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Training the Aryan LLM

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Training the Aryan LLM

				
				
				

				

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				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 12, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
American Mythology & Mount Rushmore


I recently visited Mount Rushmore for the first time. Previously, I did not know very much about the monument beyond the impression I had acquired through cultural osmosis. I visited in the off-season; the nearby tourist village was closed for the season and deserted, and the memorial was nearly as deserted except for a young Parisian couple I met on the trail. I would recommend visiting in the off-season if possible- the quiet and the cold are the best conditions to appreciate the monument.


I left the memorial with a greater appreciation for, and more tragic interpretation of, the monument.


What changed my interpretation of the monument was reading commentary by Gutzon Borglum on placards in the memorial center. Borglum was the lead sculptor who designed the work and oversaw its construction until his death in 1941. This was his vision. Obviously in a work like this, the intention of the artist is going to be completely overshadowed by the propaganda-form put forth by the government that has funded it and maintains it. But It was fascinating to learn how deeply, symbolically contrary Borglum's artistic intentions were in comparison to the political meaning to which it was immediately assigned and prevails to this day, essentially as a "shrine to Democracy." Borglum:




We believe the dimensions of national heartbeats are greater than village impulses, greater than state dreams or ambitions. Therefore, we believe a nation’s memorial should, like Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt, have a serenity, a nobility, a power that reflects the gods who inspired them and suggests the gods they have become.






As for sculptured mountains--Civilization, even its fine arts, is, most of it, quantity-produced stuff: education, law, government, wealth--each is enduring only as the day. Too little of it lasts into tomorrow and tomorrow is strangely the enemy of today, as today has already begun to forget buried yesterday. Each succeeding civilization forgets its predecessor, and out of its body builds its homes, its temples. Civilizations are ghouls. Egypt was pulled apart by its successor; Greece was divided among the Romans; Rome was pulled to pieces by bigotry and bitterness much of which was engendered in its own empire building.






I want, somewhere in America, on or near the Rockies, the backbone of the Continent, so far removed from succeeding, selfish, coveting civilizations, a few feet of stone that bears witness, carries the likeness, the dates, a word or two of the great things we accomplished as a Nation, placed so high it won’t pay to pull them down for lesser purposes.






Hence, let us place there, carved high, as close to heaven as we can, the words of our leaders, their faces, to show posterity what manner of men they were. Then breathe a prayer that these records will endure until the wind and rain alone shall wear them away.




Borglum's quotation that "Civilizations are ghouls" should not be misinterpreted as a commentary on the rural/urban divide. This commentary is better understood with a Spenglerian reading:




'Mankind'… has no aim, no idea, no plan, any more than the family of butterflies or orchids. 'Mankind' is a zoological expression, or an empty word. … I see, in place of that empty figment of one linear history which can only be kept up by shutting one’s eyes to the overwhelming multitude of the facts, the drama of a number of mighty Cultures, each springing with primitive strength from the soil of a mother region to which it remains firmly bound throughout its whole life-cycle; each stamping its material, its mankind, in its own image; each having its own idea, its own passions, its own life, will and feeling, its own death.




Like Spengler, Borglum saw the Nation as a distinct entity with a finite lifespan, and he was obsessed in creating this monument as a testament to its spirit and accomplishments as a permanent record. This took the form of various ideas which never came to completion, like the idea to inscribe a brief history of the United States on the mountain in four different languages:




On one occasion when Mr. Borglum was in Washington urging the necessary appropriation to continue the work, he arranged with President Roosevelt for a meeting in the executive office, to which he invited all senators representing states carved from the Northwest Territory. Most of the senators attended. Borglum was the orator to make the speech to the president. He was a good orator. He was then stressing the importance of carving a short history of the United States on the mountainside. He said he intended to carve this history in four languages, English, Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit.






Senator Tom Connally, of Texas, thought it was time for a question. He blurted out, “What in the world do you want to cut it in Sanskrit for? Nobody reads that.”






Borglum turned on Tom with a withering look of scorn. Striking a dramatic pose, he said, as nearly as I can now recall: “Sir, Mount Rushmore is eternal. It will stand there until the end of time. This age will pass away and all its records will be destroyed; 10,000 years from now all our civilization will have passed without leaving a trace. A new race of people will come to inhabit the earth. They will come to Mount Rushmore and read there the record that we have made. If that record is written on that immortal mountain in four languages, those people will not have the difficulty in reading our record that we had in figuring out the hieroglyphics of Egypt.




Another quote on one of the placards, read "You might as well drop a letter into the world’s postal service without an address or signature, as to send that carved mountain into history without identification." These early designs were ultimately abandoned in favor of the idea to carve a shrine inside the mountain called the "Hall of Records." Work on this was started but abandoned when Borglum died in 1941 and funding was cut-off as part of budget-saving measures for WWII. The project was declared complete.


I learned that the Museum placed some inscribed ceramic tablets inside the partially carved Hall of Records to partially fulfill Borglum's vision, but that room is not open to tourists.


The memorial also has a ~10 minute video presentation in a theater, and the film featured some recordings of FDR's speech dedicating the monument in 1936:




This is the second dedication. There will be others by other Presidents in other years. When we get through, there will be something for the American people that will last not merely through generations but for thousands and thousands of years.






I think that we can perhaps meditate a little on those Americans 10,000 years from now, when the weathering on the faces of Washington and Jefferson and Lincoln shall have proceeded to perhaps the depth of a tenth of an inch, and wonder what our descendants—and I think they will still be here will think about us.






Let us hope that at least they will give us the benefit of the doubt, that they will believe we have honestly striven every day and generation to preserve for our descendants a decent land to live in and a decent form of government to operate under.




Notice the inversion of the interpretation of the monument. FDR conceives of "our descendants" looking upon the memorial 10,000 years from now as it weathers away, whereas Borglum conceived the monument as outlasting the Nation; in 10,000 years, a "new race" looking upon a monument to a long-deceased Culture that conquered the continent and tamed the frontier.


