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The alt-lite is not alright
tl;dr Nick Fuentes and Lauren Southern are at points where their careers look far less promising now, some words on that
The alt lite was a catch-all term of sorts at a point during the peak of the alt-right which came crashing down post-Charlotessville in 2017. The alt-lite included people who would wilfully ignore the idea of Western identitarianism on the basis of ethnicity and support every other position or offshoots around it. So the kinda folks who would talk about "Western Civilization", "Western values" whilst being more tolerant of the actual alt-right than neocons. The prime example of an alt-lite figure being milo, others included Mike Cernovich, Lauren Southern, and Lauren Chen to name a few. There are two people who I will focus on today, both were not explicitly alt-right, in fact were known for fighting with the alt-right.
Nick Fuentes for now being made into a caricature of what the average person thinks is an alt-righter and Lauren Southern who unlike the other members of the alt-lite or alt-right forgot to become a fed, allegedly.
Nick is the leader of a paleoconservative movement named America First which is defined by these values which can be summed as retvrn to 1950s if you want a briefer version. He began streaming around 2015 and was his views crystallised around 2017 where he would argue with people in and around the internet bloodsport. He has been caught with trans pornography opened on his browswer a few times alongside texts and interactions with trans girls. This is well known among his former allies and was brought to light by chris brunet recently in a series of rants against him. This was further compounded by the recent leaks of streamer Destiny being caught on camera sucking a guy off. Destiny is also our bridge to the other character at play here. Again the person in the leaks is obviously not Nick but his previous acts of cozying upto Catboy Kami, watching trans porn, being a literal incel etc dont help his case at all.
Lauren Southern was a big alt-lite figure, she recently worked with Tenet Media which was taking money from Russia, the people working also included Tim Pool though the primary media person involved with the financial side was another alt-lite Canadian Lauren, Lauren Chen. Lauren Southern was down, she had been divorced from her Asian husband who she had a kid with, said husband also turned out to be a literal fed. She was doing fairly well until her hiatus. She made a comeback after her hiatus and it went badly on both personal and professional levels. For starters, she was summoned alongside Lauren Chen and testified in person. The most interesting reaction towards this was by Richard Spencer who like Milo has been outed as being a fed in public court documents. If the threat of jail time is not enough, she also wrecked whatever goodwill she had by having had an affair with the same man Nick Fuentes was being rumored with, Destiny. The leaks are painful to read.
I bring these incidents up not to gossip about two people. People yearn for ideals to strive towards, heroes of sorts. Those studying music look up to Mozart rightfully and would be visibly disgusted upon finding out about his scat fetish accusations. E celebs are considerably dumber and likely worse people than Mozart. Both Lauren and Nick are people who played a game of Motte and Bailey, Nick far more than Lauren, both have had run-ins with the government (Nick was an agitator during jan 6 who was on a no fly list but never tried, whilst people who followed his orders were, go figure) and are terrible people in their personal lives.
The "online right" is being allowed to torch people slightly on its left and it seems to be working. The consequences of being an e-celeb are not for the faint-hearted, most of them end up hiding their issues well. It is also a good reminder as to why putting the weight of your entire "movement" on one man is risky. Nick during 2019 effectively made Turning Point USA shift their opinions slightly to the right after constant harassment via his followers in college campuses during Charlie Kirks speaking tours, his low-status behavior ultimately came through. Marx despite being outed as a person with multiple character flaws did not dent marxism very much as ultimately his ideas were enough to the point where people did champion them in the 20th century. America First lacks any sort of intellectual rigor is simply MAGA but how bad faith actors want you think it is.
I wanted to write at length about the crashing and burning of various e celebs from the post gamergate era yet there is not much to be gained from it. Most if not all of them only served as introductions to the various factions of "the right". The recurring themes were fairly apparent, being an online personality will eventually cause real world harm as you care about what others think online, many people actively run gay ops just to screw you over. Political actions have always had consequences, lowering the barrier to entry does not shield you from them, you won't get crushed by a dictator for being a dissenter but you will get hurt and see people you call "normies" doing better in life, which still hurts a lot. A lust for validation thwarts your internal psyche too. Nick for instance really is not all that different from the alt right and is by all accounts far less aware of his own religious beliefs than atheist Richard Spencer, in some ways he succeeded in hiding his similarities to other identitarians long enough by being fine with current American demographics but his position is built on shaky grounds given birth rates as of this year. Lauren who publicly talked about family values at the time ended up having affairs with many on the right if you go by the words of her ex-colleagues and was cheating on her husband with a streamer. Both of these people would have been better off had they never turned to the internet for validation.
