You are another troll, Madam. What is not registering with you is the fact that Yarvin wants to destroy the very things that he needs to get a hearing and influence policy once he and/or his cronies get hold of the levers of government. Once that happens, there will be no "fair and square" tactics any longer, believe me. You are also a racist--what else can one make of your sarcastic hypothetical in the first sentence and your basically giving yourself away by the phrase "population replacement?" Every participant on this forum knows exactly what that means, and you do also. Stay on QAnon and the far-right chat boards; those are where you belong.
Do you think that there is "sweeping internet censorship" or a plot for "population replacement" taking place here? Pray tell, point it out. I must have missed it.
Whoa. You know there is no “population replacement” being proposed or carried out, right? If you’re talking about the USA continuing down its multi-ethnic path, that’s just a matter of natural migration and birth rates. There is no plot. IMO, we’re a better country the more diverse we are in all ways. Diversity makes this country powerful, imaginative, and resilient. We’ve always been a nation of immigrants and I, for one, am proud of it.
(And I do get that I’m not reckoning with the experiences of the First Nations but that’s a whole ‘nother conversation.)
Linker, this is the most excellent take-down of a figure you have done since I started reading and posting. There is not a g-----n thing new about Yarvin or his ideas; the beliefs are as old as the Ancients. It is only because of our laughable, constipated educational system, from Kindergarten on up, that we as a people do not have sufficient historical and philosophical knowledge of pre-modern times to set off our b------t detectors. We also do not have the moral/spiritual cojones to call Gnosticism for what it is, not a harmless, personal belief system such as the "New Age" of the late 20th century, but a direct threat to the very freedom (First Amendment) that, ironically, allows its enthusiasts (few as they are) to indulge in their preferred beliefs; in other words, it is, under the conditions of existence, self-undermining.
You have put your finger precisely on the appeal and engine of Gnosticism: ego. As such, you have done a far better service than early conservative movement figures such as Eric Voegelin, who used the concept to smear basically anything he and his National Review intellectual kinfolk did not like and thus rendered any potential serious critique inherent in his viewpoints as self-interested and thus dismissible, to demonstrate how specious it is--and further its incompatibility with both republican self-government and either conservative or liberal Christianity, be it Catholic, Protestant, or Eastern Orthodox. Are the likes of Deneen, Ahmari, and Vermeule paying any attention to Yarvin's opposition to not only liberalism, but also his de facto rejection of even humane conservative (NOT fundamentalist) Christian anthropology (e.g., Augustine, Luther, Kierkegaard)? If they are not, that means that they are theological illiterates and do not have any more business dictating what Americans should think any more than Yarvin does.
To close, I am sure Voegelin would be rolling around in his grave if he knew what uses his animus against Gnosticism were being put to. Then again, it has been the trajectory of conservatism to trade in its moral and intellectual integrity for popular assent--it has basically lost its soul and has a decreasing resemblance to its origins in opposition to instability and mob rule. Of course Yarvin is not a "conservative;" he is a reactionary who wants to destroy everything in sight and rule himself. Hopefully some elements of the Right will wake up out of their Trumpist/DeSantian slumber and see this charlatan for what he is.
You’ve absolutely hit the nail on the head. Yarvin wants to rule himself and to wreck the world aro himself for his own benefit. Also, I agree with you calling Yarvin a charlatan, because it describes him accurately.
Excellent. This is the best thing I've read in this vein, maybe ever. I've always thought that Yarvin, Thiel, Vance and most of the other hard right reactionaries out there were empty egotistical vessels, but I didn't have the rhetorical chops or knowledge to make such a good case.
Generally agree with you, but think you’re being a bit hard on Voegelin, who I doubt would have had any use for Yarvin and think utopian is a better word for the latter than reactionary. Despite his genuflection to monarchy, it seems to me that he wants to make up a new world entirely out his own warped imagination.
Interesting observation, sir. I admit not being an expert on Voegelin, but I do know enough that he had not only Communists in mind as was the vogue of that day, but also right totalitarians like Yarvin. I am sorry if I did not make it clear that Voegelin as a matter of course would have disdained this character as a fascist; emigrés like him were fleeing the consequences of utopianism, no matter where they ended up on the ideological spectrum once they settled in the U.S. We in the West instinctively think, of course, of utopianism as inherently wedded to "liberal" schemes of human/social improvement via supposedly humane methods; most of the American attempts at total transformation have been driven by progressivist teleologies. But others have just as encompassing world-wide ambitions who are the exact opposite, and Yarvin impeccably fits that category. And the visions of the opposing groups often mirror each other, despite their radical incompatibility from a rational/historical standpoint. All in all, great observation!
