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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31058 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 16, 2023

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Following up on a discussion with @drmanhattan16 downthread:

I keep hearing about fascist infiltration or alt-right infiltration into spaces, including themotte, but no one seems to actually be showing examples...

But now I find myself wondering if this has happened in more progressive spaces that were open to debate.

I think the answer is usually going to be "yes."

A couple months ago, during some meta-discussion of disappearing threads, I wrote up my thoughts on conspiracy theories as countersignaling. As long as there's incentive to appear cool, independent, unique, there is incentive to push the boundaries of acceptability. It's called "edgy" for a reason.

One of the common cultural touchstones for edge is forbidden knowledge. As a result, anywhere you find edgy status games, you'll find someone claiming to know whatever it is They don't want you to know. Except...if one can just say it out loud, how cool and secret can it really be? The theorist is incentivized to play up their edge, a rebel who won't be cowed rather than an attention-seeker. As an aside, antisemitism is past its heyday because it's not very good for this. Enough people pattern-match it to "attention-seeker" that it loses its edge. This is the result of decades of memetic immune response to those status games. Of course, given that one very definitely can get banned for it, it retains edgy credentials...sometimes.

(Note that I'm not claiming the antisemites here are just edgy. I understand you're pretty serious about the subject. The motte is a weird place and has other status games; personally, I think that COVID skepticism has a grip on more of the edgelords.)

In the end, some people will find themselves drawn to signal their edge. Those who do so overtly will usually end up banned, unless they signal something really milquetoast, in which case they're probably "cringe." Those with a little more tact, though...they are incentivized to find something under the radar. To maintain that sweet, sweet plausible deniability while still getting a rise out of the opposition. They need something that will prove their status as an independent free-thinker who doesn't fall for the party line.

And they take the black pill.

One of the common cultural touchstones for edge is forbidden knowledge. As a result, anywhere you find edgy status games, you'll find someone claiming to know whatever it is They don't want you to know. Except...if one can just say it out loud, how cool and secret can it really be?

The phenomenon you are describing, attraction to "forbidden knowledge", doesn't make the content untrue. HBD would fit this description, and a lot of people were probably drawn to this community because it is almost the only place where you are allowed to talk about it.

if one can just say it out loud, how cool and secret can it really be?

HBD and anti-semitism are things you can't say out loud. You would be banned from essentially any other space except for this one. Your books would be censored (Kevin Macdonald's Culture of Critique was recently banned from Barnes and Noble after having long been banned by Amazon, but it can be purchased direct through the publisher).

Anti-semitism is criminalized in much of the Western world, and historians and scientists have spent years in jail for the crime of Holocaust denial. The former head of CODOH (Germar Rudolf) has had his Green Card renewal denied by the United States, despite the fact he has an American wife and American children. His application for political asylum was also denied despite the fact spent time in jail for what would be protected speech in the United States, and would spend more time in jail for the same if he went back to his homeland. Germany also refused to renew his passport, so he is in hiding to avoid being deported to Germany where he would spend many years in prison. There are of course severe social sanctions even for American citizens, and Canada criminalized Holocaust denial only last year.

It is definitely true that there is an allure to "forbidden knowledge". It is to some extent a status game, by being an early adopter to forbidden knowledge- especially among a community like this that has a pride in higher sensitivity for detecting truth in forbidden knowledge. But the by far greater motivation is the belief that the knowledge is true, which is clearly what motivates people more than status-seeking. If they didn't think it was true, it would be far less-risky to status signal in a million different ways that would be less threatening.

The solution then, should be to avoid the topic if you find it boring or believe the interlocutor to not be genuine. Or you could engage in a debate on the "forbidden knowledge" if you feel inclined to do so.

