> neither of the two Jews who bailed out Churchill were Zionists
It should be noted that it's not clear Henry Strakosch was Jewish. See Holocaust revisionist Arthur Butz trying to uncover evidence for this and coming up short here: https://www.historiography-project.com/jhrchives/v21/v21n1p-9_butz.html. I do think it's possible he had Jewish ancestry (despite ostensibly being Christian by religion), but the primary evidence just seems to be that he kind of looks that way.
This is a good essay and the red pilling of the Right is like any drug: the first time you take it the hit is massive, but soon thereafter you need larger and larger doses to get the same high. The self-proclaimed Dissident Right are in this operating mode of ever-larger-doses of hits to keep the high. They are so focused on this drug they forget to do things like win elections and govern the country.
I was mentalist enough not just to watch the video but to sit it out to the end, since I'd sparred with him a bit on the quality-control issue and I think there is no more important one for us (other than my main concern, the state of dissident art). I noticed he kept going on about not wanting to break 'solidarity' with like-minded people, not wanting to add to the heat on them or embarrass them in public or 'cancel' them, without it ever dawning on him that our inability to push back against error without risking personal drama is the whole problem that needs addressing. Among mass media journos (piss be upon them), outright nonsense like "Trotsky orchestrated the Holodomor" would be caught by editors before going to press and that would be the end of it.
Unfortunately Moldbug's Antiversity is as far out of reach as ever, but this idea gestated for a while at UR in his earlier posts on a "revisionist Wikipedia" (Revipedia, a.k.a. Uberfact and Resartus). This sort of thing keeps getting tried and failing because it is too ambitious, but it occurs to me that it would be a relatively simple matter to set up a dissident resource page, which would collect the factual material on various subjects presently scattered across umpteen blogs and purge out the errors and propaganda. If this proved useful in its early stages, it could evolve into the 'Uberfact' model in which rival factions maintain multiple pages, and finally (but not prematurely) it could end up as an alt-Wikipedia. Of course this would not stop certain people from not bothering to check basic facts, but the project might serve to reorient the DR away from twattering and politicooming towards actually getting its case against the regime straight (I for one suspect that I've probably imbibed all sorts of dross over the years and am ready to reconsider a lot of it).
I suggested some of this to John Arcto when he floated the idea of an alt-Wikipedia, but he went on hiatus, and I wonder if it is not a project for orthodox Moldbuggers who do not (so to speak) have a monkey in the political circus. The problem is that there are probably fewer such people around nowadays than in the heyday of UR, where Yarvin immediately found a couple of tech-experienced commenters to build a site (Thiblo) that ended up getting nowhere. In any case it can't hurt to discuss the idea, and I'm currently preparing a post on it that should be out by the end of the week.
I remember hearing about Arcto's Wikipedia idea and wondering if it would ever go anywhere, suspecting probably not. But if such a thing ever did take off... I'm an orthodox Moldbugger, but have a job and family, so wouldn't be up for any serious commitment. But I have a lot of ev psych knowledge, and an MA in psych I never found a use for. And I once found a torrent that is basically a treasure trove of DR/race realist material...like all of Jensen and Flynn's books, Lynn, Rushton...hundreds of published academic articles on IQ, on sex differences...and all sorts of other weird esoteric stuff of interest to eggheads in this niche. Don't know what happened to the torrent, but I have all the stuff in my personal Caliber Library. Wow, I have paper by Emil O. W. Kirkegaard...it's been in there since years before I ever heard of him. All Paul Gottfried's books. All the New Atheist books... Books I highly recommend like The Science Wars by Anthony Walsh, Nations: The Long History and Deep Roots of Ethnic Nationalism by Azar Gat, Thomas Fleming: The Morality of Everyday Life: Rediscovering an Ancient Alternative to the Liberal Tradition, Why Race Matters by Michael Levin... There's some Laurence Auster in there, and Paul Brimelow, and Jared Taylor... Basically thousands and thousands of pdfs that would be of interest to the sort of person with academic inclinations who went through the New Atheism to NrX pipeline. I need to start digging through it again.
Funnily enough, I considered starting a blog a few years ago that would be called Orthodox Moldbuggist, and was about being both Orthodox Jewish and faithful to Moldbug theory, no hyphens.
Looking forward to your post. Also, what is your take on Urbit? I've forgotten about Thiblo, if I even remembered it in the first place.
Also, top Alan Partridge reference if it was intentional.
It was. I don't have much of a take on Urbit because I've only used it for a brief time, when someone gave me a temporary planet to play with. I've been meaning to get a permanent one for a while, but it's fallen by the wayside; I know Spandrell of Bloody Shovel recommended it, but I was a bit dismayed to hear Yarvin say in some interview that he doesn't use it (as memory serves) "for a number of good reasons". Hopefully it is robust enough to serve as an oasis in the event that we end up with a Chinese-style internet.
Post will be a bit longer than expected, out sometime this week, because I'm expanding it with more UR material on passivism and the Antiversity. Might as well be comprehensive.
Interesting idea, and I look forward to your post.
At the very least, it's a project with infinitely better chances of success than the pointless projects Dave sinks countless dozens of hours into, like his social outing Discord with Academic Agent, or his awful attempts at Twitter humor, while complaining he doesn't have 2 spare hours a week to promote truth over lies.
And I sat through the entire podcast, too. NonZionism can come across as testy on Substack, but he had the patience of a saint to put up with Dave's dozens of angry interruptions.
On Dave: I like his podcast a lot; he is usually very self-reflective, and an empathic person who tries to understand himself and other people.
Hence I was surprised how antagonistic he was when he talked with you.
It seems to me the "Jewish question" has become in the online right circle in which Dave is a member pretty much a question of faith, much as climate or BLM has become for the left. If you go against the party line, you are cancelled immediately by your own people.
Probably Dave senses that he goes against his own good judgement, and doesn't like himself for it. That was made him so strange in the podcast with you.
