Tag: Book Review

Book Review: Danger & Play: Essays on Embracing Masculinity

Mike Cernovich is an interesting man. He combines the energy and up-with-people positivity of a perma-smiling pro seminar presenter with a laid-back personality of a California surfer. He’s both a lawyer and ex-military, but it’s hard to detect even the smallest sign of either aspect of his background. I met him for the first time in Paris this summer, as we co-hosted the GGinParis event with Milo, who at the time was the common link between us. (One thing people often don’t realize about Milo is that he excels at putting people in touch with each other.) Mike and I hit it off right away; it didn’t hurt that his fiance Shauna also happened to hit it off well with Spacebunny. And while I was aware of his health-and-fitness thing – the man is not only big, but he is an inveterate walker as well – I hadn’t actually read his blog. And since I never listen to podcasts, I wasn’t familiar with his popular Danger & Play podcast either.

But after having the chance to hang out with Mike and Shauna again in Spain, then reading Mike’s Gorilla Mindset and discovering the inspirational, if literally bone-chilling magic of the contrast shower, I was looking forward to reading his new book of essays, Danger & Play: Essays on Embracing Masculinity, which are largely taken from his blog posts. They were entirely new to me, and I was, frankly, surprised to discover that it was in many ways more directly relevant to me and my objectives than Gorilla Mindset. This makes sense, actually, since mindset has never been a problem or a challenge for me, whereas a number of the issues that Mike addresses in the new book have been one or the other.

In fact, I found myself repeatedly highlighting various passages in the book as I was reading it in the gym, including the following:

  • If you’re a momentum type, your brashness and boldness creates opportunity but also leads to costly mistakes.


  • Unless I bow down to the SJWs I will always be under attack. I’ll always be a “bad” person. Only the complete and total surrender of your soul will placate the SJWs who went after Matt Taylor. That’s not going to happen.


  • Cast aside any aspirations of mainstream acceptance, unless you’re willing to crawl on your knees before Gawker.


  • Making money ethically is a sure sign that you are delivering value and goodwill to the world.


  • learn how to focus on vision rather than on what you’re afraid of.


  • The little people, the flunkies, the peons: they are the ones that want to cut you down. The big guys, they respect the audacity.


  • Think like no one else thinks by noticing what no one else notices.

Now, one might be tempted to dismiss the book as a collection of cheerleading platitudes, except for the fact that the platitudes are the direct conclusions drawn from the experiences that Mike is recounting. He isn’t blithely quoting someone when he cites “Patton or some Prussian general” in advising audacity; he clearly doesn’t even know where the quote originates! Instead, and more importantly, he is summarizing what he learned from the various experiences recounted and what you can therefore apply to your own life.

(As it happens, the famous aphorism was coined by Georges Danton, the French revolutionary: De l’audace, encore de l’audace, toujours de l’audace. Mike was fortunate to avoid citing him as an example, however, considering that Danton was eventually beheaded by the Jacobins.)

Far from being a criticism, though, this is actually an example of the book’s fundamental strength. It is focused on deeds, not words, action, not reflection, practice, not plans. It doesn’t matter in the least who said what when, the point is that the reader needs to learn to be audacious in the way Patton and Rommel and Mike himself succeeded by being audacious. For those who are given to spending all their time planning, wishing, and dreaming instead of doing, this book should act as a direct shot of adrenaline.

Mike’s literary persona is not an intellectual one. It is, rather, that of a big brother, telling his little brother to stop being such a jackass, stop uselessly spinning his wheels, and do what big brother’s experience suggests will work for him instead. If self-help writers were NFL coaches, Mike Cernovich would be Bill Belichick. Do your job. Don’t worry about the other guy. Just focus and do your fucking job!

Which leads me to the one weakness of the book: the language. It’s not a book you would necessarily want to give to a young man under the age of 18. The saltiness and worldliness of the book is not inappropriate, nor is it particularly offensive by modern standards, but it does tend to preclude giving it to teenagers or putting it in your local school library. I didn’t hesitate to have my son read Gorilla Mindset, I would probably wait until he was 18 or 19 to have him read Danger & Play: Essays on Embracing Masculinity.


