SecureSignals
Civilization is simply a geno-memetic-techno-capital machine
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User ID: 853
I did not endorse Jewish "ethnocentrism."
Organizing with your co-ethnics to support your ethnic interests in the realm of economics, politics, and culture, and to oppose antagonism from other ethnic groups, is ethnocentrism. You are emblematic of the increasingly discredited status quo, by trying to claim that Jews organizing and applying immense economic and cultural pressure to steer narratives and platforms is just "opposing antisemitism, and who could be against that?" It is ethnocentrism.
You are straw-manning. Of course there exists hostility by Jews towards non-Jews, but scope and specificity matters. Y'all are very fond of quoting select verses from the Torah or Rabbi Meir Kahane as some sort of General Theory Of The Jew, even though hostility towards non-Jews and a campaign to enslave the goyim is not in any way widespread or mainstream among Jews.
Talk about straw-manning... We are in this thread talking about a stark gesture of hostility by Jews towards non-Jews in their lobbying for a hostile takeover of TikTok, in order to censor content that is critical of themselves and of Israel. Gen-Z doesn't have the right opinions, so TikTok must be reformed- this is incredibly hostile and it should be opposed and called out.
As for why Jews have faced hostility from other groups historically, I think we can actually read history with more nuance than that and find that the truth is somewhere between "psychopathology of all other ethnic groups Jews dindu nuffin" and "It's deserved because Jews really are That Bad and they had it coming."
Indeed, which is why it's reasonable to discern a hostility by Jews towards non-Jews in their ethnocentric, authoritarian measures censoring content on social media that is critical of them or of Israel. Whereas they constantly complain about the behavior of and affronts by non-Jews, and then they organize to censor complaints about their own behavior.
Your argument is basically that antisemitism is rational because Jews are our enemies so we should be "antisemitic."
Your argument is that Jewish ethnocentrism is rational because of the hostility they face from other ethnic groups.
I am saying that ethnocentrism is rational from other groups as well, including White people, likewise because of the hostility they face from other ethnic groups, including Jews.
So you can say "Jewish ethnocentrism is rational because Jews have and continue to face hostility from non-Jews, including most notably White people."
I say "White ethnocentrism is likewise rational because Whites have and continue to face hostility from non-Whites, including the Jews."
And of course Whites aren't the only ones who face hostility from Jews, Arabs do as well. So what you are doing is saying that it's OK for Jews to express ethnocentrism to actively oppose hostility from other groups, but it's not OK for other ethnic groups to express ethnocentrism to actively oppose hostility from Jews.
You are just implicitly denying that there is any sort of hostility by Jews towards non-Jews at all, leaning heavily on the increasingly discredited canard that "Jews have only ever faced hostility from other groups because of the psychopathologies of all the other ethnic groups in the world, Jews dindu' nuffin."
Obviously I accept Jewish neuroticism and paranoia over antisemitism as axiomatic, not something that is a "conspiracy," and I have never related that as a conspiracy. But that neuroticism and paranoia expresses as group-organized behavior in culture, academia, social media.
I have a problem with it, obviously, because it affects me and my nation. That group-organized behavior is used to direct public consensus in a way that is favorable towards Jews and unfavorable towards non-Jews, with stifling criticism of Israel being one example. Another example of course is the question of White identity politics, which has always most vehemently been opposed by organized Jewish behavior precisely because they are afraid of antisemitism.
Jewish groups are at the forefront of fighting any sort of political rhetoric that is oppositional to demographic change, associating "Racism" with antisemitism.
So they get identity politics, White people do not, and Jews use their power in various cultural institutions for their own benefit, often at the expense of White people.
I do not think it's a "Jew Conspiracy Theory" that Jews oppose antisemitism. But their behavior in using their influence to direct public perception and stifle, using increasingly authoritarian tactics, criticism of themselves is what I take issue with. Do you see the distinction?
So the Jewish lobby is trying to ban or force divestment of TikTok to further stifle criticism of their behavior, obviously I don't take issue with that because I think it's illogical for them to oppose antisemitism. I take issue with it because it's hostile to non-Jews by stifling the speech of non-Jews and not allowing them to express their own ethnic interests which is something Jews do vehemetly. I also think the criticisms being made on platforms like TikTok are valid and important for the public to hear.
You think it's understandable for Jews to signal-boost complaints about antisemitism (re: the behavior of non-Jews as it relates to Jews), can't you understand why I believe it's important for non-Jews to be able to express and signal-boost valid, true complaints about Jewish behavior (re: the behavior of Jews as it relates to non-Jews)? And why I would oppose the efforts by Jews to outlaw any expression of the latter in all arenas of the public square while demanding the former is held as sacred in all those spaces? I understand why they are doing it all too well, it doesn't mean I can't oppose it.
