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Notes -
David Cole has quit Takimag:
He's enjoying his freedom from The Crowd:
This follows the end, earlier this year, of the Unz Review. Of course the website still exists, though I have no reason to go there after Steve Sailer, the last interesting writer, left. If you believe Unz, he quiet quit:
This was probably a (well-deserved) gesture of disrespect toward Unz for his descent into increasingly conspiratorial beliefs, ultimately culminating in Holocaust-denial.
I still remember fondly how I would read UR and Takimag in the 2010s. Too bad they succumbed to brainrot and audience capture.
Cole, like many disillusioned members of the right-wing commentariat, is really telling on himself here. If all you can do is churn out Takes on this week's story to an undifferentiated mass of readers, you will eventually come to see them as a giant lump of aggregate stupidity, and caricature accordingly. I assume this explains most of the phenomenon - I wouldn't want to make a guess at how much is internalized self-loathing for one's writing career terminating in what is essentially slop (that is to say, Takes).
Unz has been like that for a decade at least. This is more likely connected to Sailer's newfound career opportunities with Passage et al.
Antisemites will say "If you were kicked out of 100 different bars, maybe you're the problem." Maybe the reason so many writers, Richard Spencer, Richard Hanania, Anatoly Karlin, David Cole, along with of course the liberals, never Trump conservatives, etc., regard the populist right readership as a giant lump of aggregate stupidity has something to do with said readership.
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