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Notes -
A link to an article about kids toys somehow led me down a rabbit hole to this article
https://lydialaurenson.substack.com/p/why-i-was-part-of-the-neoreactionary
Which I am still processing right now so maybe it's too premature for me to be posting it for discussion.
In any case I haven't been around here for a while, and I guess I still owe you all thoughts from the war, but one thing I've been doing is dipping my toes into activism in the "reducing extreme polarization" sphere and this article was from a totally different country and politics from my own and yet way too terrifyingly similar. The feeling of people existing in two different realities and erasing any evidence that threatens their specific chosen reality and starting to feel like you're going a little insane from being able to sympathize with both sides instead of comfortably siloing yourself into one black and white self-righteous viewpoint.
(Sometimes I wonder if we all just know too much and read too much these days. In my moments of debating whether I even should be doing activism trying to set up coexistence circles and hikes I wonder if everyone needs to just never read the news ever again and only talk to people they know personally face to face. I don't know, surely I'm not the only one here wondering how many truly obnoxious unbearable people I meet online are secretly bots created solely to make me and the rest of the planet miserable...?)
Anyway I'm interested in the motte's thoughts and I guess I'm once again shamelessly using you as a sounding board while I try to figure out my own.
Edit: she quotes from another article but the link is a dead link, it's fortunately available on webarchive, so if someone wants to read that one as well, it's here: https://web.archive.org/web/20250904220910/https://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2007/02/liberating_iraq.html
I'll start off with my condolences to anyone of any gender that had to listen to nRXs for this to happen at the end of it.
... I have a thought. That's not fair, I recognize... though I'd like some counterexample showing I'm just cherrypicking.
Talking about anything in a sensible way is not the point of the story; talking about why no one can group can talk about anything in a sensible way isn't part of the story. Laurenson isn't writing for Red Tribers, obviously, nor writing to Red Tribers, or even explaining Red Tribers to Blue Tribers. The point is to explain where Laurenson's coming from to Blue Tribers, and that's fine.
But from a Red Triber perspective -- and I fully recognize I'm far from hydroacetelene's level of 'real' Red Triber -- it's kinda the last part of this story where there's anything interesting. The Now What section is the biggest frustration, since it starts with 'here's the Blue Tribe principle insulting me and here's the Red Tribe random asshats insulting me, tots similar in scope and regularity' and then leads to a trio of revelations that practically come with the punchline 'do you think we don't know that?' But does anyone think there's a literate Red Triber on the planet, and I'm defining 'literate' here by Chicago definitions, that does not already know that a news media environment with any mix, no matter how lopsided, of Red and Blue Tribers devolves into squabbles?
I can make the argument that deradicalization matters, I can and regularly do make the argument that liberalism is dying at this rate, I can and have made the argument that it's really really dangerous. I'd like to solve that! I've been doing the (sometimes literal) Touch Grass thing, and some STEM-focused community outreach, and a half-dozen other programs trying to bring people together without bringing politics to the forefront.
Online, I'm overtly the bi furry gun owner for a reason, knowing how offputting the constant gay or gunnie references are to so many people: areas I'd like to go and philosophies I'd like to let live become 'target rich environments' if the only ones who wear it on their sleeves are the Everything Leftism Coneheads and straight-from-central-casting . I'd hope that there'd be some impact from showing people are people, and that Red and Blue can join together to achieve goals more important than wars of all-against-all over microns of worthless territory, and that at least some goals of those politics are more than hate or rage or malice.
... but I don't know if that will work, either, and ultimately, the Litany of Tarski wins. The STEM outreach program's had a small and subtle cold war over rainbow pins in the local community, the modded Minecraft server I helped with software problems had its owner proudly promote the time he beat the shit out of Brendan Eich, there's many Blue and Red tribe spheres I can't wear anything on my sleeve. Worse, so many high-profile people pretending to straddle political aisles are very clearly not that there's less than zero trust, here.
Everything else is a distraction. Yes, people are hallucinating their own consensus realities, but (as Laurenson points out!) it's not like the normies are doing any better. If we can't even talk about anything in a sensible way, if we can't talk about why we can't talk about anything in a sensible way, trying increasingly complicated and roundabout messaging won't solve it.