"Hence I was surprised how antagonistic he was when he talked with you."
As someone who used to like Dave a lot, watching all of his videos and dozens and dozens of his livestreams for a period of a few years...I wasn't surprised at all.
And yes, Dave has been infinitely kinder and more gracious to the most ardent progressive, including repulsive liars who wish to destroy the West, like Matt McManus, than he was to NonZionism, who he angrily interrupted dozens of times, not giving him more than a few words to reply to Dave's long-winded diatribes. This despite NonZionism conceding most of his points, being gracious and polite throughout, rejecting progressive narratives, and sharing Dave's concern for Western civilization and whites in particular.
Why? Dave isn't explicit about it himself, but he always laughs with great delight and coyly agrees whenever a guest has anything bad to say about Jews. Every. Single. Time. Furthermore, Dave has repeatedly praised Academic Agent, Millennial Woes, Keith Woods (a literal communist!!!), and until very recently, when he became too obvious of a lolcow, Nick Fuentes. (Seriously) Gee, what do all four guys have in common, Dave?!
Notice too that when NonZionism criticized him in one note, Dave ran around pointing-and-screeching that he was being accused of "anti-Semitism". An accusation that NonZionism never made and even explicitly denied in a nice reply on Greene's own Substack notes.
"Wasn’t thinking about you Dave. I like your substack and, though that article was bad, you’re one of the good ones. You are not an antisemite. Have a solid."
(Incidentally, this reply is a great example of how Jews are the very worst at detecting hatred towards themselves. Even those who have written several excellent articles on the subject!)
So why did Dave's mind automatically go to "anti-Semitism"? A guilty conscience.
"Probably Dave senses that he goes against his own good judgement, and doesn't like himself for it."
This is being exceedingly generous. Furthermore, Jews are far from the only subject regarding which Dave exercises poor judgment. (Such as defending Cooper's podcast!)
At a very core level, Dave is a "tradCath" who still lives, talks, and thinks like the "California atheist shitlib" (his self-description, not mine!) he was for the vast majority of his life.
"At a very core level, Dave is a 'tradCath' who still lives, talks, and thinks like the 'California atheist shitlib' (his self-description, not mine!) he was for the vast majority of his life."
I'd say it's the opposite. Chesterton and Belloc, two of Dave's biggest heroes, both acted like this on their good days - often it was much worse. I honestly think he's gotten more venomous precisely BECAUSE he went digging through his reading list of based tradCaths, and their voices reified his amorphous ideas and made them something he could justify to himself.
This is a good observation about some of his beliefs, especially with regards to Chesterton, who Dave idolizes.
However, in his personal life and dealings, Dave isn't much of a tradCath. He and his tradCath wife have a single son, who they put into a daycare that required the children to mask up during the pandemic. This despite his wife not working! Oh, and Dave and his wife constantly complain about how difficult having one child is, and the government needs to help them more.
I normally wouldn't care, but when you make natalism and raising children such a huge part of your ideology, and claim that tradCath is the best way, explicitly superior to Protestantism and Judaism, it's very revealing when you fail so miserably yourself.
Furthermore, Dave has gone on endless rants about the evils of pornography, and how it must be banned. Yet, his close buddy AcademicAgent, who he defended on the stream with NonZionism, frequently posts softcore porn on X, encouraging his followers to lust after various thirst-traps.
I hadn't figured that. Well, it's not quite as funny as Academic Agent being a diversity hire with a degree sponsored by McDonald's, but it's certainly a banger!
"Probably Dave senses that he goes against his own good judgement, and doesn't like himself for it. That was made him so strange in the podcast with you."
No, this guy had been antagonistic to him and the DR beforehand.
We have different political views (I've been a "rightoid" since early childhood and will always be one), and I disagree with a few parts of this article, but overall, it's magnificent.
A more curious question than why certain right-wingers responded with hostility to Darryl Cooper is why ANY right-winger responded to him warmly. This is a guy who loves BLM, supports defunding the police, simps for jihadis, hates Christians and attacks Christianity at every opportunity, AND loves mass migration, believing any race can be assimilated into America. He even has the standard progressive beliefs about Israel, the supposed source for his "baseness". So at best, Cooper is a standard midwit progressive, to the point of looking exactly like the guy in the IQ graph meme. (This is ignoring the possibility of him being a fed, which there is some evidence for)
So to any right-winger defending Cooper or looking upon him positively, is everything you claim to stand for utterly fake? Or superceded by the dominant consideration of "is it bad for the Jews?!"
With regards to Dave Greene, I used to be a big fan, but now, sadly, consider him a slimy, dishonest fool, as proven by his pathetic simping for an utterly idiotic, disqualifying claim about Trotsky being responsible for the Holodomor. (A few years after fleeing for his life to Mexico!)
Dave was, by his own admission, a California atheist shitlib for the vast majority of his life, and sadly, that's fundamentally what he still is, including angrily interrupting you dozens of times on the podcast when confronted with information he disagrees with and is painful to listen to, perhaps the most common of all California atheist shitlib traits.
With respect you have zero idea what you’re talking about. Darryl Cooper is a devout Christian. He supports police and military. Much more. You have obviously not listened to him.
The OP has put in the work. You should respect that and stop patronizing for the sake of being on his team.
I haven't been keeping up with Cooper's recent flip-flops and LARPs. As recently as a year or two ago, Cooper (by his own admission!) referred to it as "the Christian myth" and attacked the Christian concept of God, something that drew the ire of that very same Dave Greene.
Now, in a Substack post from this June, Cooper admits that while "I didn't grow up in a church", and one "would conclude that I wasn’t raised with any religion at all", AND he has a bunch of views that are downright heretical and anti-Christian...he believes in "simple Christianity". Allegedly.
Very convincing, after his years of attacking the faith! Biden and Pelosi being devout Catholics is far more believable.