Nevertheless, I will definitely have him read it when the time comes because the lessons it contains are that important. I firmly believe that if I had read it at 18, I would have avoided several significant mistakes, including the single biggest one of my life, which was not dropping out of college after my third semester there. Because if there is one lesson the reader learns from the book, it is that doing things simply because everyone else does them that way is the most certain path to mediocrity, frustration, and failure.

It burns! It burns!

SJWs are very, very unhappy about the fact that people are being exposed to SJWs ALWAYS LIE:

KINDLE: CLEAN YOUR SEARCH ALGORITHMS
ByNome D. Gerron October 29, 2015
0 of 1 people found this review helpful

this is a scree of vindictiveness and self promotion. Somehow, probably in a manner akin to the almost success in awarding himself a people’s s/f trophy, this time waster appears in too many (and too many completely unrelated) categories of kindle recommendations. for example, just today, this book was pimped to me three times: in Moro history, in adaptionics and in economics. Motivated by apparent personal animosity, this book is gaming kindle.

There is is. Third law of SJW: SJWs Always Project.

It is interesting, though. We know for a fact that there are SJWs inside Amazon; it is another asymmetric battlefield where the rules are interpreted against us. But perhaps it is not quite as entirely enemy-controlled ground as we assumed.

But since this fake review is an open attempt at gaming Amazon, you know what to do.

Free delivery worldwide

“The most dangerous book in America”, SJWs Always Lie, is now available at BookDepository.

In case you’re still on the fence about reading it, it is also reviewed at Kairos:

The book was originally conceived as a polemic, but the end result is
more like a field guide to navigating the SJW-riddled minefields of
Western academia, business, and media. Vox shares accounts of people who
lost their employment and reputations to social justice witch hunts,
walks the reader through a step by step analysis of the SJW attack
sequence, and offers actionable advice for what to do when you come
under fire for alleged violations of ever-shifting social justice
doctrine.

In reading SJWAL, it fascinated me how much SJWs’ elitist, polarizing, and unaccountable attitudes resemble those of a cult.
This observation is consistent with the fact that all malignant
ideologies now threatening Western civilization are Christian heresies
to some degree.

Heresy isn’t simply untruth. It’s a truth unhinged from other balancing
truths and exaggerated out of proportion. Pelagianism was the
overemphasis on human will to the exclusion of grace. Arianism focused
on Christ’s divine Sonship to the point of denying His divinity.
Similarly, the SJW cult absolutizes social justice while rejecting the
immutable nature from which human rights are derived.

The mental state required to embrace such a self-contradictory worldview
is responsible for Vox’s First Law of SJWs and the title of his book.
Because they believe that adopting an irrational ideology makes them
morally superior to everyone else, SJWs have no qualms about lying to
advance their goals. This includes smearing, libeling, and falsely accusing others.

SJWAL‘s most valuable public service has been sounding a wake-up
call to ordinary people whose well-meant misconception that SJWs could
be reasoned or compromised with allowed their witch hunts to gain so
much traction.

Meanwhile, having been roundly trounced on the rhetorical front, SJWs are trying to think of what they can call us. Presumably besides “racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, bigot hater”.

The Most Dangerous Book in America

A new book review of SJWs Always Lie:

It begins with a primer on the forces of intolerance and thought control that are currently active in today’s society, and provides a revealing look at the hearts and minds of those at the forefront of shutting down open and honest debate. It uses the on-going saga of GamerGate to provide an in-depth analysis of one front in the culture war, and to illustrate the standard playbook of those who prosecute the modern day Salem Witch Trials. The book then segues into effective counter-strategies that can be used against them. Generally the counter-strategies are defensive in nature, but if practiced on a wide-spread scale by individuals and small groups, they result in a powerful offensive strategy capable of pushing back against the totalitarians in our midst.

While the background and tactical studies portions of the book are worth the cover price, the real value of this book lies in its clarion call to like-minded individuals who have long been silenced by the insidious tactics of those who would outlaw dissent. The seemingly endless string of successes by those who support destructive public policies can often lead to feelings of resignation and cynicism among those who oppose the modern day tyranny of censorship, but this book underlain by an energizing message of hope and optimism meant to inspire the reader to fight the good fight, and by that measure it is a wild success.

