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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?
I read (glanced over and noted the arguments) the manifesto, and it leaves me with an awkward feeling.
Basically the guy is pretty much correct on the pure factual level about everything he's seeing.
Its clear to me that he has directly experienced the modern, toxic dating pool/culture, and was probably caught between the impulse to adapt to it as it exists, or to lash out against it as an unfair, unsustainable, unhealthy artifact of modern culture.
The fact that he analyzed it with lefty-coded language is interesting but doesn't add much insight.
I find his ultimate methods abhorrent, unjustifiable and ineffectual.
But unfortunately I can't readily point towards a more effective strategy that he could implement on his lonesome. Solving the problems he identifies requires coordinated efforts.
So I'll keep my points brief:
I've pointed out how Male Grievances are almost never given any legitimate airing in mainstream publications. Indeed, it is exceedingly rare for a male writer to get to publish a piece on gender issues at all!
As you noted, Men are not allowed to organize around their own interests as a gender.
No politician ever voices male grievances as part of a policy platform.
So as this guy found, if you have not built up a large following a la Clavicular, your concerns will never get heard, your voice will never raise above the din of social media. You functionally do not exist.
And the one mainstream figure who was willing to voice these concerns was Charlie Kirk, and he got murdered by a lefty.
Oh, and add on that Lone wolf shooters like Luigi Mangione can garner significant female attention.
A lot of guys will connect the dots thusly:
"I have no real hope of getting a wife and happy family in my lifetime. I have no political representation. Nobody will listen to me if I speak out myself. No publications will ever stump for my concerns. I can't organize with other males to advocate for my interests, and if I DO become famous and popular whilst speaking out, I can just be killed in cold blood. However, if I do enough damage and spill enough blood, suddenly I have people paying attention to me... and if I survive I might see increased female attention to boot. Worth a shot."
Something something burning down village to feel warmth.
So my ongoing concern is that we're going to see a serious uptick in young male crashouts that involve (attempts at) mass killings or destruction, many of which won't be as thoughtfully targeted as this one.
Quoth me:
This guy was a 25. A Zoomer. The concerns he puts forth in that manifesto are WIDELY HELD amongst Zoomer males.
And these Zoomers are NOT BEING OFFERED A BETTER PATH FORWARD in the status quo.
Solve for Y chromosome.
Has the "death of the author" already kicked off merely a year+ later? Kirk was not killed for being an MRA he was killed for being a trad conservative influencer and particularly for being anti-lgbtq+. Any man that looks at this as "I can't become famous and speak out about men's dating woes or I'll be killed" is delusional. Your histrionics about this are actively a detriment to people taking men's problems as a class serious. There are a whole host of old MRA folks still around and kicking: Peterson, Farrell, Elam, Straughan, Pizzey, Hoff Sommers, etc. Nobody is killing MRAs for advocating for men.
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