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Looking at that thread you linked, I am more leaning towards the theory that @hydroacetylene is KulakRevolt, based on politics, the particular style of deflection when they want to deflect, and most of all the curious dedication to the idea of frustrating stylometry/basilisks with artificial tics (Kulak's forwards-from-grandma punctuation, hydroacetylene's "French autocorrect").
Definitely not.
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I’m not offended, more genuinely curious- what makes you think my politics are similar to Kulak’s?
To elaborate, Kulak wants a violent overthrow of the existing system to be replaced by ‘?’. He doesn’t have any particularly consistent reasoning for this; he can be a white identitarian, an ancap, a fascist, ultra-mysogynistic, etc. The common thread is that he wants short term violent action. He’s also some kind of pagan but not in the sense that he, like, believes in literal gods(I believe in his gods more than he does- specifically, that they are demons who at one point convinced Northern Europeans to worship them as gods). There is a bunch of historical fan fiction that he uses to tie this in with his generic pro-terrorist vibe and AFAIK he is a Canadian who makes his money entirely through internet media- whether this is from people finding him interesting or genuine believers.
I am a rad trad Catholic in the sense of actually, literally believing in my own religion. And I believe that the existing system will collapse under the weight of its own degeneracy without the need for violent action; the important thing is to be building parallel societies which grow by functioning better, to enable a slow replacement of existing power structures with patriarchal, religious, virtuous ones. I expect this to proceed as existing power structures shred their human capital through things like low fertility rates and retarded equity pushes which force them to rely on functioning parallel societies more and more. I believe a set of conspiracy theories about apocalyptic prophecies which guarantee that this will actually take place so long as me and my tribe do our part; the cathedral likes indoor plumbing a lot more than it hates rum millet, even when that rum millet is slowly overtaking it. Violence is thus counterproductive.
Where did you come upon this idea of the pagan gods? I recently learned of it from the Lord of Spirits podcast, but it's the only place I've ever heard it before.
It’s in the Bible.
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No. Hydro has been around for a long time, and he and Kulak are entirely different people.
Did Kulak eat a ban? I must have missed that, I just thought he got really involved on X / Substack and drifted away.
He made a big post about how The Motte was pointless because the time for debate was over and it was time for violence. Got a 3 day ban and never came back.
Shame; I really liked him. His Rhodesian catgirl bit was funny, and he made some genuinely good points. I still follow him on Twitter and Substack.
this impotent whining for violence is hilarious
I wonder whether it is his actual belief, trolling or just grifting in niche they found. I would put my guess on trolling supported by financial extraction they managed.
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Had a look at the Substack link, tried reading what he believes as a pagan, and my impression is "cut-rate Gibbon". Too occupied with "and here is why it's the fault of Christianity that our empire is declining!" and not enough "as a pagan this is why I do things the way I do". I doubt he makes any offering to his picture of Athena, or to Wotan, or any of the rituals pagans would engage in. When he was going "and a real pagan of the past would never do this thing", I was going "Dude, that was exactly the thing they were doing".
He hates Christianity because Christianity places importance on concepts like "mercy" and "forgiveness" and not hating, which he despises. I don't think it's much more complicated than that, and certainly not theologically deeper.
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He didn't eat a perma-ban, but he did try to flounce IIRC.
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As I recall, Kulak had a flame out post where he basically said "if you guys are gonna be that way [I forget what his grievance was], then just ban me". I can't remember if he did get banned but he did get modded to some extent or other, and I haven't seen him back since.
His grievance was that we talk about things instead of planning to murder our enemies and burn it all to the ground.
He got a timeout for his screed, but he's not banned currently.
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I would find that extremely surprising, given my interactions with Kulak and my observations of his personal interactions with others. (There are places other than TheMotte where he dwells, and I’ve also been known to dwell in some of them.) Mostly I’d just be very surprised to learn that Kulak has a second, way less strident, persona. I’ve watched him have embarrassing and quite personally-vindictive crash-outs over relatively minor disagreements — something which I’ve never seen from @hydroacetylene.
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