antifa

People who cannot find a place for themselves in society have nothing to lose if society burns

evolutiontheorist Miscellaneous , , ,
Detroit Abandoned Buildings
Detroit

I have I’m trying to write, but words aren’t flowing. Still, it’s a general fact: you preserve what’s yours; you love what’s yours.

When you don’t feel part of society, it stops mattering to you whether society burns. You know the principle: not my circus = not my monkeys.

Which means that you can’t half-ass community. Long term, you can’t have an underclass. You can’t have outcasts. You have to have community, and you can’t force it through some idiotic top-down “team building” exercise, because dammit, that will just make people hate each other even more. Community has to be a real thing that real people actually enjoy being part of, or they will, at best, let it fall apart; at worst they burn it down with you in it.

The Detroit riot of 1967 left 43 dead and 2,000 buildings destroyed; Detroit has yet to recover.

“Xenophobia” is apparently the fancy new word people are using for old-fashioned racism in South Africa:

Prior to 1994, immigrants from elsewhere faced discrimination and even violence in South Africa. After majority rule in 1994, contrary to expectations, the incidence of xenophobia increased.[1] Between 2000 and March 2008, at least 67 people died in what were identified as xenophobic attacks. In May 2008, a series of attacks left 62 people dead; although 21 of those killed were South African citizens. The attacks were motivated by xenophobia.[2] In 2015, another nationwide spike in xenophobic attacks against immigrants in general prompted a number of foreign governments to begin repatriating their citizens.[3] A Pew Research poll conducted in 2018 showed that 62% of South Africans viewed immigrants as a burden on society by taking jobs and social benefits and that 61% of South Africans thought that immigrants were more responsible for crime than other groups.[4] Between 2010 and 2017 the immigrant community in South Africa increased from 2 million people to 4 million people.[4]

Why the hell did anyone think that majority rule by black people in South Africa would result in less racism? Is there something magical about voting that stops people from being racist? No, you idiots. (Not you, my gentle reader. I know you never thought such nonsense; you know that the media has reported on plenty of racist Americans voting in elections.)

According to a 2004 study published by the Southern African Migration Project (SAMP):

“The ANC government – in its attempts to overcome the divides of the past and build new forms of social cohesion … embarked on an aggressive and inclusive nation-building project. One unanticipated by-product of this project has been a growth in intolerance towards outsiders … Violence against foreign citizens and African refugees has become increasingly common and communities are divided by hostility and suspicion.[7]  “

What, being aggressively pro-your-own-group leads to being aggressively anti-other-groups? Who could have figured that one out?

Reminder that Johannesburg used to be a first world city.

Meanwhile, Nigerian TV has some interesting segments. “Shrine” seems to be a euphemism for “human sacrifice cult”:

Maybe some of those South Africans are on to something?

— Oh jeebus, I just read about lobotomies. Changing course, guys:

 Freeman’s name gained popularity despite the widespread criticism of his methods following a lobotomy on President John F. Kennedy’s sister Rosemary Kennedy, which left her with severe mental and physical disability.[2] … Walter Freeman charged just $25 for each procedure that he performed.[8] After four decades Freeman had personally performed as many as 4,000[11][12][13] lobotomy surgeries in 23 states, of which 2,500 used his ice-pick procedure,[14] despite the fact that he had no formal surgical training.[2] … Up to 40% of Freeman’s patients were gay individuals subjected to a lobotomy in an attempt to change their homosexual orientation, leaving most of these perfectly healthy individuals severely disabled for the rest of their life.[15]… His patients often had to be retaught how to eat and use the bathroom. Relapses were common, some never recovered, and about 15%[16] died from the procedure. In 1951, one patient at Iowa’s Cherokee Mental Health Institute died when Freeman suddenly stopped for a photo during the procedure, and the surgical instrument accidentally penetrated too far into the patient’s brain.[17] Freeman wore neither gloves nor a mask during these procedures.[17] He lobotomized 19 minors including a 4-year-old child.[18]

“We went through the top of the head, I think Rosemary was awake. She had a mild tranquilizer. I made a surgical incision in the brain through the skull. It was near the front. It was on both sides. We just made a small incision, no more than an inch.” The instrument Dr. Watts used looked like a butter knife. He swung it up and down to cut brain tissue. “We put an instrument inside”, he said. As Dr. Watts cut, Dr. Freeman asked Rosemary some questions. For example, he asked her to recite the Lord’s Prayer or sing “God Bless America” or count backward. “We made an estimate on how far to cut based on how she responded.” When Rosemary began to become incoherent, they stopped.[23]It quickly became apparent that the procedure had not been successful. Kennedy’s mental capacity diminished to that of a two-year-old child. She could not walk or speak intelligibly and was incontinent.[24]”

This guy won a nobel prize in medicine.

