Wikipedia has hit a new low

[Leucosticte]

I knew they had sunk pretty far, but this pretty much takes the cake. They say, with regard to Curtis Yarvin (aka Mencius Moldbug), "From 2007 to 2014 he authored a blog called "Unqualified Reservations" which argued that American democracy is a failed experiment that should be replaced by totalitarianism."

Like a lot of biographies of alt-right people, Yarvin's biography is currently most actively controlled by a couple long-established editors, in this case, Grayfell and Chisme, although David Gerard keeps an eye on it too. It's kinda similar to what we see happening with Roosh's biography, except that JzG is also involved with that one. Anyway, Grayfell says:

A source is already cited:

• Marantz, Andrew (2019) Anti-Social: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation. Viking: New York. Page 156.

"[Mike Cernovich] read a blog by an autodidact named Mencius Moldbug, who argued that American democracy was a failed experiment that should be replaced with totalitarianism." A multi-paragraph footnote of the source goes into further detail about Yarvin's views, as well as his lack of relevant expertise or formal training. You interpretation of Yarvin's views is a form of original research. Wikipedia isn't a platform for original research, we are mainly interested in reliable, independent sources. Grayfell (talk) 00:30, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

I was actually gonna order that book just so I could take a look at what exactly the footnote said (since I can't seem to access it via Google Books; I can see there's an asterisk there but I can't see the actual footnote, and there aren't any relevant endnotes), but my mom has her credit card set up to disallow online payments, so that I don't try to order suicide supplies.

Anyway, with regard to Moldbug and totalitarianism, we know he's not a communist, because he's all about promoting capitalism; and we know he's not a Nazi, because he's half-Jewish. So what kind of totalitarian would he be, if he's neither of those?

If you google his name in conjunction with totalitarianism, you can find this recent essay. https://americanmind.org/essays/the-clear-pill-part-1-of-5-the-four-stroke-regime/ We also see this: https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2007/08/against-political-freedom/

To a neocameralist, totalitarianism is democracy in its full-blown, most malignant form. Democracy doesn’t always deteriorate into totalitarianism, and lighting up at the gas pump doesn’t always engulf you in a ball of fire. Many people with cancer live a long time or die of something else instead. This doesn’t mean you should smoke half of Virginia before lunch.

Does that sound pro-totalitarian to you? Anyway, the title of that book is kinda laughable, in that it implies that as of 2019, the alt-right had hijacked the American conversation. By 2019, the muzzling of the alt-right had pretty much been completed, with the exception of Andrew Anglin, Stonetoss, and a few others. They're not able to organize a movement of people meeting in person like the old-style NSDAP or anything like that; they just have an online audience of anonymous readers. Actually, at this point, the alt-right doesn't even have the ability to put videos out, except on obscure places like BitChute, that have a cumbersome process and lack a lot of the features and community of YouTube.

 

[Leucosticte]

@leftyincel2 do you have any suggestions for how to correct this blatant falsehood? I suppose if I cited to Grayfell that paragraph above, he'd just say, "That's a primary source, and it's trumped by the secondary source."

So basically, I could put out a book saying, "Leftyincel supports Vintological trannymaxxing" and then, if you were considered notable enough to have a Wikipedia article (or to be included in the incel article), then maybe Wikipedia would then say that about you. And you could make a statement, "No, that's not true" or someone could cite your forum posts saying you oppose Vintological trannymaxxing, but Wikipedians would say, "That's a primary source and we have to go with what the secondary source says" the idea being that maybe someone is just cherry picking posts to make it LOOK like you oppose Vintological trannymaxxing, whereas in contrast, the book someone wrote is presumably more reliable because ... they're somehow NOT cherry-picking arbitrarily or in accordance with some agenda?

Basically the way this works is, those who control the media get to create a false consensus among "reliable sources" and then this controls what appears on Wikipedia. And they can even totally distort your viewpoint and say that you support something that you don't.

 

[Leucosticte]

Yeah, he's explicitly anti-Hitler: https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2009/09/gentle-introduction-to-unqualified/

[/quote]The Reaction is Hitler-free because its engineers understand the Hitler-phenomenon precisely, and to avoid it take precautions effective and redundant.[/quote]

 

[leftyincel2]

so in those essays he supports a bureaucratic system that taxes a lot to centrally administer food and other goods (cameralism)

but he also says it is without politics, almost like some neutral collection of gvmt workers

so how could it possibly be without politics? who decides who gets food and how much?

