Riding the Red Horse now in audio

The spectre of war once more looms on the global horizon. A new generation of writers and military theorists are addressing the new forms of warfare that now challenge the nation-state’s monopoly on war.

Terrorism, technology, fourth generation warfare, the decline of the Pax Americana, and the rise of China are among the issues contemplated by the 20 contributors to Riding the Red Horse, a collection of 24 essays and short stories from technologists, military strategists, military historians, and the leading authors of military science fiction. From the Old Guard to the New, the anthology features some of the keenest minds and best-selling authors writing in the genre today. Three national militaries and three service branches are represented by the contributors, the majority of whom are veterans.

Edited by LTC Tom Kratman, US Army (ret), and Vox Day, Riding the Red Horse covers everything from real-world lasers, intelligence ops, threat assessments, and wargame design to space combats, fleet actions, and ground operations taking place in some of the most popular future universes in science fiction.

The anthology consists of contributions from Eric S. Raymond, William S. Lind, Chris Kennedy, James F. Dunnigan, Jerry Pournelle, Ken Burnside, Christopher Nuttall, Rolf Nelson, Harry Kitchener, Giuseppe Filotto, John F. Carr, Wolfgang Diehr, Thomas Mays, Benjamin Cheah, James Perry, Brad Torgersen, Tedd Roberts, Steve Rzasa, Tom Kratman, and Vox Day. Narrated by Jon Mollison, Riding the Red Horse is 14 hours and 8 minutes in audiobook format.

They took away his gay card

Great news, ladies! MILO is now officially straight!

Dear Milo,

You don’t frighten me.

I’m going to take my heels off so I can get down to your level. Let’s cover some basic ground: your bleach job and concealer several shades too light don’t make you Aryan, it just makes you look like Gerard Way failing to get into a frat party. You’ve taken all your self-hatred, warped it, and levelled it at vulnerable people. I think you’re pathetic and sad.

I’m not going to waste time telling you that you’re a bigot. The faculty has pretty well covered why you shouldn’t come here in their open letters to the chancellor. Besides, being called a Nazi doesn’t appear to stop you or anyone else on the alt-right from doing a goddamn thing….

When you get here on Feb. 1, we will be waiting here to strip you of your gay identity. You can have sex with all the men you want, but you’re not gay anymore. You’ve used your sexual orientation as an excuse to spit bile and galvanize cowards for long enough. Put your badge and gun on my desk. The community rejects you. You have never been one of us.

Neil Lawrence is a former Daily Cal columnist.

Sounds like someone is crushing pretty hard. The best part is where zhe announces zhe is a “five foot two, chronically depressed Jewish anarchist drag queen with no eyebrows.”

Every. Single. Time.

The Alt-Right comes to Washington

Politico appears to be more confused than anything about what the Alt-Right is, what it represents, who is in it, or even what it is called:

Known until recently as the “alt-right,” it is a dispersed movement that encompasses a range of right-wing figures who are mostly young, mostly addicted to provocation and mostly have made their names on the internet. On the less extreme end, they include economic nationalists and “Western chauvinists” like Yiannopoulos, who wants to purge Islam from the United States and Europe; the movement also encompasses overt white nationalists, committed fascists and proponents of a host of other ideologies that were thought to have died out in American politics not long after World War II. Over the course of Trump’s campaign, these ideas came back to life in chat rooms, on Twitter and on the fringes of the internet—driven by supporters united by their loathing of progressives and their feeling of alienation from the free market Republican Party as it defined itself before Trump’s takeover.

This “new right” is now enjoying something of a moment. It’s not clear whether the movement helped fuel Trump’s rise or just rode its coattails. But energized by his success, this loose confederacy of meme-generating internet trolls, provocateurs and self-appointed custodians of Trumpism has begun making plans to move into Washington’s corridors of power, or at least shoulder their way into the general vicinity. When they look at Washington—a besuited city that moves to the rhythm of lobbying and legislative calendars and carefully worded statements—they see an opportunity for total disruption, the kind of overthrow the movement already takes credit for visiting on American politics….

For a bunch of media-driven provocateurs, members of the new nationalist right can be highly particular about their interactions with the mainstream press. Longtime bloggers Vox Day and Steve Sailer agreed to answer questions for this story only in writing. Charles Johnson agreed to an interview on the condition that he would also record it, a tactic more commonly employed by prominent politicians. He also declined to be photographed, explaining that only one photographer is allowed to take his picture for publication….

