2rafa
18d ago
Novel Developments on the Online Right
Certain factions of the Twitter dissident right were embroiled in the latest flare-up in a long running drama this week, as history podcaster Darryl Cooper (‘MartyrMade’) published his long awaited, much anticipated opinion on the Jewish Question on his Substack.
To understand what occurred, it is important to define the two broad factions of the general dissident right. That term is itself very vague, but I’ll define it relatively narrowly here as excluding mainstream new right MAGA (Loomer, LibsOfTikTok), tech-rightists and libertarians, heterodox types, WallStreetBets rightists, Rogan/Portnoy bros and the majority of religious traditionalists of the Deneen type, excluding those who specifically engage primarily with dissident right content.
The two groups have a lot of overlap; many follow and engage with both. Nevertheless, they have substantially different ideological poles.
I - Ideological Context
The first are the Groypers, for whom Nick Fuentes is both the central ideological figure and a kind of mascot, in that even people who make fun of him will acknowledge whether they are or aren’t aligned with him. The Fuentes right maintains an absolute focus on Jews as enemy, and opposition to Jewish influence as the primary goal of their movement. All Jews who do not denounce the Jewish race, Jewish behavior and any Jewish identity or culture with extreme fervour (Unz is, as far as I know, the only one to meet Fuentes’ standard) are the enemy. To a lesser extent, the Groyper right is likely also more sexist than other rightists, for whom homoerotic misogyny is more of a joke. Groypers, motivated substantially by hostility to Jews, are part of that more general constellation of Twitter antisemites, including both Islamists and that specific niche where the extremely anti-Zionist third-worldist left meets the right at the center of the Jackson Hinkle / Glenn Greenwald continuum. It would probably be wrong to describe the Fuentesverse as ‘part of’ the Andrew Tate-sphere in which young, third world men trade insults about the OnlyFans girls they jack off to and lament the state of modern women, but it would be fair to say that aspects of it are adjacent to it. They often have either ‘Christ is King’ or a bible verse about Jews in their social profile. They oppose mass immigration but consider it a secondary problem deriving from the Jewish one. The Fuentes and associates faction have genuinely come around to an organic kind of sympathy for Palestinian Arabs, shared victims of their mutual enemy, will show emotion about the plight of Gazan babies etc and are often fans of Islamic views on women and Jews.
The second faction is the BAPists and a constellation of surrounding figures (2CB, drukpa, 0HPLovecraft). They are descended from the ‘classical’ NrX movement of Land and Yarvin, but are concerned primarily with immigration and are much less serious. While the Groypers are predominantly white ethnics, Hispanics and so on, the BAPists are predominantly Jewish and Anglo. They may be performatively antisemitic or criticize some zionist influence on US foreign policy, but have no affection for the Palestinians and are often implicitly supportive of Israeli policy against Gaza (especially shortly after October 7), even if they think Israel has no real future (as the movement’s namesake does). BAPists are overtly concerned with aesthetics, their homoerotic nationalism and misogyny is essentially aesthetic; in person they and Passage press types are closely linked to the Dimes Square / NYC arthoe scene. They are probably more racist than Fuentes posters, who are performatively white nationalist but often in practice conceive of a kind of multi-ethnic antisemitism coalition. They are more likely to be atheist, agnostic or look down on zoomer Christian wignatism. Both BAPists and Fuentes posters are very concerned by demographic change, especially in Europe, but the former is more likely to post charts and the latter is more likely to post Conor McGregor speeches and videos of riots outside of asylum seeker housing. Neither is overly fond of Trump, but on balance BAPists are better connected in the administration and less likely to go full anti-Trump the way Fuentes did before the election.
Fuentes and allies spend their time calling BAPists Jews, BAPists spend their time calling Fuentes supporters brown (often accurately in both cases), and so the world spins for this strange little subculture. Except, of course, when it occasionally interacts with figures of somewhat greater prominence on the right.
II - The Buildup
The stakes were high, as Cooper has a mainstream-ish young male conservative audience, was a guest on Tucker Carlson’s online show, and recently committed himself to a form of WW2 revisionism that - while by no means fully or even mostly aligned with the ‘traditional’ neo-Nazi / Hitlerite narrative - is certainly much more sympathetic to German war aims and grievances than the mainstream postwar telling (essentially a repeating of Pat Buchanan’s Churchill takedown from the early 2000s). More significant than his day job, though, was his posting history on Twitter / X, which involved frequently retweeting innuendo about elites, Epstein, Israel and Jews that strongly indicated he might have Groyper aligned views. He had also hinted on his Tucker appearance that there were things he couldn’t talk about on the show, to which Carlson nodded sagely then changed the topic, which further suggested that he might, in the eyes of that online audience, be based™️. Cooper had engaged heavily with the pro-Palestine segment of the dissident right on Twitter, and was - while opposed to mass immigration to Europe - also relatively sympathetic to the plight both of Arabs during the 20th century and of African Americans in his long series on Jonestown. While both BAPists and Fuentes types are frequently racist against black people, the former is moreso and the sum of these hints, views and productions suggested he was more on the side of the Groypers than the former.