 

[Leucosticte]

so in those essays he supports a bureaucratic system that taxes a lot to centrally administer food and other goods (cameralism)

but he also says it is without politics, almost like some neutral collection of gvmt workers

so how could it possibly be without politics? who decides who gets food and how much?

You let the pilots decide, as trustees of the new government: https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2008/07/olxiii-tactics-and-structures-of-any/

The hack is a precise heuristic test to select trustees. The result of the test is one bit for every citizen of Plainland: he or she either is or is not a trustee. The test is precise because its result is not a matter of debate—it can be verified trivially. And it is heuristic because it should produce a good result on average, with only occasional horrifying exceptions.

My favorite PHT defines the trustees as the set of all active, certified, nonstudent pilots who accept the responsibility of trusteeship, as of the termination date of Plaingov. The set does not expand—you cannot become a trustee by taking flying lessons, and any rejection or resignation of the responsibility is irreversible. In other words, to paraphrase Lenin: all power to the pilots. (There are about 500,000 of them.)

Let’s look at the advantages of this PHT. I am not myself a pilot—I am neither wealthy enough, nor responsible enough. But everyone I’ve ever met who was a pilot, whether private, military or commercial, has struck me as not only responsible, but also independent-minded, often even adventurous. This is a particularly rare combination. To be precise, it is an aristocratic combination, and the word aristocracy is after all just Greek for good government. Pilots are a fraternity of intelligent, practical, and careful people who are already trusted on a regular basis with the lives of others. What’s not to like?

 

[Leucosticte]

Yeah, he's explicitly anti-Hitler: https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2009/09/gentle-introduction-to-unqualified/

The Reaction is Hitler-free because its engineers understand the Hitler-phenomenon precisely, and to avoid it take precautions effective and redundant.

Btw we can see he's also anticommunist: https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2008/07/olxiii-tactics-and-structures-of-any/

If we care to broaden this set, we can extend it by adding all practicing medical doctors, or all active and retired police and military officers, or better yet both. Believe it or not, doctors were once one of America’s most reactionary professions, in the forefront of the struggle against FDR. They also made housecalls. Now they are a bunch of Communist bureaucrats. But the boys in blue can keep them in line. Our fighting men know what to do with a Communist, if they have a free hand. More to the point, each of these professions is a technically demanding task in which the professional is trusted with the lives of others.

 

[Oxblood]

I always wondered if these bloggers have some real power or they are just fantasizing about politics they would implement if they were dictators.

 

[Leucosticte]

I always wondered if these bloggers have some real power or they are just fantasizing about politics they would implement if they were dictators.

Yarvin apparently made a fair amount of money by developing the kernel for some software that was installed on a billion devices. Then after that, I think he mostly quit the tech world and just thriftmaxxed, limiting his expenditures to buying a bunch of books which served as part of the inspiration for his blog. He was going to create this other project, Urbit, but my guess is that he's probably a mediocre coder who realized his luck was going to run out if he didn't quit while he was ahead. Seems like he kinda toyed with Urbit but it never really caught on seriously, so he had nowhere to go with it, as it depended on getting a community of people to buy into it.

It seems to have been based on a similar premise as cryptocurrency or the Million Dollar Homepage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Million_Dollar_Homepage

It sounds like a cool idea to say, "Okay, I'm going to create this project where I artificially limit the supply, so that people will rush to buy in while there's still time." Not everyone can pull it off, though.

Anyway, if he could have succeeded in becoming a tech billionaire, then maybe he would've been in a position to be a ruler, or at least an aristocrat of some sort, if there were a neocameralist system.

Under our current system, if you're a guy like Mike Bloomberg, then you can get taken down in humiliating fashion by the likes of Elizabeth Warren. Under neocameralism, Bloomberg would've just bought a seat at the table, probably, without a lot of fanfare, and Warren would've had no way to gain much power under that system.

 

[Leucosticte]

Yeah, so I went ahead and debunked this "reliable source" they were quoting: https://nearcels.com/threads/so-i-got-a-copy-of-antisocial.438/

 

[ww3]

I was actually gonna order that book just so I could take a look at what exactly the footnote said (since I can't seem to access it via Google Books; I can see there's an asterisk there but I can't see the actual footnote, and there aren't any relevant endnotes), but my mom has her credit card set up to disallow online payments, so that I don't try to order suicide supplies.

It's on Libgen.

https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=7395A8F06F2F544E906E2938DD3352B1

 

[Leucosticte]

It's on Libgen.

https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=7395A8F06F2F544E906E2938DD3352B1

You're pretty good at this Internet stuff, huh? I'll make a note of that resource for next time.