The "Nazis" Katz describes notes are a small and marginalized group that has as much chance of gaining political power as a Civil War reenactment group has of retaking Dixie. Meanwhile, he's ignoring the clear and present danger in his backyard. Does he honestly think that the people who cheered while "racist" cities burned won't cheer when "Zionist" synagogues and community centers get torched?
Indeed. There were a few mainstream refugees calling for censorship. The Atlantic piece was just one of many.
And I agree. Nazi and similar labels work with some groups because they are easy. Instant emotional response. As you say it is a more complex landscape when blue-haired lesbians are making statements further to the right than "Neo-Nazis." I don't see them complaining about that.
Intentionally or not, they're also mainstreaming Antifa slogans and tactics: call everyone you disagree with a Nazi and silence them by any means necessary.
They have done that so much it is now being ridiculed. They have a very limited toolbox because they typically do not have reasoned positions. So they cannot withstand much scrutiny.
Slogans are a substitute for a considered position. This is typically left hemisphere thinking, where the world is reduced to a simple model to make it easier to understand. Climate is about CO2, for example.
If we are discussing pro-Palestine demonstrators who have found themselves chanting anti-Jewish slogans, then their model is oppressor-victim, in which the Palestinians are the victim. This simple model cannot cope with the complexity of the real situation.
Great arguments in your article, Spaceman. (I was going to call you SS, but that might not be kosher.)
The reason they don't want us talking about "Nazis" is because as soon as people learn about how they have been propagandized about the real villains of WWII, it's game over.
Not that I am holding my breath waiting for that to happen. But you never know. I used to be a complete and total feminist-almost commie-libtard. Now I write stuff on Substack that could see me jailed in several countries around the world.
I'm no Ursula Haverbeck. But I am a great admirer of that indomitable freedom fighter.
Shortly before the cancel crowd showed up after being sacked from their jobs there was a spate of crudely made Substacks which popped up and practically broadcast fake fed from a foghorn. These sites were so idiotic I don't think the Feds knew they were telegraphing how fake they were.
If you didn't know better you'd think the whole thing was coordinated as a false flag.
Manufacture problem, then draw attention to fake problem and then call for global censorship of Substack.
I doubt if those "Nazi" sites have had more than ten hits in their existence and most of those from the cancel culture 'tards.
There are an increasing number with impressive subscriber numbers in the tens of thousands, with maybe a dozen organic comments on articles. They are very obviously fraudulent.
Some of the content on them is hilarious. Nazis around every corner. Misogyny of course, plenty of that being pointed out. And the ever present racism.
I do think our cultural enemies are adept at managing traditional media, but much more inept at newer more decentralized media. I have read that memes often keep them up at night, lol.
I do sense it is all running out of steam though. I also sense everyone moving away from the mainstream, especially the young. So all these well rehearsed moves are having less and less impact.
I did. I read it with great interest. I agree with him. We are microproducers ourselves. And you even see the effect here on Substack. There is an authenticity the mainstream lacks.
I wrote about this in a few of my pieces. Basically, the mainstream reporting a war has some flak-jacketed woman on a balcony ten miles from the front wearing a helmet, breathlessly reporting some scripted bullshit. Meanwhile TikTok already has 50,000 hours of shaky footage from inside buildings while they are being bombed. Then the news channel cuts to adverts, lol. It is a farce. They even have theme music.
I think people yearn for anything real as our world is so fake. That is the great sell for microculture. What it lacks in polish it makes up for in authenticity.
Of all the many things which have made my blood run cold throughout the past four years or so, the relentless drive for censorship of alternative opinion is probably the most concerning. I never imagined it happening in my lifetime and it is a constant reminder to me of my naivety - I must truly have lived a sheltered life.
In a sense we all have. We must look on the bright side. We have learned others have a different perception of life. Some have no conscience and will seek power by any means.
The Eastern Europeans have been warning us of this for a long time due to their experiences with the Soviet Union. They always thought westerners naive.
Now we are less so.
But we should also remember the confident don't want to censor anyone. Only the insecure and weak.
