MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
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User ID: 896
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
2d ago
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
2d ago
I agree with you that the number of political debankings strictu sensu (i.e. a banking relationship is ended because the bank finds the client's political views, as opposed to the nature of the client's business, obnoxious) is probably greater than zero. But it is rare, unless you count "debankings" by Paypal. Debanking of disfavoured industries is absolutely a thing, and normally involves a combination of financial and political considerations - they are hard to separate in practice given the modest positive correlation between "chooses to make a living running an antisocial business" and "inclined to dishonesty in their financial dealings" and between "industries my staff don't want to bank" and "industries my non-evil customers don't want me to bank." Sometimes it involves improper regulatory pressure - Operation Chokepoint was very much a thing, and the Biden-era Fed unsuccessfully tried to do something similar with the fossil fuel industry.
The point I am trying to make in my posts is that if you are going to legislate about debanking, your legislation needs to get the common cases right. A law which puts a burden of proof on banks which end a client relationship is, regardless of the sponsors' intent, primarily a law about credit risk management - namely that banks have to do it upfront at the point of account opening. The main impact would be to make it harder for people who are not already rich to open business bank accounts.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
2d ago
Having a job is also a privilege with restrictions, and in 49 of the 50 states you have no right to keep it.
If you want to make the case that cancel culture is good when applied to resident foreigners but bad when applied to W-2 employees, then you can do so. But cancel culture is still cancel culture, even when it is entirely legal.
I think that "Be careful what you say, Big Brother is watching" is socially corrosive in all circumstances, and accordingly that people should not be cancelled for ill-chosen jokes, regardless of the details of the jokes or the cancellation.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
3d ago
HoI4 is Heart of Iron 4, the Paradox Interactive grand strategy game set during the period immediately before and during WW2.
Wehraboo is a term of abuse for people who get overly enthusiastic about playing as the Nazis in wargames - it originated in tabletop wargaming culture. There are a lot of Wehraboos in HoI4 fandom, and if you want to run a HoI4 discussion board you kind of have to tolerate them, hence the fandom is considered problematic by lefties.
Antifa is a international network of orgainsed violent far-left groups. The name stands for "Anti-fascist action" and they mostly like to engage in street brawls with European soccer hooligans (organised soccer hooliganism is tied to far-right politics). They are insignificant in the US. The term is also used more loosely as a general term for violent lefties who enjoy brawling with right-wing thugs.
The chans are a set of online forums, of which the original and greatest was 4chan, with a reception for lax moderation, crass language, porn-ridden image-sharing sections, and tolerating far-right politics which more respectable online fora don't. Gamergate is widely seen as the first sign of young very online people fighting back against PC/establishment-left control of the discourse, and mostly came out of 4chan. All the chans have dedicated subforums for discussing video games.
I don't know about the history of the term Groyper but it is showing up a lot in my Twitter feed. It refers to very online right-wing antisemites.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
3d ago
Other than my original prediction (Robinson has no involvement with either the Democratic Party or any organised far-left group), which I still expect to hold up, I am explicitly not betting.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
3d ago
And is obscure in the English-speaking world outside two contexts:
- The organised political movement known as Antifa, who use it as an anthem
- The HoI4 fandom, because it is used as theme music in the game
Given the other messages, I think the HoI4 interpretation is probably the correct one.
I have a book of left-wing political songs published by the British Liberal Democrats, and have actually been to events where liberals spent 45 minutes drunkenly singing anti-fascist songs. Bella Ciao isn't in there - we sang Bandiera Rossa for the Italians. I don't think someone who came out of general English-speaking left-wing culture would choose it as a pithy anti-fascist message to write on a cartridge.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
3d ago
Trump not being elected
I am increasingly coming round to the view that you can only have a healthy political culture if you have a strong centre-right party (or centre-right faction within a big-tent right-wing party - as long as it is powerful enough to keep the centre-left honest). If there is nobody for the small-c conservative normies to vote for in order to signal "actually, don't blow up the system" then someone is going to try to blow up the system. The nature of factional politics in left-wing parties means that the faction that will blow up the system (either deliberately or through naivety) will beat the faction that is committed to not doing so - the only thing that stops this happening is fear of losing elections. You see this with Trump in the US - the Democrats' instinctual response to his nomination wasn't "All hands on deck to stop the orange fascist" - it was "Now the Republicans have nominated a non-serious candidate we can engage in infighting rather then focussing on winning."
You can have healthy political cultures where the two largest parties are a centre-right and a far-right party (Poland, Czech Republic), where they are both centre-right (Ireland), or even a healthy political culture with only one strong political party - as long as it is centre-right (Japan, Singapore). The main examples of healthy political cultures with consistently left-wing governments are Sweden (1936-1973) and Israel (1945-1977). In Sweden the possibility of a coalition between the Moderates, the Liberals, and the Centre Party (all centre-right) was sufficient to keep the Social Democrats honest throughout the period, but there was no serious centre-right opposition to Mapai in Israel until 1965.
