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I was going to write a post about ripples in the pond of social sciences but plans are on hold due to a happening. Shooter kills one civilian and cop in Montreal outside a Hilton.
RobotsSources say that "the headquarters of Aylo (the parent company of Pornhub) is located in the Côte-des-Neiges neighborhood of Montreal, Quebec." That might place this shooter in the neighborhood of Aylo's headquarters to target Pornhub, which fits with the general anti-degeneracy notions in a 104 page manifesto that surfaced. It has been so long since we've gotten a proper manifesto, and this is a proper manifesto (PDF). Broadly, we are reading the thoughts of a man who wants to represent, organize, and better the lives of "dispossessed" men-- with many topics familiar to this forum about men and women in Western world touched upon in the first half. Moral decay, Chad-Stacy hypergamy, and unfair, undesirable, or dysfunctional dating/mating norms. He wants to do this by replacing the capitalist "neoliberal hypergamy state" with communism, won and run by those formerly dispossessed, which would not be quite as common here. Some highlights I saw while reading.To fix modern gender relations and society he wants to place theories of class consciousness to one side (by no means out of the way) while introducing a new biological consciousness so that dispossessed men can organize and act upon. Put those men to work in a revolution.
It'd be difficult to organize the incel vanguard on a good day, it's hard enough to get men to queue up on video games. To do so covertly, under the auspices of established political movements, seems extra difficult. Our author partly recognizes this, so he offers a stage one insurgent phase. First, pay more attention to women who lie about dating preferences and ruminate on it. Second, self-improvement ("body purification") but no weight lifting, because it takes too much time, is a bourgeois scam, and sports are suspect as well. No distraction from the revolution. After self-improvement there are a few paragraphs reminding future revolutionaries to avoid rap music:
Finally, become an insurgent, which means killing certain people identified later in the document. In short, he thinks the insurgents should kill pretty much everyone in a position of power or wealth including influencers of all stripes. That makes sense, reforming society and all. He also thinks all the drug dealers, gangsters, and so on should be liquidated. The author features many inspirational quotes by Bolsheviks, as well as other rabble-rousers such as Ulrike Meinhof and Robespierre. Following the insurgency comes the revolution.
No mention of government issued gf's. I believe the hope it won't be necessary, though I don't think the author would be opposed.
Someone has probably made this argument on The Motte before. We aren't missing any communists from roll call, are we? This is boring social engineering in the context of the manifesto which drifts into more fantastical theory, like the cyborg-augmented "extraordinary branch" of the new state to "augment both the bodies and minds" as a kind of Stasi/special forces mixture. Did he forget to mention total war or eternal struggle? No, of course not.
I rate the manifesto 6/10 with significant points given for effort in the context of modern manifestos. Points deducted for my personal revulsion to revolutionary Bolshevism, communism, tangents, and reddit posts. He shares a vision that I don't share with solutions I consider disastrous and/or unrealistic, so I could be unfair. Also, a neoliberal hypergamy state theory is not anywhere as novel or cool as the anarcho-primitivism based vision of Ted K. As an expression of deep frustrations in an atomized world I can understand, though I really think he should have made some money, bought some land, worked it, and entered the BAP-sphere with a Substack via Starlink.
EDIT: "I will go over this methodology briefly here, but for a more complete look at it, see my work The Smile of the Dispossessed; or, Further Instruction on the Implementation of Terror." All I can find by the first title is gay genre fiction, and I get no hits on the latter by a Seth Hatfield or anyone else. AI assisted hallucinations?
People making this general argument on the motte are rightwing traddies or dissident righties. Another piece of evidence for horseshoe theory. Are there even outed Marxists on the Motte at this point? Our ideological diversity leans pretty right, such that people that are left of the motte average are more likely to be centrists, and a few dissident progressives. I'm not sure I remember any outspoken old-school Marxists in the last 3 years.
I think this demographic makeup dates back to the SSC days. Even in 2019, Scott noted that he attracted readers across the political spectrum, with the exception of Marxists.
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