the alt-right

He fears Islam because it is homophobic, anti-freedom, etc.
xps

specifically remember going to a bar in 2007ish w some old high school lan party friends and thinking what is happening to these people

(nb #notalllanpartyfriends and even some of those specific people really pulled out of it with time)

I mean, "they hate our freedoms" is basically expressing this idea, I would think:

where mb sees the enlightenment as the source of corruption they see it as the thing worth protecting against the hordes of anti-enlightenment non-westerners

Hard to see what is "alt" or "left" (except maybe in the 18th century sense) about this.

He fears Islam because it is homophobic, anti-freedom, etc.

i think the trouble w/ the right-wing and the enlightenment is that they're prepared to jettison all kinds of essential elements of it to 'save it.'

sorry re alt left i left out some important bits - obv if that alone constituted their political identity they would just be conservatives but they are marxists

Ah, I get you. So they are, um, nationalist socialists?

No I wouldn't say so. They're in a clear real Marxist tradition in their writing and there isn't an obvious nationalist or racial component as much as a general pro West one. Also pretty sure they're anti fascist and probably more socially liberal at least when it comes to ppl we shouldn't lock out of the gates

i think it's important to keep in mind that the relationship between reactionary philosophy and the alt-right is super tenuous and i'm more inclined to say that they share a similar nouveau right-wing flavor bc they're both emerging in this 21st century western milieu but i don't think 4channers are reading these guys and getting really turned onto neo-reactionarism. if anything i think probably the same things animating the 4chan right-wingers are animating ppl like moldbug but they're smart enough to come up with an intellectual veneer to justify it to themselves.

I think this is broadly right but I'd say thin or tenuous rather than super-tenuous - I get the sense there's a chain of reddits mediating between them - also it's early, like you can see Moldbug/Land hardening into Canon as alt-right becomes an accepted position. But yeah, I don't think they're causal. 'same things animating' is true I think - & probably why the aesthetics all fit together if you squint- horror seems like a primary genre for this stuff, above all Lovecraft.

Land's recent fiction seems to be in that vein, w/ a dash of technothriller, but fucked if I'm going to read it.

what gets me is - what is their culture? what is their art? what do they even like?

― imago, Thursday, October 6, 2016 9:49 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I've encountered a lot of people like this on the internet, and not only recently - it's the debating style honed on 4chan of course, and I once read a very interesting article about the internal logic behind it, but can't seem to find it now.

Anyway, whenever I've asked "so what do you actually like then?" the response has always been something along the lines of "ha, I'm not fooling for that one, whatever I say you'll just say it's shit" - which is wrong (I am actually interested and wouldn't just say it was shit. of course.) but also very telling about their fear of being seen to sincerely love something.

which is weird for me because i feel like peak sarcasm was, like, three years ago. maybe with them it never stopped.

also kinda interesting phenomenon is the alt-left. not as it's generally used to - i think - mean the 'regressive left' (or if you google 'alt left' the entire Democratic party bc of the aforementioned ideological compression by the right), but leftists like platypus who probably share a lot of the same values or inclinations of people like moldbug in terms of preserving western culture but where mb sees the enlightenment as the source of corruption they see it as the thing worth protecting against the hordes of anti-enlightenment non-westerners. they both have a lot of the same enemies - post-colonialists, islamists and PC liberals. ultimately you are trying to justify why the west must resist alternative cultural memes, and more practically why you need to oppress 'fifth-columnists' or limit immigration.

― Mordy, Thursday, October 6, 2016 5:00 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'll admit i'm not familiar at all with 'platypus society' -- a quick google shows it's some kind of marxist reading group? -- but the rest of these terms like 'alt-left' and 'regressive left' are so recent and fraught and borne of social media conflicts, that, idk man you lost me

"alt-left": a non-conservative who doesn't like hillary clinton and isn't above a little twitter trolling
"regressive left": what you say when you realize calling someone an SJW makes you sound like a dipshit

i'll look into platypus tho. is it some kind of laschian class/econ left + social right kind of thing?

i said this above but didn't really elaborate on it: the tension between enlightenment and hierarchy is p easy to square if you share their determinism -- this is where all that bell curve and (code phrase) "human biodiversity" shit comes in, ie only people who are by their "nature" intelligent and industrious are capable of bearing or enjoying liberty. everyone else gets the whip.

weirdly i can trace how i found this shit back to ilx! sort of. to simon reynolds, to marxist anglo music bloggers like k-punk, to the weird end of critical theory

holy shit i had no idea until right now that one of old c.c.r.u. dudes was a major alt-right figurehead.

one minute you're reading kodwo eshun, the next you're lamenting that william wilberforce wasn't hanged for treason

i'll look into platypus tho. is it some kind of laschian class/econ left + social right kind of thing?

social right in effect but i do think there's a meaningful difference between 'cultural memes' and 'human biodiversity' even tho i realize most ppl feel the former is just a more acceptable wrapper for the same stuff the latter is doing

Alt-right now, baby, it's the alt-right now

Can we label the pricks at Spiked!/LM the alt-left? Because they are still very much around, and use many of the same tactics as the alt-right.