Yarvin’s selling his ideas to people who want influence is incredibly dangerous. They hold no discernible merit, and in fighting the people he claims are ruining the world, he wants himself and his acolytes to destroy our polity and become the people he insists are ruining the world. They are not so much workable or meritorious ideas, but they have the potential to be as destructive as fascism and communism.
Excellent piece, thanks. Especially struck by the paragraphs on the claims by the right that they don't have power because it is held by the Elites. I have heard the argument several times that the right has no power and MSM is all leftist. When I suggest Fox is the highest rated tv news source and WSJ, New York Post and countless other large print sources are quite popular, not to mention the myriad of online sources, it's merely a minor inconvenience to the argument and shrugged off.
Also, I hear over and over the idea that "I will be cancelled if I say this thing." The answer to - cancelled by whom and from what? - inevitably comes down to "cancelled by the person who holds the opposite view from me and will not agree" and 99% of the time is also an adolescent.
To believe these arguments is to deny so many easily verifiable truths and to ignore and deny one's own fragility (despite one's boisterous claims of being anti fragile).
I honestly don't think Shapiro, Crowder, Walsh, Yarvin, Bannon, et. al. understand they don't win because of some insidious power acting against them. They don't win because "the people" either A) Don't like what they're selling or B) Don't like them because they're pretentious, sanctimonious hypocrites who rarely if ever reflect the values they espouse. Fact is their model of governance is unpopular because it's a batsh*t model of governance. Nothing they say or do is gonna change that and plenty of people recognize them for the hucksters they are.
I don't know a lot about Yarvin, but it seems to me that some of the comments here have a pearl-clutching tone that can be the enemy of intellectual discovery. I would argue that intellectual history is thickly populated with people who could be both incredibly insightful in some ways and totally loathsome in others. The recent controversies over the fact that many of the founders were slaveowners is a great example of this. I think past histories were usually too exculpatory of the founders in this regard but it is also wrong to reduce indisputably great men like Washington and Jefferson to being only slaveholders, John C. Calhoun is another example. I think young people are less exposed to him than in the past because his strident defense of slavery is so noxious to contemporary sensibilities but the fact remains that he was a formidable political thinker. In sum, go ahead and knock people with disagreeable views but bear in mind that an overly censorious attitude can sometimes cut you off from great insight as well.
So, by your position here, Yarvin is as worthy to be taken seriously as Washington, Jefferson, and Calhoun? This is the position of a dilettante, not of someone with moral or intellectual integrity. I do not want to apply that label to you (you seem to be more of the village contrarian in this forum than a troll, properly speaking), but it is certainly tempting. Believe me, there is absolutely NOTHING to be learned from this charlatan. He has no "wisdom" other than that which he can spin out of his entelechy. That is to say, there is nothing original at all about him; he basically parrots and repackages for modern consumption the likes of Joseph de Maistre and the German "Conservative Revolutionaries" of the Weimar period.
If you approve of his views, then have the courage to actually defend them by evidence and logic rather than deflect the issue in the manner of Trump's "there were good people on both sides" (whatever name that fallacy goes by is unimportant for my purposes). If you want to accuse me of hypocrisy by claiming that the left is inherently amoral by its embrace of post-modernism, I will be the first to tell you that, yes, it happened, and yes, it was a stupid, abominable mistake. What is transpiring now is that a new generation on the left, for whatever motivation, has come to realize that relativism is a dead end and a weapon in the hands of its enemies, since the right has come to embrace it with a fervor never found among its French exponents of 50 or so years ago. It is nothing short of a high irony that the very movement that took up decrying the lack of moral objectivity in academia and society alike has been succeeded by those utterly indifferent to it. I do not know how much conservatives like you want for liberals to atone for the past; I suppose nothing will please some of you. That is what this boils down to, the belief that there is something eternal and unchangeable about the character of liberalism that prevents it from appropriating the notion of truth that withstands the vicissitudes of historical chance.
As for me, I will clutch my pearls anytime I damn well please, so spare us your admonitions. "Intellectual discovery" works only when there are proper conditions for its flourishing; polemics disguised as wisdom, as well intended as you might hold, is not one of them. And that goes for all of you on the left, also.
Part of Yarvin's talent seems to be rhetorical - Red Pill, the Cathedral. These are compelling explanatory images, a way of turning life into a mythic scenario, much like the Gnostics' demiurge.
Great piece. While I agree that the US is not even close to the kind of RW politics that could place Yarvin allies into power via elections. But after Jan 6th, there is a real fear that the illiberal wing of the GOP will take control.
And what Yarvin and other post-liberal forces like Bannon are best at is propaganda. As Damon outlines, Yarvin spins a good tale spinning truth about weaken political/social institutions with his dark solutions that will "solve" this problem. My fear is that by tapping into this widespread dissatisfaction with our institutions, combined with the next political earth quake we have, will create a window in which the right-wing minority of a narrow GOP-controlled executive branch, seizes power and defy anyone to take the power back. These people are smart and crazy.
