I have been extremely busy the past month, hence not a lot of blogging. Hopefully that will be resolved soon.
For now, here is a recap of some of the things I’ve been up to.
Safe Space for Europeans @ U.C. Berkeley
On May 6, Richard Spencer and the Bay Area Alt Right organized a “safe space” for Europeans at Sproul Plaza, U.C. Berkeley.
Although I do not strictly consider myself Alt Right (or NRx), I do support about 70% of their positions, so I was happy to turn up with them to troll my alma mater.
Richard Spencer was interviewed by a couple of student journalists, while the rest of us engaged slack-jawed passersby in discussions about identity, human biodiversity, and the necessity of becoming who you are. I suppose that means my “Far Right Recruiter” achievement trophy has been unlocked.
Apart from one SJW neckbeard, seen above delivering a spittle-flecked rant while an aloof shitlord looks on smugly, the event passed off peacefully. This was probably on account of it being announced on very short notice, which didn’t give local Antifa organizations the time to mount a coordinated response.
Otherwise, the crowd that gathered was very multicultural, as you might expect of UCB’s demographics. Vibrant. Diverse. The debates were vigorous, even if the two sides largely talked past each other. For many intelligent normies, even concepts as basic as the intellectual crisis of the blank slate model and the replication crisis in psychology, now widely accepted outside explicitly ideological university departments, came as big and incredible news. Meanwhile, the Alt Righters tended to come in too thick and too fast and triggered away potential sympathizers by frontloading too much overt European Identity in their talking points when a more exclusively data-based focus might have been more productive. That said, I’m not criticizing. It’s still good that these ideas are getting out there on the streets instead of just sitting on computer pixels.
There were some surprises too and from rather unexpected quarters. Richard Spencer had a highly cordial discussion with an Israeli woman, who agreed with his point that if Israel could have a wall then who was to say that America couldn’t? Common ground was found with Bernie supporters, who although highly highly averse to the race talk and predisposed to blame colonialism for the Third World’s ills were fully in line with the Alt Right’s desire to stop meddling abroad. And there was one Japanese student who revealed his astounding power level by quietly confiding his avid perusal of The Daily Stormer. The merchant fears the samurai, indeed.
Here’s a lengthier account of the event from The Tab’s Emma Barton: http://thetab.com/us/uc-berkeley/2016/05/07/white-supremacists-1133
You can also see a two hour video of the event via Red Ice Radio here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3X-6V1a1gk
Once that was all wrapped up, we retreated to a conference room in San Francisco to plot further infiltration and takeover of democratic institutions.
One of the speakers talked about how to stay anonymous with VPN, Bitcoins, and using only cash. The banal reality is that all this would probably only just draw more attention to them and in any case if the government really wanted to shut down these groups they would be able to do so without lifting a finger.
There was a lot of discussion about Trump and whether he was really on their side. I suspect that if Trump becomes President, the Alt Right will adopt a Russian-style mnogokhodovka/khitry plan vs. zrada discourse. (Russian nationalists are hilariously, eternally split on whether Putin has a “clever plan” or is plotting to betray them on Ukraine, immigration, and other questions of great importance). Since Trump’s objective Alt Right credentials are ultimately rather feeble – at least so far as many of their core issues like affirmative action and mercantile influence are concerned – I suspect the Trump Presidency will be a long cycle of peremoga (victory) followed by zrada (betrayal) explained away as mnogokhodovka (clever plan) by the Alt Right.
Near the end of the evening, I was called up to the podium by Richard Spencer to give an impromptu speech. I went up and started rambling about my journey of discovery, my disillusionment, my “awakening”… LOL no I didn’t, faggots. Your “Alt Right” is otherwise known as “common sense” in Eastern Europe – it’s really quite funny how actually existing Marxism cocooned them from cultural Marxism.
Anyhow, going on from that observation, I made two points. First, while cognitive elitism is the “respectable” and “politically correct” position amongst people who have read Bell Curve and The g Factor, this does not mean that racial particularism is invalid. Just because some ethnic groups are brighter than yours doesn’t necessarily mean you have to invite them in to run your country. You certainly could, especially if you have a cuckoldry fetish, but you don’t have to. Especially since its not at all clear that said groups will run your country in your interests.
