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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   29161 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 31, 2023

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Richard Hanania is a man whom I do not always agree with but do appreciate for successfully pissing off people both on the left and the right. The ability to piss off people from both of those groups is, in my opinion, generally correlated with being right about things.

Well, Hanania has allegedly been linked to a pseudonym. The allegation is that about 10 years ago, he was routinely saying taboo things about race and gender issues under the name "Richard Hoste".

Some quotes:

It has been suggested that Sarah Palin is a sort of Rorschach test for Americans [...] The attractive, religious and fertile White woman drove the ugly, secular and barren White self-hating and Jewish elite absolutely mad well before there were any questions about her qualifications.

If they had decency, blacks would thank the white race for everything that they have.

Women simply didn’t evolve to be the decision makers in society [...] women’s liberation = the end of human civilization.

It's nothing very shocking for those of us who read dissident right stuff, and it's not even really that far away from Hanania's typical under-his-birth-name writing. But it may be a bridge too far for much of the more mainstream audience.

What I wonder is, which way shall Hanania go?

  1. Own it, say "yes I am Richard Hoste and I did write those things"? He would gain praise from some people for honesty, but he would also stand probably a pretty good chance of losing book deals, interviews with some mainstream figures, and so on.

  2. Deny deny deny?

  3. Ignore it?

I think that it is an interesting case study, the attempted take down of one of the more famous examples of what is now a pretty common sort of political writer: the Substacker whose views are just controversial and taboo enough to have a lot of appeal for non-mainstream audiences but are not so far into tabooness, in content and/or tone, to get the author branded a full-on thought-criminal.

I'm not familiar with this guy but I think the obvious solution is to never, under any circumstances, apologize for sins against the Left. I'm reminded of the scene from Darkest Hour where Churchill, referring to peace talks with Hitler, yells "you cannot reason with a tiger when your head is stuck in its mouth!" The Left -- that is, the mass of men and women who are in control of nearly every relevant channel of Western power and influence -- aren't interested in conversation. They're interested in grinding their enemies under heel. They are the tiger, and even the most well-meaning attempts of conservatives to roll over and play the deferential gentleman get them eaten. But oh, how very gracefully those posh conservatives bowed their heads and accepted martyrdom! It won't achieve anything. The Christians with whom I stand should model themselves after the crusaders. More Richard the Lionheart and less Thomas a Kempis.

Rightists do change their beliefs like any honest person. They should be candid about that. But these changes should be framed as intellectual corrections or, at worst, correcting youthful intemperance. Never, ever, should they use Leftist semiotics (saying, "I commit to doing better," or "I apologize for my past hurtful words" is self-immolation). In other words, if you're being accused of right-wing dogwhistling then you're doing it right. Either way the Left hates the Right. They should make themselves worth the hatred.

If all that seems too rigid, then know I think these rules necessary guardrails against the conservative inclination to seek compromise. That leads to the "speed-limit conservatism" of the National Review crowd. Those people exemplify the chief problem with conservatism. The problem isn't a lack of clear policy goals or manifestos or books about the glories of Western civilization. Books are dead when their words don't fill the chests of men. The problem is that conservatives are old and bloodless. Bronze Age Pervert's book isn't a sane or articulate political project. It voices a spirit which moves and animates everything else. The actual content of the book is all performative insanity -- nobody would seriously consider comparing Mitt Romney to Alcibiades unless they're joshing around. BAP is a full-on thought-criminal who attracts just the people he needs to attract: serious young men with spines who are looking to armor themselves for the eventual crackdown their overlords will visit upon them. These men don't need another thought-piece about changing the Leftist orthodoxy from within. They need to find communities of other, understanding men with whom to build themselves against the world.

If it seems like I'm not addressing your main question, then know that's partly because I'm not familiar with Hanania (though it looks like I should be!). The best option you present appears to be #3: ignore what's going on. Not because he's ashamed or looking for approval, but because it isn't worth his time to explain himself. His silence is the answer. Eventually he might be forced to address the issue. Then he should just be honest about why he's changed his views, using parameters similar to what I outlined above. Avoiding an apologetic tone is crucial. The very young men the dissident right appeals to will sniff that stuff out as weakness, and deservedly so.

