Those who have tried to engage with hardcore civic nationalists or evangelical patriots will have experienced a strange phenomenon where they appear to be strangely blind to certain topics. For example, the story about the black seeking out and throwing a white child over a third floor railing at the Mall of America. These super-normies respond to it by blaming communism or democrats. It’s as if the facts cause their code to reboot and they start repeating whatever they saw on Sean Hannity the prior evening.
If you press them on the obvious racial angle, they get flustered and either change the subject or break into a different chant about how America is an idea. It’s an odd thing that suggests these people have some sort of shunt in their consciousness that prevents them from seeing certain aspects of life. It’s not just a matter of self-censorship in order to avoid taboo subjects. Something seems to have been altered in their brains that prevents them from seeing anything that contradicts the colorblind fantasy.
It is an important fact for dissidents to accept. A lifetime of conditioning, perhaps generations of conditioning, have made it impossible for some people to ever look up and see the great divide, much less cross over to this side. Part of it is the normal desire of most humans to belong to the pack. To stand outside the main, with regards to biology, is a dangerous place. It is a form of self-exile. Naturally, most people would not choose it, even if it meant degrading themselves by repeating what they know to be untrue.
For others, the blank slate, egalitarian creed is a religion now. It is what defines them, which is why Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson can have cult-like followings. There’s plenty of evidence that both know what they are telling their followers is false, but it provides them with a lifestyle they believe they deserve. That and the normal confirmation that comes from getting famous and building an audience begins to work its magic on them as well. They are now getting high off their own supply.
Outside of the grifters and hard cases, the inability to break free from the conditioning is something you see all over the legacy Right. Browse through the fashionably intellectual site Quillette and you see the same phenomenon. If you want to get a sense of what it was like for alchemists trying to turn base metals into gold, read some of the people from the intellectual dark web. They are working their fingers raw trying to create an alternative to Progressivism that accepts all of the left-wing assumptions about the human condition.
This post is representative. The writer starts off by analyzing a report from a left-wing outfit calling itself Data and Society. The writer, someone calling xerself Terry Newman, is baffled by the errors, but unable to come to the obvious conclusion that those errors are intentional. In other words, the fact that the Left does not argue in good faith and is willing to lie in order to further an agenda is beyond her event horizon. Read through her post and you keep waiting for her to notice the obvious, but that never happens.
Instead, just as one would expect her to exclaim, “Wait a second. I think these people are lying and doing so deliberately”, she veers off into some weird masturbatory guilt trip about how all sides are guilty of self-delusion. Her own thesis adviser calls her immoral for liking Joe Rogan and she cannot bring herself to return the favor. Instead, she apologizes for him and then spends the rest of the post trying to explain why these otherwise good people keep trying to destroy people like her. Battered women have more self-regard.
This inability to cope with reality shows up throughout the post as she, on the one hand, attempts to defend free expression, but then enthusiastically agrees that people like Richard Spencer are dangerous and should be silenced. Again, this is the bizarre habit of these people of fully embracing the principles of the Left, while trying to achieve non-liberal or conservative ends. She is like an old alchemist driven mad trying to turn lead into gold, not understanding that the rules in which she is working prevent such a thing.
The question, of course, is whether a site like Quillette is just a bunch of people blind to the reality of this life or is it a golden cage designed to keep people from waking up to reality. Mx. Newman gets published and gets the narcotic rush that comes from it, rather than peering out from the bars into the surrounding reality. These sites function as islands, tempting the intellectually curious to come along and partake of the lotus fruit. Rather than confront the harsh seas of reality, they can remain in the stupor of universal equality.
It’s why all successful revolutions offer an alternative to these islands, rather than simply an assault on them. Given the choice between the soothing answers of the lotus eaters and some hair on fire fanatic, most people will choose the former. In a way, the revolutionary is like a drug dealer, showing up with a better product. The choice on offer is not between reality and fantasy, but between an old fantasy that no longer works and new fantasy than has the kick the addict recalls from the beginning.
In L. Ron Hubbard’s “Battlefield Earth” the Psychlos had a fuse built into their brains as babies that caused them to violently short circuit when certain topics were brought up. A lot of “conservatives” are the same way and don’t realize it. These are the people that will list out the worst cities in America and say “see, they are all run by Democrats” while never seeming to realize that places like Vermont and Portland are also run by Democrats and are nowhere near as violent. Democrat leadership is the result, not the cause, of vibrant diversity.
Z,
You’re missing the link to the Newman article you’re referencing.
This is probably it.
https://quillette.com/2019/04/07/in-the-culture-wars-be-a-sancho-panza-not-a-don-quixote/
Fixed!
In paragraph six, shouldn’t “father” be “faith”?
I only point this out as this is such a phenomenonal column that I want to share it.
Beat me to it.
Fixed! Thanks. I should not have wine with breakfast.
Red wine is o.k. and goes well with Cheerios.
Avoid Chardonnais because it may turn you into a Californian.
Quillette occasionally has some good stuff, but your point is well taken. Indeed, the Booby will link to the latest Quillette article below in which the author, in typical academic pussy fashion, can’t quite bring himself to outright condemn the deplatforming of controversial (i.e. conservative or libertarian) speakers. https://quillette.com/2019/04/19/how-to-prevent-campus-deplatformings-lessons-from-harvey-mansfield-and-concordia-university/ It’s truly pathetic. The author is so clearly obsessed with not upsetting the hive that his attempt to criticize the far-left totalitarians in academia ends up sounding like subtle praise. This is why academia is a lost cause today. Even the dissenters are pliant, housebroken twits who are too afraid for… Read more »
Z—you are invoking the 3 muses today…great article…. And amazing clarity. And of course reality is depressing. My experience leads me to believe people are hardwired to reality or not hardwired. “It’s an odd thing that suggests these people have some sort of shunt in their consciousness that prevents them from seeing certain aspects of life. It’s not just a matter of self-censorship in order to avoid taboo subjects. Something seems to have been altered in their brains that prevents them from seeing anything that contradicts the colorblind fantasy.” Absolutely right! Two clear reasons why: 1) Evolutionary Hardwiring. Leads to…..2)… Read more »
Z…..Please consider writing an article on our evolutionary hardwiring disposition for group identity using emotional pain as indicators and motivators to conform (or not) and therefore push us in different tribal directions. I think you get the drift.
