Breaking the SPLC

It’s long past time that victims of anti-American thought policing began waging lawfare against the con artists of the SPLC:

In December 2018, a Baltimore lawyer filed a devastating lawsuit against the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and two of its employees. The SPLC targeted Glen Keith Allen over his former ties to the National Alliance (NA), a white nationalist group. In doing so, the liberal group allegedly violated laws and legal codes of conduct by receiving and then paying for stolen documents in violation of confidentiality agreements. The group went after Allen with the intent of getting him fired by the city of Baltimore and permanently destroying his future prospects.

Allen’s suit claims that the SPLC should have its 501c3 tax-exempt status revoked, that it owes him restitution for racketeering, and that it should pay $6.5 million in damages. It also references Allen’s pro bono work on behalf of African-Americans and his mentorship of an African-American teen, powerfully rebutting claims that he is a racist. Allen told PJ Media he now regrets his NA support, and an African-American friend of his laughed at the idea of this lawyer being branded a racist.

Perhaps most importantly, the suit attacks the liberal group for undermining America’s tradition of free expression. In an August 2016 interview with The Washington Post cited in the lawsuit, SPLC Intelligence Project Director Heidi Beirich (a defendant in the case) claimed to have watched Allen “like a hawk” because he had “the worst ideas ever created.”

“This East Europe Communist thought-crime surveillance mentality is antithetical to fundamental American cultural and Constitutional principles protecting freedom of expression and association,” Allen wrote in the suit, which can be found on his website. His lawsuit uses concrete claims of lawbreaking and defamation to expose the SPLC’s Orwellian strategy of branding its opponents “hate groups” and orchestrating campaigns against them.

In August 2016, the SPLC published an article branding Allen a “neo-Nazi lawyer” and insinuating that this lawyer’s work for the city of Baltimore was racist. Beirich, the article’s author, smeared a small political party as racist and then published allegedly stolen documents protected by confidentiality agreements connecting Allen to the National Alliance.

This article led Baltimore’s law department to fire Allen immediately, costing him at least 10 years of employment at a salary of $90,000 or more. The article also destroyed his reputation, making it extremely difficult for him to obtain a job, create a good relationship with clients, or argue before judges and jurors who would immediately judge him a “neo-Nazi lawyer.” Furthermore, a year after Allen’s firing, Baltimore badly lost the case, losing $15 million in damages.

It is said that around 60 Organizations’ “Are Considering a Lawsuit Against the SPLC Following $3M Nawaz Settlement”. They should do more than consider it. Both the SPLC and the ADL are thought-policing scams that make a very profitable living from defamation. The very name of the “Anti-Defamation League” is an example of the inversive wizardry that Owen Benjamin decries.

Darkstream: The rise of fake nationalism

If you’re wondering why I selected Dennis Prager as the example of a Fake Nationalist in tonight’s Darkstream, just read this paragraph from a column on “nationalism” he wrote in 2015.

In the United States, however, a national American identity has always been a major part of what it means to be an American. The three pillars of Americanism, constituting what I have called the “American Trinity” — are found on every American coin and banknote: “Liberty,” “In God We Trust” and “e pluribus unum.” The latter is Latin for “out of many, one.” Because America has always been a nation of immigrants, it has no ethnic identity. Therefore, unlike almost all other nations, America could not depend on an ethnic identity to keep its people together. In fact, if all Americans retained their ethnic identities, America would simply splinter. So a non-ethnic American national identity had to be forged and preserved.

Count the lies. America was not, is not, and could never be “a nation of immigrants”. The claim is as false for Americans as it is for the English, the Germans, or the Swedes. The British colonists did not emigrate to the American Indian nations of the New World. One might as reasonably declare that “Palestine is a nation of immigrants” and insist on referring to Israelis as “Jewish-Palestinians”.

Fake Nationalists rely on the same sort of wizardry that the New Atheists and Jordan Peterson utilize. They substitute “nation” for “state”, then declare that if you have the right piece of paper, that somehow eliminates every tie of blood, birth, and DNA that connects you to your actual nation. Of course, a Fake American is no more a genuine American than a fake woman is a genuine woman, no matter what the state-granted paperwork says.

The state does not define reality. The state does not define sex. The state does not define gravity. And the state does not define nationhood. It may defy these realities, but it will not do so forever.

