This Week in Reaction (2015/06/07)

Nydwracu is brilliant as well as timely here in his coverage of Curtis Yarvin’s apparent admitted disinvite to this year’s St. Louis Strange Loop Conference due to the antifa antics of the execrable POS Steve Klabnik, inter alia. “The distinctive whining scream of the Puritan, speaking power to truth as is his usual fashion. Recognizable in any century.”

“Banned at Strange Loop”… instameme for the disaffected right.

Brett Stevens was all over this thing like a cheap suit. He has early coverage here and here and some excellent commentary here and here. Allum Bokhari at Breitbart increases the streisanding.

Dante’s round-up plus good commentary: Punishment is Vindication.

Hats off to Clark Hat and Andrea Castillo for making a huge stink about Strange Loop’s fickle change of policy from the very moments of the controversy on the evening (EDT) of 3 June.

Perhaps the best summary plus commentary goes to Shylock Holmes, of whom I had not previously heard (doh!!): ‘Stop oppressing us!’, the lynch mob thugs cry . Do RTWT. He ends with some well-deserved imprecatory prayers, and a good bit of advice:

Steve Klabnik, you are a bully and a coward. You may dress your tribalism and will to power in the garments of “social justice”, but you cannot hide the sheer malignity of your actions. You are undeserving of living in a free society.

Bodil Stokke, you are a malicious and mean-spirited thug. The glee with which you gang up on others is repugnant and contemptible. I cannot conceive how any person of character would be willing to associate with you.

Alex Payne, you are a miserable hypocrite and a craven fool. Yours is the thinnest gruel of thin liberty that cannot even speak its name honestly. You are unworthy of licking Curtis Yarvin’s boots.

Gore the matador and not the cape.

If you meet any of these folks IRL, be sure to wish them a “Nice Day”. Then on Saturday, Richard Brookes over at Improprietary Influence chimes in with his own artful take in A Strange Loop.

Yarvin is only the beginning. Of course, as Moldbug, he really is an extremist. Not all that many technologists are actual supporters of bringing back monarchy and give consideration to the merits of slavery. And most of us are more careful than Moldbug was when he started leaking Yarvin’s tech ideas into his political blog. The purpose of blackballing Yarvin is not merely to hurt one fairly harmless reactionary (I say harmless because Moldbug explicitly endorses passivism, staying out of conflict with the current order until it destroys itself). The purpose is to create a hostile environment for conservatives. Now it is established that spare-time right-wing politicial opinions can get you blackballed, the criteria for exclusion will inevitably become broader. Once conservatives are knocked out, moderates will be turned on.

Again, tactics. No complaints from me, I’m a political extremist myself. But neutral parties might want to consider what future they want for technology.

Yep. Brooke’s article got linked at Hacker News which generated this bit of [flagged] discussion (while it lasts). Yet more from Brookes on the matter: The Case for Ad Hominem.

Let’s see what else…?

Anomalyuk has got a nice note on Government and Management and how modern politics tends to select for neither.

Neocolonial’s Morality and Atrocity is problematic to say the least. I won’t say it’s wrong, but I’ve got some issues with a couple of those definitions. Also conceiving Georgism as Reduction of Parasitism.

Let us review the #OfficialNRx #BestOfTheWeek candidates, shall we?

“Official” Neoreactionary Bests of the Week

Nick Land has Scott Alexander talking about AI safety. Alexander’s lucidity here is helpful: “Human civilization is a thing that isn’t a computer.” Then after mulling it around for a while, Land has a follow-on: Short Circuit II, which is absolutely required reading. Porn and sugary snacks are obvious ways modern man has developed to bypass costly, but adaptively beneficial behaviors, and instead trigger human reward “circuits” directly. How many more things like that are there? @Outsideness just kicked that search into high gear, and we’re starting to see such maladaptive short-circuits everywhere. For “Short Circuit II”, Nick Land earns an ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Runner-up☀. (Be careful with that, it’s plastic.)

Spandrell considers The Purpose of Absurdity and more importantly why it isn’t obvious to even very smart people. Then he returns with some clarification in The Cause of Absurdity. As usual, Spandrell is excellent, and doesn’t even seem to break a sweat:

The fact is Western culture has its own conception of power, a very naive construct that prevents us from noticing how things actually work. We seem to think people have ideas, and act because they believe those ideas, and power just comes out of the strength of those ideas. Call it faith in Christ, or Protestantism, or liberalism. Our conception of history is the history of ideas. Never we stop to think who comes up with this ideas, how they change, why some spread and others don’t.

