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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?
Not to be flippant about what is a very sad event, but he really did want State-Issued Girlfriends? I mean, "do away with hypergamy (which I presume he means female hypergamy, and not men wanting to marry high-value women), disseminate biological consciousness to the dispossessed, strip women of any avenues except 'marriage without your choice is the only thing between you and starvation, enjoy being treated as the serf in the domestic sphere!'" all sounds like it would fit neatly beside seizing the means of production etc.
State bureaus to ensure women don't lie about their dating preferences, keep records of single men and women, and start matching them up so no man has to go without sex on demand and the woman can starve (or more likely turn to prostitution) if she doesn't want to marry the guy picked out of the list of "so Bob here is thirty-eight and never had a long-term relationship, it's time".
"Someone has probably made this argument on The Motte before."
Could have been lifted from several past discussion threads: prevent women going into higher education, prevent women having jobs outside the home, make women economically dependent on men again, take mate choice out of the woman's hands and give it to her family, and there will never again be any man without a wife to cook for him, clean for him, and fulfil his sexual needs (her sexual needs? don't be stupid, her role is to do what he likes, sex is not about mutuality).
There is still the problem of domestic violence, does the manifesto address this or is the presumption that once every man knows he is guaranteed a woman of his own as chattel, there will no longer be any impetus to beat and abuse their partners? Wouldn't that be nice if true, but violent men don't need an excuse to be violent.
Not directly, that's just a meme. I don't see why he would have been opposed to state issued girlfriends. If his ideal totalitarian government replaces all the women in the workforce with robots to encourage monogamy it's not much of a step for the state to coerce any slow to pair with guns or assignments.
"Willingly" is doing a hell of a lot of work there. "I couldn't get a woman of my own until it was literally starvation or marry me" is not a recipe for good marriages, and all the old jokes about adultery and cuckoldry will get a new lease of life. If Sally can't stand Bob but likes Bill, unless Bob is keeping Sally locked up in the women's quarters then she'll find some way to meet Bill and have fun with him.
Swap in "men" for "women" in his manifesto there and see how that bites you. "Ugly, old, mentally ill or simply marrying this person is marrying down women can now have that husband they've always wanted, once men have no option but to marry and then will willingly take the ugly stepsister to bride". Yeah, do you think that works?
нет! Comrade Sally wouldn't dare offend the People's Revolution with counter-revolutionary acts of adultery against a fine worker like you, Comrade Bob. I don't believe it, a treasonous crime in service of the imperialist dogs. It would spit on the glory of the Party. As a precautionary measure, we shall re-educate her in Montana-lag for a period of no less than 5 years to confirm her commitment to the workers of the world. In the mean time you may take your pick of the comfort stock, Comrade Bob.
I suppose AI could arrange marriages based on some measure of physical attractiveness and compatibility. Still, it's hard to see how many would win with super egalitarian pairing.
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