The strongest non-Trump candidate in the 2016 primary was Ted Cruz, who is not centre-right in the sense I am using here - he was definitely committed to blowing up the system, just in a different way to Trump. I suppose the GOPe gets another chance in 2020 if Trump loses in 2016, but I see a Ted Cruz-style movement conservative winning on a "Trump wasn't conventionally right-wing enough, plus his character stinks" platform or Trump running again on an "I woz robbed" platform (like he did in 2024 - he had the false allegations of election fraud teed up in 2016 too) as more likely outcomes for the hypothetical 2020 primary.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
3d ago
Banks are like power and water utilities. Its not something you cut off in a modern society without very good reasons.
Plenty of people get power or water cut off for non-payment, which falls a long way short of organised crime and terrorism. Plenty of people have credit bad enough that they can only get power with a prepayment meter. The equivalent is a basic bank account which can't be overdrawn (and therefore doesn't come with a cheque book, only a debit card - with the shift to zero floor limits the number of places that debit card can't be used is now quite low). You can't run a business with a basic bank account, and you can't run a business with electricity off a prepayment meter - in both cases this is both against the rules (the social contract that says regulated businesses can't shun dirty poors only extends to consumer services, not business ones) and impractical given the lack of credit.
The vast majority of business debankings are for credit control reasons, both of the "new information means this business is no longer considered creditworthy" and of the "new information means that this business is of a type which we do not bank because we lack the special skills needed to assess its creditworthiness" types.
The level of protection the banking system offers to normies who are victims of dodgy businesses (including but by no means limited to credit card chargebacks) is only possible because the system tries to keep dodgy businesses out.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
3d ago
This is too dank to believe, and I don't believe it, but it is what my Twitter feed wants me to believe, and I'm sharing it on that basis.
The combination of the messages on the cartridges is best explained by Robinson being deep into gamer culture
- The sequence of arrows is a reference to Helldivers 2
- "Ciao Bella" can be a number of things, but one of them is a HoI4 meme.
- "If you read this you are gay" is general chan culture
- "Notices, bulges what's this" is an online furry culture meme which has also spread into general chan culture
Where does this end up? If Robinson was deep into HoI4 online culture, his browser history will be full of both Wehraboo and Antifa material. And if he got into the chans or the other online cesspools where large number of gamers hang out, then they are going to find all the bad stuff. So the people who want to believe that he was a leftist will find enough evidence to believe that, the people who want to believe he was a groyper will find enough evidence to believe that, and the people (like me) who want to believe that he was just a Thomas Crooks-style very online loser who shot a politician because in the current year it is more memetically badass than shooting up a school will find enough evidence to believe that. So the assassination will become a super-scissor. And, to add insult to injury, a wholesome hobby that I and many other Motteposters enjoy a lot (namely Paradox grand strategy gaming) will become tied in the mind of normies to political violence.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
3d ago
If cancel culture was limited to firing people who celebrated political assassinations
The Deputy Secretary of State, on his official X account, said that "praising, rationalizing, or making light" of Kirk's death was grounds for visa revocation, and encouraged Karens to report wrongthinkers. That goes beyond "firing people who celebrated political assassinations" - it is a much broader category of prohibited wrongthink, as well as being a threat of government action. "Making light" would cover a lot of perfectly normal behaviour.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
3d ago
Wexner owned Victoria’s Secret before he met Epstein. He definitely wasn’t relying on Epstein to procure girls for him - the reverse seems more likely.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
3d ago
Churchill was technically fired for plagiarism and for falsely claiming to be a Native American. The fact that affirmative action fraudsters like Churchill and Warren only get caught and fired if they become politically controversial is an indictment of the system, but his firing was clearly legally justified.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
3d ago
Kirk opposed the civil rights act. Motteposters may not consider that a far-right political view, but normies do.
He was also all-in on Trump's attempt to remain in office despite losing the 2020 election. If you think (as Orwell did and you should, although most people don't) that the main danger of the far right is the same as the main danger of the far left - the threat to democracy and the rule of law - then that makes Kirk (and Trump, and most of MAGA) far-right in the way that matters. That is what I mean by Jan 6th being the ultimate scissor.
PS. If an American publisher were typesetting this post those hyphens would be rendered as em-dashes. (British style is to render parenthetic dashes as en-dashes between spaces, which is why I was so confused by the first few months of the em-dash discourse). Still not a bot.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
3d ago
The other claim is that his friends in the bank intervened when some transactions were flagged (for what, no one really explains) but this only deepens the original question: even if he was guilty of sex crimes, that doesn't imply that his financial dealings weren't in order.