I am shocked by the utter complacency of those who think that people who see Yarvin for what he truly is are unduly alarmist. I chalk it up to the indolence that was nurtured by several generations of (relative) prosperity and social peace in the U.S. We think, in other words, that liberty is in the air we breathe and does not require effort to defend. I would suspect that Europeans, by contrast, can much better call a spade a spade in his instance--the far right has been a constant presence there since the aftermath of the Paris Commune.
I think you are overinterpreting my point. All I mean to say is that that while Yarvin seems to hold some objectionable views, that in and of itself is not a reason to dismiss him because lots of people who held objectionable views on some things were quite insightful on others. For example, John Maynard Keynes was the director of the British Eugenics Society. Does that mean I have to dismiss his work in economics? Yarvin and Bannon and these people can and should be attacked for many reasons but they are obviously speaking to things that resonate with lots of people. I wish I saw more that critiqued them on their own terms rather than a reflexive rush to brand them as bigots and thereby rule them out of bounds.
No, sir, I am sorry, but I am not buying. It does not matter whether Yarvin resonates with only a single soul. Reasoning with mentalities like his is a fool's errand, plain and simple. I stand by my unequivocal condemnation of him. If that makes me a bigot and a hypocrite, I would like to submit to you, in his own words, a strong defense of hypocrisy when it is called for:
The main point that comes from Yarvin is that property rights and unrestricted democracy are not compatible. Otherwise the whole Yarvin ideal is far-fetched, especially the racial stuff.
It is also valid to say that America is a puritan nation. The difference today is that the puritans no longer believe in God; they are mostly in thrall to cultural Marxism. The key is to not wish to be part of their clique, reject their recognition, and live your life as far away from liberal centers of power.
As to firing the entirety of middle-level bureaucrats: sign me up! I would venture to say most are simply drawing a paycheck and contributing almost nothing...
Ordinarily, I would ignore you. But I will give you credit for at least coming clean with your guts to stick your neck out and support Yarvin outright rather than pussyfoot around as some commentators here have done. But that is all that I am giving you; do not count on any possibility of changing my mind or most of the others here. Whether you like it or not is your own business; personally, I am not concerned.
I've heard that a decent rule-of-thumb is that when a think-piece's title is a question, the shortest version of the piece is 'No.'.
In this case, I think Mr Yarvin's works constitute not 'just consoling lies' but 'dangerous, inciting, fancies'. The sum of his thought—some word for a seemingly large, ideologically-born, imposing, edifice, even if it be made of Tinkertoys®, escapes me—is a warrant for violence or its use as an imminent threat. He avoids the simple trap of the vulgar conspiracy-theorist in rejecting the need for continual and secret conspiracy, but the notional opponent he constructs is similarly implacable, illegitimate, and invulnerable to opposition limited by law, custom, or even decency, justifying whatever one wants to oppose it. There is grandeur in this view of life, and a great gift: the freedom to do whatever were desired, be it legal or skirting the boundaries of Law or in violation of it or (only to the eyes of those not sharing your particular Enlightenment!) barbarous…all the while knowing that one were doing so not in satisfaction of one's own base desires, but in the name of Right itself.
The elite (which is not monolithic but has discernible tendencies) is basically libertarian, in a country which is overall, not. The LW version is culturally and behaviorally libertarian (do what makes you happy) and the RW is fiscally libertarian. My guess is members of both camps are pretty shielded from the consequences of their policies.
I was unaware of libertarianism and its siblings until the 90s where it was promulgated by the Wordlwide Web. Since then I see how it is spread and has morphed into many flavors including the oxymoron, “Christian Libertarianism”. Of course, now cultural libertarianism has become what it didn’t want to be, a straitjacket. One has to exhibit just the right understanding and use just the right words to show one’s in-group status. One has to understand the sins of cultural appropriation and the hierarchal intricacies of intersectionality. Correct behavior is codified.
And the fiscal libertarianism of the right elite? They throw bones to the base (school prayer, own the libs, Roe versus Wade) while they systematically dismantle us peons’ protections (what they call the regulative state), and unions; and slash the responsibility of the ultra-wealthy to share the fruits of the country they’ve shaped to suit their pursuit of wealth and status.
That said, a participative democracy is our best way to fight back.
(This late comment is what happens when I’m too busy to check due to RL.)
Linker when I first came across Moldbug I told him exactly what I'm saying now to you. Bonus: this is why I'm in J6 Report as some kind spark to it all.
The Home Team - the true standard GOP Trump base- the small business owners in the top half of population of the many small states HAVE RULED HERE FOR 250+ YEARS.