Spiked are left-wing now?

the alt-left is a pretty big movement though - in essence (imo) they're lefties (usually full communists) who hate safe spaces and *hate* gender politics and really don't have time for identity politics of any kind except class. think this has been covered upthread though

Isn't that just the orthodox Marxist left tho

Like paleo-Left

i guess, but willing to believe there's a significant wing of them that loves the internet and all it can be used for

read that as "the pricks of Spiked!/ILM". I don't think that anyone outside of that group really thinks of the Furedists as being part of the left anymore, and even when Brendan O'Neill describes himself as a marxist it seems to mainly be for trolling purposes or nostalgia for youthful radicalism afaict?

weird thing about them suposedly being marxists is that the Spiked online people generally have little or nothing to say about economics from what I've seen, it's all culture wars stuff

Their economic take is supposedly "support extreme version of free market -> encourage hyperinflation -> capitalism collapses -> le socialist revolution", but they're as keen to talk about it as Scientologists are to chat about Xenu, so who knows.

just looked at Spiked for the first time in ages to check if their "ppl who are offended by Trump's 'grab them by the pussy' comments are reactionary misanthropic prudes" thinkpiece has gone live yet, but there seems to be some unaccountable delay.

holy shit i had no idea until right now that one of old c.c.r.u. dudes was a major alt-right figurehead.

― a basset hound (strongo hulkington's ghost dad), Friday, October 7, 2016 7:25 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Who does this allude to?

Nick Land, presumably?

Oh I see, gotcha

SSC's summary of NRx turns out to be more readable than the Moldbug original.

The way he presents it, the argument seems riddled with holes, though, even the critique of progressive hegemony part (although I acknowledge that he's not an actual NRx guy himself). The Noam Chomsky example is odd since (unlike e.g. Milton Friedman or Henry Kissinger) Chomsky did not get a professorship or 'get rich' because of his social/political commentary (which is essentially done in his free time) but for his work in linguistics. His influence on actual governments in the world is probably negligible compared to the other two examples, who are not progressives, or are at the least not as progressive. Even Philippe Rushton enjoyed a successful academic career arguing explicitly racist views in the actual academic work he was paid to do. And if we assume that Chomsky is indulged because he says "we need to be more liberal/progressive/democratic", reinforcing the progressive tendencies of post-Enlightenment Western society, surely someone in the Stalinist USSR who published the equivalent, i.e. articles saying "Stalin isn't a real Communist! We need to be much more truly Communist" would not have been indulged. This is more or less what the Plastic People of the Universe did in 70s Czechoslovakia and they were imprisoned and censored. #toomuchtimeonmyhands

Bot for the lolz:

http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/7/13202794/arguetron-twitter-bot-alt-right-internet-bigots-4chan-sarah-nyberg

I watched some MDE and apart from a bit of liberal baiting, theres nothing obv right wing about it. kind of going for that dark sinister surrealism thats adult swim's stock in trade but MDE isnt all that funny

maybe you didn't watch enough if you didn't notice anything right wing about it

yeah maybe. its godawful either way

Bot for the lolz:

http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/7/13202794/arguetron-twitter-bot-alt-right-internet-bigots-4chan-sarah-nyberg

― xyzzzz__, Saturday, October 8, 2016 2:50 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lololol @ "dreamcast was the best console"

A Facebook friend I met backpacking around a decade ago. He seemed moreorless alright at the time. This is his (cropped) current profile picture. Should I unfriend or do I wait around for insights into the deplorables?

http://i.imgur.com/2t6vZ5I.jpg

That facial hair is unacceptable on its own.

you get off facebook forever imo

I've heard that the alt-right is increasingly turning against Milo for being too Jewish.

I've got a theory that they are actually part of the main audience for cuckold porn, with the racism, the staggering insecurity about their masculinity, women as either cheating ice queen megabitches or vulnerable property to be degraded.

http://www.inquisitr.com/3572882/milo-yiannopoulos-buying-4chan-alt-right-superstar-plans-to-make-offer-that-could-save-image-sharing-board-from-closing-down/

surely if 4chan folds it will be because of the will of free markets?

Unnamed "wealthy financier" = Martin Shkreli? 4chan dream team

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/09/call-me-a-racist-but-dont-say-im-a-buddhist-meet-the-alt-right

why are the guardian always telling me to meet people

v intolerant of u to not want some alt-right pals

i have some philosophy pals who are in regular contact with nick land, not about his lovely 'hyperracism' stuff but it's nevertheless an odd and worrying thing when reasonable and nice people still think he's an acceptable person to be engaging with and promoting

I've got a theory that they are actually part of the main audience for cuckold porn, with the racism, the staggering insecurity about their masculinity, women as either cheating ice queen megabitches or vulnerable property to be degraded.

I just assumed this was the case. I need a US map with overlay of cuckold porn popularity stat.

Cuckold not featured but it's amazing that the most popular are either incest, cartoons or not involving men.

http://cdn1b.static.pornhub.phncdn.com/insights-static//wp-content/uploads/2016/02/pornhub-insights-us-top-search-terms-map.png

why are the guardian always telling me to meet people

― Har-@-Iago (wins), Sunday, 9 October 2016 12:42 (three days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

They're worried about you, are you eating right