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PaperclipPerfector  9d ago (text post)   24770 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 1, 2025

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The Dread Jim weighs in on the "moderate right".

Basically, to him the right isn't progressing at anywhere near the rate it needs to in order to enact radical change. He uses Asmongold, the popular live streamer, as an example. Asmongold is perceived to be anti-woke, but in reality all of his positions (in Dread Jim's opinion) are moderate/centrist.

For Dread Jim, the only way to save civilization is through the following:

  • Eliminating voting rights for the vast majority of "normies", and all women
  • Executing gay people ("poofs off roofs")
  • "Conscripting wombs"

He seems to view this last solution as the most important. Fathers should once again be responsible for marrying off their daughters, and if that's not possible, the state should step in. Similarly, adultery should be punishable by death.

Barring these radical changes "failure to murder everyone who is insufficiently left is likely to also be 'extreme far radical right'".

  • -15

I am a right-wing extremist. I am aware of "The Dread Jim" from many previous discussions through the various iterations of this forum.

His proposed solutions are not feasible, nor are they necessary, nor does he appear to possess insight or a track record that makes him worth listening to or discussing in any significant way. He, like many similar "right-wing extremists", appears to be possessed of a combination of panicked fearfulness and abstracted zealotry aimed at a sort of imaginary, narrative-based glorious final battle. He, like many others, lacks the necessary coldness of heart to effectively prosecute the culture war.

His suggestions are similarly foolish.

  • eliminating voting rights is unnecessary if federal power can be annulled and Blue cultural and political power centers neutralized and demolished, which by all evidence appears to be much easier to accomplish.
  • Rolling back LGBT's influence on our society does not require exterminating LGBT people, only creating general awareness of the concrete harms their movement has caused and an understanding that their social control can and must be resisted. This, again, appears to be working.
  • It is a very good idea to roll back feminism and "women's rights" generally. As with LGBT, what this looks like is establishing common knowledge of how these movements have catastrophically overstepped, the concrete harms they've caused, and the ways we were better off before them. Women having the vote is irrelevant if we neutralize the unaccountable power that vote is meant to enable. Relationships between men and women, whether spousal or familial, are not advanced by the sort of iron fist Jim advocates. Loving relationships can exert a level of stabilization, security, and sound life decision-making that Jim's preferred forms of tyranny can never achieve.

With respect, I think you're trying to have it both ways; you call yourself as an "extremist", but your suggested proposals and the congeniality with which you express them are not really outside the mainstream in 2025. Maybe a bit outside the Overton window, but not by much. Like this

Rolling back LGBT's influence on our society does not require exterminating LGBT people, only creating general awareness of the concrete harms their movement has caused and an understanding that their social control can and must be resisted. This, again, appears to be working.

is not a controversial statement. Uttering it does not make you an extremist.

It sounds like you want to go back to the 90s; Jim wants to go back to...I don't know, the 16th century and also kill a lot of people in the process.

As with all these conversations between "normie" right-wingers and people like Jim, the distinguishing factor is race. Race is of paramount importance, and by extension immigration and demographics are the only issues that matter.

With respect, I think you're trying to have it both ways; you call yourself as an "extremist", but your suggested proposals and the congeniality with which you express them are not really outside the mainstream in 2025.

I am on record that large-scale, open-ended political violence is a preferable outcome to the political outcomes Blue Tribe appears to me to be aiming for, and further that I believe Red Tribe can and will decisively win such a fight. I have argued at length that the Constitution and rule of law are dead, and that their corpses provide little advantage to our present situation. I have argued at length, and continue to argue, that reconciliation between Reds and Blues is probably impossible in the foreseeable future, and that the culture war is terminal for our society as presently constituted. If you think that these positions do not qualify me for the label of extremism, I'd be interested in hearing your arguments as to why.

What separates me from Jim and his ilk is that I have a better understanding both of why that violence should be delayed as long as possible, and why we have advantages in executing it that are not necessarily compromised by such delays. If I am not mistaken, Jim himself, and certainly many others like him, argued that we were already past the point of no return, that political solutions were impossible, and that in fact we had already compromised our ability win an outright fight, leaving fighting immediately as a desperate last resort. And then the 2024 election happened, and suddenly our position is considerably better.

