Understanding the psychology of HBD/Racial Realism/Dark Enlightenment

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Understanding the psychology of HBD/Racial Realism/Dark Enlightenment

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Doc Hawkins posted:

I finally remembered who all the psychotic talk about thal-skulls and melonheads reminded me of: Szukalski!

Basically, imagine if David Icke was one of the greatest artists of his time, and witnessed the fall of Warsaw. Also he's educated enough to be hilariously confident in his batshittery. Tell me this doesn't sound like something a NrX redpill turbodork would say:

I wonder how often delusions of this type recur. I feel like this isn't the only time I've heard nutbars complain that some kind of concealed, twisted, near-humans have body-snatched their way to power in the world and are cruelly persecuting the True Humans.

e: as wikipedia puts it

So this guy's giant folder of yeti rape fanart became a prized collector's item?

There's hope for goons yet.

# ¿ Dec 23, 2015 16:13

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 21:10

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Or HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH, to bring us back to weird Harry Potter fanfic.

# ¿ Dec 24, 2015 03:46

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

The thing about Rorschach is that while he's a profoundly messed-up person, it's easy to argue that his response to the story's ending was, in fact, the correct one. Ozymandias's gambit may have worked in the short-term, but the story drops a lot of hints that he just papered over deep-rooted problems in human society by killing millions of people, and that his new peace won't last long (poo poo, just look at his name). Dan, Laurie, and Jon are just overwhelmed by the whole thing and flee in their own different ways, leaving the insane conspiracy theorist as the only one trying to bring one of history's greatest mass-murderers to justice.

# ¿ Dec 28, 2015 22:27

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Maoist Pussy posted:

Well, no. Fascism is the binding together of individuals into a greater polity, which is any political system other than purely anarchist ones. Liberal systems, communitarian systems, and systems typically called fascist in the modern sense simply have different emphases on what the polity should accomplish for the individual. All three are valid.

Anarchist spotted.

# ¿ Dec 29, 2015 03:31

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

The ManKind Initiative is pretty sketch. Being associated with MRA superstar Erin Pizzey doesn't help, either.

# ¿ Dec 29, 2015 21:28

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Guavanaut posted:

Strangely, the neoreactionary set seem to be okay with trans people. At least compared to the rest of the right, center, and a fair chunk of the left.

So long as they fit into their MRA appointed gender roles, I guess.

Justine Tunney.

# ¿ Jan 2, 2016 14:05

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Maoist Pussy posted:

Actually, fascism elevates human life; that is its purpose. The power of a democratic majority can vote to invoke any aspect of any political system- liberal, fascist, communist -all of which do necessarily overlap.

Wait, what? How does this fit with the death-cult elements you see so often in fascist propaganda (see also, the highly common happy ending in Nazi movies of a beautiful young man dying a heroic death)?

Where the gently caress are you getting your definition of fascism from?

# ¿ Jan 5, 2016 08:40

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Munin posted:

The "beautiful young man dying a heroic death" is part of a more general German cultural thing and that motif is most closely associated with "Sturm und Drang" in particular. "Sturm und Drang" was a reaction against the rationalism of the enlightenment which several young male writers in particular felt lacked blood and passion. Goethe's "The Sorrows of Young Werther" was the most successful work of the movement and became a breakthrough hit across Europe and led to young men across the continent topping themselves in dramatic ways or adopt the dress and style of the hero of the novel. Goethe himself ended up slightly pissed at the fact that despite all the other great works he created he often was only popularly known as that guy who wrote Werther.

The reason why the nazis glommed onto it in particular is the manly man nature of it and also that it was one of the first pan-Germanic cultural movements which achieved prominence across Europe.

It was a thing for the other fascists as well, though. The Italian Futurist Manifesto was pretty much 'live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse', and specifically praised 'the beautiful ideas worth dying for', and the Spanish Falangists infamously had the battle-cry of 'Viva la muerte!'. I'd say the pre-existing death-cultist elements in German culture, if they existed, were simply a helpful boon for fascism's popularity, not something that shaped the ideology as it was.