III - The Opinion
Cooper pulls no punches in the piece. While he acknowledges criticism of some Jewish organisations and the zionist lobby in the United States, the majority of his article is a criticism of his own supporters for being, in his opinion, obsessed with hating Jews.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one. Three Jews walk into a bar, and, before they even order a drink an OG troll in the far corner shouts, “Three oven-dodgers in one place? How did Adolf drop the ball so badly?” One of the newcomers wants to fight, and is promptly thrown out by the bouncer. The second huffed and puffed with tears in his eyes before fleeing the place. But, without missing a beat, the third Jew says, “Because Adolf was too busy screwing your grandma before he shot himself like a little bitch.” Some OG like me says, “Ha! Buy this man a drink! Sorry, this bar doesn’t carry the blood of Christian infants.” And the awesome Jew says something like, “That’s OK, you guys have been aborting so many of your babies we’ve had to find alternatives anyway.” I just made this guy up, but I already love him. This is how things worked back in the day.
But then, with furrowed brow, another regular, a younger guy, says, “Don’t buy that Jew a drink!”
“Har har har. He passed your test, leave him be. Don’t be an asshole.”
“Fuck that Jew, and fuck you too if you defend him.”
I say this asshole is a regular because we’ve seen him around, but he actually showed up relatively recently. I look around the bar for support, but I’m met with blank or hostile stares. A lot of my old friends from the bar have moved on. A few told me they left because the younger crowd coming in was hateful and dangerous, so naturally I called them pussies and told them to take a hike. Come to think of it, I don’t recognize most of the faces any more. Anyway, I tell them to give it a rest, he’s cool, but they are not having it. They’re not joking, and things are getting uncomfortable, and so I - and this is the point I’ve come to in real life - I shake the dust from my feet and leave my favorite watering hole for good.
This post is a simple announcement that I’m shaking the dust from my feet and finding another bar where people still get the joke. I’ve blocked over 15,000 people on X by now, and I would say that 70% of them were due to vulgar antisemitism. I don’t block people for saying Jews run the media, or that we live under a Zionist Occupied Government, or that Jews have split loyalties, so those 15,000 are just the nakedly hateful, the-Holocaust-isn’t-real-but-I-wish-it-was people.
If you’re thinking “somebody got to Cooper,” or “he’s controlled opposition,” or some other phrase you once saw someone tweet, or if you’re getting angry that I’m trying to dissuade people from following you into the muck, leave or keep it to yourself. I’m happy to discuss this with anyone, especially hardened antisemites, if they’re willing to engage in good faith, but I’m done indulging or ignoring low-IQ vulgar antisemitism. The goal of these people is to conscript everyone else into their conflict, and they won’t be using me or my platform to do it.
Naturally, the BAPists retweeted this to them very reasonable and intelligent take, and the Groypers duly declared Cooper a traitor, shill, liar, hack, fed and subversive. The actual impetus behind the timing of the post appears to have been an escalation in a long-running series of attacks by Fuentes and his supporters on Dave Smith, a Jewish libertarian comedian strongly critical of Israel and a personal friend of Cooper. Smith wasn’t hostile to Fuentes, in fact he’d had Fuentes on his show, but then there had been some personal falling out, and then Fuentes had set the Groypers against Smith. Less charitably, Cooper had also been the subject of press attention from the New York Times recently, including an upcoming profile. Cooper’s own audience had a mixed response, some agreed, some were very upset, some asked for clarification. In the comments section, he assured his audience that his ‘Hitler was misunderstood’ take was still very much coming.
The posting war continues, with each side claiming the other is retarded and are shills, Jews, brown or feds as applicable.
2rafa
18d ago
We switched to gender neutral bathrooms a couple of years ago. They're all single-occupancy with their own sink and dryer, which is a huge improvement. Some of them have a little mark outside that means they have a urinal (as well as a toilet). The hallway has security cameras and is just a passage to the cubicles. Everyone seems pleased with them; you can actually wash your face or do makeup or get changed or change contact lenses or something in a fully private space now, with a sink and mirror.
2rafa
18d ago
Thanks for this. I guess to me it doesn't really seem particularly 'Chinese' or 'Western', I'm not sure I know enough about either to judge, although I never really bought the ultra-wignat view that there was some kind of magic special sauce to the European mind that the 'pacific hivemind worker bees' or whatever didn't have.