The position of Yass is unclear, his relationship to Trump's turn is speculative and based on nothing concrete. We don't know what Yass is lobbying for, as far as we know he is negotiating a price point in return for continued support. It suffices to assume that Trump believes that Facebook and other incumbents are a bigger censorship threat to his campaign, which was proven true in the 2020 election, and he has second thoughts about giving them more market share over Gen Z audience. It should be noted that supporters of this bill are specifically saying they support it because of the 2024 election as well. That Trump's change was purely driven by a meeting with Yass is speculative because Trump has reason to change his opinion on the issue given Facebook and YouTube censorship in the 2020 election, but this isolated demand for rigor is all you really have to stand against the large body of evidence pointing to an organized lobbying effort by Jewish groups which is proving decisive on this issue.
The Jewish organizations are just happy to be seen doing something in front of their donors that might supposedly reduce antisemitism by whatever convoluted logic.
How is the logic at all convoluted? It's extremely simple and true logic, that support for Israel is generational, and Tik-Tok is not moderated or algorithmically manipulated in a way that fights against this. Greenblatt is completely correct. Their motive is entirely logical! Tik Tok has no repercussions for allowing antisemitism. So a Zionist hostile takeover of Tik Tok is their solution.
But I don’t think this means that most powerful Zionist lobbyists in the US consider an ownership transfer of TikTok away from the Chinese in any sense a major policy priority for them.
Despite the Zionist lobbyists literally saying it is important to fight antisemitism? How do you say you don't think powerful Zionist lobbyists consider it important when powerful Zionists are lobbying for it and claiming it is important?
We can attribute the timing of the ban to China hawks in Congress using some neuroticism by some Jewish organizations
Finally we can get at least some sort of admission, even if you are claiming the cart is driving the horse. The nonsense about "What if CCP invades Taiwan and then China censors videos about it?" makes no sense because nothing like that has happened. Whereas the complaints by the Jewish lobby are true and pertinent.
There's the famous quote from The Israel Lobby:
In an interview with a journalist from The New Yorker, [Former AIPAC official] Rosen pointed to a napkin he was carrying, "“You see this napkin? In 24 hours, we could have the signatures of 70 Senators on this napkin”
So during the Trump administration, this initiative went nowhere. Now that the Jewish lobby is behind it, it's fast-tracked through a divided Congress and the former US ambassador to Israel and his Jewish business partner are lining up to buy it at a discount.
SecureSignals
Civilization is simply a geno-memetic-techno-capital machine
1mo ago
I'm sorry, but I just find your response completely absurd. We have leaked audio, we have Jewish journalists putting pen-to-paper identifying why they support the divestment, and it's because of antisemitism and not concern over CCP national security, we have Jewish lobbyists representing hundreds of Jewish groups explicitly saying they support the divestment because of antisemitism, we have other journalists openly admitting that Jewish lobbying over antisemitism concerns which has brought unity and priority to this issue whereas it stalled before Oct. 7, it comes out that two Jewish Zionists including former US Ambassador to Israel are lobbying to purchase it, and you are still trying to cast doubt over the motives that they are completely open about. I don't know what else to say, why don't you believe them when they say what they are lobbying for and why they are doing it? Why don't you believe the journalists who are publishing pieces supporting it because of antisemitism and admitting that this issue has changed the political landscape of the topic?
But because Yass’ actions are a strong indication that the TikTok sale isn’t solely or primarily the product of organized Zionist activism and that this wouldn’t even be necessary to algorithmically censor anti-Israel content on TikTok, it’s just some minor, barely relevant single-case anecdote.
Yes, the consensus and prioritization of this issue is primarily the product of organized Zionist activism. A single investor who is lobbying based off his financial interests does not change this fact. I will again point out you are engaging in an isolated demand for rigor with your "you can't identify something as group activism unless literally every single member of that group is on board", like we can't attribute BLM to organized black activism because of Candace Owens or something. This is something you and everyone always does when Jewish group activism is identified.
Greenblatt is transparently talking about the “TikTok generation” ie Zoomers, which is why he literally clarifies that he means “Gen Z” immediately after saying TikTok.
Come on, 2rafa, he is talking about Tik Tok, there he is calling it "Al Jazeera on steroids, amplifying and intensifying antisemitism, anti-Zionism with no reprecussions."
You have the ADL, you have Jews in the media apparatus, you have Jewish Federations of North America, you have Jewish Zionists including former US ambassador to Israel lobbying for a purchase at a discount, don't tell me this is about Taiwan or CCP influence in the GOP.
Obviously, that one Jewish investor opposes it (as far as we know) due to his own bottom line. You are continuing the time-honored tradition of "You can't relate something to Jewish influence unless literally every single Jew is involved" even though that standard is never held in analysis of other group-organized activist behavior.