As for defunding the police, that's an odd hill to defend. Cooper has openly called for it many times, in Tweets and articles alike.
He is very clear on how he was raised. Regardless, you’re superimposing that childhood/formative time on to the current Darryl Cooper. He was also quoted as saying “I would not sacrifice my Christian faith for anything” over the summer. I should know because I have listened to everything of his, and I used to kind of dislike that Christian part of him. There was a British mathematician (name?) that was a creationist that used to debate Hitchens. Never computed with me.
I’m mature enough now to just accept people’s faith as it exists, or to whatever it exists in, or does not exist. Regardless, his faith is between him and God, and for you are supposing his faith, then using that to weaken his resolve or integrity. You’re arguing someone’s faith in God that you’ve never met, and never sat down with, etc. This is a basic case of “taking things out of context”.
I get it. You don’t like him. But I am willing to bet have not listened to enough of his material, over enough of a period of time, to gauge what kind of person he is. I have and he still can be a difficult person to nail down. That’s ok. I enjoy his material. I’m sorry you feel otherwise.
"The problem is the perennial one: there are limitless numbers of subversive, brain-exploding takes, but only a limited number of true ones. If your business model (and it is a business) is providing these red pills, then you have committed yourself to eventually serving up dreck. It’s just a matter of time. There literally is no other way."
this is best explanation i have read about how people go from subversive and intresting to outright crazy idiots that plus audience capture
"I think it’s necessary to have high intellectual standards of accuracy and he agrees that it would be desirable, but thinks its too hard, so we just have to do without."
You're so dishonest you couldn't even get to the next sentence before contradicting yourself!
"...but thinks its too hard, so we just have to do without."
Hardly the most accurate description of his position.
I watched the whole sodding podcast with Dave Greene and I can say that this, silly though it sounds, is an accurate description of his position. At one point he starts talking about his schedule and saying he doesn't have enough hours in the day to check for errors.
I can surmise you didn't bother to watch the video, because that wasn't the only statement of his to this effect. I would advise you to do so before calling people "dishonest". And I should hope that every author on here checks his posts for errors.
If he had other statements to this effect, then my initial point, that the author's claim of 'he thinks it's too hard so we just have to do without' does not possess a high level of intellectual accuracy. It is the loosest of strawmen.
And it's good to accuse people of lying when they are lying.
And you don't. Nor should you. If you had anything to say, you would succumb to every error you find in others - and to a much more egregious extent.
"Fact-checking takes time. Time is a finite and valuable resource. Therefore, we should spend it wisely. Yet the time it takes to fact check any lengthy piece is great enough relative to the expected payoff that it is a fool's errand. Moreover, the great variety of sources and interpretations means that no fact-checking endeavor will ever be definitive. So any amount can be countered with the demand of 'moar'. Therefore, fact-checking is a waste of time."
You make excellent points on the need for fact checks. I think there should be dissident right journals where groups of people sign off on the factual accuracy of their posted articles. I think you are a little catty in attacking Dave and Darryl but there are truly problematic people and opinions within the dissident right and bad thoughts do often lead to bad outcomes.
I will not speak for Dave or Darryl but two arguments can be (1) "European peoples should not be demonized THUS we need to de-mythologize WW2 in this specific way" and (2) "WW2 was less a war of good vs evil and more a war between competing powers THUS we should point out the flaws of Churchill"
That you address the factual parts of the arguments after "THUS" is commendable. But the parts before the thus are mighty important to us. Maybe you could use your high IQ to provide better arguments after the "THUS" (if you are a friend)
Since the car-crash podcast my opinion of Daryll Cooper has gone up somewhat, and I think probably most of his issues are to do with Twitter, and he is really being ill served by friends who don't tell him to stop being a dumbass. Tucker Carlson is the villain of the piece, and is actually quite a poisonous person. My opinion of Dave Greene has absolutely plummeted, but that's entirely a function of the weird way he chose to handle this.
On WW2, I think I am more radical in my revisionism than you, but I think everything you need to know is already in 'Stalin's War' by Sean McMeekin, and in Unqualified Reservations (thought the latter contains some judgments that, at least, have to be pared back a bit). One of the points I was making to Dave Greene when he wasn't just rambling or interrupting me is that a major source of dysfunction in online information spaces is the constant demand to create new content, repackaging things that have already been said perfectly clearly already.
I listened to this interview. I've decided he is thoughtful, but not especially intelligent, person who just can't stop himself being a retard on Twitter, and was used by Tucker Carlson for click bait. More a victim of the rightoid insane asylum than a culprit. Also, the article I linked to and the anecdotes in it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkGXrUEmLTk&
I wouldn't know of what McMeekin said on WW2, but if his proven charlatanry on WW1 is anything to go by, then my automatic assumption is "Press X to doubt".
When he wrote Russian Origins of WW1, he butchered the timeline of events to exculpate Germany and Austria and paint Russia as the central villain of the story. If you go through his book versus John Rohl's "1914: Delusion or Design?" or David Fromkin's "Europe's Last Summer", you will immediately notice that a lot of events that can be found in their accounts are just straight-up missing or twisted by removing key details in his version, especially anything which implicates the Germans or Austrians. There's also his persistent snarling tone and use of transparently biased rhetoric whenever he writes about the Russians and the Armenians. Clearly, he's writing not as an impartial observer, but as a defense lawyer for one side.
The real aim of the book is revealed when he starts talking about the Armenian Genocide. His argument is that the Russians' use of Armenian guerrillas during the war forced the Turks to enact harsh measures and deportations. Thus, he shifts the blame from Turkey to Russia, which explains why he pinned the blame for WW1 on it as well - if you're going to write a hitpiece, ambivalence and nuance is counterproductive. Is it worth mentioning that he's a professor at a Turkish university and has a Turkish muhacir wife?
