Mencius Moldbug gives a rather rambling talk on how to reboot the US government:
How to Reboot the US Government
Monday, October 22nd, 2012A Nazi Perspective
Wednesday, October 26th, 2011We want to know the Nazi mind, Mencius Moldbug says, because nothing human is foreign to us, but going to the writings of, say, Albert Speer, doesn’t reveal the Nazi mind so much as the former-Nazi mind.
If you want to get a Nazi perspective, you have to look harder.
Moldbug recommends Hans Fritzsche‘s Sword in the Scales and shares its entire thirteenth chapter, “Can Such Things Be?”
Fritzsche also points to the testimony of SS Judge Georg Konrad Morgen, who went on to practice law in West Germany. A few highlights:
Q. How many cases did you investigate? How many sentences were passed? How many death sentences?
A. I investigated about 800 cases, or rather, about 800 documents, and one document would affect several cases. About 200 were tried during my activity. Five concentration camp commandants were arrested by me personally. Two were shot after being tried.
Q. You caused them to be shot?
A. Yes. Apart from the commandants, there were numerous other death sentences against Fuehrers and Unterfuehrers.
Q. Did you have any opportunity of visiting and seeing for yourself the conditions inside concentration camps?
A. Yes, because I had authority to visit concentration camps myself. Only a very few persons had this permission. Before beginning an investigation, I examined the concentration camp in question in all its details, seeing especially those arrangements which seemed particularly important to me. I visited them repeatedly and thoroughly. I paid surprise visits. I was working mostly in Buchenwald itself for eight months. I lived there. I was in Dachau for one or two months.
Q. As so many visitors to concentration camps say they were deceived, do you consider it possible that you, too, were a victim of such deception?
A. As I have already pointed out, I was not a mere visitor to a concentration camp. I had settled down there for a long residence, I might almost say I established myself there. It is really impossible to be deceived for such a long time. In addition, the commissions from the Reich Department of Criminal Police worked under my instructions, and I placed them directly in the concentration camps themselves. I do not mean to say that, in spite of these very intensive efforts, I was able to learn of all the crimes, but I believe that there was no deception in regard to what I did learn.
Q. Did you gain the impression, and at what time, that the concentration camps were places for the extermination of human beings?
A. I did not gain this impression. A concentration camp is not a place for the extermination of human beings. I must say that my first visit to a concentration camp, namely Weimar-Buchenwald, was a great surprise to me. The camp was on wooded heights, with a wonderful view. The installations were clean and freshly painted. There were grass and flowers. The prisoners were healthy, normally fed, sun-tanned, working -
THE PRESIDENT: When are you speaking of? When are you speaking of?
A. I am speaking of the beginning of my investigations in July, 1943.
Q. What crimes — you may continue — please, be more brief.
A. The installations of the camp were in good order, especially the hospital. The camp authorities, under the Commandant Diester, aimed at providing the prisoners with an existence worthy: of human beings. They had regular mail service. They had a large camp library, even with foreign books. They had variety shows, motion pictures, sporting events. They even had a brothel. Nearly all the other concentration camps were similar to Buchenwald.
THE PRESIDENT: What was it they even had?
A. A brothel.
Q. What crimes did you learn about?
A. As I said before, the investigations were based on a suspicion of corrupt practices. In time, however, I was obliged to come to the conclusion that besides those crimes, killings had also occurred.
Q. How did you reach the suspicion that killings had occurred?
A. I learned that the starting-point was the assignment of Jews to the camps after “Action 38.” I had to learn all possible facts about this action, and in doing so I was obliged to notice that the majority of prisoners of whom it could be assumed that they might know something about these cases, had died.
This peculiar frequency of killings was noticeable — I noticed it — because other prisoners who were not in any key positions remained in Buchenwald for years in the best of health, and were still there, so that it was rather remarkable that it was just certain prisoners who could have been witnesses who had died. I thereupon examined the files concerning these deceased prisoners.
[...]
Q. How did you come on to the track of mass killings? You have just spoken of individual killings.A. I found traces of mass killings also by accident. At the end of 1943, I discovered two trails at the same time, one leading to Lublin and the other to Auschwitz.
Q. Please describe the Lublin trail first.
A. One day I received a report from the Commandant of the Security Police in Lublin. He reported that in a Jewish labour camp in his district a Jewish wedding had taken place. There had been 1,100 invited guests at this wedding.
As I said, 1,100 guests participated in this Jewish wedding. What followed was described as quite extraordinary owing to the gluttonous consumption of food and alcoholic drinks. With these Jews were members of the camp guard, that is to say some SS men or other, who took part in this function. This report only came into my hands in a roundabout way, some months later, as the Commandant of the Security Police suspected that the circumstances indicated that some criminal acts had occurred.