And it's never going to stop. You know it. You hate it Damon. The entire tone of your article here is a lie... But let me explain WHY it is this way- mechanistically.
WHY? The US system (our game rules, like Monopoly or Scrabble) was created literally by 57 dudes from 12 states (RI stayed home) in Philly in 1787 and they had to go home convince THEIR STATE LEGISLATURES TO RATIFY the Constitution. The governors didn't get to matter, the state judges.... it was really the state legislature. Remember ratification, we'll go back to it.
So the games rules said this:
1. State legislatures will choose the 2 Senators.
2. State legislatures will choose (the electors for) POTUS
3. Senators and POTUS will choose SCOTUS
The only thing the people got vote on was their House Rep (power of purse and all that)
Thats the WHY America feels so UNFAIR to Democrats, bc the country was created by competing states who sole concern was maintaining their own sovereignty. It's FINE to go read the Federalist papers and the consider the other arguments and ideas that men had- but when it came down to it, the game rules IN EVERY SINGLE DECISION they were first concerned with states legislatures agreeing to RATIFY and of course that meant building a govt that made state legislatures super powerful.
It remains that way today. SCOTUS tossed Roe (I love abortion). Easy peasy. There is nothing that keeps them layer by layer from unpeeling the onion, decision by decisions, back to states have their religion and can limit speech.
This is why you Fear & Loathe and why Yarvin is full of shit. HOME TEAM IS THE HOUSE, THE ODDS FAVOR THEM. This doesn't stop "progress" it just means that TALENT is always in charge in medium and long term.
There are 4 players in the game- in every country- in every moment in history:
1. TALENT (smartest guys, least averse to risk)
2. CAPITAL (yesterdays talent)
3. GOONS - not as many of those any more
4. BUREAUCRATS
LABOR doesn't matter much. It follows Talent. trailing behind it. Gaining an dlosing relative population is how states keep score.
Countries (states) rise when they kiss Talents ass. Talent floods in, it goes where it can make its fortune.
Capital and goons and bureaucrats in different times and different collective efforts try to control Talent. This can work in short term. In the most extreme examples the Talent is literally LOCKED IN, and must defect to get out.
We have had 4 "turnings" in the US - the turning discourse is stupid too, they don't understand the WHY...
1. When US was formed, Talent began to flee to New England and away from Southern Ag mostly capital and goons. New England bureaucrats WELCOMED Talent - do whatever you want with your fancy new machines!
2. 80 years in, even prior to civil war, the Midwest was where the Talent went, as it was chased out by bureaucrats and capital. During the next 80 years you see Ohio field endless POTUS.
3. The 3rd turning 160 years in, came with CA bureaucrats bending over to kiss Talent's ass.
4. And now we are squarely into the rise of TX, FL, NC, GA, AZ - the Southern states rise again 240 years later!
Bureaucrats just cant get their hands around steering wheel no matter how many unholy deals with make with capital or goons. Talent rules.
The US was discovered by our first venture funded startup god king, Christopher Columbus. And for 400+ years, if you believe in genetics at all- forget race thats not a real thing- BUT TALENT GENES (the top 1% high on IQ and risk tolerance, weak on family and place) have fled the entire Earth to move here and breed. Even you Damon have some explorer, pirate, wildcatter, cowboy stuff in you- in much higher quantities than the rest of Earth.... thats part of why we are ungovernable... but mainly it is our BIOS rules - federalism.
Look, it's not like we don't NEED the Yarvin dystopians, bc it STEELS US for what we will do if we must- McCarthy Hearings, but we don't NEED those....
McCarthy happened bc the bureaucrats held out, long after Teddy (our 2nd Jacksonian POTUS) came in... but when we got our 3rd Nixon, he broke the Weather Underground, Black Panthers in a decade!
Antifa/BLM is half strength to the Boomer radicals. Hell, we had 3K domestic bombings in the early 70s- and STILL turned those liberals into Reagan voters. Here comes DeSantis.
It's literally only 1975 right now. We're 15 years after Obama/JFK.
The last cycle 1960-80, bought the 28 YEARS of conservative rule you and I grew up in Damon.
So YES, you are right Yarvin doesn't have the capacity to see he's not NEW. My god. He's not new at all...
But it silly for you to agree with his premise, bc deep down dude, you know TX and FL are taking over (also called the Freedom Caucus) . CA, NY, IL, NJ are the next RUST BELT- and are only going to get worse. There will be no bailout from DC for them.
You are another troll, Madam. What is not registering with you is the fact that Yarvin wants to destroy the very things that he needs to get a hearing and influence policy once he and/or his cronies get hold of the levers of government. Once that happens, there will be no "fair and square" tactics any longer, believe me. You are also a racist--what else can one make of your sarcastic hypothetical in the first sentence and your basically giving yourself away by the phrase "population replacement?" Every participant on this forum knows exactly what that means, and you do also. Stay on QAnon and the far-right chat boards; those are where you belong.