Also, much like how Darryl Cooper conveniently forgets the evidence of how the Nazis intended for and planned out the various atrocities on the Eastern Front, Sean McMeekin avoids any mention of prewar CUP ideology or policy planning regarding the Armenians and eastern Anatolia, and takes care to say that the majority of deaths were by starvation and thirst, not murder. By the by, he also blames the Armenians for provoking the Hamidian massacres. Whenever the Turks commit an atrocity, he bothsides the issue and slants it as if it was the Armenians that started it and 'gave as good as they got'.
He's the latest innovation in Turkish propaganda aimed at Western audiences, no doubt a worthy successor to men like Stanford J. Shaw and Justin McCarthy before him.
Well, that's certainly a good explanation. I don't know very much about WW1, but I'll look into it. I've read as many hostile reviews as I can find of Stalin's War, and they don't make criticisms of anything like this gravity. He did write Stalin's War 10 years later, so perhaps he matured as a scholar, or perhaps (a) the prevalent historiography of WW2 is just much more flawed, and makes it easier to do revisionism or (b) Stalin really was so bad, that you can be as biased as you want and still not do him an injustice.
I've only read McMeekin's book on the July Crisis and Stalin's War so I cant comment on the book you referenced but I would encourage you to read Clark's Sleepwalkers if you want a well regarded neutral book that comprehensively tears the Fischer Thesis apart. I'm not sure I'd go as far as Mcmeekin in blaming the entire war on the Russians but the Tsars decision to mobilize was unquestionably the point at which a major war in Europe was unavoidable.
Again I'm not sure what exactly McMeekin claimed about Armenian responsibility for the Genocide but in hindsight its hard to argue that Russian encouraging Christian uprisings and British encouraging Greek interventions in Anatolia and then abandoning them served either groups interests at all.
-- "in hindsight its hard to argue that Russian encouraging Christian uprisings and British encouraging Greek interventions in Anatolia and then abandoning them served either groups interests at all."
Say what you will about the British for being flakes, but the Russians fought for three years on the Ottoman front up until a certain event forced them out of the war.
Funny you should say that, because Clark's book is *also* very economical with the truth and takes care to paint its subject in the rosiest colors possible. Which makes sense - Clark is, after all, a Hohenzollern family defense attorney, and his historical work on Germany is widely lauded for "improving Anglo-German relations". The agenda is not just on display, it's at the level of the emperor's new clothes.
Unfortunately, laypeople don't bother to do even basic background checks on the historians they read, which means that for every David Irving who only becomes infamous by lying about a subject as charged as the Holocaust, a hundred other liars get to stay in the zone of respectability just because they chose to lie about a topic nobody cared enough about to call them out on TV and which so many people *wanted* them to be correct on. The result is that they can falsify even basic events with complete chutzpah, safe in the knowledge that any layman with a sentimental tenderness for the Kaiser's Germany will applaud them as a hero for the cause. Clark is the Kaiser's PR man through and through - if you want a more honest appraisal of Willy and his government's role in starting WW1, read Rohl's "The Kaiser and His Court: Wilhelm II and the Government of Germany", followed by Fromkin's "Europe's Last Summer".
You make excellent points on the need for fact checks. I think there should be dissident right journals where groups of people sign off on the factual accuracy of their posted articles. I think you are a little catty in attacking Dave and Darryl but there are truly problematic people and opinions withing the dissident right and bad thoughts do often lead to bad outcomes.
I will not speak for Dave or Darryl but two arguments can be (1) "European peoples should not be demonized THUS we need to de-mythologize WW2 in this specific way" and (2) "WW2 was less a war of good vs evil and more a war between competing powers THUS we should point out the flaws of Churchill"
That you address the factual parts of the arguments after "THUS" is commendable. But the parts before the thus are mighty important to us. Maybe you could use your high IQ to provide better arguments after the "THUS" (if you are a friend)
"It must hurt if you spend years building a house only to discover the timber is infested with maggots, but you have to fess up all the same. Your community has maggots. Maybe it’s not mostly maggots, but it’s hard to tell, because they’re writhing so much you can’t see anything else. You can explain away at as great a length as you wish why it’s not your fault, why there’s nothing you can do, but what difference does it really make?"
I feel like I've read something similar to this in the book that shall not be named.
"I think it’s necessary to have high intellectual standards of accuracy and he agrees that it would be desirable, but thinks its too hard, so we just have to do without."
You're so dishonest you couldn't even get to the next sentence before contradicting yourself!
"...but thinks its too hard, so we just have to do without."
Hardly the most accurate description of his position.
On an unrelated note, are you going to write the post about your issues with Moldbug and nRx you hinted in one of your notes? Would really like to read it personally.
Great post. One aside:
> neither of the two Jews who bailed out Churchill were Zionists
It should be noted that it's not clear Henry Strakosch was Jewish. See Holocaust revisionist Arthur Butz trying to uncover evidence for this and coming up short here: https://www.historiography-project.com/jhrchives/v21/v21n1p-9_butz.html. I do think it's possible he had Jewish ancestry (despite ostensibly being Christian by religion), but the primary evidence just seems to be that he kind of looks that way.
Oh wow. Thanks so much for sharing that. I guess Nazi wartime propaganda can't be trusted after all.
This is a good essay and the red pilling of the Right is like any drug: the first time you take it the hit is massive, but soon thereafter you need larger and larger doses to get the same high. The self-proclaimed Dissident Right are in this operating mode of ever-larger-doses of hits to keep the high. They are so focused on this drug they forget to do things like win elections and govern the country.
This analogy can be applied to any “sided” worldview (or argument I suppose).
The ability to disengage has been key for me. This crucial survival instinct rarely kicks in for most people.
I see the rabbit hole that the OP proposes. And it is a very real potential.
"Redpilling" is indeed a codeword for overdose.