Rod Dreher discovers his inner nationalist

Learning about the Spanish Civil War seems to have put a modicum of some stiffer substance – one can hardly call it steel – into Rod Dreher’s spine as he gradually begins to discover why the Nationalist Right is inevitable.

In 1930, the military dictatorship was overthrown, and municipal elections across the country the next year led to a big win for combined parties of left and right who favored a democratic republic. (N.B., not all leftists and rightists wanted a republic!) After the vote, the king abdicated, and the Republic was declared. Later that spring, leftist mobs burned convents and churches in various cities, while Republican police stood by doing nothing. This sent a deep shock wave through Spanish Catholicism.

The Republic, in typical European fashion, was strongly anticlerical. It quickly passed laws stripping the Catholic Church of property and the right to educate young people. There were other anticlerical measures taken. Anti-Christian laws, and violent mob action, were present at the beginning of the Republic. Prior to watching this documentary, I assumed they happened as part of the civil war itself. Imagine what it was like to see a new constitutional order (the Republic) come into being, and suddenly you can’t give your children a religious education, and your churches and convents are being torched. How confident would you be in the new order?

According to the film, Spain was still in the 19th century, in terms of economics. It was largely agrarian, with a massive peasantry that was underfed, and tended to be religious and traditional. On the other hand, they were dependent on large landowners who favored the semi-feudal conditions. These landowners were extremely conservative. Their interests clashed, obviously, and became violent when the land reform promised by the liberal Republicans did not materialize fast enough for the peasantry. Mind you, the Republic was declared in the middle of the global Great Depression, with all the political and economic turmoil that came with it.

The urban working class was organized along Marxist lines, though the left was badly fractured, and unstable. There were democratic socialists, but also communists who hewed closely to the Stalinist line. Plus, anarchists were a really significant force in Spain, something unique in Europe at the time. They competed politically, and usually aligned with the left in fighting the right. But they refused to compromise their principles by taking formal power, even when the defense of the Republic required it.

Regional autonomy also played a role in defining sides. When the civil war started, Catholics supported the Nationalist side (the Francoists) … but not in the Basque Country, which was religious, but which wanted more self-rule — something the Nationalists despised. Catalonia also wanted more independence, which meant it was firmly Republican. Barcelona, the Catalan capital, was a Republican stronghold for left-wing reasons, to be sure. I bring up the situation with the Basques and the Catalans simply to illustrate the complexity of the conflict.

Anyway, the 1933 elections resulted in a swing back to the right, with a coalition of center-right and far-right parties winning control, and reversing some of the initiatives of the previous government. Socialists, anarchists, and coal miners in the province of Asturias rebelled against the Republic. They murdered priests and government officials; the military, led by Gen. Franco, brutally suppressed the uprising. All of this radicalized the left even more.

By 1935, left-right opinion had become so polarized that there was practically no middle ground left. Both sides came to distrust democracy because it was the means by which their enemies might take power. And, as one Nationalist interviewed in the documentary puts it, people on the left and right just flat out hated each other. The whole country was a powder keg.

By the 1936 campaign, the centrist parties had practically disappeared.

He’s really going to harden his position after he reads Anthony Beevor’s book on the war. Once you figure out that the other side really, genuinely, and truly wants to exterminate your religion and your race, only the suicidal and the delusional will persist in trying to “come together” and seek to “discuss our differences”. You can brag about being anti-racist, apolitical, post-ideological, colorblind, or even apathetic all you like, but once it finally registers that the other side is literally hell-bent on destroying everything and everyone you value, it’s no longer possible to continue lying to yourself.

I saw this in a microcosm in my interview with Bleeding Cool editor-in-chief Mark Siefert. He simply could not, and would not, believe what I was telling him about the SJWs in comics. He insisted that there must be a place at the table for everyone, that it didn’t have to be war to the knife. I assured him that he was wrong, and that the SJWs could not be reasoned with, and the next day, he discovered the truth when he was ejected from his position by the very SJWs he’d been defending as reasonable the day before.

The cuckspace is shrinking. The middle ground is rapidly vanishing and nothing is going to bring it back. There is nothing to bring it back, because diversity is, quite literally, disintegration. It won’t be long before those who believed they were morally superior for denouncing nationalists as fascists and nazis will be crying for those nationalists to save them… if they are not proclaiming themselves to have been nationalists all along.

The real lesson of the Spanish Civil War is this: you will not save your nation without fighting for it.

