I don't have a single specific link for (3). It's scattered over a number of his essays and interviews, from what I recall. His basic point, as best as I can phrase it, is that the left is largely just normies who have been doing what normies always do, which is to follow the dictates of whatever regime is currently in power. The key is that Yarvin doesn't view this as a bad thing. After all, as a monarchist, he on some level likes the idea of normies following whatever regime is currently in power. Hence his politics is focused on a revolution among the elites, rather than on a populist revolution. He doesn't really want the masses to rise up, and he probably doesn't think that they are capable of it in any case. He is more focused on getting the masses a new set of masters. He thinks that if a new regime takes power, it should make sure to lock the previous regime out of any important positions of political influence, but other than that it should also treat the previous regime's foot-soldiers decently and not try to get revenge on them. He often brings up the example of the Allied de-Nazification of Germany. Basically, the Allies made it illegal to be a Nazi, but for the most part they did not persecute minor Nazi officials, they kind of just let them continue to be part of society, they just made sure that they could not reconstitute something like Nazism. Yarvin has a similar vision for if a regime that is different from today's regime takes power in the US. He would take political action to prevent the former regime from reconstituting itself, but for the most part he would not persecute the former regime's foot soldiers.
Note: I do not agree with all of Yarvin's points, I am just trying to do as best of a job as I can to present his thoughts accurately.
Goodguy
1d ago
Tolkien doesn't use the term "dark elf" from what I recall, but he has plenty of morally dark, morally ambiguous, and/or rebellious elf characters who could be characterized as "dark elves". In Tolkien, there is no race of dark elves, but then, in Yarvin's metaphor there also isn't. When he talks about "dark elves", he more or less means elites who defect from the blue tribe consensus, he's not talking about a race or ethnic group.
Goodguy
2d ago
Yarvin, for all his faults, at least doesn't base his thought on always telling people what they want to hear. Some of his ideas, such as 1) Trump probably won't accomplish much, 2) the system is more likely to be changed by blue/gray tribe elites defecting than by populist right-wing revolution, and 3) even if the right wins, they should forgive the left and treat them decently rather than trying to seek vengeance... make him unpalatable to the more passionate and radical type of modern right-wing intellectual who believes in a glorious right-wing uprising that sweeps all before it.
I agree with you that it's annoying how the interviewer acts like certain political positions are obviously right rather than being willing to engage in a more dispassionate debate about them. To be fair, though, Yarvin frequently does the same thing in his writing and speaking. Indeed, part of why he is popular is because he uses many effective emotional and stylistic rhetorical techniques instead of just writing dull dry dissertations. And part of why he is often criticized even by people who are sympathetic to his worldview is that all too often, he jumps from one statement to another one that does not necessarily follow from what he said before and uses rhetorical flourishes to cover up the non-sequitur.
Also, to be fair to the interviewer, if you come into the interview knowing nothing about Yarvin's thought, I would say that Yarvin's views on slavery from years ago are actually pretty useful to know about. For one thing, they are one of the aspects of his thought that is most different from the typical NYT reader's thought, so it is worthwhile to draw attention to the issue so that the reader has a rough idea of what Yarvin is about. For another thing, claiming that the black slaves were better off under slavery is one of the easiest Yarvin ideas to critique even from a purely logical point of view, so critiquing it is a good way to show an example of some of the strengths and weaknesses of Yarvin's worldview in general. Do I think that Yarvin genuinely believes that the blacks were better under slavery? Not really. And I say this as someone who has read probably more than half of everything that he has ever written for public consumption. I think he believes that it is somewhat true that blacks were better off, in some ways, under slavery, but he does not really believe deep down that they were better off. When he claims that they were, it is because he wants to do a bit of very typical Yarvin trolling, plus he wants to poke at conventional wisdom in order to get people thinking more deeply. I think it would be fair to believe that when Yarvin says that blacks were better off under slavery, this is just a bit of a rhetorical flourish which covers the fact that he what he really probably thinks is that whites were better off when blacks were in slavery.
That said, all this doesn't mean that I think this is a good interview. I am referring to the printed version, I have not seen any video of it. The interviewer either deliberately or accidentally fails to talk to Yarvin in depth about the actually most interesting and useful aspects of Yarvin's thought.