I was mentalist enough not just to watch the video but to sit it out to the end, since I'd sparred with him a bit on the quality-control issue and I think there is no more important one for us (other than my main concern, the state of dissident art). I noticed he kept going on about not wanting to break 'solidarity' with like-minded people, not wanting to add to the heat on them or embarrass them in public or 'cancel' them, without it ever dawning on him that our inability to push back against error without risking personal drama is the whole problem that needs addressing. Among mass media journos (piss be upon them), outright nonsense like "Trotsky orchestrated the Holodomor" would be caught by editors before going to press and that would be the end of it.
Unfortunately Moldbug's Antiversity is as far out of reach as ever, but this idea gestated for a while at UR in his earlier posts on a "revisionist Wikipedia" (Revipedia, a.k.a. Uberfact and Resartus). This sort of thing keeps getting tried and failing because it is too ambitious, but it occurs to me that it would be a relatively simple matter to set up a dissident resource page, which would collect the factual material on various subjects presently scattered across umpteen blogs and purge out the errors and propaganda. If this proved useful in its early stages, it could evolve into the 'Uberfact' model in which rival factions maintain multiple pages, and finally (but not prematurely) it could end up as an alt-Wikipedia. Of course this would not stop certain people from not bothering to check basic facts, but the project might serve to reorient the DR away from twattering and politicooming towards actually getting its case against the regime straight (I for one suspect that I've probably imbibed all sorts of dross over the years and am ready to reconsider a lot of it).
I suggested some of this to John Arcto when he floated the idea of an alt-Wikipedia, but he went on hiatus, and I wonder if it is not a project for orthodox Moldbuggers who do not (so to speak) have a monkey in the political circus. The problem is that there are probably fewer such people around nowadays than in the heyday of UR, where Yarvin immediately found a couple of tech-experienced commenters to build a site (Thiblo) that ended up getting nowhere. In any case it can't hurt to discuss the idea, and I'm currently preparing a post on it that should be out by the end of the week.
I remember hearing about Arcto's Wikipedia idea and wondering if it would ever go anywhere, suspecting probably not. But if such a thing ever did take off... I'm an orthodox Moldbugger, but have a job and family, so wouldn't be up for any serious commitment. But I have a lot of ev psych knowledge, and an MA in psych I never found a use for. And I once found a torrent that is basically a treasure trove of DR/race realist material...like all of Jensen and Flynn's books, Lynn, Rushton...hundreds of published academic articles on IQ, on sex differences...and all sorts of other weird esoteric stuff of interest to eggheads in this niche. Don't know what happened to the torrent, but I have all the stuff in my personal Caliber Library. Wow, I have paper by Emil O. W. Kirkegaard...it's been in there since years before I ever heard of him. All Paul Gottfried's books. All the New Atheist books... Books I highly recommend like The Science Wars by Anthony Walsh, Nations: The Long History and Deep Roots of Ethnic Nationalism by Azar Gat, Thomas Fleming: The Morality of Everyday Life: Rediscovering an Ancient Alternative to the Liberal Tradition, Why Race Matters by Michael Levin... There's some Laurence Auster in there, and Paul Brimelow, and Jared Taylor... Basically thousands and thousands of pdfs that would be of interest to the sort of person with academic inclinations who went through the New Atheism to NrX pipeline. I need to start digging through it again.
Funnily enough, I considered starting a blog a few years ago that would be called Orthodox Moldbuggist, and was about being both Orthodox Jewish and faithful to Moldbug theory, no hyphens.
Looking forward to your post. Also, what is your take on Urbit? I've forgotten about Thiblo, if I even remembered it in the first place.
Also, top Alan Partridge reference if it was intentional.
It was. I don't have much of a take on Urbit because I've only used it for a brief time, when someone gave me a temporary planet to play with. I've been meaning to get a permanent one for a while, but it's fallen by the wayside; I know Spandrell of Bloody Shovel recommended it, but I was a bit dismayed to hear Yarvin say in some interview that he doesn't use it (as memory serves) "for a number of good reasons". Hopefully it is robust enough to serve as an oasis in the event that we end up with a Chinese-style internet.
Post will be a bit longer than expected, out sometime this week, because I'm expanding it with more UR material on passivism and the Antiversity. Might as well be comprehensive.
EDIT: Post now published and ready to read: https://jacklaurel.substack.com/p/taking-authority
Interesting idea, and I look forward to your post.
At the very least, it's a project with infinitely better chances of success than the pointless projects Dave sinks countless dozens of hours into, like his social outing Discord with Academic Agent, or his awful attempts at Twitter humor, while complaining he doesn't have 2 spare hours a week to promote truth over lies.
And I sat through the entire podcast, too. NonZionism can come across as testy on Substack, but he had the patience of a saint to put up with Dave's dozens of angry interruptions.
Very good historical information, thanks.
On Dave: I like his podcast a lot; he is usually very self-reflective, and an empathic person who tries to understand himself and other people.
Hence I was surprised how antagonistic he was when he talked with you.
It seems to me the "Jewish question" has become in the online right circle in which Dave is a member pretty much a question of faith, much as climate or BLM has become for the left. If you go against the party line, you are cancelled immediately by your own people.
Probably Dave senses that he goes against his own good judgement, and doesn't like himself for it. That was made him so strange in the podcast with you.
"Hence I was surprised how antagonistic he was when he talked with you."
As someone who used to like Dave a lot, watching all of his videos and dozens and dozens of his livestreams for a period of a few years...I wasn't surprised at all.
And yes, Dave has been infinitely kinder and more gracious to the most ardent progressive, including repulsive liars who wish to destroy the West, like Matt McManus, than he was to NonZionism, who he angrily interrupted dozens of times, not giving him more than a few words to reply to Dave's long-winded diatribes. This despite NonZionism conceding most of his points, being gracious and polite throughout, rejecting progressive narratives, and sharing Dave's concern for Western civilization and whites in particular.