His application for political asylum was also denied despite the fact spent time in jail for what would be protected speech in the United States

Your implication that he was treated unfairly appears to be based on an incorrect premise. As Justice Alito said when he was on the Third Circuit "the concept of persecution does not encompass all treatment that our society regards as unfair, unjust, or even unlawful or unconstitutional. If persecution were defined that expansively, a significant percentage of the world's population would qualify for asylum in this country — and it seems most unlikely that Congress intended such a result." Fatin v. INS, 12 F.3d 1233, 1240 (3d Cir.1993). And see Foroglou v. INS, 170 F.3d 68, 72 (1st Cir.1999) ("The asylum statute does not inflict on foreign governments the obligation to construct their own draft laws to conform to this nation's own highly complex equal protection jurisprudence.").

The former head of CODOH (Germar Rudolf) has had his Green Card renewal denied by the United States, despite the fact he has an American wife and American children . . . so he is in hiding to avoid being deported to Germany.

Permanent residence status does not expire. Once a person becomes a permanent resident, he remains a permanent resident unless it is revoked or abandoned. The most common reason for the latter is being outside the US for more than 6 months in any calendar year. The card itself expires, but that is a different thing.

Having an American wife and children does not entitle someone to retain his status as a permanent resident if he is otherwise subject to revocation or abandonment.

Your implication that he was treated unfairly appears to be based on an incorrect premise.

Of course he is being treated unfairly. Your implication is that he is not being treated unfairly because his treatment is within the boundaries of the law, which relies on an incorrect premise that fairness and lawfulness are always aligned. This is from the CODOH update last month:

December 15, 2022

We had to deal with three major obstacles this past year: Ingram Content Group canceling our printing, distribution and order-fulfillment contract; Barclays Bank in the UK closing our British account and thus our last banking stronghold in Europe; and our CEO Germar Rudolf resigning from his leadership positions at CODOH and Castle Hill, and taking an extended leave of absence. Let me address them in sequence.

As we reported earlier this year in a blog post, the General Assembly of the United Nations ratified a resolution introduced by Germany and Israel on January 20, 2022, which calls for all governments in the world to do everything possible to combat and suppress Holocaust revisionism. Since both CODOH and Castle Hill have been singled out for decades by governmental and NGO watchdog organizations in the US, the UK, Germany and Israel, among other countries, for being the only entities left that produce new and relevant revisionist material, you didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out what was coming…

After eight years of flawless cooperation, Castle Hill’s partner for multi-national book printing, distribution and order fulfillment, the almighty Ingram Content Group, canceled the contract just four days after the above-mentioned UN resolution had passed, claiming that retailers had been complaining about Castle Hill’s type of books. Ingram has a monopoly in book distribution in the U.S., and Amazon controls some 70% of all new books sales here, hence also of Ingram’s turnover. Each time we published a new book, Ingram’s live data feed into Amazon’s websites had it show up there. Amazon got harassed by the usual enemies of free speech for again offering one of our books. They had to manually delete it, but the game would start all over once we issued a new edition (which we do with regularity). Finally sick of this futile whack-the-mole game, Amazon, no doubt with the UN resolution in hand, went to Ingram telling them to stop the charade at the source by kicking us out for good – which they promptly did. Since Ingram’s database also feeds into all kinds of databases abroad, all our books suddenly disappeared from the national and international book markets. We lost some 50% of our turnover in the U.S., and our entire turnover from overseas, as we don’t have any printing, warehousing and order-fulfillment outlets in the UK or Australia (but Ingram does).

As a consequence, we had to completely reorganize the way we operate. We had to find a new printing partner in the U.S., reformat all cover artwork to fit their specs, invest into a complete reprint of everything, get ourselves a small warehouse locally, equip it with shelving, basic equipment and shipping supplies so we can do order fulfillment ourselves, and then repeat the procedure also in Europe and/or the UK somehow to recover that market as well.

Just a week after the UN resolution, Barclays Bank in the UK, with whom we had our business banking since 2007 and never had any problems, opened some investigation by requesting more details about what our business was all about. Then three weeks later, they told us unceremoniously that they will close our accounts, citing a passage in the agreement that simply allows them to close whatever account they want whenever they please. Period.