I don’t trust doctors very much.

A few other random thoughts:

I have no opinion on the Hong Kong protests because I am not from HK or China and don’t speak Chinese and so don’t know enough to have an opinion. I do think, however, that there is a frequent–and understandable–impulse crave excitement that modern life cannot otherwise supply. We want to be heroes; we want to be like the people in games and movies.

Even in Minecraft, a game that starts with you digging dirt blocks with your bare hands, ends with you fighting a dragon. People want that dragon; they want to be heroes, and who cares if it involves burning down someone else’s house? Characters in movies never stop to consider whether their rampages are flipping innocent people’s cars or preventing normal people from getting to their jobs; these mundane considerations pale to nothing when there is an ENEMY to be conquered… but often enough that enemy is just an invention of our own boredom.

Antifa, too, want to play-act being important by killing the enemy. It’s the same impulse that leads normal people to play video games; normal people are just good at distinguishing between games and real life.

Links Post

evolutiontheorist Miscellaneous , , , , , , ,

I have too many open tabs so let’s have a quick “what I’m reading” post

Millenials rediscover concepts like “dorms,” “boarding houses” and “apartments.” I’m not sure how this is novel.

Despite San Jose’s reputation for inclusivity (about 40 percent of residents are foreign born) and economic mobility (ranked best among U.S. cities), Mayor Sam Liccardo says the region’s affordable housing shortage has forced thousands to crash on couches, live in their cars, or stay on the streets.

Here, I think I see your problem:

Despite Because of San Jose’s reputation for inclusivity (about 40 percent of residents are foreign born) and economic mobility (ranked best among U.S. cities), Mayor Sam Liccardo says the region’s affordable housing shortage has forced thousands to crash on couches, live in their cars, or stay on the streets.

There. Fixed it for you.

On the other hand, these startups might be nice places to live.

Greater male variability, this time in response to solar cycles:

The authors use the vital statistics of 320,247 Maine citizens over a 29-year period to show that those born in 3-year peaks of 11-year solar cycles live an average of 1.5 years (CL 1.3–1.7) less than those born in non-peak years. Males are more sensitive than females to this phenomenon, which is statistically demonstrable well into adult life, showing the effect of probable UVR on the early human embryo despite superimposed adult lifetime hazards.

Genetic analysis of social-class mobility in five longitudinal studies:

… we studied social mobility in five cohorts from three countries. We found that people with more education-linked genetics were more successful compared with parents and siblings. We also found mothers’ education-linked genetics predicted their children’s attainment over and above the children’s own genetics, indicating an environmentally mediated genetic effect. Findings reject pure social-transmission explanations of education GWAS discoveries. Instead, genetics influences attainment directly through social mobility and indirectly through family environments.

Interesting Twitter thread on some recent antifa thing: 

White Woman: Your parents would be embarrassed by you–and your grandparents–who have been oppressed by white men throughout history. You should be ashamed of yourself.

Asian Man: Why?

White Woman: Because you’re an Asian giving in to white supremacy, motherfucker

I don’t know anything about Andy Ngo, the photographer who captured this segment and wrote the thread, but I do think there’s some seriously non-self-aware irony in a white person insulting and verbally abusing an Asian person for a perceived failure to feel oppressed by other white people. If she’s so concerned about whites oppressing Asians, maybe she should… stop doing it herself?