Yiannopoulos said he still talks to Bannon, but he declined to say about what. He disavowed any interest in Washington past the inaugural festivities. “Everybody in politics is a cunt,” he said. “They’re boring, untalented, unattractive people.” The real fight, he thinks, is the culture war he’s waging on college campuses. Yiannopoulos said he will leave Washington after Trump’s inauguration weekend with no desire to return.

“I’m like Cincinnatus,” he said, comparing himself to the 5th century B.C. patrician who was appointed dictator of Rome to repel an invasion and promptly returned to civilian life after the crisis passed. “I want to go do this shit and go back to my fucking farm.”

Since the guy completely wasted my time, didn’t bother to quote me once – although, admittedly, doing so would have risked puncturing his prefabricated narrative about the Alt-Right going to Washington – and neglected to mention the name of Mike’s “Finnish publishing house”, in this case I’ll provide the full set of questions and answers. I don’t care if they want to ignore me, that’s fine. But if you repeatedly contact me, ask me questions, and then ignore my answers, well, don’t be surprised when I ignore your future requests.

This reminds me of the sports media, and the way that they constantly complain that the athletes either don’t talk to them or refuse to give them anything but canned answers. Who do they think taught them to do that? The media clearly doesn’t like the fact that we won’t talk to them on the phone, and it won’t be long before they are complaining that we don’t bother responding to their emails anymore. Well, you see, Mr. Journalist Reporter, since you’re obviously not going to utilize any of the answers we’re giving you, there simply isn’t any reason to talk to you in the first place.

This is why Stefan Molyneux doesn’t bother with them at all. I may need to further alter my media policy in imitation of his. Or perhaps I’ll simply tell everyone who contacts me to go talk to Milo. All they really want is quotes from him anyhow, so we might as well cut right to the chase.

Hi Vox,


Can I interview you for Politico Magazine about your plans for the next four years?

I didn’t respond to that. I shouldn’t have bothered responding to the next one, obviously.

 Hi Vox,


Bumping this to the top of your inbox. Can we arrange an interview?

Certainly. However, please note that I only do written interviews. We can do as many rounds of follow-up as you require.

Do you expect your writing will gain more traction in Washington during the Trump administration than it has in recent years?

I would tend to think so. Considering that I publicly predicted both the 2008 financial crisis and the Trump presidency long before they happened, it would seem to make sense to pay attention to those commentators utilizing effective predictive models rather than those that have proven repeatedly false. Regardless of what people think about it, it is increasingly obvious that the Alt-Right is the only philosophical perspective that is in line with both current science and the present historical trends.

Have you been to DC since Election Day? Are you planning to spend more time in DC during the Trump administration ? (I’m not sure where you’re based)

No, I haven’t been there in years. And I have no intention of going there in the future.



Do you or other intellectuals you’re in touch with have plans for building a lasting political movement?

I have absolutely no interest in building a political movement, ephemeral or lasting. I am solely interested in writing books, designing games, and understanding what is true to the greatest extent of my ability to recognize it. While some of the people with whom I am in touch are actively involved in politics, and I support their efforts, that’s just not something in which I’m interested. My parents were involved in politics and that exposure was sufficient to dissuade me from it.

What was your parents’ political involvement and how did it dissuade you from pursuing politics?

They were heavily involved in Minnesota politics and were both delegates at the 1988 RNC. My father also ran Pat Robertson’s presidential campaign in Minnesota and was close with Ralph Reed and the Christian Coalition. What I saw in the inner circles of the Republican Party was that with a few principled exceptions, most of the establishment figures cared about nothing but influence and money. They viewed ideology as something to keep the rubes occupied.

That’s why Donald Trump smoked the GOP establishment so badly. He listened to the people and embraced their causes. The professional Republicans had been tuning them out for at least 28 years.

Plans to set up think tanks or run candidates for office or set up other political infrastructure?

None at all.

Do you have thoughts or plans on how to gain wider acceptance for ideas that are currently treated as taboo?