This was my impression as well, and I thought that this report would give me an indication of another big case of criminal corruption. With this intention, I went to Lublin and I went to the Security Police there, but all they would tell me was that the events were supposed to have happened at a camp of the “Deutsche Ausrustungswerke.” But nothing was known there. I was told it might possibly be a rather peculiar and “opaque” (this was the actual term used) camp in the vicinity of Lublin. I found out the camp and the commandant, who was Kriminalkommissar Wirth.
I asked Wirth whether this report was true and what it meant. To my great astonishment, Wirth admitted it. I asked him why he permitted members of his command to do such things and Wirth then revealed to me that on the Fuehrer’s order he had to carry out the extermination of Jews.
Q. Please go on, witness, with what you did.
A. I asked Wirth what this had to do with the Jewish wedding. Then, Wirth described the method by which he carried out the extermination of Jews and he said something like this: “One has to fight the Jews with their own weapons, and one has to cheat them.”
Wirth built up an enormous deceptive manoeuvre. He first selected Jews who would, he thought, serve as column leaders, then these Jews brought along other Jews, who worked under them. With those smaller or medium-sized detachments of Jews, he began to build up the extermination camps. He extended this staff, and with them, Wirth himself carried out the extermination.
Wirth said that he had four extermination camps, and that about 5,000 Jews were working at the extermination of Jews and the seizure of Jewish property. In order to win Jews for this business of extermination and plundering of their brethren of race and creed, Wirth gave them every freedom and, so to speak, gave them a financial interest in the spoliation of the dead victims. As a result of this attitude, this extraordinary Jewish wedding had come about.
Then I asked Wirth how he killed Jews with these Jewish agents of his. Wirth described the whole procedure that went off like a film every time. The extermination camps were in the East of the Government General, in big forests or uninhabited waste lands. They were built up like a Potemkin village. The people arriving there had the impression of entering a city or a township. The train drove into what looked like a railroad station. The escorts and the train personnel then left the area. Then the cars were opened and the Jews got out.
They were surrounded by these Jewish labour detachments, and Kriminalkommissar Wirth or one of his representatives made a speech. He said: “Jews, you were brought here to be resettled, but before we organize this future Jewish State, you must of course learn how to work. You must learn a new occupation. You will be taught that here. Our routine here is, first, everyone must take off his clothes so that your clothing can be disinfected and you can have a bath so that no epidemics will be brought into the camp.”
After he had found such calming words for his victims, they started on the road to death. Men and women were separated. At the first place, one had to give his hat; at the next one, his coat, collar, shirt, down to his shoes and socks. These places were set up like check-rooms, and the person was given a check at each one so that the people believed that they would get their things back. The other Jews had to receive the things and hurry up the new arrivals so that they would not have time to think. The whole thing was like an assembly line. At the last stop they reached a big room, and were told that this was the bath. When the last one was in, the doors were shut and the gas was let into the room.
As soon as death taken place in, the ventilators were started. When the air could be breathed again, the doors were opened, and the Jewish workers removed the bodies. By means of a special process which Wirth had invented, they were burned in the open air without the use of fuel.
Q. Was Wirth a member of the SS?
A. No, he was a Kriminalkommissar in Stuttgart.
Q. Did you ask Wirth how he arrived at this devilish system?
A. When Wirth took over the extermination of the Jews, he was already specialist in mass destruction of human beings. He had previously carried out the task of getting rid of the incurably insane. On behalf of the Fuehrer himself, whose order was transmitted through the Chancellery of the Fuehrer, he had, at the beginning of the war, set up a detachment for this purpose, probably composed of a few officials of his, I believe, the remainder being agents and spies of the criminal police.
Wirth very vividly described how he went about carrying out this assignment. He received no aid, no instructions, but had to do it all by himself. He was only given an old, empty institution in Brandenburg. There he undertook his first experiments. After much consideration and many individual experiments, he evolved his later system, and then this system was used on a large scale to exterminate the insane.
A commission of doctors previously investigated the files, and those insane who were considered to be incurable were put on a separate list. Then the institution one day was told to send these patients to another institution. From this institution the patient was transferred again, often more than once. Finally he came to Wirth’s institution. There he was killed by gas and cremated.
This system which deceived the institutions and made them unknowing accomplices, this system which enabled him with very few assistants to exterminate large numbers of people, this system Wirth now employed with a few alterations and improvements for the extermination of Jews. He was also given the assignment by the Fuehrer’s Chancellery to exterminate the Jews.
Q. The statements which Wirth made to you must have surpassed human imagination. Did you immediately believe Wirth?
A. At first Wirth’s description seemed completely fantastic to me, but in Lublin I saw one of his camps. It was a camp which collected the property or part of the property of his victims. From the quantity — there were an enormous number of watches piled up — I had to realize that something frightful was going on here. I was shown the valuables. I can say that I never saw so much money at one time, especially foreign money — all kinds of coins, from all over the world. In addition, there were a gold-smelting furnace and really prodigious bars of gold.
