/lit/ - Literature

>>15999547
Always and everywhere, the worst way to resist a regime is to inhabit its stage villains. Like most bad choices, this choice is a bad default. It’s as you lived in 15th-century Paris and thought the Church was very corrupt and bad—but there was no alternative. You couldn’t be a cool Enlightenment philosophe or at least just a Protestant. Because it was the 15th century. And there weren’t even words for these things.

So you asked your priest: if not God, King and Church, in what would I believe? Who is against God and King and Church? And your priest said: Satan. And so, thinking logically, you became a Satanist. This probably actually happened to you, except it wasn’t a priest but a “guidance counselor.” The way the world works never changes.

If some party A asks how it should operate in opposing some opponent B, B’s vision of who its opponents are and how they operate is hardly the place to start! You could start with a clean slate. You could start with any other period in history. Instead you start by literally aping your enemy’s propaganda. The only possible cause of any such choice is laziness and/or immaturity: not promising qualities in an aspiring aristocrat.

So while in a way we can’t really blame you for falling into the default, which means falling into a trap, in a way it still is your fault. Not finding Voltaire or even Calvin on the menu, the right response is not to give up and settle for Satan—but to invent Calvin or Voltaire. On one side of the coin, this is an epic challenge; on the other, an epic opportunity.

The player/operator
Here we at last wriggle free from the department of losers, and get into real power. We will consider dissidents only in this section—the volunteer player/operator, who is just a straight-out winner, is truly part of the regime, and belongs to the next chapter.

Again, under our present system of government or anything like it, there is no such thing as a dissident operator. There is no obvious and realistic plan to build power against the regime. The rare dissident player can resist or divert it—but this work is useful only for itself; these successes, which are rare, do not make other successes easier.

This is because like water flows downhill, power flows to the regime. But why? How? We could surely imagine collective actions, organizations or operations which built power for the enemies of power. Let’s imagine some more concrete options in more detail, to see why there is no obvious way to solve the problem.

The general problem: since assaulting the enemy expresses power, the dissident operator is operated on long before he could operate. People will feel good because they hit you. They will hit you in any way they can. Since they are bigger and stronger than you, they will win. So don’t even think about hitting people. Yes, that absolutely is a thoughtcrime—thoughtcrime is real and always has been. Don’t do the crime, kids.

>>15999554
In a centralized regime, the dissident operator is a target for the intelligence ministry. In a decentralized regime, he is a target for everyone. He will not be hired; his books will not be published, nor will books about him be; his real-estate deals will fall through; his dog will be denied a dog license. In fact he is not a person at all. People will get in trouble for just knowing him. And this is his best-case scenario—if he takes every precaution to not be a usable heel.

Not even the excuse that you are just trying to do some innocuous Y, but you actually produce some side effect Z—which just so happens to make your side powerful—will save you. If you are in fact expressing power against the regime, anyone can express much more power by crushing you for the regime. They will be able to make up some reason they are right.

Your two roads to damnation
Let’s take an even closer look at some examples. There are two ways to build power: extragovernmental (by building regimelike things outside the regime), and intragovernmental (by infiltrating the regime).

Operating extragovernmentally, we could build informal networks for informal protection and defense. Such networks are not unusual in our society, in which an enormous amount of government-like activity operates beneath the law. And of course, the line between protection, retaliation, and coercion is always a blurry one—and the power to coerce is the power of government.

So surely we are on the way. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. Or if it is not good—perhaps we ganders can, by exercising our anserine rights and behaving as the geese, prove that we are just as good as geese? And if geese have “muscle”…

Everyone who tries this discovers that the situation is not at all symmetric. Apparently water does not flow uphill, and ashes don't turn back into trees. What's good for the goose is actually terrible for the gander—who ends up on the news as a classic heel.

All power flows toward the regime because the first reflex of any regime is to crush all power outside it. Collective actions that would otherwise express power outside or against the regime are impotent at best once its thumb is on the scale. This goes double for your little black-shirted army of paintball wizards with road flares—which both physically challenges power, and does so by inhabiting power’s own stereotype.