Goodguy
2d ago
Because of the idea itself, or because of the cheesy Tolkien metaphor he wrapped it in?
Goodguy
2d ago
In my opinion, less than what would go right if we deleted it. But it would probably be hard to find a national-level majority that agrees with me about that. The Department of Education is also a sacred cow because people understandably are very attached to children, and a huge fraction of people are still stuck in the mindset that mass education is actually effective at making people more educated beyond the reading/writing/arithmetic basics.
I feel very differently. I don't like China's government and I would hate to live in China, but at the same time, I definitely view the US government spying on me as being more dangerous than China spying on me. After all, I am a US citizen, so it is very unlikely that China would do anything to me no matter what kind of information they had on me. The US government, on the other hand, could do all sorts of things to me.
I hope that I'm wrong, but my hunch about DOGE is that they will cut a million here, a million there, but will not be able to get rid of any major inefficiencies, and that they will avoid touching the $1 trillion / year military-intelligence budget, since that is a sacred cow for both Democrats and especially Republicans, and is also a massive and very sensitive jobs program.
Goodguy
3d ago
I don't think that Japanese are smarter than Britons. They perform better on IQ tests, but it is clear to me just based on examining Japanese accomplishments and Japanese history that it is unlikely that Japanese have any intelligence advantage over Britons. Historically, Britain has been vastly more innovative than Japan in math, science, and social organization. Of course there are many factors that could explain this other than Britons being smarter than Japanese, but given this discrepancy, it is also hard for me to believe that Britons are stupider than Japanese. IQ tests do not perfectly measure intelligence. For example, obviously one can get better at IQ tests by doing more of them, whereas it is much harder to raise overall intelligence by similar levels through practice.
I don't really see why the IDF spending years in Gaza would be bad for morale. After 10/7, it's hard for me to imagine any Israeli soldier not being happy to spend a few months patrolling an occupied Gaza, especially given that now that Hamas' military strength is mostly broken, an Israeli soldier would be unlikely to die over there. But then, I'm neither an Israeli nor a soldier. I guess in practice, it would not be that great. For one thing, it probably does sap morale for most non-insane people to patrol an occupied population.
I'm surprised that the IDF and Mossad would want a peace deal. My mental model of both those groups is that they are controlled by hard-liners who want to destroy their opponents. But I don't know much about the inner politics of Israel and I'm pretty sure that you know much more about it than I do.
The situation with the Gulf states is one that I probably didn't spend too much time thinking about when I made my original post. I did think of them, but my initial thought was that pretty much no matter what Israel did short of an actual genocide, they would figure out how to spin it to their populations as being close enough to a draw that they would not face any major unrest, and even if they did face unrest as the result of such an outcome, they would not be seriously threatened. But when I think over it again, I can see how maybe an Israel that does a deal with Hamas that leaves Hamas effectively destroyed for the near future is better for the region's stability than Israel going all-out to destroy its enemies. After all, Israel has in the last year shown that it is not a country that you want to fuck with if you have the typical second/third world minor country type of corrupt, ineffective, and technologically/organizationally relatively primitive military.
There is a lot of talk right now about whether the Israel-Hamas ceasefire / hostage release deal is a good thing or not.
One thing I don't see brought up is that maybe the best thing for Israel to do would be to sign the deal, get the hostages back, and then immediately just ignore the deal and spend the next couple of years killing every Hamas member on the face of the planet.
I don't really see much downside. What would people do in the future as a result? Not trust Israel as a deal-maker? By and large, groups that would be in the position to sign a deal with Israel already either don't trust Israel or have no choice because Israel has overwhelming military force. Political entities generally do not sign peace agreements because they trust each other, they sign peace agreements because they view doing so as being better than the alternatives.
Another possible downside would be that in the future, groups would just kill Israelis instead of taking any hostages... but again, would this really be that bad for Israel? Would 10/7 have been much worse for Israel if Hamas had killed every single person that they ended up taking hostage immediately instead of taking them hostage? Well yes, for the few currently surviving hostages it would have been worse, but I figure that overall probably more Israeli lives would be saved by Israel making it clear that hostage taking is an ineffective approach than by Israel right now signing a deal that effectively signals that taking Israeli hostages has some degree of effectiveness.