Vladimir, who’s reign as Most Valuable Commentator has gone unchallenged since Handle started his own blog, makes a featured appearance:

Nowadays, however, the phenomenon of “reality TV” has broken with these restraints of genre, and celebrities are expected to give interviews in which they pour out their feelings and personal dramas in the most undignified and degraded way. This leads to a competition for the most extreme drama one can come up with, without any restraints of propriety and dignity — both for the media competing for public attention and by the celebrities competing for media prominence. Clearly, Jenner and his media handlers have accomplished a tremendous success in this regard.

It seems to me that this phenomenon has been brought about by sheer market and career pressures in the media industry, rather than ideological pressures. It’s always in one’s interest to try to push the envelope still further in the direction of exploiting these base urges of the masses. Of course, ideological pressures have had a decisive influence on the specific content of the prominent media stories we’re seeing nowadays. But as for the sheer level of stupidity, nonsense, and degeneracy, regardless of the specific content in which it’s manifested, I believe it would be reached sooner or later under any system that allowed free media competition for capturing the attention and devotion of the mass audience.

For the pair of posts: “On Absurdity”, Spandrell earns an ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Runner-up☀ (Try not to spend it all in one place.) Seeing as everyone was loving the Chinese history mash-up so much, Spandrell also has a nice follow-on to both: Giving the Handle.

But the ☀☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Award☀☀ goes to Watson with his: Rehabilitating the Slippery Slope—going all the way back to first civilizational principles. The first one being: Civilizations don’t just grow on trees. They are very hard work, and more fragile than we realize. This is a major theory piece, despite its name. It’s hard to excerpt fairly, but I cannot agree more with this particularly well put conclusion:

Making a slippery slope argument is not a claim which needs proof but a valid tool which should be used as often as possible. To anyone trying to make changes to long running institutions the burden of proof is on them. In order to change a norm one must demonstrate its purpose, its corollary and tertiary effects. That task is honestly nearly impossible. A need for changing society is an extraordinary claim, which requires extraordinary evidence. From the difficulty of the task at hand it is clear society cannot be changed by the conscious decisions of a few actors but needs guidance from the inherited knowledge of generations.

Congratulations, Watson. (Please send $20 handling to process your award.)

Let’s see… what else wuz goin’ on?

Donovan Greene writes about Failure Mode—principally of the genetic variety. He ends with #OfficialNRx #BestSentenceOfTheWeek:

[I]t is not enough to build a better world. You also have to breed it.

Also, some thoughts on Rolling in the Deep (State). And of course Friday Frags—Strange Loop Limerick Damn Those Racisty South Africans Can Sure Put Up a Fight Edition.

Neovic‘s got a rather cryptic post up over at The Mitrailleuse: Magicians of the Outer Right. In which the recent Neoreactionary Putsch is overlaid with the Order of Nine Angles, a brief history of magick, and the CIA.

Sarah Perry has Puzzle Theory, which is another couple chapters (over 8 kilowords) of something I think.

Free Northerner presents some cant-free thinking On Homosexuals. And on Nihilism and Utopianism as well.

With an assist from Thumotic, Jim adds “Psychopathy” to the list of anti-concepts. Michael Laurel says, “With all due respect, not so fast!”

Lots of classic stuff getting reposted over at Future Primaeval. Anton Silensky’s Material and Social Technologies, Hacking Technological Determinism for Fun and Profit, and The Circle of Equity. Here is Charles Tuttle’s When Did Healthy Communities Become Illegal?

This week at Social Matter

Ryan Landry’s Sunday post is now the #OfficialNRx trigger for the beginning of the Official TWiR week. We begin the week, therefore, with Moving The Muhammad Window—ever Islam-ward. USG incompetence and malfeasance in the middle east, dating back to post WW2 really, has revealed a pattern of Muslim ratchets in which Muslim radicalization is a hard lock against (welcome) restoration movements, such as the current Egyptian junta.

The Christians will pine for the days of Mubarak, but no one else will. This is a good warning to the few folks in America who hope for a military coup. National change is not a simple change of the administrators. Who molds minds and who molds the culture?

Americans may just get generals waving rainbow flags. The Egyptian junta that al-Sisi leads is made up of men born after the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and Muslim radicalization.

In the running for Official Best Title of the Week, David Grant returns for a lesson from history with The Athenians Wanted Democracy, And They Got It Good And Hard. So… how hard did they get it? Grant counts the ways.

Next up: How to Replace the Schooling Pattern. By way of diagnosis, Henry offers this gem:

In the modern West, our education systems have failed. Only the pretense of function remains. People who continue to believe in the pretense will disadvantage themselves and their children. Those that accept that it is only a pretense will find new advantages.

How do we get disentangled from “the system”?

Natural economic selection is likely to favor those families that find more efficient, lower-cost ways to find economic niches for their children while only minimally touching the sclerotic education systems of the modern West. While the institutions are dysfunctional, it’s easy to meet professionals, gain access to relevant professional knowledge, and find relevant professional networks.