The stereotype is the bacon of power’s story. Bacon goes in everything. It makes any dish taste great and feel real. The regime’s only problem is that it has a limited supply of bacon. Once the regime runs low on real enemies, its narrative has to resort to imaginary conspiracies, unstable teenagers, straight-out madmen, etc.

Needs more made up nrx words.

>>15999560
These low-grade heels work for most viewers; they do taste like bacon; but they lack a certain flavor. As a would-be dissident operator, you are the realest meat around. The more serious your plan, the more power your destruction will express, and the greater the forces that will assemble to participate in your destruction.

If your strategy is physical resistance, no law can protect you. You cannot even defend yourself—any self-defense will present as aggression—and whatever was good for the Minutemen, the Wide Awakes, or even the Weathermen, is certainly not good for you.

Intragovernmental infiltration is an even more precarious path. You might think it had been done before—and it has—but only by volunteers. Only power can infiltrate itself.

The problem is that heresy is not the inverse of fanaticism. Within the loop of actual power, fanaticism is always prosocial. Extreme fanaticism is misguided but still often charming. Heresy is always antisocial; excessive heresy is terrifying.

So while extreme fanatics can infiltrate a moderate organization, heretics cannot. When an institution is full of heretics, they usually have defected in place—or fanatics have built a new normal around them. A career in a profession that cannot accept you as you are is always a marginal idea; if you must pursue it, the profession should be as orthogonal as possible to politics.

The subversive strategy of pretending to be a moderate fanatic, while actually being an extreme fanatic, is so normal it's banal. The inverted-subversive strategy of pretending to be a moderate heretic, while actually being an extreme heretic, is just nonviable. No one says that the best way to beat the extreme heretics is to support moderate heretics. Every moderate heretic is already suspected of being an extreme heretic. You might as well shoot a lion documentary while camouflaged as a goat.

If your strategy is dissident infiltration, success means you succeed so perfectly in pretending to be a true believer that, objectively, you are a true believer. There is never any use, individually or collectively in "uncloaking." Hired in the closet, you retire in the closet. You’re essentially like a KGB agent infiltrating MI5, but without any support from the KGB. (At least you don’t have to write reports back to Moscow.)

>>15999568
And as you age, you may drop not the mask—but the soul under it. As Havel explains:

In any case, experience has taught us again and again that this automatism is far more powerful than the will of any individual; and should someone possess a more independent will, he must conceal it behind a ritually anonymous mask in order to have an opportunity to enter the power hierarchy at all.

And when the individual finally gains a place there and tries to make his will felt within it, that automatism, with its enormous inertia, will triumph sooner or later, and either the individual will be ejected by the power structure like a foreign organism, or he will be compelled to resign his individuality gradually, once again blending with the automatism and becoming its servant, almost indistinguishable from those who preceded him and those who will follow.

Power is heroin. Being an operator is heroin. There is nothing like it. But no one can both serve the devil and master him. And the only reason to do so is frivolous: like a heroin addict, your whole life is consumed by the stimulation of your own desire. And since you are not actually an operator—and likely a heel—this is not Kantian action.

Your warning sign should have been that your collective actions were futile. But they were too fun for you to notice. Well—not all fun is bad, or even bad for you. The best thing about being a dissident really was the friends we made along the way.

Ceci n'est pas un blackpill
There is nothing wrong with defining detachment as a spiritual or emotional commitment. Its very practice demands this commitment.

But every esoteric doctrine has a layer beyond each layer: a higher doctrine which completes and perfects the work below. To the profane and uncircumcised, this new revelation may resemble an exception, a contradiction, even a hypocrisy—which just shows how little these fools know.

The careful reader (who would never join a cult) will note that nowhere have we disproved the existence of forms of collaboration whose expected outcome does matches their predicted outcome. We have not disproved Kantian collective action, positive or negative.