# ¿ Jan 5, 2016 23:58

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Also, it's a mistake to tie fascism to Imperial Rome too much. It's a modern industrial-age ideology with about as much of a relationship to the Roman political system as Wicca has to pre-Roman Celtic druids. Mussolini using the trappings of his country's semi-mythical golden age for his philosophy of dictatorship didn't mean he had a direct line to the ancient wisdom of millennia-dead consuls and senators, and while it hearkens back to the good old days, breaking with tradition is a core element of fascist philosophy. See, again, the Futurist Manifesto:

quote:

MANIFESTO OF FUTURISM

1. We intend to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and fearlessness.
2. Courage, audacity, and revolt will be essential elements of our poetry.
3. Up to now literature has exalted a pensive immobility, ecstasy, and sleep. We intend to exalt aggressive action, a feverish insomnia, the racer�s stride, the mortal leap, the punch and the slap.
4. We affirm that the world�s magnificence has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing car whose hood is adorned with great pipes, like serpents of explosive breath�a roaring car that seems to ride on grapeshot is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.
5. We want to hymn the man at the wheel, who hurls the lance of his spirit across the Earth, along the circle of its orbit.
6. The poet must spend himself with ardor, splendor, and generosity, to swell the enthusiastic fervor of the primordial elements.
7. Except in struggle, there is no more beauty. No work without an aggressive character can be a masterpiece. Poetry must be conceived as a violent attack on unknown forces, to reduce and prostrate them before man.
8. We stand on the last promontory of the centuries!� Why should we look back, when what we want is to break down the mysterious doors of the Impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. We already live in the absolute, because we have created eternal, omnipresent speed.
9. We will glorify war�the world�s only hygiene�militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of freedom-bringers, beautiful ideas worth dying for, and scorn for woman.
10. We will destroy the museums, libraries, academies of every kind, will fight moralism, feminism, every opportunistic or utilitarian cowardice.
11. We will sing of great crowds excited by work, by pleasure, and by riot; we will sing of the multicolored, polyphonic tides of revolution in the modern capitals; we will sing of the vibrant nightly fervor of arsenals and shipyards blazing with violent electric moons; greedy railway stations that devour smoke-plumed serpents; factories hung on clouds by the crooked lines of their smoke; bridges that stride the rivers like giant gymnasts, flashing in the sun with a glitter of knives; adventurous steamers that sniff the horizon; deep-chested locomotives whose wheels paw the tracks like the hooves of enormous steel horses bridled by tubing; and the sleek flight of planes whose propellers chatter in the wind like banners and seem to cheer like an enthusiastic crowd.

# ¿ Jan 7, 2016 04:10

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

The Vosgian Beast posted:

I dunno, what pathology causes you to believe that Lovecraft gods are real, and instead of them being scary tentacle monsters or metaphors for the cold indifference of the cosmos, they represent social trends or forces that don't benefit you, personally?

Other than ~~the study of thetans~~memetics

It's called 'being a giant nerd and using nerdy analogies for your home-brewed political theories'. Not quite sure if that's on the DSM.

Maoist Pussy posted:

It is a mistake tie fascism to Mussolini, just as it is a mistake to tie collectivism to Stalin.

Fascism and collectivism and liberalism behave like the archaic humoral system of medicine- elements are present in every polity, and disease results from an excess or deficit of any one of them. In the West, we currently suffer from an excess of liberalism.

I ask again, where the gently caress are you getting this from? Cite your sources, dude.

# ¿ Jan 8, 2016 00:55

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

BaurusJA posted:

Calmate chico.
Given we are all spraying ideological poo poo everywhere, I think that asking for sources as if this is an academic journal might be a bit much. Asking him to explain his rational for this conception might be prudent, but as someone working on a thesis right now, I'm not going to dig through my books or through academic databases on my free time. He might feel similarly. Dunno just my take.

The thoughts themselves which he expresses are interesting enough to debate on their own premises without devolving into academic formalism.

But if you insist and are really interested, I sincerely offerr to go and look up secondary sources on ideological genealogies and galen's humoral theory and fully interrogate this line of thought.

:seriouspost:

I'm asking because while this isn't a formal academic discussion, most of us are making a token effort to back up what we're saying with links and examples, while he seems to be pulling some really weird stuff out of his rear end that doesn't match with anything else any of us are familiar with and stating it as objective fact. Like, where does the idea that fascism, a twentieth-century ideology with relatively shallow roots that's built around iconoclasm and deliberately mythologised distortions of the past, is an integral component of political thought as a whole even come from?

Basically, we need something resembling sources - hell, even just a namedrop - because he's using such strange personal-dictionary definitions that it's impossible to talk about the ideas he's putting forward without a better grounding in what he means by them.