It may not directly inspire an earth-shaking demonstration that single-handedly changes the world, but it is easy to imagine “SJWs Always Lie” inspiring countless acts of quiet resistance that together add up to a powerful and undeniable pushback against the entire culture of thought-crimes. In that way, this book helps serve as a bellows heating up the spark of freedom that still lurks in the hearts of all men, which – if we are lucky – will fan the flames of an honest debate between those who hold a defense of truth, real justice, and the American way against those who believe the spread of lies, false justice, and slavery are virtues.

Book club invite

The Goy Luck Club is reading SJWs Always Lie and has invited VP members to take part in the discussions if anyone is interested:

Vox Day, The Supreme Dark Lord of the Evil Legion of Evil, has been is a science fiction writer for Castalia House, and was purged by the Science Fiction Writers of America by SJW’s for having naughty thoughts (sound familiar?). Since then, he has devoted part of his blogging to fighting back against the SJW’s in the Hugo Awards and in the Culture War. By organizing some of his readership, which he calls the Evil Legion of Evil, he is successfully getting SJW’s to burn down the Hugo Awards, a group that has been infested with SJW’s for 20+ years. He has accomplished this by getting them to vote for “No Award” for the various book awards, so the books he and his supporters nominate (The Sad Puppies slate) will not win the awards.

The book we will be reading is called SJW’s Always Lie.

For the first reading starting today (10/16/15) and ending next Friday (10/23/15), we will be reading chapters 1-5.

I will also be doing a closed Brainstorm event after the reading for those who take part and will be taking questions from readers about the book. And yes, speaking of a reading group, I do need to finish up the quizzes for A History of Strategy. And speaking of SJWs Always Lie, this review from M-Zed is both characteristic and extremely complimentary, considering:

Even Despite Our Differences, A Strong Book
By Michael Z. Williamson on October 15, 2015

I review this as an ardent anti-Voxxer, who has argued with him many times. The man is a troll, a self-aggrandizing narcissist, and woefully ignorant of science.

However, in the field of philosophy and debate, there are few better in this market. He understands clearly the tactical use of dialectic and rhetoric, and that arguing facts against someone who refuses to accept them is pointless.

The key to arguing with such people is to recognize, evade, and turn their own tactics upon themselves, so they are forced into their own corners. And, may I suggest, it’s very useful for dealing with annoying exes who attempt to obfuscate at every opportunity.

It is well worth the money to learn how to debate with the unreasonable.

It’s wonderful to have fans and supporters, but there are few compliments more sincere or satisfying than one from a dedicated foe. Obviously M-Zed and I have our differences, a considerable quantity of differences, but what I like about him is that he’s not afraid to speak his mind, for better or for worse.

Appendix N: conclusions

Jeffro has completed the initial pass of his quixotic masterpiece. Some of his conclusions:

  • Tolkien’s ascendancy was not inevitable. It’s really a fluke that he even became the template for the modern fantasy epic.
  • A half dozen authors would have easily been considered on par with Tolkien in the seventies.
  • Our concept of “Tolkienesque” fantasy has little to do with Tolkien’s actual work. Likewise, the “Lovecraftian” stories and games of today have little to do with what Lovecraft actually wrote. Our concepts of swords and sorcery have had the “weird” elements removed from them for the most part. Next to the giants of the thirties, just about everything looks tamed and watered down.
  • Entire genres have been all but eliminated. The majority of the Appendix N list falls under either planetary romance, science fantasy, or weird fiction. Most people’s readings of AD&D and OD&D are done without a familiarity of these genres.
  • Science fiction and fantasy were much more related up through the seventies. Several Appendix N authors did top notch work in both genres. Some did work that could be classified as neither.
  • It used to be normal for science fiction and fantasy fans to read books that were published between 1910 and 1977. There was a sense of canon in the seventies that has since been obliterated.
  • Modern fandom is now divorced from its past in a way that would be completely alien to game designers in the seventies. They had no problem synthesizing elements from classics, grandmasters of the thirties, and new wave authors.
  • Ideological diversity in science fiction and fantasy was a given in the seventies. We are hopelessly homogenistic in comparison to them.
  • The program of political correctness of the past several decades has made even writers like Ray Bradbury and C. L. Moore all but unreadable to an entire generation. The conditioning is so strong, some people have almost physical reactions to the older stories now.