There's no real risk of jail time. SDNY filed an indictment against two RT employees in Russia. They notably didn't even charge RT, which is an important tell. The corporation could have sent lawyers to fight the charges without sending anyone who could actually be arrested. So the DOJ is carefully avoiding being put in a position to prove the charges in court.
To put Southern in jail they'd have to go to a Canadian court first with all of the documentation proving the full money trail as well as an explanation of how Southern specifically broke both US and Canadian law to extradite her.
Even Chen is at little risk, as the trial would be in Middle District of Tennessee and those courts aren't as rubber stampy as SDNY is.
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I heard of Nick Fuentes, and only barely saw scattered video with Lauren Southern. She was young, cute, and over reacted to everything. I remember she went to some protest in the UK in 2014-2015ish, and started screaming for her life the moment things got mildly impolite by UK standards.
But it is remarkable the intellectual shredder e-celebrity is. For the longest time I attempted to have a carefully curated diet of center left and center right media. Maybe a skosh further right than left. Over time every center left person I enjoyed "drifted" right and wound up, if not endorsing Trump, screaming from the rooftops that the Democrats were not the lesser of two evils. Many straight up lost their mind.
I enjoyed Tim Pool doing on location reporting. Now he has a doomsday bunker in West Virginia and just does lame news reaction podcast. I enjoyed Crowder for ostensibly being a topical comedy show. His incessant need to center himself as a victim in every story, talk about himself over his guest, and act like he was filming in a doomsday bunker in Texas pushed it beyond all watchability. I enjoyed Dave Rubin circa 2014ish as a reasonable center left voice, and sometime around 2017 he went full "Trump is the answer to all things", which was just repetitive and boring. I don't know if he got a doomsday bunker in Florida. Once upon a time I enjoyed the Breaking Points team, Saagar Enjeti and Krystal Ball. Saagar brought a Realpolitik perspective to the chaos of the Trump campaign and then admin, and Krystal was able to criticize Trump's policies without lapsing into Trump tourette syndrome where every segment begins with the verbal ticks of "racist, sexist, xenophobic". Saagar is hanging in there, but Krystal has lapsed into far worse verbal ticks, just haphazardly throwing out "convicted felon, Arnold Palmer's dick, Elon Musk, island of trash" no matter the topic at hand. The show borders on unwatchable.
Joe Rogan is still keeping it real. Although he does have a doomsday bunker in Austin... I've been enjoying Triggernometry, but this election pushed them firmly from centrist to "The Democrats are not fit for purpose", almost their exact words. I don't think you are allowed to have a doomsday bunker in the UK, so I look forward to them emigrating somewhere that does. I've enjoyed Bridget Phetasy, and I'd hope someone with her sort of lived experience proves a bit more resilient than your run of the mill 20 something e-celebrity. I hope her sobriety is rock solid though.
I guess if I've noticed a trend, it's that reasonable centrist condemn the DNC as the greatest threat to America, go insane, and buy doomsday bunkers. I'm not really aware of a single centrist that drifted left versus right. Which more or less matches those charts we see of how insanely far left the DNC has gone.
Yeah, the 'reasonable centrist' or 'sane rightie' niche seems to eat people's personalities alive. Mentally, you probably get pulled in so many directions that eventually you'll suffer a break in some direction or other. Every person you mentioned is somebody that I enjoyed listening to at some point or another, but over time lost the qualities that actually made the stand out as notable.
ShoeOnHead seems to have avoided the worst possible outcomes.
You know, I forgot about ShoeOnHead. I think a credible argument could be made that she drifted left, even if she harbors a hatred and disrespect for the DNC. Bitching about RINO's doesn't disqualify someone from being on the right after all.
She did get married and have a kid though, so we'll see how well that leftward shift holds up.
I'm not even sure Shoe ever "drifted" left, she was a Bernie supporter and complained about the "Liberal Voltron" formed to block him in 2020.
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There would seem to be lots of people who might qualify as "center-left" nowadays that haven't drifted right. They are perhaps more willing to share heterodox takes today than in the bad old days.
Some examples: Nate Silver, Matt Yglesias, Noah Smith, etc...
I haven't seen it personally, but I could see how one would become captured by his audience. Until recently, there was a shortage of any content that was not rubber-stamped by the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. So posting anything with even a tinge of red was a great way to build an audience (if you didn't get canceled first). Of course, the redder your posts, the more engagement you got! And so it would be easy to drift in that direction.
In any case, I don't know why we talk about Nick Fuentes, Milo whatever his name is, or all the other obvious grifters that the terminally online seem obsessed with. It's trashy.
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Explain like I am a 55 year old non-American non-4Chan non-always-online person?