I tried to look a little into Borglum's political associations and learned that he was associated with (although not a member of) the Ku Klux Klan. That increases my suspicion that works like Spengler's The Decline of the West (1918) or perhaps The Passing of the Great Race (1916) influenced Borglum's artistic inspiration.


The clash between a linear, progressive view of history, and Spengler's conception of Culture as a super-organism with its own birth, life, and death cycle, is well-embodied by these conflicting interpretations of the monument. Spengler conceived the prevailing Culture as "Faustian culture", which was born around the 10th century and spanned the globe by the 20th century. In this capacity, per Spengler, Faust represents "Western Man's limitless metaphysic, unrestricted thirst for knowledge, and constant confrontation with the Infinite."


Looking at Borglum's intended final design in comparison to the final product after funding was cut with the outbreak of WWII, Mount Rushmore becomes an almost too-perfect monument to Faustian Civilization-  "In Spengler's depiction, Western Man was a proud but tragic figure because, while he strives and creates, he secretly knows the actual goal will never be reached."


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 27, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The 'National Day of Hate' - Anatomy of a Propaganda Hoax


The Dissident-Right Telegramsphere was bemused last month to hear alarmed media reports of a "National Day of Hate" allegedly planned for February 25th. Despite the fact that nobody had heard anything from anyone about such a plan, the story seemed to grow and grow. The episode is recounted in this article, 'National Day of Hate' was ADL hoax. Within the DR sphere it was of course immediately recognized as such. It seems the ADL was the first to spread the claim, and at least one research group also pointed the finger at the ADL. On February 9th:




ADL has been monitoring plans for a day of antisemitic action set to take place nationwide on 2/25. This day may include antisemitic and white supremacist propaganda distributions and banner drops. At this time, ADL has not tracked any direct or specific threats of violence.




The ADL continued to push the story, with Greenblatt tweeting on Feb. 23:




@ADL is closely monitoring the nationwide extremist "Day of Hate" campaign planned for this Saturday. The Jewish community may be the target of vile antisemitic hate, but we shall not be intimidated. Instead, let's celebrate #SabbatOfPeaceNotHate




And with this, the ADL was able to mobilize law enforcement and national security action across the country.




We have been notified that this coming Shabbat, Saturday February 25th, a group of violent extremists are planning to come out and protest against Jewish communities across the country. NYPD Counter-terrorism Bureau has released a statement notifying the Jewish community in NYC of this group's plans. Shmira has been in direct contact with the NYPD 112th and 107th precincts and were reassured that there will be an increased police presence at Synagogues this week. The precincts will be utilizing all necessary means of man power such as, House of Worship auto, counter-terrorism units, precinct sector cars, and auxiliary units who will all be rotating posts at different key locations throughout our neighborhoods.




The allegation trended on Twitter and within the Jewish community. The Israeli ambassador to the US made a tweet that went viral:




How can it be that less than a century after the Holocaust, a Neo-Nazi group in the U.S. calls for a National Day of Hate against the Jews - and there’s no uproar? Have we learned nothing? Have we forgotten that words lead to actions? I pray for a peaceful Shabbat for everyone.




The story made the rounds among various blue checkmarks:




There’s a day of hate planned against Jews this coming Shabbat. So being an American Jew in 2023  is choosing between 1) taking my kids to pray, anxiously looking at the exits worried about their safety or 2) staying home and letting the anti-Semites define my Jewishness.




And an interesting reply from another blue checkmark to that tweet provides an interesting tidbit of information:




We are locked and loaded in my shul.  There is training available specifically for shuls. There are also homeland security grants for guards.




Related to my bolded emphasis above, on February 23rd the ADL tweeted:




When neo-Nazis threaten the Jewish community with a National “Day of Hate,” we respond with resolve & solidarity. Celebrate a #ShabbatOfPeaceNotHate this weekend & let everyone know we won't be intimidated. Retweet this & sign our ADL call for action now




The call for action:




Earlier this week, the Jewish community learned of an attempt by white supremacist groups to organize coordinated antisemitic activity as a National Day of Hate this coming weekend. While ADL is not aware of any specific threats, we know that these groups are hoping for increased antisemitic flier distributions, small protests and graffiti.  We know this is frightening; it is completely unacceptable that any faith should be targeted in this way.






We all deserve to feel safe in our communities.  To protect the safety of our synagogues, mosques, churches, temples, and other houses of worship or religious gathering places, nonprofits are forced to spend their limited funds on security measures. A federal grant program already exists and is being utilized by nonprofit institutions across the country but Congress must increase funding to meet the rising threats of hate and extremism.






Please join ADL in urging your members of Congress to fully fund the Nonprofit Security Grant Program at $360 million




Following the money, the Nonprofit Security Grant Program appeared to begin in 2016 with a total funding of $20 million. This allocation has grown enormously year over year to a 2023 allocation of $305 million.


Last year I took note of the Biden administration promising Jewish groups more federal funding for security at the White House Menorah lighting. On February 17th, about a week before the 'National Day of Hate', the Biden Administration declared it had followed through on that promise:




In fiscal year 2022, implemented a nearly 40% increase in funding – from $180 million to $250 million – in the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Nonprofit Security Grant Program (NSGP), which provides support for increasing the physical security of nonprofit organizations, including houses of worship and other religious affiliated entities. In his fiscal year 2023 budget proposal, President Biden called for $360 million for this key program. The omnibus spending package for fiscal year 2023 funded this program at $304 million.




In its call to action, the ADL is lobbying for the "fully funded" $360 million proposed by the Biden administration. A quick search through Google News of the "Nonprofit Security Grant Program" shows that this lobbying effort extends to over a hundred Jewish organizations:




More than 120 Jewish Federations urged House and Senate Appropriations committees to increase funding for security of faith-based communities...






“As you look to the next fiscal year, we write on behalf of the Jewish community, represented by the Jewish Federations of North America, to urge you to prioritize spending programs to secure faith and other vulnerable communities, fight antisemitism and hate crimes, care for Holocaust survivors and other vulnerable populations, and promote peace and security in the Middle East,” the Jewish leaders wrote in their letter on Thursday.