Portland is apparently turning into some kind of shithole:

As the crowd made their way to a nearby courthouse, they marched in the middle of the street, bringing traffic to a stop though they didn’t have a permit. Kent Houser, 74, made the mistake of attempting to pass them in his sedan. His car slowly pushed against a masked marcher. The crowd surrounded the car and started kicking it. After speeding down the block, Mr. Houser stepped out and was assaulted by the mob. They pushed him and smashed his car with clubs after he managed to get back inside the vehicle. No police were in sight even though the central precinct was blocks away. …

The mob later occupied a busy intersection. When a middle-aged man driving a car with North Carolina plates stopped in confusion, the agitators descended on him. “You white little f—er!” shouted one white man. “You are a little white supremacist. Go back to North Carolina where you came from.” The driver phoned police for assistance. Nobody came. …

A block away, police officers looked on passively. Why didn’t they respond? The department told me in a statement that it feared intervention would “change the demeanor of the crowd for the worse.”

Such lawlessness is increasingly typical here. Portland’s Resistance organized a protest after Election Day 2016 that turned into a riot. Masked vandals smashed stores and set fires, causing over $1 million in damage.

I remember those riots. They put a friend of mine who ticks every SJ-interest box you can name in danger, because antifa do not actually care about the people they claim to care about.

I’m sure the Portland Police would like to do their jobs, but it’s not worth it–either they’ve been told not to by their superiors or they’re guaranteed to get sued if they do.

 

 

Guest Post: Professor Dwayne Dixon and the death of Heather Heyer

evolutiontheorist Political Critiques , , , , , , , , , , ,

Note: Today we have a guest post.

On August 12, 2017, James Fields’s car plowed into a crowd of protesters in Charlottesville, VA, resulting in the death of Heather Heyer. This is well-known, but why did Fields run into the crowd (and the car in front of him)? Was Fields trying to exact vengeance on the crowd for ruining his day, or was he fleeing from a threat in a state of panic?

Fields has been charged with first degree murder, meaning the prosecution will argue that the killing was willful, deliberate, and premeditated. However, evidence has been uncovered indicating that Fields drove the car into the crowd because he feared for his life.

In this video, Dwayne Dixon–speaking on October 24, 2017 at the Carr Center at Harvard–claims to have waved off Fields with a rifle shortly before the crash. During a question and answer section, Dixon elaborates, stating that he “raised his rifle” at Fields in order to get him to “get the fuck out of here”.

In January 2018, Dixon posted a similar statement to his Facebook, which was later deleted.

Many people and cars were attacked that day in Charlottesville, including a car in the following video just 15 minutes before Fields’s crash.

The crowd of counterprotestors was hostile to Fields, and when he was arrested the police noticed a yellow stain on his shirt that smelled of urine. Fields may have feared that if he stopped among this crowd, he could end up like Reginald Denny.

Here is the full, 2 hour video of Dwayne Dixon – You Don’t Stand By and Let People Get Hurt: Antifascism after Charlottesville – posted by Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. From the video’s description:

What does this time of escalating political discord demand of us—our ethics, our social selves, and our bodies? How can communities protect themselves from racist terror when the state is indifferent or hostile? From the perspective of his experiences with Redneck Revolt in Charlottesville, VA, and Durham, NC, anthropologist Dwayne Dixon discusses armed self-defense and the need for a diversity of tactics in anti-fascist resistance.

—-
DWAYNE DIXON is a lecturer in the Department of Asian Studies at UNC-Chapel Hill. His research examines the role of media, urban space, and global imaginaries in the lives of young people in contemporary Japan. He is currently studying the ways small arms and their optics are incorporated into bodies through prosthetic practices with specific attention to the influence of the American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq on firearms theory and training. He is a long-time activist and part of the Durham 15 who are facing charges in North Carolina for removing a Confederate statue and for armed self-defense in the face of the KKK.

Why is Harvard inviting speakers to talk about violent opposition to “fascists”, particularly one who may have illegally contributed to Heyer’s death?

Under the Virginia law on Brandishing, “Pointing, holding, or brandishing a firearm… in such a manner as to reasonably induce fear in the mind of another of being shot or injured,” is a class-1 misdemeanor. If it happens within 1,000 feet of a school, it’s a felony.

Raising his rifle at Fields in order to get Fields to “get the fuck out of there” (in fear) easily violates this law, and it would be a felony violation as Dixon appears to have encountered Fields near Market and 4th, within 2 blocks of a school and well within 1000 feet of it.

