The great justice debate in the Western World today is about equality. The Left insists that all human groups are equal in actual fact, which brings with it some conceptual difficulties. The Left reasons from this assumption of equality that all observed differences must be due to discrimination of some kind, usually structural discrimination by Big, Bad Whitey.

Some of the Alternative Left will insist that justice means exact equality of outcome, and so as long as there are disparities in e.g. academic achievement or income, then this is proof of injustice. Observers of the Alternative Left will have noted their uniform acceptance of Blank Slate Theory. These two are related: Blank Slate Theory claims that all human differences come down to how those humans have been treated earlier in life. Thus, poor outcomes are down to mistreatment.

To deny the equality of all human groups, we are told, is a great injustice. It’s unthinkable to say that some groups have poor outcomes because of innately lower intelligence. This is tantamount to saying that some groups are inferior to others – an attitude adjacent to Nazism. Anyone claiming that Australian Aborigines are any less intelligent than Singaporean Chinese is taking the first step on the slippery slope to gas chambers.

The stupidity of this insistence has led to people on the Alternative Left claiming that all immigration is good. Because all human groups are precisely equal on all intellectual measures, immigration cannot lower GDP per capita. It only makes the big line go up.

To the Alternative Centrist, the insistence that all human populations are exactly the same on all intellectual measures is stupid. To insist that everyone else must go along with this or face abuse is double stupid. To continue to insist on both of these things while refusing to look at any of the scientific evidence is triply stupid. The Alternative Centrist rejects all of this stupidity with the Fifth Rejection.

As Alexander Solzhenitsyn put it: “Human beings are born with different capacities. If they are free, they are not equal. And if they are equal, they are not free.” Forced uniformity might be incredibly stupid, not least because it contradicts other leftist aims such as maximising freedom, but the Alternative Left just can’t give up on the idea. For them, any disparity in outcome between two different groups is proof of discrimination, and they will not hear otherwise.

The Alternative Left, however, don’t realise how this attitude sabotages their own position. Anyone with a modicum of sense can see that letting hordes of Somalis into an area will have different outcomes to letting in large numbers of Japanese, because the two groups are extremely different. So when the Alternative Left (and the Left in general) act like all the murders and rapes committed by Somalis weren’t a predictable outcome, they make themselves look stupid to followers of the other positions.

Like most stupidities, there are all manner of moral justifications for claiming all populations are intellectually the same.

The usual justification is that it’s preventing another World War Two. The mainstream narrative is that the perception of differences between races led to the supremacist Nazis trying to take over the world for lebensraum. Therefore, if we concede that any difference between races exists, we risk the chance of the Nazis coming back and plunging the world into war again.

In actuality, the supposedly race-blind position enables a great deal of anti-working class prejudice, and is seldom less bigoted than the position of outright racists.

One notices plenty of this prejudice on the Alternative Left. This is because the Western working classes did not support the prophecised Marxist revolution. The Left, out of narcissism and resentment, interprets this refusal as a betrayal. It’s possible to detect enormous spite on the part of the Alternative Left with regards to its immigration policy and the harms caused by it. Many on the Alternative Left behave as if these harms punish the Western working classes for their betrayal.

The sneering indifference of the Alternative Left to the suffering of the Western working classes is a major factor in their rejection by the Alternative Centre. The Fourth Acceptance is the acceptance of truth, and the truth is that the Marxist prophecies of capitalism leading to the working class overthrowing the bourgeoisie failed. It’s time to acknowledge this and move on.

The stupidity of the Alternative Left is best summarised by the above quote from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. This emphasis on moral rectitude rather than factual correctness is an extreme form of virtue signalling, especially when considering the near-complete absence of that rectitude among politicians like Ocasio-Cortez. It’s a grossly stupid approach borne of shallow and narcissistic thinking.

The Alternative Centre rejects all low IQ, unscientific, feel-good narratives.

Science is paramount. The Fourth Acceptance emphasises the value of truth, and the Fifth Rejection stands against all delusion and intellectual weakness likewise. Putting these two together gives us an unyielding commitment to learning and applying methods of truth determination. The truth is accepted and stupidity rejected.

The Establishment Left may be flawed in the sense they cause too much chaos, but they aren’t stupid. They understand that class solidarity is necessary to have any leverage over our rulers. The Alternative Left rejects this simple truth for a hodgepodge of incoherent ideologies that contradict each other at every turn. Because of their tendency to stupidity, they haven’t thought rationally about what they believe. Incoherence is the result.

The Alternative Left are so concerned with what makes them look morally superior that they have neglected what would have made them look intellectually superior. Or, at least, not inferior – a person who speaks to an Alternative Leftist is often struck by how poorly-educated they are in comparison to Establishment Leftists, who have always seen educational opportunities as the main way out of poverty. Many Alternative Leftists outright decry education as fascist, on the grounds that it suggests a will to self-improvement and therefore self-aggrandisement, which is considered unjust.

Everything downstream of stupidity – like shallow thinking, incoherence, anti-intellectualism – is all rejected under the Fifth Rejection.

Also rejected are all of the counter-productive stupidities the Alternative Left likes to engage in and call political activism, such as pointlessly antagonising people.

The Left gifts their opponents tremendous political capital by pushing diversity, inclusion and equity initiatives. The net effect of these initiatives is to stir up distrust between various demographics, rendering genuine solidarity impossible. Any working-class white person, upon hearing the word “inclusion”, knows they are being excluded. “Diversity”, likewise, seems to amount to fewer white people. But the Alternative Left, seemingly, can’t help itself from pushing this sort of rubbish. This has caused some to ask if the Alternative Left aren’t, in fact, working on behalf of the Establishment. But no, they’re just dumb.

In summary, the Alternative Centre rejects the stupidity of the Alternative Left, recognising that it makes all political objectives harder to achieve: it loses friends, it gains enemies, it saps internal cohesion, it emboldens the opposition and leads directly to stagnation, chaos, degeneracy and cruelty.

This chapter is from The Alternative Centrist Manifesto, the upcoming work of political philosophy that offers the answers to the political problems of the West.

For more of VJM’s ideas, see his work on other platforms!
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