We have shown something different: that the set of popular collective actions of both polarities is weakly selected for Kantian traits (like actually succeeding), and strongly selected for non-Kantian traits (like expressing power). So picking a cause from one of these popular sets is not Kantian.

But all this means is that, if you want to act, you actually have to think. You can expect the defaults to be all bad—or mostly bad. There may be Kantian actions out there. They will be hard to find—and harder to promote.

If you are a positive person and you want to only do good in the world, without expressing any kind of social or political power, you can usually find a way to do that. If you are a negative person—well, you're here, aren't you?

>>15999577
Detachment is emotional renunciation of the desire for power. Renunciation of any form of desire can go in two directions: abstinence or mastery. Once free from the blindness of desire, we can simply relax in our newfound freedom and truth.

But upon regaining our sight, we also see that we could execute more effectively—even without compromising our abstinence from power. This seems like a paradox, and it is—stick around for it:

Subscribe now

>>15999561
I appreciate the lack of made-up words in this piece. I wish he would stop making up words, actually.

>>15999547
Forgot to post the link.
https://graymirror.substack.com/p/2b-negative-causes-are-frivolous

bump

I hate his belaboured metaphors

>>16000320
Same.

>>15999547
>>15999554
>>15999560
>>15999568
>>15999577
Well well well, looks like someone discovered Markov chain generators

>>16000482
You can't be serious.

Bumperino

He is a mediocre thinker and a bad writer. I really don't understand what "influence" he has managed to chisel out.

Moldbug's personal life is a counterexample to his own strategy. He gave this inactivist/passivist strategy nearly 10 years ago in his blog, yet they still came after him. He even said back then that they would ignore his blog for the things it was doing, yet they did the exact opposite. If his theory of passivism in the face of power is correct, then you'd expect at least some predictive value to it; yet it has none, so what does that say about the validity of his inactivist theory? He's right that acting like a /pol/ moron attracts their attention, but if you do what Moldbug does you'll also still attract attention. There needs to be some sort of other strategy, but I doubt you'll get one from the neoreactionaries as they suck at strategic thinking.

>>16001067
What Moldbug does is still technically a form of activity, since he writes and speaks. He's advocating doing literally nothing in this case. That means living our private lives without discussing politics with anyone, at least not in any manner that can be directly attributed to us.

Getting rich off of high level coding doesn't make you elect. Advocating passivity shows your true spirit. Your wealth is an accident, and epiphenomenon, of the conquests of active people.

>>16001145
He said the same thing in his old blog, m8. He said it wouldn't attract any attention from power, but it did. Now he and you are shifting the fundamental hypothesis of the theory in an ad hoc manner from attack (from blogging about old books with naughty thoughts is doing nothing, to doing nothing is doing nothing). If you've read any Lakatos, you'd realize the problem with shifting the fundamental parts of your theorizing about power.

Also, if you were familiar with any sort of strategic thinking or counterintelligence history, you'd realize that not discussing politics with anyone would be an intelligence signature in itself to both the state and its lackeys. A few years back the CIA had a target drug group in central/south america. The CIA leaked a disinfo operation that key drug cartel members were being captured by face recognition (they weren't), mid and high level drug cartel members then started covering up their faces. So the CIA and feds started rolling up suspicious people with bandannas, big hats, and sunglasses in the target areas. Change of behavior and abnormal behavior is a signature that will be used against you. The horns of the dilemma: You either do nothing and be caught by intel signatures, or you pretend to do something and eventually get caught up in the soul-destroying system as Moldbug says above.

>>16001230
>>16001067
Is anyone really coming after him, though? For a long time he was just a literally who with only a single hitpiece against his pen-name, and it wasn't even a really good hit piece, it just called him a two-bit racist because he said Blacks are dumb. Even Urbit was just a minor blip that only racist fa/g/gots even knew existed.