Correct. Western nations have been sleeping while obviously nefarious types have taken hold of all the institutions. Cubans and Venezuelans have decades of experience of what aggressive decline looks like. Corrupt power hungry people masquerading as champions of the people will destroy any nation.
It amused me to watch the Jewish-supremacists who presently march behind their 'Woke' false front, ghost and cancel Latinos when it became clear they were not, like Blacks and (sadly) Native Americans, nearly 100% reliable slaves on the 'Democratic' plantation. The advertising 'woke' capital is bombarding us with is nearly all Blacks, or a Black-on-White mixed family. Latinos have been as completely ghosted as Whites. The J-sups even replaced 'POC' with 'BIPOC' to clearly exclude them. And Asians, but that's another story.
In the UK the same phenomenon is seen with Indians who are largely invisible. The appointed minority is black. Mixed race couples are invariably black man, white woman. Almost no other forms of race mixing. The East Asians are completely absent despite our links with Hong Kong.
Yes, precisely: Western messaging, not just in ads but any format is a massive ad campaign for Black-on-White couples with brown kids. East Asians ghosted, and blatantly discriminated against by elite colleges.
The result, of course, is a lot of White single mothers with halfbreed kids looking for some stable White cuck to pay for them. Good luck with that!
Alas that isn't working out for the single mothers. I'm sure you've seen the memes.
All manipulation of course. And yet, it isn't really working. As propaganda it has failed if their goal was mixing. So it is interesting to see the media's enthusiasm for a fake view of society.
“ The more seasoned reader understands the only way to ensure a lack of bias is ever more speech.” Convoy System required. If Bitcoin got corrupted, Substack will too. I bet each platform gets just so long a run before the Borg borgs it.
That's the real truth of the matter. Success is always sowing the seeds of its own destruction. Half of mankind is pure envy and wants to destroy anything currently working well. They can't help it, it is part of their whole biological strategy.
I agree. Much of our decline is just this impulse. There is no plan except destroy. Destroy now, destroy the past, destroy traditions that have worked well. Like the nuclear family.
I am not sure what the solution is. But I do know the solution is not more government.
Another lovely thing about speech is we can all work together to address issues. I don't have to write this piece, it's not all on my shoulders, I don't have to save everyone.
And besides, you wrote it better than I could anyway!
More speech is always better, even if you find it distasteful. If the mainstream newspapers all committed to supporting comments on all their articles, with minimal moderation, I bet they would all see an uptick in people reading them online. People like to argue.
Alas we live in a safety-first age. Can't have the cattle getting ideas into their heads.
What always grates on me is the inherent patronizing of the censurer. "The hoi polloi are just too stupid to divine the truth for themselves. They must be lead to it. By me!"
And therein lies the insight. It is not that they think they have the answer. They fear you do and they are wrong. So make it go away. This is probably subconscious and emerges as anxiety, an experience some find unbearable.
Yes this could be true. Certainly for the strategists. For the virtue signallers, not so much.
But people with a common cause, like being condemned even for existing, can band together. I do think this drives a lot of the fear at more elite levels.
Yes, I agree. These things must become unthinkable. Even Tucker Carlson occasionally throws this in to his monologues. Fleeting condemnations of ethnostates etc. Plants the seed so the obedients on the Right get the message.
Three out of the six sources Katz cited don’t even charge money, and two don’t even have Nazi content that I can find. As far as I know, Richard Spencer does not have a blog here.
I will check it out. The whole witch hunt is a farce.
It is a form of trolling to win support from their peers. To show they are on message. The owners seem to be sticking to their principle of free speech. So that is something.
The one gave me a good chuckle was the Reich one. It reads like an edgy teen from the late 2000s/early 10s. Even featuring a lack of proper capitalisation and even using all caps. It's also so offensive that no one would ever take it remotely serious.
I also read a note from a guy that apparently lurks in telegrams for several hours a day. Which honestly sounds like a sad existence.
Indeed. They are absolutely determined to find the Nazis. Both of them.
I mean, Nazis. A recent poll found something like 20 percent of Americans had never heard of the holocaust. And it is doubtful they know much about WW2.