I also saw that the headquarters from which Wirth directed his operations was very small and inconspicuous. He had only three or four people working there for him. I spoke to them too.
I saw and watched his couriers arrive. They actually came from Berlin, Tiergarten Strasse, the Fuehrer’s Chancellery, and went back there. I investigated Wirth’s mail, and I found in it confirmation of all this.
Of course, I could not do or see all this on this first visit. I was there frequently. I pursued Wirth up to his death…
Alternate History
Saturday, August 27th, 2011Alternate history has moved beyond TV tropes and online forums and into the basic-cable mainstream with Spike’s Alternate History — which is pretty awful, particularly if you’ve swallowed the red pill.
For instance, the first episode’s what-if is the classic, What if Hitler had won the war?, and it doesn’t even mention Soviet Russia — or any other countries besides the US and Germany. So, how does Hitler win the war? By repulsing the D-Day invasion with his jet fighters, of course. That was easy.
So, he then consolidates his holdings in Europe, Asia, and Africa, right? Not sure. But we do know that he develops submarine-launched missiles with atomic warheads, destroys a couple American cities, and then takes over. It’s the obvious next step.
And that‘s the real point of the show, to depict America under the heel of evil white right-wingers who use smart-phones and tablets to track down Jews, Blacks, and “undesirables” for extermination.
Ah, but The People rise up and use social networks to Revolt and take back Power! I’m not sure who their NATO is though, providing air cover and covert operatives on the ground.
Old Europe as Tigana
Friday, August 5th, 2011The fate of old, pre-World War Europe reminds Mencius Moldbug of Guy Gavriel Kay’s fantasy novel, Tigana:
The plot focuses on a group of rebels attempting to overthrow both tyrants and win back their homeland. Many of the rebels are natives of the province of Tigana, which was the province that most ably resisted Brandin: In a crucial battle, Brandin’s son was killed. In retaliation for this, Brandin attacked Tigana and crushed it more savagely than any other part of the Palm; then, following this victory, he used his magic to remove the name and history of Tigana from the minds of the population. Brandin named it Lower Corte, making Corte, their traditional enemies to their north, seem superior to a land that was all but forgotten.
Only those born in Tigana before the invasion can hear or speak its name, or remember it as it was; as far as everyone else is concerned, that area of the country has always been an insignificant part of a neighbouring province, hence the rebels are battling for the very soul of their country.
This makes more sense when you realize that modern Europe, according to Moldbug, was remade by the American Left after World War II, and old Europe was equated with fascism.
Breivik’s Mother
Thursday, August 4th, 2011I was aware that Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik’s father had remarried multiple times and abandoned Anders at a young age. I hadn’t heard much about Breivik’s mother though:
According to him, she has been debilitated by an STD. At the age of 48, she married a man who regularly frequents hookers in Thailand, and she contracted herpes.
In his words (pg. 1172):
The herpes infection went to her brain and caused meningitis (this condition is usually rare and occurs in less than 1% of herpes infected individuals). As a result of this brain infection, which prevented the spinal fluid from flowing freely, she had to operate a shunt into her brain as the herpes attacks occurred regularly. She was forced into early retirement as a result and her life quality has been significantly reduces since, and she now has the intellectual capacity of a 10 year old. Her STD has not only cause her much hardships, but it has also cost her and the state up to 1 million Euro.
Both my sister and my mother have not only shamed me but they have shamed themselves and our family. A family that was broken in the first place due to secondary effects of the feministic/sexual revolution. I can only imagine how many people are suffering from STDs as a result of the current lack of sexual moral.
Delightful family.
(Hat tip to Mencius Moldbug.)
Fatah Youth condemns Norway attacks
Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011The Ma’an News Agency reports that the Fatah Youth released a statement on Saturday condemning the recent attack against their Norwegian Labor Youth comrades:
“It is with consternation that we have received the dramatic news of an awful terrorist attack against a summer camp ran by our comrades of Norwegian Labor Youth ‘AUF,’” the statement said.
The Fatah Youth group had taken part in the summer camp in the past on the Island of Utoya, near Oslo, where over 90 people were reportedly killed in a shooting spree on the Island and a bomb attack in Oslo on Friday, news reports said.
“Fatah Youth declares its consternation about the terror attack. There are no words to describe an attack against people that have been our comrades in our struggle for freedom and independence. Very few people have stood by our side as much as the Norwegian people, and particularly our AUF comrades.”
“We know those who have been cowardly assassinated. Those are people that have stood for the human and national rights of the Palestinian people both in Europe and while visiting Palestine.
“Fatah Youth has participated for almost 15 years in the same summer camp and our youth has benefited by learning and sharing experiences on democracy and advocacy for peace and justice.
“We hope that those responsible for this criminal terror attack will be brought to justice. Such sick minds should not have a place in any society.
