AntiDem

An old story: When barbarians fight against civilized men who operate under civilized rules of conduct, the barbarians win. By the time the civilized men realize what’s at stake and how bad things have gotten and start fighting like they mean it, the enemy has swept the battlefield. Vlad the Impaler left so many twitching, still-barely-alive Turkish corpses impaled along the roads of Wallachia that Mehmet II, a man not known for his squeamishness, turned back, unable to stand the sight of another mile worth of them. But by then, he’d taken Constantinople, which the Turks still haven’t left. In the political arena, Trump fights like he means it. In 1992, that would have made an incredible difference. Now? We’ll see… and hope. But it's likely too late to solve this politically.

---

Say I: No more "principled opposition". Barbarians understand only one kind of opposition. Vlad, for all his faults, understood what kind that was. They are always either at your feet or at your throat. Crush them, or be crushed by them.

View more

A lot of guys get into this thinking they're going to be Batman. Cool gadgets. Tricked-out car. Hans Zimmer soundtrack. All of that. After a couple of years, they look around and figure out that there is no Joker - no supervillain to bring down in an epic climactic battle. They figure out that Hannah Arendt was right. Evil isn't dramatic. Evil is banal. Joe Chill is just a piker, but he's who's actually out there, by the millions. It gets tiresome after a while. You get burned out. I understand.

---

Everyone who wants to get into this should take note that Batman is the wrong model for this gig. To do this, you have to be Daredevil. No gadgets. No car. No Hans. Back to basics. Fists, a billy club, and a mask. People think Daredevil's superpower is in his hearing or his ninja training. Nope. That's just icing on the cake. Want to know what Daredevil's real superpower is? It's that Murdocks never quit. Simple as that.

---

So EsotericTrad threw in the towel and Social Matter wandered off to get drunk (no, really: http://www.socialmatter.net/2016/04/26/alcohol-is-the-truth-serum). That sucks, but there's nothing I can do about it. I'm not their dad. I can't turn them over my knee and spank them. All I can say is: AntiDems never quit. Simple as that. I'm in for the duration, or until they drag me off to a friendly neighborhood FEMA camp for some Khmer Rouge-style reeducation.

View more

No. I like Spandrell, but if he's being serious (as opposed to proposing this as a thought exercise) then this idea is too dumb to bother with. Europe is the (Christian) faith; the (Christian) faith is Europe. End of story.

---

Spandrell, like a lot of atheists, doesn't appreciate the difference between religions in the same way that a devout Mormon doesn't appreciate the difference between scotch and bourbon. He also doesn't seem to appreciate that different races in different places with different cultures tend to practice the same religion very differently (Go to the black Baptist church and the white Baptist church in the same small southern town and you'll see what I mean). And frankly, his posts on this matter don't display a very good grasp of the history and nature of Islam, or of Christianity either. He seems to see only that Muslims fight whereas Europeans are passive, and figures that if Europeans adopted Islam, they'd stop being passive. To call the cause and effect at work there questionable, and to say that it ignores some glaringly important subtleties, would be be extremely generous.

---

But really, I'm guessing that this is all just a thought exercise, not to be taken literally.

View more

No. They seem to have completely misinterpreted Moldbug's (valid) breakdown of the Mandate of Heaven:

---

1) Become worthy
2) Accept power
3) Rule

---

If you look at that as a formula for gaining power - which is what NRx is currently doing - then you're going to end up going nowhere. But that's not really what it's all about. What this is trying to tell you is that the first thing you need to worry about is becoming the kind of person who ought to be trusted with power. And that's what's wrong with where NRx is going now: too much concern with how to gain power, and not enough with how to wisely wield it.

---

If this seems like I'm contradicting myself, in that I've complained that NRx is becoming too inward-focused and navel-gazing, we have to look at what exactly they're doing when looking inward. There seems to be a lot of rationalization that leads to the idea that "becoming worthy" can be accomplished - via a complete and utter coincidence - by doing a bunch of things that also involve indulging the personal desires of the people seeking worthiness; and not only that, but by doing those things in lieu of hard, time-consuming, humbling tasks that slowly beat some sense into you over the course of years. For example, if Anissimov wants to be the big man in a rural community, the way to do it is pretty straightforward: move to a random small town in a red state, talk your way into a job as a farm hand, spend a couple of years getting laughed at and called a city slicker as you make every stupid mistake in the book, put up with getting a lot of blisters and callouses and bruises, but slowly gain knowledge, gain confidence, gain friends, gain muscle mass... gain everything you need to start becoming who and what you want to be. But no, instead Anissimov figures that nanobots will make him Potato King without him having to know so much as how to milk a cow, because Science™!

---

NRx may have purged Anissimov, but they haven't purged that kind of thinking. If you want to toughen up and learn about leadership, you could join the Marines. Or you could simply get any blue-collar job where men work hard and there's some element of risk involved: sign up as crew on a swordfishing boat, work pulling oil out of the tar sands through a few Alberta winters, or cut timber in Oregon or Alaska. That'll do it, but it'll be hard work, out in the wet and the cold. Fortunately, Hestia Society research has shown that the best way for socially-awkward, friendless autistics to become worthy natural leaders is to hang out with a group of totally cool alpha bros, doing fun stuff together all day and then getting plastered with your awesome new friends every night. But hey - let's have some rules about not stealing the smokin' hot girlfriends we're all sure to pick up due to our extreme alphaness! Bros before hoes, after all!

---

Shortcuts, indulgence, and fantasy instead of hard work, risk, and self-reliance. That's not the Mandate of Heaven.

View more

Well, at least now they can't say I didn't try to warn them when their ideas took a turn for the batty. I warned them so hard they banned me.

---

Basically, as the old saw goes, there are three options: Lead, follow, or get out of the way. With the whole "passivism" idea, neoreaction has announced that its official policy is to get out of the way. That's fine - it's their right to do so. But if they think they're going to come back after wasting valuable time with pointless, doomed schemes to save the world by forming mens' drinking clubs, announce that they're worthy now, and and that those who led and followed while they were off under a rock somewhere are just going to hand them power, well, let's just say that I think they're in for some serious disappointment. I can't speak for others, by my attitude toward those who, when the going gets tough, will neither lead nor follow, is:

---

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iOpUdsMeqM

View more