I remember years ago they did a poll of teenagers, asking them all sorts of things about 20th century history. One of the questions was who won WW2. Some of the kids answered, Tom Hanks. Not the Allies, or anything even close. But a person who acted in a film. They are probably the Nazis they mean, lol.
It's funny not funny, the ones demanding censorship are also all-in on sterilizing children in the name of therapy, deadly safe and effective jabs and letting millions of military aged men with no history of democracy or law and order across the border to prey on regular Americans.
That's because you just don't understand the grand vision, pleb. And by grand vision I mean the handy fictional model our betters have downloaded into their impressively open minds, all neat and tidy and thoroughly focus grouped to ensure maximum emotional resonance and minimal resistance.
Sterilizing kids is gender-affirming care; the jabs were declared safe and effective by credentialed people and some guy on TV; and those young men have travelled across oceans to bolster our democracy, we are a nation of immigrants, no human is illegal, and all those rapes are just cultural misunderstandings etc etc etc.
We are so far beyond this perspective. We have hate speech codified into law. We have legally protected classes. A man in New Jersey just got eight years in prison for a racial slur and spitting on someone. Eight years. People are serving long prison sentences for protesting the fairness of an election. We have a black president of Harvard whose meagre academic publishing is shallow and rife with plagiarism and Harvard doesn’t care. We have turned HR into reeducation camps, forcing us to declare trannies perfect humans. We stopped fighting for free speech a long time ago. Now you think we can use logic and vote our way out of this?
Yes we can. Logic and even voting have their place. How could they not?
What we have on our side is reality. Real life itself. Take the Harvard president. There is now scrutiny. It is an obvious misstep by the woke people. She was a poor choice to demonstrate their inclusion policies. That is all visible, and becoming more so. We already see major donors at Harvard express concern and withdraw support.
The visibility of these initiatives will be their downfall. That is the point. The draconian legislation being drawn up in Ireland is a case in point. They intend to criminalize any criticism of immigration and related phenomenon. That will only invite even more scrutiny.
But all of it begins with a firm commitment to free speech and conveying its necessity to those on the fence.
Trump’s promise was to build a wall. He had an RNC controlled house and senate. Still, nothing. The RNC has lost on every issue for a long time. Why? their opposition is all a charade, a grift. Now progressives run crooked election and squelch free speech. How are we ever going to drive change. Progressives own HR department and diversity and inclusion functions in most companies. Employees are forced to watch and openly agree with transgenderism and many other progressive projects. Big tech wants to work as a propaganda machine, suppressingy speech.
It is not ours to win, it is theirs to lose. More and more see all this as the farce it is. Their policies, taken to a logical conclusion, result in San Francisco, not utopia.
That is the harsh reality. The people now running the asylum will destroy it as reality always asserts itself. The animus towards free speech just protects their precious ideas for a little longer. It lets the fantasists pretend for a while. But real life is real.
We all know diversity doesn't work. Every business knows this. But we have unwisely allowed liberalism to take hold for 60+ years. I suspect the only thing that will fix it is collapse.
Great article, except, in my opinion, the "whining effeminacy of weaklings" bit at the end. What is feminine about whining? It certainly doesn't fit with the women in my life, believe you me.
I think "whining sycophancy of weaklings" is a better turn of phrase myself.
> Terms like Neo-Nazi are not intended as accurate labels. They are used to halt debate and encourage an immediate, emotional judgement.
Right on. My favorite is “far right.” The other day Bloomberg ran a story about the co-head of Germany’s AfD party, Alice Weidel. The piece is titled “The Many Faces of the Woman Taking German Far-Right Politics Mainstream”
She is lesbian, favors skills-based immigration (like in Canada), and views Margaret Thatcher as her economic role model.
It works in their own echo chambers. Like calling someone a pedophile, it has immediate emotional resonance. Their own identity is about being perceived as good and decent but above all superior.
AfD are a good example of the disconnect. They look at Germany, particularly in the working class East, and see low skilled illiterates on the dole with six kids. They conclude this is absurd and dangerous. So does everyone else. Pure exploitation.
That common sense view is shared by over 90 percent of the world's population. Few countries allow mass immigration even of skilled immigrants.