“As a people that has been victim of state terror for the last 64 years, the Palestinian people and particularly Fatah Youth presents its condolences to the families of those killed and sends a strong message of support to our comrades from the Norwegian AUF as well as from other sister parties that were participating in this summer camp,” the statement concluded.
A commenter at Lawrence Auster’s site follows up another comment with this:
“Fatah is Norwegian Labour’s sister party through the Socialist International.”
This sentence is so fascinating. It is like finding a living fossil in a quiet, bucolic, farm pond. It is like walking into a small town general store and finding life-sized images of Lenin and Stalin hung in places of honor.
The sad history of the 20th century is studded with horrible episodes, and often one finds the Socialist International bound up in them. Mussolini broke with the Socialist International over Italy’s entry into World War One, but took much of his Fascist philosophy from that organization. If I recall correctly, Orwell mentions the Socialist International in “Homage to Catalonia” more than once, not always in a favorable context to be sure. The various Soviet-run “peace” groups of the 1950s, ’60s, ’70s and ’80s were almost always affiliated with the SI.
Vidkun Quisling’s party had a sister party, too, through a different Socialist organization. It seems to me that Norwegian Labor’s alliance with Fatah is a lot closer to Quisling’s alliance than the left would care to admit.
(Hat tip to Mencius Moldbug.)
Such a Nice Boy
Tuesday, August 2nd, 2011Recently, around 11 PM in a “bad” part of Chicago, police shot a teenager who was holding a gun. It turned out to be a realistic-looking BB gun.
Anyway, here is the photo his family sent the media:
And here’s how his photo appeared in the media.
Naturally the cop community considers this yet another media cover-up designed to make them look bad:
It has been pointed out to us by a number of commentators that he is representing one of the most violent street gangs ever to grace the streets of Chicago, namely the vice lords. It has also been mentioned that the nearby Piccolo Elementary School has suffered a rash of windows being shot out by BB’s over the past week along with neighborhood cars. Also, the time of the shooting (after 2300 hours) indicates a curfew violation. But none of this is being covered in the media reports now. All we’re hearing is how police are too heavy handed, Jimmell was a good boy, there was no gun, blah blah blah.
A commenter emailed the reporter:
Your first picture on the tribune website, WAS CROPPED, to eliminate the fact this teen was flashing GANG SIGNS. The full picture is available all over the internet. Now your picture of this teen in the hospital is bordering on scandalous. How dare your newspaper use these subtle techniques to slant the news. The fact is he had a realistic looking gun. Was already in the grip of a street gang, these are the things your story should mention, and that this is a BIG problem with youth in certain areas of the city. These are the facts. I feel sorry for the officer and the rest of the CPD that the trouble that your slanted biased coverage will cause. Yellow Journalism is alive and well in Chicago.
The reporter replied:
A couple of things…
Our “first” picture — I take it you mean the first photo we posted — was uncropped. If you’re a regular reader on our site, you’ll know that most of the pictures we post are cropped, so our photo folks cropped it as they always do.
I’m not aware whether the picture is “all over the internet” but we posted it with the family’s permission.
I don’t know if the gun in question was realistic looking, I haven’t seen it, though from past experience, many BB or pellet guns do look like their real counterparts. I don’t know if he was “already in the grips” of gang life, either.
Yellow journalism refers to the sensationalism of the news. What you’re accusing us of is the exact opposite: still incorrect, but not yellow journalism by its definition. Your statement is wrong because it flatly states that we as a newspaper, or I, as a journalist, have a pre-determined point of view.
I’m a fact gatherer. Sometimes we get the facts, sometimes we don’t. Whatever we get, we pass it on to our readers.
I like to interact with readers. I like it even better when they’re correctly informed.
I hope this clears a few things up.
W.
(Hat tip to Mencius Moldbug, who considers this a dispatch from the real America.)
Folk Activism
Sunday, July 24th, 2011We do need to remember that terrorism, left or right, is a legitimate military tactic, Mencius Moldbug says:
But by the natural law of war, which no man made and no man can unmake, 9/11 was far more legitimate as a military act than the Utoye massacre. ABB is worse than OBL.
Why? Because the law of war is that all war’s carnage, whether it affects “soldiers” or “civilians” (a completely arbitrary distinction) is legitimate if and only if it serves a military purpose. What is a military purpose? Since the purpose of all war is the transfer of political power, a military purpose is a political purpose.
Slaughter that serves no purpose is sadistic, insane, terrible. Slaughter for purpose is the very nature of war, and cannot be separated from it. Since right-wing terrorism does not work, it is illegitimate as a tactic of war. Since left-wing terrorism does work, it is perfectly legitimate. Thus, OBL is legitimate and ABB is not.
Islamic terrorism (which is in every case left-wing) is legitimate because it’s effective. It’s effective because its political result is to expand the political power and privilege of Muslims and their progressive sponsors. Right-wing terrorism is illegitimate because it’s ineffective. It’s ineffective because its political result is to contract the political freedom and influence of conservatives (extremist or moderate).