The Gilded Path

Last night’s Darkstream was on the media’s made men, including Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro:

As evidence that I’m not simply conjuring these observations out of thin air, consider this graphic on Ben Shapiro’s “gilded path to prominence”.

Following his departure from Breitbart. Shapiro quickly founded the Daily Wire with funding from its owners, brothers Farris and Dan Wilks, Texas fracking billionaires who supported Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in the 2016 Republican presidential primary. The brothers and their wives combined to donate $15 million to a pro-Cruz super PAC in the early election season.

YAF has “Young Americans for Freedom” student chapters at colleges and universities around the country. The nonprofit helps organize and sponsor campus lectures, and Shapiro is one of YAF’s most prolific college speakers. Since 2015, YAF has organized over 35 Shapiro speaking gigs, according to the organization. In November 2017, YAF announced that it would be the “exclusive home” of Shapiro’s 2018–2019 college speaking tour, funded by Fred R. Allen. (It’s unclear who Fred Allen is, and YAF did not return an inquiry about his identity.) The group announced on July 25 that six universities will host Shapiro this fall with the headline, “LOOK OUT SNOWFLAKES.”

The chart below clearly demonstrates the difference between organic popularity and manufactured fake popularity. Or, as one commenter noted, the difference between those who have sold their souls and those who have not. Keep in mind that the yellow line represents Stefan Molyneaux, who has 889,759 YouTube subscribers compared to Ben Shapiro’s 444,386. It’s difficult to see from this graph, but note that for 11 years, from 2004 until early 2016, my Google Trends profile was reliably higher than Shapiro’s despite the best efforts of those propping him up.

And no, I’m not envious at all. I’ve been calling out Shapiro since 2005. Why would I ever envy a cowardly little creature who couldn’t compete with me without selling his soul? I know the price of “success” like that and it is not one that I would ever be willing to pay.

Curiouser and curiouser

Holding Space Films is a boutique production company based in Toronto. Director Patricia Marcoccia began working on a documentary film about now famous public intellectual Jordan Peterson in spring 2015. A year and a half later, he became embroiled in a public controversy about human rights and political correctness. Our first film, SHUT HIM DOWN: The Rise of Jordan Peterson, traces this contentious period with behind-the-scenes footage and multiple perspectives. The film hit the number one spot for 2018 on CBC Docs POV in Canada. We are now working on an extended version of the film for theatrical release.

The end of an era

We are rapidly approaching the end of the Carrier Age with regards to sea power:

They’re the pride of the US fleet: enormous 100,000 tonne, 333m long nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. But Beijing thinks they’re Washington’s achilles heel.

Rear Admiral Lou Yuan has told an audience in Shenzhen that the ongoing disputes over the ownership of the East and South China Seas could be resolved by sinking two US super carriers.

Taiwan’s Central News Agency (CNA) reports Admiral Lou gave a wide-ranging speech on the state of Sino-US relations. The high-profile, hawkish military commentator reportedly declared the current trade spat was “definitely not simply friction over economics and trade,” but was instead a “prime strategic issue”.

His speech, delivered on December 20 to the 2018 Military Industry List summit, declared that China’s new and highly capable anti-ship ballistic and cruise missiles were more than capable of hitting US carriers, despite them being at the centre of a ‘bubble’ of defensive escorts.

“What the United States fears the most is taking casualties,” Admiral Lou declared.

He said the loss of one super carrier would cost the US the lives of 5000 service men and women. Sinking two would double that toll.

“We’ll see how frightened America is.”

I don’t think it’s an accident that both Russia and China have developed carrier-killer missiles. It’s not so much that they want to get into a conventional war, it’s that for the first time since the end of World War II, they appear to possess the ability to keep the US military from exercising air superiority or even supremacy and controlling the oceans wherever it pleases.

One carrier sinking will forever change the balance of power. And even a shift in US strategy that clearly reflects an awareness of the new vulnerability of its carriers will probably be enough to alter it substantially.

Traffic report 2018

2018 was an unusually challenging year. It was full of deplatformings and bannings, disruptions and disqualifications. It saw the end of Alpha Game due to a lack of interest on my part and it failed to see the final publication of A Sea of Skulls due to a lack of time and focus on my part. It saw the collapse of the Amazon ebook market and a concomitant step backward for Castalia House. On the plus side, it also saw the publication of nearly 30 new comics from Arkhaven and Dark Legion and forced us to take structural steps that should provide a stronger foundation for future growth.