What it does feel like is a relatively average LessWrong type post by an intelligent young man keen to share his intelligence, and knowledge thereof, with others. I don't mean it in a bad way, but I'm not sure I learned anything.
2rafa
19d ago
I’m not really interested in arguing over who was to blame for the death of Jesus. Clearly It was obviously extraordinarily historically convenient for the later extremely successful proselytizing of the religion to Roman elites that the singular Roman elite who factually ordered the death of and chose the method of execution of (and had the power to spare) Jesus was absolved of all responsibility and even venerated by many early (and some current) Christians, but that is not an argument in and of itself.
2rafa
19d ago
One of the problems with judges is that there is no accountability for legislating from the bench unless extremists are in power. Under moderates or even principled radicals, judges can be impeached for personal misconduct, but not for bad rulings that run contrary to the basic desires of most people. This inevitably drives radicalization.
For several decades, in both North America and Europe, judges have ruled on immigration cases in ways that fundamentally violate the popular will, and have unjustifiably prevented the deportation of people that most citizens did not and do not want to share their countries with. Unlike politicians, the people cannot really even try to remove judges, because while some are technically political appointees, the ‘profession’ has largely wrangled the ability to regulate itself away from legislatures in both spirit and practice.
The historical Anglo-Saxon judicial tradition upon which the Common Law is based always afforded judges the right, and indeed in many cases implicitly obligated them, to respect the people’s will. If a crowd of people clamor outside the courthouse for a man’s innocence or guilt, judges were and should be swayed by it. For millennia, and to the great detriment of the Jewish people, Christians blamed the Jews (the civilians) and not Pilate, who ultimately sentenced Christ, for his execution. Less (although sometimes not much less) controversially, there are countless cases in the English legal tradition in which judges heeded the popular call for a specific kind of justice.
I don’t want to live in an unaccountable dictatorship, in the Chinese legal system in which lawyers are either set dressing, fixers or enemies of the state or powerful officials with a very short career and freedom expectancy. But that is inevitable in the West unless judges use their verbal ability to sense the way the wind is blowing on immigration and start giving the people what they have so often and so politely requested.
2rafa
20d ago
Given that AI implicitly trusts Wikipedia sources in the training set the most (not programmed; just organically and in part because of references to the platform elsewhere), and every LLM is trained on it, Wikipedia power editors have unfathomable power, possibly over the future of all life on earth and maybe beyond. Interesting to think about.
2rafa
21d ago
The nearest thing to an exception is North African Arabs in France - differential fertility means that they are 16%
While I wouldn’t put absolute faith in extrapolations deriving from sickle cell anaemia testing (which is increasingly universal in France anyway), Maghrebis are almost certainly having much, much more than 16% of newborns in France.
2rafa
22d ago
I’m actually impressed by this, they really tried on the ideology, they recognize how important the ideological leanings of faculty members at Harvard in particular really is.
They failed (for now), but a respectable and valiant attempt nonetheless, and more than I had expected. This is the kind of stuff we spoke about 5 years ago on the board as pie in the sky, moderately fanciful stuff, ‘what would you do if you became president’ kind of filler.
2rafa
22d ago
I think the coming crises will be best weathered by small (in population), still-relatively-ordered European countries with a strong sense of social solidarity and government capable of quickly responding to the people and probably Japan (the Chinese don’t care to invade them, whereas there are conceivable scenarios where they make a move on South Korea). The Baltics are out because of the Russian thing.
I would put the ranking as something like
Tier 1: Norway, Denmark, Switzerland, Japan (although probably only as a native)
Tier 2: USA
Tier 3 onward: everyone else
While I would not necessarily want to live through the automation revolution and/or China conflict in the US, the combination of ambitious, self-assured, optimistic worldview, bountiful natural resources, still-large domestic manufacturing sector and the lack of the soon-to-boil-over extreme ethnoreligious tensions present in the UK/France/Germany/Benelux mean that, if you can’t get into one of the above ‘premium’ European countries, you’re probably still best in the US.
2rafa
22d ago
They sent him to a prison they didn’t let him off at the airport.
The Salvadoran government, his government, can release him whenever they want.
2rafa
22d ago
Crimes committed abroad are often prosecuted domestically, murder is illegal in El Salvador so he can be deported and then tried there.
2rafa
23d ago
By whom? Who's the power behind Ukraine staying in the war? What is it hoping to achieve? Been looking for analysis on this for a while and not found any.
By the state / defense bureaucracy which is comprised (at this stage, after numerous purges) of ardent nationalists.
2rafa
23d ago
Or is that the participating in society meme?
