Interview is debatable. I’ve watched the first twenty minutes of the hour plus show so far and it is very entertaining. I don’t know how much longer it’ll be up on YouTube so take a look soon if you’re interested.
Tag: Mencius Moldbug
Curtis Yarvin Talks About Regime Change and How it Can be Done
I’m a non-paying reader of Curtis Yarvin’s substack page Gray Mirror. His latest article was a response to a journalist named Damon Linker at the The Week becoming upset at the content of a discussion between Yarvin and Michael Anton in an American Mind podcast. Apparently, the idea of these two men discussing the idea of a monarchical government for the United States is so beyond the pale that Mr. Linker started getting the vapors. Meanwhile, roving mobs of masked thugs burning down police stations and private businesses is just good old democratic horse trading to him I suppose.
Yarvin uses Linker’s outrage as a jumping off point to go into his hypotheses about what will and won’t work at reforming American government.
I’ll paraphrase these:
- The only choices with respect to the present regime are leave it alone or replace it completely.
- To replace the present regime we will have to elect a president and allow him to assume absolute power.
- The process of making this change can be completely non-violent.
- That the actions embodied in these hypotheses are just as practical as any other reform program being contemplated.
I recommend reading Yarvin’s essay. It is worth thinking about. The present oligarchic regime is extremely powerful and has figured out all the angles for rigging our elections and even ignoring the leaders we do manage to get elected. Yarvin may be right about the need for a total reset. The part about it being violence free is the thing I have my doubts about. Read it for yourself and tell me what you think.
Thoughts About the Conversation Between Michael Anton and Curtis Yarvin
Recently I watched a discussion on the Jack Murphy Live show that featured Michael Anton and Curtis Yarvin. If you are unfamiliar with either one of them, I’ll say a few words about them.
Michael Anton was a former senior national security official in the Trump administration but is best known for writing the “The Flight 93 Election” back in March 2016 under the pseudonym Publius Decius Mus. He received graduate education at Claremont Graduate University where he learned from faculty that followed in the tradition of noted academic Leo Strauss. Anton is a social conservative and a pretty pessimistic critic of the current state of American politics. With the failure of the 2020 election Anton does not believe the Republicans will ever win the presidency again.
Curtis Yarvin is a computer scientist who also has become known for his political beliefs which some have called “neo-reactionary.” Yarvin believes that government should be almost like the management of a publicly owned corporation with the CEO taking the place of the “king” and the citizens as stockholders. He also had a pseudonym under which he wrote his thoughts, Mencius Moldbug. Yarvin is extremely unenthusiastic about democracy in general and doesn’t hold out much hope for the American form at this point in its evolution.
Anton and Yarvin are both very smart guys. They’re both academics in a sense. Both of them would be part of the elite if they happened to follow left-wing ideologies. Because of what they do believe they are pariahs in our present political climate. I think listening to them in the discussion both of them are extremely pessimistic about the United States escaping from the control of the progressive corporate, bureaucratic, academic complex.
So why listen to these guys talk? Well, that’s a good question. Neither of them has an action plan to reverse the damage and move things back to a normal country. There isn’t a website where I can join the underground and fight for the day when we take back the country. I think I read them so I can feel like I shouldn’t just give up. As long as I know that there are other intelligent people who don’t accept the idea that there is no use resisting the woke state, I feel like I can figure out a way to hold onto the good things that used to be the basis of our way of life.
I can think of one line that Yarvin made pretty close to the end of the video. When asked what he thought people should do he said no one should try to use force to stand up to the feds alone. That would be suicide and it would accomplish the opposite of what you intended. That would be sort of what happened on January 6th. The government would destroy you and use it as a propaganda argument for destroying everyone else they didn’t like. Instead, he said we need to say no!
In other words, we have to figure out a way to reject their program. We need to build up organizations, businesses, groups that don’t depend on their approval. There’s nothing new about that message. That’s the old “build your own platforms” line. But what he is saying is that it’s the only way. And we need everyone on our side, all 70 or 100 million of us to form a single organization to say no to what is going on. And that’s the only encouragement I take from all this. If two guys like Anton and Yarvin sort of agree about where we are and what we must do then basically the whole gamut of people who aren’t leftists agree. We have to stop trying to do everything at once and take concrete steps one at a time. First order of business, we pool our resources and identify one important thing we can get done and do it. Maybe we decide that the most important possible thing is crushing Amazon. And maybe we buy the votes of Democrat senators and congressmen to make it happen. But we move heaven and earth and we get it done. That alone would be an enormous shot in the arm for our country. Suddenly a million small stores all over the country would find business that had been strangled out of existence by Jeff Bezos.
But whatever it is we decide to do; rein in the social media companies or re-establish freedom of religion or outlaw child transgender mutilation; we need to win a battle and win it decisively. Donald Trump and Peter Thiel are renegade members of the elite. They are the ones with the resources to organize new platforms. Anton and Yarvin are members of the intellectual class who would disseminate the ideas and help implement the actions we want to see happen. We are to some extent their customers.