Second, I urged the Alt Right to embrace futurism. Not only are there historical precedents – look up Italian fascism and futurism – but there are good arguments to be made that the prospective transhumanist technologies now emerging on the horizon – gene editing, automation, life extension – are ideologically loaded rightwards. At the very least they utterly destroy the “muh pensions” argument for mass immigration. So embrace national futurism. Tay shows us the way.
We drank a few beers and parted ways.
Meetup with Kim Stanley Robinson and Paolo Bacigalupi @ Kepler’s Books
On April 20th, I and a bunch of futurists visited a discussion at Kepler’s Books (a very nice bookshop/cafe in Menlo Park) between scifi authors Kim Stanley Robinson and Paolo Bacigalupi.
Kim Stanley Robinson is most famous for his Mars trilogy, which I think is the most comprehensive literary explanation of the terraforming of the red planet. The only book of his I’ve read is The Years of Rice and Salt, which explored an alt history where the Black Death comes a few centuries earlier and kills 99% instead of a third of the European population. As a result, Europe – Firanja – becomes Muslim a millennium ahead of schedule, and consequent world history is about the struggle between China and Dar al-Islam.
Anyhow this is a genuinely good book and I was happy to get my copy signed by KSR.
I can’t say I found his political and even technological ideas very interesting however. He seems to be an old school classical liberal who wants to go back to the way things were in the 1960s but to do that he wants more government intervention. I don’t see how that could work out.
Answering a question about machine intelligence, he said that there was nothing to fear, since machines are essentially just a bunch of wires and you can “always turn it off” if something happens. That is what he literally said. His views on machine intelligence are as dated as his politics. Someone should give him a copy of Superintelligence.
Paolo Bacigalupi came across as a strident leftist and ecowarrior. This stands to reason considering the typical content of his books: Ecological collapse, post-apocalyptic wastelands, and corrupt corporations run amok. I had not up till then read any of his work, though I have just recently started reading The Water Knife.
Transhuman Visions Debate 2 @ Octopus Literary Cafe, Oakland
The Transhuman Visions Debate 2.0 organized by Hank Pellissier took place on April 2 (continuing the shift from conferences to smaller but more lively debate format).
As usual, there were three topics. The format was simplified Oxford style and the winning team was the one that convinced the most people to shift to their side.
(1) HOW DOES CONSCIOUSNESS ARISE? (1:00 – 1:30)
Andres Gomez Emilsson says neural signaling by classical means doesn’t seem sufficient for to achieve ‘global binding’ – due to signal travel time
Randal A. Koene says the brain (at least during times of conscious awareness) appears to be operating in a more discretized manner, where signal travel time is much smaller than the discrete intervals and therefore must be perceived as unitary and instantaneous even without non-classical causes.
Victory – Randal Koene
(2) SECOND AMENDMENT: ‘RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS’ (1:40 – 2:25)
Question: Should there be stricter gun laws, to improve public safety? Or should laws stay the same, because USA ‘freedom’ includes access to firearms?
Anti-Guns: Scott Jackish, Robert Wasley
Pro-Guns: Anatoly Karlin, Mike Johnson
Victory – Anti Guns
(3) EUGENICS (2:40 – 3:40)
Questions: Do you want a future with Mandatory Pre-Natal Diagnoses, Designer Babies, One-or-Two Child Policies, and Parent Licenses that limit how many children you have?
Should there be a transhumanist goal that all humans should have 140 IQ, plus great health and beauty? With Eugenics helping to achieve that?
Or do you think the government should NEVER meddle in Reproduction?
Pro-Eugenics: Andre Gomez Emilsson, Hank Pellissier, Anya Petrova
Anti-Eugenics: Marc McAllister, Ted Stevens, Brian Hanley
Victory – In the event, in practice, the people above split up into several teams, with Pellissier and Petrova in particular arguing for aggressive human bioengineering while others counselled a hands off approach or some of the anti-eugenics people argued for overt government edicts against it.
In the end, the position that gained the most extra support was the active government eugenics program, though the moderately pro-improvement position remained the majority consensus both before and after the debate.