Less than two blocks from the apparent encounter with Dixon, Fields crashed into the crowd near 4th and Main.

In the Commonwealth of Virginia, if in the process of committing a felony, you cause someone else to die, (whether you intended to kill them or not,) you have committed “felony homicide”:

There are further reports that Fields’s car was attacked by the crowd as it was driving on 4th street prior to crashing into the crowd; the banging of a flagpole onto his back bumper could have sounded like gunfire or else made him reasonably afraid he was about to be shot.

If Dixon actually pointed his rifle at Fields, and this caused Fields to fear for his life and accelerate away from the crowd that was bashing his car, crashing into Heather Heyer and the car in front of him, then Dixon committed felony homicide.

[EvX: I would like to add that if you have never had a panic attack, then you likely don’t know what it feels like. A true panic attack is not merely feeling panicky or anxious. They can induce uncontrollable physical reactions like screaming, fleeing, or hiding. For example, after hearing a loud bang, someone who survived a WWII POW camp might be found cowering under a car or desk with no idea how he got there.

So even if Fields had other options besides crashing into the people and car in front of him–like turning onto a side street or hitting the breaks–if he was truly panicking because he thought the antifa beating his car were about to shoot him, he may not have been mentally able to think or act on these possibilities.]

Why would Dixon go on camera and admit to facts that could lead to a murder charge? 5 possibilities:

  1. He’s lying and never actually pointed a gun at Fields. (Of course, it is a bad idea to lie and claim responsibility for a felony.)
  2. He doesn’t know the law and doesn’t realize that brandishing a weapon is a felony, nor does he know of felony homicide.
  3. He believes his brandishing of the rifle was justified self-defense
  4. He regards himself as a hero for chasing off a “fascist”
  5. His insufficient “theory of mind” makes him incapable of realizing that threatening Fields with a semi-automatic rifle made him afraid for his life. Dixon believes that Fields was maliciously looking for someone to harm, that he bravely chased Fields off, and then Fields attacked protesters elsewhere.

Interestingly, in order to convict someone of Felony Homicide, the state does not have to prove that the perpetrated intended to kill anyone. By contrast, in order to convict someone of First Degree Murder, the state must prove that they intended to murder someone–the law specifies thet the act must be “willful, deliberate, and premeditated.”

Further evidence against the killing being willful, deliberate, and premeditated lies in the Preliminary Hearing Transcript. The police officer testifies that Fields repeatedly said he was sorry and said that all medical assistance should be directed to people injured in the crowd rather than himself. Additionally, he appeared shocked and cried when he was told that someone died from the crash. I don’t think this is how people normally react when they intentionally kill someone.

Another point of evidence against the crash being intentional is the fact that Fields crashed into another car, which put him in danger of injury. The street is sloped, so Fields could presumably see the car below him. Had he wanted to injure protesters, he could have plowed into any of the many protesters who were better positioned.

As for Dixon, he is still a professor of “anthropology” at the University of North Carolina.

I would like to know what UNC and Harvard think about employing and endorsing a man who could be charged with felony brandishing and felony murder in the death of Heather Heyer–and why the Charlottesville police have not seen fit to investigate Dixon’s role in the crash.

Politics are Getting Dumber

evolutiontheorist Neuropolitics, Metapolitics , , , , ,

You don’t need to watch the video. I haven’t watched the video. I’m only highlighting it because it starts with a moronic question.

Meanwhile, in the social justice warriors vs inanimate objects department:

Kick that statue! Yeah! You show that big chunk of metal who’s boss!

And in inanimate objects vs. inanimate objects:

CNN is impressed by the fact that statues (normally) don’t move.

This one is stupid on several levels–the statue itself, erected by a male-dominated industry to celebrate “female empowerment,” infantilizes women by symbolically depicting them as a small, stupid child who doesn’t know enough to get out of the way of a charging bull.

You know, I could keep posting examples of stupidity all day.

Mob mentality is never good, but it seems like political discourse is getting progressively stupider.