If it was militarily possible to free Norway from Eurocommunism by killing a hundred communists, or a thousand communists, or ten thousand communists, we might have an interesting moral debate over whether this butcher’s bill was worth paying. Since it is not possible to free Norway from communism by killing a hundred communists, ie, roughly 0.01% of all the communists in Norway, leaving the other 99.99% with a permanent raging hard-on, no debate is possible. The verdict is clear: illegitimate, ineffective and wrong. I condemn Anders Behring Breivik! So there.
Of course, there are plenty of historical contexts in which right-wing terrorism did work — for instance, Germany in the 1920s. In these contexts, it was legitimate. Conversely, left-wing terrorism was ineffective in the fascist nations, and hence illegitimate.
Why does left-wing terrorism work, and right-wing terrorism not? As Carl Schmitt explained in Theory of the Partisan, terrorist, guerrilla or partisan warfare is never effective on its own. While an effective military strategy, it is only effective as one fork of a pincer attack. The terrorist succeeds when, and only when, he is allied to what Schmitt called an interested third party — either a military or political force.
Left-wing terrorism succeeds as the violent arm of a political assault that would probably be overwhelming in any case. In every case, the terrorist plays Mutt in a Mutt-and-Jeff act. Right-wing terrorism in the modern world is cargo-cult terrorism: Mutt without Jeff. Indeed, in historical cases where right-wing terrorism has been successful, in every case we see it aligned with powerful forces within the state. Right-wing terrorism worked in Weimar Germany, for instance, or prewar Japan, because it aligned with fascist conspiracies in the security forces. Somehow I don’t see a lot of that in 2011 Norway.
Thus, we note that there are two responses to terrorism: the natural response and the unnatural response. The natural response is to take revenge on the terrorist and everyone even remotely resembling him. If he is a Muslim, the natural response is to chastise the Muslims. When Grynzspan, a Jew, kills the German vom Rath, the German people must chastise the Jews. And, of course, when a right-wing piece of filth slaughters the cream of the Norwegian Komsomol, all racists and reactionaries are automatically suspect.
The unnatural response — which will not happen by itself, but can be made to happen by a sufficiently powerful psychological-warfare machine — is to look instead at the grievances of the attacker. After all, no one commits terrorism unless he has some complaint. No complaint — no terrorism. Thus while the Nazi response to the terrorism of Grynzspan is to collectively punish the Jews, the Atlantic response to the terrorism of Grynzspan (ineffective and thus illegitimate) is to attribute it to the injustices suffered by the Jews. This of course is also our response to the terrorism of Mandela (effective and thus legitimate).
In more typical cases, however, the political movement allied with a successful terrorist campaign adopts a strategy of dualism. Here is our Mutt-and-Jeff act: the unnatural response. We can always tell a Mutt-and-Jeff strategy because Mutt and Jeff have the same demands. Mutt tells you to satisfy these demands, or die. Jeff tells you to satisfy these demands, to “take the wind out of Mutt’s sails.” Also, Jeff and Mutt are frequently found at the same parties, enjoying the hell out of one another’s company.
Thus, Islamic terrorism is productive, because it results in increasing communal deference to the Islamic community and its progressive allies. Fascist terrorism is counterproductive, because it results in increasing communal intolerance toward the fascist community — which of course has no conservative allies. Rather, the community — whose information source consists almost exclusively of progressive organs — adopts a monist approach, ascribing guilt by association to everyone even remotely resembling a fascist. Ie, everyone to the right of Mitt Romney. Since this is the natural response, it is not at all difficult to orchestrate. The story writes itself.
This gets us to the essence of what’s wrong with ABB‘s thinking. The error of ABB goes far beyond his decision to run wild with a Glock. This is just his specific error. His general error is what Patri Friedman calls folk activism — a broad pattern of ineffective or counterproductive political action which extends across the entire right-wing spectrum, from moderate libertarians to hardcore neo-Nazis. It’s not just that running wild with a Glock is stupid. Almost everything the right does is stupid. Very few rightists are running wild with a Glock, but most are in some way or other guilty of folk activism.
Why did ABB think right-wing terrorism could work? Because ABB grew up in a leftist world, he thinks like a leftist. His heroes are leftist heroes — Max Manus, not Vidkun Quisling. Terrorism works for leftists — and so do many other forms of democratic activism.
Terrorism is anarchism: a shattering of order. Is there such a thing as right-wing anarchism? Of course not: the concept is retarded. If the word “right” means anything, its goal is not to shatter order, but impose it.
Who governs Norway? The Norwegian Labor Party? If an ABB wanted to accomplish something useful, he shouldn’t have decimated the Norwegian Labor Party. Rather, he should have joined the Norwegian Labor Party. After all, Chinese communism became fascist — why can’t Norwegian communism? ABB could have been Norway’s Deng Xiaoping, not its Timothy McVeigh. That’s the difference between action and folk activism.