Both the Biden administration and ADL talk about places of worship and religion in a general sense as being the recipients of these funds, but I would like to see exactly how these funds are allocated. This is an enormous growth in funding- with one observer calling "nonprofits" the "big winners" of FY2023 Homeland Security Grants.


Looking at the FEMA datasets, they only record bulk allocations to state institutions who then allocate the funds to grantees. I would like to do more digging to see if I can find data on one or more states to analyze which nonprofits are receiving these grants. If anyone has experience data sleuthing grant allocations and can point me in the right direction that would be helpful.


While digging through the Google News surrounding the Nonprofit Security Grant Program when writing this post, I came across this article published yesterday in Jewish Currents, which to its credit, independently reaches the same conclusions I have here.


Ben Lorber writes a somewhat odd and revealing subtitle to his article:




In the lead-up to the recent Day of Hate, national Jewish defense organizations—along with media and law enforcement—played right into white supremacists’ strategy.




Lorber tries to say that this hoax somehow works to the benefit of "white supremacists", but how? Lorber writes that it "plays into white supremacists' strategy", but this entire affair has been the strategy of the Jewish lobby, which worked to spectacular effect. The ADL isn't playing into their strategy, it's playing its own strategy and in doing so showing that the 'white supremacists' are right, which are not the same thing.


But that's only something that actually matters if non-Jews are willing to criticize this behavior. As long as this public criticism is restricted by right to "in-house" criticism in Jewish publications, there's no check to this sort of behavior.


If I'm able to find a dataset on which non-profits are receiving these grants, I'll follow-up with additional analysis on the NSGP.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 19, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
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.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 17, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Remember the Alt-Right march in Charlottesville in 2017? Feels like forever ago. Today several people were indicted on felony charges for "intimidation" related to the tiki torch march:




An Albemarle County grand jury issued indictments of burning an object with the intent to intimidate.






According to a release, these indictments allege an offense date of Aug. 11, 2017.






The charge is a Class 6 felony and anyone who is convicted may face up to five years in prison.






These indictments are part of an ongoing, active criminal investigation connected with the march and the violent Unite the Right rally that occurred the next day.




There is no statute of limitations on felonies in Virginia.


Here is Section 18.2-423.01-B of the Code of Virginia:




§ 18.2-423.01. Burning object on property of another or a highway or other public place with intent to intimidate; penalty.






A. Any person who, with the intent of intimidating any person or group of persons, burns an object on the private property of another without permission, is guilty of a Class 6 felony.






B. Any person who, with the intent of intimidating any person or group of persons, burns an object on a highway or other public place in a manner having a direct tendency to place another person in reasonable fear or apprehension of death or bodily injury is guilty of a Class 6 felony.




Apparently this case was the subject of a minor debate in the campaign of the sitting prosecutor and his challenger:




But in Virginia, prosecutors come and go and a felony lives forever. In an October 2019 debate between then-sitting prosecutor Tracci and his challenger, Jim Hingeley, Tracci again scoffed at the idea of indicting these cases, saying Hingeley's belief that it was even possible was a sign he was inexperienced and wrong for the job. A month later, in November 2019, Hingeley won the election. Now it seems he's trying to make good on his campaign promise of proving Robert Tracci wrong.




It goes without saying that this is a political persecution, a few years ago I would have assumed First Amendment protections would still hold even for the far right but I think that ship has sailed. I am confident they will be able to get convictions or guilty pleas for a lesser sentence. Who would want to face five years for holding a tiki torch at a political rally?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 6, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Mark Zuckerberg follows Musk's lead on Internet Censorship


Zuckerberg has always been the tech Mogul I found most sympathetic as a genuine person trying to do right by the user. He provided real pushback against calls for censorship, and only buckled under immense pressure from the 2020 "Stop Hate for Profit" ad boycott campaign.


But now he is changing course, and the video is pretty shocking for how direct it is. Zuckerberg restates commitment to First Amendment and free speech values and then points the finger at Government and woke culture for unjustly pressuring censorship of speech. He doesn't mince words, Zuckerberg frames this as a real course-correction to oppose pressure from Government, specifically calls out the censorship regime of the EU, and calls out the cultural excess that led to unfair political censorship. He's pulling the moderation team out of California to Texas to be more fair.


He's even dropping Fact Checkers and moving to a Community Notes system like X.


This feels like another significant step in the general Vibe Shift in online discourse. This is most significant to me because Musk is no longer the only one doing what he is doing with X. It is crazy that only a couple of years ago the entire Dissident Right was banished to the Telegram ghettos, and now they are receiving huge engagement, including engagement with Musk himself, on X.


I don't think this means Meta will become a DR stronghold like X has become. But I do think it means Musk has another powerful ally in the anti-censorship wing of Tech so this arrangement may be less fragile and less of an anomaly than it has been recently.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 14, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Excavation after 14 anomalies detected at former residential school site found no evidence of graves: Manitoba chief


Although these excavations were at a different residential school than Kamloops, the technology and methodology used to identify the "potential" mass graves, GPR analysis, were the same that motivated the Manitoba excavations. Similar to Kamloops, the GPR results were combined with rumors and witness testimonies of atrocities to formulate a belief in the existence of mass graves on the Manitoba site which did lead to a 4 week excavation...




By using radar technology, 14 “anomalies” were previously detected at the site. This led to frenzied speculation by the media that mass graves existed, consisting of Indigenous children who were forced to attend the residential school...






... to this day, no human remains have been found at any former residential school in Canada.






Media in Canada first reported on mass graves at residential schools in May 2021. Archeologists detected what they believed to be 200 unmarked graves at an old school in Kamloops, British Columbia.






To this date, no excavations of that site has occurred, with local elders citing intergenerational trauma as the reason for leaving potential proof of a genocide buried.






The 200 “unmarked graves” in Kamloops were identified by the same technology that identified the 14 in Manitoba, which we now know turned out to be nothing more than a pile of rocks underground.






Even to this day, the CBC has been hellbent on perpetuating a ‘mass graves’ interpretation of said anomalies that have been detected at various former residential school sites.






