naraburns nihil supernum
1yr ago
(text post)
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Israel-Gaza Megathread #2
This is a refreshed megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.
HlynkaCG
old man yelling at clouds
1yr ago·Edited 1yr ago
You're assuming that there is much (if any) sense to be made.
The easiest way to understand Yarvin is to think of him as a LLM that's been handed the prompt "Defend a straw-man of monarchism in the style of a Berkley-educated Marxist".
More charitably he's a deeply progressive Jewish Academic in the same general mold as Scott Alexander or Scott Aaronson who noticed the same fundamental contradiction at the heart of Liberalism that Hobbes, Burke, and Smith did back in the day, but instead of turning away at the last second the way Scott would, or tying to deny it like the other Scott, he steered into it.
If the endstate of maximizing individual autonomy/social atomization is a world of might makes right than might must make right.
He's basically Bill W if the cause of Bill's downfall had been Liberalism instead of Alchohol, an ardent liberal who thinks that liberalism must be banned for it's own good and who seems to be unable to grasp the concept of moderation.
HlynkaCG
old man yelling at clouds
2rafa 1yr ago·Edited 1yr ago
Hard to say, you might as well ask "what would your dog look like if he were a cat?" or vice versa.
I've written about this at length on the old site but the ultimate problem with Yarvin (and the wider NRx movement) from a traditionalist/right-wing perspective is that that their goals and methods of are those of a radical Marxist. He might try to wrap his philosophy in the superficial trappings of traditionalism, but at the end of the day he is more a revolutionary than he is a reactionary.
Were he to get his way all existing social norms/morality would be bulldozed to make way for a more explicitly materialist and inductive dialectic based on race class and education (not necessarily in that order). He pursues this course because he believes that instantiating a dictatorship of the proletariat Gnon is the shortest path to maximal freedom / personal autonomy.
In short, both his methods and his goals are those of the adversary.
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Notes -
You're assuming that there is much (if any) sense to be made.
The easiest way to understand Yarvin is to think of him as a LLM that's been handed the prompt "Defend a straw-man of monarchism in the style of a Berkley-educated Marxist".
More charitably he's a deeply progressive Jewish Academic in the same general mold as Scott Alexander or Scott Aaronson who noticed the same fundamental contradiction at the heart of Liberalism that Hobbes, Burke, and Smith did back in the day, but instead of turning away at the last second the way Scott would, or tying to deny it like the other Scott, he steered into it.
If the endstate of maximizing individual autonomy/social atomization is a world of might makes right than might must make right.
He's basically Bill W if the cause of Bill's downfall had been Liberalism instead of Alchohol, an ardent liberal who thinks that liberalism must be banned for it's own good and who seems to be unable to grasp the concept of moderation.
What would Yarvin’s thought look like if he was, by your standards, an “actual” conservative?
Hard to say, you might as well ask "what would your dog look like if he were a cat?" or vice versa.
I've written about this at length on the old site but the ultimate problem with Yarvin (and the wider NRx movement) from a traditionalist/right-wing perspective is that that their goals and methods of are those of a radical Marxist. He might try to wrap his philosophy in the superficial trappings of traditionalism, but at the end of the day he is more a revolutionary than he is a reactionary.
Were he to get his way all existing social norms/morality would be bulldozed to make way for a more explicitly materialist and inductive dialectic based on race class and education (not necessarily in that order). He pursues this course because he believes that instantiating a dictatorship of
the proletariatGnon is the shortest path to maximal freedom / personal autonomy.In short, both his methods and his goals are those of the adversary.
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