Goodguy
7d ago
Can people suggest a good way to learn the ropes of finance and playing markets? I am shamefully un-learned in these things. I would like to learn about how modern finance, investments, banking, markets, financial regulations, etc. all work. More from a pragmatic than from a theoretical motivation (I want to start being more of a capitalist and less of a wagie), but theory is good too.
Goodguy
9d ago
Interesting. I feel a bit silly for having missed that obvious factor.
That does bring up the question, though... why wouldn't an advertising boycott be a similar problem for Meta nowadays? Has culture really shifted that much in the last few years?
Goodguy
9d ago
Did he really have to, though? What would have happened to him if he had said no to DEI? This isn't a rhetorical question on my part, by the way.
Discrimination lawsuits against Meta? They could have been fought.
Loss of woke employees? Not that significant for a company that people in general want to work for as much as they want to work for Meta.
Government interference of some kind? Not sure about this one. I can imagine the government forcing companies to add surveillance or censorship, since we have seen both happen, but I don't know if the government would bother to enforce DEI programs.
Angry investors? Also not sure about this one. How many would have cared?
I haven't watched the quite lengthy Rogan Zuck interview, so maybe someone could fill me in.
I think it's not so much about being near white people, it's about being near people who create thriving economies and do little violent crime or property crime. Few people of any race want to live around methed-out white gangsters in a backwater town. And then the secondary consideration is being around your own race. So, for example, a white person will probably on average prefer to live around affluent peaceful white people than around affluent peaceful Asian people, (of course there are many exceptions - some people of every race enjoy living around people of a foreign culture and so on. I just mean on average), but would rather live around affluent peaceful Asian people than around violent white people in a place with a really bad economy.
Goodguy
11d ago
Sure, but it does mean that WhiningCoil's argument that Californians have only themselves to blame is ridiculous.
Goodguy
11d ago
Everyone there voted for this for at least a decade.
What in the world are you talking about? 38% of California voted for Trump in the last election. More than 40% voted for the Republican in the most recent gubernatorial election. California is only about 60% Democrat. Very very far from "everyone".
Goodguy
11d ago
Quantity of books read, in itself, doesn't matter much. It's possible that someone who reads 5 books a year gets more out of them than someone else who reads 50 books a year gets out of those books.
Goodguy
13d ago
I'm sure that Trump is smart enough to not really mean this. Annexing Canada would mean either allowing the Canadians to vote in US politics or not allowing them to vote. Allowing them to vote would mean that the Republican party would never win another national election in its current form. Not allowing them to vote would destroy the entire supposed moral basis of American global hegemony.
Goodguy
13d ago
I actually really wonder if the US military would even obey a Trump order to invade Canada. I kind of doubt it. If the military did obey the order, then the US would win the war in about one day. I think that the UK and France would raise complains and likely would leave NATO and try to form a new NATO-without-the-US, but they would not use military force to try to stop the invasion, not that they could even if they wanted to. They would not seriously risk nuclear war for Canada's sake.
Goodguy
13d ago
What sort of leftist academic would say that new housing construction is bad? I would think that, almost by definition, if you think that new housing construction is bad than you are not a leftist.
Goodguy
18d ago
Sure, for example it's easy to find Nazis who think that Jews aren't actually smarter than non-Jewish whites on average despite the overwhelming evidence for the fact that Jews actually are smarter than non-Jewish whites on average.
That said, I don't think talking about "rote learning" or "in-group preferences" of East Asians is necessarily the same phenomenon. With some commenters, it is, but not with all. There is a real phenomenon to be explained of why it is that East Asians are not more successful than whites despite testing higher on various measures of intelligence. Jews, clearly, are more successful than non-Jewish whites on average, so in their case there is no phenomenon to explain. The idea that standardized tests make East Asians seem smarter than they actually are in the real world seems like a plausible explanation to me. It's not necessarily just some systemic racism theory.
Goodguy
18d ago
Standardized test scores are also not really a part of academic merit, they are just a proxy for academic merit. The only actual metric for academic merit would be one that measures the extent to which someone produces actual academic results like innovating new historical approaches or proving a math theorem, etc.
I kneel before superior Tolkien knowledge.
Speaking of Tolkien knowledge, I find it interesting that /r/tolkienfans is one of the few subreddits I can think of that is relatively free from Reddit-ism. Perhaps in some way, one can give partial credit to the old Professor for that.
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