Yarvin as Eminence Grise of the US Right, The Social Recession, China to Stay the Course/Resist Americanization At All Costs, Rishi's Poisoned Chalice, Peak-Click Internet
Prophet Hollobeque was, as ever, ahead of the time with The Possibility of an Island.
There's an episode of the OC (which was around when the internet was still just for nerds) where the 40-something dad is teased for having no friends. When I was growing up my dad had barely any friends. Now approaching 40, mine are starting to fade out of my life.
This is something that should only happen when you're married, not when you're a teenager. It's a tragedy if kids are alone.
I am no longer on other forms of social media and was cutting all ties until I happened upon this version. I am still in debate phase as I believe most people only desire entertainment and not actually do anything (in my case my promotions are obvious).
Your stack is right on point in this regard.
I cherry picked this sentence: many of these same trends are present elsewhere because its catalyst is primarily the internet itself.
Internet is not the be all, its a diversion of precious time.
What sort of time you call this? I just conducted a rigorous scientific investigation as a result of which for the better edification of yourself and my colleagues I report nowhere on Earth is it Saturday.
Moldbug is no more threat to any soft or hard power than any other blogger. He could be advocating for cloning Hitler and making him God Emperor, it would be the same.
It was enlightening for me to revisit the story of Scott Alexander Siskin, also more or less "just a prolific blogger", who was doxed and given the 2-minutes-of-hate treatment by the Megafons of Sauron 2 or so years ago.
He took his blog offline, now it's back.
These people don't even get think tank funding. In Hungary we have more money shoved into "Soros blogs" than all the money given to Western dissident writers together. Our backwater of 10 million worths supporting thousands of paid shills who push the same agenda that you can also get from Netflix anyway, dubbed in Hungarian.
There's something so petty about "investigating" bloggers like Yarvin by media that gets its funding from the DNC or owned by Disney or the Saudis or both.
The underlying death wish, I want you to be under public pressure, fired, blacklisted and to die on the street makes this viciously nasty. Meanwhile, anime avatars on twitter advising the same journos to "learn to code" get the ban immediately, that's somehow more antisocial.
„Karl Marx famously concluded that capitalism alienates the worker from the means of production.“
Social atomization is not the same thing as worker alienation. In fact the latter is one of the weakest parts of Marx’s philosophy, and since he’s really talking about industrial societies it’s not clear how nationalising the factories helps one bit. There’s also a contradiction where he sees workers being alienated from each other by capitalism but also forming a well socialised class that can seize the means of production as a unified group.
Atomization is a product of modern society, though it’s hard to see how to reverse that too.
I've had the thought the main goal was the elimination of peasants who were not subjected to the hierarchy, kill the most independent off and enslave the rest to supply workers for the industrialists and feed the human cities.
The best social arrangements were made after Ww2 with the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats finding common ground, and something similar in effect in America happened with the Social Contract with Labor, Businesses and the government.
>But the Boomers were bored so we got this..,.
...and the Boomers admit it, now that they’re older.
Moldbug as eminence grise of US right? The person who fills that role will have to be more authentically Christian adjacent/sympathetic. Plus I’ll have to indulge in calling out his GAE-aligned Covid perspective, which cannot be reconciled with the rank and file, regardless of how backroom his influence is. The dynamics of the US right are evolving quickly and, I’d argue, not directionally towards his candidacy
We can't prescribe the historic roles anyone is going to play. It is all a work in progress. Curtis is a grey eminence of sorts...also a sperg shaman luring the Ghost Dancers of the Right towards alternatives that may be more active and vigorous...and a Socratic gad-fly keeping debate honest. Above all, he is a visible presence who shows that it is possible to navigate the complex spaces between the system and its enemies.
Moldbug is afforded the luxury of navigating the cathedral and its enemies that many are not. His prior contributions are commendable but given key missteps, IMHO the baton must be passed on
Wittgenstein once wrote that if lions could speak, we would not be able to understand them. This sums up the situation with Curtis Yarvin (may his roar be strong!).
The regime-compliant are now fast evolving into a sub-species that cannot readily communicate or understand, let alone empathise with, others. Yarvin is anything but a fascist. Those who understand Yarvin do not necessarily agree with him. Nor should they. The good guru is not the one you disagree with, but the one who gets you to understand, to think for yourself. Yarvin is outstanding at this. because he is (regardless of his shortcomings) an iconoclast.