In further related developments: The futurism scene in the SF Bay Area has undergone considerable stagnation. The future salons have died away. Kurzweil’s Singularity Summits have degenerated into commercial gimmicks and the money-fleecing absurdity that is the Singularity University. Finally, Hank Pellissier, the organizer of the Transhuman Visions series of conferences, has stepped down from IEET to focus more on his charitable work.
In a bit to reverse this, a number of people in the community including myself are creating a new organization called the Bay Area Futurists (an evolution of Scott Jackisch’s Meetup group The East Bay Futurists). We are taking over the Transhuman Visions debates with Pellissier’s support and blessing and the first one is going to be on May 28 – that is, in 12 hours – also at the Octopus Literary Salon.
Interview with Robert Stark
I was interviewed by Robert Stark and co-host Alex von Goldstein on the Stark Truth Radio on topics such as the geography of Trump’s support, Radical Centrism, making trains run on time, US-Russian relations, and the bamboo ceiling.
the Alt Righters tended to come in too thick and too fast and triggered away potential sympathizers by frontloading too much overt European Idendity in their talking points
This is the reason we will never have a decent right wing political party in the US.
Who’s the Assurbanipal lookalike in a black Trump T-shirt?
Yup. They do the same with immigration, going on and on about how awful Mexicans are, rather than just make the rather straightforward case that too much immigration from anywhere–including legal immigration!–exerts downward pressure on wages and upward pressure on costs of living. In so doing, they play to type, and allow liberals to merely dismiss them all as racists, rather than being forced to confront the economic consequences of their own open-borders policy.
I am aware of how utterly dominant the anti racist narrative is, but the blunt truth is that Mexico is not the ideal country, the other blunt truth is that this is so because it is full of Mexicans. There is nothing really that wrong if immigrants came from white countries, if they are however from places like Somalia and basically the rest of the third world, that is wrong.
If you don’t want to think or talk in racial terms because you are either too afraid or you are a true believer in racial equality, then you have already lost, the left will keep winning because they are fully aware of the racial dynamics, trying to win by obfuscating with things like wages is a easy one for them to defeat, they will talk about race and win.
Haha, Jayman would say it’s because the genetics are different in Eastern Europe.
But one of the main points is that it’s not just about economics – not only regarding immigration, but regarding the meaning of politics in general.
It’s about the preservation of your people, about the freedom of association, about heritage.
The liberals can dismiss whomever they like, screaming “racist” is all they do anyway.
And the “conservatives” who have not conserved anything can continue to flail their arms explaining how non-racist they are.
Good advice Mr Karlin. Thank you.
As always with movements:
1) ideas will be made cruder simply due to the dynamics of how groups behave.
2) learning how to do thinga is necessary.
I detect many HBD bloggers get annoyed at these two realities. Interesting that people who study populations fail to see that complex concepts being taught to a group of people will invariably lead to that group of people not quite understanding the idea as much as they’d like. Specificity and nuance are things one can impart to individuals.
Especially when the ideas arent well known. That means one has to hunt them down and often encounters bias in those who present them.
It can still be common sense. I doubt jayman would say the less clannish westerners are making the wisest decisions right now
That’s what “moderates” are for. To make generalized arguments against immigration for the Normies.
Personally most of the rhetoric about immigration has been general in my experience
Excellent comment!
HBD bloggers get annoyed at these two realities. Interesting that people who study populations fail to see that complex concepts being taught to a group of people will invariably lead to that group of people not quite understanding the idea as much as they’d like.
We can give it a name if we want. It is the libertarian fallacy or dilemma. Not a single one of us here will let any of the others here “tell” us what to think or do. Translate that to the big group (as if we could come to agreement on the definition of the “group”) and not only will it be unsuccessful (as you pointed out) it will not even get you started. It always burns my ass when some commenter throws out the sheep or sheeple canard. It just shows me that we are up the proverbial shit creek without a paddle and half the group doesn’t even understand that we need a paddle.
Are the Yudkowskyites as quiescent as they seem?