Who Are These Luzers?
Monday, April 4th, 2011Gary Brecher found his book, The War Nerd, criticized by a “goody-goody lefty” named Daniel Luzer, leading him to ask, Who are these Luzers?
These American lefties, I swear to God. Other countries have revolutionaries like Pancho Villa. I could back somebody like Pancho in a second. But these little preachers — that’s what they remind me of more than anything: preachers — and not Pentecostal ones either because to give them credit Pentecostal preachers are a salty bunch. More like Anglicans. Yeah that’s it: Leftists are like Anglican preachers. In fact half of them are Anglican preachers. The women, mostly.
And what these lefty preachers hate more than anything is bad language. Seriously. Nobody notices but it’s true. Everybody think because the movies say “fuck” a lot that we’re all past the bad-language thing, but the bad words have just changed, that’s all. These preachers are as twitchy about language as they ever were. That’s why Daniel Luzer had a problem with my book.
I was expecting him to continue his tirade with an attack on political correctness. Instead, he mocks Luzer for writing “s–t”.
One of the commenters immediately saw the parallels to Mencius Moldbug’s argument that American leftism is protestant millennialism minus the whole God part.
A Simple Game of Rock, Paper, Scissors
Wednesday, March 16th, 2011Power in Egypt — and the world has many Egypts, Mencius Moldbug says — is a simple game of rock, paper, scissors:
In Egypt there are three kinds of people: sheep (liberals, upper-class), dogs (nationalists, lower-class), and wolves (Islamists, beyond class). Sheep (with a big hand from Twitter and State) beat dogs, dogs kill wolves, wolves eat sheep.
If our twittering hipster is especially hip, she’s seen Persepolis and met the wolves. And indeed, the wolf form is natural to humanity. It is our society, the civilized European system with lots of sheep and some dogs and a very, very rare wolf, that is anomalous. And if it keeps behaving as it is, the anomaly will not take long to rectify.
The “Arab Spring” is springtime indeed for the violent, ruthless young man with a mission. Mubarak’s dogs, equally violent — indeed once Nasser’s wolves themselves, for fat authority turns wolves into dogs — tamed the most violent of wolves with the most wolfish of methods. The dog, half wolf himself, speaks the language of the wolf. The sheep looks at the wolf — and sees a sheep. And there has never been any shortage of wolves who speak sheep. Baa! Baa!
In the dog state, so long as they minded their own business, within very broad definitions of their own, a sheep could live as a sheep. Now we see the sheep state, young heaven for wolves. Even the dogs turn into wolves — what’s an old Mubarak thug to do? Thuggery is all he knows. The old firm has disbanded. The jihad is hiring. Allahu akbar! Indeed, Islam is the future in Egypt — if I were an Egyptian, I’d be working on my raisin right now. Sovereignty is conserved; power creates its own popularity. In anarchy, violence is power, and the wolves have it.
The tragedy of Egypt is that if the dogs and sheep did not respond to different masters, if the sheep did not have Twitter and Harvard to follow, the sheep would do what sheep do naturally and follow the dogs. Who would in turn love and cherish the sheep, and kill the wolves. This is the difference between Mubarak’s Egypt and Elizabeth’s England — both societies with a small educated elite, a vast base of varlets, an absolute ruler and an active, efficient secret police.
In other words, if Egypt’s natural intelligentsia was not Americanized, if it was not drawn away from its own country and its own leadership by the lure of Twitter, it would have no choice but to participate in the government of its own country. Which would, in turn, lose much if not all of its peasant-thug character, having better talent to draw on than peasant thugs. If this hypothesis is correct, it’s the apparent solution — the Americanization of Egypt — which creates the problem.
So the American liberal, who is not after all dumb, if he was genuinely concerned about the Egyptian liberal, would observe reality and tell his tawny friends: chill out. Deal with it. You cannot rule Egypt; we are not the British Empire, we are not going to rule it for you. Yet someone will rule Egypt, as they have since the Scorpion King was a little boy. Do you even begin to know how much worse than Mubarak it can get? If you don’t like peasant thug secret policemen, apply for a visa or just come illegally. Learn a little Spanish and pass for Mexican. Or, you know, just deal. I mean, it’s not like our permanent government is that great either.
But no. And here is the American’s sin: from his own cupidity, from his ennui and folly and innate, instead of using the power of America in the best interest of Egyptians, or even in the best interest of Americans with an Egyptian passport, what does he do? To entertain himself, to get his TV jollies, shouting hosannahs and clapping himself on the back, he assists his Egyptian friends in committing horrible and spectacular political suicide. Is the American moral? Is he realistic? He is both criminal and insane. His nightly news is quite dramatic; his gas goes up by a dollar a gallon; his friends are devoured by wolves. Hell, it’s America, we’re bored and rich.