Yarvin is waking people up. He is essential. He is the only political theorist in the USA who is offering new ideas to the public. The rest are either apologists for the regime or pimps for seedy political sects and cliques.
Regime-compliance is actually becoming its own subgroup, only being around each other and marrying each other, they may just end up forming an inbred breakaway ethnicity at this point
I agree but would put it differently. The regime sponsors the fragmentation of the population and the denationalisation of life, above all of economics. At the same time the regime also enables the formation of groups and sub-groups whose various confected identities facilitate mobilisation in defence of the emerging status quo. The enthusiasm of various regime compliant tribes and castes indicates that social engineering works...at least for Cthulhu.
Here in Australia it is very, very patchy and mixed. Some of the most productive and reliable people on the planet live in rural and remote Australia, but there are also some very dysfunctional communities and one or two areas that attract people pushed to the fringes by living costs in the capital cities. There are some regional centres that are thriving, others that have been dying since the invention of the horseless carriage. The cities too are mixed. Several generations of ill-conceived social engineering and smug, thoughtless, economic policy have created problems where none needed to exist. As always, solutions are pimped by the senseless and ambitious. IMHO there are no solutions that do not involve full employment, investment (public and private) in productive infrastructure, public spirit and at least a degree of honesty about the generations of neglect in relation to training and education.
Whatever hope there is will come from fear of war...nothing less will disturb the torpor and selfishness of our decision-makers.
This might sound cruel, but if I was tasked with discrediting him, I'd just point out that if we divide his real world impact with the number of characters he typed over the past decade, he's the least influential public intellectual in terms of efficiency.
But his attackers want the strongest straw man that they can still easily destroy to maximize the crowd's pleasure.
I'm sure there's a Marvel movie analogy in there, but to come up with one I prefer to take a bullet.
If they did and he gave in to temptation, he'd deserve a Viking funeral with academics and journalists chained to the deck of his burning funeral-ship.
The social recession is further proof that politics is war by other means. Leviathan/Cthulhu thrives on anomie and despair. The post-liberal state (which is actively Sado-Malthusian) seeks its advantage, above all its security, in the demoralisation of the masses. Those forces that foster cohesion at the grassroots level (stable heteronormative families, but also enduring friendships, communal feeling, inherited forms of social and cultural life, organised religion) threaten it. As Leviathan/Cthulhu develops and grows stronger, people will become weaker and sicker. Fostering isolation is an essential part of this.
The indications are that Xi understands what he is doing. There won't be a Chinese Gorbachev or a Yeltsin.
The post-hegemonic era is under way. American hard power is weakening. The US is behind the Russians and Chinese in hypersonic avionics, behind Russia in air defense and satellites and incapable of matching a combined Russian/Chinese military-industrial opposition.
American soft power is collapsing amongst aspirational types world-wide, above all in the developing world. The demonstration effect of diversity, equity and inclusion in American schools and the crime wave in the cities is having an effect. The American model of oligarchy combined with a technocracy constrained by racial and gender egalitarianism has a very limited appeal.
The irresistible mood has struck me at roughly one third through your nourishing write-up.
In a way, Yarvin’s Cathedral = a fancier term for key echelons of McConkey’s managerial class 😉 Sure, the prescriptions of what to do differ.
An opportunity not to be wasted to plug The Circulation of Elites, a stack brimming with well-researched insightful content if costumed in somewhat dry academic attire → https://thecirculationofelites.substack.com/ 😇
1) I'd agree about the Marxist notion of alienating the workers if we were in a capitalist system but I can't because I don't believe we are any longer.
2)I find it deeply disingenuous when anti-brexit activists blame Brexit for the UK's current issues when they are clearly resulting from ~15 years of money printing (especially during Covid), covid lockdowns and now anti-Russian beligerance causing an energy crisis.
3) Anyone paying attention will have been aware of Labour's stated positions over those same issues, plus the BLM riots, and thus should know they've been on the wrong side at every step ie; more lockdowns, more beligerance, more BLM grift, more globalist totalitarianism.
Re atomisation, it is becoming clear in my homeland that if it is nobody's business what you do, the corollary is nobody cares what you do. The end point will be nobody cares, period. And the crap media describing everyone from trans to gay to GAA, horse racing people whatever as a community is rendering the word meaningless.
Our national broadcaster sees our serious and growing housing crisis as something that will give strength to right wing populism, which is awful. There is no right wing here with everyone chasing the socially liberal vote. Literally no right wing. There is no party to represent the over 33 pc who voted against gay marriage or liberalising abortion law. The notion is that they are old.