I think I know who Southern Lauren is back from Gamergate (but searching her I find a video that she fled a tradwife life because of her horrible husband?), and I sometimes hear about this Destiny guy (why is it noteworthy that he is gay?), but I have no idea what he is or for what politics he has (was he some StarCraft streamer?) and Nick Fuentes seems to be some rightwingnut troll? What does it mean “to be a fed”? Is this just a diss or a really serious allegation?
I think there should be a more extensive KnowYourMeme or outOfTheLoop explanation?
Lauren Southern and Nick Fuentes are both minor celebrities (for a given definition of "celebrity") who made thier bones out of trolling the woke. While both try to paint themselves as very trad, both come fom very liberal "blue" backgrounds.
The accusation of being "a fed" comes from the Federal Bureau of Investigation's known habit of using honey-pots, entrapment, and controlled opposition to target would-be dissidents/criminals. That Fuentes seems to be able to publicly advocate for an engage in illegal and anti-social behavior without suffering negative consequences has resulted in suggestions that he must at least have "friends" in FBI, or amongst the wider powers that be, if he isn't actually working for them directly.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO
Basically that.
"I like our political advocacy group, but what if we also committed violent crimes? In fact I have some bombs. Let's start bombing." <- That person is a fed.
"you're going to spy on your neighbors for us or we'll throw you in prison for sawing the barrel off of this here shotgun, don't resist or we'll kill your wife in front of your kids"
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Destiny is a fast-talking lib who would debate anyone and everyone exept for people who talk about hbd. He routinely gets his ass handed to him by actual experts and looked silly when he debated mister metokur 8 years ago. He recently got dumped by his wife and overall you are better off not knowing him.
The term fed is used for federal agents or for people who act for federal authorities as a bargain to avoid charges. Milo and Richard both helped out various intelligence agencies and the guy Lauren Southern married was one of these people. Another term used for this is glowie, sometimes snitch and you would find plenty of examples of it being used online. This is why you have so many people telling younger dissidents to avoid anyone who is online and telling them to pick up arms for a revolution from a righ wing perspective as it is either an asset or an undercover agent.
I apologise for the lack of documentation, many here are familiar with the lingo and it was pretty late so I did not add it but will add Urban Dictionary and other links tomorrow.
The nick allegation is very serious since he was on a loudspeaker inciting people on jan 6, there are people from his audience who served jail time including his former friends like Baked Alaska, he was on the no fly list but never had to show up to courts for even a day which is wierd. Anyone who is cooperating with the agencies will never publicly say that as that is a violation of their agreement. Nick also runs or ran cozy.tv which has the info of his followers so if people think that anyone subscribed to his ideology is up to no good, you have a lot of names and personal info which people think is private afterall.
Nick also happens to be prone to hurt his side of politics at the most convenient of times, often flying in the face of his own stated ideology. And he is always named and promoted as the face of the far right by mainstream figures whilst rarely facing the same level of persecution as more directionally accurate but less well known dissidents.
There is no definitive proof but a suspicious amount of circumstance points towards him being part of some intelligence operation.
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Yes, he was, years and years and years ago. He streamed League of Legends, too, for years after leaving Starcraft. He's been doing political debate (talk-radio, basically) for quite some time and has made that his main content focus.
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"A fed" is someone working for the federal government. In this context, it's an accusation either of being a federal informant or a federal agent, most likely the former, and is an allegation being made seriously.
I wonder if we'll ever get an "FBI files" similar to the "Twitter files" when Elon aired all of Twitter's dirty laundry?
Probably not because they'll classify everything, but I really hope so.
"What is the weirdest American tradition?"
"The secret police regularly declassifies a bunch of documents proving that yes they were up to all that no good shit that you suspected all those years ago and nobody can or will do a damn thing about it."
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No if they're any competent. Spook agencies have shredders for reasons.
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To add some more context in right wing circles (I would also assert this) many of the most prominent "kinetic" actions of extreme right wingers seem to be full of "feds" if not majority feds. Occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping both probably started with more feds than not. Similar with a lot of the Islamic terrorist plots that the FBI "foiled".
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Fuentes is not alt-lite, the alt-lite is not alright because alt-right talking points are now fairly ubiquitous on X. Things like remigration and "Great Replacement" and "anti-white" are all essentially mainstream. The alt-lite doesn't have a market anymore because the alt right is going mainstream, and that was the entire purpose of the alt-lite, to try to grift on the parts of the alt-right that were congruent enough with the mainstream to not get banned.
I'm not sure if you're just gullible, but it's absolutely not Nick Fuentes in that Destiny leak. That is a claim which has been made mostly by the "Dissident Right" figures surrounding the BAP/Peter Thiel network who all hate Fuentes because Fuentes calls them out as crypto-Jewish dissemblers who adopt an Aryan Twitter aesthetic and then try to orient the Alt-Right in a pro-Israel, Kosher direction. So they have no problem lying, I guess, to hurt Fuentes in a scandal he's not involved in whatsoever.
