posted on October 24, 2022 03:11 PM by
u/Epistaxis
65
u/mtraven54 pointsat 1666635339.000000
Yarvin has cleaned up his act a bit in recent years. His back catalog
of open Nazi apologetics is readily available though:
https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2007/05/understanding-racial-idealism/
I’ve never actually read through a summary of what Yarvin believes,
and it’s legitimately scary. There’s no way he really thinks any of that
would be “peaceful” and “joyous”. If anything, it seems like he’d be
gleeful at the oceans of blood that would be spilled if somebody
seriously tried to implement any of those plans
You don't have to pick fascist ideology apart too much before you get down to them admitting "yeah living in a brutal police state would probably suck, actually, but that's fine"
Like, in the Turner Diaries, the author's description of the future is like "yeah we purge all degenerate or dissident individuals. A lot of them are actually innocent but hey that's just the price ya pay!" So in this fascist "utopia" you can do everything they say you're supposed to do (including being the right race and sexual orientation, etc.) and you might still get your head chopped off just because. Sounds great???
I feel like fascists must just live vicariously through the leaders they worship. Because even in their wildest fantasies they can't sell it as a good situation for anyone else, including themselves.
It's just all so bafflingly non-self-aware. We aren't talking about abstract political theories with no empirical evidence. We have *ample* evidence that authoritarianism is less functional than democracy. The rare exceptions where it has worked exclusively come at the cost of a lot of bloodshed, and/or total ethnic and religious homogeneity. I admire Singapore as much as the next person, but I'm not willing to watch hundreds of thousands of people die to get there, if we ever did.
In terms of "keeps the trains running on time," Singapore is perhaps the only successful authoritarian society in modern history. In terms of "would actually want to live there," Singapore is certainly not on the list.
I thought Oman hadn't done too badly under the current guy. Germany under Bismarck might also count (and is probably prominent in Yarvin's thoughts) although obviously it didn't work out super great long-term.
Wilhelmine Germany was so obviously a society in transformation though. Even without WWI the Wilhelmine settlement wasn't going to last, and everyone knew it, the question was where it would go.
I think the far-right means something very different by "peaceful" and "joyous" than we do. I know people who occupied Ottawa in the convoy, terrorizing regular people, including my friends and their young child, shitting on people's lawns, tearing down Pride flags, torturing people with constant honking, even coming close to arson. But to hear them talk about it, it was all about "peace" and "joy" and "love." How can it be terrorism if there's a bouncy castle and a barbecue?
To people like this, "violence" is property destruction, and what we would consider violence—harm to humans—doesn't count because they don't consider most of us people.
the US government could be toppled and replaced — “rebooted” or
“reset,” as he likes to say — with a monarch, CEO, or dictator at the
helm. Yarvin argues that a creative and visionary leader — a “startup
guy,” like, he says, Napoleon or Lenin was — should seize absolute
power, dismantle the old regime, and build something new in its
place.
Silicon Valley was a mistake. The Soviet Union as a start-up is a fun
idea though
Also he missed an important software design lesson. This whole 'we gonna restart from scratch because now we know more and our current code looks ugly, so we can do better next time' doesnt work in most cases. I think Paul even has a blog post warning naive coders against this.
(The reason the code often looks ugly is because using the software in the real world exposes you to the exceptions which should have been made initially, so they are unavoidable, and it also removes all the hours of testing etc which will have to be done all over again).
(I know this isnt a 100% rule, but always be very weary of 'lets start over, we can do better the second time')
In Yarvin’s telling, his political awakening occurred during the 2004
election. A computer programmer living in Silicon Valley, he was then an
avid reader of political blogs, following the “Swift Boat Veterans for
Truth” scandal about whether Democratic nominee John Kerry had lied
about aspects of his military service. Yarvin thought it was clear Kerry
had lied, and felt the media went to stunning lengths to protect him and
smear his accusers
It always comes down to conspiratorial thinking for these fuckers
doesn’t it?
Ah yes, the hot new idea, don’t do an Italian fascism because they
read lord of the rings but make sure to do a Californian one because
they don’t read anything except Hoover Institute blogs.
The New Right blogger has been cited by Blake Masters and J.D.
Vance.
Man… remember in 2016 when every other day, someone in
Truereddit was waxing poetic about Hillbilly Elegy, as if Vance was the
exciting new voice of liberalism? Damn, liberals are gullible.
Nancy Isenberg's White Trash, which came out at a similar time, is by FAR the superior work, and I'm still gloating about that to a friend who tried to argue in favor of Hillbilly Elegy instead.
ooh cool rec thx
Strangers in Their Own Land is a third book on the same topic that came out that year, and somehow manages to humanize and sympathize with its subjects better than Vance does while also revealing even moreso (in their own words) just how batshit things have gotten
Just loving whoever it was that convinced him “no the only way to do this is in full profile, like a roman emperor on a coin or some shit like that. What was his name anyway, the really good one? Caligula or some shit like that, anyway roman emperor on a coin it is for you Curtis…”
Yarvin has cleaned up his act a bit in recent years. His back catalog of open Nazi apologetics is readily available though: https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2007/05/understanding-racial-idealism/
I’ve never actually read through a summary of what Yarvin believes, and it’s legitimately scary. There’s no way he really thinks any of that would be “peaceful” and “joyous”. If anything, it seems like he’d be gleeful at the oceans of blood that would be spilled if somebody seriously tried to implement any of those plans
the US government could be toppled and replaced — “rebooted” or “reset,” as he likes to say — with a monarch, CEO, or dictator at the helm. Yarvin argues that a creative and visionary leader — a “startup guy,” like, he says, Napoleon or Lenin was — should seize absolute power, dismantle the old regime, and build something new in its place.
Silicon Valley was a mistake. The Soviet Union as a start-up is a fun idea though
It always comes down to conspiratorial thinking for these fuckers doesn’t it?
Ah yes, the hot new idea, don’t do an Italian fascism because they read lord of the rings but make sure to do a Californian one because they don’t read anything except Hoover Institute blogs.
Man… remember in 2016 when every other day, someone in Truereddit was waxing poetic about Hillbilly Elegy, as if Vance was the exciting new voice of liberalism? Damn, liberals are gullible.
[deleted]
literally 1939