This is the Quality Contributions Roundup. It showcases interesting and well-written comments and posts from the period covered. If you want to get an idea of what this community is about or how we want you to participate, look no further (except the rules maybe--those might be important too).
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These are mostly chronologically ordered, but I have in some cases tried to cluster comments by topic so if there is something you are looking for (or trying to avoid), this might be helpful. Here we go:
Quality Contributions to the Motte
Contributions for the week of January 30, 2023
Rowliphobia
Identity Politics
Contributions for the week of February 6, 2023
Who Teaches the Teachers?
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Notes -
Yarvin would probably reply that if Greenblatt would disappear tomorrow, somebody else would just take his place. In fact, he does say exactly that:
And I guess you could say that for the enemies of what Yarvin calls the Cathedral, it might make sense to focus on a specific mercenary as to raise the perceived costs of sword-selling. That might work. Or it might not - after all, you can call the villification of Schwab a lot of things, but effective probably isn't one of them. Soros becoming the Right's boogeyman might be a better example, but only because someone like Orban managed to grasp actual power. Him going after Soros is an outcome of him having won political battles, not the other way around.
Of course, your approach is much more actionable and less fatalist than Yarvin's powergazing, I give you that.
He surely would. Sorry, was a bit distracted, see edit:
Bluntly, I do not believe that leaders, coordinators, instigators, Machiavellians do not matter and do not determine how the vague popular sentiment and antagonism swells and turns. In some galaxy-brained Civilizational Big Picture it may be different, but on the timescale of real politics, at least, wins and losses are largely determined by the quality of commanding corps and their ability to not be handicapped, distracted and dispersed.
To think otherwise is supremely democratic, ironically. Yarvin consistently downplays the relevance of specific decisionmakers, unusual capabilities and intelligence (see his rhetoric on AGI). Well, I've already explained how I interpret this impulse.
To the extent that Schwab is not a figurehead, it could be effective. I just don't think Schwab is who he is alleged to be by right-wing conspiracy nuts. Greenblatt's authority over his organization is not a conspiracy theory but a fact of life, a fact that upsets even Jews who feel he's too focused on culture war bullshit they didn't subscribe to, compare him negatively to Abe Foxman, and it is plausible that him being replaced by a straightforward Bibi-style Zionist, as they'd prefer, would change matters for the better (or for the worse). Schwab, like @2rafa says, is for the most part just an old man, a normie European economist who likes to run conferences – he does not even peddle ideas right wingers attribute to him, nor does he have the power to compel others to act on his actual views. Actually the degree of Schwab demonization should be suspicious in itself – it's almost like he's a lightning rod to distract enemies of the forming political consensus (which is, incidentally, not «globalist» any more) from its high-agency advocates. See the previous point.
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