The online DR is as fractured as ever, as someone on DR twitter yesterday made an apt comparison to Gangs of New York. But the "rumor" about Fuentes and Destiny is just a lie perpeatured by the left-wing and especially BAP factions of X, who are knowingly lying. But burning their credibility to get at Fuentes is worth it for them, I guess?
I say this as someone who doesn't like the Christian Nationalist project of Fuentes, for basically the reasons given by Richard Spencer.
What are his reasons/where to read them?
His substack has a lot of free posts, alexandria archives, in a few of them he criticises Nicks movement, Christianity and abortion multiple times whilst also making cases against watching watching football, college football and obsession with hbd.
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Yeah. Going mainstream as a part of the platform of people devoted to preserving American power so it can protect Israeli interests.
Musk's photo-op in Israel after he said something stupid? Him now being close advisor to Trump, the guy with a record-breaking amount of Jewish family for a non-Jew?
I'm not that happy with that term either but it does fits: it's the capable parts of the US deep state, Silicon Valley which can sell them toys and new industrialists who will want those weapons contract to keep the world safe for Israel and democracy. After all, legacy arms industry is almost completely fucked and blinkered, so if US wants a prayer of a chance to win against Chinese, they'll have to do everything right.
What more do people want? A reasonable government and a chance to bend their backs in service to a monumental, meaningful task -saving the planet from Han domination, just as their grandfathers bent their backs and took over the world so communists couldn't do it.
I'm thinking that that won't make you very happy. The Rufo-Reich. It won't make Holocaust denial socially acceptable, though it might successfully clamp down on public black dysfunction.
Most people will be pretty happy with it, I believe.
Which is only a problem if you explicitly believe the replacement and opposition to whites is happening because of Jewish influence, instead of being done by elite progressive white people who hate their co-ethnics.
Can't it be both?
Sure, I don't doubt that there are a lot of Jews in powerful positions who agree with the point of view and have pushed it along. But my belief is this is due to their eliteness, not their Jewishness.
And I believe the same thing would be happening if there were no Jews in positions of power whatsoever. I believe elite Jews are mostly indistinguishable from elite gentiles in the west in terms of their worldview; they're mostly atheists with vaguely-to-decidedly progressive beliefs, just with a somewhat more intense radar for antisemitism.
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I actually think it's entirely possible that the Zionists aligned with Silicon Valley and Musk/Trump are also going to adopt a nearly-alt right stance on immigration and remigration and race writ-large. Mostly because they are seeing with their own eyes the impact of diversity on their cultural and geopolitical interests. I do expect they are going to slow down or even reverse the overt anti-white hatred. It's already happening. They are going to just hand us most of what the "alt right" has been asking for, or at least enough of a veneer to satisfy or even deradicalize people. It's one of the downsides of Trump winning, I wish this chaotic "Dissident Right" sphere had 10 more years to incubate and evolve but I think they are going to be placated by the major pivot that is going to happen away from wokeness and open borders.
I would bet against that, every single VC types supporting trump wants more migration and Trump publicly said he wants to attach green cards to diplomas. This is simply left wing, illegal immigration is a far better choice as then at least your kids dont have to face exponentially more issues competing with Asians who build their life around gaming tests. India is included here too since they do the same and abuse the h1b more than any other people
This is a temporary sigh of relief the leftist march will continue and anti-white hatred will not stop.
Illegal immigration is not a choice. It's imposed by law-breakers and political enemies via ad hoc processes, based on their own desires.
Like, if you really cared about "white genocide" or whatever, that alone makes a Canada-style migration system the lesser of two evils
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It is not nick, I never claimed it was and I was and my title is iron since nick crusaded against spencer and the likes and southern is alt lite. Nick did get called an optics cuck during his Internet Bloodsport days for being against the messaging offered by the alt right but ultimately ended up becoming a political pariah anyway who drove out half his inner circle.
My issue with Fuentes is not him having trans porn on his browser and a slew of wierd texts sent to pariah doll on twitter, if you ignore the Jan 6 issues. I simply wanted to point out that e celebs end up worse due to the lust for fame as taking them down becomes a fixation point for many. Most people end up in believing in things far more than they would have had they not set out on this path in the first place. I have no issues with thiel being gay and same for fuentes or bap or mishima, its that nick has basically built this ideological purity spiral where even if he were to be only suspected of that thing, his stock falls as purity spiralling is a big part of his own "movement"
But Nick's "stock" isn't falling (if that's even true) because of purity spiraling, it's because some people who hate him are just lying about him being part of a scandal he has no relation to... that's not purity spiraling it's just a vendetta.