Reality has a way of imposing itself on societal taboos. Identity politics are upon the USA whether we like them or not. Acceptance for the Alt-Right perspective will occur due to the continued failures of liberalism and conservatism alike, as it is already obvious to anyone who is paying attention that the idea of a shiny happy multicultural, multireligious America is a complete and utter failure. How much more failure has to happen before people reluctantly abandon their false philosophical models cannot be known, but we know that sooner or later, they will.

In other words, we don’t have to do anything but continue to point out the obvious to everyone, and eventually, inevitably, the sane and stable elements of the America public will come to accept it.




Who else should I talk to for this article?

Mike Cernovich, Peter Turchin, Milo Yiannopoulos, the Men of the West blog.

Do you have contact info for Molyneux?

Yes, but he won’t talk to you. He never talks to the media in any form.

How to kill your business

Why would you EVER take your computer to the Geek Squad, knowing that the FBI is paying them to inform on their customers?

Law enforcement has a number of informants working for it and the companies that already pay their paychecks, like UPS, for example. It also has a number of government employees working for the TSA, keeping their eyes peeled for “suspicious” amounts of cash it can swoop in and seize.

Unsurprisingly, the FBI also has a number of paid informants. Some of these informants apparently work at Best Buy — Geek Squad by day, government informants by… well, also by day.

According to court records, Geek Squad technician John “Trey” Westphal, an FBI informant, reported he accidentally located on Rettenmaier’s computer an image of “a fully nude, white prepubescent female on her hands and knees on a bed, with a brown choker-type collar around her neck.” Westphal notified his boss, Justin Meade, also an FBI informant, who alerted colleague Randall Ratliff, another FBI informant at Best Buy, as well as the FBI. Claiming the image met the definition of child pornography and was tied to a series of illicit pictures known as the “Jenny” shots, agent Tracey Riley seized the hard drive.

Not necessarily a problem, considering companies performing computer/electronic device repair are legally required to report discovered child porn to law enforcement. The difference here is the paycheck. This Geek Squad member had been paid $500 for digging around in customers’ computers and reporting his findings to the FBI. That changes the motivation from legal obligation to a chance to earn extra cash by digging around in files not essential to the repair work at hand.

More of a problem is the FBI’s tactics. While it possibly could have simply pointed to the legal obligation Best Buy has to report discovered child porn, it proactively destroyed this argument by apparently trying to cover up the origin of its investigation, as well as a couple of warrantless searches.

Setting aside the issue of whether the search of Rettenmaier’s computer constituted an illegal search by private individuals acting as government agents, the FBI undertook a series of dishonest measures in hopes of building a case, according to James D. Riddet, Rettenmaier’s San Clemente-based defense attorney. Riddet says agents conducted two additional searches of the computer without obtaining necessary warrants, lied to trick a federal magistrate judge into authorizing a search warrant, then tried to cover up their misdeeds by initially hiding records.

The “private search” issue is mentioned briefly in OC Weekly’s report, but should be examined more closely. Private searches are acceptable, but the introduction of cash payments, as well as the FBI having an official liaison with Best Buy suggests the searches aren’t really “private.” Instead, the FBI appears to be using private searches to route around warrant requirements. That’s not permissible and even the FBI’s belief that going after the “worst of worst” isn’t going to be enough to salvage these warrantless searches.

One would think they are unaware of how Americans have learned that a justifiable use of a dangerous tactic always leads to unjustifiable uses of it. It’s one thing for there to be a mechanism for reporting this sort of thing when evidence of egregious criminal wrongdoing is encountered, but it is absolutely something else entirely when private services are compensated and incentivized to hunt for it, or worse, create it.

Pity the poor Never Trumpers

Given their inability to grasp the relationship between action and consequence, to say nothing of their inability to predict events, one could argue there is a case for the God-Emperor Ascendant to leave the Never Trumpers Never Employed even if he was inclined to let bygones be bygones.

They are some of the biggest names in the Republican national security firmament, veterans of past GOP administrations who say, if called upon by President-elect Donald Trump, they stand ready to serve their country again.

But their phones aren’t ringing. Their entreaties to Trump Tower in New York have mostly gone unanswered. In Trump world, these establishment all-stars say they are “PNG” — personae non gratae.

Their transgression was signing one or both of two public “Never Trump” letters during the campaign, declaring they would not vote for Trump and calling his candidacy a danger to the nation. One letter, with 122 names, was published by War on the Rocks, a website devoted to national security commentary, during the primary season in March. The other, with 50 names, including some repeat signatories, was published by the New York Times during the general-election campaign in August.

