Zacked¶
Whilst it’s undoubtedly flattering to be the target of a brutal, lazy, and dishonest hit piece, it’s also vaguely irritating. Couldn’t Kuznicki have stoked the hate sufficiently with the rejection of democracy, HBD sympathies, anti-egalitarianism, market-fundamentalism, disintegrationism, and Shoggoth-whispering, without also making up a bunch of stuff?
Anyway, just for the record:
* I’m not a proponent of “white nationalistic race ‘realism’.”
* I nowhere make the “case that white nationalism and market
liberalism somehow belong together.”
* I have never made a “case against markets” of any kind, let alone
that they “stand behind democracy with a tyrannical, unpredictable
veto” [whatever than means]
* I have never advocated for “racial purity”
There’s no doubt a number of people who turn up here who wish that I did make some of these arguments, and by distancing myself from them I’m not wanting to endorse Kuznicki’s suggestion that they’re mere slurs.
As far as Kuznicki’s own substantial points are concerned — defense of dialectics, voice, meliorative politics — I’m not really interested enough to engage.
This sort of situation tends to stress objectivity, so I won’t pretend to perfect balance on the subject. There seem to be lessons, though, of a quite general nature.
To begin with, the problem of ‘engagement’ with the media is a real one, which can only get more pressing in strict proportion to ‘success’. They have to come after Mencius Moldbug at some point, insofar as anything interesting is brewing up, so there will probably be further test runs against secondary targets. The whole target selection question is potentially interesting, but I’ve no special insight to share on that topic at this point.
Clearly I’ve lucked out in this case. China doesn’t seem Cathedral-compliant (as Stirner points out in the excellent comments thread), so direct social pressure is seriously dulled. Kuznicki is neither the sharpest knife in the drawer, nor a pitbull, so weakness has been the ‘dominant’ impression. The site he posts from, despite its Magazine-style format, is quite incredibly marginal — the traffic from this little blog to his has been running at two-to-three times the reverse (which I would never have imagined — they have ten contributors listed there). Umlaut also allows comments, which has been a comprehensive fiasco for them this time (check it out). All the visitors have been ripping into Kuznicki, and using the up/down vote system to quantify the point. I’m biased, but I’ve found it utterly hilarious. It’s worth noting, however, that the left media machine has been stripping out its comment threads, which makes them far more effective as no-comeback attack machines. Finally, Twitter has been an extraordinary resource. It’s an absolutely critical component of our capability to defend ourselves.
Drawing all this together: We have to learn, prepare, and anticipate. The fights coming up are worth getting right. Any fatalistic depression about the might of our enemies is both self-fulfilling defeatism and to a considerable extent simply false. There’s no reason to think that the ‘destiny’ of media is under their control, or even that its trends are generally favorable to them. Practice is our friend. This stuff is going to matter more and more. Luck won’t always run so obviously one way.
ADDED: Handle explores the limits of civility and reason.
ADDED: Nerves? Not to mention this, and this.
ADDED: Jason Kuznicki is magnanimous enough to write this. It’s appreciated.