# ¿ Jan 8, 2016 04:02

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

ToxicSlurpee posted:

Tolkien wasn't a racist. I mean we're all a little bit racist but he wasn't a person writing from the standpoint of "white people good, everybody else bad" and using that to influence his works. He was, however, a traditionalist and a very devout Catholic. He wasn't a jerk but he was definitely not a fan of progress. More of a stodgy old man that had to be pulled into the future grudgingly.

This post seems to be falling into the common pitfall that you apparently have to be a howling, frothy-mouthed Stormfronter like Lovecraft or Howard (or most of the people discussed in this thread) to count as a 'proper' racist. I think it's more accurate to say that while Tolkein was racist in that sheltered old white man sort of way, he was also aware that racism was bad and tried to minimise it as much as he could. A good example is the one-two combo of his really uncomfortable description of Dwarves (a race he'd identified as 'Semitic, obviously... don't they remind you of the Jews?' outside his stories) in The Hobbit on the one hand:

quote:

�The most that can be said for the dwarves is this: they intended to pay Bilbo really handsomely for his services; they had brought him to do a nasty job for them, and they did not mind the poor little fellow doing it if he would; but they would all have done their best to get him out of trouble, if he got into it. . . . There it is: dwarves are not heroes, but calculating folk with a great idea of the value of money; some are tricky and treacherous and pretty bad lots; some are not, but are decent enough people like Thorin and Company, if you don�t expect too much.�

... and his rather lovely letter to the Nazis when asked if he had suitably Aryan ancestry on the other:

quote:

Thank you for your letter. I regret that I am not clear as to what you intend by arisch. I am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-Iranian; as far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects. But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people. My great-great-grandfather came to England in the eighteenth century from Germany: the main part of my descent is therefore purely English, and I am an English subject - which should be sufficient. I have been accustomed, nonetheless, to regard my German name with pride, and continued to do so throughout the period of the late regrettable war, in which I served in the English army. I cannot, however, forbear to comment that if impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name will no longer be a source of pride.

Your enquiry is doubtless made in order to comply with the laws of your own country, but that this should be held to apply to the subjects of another state would be improper, even if it had (as it has not) any bearing whatsoever on the merits of my work or its sustainability for publication, of which you appear to have satisfied yourselves without reference to my Abstammung.

Similarly, the guy was super uncomfortable with how accidentally racist he'd made the orcs (who, if you recall, looked like 'the least lovely Mongoloids', and were inherently evil), and wrestled with it for much of his writing career. I think part of his problem may have been that many of the authors he pastiches from were, in fact, howling racists - the dwarves in Wagner's Ring Cycle, for instance, were absolutely Jewish stereotypes, because Wagner was an out-and-proud anti-Semite - which, as a sheltered white guy, ended up shifting his unexamined assumptions even if he was trying not to be bigoted.

# ¿ Jan 8, 2016 12:36

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

ToxicSlurpee posted:

One of the issues with writing the kind of story that Tolkien wrote is you need villains but you need villains that aren't sympathetic. It's also a fantasy world so it doesn't necessarily need to ape the real world.

So how do you create villainous villains that you can't negotiate with? Create something like orcs. That's a long, long trope of not just fantasy but fiction in general. "These things are mean and nasty and you can only fight them." It doesn't necessarily mean the writer is racist. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't.

edit: Now that I think about it I realize why DE likes these stories so much; they clearly delineate the world into "good things" and "bad things." Humans, elves, hobbits, and dwarves are good. Orcs are bad. That's the way of things. What these guys want to do is separate the real world into that clear delineation as well. Which is unfortunate as reality is...a lot more complicated. Fictional worlds are simpler because it makes for good storytelling.

Tolkein had a solution to this, though - he was a devout Christian who believed in free will, so the easy way for him to make an unsympathetic villain was someone who deliberately chose evil, like Saruman, Sauron, and Morgoth. This is why he hated the orcs as a villain-concept - they had literally been made to be inherently evil, and lacked that opportunity to choose. It was, again, the unfortunate consequence of pastiching older stories by much more enthusiastically racist authors (hi again, Wagner), and not being able to come up with a good alternative that wouldn't betray a tradition that he loved despite its flaws. You see it a lot in more recent literature with Lovecraft's disciples, who tend to wrestle with finding ways to capture the dark magic of his cosmic horror while removing the bug-eyed bigotry that's one of its most important inspirations.