And at Castalia House, Jeffro has posted a not-unrelated retrospective on the topic of Tolkien’s influence on Dungeons & Dragons:

This list has been held up as conclusive evidence of Tolkien’s
influence on the formation of original D&D.² Taking all of the
game’s influences into account it’s just not that convincing, however.
Certainly, players of this rule set would have been able to recreate The
Battle of Five Armies and The Battle of the Morannon. And unlike
anything you’d see in the coming D&D rule sets, Bard the Hunter’s
ability to take out a flying dragon with a single shot is accounted for
here. But while wraiths here are clearly inspired by the Nazgul, raising
the morale of their allies, causing their foes to make morale checks,
and paralyzing men with fear, these special abilities also failed
to survive the transition from miniatures supplement to role-playing
game.

Other staples of the D&D zeitgeist are in evidence even at this
early juncture: the chromatic dragons are out in force, along with the
chlorine gas breathing variety from the de Camp and Pratt’s The Roaring Trumpet.
The clearest example of Tolkien’s diluted authority in Gygax’s views
would be in the matter of Trolls. “What are generally referred to as
Trolls are more properly Ogres,” he explains. To Gygax, “true Trolls”
are more in line with the one in Poul Anderson’s Three Hearts and Three Lions.
 
Similarly, the wizards of the Chainmail Fantasy Supplement are unlike
anything from Tolkien’s corpus; they unleash “Cloudkill” on enemy
armies, create hallucinatory terrain, “haste” friendly units while
“slowing” enemies, and disrupt the opposing force’s command and control
with “confuse”. Tolkien’s stark contrasts between good and evil are
replaced with Poul Anderson’s and Michael Moorcock’s Law to Chaos
alignment spectrum, with the most surprising implication of this
system being that the question of whether Elves will come in on the side
of Halflings or Wraiths is determined entirely by the roll of the dice!

It’s very easy for wargamers to see the wargaming roots that underlie all role-playing games, but rather less easy for non-wargamers to recognize them. This is actually something I cover in my game development course; the students tend to be very fascinated to see how one can trace the developmental lineage of some of today’s biggest games all the way back to the arcade games of the 1980s. As for literature, I always find it amusing when people assert that Warhammer was an influence on Selenoth because I don’t play Warhammer or any miniatures games nor have I ever read even a single book from the Black Library. The influences they think they are seeing actually stem from board-and-counter games that influenced both Games Workshop and me.

Selenoth began life as a wargame called “Warleader” which was my attempt to write rules for Fantasy Advanced Squad Leader. Perhaps one day I’ll return to it.

Speaking of Castalia House, we are looking for some more high-quality writers to join Jeffro, Morgan, and Daniel there, but we are only interested in potential contributors who already have a blog and a track record. If you’re a book reviewer or a game writer interested in expanding your audience, touch base.

    Fourmilog review

    John Walker reviews SJWs Always Lie at None Dare Call It Reason:

    This book is a superbly written history of GamerGate and the revolt against SJWs in science fiction and fantasy writers’ associations and fandom, but also provides deep insight into the seriously dysfunctional world of the SJW and advice about how to deal with them and what to do if you find yourself a target. The tactics of the SJWs are laid bare, and practical advice is given as to how to identify SJWs before they enter your organisation and how to get rid of them if they’re already hired. (And get rid of them you must; they’re like communists in the 1930s–1950s: once in place they will hire others and promote their kind within the organisation. You have to do your homework, and the Internet is your friend—the most innocuous co-worker or prospective employee may have a long digital trail you can find quickly with a search engine.)

    There is no compromising with these people. That has been the key mistake of those who have found themselves targeted by SJWs. Any apology will be immediately trumpeted as an admission of culpability, and nothing less than the complete destruction of the career and life of the target will suffice. They are not well-meaning adversaries; they are enemies, and you must, if they attack you, seek to destroy them just as they seek to destroy you. Read Alinsky; they have. I’m not suggesting you call in SWAT raids on their residences, dig up and release damaging personal information on them, or make anonymous bomb threats when they gather. But be aware that they have used these tactics repeatedly against their opponents.

