Who is “Banned in DC”? (A Sycophancy so Immense…)
A few days ago, I began receiving multiple Google alerts about something called “Banned in DC,” an anonymous blog with a fixation on Takimag. The site was established only two week ago, apparently for the express purpose of attacking Takimag writers and talking up the Lukacs/Buchanan controversy. The commentary struck me as rather inane and trivial, and I moved on—until I noticed that the site also functioned as a kind of Scott McConnell fan club. The author switched between trite bashing of John Zmirak and R.J. Stove—“d-list rejects” and “maundering malcontents”—and trite TAC apologetics, offering up lines like, “I was impressed by the argument he [McConnell] put forth here— nuanced, thoughtful, and not rendered in the spirit of those who attacked him last week.”
McConnell would never do something like set up a TAC front group, and so I began to ask myself what kind of groveling wretch would dedicate himself to such sycophancy? After Ramesh Ponnuru, for whatever reason, linked to this ridiculous blog on National Review Online as serious commentary on the Buchanan controversy, I simply had to find out Who is banned in DC?
The name itself—a reference to some execrable punk and reggae compilation—should have given it away from the start. Regardless, I’ve now acquired definitive evidence (which I could present to anyone if asked) that the author of “Banned in DC” is A.G. Gancarski, a free-lance writer who’s attempted to build a career denouncing and then shilling for the same person--Scott McConnell.
Gancarski first entered the paleo orbit during TAC’s infancy in 2003, going by the byline “Anthony Gancarski” and offering up the occasional color piece on Jonny Cash or punk rock. A friend of mind who met him personally said that the Ganc described himself as a “rasta-con,” apparently hoping to unite Bob Marley and the Roman Catholic Church in a new conservative coalition. Masterpieces of the early Gancarski include articles like ”Hail Mary, Pass the Dutchie: Rebranding the US Catholic Church.”
Well, by 2004, Gancarski had decided to start up a very different kind of political venture. Perhaps inspired by David Frum’s infamous hit piece “Unpatriotic Conservatives,” Gancarski tried to make a career of it at David Horowitz’s FrontPageMag bashing the antiwar paleos and libertarians in general and Scott McConnell in particular. From the beginning, Daniel Larison smelled out the rank mendaciousness and opportunism of the refashioned “A.G. Gancarski.”
The Ganc’s commentary on the paleos was so bush-league and riddled with factual errors it made “Unpatriotic Conservatives” seem like The Critique of Pure Reason. Gancarski made “arguments” like, Bush won the 2004 election, therefore McConnell should stop criticizing the neocons, and that TAC is really, like, “European” or something (“cheese-eating surrender monkeys” lines were working back in ’04).
And then came the obligatory accusation of anti-Semitism. Mentioning that McConnell listed by name some prominent neoconservative players—Rumsfeld, Cheney, Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith et al.—Gancarski called it the “time-honored neocon Jew rollcall.” According to the Ganc: “they aren’t McConnell’s kind of people. They aren’t WASPs, and what’s more, their foreign policy arguments are dangerous – especially in the hands of the ‘wrong’ people.”
Within the space of 800 words, Gancarski denounced McConnell as a Euro PC leftist and then as a anti-Semitic White Nationalist—both allegations self-evidently wrong to anyone who’s ever known McConnell or read his writings.
Gancarski spend most of his time at FrontPageMag not simply attacking critics of the Iraq war but basically everyone to his right—Justin Raimondo, the LewRockwell.com libertarians, Sam Francis, and Pat Buchanan were all targets. Dropping phrases like the “Hate America Right,” the Ganc seemed to be auditioning for a staff writer position at “Fox and Friends.” For the likes of Midge Dector and Donald Rumsfeld, he had nothing but praise.
The Ganc’s sojourn at FrontPageMag lasted about a year and a half, ending with a rambling, incoherent piece on pop music and political culture, much like the forgettable stuff he’d been contributing to TAC a couple of years earlier.
After the FrontPageMag experience, Gancarski apparently decided to meandered on back into paleo territory, and somehow—for resons that I simply cannot comprehend—he got back in the good graces of Scott McConnell and Kara Hopkins, who allowed him to return to his old duties writing short pieces on the musical genius of The Clash and critiquing the rock selections at Republican campaign rallies.