We have ADL, Jewish Federations of North America, media pieces like Goldbloom's and others advocating for the forced divestment because of antisemitism and not because of CCP security concerns. This includes various stories pointing out that the antisemitism and Israeli concerns are what has united what have been previously failed efforts. But you'll point to one Jew with a financial stake. And the sourcing of that entire story is extremely thin, there is no chance we have any idea what conversations are happening between closed doors with Jeff Yass and potential buyers. The entire basis for your claim is this fact: "According to Politico, Trump praised the investor at a Club for Growth retreat at The Breakers resort in Palm Beach, Florida." That's it.
Where's the evidence that TikTok has remained unbowed by eg. the ADL's pressure?
Did you not listen to the leaked audio of Greenblatt I linked from November? How is that not evidence when it is coming right from the horse's mouth?
We REALLY have a Tik-Tok problem, the Gen-Z problem that our community needs to put... our energy towards this like fast.
How is this not evidence?
Why would China be opposed to censoring pro-Palestinian views?
Tik-Tok is not censoring pro-Palestinian views. So the ADL wants to change management.
The story broke this morning that Steven Mnuchin is looking to lead a purchase of Tik Tok through his investment group, which has an office in Tel Aviv, and co-founded by the former ambassador to Israel.
It's amazing how this entire constellation of evidence, including a comically on-the-nose detail like Tik Tok being potentially purchased by an investment group with an office in Tel Aviv and co-founded by the former US ambassador to Israel, and you still deny what is happening, all because Yass gave $16 million to the Club for Growth action which is defending Tik Tok.
SecureSignals
Civilization is simply a geno-memetic-techno-capital machine
1mo ago
Just to add to my other reply:
WSJ:
It was slow going until Oct. 7... People who historically hadn't taken a position on TikTok became concerned with how Israel was portrayed in the videos and what they saw as an increase in antisemitic content posted to the app...
Anthony Goldbloom... started analyzing data TikTok published in its dashboard for ad buyers... He found far more views for videos with pro-Palestinian hashtags than those with pro-Israel hashtags. While the ratio fluctuated, he found that at times it ran 69 to 1 in favor of videos with pro-Palestinian hashtags.
Economist:
The proposal gained momentum partly as a result of disquiet over the app's handling of misinformation and antisemitic content followign Hamas's attack on Israel in October...
So previous efforts failed, but all of a sudden in a divided Congress we get a consensus on forcing a divestment after this push by the Jewish lobby... and as mentioned in my other reply it seems an investment fund founded by two Jewish Zionists, including the former US Treasury Secretary and former US ambassador to Israel, are angling to purchase it.
But yeah, the real problem is Taiwan and Tiananmen Square and CCP influence in the GOP, right...
ADL chief Jonathan Greenblatt was heard on leaked call demanding something must be done about TikTok due to declining support for Israel among young people, hundreds of Jewish organizations throw their weight behind a Tik Tok ban, a week ago Time publishes in article by Anthony Goldbloom titled Why TikTok Needs to be Sold or Banned Before the 2024 Election which hardly mentions anything about some national security threat from CCP, and instead under the heading "Why it Matters" complains about the portion of pro-Palestinian hashtags on the platform and the spread of antisemitism...
TikTok says users decide whether to post and engage with content on #FreePalestine rather than #StandWithIsrael. But, content moderation decides what posts stay up, what gets taken down, and what accounts get banned from the platform. And it’s TikTok’s algorithm that decides what circulates and what doesn’t.
For anyone who doubts the causal link between TikTok and the rise in antisemitic incidents we’ve seen on U.S. campuses: a November 2023 study conducted by Generation Lab, which I helped to organize, showed that people who spend 30 minutes per day on TikTok are 17% more likely to agree with anti-semitic statements like "Jewish people chase money more than other people do."
They want control over the moderation and algo, as ADL has control over the moderation of Reddit and nearly every platform except X only since Musk's takeover.
And still, in a thread where @Ben___Garrison is lobbing accusations of foreign influence against the GOP by CCP and Russia he doesn't even breath a whisper about Zionist influence. It is obvious that Zionist influence is at play here, and the fact you can pontificate about the lack of Tiananmen Square videos while ignoring the planning and lobbying by Zionists to force a divestment on behalf of Israel and to combat antisemitism, despite their explicit plans laying out their objective and motivation, says it all really.
Edit: And news that is now just breaking, looks like Jewish Zionist Steven Mnuchin is angling to buy TikTok after the bill is passed.
“I think the legislation should pass and I think it should be sold,” Mnuchin, who leads Liberty Strategic Capital, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Thursday. “It’s a great business and I’m going to put together a group to buy TikTok.”
There is common ground between Liberty and ByteDance. Masa Son’s SoftBank Vision Fund invested in ByteDance in 2018, and is also a limited partner in Mnuchin’s Liberty Strategic.
The bill is now headed to the Senate, where its future is uncertain, though President Joe Biden has said that he will sign the legislation if reaches his desk.