So yes, common sense is now far right. The jokes write themselves.
Reality exists. And it is going to assert itself. You can't sloganize your way out of consequences, and the kind of lightweight nonentities who peddle Current Things are usually the least able to cope with real life.
Also funny how calling for censorship actually has the opposite effect by increasing the reach the censored ones gain.
Also it is a self proving act. Shouting for censorship without actual case will face its opposition from people that don't like such actions. Once they emerge they have the actual group they can point at. You, me...
Indeed. But I suspect such subtleties are lost on them. They are really aiming it at their own echo chambers. They are harvesting brownie points among their peers. That's the game. Look how decent I am. I am stalking the racists etc.
It is infantile. Ignore them or challenge them. Those are the healthy options.
Exactly In Germany where “hate speech” is banned the far right (but now somewhat moderate) are not only surging but expected to form part of the government next election if not win outright.
The "Nazis" Katz describes notes are a small and marginalized group that has as much chance of gaining political power as a Civil War reenactment group has of retaking Dixie. Meanwhile, he's ignoring the clear and present danger in his backyard. Does he honestly think that the people who cheered while "racist" cities burned won't cheer when "Zionist" synagogues and community centers get torched?
Indeed. There were a few mainstream refugees calling for censorship. The Atlantic piece was just one of many.
And I agree. Nazi and similar labels work with some groups because they are easy. Instant emotional response. As you say it is a more complex landscape when blue-haired lesbians are making statements further to the right than "Neo-Nazis." I don't see them complaining about that.
Intentionally or not, they're also mainstreaming Antifa slogans and tactics: call everyone you disagree with a Nazi and silence them by any means necessary.
They have done that so much it is now being ridiculed. They have a very limited toolbox because they typically do not have reasoned positions. So they cannot withstand much scrutiny.
Slogans are a substitute for a considered position. This is typically left hemisphere thinking, where the world is reduced to a simple model to make it easier to understand. Climate is about CO2, for example.
If we are discussing pro-Palestine demonstrators who have found themselves chanting anti-Jewish slogans, then their model is oppressor-victim, in which the Palestinians are the victim. This simple model cannot cope with the complexity of the real situation.
"Nazi" are the Skittles of evil.
Hollywood has done its bit to give us a handy go-to villain. They even wore distinctive uniforms. Amazing how that works.
Great arguments in your article, Spaceman. (I was going to call you SS, but that might not be kosher.)
The reason they don't want us talking about "Nazis" is because as soon as people learn about how they have been propagandized about the real villains of WWII, it's game over.
Not that I am holding my breath waiting for that to happen. But you never know. I used to be a complete and total feminist-almost commie-libtard. Now I write stuff on Substack that could see me jailed in several countries around the world.
I'm no Ursula Haverbeck. But I am a great admirer of that indomitable freedom fighter.
I suspect they'll use my SS initials in my show trial, which you are cordially invited to attend 😜
And thank you for your kind words. I must now subscribe to you and reread what I wrote here.
Shortly before the cancel crowd showed up after being sacked from their jobs there was a spate of crudely made Substacks which popped up and practically broadcast fake fed from a foghorn. These sites were so idiotic I don't think the Feds knew they were telegraphing how fake they were.
If you didn't know better you'd think the whole thing was coordinated as a false flag.
Manufacture problem, then draw attention to fake problem and then call for global censorship of Substack.
I doubt if those "Nazi" sites have had more than ten hits in their existence and most of those from the cancel culture 'tards.
There are an increasing number with impressive subscriber numbers in the tens of thousands, with maybe a dozen organic comments on articles. They are very obviously fraudulent.
Some of the content on them is hilarious. Nazis around every corner. Misogyny of course, plenty of that being pointed out. And the ever present racism.
I do think our cultural enemies are adept at managing traditional media, but much more inept at newer more decentralized media. I have read that memes often keep them up at night, lol.
Katz's article came out right before Taibbi and Shellenberger testified before another Congressional inquisition.
Imagine that. How strange!
Indeed. What a coincidence.
I do sense it is all running out of steam though. I also sense everyone moving away from the mainstream, especially the young. So all these well rehearsed moves are having less and less impact.