It’s worth noting that after Gancarski turned coat one more time, and re-alligned himself with the erstwhile “anti-Semite” and WASP elitist, we haven’t heard any grand denunciations of David Horowitz as, say, an evil imperialist Zionist or whatever. Indeed, to my knowledge, Gancarski hasn’t leveled so much as a peep of criticism towards his former neocon comrades, nor bothered to explain his latest re-conversion to antiwar conservatism. Why TAC would be so eager to allow Gancarski back into the fold, or view him as a literary asset, is absolutely beyond me.
In any case, Gancarski has set his mind to making a name for himself at the magazine he once ridiculed and using his “Banned in DC” blog as a vehicle for a shilling for the man he once denounced.
Knowing this history, it’s also clear why “Banned in DC” simply had to be anonymous. Indeed, many of the passages take on a whole new quality, become almost jaw-dropping, when re-read with full knowledge of the author in mind.
Take for instance:
My question, to Zmirak and all the other having ‘second thoughts’ about the folks at TAC since the Lukacs review dropped is this: why didn’t you leave before, if you really had such differences with the ‘senior editorship’ of this magazine? Why did you continue the affiliation with a magazine you clearly had such issue with?
“Second thoughts” about TAC, huh? John recognized from the beginning that he had some philosophic differences with McConnell, but decided to stick with TAC because he thought much good could come from a “alternative” conservative magazine—a sane and stable course of action in comparison with Gancarski’s shenanigans.
And then there’s:
TAC, in many ways, would be better off if it didn’t scrape and bow to the whims of a bunch of d-list rejects on this issue. There will undoubtedly be a few more ‘kiss off’ pieces directed to McConnell and company. If they are smart, they will weather the storm, and replace these maundering malcontents with writers who don’t have some phantom bullshit axe to grind with the current direction of the magazine.
The Ganc no doubt imagines himself as that pristine A-lister who’s shown nothing but selfless fidelity to McConnell and should be rewarded with a regular column.
Successive bootlicking and condemning is all Gancarski knows how to do. He’ll fashion himself a punk-loving paleo and then, in an instant, a GOP war hawk, and then back again. Throughout the twists and turns, his desire to grovel and please remains as constant as the Northern Star. This guy probably won’t earn too much cred on the antiwar Right, but he could have made a great career for himself in a Politburo somewhere.
While bashing Takimag writers, he hasn’t spent a moment analyzing any of the content of the arguments, relying instead on blatant lying, claiming, for instance, that we’ve been insinuating things like, “David Irving isn’t really that bad, when ya stop to think of it” (!). No one at Takimag has defended the work of Irving, as is clear to anyone. We’ve been exasperated by the fact that TAC would publish something in which the founder of the magazine is compared to this one-time Holocaust denier and full-time Nazi-nostalgic. Gancarski is either attempting cheap and easy slander—done anonymously of course—or else his mind is too feeble to even grasp the arguments of the men he’s denouncing. Which one is it, Ganc?
Gancarski refers to my essay as a “personal attack of Mr. Lukacs” and yet my critique is entirely textual. Such a willful mischaracterization reveals a man incapable of even beginning to defend intellectually Lukacs’s position on Buchanan (or even to pretend that he likes Lukacs).
And then there’s my favorite from the Gancarski compilation:
“TAC could’ve had some hack — maybe even Stove or Zmirak! — write a kiss-ass review of this half-baked book. They didn’t. Kudos. Yay.”
Oh yes, those two “hacks,” Stove and Zmirak… While the Ganc was out with his buds at a Rastafarian concert, Stove was researching his history of western music and Zmirak was writing his study of the economic thought of Wilhelm Röpke. That someone with the lifetime accomplishments of an A.G. Gancarski would call these two men “hacks” is beyond pretentious.
I’m also not so sure how much calling The Unnecessary War “half baked” will ingratiate Gancarski with one of the most respected men of the antiwar Right. But the real question is how far this will get him with the editors of Pat Buchanan’s magazine…
Comments
I now realize what’s going on with The American Conservative: the Neocons recognized it as an effective and principled threat to their fraudulent conservatism, and so instead of bashing it, sought to infiltrate and co-opt it, just as they did with the GOP. First step: insert Neocon Ron Unz as publisher. Step two: begin bashing principled traditional conservatives like Buchanan and other writers at TakiMag from within and without its covers.
McConnnell, who until Unz took over had excellent editorial judgment, is now in a bit of a bind. He should either insist on a firewall and completely re-take the reigns, or resign. Otherwise, how can he in good conscience stay at the helm of just another Neocon front when the whole casus belli of The American Conservative to begin with was to provide a principled conservative alternative to Neocon propaganda?