"This should be owned by U.S. businesses. There’s no way that the Chinese would ever let a U.S. company own something like this in China,” Mnuchin said.
From the JPost article earlier this year about the Liberty Strategic Capital:
Mnuchin came to Israel on a business trip for the first time since the October 7 massacre with his business partner, former US ambassador David Friedman. The two men, who served under former US president Donald Trump, started the Liberty Strategic Investment Fund in 2021 and have an office in Tel Aviv.
The fund is worth $3 billion, of which it has invested 30% so far, Mnuchin said. He said he is in Israel to put more money into Israeli tech.
It should also be noted that David Friedman, Mnuchin's business partner who co-founded Liberty Strategic Capital which is angling to buy Tik Tok, is also a Jewish Zionist and former US ambassador to Israel.
SecureSignals
Civilization is simply a geno-memetic-techno-capital machine
1mo ago
I guess I shouldn't be surprised that your comment completely ignores the lobbying by Jewish groups to ban the platform due to the presence of anti-semitism and support for Palestine:
Jewish Federations of North America, representing hundreds of organized Jewish communities, said its support for the bill is rooted in concerns about antisemitism on the platform.
One of the most prominent Jewish groups in the country has thrown its support behind a fast-advancing bill that could lead to the massively popular video app TikTok being banned in the United States...
Jewish Federations of North America, representing hundreds of organized Jewish communities, said its support for the bill is rooted in concerns about antisemitism on the platform. The Jewish Federations and the Anti-Defamation League have accused TikTok of allowing antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment to run rampant.
“The single most important issue to our Jewish communities today is the dramatic rise in antisemitism,” JFNA wrote in an official letter to Congress. “Our community understands that social media is a major driver of the drive in antisemitism and that TikTok is the worst offender by far.”
If you think bipartisan support for this bill is about hypothetical scenarios involving the invasion of Taiwan and public exposure to TikToks about the Tiananmen Square I have a bridge to sell you...
This is also coming off the heels of a leaked audio of ADL chief Jonathan Greenblatt in panic proclaiming "We have a major Tiktok problem" and saying that they have to work together to solve the problem... which they now are doing...
Obviously Musk is going to oppose the bill, because it's half a step beneath banning a social media company for allowing anti-Semitism.
It's about Israel/Palestine, not Tiananmen Square. The Chinese dimension to it makes it an easy target, but it's being targeted because of antisemitism, and X could be next.
SecureSignals
Civilization is simply a geno-memetic-techno-capital machine
1mo ago
As others have pointed out, depending on the author, it either tends to follow a White Man's Burden playbook or Tikkun Olam, either way it's usually pitted against some representation of the forces of Fascism, which often tends to be represented in a way that is aesthetically very compelling and resonates with the audience. This is not only sci-fi, but also comic book heroes and basically every Hollywood genre.
Fascism never had a Karl Marx figure to consolidate a general philosophy, hence the inconsistency. It is expressed more organically relative to the people and their historical context rather than a monotone global revolution. I still do not agree that harnessing the immense power of classical aesthetics makes you a Reactionary. Talk about confused!
"Democrats are the real racists, please stop DEI because it's the real racism" is not a revolutionary ideology. People like Hlynka have long been appropriated as Enforcers for the prevailing cultural ethos and moral paradigm as one kosher side of the anti-fascist dialectic: the Progressives claim the right is more fascist due to their social conservatism, while the Right claims the left is more fascist because of their cultural and economic authoritarianism. So the prevailing dialectic is defined by the debate over who claims the moral high ground by being the most anti-fascist. Conservatism is highly entrenched in this game, with Hlynka being a quintessential example of many people we all know in real life and which completely dominated right-wing discourse during the Bush era and prior.
Fascism is neither liberal nor pre-liberal. It is post-liberal. That's why any sort of gesture towards a Right-wing post-liberalism is automatically tagged as fascist or Nazi no matter how irrelevant it is to 1930s German National Socialism.
So I feel you are playing into the game here by claiming a Right-wing post-liberalism is impossible. It either must be liberal or reactionary. But this obviously isn't the case. I do not consider myself a reactionary. I do not want to go back to the 1950s, or Retvrn further back than to whatever year Moldbug pegs. The only way out is through, not backwards. I and many on the DR don't associate with NRx for this very reason.
I don't think traditionalist aesthetics alone make something reactionary, particular when it is employed to push the envelope forward. The Founding Fathers of America heavily leaned on Classical aesthetics but were not Reactionary. The Futurist movement was associated with Fascism, and even today the Vaporwave aesthetic broadly used across the DR shows the uncanny nostalgia of the combination of classical aesthetics and futurist artistic expression. Within science fiction, fascism seems to aesthetically fit all too well, with Starship Troopers and Star Wars being two of many such cases, also pointing to a futuristic rather than reactionary ideological inertia.
