This piece documenting how the oligarch class funds vast networks of NGOs to coordinate progressive messaging, fabricate "data" and "science," and launder it through official channels is one of the most disturbing things I've read in a long time
This piece falls squarely into the category of "things you sort of already understood were happening but seeing it laid bare is like falling into a nightmare"
While 20th century democracy was hardly what you would call "organic," the 21st century model has been entirely captured by a tiny class of elites who carefully manufacture issues, moments, and crises while pretending this process is entirely "grassroots" and "people-driven"
"But these are just some stupid radicals, they don't matter lol"
Yeah—radicals run by the people who run the country. And spent all of 2020 nakedly doing so under the guise of "organic democratic movements"
One of Moldbug's key insights was that progs are in love with the GOP because it represents a form of liberalism that progressivism has already defeated
This prog doesn't hate free markets. She loves them, this is a tweet in favor of them. Why? Because they serve progressivism
If this sounds crazy, think what absolute free trade *means*. It means sending millions of manufacturing jobs to Mexico, or ideally China, because it's cheaper
I.e. it means globalism. And what is globalism but the erasure of distinct nations? Is that a *conservative* project?
Globalization means centralization, which means erasing all local cultural norms and replacing them with the values of the hegemon
Which is crazy, because if true it'd result in things like Gab/Parler being shut out by the hegemon—or the US President getting banned from the web
If you were persuaded or reasoned from normiedom into the dissident right, it's easy to lose track of that process, and then assault those in the middle for their lameness
But never lose sight that you *were* talked into it: and it took more milquetoast types to get you there
Consider also that the "pipeline" is constantly fracturing: either breaking back toward the establishment (or with "Breadtube) even full leftism), or toward our ranks instead, as they either go deeper, or retreat towards the more comfortable position
In the current age, the center is the least stable point (what even is the "center" now, when everything is realigning?), because this is an age of extremes, and so people walk up to the brink, and then fracture towards the extremes—usually, but not always, to our side
Learning that John Gardner's GRENDEL is a vicious takedown of Sartre makes me understand why I loved it even as a young prog, and already makes even the second page of my reread an order of magnitude funnier than when I first took it in
That's the greatest part of it as art—it's written so that by the end, you *do* pity Grendel. But you also believe the world is made a better place when
~SPOILER ALERT~
Beowulf rips his limbs off and leaves him for dead
This is very similar, dramatically, to how Tolkien treats Gollum
But in Tolkien's realm, where Christianity is still in charge, Gollum is also *physically* weak—an object of pity, but overpowered by mere hobbits, once they understand what they're up against
The entire BLM movement is based on lies. But since it's backed by elite institutions who have no interest in actual truth—and who actively brainwash people to support their power in defiance of the truth—"voting" is exposed as a means of laundering power through "public opinion"
Good lord, he really is gonna get fired and have to start his own Joe Rogan thing, isn't he. What he's saying is indistinguishable from a dissident right groupchat whose opinions would get every single participant unpersoned.
Is there anything more revealing than the corpse of Jon Stewart getting trotted out every two years to push some ossified irrelevancy while Ol' Bowtie emerges as a political tour de force
"Clown nose on, clown nose off" was the most devastating own of the 21st century
Since the core tenet of the progressive faith is that all people are equal, resources like "education" are canonized as the only reason for inequality.
But if people privately spent the exact same quantity of resources on direct education, it would be recast as "privilege"
Belief in perfect equality means that creating it is a moral imperative. Infinite resources must be spent to achieve it
Since equality is curiously slow in arriving, more and more resources are spent creating the elitely educated administrative class capable of building utopia
Since this class is at the core of the progressive faith, it is intrinsically high-status. That means that huge numbers of people will fight to become part of it.
As it populates more and more of the elites and the bureaucratic middle class...