# ¿ Jan 9, 2016 05:05

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Polybius91 posted:

This is from a few pages back but:

I'm kind of curious about this, because in many ways it seems the opposite to me. Fascism as I understand it tends to be all about doing away with democracy; relegating women to children, kitchen, and church; holding men to traditional notions of masculinity; and opposition to any sort of cultural evolution (just ask any of them what they think about multiculturalism, or look at the way the Nazis branded new art forms as "degenerate").

I'm not saying you're completely wrong, just that fascism's attitude toward tradition seems rather complicated.

Sure thing. Basically, it boils down to the key thing that separates fascism from your standard reactionary conservative philosophy, its definition of itself as a vitalising force rescuing a nation from stagnation through constant, violent action. I've already posted the proto-fascist Futurist Manifesto, so let's go a little closer to the source with Mussolini's Doctrine of Fascism:

quote:

REJECTION OF PACIFISM

First of all, as regards the future development of mankind, and quite apart from all present political considerations. Fascism does not, generally speaking, believe in the possibility or utility of perpetual peace. It therefore discards pacifism as a cloak for cowardly supine renunciation in contradistinction to self-sacrifice. War alone keys up all human energies to their maximum tension and sets the seal of nobility on those peoples who have the courage to face it. All other tests are substitutes which never place a man face to face with himself before the alternative of life or death. Therefore all doctrines which postulate peace at all costs are incompatible with Fascism. Equally foreign to the spirit of Fascism, even if accepted as useful in meeting special political situations -- are all internationalistic or League superstructures which, as history shows, crumble to the ground whenever the heart of nations is deeply stirred by sentimental, idealistic or practical considerations. Fascism carries this anti-pacifistic attitude into the life of the individual. " I don't care a drat � (me ne frego) - the proud motto of the fighting squads scrawled by a wounded man on his bandages, is not only an act of philosophic stoicism, it sums up a doctrine which is not merely political: it is evidence of a fighting spirit which accepts all risks. It signifies new style of Italian life. The Fascist accepts and loves life; he rejects and despises suicide as cowardly. Life as he understands it means duty, elevation, conquest; life must be lofty and full, it must be lived for oneself but above all for others, both near bye and far off, present and future.

The population policy of the regime is the consequence of these premises. The Fascist loves his neighbor, but the word neighbor does not stand for some vague and unseizable conception. Love of one's neighbor does not exclude necessary educational severity; still less does it exclude differentiation and rank. Fascism will have nothing to do with universal embraces; as a member of the community of nations it looks other peoples straight in the eyes; it is vigilant and on its guard; it follows others in all their manifestations and notes any changes in their interests; and it does not allow itself to be deceived by mutable and fallacious appearances.

Now, Mussolini does express a respect for tradition(as the movement's name, from the Roman fasces, indicates)...

quote:

THE IMPORTANCE OF TRADITION

In the Fascist conception of history, man is man only by virtue of the spiritual process to which he contributes as a member of the family, the social group, the nation, and in function of history to which all nations bring their contribution. Hence the great value of tradition in records, in language, in customs, in the rules of social life (8). Outside history man is a nonentity.

... but this respect is highly qualified. The past fascism hearkens back to is deeply mythologised, and serves as an impetus for forward momentum that should not be looked upon in detail for fear it will slow you down. The Futurists wanted to destroy museums and libraries, and Goering and the Nazi elite sneered at 'culture', because they sought to save their nations from the perceived decadence and decay of the past. Introspection is paralysis. Fascist art should be bold, violent, and active, fetishising the inevitable forward progress of the State. You see this a lot in Nazi movies, too - a celebration of scientific and economic might as heroes die young and beautiful without having a chance to decay, spurring the cause ever onwards. Here's Mussolini again:

quote:

THE FASCIST TOTALITARIAN VISION OF THE FUTURE

The Fascist negation of socialism, democracy, liberalism, should not, however, be interpreted as implying a desire to drive the world backwards to positions occupied prior to 1789, a year commonly referred to as that which opened the demo-liberal century. History does not travel backwards. The Fascist doctrine has not taken De Maistre as its prophet. Monarchical absolutism is of the past, and so is ecclesiolatry. Dead and done for are feudal privileges and the division of society into closed, uncommunicating castes. Neither has the Fascist conception of authority anything in common with that of a police ridden State.