Thus brains on the road. And thus, Libya — which is to Egypt as Egypt is to New Jersey, at least culturally. Thus America, twittering away, says to Libya: “Come on! Have a revolution! It’s fun! Don’t miss out! Besides, we’re all done with Egypt and we’re getting bored bored BORED!”
More Concentrated, Less Direct, and More Anonymous
Friday, February 11th, 2011In Unchecked and Unbalanced, Arnold Kling argues that knowledge is becoming more diffuse while political power is becoming more concentrated. Foseti disagrees:
I unreservedly agree with Kling’s argument with respect to knowledge. Knowledge is becoming more complex and diffuse. Kling focuses on the financial industry. Knowledge has become more specialized, and therefore more diffuse. Kling also repeatedly cites the example of the internet as a inherently diffuse source of knowledge.
Unfortunately, with respect to power, I have some disagreements with Kling. Let’s take his favorite example of TARP. Under TARP, Congress allocated close to a trillion dollars to buy “troubled assets” (my favorite term from the financial crisis) from failing banks. Kling uses this example to show how much power Congressmen have — they can spend trillions!!
But, a closer look at TARP reveals who really had the power. Congress was essentially blackmailed by the financial bureaucracy into passing TARP. Did Congress want to destroy the global financial system? Of course not. So, they only had one choice — pass TARP. The financial bureaucracy told Congress to dance and Congress did. There was clearly a crisis, did Congress have any better ideas? Of course not — please don’t be ridiculous.
Once passed, what did TARP actually do? In short, it gave a trillion dollars to the bureaucracy to spend as it saw fit. The bureaucracy had changed its mind by the time TARP passed. Instead of investing in “troubled assets” the bureaucracy now wanted to invest directly in what we might call “troubled banks.” Nothing in the bill prevented bureaucrats from totally changing how the money was spent (a good indication of who was really in charge). TARP was therefore immediately used to inject capital into banks and into auto companies in a decision that could only make sense to the bureaucracy (if the plebes don’t like bank bailouts, maybe they’ll be happier if we bailout some plebe companies, and who’s more plebe than GM?).
So, if I’m right, it’s overly-simplistic to describe what we see as a concentration of power. I admit that in some ways power is more concentrated — someone is clearly exercising a huge amount of power. But who and how? If we don’t know, are they really that powerful? The exercise of power is also not particularly direct. TARP was — perhaps more than anything else — an unorganized mess. Whoever was exercising power was doing so in an incredibly haphazard and disorganized way. I think these facts — that we don’t really know who is exercising power and they don’t seem to be able to exercise it very directly or effectively — are as salient as the fact that the power has become more concentrated.
How do we explain how power has gotten more concentrated, less direct, and more anonymous? Foseti turns to Moldbug, who ranks the preferred sources of policy within a large bureaucracy like the government:
- The Law
- Science
- Public Opinion
- Committee
- Personal Authority
For instance:
Congressmen, like everyone else, don’t want to exercise responsibility, so they consult the law, which doesn’t help. Next they consult science. Fortunately, the financial bureaucracy is staffed with many economics PhDs who will be happy to scientifically demonstrate why not bailing out the banks will cause ruin.
The specialists can use “science” and who is a Congressman to question science? Science demands $700 billion dollars! So Congress wrote the check. (Notice that science trumps public opinion).
On government employment
Thursday, February 3rd, 2011One of the things that drew Foseti, then a neo-fusionist libertarian-conservative, to Mencius Moldbug’s neo-reactionary point of view was that Foseti had an inside look at how government bureaucracy works, and Moldbug was the only writer who seemed to understand that elected officials aren’t in charge any more.
Now Foseti has written his own piece on government employment, answering questions and explaining how it works:
I’m suggesting that the bureaucracy runs the show. You might take that to be a bad thing. But, it’s important to remember that it’s far superior to the alternative. We would really be screwed if Congress was actually running the show. In this sense, one can agree with me that the bureaucracy is in charge and be very happy (not cynical) about the status quo.
I share my cynicism with people in government all the time. Almost alll agree that agencies have immense power — and they see nothing wrong with this fact. I sometimes push back that the bureaucracy is totally unaccountable. This often gets some objection, but not in the form of a coherent argument opposing my position.
Accountability does not work in the bureaucracy. I can’t stress this point enough. The defining feature of the bureaucracy is lack of accountability. It’s very hard to understand the complex ways in which the total absence of accountability affects and organization.
If someone really really screws up, they will not be given any new work. That’s about the extent of accountability.
The bureaucracy changes it’s mind when the media and the academics change their mind. This is rare — I haven’t seen it happen yet. This also means that only tangible results that fit media narratives and academic biases inform policy.
Read the whole thing.