Or are you referring to something new that has come about because he's been going on podcasts and getting in catfights with neocons? I'd argue that that goes directly against passivism (I would also say "it's own creator can't even stick with it" is a valid criticism, however) because as I understand it the entire point of passivism is to drop out of the current system(s) and make your own. I would also say that "well why would the dominant system ever let competition exist?" is a very good critique of that idea, however.

>>16001192
Correct, which is why he says that he should never be allowed to have power, because technocrats and plutocrats make shit leaders. Whether he'd actually refuse power if given it is another question, but lets face it no one is going to give any of us power anyways so it's a moot point.

>>16001230
>He said the same thing in his old blog, m8.
No he did not. The inaction imperative was not mentioned in any post I've read so far, and I've read more than half of his posts.
>He said it wouldn't attract any attention from power, but it did.
Of course it did. Running around calling for the destruction of the government will always attract attention from power. Even crap you post on Facebook will get the attention of the authorities.
>Now he and you are shifting the fundamental hypothesis of the theory in an ad hoc manner from attack (from blogging about old books with naughty thoughts is doing nothing, to doing nothing is doing nothing).
I've never posted anything other than Gray Mirror here, because this is the only discussion of power of his that I find insightful. I live in a very, very liberal area, and what he says is right. I've never seen anyone get hurt by being silent. Only opening your mouth gets you in trouble.
>Also, if you were familiar with any sort of strategic thinking or counterintelligence history, you'd realize that not discussing politics with anyone would be an intelligence signature in itself to both the state and its lackeys.
1. The organizations you speak of are criminal. Every single person you mentioned was involved in crime, and was therefore already on the run. Moldbug's inaction principle applies only to those who have either done nothing illegal, or who have done nothing up until now. If you have done nothing and intend to do nothing, neither the government nor your local ideologues can do anything. If you don't tell anyone, no one will ever know.
2. The conflict you described is one between state organs and criminal organizations. Not being a liberal or a left-winger does is not yet criminal, and the US government is not the exclusive property of any ideological trend, so there is literally no reason why the government would care if I decide to stop annoying people with trivial political discussion.
>>16001261
>I would also say that "well why would the dominant system ever let competition exist?" is a very good critique of that idea, however.
He discusses that in the excerpt posted above. He advocates literal passivism, not attempting to create parallel structures. He genuinely means not doing anything and not talking to anyone about doing anything.

I'm enjoying the Moldbug resurgence. Been revisiting UR and will probably end up buying Gray Mirror (although I hope he drops the Nihilist Prince part)

>>16001230
That CIA episode is interesting and I see your point, but I don't think that principle applies to private citizens of the US engaging in free discourse. One wouldn't be signalling anything dangerous by simply making bland, cynical political observations when prompted, while hiding their true ethos. It's fashionable to be skeptical of both political parties, after all.

>>16001286
>It's fashionable to be skeptical of both political parties, after all.
Only in a manner that chastises both political parties for not adhering to Liberal religious values strongly enough, however. You can only ever disagree one way, and that's the way that props up the system.

It's similar to why you can say that the Holocaust wasn't six million, but sixty million, but cannot say that it was only six thousand. One agrees with the myth and amplifies the moral principles behind it, the other directly disagrees with those moral principles by undercutting the importance of the myth.

>>16001286
>Been revisiting UR and will probably end up buying Gray Mirror
Same. Gray Mirror is shaping up to be decent. I didn't hear about it until this month, though, so I've only read the first two chapters.

>>15999547
Persuasion is the best piece he’s put on the substack so far

>>16001261
> write and speak tomes about how you shouldn't be given power to influence people.

>Curtis Yarvin, a “neoreactionary” who blogs under the name Mencius Moldbug, was allegedly removed from the campus by security after being invited to lunch.

tfw you're banned from Google

>>15999560
>Bacon goes in everything. It makes any dish taste great and feel real.
Le epic narwhal bacons at le midnight xD

>>16001326
His entire project is based around the idea that shit is fucked and will not be unfucked until well after he is dead. His goal, then, is to write things down so that people who come later can figure out how to run things better. He couldn't attain power in a way he would want to hold it anyways, because shit is fucked at a fundamental level.