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Chris,
Your theory is wrong on many levels.
Ron Unz is not a neocon nor has TAC published any neocons in its pages. The case of Gancarski is pretty sui generis and doesn’t, in my estimation, have anything to do with any neocon take-over conspiracy, Please try again.
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Seems to me like he is looking for a check.
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“Ron Unz is not a neocon”
Here is a Steve Sailer article on Ron Unz: Unzism – the (new) doctrine of American Decline http://www.vdare.com/Sailer/unzism.htm
“Ron Unz is California’s most interesting and adventurous political entrepreneur…he is writing articles outlining his grand strategy for the Republican Party and America. In the November 1999 Commentary appeared “California and the End of White America"…
“The GOP, Unz argues, should push a two-pronged strategy:
1] “a strong and forthright stand” in favor of mass immigration; and
2] the revival of the assimilation techniques that worked so well (he says) in turning Jewish and Italian immigrants into patriotic Americans.”…
“Unzism is analogous to Henry Kissinger’s foreign policy strategy of the Seventies. Kissingerism assumed that American power was in permanent decline. He thus advocated détente as an artful means to manage our decay.”…
“President Clinton trumpets the End of White America every chance he gets – …The President’s message to whites is implicit but obvious: “These dusky hordes are going to overwhelm us whites eventually, so you’d better placate them now with affirmative action and bilingual education and other multiculturalist handouts. Otherwise, well, let’s just say that things could get ugly, if you get my drift ...”
If Unz is not a Neocon, he certainly carries many Neoconservative characteristics, including an apparent latent hatred for white Christians, a desire to swamp America with less-educated non white Christians, a willingness to pander to Big Business/Big Government seeking cheap labor and cannon fodder for Big Wars, apparently a dislike of Pat Buchanan…
Unz wants what the Neocons want: under-educated, government brainwashed, complient masses who won’t object to their schemes.
If it acts like a duck and quacks like a duck…
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Ethiopia has it’s own Ge’ez rite in the Catholic Church though there is a Catholic Church group in the country by way of Italy. The Ge’ez rite is part of the Liturgy of St Mark, the first Bishop of Alexandria Egypt which makes it one of the earliest Christian rites along with the Liturgy of Jerusalem.
Bob Marley’s widow wants to move his body to Ethiopia and Rastas celebrate Haile (Might of the Trinity) Sellasie’s descent from the line of David through Solomon and the Queen of Sheba and therefore related to Jesus. I was intorduced to H.I.M. a couple times and only thought of him as short but he looked good in a uniform.
The Agony of Ethiopia, the great famine started after the overthrow of Sellasie by the Communist which makes one wonder if there is something to a King being a connection between God and His people.
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Banned is apologizing for his foray at Front Page Mag at his site, and he seems sincere.
What is it about Front Page that when paleos get disgruntled they go there to bash there old colleagues. So I guess William Hawkins was following in the foot steps of Banned.
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As I recall Unz was the most prominent GOPer in California to oppose prop. 187 in 1994
which would have ended benefits to illegals.
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The reason why McConnell would welcome a David Horowitz type like Gancarski back into the bosom of TAC is that McConnell is well, um, a eunuch. By that I mean he’s a fuss-budget old fool. In his eyes Gancarski is Errol Flynn with a keyboard. TAC had potential but by sticking with McConnell - they blew it.
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Richard,
I know Gancarski a bit, and while I loudly disagreed with the FP piece at the time (arguing with numerous people about it, when no one else cared), it would be wrong to say that Gancarski started his blog for the sole purpose of attacking Taki. In fact Anthony sent me a link to his blog before any of this stuff really took off and had several posts up before the controversy erupted.
I have written a lot of unfavorable things about some of the opinions expressed on this site over the last couple of months because I think they have been poorly thought out, wrong, et. Nonetheless I still read the site daily and the only reason I even care is because it disappoints me. I suspect Gancarski feels the same way.
Dylan (who also considers himself a punk-paleo)
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TakiMag is a great website. Excellent editing, excellent contributors.
OK? Now, speaking as nothing more than a humble reader, maybe it’s time for all you drama queens here to give this issue a rest. First of all, “outing” an anonymous blogger is really, really low. It’s also kind of ironic given the recent post here about pseudonyms.
