2rafa
18hr ago
It’s a widely made argument that Epstein was an intelligence agent from the start. If he was merely a rich guy with influential friends who occasionally brokered largely made-up intelligence for fun or minor favors as a side hobby in late middle age, then a substantial part of that argument collapses, he’s just another informant, not an agent. It also challenges another argument of the agent thesis, namely the mysterious source of his wealth (which, again, has been shown relatively conclusively was Wexner). This in turn ties into things like an alleged blackmail operation (targeting…already zionist billionaires) being largely about his personal fetishes, which he occasionally invited friends to participate in, rather than an intelligence-led scheme. So yeah I’d say it’s relevant.
2rafa
1d ago
Yes there were a few very brief outages or periods of bad performance over the years, but nothing like what’s happened over the last couple of months.
2rafa
1d ago
The Motte’s Declining Audience
Several times this month I have tried to load the site and it’s been very slow, looked weird (with a kind of almost rdrama pink theme and unusual spacing) or failed to load at all.
I’d guess that this is a big reason why, after 5+ years of relative stability, the last few months have seen a huge drop off in culture war thread comments. Posting here for visibility, but this seems like something we should fix or this place is going to die pretty quickly.
His accomplice Ghislaine was the daughter of an Israeli “super spy”.
She was the daughter of a man who facilitated arms deals from the Eastern Bloc to Israel early in its history and so was held in very high regard by the old cadres of the Mossad several decades later, sure.
What would convince you that Epstein was Israeli intelligence?
The Israel connections came through Wexner, whom he met in the late 1980s in Palm Beach. Israel didn’t need Epstein to build relationships with wealthy Zionist billionaires. He used Wexner’s network to meet other billionaires and because Wexner was/is a passionate zionist, others like the Mega group / Ron Lauder.
What would convince me? Very simple. A single shred of evidence that Epstein had even the faintest connection to Israel or Israeli intelligence before he became a close associate of Les Wexner. Given that, as I have documented extensively, Epstein’s self-professed connections to the world of Annan Khashoggi in the arms market in the early 1980s were largely or entirely fabricated (by himself), I think none exists.
2rafa
3d ago
Nothing in this evidence contradicts my theory. Certainly nothing suggests that Epstein was plucked out of his high school teacher job (or perhaps placed in it, as the Barr theories suggest - even though they don’t even understand the forward passage of time) by Israeli intelligence in the mid-1970s and given a world-historical mission by the Mossad, which is what is widely alleged.
That Epstein befriended Barak in the 1990s and that his personal assistant (the “Israeli intelligence officer” in question, since most senior personal staff to Israeli leaders come through intelligence) enjoyed Epstein’s hospitality as his boss did were both widely known. I explicitly stated that Epstein had worked his way into powerful circles by the late 90s (his friendship with Prince Andrew only the most famous). He “brought some leaders together” (as I have said, much of this was braggadocio), opined on American and global politics and wrote articles for said powerful foreign friends (or had associates do so).
2rafa
3d ago
Not at all, in fact I discussed Epstein’s personal connection with Ehud Barak several times in my posts; they met in the 1990s as Epstein was rising in the world and as he was courting various world leaders. The “Israeli intelligence officer” was Barak’s personal assistant, who travelled with him. The op eds he wrote were for mainstream newspapers, it would make sense as a foreigner in the pre-chagpt era to get your rich, charismatic, native English speaking friend to write them instead of doing so yourself.
2rafa
4d ago
Absolute loyalty to your personal self interest over anyone else’s is widely considered a bad trait in politicians given that perceived personal self interest (especially financially but also in terms of influence, donations and so on) is rarely absolutely aligned with public support.
This, combined with the ruckus over Trump arguing we need foreign talent, has caused a massive cratering amongst online confidence in MAGA.
You really see the craven lack of any consistent position across the congressional (and executive, but Trump’s loyalty to himself is widely known) GOP here. Weeks ago, MTG was arguing in her big Reason interview that actually deporting non-criminal illegal immigrants is a bad idea and implying, essentially, there should be some kind of pathway to citizenship. Today she’s criticizing the administration for being soft on immigration.
Miller opposes both illegal and legal immigration. But the reality is that deporting illegals (which can be done without congress) is higher priority than deporting H1B workers or ending legal work visa immigration, which requires congress to repeal laws it passed and where even minor measures like the $100k new application fee are likely to be successfully challenged. Importing an Indian elite, 150,000 people a year at a time, may be an issue in the medium to long term, and I find that argument persuasive, but on a fundamental priorities basis it’s low skill illegal immigration in the millions, primarily from Central America, that is far worse for the future of America when it comes to crime, schooling, welfare, tax receipts, public services and general civilizational quality.