That's literally why it's the Gray MIRROR for the Nihilist PRINCE. He's writing Mirrors for Princes, a genre of literature in which people without power analyzed the world and wrote books to be read by those who had power.

Source: the Hermitix episode he did.

>>16001348
In other words, he has nothing of value to say for us so don't pay for his content or speak his sage name.

>>16001366
>he's just power hungry, so you shouldnt listen to him!
>no he isnt
>well he's not power hungry, so you shouldn't listen to him!
It sounds like you don't actually have a point and just want to get angry about things on the internet. Why not just hide the thread if his ugly nerd mug makes you so irrationally angry?

But yeah, never pay for a podcast or essays. Paycucking is the highest form of degeneracy.

>>16001366
he could save you from yourself

>>16001382
This. You and many others on this board are clearly on the path to self-destruction.

>>16001378
The point was always that he's power hungry and that he doesn't deserve the power and adulation he craves. If his position really were self-effacing passivism, he wouldn't astroturf is ideology.

>>16001406
What exactly does any of that mean?

>>16001406
Okay.

>>16001406
You sound like you're frothing at the mouth, dude.

Anyone know of any good neoreaction forums?

>>16001456
don't fall for the meme

>>16001456
I hear that 4chan.org has a few.

>>16001261
Moldbug's been deplatformed and named by the media as the spiritual guru of at least three major far right internet movements. If there ever was an "up against the wall" moment, him and his family would be goners. A year or so ago he got kicked out of Google, because he was visiting a friend. Why did he get kicked out? Because someone had put his name in an internal blacklist. Why would one of the most powerful tech companies on the planet put Moldbug on a blacklist? If you've interacted with Moldbug directly or posted his thoughts on social media, it would not surprise me that you are on some sort of graph-like blacklist (a list potentially accessed not just by internal tech activists but also at least two enemy gov intelligence: USGOV and the Chicoms).

>>16001279
>No he did not. The inaction imperative was not mentioned in any post I've read so far, and I've read more than half of his posts.
You're the dipshit I was talking to the other day. Read Rules for Reactionaries. The passivist program is given in those posts, and he also mentions it in several other posts. This inactivist imperative is a re-run of the passivist program. Like I said the other day, you're a noob. STFU and lurk.
>Of course it did. Running around calling for the destruction of the government will always attract attention from power.
He says somewhere his blog wouldn't attract attention, so he was wrong. Read Lakatos, learn what it means to change your fundamental hypotheses in an ad hoc way.
>1..
>2..
Could you miss the point more? The analogy here has nothing to do with the legal properties of the organizations, galaxy brain. The conclusion you should be drawing is to do with behavioral signatures. That's what the example served. If you weren't a naive fucking faggot, you'd realize how dangerous a behavioral norm of "do nothing" in an environment where insane activists -- soon to be backed by billions in cash -- are screaming "silence is violence" and this stuff ramps up in workplaces, the government, and your personal life. Even Moldbug understands this better than you do, as he can feel the changes coming (but is giving shit advice). Your numbered points here are a synchronic approach to something that is being done diachronically by Moldbug (a static non-growing timeslice versus fast developing extremist ideology that would see "do nothing" as an abnormal behavioral signature). You've gone full sperg-logic on something that is a practical, cunning matter of outwitting your enemy while focusing on something that is completely irrelevant.

>>16001286
>It's fashionable to be skeptical of both political parties, after all.
That's not the threat he's talking about in terms of doing nothing. What is wrong with you people? You people are seriously going to drop like flies if things get worse. This is something you should be taking much more seriously than you are, but you are treating it as if its another theory to be adorned like you are peacocks.