I am on record that large-scale, open-ended political violence is a preferable outcome to the political outcomes Blue Tribe appears to me to be aiming for

Depends on what outcomes you're referring to.

I have argued at length that the Constitution and rule of law are dead

Too broad of a statement to analyze, need specifics. Aren't these things that Blue Tribe blame the Red Tribe for as well?

I have argued at length, and continue to argue, that reconciliation between Reds and Blues is probably impossible in the foreseeable future, and that the culture war is terminal for our society as presently constituted.

I don't see why this statement makes you an extremist. Maybe just a political realist?

If I am not mistaken, Jim himself, and certainly many others like him, argued that we were already past the point of no return, that political solutions were impossible, and that in fact we had already compromised our ability win an outright fight, leaving fighting immediately as a desperate last resort.

I think you misunderstand the far-right position. Jim thinks we're past the point of no return because 50% of newborns are non-white. What's your political solution to that?

No, you're just operating from totally different first principles.

Responding to the edits:

It sounds like you want to go back to the 90s; Jim wants to go back to...I don't know, the 16th century and also kill a lot of people in the process.

"Where did things go wrong" is an important element of social critique. My answer is that things went wrong with the Enlightenment, which was not the triumph of rationality over superstition, but rather the opposite. That's a long and involved conversation, though.

I do not think my model is accurately summarized as "go back to the 1600s", more along the lines of "stop making a simple (but for some highly lucrative) mistake we made in the 1600s and have been continuously making ever since." This would be a better summary:

The empiricism, materialism, skepticism and rationality were never rigorous in any population-level sense. Superstition and ignorance changed their masks, and nothing more. Now that bedazzling scientific advancements are slowing down and we have had a moment to collect ourselves, a modest amount of actual skepticism and curiosity and a memory broader than the last fifteen minutes is sufficient to tear the whole rotten edifice wide open.

Skepticism, rationality and empiricism, and even instrumental materialism, do not mean believing that studies show.

In any case, I do not wish to "go back to the 90s". Free speech and human rights are a spook, "rule of law" is doomed because no set of rules can ever constrain human will. Values-coherence is a prerequisite for the formation and maintenance of a functional society; the aim is to achieve values-coherence with others, band together for mutual benefit and defense, and prevent rule by those who hate you.

As with all these conversations between "normie" right-wingers and people like Jim, the distinguishing factor is race. Race is of paramount importance, and by extension immigration and demographics are the only issues that matter.

That is certainly one point of contention. Jim and similar "right wingers" believe that the problem is blacks and browns, and wish that Reds and Blues could coordinate against them. I believe that the problem is Blues; if it were possible to coordinate with Blacks and Browns against them, that would be an entirely acceptable outcome. Browns and Blacks are a problem to the degree they empower Blues; if blue power is broken, disputes with blacks and browns are solvable in any number of ways.

Depends on what outcomes you're referring to.

Blue Tribe's goal is sociopolitical closure, to shut anyone who disagrees with them out of the economy, the political arena, and to the greatest extent possible society itself. In the classic formulation, they aim to make peaceful revolution impossible, and to the extent that they succeed they make violent revolution inevitable. The part people have missed, though, is the degree to which they have not succeeded in making peaceful revolution impossible.

Too broad of a statement to analyze, need specifics. Aren't these things that Blue Tribe blame the Red Tribe for as well?

Sure, and they're occasionally correct, after a fashion. But let's put it bluntly: the first amendment does not protect my speech, and the second amendment does not protect my right to keep and bear arms. What protects my rights is my ability to coordinate action among those who share sufficient values with me to be allies. There is no way to share power long-term with those who do not meet this basic criterion.

I think you misunderstand the far-right position. Jim thinks we're past the point of no return because 50% of newborns are non-white. What's your political solution to that?

Creating a polity where Blues hold no sway, and hence browns and blacks are not an appreciable problem. encouraging blacks and browns committed to blueness to leave for blue areas seems like a pretty easy and bloodless solution. to the extent that this is not possible, it is because Blues still have too much power, which is again a problem I think we are in the process of solving.

No, you're just operating from totally different first principles.

Indeed we are. His are wrong and foolishly so.