Do you think that there is "sweeping internet censorship" or a plot for "population replacement" taking place here? Pray tell, point it out. I must have missed it.
Whoa. You know there is no “population replacement” being proposed or carried out, right? If you’re talking about the USA continuing down its multi-ethnic path, that’s just a matter of natural migration and birth rates. There is no plot. IMO, we’re a better country the more diverse we are in all ways. Diversity makes this country powerful, imaginative, and resilient. We’ve always been a nation of immigrants and I, for one, am proud of it.
(And I do get that I’m not reckoning with the experiences of the First Nations but that’s a whole ‘nother conversation.)
As always, a fine piece.
Linker, this is the most excellent take-down of a figure you have done since I started reading and posting. There is not a g-----n thing new about Yarvin or his ideas; the beliefs are as old as the Ancients. It is only because of our laughable, constipated educational system, from Kindergarten on up, that we as a people do not have sufficient historical and philosophical knowledge of pre-modern times to set off our b------t detectors. We also do not have the moral/spiritual cojones to call Gnosticism for what it is, not a harmless, personal belief system such as the "New Age" of the late 20th century, but a direct threat to the very freedom (First Amendment) that, ironically, allows its enthusiasts (few as they are) to indulge in their preferred beliefs; in other words, it is, under the conditions of existence, self-undermining.
You have put your finger precisely on the appeal and engine of Gnosticism: ego. As such, you have done a far better service than early conservative movement figures such as Eric Voegelin, who used the concept to smear basically anything he and his National Review intellectual kinfolk did not like and thus rendered any potential serious critique inherent in his viewpoints as self-interested and thus dismissible, to demonstrate how specious it is--and further its incompatibility with both republican self-government and either conservative or liberal Christianity, be it Catholic, Protestant, or Eastern Orthodox. Are the likes of Deneen, Ahmari, and Vermeule paying any attention to Yarvin's opposition to not only liberalism, but also his de facto rejection of even humane conservative (NOT fundamentalist) Christian anthropology (e.g., Augustine, Luther, Kierkegaard)? If they are not, that means that they are theological illiterates and do not have any more business dictating what Americans should think any more than Yarvin does.
To close, I am sure Voegelin would be rolling around in his grave if he knew what uses his animus against Gnosticism were being put to. Then again, it has been the trajectory of conservatism to trade in its moral and intellectual integrity for popular assent--it has basically lost its soul and has a decreasing resemblance to its origins in opposition to instability and mob rule. Of course Yarvin is not a "conservative;" he is a reactionary who wants to destroy everything in sight and rule himself. Hopefully some elements of the Right will wake up out of their Trumpist/DeSantian slumber and see this charlatan for what he is.
Thanks. I was going to comment on how this article exposes the New Right fascists as egotistical and self absorbed, but you said it all.
You’ve absolutely hit the nail on the head. Yarvin wants to rule himself and to wreck the world aro himself for his own benefit. Also, I agree with you calling Yarvin a charlatan, because it describes him accurately.
Excellent. This is the best thing I've read in this vein, maybe ever. I've always thought that Yarvin, Thiel, Vance and most of the other hard right reactionaries out there were empty egotistical vessels, but I didn't have the rhetorical chops or knowledge to make such a good case.
Generally agree with you, but think you’re being a bit hard on Voegelin, who I doubt would have had any use for Yarvin and think utopian is a better word for the latter than reactionary. Despite his genuflection to monarchy, it seems to me that he wants to make up a new world entirely out his own warped imagination.
Interesting observation, sir. I admit not being an expert on Voegelin, but I do know enough that he had not only Communists in mind as was the vogue of that day, but also right totalitarians like Yarvin. I am sorry if I did not make it clear that Voegelin as a matter of course would have disdained this character as a fascist; emigrés like him were fleeing the consequences of utopianism, no matter where they ended up on the ideological spectrum once they settled in the U.S. We in the West instinctively think, of course, of utopianism as inherently wedded to "liberal" schemes of human/social improvement via supposedly humane methods; most of the American attempts at total transformation have been driven by progressivist teleologies. But others have just as encompassing world-wide ambitions who are the exact opposite, and Yarvin impeccably fits that category. And the visions of the opposing groups often mirror each other, despite their radical incompatibility from a rational/historical standpoint. All in all, great observation!
Thanks for your thoughts. I’m no expert on Voegelin either, just an avid reader when I was younger.