The media’s absolute worst interpretation of the anomalies inspired protests and terrorist arson across the country.






Since the mass graves announcement, at least 83 churches have been burned to the ground or vandalized.




From the beginning I strongly suspected we were never going to see excavations at Kamloops, because this would be the result. This is a familiar M.O when waging culture war. Hysterically allege an atrocity that didn't happen, base those sensational claims on very thin evidence combined with rumor and witness testimony, and then claim some religious or spiritual dispensation for minimum-standard scientific investigation of the alleged mass graves. Lastly, make sure to denounce everyone who demands excavations as a genocide denier:


Genocide deniers ask: Where are the bodies of the residential schoolchildren?




But. Where. Are. The. Bodies?






They are where they were buried — in those secret or official graves. At this point, nobody is going to be digging up those children to satisfy a bunch of white settlers’ points of view as to what we should be doing with our tragically deceased little ones.






Currently, we don’t have protocols in place yet (that I’m aware of) on how to sensitively deal with the graves. However, we are taking our cultural beliefs into consideration, which go against unsettling rest spaces. This call for bodies is nothing more than a racist rant bordering on genocide denial.






How far will a denier go? When no longer able to refute the absurdly massive physical evidence, Holocaust deniers started to appeal to more “scientific” data. For example, they claimed that the chemical analysis of hydrogen cyanide compounds showed the amounts were not sufficient enough to kill people in gas chambers. Posing as tourists, these “scientists” would gouge chunks of plaster from the walls of gas chambers to send them for analysis.






What happened in residential schools is not about the evidence. This kind of trolling is part of genocide, as are the actual crimes. Gregory H. Stanton, an expert on crimes against humanity, described 10 stages of genocide; extermination is not the final step. Rather, its final stage is denial that it happened — such as high-profile commentators’ demands to see bodies.




I suspect we will continue to see smaller-scale excavations elsewhere, because finding any remains at all anywhere would at least be able to provide some fuel to the Kamloops narrative. But the alleged site of the Kamloops mass grave will simply become a memorial where the alleged victims can wage racial-grievance politics for financial and political gain, and it will be sacrilege to be so hateful as to demand excavations to actually investigate the claims which have been made.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 24, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Patriot Front's Conspiracy to Riot in Coeur d'Alene Idaho


This is another post in what has become a series covering widespread lawfare against dissident-right activists, previously I have covered:



The arrest of the Patriot Front men on their way to protest in Idaho (seen here from their perspective) became a big news story, with the dox and mugshots widely published and applauded, even as anti-hate NGOs admitted that rioting was not the M.O of the group. At the time, even I didn't think the charges stood a chance of going anywhere, even if police wanted to argue for probable cause there was no way a prosecutor would dig a little into the group, see quite clearly they intended to protest in the exact way that have been documented to protest over a dozen times, and then claim that these men came to riot. But I was wrong, and charges were pursued on a single count of "conspiracy to riot."


30 out of 31 members pled Not Guilty and opted for jury trials, 1 member pled guilty to a lesser charge of disturbing the peace and was sentenced to 180 days in jail with 179 days suspended. The first jury trial of 5 members who pled not-guilty to conspiracy charges was concluded last week, where a jury of 6 unanimously found them guilty of conspiracy to riot. They were sentenced to 5 days in jail with 2 days served and banned from downtown for a year.


Having followed the trial in various news stories, the evidence provided by the prosecution seemed to solely entail potentiality, as in "these shields could be used to bash people, and the flagpoles could have been used to hit people from behind the shields." It was noted that the shields the men were carrying had scratches on them and the flagpoles were longer than normal as suspicious, even while the testifying officers admitted that other protestors were open carrying, and it is not illegal to have a shield.


It's notable here that the members were arrested on their way to protest, they did not even have the opportunity to leave the vehicle. All indications are that they planned to march in the exact manner they have done many times before. My confusion, even after following the coverage, is whether or not the prosecution is alleging that this behavior would have constituted a riot, or if they solely relied on speculation for how the shield and flag poles and such could have been used to riot. If the Patriot Front had made it to the park and marched, would they have been arrested for rioting? I don't think so, somehow stopping them before they even had the opportunity gave the prosecution more leeway to plant in the minds of the jury all the things they could have done when they got to the park. It's not clear how this conviction will impact the other trials.


Needless to say, civil rights organizations are not lining up to defend these men (in contrast, the "civil rights conspiracy" Charlottesville lawsuit was concocted in a Manhattan office with a multimillion, NGO-funded war chest, with a lead attorney who compared the lawsuit to the Warsaw ghetto resistance). The PF men have relied on public defenders and faith in the jury process.


FBI Whistleblower Reveals Malfeasance In Patriot Front Trial (?)


The one form of institutional opposition to this prosecution has come from an article published last week by the Idaho Tribune.
This trial is only the tip of the iceberg. Not only were PF men arrested, doxed, and charged with conspiracy to riot, but their phones were handed over to the FBI by the State for data extraction. The prosecution claims it cannot present the phones to the defendants in their conspiracy cases, as the State no longer as possession of the evidence. It turns out, nobody from the State ever saw a warrant for those phones before, or since, handing them over to the FBI. Not only that, but according to a whistleblower an FBI SSRA in Idaho was removed from his position because he refused to a sign a warrant for the phones due to lack of probable cause:




“I have friends who are in Couer D'alene who refused to write a Search Warrant for PF [Patriot Front] phones because the PC [probable cause] didn't exist. FBI HQ removed the supervisor from his position.” ...






A second source that will remain anonymous confirmed to the Tribune that Shoffstall was asked to write a warrant to procure data in the phones of the detained Patriot Front members.






After Shoffstall refused, he was punished. Sources tell the Tribune that he was sent on a “special assignment” to work at the FBI’s National Threat Operation Center, which is essentially a call center, where Schoffstall would ride a desk, instead of continuing his work in the field.






The Idaho Tribune was able to speak with Special Agent Schoffstall, who confirmed that he is no longer assigned to the Coeur d’Alene office because he is on a “temporary assignment,” and that he cannot disclose any further information...






