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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 5, 2025

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Ye, better known as Kanye West has released a song titled "Heil Hitler"
I have to admit, it's quite catchy, especially the unlikely refrain "nigger, Heil Hitler", which definitely has an intriguing ring to it. Whether Kanye is a truly great artist or not, he's nothing if not a skilled craftsman.
I've long since lost the ability to treat anything on the internet seriously and my reaction was limited to squeezing my eyes shut and suppressing a chuckle, but I suspect that the wider audience is also outraged only in a performative, inertial way. I doubt it will end up making any real impact on anything and waves in the social media will likely fizzle out in no more than a few weeks.
I wonder if we're seeing the first signs of postmodern corrosion eating away at the last grand unifying narrative of our age: WW2 mythos, with Adolf Hitler at its center not as mere historical figure, but as the archetypal villain and the secular devil. In many countries the taboo is backed by legal force, but legislation doesn't truly govern things of this nature. The law may end up hollowed out and irrelevant long before someone cares to remove it from the books
Maybe I will live to tell my incredulous grandkids about how we were all expected to perceive one specific 20th century dictator through a prism of quasi-superstitious dread.
Should this really happen, good riddance. Though on the other hand, we might end up remembering having this kind of culture spanning, unifying narrative as kind of comfy compared to total balkanization

Kanye West is like a Holocaust-denying parrot. Imagine it, a parrot squawking "six million didn't die, the Holocaust is a lie!" Funny for a few days, but then you're left with a Holocaust-denying parrot squawking and crapping all over its cage. The parrot can't vote. It can’t work for DOGE. It can’t argue cases before a judge. I get it, it's funny, I'm a 4chan troll too. But I'm also interested in actually exercising power. Fuentes, who I'm not sure if he was behind Ye's ideological evolution or was just there to cheer it on, seems to be recognizing the Right's strategy of relentlessly and exclusively appealing to low human capital is not gonna go anywhere good:

https://x.com/FuentesUpdates/status/1908187813117411525

I wonder if we're seeing the first signs of postmodern corrosion eating away at the last grand unifying narrative of our age: WW2 mythos, with Adolf Hitler at its center not as mere historical figure, but as the archetypal villain and the secular devil.

One figure replacing him as the secular devil is Jeffery Epstein.

Fuentes, who I'm not sure if he was behind Ye's ideological evolution or was just there to cheer it on, seems to be recognizing the Right's strategy of relentlessly and exclusively appealing to low human capital is not gonna go anywhere good:

Special Agent Fuentes was more than happy to pal around with Kanye when his ridiculous cringe mental illness antics were making the far right look like a bunch of unserious clowns. Now when Kanye knuckles down and independently puts out an actually effective piece of viral far right propaganda, Nick is suddenly hammering the “uhhh actually guys we have to distance ourselves from this, it’s making us look low status”. Even though Nick’s own low human capital has been making the far-right look low status for over half a decade.

The hate fuentes gets on this forum glows brighter than the existing discussion around fuentes himself.

Is the there anyone who likes him other than some autistic losers?

Yes, he’s extremely popular at Eglin Air Force Base.