Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
I am actively attempting to deradicalize myself. I dislike puritanism and intolerance. DM me if you want my Discord, Twitter, Reddit, etc.
User ID: 1719
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
6mo ago
Yes, another top level comment about The Origins of Woke from me, in the same thread on the same week. But this is about something else. I had an epiphany while reading the book.
I've wondered for many years why Marxism is more socially acceptable than racism when it's responsible for even more deaths than the Holocaust. It's because companies are (de facto) legally required to fire racists, but they're not required to fire Marxists. In fact, firing a Marxist for merely being Marxist would be illegal in California.
California has a state law against firing people for their political beliefs, but it didn't protect James Damore, who was fired in compliance with the law against creating a hostile work environment for protected groups.
It all adds up.
I forget whether I already posted this, but it occurred to me recently that it may be more accurate to say that J.K. Rowling, and perhaps TERFs in general, are sexist than to say that they're transphobic. Rowling supports the right of people to dress however they like and receive whatever medical intervention they desire. She uses preferred pronouns in polite company. But she wants spaces to exist that discriminate based on biological sex, without taking someone's gender identity or expression into account. The term for sex-based discrimination is sexism.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
7mo ago
For the first time in my life, I'm starting to think we need childhood bullying. I am continually astonished by the cruelty of other people, often practiced under the pretense of standing up to bullies. It's like these people don't actually know what it's like to be on the other end. If they did, wouldn't they be more sympathetic?
So, what if we need childhood bullying to prevent adulthood bullying? Perhaps people need to learn at a young age how it feels to be a victim so they don't become the victimizer as an adult?
Of course, maybe being mistreated doesn't cause people to sympathize with others who are mistreated. But I've never seen anyone make this argument, at least prescriptively, so I figured I should, so I can see how people would argue against it.
I've learned to be distrustful of mainstream conservative commentators, but I still had hope that Dennis Prager was one of the intellectually honest ones. Having read his latest column, my disappointment is immeasurable, and my day is ruined.
I understand that accusing someone of intellectual dishonesty without clear evidence that they are lying is frowned upon here and likely anywhere else that meaningful discussion happens. If anyone has a defensible reading of this column, I would greatly appreciate hearing it, because I can only see two possible readings.
-
The subject of the holocaust hits so close to home for Prager that he suspends all rational thought when discussing it, leaving him incapable of recognizing his own hypocrisy or recusing himself to avoid embarassment.
-
He is consciously trying to enforce a norm that you can't question anything about the holocaust; he is aware that this contradicts his encouragement of vaccine hesitancy and other forms of wrongthink, but he doesn't care, because those are forms of wrongthink he likes, and this is one he doesn't like.
The first possibility fills me with pity. The second one fills me with outrage, not only because I consider that attitude to be morally wrong, but because I consider it to be counter-productive. The best way to encourage holocaust denial, and the anti-Semitism that it so often leads to, is to tell people not to question any details about it. And I'm not exaggerating when I say that Prager does not want people to question any details about it whatsoever. He says so himself.
Yet, some people, including an American named Nick Fuentes, aggressively deny the Holocaust, asserting that a few hundred thousand Jews, not millions, were killed.
Prager does not define the holocaust as "the German government's mass-murder of Jewish citizens," or even "the deliberate attempt by the German government to kill all of the Jews in Europe." He defines the holocaust specifically as the murder of millions of Jews, meaning that if you put the death toll at anything under 7 figures, you are denying the totality of the event in his mind. If Prager was giving a live lecture, I would excuse this implication as an accidental result of speaking off-the-cuff, but this is a written column, which means he had the opportunity to proof-read his words and think about what they mean, and he still thought that this was acceptable.
Based on my conversations with others about holocaust denial and revisionism, I suspect there's an unspoken implication in this column that people who are neurotypical (or just not autistic in the same way I am) are capable of picking up on: that anyone who questions any detail about the holocaust is a bad faith actor trying to Ship of Theseus it out of the historical record. I've had many people, even in ratspace, tell me that this is so obvious a reason to ostracize holocaust revisionists that it doesn't even have to be stated explicitly when condemning them. Well, not only is it not obvious to me, but I think it takes an astonishingly poor imagination to think that there might not be anyone out there who, in good faith and without denying Hitler's genocidal ambitions, questions how many people were killed in the holocaust or what methods were used.
This is not a defense of Nick Fuentes. While I can't read Fuentes's mind, I have inferred based on his tone when speaking about the holocaust that he likely either doesn't believe it happened or wants other people to not believe it happened. The column, however, is not about Nick Fuentes. It's a column about the general subject of holocaust "denial," and it merely uses Fuentes as an example. And while I'm at it..
Second, Holocaust denial is not only a Big Lie; it is pure Jew-hatred, i.e., antisemitism. The proof that it emanates from antisemitism is that no other 20th-century genocide is denied (with the exception of the Turkish government’s denial of the Turks’ mass murder of Armenians during World War I). No one denies Stalin’s mass murder of tens of millions of Soviet citizens in the Gulag Archipelago or his deliberate starvation of about five million Ukrainians (the Holodomor); or the Cambodian communists’ murder of about one in every four Cambodians; or Mao’s killing of about 60 million Chinese. The only genocide-denial is the genocide of the Jews.