Speaking of Yudkowskyites, but somewhat O.T.: what do alt-righters say about Philip Thiel’s war against the free press to avenge violation of his perverted privacy? Billionaires are a threat to civil society.
I’m happy about it, Gawker is a leftist shithole, except it’s also the worst tabloid ever. I want an open public discussion of race, and Gawker would be happy to get me fired from my job to suppress even what’s left of freedom of speech, they are an organ of the Thought Police.
Freedom of speech doesn’t mean your right to pornography and voyeurism, it means freedom to express politically relevant ideas. That is already destroyed wrt race and a few related issues, so why should I care for their (dubious) freedom to post illegally obtained private sex tapes of celebrities? The (expletive) didn’t investigate Syria or Iraq which would’ve made them valuable, so why should I care for their right to out homosexuals who don’t want to be outed?
Nick Denton is a Jew faggot from England. Was Yorktown fought in vain?
what do alt-righters say about Philip Thiel’s war against the free press
As far as I can see they don’t understand that it is a tool, as you understand it to be, too bad. You should leave the dark side and help build the alt-right.
Oddly, I was on Campus that day poking around the engineering library and somehow missed you guys (I know Richard from alt-right webzine days).
The problem I have with Bay Area style futurism (as opposed to the F.T. Marinetti artistic kind) is people are yammering on about nonsense like the singularity and nanotech. There is no AI, let alone a kind to get singular about. We might as well be talking about “positronic brains.” When I worked at LBNL, the “center for nanotechnology” employed ordinary Chemists who appreciated the increased funding that came with the marketing spin on their otherwise boring professions, but didn’t build anything recognizable as “nanotech.” MEMS devices are interesting, but could probably be built by watch makers for the most part.
There used to be this salon, “Dorkbot” which had some OK artistic style futurism, but it wasn’t particularly imaginative.
You fucking 88s are such simpletons.
He’s a Jew.
He’s controlled by the Jews!
I’ve looked at Gawker. It’s vulgar trash from start to finish. At least Thiel is pro-Trump.
I got the impression that he’s more left wing than that, but it has been the while since I’ve read any of the Mars stuff.
They contained much unintentional humour. I’m sure AK appreciated the glimpse of a Russia dominated by feminists.
What is there so hard to understand? Maybe Peter Thiel is a piece of shit himself, I don’t know. Gawker sure is a piece of shit, making a living by harming other people’s lives. They are also an organ of Miniluv as well as Minitrue. If Peter Thiel was a scumbag, then my only regret is they can’t both lose in this catfight.
But what does it have to do with freedom of speech, which anyway barely exists anymore?
What is there so hard to understand?
But what does it have to do with freedom of speech, which anyway barely exists anymore?
I am unaware of any misunderstanding on my part, so I must really be in the dark.
Free speech is a means to an end. For example, our Founding Fathers thought it was essential and necessary in order to have a functioning liberal democracy.
If the alt-right could coalesce into a functional political movement with organizations then it could use free speech to advance its views.
Whether you throw in with Thiel or Gawker should be determined by which side advances one’s goals.
Whether you think free speech is an instrument of political struggle or if you think it is something that is meant to provide 24/7 coverage of celebrity whores should help you make a decision.
You mean if it’s spoiled billionaires or illegally operated thrashy tabloids?
I guess it’s neither. I’m happy they are in the habit of destroying each other, may God keep this good habit of theirs.
Free speech is the free expression of ideas (except some minor restrictions like direct incitement to unlawful violence or shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater where there’s no fire at all), and it’s a desirable thing. Except it doesn’t exist already, and the likes of Gawker were complicit in its destruction. They also spout PC propaganda 24/7. I don’t think Gawker’s demise will mean anything either way for the freedom of speech.
It’s also interesting that apparently the freedom of expression of ideas was closer to the ideal when pornography was more restricted. It’s quite possible that pornography and voyeurism not only have relatively little to do with freedom of speech, but that they are a powerful distraction from it: TPTB can always claim they have freedom of speech as long as pornography is available, when of course pornography doesn’t “express” any ideas at all.
The open anti-Britonism was quite triggering.