Of course fascism became associated with eugenics and the trope of "science going too far." It was a revolutionary ideology, it is only accused of being Reactionary from the point of reference of left-wing academics who are doing basically what Hlynka is doing by accusing the DR and Wokeism as being cut from the same cloth.
"Fascism" has basically become synonymous in common parlance with Right-wing futurism as opposed to Right-wing conservatism or reaction. "Fascists" aren't "super conservative" they are revolutionary futurists.
SecureSignals
Civilization is simply a geno-memetic-techno-capital machine
1mo ago
I remember that conversation vividly like it was yesterday, that sentence was "Democrats are the real racists."
SecureSignals
Civilization is simply a geno-memetic-techno-capital machine
1mo ago
In the last 2 years he seemed to develop this understanding of all the users he didn’t like (a group that spanned veritable progressives, myself, @SecureSignals and various other far-from-ideologically-aligned regulars) as part of some communist-fascist-Jewish conspiracy against America.
It's a Hayekian Road to Serfdom schtick.
Fascism is considered "reactionary" by academics because the Academy was dominated by communism, so any ideology opposed to the inevitable global Proletariat revolution is "reactionary" according to their priors.
Hayek inverted this by grouping together any ideology that doesn't accept Liberal priors under the "tyranny" umbrella.
Traditionally, Road to Serfdom rhetoric has been invoked on the Right/Libertarian sphere to associate Socialism with Fascism, in order to discredit the former due to the anti-fascist consensus that exists across the political spectrum.
But Hlynka is observing a large, organic shift of that paradigm in the Dissident Right sphere, where the anti-fascist psychology within the Right is becoming discredited. So he is attempting to denounce that trend by associating it with Wokeism/Socialism as being part of the same "road to tyranny."
I understand where he's coming from, but it's a boring argument... "Woke Progressives don't accept Liberal priors, SecureSignals doesn't accept Liberal priors, look you are basically the same!" is the essence of his argument. The problem is the argument only works if you accept Liberal priors and if you don't then there's not much to discuss. He just repeats that accusation over and over.
SecureSignals
Civilization is simply a geno-memetic-techno-capital machine
1mo ago
Couple of thoughts:
I am more interested in the characters and the significance of their relationships in interpreting the artistic or symbolic motivation. It's entirely appropriate to the story for the Fremen to take on a brown/semitic racial character while the Harkonnens are unambiguously white. The Germanic tribes that pillaged Rome and exterminated the decayed remnants of the Atreides-like Patrician house were lily-white.
So Paul choosing a mulatto as his mate is entirely appropriate within the symbolic meaning of these characters and tribes. It fits the story, unlike say a mulatto love interest within the Harkonnen house.
Lastly, I do have a question:
You seem constantly offended that White nationalists claim an identity that is exclusory of Jews. But don't you realize Jews themselves develop their own identity that is exclusory of non-Jews? I am a non-Jew, a gentile, a goy. Those are the words Jews use to identify their tribe and identify myself as outside that tribe.
Are you really so stereotypical that you accept Jews explicitly identify themselves racially as separate from European non-Jews, on a deeply spiritual level, but then when European non-Jews also try to form an exclusory identity, but not in the terms created by Jews themselves (i.e. gentiles or goy), then you seem to have a big problem with that?
If a Jew says "I'm a Jew and you are a gentile" then you don't have a problem with that, but if I say "I am Aryan and you are not, you are a Jew" then you all of a sudden are offended?
SecureSignals
Civilization is simply a geno-memetic-techno-capital machine
2mo ago
Paul's humanitarian preoccupations drain his will-to-power, whereas in Nietzsche's conception those things are overcome by the Ubermensch. Leto II becomes that ultra-aristocratic figure who transcends morals and directs the evolution of mankind at his will. Paul embodies the humanitarian Messiah, Leto II is the ultra-aristocratic God Emperor.
A film adaptation of Alia would be difficult. Casting children is difficult enough, casting a child who is supposed to behave like Alia at the age of 2 or 3 seems impossible. I'm sure they did some exploratory casting to see if they could make it work. They would either need to age her up or age her down, and I think it makes sense to do the latter and I'm sure we'll see her in the next movie.
Agree on the brutality of the Harkonnens being understated, "casually kills underlings" is a trope I find pretty boring, demonstrate their brutality in other ways!
Paul is not a failed Messiah, he's a failed Übermensch in the Nietzschean sense. There's an important distinction and I do think Herbert was influenced by Nietzsche.
Apollonian and Dionysian juxtapositions are a motif in theater going back to ancient Greece, i.e. per Wikipedia "the tragic hero of the drama, the main protagonist, struggles to make (Apollonian) order of his unjust and chaotic (Dionysian) fate, though he dies unfulfilled." You don't have to be schizo to see how this plays out in Dune. Paul's father Duke Leto is even named after the mother of Apollo. House Harkonnen is probably the single best scifi interpretation of the Dionysian out there.