It is completely unclear in your post that you were aware the "rumors" are just blatantly false claims with no basis in truth. You pass them along as "rumored to be" without disclosing that you know they are false.
I'm not even opposed to punching right. I wouldn't mind seeing Nick's movement fail because I don't think Christian Nationalism is the answer for the Right. I'm in general in favor of the divisiveness to some extent, high-variance communities and hopefully everything evolves in a more constructive way. But just lying about this and then coming here and saying "there's this rumor going around!" when you know it's not true is really stupid and does make me more sympathetic to Nick relative to the people who are knowingly spreading a false claim.
Are we sure they are lying though? Both BAP and Fuentes are pretty queer-coded and, as the old saw goes, it takes one to know one.
BAP is in his mid forties, no kids, unmarried and posts half naked dudes on his timeline with a mishima obsession. Leftists have started picking up on it too. In Nicks case catholicism saves it but no sane person hangs out with catboys and trans females as regularly if they are apparently a part of the hard right.
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I’m probably going to regret asking this, but how is he not part of the scandal? I thought the whole thing was he’s been caught on video having gay sex.
Nope, that didn't happen, the leak was of Destiny and a bunch of Nick's enemies on Twitter all claimed it was him. Although they were knowingly lying. It's interesting how a scandal around Destiny was psyopped into a Nick scandal, literally every comment in the Reddit thread that hit the front page about this was about Nick even though he was uninvolved.
It's not a Destiny scandal because Destiny's whole brand is being a degenerate (in the eyes of anyone who would care about Nick Fuentes' good name).
Like, the guy has already been memed for being a literal cuck and his audience doesn't give a damn. There's no juice in that orange anymore.
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No, his stock has been falling since it peaked in 2019 and when people found him consuming trans porn, being there on jan 6 and being a whiny person online whose movements run out of ideas leading him to pick fights. X is now not ban hammer happy so his ideas look tame compared to what others post so a lot of his could-be followers are drawn there.
I am completely aware and will reword my post to be more chartiable but the doubts about his own orientation are very pertinent. Here is a guy who is 26, watches trans porn, hangs out with Catboy Kami, a guy whose house got raided for child porn, speaks with trans groypers. The leaked video is obviously not him but the doubts still remain, the only video of him with a girl irl is one kissing him on his cheek where he looks super awkward. The right has plenty of gay dudes. Alt hype, Thiel, BAP, Mishima etc so I have no issues with that.
It never was, religioisity cannot answer ethnic questions. Hinduism tried it and it ended in a disaster with the priests making new scriptures to accommodate new demographics that later led to everything vdeic being phased out
I agree that Christianity is inherently a multiethnic religion and any attempts to introduce racial supremacist ideas to it leads to heresy and perversion. But I think you may be conflating Christian Nationalism with Christian Dominionism.
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Religiosity is the answer to the most pertinent racial questions, just ask the Jewish people. That's why it can't be Christian Nationalism.
Judaism is an ethnic religion. The issue most have is of demographics down the line which cannot be addressed by Christianity, I do want to hear out what you mean and what your suggestions are so that there is no miscommunication here.
If you convert the Rotherham grooming culprits and they end up attending the church of England, the crimes will not change by much if at all.
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Come on, no serious credibility is on the line here. When I bullied the autistic kid in high school was I seriously asserting he was homosexual? No, it was fun because it caused him to sperg out.
I think the credibility is fairly serious, they may have bullied Nick Fuentes but they have also made fools of all their followers who believed them. I don't like Nick but the gayops are offputting. Some liberal progressive like Destiny gets involved in a pretty big scandal and that sphere of Twitter makes it all about a false accusation towards Fuentes? Seems pretty stupid.
Chris Brunet and others just want to dig pile on him whilst they can. They don't care whether it's real or not.
They always knew destiny was a bisexual lib, accusing nick at least gets them somewhere in their heads. There's little he can say that's helpful as any amount of denial will just be considered a cope.
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I’m not sure I buy this, and it seems like an isolated demand for purity. If I’m basing my political beliefs on you, the only part that matters is whether or not you are consistent and correct on that thing. If it’s music, I don’t care about your personal life as long as the music is good. I think unless what you’re talking about is a serious felony, personal conduct outside of your own domain is irrelevant. I’m into Elon Musk because he’s building cool rocket ships and internet satellites. Do I really care if he’s banging a trans chick while hanging from a trapeze? No. It has absolutely nothing to do with Space X or Tesla.