    You must also learn that SJWs have no concern for objective facts. You can neither persuade nor dissuade them from advancing their arguments by citing facts that falsify their claims. They will repeat their objectively false talking points until they tire you out or drown out your voice. You are engaging in dialectic while they are employing rhetoric. To defeat them, you must counter their rhetoric with your own rhetoric, even when the facts are on your side.

    The word is spreading. I appreciate the efforts some of you have been making to bring the book to the attention of those with platforms to reach potential readers that I cannot.

    And an Amazon reviewer asked a question that merited a response:

    Very funny, but why get embroiled in fights with crazy people in the first place? You can’t win, they are not open to logic, and nobody benefits one way or the other. Some SJWs will grow up and realize their silliness, but others, like the hags of N.O.W., never change or advance. The general public is oblivious, and always will be.

    Why? Because you can’t avoid them. They are on the Long March through the institutions and organizations of the West and they will attack everyone who does not submit to the Narrative. They are not open to logic, but you can win and I am living proof that you can benefit from standing up to them and defeating them.

    And while the general public is oblivious, it will not always be. There is absolutely no reason for defeatism when until recently, most of us didn’t even realize they have been attacking and undermining Western civilization for over 150 years. We not only CAN win, we WILL win because reality always reimposes itself in the end.

    One week at #1

    Interest in SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police remains strong; it has 132 reviews and ranks in the Amazon top 500, which has been enough to keep it at #1 in Political Philosophy for a solid week now. Thanks to all of you for that; none of that happens without you buying the book, talking it up on Twitter and Facebook, and reviewing it. I hope you will continue to spread the word about it.

    I’m gratified by both the positive responses from the Dread Ilk, #GamerGate, and the Alt-Right as well as the negative responses from the SJWs. Here are two recently published quasi-reviews, one from the gentleman plotting against me, another from a woman who is a strong supporter of Castalia House.

    SJWs is primarily a series of Scripts. For PUA manuals, these Scripts are opening lines, moving from one phase to another, shifting venues, et al. In SJWs, the first Script is the anatomy of a SJW attack (Point and Shriek and so on) and the second Script is the proper response (Don’t Apologize and so on).

    There is, of course, more to this book than the two Scripts, but as with PUA literature, it is mostly there either to explain and support the Scripts or to explain and support the Worldview. There are calls to arms and sections on how to SJW-proof an organization, but this is so much window dressing. What really matters are the Scripts and canned routines.

    The breakdown of dialectic vs. rhetoric is a good one, although it does claim that Leftists are incapable of dialectic reason. Again, this may be somewhat justified. After a year of following Vox, I have not yet seen an opponent attack him with a dialectic argument, for whatever reason.

    At the end of the day, SJWs Always Lie will likely do exactly what it set out to do. The culture wars within fandom will escalate, the disqualification arms race will heat up, and both sides will steadily lose the ability to see the other side as human beings. I will never say that both sides are the same, but they do have one thing in common: the constant dehumanization of the other side.

    Vox Day suggests that the only way to combat the intellectual policing of the Left is for the Right to engage in intellectual policing. This is what we have come to, and why I find Vox’s posturing as a hero of free speech disingenuous. Apparently the Hugo SJWs are not the only ones willing to burn down the city to save it.

    It’s a fair and intelligent non-review, but I think Rev 3.0 makes the same mistake so many moderates do of confusing the TACTIC with the OBJECTIVE. There is nothing disingenuous about thought-policing SJWs in defense of free speech; how else does he think their attempts to exert control over everyone else’s thoughts and speech are going to be combated?

    Once your opponent introduces tanks to the battlefield, if you do not meet them with anti-tank measures, including more and better tanks, you will lose. Rev 3.0’s implied notion of nobly relying upon even more free speech to combat the SJW speech police reminds me of the WWI French military doctrine that relying upon élan and esprit de corps was the right way to defeat barbed wire, trenches, and emplaced machine guns.

    Isn’t it possible that by utilizing their tactics we will turn into SJWs? It may be theoretically possible but it’s not even remotely likely. We don’t share their ideals, their goals, or their slavering hunger for control over others’ thoughts and words. The Marines didn’t magically transform into Nazis even though they adopted the maneuver warfare tactics that were developed by the Wehrmacht, and we won’t turn into SJWs just because we have turned their own tactics against them.