Yarvin’s selling his ideas to people who want influence is incredibly dangerous. They hold no discernible merit, and in fighting the people he claims are ruining the world, he wants himself and his acolytes to destroy our polity and become the people he insists are ruining the world. They are not so much workable or meritorious ideas, but they have the potential to be as destructive as fascism and communism.
Excellent piece, thanks. Especially struck by the paragraphs on the claims by the right that they don't have power because it is held by the Elites. I have heard the argument several times that the right has no power and MSM is all leftist. When I suggest Fox is the highest rated tv news source and WSJ, New York Post and countless other large print sources are quite popular, not to mention the myriad of online sources, it's merely a minor inconvenience to the argument and shrugged off.
Also, I hear over and over the idea that "I will be cancelled if I say this thing." The answer to - cancelled by whom and from what? - inevitably comes down to "cancelled by the person who holds the opposite view from me and will not agree" and 99% of the time is also an adolescent.
To believe these arguments is to deny so many easily verifiable truths and to ignore and deny one's own fragility (despite one's boisterous claims of being anti fragile).
I honestly don't think Shapiro, Crowder, Walsh, Yarvin, Bannon, et. al. understand they don't win because of some insidious power acting against them. They don't win because "the people" either A) Don't like what they're selling or B) Don't like them because they're pretentious, sanctimonious hypocrites who rarely if ever reflect the values they espouse. Fact is their model of governance is unpopular because it's a batsh*t model of governance. Nothing they say or do is gonna change that and plenty of people recognize them for the hucksters they are.
I don't know a lot about Yarvin, but it seems to me that some of the comments here have a pearl-clutching tone that can be the enemy of intellectual discovery. I would argue that intellectual history is thickly populated with people who could be both incredibly insightful in some ways and totally loathsome in others. The recent controversies over the fact that many of the founders were slaveowners is a great example of this. I think past histories were usually too exculpatory of the founders in this regard but it is also wrong to reduce indisputably great men like Washington and Jefferson to being only slaveholders, John C. Calhoun is another example. I think young people are less exposed to him than in the past because his strident defense of slavery is so noxious to contemporary sensibilities but the fact remains that he was a formidable political thinker. In sum, go ahead and knock people with disagreeable views but bear in mind that an overly censorious attitude can sometimes cut you off from great insight as well.
So, by your position here, Yarvin is as worthy to be taken seriously as Washington, Jefferson, and Calhoun? This is the position of a dilettante, not of someone with moral or intellectual integrity. I do not want to apply that label to you (you seem to be more of the village contrarian in this forum than a troll, properly speaking), but it is certainly tempting. Believe me, there is absolutely NOTHING to be learned from this charlatan. He has no "wisdom" other than that which he can spin out of his entelechy. That is to say, there is nothing original at all about him; he basically parrots and repackages for modern consumption the likes of Joseph de Maistre and the German "Conservative Revolutionaries" of the Weimar period.
If you approve of his views, then have the courage to actually defend them by evidence and logic rather than deflect the issue in the manner of Trump's "there were good people on both sides" (whatever name that fallacy goes by is unimportant for my purposes). If you want to accuse me of hypocrisy by claiming that the left is inherently amoral by its embrace of post-modernism, I will be the first to tell you that, yes, it happened, and yes, it was a stupid, abominable mistake. What is transpiring now is that a new generation on the left, for whatever motivation, has come to realize that relativism is a dead end and a weapon in the hands of its enemies, since the right has come to embrace it with a fervor never found among its French exponents of 50 or so years ago. It is nothing short of a high irony that the very movement that took up decrying the lack of moral objectivity in academia and society alike has been succeeded by those utterly indifferent to it. I do not know how much conservatives like you want for liberals to atone for the past; I suppose nothing will please some of you. That is what this boils down to, the belief that there is something eternal and unchangeable about the character of liberalism that prevents it from appropriating the notion of truth that withstands the vicissitudes of historical chance.
As for me, I will clutch my pearls anytime I damn well please, so spare us your admonitions. "Intellectual discovery" works only when there are proper conditions for its flourishing; polemics disguised as wisdom, as well intended as you might hold, is not one of them. And that goes for all of you on the left, also.
Part of Yarvin's talent seems to be rhetorical - Red Pill, the Cathedral. These are compelling explanatory images, a way of turning life into a mythic scenario, much like the Gnostics' demiurge.
A very helpful piece - thank you.
Great piece. While I agree that the US is not even close to the kind of RW politics that could place Yarvin allies into power via elections. But after Jan 6th, there is a real fear that the illiberal wing of the GOP will take control.
And what Yarvin and other post-liberal forces like Bannon are best at is propaganda. As Damon outlines, Yarvin spins a good tale spinning truth about weaken political/social institutions with his dark solutions that will "solve" this problem. My fear is that by tapping into this widespread dissatisfaction with our institutions, combined with the next political earth quake we have, will create a window in which the right-wing minority of a narrow GOP-controlled executive branch, seizes power and defy anyone to take the power back. These people are smart and crazy.