>>16001456
pajeet.com

>>16000929
The right desperate for anything they get

>>16001474
>You're the dipshit I was talking to the other day. Read Rules for Reactionaries. The passivist program is given in those posts, and he also mentions it in several other posts. This inactivist imperative is a re-run of the passivist program. Like I said the other day, you're a noob. STFU and lurk.
I went and read it and replied to you. It's not in there.
>He says somewhere his blog wouldn't attract attention, so he was wrong.
I agree, he was wrong then. But he's not wrong now.
>The conclusion you should be drawing is to do with behavioral signatures. That's what the example served.
The example doesn't work, though, because it was clearly targeted at criminal organizations and was performed by an organization with the logistical and executive power to behave as it pleased. We are not facing such a situation in the United States.
>If you weren't a naive fucking faggot, you'd realize how dangerous a behavioral norm of "do nothing" in an environment where insane activists -- soon to be backed by billions in cash -- are screaming "silence is violence" and this stuff ramps up in workplaces, the government, and your personal life.
I live near San Francisco, dude. Things aren't that bad if you make sure you're not in the wrong place at the wrong time and talking to the wrong people. Plenty of people around me simply refuse to discuss politics and are able to get on just fine. The key is to keep your goddamn mouth shut and go with the flow when people ask you what your pronouns are.
>You've gone full sperg-logic on something that is a practical, cunning matter of outwitting your enemy while focusing on something that is completely irrelevant.
There is no "outwitting" them. All we can do is prepare for years of pure ass.

Look at how impotent his defenders become after just a few posts. What a robust ideology!

>>16001554
What? His detractors are being smoked in this thread lol

someone mad he ain't no prince

>>16001589
As evidenced by the 5'4" pajeet ripostes "you seem mad" and "he could save you"

>>16001626
Seething, just absolutely seething.

>>16001554
Quibbling with Yarvin's prescription of detachment does not even begin to touch his core ideology, which has not been discussed in detail in this thread.

>>16001554
>>16001605
>>16001626
>>16001637
All of you are gay. Stop this pointless bickering.

You can't even fathom how amazing this ideology of ecommerce back-end coder aristocracy really is until you subscribe.

Seems pretty accurate in regards to groups like antifa, and those lone shooter types.

the pop culture counterpoint to the inaction imperative is the apex of mde, the man who wouldn't be what they made him to be

>>16001530
>I went and read it and replied to you. It's not in there.
passivism site:unqualified-reservations.org/
>But he's not wrong now.
The fact that he was wrong about a matter of political practice and then shifted parts of his theory while still maintaining the same practice would be like a military commander carrying out the same plan after a series of defeats.
>We are not facing such a situation in the United States.
Right, you're not facing a billionaire dollar movement with un-ending cash from mega-corps, informational and moral support from the media, legal support from the judiciary and NGOs, potential deep state involvement, and various other support groups. A movement who mounts moral and psychological attacks with controlling group behavior that can potentially flush out behavioral signatures with "silence is violence". Again, your dilemma here is either keep your head down, which outs you as a political passivist (and a potential bad guy), or you pay lip service to authority, which Moldbug maintains above you cannot do for long for the various reasons in this post: >>15999577
>Things aren't that bad
>prepare for years of pure ass
The mind of the Silicon Valley geniuses who can hold two contradictory thoughts in their head.
>There is no "outwitting" them
Retreating and not fighting is still a strategic move in a game: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty-Six_Stratagems#If_all_else_fails,_retreat_(%E8%B5%B0%E7%82%BA%E4%B8%8A%E8%A8%88%EF%BC%8F%E8%B5%B0%E4%B8%BA%E4%B8%8A%E8%AE%A1,_Z%C7%92u_w%C3%A9i_sh%C3%A0ng_j%C3%AC)

>>16001646
>quibbling
Passivism is his main strategy to deal with the predatorial nature of power. It's at the core of his praxis, so it's not "quibbling". You neoreactionaries are becoming to sound like commies ("read the theory! don't criticize the practice!"). Remember what moldbug said above about his readers not being cultists, lmao.