I believe that the problem is Blues; if it were possible to coordinate with Blacks and Browns against them, that would be an entirely acceptable outcome. Browns and Blacks are a problem to the degree they empower Blues; if blue power is broken, disputes with blacks and browns are solvable in any number of ways.

I hope it's not to low effort for me to say thank you for expressing this, and doing so in such a clear manner. It sums up not just my disagreement with some people online, but also with some people I know IRL, because we are in agreement here, and they're at the "the problem is blacks and browns, and wish that Reds and Blues could coordinate against them" position.

(It's related to why I argue eugenics is still a deeply Progressive position, and tend to reference Confucians on social inequality.)

Values-coherence is a prerequisite for the formation and maintenance of a functional society; the aim is to achieve values-coherence with others, band together for mutual benefit and defense, and prevent rule by those who hate you.

I have to ask, becuase this seems like a pretty important wrinkle in your thesis here. To what degree and type of values-coherence do you require? You are a Christian, so I presume you are against pre-marital sex. In your ideal society, would anybody who thinks pre-marital sex is fine be expelled? Would anybody committing it be imprisoned?

My question really is how much values-coherence is enough; that is, where is the line? And how can you even quantitatively/rigorously determine where the line is?

In my tradcath filter bubble the normal response to fornication runs the spectrum from ostracism(for a seducer) to a shotgun wedding(for a courting couple that made a stupid mistake) with the median outcome being a mutual no-contact order. The man is held primarily responsible. 'Fornication is OK' is outside the overton window, 'Fornication sometimes happens and worrying too much is a cure being worse than the disease' is at the far end of it. People are not popularly held to have a right to privacy wrt past fornication, and it's very likely to restrict an individual's marriage prospects by a lot- but no one asks questions about a first child only taking six months or so.

I'm pretty sure we're a bit more conservative than @FCfromSSC on questions like that.

To what degree and type of values-coherence do you require?

Have you read Conservatives as Moral Mutants?

And yet, fundamentally… it’s not true that conservatives as a group are working for the same goals as I am but simply have different ideas of how to pursue it. It’s not true that conservatives simply think that lowering taxes will stimulate the economy or that economic growth works better than foreign aid to help the global poor or that, as regrettable as it is for gay couples who long for children, children will be severely traumatized unless they are raised by heterosexuals. I would certainly prefer it to be that way. I want to have respect for all belief systems; I want to believe we’re all working for the same goals but simply disagree on certain facts.
But my read of the psychological evidence is that, from my value system, about half the country is evil and it is in my self-interest to shame the expression of their values, indoctrinate their children, and work for a future where their values are no longer represented on this Earth.

So it goes.

That's an example of what not enough overlap for society to function looks like.

Zunger was straightforwardly correct:

No side, after all, will ever accept a peace in which their most basic needs are not satisfied — their safety, and their power to ensure that safety, most of all. The desire for justice is a desire that we each have such mechanisms to protect ourselves, while still remaining in the context of peace: that the rule of law, for example, will provide us remedy for breaches without having to entirely abandon all peace. Any “peace” which does not satisfy this basic requirement, one which creates an existential threat to one side or the other, can never hold.

i am indeed a Christian. I don't require people to also be Christians to live in peace with them. I don't require the laws to be Christian laws to live in peace under them, since there is very little the law can do to secure Christian ends. I am happy to cooperate with people who disagree with me on some things to achieve the other things that we do agree on. I am willing to extend liberty to others to the extent that they are willing to extend liberty back.

On the other hand, the more cohesive my community and the more fringe the demand of tolerance from those at its fringes, the more it seems to me that people who are incapable of fitting in should simply go somewhere else. This principle works the other way: I and mine should not casually intrude into the lives and communities of those alien to us. We should interact with those we can tolerate, and those we cannot tolerate we should separate from and avoid. This is not out of any high-minded principle, but only the practical wisdom of circles of concern. People far away are not generally as much of a problem as those close by; you are never going to conquer the whole world and institute global utopia, so the best thing is to make your bit as good as possible, and let those far away do as they will.