Why? Dave isn't explicit about it himself, but he always laughs with great delight and coyly agrees whenever a guest has anything bad to say about Jews. Every. Single. Time. Furthermore, Dave has repeatedly praised Academic Agent, Millennial Woes, Keith Woods (a literal communist!!!), and until very recently, when he became too obvious of a lolcow, Nick Fuentes. (Seriously) Gee, what do all four guys have in common, Dave?!
Notice too that when NonZionism criticized him in one note, Dave ran around pointing-and-screeching that he was being accused of "anti-Semitism". An accusation that NonZionism never made and even explicitly denied in a nice reply on Greene's own Substack notes.
"Wasn’t thinking about you Dave. I like your substack and, though that article was bad, you’re one of the good ones. You are not an antisemite. Have a solid."
(Incidentally, this reply is a great example of how Jews are the very worst at detecting hatred towards themselves. Even those who have written several excellent articles on the subject!)
So why did Dave's mind automatically go to "anti-Semitism"? A guilty conscience.
"Probably Dave senses that he goes against his own good judgement, and doesn't like himself for it."
This is being exceedingly generous. Furthermore, Jews are far from the only subject regarding which Dave exercises poor judgment. (Such as defending Cooper's podcast!)
At a very core level, Dave is a "tradCath" who still lives, talks, and thinks like the "California atheist shitlib" (his self-description, not mine!) he was for the vast majority of his life.
He is part of a circle now who makes money with their streams and articles. They all cater to the same fairly young people who graduated from 4chan.
Edgy antismetism has become a business model.
"At a very core level, Dave is a 'tradCath' who still lives, talks, and thinks like the 'California atheist shitlib' (his self-description, not mine!) he was for the vast majority of his life."
I'd say it's the opposite. Chesterton and Belloc, two of Dave's biggest heroes, both acted like this on their good days - often it was much worse. I honestly think he's gotten more venomous precisely BECAUSE he went digging through his reading list of based tradCaths, and their voices reified his amorphous ideas and made them something he could justify to himself.
This is a good observation about some of his beliefs, especially with regards to Chesterton, who Dave idolizes.
However, in his personal life and dealings, Dave isn't much of a tradCath. He and his tradCath wife have a single son, who they put into a daycare that required the children to mask up during the pandemic. This despite his wife not working! Oh, and Dave and his wife constantly complain about how difficult having one child is, and the government needs to help them more.
I normally wouldn't care, but when you make natalism and raising children such a huge part of your ideology, and claim that tradCath is the best way, explicitly superior to Protestantism and Judaism, it's very revealing when you fail so miserably yourself.
Furthermore, Dave has gone on endless rants about the evils of pornography, and how it must be banned. Yet, his close buddy AcademicAgent, who he defended on the stream with NonZionism, frequently posts softcore porn on X, encouraging his followers to lust after various thirst-traps.
I hadn't figured that. Well, it's not quite as funny as Academic Agent being a diversity hire with a degree sponsored by McDonald's, but it's certainly a banger!
"Probably Dave senses that he goes against his own good judgement, and doesn't like himself for it. That was made him so strange in the podcast with you."
No, this guy had been antagonistic to him and the DR beforehand.
We have different political views (I've been a "rightoid" since early childhood and will always be one), and I disagree with a few parts of this article, but overall, it's magnificent.
A more curious question than why certain right-wingers responded with hostility to Darryl Cooper is why ANY right-winger responded to him warmly. This is a guy who loves BLM, supports defunding the police, simps for jihadis, hates Christians and attacks Christianity at every opportunity, AND loves mass migration, believing any race can be assimilated into America. He even has the standard progressive beliefs about Israel, the supposed source for his "baseness". So at best, Cooper is a standard midwit progressive, to the point of looking exactly like the guy in the IQ graph meme. (This is ignoring the possibility of him being a fed, which there is some evidence for)
So to any right-winger defending Cooper or looking upon him positively, is everything you claim to stand for utterly fake? Or superceded by the dominant consideration of "is it bad for the Jews?!"
With regards to Dave Greene, I used to be a big fan, but now, sadly, consider him a slimy, dishonest fool, as proven by his pathetic simping for an utterly idiotic, disqualifying claim about Trotsky being responsible for the Holodomor. (A few years after fleeing for his life to Mexico!)
Dave was, by his own admission, a California atheist shitlib for the vast majority of his life, and sadly, that's fundamentally what he still is, including angrily interrupting you dozens of times on the podcast when confronted with information he disagrees with and is painful to listen to, perhaps the most common of all California atheist shitlib traits.
With respect you have zero idea what you’re talking about. Darryl Cooper is a devout Christian. He supports police and military. Much more. You have obviously not listened to him.
The OP has put in the work. You should respect that and stop patronizing for the sake of being on his team.
I haven't been keeping up with Cooper's recent flip-flops and LARPs. As recently as a year or two ago, Cooper (by his own admission!) referred to it as "the Christian myth" and attacked the Christian concept of God, something that drew the ire of that very same Dave Greene.
Now, in a Substack post from this June, Cooper admits that while "I didn't grow up in a church", and one "would conclude that I wasn’t raised with any religion at all", AND he has a bunch of views that are downright heretical and anti-Christian...he believes in "simple Christianity". Allegedly.
Very convincing, after his years of attacking the faith! Biden and Pelosi being devout Catholics is far more believable.
As for defunding the police, that's an odd hill to defend. Cooper has openly called for it many times, in Tweets and articles alike.
He is very clear on how he was raised. Regardless, you’re superimposing that childhood/formative time on to the current Darryl Cooper. He was also quoted as saying “I would not sacrifice my Christian faith for anything” over the summer. I should know because I have listened to everything of his, and I used to kind of dislike that Christian part of him. There was a British mathematician (name?) that was a creationist that used to debate Hitchens. Never computed with me.
I’m mature enough now to just accept people’s faith as it exists, or to whatever it exists in, or does not exist. Regardless, his faith is between him and God, and for you are supposing his faith, then using that to weaken his resolve or integrity. You’re arguing someone’s faith in God that you’ve never met, and never sat down with, etc. This is a basic case of “taking things out of context”.