>>16001715
>The fact that he was wrong about a matter of political practice and then shifted parts of his theory while still maintaining the same practice would be like a military commander carrying out the same plan after a series of defeats.
No it's not. And in any case, we aren't Curtis. This is about us.
>Right, you're not facing a billionaire dollar movement with un-ending cash from mega-corps, informational and moral support from the media, legal support from the judiciary and NGOs, potential deep state involvement, and various other support groups. A movement who mounts moral and psychological attacks with controlling group behavior that can potentially flush out behavioral signatures with "silence is violence". Again, your dilemma here is either keep your head down, which outs you as a political passivist (and a potential bad guy), or you pay lip service to authority, which Moldbug maintains above you cannot do for long for the various reasons in this post
1. I have yet to see anyone at my extremely liberal university say "silence is violence." There are professors in my department who have declined to participate in any of the politicking currently going on, and they are doing just fine. I myself manage to get along just fine when I keep my mouth shut.
2. The movement might be powerful, but it is not a state. They have not yet captured state power in the US. If you simply keep quiet, do your work, and refuse to involve yourself in politics, you will stand a chance of making it through.
3. In that post, he speaks of attempts to enter the halls of power as a dissident. He is right, but only when it comes to the halls of power. You will not be able to enter an ethnic studies department as a right-wing dissident, nor will you do well in a literature department as one. But if you're an engineer or a specialist in something else, keeping quiet and going with the flow is enough.
>The mind of the Silicon Valley geniuses who can hold two contradictory thoughts in their head.
They aren't as bad as you think they are, but they're pretty damn bad. I'm not gonna lie, I've made some incredibly heretical statements in public and in front of professors and gotten away with it, but that might be because I'm not white.
>Retreating and not fighting is still a strategic move in a game
Okay have fun playing Minecraft.

It's not pandering to maintain a personal following, it's a strategic retreat.

t. My readers, the patrician's cult.

>>15999547
>reddit spacing
>nihilism
onions

>>16001781
>The movement might be powerful, but it is not a state. They have not yet captured state power in the US.
Not him, but this is an embarrassing take for someone who is defending Yarvin. Makes you look like you aren't familiar with the cathedral, high-low vs middle, etc. like the other anon is saying.

>>16001781
>The movement might be powerful, but it is not a state
Yes it is. BLM, Social Justice, these are manifestations of the state religion. This religion has been exactly the same for centuries, and has been doing this for centuries. This IS the state. The people running the state believe this. The people running the state will use any opportunity they can to display their piety.

We're just going through an internal purge, wherein people with status and power who are not sufficiently holy and pious are being burnt at the stake.

>>16001877
I don't agree with him on that question.
>>16001914
I don't agree. Those factions might be powerful, but they are not the state.

>>16002029
The only parts of the State uncompromised by this doctrine are: the Trump White House, the military, and law enforcement. You already see the broadside assault on law enforcement that's taking place. Trump is probably going to lose in November (not that his victory would do any good anyway). So how again is the State independent of the Cathedral?

>>16001348
>writes a mirror for princes political guide telling people not to be political
>now everyone knows that non-political people might secretly be neoreactionaries
>tries to stop witch hunts while giving witch hunters a lead
t-t-thanks curtis
biggest self own in the history of online politics

>>16002061
LOL

>>16002061
Even progressives would lose credibility if they accuse people minding their own business of being neoreactionaries (as if mainstream America has any idea what that is) simply by the fact that they're...minding their own business. If anything is a self-own, it would be that.

>>16002049
the military is the only functional part of the state at this point and has been for decades. to say that they are uncompromised is to admit that no part of the state falls under 'their' influence

>>16002061
At last I've figured it out...it's secretly an Urbit pump and dump. Once you are all cancelled, thanks to Moldbug's 5D chess, you get a free planet. Truly the Neo of our cathedral matrix.

Reminder that he influenced Peter Thiel, one of the foremost tech moguls out there, as well as Elon Musk.

The far right will win the culture war.