Prager, buddy, do you have any idea how many people on my university campus alone denied "Stalin’s mass murder of tens of millions of Soviet citizens in the Gulag Archipelago?" I don't, because once you're counting in the dozens, it's impossible to keep track without administering a structured survey. I know that Bob Avakian's group canvassed there every day for years without incident, while right-wing events were met with hostile protests. I was one of the first people to know that Quentin Tarantino spoke at one of their events, but it took Breitbart a month to report on my tip, and not a single other outlet picked up on it because they didn't care.
What world does Prager live in where Stalin apologists are marginalized, but holocaust denial runs free? It's not the world he lived in five years ago, because 3 minutes into this video, he approvingly quotes a professor's statement that denial Stalin's genocide is common. Did Prager's assessment of the culture change over the past five years, or is he just contradicting himself to effectively enforce his preferred censorial norms? I'm inclined to think the latter, and it's a darn shame. I used to be a Ben Shapiro fan until I caught him doing stuff like this, and my search for people who recognized the problems with wokeness without enforcing their own intellectual taboos drove me further right to places like VDare and Unz, because they were less obviously dishonest. Several years later, I don't think those places are particularly honest, but I'm sure they're more honest than Daily Wire, and I expect many people to get stuck at that level of the radicalization rabbit hole without graduating to the general agnosticism and confusion I'm at. Shit, now I'm getting emotional.
Also, whoever chose that headline did a bad job. Prager is Jewish, and his reference to hell in the column was clearly meant to be a figure of speech. Making it the headline makes it sound literal. I wonder if Prager approved it.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
1mo ago
The main argument against repealing the Civil Rights Act is that if people have the option to discriminate against racial minorities in jobs, housing, and school admissions, they will do so. In order to know if this is true, we would need to look at a country that has a similar racial mix to America, but no anti-discrimination laws, then compare the life outcomes of Africans or other historically oppressed groups in America to their life outcomes in that country.
Can anyone think of such a country to use as a test case?
I recently found out that France does not have anti-discrimination laws, but also that they don't collect data on race, so it might not be possible to use them as a comparison.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
10mo ago
I'd like you guys to refrain from responding to this message (the one you are reading right now) unless you either are someone who holds the beliefs I am trying to engage with, or you can steelman how someone who holds those beliefs would respond to what I'm saying. Expressions of agreement are useless to me here. Thank you. (I have tried to get this discussion going on Twitter, but as one would expect, it hasn't worked.)
clears throat
So you, hypothetical person, believe that if a trans child has been on puberty blockers for the maximum of two years, then they should be allowed to switch over to HRT, even if they haven't reached the age of consent. So, for example, if a child starts blockers at age 12, then they should be able to switch over at age 14, even though the age of consent is no lower than 16 anywhere in the United States.
Why should the age of consent for HRT, the "real deal" of transitioning, be lower than the age of consent for sex? If you say that HRT is less harmful for children than sex with an adult, you need to be able to substantiate your claim.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
3mo ago
Great post! Thank you!
The trilogy is complete.
This is the third time in my life that a professional pundit has made a shocking political transformation, I found out about it after the fact, and I'm left wondering how it happened. You'd think there'd be some drama YouTuber recapping these stories in a well-edited highlights reel, but it's all just spread out over many, many hours of streams.
First, it was shoe0nhead. I stopped paying attention to her completely after her feud with ShortFatOtaku, and then I heard about her getting involved with BreadTube (yuck) through Sargon of Akkad, and now she's... making really based tweets about current events that keep finding their way to me? I asked what happened, and people say she's not a socialist anymore and has a trad right boyfriend. I'd love to know how that last shift happened, because I've never seen someone go that far left and then pull back.
Then, it was Red Scare. I never paid attention to Red Scare, but I knew they were a sister act to Chapo Trap House and that prominent celebrities listened to the show, and I knew about the "Sailor Socialist" incident where the InfoWars reporter rudely accosted Dascha but asked totally reasonable questions, which Dascha responded to with dismissive quips, which meant she won in the eyes of the internet. Now the hosts are tradcaths, one of them got kicked off an HBO drama for being anti-woke, and they're doing right-wing tribal signalling. I don't know when or how that happened.
But now I just found out about the MOST INSANE one of all.
I remember the groyper wars from four years ago. The one good thing Nick Fuentes ever did. But the groypers lost, right? Covid killed all their momentum. This year, AFPAC died because Fuentes lost all his fans. Even the Kanye West bump didn't save him.
But today, on Twitter, I saw Charlie Kirk (rightfully) defending Elon Musks's statements on Da Jooze. In the replies, someone pointed out that over a month ago, he interviewed Steve Sailer on his podcast.
For one thing, I'm shocked that I didn't hear about this immediately when it happened. But also, HOW did it happen? Kirk's organization was blacklisting people who got near Unz or VDare.. heck, people who just admitted to reading them! He's part of Con Inc! Now he's okay with it? What changed? How did this happen? I thought the groypers lost! Was this a downstream effect of Musk taking over Twitter? How the heck???