But of course MTG (herself a construction business owner) and various other Republican congressmen work in states where red business interests rely on illegal labor, whereas H1B Indian immigration is a distant thing that’s easy to performatively oppose because it’s concentrated in a few coastal cities and the constituencies that like it are either WITCH outsourcing firms owned by non-Americans or big tech companies in California.
2rafa
7d ago
Maybe the point is that in making the next Taylor Swift probably 0.1% spend is on music (regardless of whether AI or human made) and 99.9% is on marketing, both standard and native.
2rafa
8d ago
For now it's not really a risk as long as models don't learn in real-time. Obviously everyone knows that eventually they will.
2rafa
11d ago
My impression of the last 10 months is this:
-
Trump wins, most radical conservatives and even many centrists and liberals expect a continuation of Trump I, ideologically and politically. Sure, that means a move moderately rightward on immigration and maybe a reduction in support for Ukraine, but broadly not much is going to change, since most presidents don’t change radically in a second term and even though Trump’s is non-continuous, that is the general assumption. The dissident right already has Trump at arms length, not just the groyper factions but also the BAPists and even Heritage AmCon types, in part because of Trump’s disavowal of the hardcore pro-life crowd and his seeming ambivalence toward Project 2025.
-
Come late Jan and early Feb, the new administration seems to embark on things with a zeal that was completely absent in the first Trump administration. Not only are many cabinet picks radical or unusual, but DOGE starts shutting down things that he never touched previously, and doing so very publicly. The ideological tests come out for some federal employees, people get fired visibly, the press is outside federal buildings as employees wait outside locked doors.
-
Most importantly of all, as the press tries previous Trump tactics like trying to cancel DOGE staffers for previous racist or sexist tweets or posts, nothing happens. The Vice President even defends the staffers. The Jan 6 protesters get the widest possible pardon, more than many even on the right expected. Rhetoric against mass immigration heats up with the Homan appointment and some high profile raids. Non-groyper dissident rightists start celebrating, even many Trump-ambivalent people come onside, hope accelerates rapidly.
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The tariff situation happens, which again is vastly more radical than anything in the first administration. The market crash is reversed when Trump rolls some things back, but that only cements the impression of this administration as fundamentally unstoppable. Democrat protests fade away or are smaller in size than in the first administration.
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Trump passes a budget that gives him almost everything he wants, which feels like the high point for him and his support (so far). The liberal and progressive press is full “it’s over” in a way they never were from 2016-2020. The administration openly cancels media figures, and the leaders of major corporations and tech companies who were full prog #dei in term 1 are now scrapping diversity programs and swearing fealty to the president and even saying in interviews, self-servingly of course, that the left went way too far. This includes industries that are notoriously progressive like Hollywood and Big Tech. White shoe law firms are pressured to abandon legal assistance to the left under threat of sanction and no government contracts, which finally feels like the right is playing hardball in a way they haven’t at any time in modern American history.
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The exuberance results in some infighting on the right, especially in the wake of the Kirk assassination. Miller and other senior figures are hyperborea-posting on Twitter, DHS is posting 80s synthwave and Halo remixes on top of videos of illegal immigrants being led onto planes in handcuffs, the shitposters are in charge. All the while the economy is deteriorating, graduates (including young white and Hispanic men who did vote for Trump in large numbers) find it much harder to be employed. I agree with a lot of the policies (and am in full alignment with Miller) but there does seem to have been a certain ignorance from the admin about how this is perceived. Many people don’t like illegal immigrants, but there are a surprising number who are too squeamish for certain kinds of imagery the admin was pushing out.
Now, some defeats happen. It’s not disastrous at all. The GOP still polls ahead on many issues, including immigration and crime. I don’t think the groyper war on X over Israel is particularly important for these national results. But the economy is concerning, and its effect is larger. A downturn will make it impossible to hold congress in 2026 even with favorable maps. Big tech that is being AI automating jobs now being ‘on the side of’ the right will make a populist economic message much harder.
2rafa
15d ago
A 32-year-old black male and a 35-year-old black male of Caribbean descent were arrested by Cambridgeshire Police when officers stormed on board. Both men are British nationals
From the Daily Mail. Likely a consequence of higher rates of schizophrenia among this population rather than Islamist terrorism (almost all are Christian, and jihadism comes with a few common indicators, not just the ‘god is great’ thing but also usually at least a few shouted lines to clarify motive, as in the recent synagogue stabbing).