There is no definable "line". Either people are willing to cooperate or they are not. Either you can tolerate others or you cannot. Both maximizing and minimizing tolerance have serious downsides; you need a happy medium, and there is no way to rigorously define where that medium is. There is no way to codify it into a set of legible rules. If you have too much tolerance, values drift and society collapses. If you have too little tolerance, you fall into purity spirals and infighting and society collapses. There's no substitute for prudence and sound judgement.

degree to which they have not succeeded in making peaceful revolution impossible.

much confused! The Blues have succeeded in making peaceful revolution possible?

I observe that Blues tried and failed to make peaceful revolution against them impossible.

I believe that the problem is Blues; if it were possible to coordinate with Blacks and Browns against them, that would be an entirely acceptable outcome. Browns and Blacks are a problem to the degree they empower Blues; if blue power is broken, disputes with blacks and browns are solvable in any number of ways.

But, if I’m reading you correctly, ultimately your end goal is to form a regional society of people who share your moral intuitions. If Blacks and Browns refuse to relinquish Blueness, or at any rate refuse to become sufficiently compatible with your Redness, doesn’t that mean you will either have to quell them or expel them? And if so, isn’t TDJ just skipping the middle steps?

What solutions were you envisaging?

But, if I’m reading you correctly, ultimately your end goal is to form a regional society of people who share your moral intuitions.

Sure, or enough of them to limit the scope and scale of political conflict to something survivable.

If Blacks and Browns refuse to relinquish Blueness, or at any rate refuse to become sufficiently compatible with your Redness, doesn’t that mean you will either have to quell them or expel them?

If they can't secure blue power by winning a vote, and they can't compromise law enforcement, why do they need to be either quelled or expelled? If they are content to live as a political minority, well and good. if they are not content, they can move somewhere that seems more congenial.

What solutions were you envisaging?

Blue Power comes from several sources, among them political machines, long-term control of the knowledge production and dissemination apparatus, entrenched bureaucracy, and entrenched legal precedent. The foundations of most of these sources are visibly decaying. Without them, I do not think Blue Tribe is capable of the sociopolitical closure they threaten. Without that threat, the geographical sortition that has been ongoing for well-over a decade should make it possible to simply allow them to stew in their own shitholes, far away from me. and if not, the sword will remain a viable option for the foreseeable future.

Fair. I would consider ‘no meaningful political or extra-political power’ as ‘quelled’ but that’s really quibbling over semantics.

Without that threat, the geographical sortition that has been ongoing for well-over a decade should make it possible to simply allow them to stew in their own shitholes

I would say this is optimistic. The fact remains that the high-paying and high-status jobs are all in Blue areas and are likely to remain so. Your children and their children are likely to have to grapple with some level of Blue domination for as long as this is the case, although having a reliable bolt hole might make this more comfortable.

Creating a polity where Blues hold no sway, and hence browns and blacks are not an appreciable problem. encouraging blacks and browns committed to blueness to leave for blue areas seems like a pretty easy and bloodless solution.

Agreed. But I think many conservatives do not want a bloodless solution. They want to overcome liberalism's tolerance of mediocrity and comfort. They want a return of martial values and spirit. They're Occidentalists, seeing bourgeois values as soft and unworthy of emulation.

Agreed. But I think many conservatives do not want a bloodless solution. They want to overcome liberalism's tolerance of mediocrity and comfort. They want a return of martial values and spirit. They're Occidentalists, seeing bourgeois values as soft and unworthy of emulation.

Can you give some examples of these "conservatives" of which you speak?

and the second amendment does not protect my right to keep and bear arms.

So then a progressive effort to scrap that, you'd just be indifferent? Waste of time to try and do anything about it?

So then a progressive effort to scrap that, you'd just be indifferent? Waste of time to try and do anything about it?

No. You use the progressive efforts to coordinate united opposition from your own tribe. Such opposition has, in the past, involved both voting and passing laws in some cases, and shooting federal agents and bombing federal buildings in other cases. What you cannot do is assume that "playing by the rules" is the sum of valid responses, because "rules" do not work the way the "play by the rules" narrative assumes they do.

Blue efforts to kill the second amendment de jure or de facto should be resisted, because even as a corpse the second amendment is a powerful rally point. But at the same time, one must remember that the second amendment, alive or dead, was only ever a tool, and the aim that tool was designed for must be pursued regardless, within or without the law as may be necessary.

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