A party governing a nation �totalitarianly" is a new departure in history. There are no points of reference nor of comparison. From beneath the ruins of liberal, socialist, and democratic doctrines, Fascism extracts those elements which are still vital. It preserves what may be described as "the acquired facts" of history; it rejects all else. That is to say, it rejects the idea of a doctrine suited to all times and to all people. Granted that the XIXth century was the century of socialism, liberalism, democracy, this does not mean that the XXth century must also be the century of socialism, liberalism, democracy. Political doctrines pass; nations remain. We are free to believe that this is the century of authority, a century tending to the " right ", a Fascist century. If the XIXth century was the century of the individual (liberalism implies individualism) we are free to believe that this is the "collective" century, and therefore the century of the State. It is quite logical for a new doctrine to make use of the still vital elements of other doctrines. No doctrine was ever born quite new and bright and unheard of. No doctrine can boast absolute originality. It is always connected, it only historically, with those which preceded it and those which will follow it. Thus the scientific socialism of Marx links up to the utopian socialism of the Fouriers, the Owens, the Saint-Simons ; thus the liberalism of the XIXth century traces its origin back to the illuministic movement of the XVIIIth, and the doctrines of democracy to those of the Encyclopaedists. All doctrines aim at directing the activities of men towards a given objective; but these activities in their turn react on the doctrine, modifying and adjusting it to new needs, or outstripping it. A doctrine must therefore be a vital act and not a verbal display. Hence the pragmatic strain in Fascism, it�s will to power, its will to live, its attitude toward violence, and its value.

Basically, what you see as regressive, the fascists saw as an advance, stripping away the silly ideals of yesteryear (like democracy, women's rights, and cultural intermingling) to create something glorious and new, a project that drew from the mythologised past but was its own beast, conquering and killing and constantly improving itself. Mussolini would likely be horrified by the neoreactionaries of the Dark Enlightenment because they are, in their own twisted way, utopian - they see an end-point to society, a romanticised feudal system overseen by omnipotent AI gods where they can be immortal. That's stagnation and decay, without the purifying force of death to keep things fresh. Any ideology that wigs out at the idea of 'deathism', by definition, can't be fascist. Any of these chinless goobers who decide to align themselves with what I'll hesitantly call the intellectual side of neo-Nazism have no idea what kind of fire they're playing with, and not just because so many of them are gay and/or Jewish.

# ¿ Jan 10, 2016 21:12

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Number Two Stunna posted:

If you guys want to understand these guys, why don't you go to one of their subreddits/forums and ask them what they're all about?

This thread is just a bunch of circle-jerking about how awful people who have right-wing opinions are.

The whole point of mock threads is to be able to enjoy horrible people being insane on the internet at a safe remove without having to engage in the soul-deadening experience of trawling through literal hate sites. I mean look at these guys, and then seriously ask yourself if you really want to stick your dick in that blender for any extended period of time.

# ¿ Jan 14, 2016 12:49

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Woolie Wool posted:

If liberals really had that much in common with reactionaries, reactionaries wouldn't try to silence or murder us every time they get even close to power.

Really? You seen what these fuckers are like to each other, right?

I don't remotely believe that liberals and reactionaries are two sides of the same coin, but that's an amusingly bad argument.

# ¿ Jan 15, 2016 04:07

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Pththya-lyi posted:

Maoist Pussy just wants to retain the masculine mystique

Nah, it's just wilful abstruseness.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2016 00:00

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Who What Now posted:

Presumably this includes you, who cannot even define what it even is.

Inarticulacy is masculinity. What now? :smug:

# ¿ Mar 12, 2016 00:36

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

rudatron posted:

I understand debate and discussion is difficult for you, but you need to apply your brain here. If it were just 'biology', then there's no reasonable expectation for those that are 'poo poo at it', to ever not be 'poo poo at it' and, conversely, those who are not 'poo poo at it', to not be 'poo poo at it', regardless of environment. Ergo, by your own logic, space sweden would have just as many men as today.

Please stop serious posting at yawning Rei.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2016 00:42

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Lady Naga posted:

Why do you bother to engage people who feel no desire to do the same?

Because mail-order brides are most DE folks' only options.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2016 01:01

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 21:10

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Bulkiest Toaster posted:

Who are the best alt-right philosophers I should read? Looking to get into the alt-right.

'Best' by which measure?

# ¿ Dec 31, 2016 02:03

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