My point is that Yarvin fills a liberal need, they need him. Masters is too intelligent to give too many hostages to fortune. Ditto Vance.
Two points. 1) Yarvin is bold enough to go further than Masters or Vance. He can do this because he is not seeking public office. But he opens up space. It is useful to have lucid and balanced people to the right of the electable types. The alternative is that this space would be occupied by loonies or midwits. 2) Yarvin indeed fills a need of the regime, but he does so in ways that will ultimately weaken it. The regime is unconsciously crafting its nemesis. By labelling everyone to the right of Liz Cheney a fascist, white supremacist or extremist, the regime is steadily fortifying a vast range of self-consciously reactionary elements. If the alternative to A is B and A is unendurable, then B becomes a viable option, however much it is stigmatised. The regime is becoming enchanted with its own narratives. This will lead it into any number of dangerous errors.
As I see it, one of Yarvin's many functions is to simultaneously nudge the regime as a whole towards shaping the resistance that will constrain it while ultimately inspiring those elements of the elite that listen to dissident/dissenting opinion with a degree of sympathy. The latter will one day weaken the regime from within and will help form the successor regime, as elites circulate.
Then again, maybe I am full of shit, but if I am right about this Curtis Yarvin is performing his own ideas. He is a renegade cast out of the Cathedral, misunderstood by those he calls hobbits, but followed by those he calls 'dark elves'.
I hate using Tolkienian analogies, so will shift to Lynchian allusions: Curtis is a magician and fire walks with him.
I agree with your point about "opening up space". There needs to be someone who will lucidly and intelligently clear away the undergrowth and cut away the dead wood around the central 'stuff' of the argument.
One I see here is foreigners and 'modern' Brits laughing at the old-fashioned Imperial system. They are unaware of it at all and laugh because it sounds old-fashioned. The fact that it was taught to their parents and was used to build the British Empire and put man on the moon is simply met with a blank stare. This is what needs to be cleared away. When you then explain that a foot is a person's foot and an inch is the breadth of a thumb, that there are more common factors to twelve than ten etc they are less sure of themselves.
My point is that the innate reaction is to laugh and quickly dismiss either new ideas or revitalisation of the old. It takes the charismatic or simply forceful to push through the stereotype.
James, could not agree more. The conventional 'trads' and 'conservatives' do a hopeless job at explaining the old order and what we have lost or making any kind of a case for recovering whatever we can of it. An intellectually alert reactionary like Curtis Yarvin is demonstrating how it is done. We need more like him.
Re innate reactions, by their instincts fools identify themselves, so do those with insight. The contrast says it all.
Only party not terrified of Irish Times is SF, whose unwillingness to submit to media bullying is described as chilling. And yep, they have many skeletons in their closet. Not an SF voter but no Provos, no GFA, ever
What is terrifying about the Irish Times? Are they seriously influential? Do they deploy investigative journalists as attack dogs?
I have always thought that professional politicians are fools to focus too much on the media which is one sector even more distrusted and despised than politics. Leaders with assurance do not take directions from the kinds of people who write for the press or front tv shows. The influence of 'media advisers' on politics is profoundly negative.
The dreaded Pol adviser class, paid by taxpayer of course, are media driven and 'on' 24/7. The parties employ people to read papers and listen to radio and have instant reply ready. A single woke liberal ideal drives media and they are almost upset we fail to present them with a genuine populist right leaning party against which to be 'brave' and to strive against the darkness. An example would be a female journo on our national broadcaster RTE describing a really critical and debutating housing crisis as bad insofar as it might feed right wing - chance would be a fine thing!
It is still odd, though. Who do FF think is their constituency? SF own unity, FG as ever represent the bourgeoisie both urban and rural, Labour just hang on to some public service workers and barrister class. So who are their intended voters?
Dead Internet is so real. The internet feels like a mirage to me. Why does it feel like 5 years ago it was bigger? The fuck is even going on. I am going insane.
Dead Internet is a half-truth pointing to a one-and-a-half-truth. The population are being zombiefied by infotainment, cannabis and sleep deprivation. The deadened affect produced by constant immersion in dematerialised experience fortifies these influences, arousing the Death Instinct at the subconscious level. Life is becoming unendurable. We are being led off a cliff by the regime and the culture developed, marketed and imposed by its allies and servitors.
I skimmed the Curtis Yarvin piece and will go back for a deep read later. But while Niccolo’s article is still new:
(1) Yarvin’s first step is for someone to campaign and win on “I am going to assume absolute power in Washington and rebuild the government”. In what world will this happen?