Similar circumstances here. Dissidents tend to be outcasts, overloading us with gamma types & grifters. Our numbers are going to be limited and every recruit is suspect. Another question we need to answer in selling our fantasy is do we recruit among outcasts for quantity or quality?
Or do we recruit at all. Caution: The act of recruiting means someone is in charge, and that first layer usually runs bad—ego takes charge, goes to their head and a power grab ensues, then they kill the next layer. This is tough to figure. Go back and re-study the 1917 Commie Revolution and then Castro/Che and that Revolution. Ugly stuff about revolutionists. Does a civil war necessarily end up in a revolution? Should a movement be “organic” whatever that means. Should it snuffle along and follow the promptings. Set up structure as each piece unfolds. I’m not wired to… Read more »
I appreciate hearing your story
Nine Muses, Three Graces, Three Fates.
Two turtle doves and one partridge in a pear tree
Whatever one thinks of Moldbug he fashioned his attacks on Modernism by first getting people to see the crass manipulations of the American Revolution. Something very few people have an emotional attachment to.
Once someone was able to acknowledge that a lifetime, a multi-generational time span, of accepted truths was not so clear cut…he could begin doing the same to the sacred truths of our current day.
Tim Pool was the most baffling inclusion and I’m surprised that did not push her over the edge. He certainly got a good chuckle at being labeled as the portal to the alternative universe of white supremacy.
Breitbart is a great site to see this in action. You don’t even have to go to Fox News. I go to Breitbart to see what the rubes are being spoon fed every so often. The approach is very intentional, keeping their minds within the bright lines of appropriate thought and conversation, with all signs pointing to “leftism” “Democrats’ “Progressives” “Socialists” etc. As has been discussed before on this blog, conservatives are hijacking a liberal outrage machine, but also embracing with it, the same underlying assumptions and worst of all, that we should even be outraged by certain topics, because… Read more »
I am proud to announce that I have been banned from the comments section on Breitbart. And if they ever allow me on there again, they will get a double dose of dissident right reality.
That’s saying something. I’ve posted some hard hitting commentary on the articles there and not been banned yet. Although I’m attacked by a hundred obese people who wear white tube socks (I just know, don’t need to see them) and think people like John Bolton are heroes that are securin’ the homeland.
The problem is as old as the hills, and the cave that Plato found there.
If you cannot break the prisoner’s chains and drag him into the light, then you must seize control of the shadow parade and show him Noble Truths, but darkly.
It’s a neat trick to manage this without losing your own life or soul in the process.
If the prisoner’s chains are unbreakable you can’t show him noble truths, he’s blind to them. All you can do is drag him by his chains to a new cave of your design and he’ll sit just as happily watching whatever shadows you project.
At least that’s how I see every revolution.
“For others, the blank slate, egalitarian creed is a religion now. It is what defines them, which is why Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson can have cult-like followings. ”
Z, I think you’re wrong about Peterson, at least on this point.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iF8F7tjmy_U
You can’t fight a religion with logical, dialectic argument. It takes a competing mythology expressed in rhetoric. As the neocons continue to demonstrate, the American origin story is a powerful mythology. A diaspora of oppressed fanatics sojourns in the wilderness, achieves untold prosperity and defeats the Evil Empire b/c Chosen. Sound (((familiar)))? Europeans have advantages of scale and history to help them develop and express tribal identity. America’s more diverse and (((pasteurized))) White tribes need to reclaim their heritage. (Buchannan’s “Republic Not an Empire” is a good red-pill.) Beyond that, I’m not sure which way to go in presenting our… Read more »
I think Balkanization is the likely outcome. All white people are not the same just because they’re white. As a west coast person I feel pretty alien in other parts of the country, especially in places where you order a chicken salad and the little pieces of chicken are fried, or you order an iced tea and spit it out because some vile person added humming bird food. Or country pop music. Is there anything that awful? As foreign as Bollywood music. Or opening your hotel room door and having a paper with an entire section just on Nascar. I… Read more »
Regarding what happened in Minnesota, my opinion of best strategy to take with the civic nationals is to tie this together with Ilhan Omar, who they hate. Remind them that the only reason this loon is in Congress is that we imported a bunch of unstable Somalis like this perp. Getting the civic nationals to admit the importation of Somalis is a bad idea seems like low hanging fruit. If we can’t even do that…
Most of my family are comprised of CivNats and Evantriots. Theirs is the voice of invincible ignorance. The ones with military service are impossible to reach. And, of course, the biggest challenge is to get them to stop swallowing their usual sources. You can tell when they tire of the discussion…they turn to some sportsball subject. As you might imagine, I’m not popular in my family.
These things can take time; I’m a living example. In my earlier novels four years ago, I talk about Blacks and Whites working together while living apart.
In my most recent this past November, I have the antagonist correctly pointing out that “we’re in this situation, Miss Clarke, because your shitskin mayor and his shitskin special police shelled our women and children!”
Via you, Severian, C. Hartieste, and Gab, and others, I crossed the river. Let’s give the normies a better paradigm.