No offense, I hope you're getting something out of your projects other than their stated purpose, but history is coming, and it doesn't care about who's in the way. Forces significantly greater than one man and his good intentions are angling to crush and wipe out what you are trying to protect and nourish, and they will, and all your efforts to stop them are in vain. Narratives serve to tie people together and unite them behind a cause, they insulate them against attempts to divide them and help consolidate power that can be wielded against the outgroup. Trying to oppose that with good epistemics is hopeless. You'd need a more powerful yet simpler, a more attractive and inclusive, a generally fitter narrative to supplant the one that currently dominates - and "let's be reasonable and not fight each other" is a guy climbing out into no-man's-land to get ignored at best, but probably just shot. The culture wars won't cool down or stop over someone showing up with doves and olive branches. They'll stop only once all or all but one side are marginalized and the winners are smart enough not to discredit themselves, or once another party shows up with nukes pointed at all sides and forcing them to stop, or when the aforementioned superior narrative shows up and divides people along entirely new lines.
The stated purpose of the programs is to teach, and to learn by teaching. Can't say we're always doing that as well as I'd like, but I don't have to seriously consider the Litany of Tarski, either.
But, yes, I'm not optimistic. I'm not even trying to solve things with doves and olive branches; I'm just hoping that having an idea of what the 'other side' even looks like at least could leave us more grounded on actual disagreements instead of several layers of imagined ones. And I'll emphasize the 'hope' on that.
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I'm shocked, shocked to find that
gamblingracism is going on in this establishment!More options
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This, I think, is a huge part of it. Calls for "deradicalization", "reducing polarization", or "moderation" are nearly always calls for the other side to surrender and disarm. Either there's no offer for the caller's side to give something up, or they obviously don't have the power to make it come about.
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I'm not on X and refuse to join (because I believe social media is a major net negative for the culture). So I don't know what I'm supposed to be looking at.
Laurenson had no X commentary about either the Jay Jones scandals nor the Charlie Kirk assassination, and as far I can tell, did not anywhere else. Perhaps I’m missing some counterexample, or some massive story from her media deal.
The movement she’s left has changed. It’s not the only thing failing her tests.
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I think this all the time. 'News' is a mind-virus worthy of a bare few minutes a day--max. Yet it's addictive, somehow.
this is a long article, might take me some time to get through it, but one thing I notice straight off is the implicit assumption that all young people seem to share that "everything is political." It's just seeded into every aspect of everything everyone younger than 50 seems to want to talk about. It's not even questioned, it just is. I think this is a big part of the underlying problem because everyone is just desperate to be a Good Person (tm) and every life choice revolved around this basic motivation (even the people who overtly reject this have the same basic presumptions).
I really wish there were more "go fuck yourself" punks in the world. I feel like we need this energy to counteract the "I'm paddling my feet as fast as possible to be a Good Person (tm). I'm sick of Nice People (tm) and Good People (tm). It's not your job to save the world and trying to know every last detail about every possible threat to humanity just drives everyone insane.
I'll keep reading, it's not uninteresting just long. If something else catches my attention I'll reply again.
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To me it seems like the situation is still pretty bad, possibly getting worse. The most concerning recent event to me was the July 4th attack on a border patrol station a few months ago, which involved five to ten people. That indicates to me that actual organized paramilitaries are forming below the surface.
Then you have comments by the Virginia District Attorney and the general internet commentatariat in the wake of the Mangione assassination and the assassination of Charlie Kirk which indicate the body politic is becoming increasingly comfortable endorsing political violence. That’s not just a spiritual and moral issue. You need that kind of hardness and willingness to accept violence among the gen pop to sustain any kind of campaign of armed struggle like the IRA’s in Northern Ireland. People have to be willing to provide passive aid and look the other way.
The right wing is angry too. Although Rob Reiner’s murder was apparently not a political killing, I heard comments in right wing spaces that mirrored the level of bitterness you saw in the left over Kirk.
Oddly I don’t see the same level of paramilitary organization forming in the right which you wouldn’t think given their greater affinity for gun culture. I don’t anticipate any major attacks coming out of the right in the near future. The anger is there but no one seems interested in doing anything about it. Maybe because the current Federal government is perceived as friendly. I don’t know.
The right affiliated zoomers are concerning to me. I think a huge percentage are in the process of seriously embracing actual unreconstructed naziism as an ideology. They are keeping it on the down low for now, probably not for too much longer.
I think there are two main escalation triggers to watch out for. The first is the dying off of the baby boomers, which will have a similar effect to pulling out all the control rods from a nuclear reactor at once. Boomers are less radical and they are an underrated part of damping both sides more violent impulses. I think the Boomer die off induced radicalization will be more potent on the right, which by and large places more importance on what their parents and elders think of them.
The second is the economy. It’s not great for regular people already. If there’s a big crash and mass unemployment in the near future you’ll see some serious shit.
