posted on March 04, 2022 04:06 AM by
u/bongpilthrowaway
32
u/bongpilthrowaway55 pointsat 1646366922.000000
The part that gets me is:
The guest was Curtis Yarvin, a prolific blogger and software
developer
who first achieved notice under the pseudonym “Mencius Moldbug.”
Writing
as Moldbug from 2007 to 2014, Yarvin became synonymous with
“neoreaction,” an abstruse political philosophy that prefers
rational
authoritarianism to democracy. To the extent that Yarvin is held to
be
dangerous rather than offensive or kooky, it is because of the
sense
that he represents an unexpressed current of antidemocratic belief
in
Silicon Valley. But when Belove listened to Yarvin speak, all he
heard
was a particularly intelligent bong-hit philosopher.
Moldbug’s philosophy isn’t abstruse, it’s just poorly written. He
just wants to be ruled by a philosopher-king so he can stomp on people
he doesn’t like. The dorm room philosophy I heard was “dude, how can we
be sure we all see the same colors?”, not “Peter Thiel should be able to
kill anyone he wants.” When will reporters stop being this
credulous?
what amazes me is that the artist here seems to really believe he is opposed to Thiel, rather than doing more or less exactly what Thiel wants. The stuff about Yarvin is not at all the only place where this person expresses direct admiration for fascism.
This is a common undertone in post-left circles. Covering all you do in multiple levels of irony to shock their parental figures isn't as clever as they think it is.
(e: and they also aren't really that shocking. Like if you are going for shock, create a festival which espouses to speak for incels, and then invite [neckbeard deathcamp](https://youtu.be/c6U6aLrbizs?t=29) as a surprise act. I'm going to shock people by saying contradictory things which get me cancelled so I can get some attention, is so boring (does suck for the guy that he was the only poor person in the room and his art collective buddies just went home when covid struck (And here we see the flaws in art from a not left-wing, not solidarity, perspective, in this essay I will...) and pretty shitty he died)).
I assumed he wanted to be the philosopher king, and everyone would be forced to read his book-length "essay" on why him and his friends are less corrupt than any alternatives.
Going back over the article, some things pop out:
* The idea that bad people can like good art is absolutely not new; look at Martin Shkreli and that Wu-Tang album, Chris Christie being a Springsteen fan, Lee Atwater being a blues fan despite creating and using blatant racist appeals in political campaigns, etc.
* Although, in this case, the art wasn't really that good. Anyone who's spent time around art schools or even the arts scenes at decent-sized colleges is very familiar with the sentiment embodied in “Look At What We’re Doing With Your Money, You Dick”, which is really just "screw you, Mom and Dad", a phase that most artists seem to go through, and that some never really move on from. The only thing that distinguishes the Eldridge Street party from one that could have been held in Normal, Illinois is that the former is being held in a $7.5 million carriage house, and apparently John Waters is involved somehow.
* Also not new is the idea that being reactionary is really rebellious if there are enough liberals around; that's National Lampoon's history in a nutshell.
* That this thing began with someone (Hadrian Belove) who got MeTooed tracks, ditto for his support for someone's documentary on incels, but then there's this big section on Curtis Yarvin that doesn't mention "dark enlightenment" even once.
* And then there's the whole section on Trevor Bazile, who, if he really was a talented and unique artist, you couldn't tell from the way the article portrays him. Dying young of a\[n apparent\] drug overdose doesn't make you a genius any more than punching down on IG was.
Maybe it’s just because I’ve read Bernstein’s work in this area before, but I think you’re wildly misinterpreting the takeaway here
1. He doesn’t intend to make you think there’s anything novel to that
2. He isn’t all that interested in the quality or lack thereof, he’s describing the story of a trendy happening, one whose value he clearly finds questionable
3. The article literally points out that this isn’t novel or unforeseeable
4. Why were you expecting the dark enlightenment to be mentioned by name when yarvin is just one player here and it makes it clear who he is and what he stands for?
5. It doesn’t matter, Bazile was the locus of much of the whole story: this isn’t an evaluation of his artistic talent
The part that gets me is:
Moldbug’s philosophy isn’t abstruse, it’s just poorly written. He just wants to be ruled by a philosopher-king so he can stomp on people he doesn’t like. The dorm room philosophy I heard was “dude, how can we be sure we all see the same colors?”, not “Peter Thiel should be able to kill anyone he wants.” When will reporters stop being this credulous?
What an odd article.