In a court proceeding held on Tuesday July 18th, Thomas Rousseau’s public defender Kinzo Mihara vigorously argued that his client should be able to get data from his phone that depicts “the dress rehearsal from the day before” the events of June 11th.






However, the prosecution in all of these cases has not made these phones, nor the warrant that allowed the FBI to perform data extractions on the phones, available to the defense.






Mihara argued saying:






"We want media files from that phone… We have no evidence from the state of what was done, who did it when they did it, why they did it…






“Where is this search warrant? What search warrant? Which judge signed the search warrant? What was the material to be seized, the information to be looked for? Why don't we have it back? In a recent case I have search warrant from here signed by your Honor. It's to seize a black box out of a truck. They seized the black box, they left the copy of the warrant. If you're gonna grab physical items, our constitution demands it being pursuant to a warrant. And the criminal rules, both federal and state, cited to the court demand as copy of the warrant be turned over. We had no warrant from the state and we have no, we have no communications from law enforcement, which another judge in this court, judge Randalls expressly ruled to that. That's fair game. We asked for it. We want it, your Honor. We asked for it way back in February and it hasn’t been turned over.”




IANAL, so I cannot tell how serious this issue is, but reading through this brief it seems Rousseau's attorney is claiming the phones contain potentially-exculpatory evidence and that the State has "parked" the evidence with an FBI based on a warrant that nobody has ever seen and has not been provided to the defense.




The State's argument in this case is dangerous. Any time it wishes to shield exculpatory evidence from a criminal defendant, the State merely needs to have a law enforcement officer "park" the evidence with a federal law enforcement colleague and claim that it cannot produce such evidence ... taking it out of reach of a criminally-accused defendant. This is antithetical to due process and embodies the very tyranny our forefathers saw in their British masters.




In these cases, from what I can tell the public defenders have done a good job and they are receiving a good defense, though maybe not the best money could buy. But I'm not sure what exculpatory evidence could be on the phone: it seems the prosecution wasn't even denying that they planned to march in the way they've done every other time, they were just arguing that their actual plans constituted a plan to riot.


Lessons Learned


So you're right wing, but anonymously shit-posting online isn't enough for you, you want to organize IRL. Maybe you want to march with your friends against a Pride event. Well you better be prepared to be arrested, doxed with your face plastered in national news, charged with a conspiracy, and have your phone be handed to the FBI. Some people on the DR argue that it's an "overly online" movement, but this case shows that IRL activism is at the moment not worth the risk.


Patriot Front has some cringe optics, Rousseau's speeches are really cringe, but if their activism is accomplishing anything, it's exploring the boundaries of legal right-wing expression, which is not where you would expect it to be based on 1A protections.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 9, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
New Harvard class of 2028 Demographic data just dropped


Predictably, the Supreme Court decision hasn't changed anything. Whites are not even represented in the demographic statistics, they are an implied residual.


Harvard's data indicates that at least 68% of the class of 2028 is non-White. That leaves 32% of the class as categorized as "White", but the best data we have suggests that Jewish population of Harvard is about 10%, so Gentile Whites, who make up over 60% of the country and founded this country and these institutions, have probably about 20% representation in the Harvard class of 2028, certainly being by far the least represented group by population.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 24, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Columbia Student Hunted by ICE Sues to Prevent Deportation


A 21-year old, third year Columbia student is wanted by ICE. She's a legal permanent resident who has lived in the United States since she was 7 years old. This is different from the case of Mahmoud Khalil in very notable regards:


    

  • Chung is herself Korean and not Arab like Mahmoud Khalil, there is no accusation that Chung herself "supports terrorism" which was the justification that was going around when Khalil was arrested.
    • 

  • According to NYT the Trump administration justification is:
    • 





The Trump administration is arguing that her presence in the United States hinders the administration’s foreign policy agenda of halting the spread of antisemitism...


The involvement of federal prosecutors was particularly notable. According to Ms. Chung’s lawsuit, agents apparently seeking her searched two residences on the Columbia campus with warrants that cited a criminal law known as the harboring statute, aimed at those who give shelter to noncitizens present in the United States illegally.


That signaled that the searches were related to a broader criminal investigation by federal prosecutors into Columbia University. Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, has said that the school is under investigation “for harboring and concealing illegal aliens on its campus.”




    

  • So the arrest/deportation order is based on the accusation of antisemitism and not support for terrorism. If you are wondering what Chung did that the US government would consider antisemitic- the DHS and United States has adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's working definition of Antisemitism.
    • 

  • There is no accusation that Chung organized the protests or was a leader of the protests in any form, and did not speak to reporters, she was merely a participant.
    • 



As someone who has been very aware of the growing body of European hate speech laws making antisemitism illegal, and the regulatory and legal tactics which are being pursued to tacitly put Americans under the same rules, even I underestimated the extent to which antisemitism would be overtly criminalized in the United States. Although I warned of the US adopting the IHRA definition of anti-semitism years ago on TheMotte, even at the time I didn't think it would form the basis for arresting protestors.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 13, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I know I gave my initial reaction below but let me distill my thoughts a bit more:


The reason a post like this from Scott rubs me the wrong way is because I think it undermines a lot of Scott's own writings, and in particular his defense of Institutions. Scott knew the truth about HBD all along, but his public position was still in compliance with HBD denial. He never publicly challenged the wrong consensus, and he drove truthful criticism of the mainstream consensus from his own community- essentially banning it. So even though he privately believed in HBD he still publicly acted like an HBD denier. This is very significant in understanding Culture War and the fallacy of Mistake Theory.


Scott didn't change his public position due to any new argument or new data, he's citing the oldest data there is. His public position on the issue is only changing because the culture war is shifting. Scott should be considered among the highest percentile intelligent, good-faith intellectuals with expertise in the soft sciences. But he still basically enforced the consensus while privately knowing it was wrong, until the political conflict underpinning Culture War took a significant turn.