It takes a certain level of intelligence to do two critical things:

  1. Understand and calmly discuss other people’s opinions even when you disagree with them
  2. Realize that cooperating in the prisoner’s dilemma is long-term better than defecting, even if you don’t like the people you’re cooperating with

Traditional “liberalism”* was a kind of meta-political technology for allowing different groups of people to live in one country without killing each other. Freedom of Religion, for example, became an agreed-upon principle after centuries of religious violence in Europe. If the state is going to promote a particular religion and outlaw others, then it’s in every religious person’s interest to try to take over the state and make sure it enforces their religion. If the state stays (ostensibly) neutral, then no one can commandeer it to murder their religious enemies.

*”Liberal” has in recent years become an almost empty anachronism, but I hope its meaning is clear in the historical context of 1787.

Freedom of Speech, necessary for people to make informed decisions, has recently come under attack for political reasons. Take the thousands of protestors who showed up to an anti-Free Speech rally in Boston on Sat, August 19th.

The Doublespeak is Strong with this One

Of course no one likes letting their enemies speak, but everyone is someone else’s enemy. Virtually every historical atrocity was committed by people convinced that they were right and merely opposing evil, despicable people. Respecting free speech does not require liking other people’s arguments. It requires understanding that if you start punching Nazis, Nazis will punch you back, and soon everyone will be screaming “Nazi!” while punching random people.

Edit: apparently one article I linked to was a hoax. Hard to tell sometimes.

Now, Free Speech has often been honored more as an ideal than a reality. When people are out of power, they tend to defend the ideal rather strongly; when in power, they suddenly seem to lose interest in it. But most people interested in politics still seemed to have some general sense that even if they hated that other guy’s guts, it might be a bad idea to unleash mob violence on him.

In general, principles like free speech and freedom of religion let different people–and different communities of people–run their own lives and communities as they see fit, without coming into direct conflict with each other, while still getting to enjoy the national security and trade benefits of living in a large country. The Amish get to be Amish, Vermonters get to live free or die, and Coloradans get to eat pot brownies.

But that requires being smart enough to understand that to keep a nation of over 300 million people together, you have to live and let live–and occasionally hold your nose and put up with people you hate.

These days, politics just seems like it’s getting a lot dumber:

Cat that nearly died after being attacked by a thug “because he looks like Hitler” has now recovered despite losing an eye.

The AntiFa and Me

evolutiontheorist Political Critiques , , , , , , , , , ,

Ages ago when I set off to college, my political views were fairly moderate and conventional, if passionately argued. (For that matter, I still consider myself a “moderate,” if an unconventional one.) At some point I read Persepolis (volume 2), Marjane Satrapi’s memoir of the Iranian Revolution and her childhood in Iran, college years in Germany, and return to post-revolution Iran. It’s a pretty good book, though I liked Vol. 1 better than Vol. 2.

While in Germany, Satrapi began reading Bakunin, whom she refers to as “The anarchist.”

So of course I read Bakunin. According to Wikipedia:

Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin…. 30 May 1814 – 1 July 1876) was a Russian revolutionary anarchist, and founder of collectivist anarchism. He is considered among the most influential figures of anarchism, and one of the principal founders of the social anarchist tradition. Bakunin’s enormous prestige as an activist made him one of the most famous ideologues in Europe, and he gained substantial influence among radicals throughout Russia and Europe. …

In 1840, Bakunin traveled to St. Petersburg and Berlin with the intention of preparing himself for a professorship in philosophy or history at the University of Moscow… Eventually he arrived in Paris, where he met Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Karl Marx.

Bakunin’s increasing radicalism – including staunch opposition to imperialism in east and central Europe by Russia and other powers – changed his life, putting an end to hopes of a professorial career. He was eventually deported from France for speaking against Russia’s oppression of Poland. In 1849, Bakunin was apprehended in Dresden for his participation in the Czech rebellion of 1848, and turned over to Russia where he was imprisoned in the Peter-Paul Fortress in Saint Petersburg. He remained there until 1857, when he was exiled to a work camp in Siberia. Escaping to Japan, the US and finally ending up in London for a short time … In 1863, he left to join the insurrection in Poland, but he failed to reach his destination and instead spent some time in Switzerland and Italy.