Now, just days before Trump is sworn in as the nation’s 45th president, the letter signers fear they have been added to another document, this one private — a purported blacklist compiled by Trump’s political advisers….

The conflict was exacerbated shortly after the election when Eliot Cohen, a State Department counselor during the Bush administration who had helped organize the War on the Rocks letter, aired new criticism of the Trump transition. In an opinion column for The Washington Post in November, Cohen said that a friend on the transition team had asked him to provide names of potential job candidates — with the stipulation that he include no one who signed either of the letters.

Cohen wrote that he became convinced there were “pent-up resentments” among members of the Trump team, and he warned young policy experts against working for the administration. Cohen has had no further communications with the transition team.

“Believe me — my phone is not ringing,” he said in a recent interview.

Forget not being hired. These jokers should be worried about being renditioned and droned. After all, they have called the President-Elect of the United States of America “a danger to the nation”.

And what nation would that be, exactly?

The fact that they are so utterly clueless as to be surprised that they are not being offered employment by the very man they attacked so viciously and so publicly should alone be enough to prevent anyone from hiring them, not just the Trump administration.

In any event, once more the God-Emperor Ascendant is demonstrating his wisdom by refusing to place his trust in the bureaucratic elite that hates him and will fight him at every opportunity. I don’t think Trump is going to disappoint his supporters, I think he is going to delight them by exceeding their expectations.

APPENDIX N: The Literary History of Dungeons & Dragons

APPENDIX N: The Literary History of Dungeons & Dragons is a detailed and comprehensive investigation of the various works of
science fiction and fantasy that game designer Gary Gygax declared to be
the primary influences on his seminal role-playing game, Dungeons &
Dragons. It is a deep intellectual dive into the literature of science
fiction’s past that will fascinate any serious role-playing gamer. It
also contains an extensive interview with the designer of the Tunnels & Trolls RPG, Ken St. Andre.

Author Jeffro Johnson, an expert role-playing gamer, accomplished
Dungeon Master and three-time Hugo Award Finalist, critically reviews
all 43 works listed by Gygax in the famous appendix of the original
D&D game books, and in doing so, draws a series of intelligent
conclusions about the literary gap between past and present that are
surprisingly relevant to current events, not only in the fantastic world
of role-playing, but the real world in which the players live. Johnson is also the Editor of the Castalia House
blog and a regular contributor there.

Featuring an Introduction by John C. Wright, himself an inveterate role-playing gamer, APPENDIX N is 355 pages, DRM-free, and retails for $6.99.

Brian Renninger described the significance of Johnson’s APPENDIX N:

With this book we are coming out a dark age. Jerry Pournelle has said “The definition of a Dark Age is that we no longer remember what we once could do.” It’s not just that we have lost capability but, not knowing that we ever had capability that makes it dark. Of course, the term “Dark Ages” has fallen out of current fashion. It seems judgmental and unscientific to call that time after the fall of Rome and through the end of the Viking Age “dark” as if it were lesser in some way. But, I’m not an academic and history is not science. And, Rome was sacked. The aqueducts did stop running. Latin was forgotten, by all but a few specialists, to be replaced by the babble of dozens of local tongues. It’s dark because the records of that time are sparse – fewer people wrote and the people who did write, wrote on fewer topics.

Appendix N is just a reading list. But, a reading list tailored to a topic. The topic being inspirational works for playing the original role-playing game – Dungeons and Dragons. The list was intended to inspire players on adding variety to their game. And, to give players examples that explain why the game was made the way it was made.</

Jeffro Johnson set himself the task to read all of Appendix N in the context of its stated purpose. He found what he was looking for: clear evidence for many of the foundational rules of Dungeons and Dragons hidden in plain sight in the text of old fantastic adventure writing. But, he also found more – the nucleus of an earlier canon of fantastic literature. In that canon he discovered greater variety, subtlety, strangeness and a broader sophistication of theme than found in the general run of fantasy writing today. And, he found some damned fun stories.