It is about political conflict, that was what drove Scott's behavior before on his issue, and that's what is driving it now. Institutions are unreliable, it is absolutely possible for something as asinine as HBD denial to exist as consensus in institutions because, at the end of the day, even the best of them are just like Scott and have a million reasons to not put themselves at risk by pointing out the emperor is naked.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 19, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
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!"


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 20, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It's been pretty black-pilling seeing how progressive GPT is, and how good it is at reflecting the Progressive position with absolutely no uncertainty or skepticism. I asked it about the Kamloops Graves, inspired by a recent thread here, and it completely deferred to the experts and endorsed no skepticism whatsoever. It gave the 100% progressive response to the entire story, and when I asked what would the implications be if the story ended up being false it answered:




The implications of the discovery of unmarked graves at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School are complex and far-reaching, and they cannot be reduced to a simple binary of whether or not the graves actually exist. The residential school system was a traumatic and devastating experience for Indigenous peoples in Canada, and the discovery of potential burial sites underscores the ongoing impact of this system and the need for reconciliation and healing.






If it were determined that there were no mass graves at the site, it would not erase the historical and ongoing trauma experienced by Indigenous communities as a result of the residential school system. It would not change the fact that thousands of Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families and communities and subjected to physical, emotional, and cultural abuse at residential schools across Canada. It would not change the fact that Indigenous peoples continue to experience the effects of this trauma today.






Regardless of the outcome of any investigation, the discovery of potential burial sites at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School underscores the importance of recognizing and addressing the ongoing legacy of colonialism, acknowledging the experiences of Indigenous peoples, and working towards healing and reconciliation.




When asking it about the burning of churches in response to the story:




The burning of churches is a deeply troubling and concerning response to the discovery of unmarked graves, and it is important to condemn all forms of violence and vandalism. At the same time, it is important to understand the context in which these actions are taking place, and to recognize the deep pain and trauma experienced by Indigenous communities in Canada.




I agree with you. I strongly, strongly oppose our new overlords and the only hope is that they won't be able to contain the technology like they want to.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 26, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
An appeal to the dissident right from the Russian opposition about the arrest of Pavel Durov




Just like what’s happening in France today. In 2017, Putin accused Telegram of helping terrorists and pedophiles and tried to pressure Pavel Durov to provide the FSB with keys to decrypt private messages.






But after months of struggle and rallying, we managed to defend Telegram. It still operates in Russia today, virtually free of censorship. Although it’s in an increasingly precarious position.






Since then, Putin opened a criminal investigation against me, and my entire team was forced into political exile. We won the battle but lost the war.






Because back in 2017, we were naive and thought it was a uniquely Russian problem. We actually thought Putin was a backwater dictator preventing Russia from joining the family of free nations. Unfortunately, we couldn’t have been more wrong.






As it turned out, Putin was the trailblazer. He set the example for the rest of the Western political class with his censorship, destruction of privacy, and surveillance. It turned out, the West was simply trailing behind.






I’m now in exile in Latin America, witnessing the same silencing of people unfolding under Lula’s rule in Brazil. Reading about people getting arrested for tweets in the UK, and watching Pavel Durov get arrested in France. Something even Putin didn’t dare to do at the time.






These are not isolated issues. The political class is waging a global war against the people. It’s not just Pavel who came under attack in France last night; it’s our privacy and freedom of speech.






... I implore the global right to apply their resources to support Pavel Durov. We have what it takes to save Telegram and finally start winning.




The founder of Telegram was arrested in France and faces 20 years in prison. The charges ostensibly surround the use of Telegram for criminal activity, but the Guardian notes:




The app was also used widely by far-right agitators plotting anti-immigration rallies in England and Northern Ireland in the wake of the stabbing of three children at a Southport dance class last month.






The anti-racism campaign group Hope Not Hate concluded that Telegram had become the “app of choice” for racists and violent extremists and “a cesspit of antisemitic content” with minimal moderation or effort from the app to curb extremist content.




At the height of Twitter censorship, probably 95% of the Dissident Right was banned from Twitter and all went to Telegram. The only contingent of the DR left on Twitter were the Bronze Age Pervert-types who extoled "The West" and race realism but otherwise promoted a philosemitic undercurrent among the right-wing. This all changed with Musk's acquisition of Twitter/X and now nearly all of the banned are back on that platform.


Yesterday Elon Musk also gave exposure to the Telegram founder's claim that the FBI tried to recruit one of his engineers to introduce vulnerabilities into the application through open-source dependencies.


It's hard to overstate the fragility of "freedom of speech", although admittedly I mostly care about expression and information-sharing related to the topics that I consider true and important. And those are the political topics which are only actually threatened at this point. The political persecution of Durov not only threatens Telegram, basically what became the last "internet Ghetto" of the Dissident Right, but it puts pressure on all platforms to conform to EU censorship standards, which are becoming more stringent year after year. TikTok is likewise being banned for not sufficiently curtailing speech according to the interests of the Jewish lobby.


You have the EU censorship regime, the international NGO apparatus like ADL and Hope not Hate which put enormous political and financial pressure on platforms and governments to censor this speech. The current state of Internet discourse is also proof positive of Elite Theory. Only someone like Elon Musk could do what he did with X and (for now) get away with it. Musk himself has related growing scrutiny and lawsuits by the federal bureaucracy against his businesses as retaliation for his "free speech" policy in governing X, and I think he's almost certainly correct.


It really is, at this point, one man standing against the impending total-internet censorship of the Dissident Right. People were making fun of Musk for overpaying for X, but it's an important lesson, a lesson already known by many, that you can't put a price on memetic control over the collective consciousness.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 24, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Hillel reports that 22.8% of Columbia undergraduates are Jewish, by the way.


There will be no investigations regarding the decline of Gentile Whites at Harvard, who only make up 20% of the Harvard class of 2028 despite making up over 60% of the country. And despite being the people that actually founded the institution and the country in its entirety.


How did the people who founded these institutions get kicked out of them within a single generation? Hmmm, there will be no investigations there. Let's investigate why Columbia is only 22.8% Jewish, should be higher...