2rafa
17d ago
Until now those like Ben Shapiro - "I don't care about the browning of America"
What do you make of Fuentes’ embrace of civic nationalism today, the videos of him saying that anyone born in America is an American, that that’s what America First means and so on? It seems like a stunning moderation, but it’s not truly sudden either, he’s been setting it up for several months (even before the Kirk assassination), pushing back against his followers’ violent antisemitic rhetoric in a way he didn’t before, tongue-in-cheek comments about Jews actually being behind a lot of great movies and comedy, gently dressing down his more…violent commenters in the chat. Certainly it’s drawn a hugely negative reaction from many groypers and extreme antisemites who formerly liked him in the last 24 hours on Twitter. I don’t think it’s as simple as just moderating to appeal to Carlson’s audience, because it’s aligned with his own streaming on his own channel recently. Six months ago he was hostile towards Dave Smith, the libertarian anti-zionist and Jewish convert to Christianity, primarily for being ethnically Jewish. Beyond antisemitism, he advocated for the imprisonment and/or expulsion of certainly a substantial proportion, if not the great majority, of black people in America. Today, Fuentes makes the case for what I would consider Bannonite civic nationalism, indeed he’s almost totally aligned with Bannon’s vision of a loosely culturally Christian multiracial conservative coalition.
Tucker too essentially asks Fuentes in the interview, and it’s relatively explicit, “OK, so what do you want to do about it?” and Fuentes says (and I paraphrase loosely) force AIPAC to register as a foreign lobbying organization, ban dual citizens from serving in congress (Randy Fine, announcing legislation that would do just that, said last week that to his knowledge no Jews in Congress are Israeli citizens, so this would be no change), stay out of foreign entanglements and put America first, and that anyone who puts America first (relatively nebulous) is an ally of his. This is a pure Buchananite position, when previously Fuentes was well to the right of Buchanan, who was certainly moderately antisemitic but not in an ‘expel the Jews’ way, which was much more central to groyper messaging.
There was also some minor drama today on Twitter (which I’m sure you saw) about some guy who was full-on “kill them all” rhetoric about Jewish people getting a cop visit, which I think highlights what is increasingly a rather colossal gap between the groyper hardcore and the current Fuentes position.
2rafa
19d ago
Because the loyal natives who benefited most from socialism will riot and the army is relatively loyal (and they don’t need to be fully loyal, just loyal enough for some to rebel and hand over the weapons and ammunition stores), the chance of a prolonged leftist insurgency in the country’s difficult terrain is significant. A FARC type campaign (and various other Latin American leftist groups, cartels and likely low key foreign governments hostile to the US would gladly fund it) would be very costly in terms of lives even if an initial invasion was fast, there would be bombings and terror campaigns targeting occupying soldiers, the whole thing would turn into a quagmire.
2rafa
19d ago
There is violence in prisons, but almost none of it is at the hands of the guards.
2rafa
19d ago
I don’t think this alone will do it but the only way to topple the bolivarian regime is to deject and destroy the morale of the millions of indigenous peasants who prevented previous coup attempts and who form the loyal core of Maduro’s support. With the military co-opted fully after 25 years of socialism, the right lack the manpower to mount an effective revolutionary attempt; those with money have fled and the remaining and even former middle classes have the most to lose from another failed attempt to topple him. The US will never invade Venezuela, it’s hardly Granada and would likely hit the casualty level (~2000 US troops) where public sentiment can quickly turn, but if it can humiliate the military, and humiliate the regime, it probably makes the end marginally more likely.
2rafa
19d ago
The US has broad dominion over Latin America and Central America in particular (and Venezuela after the totality of its decay is now a standard Central American country, geography aside). I don’t think this is anything new, nobody in the rest of the world even cares much. There are probably some cringe X edits set to synthwave music that a previous admin wouldn’t have (re)tweeted, but I don’t consider that a change of policy.
2rafa
19d ago
Either:
- The police are able to dispense low level summary justice, as they were for hundreds of years. They can smash up stores of counterfeit products, they can beat the shit out of petty criminals, they can punish groups of disaffected or antisocial youths at risk of turning to more serious crime, they can clear up homeless encampments and disperse loiterers, and they can adjudicate local neighborhood disputes based on their obvious local knowledge of who the party most likely to have the litigious or ridiculous grievance is.
or
- The public will eventually start taking the law into their own hands, with endless he said she said disputes, instances of clearly immoral but legal killing, and ultimately this a peculiar but hardly previously unheard of form of anarchy.
Personally, I would prefer (1), but the neutered police forces of the modern west, constantly monitored, unable to dispense even basic local low-level enforcement (which for reasons of criminal high time preference and the time the evidence gathering, prosecution and court process usually takes can never be replaced by another aspect of the justice system), also known as “police brutality”, are for now incapable of it.