I get it. You don’t like him. But I am willing to bet have not listened to enough of his material, over enough of a period of time, to gauge what kind of person he is. I have and he still can be a difficult person to nail down. That’s ok. I enjoy his material. I’m sorry you feel otherwise.
"The problem is the perennial one: there are limitless numbers of subversive, brain-exploding takes, but only a limited number of true ones. If your business model (and it is a business) is providing these red pills, then you have committed yourself to eventually serving up dreck. It’s just a matter of time. There literally is no other way."
this is best explanation i have read about how people go from subversive and intresting to outright crazy idiots that plus audience capture
"I think it’s necessary to have high intellectual standards of accuracy and he agrees that it would be desirable, but thinks its too hard, so we just have to do without."
You're so dishonest you couldn't even get to the next sentence before contradicting yourself!
"...but thinks its too hard, so we just have to do without."
Hardly the most accurate description of his position.
I watched the whole sodding podcast with Dave Greene and I can say that this, silly though it sounds, is an accurate description of his position. At one point he starts talking about his schedule and saying he doesn't have enough hours in the day to check for errors.
"but thinks its too hard" != "saying he doesn't have enough hours in the day to check for errors"
Not the same statements.
Also, he's right.
You think the author of this post went through each line looking for errors?
Not of his own stuff, certainly.
For the record, I did this multiple times and sent it to two people for comments.
Pics or it didn't happen.
I can surmise you didn't bother to watch the video, because that wasn't the only statement of his to this effect. I would advise you to do so before calling people "dishonest". And I should hope that every author on here checks his posts for errors.
You can surmise it, but you'd be wrong.
If he had other statements to this effect, then my initial point, that the author's claim of 'he thinks it's too hard so we just have to do without' does not possess a high level of intellectual accuracy. It is the loosest of strawmen.
And it's good to accuse people of lying when they are lying.
And you don't. Nor should you. If you had anything to say, you would succumb to every error you find in others - and to a much more egregious extent.
Dave threw a fit on stream because he claimed it was impossible for him to spend an additional 2 hours per week checking for errors.
Your slavish defense of Dave here is embarrassing.
Your profile says you're a writer and right-wing dissident thinker.
You should remove the last word from that description.
Great, if I surmised wrongly, then you should be able to stop handwaving like an intellectual bullshido master and summarize his position yourself.
"Fact-checking takes time. Time is a finite and valuable resource. Therefore, we should spend it wisely. Yet the time it takes to fact check any lengthy piece is great enough relative to the expected payoff that it is a fool's errand. Moreover, the great variety of sources and interpretations means that no fact-checking endeavor will ever be definitive. So any amount can be countered with the demand of 'moar'. Therefore, fact-checking is a waste of time."
What, in your opinion, is an accurate description of his position?
You make excellent points on the need for fact checks. I think there should be dissident right journals where groups of people sign off on the factual accuracy of their posted articles. I think you are a little catty in attacking Dave and Darryl but there are truly problematic people and opinions within the dissident right and bad thoughts do often lead to bad outcomes.
I will not speak for Dave or Darryl but two arguments can be (1) "European peoples should not be demonized THUS we need to de-mythologize WW2 in this specific way" and (2) "WW2 was less a war of good vs evil and more a war between competing powers THUS we should point out the flaws of Churchill"
That you address the factual parts of the arguments after "THUS" is commendable. But the parts before the thus are mighty important to us. Maybe you could use your high IQ to provide better arguments after the "THUS" (if you are a friend)
Since the car-crash podcast my opinion of Daryll Cooper has gone up somewhat, and I think probably most of his issues are to do with Twitter, and he is really being ill served by friends who don't tell him to stop being a dumbass. Tucker Carlson is the villain of the piece, and is actually quite a poisonous person. My opinion of Dave Greene has absolutely plummeted, but that's entirely a function of the weird way he chose to handle this.
On WW2, I think I am more radical in my revisionism than you, but I think everything you need to know is already in 'Stalin's War' by Sean McMeekin, and in Unqualified Reservations (thought the latter contains some judgments that, at least, have to be pared back a bit). One of the points I was making to Dave Greene when he wasn't just rambling or interrupting me is that a major source of dysfunction in online information spaces is the constant demand to create new content, repackaging things that have already been said perfectly clearly already.
What has improved your opinion of Daryll? You were pretty damning initially.
I listened to this interview. I've decided he is thoughtful, but not especially intelligent, person who just can't stop himself being a retard on Twitter, and was used by Tucker Carlson for click bait. More a victim of the rightoid insane asylum than a culprit. Also, the article I linked to and the anecdotes in it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkGXrUEmLTk&
I wouldn't know of what McMeekin said on WW2, but if his proven charlatanry on WW1 is anything to go by, then my automatic assumption is "Press X to doubt".
Please explain.
When he wrote Russian Origins of WW1, he butchered the timeline of events to exculpate Germany and Austria and paint Russia as the central villain of the story. If you go through his book versus John Rohl's "1914: Delusion or Design?" or David Fromkin's "Europe's Last Summer", you will immediately notice that a lot of events that can be found in their accounts are just straight-up missing or twisted by removing key details in his version, especially anything which implicates the Germans or Austrians. There's also his persistent snarling tone and use of transparently biased rhetoric whenever he writes about the Russians and the Armenians. Clearly, he's writing not as an impartial observer, but as a defense lawyer for one side.
The real aim of the book is revealed when he starts talking about the Armenian Genocide. His argument is that the Russians' use of Armenian guerrillas during the war forced the Turks to enact harsh measures and deportations. Thus, he shifts the blame from Turkey to Russia, which explains why he pinned the blame for WW1 on it as well - if you're going to write a hitpiece, ambivalence and nuance is counterproductive. Is it worth mentioning that he's a professor at a Turkish university and has a Turkish muhacir wife?