I am shocked by the utter complacency of those who think that people who see Yarvin for what he truly is are unduly alarmist. I chalk it up to the indolence that was nurtured by several generations of (relative) prosperity and social peace in the U.S. We think, in other words, that liberty is in the air we breathe and does not require effort to defend. I would suspect that Europeans, by contrast, can much better call a spade a spade in his instance--the far right has been a constant presence there since the aftermath of the Paris Commune.
Hi Mike,
I think you are overinterpreting my point. All I mean to say is that that while Yarvin seems to hold some objectionable views, that in and of itself is not a reason to dismiss him because lots of people who held objectionable views on some things were quite insightful on others. For example, John Maynard Keynes was the director of the British Eugenics Society. Does that mean I have to dismiss his work in economics? Yarvin and Bannon and these people can and should be attacked for many reasons but they are obviously speaking to things that resonate with lots of people. I wish I saw more that critiqued them on their own terms rather than a reflexive rush to brand them as bigots and thereby rule them out of bounds.
No, sir, I am sorry, but I am not buying. It does not matter whether Yarvin resonates with only a single soul. Reasoning with mentalities like his is a fool's errand, plain and simple. I stand by my unequivocal condemnation of him. If that makes me a bigot and a hypocrite, I would like to submit to you, in his own words, a strong defense of hypocrisy when it is called for:
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/319152-hypocrisy-is-a-tribute-that-vice-pays-to-virtue.
The main point that comes from Yarvin is that property rights and unrestricted democracy are not compatible. Otherwise the whole Yarvin ideal is far-fetched, especially the racial stuff.
It is also valid to say that America is a puritan nation. The difference today is that the puritans no longer believe in God; they are mostly in thrall to cultural Marxism. The key is to not wish to be part of their clique, reject their recognition, and live your life as far away from liberal centers of power.
As to firing the entirety of middle-level bureaucrats: sign me up! I would venture to say most are simply drawing a paycheck and contributing almost nothing...
Ordinarily, I would ignore you. But I will give you credit for at least coming clean with your guts to stick your neck out and support Yarvin outright rather than pussyfoot around as some commentators here have done. But that is all that I am giving you; do not count on any possibility of changing my mind or most of the others here. Whether you like it or not is your own business; personally, I am not concerned.
I don't endeavor to change anyone's mind. I don't even expect to win. I just want to tell the truth and not be bullied into recanting.
And there is no question my claims are correct.
I've heard that a decent rule-of-thumb is that when a think-piece's title is a question, the shortest version of the piece is 'No.'.
In this case, I think Mr Yarvin's works constitute not 'just consoling lies' but 'dangerous, inciting, fancies'. The sum of his thought—some word for a seemingly large, ideologically-born, imposing, edifice, even if it be made of Tinkertoys®, escapes me—is a warrant for violence or its use as an imminent threat. He avoids the simple trap of the vulgar conspiracy-theorist in rejecting the need for continual and secret conspiracy, but the notional opponent he constructs is similarly implacable, illegitimate, and invulnerable to opposition limited by law, custom, or even decency, justifying whatever one wants to oppose it. There is grandeur in this view of life, and a great gift: the freedom to do whatever were desired, be it legal or skirting the boundaries of Law or in violation of it or (only to the eyes of those not sharing your particular Enlightenment!) barbarous…all the while knowing that one were doing so not in satisfaction of one's own base desires, but in the name of Right itself.
The elite (which is not monolithic but has discernible tendencies) is basically libertarian, in a country which is overall, not. The LW version is culturally and behaviorally libertarian (do what makes you happy) and the RW is fiscally libertarian. My guess is members of both camps are pretty shielded from the consequences of their policies.
I was unaware of libertarianism and its siblings until the 90s where it was promulgated by the Wordlwide Web. Since then I see how it is spread and has morphed into many flavors including the oxymoron, “Christian Libertarianism”. Of course, now cultural libertarianism has become what it didn’t want to be, a straitjacket. One has to exhibit just the right understanding and use just the right words to show one’s in-group status. One has to understand the sins of cultural appropriation and the hierarchal intricacies of intersectionality. Correct behavior is codified.
And the fiscal libertarianism of the right elite? They throw bones to the base (school prayer, own the libs, Roe versus Wade) while they systematically dismantle us peons’ protections (what they call the regulative state), and unions; and slash the responsibility of the ultra-wealthy to share the fruits of the country they’ve shaped to suit their pursuit of wealth and status.
That said, a participative democracy is our best way to fight back.
(This late comment is what happens when I’m too busy to check due to RL.)