In many ways the perfect motte and bailey question. You can own an iPhone and be a communist, but you probably can’t buy the latest iPhone every year and be a communist because - even if you think FALGSC is inevitable - communism is an international movement that sees even the lifestyle of the Western middle class as the product of grotesque exploitation of third world peasants and proletarians that would be swiftly corrected under a communist revolutionary movement.
Peace is often found when lifestyle and your worldview are in some alignment. It is possible to be an actively-gay-sex-having Catholic priest (albeit a bad one who, I imagine, is breaking his vows) who nevertheless advocates that gay sex is bad. I suspect there is some torment involved, though, no matter the undoubtedly complex knot of justification and self-deceit. If you believe in America, I suspect it feels especially good to buy American. Plus, if you have money, the quality is often better.
2rafa
23d ago
It's a pale shadow of true immortality
It’s the only immortality that is realistic. Not because “brain upload” is against the laws of physics but because it’s probably grossly inefficient.
2rafa
23d ago
The other reply is right, you don’t have anywhere near enough data on Grandma (unless she’s a famous celebrity with a 40+ year TV career) to train an AI that ‘feels’ like it’s her. She’ll make an infinity of hand movements, facial tics, use certain words and the illusion will be instantly destroyed.
It’s as much about learning the things she would never say as it is appearing like an authentic old person. For it to be fully authentic those Meta glasses will have to catch on so we can record dozens of hours of mundane interactions with others. I would estimate that a few thousand hours would be enough for a good facsimile.
2rafa
23d ago
Zelensky could send family abroad (they may already be, but at the least they have been many times since the start of the war) and then resign into exile in Florida while on a visit. He has enough money in Panama for a Trump Gold Card and the administration could frame it as a generous gesture for peace personally negotiated by the president. The SBU are competent enough to pull off overseas assassinations but doing so in America would be uniquely dumb even for them.
2rafa
23d ago
AIPAC would be the more relevant group to compare to Soros. The things Musk is doing are all things Trump ran on.
Trump ran on being the most pro-Israel president ever and openly discussed assisting Israel in the war on Hamas many times in the campaign.
2rafa
24d ago
By that logic everyone who voted for Biden should have been OK with Democratic aides and advisors running the show because that’s the way it has been forever, it didn’t even need to be mentioned.
2rafa
24d ago
I think the reason people assume absolute dominance (either of the most powerful ASI or of the humans in charge of it if control can be solved/maintained) is that once you get to super intelligence it’s theorized you also get recursive self-improvement.
Right now it doesn’t matter for mundane human automation of tasks like image or text generation if one model is 3% smarter than another. In the ASI foom scenario, an ASI 0.1% smarter than another immediately builds a infinite advantage because it rapidly, incrementally improves itself ever faster and more efficiently than the ASI that started just a little bit less intelligent than itself. Compute / electricity complicate this, but there are various scenarios around that anyway.
2rafa
24d ago
The BBC article on this change specifically mentions solar cells as part of the exemption.
2rafa
24d ago
No lol, he just picked an anime avatar and now some of his twitter audience unbelievably think he’s a woman. I don’t think he’s even claimed to be, so it’s not even a grift, it’s just weird or very stupid people.
2rafa
24d ago
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Impose huge tariffs on China to try to drive some kind of autarchic domestic manufacturing revolution.
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Embarrassing climbdown after the market melts down and your donors / friends get mad. Keep tariffs only on China. This means that cheap manufactured goods, clothing, widgets etc keep flowing in from South and Southeast Asia in huge volumes, so no boost to American manufacturing for any of them.
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Exempt electronics, computers, solar panels etc from Chinese sanctions, ensuring that even the critically important industries to national security stay 100% reliant on Chinese manufacturing because Tim Apple said that the iPhone would double in price if he didn’t get his exemption.
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Chinese tariffs remain at 125% on the US. Trade deficit with China widens. American manufacturing doesn’t develop at all (suppliers buy the easy stuff from elsewhere and the complex stuff from China, where the exemptions apply). Americans can’t sell anything in China.
This really is what winning looks like.
2rafa
24d ago
Having, say, a year of gradually escalating fees ending at 1,000,000% percent or whatever we've slapped on China now seems much better from a market's perspective than "1,000,000% in 90 days."
If you’re actually going to do it it’s better to do it all on Day 1 because anything else is extremely inflationary as the tariffs slowly tick up (I assume this is the actual advice Trump was given). Of course, it’s a bad idea to do it at all.
Sorry for the late response, but it’s clear this is a relatively empty threat. If a lot of Mexicans end up in this Salvadoran mega prison, then Mexico will just deal with the Salvadorans directly and get them out, unless you really annoy the Mexican government you’re not going to spend a lifetime in jail in El Salvador.
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