2rafa
24d ago
Yeah, but the South Africans were not interested in putting up a fight to the level that the Rhodesians had.
2rafa
25d ago
And it is important to say that even 1 million to-the-death committed settlers in Algeria in 1960 could likely still have fully pacified the native population given both HBD and other factors.
The end of French Algeria is one of the greatest tragedies of the 20th century. It happened under American pressure but it really happened, ultimately, because the settlers did not fight to the death to save it. They had France to return to. The Israelis (most of them, anyway) lack the same luxury, even if they have dual citizenship it is to a land of which they know nothing and to whom they will never belong. Their only identity is Israeli, or Jewish.
Countless native civilizations have been destroyed before. As Churchill said, nobody now mourns the native Americans beyond the vapid and entirely European absurdity of “land acknowledgements”. The only time settler regimes ended despite real and proper resistance (see Rhodesia) had a 20:1 native to settler population ratio. Israel will soon be at 1:1 with the total Palestinian diaspora still in Arab lands.
There is a good chance that Israel is still destroyed in the lifetimes of most of the people reading this. But even in that scenario I anticipate it will still be a fight to the death for millions.
2rafa
25d ago
To be fair, it was, until it wasn’t. If they’d accepted 1948 and stationed a Jordanian-Egyptian army garrison just outside East Jerusalem (which I guess would have been a Danzig-style international city) there would be no settlers on the West Bank.
2rafa
25d ago
The AIPAC strategy relies (or relied) on one central fact:
Most American voters and politicians were either ambivalent (which includes mild antipathy) or positive about Israel.
This meant that the average Democrat or Republican, outside a tiny handful of very progressive or substantially Muslim constituencies, lost nothing from taking AIPAC’s money. There was no tradeoff. Increasingly now there is, so AIPAC’s influence will likely decline.
You also can’t do the same thing as the libertarian. The Republican will get primaried if he isn’t sufficiently anti-immigration. The Democrat will get primaried if she supports lower taxes on the rich. These are issues where almost every voter, and every voter in the primaries, has a relatively strong opinion. “[Democrat] took five million dollars from the mining lobby to destroy our environment and the habitat of our birds and fishes” might easily be the different between winning and losing a tight primary.
Great question and certainly an interesting topic.
At some point, you have to ask yourself why half the Indians you meet at the top of every high performing PMC job belong to a tiny minority that makes up 0.15% of the Indian population. Something similar happens when you realize that in many cases it feels like a majority of PMC Africans in the West in fields like medicine, finance, big law etc are Igbos (although the outperformance is less great; there are a lot of Igbos). In both cases there are partial emigration dynamics explanations - the socialist government of Tamil Nadu after independence forcibly acted against the dominance of the Tamil Brahmins, stripped them of their caste names, removed them from positions of power, and drove many into exile, and of course for the Igbos there was the whole Biafran War thing, but those explanations are insufficient. Plenty of other tribes, after all, have faced similar circumstances without that outcome.
You also become adept at recognizing Tamil Brahmins, even if they no longer have the Iyer/Iyengar names because of anti-casteism policies in their home state. I see them everywhere now, they are impressed when I recognize them, although they can instantly recognize each other.
Quantitative data is limited; it is sometimes forgotten that the only reason we have good data on Ashkenazi Jewish outperformance and various European groups in general is that they were present and recorded in the early 20th century at the height of the scientific study of group differences; Tamil Brahmins were not (certainly in large numbers). Data is more limited. Nobels tell part of the story but, like chess competitions, far from all of it. Performance can be depressed in various ways. Clearly today when international emigration is commonplace, Tamil Brahmins outperform almost all other ethnic groups per capita in terms of leading roles like making it to the top of US corporations, senior PMC jobs, especially when accounting for legacy effects (like a corporation run by a Jewish or white gentile guy appointing his son, nephew or whatever as his successor) that they don’t have access to.
Nepotism is a poor explainer; there are so few of them and North Indian Brahmins, who are far more numerous, often look down on them for being from South India, having darker skin (lighter than all other Tamils, but certainly darker than northern Indian Brahmins) etc.
Generic Brahmins are best seen as the hereditary ancient higher segment, but remember that there are almost a hundred million of them, in some places well over 20% of the population. The best analogue is to the aristocracy in somewhere like early modern Poland where 15% of the population were technically nobles. A tiny percentage of them were actual elites, lived in palaces, had hundreds of servants, owned lots of land. Most were essentially kulaks, smallholders, people who would be considered barely above (or indeed) peasants in more restrictive European estates systems. Most Brahmins in India are rural poor, the average urban middle class person of any caste is much richer.
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