Looking over at this post, I spent too much of this post talking about show and Red Scare. The reason I'm posting tonight is because I want to know if anyone understands why Kirk is suddenly breaking bread with the people who were his enemies just yesterday.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
11mo ago
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
10mo ago
A long time ago, we used to award internets for posts such as these. I don't know if I'm still qualified to issue an internet, but if I am, then you have won an internet, good sir.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
1yr ago
There needs to be a taxonomical distinction between political views and what I have recently decided to call "normative views". Political views relate to government policy, and normative views relate to the way we use language and the way we treat each other, i.e. social norms. Whether we define racism as racial discrimination or "prejudice plus power" is a normative issue, as is whether it's ever okay to misgender someone. These issues are only political insofar as they can be affected at the ballot box, and they generally cannot. (Public schools teaching CRT is an example that you can go after at the ballot box.)
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
1yr ago
I don't like when people treat empathy as an all-or-nothing, or when they say that not having empathy makes you a bad person. I am capable of empathizing with people, but only when they think the same way I do, which means I hardly have empathy at all. For example, if something makes someone upset, I can understand their thoughts/feelings if the same thing would make me upset. Otherwise, it's like I'm looking at an alien creature. It's why I've never understood why people get offended at jokes when they know that they're jokes, or why people don't find communism as upsetting as racism, and so on. And on the rare occasion I do think I've modeled someone mentally, I usually end up being wrong.
What would you call this phenomenon? Limited empathy?
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
1yr ago
I've found it impossible to find thorough, unbiased reading material about the Alex Jones/Sandy Hook trial. My take is "what he did shouldn't be illegal, but if it is, wouldn't removing the content from the internet and issuing a retraction be enough?" I'd appreciate some reading material if anyone has any.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
6mo ago
The only way out is through de-escalation and the only permanent de-escalation is through formal legal recognition of Palestinians in the territories as full citizens in a democratic system. This might come from the establishment of a Palestinian state
Does Gaza not already count as a Palestinian state? Ignoring the blockade, they have sovereignty.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
7mo ago
We are made of matter. Matter is not created or destroyed. It just changes form. Right now, for a brief moment in time, it has taken on a form that is self-aware. That's you. After you cease to be, where does your matter go? It goes everywhere. And because time is infinite, it will eventually reconnect. Every last atom. Infinite monkeys on infinite typewriters, after all.
And if that is inevitable, it is also inevitable that your matter will take on a self-aware form again, eventually.
Reincarnation is real.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
8mo ago
I want him to acknowledge the article and say that his views changed, but not grovel.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
1yr ago
Should I be concerned that this spending bill is too long for anyone to realistically read it before voting on it? Even if that's the norm, it still sounds like a bad thing.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
1yr ago
And yet San Francisco was happy to see notorious transphobic TERF and mild anti-Semite Dave Chappelle.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
6mo ago
There is no straight reading of the Civil Rights Act and there hasn't been since 1979.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
7mo ago
#4 hadn't occurred to me. I'm conflating the extremely online dissident right with anti-Semitism in general. As for b, I was making that assumption because they ostensibly share my goal of wanting to understand anti-Semitism, but they are richer, likely more well-educated, and do this as a job instead of a hobby.
That you see modern anti-Semitism and historical anti-Semitism as the same phenomenon rather than at least two distinct ones indicates that we're looking at the issue very differently. Racism, and tribalism in general, is a part of human nature, but they can be strengthened or weakened by one's environment.
(Just realized that I'm answering these points out of order, but I am multitasking.) I take people at face value in general until I've observed them enough to conclude that they're being deceptive. Maybe I'm being more charitable to the people I'm describing than I should because I relate to them. I share their grievances, but the difference is that I don't hold these grievances against Jews as a group, despite the explicit insistence that I should by the far right and the implicit insistence that i should by the progressive left.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
7mo ago
God, I love you. This is why I come here. Thank you for writing this out.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
8mo ago
I like this place, but I think it's gotten too right-dominated since the move from Reddit. I come here to be challenged by people to my left who are both smart and intellectually honest, a rare breed. The only other place where I could find them was the SSC Discord, and they permabanned me. (The adjacent servers also have a uniform rule to ban me if I ever talk politics.) So I'm stuck here regardless of my criticisms, but I wish it was leftier.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
8mo ago
Anti-white racists (who aren't considered racist), yes. But do pro-white racists have a major impact?
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
8mo ago
I appreciate you as a dissenting voice, but I genuinely believe Hanania's upcoming book is the most important conservative book of the last 20 years and possibly the most important American book of the past decade. I can't afford for him to lose status because I can't afford for this book not to be a smashing success.
It occurred to me recently that I have no idea why Jim Crow laws existed.
I know from life experience that white flight isn't the result of racist white people wanting to avoid being near people who look different from them, but rather, reasonable people wanting to avoid black crime. I could extrapolate from this that the point of Jim Crow laws was to keep black criminals away, but that makes no sense. Black people had been enslaved for their entire time in the new world, so they didn't have the opportunity to become a criminal underclass. White people would not yet have any basis for the claim that black people are dangerous to be around, would they?
More options
Context Copy link