Because of technology, it’s never been easier to unplug from sclerotic institutions. (Even non-sclerotic ones, for that matter. Which explains the slow decades long die-off of voluntary organizations, especially of and for men.) But never have so few been willing to blaze their own trails and make their own luck. If particularists care about the preservation of their particularities, they’ll need to adapt to these technologies, and be in front of the curve in using it for their own ends to advantage their children. And no… that does not mean just buying little Johnny an I-phone at age 10.

This week in Henry Dampier

Henry Dampier starts out the week talking about The Electoral Addiction. Political theater, the pretense of democracy, is actually quite essential. It diverts attention away from the true seats of power and how they work, and into benign and predictable pastimes such as voting, issues boosterism, grassrootsing, bloviating, demonstrating, protesting, and rioting.

Then Henry went silent, except for his Social Matter piece mentioned above. I hope everything is okay… Henry, via private correspondence, has just been busy IRL. Being a super-blogger is not as easy as it looks on the internet.

This week in 28 Sherman

Son of Brock Landers was up to his usual verbosity this week. On Monday, we find China Reaching Out. As the American (USG-based) Empire inexorably erodes, her clients are beginning to look elsewhere for sovereignty.

I really liked Those Old, Effective, and Competent Racists. It turns out people who used to manage South Africa have some utility after all.

These old men who are over the hill and should be retiring are embarrassing not just a young opponent but a young military of a nation the world is told is a potential rising power. The interviewed experts praise the efforts of the mercenaries but golly shucks it’s just, oh well, those men are probably racists. Forget that they are working with the all black Nigerian military to save blacks; they might be racists. The article even allows another person to take up precious news space to then defend them against the accusation. That has no bearing on the subject yet it is what the article wants to make certain you understand. Competent, effective, winning but problematic.

North America is a white continent. Africa could have been.

Here is Cthulu Swims Left: President Edition. In 1971, President Nixon had the misfortune to see this episode of All in the Family. You’ll never believe what happened next.

Finally, An Italian World War One Postcard.

This week in A House with No Child

Michael Laurel seems to be back to his normal (feverish) posting pace. He begins the week by pointing us to a big, illuminating essay about Dostoevsky on Dark Charisma. Quite excellent.

Monday, he speculates on The real reason for the Anti-Tobacco Crusade. (Hint: it makes us too smart…)

Next, Michael has a post mortem on one of his a failed predictions. Learning from mistakes is anti-fragile. Also A fascinating Tobacco link.

On Thursday, Michael avers: Tobacco does not cause 400,000 American deaths a year! Quoting this study:

To be blunt, there is no credible evidence that 400,000 deaths per year—or any number remotely close to 400,000—are caused by tobacco. Nor has that estimate been adjusted for the positive effects of smoking – less obesity, colitis, depression, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and, for some women, a lower incidence of breast cancer. The actual damage from smoking is neither known nor knowable with precision. Responsible statisticians agree that it is impossible to attribute causation to a single variable, like tobacco, when there are multiple causal factors that are correlated with one another. The damage from cigarettes is far less than it is made out to be.

All I know is: Cigarettes put men on the moon! We haven’t been back since 1973. That’s proof enough for me. Also: The unknown secret behind these plane crashes? Maybe. I’m skeptical.

Finally, on Sunday, good news from the Orthodox. I pretty sure the Roman Pontiff would say that, too… but he’d probably feel like he needed to apologize for it for some reason.

This week… Elsewhere

Briggs takes up Bill Nye’s bluff: “Let’s Talk” About Global Warming. Okay, Let’s. Silly Briggs. Don’t you know that Serious National Discussion™ means Power speaks to Truth with a Megaphone? Now eat your peas. Also: Why Global Warming Models Are Hot And Bothered.

Matt Briggs is also gonna be at The Heartland Conference next week, and my-oh-my look at that swag. Briggs also gets reposted over to Breitbart, which a well deserved feather in his well fitted cap.

Mark Citadel has a review of Bryce Laliberte’s What is Neoreaction?. Of all things. That book is very hard to get these days. I’m certain Mark’s positive review and kind words for Bryce will be appreciated.

BW Rabbit has coverage of and commentary on the Cuckelodean Scandal.

Sonic takes note of the fact, along with due umbrage, that Elon Musk is the highest-paid government employee.

Dangerous children (dangerous to the establishment at least) Often Learn to Swim Before Learning to Crawl. Warning: Really cute videos.

Kakistocracy examines The Achievement Gap Examined. Depending on how you examine said gap, it can be mighty lucrative business. One might even call it “privileged”.