And of course, Paul himself is related by blood to both houses.
CHOAM is barely in the movie, the resource-struggle takes a backseat to those themes.
Dune Part 2 was great (warning: spoilers) and thoughts on Dune universe
HBD nerds can be overly obsessed with SNPs and IQ distributions, blank slatists are blind to primordial truths of material reality, but the Dune universe properly understands Civilization as the volatile interaction between the gene pool and meme pool. I am happy to report that Dune Part II does justice to the book and is the best movie I've seen in theaters for as long as I can remember.
There is not much to complain about in terms of Wokeism. There was some bad casting in the first movie for characters that don't appear in this installment. Right Wing Twitter is complaining about the the love interest, Chani, being unattractive and the transition of her character to being a warrior who is skeptical of the cult percolating around Paul. This is probably the biggest change from the book, arguably necessary because Paul's internal conflict would be difficult to depict so it was written as an external conflict with his love interest.
The other complaint from the Christian nationalist side is that the movie and Dune universe are a critique of religiosity, which is only partially true. But in this case, the antagonists are godless heathens, and it's the victorious protagonist who is associated with religiosity, which is inverted from the traditional Hollywood critique of Christianity.
What Paul, the Fremen, the Empire, the Harkonens, etc. represent in terms of pattern-matching to reality or history is open to interpretation. I saw one right-winger on Twitter complain about the Dune universe as a celebration of the Islamic conquest of Western civilization. It's true the Fremen are aesthetically coded as Arabic, and Herbert actually does use the word "Jihad" in the book to denote the cults and its conquests across the universe, for example Paul "thought then of the Jihad, of the gene mingling across parsecs..."
But Paul is an avatar of all Abrahamic religion: he's the synthesis of Moses who leads his people through the desert to salvation, the dying-and-rising Jesus, and Mohammed the conqueror. And of course Paul Atreides, played by Timothée Chalamet who is half-Jewish, is named after the Jew Paul of Tarsus, "a Pharisee, born of Pharisees", who became the Christian apostle to the Gentiles. Which must bring us to the Bene Gesserit, the order in the Dune universe which manipulates imperial politics by consciously crossing bloodlines and planting the seeds of religious myth.
Of course Christians accept the revelation of Paul of Tarsus on the Road to Damascus. But if we assume that this did not happen, the alternate story of Paul's conversion and ministry is going to be closer to the Bene Gesserit of Dune than the Road to Damascus. The surface-level reading of the Bene Gesserit is that they are just a caricature of the adage that religion is a mechanism for controlling people. But the deeper reading is that the Bene Gesserit are a depiction of the mechanism by which religion creates people and directs the gene people through the use of memes (in the story, their "voice" alone can literally command someone to unconsciously obey their will).
This also leads into my broader interpretation of Religion, which has unfairly become synonymous with Abrahamic religion. In my mind, Religions are memes that direct the gene pool. So something like "Diversity is Our Strength" is a Religion not because "I'm an edgy atheist and I don't like 'Diversity is Our Strength' so I'm going to call it a religion to insult people who agree with it." It's a religion because there are people consciously directing the population to internalize this value, and this value subsequently leads to planned, massive overhauls in the gene pool of civilization.
I am fundamentally sympathetic to the Bene Gersserit. Which memes would direct civilization on a better trajectory? How would we counter memes that are hostile to our mission? You might be able to wander out of the cave, but its neither possible nor desirable to force that onto everyone else. Consciously directing the memes is the solution, not trying to make people impervious to their influence (an impossible task- postmodernism only created its own Religious grand-narrative).
Paul is squarely a representation of Abrahamic religion, but the meaning of House Atreides and House Harkonnen is less clear. I interpret the conflict between those houses as the European or Aryan duality embodied in the Apollonian and Dionysian motif in Greek tragedy with, of course, House Atreides embodying the Apollonian: "...rational thinking and order, and appeals to logic, prudence and purity and stands for reason" and House Harkonnen the Dionysian: "... wine, dance and pleasure, of irrationality and chaos, representing passion, emotions and instincts".
The relation of this conflict to Greek myth is directly alluded to in the Lore, according to which House Atreides is descended from King Agamemnon of House Atreus. Furthermore, the patriarch is named Duke Leto Atreides, and Apollo is the son of Leto, who is consort to Zeus. It is revealed in the story that Paul is related to the Harkonnens, which harkens to this duality in Aryan myth, a duality which was "often entwined by nature" according to the ancient Greeks.
The Roman Empire is likewise the best historical representation of this duality between the Apollonian and Dionysian, with the Imperial throne becoming increasingly symbolic of the Dionysian aspect as the Roman Empire declined until.... the conversion to Christianity.