    As for why they won’t attack me with calm, rational, and reasoned arguments, it is because most of them are incapable of dialectic. The few that can handle it also recognize that I am much, much better at it than they are. They don’t flee from public debate with me because they are afraid they will defeat me too resoundingly and expose my intellectual limitations, but because they fear I will do that to them.

    Ann Sterzinger’s review is rather less coherent, and transforms into a Hugo 2015 summary before transmogrifying entirely into a review of John Wright’s Somewhither in which she rather precisely nails some of the novel’s weaker points. Unless she didn’t.

    Day’s brand-new nonfiction book on Castalia—SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police—is half Rabid Puppies memoir, half field manual for dealing with the sort of people who repeatedly call Day a white supremacist even though he repeatedly reminds them that he’s part Native American, and won’t shut up about his great-grandfather who was some kind of Mexican war hero.

    The negative reaction by the SJWs is very nearly as satisfying, as the only time I have seen levels of butthurt this high was the day that that the 2015 Hugo nominations were made public.

    • this is an example of somebody piggybacking on a topic he knows will be popular for his own obvious self-aggrandizement
    • The book itself is named after one
      of his “Three Laws of Social Justice Warriors”, a reference to Asimov’s
      Three Laws of Robotics 
    • Adorable whining from a guy with a hardon about losing at the Hugo’s
    • An unintentionally amusing account of how a pudgy, angry, little boy grows up into a pudgy, angry, little man.
    • This book is very poorly reasoned and complete garbage. The title is itself inaccurate and rhetorical fallacy.   

    UPDATE: Greg Johnson has posted a long review at Counter-Currents:

    At the risk of sounding like the Oprah of the New Right, I want every one of you to buy and read this book. Vox Day has written an indispensable manual for resisting the politically correct witch-hunts of so-called “Social Justice Warriors….

    Chapter 8, “Striking Back at the Thought Police” and Chapter 9, “Winning the Social Justice War,” are the most exciting parts of the book, for Day makes it clear that he is not content with just fending off the Left, but on rolling it back completely. This is what sets him miles apart from mainstream conservatism, which has never conserved anything from the Left, much less taken back lost ground. I will just deal with the highlights of these chapters.

    Day’s first strategic principle is to know oneself and one’s enemy, and act accordingly. Day points out that the Right has a systematic advantage over the Left, because the Left is based on lies; Leftists do not understand themselves or their enemies, but we do.

    One of Day’s most important principles is to reject the ideals of SJWs: equality, diversity, tolerance, and progress. Day flatly rejects equality as a fact or a moral ideal. He flatly rejects the daft notion that diversity is a strength. He does not measure progress in terms of equality and diversity, but in terms of science and technology, and points out that these forms of progress are incompatible with the first two ideals. He dismisses tolerance as “little more than a cloak for SJW entryism,” noting that SJWs always demand it but never practice it.

    Day simply denies the Left the moral standing to judge the Right. He dismisses them as followers of false ideals that lead to injustice and tyranny.  

      Do you really want to hurt me?

      A four-part series on “Killing Vox Day”. And I have to say, despite his purportedly homicidal intentions, the author says nicer things about me than most of my friends and family do.

      1). Vox Day is Honest
      Whatever you think about Vox Day’s opinions, you cannot deny that he states them publicly and consistently in the face of intense criticism.

      Being honest does not mean telling the truth per se. It does not mean that what you say is ultimately correct. Honesty means telling the truth as you see it, based on your best understanding of the situation. Vox is acerbic, biased, and prone to fits of exaggeration, but taking these things into account, he generally says what he thinks to the best of his knowledge.

      If anything, I’ve been stunned by how open Vox Day is about his evil, evil plans. In terms of Hugo strategy in particular, his modus operandi seems to be openly declaring his strategy, openly following through with said strategy, and then laughing at his enemies’ confused responses….

      2). Vox Day is Intelligent (and Sane)
      One of the things I have noticed about detractors of Vox Day is that they assume Vox is either an idiot or insane. Nothing could be further from the truth.

      Vox is an extremely sharp person. He knows how to argue successfully. He can set up a consistent argument, pick out flaws in his opponent’s reasoning, and generally defend intellectual positions that few other people can. Why these positions are difficult to defend hardly matters. What matters is that he has the chops to defend them.