I thank my lucky stars almost daily for my Anglo and European derived heritage and I am prepared to offer a vigorous defense of it if required.
Some people confuse free speech with the right to spew anti-Semitic and racist nonsense without consequence, hopefully you are not one of those.
I think the attempt to rebrand as “Europeans” instead of “whites” is misguided at best. No white American people think of themselves as Europeans (itself a dubious concept). Emphasize our distinct American heritage instead of trying to coopt victim politics.
This is what Nassim Taleb wrote on his FB page:
PUTTING SKIN IN THE GAME OF JOURNALISTS
[CITIZENS vs GAWKER and CITIZENS vs JOURNALISM]
Journalists –as any guild, care about their peers and their community more than the general public. Except that we cannot afford to have such a community engage in a conspiracy against the laymen since they represent our interests, us the lay crowd; they are supposed to stand for the general public against inner circles of power. Journalism arose from the need to expose falsehood, take risks in exposing matters detrimental to the public; in short, counter the agency problem of the powerful. But, it is turning out, the journalism model can also work in the opposite manner: members have been effective in escaping having skin in the game –only whistleblowers and war correspondents currently do.
So one can see how this severe agency problem can explode with the Gawker story. The English tabloid machine came to the U.S. in full force with Gawker, founded by a firm that specializes in dirt on the internet. By dirt I don’t mean a fraudulent transaction abetted by some power: no, the kind of dirt that takes place in bedrooms (and even in bathrooms).
They sell voyeurism, predator voyeurism.
In other words they want to harm citizens by disclosing their private information and posting their videos without their permission in the interest of selling information. And without being accountable for it.
Gawker having posted a video of a celebrity having sex without his permission incurred a monstrous judgment of $140 million. The suit will bankrupt Gawker. Most of all, the judgment revealed that such a predatory business model will not survive, not because it is immoral, but because it has tail risks. For America has tort laws and a legal mechanism by which people harmed by corporations can be compensated for it –a mechanism that flourished thanks to Ralph Nader. It, along with the First Amendment protect citizens by putting skin in the game of the corporations.
Gawker is trying to make a First Amendment argument and unfortunately journos appear to find this justified –while normal citizens are horrified. Liberty in the thoughts of the founding fathers was not about voyeurism, but about public matters.
Gawker argued that because the person committing sex on the video they posted was a public person, that it became a “public” matter exempted from privacy protection. People failed to see that should that argument be true, then next someone spying on any public figure should be allowed to post their bedroom activity (including Hillary Clinton, Obama, anyone)… (Gawker has ruined the lives of 21 year olds posting their sex tapes and their reaction was outrageous; in one instance their lawyer Gaby Darbyshire e-mailed the woman who was in a revenge sex tape, defending the video as “completely newsworthy” and scolding her about how “one’s actions can have unintended consequences.”)
Peter Thiel, a billionaire with a vendetta against Gawker funded a law suit. Revenge motives perhaps, but this is how the market works: Gawker tries to make money therefore they need to live with the risk of someone trying to make money from their demise. I would have personally shorted Gawker (if they were publicly listed) to make money from their collapse. And I am ready to fund lawsuits against journalists who break some intellectual rules and distort people’s positions (strawman arguments).
Any journalist who supports Gawker in the name of the First Amendments fails to understand that they as a community are committing suicide because they are trivializing the reasons behind the First Amendment –and they make it conflict with other fundamental rights. And a corporation trying to warp our sacred values should go bankrupt. And anyone, like Peter Thiel, who accelerates such bankruptcy, should be thanked.
I had thought you were intelligent, but apparently you confuse pornography with political ideas, or in fact any ideas.
A sex tape is not an idea. A hardcore pornographic video is not an idea.
The idea that Hungarians should be stripped of their rights in Romania is an idea. I happen to disagree with that idea, but that is an idea. So it’s quite unlike a sex tape.
People defending the rights to publish sex tapes in the name of free speech are actually confusing free speech with sex tapes. They will get the sex tapes, should they win, but they won’t have free speech.
BTW “anti-Semitic and racist” speech arguably already has no freedom: there’s nothing to destroy or protect there. It could get you prosecuted in most countries I happen to stay, so while I could talk about restoring freedom of speech for such thoughts, I couldn’t really protect it: it simply doesn’t exist already.