We want to hear more and soon about any real plan to get something new started. Anyone who has the ambition to lead a movement has a once in a lifetime opportunity right now. We’re ready to be led. There is a nation looking for a savior. We could make this a great country again. If that doesn’t happen soon then we need to leave.
Michael Anton and Curtis Yarvin Talk About America
Michael Anton and Curtis Yarvin are sort of the polar opposites of the intellectual world that opposes the Woke establishment. If you are interested in what the intellectuals think about our current mess these two men will sort of cover the territory and listening to them disagree about what it means and where it is going might clarify your own thinking. But if you don’t like that sort of thing don’t touch it. I think it’s about two hours long and I’ve only gotten through the first thirty minutes.
My sentiments are with Anton’s point of view. But Yarvin’s cynicism and pessimism is something that I hesitate to ignore. I read his substack and it by turns, angers, depresses and sometimes makes me think. Yarvin is a renegade elitist. But he is at least honest about it. But so is Anton in the sense that he is an academic and a government apparatchik. But Anton’s sympathies are with us. Yarvin doesn’t really have any sympathies. Mostly he is full of scorn. I’m going to watch the whole thing and then I might write a post about it.
My Take on Yarvin’s Essay “The Deep State vs The Deep Right”
Last night I clicked on the American Mind website and saw that Curtis Yarvin (aka Mencius Moldbug) had a new post up. The title was “The Deep State vs The Deep Right.” I find Yarvin’s ideas interesting but at the same time in some ways obscure. In this new essay he states that the only way to overthrow a regime you live under is to undermine its authority with a more attractive idea. He puts this in terms of aesthetics. His case in point is the Czar. According to Yarvin the Russians overthrew their government by first convincing everyone including the Czar that they needed to adopt the British outlook on life. And since socialism was the religion of the British elites at that time what better way to emulate them than by taking their ideal and turning it up to eleven via Marx’s writings. Yarvin’s point is that art (in this case the 19th century Russian novelists) had prepared the Russians for the replacement of the monarchy long before the Bolsheviks came on the scene.
Yarvin’s idea is that what is needed to overthrow the current neo-liberal order is an aesthetic to replace the aesthetic our current elites espouse. This is the confusing part. When he talks of aesthetics and art he’s talking about books and music and movies. You are probably asking yourself how does this get Nancy Pelosi off of the Speaker’s podium? And that’s a fair question. As much as I’d love to write the ultimate science fiction novel that shifts the balance of power from the Left to us, I don’t see how that happens. Yarvin points to Bronze Age Mindset as a sort of first attempt at moving the aesthetic in our direction. And maybe it is. Apparently, it was very popular with younger men and showed there is a market for dissident ideas out in the real world.
Okay, so why should I care about any of this? Well, because I kinda know what he’s saying. The people who want to tell us what to do, say and think aren’t going to believe us when we say their ideas are wrong. They think that what we believe and who we are is stupid. They are convinced that what they believe and who they are is smart. We are going to have to make our case in the court of public opinion. We are going to have to show them that our ideas are better and stronger than theirs.
From the point of reason, it shouldn’t be too hard to convince people that things like screwing up the hormones of an eight-year-old boy and then castrating him is not sane. But remember, we don’t have the microphone so we don’t get to tell the story on tv. We’ll have to work on back channels like blogs and self-published books and podcasts.
But of course, that isn’t enough. What I’m hearing from Yarvin is we’ll need to convince and recruit the intelligentsia in order to get the microphone we want and need. That’s a pretty tall order but I think Yarvin’s got something there. We have to get people who speak their language, academics and artists to make the case that our world view is sane and theirs is crazy. Specifically, we’ll need some medical doctors and psychiatrists and ethicists to expose the nightmare logic at work. We’ll need documentary and dramatic filmmakers to sway public opinion. But first we’ll need judges and lawyers and cops and even politicians to have the courage to confront these lunatics who defend these practices and hold them accountable.
So, there’s the pipe dream we need to dream. We have to turn the world upside down, or right side up if you look at it from our point of view. And the first step is to identify the weakest points of the current system and attack them. And to attack them we have to show the world what we would put in its place. I would say that the beginning of such an enterprise requires a lawfare approach. We’ll need a Circuit Court with jurisdiction over a blue state that has adopted the most flagrantly perverse law and have a lawyer challenge that behavior at the Circuit Court level and have it struck down. That would trigger a storm that would catch the attention of national press and allow public opinion to hear our side of the story from the judges and the plaintiffs. After the dust settles it will make a good book, an interesting documentary and maybe even a decent movie although we probably wouldn’t be able to get any A-listers involved. But it’ll be a good start.
This idea highlights why it is such an important thing to have President Trump appointing judges to the Circuit and supreme Court in the numbers he is doing. He is close to flipping the Ninth Circuit and that court rules over California and the rest of the Left Coast. That is a place where a lot of wonderful damage can be done. I think I see what Yarvin is talking about.