Every president we’ve had recently but Trump was approved by the system and all of them had Democrat or Republican support. If a Republican speaks like this, “fascist!”, and a Democrat will not speak like this as they enjoy the status quo… for now, at least.
I don’t see winning a popular vote as being part of regime change in America.
(2) America aggressively suppresses what it perceives to be its greatest internal threats. Marxist-inspired class movements (unions, socialism, communism) were a common collection of threats.
The typical pattern is “first, violence; second, co-opting”. Read about the bloody history of unions, how effective they used to be, and how weak they are after being co-opted.
If Yarvin presented an actual threat to the United States, would the FBI not be at his doorstep and the NSA tracking all of his supporters online? Look at what Trudeau did to the Freedom Convoy.
Perhaps the state does not recognize him as a threat, perhaps he’s ahead of his time and will prove prophetic in a few decades, or perhaps my view of “America suppresses and co-opts the most dangerous movements that threaten it” is wrong
The regime has no need (or capacity) to lock up every threat. It would cost too much. Curtis is tolerable because he has no mass following. Even the USSR had critics and dissidents it did not lock up.
Yeah, no mass following answers it for me. George Menyhei said above that “Moldbug is no more threat to any soft or hard power than any other blogger”. Even if his ideas are considered dangerous, without followers willing to enact them, they are not much of a threat
Regardless, an interesting figure to discuss and I’ll be reading Niccolo’s linked article in depth later. I’ve known of Yarvin for a while, but haven’t read much of him
The UK trap is presented as austerity vs more crushing debt to help the common people- I wonder if these are the only 2 choices? We’re all in the same trap.
Debts and Deficits are of course stealth taxes on all especially the commons, and the debt payments just eat up the budget.
The answer I think is take the petrodollar to the next logical step of actual energy money: 1 KwH = 1$ (actually a Dime 10 cents is roughly current rate average). The energy has real value, wars are fought for energy and justly. Say Shilling or Euro KwH for England and Europe.
The problem of inflation spiking energy costs causing vicious loop is solved, Inflating energy tied money actually lowers many if not all costs- more cheap money from ever cheaper energy.
Not to mention you can drill, mine, solar, wind, nuke your way out of debt.
TLW, your comment above assumes that helping the common people is on the agenda, an heroic assumption in my view.
The Russians are moving towards formalising transnational settlements and exchange using currencies backed by resources (above all energy) and precious metals. This takes time, but it is definitely happening. The Russians are patient, but deadly serious. The system (SWIFT, the BIS, the petrodollar) it is all going. The Russians are even moving towards creating their own international gold exchange in competition with London (this will reduce the ability of the Western IC to play their historic games). Hard currency is on its way back.
Where did this 'we' come from? Nothing divides people as quickly as monetary policy. Nothing. It is all 'us' and 'them'.
The existing divisions within the oligarchy on energy related matters are already white-hot too. The energy-rich states (all Red) threatened Biden with withdrawing all public sector pension funds from investment banks should they ever boycott or deprioritise the hydrocarbon sector. I'd expect that this did not go down well with those sections of the IC closest to the Biden administration.
Yes, he did indeed and got the job done, though he would probably have mixed feelings about the uses to which Australia has put the last 70 years, given the sacrifices involved. One can only hope for everyone's sake that your optimism is vindicated.
Prophet Hollobeque was, as ever, ahead of the time with The Possibility of an Island.
There's an episode of the OC (which was around when the internet was still just for nerds) where the 40-something dad is teased for having no friends. When I was growing up my dad had barely any friends. Now approaching 40, mine are starting to fade out of my life.
This is something that should only happen when you're married, not when you're a teenager. It's a tragedy if kids are alone.
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I am no longer on other forms of social media and was cutting all ties until I happened upon this version. I am still in debate phase as I believe most people only desire entertainment and not actually do anything (in my case my promotions are obvious).
Your stack is right on point in this regard.
I cherry picked this sentence: many of these same trends are present elsewhere because its catalyst is primarily the internet itself.
Internet is not the be all, its a diversion of precious time.
What sort of time you call this? I just conducted a rigorous scientific investigation as a result of which for the better edification of yourself and my colleagues I report nowhere on Earth is it Saturday.
Moldbug is no more threat to any soft or hard power than any other blogger. He could be advocating for cloning Hitler and making him God Emperor, it would be the same.