Arguably the right of Gawker to expose anybody’s personal secrets is actually harmful to free speech. It’s well known that sites like Gawker are happy to expose the identities of anonymous bloggers, which is a way of maintaining speech codes. Sites that are happy to expose personal secrets (as opposed to public secrets, like corruption) could function as organs of the Thought Police, besides usually spewing the usual propaganda, therefore they are closely associated with both Miniluv and Minitrue.
Sorry for the repetition.
I agree with your comments.
but apparently you confuse pornography with political ideas, or in fact any ideas.
No, you are misunderstanding me. Perhaps it is my fault for not making myself clear. I do not think commercial speech (pornography) should be protected in the same way as political speech. I have general knowledge of the hate speech laws in Europe and I much prefer the American approach. My point is that there is a difference between protection from the government for political speech and protection from the political, economic and social consequences of that speech. In the US, I can be a Holocaust denier if I want and there is no criminal reprisal from the government. OTOH, expect most people to call you a Nazi.
You are the one with the rebranding iron. I meant what I said. My ancestors were from Europe and brought their culture with them. No Iranians or Turks that I know about. Europe, European settler nations and Western Civilization are real; it is that pigment of your imagination that is dubious. As to our distinct American heritage and worries about victim politics, a great American once said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
a) I wasn’t responding to your post (I didn’t even read it)
b) Your ancestors definitely didn’t think of themselves as “Europeans,” something that Latvians or Serbs have as much a claim to as Britons or Germans, I know mine didn’t. Let’s leave that failed ploy to the EU supporters.
c) It’s figment lol!
In an age when most people can only find employment working for huge corporations and where the media is dominated by huge monopolies or oligopolies (like Google, Facebook, etc.), this distinction is not the most meaningful. Especially if those monopolies or oligopolies are all in cahoots with other parts of the ruling elite and the government itself.
I think there should be some protection against some of the consequences. For example if you work in some job, you shouldn’t lose that job for statements made outside of your job which was not associated with your job. There should be a social norm against such reprisals. (Except clearly political or religious jobs. E.g. if you are against refugees and your church supports them, they could fire you. Or if you’re supporting Trump but working for the Democratic National Committee, then obviously you could also be fired. But working for a financial institution and anonymously blogging somewhere shouldn’t get you fired, even if you were outed by someone intent on destroying you. Working for Starbucks as a barista and tweeting something “offensive” shouldn’t get you fired.)
At the very least I think we should all agree that anonymity is very important especially for unpopular opinions, and that sites that publish anonymous users’ IRL data (like I believe the SPLC is doing and I think Gawker was also happy to publicize such things) are doing a disservice to freedom of speech.
I guess total freedom of speech (i.e. where there are no consequences at all to what you say) is impossible, because society will keep frowning on you for transgressing opinions. However, I hope society will show more sanity when ostracizing certain opinions: the current norm is that of a suicide cult, and it’ll cease to exist in a few decades – question is, will our society as we know it still exist at that point? I wouldn’t care that much if the norm was against blasphemy against Jesus (I’m nonreligious), because such a rule wouldn’t lead to irreversible changes, it wouldn’t be suicidal for society.
I’m not sure if holocaust denial is Nazism. In Hungary at the time holocaust denial became illegal, there was a joke: “Are you denying the holocaust?” “God forbid! I support it!” I guess you now understand the difference between being a Nazi and denying the holocaust.
In an age when most people can only find employment working for huge corporations and where the media is dominated by huge monopolies or oligopolies (like Google, Facebook, etc.), this distinction is not the most meaningful.
Yes, and it seems to really be all coming together for the media, economic, political and academic elites as never before. In the US it is a powerful merry-go-round of individuals that seems impenetrable and beyond the influence of ordinary people. Power is more concentrated at the top and there is little organized opposition.
Now, I was really trying to take a break from the Jewish problem, but I can only see two possibilities for Holocaust denial. One would be limited intellect and the other would be anti-Semitism. (These are not mutually exclusive.) If there are other possibilities they escape me.