I’ll also note here that from my point of view, only the right is really expected to have these high hills of purity to climb. I’ve never heard anyone rag on the leaders of left leaning people over their impurities. And some of them are much more connected to the issues at hand. BLM leadership siphoning money from donations is directly related to whether or not they’re good leaders. Fuentes banging a hooker doesn’t connect to anything else he’s talking about. Fuentes fans are supposed to drop him over porn. BLM supporters are not supposed to care how much money the founders are paying themselves.
He claims to be a Catholic Integralist. If you're going to say that people should be held by the state to religious standards of behavior, you damn well better be sure you're following them yourself.
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I recall one of our old conservative grandees, from before the move to reddit, either BarnabyCajones, Hlynka, or FacelessCraven making the case that these "high hills of purity" were what distinguished the right from the left. A man on the left is allowed to have "no enemies to the left" and no values beyond the pursuit of politics. But a man on the right expects, and is expected, to be judged against some higher power or virtue. Some of more vocal NRX and Alt-Rightist(Alt-Litists?) In the comment section like E. Harding, Vox Day, and The Dreaded Jim felt they had been called out and caused something of a furor.
Sadly (for archival purposes) Scott appears to have memory-holed many of the old culture war conversations from those days, but i also can't say that i blame him. The original discussion leading up to and surrounding, The "You're Still Crying Wolf" "This Blog Endorses Anyone but Trump" posts got pretty heated.
That would definately not have been me. Probably Hlynka or Barnaby.
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I mean, in large part that's because my tribe cares. We can overlook some spousal infidelity on the basis of 'politicians aren't often good people', but homosexuality is a bridge too far.
I posit that there are things liberals/progressives could be caught doing which would impede their credibility for moral reasons. Everyone has ritual purity standards. I don't know what would be a serious violation of them in a progressive- trying to pray away the gay? Marrying a teenager? But I am confident that they exist.
Now I've never been a Nick Fuentes fan. But among IRL people with actually far-right beliefs, being gay is disqualifying from having an opinion.
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The right plays second fiddle to the left so has to be the moral side so that they can call the outgroup for "hypocrisy" which is utterly spineless since only the powerful can be hypocritical.
To get what I mean, imagine if you woke up and realised that Musk was just a front used to pump up the value of the various firms he is in and is closer to Elizabeth Holmes than to steve jobs, that he literally does nothing at his day job and just larps, purely hypotehtical scenario. In that case, it would sour how you view some things. People who are attached to movements that are defined by a person feel that way when any kind of moral rot is found as it obviously matters. The political sphere is very vengeful and zero-sum, everybody dogpiles and doxxes others, it is done many times for personal reasons, so to them it is akin to seeing an elder turning out to be a duplicitous purpose.
I do not feel that way at all, I have never had issues with homosexuality or any values that go against Christianity not just because I am not a Christian but because I do not believe the cover story or the idea of a hero to begin with but many buy into that.
If anything its the opposite. The left plays second fiddle to the right as the left defines itself in its opposition. The right erects structures that the left then subverts and destroys.
Lenin was wrong though, hypocrisy has nothing to do with being strong or weak, it is the price paid for having principles that go beyond political expediancy.
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See, I kinda see it differently. The demands of non-hypocrisy and morals are much less important if you’re the weaker party. The thing that the underdog must do is get sufficient numbers and popularity to be a credible threat. You can’t do that if you’re throwing potential allies away for reasons that have nothing to do with the issues at hand. Numbers matter if the goal is power. That’s why the Left loves to pound the right on hypocrisy especially hypocrisy they’d never hold their own side to. It’s an easy way to limit the power of conservatives, as they’re having to throw away good Allie’s all the time for whatever reason the left starts pointing them out. And as such, you end up with fewer people fighting for power
I think the causality is backwards — the left is powerful because they are willing to be hypocritical, they’re willing to be accused of being a crime-thinker. The right has less power because the accusations of hypocrisy and thought crime still bother them enough to make them embarrassed. A lefty accused of being socialist or progressive doesn’t get kicked out. A rightist will be, to the point that even the accusation is too much.
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I decided long ago that you should never meet your heroes or role models.
They won't live up to the hype, and they'll inevitably let you down with their behavior.
So mostly glad that I only ever stayed on the periphery of the alternative/indie media scene. Never followed any of them too closely, picked and chose who I thought was actually trustworthy, and certainly never financially supported any of them. I turned out to be consistently right on the money.
As much as I think legacy and mainstream media is corrupt, the problem with independent media tends to be incompetence. They don't have the experience or connections to maintain a positive public image in a high profile environment, so they have to make things up as they go along, and any missteps could blow up in their face. If they didn't have their life together when they became famous, an injection of fame surely wouldn't help them get it together.