It was enlightening for me to revisit the story of Scott Alexander Siskin, also more or less "just a prolific blogger", who was doxed and given the 2-minutes-of-hate treatment by the Megafons of Sauron 2 or so years ago.
He took his blog offline, now it's back.
These people don't even get think tank funding. In Hungary we have more money shoved into "Soros blogs" than all the money given to Western dissident writers together. Our backwater of 10 million worths supporting thousands of paid shills who push the same agenda that you can also get from Netflix anyway, dubbed in Hungarian.
There's something so petty about "investigating" bloggers like Yarvin by media that gets its funding from the DNC or owned by Disney or the Saudis or both.
The underlying death wish, I want you to be under public pressure, fired, blacklisted and to die on the street makes this viciously nasty. Meanwhile, anime avatars on twitter advising the same journos to "learn to code" get the ban immediately, that's somehow more antisocial.
Thank you.
I shall be employing Learn To Code frequently .
Now that Elon's in charge it's less game though.
„Karl Marx famously concluded that capitalism alienates the worker from the means of production.“
Social atomization is not the same thing as worker alienation. In fact the latter is one of the weakest parts of Marx’s philosophy, and since he’s really talking about industrial societies it’s not clear how nationalising the factories helps one bit. There’s also a contradiction where he sees workers being alienated from each other by capitalism but also forming a well socialised class that can seize the means of production as a unified group.
Atomization is a product of modern society, though it’s hard to see how to reverse that too.
I've had the thought the main goal was the elimination of peasants who were not subjected to the hierarchy, kill the most independent off and enslave the rest to supply workers for the industrialists and feed the human cities.
Yea I suspect Emile Durkheim is more instructive on this than Marx.
Good point on the contradiction.
Agree. Marx's analysis is crap but it is a useful platform/brand and used to justify Communist and Socialist power grab.
None of them are interested in communal living and socialism is a buzz word to hide the money flows.
The best social arrangements were made after Ww2 with the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats finding common ground, and something similar in effect in America happened with the Social Contract with Labor, Businesses and the government.
>But the Boomers were bored so we got this..,.
...and the Boomers admit it, now that they’re older.
The Suburbs are so boring!
Well.
The Boring Part is fixed.
Moldbug as eminence grise of US right? The person who fills that role will have to be more authentically Christian adjacent/sympathetic. Plus I’ll have to indulge in calling out his GAE-aligned Covid perspective, which cannot be reconciled with the rank and file, regardless of how backroom his influence is. The dynamics of the US right are evolving quickly and, I’d argue, not directionally towards his candidacy
We can't prescribe the historic roles anyone is going to play. It is all a work in progress. Curtis is a grey eminence of sorts...also a sperg shaman luring the Ghost Dancers of the Right towards alternatives that may be more active and vigorous...and a Socratic gad-fly keeping debate honest. Above all, he is a visible presence who shows that it is possible to navigate the complex spaces between the system and its enemies.
Moldbug is afforded the luxury of navigating the cathedral and its enemies that many are not. His prior contributions are commendable but given key missteps, IMHO the baton must be passed on
Wittgenstein once wrote that if lions could speak, we would not be able to understand them. This sums up the situation with Curtis Yarvin (may his roar be strong!).
The regime-compliant are now fast evolving into a sub-species that cannot readily communicate or understand, let alone empathise with, others. Yarvin is anything but a fascist. Those who understand Yarvin do not necessarily agree with him. Nor should they. The good guru is not the one you disagree with, but the one who gets you to understand, to think for yourself. Yarvin is outstanding at this. because he is (regardless of his shortcomings) an iconoclast.
Yarvin is waking people up. He is essential. He is the only political theorist in the USA who is offering new ideas to the public. The rest are either apologists for the regime or pimps for seedy political sects and cliques.
🗨 The regime-compliant are now fast evolving into a sub-species that cannot readily communicate or understand, let alone empathise with, others.
Scary as hell—but rings true, loudly 😟
PS A tad relieved to see ↑ balanced by → https://niccolo.substack.com/p/saturday-commentary-and-review-103/comment/10096738 🙂
🗨 The regime is becoming enchanted with its own narratives. This will lead it into any number of dangerous errors.
Regime-compliance is actually becoming its own subgroup, only being around each other and marrying each other, they may just end up forming an inbred breakaway ethnicity at this point
I agree but would put it differently. The regime sponsors the fragmentation of the population and the denationalisation of life, above all of economics. At the same time the regime also enables the formation of groups and sub-groups whose various confected identities facilitate mobilisation in defence of the emerging status quo. The enthusiasm of various regime compliant tribes and castes indicates that social engineering works...at least for Cthulhu.