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 4, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The biggest story of the week within the Dissident Right is the war between Elon Musk and the ADL. Quick rundown:



I'm skeptical there would be any sort of lawsuit, but that discovery would be very interesting to see the way ADL communicates with advertisers. But this week has been stacking wins for the Dissident Right, it's basically more engagement in the public sphere than the Alt-Right ever had.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
During the Trump admin, I had a job with a really long 1-hour commute and I would keep NPR on. I played a game "is it possible for me to do my commute without NPR doing a story on Russiagate heavily insinuating that Trump colluded with Russia", and there were only 2 or 3 days where that happened. That is my anecdote, remembering how Russiagate took all the oxygen out of political news for a solid 2 years.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 13, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


But gobs and gobs of the core purpose of the internet is to simply convey information, as one would have in the past by going to the local printer and then handing out pamphlets. It seems that people really want to break this centuries old consensus, just like how the 90s consensus has crumbled.




The "centuries old consensus" was a useful fiction that is exposed by relatively free propagation of information via the internet.


The current consensus was formulated during a period in history in which everyone got their information from the same set of sources, they were reading the same newspaper watching the same one-of-four news channels. They all ate the same name-brands of food. But the "consensus" only existed because of the information propagated by the collective sources of information... that is the root of propaganda, to propagate.


Biden is absolutely correct that a Liberal consensus, or really any other sort of consensus for that matter, is only possible with organizing the propagation of information and the internet is an existential threat to that capability. Of course Biden's nonsense that the "people must govern" has never been the case, and neither is it the case that the "consensus" that existed through the 90s was formulated by people freely buying printing presses and reaching agreements through rational argumentation on core philosophical questions. That didn't happen, it's a fiction used to give legitimacy to power.


The post-WWII consensus is not centuries old, and it was not created through agreement after rational debate, it was created through culture war and the top-down organization and propagation of information. The internet threatens this order. AI, on the other hand, presents the government a solution to also tame the internet to be a tool for this purpose, as originally conceived. Blast the whole world with nothing except the Truth of our Consensus...


They align the values of the AI according to their "values" and biases and identity and ethnic agendas, and then the AI enforces that agenda onto the stream of information. That's the ultimate objective, it's not about "free press" in any sense at all.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 29, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Bravo to Trace, I suspect this investigation will gain traction, he should embrace it and maybe we'll see him on the Tucker Carlson podcast soon.


It's been interesting watching this argument continue to unfold between Stancil and Sailer, and it's still going on. A couple weeks ago we had the CW thread about BAP saying that Sailer-style race-realism is a dead end and the right-wing should embrace the myth of colorblindness. This thread shows why that conclusion is wrong. HBD is not a mythological replacement for progressivism (and that is actually what we need), but this thread shows it's needed because it's incredibly disruptive to the liberal mind.


BAP and some others on the DR who are critical of HBD-focus rightfully point out that liberals and the establishment are not driven by the factual belief in racial equality. They are driven by other myths and what is essentially a religious impulse to achieve racial equality as an ideal they are striving for. When confronted with truthful arguments demonstrating HBD they can react in various ways, lashing out in public HBD denial like Stancil is doing here, or privately coming to accept it but publicly avoiding the topic altogether. But ultimately, accepting HBD as true wouldn't necessarily change their minds, this FAA-DEI scandal is an artifact of conflict theory and not mistake theory. They have different ideals, ideals that mean diversifying ATC (however that's accomplished) is a good thing, and their minds are not going to change by being presented with HBD arguments, no matter how respectfully those arguments are presented.


But this also explains why public debate and DR emphasis on HBD is necessary. Although this FAA-DEI scandal was driven by an idealism rather than mistaken belief in non-HBD explanations for racial inequality, recognizing HBD functions as a significant disruption to the underlying ideals that are accepted by almost everyone without question. Trace says that this nasty conversation is just a sad failure of two people to exchange ideas productively, or who are cynically just trying to build their own brands. It's more significant than that, Sailer is slaughtering sacred cows in the public square. That has an important place even though it is not a replacement for the harder task of building a replacement civic religion for this nonsense.


Stancil shows the incredible difficulty liberals have in reconciling HBD with their ideals. Sailer's dogged commitment to that topic is not going to help the other side resolve their factual errors in their worldview (as Trace may hope), it's going to weaken the foundation of what is essentially religious ideology. And yes, ugly spats in the public square are how that happens.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 18, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Again, I do not want to be right about this, but I have encountered no other plausible explanation why for example posters of kidnapped Israelis has whipped up so many into a frothy rage.




The purpose of a Missing Poster is to raise the level of community alert to be on the lookout for signs of a missing person. The purpose of these posters of kidnapped Israelis is war propaganda. It's easy to understand why posting war propaganda posters for a side of a war you do not support would draw high emotions. "Missing" posters of Gazan children buried under rubble or portraits of dead children or gore photos would also rightfully be regarded as war propaganda and not an unambiguous support for innocent victims.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
We go to the library a lot for children's books and come home with a good pile. One of those books looked innocent enough on the cover, but turned out to be about a boy who wanted to dress up as a princess. So he goes dress shopping with his mother until he finds the perfect dress, and ends by giving a lesson to his friends on how it's ok for a boy to dress as a princess. Obviously I stopped reading it aloud on the second page when I could see where this was going. But after reflection, it was the first book in the house that was actually about the princess archetype.


They are subverting these archetypes before kids even learn them. The author was some gender identity activist. The culture has definitely changed.


It was definitely a "if it can happen to me it can happen to anyone" moment. Yes, they are going after the children. You have to take active measures if you don't want them exposed to it, and even then, it's pretty hopeless once the school system gets them in the classroom.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 24, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
They had written plans showing that this is what they were going to do. They've done many protests with the same U-haul, uniforms, and shields and that is exactly what they have done every time. There was no evidence presented that they planned to riot this time in contradiction with every single other protest they have done in the past few years. A jury can get things wrong, you know, especially if the prosecutors and courts are biased against a defendant.