So, so many 'prominent' internet personalities from the early 2010's/Post-gamergate era turned into or just turned out to be horrible people. Not worthy to be looked up to as leaders, but somehow given outsize influence over their little corner of the culture. The lucky ones just slowly fade into irrelevance, their content getting <1% of the attention it used to, but still churned out with some regularity.
Except PewDiePie, somehow that dude made his money, found his girl, and got out without nuking his reputation or sending his life into a tailspin. Also JonTron seems to have hit a point in his career where he can spit out a video every few months to a million or so views, and just live his life the rest of the time.
I suspect that the nature of the internet, which is able to bestow some random citizen with more attention and fame than literal emperors in olden times would have gotten, out of the blue (think Hawk Tuah girl, for sure) and most are just not psychologically trained to handle that with grace. Eventually they'll choose to indulge whatever their worst impulses are, and usually their fans will cheer them on because they're just there for the drama. Then its either a slow descent into degeneracy, or possibly a rapid unplanned disassembly. Or, perhaps, the better interpretation is they go through the same sort of travails that most 'normal' people experience, but being broadcast to an audience of hundreds of thousands kind of raises the stakes.
The sort of people who seek to be 'pundits' or leaders of political movements are probably predisposed to be sociopaths or narcissists who will eventually abuse their influence.
There are some exceptions. I really enjoy the Indie Scifi Book Series written by Travis J.I. Corcoran, and I got to spend some time around him and he... is exactly what he represents himself as. Curmudgeonly as all hell, but also unwilling to compromise on truth and is charming in his way.
I also briefly met Larry Correia and he's pretty cool.
The only decent person I can name from the top of my head from the Gamergate saga who was not an out out shill, incompetent person, moron, bad faith actor or a complete weirdo would be Mister Metokur. He was disgusted by this new class of anti-SJW bros back in 2014-15 itself as they were simply trying to compete with ign instead of actually fixing anything and had dubious morals. Many just became leftists after getting their ass handed to them by actual dissident right wingers. Plenty of people did that, h3h3 and kraut and tea being two examples.
If you are a low-status person and hit a nerve on the internet, you will never leave as we all instintively know what our position in society is so the internet is this prallle world where you can kinda lie to yourself which fuels most of these people. The internet is not stable though and these firms demand you to churn out stuff to stay relevant and its a bad cycle.
I have never met anyone I really look upto since I dont look upto anyone. Indie artists are better than more popular ones since they don't have much in the way of pr. I will look up the books now since you brought them up.
I dunno. His whole shtick ended up coming off as fiddling as Rome burns, and I'm not sure how much I buy his moral disgust, when he explicitly promoted some of these personalities in what seems like an attempt to get at people he considered "cringe".
Completely fair, although I am surprised that people here even know of him or the entire post-Gameergate saga. Small world. I guess Faith Goldy did alright now that she is just a regular suburban canadian mom and Pewdiepie is a regular Swedish dad.
I don't think Pewdiepie deserves to be lumped in with these people. He was (maybe is? I have no idea) way more famous, and way less political, he just got targeted because he was non-woke in a then very liberal ecosystem.
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How much do you think is were horrible people or were marginal people that got the chance to turn into horrible people. For a brief possibly closed window fairly normal people could luck there way into a bit of fame with few guard rails. For males easy money and easy sex are hard to pass up.
I'd go out on a limb and say its 60-40, 60% good people getting compromised because they are suddenly gifted fame and fortune and happen to fall into some vice or other, and 40% grifters who were ALWAYS in it for the money and fame, and had no morals before getting them.
Milo Yiannopoulos had a seemingly meteoric rise and fall in a fairly short period, he's probably the most obvious of the grifters.
The other amazing thing is how these types will often lash out and drag others down with them when they sense they're about to lose everything. I think that's perhaps the one way you can tell who was ever a good, honorable person. If they quietly accept their fate and remove themselves from the limelight without trying to blow everything up on their way out, vs. pull a straight up face/heel turn and lean into the controversy, desperately trying to stay relevant by picking fights and destroying others reputations in the process.
The funny thing is: Milo seems to have been destroyed the one time he seemed to be totally sincere.
There was no reason for a gay guy trying to redpill millennials and conservatives to talk positively about pederasty. No reason to do it more than once. He dropped the glib act for a few minutes and picked about the worst thing to be honest about/rationalize.
Yep. It was interesting that what nuked him was giving his honest opinion on something that he had actually experienced and wasn't doing it to insult any given target or to troll.
One wonders if he responded by going SO DEEP into his act that he'll never resurface again.
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Milo also recently started taking more alt right type positions given X is less ban happy. Most of this has been grifts unfortunately. Baked Alaska is a funny case study in e celeb culture, guy went from normie lib to nearly alt right to back again and then whatever nick fuentes does.