If you surveyed Rural Australia or even any area outside of the Prog fever swamps would you find mostly decent, healthy people or dystopian Hellscape?
The Dystopian Hellscape’s here exist but sorry they are the Democratic voting banks and they chose.
Here in Australia it is very, very patchy and mixed. Some of the most productive and reliable people on the planet live in rural and remote Australia, but there are also some very dysfunctional communities and one or two areas that attract people pushed to the fringes by living costs in the capital cities. There are some regional centres that are thriving, others that have been dying since the invention of the horseless carriage. The cities too are mixed. Several generations of ill-conceived social engineering and smug, thoughtless, economic policy have created problems where none needed to exist. As always, solutions are pimped by the senseless and ambitious. IMHO there are no solutions that do not involve full employment, investment (public and private) in productive infrastructure, public spirit and at least a degree of honesty about the generations of neglect in relation to training and education.
Whatever hope there is will come from fear of war...nothing less will disturb the torpor and selfishness of our decision-makers.
This fellow sums it;
“The Privileged vs. The People
America's decadent elite is a plundering barbarian horde, leaving social and material destruction in its wake.”
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-privileged-vs-the-people/
Never mind TAC link, he’s no neckbeard.
This might sound cruel, but if I was tasked with discrediting him, I'd just point out that if we divide his real world impact with the number of characters he typed over the past decade, he's the least influential public intellectual in terms of efficiency.
But his attackers want the strongest straw man that they can still easily destroy to maximize the crowd's pleasure.
I'm sure there's a Marvel movie analogy in there, but to come up with one I prefer to take a bullet.
It ain't over till the obese wine aunt screams. With you 100% on the bullet over Marvel.
If ever they want to tempt Yarvin to Suicide, a Marvel Comic “Moldbug” would have the best chance.
If they did and he gave in to temptation, he'd deserve a Viking funeral with academics and journalists chained to the deck of his burning funeral-ship.
The social recession is further proof that politics is war by other means. Leviathan/Cthulhu thrives on anomie and despair. The post-liberal state (which is actively Sado-Malthusian) seeks its advantage, above all its security, in the demoralisation of the masses. Those forces that foster cohesion at the grassroots level (stable heteronormative families, but also enduring friendships, communal feeling, inherited forms of social and cultural life, organised religion) threaten it. As Leviathan/Cthulhu develops and grows stronger, people will become weaker and sicker. Fostering isolation is an essential part of this.
Many will fall, but The Wang will remain
This is my prediction
The indications are that Xi understands what he is doing. There won't be a Chinese Gorbachev or a Yeltsin.
The post-hegemonic era is under way. American hard power is weakening. The US is behind the Russians and Chinese in hypersonic avionics, behind Russia in air defense and satellites and incapable of matching a combined Russian/Chinese military-industrial opposition.
American soft power is collapsing amongst aspirational types world-wide, above all in the developing world. The demonstration effect of diversity, equity and inclusion in American schools and the crime wave in the cities is having an effect. The American model of oligarchy combined with a technocracy constrained by racial and gender egalitarianism has a very limited appeal.
The irresistible mood has struck me at roughly one third through your nourishing write-up.
In a way, Yarvin’s Cathedral = a fancier term for key echelons of McConkey’s managerial class 😉 Sure, the prescriptions of what to do differ.
An opportunity not to be wasted to plug The Circulation of Elites, a stack brimming with well-researched insightful content if costumed in somewhat dry academic attire → https://thecirculationofelites.substack.com/ 😇
A couple of thoughts;
1) I'd agree about the Marxist notion of alienating the workers if we were in a capitalist system but I can't because I don't believe we are any longer.
2)I find it deeply disingenuous when anti-brexit activists blame Brexit for the UK's current issues when they are clearly resulting from ~15 years of money printing (especially during Covid), covid lockdowns and now anti-Russian beligerance causing an energy crisis.
3) Anyone paying attention will have been aware of Labour's stated positions over those same issues, plus the BLM riots, and thus should know they've been on the wrong side at every step ie; more lockdowns, more beligerance, more BLM grift, more globalist totalitarianism.
Re atomisation, it is becoming clear in my homeland that if it is nobody's business what you do, the corollary is nobody cares what you do. The end point will be nobody cares, period. And the crap media describing everyone from trans to gay to GAA, horse racing people whatever as a community is rendering the word meaningless.