So, for us, what has been forgotten? To a large degree, we have forgotten the scope that fantasy fiction can obtain when allowed unfettered freedom of imagination. We have forgotten that fantasy fiction can be just as edgy and daring when addressing the best of human nature rather than the worst. In fact, we have forgotten that literature can and should encompass all things. Or, even more, that literature should also encompass impossible things – especially fantastic literature.

And at Castalia House, Schuyler Hernstrom explains how it was that Appendix N started a literary movement:

Jeffro has indeed unearthed something. It is the hidden heritage of our beloved genres. I feel a little embarrassed, frankly, that I was so wrong about the fiction that I love so much. What I thought I knew about the genre was a series of walls and fences, put into place to guide me toward opinions and attitudes that were presented as things inevitable…. Jeffro’s work has become a lodestone, pulling at a set of emerging and disparate writers. We are out there, creating what we want from influences as varied as Lord Dunsany and anime. From the maps he drew we are navigating rivers back to their sources. We are exploring myth and knocking the rust off old ideas like heroism and honor. 



Some may wonder why Castalia publishes such seemingly esoteric books, especially given the fact that I’m not an RPGer, and never was except in the very most casual computer-game sense. The reason is that the dominance of the Left is cultural, and they arrived at their position of political influence in the West primarily through cultural means as per Gramsci rather than the economic means Marx predicted or the violent means Mao, Lenin, and Che utilized. Those on the Right who sneer at cultural matters as being irrelevant or unimportant fail to realize that they are playing a superficial and losing game. It is from children’s tales and children’s games that tomorrow’s voters are made.


“Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”
– GK Chesterton

Happy Robert E. Lee Day

From Men of the West:

Today, according to Google, is Robert E. Lee Day.    As proven in the screen shot above, Google’s desktop version is reporting the holiday not as honoring Martin Luther King Jr, but Robert E. Lee.

That would actually make for a potentially effective meme next year. Instead of celebrating the sacred martyr of an alien tribe, celebrate a true American and a heroic man of Virginia and the South.

No one cares what you want

Jonah Goldberg expresses concerns, concernedly, that Donald Trump will fail to be the kind of president Jonah Goldberg prefers.

I very much want Trump to be a successful conservative president — which is to say, I don’t want him to be a successful statist president. I understand all-too-well that many of Trump’s fans do want him to be a successful statist president. They don’t use the word “statist,” preferring the rough synonym “nationalist.” They either sincerely think, or convincingly pretend to think, that there’s a meaningful difference between a statist and a nationalist. There isn’t. That’s a worthwhile argument to have, and there will be many opportunities to have it down the road. But if Trump is going to be a successful conservative president, I think his biggest fans will have to recognize their own tribalism.

The intrinsic dishonesty of some civic nationalists runs so deep that they do not even appear to recognize it when they make massive blunders like confusing statism with nationalism.

Jonah is smarter than this. He understands the difference between a nation – a group of homogeneous people – and a state – a sovereign political entity. He’s written about the Kurds before, so he knows there is a Kurdish nation but not a Kurdish state. He’s written about the Soviet Union before, so he knows there was a Soviet state despite there being no such thing as a Soviet nation.

Moreover, conservatives have been overt statists since the first Bush ’43 administration. Has Jonah already forgotten “big government conservatism” or the bank bailouts of 2008? The fact is that conservatism is a dying non-ideology, and that’s why all the anti-Trumpers and Never Trumpers are beginning to cozy up to the God-Emperor Ascendant, whispering their wicked advice in the hopes that they can influence him.

But it won’t do them any good. Their electoral impotence, their intellectual irrelevance, and their lack of character was revealed in last year’s primary and general election campaigns. And very, very few of them are indicating that they learned anything from the experience.

And as for tribalism, we readily admit ours. We would just like to see Mr. Goldberg and company be honest about theirs. Given the absence of a strong demographic majority, tribalism and identity politics are the inevitable order of the day. See Thomas Sowell for details.

Martin Luther King, in his own words

The myth of Martin Luther King often appears to have more to do with Gandhi or the Buddha than to the actual man himself. It can be amusing to use his words to trigger SJWs, who don’t hesitate to declare them deplorably racist right up until the moment they discover whose words they are.

Alex Haley: Your dissatisfaction with the Civil Rights Act reflects that of most other Negro spokesmen. According to recent polls, however, many whites resent this attitude, calling the Negro “ungrateful” and “unrealistic” to press his demands for more.