From Under the Rubble of Egypt
Monday, January 31st, 2011Mencius Moldbug cites Solzhenitsyn’s From Under the Rubble to explain the situation in Egypt:
The intelligentsia proved incapable of taking action, quailed, and was lost in confusion; its party leaders readily abdicated the power and leadership which had seemed so desirable from a distance; and power, like a ball of fire, was tossed from hand to hand until it came into hands which caught it and were sufficiently hardened to withstand its white heat (they also, incidentally, belonged to the intelligentsia, but a special part of it). The intelligentsia had succeeded in rocking Russia with a cosmic explosion, but was unable to handle the debris.
The Dark Side of the Left
Tuesday, November 9th, 2010Foseti reviews another Moldbug-recommended work, The Dark Side of the Left, by Richard J. Ellis:
The radical leftists are uncompromising in a way that no other groups are. Thus, they inevitably win — everyone else compromises with them and the political equilibrium is thus constantly shifting leftward. Radically leftward.
Finally, the non-leftist reader will be struck by the similarities that run through all of the movements covered in the book. The abolitionists are the first group covered. The feminists are the second to last group covered. Yet, we don’t even have to leave the chapter on the abolitionists before we get calls for the end to “the patriarchy of marriage.” Let’s look closer at abolitionism.
Ellis quotes Stephen Foster as saying that “every family” is “a little embryo plantation.” Traditional marriage to many abolitionists was a form of slavery that needed to be eradicated like all other forms. Many of the abolitionists also rejected capitalism, as again, it creates “slaves.” Of course, the abolitionists also became militants. Many eventually gloried in the deaths of the Civil War which killed more Americans than any war. For example, Wendell Phillips said that “the bloodiest war ever waged is infinitely better than the happiest slavery which ever fattened men into obedience.” It would be hard to better distill the totalitarian mindset in one sentence.
I’ve chosen to focus on the most controversial topic (i.e. slavery). Don’t let this shade your view of the book. Ellis is best discussing the violence of the New Left, but I found the initial chapter on abolitionism more interesting.
I should conclude by saying that the reactionary will agree with many positions held by the radical leftists. Specifically, the radical leftists have a disdain of the masses that the reactionary will find appealing. However, the radical leftists believe that this makes the masses expendable. Further, the radical leftists believe that the deficiencies of the masses can be fixed with the right program. The reactionary believes neither. The radical leftist despises the masses but continually embraces democracy — his movements, therefore, fizzle in this inherent contradiction. Unfortunately, the don’t fizzle before the damage has been done.
Ellis believes that the core of radical leftism is radical egalitarianism, but Foseti shares Molbug’s belief that it’s really radical protestantism, which has evolved into a secular religion.
How much German World War I propaganda have you read?
Thursday, October 28th, 2010How much German World War I propaganda have you read? Not much, I’m sure. Mencius Moldbug recommended reading The Vampire of the Continent, and Foseti took him up on it:
Before I started reading this, I decided to think about what I knew about the beginning of WWI. I knew that Europe was a tangled mess of alliances. I knew that England followed its historical pattern of allying itself in such away as to maintain a “balance of power” in Europe. I knew that the major powers were building up their armies and navies. I knew that when war broke in the Balkans, the alliances caused every country to instantly be at war with every other country. I knew that England was pledged to defend Belgium, but that it could have easily decided not to do so, when German attacked France. I knew that the war lasted a very long time and that lots of people died.
Looking back now on this narrative (which I have perhaps over-simplified slightly), I see some holes. Why were the alliances the way they were? If the major powers were accidentally drawn into war with each other — as the story goes — why were they willing to fight so long and lose so much? Why were they building up their armies prior to the outbreak of WWI? What did they hope to gain from the war once it had begun? Etc.
Reading Reventlow’s work, I realized that my understanding of WWI is based largely on Allied propaganda — this is really only a slight exaggeration. The hazy answers that I would have been able to provide to these questions were also based on Allied propaganda — this is hardly an exaggeration. Allied propaganda in 1916 (the year Reventlow wrote this book) is now known as “history.” The Allies, after all, won.
Reventlow’s work is over-the-top. But if Germany had won the war, it would probably be known as “history” now. Thus, one can argue that most of history is written by cranks.
Reventlow explains the build-up to WWI, starting with British foreign policy going back to the Spanish Armada:
Thus began, as British historians solemnly tell us, the “heroic age” of the English people. It was an age characterised by organised piracy and high way robbery; which was at first tolerated, and subsequently sanctioned, by the English sovereigns — especially by the Virgin Queen, the champion of Protestantism.
This is hard to argue with, Foseti notes:
In Reventlow’s telling, England did nothing good. In fact, in his telling, the industrial revolution didn’t really start in England. It started elsewhere, but since England controlled the seas, England prevented any other country from becoming truly industrialized. Instead, England stole technology from others and ensured that markets around the world were opened to its goods. In other words, if you want to industrialize, you should: 1) steal others’ technological advancements, 2) prevent their goods from being sold abroad, and 3) prevent anyone from closing off other markets to you. Actually, this sounds like it would be highly effective.