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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   27737 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 13, 2025

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It refutes the main far right talking points.

  • Voting doesn’t matter : Trump’s election has loosened the tongues of intellectuals who can finally express “what the man on the street is really thinking”.

  • Discussion is pointless/conflict theory: The Truth triumphs yet again against all attempts to censure it (including a brief attempt by our own mods) ; kept alive by the tireless arguing of myself and others, transferred to the public, voted in, correcting course, guiding & guarding us on our way to a better future.

Discussion is pointless/conflict theory: The Truth triumphs yet again

...through conflict, and not through discussion. This is derived directly from the previous point.

The discussion was had and was highly relevent to subsequent developments. There was more than zero conflict, particularly around the aquisition of X/Twitter, but discussion ultimately won.

Do you think we'd be where we are now on the issue, if Harris won?

Is voting conflict now? According to SS and his ridiculous euphemism "memetic political conflict", even discussion is conflict.

As Clausewitz famously said, war is a continuation of politics by other means. Another way of looking at it is that politics is a continuation of war by other means.

politics is a continuation of war by other means

Some people use this logic to justify democracy as the alternative to bloody civil war. Rather than slaughtering each other to resolve political conflicts, we vote and then accept majority rule.

Of course.

When you vote, you are exercising political authority, you're using force. And force, my friends, is violence. The supreme authority from which all other authorities are derived.

Another way to look at it is the vote that happens after a debate to determine the winner.

But even from a perspective of the vote as representing force, the vote is less an instrument of conflict than a sublimation of it.

It's a proxy for "how many divisions can you field" and the further it is removed from that the less useful it is as a consensus mechanism. Because then, you "win" an "election" and the people with more divisions topple your illegitimate regime.

You can't escape violence, you can only add abstractions on top of it. Liberals used to understand this before they fell for their own propaganda.

I understand one-man-one-gun-one-vote fine, I don't see why it should undermine debate or democracy.

You can't escape violence, you can only add abstractions on top of it.

If you want; then I am pro-abstraction. One man goes around shooting people - another talks to them, then counts their vote, and then, only if he has won, uses limited force. Do you think they are the same?

It's not the same. We've long known of the distinction between abstraction heavy and light regimes, i.e. Machiavelli's Foxes and Lions. But I'm not sure you are fully aware of the tradeoffs.

For instance, a common criticism of fox regimes is that they, by nature, have to be totalitarian. The legitimacy they rest on relies on the illusion of public support, which means they have to control and shape public opinion as much as possible. This is how it is paradoxically democracies that have brought forth general conscription, total war and the most sophisticated forms of psychological warfare.

This isn't all to say that debate is useless or pointless. Nor even that Fox regimes are strictly worse that Lion ones. Merely that it is foolish to think oneself secure from the forces of power, however many pieces of paper one hides behind.

Debate only really is possible in the areas of life that do not concern power, and this isn't something that can be changed. To the dismay of any and all anarchists.

For instance, a common criticism of fox regimes is that they, by nature, have to be totalitarian.

I think a reality check is enough to disabuse people of that theory, if ‘totalitarian’ is to keep any meaning.

I take it you categorize the ur-totalitarian communist, and nazi regimes, as ‘light’, ‘fox regimes’? Even though they were opposed to debate, to voting, and made direct unrestrained force the order of the day?

The legitimacy they rest on relies on the illusion of public support, which means they have to control and shape public opinion as much as possible.

There’s a contradiction here. If the people are truly powerless, their support a mere ‘illusion’, why do the rulers need it, shape it? Your answer ‘Legitimacy’ is tautological. Why do the people in power need this ‘legitimacy’, what is legitimacy but the people’s acceptance of a ruler’s authority?

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Yes, voting is conflict. Unlike discussion, voting means the majority wins.

What does taking over specific positions of political power have to do with the truth triumphing via discussion? Why were the intellectuals' tongues so tied before the elections? Why couldn't they just convince their opponents of the truth by making superior arguments? Yeah, in this context it's clearly conflict.

So voting works, we’re definitely done with all the nonsense about elites controlling everything and democracy being a sham? Okay, next.

Why couldn't they just convince their opponents of the truth by making superior arguments?

They did. Some, like our progenitor, in a rather ‘conflict avoidant’ way. Not my style, but still. Or did HBD warriors use their fists beat up on their enemies until they gave up?

So voting works

Sure, but that necessarily means that discussion doesn't.

we’re definitely done with all the nonsense about elites controlling everything and democracy being a sham? Okay, next.

> A billionaire very likely changed the result of the election by buying a communications platform

> "we’re definitely done with all the nonsense about elites controlling everything and democracy being a sham?"

How? Why?

They did. Some, like our progenitor, in a rather ‘conflict avoidant’ way.

He didn't. He got bullied into keeping his mouth shut, and into personally shutting the mouths of anyone who agreed with him, until Trump won.

Or did HBD warriors use their fists beat up on their enemies until they gave up?

People, a large part of which knows nothing about HBD, used their votes to take away power from people who were censoring and terrorizing HBDers.

So voting works

Sure, but that necessarily means that discussion doesn't.

Why? Is discussion incompatible with democracy?

A billionaire very likely changed the result of the election by buying a communications platform

According to the previous alt right theory, “‘the elites” were acting collectively, in a specifically “‘New York Times” direction, against the wishes of the masses, always successfully. It wasn't predicting an isolated eliteman taking a turn to the right with popular support.

Although maybe that’s a caricature of alt right thinking on my part. A caricature of my position would be that billionaires/elites are just as influential as normal people.

That’s not what Moldbug’s theory was. Moldbug’s theory was always that a lot of ‘nominal’ elites were successful finance/tech/etc people who had a lot of money but were actually subordinate in power terms to a class of people who cared more about politics.

Maybe we could discuss the actual merits of, say, de Mesquita et al.'s theory of the selectorate held against modern incarnations of Elite Theory instead of pretending that a school of political analysis that dates back to Polybius is a machination of a barely extant US political movement?

Who knows, we may well learn something.

Why? Is discussion incompatible with democracy?

You gave "Voting doesn’t matter" along with "Discussion is pointless/conflict theory" as points that disprove the dissident right narrative. In the case we are discussing (I should have pointed out that "necessarily" was still meant in the context of the conversation, not universally) voting mattering is a direct consequences of discussion yielding no results, while a political victory caused a massive shift.

If discussion yielded results, it's not clear that voting would have mattered.

EDIT: actually let be more brief - when you are not voting on the issue that's being discussed, but the vote has a huge impact on the truth triumphing, while discussion has almost none, then the discussion not mattering results directly from voting mattering.

Although maybe that’s a caricature of alt right thinking on my part. A caricature of my position would be that billionaires/elites are just as influential as normal people.

Well, perhaps you can outline what your actual position is, and then I can properly respond to it? You've been mostly focused on caricaturing the right, rather than putting forward what you believe.

You'll notice that success at the polls was conditionned on coordinated elite action. Without Elon Musk, there is no trifecta. Voting works as a coordination mechanism for existing forces, it doesn't create forces out of thin air.

You should read Michels instead of imagining caricatures of his political model.

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