In 2018, Vox Popoli had 32,260,094 Google pageviews. The blog is now running at an average rate of 88,384 daily pageviews, up from an average 85,524 last year. The running annual pageview totals are as follows:

2008: 3,496,757
2009: 4,414,801
2010: 4,827,183
2011: 5,422,628
2012: 6,098,774
2013: 9,340,663
2014: 11,236,085
2015: 16,211,875
2016: 25,817,343
2017: 31,216,357
2018: 32,260,094

The biggest blog news in 2018 was the unexpected retro-cancellation of the successful Alt★Hero:Q crowdfunding campaign by Indiegogo, which not only led to the creation of our own comics site complete with a store and crowdfunding engine, but a successful replacement campaign that raised 42 percent more net than the original cancelled campaign as well. Thanks very much to all 1,657 backers who made that possible!

Another success was the return of Voxiversity and the development of its ancillary Darkstream, which is now averaging 8k views per stream. Look for further advances on the video front in 2019 thanks to the strategery of the Foundation.

We will have some very big announcements in the first two months of the new year, including the introduction of Infogalactic’s first social component. On a personal note, I expect to publish Corporate Cancer by March and A Sea of Skulls in print before June. And I’m very, very pleased to be able to announce that Jeremy Daw has literally just completed the massive task of narrating A Throne of Bones; the audiobook, which we anticipate will exceed 40 hours in total, should be available on the Arkhaven store before the end of March if everything proceeds according to plan.

Thanks to everyone who continues to read VP and to everyone who supports one or more of the various endeavors that have emanated from it. Thanks especially to the Infogalactic Burn Unit, the Alt★Hero backers, the Castalia volunteers, the Brainstorm crew, and the Arkhaven team, all of whom have come together in a spirit of creative cooperation to make these various projects viable. Your participation in these things is invaluable and very much appreciated.

Of course, it would not be an annual traffic report without that old standby, the comparison of VP’s annual traffic to that of the Most Popular Blog in Science Fiction. Some things never grow old. And the ride never ends.

We could hardly blame him

Bridget Phetasy@BridgetPhetasy
I just read the word “pedophobes” and well, I think we are done here, society.

This is what happens when you run away from being called wizard words. The wizards just create more words to control your behavior.

Deus vult.

Sparks flying at Arkhaven

Jon Del Arroz’s superhero romance comic FLYING SPARKS is now available in high-resolution CBZ format at the Arkhaven Comics store.

Due to many requests from our readers for higher-resolution digital comics than the 1280×800 resolution utilized by Amazon Kindle format, Arkhaven and Dark Legion Comics will be releasing all of their new digital editions in 2048+ resolution DRM-free CBZ format for better-quality reading on tablets and smartphones.

Unfortunately, due to Amazon’s requirement of exclusivity for Kindle Select, this means that our digital editions will no longer be available on Kindle Unlimited. They will still be available on Amazon as regular Kindle ebooks.

In other Arkhaven news, the AH:Q 2.1 campaign has been very successfully concluded with 279 new backers. Thanks to all of you who force-multiplied the project. We anticipate the initial release of AH:Q #1 to all the backers by the end of the month. We can also announce that 176 of the original AH:Q backers will submit their joint request for arbitration to Indiegogo next week. The rubble will be bouncing.

Industrial scale wizardry

From Jordan Peterson to The Last Jedi, you simply can’t believe anything that the media tells you about what is big or smart or successful or popular anymore. Because it’s all just corporate gaslighting for profit.

Director Kyle Newman: You look at The Last Jedi, and honestly, I don’t know anybody out here, maybe two people in my life, out of hundreds of people that I’ve talked to, who liked the movie. All the filmmakers I know that won’t talk about it publicly. All the people I know internally, there’s all these people that won’t, even journalists who gave it positive reviews are like, I do that because I need to maintain my access. Privately, there’s a lot of people who really don’t like it.

Geeks and Gamers: So you’re saying that the ones who gave it good reviews really are phony reviews.

Newman: 100 percent. I can’t name them, but yes, 100 percent.

I find it interesting that despite the constant encouragement to “think different” and “question authority” and engage in “critical thinking”, the media devotes an incredible amount of resources to convincing those who consume its products to do precisely the opposite. This would appear to be the inversive wizardry that Owen Benjamin describes, albeit on a giant industrial scale.