Goon Danton posted:

So what is "America is a communist country" actually supposed to mean when you run it through your moldbug decoder ring? It obviously can't mean what it says in normal English.

Goon Danton posted:

So what is "America is a communist country" actually supposed to mean when you run it through your moldbug decoder ring? It obviously can't mean what it says in normal English.

Silver2195 posted:

It means something like "a lot of US policies are driven by the same kind of hypocritical pseudo-empathy that drove the policies of communist regimes."

The Vosgian Beast posted:

Thank you for the input, Moldbug.

Goon Danton posted:

So what is "America is a communist country" actually supposed to mean when you run it through your moldbug decoder ring? It obviously can't mean what it says in normal English.

Unqualified Reservations posted:

The basic problem with the outside agitator Commie subversion narrative is that it's way too optimistic. Were communism some exotic pest, it would be easy to eradicate. Perhaps we could find some kind of microscopic wasp that kept it in check in its strange foreign homeland. Indeed, the usual pattern with an invasive species is that resistance to it is strongest in its actual homeland.

For example, when we look at John Reed's short dramatic life, we see several epidemiological hypotheses - pick one:

• The Russian and Mexican revolutions have no connection; similarities are coincidental.
  
• There is one revolution, inherently Russian. It spread, through America, to Mexico.
  
• There is one revolution, inherently Mexican. It spread, through America, to Russia.
  
• The Russian and Mexican revolutions are connected via somewhere else - maybe Brazil?
  
• Communism is as American as apple pie.

Of course, nationalist rhetoric - of a particularly virulent anti-American kind - was an essential ingredient in both the Russian and Mexican revolutions. If the origin of these revolutions is essentially foreign to the countries they devastated, it makes perfect sense that the lady would have no alternative but to protest too much.

It's not foreign to ours, however, which explains why communism has only mildly devastated America. No gulags here! The home of the screwworm is also the home of the screwworm-eating wasp. Unfortunately, one can't really rely on the wasp to eradicate the screwworm. But it keeps the screwworms relatively sane, honest and under control, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. It's a good thing because it's a good thing. It's a bad thing because it makes it a lot easier for us to deny we have a communism problem.

Unqualified Reservations posted:

And what is communism? As a political formula? Perhaps we can define it, with a nice 20th-century social-science jargon edge, as nonempathic altruism. Or for a sharper pejorative edge, callous altruism.

Unqualified Reservations posted:

So, for example, in classic Bolshevik communism, who is the revolution for? The workers and peasants. But... in classic Bolshevik communism... who actually makes the revolution? Nobles (Lenin) and Jews (Trotsky), basically. To wit, the groups in Russian society who are in fact most distant - emotionally, culturally, socially - from actual workers and peasants.

Similarly, the most passionate anti-racists in America are all to be found, in early September, at Burning Man. Everyone at Burning Man, with hardly an exception, is highly altruistic toward African-Americans. But, to within an epsilon, there are no African-Americans at Burning Man.

But wait, why is this wrong? What's wrong with nonempathic altruism? Why does it matter to the people being helped if the brains of their helpers genuinely light up in the love lobe, or not? Loved or not, they're still helped - right?

Or are they? How'd that whole Soviet thing work out for the workers and peasants?

Heck, for the last 50 years, one of the central purposes of American political life has been advancing the African-American community. And over the last four decades, what has happened to the African-American community? I'll tell you one thing - in every major city in America, there's a burnt-out feral ghetto which, 50-years ago, was a thriving black business district. On the other hand, there's a street in that ghetto named for Dr. King. So, there's that. And since we mentioned Mrs. Jellyby, what exactly has a century of telescopic philanthropy done for Africa?

Unqualified Reservations posted:

Once you learn to recognize the distinction between empathic and nonempathic altruism, you'll see it everywhere. Empathic altruism - charity - is simply good. Nonempathic altruism - communism - is simply evil. There's not a whole lot of gray area between good and evil. Evil motivations can certainly, by coincidence, produce good results - but this is an accident, which has little or nothing to do with the supposed "good intentions."

quote:

Heck, for the last 50 years, one of the central purposes of American political life has been advancing the African-American community. And over the last four decades, what has happened to the African-American community? I'll tell you one thing - in every major city in America, there's a burnt-out feral ghetto which, 50-years ago, was a thriving black business district.

Parallel Paraplegic posted:

Like can anyone confirm that Moldbug has ever actually seen a black person before, maybe to him they're just weird vaguely bad abstract ideas.

Freedom is Slavery posted:

The fear that someone, somewhere, is exercising power over someone else, is one of the most basic cues of the callous-altruist mentality. Let me kill the master and free the slave. Out of altruism! Not sadism or ambition, of course. My hands are pure.

But slavery is simply dependence, and the default state of the newly "freed" slave is to be dependent on his new master - you, because you killed the old master. So your sadism itch is scratched, because you get to kill; and your ambition itch is scratched, because you become a slavemaster.

(A slavemaster? You may not tell your dependent what to do all day. But if you pay him to do nothing, he is still your slave - you may not ask him to work today, but you could tomorrow. He would have to obey your commands or starve. In other words, he's a slave. And of course, there's one thing you've surely bought - his vote.)

When Higginson and friends tried this experiment in the 1860s, roughly a fourth of the slaves died as a consequence of the operation. Not to mention all the other people killed. Naturally, since America is a communist country, this episode - which might under other regimes be viewed as an outbreak of mass criminal insanity - is considered one of the most glorious in our glorious history.

quote:

But slavery is simply dependence, and the default state of the newly "freed" slave is to be dependent on his new master - you, because you killed the old master. So your sadism itch is scratched, because you get to kill; and your ambition itch is scratched, because you become a slavemaster.