Also, much like how Darryl Cooper conveniently forgets the evidence of how the Nazis intended for and planned out the various atrocities on the Eastern Front, Sean McMeekin avoids any mention of prewar CUP ideology or policy planning regarding the Armenians and eastern Anatolia, and takes care to say that the majority of deaths were by starvation and thirst, not murder. By the by, he also blames the Armenians for provoking the Hamidian massacres. Whenever the Turks commit an atrocity, he bothsides the issue and slants it as if it was the Armenians that started it and 'gave as good as they got'.
He's the latest innovation in Turkish propaganda aimed at Western audiences, no doubt a worthy successor to men like Stanford J. Shaw and Justin McCarthy before him.
Well, that's certainly a good explanation. I don't know very much about WW1, but I'll look into it. I've read as many hostile reviews as I can find of Stalin's War, and they don't make criticisms of anything like this gravity. He did write Stalin's War 10 years later, so perhaps he matured as a scholar, or perhaps (a) the prevalent historiography of WW2 is just much more flawed, and makes it easier to do revisionism or (b) Stalin really was so bad, that you can be as biased as you want and still not do him an injustice.
I've only read McMeekin's book on the July Crisis and Stalin's War so I cant comment on the book you referenced but I would encourage you to read Clark's Sleepwalkers if you want a well regarded neutral book that comprehensively tears the Fischer Thesis apart. I'm not sure I'd go as far as Mcmeekin in blaming the entire war on the Russians but the Tsars decision to mobilize was unquestionably the point at which a major war in Europe was unavoidable.
Again I'm not sure what exactly McMeekin claimed about Armenian responsibility for the Genocide but in hindsight its hard to argue that Russian encouraging Christian uprisings and British encouraging Greek interventions in Anatolia and then abandoning them served either groups interests at all.
-- "in hindsight its hard to argue that Russian encouraging Christian uprisings and British encouraging Greek interventions in Anatolia and then abandoning them served either groups interests at all."
Say what you will about the British for being flakes, but the Russians fought for three years on the Ottoman front up until a certain event forced them out of the war.
Funny you should say that, because Clark's book is *also* very economical with the truth and takes care to paint its subject in the rosiest colors possible. Which makes sense - Clark is, after all, a Hohenzollern family defense attorney, and his historical work on Germany is widely lauded for "improving Anglo-German relations". The agenda is not just on display, it's at the level of the emperor's new clothes.
Unfortunately, laypeople don't bother to do even basic background checks on the historians they read, which means that for every David Irving who only becomes infamous by lying about a subject as charged as the Holocaust, a hundred other liars get to stay in the zone of respectability just because they chose to lie about a topic nobody cared enough about to call them out on TV and which so many people *wanted* them to be correct on. The result is that they can falsify even basic events with complete chutzpah, safe in the knowledge that any layman with a sentimental tenderness for the Kaiser's Germany will applaud them as a hero for the cause. Clark is the Kaiser's PR man through and through - if you want a more honest appraisal of Willy and his government's role in starting WW1, read Rohl's "The Kaiser and His Court: Wilhelm II and the Government of Germany", followed by Fromkin's "Europe's Last Summer".
Rohl sums the controversy up quite well in this piece: https://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/files/field/field_publication_docs/INTA91_1_09_Roehl.pdf As an aside, I would highly recommend this article by Holger Herwig on the postwar effort to whitewash Germany's image -- https://www-jstor-org.proxy16.noblenet.org/stable/2538811 -- in case you find yourself shocked at the suggestion that a historian as honored as Clark could be on someone's payroll to distort history.
And if you want to preserve your good image of pre-Hitlerine Germany, never under any circumstances look up the Polish Border Strip plan.
Excellent summary, thanks. For some reason, I can't like replies here.
You make excellent points on the need for fact checks. I think there should be dissident right journals where groups of people sign off on the factual accuracy of their posted articles. I think you are a little catty in attacking Dave and Darryl but there are truly problematic people and opinions withing the dissident right and bad thoughts do often lead to bad outcomes.
I will not speak for Dave or Darryl but two arguments can be (1) "European peoples should not be demonized THUS we need to de-mythologize WW2 in this specific way" and (2) "WW2 was less a war of good vs evil and more a war between competing powers THUS we should point out the flaws of Churchill"
That you address the factual parts of the arguments after "THUS" is commendable. But the parts before the thus are mighty important to us. Maybe you could use your high IQ to provide better arguments after the "THUS" (if you are a friend)
If I didn't know why better, this is Curtis Yarvins alt account
"It must hurt if you spend years building a house only to discover the timber is infested with maggots, but you have to fess up all the same. Your community has maggots. Maybe it’s not mostly maggots, but it’s hard to tell, because they’re writhing so much you can’t see anything else. You can explain away at as great a length as you wish why it’s not your fault, why there’s nothing you can do, but what difference does it really make?"
I feel like I've read something similar to this in the book that shall not be named.
Ah, but it's different when you do it, right?
Never again - unless you're the one doing it.
When people say that LLMs have made people below a certain intelligence threshold redundant they mean you.
There's that lack of self-awareness coming out yet again.
"I think it’s necessary to have high intellectual standards of accuracy and he agrees that it would be desirable, but thinks its too hard, so we just have to do without."
You're so dishonest you couldn't even get to the next sentence before contradicting yourself!
"...but thinks its too hard, so we just have to do without."
Hardly the most accurate description of his position.
Spot on.
On an unrelated note, are you going to write the post about your issues with Moldbug and nRx you hinted in one of your notes? Would really like to read it personally.
It's on the agenda, but I want to go back and re-read a lot of the UR catalogue first.
Agree to disagree friend. Your thoroughness and conviction is to be commended regardless of our disagreement.
I'll take it. Good Yom Tov.
Healthy happy new year and chag sameach for sukkot!