Since business had become pretty much impossible for Caste Hill in the UK, with Brexit making exports to EU countries borderline impossible and banking being canceled, we decided it is time to pack up and leave. Castle Hill was officially sold by its UK owner (identity undisclosed) to CODOH on April 8, 2022, and CODOH reorganized it as a single-member, non-neglected limited liability company as “Castlehill Publishing LLC.”

Our attempts at establishing a printing, warehousing and order-fulfillment solution in the UK/Europe for our English-language material hit unexpected resistance when we realized that many British printers are now mortally afraid to get involved in the production of printed matters that could violate Britain’s 2017 anti-revisionist law. Although that law requires that “Holocaust denial” happens concurrently and in conjunction with disparaging the victims, which is something Caste Hill does not do, any printer accepting our printing jobs would be legally required to thoroughly read and correctly assess all our material before printing it to make sure it does not contain anything legally hazardous. No printer will invest that amount of time and effort. They simply turn down the job, and that’s the end of that…

When the first consequence of the UN resolution hit Castle Hill in early 2022, our then-CEO Germar Rudolf predicted that he expects “them” to go after him personally next. And that is what happened this past summer. This is not the place to divulge what exactly has been happening. Suffice it to say that Rudolf dropped all responsibilities at CODOH and Caste Hill this past summer, and disappeared from the face of the earth in early fall. His whereabouts are currently unknown.

Rudolf’s main vulnerabilities are that his application to become a U.S. citizen was terminally rejected in 2020, and that the German authorities have issued numerous arrest warrants against him for reasons that are yet unknown. However, with some 80 new revisionist books or new editions of older books in the German-language published over the past ten years with Rudolf as the production manager, it’s easy to understand why they want him locked away. Although those German arrest warrants cannot be enforced in the U.S. due to the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, Rudolf’s German passport expired in 2019, and Germany refuses to issue him a new one. His “Green Card” here in the U.S. expired in 2021, and the U.S. authorities followed Germany’s lead by also refusing to issue him a new one. You get the picture. They are trying to entrap him, then play the same dirty trick on him and his family as they did back in 2005: arrest, deport, put into a German dungeon, and throw away the keys.

In the meanwhile, Castle Hill is getting reorganized once more, so it can survive in this increasingly hostile environment even without Germar Rudolf’s involvement. We appreciate your patience and support for this drawn-out, difficult process.

This content is not if one can just say it out loud, how cool and secret can it really be? It's dangerous to talk about, and those involved continue despite the risk of persecution because they think it's true and important.

What does any of that have to do with his asylum application?? You said, "His application for political asylum was also denied despite the fact spent time in jail for what would be protected speech in the United States," implying that normally, being threatened with imprisonment for engaging in speech which would be protected were it engaged in in the US establishes an asylum claim. I pointed out that that does not seem to be the case, and nothing in that long quote is even relevant to that issue.

His “Green Card” here in the U.S. expired in 2021, and the U.S. authorities followed Germany’s lead by also refusing to issue him a new one. You get the picture. They are trying to entrap him, then play the same dirty trick on him and his family as they did back in 2005: arrest, deport, put into a German dungeon, and throw away the keys.

Again, a green card is just a piece of paper. It is an important piece of paper -- without a current green card, a permanent resident cannot travel abroad and then be admitted on his return, nor can a permanent resident legally work without a green card -- but lacking a green card does not expose a permanent resident to deportation; as discussed in the link I provided, the status of permanent residence does not expire.

his application to become a U.S. citizen was terminally rejected in 2020

Might that have something to do with his 2020 convictions for indecent exposure and open lewdness? "Certain crimes are defined by US immigration law as “crimes involving moral turpitude.” Conviction of one of these crimes will typically bar you from receiving citizenship for five years after your conviction date (only three years if your permanent residence is based on marriage to a US citizen). If you are convicted of one of these crimes, you will have to wait for the five-year (or three-year) anniversary of the conviction date to file your citizenship application.".

Is he or is he not at risk of deportation? Give a clear answer.

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