In 1868, Bakunin joined the socialist International Working Men’s Association, a federation of trade unions and workers’ organizations, which had sections in many European countries, as well as in Latin America and (after 1872) in North Africa and the Middle East. The “Bakuninist” or anarchist trend rapidly expanded in influence, especially in Spain, which constituted the largest section of the International at the time. A showdown loomed with Marx, who was a key figure in the General Council of the International. The 1872 Hague Congress was dominated by a struggle between Marx and his followers, who argued for the use of the state to bring about socialism, and the Bakunin/anarchist faction, which argued instead for the replacement of the state by federations of self-governing workplaces and communes. Bakunin could not attend the congress, as he could not reach the Netherlands. Bakunin’s faction present at the conference lost, and Bakunin was (in Marx’s view) expelled for supposedly maintaining a secret organisation within the international.

However, the anarchists insisted the congress was unrepresentative and exceeded its powers, and held a rival conference of the International at Saint-Imier in Switzerland in 1872. This repudiated the Hague meeting, including Bakunin’s supposed expulsion.

Sound familiar? Sounds familiar.

Anyway, I thought Bakunin’s Statism and Anarchy was pretty good, though I was less impressed with God and the State.

Since then I’ve read a smattering of other anarchist writings, (eg, Thoreau,) but none of the major figures like Proudhon or Chomsky.

Wikipedia goes into a bit more detail about the Anarchist/Marxist split, quoting Bakunin:

They [the Marxists] maintain that only a dictatorship—their dictatorship, of course—can create the will of the people, while our answer to this is: No dictatorship can have any other aim but that of self-perpetuation, and it can beget only slavery in the people tolerating it; freedom can be created only by freedom, that is, by a universal rebellion on the part of the people and free organization of the toiling masses from the bottom up.

— Mikhail Bakunin, Statism and Anarchism[49]

…we are convinced that liberty without socialism is privilege and injustice; and that socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality.

— Mikhail Bakunin, Federalism, Socialism, Anti-Theologism, 1867[50]

Collectivism without the gulags and KGB certainly sounds like an improvement over collectivism with it. As a college student trying to reconcile libertarian-ish tendencies with SJW dogma, Anarchism seemed like a good fit, and I began calling myself an Anarchist.

To me, Anarchism was more of a starting point than an end point, a default position that you should leave people alone to regulate their own affairs unless you have proof that there’s an actual problem that needs fixing and that your fix won’t make things worse than the original problem. You might see parallels here with my current thinking. Society was full of rules, those rules seemed oppressive and arbitrary (Why can’t I eat waffles for dinner and lasagna for breakfast? Why do different states have different traffic laws? Why does copyright last for 90+ years? Just leave me alone, man!)

One of the most important anarchist insights was that “government” should be thought of as more than just the official, legally-defined “state.” “Government” is really the entire power structure of a country, from the domestic relationships of your own home to the influence of religious leaders to the power your boss wields over almost every aspect of your 9-5 daily life. What does it matter if you have “Freedom of Speech” on paper if in reality, speaking your mind results in instantly losing your job, and so no one does it? If the result of government pressuring businesses to fire outspoken employees is the same as businesses doing so voluntarily, the effect on liberty is the same either way, and your boss must be considered part of the power structure.

This is why argument along the lines of “It’s just fine for violent mobs to shut down speakers because Freedom Of Speech only applies to the government” are stupid.

So, armed with my shiny new philosophy, I marched out bravely to meet my fellow internet Anarchitsts.

Yeah…
That didn’t go well.

There were some interesting people in the community, like the guys who wanted to make their own Sea Land.

And there were a bunch of angry Marxist-Stalinist-Maoist who thought everyone who wasn’t in favor of forcefully redistributing wealth along racial lines and sending whites to re-education camps was a counter-revolutionary.

The presence of such people in Anarchist communities genuinely confused me. Didn’t these people know about the Marx-Bakunin split of 1872? Didn’t they understand they were advocating Communism, not Anarchism, and that in practice, these two were direct opposites? I spent a while trying to impress upon them the importance of leaving people alone to run their own lives, but this failed rather spectacularly and I began to seriously hate SJWs.

I eventually decided that there must be something about unusual philosophies that draws crazy people–perhaps folks who are already a little bit off are more willing to consider ideas outside of the mainstream–and while this didn’t necessarily mean that the actual principles of Anarchism itself were bad, it certainly meant that Anarchist communities were full of unhinged people I didn’t want to be around.