Gun culture both makes paramilitary activity easier to hide(it would take me about three phone calls to get into a ‘yeah, we have a commander, and we like to get together and train on the weekends, and we’ve got plans for when the shit hits the fan, but we’re definitely not a militia, no sir’) and makes would be attackers think twice. This stuff is concentrated among the functional, elite end of the red tribe, which already likes guns, hunting, firefight training, etc, and which is consequently very well aware that shooting people kills them. It sounds obvious, but I genuinely don’t think a lot of the nuts that go shoot people for political reasons really intend to leave body counts(I do, however, think they are crazy). Red tribe schizos who want to commit mass shootings don’t need to join a paramilitary group to do so, because they live in gun culture, and those paramilitary groups largely wouldn’t accept them anyways because they work on word of mouth, vetting, and reputation- like a more civilized motorcycle club. This mode of social organization- deinstitutionalized networking with high functioning members and extensive IRL vetting- is very red tribe and very good at excluding nut jobs.
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The reason for this is that any attempt to do as such is often met with the reply of 'Nice try, Fedboy.'
The Right as a whole is excruciatingly aware of the double-standard of how paramilitary organizations are treated. Antifa? John Brown Society? A-O-Kay, says the Feds. Patriot Front? A right-wing organization of people dressed in anonymous uniforms?
Clearly a fed-run honeypot.
I can't really blame them, going by the long history of treatment by right-wing elements by said fed. Even just recently, with the governor kidnapping attempt, who's conviction of those indicted was actually overturned because the majority of said group was federal operatives egging the entire plot on. And that overturned conviction was reversed by a higher-judge.
Because of course it was.
So. Any right-wing paramilitary organization is going to be quiet, run deep, run silent, and will probably never get talked about unless things get really, really bad.
Can you provide some more information on this sequence? Particularly the bit where the conviction was overturned, as I'm having trouble finding anything about it.
What I've seen on this is that the initial trial had some convictions and some acquittals, with entrapment being presented as part of the defense, and then the court affirmed on appeal for Adam Fox and Barry Croft, who argued that the court didn't let them focus on the entrapment aspect as much as they wanted to.
Which, maybe they're right, but if this is just the appeals court going "we're sticking with what the jury said", that seems significantly less bad than judges fighting each other over the conviction, which I can't find evidence of.
Here I thought I was about to pay for my sins of not doing my due dilligance on the Motte, but;
Gretchen Whitmer: Michigan governor kidnap plot case collapses
Fox and Croft were the two I was thinking of. Not acquited, but a mistrial. I find it telling that the initial court for those two were ruled as a mistrial, only to be convicted after a second trial(of cource) and both were given very heavy prison terms - again, of cource - and then denied appeal by a panel of Judges, as noted in your second link.
Of. Cource.
Perhaps I'm being very uncharitable, but I find it difficult to do so in such a case as this one.
While mistrials can be declared for a bunch of reasons, your article is very clear on why there's a mistrial:
They didn't find Fox and Croft not guilty, they were unable to decide whether they were guilty or not, which means a hung jury, that mistrial status, and generally a retrial: this was a pretty high-profile case, it would be very surprising for the courts to say "eh, we don't really care about this enough for two trials, let it go". Their co-defendants Harris and Caserta, who the jury did acquit, did not have a second trial, and if Fox and Croft had managed that they wouldn't be getting a second trial either.
You can argue that the courts stacked the deck to make sure the second trial had a better chance of finding them guilty, but that was clearly a reasonable possibility even in the first trial, or the jury would have just acquitted as they did for Harris and Caserta.
Still no judge overturning the convictions: Fox and Croft were still in the indistinct "haven't resolved this in a court" status after the first trial, a second trial found them guilty (still by a jury), and then the appeals court decided the jury's decision was from a trial that was performed adequately and didn't need reexamination.
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I also imagine cell based approaches will be more popular among righties. Even though it's less capable of coordinated action, it's far more resistant to fed infiltration.
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This is honestly the best part, my "actually the jedi are evil" conceit. The Zoomers are going to have absolutely nothing even close of the exposure to the "holocaust" memeplex. Instead they are only on the receiving end of the bitterness and hatred of an already disintegrating edifice of the neolib/neocon machine.
I can only dream of a world where the US has successfully removed it's futurama esque green brain slug. And the zoomers seem to be a good stepping stone towards that.
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Maybe they're less radical, but they certainly were more violent back when they were young compared to the youth of today.
It’s not just about capacity for violence, it’s about the level of desire for a radically new social order. Old people don’t want that, they want things to remain comfortable just long enough for them to die. Even the ones that intensely dislike the way things are now are still like this.
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