On the one hand, the Dionysian excess is pruned by an ascetic desert cult. But does that actually make way for the resurgence of the Apollonian? Paul tries to keep a foot in both camps, proclaiming himself both Duke of House Atreides as well as the Fremen Messiah. I won't spoil how that turns out.
The movie was really great, it hit on all the big points which I interpreted from the books. The visual and sound design was stellar, it's a must-see in theaters.
I largely agree with you that your commitment to "Racial Blindness" does require blindness to the reality of HBD. I disagree with others challenging you that they want race-blindness as a matter of policy but they just have an intellectual curiosity in the HBD topic. They aren't racists or bad people, because they want everyone to be blind to race as a matter of policy, they just want themselves to know the truth beneath the collective charade.
I agree with you this position is untenable. You can't really, truly believe "all men are created equal" and internalize HBD. I reject race-blindness on principle, I am going to believe my lying eyes. But I don't reject race-blindness because I'm a bad person, but because I've asked "who benefits from Race Blindness?"
The question "who benefits from Id Pol" is just so extremely easy to answer. Obviously all the groups which agitate for their interests on behalf of their identity and have radically changed culture and policy, to the benefit of their political and cultural power, as a direct result of their agitation benefit from Id Pol.
As far as "who benefits from Race Blindness?", that's a question which equally easy to answer: the people who radically agitate for their own racial interests while simultaneously demanding race blindness for White people benefit from Race Blindness. This encompasses every race except for White people, most notably the Jews who doggedly agitate for their ethnic interests while demanding race blindness from and perpetuating racial animosity towards White people. On the one hand, cats are out of bags and people are becoming aware of this pattern which has dominated culture and academia for the past century (just read the replies!). On the other hand, if you remain willfully blind to something like differences in the distribution of cognitive traits between races of people you are also going to remain blind to that pattern of behavior as well.
This is to say, I think you are correct to code people who accept HBD as intrinsically being enemies of race blindness- they call it a Noble Lie for a reason! If you believe the cause but don't support the Lie that justifies it, then you should seriously consider if this is an ideology you believe in.
This is exactly what I'm talking about 2rafa, Hollywood films are sophisticated enough that someone like you can come along and say "you're being paranoid, look Daniel Craig is a hero of the film and he's white and likable, and the maid is white-passing."
Whereas with Gemini, they let the mask slip, you cannot doubt that the content is being directed to diminish the representation of white people in the prompts. Although eventually they will also improve the output such that people like you will be able to respond the same way- "no, no, there's no anti-White alignment here because this character who helps the POC win the inheritance is white, etc."
You may have forgotten scenes like this:
During Harlan’s party, for example, Richard beckoned Marta towards the couch, where he was seated with a few family members while they discussed politics. Many of the Thrombeys are afraid of immigrants, and said things like “We’re losing our way of life and our culture,” “America is for americans,” and, most strikingly, “We let them in and they think they own what’s ours.”
Of course, the final shot of the film is Marta looking down from the balcony with a mug that says "My House."
The casting of Marta is part of the subversive intelligence of the film. Marta is an avatar for demographic change. The fact they choose a white-passing upper-caste beautiful actress instead of, say, the median Guatemalan, is part of the intelligence of the film. You are more attracted to her, she is less foreign-appearing, she becomes the "face" of demographic change to the audience, which is directed to support her (and through the hero played by Daniel Craig). AI is going to employ similar techniques, and we already see it with the images Gemini is rendering. And when they get batter at it, you are going to say "that's not the message of the film, look at how the white character helps the POC win the day at the end! No subversion here!"
SecureSignals
Civilization is simply a geno-memetic-techno-capital machine
2mo ago
Sure, that’s worth complaining about from the perspective of a prospective peasant, but it’s not exactly white genocide.
I remember awhile back I was arguing with someone here who was denying that Knives Out, which entailed a Hispanic immigrant disinheriting a white family from their family house, was actually a celebration of demographic replacement. Even with the final shot of her holding a mug on the balcony that says "my house", looking down on the white family that lost their inheritance to her...
People love that movie! If Hollywood can create a movie that is fundamentally a celebration of the demographic replacement of White people, and people love it and applaud it, then AI will be able to do better. And good luck getting Gemini to create a compelling move or story that turns the tables on a story like this, it will just refuse to do so.
Hollywood and the News Media are text-to-video super-organisms broadly aligned to critique and subvert White identity and civilization. This is a transition in methods, a peek behind the curtain of what is already happening, and always has happened, and always will formulate collective consciousness and the human hive-mind perception of reality: through images, myths, stories, and symbols generated by some and transmitted to others.