Martin Luther King: This is a litany to those of us in this field. “What more will the Negro want?” “What will it take to make these demonstrations end?” Well, I would like to reply with another rhetorical question: Why do white people seem to find it so difficult to understand that the Negro is sick and tired of having reluctantly parceled out to him those rights and privileges which all others receive upon birth or entry in America? I never cease to wonder at the amazing presumption of much of white society, assuming that they have the right to bargain with the Negro for his freedom. This continued arrogant ladling out of pieces of the rights of citizenship has begun to generate a fury in the Negro. Even so, he is not pressing for revenge, or for conquest, or to gain spoils, or to enslave, or even to marry the sisters of those who have injured him. What the Negro wants—and will not stop until he gets—is absolute and unqualified freedom and equality here in this land of his birth, and not in Africa or in some imaginary state. The Negro no longer will be tolerant of anything less than his due right and heritage. He is pursuing only that which he knows is honorably his. He knows that he is right.

But every Negro leader since the turn of the century has been saying this in one form or another. It is because we have been so long and so conscientiously ignored by the dominant white society that the situation has now reached such crisis proportions. Few white people, even today, will face the clear fact that the very future and destiny of this country are tied up in what answer will be given to the Negro. And that answer must be given soon.

Alex Haley: If it’s morally right for supporters of civil rights to violate segregation laws which they consider unjust, why is it wrong for segregationists to resist the enforcement of integration laws which they consider unjust?

Martin Luther King: Because segregation, as even the segregationists know in their hearts, is morally wrong and sinful. If it weren’t, the white South would not be haunted as it is by a deep sense of guilt for what it has done to the Negro—guilt for patronizing him, degrading him, brutalizing him, depersonalizing him, thingifying him; guilt for lying to itself. This is the source of the schizophrenia that the South will suffer until it goes through its crisis of conscience.

Alex Haley: One of the basic precepts of black nationalism has been the attempt to engender a sense of communion between the American Negro and his African “brother,” a sense of identity between the emergence of black Africa and the Negro’s struggle for freedom in America. Do you feel that this is a constructive effort?

Martin Luther King: Yes, I do, in many ways. There is a distinct, significant and inevitable correlation. The Negro across America, looking at his television set, sees black statesmen voting in the United Nations on vital world issues, knowing that in many of America’s cities, he himself is not yet permitted to place his ballot. The Negro hears of black kings and potentates ruling in palaces, while he remains ghettoized in urban slums. It is only natural that Negroes would react to this extreme irony. Consciously or unconsciously, the American Negro has been caught up by the black Zeitgeist. He feels a deepening sense of identification with his black African brothers, and with his brown and yellow brothers of Asia, South America and the Caribbean. With them he is moving with a sense of increasing urgency toward the promised land of racial justice.

Alex Haley: Do you feel that the African nations, in turn, should involve themselves more actively in American Negro affairs?

Martin Luther King: I do indeed. The world is now so small in terms of geographic proximity and mutual problems that no nation should stand idly by and watch another’s plight. I think that in every possible instance Africans should use the influence of their governments to make it clear that the struggle of their brothers in the U.S. is part of a worldwide struggle. In short, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, for we are tied together in a garment of mutuality. What happens in Johannesburg affects Birmingham, however indirectly. We are descendants of the Africans. Our heritage is Africa. We should never seek to break the ties, nor should the Africans.

Alex Haley: Do you feel it’s fair to request a multibillion-dollar program of preferential treatment for the Negro, or for any other minority group?

Martin Luther King: I do indeed. Can any fair-minded citizen deny that the Negro has been deprived? Few people reflect that for two centuries the Negro was enslaved, and robbed of any wages—potential accrued wealth which would have been the legacy of his descendants. All of America’s wealth today could not adequately compensate its Negroes for his centuries of exploitation and humiliation. It is an economic fact that a program such as I propose would certainly cost far less than any computation of two centuries of unpaid wages plus accumulated interest

Alex Haley: If Negroes are also granted preferential treatment in housing, as you propose, how would you allay the alarm with which many white homeowners, fearing property devaluation, greet the arrival of Negroes in hitherto all-white neighborhoods?