Did you see Ted Gioria's article about the war between macro and micro culture?
That's a big part of what's driving this, and free speech is a foundation of micro culture.
I did. I read it with great interest. I agree with him. We are microproducers ourselves. And you even see the effect here on Substack. There is an authenticity the mainstream lacks.
I wrote about this in a few of my pieces. Basically, the mainstream reporting a war has some flak-jacketed woman on a balcony ten miles from the front wearing a helmet, breathlessly reporting some scripted bullshit. Meanwhile TikTok already has 50,000 hours of shaky footage from inside buildings while they are being bombed. Then the news channel cuts to adverts, lol. It is a farce. They even have theme music.
I think people yearn for anything real as our world is so fake. That is the great sell for microculture. What it lacks in polish it makes up for in authenticity.
Of all the many things which have made my blood run cold throughout the past four years or so, the relentless drive for censorship of alternative opinion is probably the most concerning. I never imagined it happening in my lifetime and it is a constant reminder to me of my naivety - I must truly have lived a sheltered life.
In a sense we all have. We must look on the bright side. We have learned others have a different perception of life. Some have no conscience and will seek power by any means.
The Eastern Europeans have been warning us of this for a long time due to their experiences with the Soviet Union. They always thought westerners naive.
Now we are less so.
But we should also remember the confident don't want to censor anyone. Only the insecure and weak.
A lot of Latinos, especially Cubans and Venezuelans, have been raising alarms as well.
Correct. Western nations have been sleeping while obviously nefarious types have taken hold of all the institutions. Cubans and Venezuelans have decades of experience of what aggressive decline looks like. Corrupt power hungry people masquerading as champions of the people will destroy any nation.
It amused me to watch the Jewish-supremacists who presently march behind their 'Woke' false front, ghost and cancel Latinos when it became clear they were not, like Blacks and (sadly) Native Americans, nearly 100% reliable slaves on the 'Democratic' plantation. The advertising 'woke' capital is bombarding us with is nearly all Blacks, or a Black-on-White mixed family. Latinos have been as completely ghosted as Whites. The J-sups even replaced 'POC' with 'BIPOC' to clearly exclude them. And Asians, but that's another story.
In the UK the same phenomenon is seen with Indians who are largely invisible. The appointed minority is black. Mixed race couples are invariably black man, white woman. Almost no other forms of race mixing. The East Asians are completely absent despite our links with Hong Kong.
Yes, precisely: Western messaging, not just in ads but any format is a massive ad campaign for Black-on-White couples with brown kids. East Asians ghosted, and blatantly discriminated against by elite colleges.
The result, of course, is a lot of White single mothers with halfbreed kids looking for some stable White cuck to pay for them. Good luck with that!
Alas that isn't working out for the single mothers. I'm sure you've seen the memes.
All manipulation of course. And yet, it isn't really working. As propaganda it has failed if their goal was mixing. So it is interesting to see the media's enthusiasm for a fake view of society.
And never forget or forgive, always remember to ask: who did this to us, and what can we do about it?
It's amusing how many of the people going on about 'White Supremacism' are Jewish Supremacists.
“ The more seasoned reader understands the only way to ensure a lack of bias is ever more speech.” Convoy System required. If Bitcoin got corrupted, Substack will too. I bet each platform gets just so long a run before the Borg borgs it.
Success attracts scrutiny. If it happens often enough someone is bound to create a decentralized version.
The whole thing is an arms race. Substack is fine for now, although I doubt it will last. Too much cash can be brought to bear.
That's the real truth of the matter. Success is always sowing the seeds of its own destruction. Half of mankind is pure envy and wants to destroy anything currently working well. They can't help it, it is part of their whole biological strategy.
I agree. Much of our decline is just this impulse. There is no plan except destroy. Destroy now, destroy the past, destroy traditions that have worked well. Like the nuclear family.
I am not sure what the solution is. But I do know the solution is not more government.
Excellent work, sir.
Another lovely thing about speech is we can all work together to address issues. I don't have to write this piece, it's not all on my shoulders, I don't have to save everyone.
And besides, you wrote it better than I could anyway!