Our national broadcaster sees our serious and growing housing crisis as something that will give strength to right wing populism, which is awful. There is no right wing here with everyone chasing the socially liberal vote. Literally no right wing. There is no party to represent the over 33 pc who voted against gay marriage or liberalising abortion law. The notion is that they are old.
My point is that Yarvin fills a liberal need, they need him. Masters is too intelligent to give too many hostages to fortune. Ditto Vance.
Two points. 1) Yarvin is bold enough to go further than Masters or Vance. He can do this because he is not seeking public office. But he opens up space. It is useful to have lucid and balanced people to the right of the electable types. The alternative is that this space would be occupied by loonies or midwits. 2) Yarvin indeed fills a need of the regime, but he does so in ways that will ultimately weaken it. The regime is unconsciously crafting its nemesis. By labelling everyone to the right of Liz Cheney a fascist, white supremacist or extremist, the regime is steadily fortifying a vast range of self-consciously reactionary elements. If the alternative to A is B and A is unendurable, then B becomes a viable option, however much it is stigmatised. The regime is becoming enchanted with its own narratives. This will lead it into any number of dangerous errors.
As I see it, one of Yarvin's many functions is to simultaneously nudge the regime as a whole towards shaping the resistance that will constrain it while ultimately inspiring those elements of the elite that listen to dissident/dissenting opinion with a degree of sympathy. The latter will one day weaken the regime from within and will help form the successor regime, as elites circulate.
Then again, maybe I am full of shit, but if I am right about this Curtis Yarvin is performing his own ideas. He is a renegade cast out of the Cathedral, misunderstood by those he calls hobbits, but followed by those he calls 'dark elves'.
I hate using Tolkienian analogies, so will shift to Lynchian allusions: Curtis is a magician and fire walks with him.
I agree with your point about "opening up space". There needs to be someone who will lucidly and intelligently clear away the undergrowth and cut away the dead wood around the central 'stuff' of the argument.
One I see here is foreigners and 'modern' Brits laughing at the old-fashioned Imperial system. They are unaware of it at all and laugh because it sounds old-fashioned. The fact that it was taught to their parents and was used to build the British Empire and put man on the moon is simply met with a blank stare. This is what needs to be cleared away. When you then explain that a foot is a person's foot and an inch is the breadth of a thumb, that there are more common factors to twelve than ten etc they are less sure of themselves.
My point is that the innate reaction is to laugh and quickly dismiss either new ideas or revitalisation of the old. It takes the charismatic or simply forceful to push through the stereotype.
James, could not agree more. The conventional 'trads' and 'conservatives' do a hopeless job at explaining the old order and what we have lost or making any kind of a case for recovering whatever we can of it. An intellectually alert reactionary like Curtis Yarvin is demonstrating how it is done. We need more like him.
Re innate reactions, by their instincts fools identify themselves, so do those with insight. The contrast says it all.
Supporting anything tangential to the Church is low class. It might just be as simple as that.
Only party not terrified of Irish Times is SF, whose unwillingness to submit to media bullying is described as chilling. And yep, they have many skeletons in their closet. Not an SF voter but no Provos, no GFA, ever
What is terrifying about the Irish Times? Are they seriously influential? Do they deploy investigative journalists as attack dogs?
I have always thought that professional politicians are fools to focus too much on the media which is one sector even more distrusted and despised than politics. Leaders with assurance do not take directions from the kinds of people who write for the press or front tv shows. The influence of 'media advisers' on politics is profoundly negative.
The dreaded Pol adviser class, paid by taxpayer of course, are media driven and 'on' 24/7. The parties employ people to read papers and listen to radio and have instant reply ready. A single woke liberal ideal drives media and they are almost upset we fail to present them with a genuine populist right leaning party against which to be 'brave' and to strive against the darkness. An example would be a female journo on our national broadcaster RTE describing a really critical and debutating housing crisis as bad insofar as it might feed right wing - chance would be a fine thing!
It is still odd, though. Who do FF think is their constituency? SF own unity, FG as ever represent the bourgeoisie both urban and rural, Labour just hang on to some public service workers and barrister class. So who are their intended voters?
Dead Internet Theory diagnosis *feels* premature as long as we keep being gracefully Fisted by Foucault 😜
Dead Internet is so real. The internet feels like a mirage to me. Why does it feel like 5 years ago it was bigger? The fuck is even going on. I am going insane.