BannedInDC’s comments were right on target. I went and read McConnell’s defense of his editorial decision. Classy, substantive, honorable, and persuasive. The exact opposite of many of the posts at this website.
And I’m an impartial observer; I couldn’t care less about either Buchanan or Lukacs.
Your idea of a “Sniper’s Tower” was a good one. I suggest another category, maybe called the “Slime Pit”, for commentary of this sort.
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Dylan,
Yes, I’ve been reading your blog. Unlike some people (ahem), I have no problem whatsoever with rational criticism, indeed, I appreciate it and try to learn from it. Critique functions like competition in the free market--it keeps us honest and makes us better.
What I have contempt for are things like accusing someone of anti-Semitism and then two years later trying to work him (!). Did Gancarski learn anything? Is he contrite? Well, he was up to his old tricks again, saying things like we were insinuating, “David Irving isn’t really that bad, when ya stop to think of it.”
What I’ve read on your blog has been rational, and I do think that you have a healthy aversion to paleo-infighting and you want Takimag to be better. I’ll tolerate the whole “punk” thing… But keep up the good work on your blog!
Ploni,
A new section called “The Slime Pit” is a great idea! I’ll get on it ASAP....
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Richard,
I understand that your main issue is with tone and method, not critique. I will let Gancarski defend himself on those points.
Dylan
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I never thought I’d hear the words “fan club” and “Scott McConnell” in the same sentence. I don’t know anyone who reads his “American Conservative” newsletter.
As for Gancarski, he is a white boy who wears dreadlocks. That alone should tell you all you need to know.
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Though your position here seems convincing, I wish Takimag would devote more attention to issues beyond internecine warfare in the blogosphere. Over the course of this year I have found myself steadily less interested in coming here, because a greater and greater proportion of the columns seems devoted to these sorts of teapot tempests. I realize you must think there is a good justification for this, but as an outsider this seems disturbingly parallel to the mainstream media’s tendency to cover itself first and foremost.
I could really use more sound information on solid topics such as economics, social issues, religion, and culture. Rolling the local drunks is someone’s job, I suppose, but it shouldn’t lead the nightly news, as it were.
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It is a sign of success of TakiMag that people - even if it is only a bottom feeder like Garc - devote their time and money to attacking this site. Seems the NeoCon money machine is not quite sure yet how to silence the opinions voiced here. Taki is not as easily bought off as TAC, where I was and still am a charter subscriber. At TAC the NeoCons followed the same script I have seen at other publications - Reason Magazine comes to mind - that found a following by speaking openly about issues that were off limits in the MSM. They buy it and install one of their own (Ron Unz in the case of TAC) as the gatekeeper against uncomfortable truths.
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I’ve never worked with Unz; my contributions to the magazine (some 10 or more stories, five or six cover stories) mostly came before his time. But I think it’s a mistake to blame him for anything. I haven’t seen any change in editorial direction since he took over. Many good pieces still appear in the magazine, and we shouldn’t be churlish toward Mr. Unz, whose generosity saved the magazine from closing. My objections relate to the private scorn which McConnell and Hopkins feel for populist and religious conservatives--which leaks out in crucial ways, for instance in their betrayal of Mr. Buchanan. Let’s leave the good Mr. Unz out of this. While we might not agree with his views, he has not, by all accounts, been an intrusive publisher.
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There once was a man named Buchanan,
In whose face his friend Scott kicked some sand in.
Takimag drew the sword,
While the crowd looked on, bored.
Wake me up when there’s just one left standin’.
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Thanks for the limericks, Ploni. They’re a lot of fun. Here’s another:
I knew an old Hun named Lukacs
whose feet we’re unworthy to wash.
He issued a bull;
of shit it was full.
But at least it appealed to the posh.
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I would like to second John on the Unz situation.
He was never a “neocon” in any strict sense of the term. Even if formerly he wasn’t perfect on immigration, his support of people like Steve Sailer and others reveals that he’s willing to patron restrictionist positions. While I was at TAC, he had very little editorial influence on the magazine--I now wish he had more.
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Puts one in mind of what Hemingway called writers in
New York City: ‘angleworms in a bottle.’
Later dudes, I’ve got to go across the river and into
the trees. Always good to get out of manhattan;
wherein everything’s small at ground level
especially the coffee shops, though extruded upward
into the sky like the island grew hairs on its head
and suddenly saw a ghost.
What a town. I only mention it since it tells the
beltway or d.c. what to do, and that’s always crap.
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