More speech is always better, even if you find it distasteful. If the mainstream newspapers all committed to supporting comments on all their articles, with minimal moderation, I bet they would all see an uptick in people reading them online. People like to argue.
Alas we live in a safety-first age. Can't have the cattle getting ideas into their heads.
Glad you liked it. Thanks for reading.
What always grates on me is the inherent patronizing of the censurer. "The hoi polloi are just too stupid to divine the truth for themselves. They must be lead to it. By me!"
And therein lies the insight. It is not that they think they have the answer. They fear you do and they are wrong. So make it go away. This is probably subconscious and emerges as anxiety, an experience some find unbearable.
'it is the would-be censors who need to explain their vice of control. Most of their arguments can be reduced to distaste.'
I think another reason is to avoid keep contrary-minded people from coalescing into groups. Think Arab Spring.
Yes this could be true. Certainly for the strategists. For the virtue signallers, not so much.
But people with a common cause, like being condemned even for existing, can band together. I do think this drives a lot of the fear at more elite levels.
'Certainly for the strategists. For the virtue signallers, not so much.' Yes! For example, CIA is the former, SJ Terp and plebs the latter.
Yes, I agree. These things must become unthinkable. Even Tucker Carlson occasionally throws this in to his monologues. Fleeting condemnations of ethnostates etc. Plants the seed so the obedients on the Right get the message.
Thanks for this. I wrote my own take. Link below.
Three out of the six sources Katz cited don’t even charge money, and two don’t even have Nazi content that I can find. As far as I know, Richard Spencer does not have a blog here.
https://open.substack.com/pub/zerograv/p/the-atlantic-has-a-fallacy-problem?r=lqhl5&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
I will check it out. The whole witch hunt is a farce.
It is a form of trolling to win support from their peers. To show they are on message. The owners seem to be sticking to their principle of free speech. So that is something.
They’ve been anchored down and silent, which is exactly what they should be doing.
I agree. Storm in a teacup. They will soon move on.
The one gave me a good chuckle was the Reich one. It reads like an edgy teen from the late 2000s/early 10s. Even featuring a lack of proper capitalisation and even using all caps. It's also so offensive that no one would ever take it remotely serious.
I also read a note from a guy that apparently lurks in telegrams for several hours a day. Which honestly sounds like a sad existence.
Indeed. They are absolutely determined to find the Nazis. Both of them.
I mean, Nazis. A recent poll found something like 20 percent of Americans had never heard of the holocaust. And it is doubtful they know much about WW2.
I remember years ago they did a poll of teenagers, asking them all sorts of things about 20th century history. One of the questions was who won WW2. Some of the kids answered, Tom Hanks. Not the Allies, or anything even close. But a person who acted in a film. They are probably the Nazis they mean, lol.
It's funny not funny, the ones demanding censorship are also all-in on sterilizing children in the name of therapy, deadly safe and effective jabs and letting millions of military aged men with no history of democracy or law and order across the border to prey on regular Americans.
That's because you just don't understand the grand vision, pleb. And by grand vision I mean the handy fictional model our betters have downloaded into their impressively open minds, all neat and tidy and thoroughly focus grouped to ensure maximum emotional resonance and minimal resistance.
Sterilizing kids is gender-affirming care; the jabs were declared safe and effective by credentialed people and some guy on TV; and those young men have travelled across oceans to bolster our democracy, we are a nation of immigrants, no human is illegal, and all those rapes are just cultural misunderstandings etc etc etc.
Pleb understand. Me try better.
We are so far beyond this perspective. We have hate speech codified into law. We have legally protected classes. A man in New Jersey just got eight years in prison for a racial slur and spitting on someone. Eight years. People are serving long prison sentences for protesting the fairness of an election. We have a black president of Harvard whose meagre academic publishing is shallow and rife with plagiarism and Harvard doesn’t care. We have turned HR into reeducation camps, forcing us to declare trannies perfect humans. We stopped fighting for free speech a long time ago. Now you think we can use logic and vote our way out of this?
Yes we can. Logic and even voting have their place. How could they not?