Filed under “Better Start Taking This Kali Yuga Thing MOAR Seriously” (as well as “Doh I Missed This Last Week”): Mark Citadel has got two of an N-part series: Gazing Into the Age of Kali (Part I, Part II). Those predictions are absolutely amazing. Yet I do not see a necessarily super-natural prescience in them, so much as the careful examination of human nature coupled with deep insight into the natural law. Of course the ability to do that h”Unaided” human reason is never unaided. Some of these are absolutely amazing, coming as they did 5000 years ago, in their specificity to the modern condition:

Prediction #6 – “In this age illicit connection with women will render many women and children uncared for. Circumstantially, the women will try to become independent of the protection of men, and marriage will be performed as a matter of formal agreement between man and woman.”

…

Prediction #7 – “The brahmanas are traditionally intelligent men, and thus they will be able to pick up modern education to the topmost rank, but as far as moral and religious principles are concerned, they shall be the most fallen.”

…

Prediction #16 – “And one who is very clever at juggling words will be considered a learned scholar.”

And now for the jaw-dropper:

Prediction #19 – “Pre-cooked food is sold is sold in the public squares”

Five thousand years ago.

The Prophet CWNY has up The Darkness Deepens.

OLF has a big, link-rich rant that’s about a whole lot more than Neoreaction, State and Taxes. His closing poem was pretty good:

“They shall be the finest minds,
these men who give of themselves to me.
For high IQ I shall breed them,
and in the anvil of Antiversity forge them.
They will be of indominable will and sharp wit.
In great Hyperstition shall I clad them,
and with the mightiest Horrorism will they be armed.
They will be untouched by labeling or trolling,
no entryism will blight them.
They will have dank memes, science and history,
so that no foe can best them in debate.
They are my bulwark against the Cathedral.
They are the Defenders of Civilisation.
They are my Neoreactionaries,
and they shall know no degeneracy.”

Mr. Roach names the Jew in the broader context of A Culture in Decay. Also some straight talk on Strategy and National Interests. After delivering a pox on both their houses to “idealists” and (so-called) “realists”, he outlines a few interests which would not have seemed strange to American presidents 200 years ago or so. Which is how you know they’re spot on.

Real Gary has some choice quotes from Jeff Cooper’s Principles of Personal Defense. The money quote: “After we have arranged for our survival, we can discuss sociology.” True dat! Also some good commentary here: Black Grievance Industry at a Traffic Stop.

Over at The Orthosphere, Kristor pens Babel. No cult, no culture. Many cults, confusion, which leads to no cult, no culture.

The West has long sought to recuse itself from all conflict about cults, so as to avoid wars of religion. But there is no such recusal. To recuse from a debate is implicitly to tender and advocate a proposition within it, to the effect that the debate is not worth having. In the case of the debate over our proper common cult, it is an effectual proposal that everyone agree to the notion that, as unimportant, the selection of a superordinate cult is simply not relevant to common social life as lived; and the only way that this could be so is if cults as such were not possible to carry into practice, or therefore true.

A follow up, of sorts, from Kristor: The Way of all Ways. He also has a fine post up on The Circumstantial Injustice of Taxes on Property—implying the circumstantial justice of them.

Crass.us has all you need to know about Bruce “Caitlyn” Jenner: “Men who dress like women are trying very hard be vampishly sexed-up caricatures of women. Wearing a corset in public is the main point.” Yup. And it used to be funny. Also: America’s Unsullied (heh! I get that reference) and The future of Chinese hacking into US companies and government: H1-B visas.

Wasenlightened has a bit of poetry for us with Fables of the Deconstruction, a tale about pulling up the ladder after it’s too late.

Reactionary Tree has the Top 100 Most Dangerous Cities (Thoughtcrime Edition). 100 things you cannot not see, but which are nevertheless illegal to notice.

Over at Carcinisation, Alicorn has some excellent thoughts on The Memetic Commons—specifically preserving them.

These [“costs of redrawing memetic commons”] indicate that there should be a bias for keeping whatever the current memetic commons layout is, just to save the trouble of moving the fences – of course you can argue that the transition is worth the costs thereof (especially if you’re aiming at standardization, disambiguation, or other aims that make the entire commons more navigable), but this is a threshold you must specifically overcome; you can’t just declare that it would be better if this fence had been six feet to the left all along and therefore everyone had better pick up a post and shuffle.

And he (or she?) goes on to list the signs (of cheating) to watch out for.

Sonic catches Yglesias telling the truth on taxes. That’s a relief! My aren’t you relieved? I sure am relieved.

Oriental Neoreactionary has some thoughts on Turkish Elections—principally don’t trust them, which quite sadly is a harder sell in The States. Also the Winner.

Sorry this is late. It’s supposed to come out while you sleep on Monday morning. We’ll see if that ever happens… In the meantime: Keep on Reactin’! Til next week… TRP, over and out!!