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Hmm. This sentence clings to me. What's going on here... lets see... yes. This sentence was just an aside. An example to further your point. Really a completely irrelevant thing to make my response about.
However to me it was a discontinuity. A confusion. The above sentence is treated like a "as we all know". But I totally missed the memo.
Why would those studying music be disgusted by their idol having gross kinks? I can see how you could likely elicit that disgust with any unsolicited claim of "Famous_Name has a scat fetish"- to someone that themselves is not into scat. But then- it wouldn't be about their Hero it would just be about the scat.
A good chunk of people absolutely search for heroes who are larger than life, perhaps my expereinces are far more normie coded. Growing up I kinda knew that even those who do good things are kinda fucked up like others but others attachted religous fervor to this sorta stuff.
Look at how doping gets treated, we all know that evey guy who competes in any sport is not just doping but doping a lot. Kids, ppeople playing the sport, the vast majority of those who watch them not only dont care but will actively not believe you when you present them with evidence.
This is what happened with many on the internet political thing. If you preach certain vaules daily, you talk about normies being unwashed masses and then you end up doing things far worse than them and its public, your stock will fall. Hero worship, the cult of a hero is a very real thing that grips most people who consume things with a passion.
That makes sense.
I think it's also difficult for me to conceive of enjoying the smell of farts or unveiling one's inner truth as vices. I think that's the oft discussed purity / exploration divide.
Plus something aesthetic relating to my existence as a Golgari mage. Shoveling shit is clean honest work. That requires a bath afterwards.
What?
The term comes from Magic The Gathering lore and color pie philosophy. In mtg circles people will sometimes identify themselves by a color or color combination. Either due to liking the gameplay of that combo, or liking its aesthetics or personally vibing with the actual ideology.
Golgari is Black/Green. Life and death. The growth and decay of all things. Rot and Compost. One organism's bloated corpse is another organism's egg laying site. The mode of thinking that believes that the most respectful way to treat the dead crewmate is to return them to the ship's biomass recycler. This is the circle of life. This is the essence of Golgari.
"They say nothing lasts forever. I say everything lasts forever, just not in the form you may be accustomed to."
-- Deathsprout flavor text.
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Maybe a better example is "Isaac Newton was a genius about physics and calculus but a complete crank about everything else"? Though I guess that's a bad example too, being a crank is kind of a sign of genius to me
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Fuentes is and was always controlled opposition, I suspect originally introduced to disrupt Turning Point USA. He wasn't supposed to have staying power.
nice username. Fuentes was never deplatformed for his unite the right shenanigans and never faced jailtime which are two giant red flags, that alongwith him never having even kissed a girl. How can you be touching late 20s and never had any encounters with girls without being an incel. Do you think he is propped up by the feds or what?
Easily?
I'm beginning to wonder if the FBI is turning into a big pyramid scheme.
I doubt it, he is not strapped for cash, socially obtuse and very clearly talks about wanting a lot of kids which requires you to marry early. People around him are married or have girlfriends yet he is the odd one out.
This has to be the funniest thing I have read this week lol.
He could simply be socially awkward+not trying very hard. This isn’t India where your extended family will just make you get married.
And yet he's extroverted enough to stand publicly for taboo topics?
Yes. Entirely possible.
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Ecelebs seem to reach a certain level of fame and just become a reality show of incestuous dating, relationships and breakups. Like Sam Hyde after losing his Adult Swim show has since retreated to "Fishtank Live" which as far as I can tell is a literal eceleb reality dating show and he routinely makes videos featuring has-beens like Star Wars Fatty and iDubbbz and attempting to "call out" others like Hasan.
My last post was on fishtank, fishtank is simply him housing people with issues and fucking with them instead of dating. It is not a dating show lol but I get what you mean. His schtick is meta irony, amazing in short doses.
Lauren apparently left a 1488 bracelet with Paul Joseph Watson after spending a night at his place according to milo. Why do you think it becomes incestuous though? Some suspect that dudes who are higher status would seem more attractive to the girl which would make them attractive but destiny is a literal poly guy whose wife left him.
When you decide you are more important than your stories - usually because a bunch of people are telling you that - you inevitably start avoiding and being avoided by the people who put the story first (they don't like you because they can't trust you) and self ghetto with the other self obsessed, who will help you prop yourself up in exchange for the same. Then you have basically turned your news outfits into a distributed soap opera where you and your friends generate stories for people that may also mention current events.
All media becomes incestuous when it becomes self obsessed, and all media eventually becomes self obsessed. But these motherfuckers started off that way.
That might explain the weird vibes on the Wicked press tour...
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