What we have on our side is reality. Real life itself. Take the Harvard president. There is now scrutiny. It is an obvious misstep by the woke people. She was a poor choice to demonstrate their inclusion policies. That is all visible, and becoming more so. We already see major donors at Harvard express concern and withdraw support.
The visibility of these initiatives will be their downfall. That is the point. The draconian legislation being drawn up in Ireland is a case in point. They intend to criminalize any criticism of immigration and related phenomenon. That will only invite even more scrutiny.
But all of it begins with a firm commitment to free speech and conveying its necessity to those on the fence.
Trump’s promise was to build a wall. He had an RNC controlled house and senate. Still, nothing. The RNC has lost on every issue for a long time. Why? their opposition is all a charade, a grift. Now progressives run crooked election and squelch free speech. How are we ever going to drive change. Progressives own HR department and diversity and inclusion functions in most companies. Employees are forced to watch and openly agree with transgenderism and many other progressive projects. Big tech wants to work as a propaganda machine, suppressingy speech.
It is not ours to win, it is theirs to lose. More and more see all this as the farce it is. Their policies, taken to a logical conclusion, result in San Francisco, not utopia.
That is the harsh reality. The people now running the asylum will destroy it as reality always asserts itself. The animus towards free speech just protects their precious ideas for a little longer. It lets the fantasists pretend for a while. But real life is real.
We all know diversity doesn't work. Every business knows this. But we have unwisely allowed liberalism to take hold for 60+ years. I suspect the only thing that will fix it is collapse.
But I still want to speak freely.
I agree a collapse is likely. I agree with free speech.
Great article, except, in my opinion, the "whining effeminacy of weaklings" bit at the end. What is feminine about whining? It certainly doesn't fit with the women in my life, believe you me.
I think "whining sycophancy of weaklings" is a better turn of phrase myself.
Effeminacy is not femininity. It is a lack of strength where we expect it. It is mildly insulting of course. But I take your point.
Just started reading. "To compliment this Atlantic magazine recently published a piece...'
That should be "complement".
Well spotted!
I don't *spot* these things. They leap out and attack me 😬
The curse of having been a copy editor.
I usually spot them, but it is more difficult with your own writing.
> Terms like Neo-Nazi are not intended as accurate labels. They are used to halt debate and encourage an immediate, emotional judgement.
Right on. My favorite is “far right.” The other day Bloomberg ran a story about the co-head of Germany’s AfD party, Alice Weidel. The piece is titled “The Many Faces of the Woman Taking German Far-Right Politics Mainstream”
She is lesbian, favors skills-based immigration (like in Canada), and views Margaret Thatcher as her economic role model.
“Far right” has lost all meaning.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-12-09/will-afd-s-alice-weidel-be-germany-s-first-far-right-leader-since-nazi-era
It works in their own echo chambers. Like calling someone a pedophile, it has immediate emotional resonance. Their own identity is about being perceived as good and decent but above all superior.
AfD are a good example of the disconnect. They look at Germany, particularly in the working class East, and see low skilled illiterates on the dole with six kids. They conclude this is absurd and dangerous. So does everyone else. Pure exploitation.
That common sense view is shared by over 90 percent of the world's population. Few countries allow mass immigration even of skilled immigrants.
So yes, common sense is now far right. The jokes write themselves.
“Common sense is now far right.” That’s a nice summary of the current absurdity.
Reality exists. And it is going to assert itself. You can't sloganize your way out of consequences, and the kind of lightweight nonentities who peddle Current Things are usually the least able to cope with real life.
Also funny how calling for censorship actually has the opposite effect by increasing the reach the censored ones gain.
Also it is a self proving act. Shouting for censorship without actual case will face its opposition from people that don't like such actions. Once they emerge they have the actual group they can point at. You, me...
Indeed. But I suspect such subtleties are lost on them. They are really aiming it at their own echo chambers. They are harvesting brownie points among their peers. That's the game. Look how decent I am. I am stalking the racists etc.
It is infantile. Ignore them or challenge them. Those are the healthy options.
Exactly In Germany where “hate speech” is banned the far right (but now somewhat moderate) are not only surging but expected to form part of the government next election if not win outright.
There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.