The actual content of the book is all performative insanity -- nobody would seriously consider comparing Mitt Romney to Alcibiades unless they're joshing around. BAP is a full-on thought-criminal who attracts just the people he needs to attract: serious young men with spines who are looking to armor themselves for the eventual crackdown their overlords will visit upon them

I honestly think this is cope for the fact that BAP and people who like him genuinely believes a lot of straightforwardly false ideas. "The mean of the white IQ distribution is significantly higher than that of the black IQ distribution and that means more white people should have positions of influence than black people" - okay. "Race mixing pollutes the nobility of the Nordic Races and races have different spirits. white people are superior to asian bugmen" - not true at all. (ten more examples elided). And, yeah, it's pointless arguing whether or not BAP 'really believes this', maybe it's all a big joke. But a large portion of the internet far right he associates with, e.g. people he retweets on twitter, clearly do believe it - both from their public posts and (if you imagine they're joking too) private conversations. These are precisely the serious young men you mention. What prevents this resurgence of far-right ideas from descending into romantic fantasies and failing to accomplish anything? Those "serious young men with spines" satisfy their animals spirits translating old texts or dreaming of conquering a small african country, while ... lifting weights and posting on twitter, or plotting to reduce illegal immigration by 30% or introduce tariffs in the next Trump admin.

They need to find communities of other, understanding men with whom to build themselves against the world.

You can imagine your Based Marketing Firm or Based Dating App is a mannerbund all you want. It's still responding to the demands of the market, selling slop to consumers. The 'world' isn't going anywhere - technology's taking it over, the 'liberal' global economy is more capable than ever and 'satisfying consumers' as well as it ever has.

Seriously, it's worth meditating on the lack of practical meaning within this statement:

serious young men with spines who are looking to armor themselves for the eventual crackdown their overlords will visit upon them. These men don't need another thought-piece about changing the Leftist orthodoxy from within. They need to find communities of other, understanding men with whom to build themselves against the world.

How are they 'armoring themselves'? 'Communities of men building themselves against the world'? I keep hearing stuff like 'build brotherhoods of men / institutions that will survive the collapse, and pick up the pieces in the harsh world to come'. But ... that isn't happening. AGI catastrophe is more plausible than that. It's hard to think of a material way that 2020 is worse off than 1980, and 1970-1980s america didn't collapse.

IQ

You surely know but BAP isn't too keen on HBD and IQ-focused discourse; or rather, his notion of evaluation methodology, «racial hierarchy», desirable qualities and perhaps even the mechanics involved are all entirely different from the Sailerite school of thought (which is why I'm pissed when everyone on the dissident right is rounded up to a Nazi; no you fools, at least appreciate the vibrant diversity of other doctrines which are every bit as irreconcilable with yours, it's an honor to be hated from so many different angles!). And it's not about Nordics as such, he preaches exactly what it says on the tin – Bronse Age mindset, bodybuilders on horseback.

It's hard to think of a material way that 2020 is worse off than 1980, and 1970-1980s america didn't collapse.

I dislike the phrase "techno-solutionism" but it ought to be recognized how much of our "not worse off" depends on outracing the decline. Opinions differ as to how sustainable that is. I do not foresee or dream of a collapse, but I'm also not looking forward to this kind of dysfunctional culture being empowered by technology indefinitely.

I do not foresee or dream of a collapse, but I'm also not looking forward to this kind of dysfunctional culture being empowered by technology indefinitely.

I've been reading which I think put this distinction we should be making between cultural and material progress quite well. From Eisel Mazard's No More Manifestos:

We are much more willing to look at the progress of technology as the model that social progress "should" resemble, no matter how improbable the resemblance might be. The cycle of invention and obsolescence is more appealing than the tragic history of "the rise and fall" of Rome: technology promises us a rise without a fall, and a history without heroes or villains – only inventors. Unlike a struggle between factions, with each side pretending to be certain that they alone can lead the public to a better future but living forever with uncertainty and regret (as when the Tories slaughtered the Whigs, and vice versa, in the American Revolution) about all the good men who died on the other side, half wondering as to whether or not the unexpected outcomes of all the violence really were "the best of all possible worlds", as Candide would say, when we imagine social progress in technological terms we need not question the extent to which we will be heroes, villains, or simply passive cowards, in the next chapter of history to be written. Brutus must have wondered, before his death, if he had been more a villain than a hero, and must have questioned whether or not he would have been better off a coward and a conformist –whether or not all of Rome would have been better off, by the same token. Instead of all this endlessly ambivalent tragedy, we can all fix our eyes on a new cellular phone, laid bare upon the dining room table, and express our astonishment at how much "the state of the art" has improved in the last twenty years: now this is progress!