Some time later for totally independent reasons I became interested in what scientific research had to say on the effectiveness of parenting strategies on children’s life outcomes, (short answer: not much,) and more relatedly, the neurology underlying people’s political persuasions–why do some people turn out liberal and others conservatives?

That path, of course, eventually led me here.

It was only later that I connected these cranky internet communities to the now rather visible AntiFa who shut down Berkley and have been generally making a ruckus.

No wonder we didn’t get along.

Open Thread: Antifas?

evolutiontheorist open thread , , , , , , , ,

picture-6So.

Antifas have been in the news a bit lately.

What is up with these people? Where did they come from?

While SJWs and progressives are well at home in academia, you don’t see a lot of explicit antifa support in the typical edition of Yale Magazine (though I am sure you can find it if you look hard enough.)

Honestly, I feel like we’re dealing with a completely alien, a-American ideology that has infected America, not through the universities, but some other mechanism.

Way back in the day, I read Satrapi’s Persepolis, and Satrapi (or one of her characters) claimed Bakunin was “the anarchist,” so naturally I read Bakunin, found him insightful, and attempted to find like-minded people online.

Is this real?
Is this real?

Unfortunately, the anarchist communities I found were infested with violent communists who seemed unclear on the principle of not coercing others, so I left. I was pretty busy those days so I didn’t give it too much thought; I figured perhaps weird ideologies just attracted a lot of crazy people.

I understand people who don’t like coercion or just don’t like other people telling them what to do. There are plenty of old-fashioned freedom-loving, libertarian-minded folks in my own family, after all.

This “anti-fascist” business, though, feels entirely alien. After all, how can you be “anti-fascist” in a country that has never had a significant fascist presence? You might as well call yourself anti-malaria.

Maybe there are organized fascist parties in Europe for anti-fascists to attack. I’m not European so I don’t really know, but I hear that dynamic is more of a thing over there. But over here, what boogeyman are they forced to invent to justify their existence? The Republicans?

Quote from someone, somewhere
Quote from someone, somewhere

No matter what your politics, you have to admit that’s some pretty bad linguistic creep.

Anyway, sorry this post is kind of late. Things have been really busy around here lately. (Whoops, looks like Thursday’s post went up before this one!)

 

On to the Comments of the Week:

Here’s BaruchK, disagreeing with me on “The Government is Us”: Brahmin Tic and the Civil War:

>which side you’re on probably has a lot to do with whether or not the government marched in and burned down your great-great-great-grandparents’ farm in 1864

I don’t think so.

Lower and middle class whites in various factory towns in the North and West are generally not huge fans of the government (especially since the government has decided to ethnically cleanse them from their neighborhoods via proxy racial warfare.)

It has more to do with whether you/your friends and loved ones are in a government-affiliated career field or community (the military and law enforcement are somewhat excluded, though the more intellectual parts of the military like the NSA lean left.)…

RTWT

and Chauncey Tinker, offering a positive perspective on Rumor, Outrage, and “Fake News”:

I think this is really a teething problem. The internet is still too new for systems to have evolved. Just a few years ago Wikipedia was really unreliable but it has improved a lot. A teenager managed to insert his name into several pages stating that he was a company executive although he wasn’t. Now its much harder to do this sort of thing.

Its easy to see the negative aspects and miss the positive ones as well. What has become increasingly obvious, thanks to alternative news sites and social media, is how much the current mainstream media that we have relied on for so long often in fact are misleading us by misrepresenting what is really going on. A good example of this was seen in coverage of the migrant crisis in Europe. The migrants were overwhelmingly fit young men, but the MSM chose to publish pictures of the few small children and women who were among them, giving a hugely distorted picture of what was really going on. The MSM’s “politically correct” agenda has been to a degree exposed and undermined by video evidence that circulates on youtube. …

A couple of my posts on related matters:

“A Post-Truth Era? Part 1 – Trump and Brexit”

“Political Correctness Was Always Mad”

Here are a couple more quotes I saved over the weekend:

c24stq_vqaail_n c26fmwmxuaauzti

So guys, how’s it going? What are you thinking about?