Linker when I first came across Moldbug I told him exactly what I'm saying now to you. Bonus: this is why I'm in J6 Report as some kind spark to it all.
The Home Team - the true standard GOP Trump base- the small business owners in the top half of population of the many small states HAVE RULED HERE FOR 250+ YEARS.
And it's never going to stop. You know it. You hate it Damon. The entire tone of your article here is a lie... But let me explain WHY it is this way- mechanistically.
WHY? The US system (our game rules, like Monopoly or Scrabble) was created literally by 57 dudes from 12 states (RI stayed home) in Philly in 1787 and they had to go home convince THEIR STATE LEGISLATURES TO RATIFY the Constitution. The governors didn't get to matter, the state judges.... it was really the state legislature. Remember ratification, we'll go back to it.
So the games rules said this:
1. State legislatures will choose the 2 Senators.
2. State legislatures will choose (the electors for) POTUS
3. Senators and POTUS will choose SCOTUS
The only thing the people got vote on was their House Rep (power of purse and all that)
Thats the WHY America feels so UNFAIR to Democrats, bc the country was created by competing states who sole concern was maintaining their own sovereignty. It's FINE to go read the Federalist papers and the consider the other arguments and ideas that men had- but when it came down to it, the game rules IN EVERY SINGLE DECISION they were first concerned with states legislatures agreeing to RATIFY and of course that meant building a govt that made state legislatures super powerful.
It remains that way today. SCOTUS tossed Roe (I love abortion). Easy peasy. There is nothing that keeps them layer by layer from unpeeling the onion, decision by decisions, back to states have their religion and can limit speech.
This is why you Fear & Loathe and why Yarvin is full of shit. HOME TEAM IS THE HOUSE, THE ODDS FAVOR THEM. This doesn't stop "progress" it just means that TALENT is always in charge in medium and long term.
There are 4 players in the game- in every country- in every moment in history:
1. TALENT (smartest guys, least averse to risk)
2. CAPITAL (yesterdays talent)
3. GOONS - not as many of those any more
4. BUREAUCRATS
LABOR doesn't matter much. It follows Talent. trailing behind it. Gaining an dlosing relative population is how states keep score.
Countries (states) rise when they kiss Talents ass. Talent floods in, it goes where it can make its fortune.
Capital and goons and bureaucrats in different times and different collective efforts try to control Talent. This can work in short term. In the most extreme examples the Talent is literally LOCKED IN, and must defect to get out.
We have had 4 "turnings" in the US - the turning discourse is stupid too, they don't understand the WHY...
1. When US was formed, Talent began to flee to New England and away from Southern Ag mostly capital and goons. New England bureaucrats WELCOMED Talent - do whatever you want with your fancy new machines!
2. 80 years in, even prior to civil war, the Midwest was where the Talent went, as it was chased out by bureaucrats and capital. During the next 80 years you see Ohio field endless POTUS.
3. The 3rd turning 160 years in, came with CA bureaucrats bending over to kiss Talent's ass.
4. And now we are squarely into the rise of TX, FL, NC, GA, AZ - the Southern states rise again 240 years later!
Bureaucrats just cant get their hands around steering wheel no matter how many unholy deals with make with capital or goons. Talent rules.
The US was discovered by our first venture funded startup god king, Christopher Columbus. And for 400+ years, if you believe in genetics at all- forget race thats not a real thing- BUT TALENT GENES (the top 1% high on IQ and risk tolerance, weak on family and place) have fled the entire Earth to move here and breed. Even you Damon have some explorer, pirate, wildcatter, cowboy stuff in you- in much higher quantities than the rest of Earth.... thats part of why we are ungovernable... but mainly it is our BIOS rules - federalism.
Look, it's not like we don't NEED the Yarvin dystopians, bc it STEELS US for what we will do if we must- McCarthy Hearings, but we don't NEED those....
McCarthy happened bc the bureaucrats held out, long after Teddy (our 2nd Jacksonian POTUS) came in... but when we got our 3rd Nixon, he broke the Weather Underground, Black Panthers in a decade!
Antifa/BLM is half strength to the Boomer radicals. Hell, we had 3K domestic bombings in the early 70s- and STILL turned those liberals into Reagan voters. Here comes DeSantis.
It's literally only 1975 right now. We're 15 years after Obama/JFK.
The last cycle 1960-80, bought the 28 YEARS of conservative rule you and I grew up in Damon.
So YES, you are right Yarvin doesn't have the capacity to see he's not NEW. My god. He's not new at all...
But it silly for you to agree with his premise, bc deep down dude, you know TX and FL are taking over (also called the Freedom Caucus) . CA, NY, IL, NJ are the next RUST BELT- and are only going to get worse. There will be no bailout from DC for them.
Hope this helps!