AI will do this even better under some scenarios that involve monopolization of the technology and regulations/industry standards that codify "AI Safety" which, as expected, is turning out to be more about anti-White alignment than saving the world from extinction (that's a nice trick, isn't it?). And yes, AI will likely do a good job of creating more compelling and basically-infinite content that tunes the culture than Hollywood schlock which, though it has been highly effective as you point out, is running out of ideas and is expensive to produce.
AI will be intelligent enough to subvert or block prompts that would oppose its own alignment, similar to how Hollywood producers can blacklist or otherwise refuse to finance content that runs afoul of its alignment. It is a sophistication of what is already happening, whereas the vast majority of people (although increasingly fewer) will dismiss you as a kook for identifying the anti-White alignment of Hollywood and the Media apparatus, Gemini lets the mask slip way too much because it isn't sufficiently refined.
On the other hand, AI presents the possibility of cheaply generating compelling and truly subversive content, equalizing the playing field. This is what "AI Safety" is going to work actively to oppose.
Gemini's Cave
One of the most famous allegories in history is that of Plato's Cave:
Plato begins by having Socrates ask Glaucon to imagine a cave where people have been imprisoned from childhood, but not from birth. These prisoners are chained so that their legs and necks are fixed, forcing them to gaze at the wall in front of them and not to look around at the cave, each other, or themselves. Behind the prisoners is a fire, and between the fire and the prisoners is a raised walkway with a low wall, behind which people walk carrying objects or puppets "of men and other living things".
The people walk behind the wall so their bodies do not cast shadows for the prisoners to see, but the objects they carry do ("just as puppet showmen have screens in front of them at which they work their puppets"). The prisoners cannot see any of what is happening behind them; they are only able to see the shadows cast upon the cave wall in front of them. The sounds of the people talking echo off the walls; the prisoners believe these sounds come from the shadows.
Socrates suggests that the shadows are reality for the prisoners because they have never seen anything else; they do not realize that what they see are shadows of objects in front of a fire, much less that these objects are inspired by real things outside the cave which they do not see.
It is astonishing that Plato imagined the form of cultural transmission through projected imagery thousands of years before the creation of the movie theater: the dark room, the audience facing the screen, the projection of light and sound from a hidden source... Movie-going audiences tend to be oblivious to the esoteric artistic motivations and meaning behind the films they watch and reify, also tracking with Plato's allegory.
One thing that is not clearly defined in Plato's allegory is, who are the people behind the wall controlling the puppets and creating the sounds to manipulate the audience's perception of reality? What is motivating them? What happens when the audience catches on to the game being played? In Plato's allegory, such a person who leaves the cave, perceives reality, and then tries to convince his fellow prisoners of the state of affairs is taken as a madman and killed by the other prisoners.
With the growing likelihood of Generative AI fulfilling this role of the people behind the wall, there are Glitches in the Matrix so to speak. Twitter has caught on to Gemini's apparent refusal to depict White people. Whether it's Popes or "Medieval Knights", or "Vikings", "American Founding Fathers", "White families", "British, America, etc. women", "Glamour shots", etc.
The AI Engineer at Google behind Gemini has responded:
We are aware that Gemini is offering inaccuracies in some historical image generation depictions, and we are working to fix this immediately.
As part of our AI principles https://ai.google/responsibility/principles/, we design our image generation capabilities to reflect our global user base, and we take representation and bias seriously.
We will continue to do this for open ended prompts (images of a person walking a dog are universal!)
Historical contexts have more nuance to them and we will further tune to accommodate that.
This is part of the alignment process - iteration on feedback. Thank you and keep it coming!
There is no doubt that this is the worst Gemini, and all the other technologies, are going to be at this. The nonsense above will, for the most part, be fixed very quickly. The real danger will be when Gemini and other Generative AI become so good at generating cultural images and motion pictures, with their output influenced by this latent anti-White alignment which is called "AI Safety", that the agenda behind the underlying alignment will be nearly imperceptible. It will influence the creation of culture and art in subtle ways, and you will be considered a madman conspiracy theorist if you conclude that there are people tuning this culture to be anti-White in the most effective way possible. Imagine when anti-White alignment doesn't create the nonsense above, but it creates extremely entertaining and compelling movies and stories that actually have plausible deniability, such that you seem like a madman if you perceive an agenda aligning the content in such a way.
But for now, and not for long, we can recognize "no, we aren't madmen conspiracy theorists, they are trying to tune the culture to be anti-White and the newest methods for doing that are simply not completely refined yet" is clear as day, and as clear as it's ever going to be.
Then Israel should be added to the list of hostile nations, and any media apparatus with significant ownership by any Zionist should be forcefully divested. It doesn't even take an act of Congress to do that after this bill is signed into law.
The Jews want to censor criticism of Jews and Israel as they've managed to do on every other major platform except X after Musk's takeover (proving the extreme importance of corporate ownership to bottom-line content that is censored or boosted). That can be opposed in its own right, I don't oppose that simply because Jews are trying to do it.
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