Dead Internet is a half-truth pointing to a one-and-a-half-truth. The population are being zombiefied by infotainment, cannabis and sleep deprivation. The deadened affect produced by constant immersion in dematerialised experience fortifies these influences, arousing the Death Instinct at the subconscious level. Life is becoming unendurable. We are being led off a cliff by the regime and the culture developed, marketed and imposed by its allies and servitors.
Exactly
You nailed it.
I skimmed the Curtis Yarvin piece and will go back for a deep read later. But while Niccolo’s article is still new:
(1) Yarvin’s first step is for someone to campaign and win on “I am going to assume absolute power in Washington and rebuild the government”. In what world will this happen?
Every president we’ve had recently but Trump was approved by the system and all of them had Democrat or Republican support. If a Republican speaks like this, “fascist!”, and a Democrat will not speak like this as they enjoy the status quo… for now, at least.
I don’t see winning a popular vote as being part of regime change in America.
(2) America aggressively suppresses what it perceives to be its greatest internal threats. Marxist-inspired class movements (unions, socialism, communism) were a common collection of threats.
The typical pattern is “first, violence; second, co-opting”. Read about the bloody history of unions, how effective they used to be, and how weak they are after being co-opted.
If Yarvin presented an actual threat to the United States, would the FBI not be at his doorstep and the NSA tracking all of his supporters online? Look at what Trudeau did to the Freedom Convoy.
Perhaps the state does not recognize him as a threat, perhaps he’s ahead of his time and will prove prophetic in a few decades, or perhaps my view of “America suppresses and co-opts the most dangerous movements that threaten it” is wrong
The regime has no need (or capacity) to lock up every threat. It would cost too much. Curtis is tolerable because he has no mass following. Even the USSR had critics and dissidents it did not lock up.
Yeah, no mass following answers it for me. George Menyhei said above that “Moldbug is no more threat to any soft or hard power than any other blogger”. Even if his ideas are considered dangerous, without followers willing to enact them, they are not much of a threat
Regardless, an interesting figure to discuss and I’ll be reading Niccolo’s linked article in depth later. I’ve known of Yarvin for a while, but haven’t read much of him
The UK trap is presented as austerity vs more crushing debt to help the common people- I wonder if these are the only 2 choices? We’re all in the same trap.
Debts and Deficits are of course stealth taxes on all especially the commons, and the debt payments just eat up the budget.
The answer I think is take the petrodollar to the next logical step of actual energy money: 1 KwH = 1$ (actually a Dime 10 cents is roughly current rate average). The energy has real value, wars are fought for energy and justly. Say Shilling or Euro KwH for England and Europe.
The problem of inflation spiking energy costs causing vicious loop is solved, Inflating energy tied money actually lowers many if not all costs- more cheap money from ever cheaper energy.
Not to mention you can drill, mine, solar, wind, nuke your way out of debt.
😉 please forward to Rishi I’m sure he’s a follower.
TLW, your comment above assumes that helping the common people is on the agenda, an heroic assumption in my view.
The Russians are moving towards formalising transnational settlements and exchange using currencies backed by resources (above all energy) and precious metals. This takes time, but it is definitely happening. The Russians are patient, but deadly serious. The system (SWIFT, the BIS, the petrodollar) it is all going. The Russians are even moving towards creating their own international gold exchange in competition with London (this will reduce the ability of the Western IC to play their historic games). Hard currency is on its way back.
Energy plenty hard as currency, literally current. We can do as Russia does and should for our own reasons.
Where did this 'we' come from? Nothing divides people as quickly as monetary policy. Nothing. It is all 'us' and 'them'.
The existing divisions within the oligarchy on energy related matters are already white-hot too. The energy-rich states (all Red) threatened Biden with withdrawing all public sector pension funds from investment banks should they ever boycott or deprioritise the hydrocarbon sector. I'd expect that this did not go down well with those sections of the IC closest to the Biden administration.
With heroic and epic optimism, I presume a "We" shall return. ;)
Listen, MacArthur came back for Australia, right?
He returned !
Yes, he did indeed and got the job done, though he would probably have mixed feelings about the uses to which Australia has put the last 70 years, given the sacrifices involved. One can only hope for everyone's sake that your optimism is vindicated.
The only end of history will be extinction.
Which is of course just in sight now.
Giving a dementia patient surrounded by psychos the nuclear football....bad call,
oh democracy.
Yarvin actually wants a Start up President, an FDR to reboot our government. As far as the Constitution that’s a restoration.