We ignore that the table the phone is sitting upon hasn't changed at all; nor has the concrete floor, nor the pipes that bring us water below the floorboards, and so on. It does not occur to us that the stasis of our senates, parliaments, prisons, police services and universities should be judged more harshly, relative to the rapid progress made in other fields (or at least in this one). Instead, we behave as if the innovations made in consumer electronics were infectious. Perhaps if you leave that cellphone sitting on the table long enough, the ingenuity embodied within it will seep through the polished surface, drip down the wooden legs, through the concrete floor, and then percolate into the pipes --revolutionizing the sewage system along with everything else it touches, without any of us having to be bothered about leading a revolution.

silly tangent

I googled No More Manifestos, and found my way to the author's youtube channel.

It looks like he was a vegan debater in the past. His most popular video is about a /r/drama tier internet dispute where someone sent him death threats (or something, I haven't watched it).

His popular videos are all 7ish years ago - he still posts, but gets many fewer views.

From a recent video - he wanted to move to the US, but was unable to, due to the intricacies of immigration law! He's also never driven a car.

Yeah his YouTube can be very off-putting. I first got interested in it as a curiousity and then he surprised me with how well read he seems to be in history and political philosophy. His other writings are mostly academic style articles where he claims that millions of Buddhists have been mislead by scholars on the embarrassing role of flatulence in breathing meditation present in the ancient Pali texts:

In plain English, what he calls “abdominal breath” is flatulence –and the mistranslation of the corresponding passages of the canon is very nearly the apotheosis of farting. So-called “breathing meditation” is not at all what millions of Buddhists have been lead to believe: many passages of the PTS translations (old and new) are grossly misleading, and, in one important aspect least, they are flatly wrong.

My pipes have changed, though? They're plastic now, instead of metal - cheaper and less likely to put metal ions in the water. And there's a water filter in my house between the pipe and my mouth. The city, itself, is using improved water treatment tech. And these changes have entirely been enabled by science, technology, and society.

My table also has changed. It's a bit cheaper, and the antifungals are less toxic now. I can have a new one delivered if I don't like it. Maybe I have a standing / treadmill desk. Maybe I don't have to use the table as much, as I go on a walk in nature while chatting with friends or listening to podcasts.

The concrete formula itself has improved quite a bit too, and is 10x cheaper. (edit: 1.1x cheaper, I rewrote this a bit and missed that)

"Technology isn't changing the social aspects of society", he says on the anonymous political internet forum.

I think he extended that table metaphor a bit too much, but the point is that technological progress can go hand in hand with stagnation in universities, police departments, parliaments etc, though it gives the illusion that these things must also be obviously better than they were in the past.

The idea of stagnation in universities is also subtle. Ethnic and gender studies are a festering wound. But ... if we're looking to the past, we have to compare them with psychoanalyis, theology, continental philosophy / idealism, marxism ... is it really obvious things are much worse? A lot of ruin in a nation etc.

And back to the original topic, I think the factual accuracy of (most of) the internet far-right including bap is now comparable to that of the ethnic studies people. The far-right carries forward a bunch of accurate claims, but is accreting an ever-growing ball of nonsense onto it. Part of hanania's popularity comes from not being like that!

is it really obvious things are much worse

Aside from the cost, things aren't obviously much worse than they were in the past 50 years but they're not very different either. Asking what subjects are taught is one way of evaluating a university, but I'll just throw some ideas out to illustrate that there are other avenues where innovation could have been made but wasn't.

How about asking if some of the subjects are being taught to an objective standard at all? There are language courses where you get your degree and can't speak the language, Buddhist studies taught by true believers who won't bring your attention to the ugly aspects of its history etc, and a lot of dishonesty about whether this degree will help you in life at all (employment being the obvious one). It's taken for granted in some industries that your degree has not prepared you for the job at hand and the necessity for further training is a given, but there doesn't seem to be any incentive for the university to care about this.

Then there's the format. Why is a lecture hall with hundreds of students the unquestioned standard? There is a surplus of PhDs in many fields, it wouldn't be that expensive to drastically increase the student to teacher ratio (or the professor to admin ratio to get more directly at the cause). As much one on one tutoring as possible seems to be the ideal but apart from PhD students no one is even aiming for that.

And lastly, how can you encourage critical thinking amongst students when, in the liberal arts especially, the person with the power to fail them is also the someone who they are supposed to be confidently and credibly accuse of bullshiting?

And back to the original topic, I think the factual accuracy of (most of) the internet far-right including bap is now comparable to that of the ethnic studies people. The far-right carries forward a bunch of accurate claims, but is accreting an ever-growing ball of nonsense onto it. Part of hanania's popularity comes from not being like that!

I don't disagree, though the guy I'm quoting from is definitely not of the far-right. The original topic is a few comments back so I'll have to reread and maybe edit lest I misunderstand you.

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