>>16002061
lmao goddamn nrx is retarded

>>16002049
Congress, the White House, the military and law enforcement are all areas in which the ideology is not predominant. In universities, it is predominant only in the sense that the bureaucracy that runs them, most students, and an unidentifiable number of professors believe in it. Journalists believe in it almost to a man. But the ideology, its source, and its propagators are not the same as the state. Journalists are not the state. They may exert undue influence on it, but that does not, in and of itself, make them a part of the state. I also take issue with his characterization of the ideology as nothing more than an offshoot of Protestantism. His argument is weak and his source base even weaker.
Basically, believers in the ideology cannot literally do as they please. If they commit murder and there is sufficient evidence of the crime, they will be thrown in jail. This alone proves that they are not the state.

>>16001554
They're fucking crying lol

>>15999547
>>15999554
>>15999560
>>15999561
>>15999568
>>15999577
Needs less sources, more unjustified speculation, more speculative classifications and divisions and more defeatism. Good sources don't cite their claims and if they do they refer to another philosopher-speculator. I mean, look at this shitpost's bibliography. Scientific studies showing who has power! Lol. Historical documents clarifying how governmental structures function amongst each other? What an idiot. A good thinker can just make all that up in his head. Really, writing is just aesthetics. The truth doesn't matter. It's all about convincing people, who are mostly stupid. But this post lacks any semblance of persuasive metaphor, smalltalk, and other rhetorical flourish. What an autist. He needs to write more like the good Jews do.

>>16002453

>>16002453
>>16002466

>>16002453
>>16002466
>>16002471

>>16002453
>>16002466
I'm the OP, and I agree with this analysis. Who made it? Moldbug has said one or two clever things, but most of his writing is poorly argued and even more poorly sourced.

>>16002453
>>16002466
>>16002471
>>16002480

>>16002492
>Anti-Semitism
I spoke too soon.

>>16002512
Honestly Mr. Goldberg, Jews are the major cause of liberalism and Moldbug (who is a Jew) is clearly just trying to deny this and cope with all his writings. He can't be rigorous because that would lead him to the importance of Jews in the status quo.
That you mistake what I'm saying for antisemitism and will probably respond with weak arguments strawmanning me and saying Jews aren't the only cause of the status quo shows you're probably motivated by the same thing as Moldbug.
Ron Unz is the only Jew to my knowledge that has been willing to acknowledge the truth on this matter. Because of this fact somebody's gentile status is an incredibly potent filter when it comes to knowing if they'll have anything worth saying on the analysis of power & the status quo. Moldbug doesn't and falls to this filter. You don't either and are probably not gentile or at least not white.

>>16002486
>>16002512
Shrunk back and screencap'd
>>16002453
>>16002466
>>16002471
>>16002480
>>16002492
Based

>>16001067
>If his theory of passivism in the face of power is correct, then you'd expect at least some predictive value to it; yet it has none
Societal ennervation on the model of the Soviet Union. No one gives a fuck. There is no incentive to do anything beyond what is required as the bare minimum. Physical and spiritual subsistence living.

>>16002061
>now everyone knows that non-political people might secretly be neoreactionaries
Which is the hypernormalization MO -- precious people with ideological possession keep the hamster wheel spinning

>>16002547
>that has been willing to acknowledge the truth on this matter
Henry Makow

>>16001554
To be fair there are much better NRX writers than Moldcuck (see here https://theamericansun.com/))

>>15999547
Why is his face so god damn punchable?
Is he jewish?

>>16002061
Sure is weird how he tells people to do nuffin while politicizing the act of doin' nuffin.

>>16002061
BEHOLD THE CORNCOB POWER OF ARISTOCRATIC TITANS OF INDUSTRY WITH OLD BOOKS

>>16002453
>>16002466
>>16002471
>>16002480
>>16002492
Absolutely destroyed.

>>16002108
Theres no culture war you slobbering fool.

>>16002942
there's a culture war!

>>16002364
>crying
oh, so like Yarvin everytime he tells that communism story lmao