Martin Luther King: We must expunge from our society the myths and half-truths that engender such groundless fears as these. In the first place, there is no truth to the myth that Negroes depreciate property. The fact is that most Negroes are kept out of residential neighborhoods so long that when one of us is finally sold a home, it’s already depreciated. In the second place, we must dispel the negative and harmful atmosphere that has been created by avaricious and unprincipled realtors who engage in “blockbusting.” If we had in America really serious efforts to break down discrimination in housing and at the same time a concerted program of Government aid to improve housing for Negroes. I think that many white people would be surprised at how many Negroes would choose to live among themselves, exactly as Poles and Jews and other ethnic groups do.

Looking back with the benefit of 52 years of hindsight, it should be entirely clear to anyone with a reasonable grasp of history that the Civil Rights movement was founded on a series of misconceptions, erroneous beliefs, false predictions, and outright lies, and that those who opposed the movement were entirely right to do so. 1965 was a seminal year in the destruction of the United States of America, and it is deeply ironic that one of the more symbolically important destroyers is celebrated today.

Social media and the threat to the status quo

I don’t think it is a coincidence that we’re seeing a growing push against social media from the Left, as it has largely ceased to serve their social justice purposes and has now been transformed into a sword that cuts both ways:

We are learning that all of our thoughts aren’t welcome, especially by social media company investors. We are also learning that social media companies are a business. This means conversation is encouraged as long as it runs the gamut from mundane to vicious but stops at the overtly sexual or violent. Early in its life-cycle Pinterest made a big stink about actively banning porn while Instagram essentially allowed all sorts of exposition as long as it was monetizable and censored. Facebook still actively polices its photographs for even the hint of sexuality as an artist named Justyna Kiesielewicz recently discovered. She posted a staid nude and wanted to run it as an targeted advertisement. Facebook mistakenly ran the ad for a while, grabbing $50 before it banned the image. In short the latest incarnation of the expository impulse is truncated and sites like Facebook and Twitter welcome most hate groups but most draw the line at underboobs.

Further, social media is no longer protected. As careless CEOs quickly discover saying the wrong thing in a “private” chat or deleting an errant tweet does not mean someone won’t screencapture your rant. In fact social media has become an id and ego collector, a fly strip where all of our worst thoughts are captured permanently. We exhale in anger and chuff in frustration. We tell people to unfollow us if they don’t like what we’re saying and we turn neighborhood pages into political cesspools. Then, when we cross too many perceived boundaries, an army of trolls is ready to pounce and our private spaces become public very quickly.

In short social media is no longer a safe place. I don’t mean this in the politically correct sense but in the very mental and physical sense. Whereas the web was once a broadcast medium it is now a two-way or many-to-many medium. Our errant Twitter thoughts can make us targets and we often don’t know we’re being watched. Entire wars can break out online that have real-world consequences – see Pizzagate – and hoaxes flit through the memetic bloodstream like cancer, breaking down our defenses. A prominent writer and friend recently mused about what would happen if he posted some political rants. The first thing that leapt to his readers’ minds was the potential for SWATing and doxing and then an visit from the FBI. Then, as evidenced by the above CEO example, you get fired.

Social media has become a very real, very visceral, and very censorial force and it can now only worsen the human condition. It was once an experiment but that experiment is over.

That being said, this is a genie who won’t be easily put back in the bottle, because it still serves too many powerful and vested interests. What we can expect is what we are starting to see; a one-sided crackdown that will ultimately fail because it necessarily sacrifices the moral level of war, and in its hypocrisy, gives up both the moral and intellectual high grounds.

The intrinsic problem that the Left faces is that in its constant attempts to destroy every Right-wing figure who surfaces, those who survive become impervious to their methods and become examples to others. Observers then learn what approaches work, such as the open antifragility pioneered by the likes of MILO and Stefan Molyneux, and which ones don’t, such as the aggressive anonymity that is easily neutered by a simple doxxing.

The Left can’t win on an equal playing field, so they have fought dirty for nearly a century. That was effective so long as the Right was the establishment and sensitive to accusations of fairness and violating its own standards. But now the Alt-Right is rising, and has demonstrated that it is capable of winning on an equal playing field or tilting the field, as needed. This is why their attempts to discredit, disqualify, and destroy will be more furious than ever, and why antifragility and reliable allies rather than anonymity are necessary for every Alt-Right and Alt-Lite figure, however minor.