Parallel Paraplegic posted:

Bwuaahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Peztopiary posted:

You really need to flatter the intellects of your rear end in a top hat readership, really tongue the ol' intellectual taint if you will, to get people who think they've arrived at their station in life through logical first principles to unconditionally defend your vigorous public racism.

Lottery of Babylon posted:

The Ultimate Proof That America Is Communist: white people callously deigned to let black people vote

quote:

And then, as you’d expect, he begins to go through various interpretations to show how they are either obviously idiotic or true. And yet there is one interpretation that, astonishingly, never occurs to him: “America is in some meaningful fashion run according to the philosophical principles of Karl Marx.” In fact, literally none of the thirty uses of the word Marx appear in the essay in question, “Technology, communism, and the Brown Scare.”

A White Guy posted:

You know, I like Aurini. Not as in 'I think he would be a good human being', but as in he actually loving states, in way fewer words than Moldbug, his ideas. And in that succinctly stated proposition, you can see just how utterly bullshit his ideas are. Moldbug, instead, takes thousands of words to propound on his idiotic ideas.

So basically, Aurini would say "I hate niggers." Moldbug would take at least three paragraphs to say the same thing.

Peztopiary posted:

^Nothing wrong with loving Homestuck. It's like being a Sanders voter. What you do with your fandom is the question. I dunno, Moldbug isn't the most annoying of the DE people, but his inability to own his racism is sad. At least the HBD people and the other alt-rightists are honest about it.

Tesseraction posted:

I'm starting to think this Yarvin chap isn't nearly as clever as his purple prose attempts to suggest.

DStecks posted:

The best thing is that the basic admission that white nationalism might have value, even theoretically, is a giant red flag for "has hosed-up views on race", and they think that it isn't. If that makes any sense? Like, they think they can be ambivalent about it, like people who say they like communism on paper but acknowledge it doesn't work, but saying you think white nationalism might be ok basically means you think there's such a thing as a "white nation", which is inherently a racist myth you're buying into.

Parallel Paraplegic posted:

I mean he's clever in that he realized that for anyone to take him seriously he had to couch everything he does in impenetrable and put on an air of vague academic-ness, which is more than a lot of people with Very Bad Ideas do

Nessus posted:

If communism is so pervasive and all powerful even when it is in retreat except in some national parties of varying levels of actual adherence, perhaps we should join the winning team.

The Vosgian Beast posted:

It's that old joke about the rabbi who only reads anti-Semitic newspapers in order to hear good news about Jewish victories for once.

quote:

Q: Is one permitted to ride in an airplane on the Sabbath?
A: Yes, as long as your seat belt remains fastened. In this case, it is considered that you are not riding, you are wearing the plane.

divabot posted:

To quote Phil Sandifer out of school (from the current draft):

Silver2195 posted:

I think this is a manifestation of a weird blind spot Moldbug has (though he's not the only one to have it) where it's assumed that only people from a handful of countries/cultures (in his case the US, the UK, China, and sometimes France and Russia) can have real agency. Marx was a German, ergo Marx cannot have had a real impact on the history of ideas.

Reflections85 posted:

Marx lived in the UK for a good period of time and was buried there. He was also a correspondent for an American newspaper that was on the Union side of the Civil War. He even wrote a letter of congratulations to Lincoln. Thus, all of Marx's influence is through the United States, particularly through the Communist Republican Party.

Tesseraction posted:

Well you say that, but then I think of Creationism and Liberty University et al.

Basically I think eloquent duncery is becoming the new normal. Among wingnuts, as in.

Parallel Paraplegic posted:

It's like the good somewhat smug feeling you get out of reading a "hard" book like Gravity's Rainbow or Ulysses or homestuck except Moldbug doesn't hide his terrible ideas the way James Joyce hid his fart fetish or whatever his deal was

eschaton posted:

Somebody doesn't remember William F. Buckley, Jr.

Eloquent duncery has been common among the right for a long while.

Count Chocula posted:

I...what? Ulysses is about a zillion things, and some beautiful sentences. Don't compare that to the DE idiots. The only place they intersect is in the chapter where a long-winded anti-Semetic blowhard chases Bloom out of a pub.
Though I do enjoy getting lost in long-winded books and essays - Sandifer scratches that itch, and I suspect that Nick Land's pre-DE work will too.

Parallel Paraplegic posted:

I threw that Homestuck jab in there because there was this incredibly stupid PBS Idea Channel thing titled "Is Homestuck this generation's Ulysses?" or something like that.

Doc Hawkins posted:

...Yep. It's pretty funny. Not sure why I suddenly thought of it, though. RIP Umberto Eco.

quote:

politics and hobbies, ruined and derailed by inter-sexual drama. Purposeful groups should therefore adopt rules to eliminate sociosexual drama and improve group cohesion.

Here is a set of rules that we use in our groups for this purpose:

1. Brotherhood. The group shall be composed exclusively of men.

2. No Ex-Girlfriends. No man in the group shall be in contact with any member's ex girlfriend.

3. Monoandry. No man in the group shall flirt with another's girlfriend, nor allow any flirting between girlfriends and any other man.

4. Monogyny. No man in the group shall pursue multiple women at the same time or in quick succession, especially not to the exclusion of the other men in the group.

Fututor Magnus posted:

https://twitter.com/AuerbachKeller/status/723241267136700416
https://twitter.com/AuerbachKeller/status/723242532918931460
https://twitter.com/AuerbachKeller/status/723243103050686465
https://twitter.com/AuerbachKeller/status/723238377810759680

David Auerbach posted:

Woolie Wool posted:

There's no such loving thing as an untouchable outside India/Pakistan/Bangladesh you loving fool.