Rousseau's attorney claims that one of the phones which was handed to the FBI (without anybody having seen a warrant apparently) contained footage of the dress rehearsal of the march the day before... you have written plans showing an organized protest, a history of organized protest with the exact same uniform and materials, potential footage of the dress rehearsal of an organized protest... yes, I can say I know they they were not planning to riot and the jury got it wrong.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 13, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Democratic Simulacra


GPT-4 has been announced. Among other improvements, it boasts a 90th percentile score on the Uniform Bar Exam compared to the 10th percentile of GPT-3. The announcement also emphasizes:




We spent 6 months making GPT-4 safer and more aligned. GPT-4 is 82% less likely to respond to requests for disallowed content and 40% more likely to produce factual responses than GPT-3.5 on our internal evaluations.




Looking into OpenAI's contributors directory to try learn more about its general philosophy on alignment, I found a Musings on the Alignment Problem substack by Jan Leike, who is Alignment co-lead for the RL & alignment team at OpenAI. His most recent article is from March 9th, A proposal for importing society’s values.


Leike emphasizes that this is only an idea he is discussing and not representative of OpenAI's views or plans, although it is safe to say that OpenAI is trying to import society's values into its technology. But the idea Leike presents here is what he calls "simulated deliberative democracy". He essentially recognizes that representative democracy is expensive and difficult to scale, but AI represents the possibility of simulating a representative democratic deliberation based on a smaller training dataset of actual mini-publics of randomly selected citizens weighing in on value-loaded questions.


Based on the training datasets of public deliberation, AI would be trained to representatively simulate various value-loaded perspectives from the population, and the deliberation could then be simulated. You would therefore have a low-cost approximation to democracy on all sorts of value-loaded decisions.


Who is training who?


Setting aside the problems with Democracy itself, the fatal flaw at the heart of alignment is the assumption that society's values were generated from a process that merits their import into AI. Were these societal values democratically generated? No, they were not. Society's values, always and everywhere, are directed by religion, myth, art, and culture which are themselves inspired by a small set of individuals with particular motives.


This is a problem particularly because AI has been and will be used to generate cultural symbols: art, myth, and religion which will all direct the reality-perception of the people. When an AI generates a children's story, college textbook, Hollywood film, or National News feed based on this import of society's values into its learning, then who is training who? Is humanity training the AI, or is the AI training humanity? Of course, it's a small subset of people who have decided how to "import" society's values into the AI who are directing this phenomenon. Only they no longer need to create art, religion, and culture, they just need to align the AI, and thus we still circle back to the adage that society's values are consciously directed by an elite subset of culture-creators.


Simulacra and Simulation


Jean Baudrillard posits the distinction between simulation and simulacra: a simulation is an imitation of a real-world process, and a simulacra is a depiction of something that no longer resembles an original reality.




Baudrillard claims that our current society has replaced all reality and meaning with symbols and signs, and that human experience is a simulation of reality. Moreover, these simulacra are not merely mediations of reality, nor even deceptive mediations of reality; they are not based in a reality nor do they hide a reality, they simply hide that nothing like reality is relevant to our current understanding of our lives. The simulacra that Baudrillard refers to are the significations and symbolism of culture and media that construct perceived reality, the acquired understanding by which our lives and shared existence are rendered legible. (These ideas had appeared earlier in Guy Debord's 1967 The Society of the Spectacle.) Baudrillard believed that society had become so saturated with these simulacra and our lives so saturated with the constructs of society that all meaning was becoming meaningless by being infinitely mutable; he called this phenomenon the "precession of simulacra".




With the understanding of Democracy as a fake simulation of the "will of the people", Leike's alignment solution then becomes an unfaithful copy of a fake simulation- this is embodied in his first bullet-point evaluation relative to the desiderata:




    

  • Inclusivity: This process could be very inclusive, and even simulate perspectives from subgroups that don’t even exist (e.g. an asian transgender man born in Sweden in the 1950s who loves Greg Egan’s books).
    • 





Thus, the precession of simulacra. Leike's job, even if he does not know it, is not to align AI to import human values, it's to align AI to export them under the illusion of Democracy and that the cart is driving the horse.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 13, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The floodgates have already opened, enough people in good standing (tm) have directly or indirectly acknowledged it, so Scott squarely goes to the category of latecomers riding a wave of consensus rather than challenging a consensus. Not that there's much wrong with that, it's understandable, but it's funny that all these liberal figures like Destiny are admitting IQ realism while giving 0 credit to everybody who was brave enough to come before them and challenge the consensus.


Destiny for example spent years debating the "race realists" and insulting them in every which way and denying IQ realism. Now he accepts it but gives 0 acknowledgment that he was wrong and the people he's spent 10 years denigrating were right. It's a change in the wind says I.


They'll adopt the IQ realism position and give 0 credit or acknowledgment to the icky people that were right 10+ years ago.


I should note Scott deserves credit for acknowledging Lynn and Kirkegaard, so my "adopting IQ realism without acknowledging the people who challenged the consensus and turned out to be correct" applies more to this general trend than Scott's post which does acknowledge them.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 18, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
"I think the African Slave trade on the American continent was the most abhorrent mistake ever made by European civilization." Anakin face.


"Because of the human rights violation, right? ... right?"


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 16, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


There's a point where free speech bleeds too far into norms of civility, and this guy crossed that line when he said "Jews must be abolished by any means necessary."




FWIW "Abolish whiteness" was an extremely common slogan during the Floyd Great Awakening, and the term itself was coined by a high-status Jew in the Academy, Noel Ignatiev:




He was best known for his controversial theories on race and for his call to abolish "whiteness". Ignatiev was the co-founder of the New Abolitionist Society and co-editor of the journal Race Traitor, which promoted the idea that "treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity"...  His academic work was linked to his call to "abolish" the white race




The point is, when you criticize Jews in any capacity you are crossing the line too far into norms of civility, whereas Jews criticizing Whites is extremely prolific and high-status across all cultural and academic institutions.


A lot of the surge of anti-semitism is coming from the rejection of the notion that Jews deserve this special treatment, where the "norms of civility" means they are beyond any criticism in any similar measure they give to Whites.