If Epstein was as rich as he claimed to be without any of the wackier conspiracy conspiracies being true, he got the money by embezzling from Les Wexner. If any of the wackier conspiracies were true, he had a lot of foreign income he was being dishonest about the source of.
I personally think that Epstein's finances were above board and he simply wasn't as rich as he claimed to be (his lifestyle was consistent with the amount of money he could have made scummily but legally by charging Wexner 2-and-20 without providing alpha). But if I was the Feds I would have been going over his finances with a fine-tooth comb.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
4d ago
I can't say I've heard of an American movie getting grief for casting non-Americans
There was a fuss about black British actors playing characters who were ADOS blacks in American films - but it isn't clear to me if that was an actual thing or if it was just Samuel L Jackson and his sycophants.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
4d ago
· Edited 4d ago
Listen to American music, watch American shows, go see American films - obviously you're going to play American games as well
Games is the software sub-sector where the US is least dominant (Nintendo exists, for example), so this isn't the story.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
4d ago
If the killings are being done by psychos (which, to date, they mostly are) then that doesn't work.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
4d ago
real action basically never happens
I come from a Northern Irish family. I assure you that "real action" can happen if enough people want it to, and that you really shouldn't want it to.
I agree that (absent evidence that Kirk's killer was part of an organised political faction), "real action" is not happening in the USA in 2025
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
4d ago
Big Tech now has high but not stupidly high PE ratios (except Tesla) - Apple/Google/Microsoft really are some the most profitable private-sector companies (sorry, Aramco) in history. Both that profit and the expenses (mostly pay and benefits) used to generate it count to US GDP. The fact that almost anyone with a raw IQ above 130 and a willingness to put up with corporate bullshit can learn to code and get a $250k tech job has driven up upper-middle class incomes in the US across the board. And the upper-middle class in California (and other Blue Tribe places which compete with California for mobile talent) pay a fuckton of taxes which secure the loans from the Red Chinese which allow normie-Americans to enjoy a comprehensive welfare state for the old without paying for it.
Software isn't the entirety of why America now has a higher GDP-per-hour-worked than Western Europe, but it is the biggest part of it. My tl;dr for why America won the early 21st century economically would be "America was already dominant in software by 2000, and software ate the world before anyone else could make a serious effort to catch up."
Think of all the sectors hollowed out by competition from Big Tech (most obviously newspapers and B&M retail). In Europe, those sectors have been hollowed out by foreign competition with the same kind of social impact (but on a smaller scale) as the China Shock hollowing out US manufacturing.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
4d ago
And so, goes this narrative, there really is a simple solution to these events: stop talking about them. Kill the meme and you kill the behavior. This obviously wouldn't be easy, between press incentives and an open internet, but I'm confident it would be easier than seizing hundreds of millions of guns.
I agree that this would work, and won't happen. The US has an unusually strong free speech culture as well as an unusually strong gun culture, so I don't think it is necessary easier than keeping guns away from crazies.
Switzerland and Canada both have broadly available long guns, but they don't seem to have many spree killings. I don't know if that this is because they are not exposed to the same mimetic contagion (unlikely in the case of Canada) or if their gun culture is healthier in some way which means that fewer guns are stored in ways where crazies have access to them. (Most school shooters use Dad's insecurely stored gun).
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
5d ago
For the Taliban, no. Donald Trump surrendered in 2020 and Biden rather notoriously botched the implementation of the surrender agreement in 2021.
To the extent that Al-Qaeda still exists, the US is still at war with them.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
5d ago
The post-911 AUMF was (although it didn’t use the words, and probably should have done) a declaration of war against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
5d ago
Hope, definitely. Bet, too. There is a reference class here - shootings of political figures by crazies with no participation in organised politics is now a several times per year event. As far as I can see, the only time in the internet news era a political figure in the US was shot at by an actual political opponent was Steve Scalise almost a decade ago.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
5d ago
I would put "Dems fumble an easily winnable election through poor candidate choice" and "Team Trump manage to steal the election" at about 20% and 10% respectively. And "The Trump administration gets less incompetent and thus more popular" has non-zero probability.
If he was in fact dating a tranny, then the "the killer was radicalised by transactivists" theory is probably correct.
Assuming it wasn't transactivists, the whole reason why this is a dankest timeline scenario is that if Robinson was, in fact, radicalised in the online computer wargaming community, then his motives have essentially nothing to do with mainstream politics, but nobody is going to believe this because of the obvious political associations of the wargamer memes he wrote on the bullet casings. The point is that the explanation for "catch this fascist" would only be comprehensible for someone familiar with the memes of the relevant online community.
I don't know very much about the culture of online wargaming, but the tabletop wargaming culture has a number of features which means that I can imagine a very online version of it being a risk factor for radicalisation.
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