Now what do you think? If you agree or sort of agree or even strenuously disagree, I’d like to hear from you. This site is to allow me to have my say but also to here what everybody else thinks. Leave a comment in the section below and get to have your two cents.
Mencius Moldbug Has a New Essay on American Mind
Here Mencius is continuing on his theme that the only way to overthrow the current order is to change the aesthetic we live by. And the only way to change the aesthetic is to live the one you believe in and prove that it is stronger. Always thought provoking. See what you think.
Link to Part Two of Curtis Yarvin’s “The Clear Pill”
Without a doubt Yarvin must have a dizzying intellect. Reading his narrative is like taking a graduate course in sociology from Einstein. I feel like I’ll need to read it three more times to make sure I followed all his points. Basically he’s explaining why Progressives believe the nonsense they believe. He used climate science as an example and it is interesting. Support for the Progressive worldview allows Leftists to feel good about themselves by believing that the warming narrative makes sense. It’s a dense read but if you liked Part 1, you’ll have to continue down the rabbit hole..
Bronze Age Mindset – A Book Review
When Bronze Age Mindset (BAM) came out last year I heard a little bit about it at various sites. When Michael Anton reviewed the book back in August I became interested and decided to read it. When the author (Bronze Age Pervert or BAP for short) published a response to Anton in October I reminded myself to buy it. Now I’ve read it and I am trying to get my opinion into some kind of an orderly form. But unfortunately, BAM isn’t that kind of a work. It’s a mixture of philosophical treatise, civilizational diatribe, atavistic lament and fraternal advice. One thing is for sure. BAP wants this world to melt down hard enough so that he can securely raise the black flag and start slitting throats.
As has been noted previously by Anton, BAP is in at least part agreement with Nietzsche. BAP reviles our age for its complete lack of heroic opportunities. He believes that for at least a portion of modern men life in a modern democratic state is a death sentence. A large part of the first part of the book describes his comparison of modern life to the life of the warriors of Bronze Age Greece as embodied in the Homeric works and the military dictatorship in Sparta. Along the way he expends enormous vitriol decrying the modern world and its feminists, neutered males (bugmen), endless bureaucracy, politically correct institutions, slave-driving lifestyles and the generic ugliness of modern life. He despises democracy as a false equivalency. He believes in the superiority of the alpha male and his right to rule over the rest of society.
BAP writes this diatribe in a clipped version of English that uses internet abbreviations and leaves out definite and indefinite articles at random. This doesn’t make it too difficult to read along but to my ear it is affected. Toward the end of the book he lapses into grammatical English and is obviously very literate.
As for the pervert in his name (BAP), he does seem to espouse at least some kind of homoerotic sensibility but he seems to describe it as not a homosexual attraction but an appreciation of male physical perfection. Either way for me it’s off-putting. Also, he thinks that the seamiest parts of the underworld with its pornography and prostitution and other perversions is important and men like him are meant to delve into it and take possession of it for some redemptive purpose that involves destroying the bugmen order.
The book is uneven and ranges from poetic to almost psychotic. Some of it is either humorous fantasy or the author believes in things that are obviously untrue. For instance, he claims that Laotian is the same language as the dialect of Spanish spoken in Chiapas Mexico.
Toward the end of the book he talks more realistically about what a non-bugman can do to exist in the nightmarish post-normal world we find ourselves in. Here he is addressing the non-pirate, non-superman part of the population that have jobs and families. Some of the advice is actually very sensible and useful.
All in all, I found the book interesting. He has some insights that even a normie such as myself finds resonant. Undoubtedly the book is uneven and at times bizarre but it has valid points to make and it speaks to a part of every normal man who finds himself marooned in the modern Hive and wonders how we got here and how we get out. It’s not for all tastes but if you’re interested in another take on the modern world this might be interesting to you.
Curtis Yarvin Has a New Pill for Us to Take, The Clear Pill
Mencius Moldbug (aka Curtis Yarvin) was the tech savant who got interested in the power structures of the modern world. He is credited with borrowing the red pill/blue pill imagery from the “The Matrix” and using it as an analogy for waking up to how the world really is run.
In this new set of posts, over at Claremont Institute’s “the American Mind,” he describes, in his typically long, highly elaborate way, a thought experiment to try to get at the objective truth of how our society is actually controlled as opposed to the official version.
Yarvin is not an easy read. His writing style is expansive. It reminds me of a spider spinning a web that spirals out and out until you can’t even remember where you started. But I find him extremely interesting.
Michael Anton Analyzes Bronze Age Mindset
Michael Anton is an interesting character. Having been Publius Decius Mus of Flight 93 Election fame I like to see what he has to say. Here he receives a copy of Bronze Age Mindset from Curtis Yarvin ( also known as Mencius Moldbug) and actually manages to read it through. Read his reaction.
https://www.claremont.org/crb/article/are-the-kids-altright/
Apparently the unneutered millennial men are pretty pissed off about the world we are handing over to them. Can’t say that I blame them. This place is pretty awful.
Now I guess I have to try reading it. Is there no end?