      If you need an example of this, just look at the arguments he presents in any given blog post and the bleating of his supporters in the comments. There is a world of difference. And this is why they keep coming back – because he is very, very good at arguing for them. You don’t rally around a person who consistently loses.

      Another good example is this interview on CSPAN where he gives a logical and eloquent argument for the right of American states to secede from the Union. You can tell that the host was expecting an easy kill against a right-wing nut job and ended up with a lively, intelligent debate.

      Vox likes to credit his years of strategy gaming for these abilities (Advanced Squad Leader in particular). Personally, I like to credit years of playing Cooking Mama for my three Michelin stars and Mario marathons for my six-foot vertical jump. The more likely factor is that Vox is an avid reader – he displays a more than passing familiarity with philosophy, statistical modelling, and yes, military history and tactics (particularly Fourth Generation theory – more on this later).

      Again, this is not to say that his arguments are objectively true, only that he does a good job of flustering, discrediting, and generally taking down his opponents. He can think logically, tactically, and worst of all, strategically. He does not win because of the inherent strength of his positions, but because of his technique in defending them. That is not the behavior of a drooling troglodyte or an insane person.

      After seeing the first two parts of the series, I sent the author a copy of SJWs Always Lie, as I thought he might find it to be useful in analyzing my thought processes. As I thought he might, I wasn’t surprised to see he posted a fair review of it:

      This book is a necessary buy for anyone who finds themselves under attack for their politics. Two sections in particular stand out: the anatomy of a SJW attack and the response scripts. It will tell you exactly what to expect, what frame of mind to get in, and how to respond.

      That said, I take exception with Vox’s suggestion later in the book that the antidote to the thought police is an equal and opposite thought police for conservative organizations. I understand his argument that ‘they started it, so it’s fair game,’ but it seems like the opposite of the ideal outcome: un-policed thought.

      I will hasten to add that this is a mere academic consideration when you are under active attack from a group that wants to destroy your good name and livelihood for political reasons. Your first priority is to defend yourself, and this book will help you do just that.

      I will point out that the mistake he made in the second paragraph is no different than the one that many, indeed, MOST conservatives make. The tactic is not the outcome. The means is not the end. To achieve the objective of unpoliced thought, we must police our organizations against the SJW thought and speech police. Like the Germans with mustard gas in WWI, they will not abandon the tactic unless and until it is used against them with greater efficacy.

      “one of the most important books you will read”

      Chris Nuttall, an Amazon Top 100 author and contributor to Riding the Red Horse, reviews SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police:

      In the current climate this book may have a fair claim to being one of the most important books you will read. It is no surprise, therefore, that most of the one-star reviews on Amazon are insults directed at Vox Day personally, rather than the book itself. The unspoken intention is to mock the messenger, thus discrediting the message.

      Read this book. You may hate it, but at least you will have the pleasure of knowing you made up your own mind.

      One of the most heartbreaking stories to come out of the Soviet Union came from a man who’d been sentenced to the gulag (prison camp for dissidents); he asked himself, afterwards, why he hadn’t fought or run when the police came for him. He just sat in his house and awaited his fate. The answer, of course, is quite simple. The USSR was a prison camp above ground (and a mass grave below); the inmates – sorry, the population – were conditioned not to resist authority, even when authority was brutal, capricious, untrustworthy and quite thoroughly hypocritical.

      Many people will say ‘it can’t happen here.’ But it can and it does.

      Our society is under attack by Social Justice Warriors (or, as I prefer to think of them, Social Justice Bullies). They have, as Day points out, become the new thought police. Tell an off-colour joke? Lose your job, reputation and perhaps even your life. Disagree with the prevailing orthodoxy? Get harried into silence and then buried below a wave of focused scorn and contempt. Question the claims to victimhood of the aristocracy of victimhood? Get called a racist, sexist, homophobe, etc.

      I think Chris is correct to point out that the choice of the SJW used as the example demonstrating the Three Laws of SJW can be seen as a weakness, but the fact is that there is no other SJW whose lies I know as well, that I can refute in such documented detail, as those told by that particular SJW. It is precisely because I have been in direct conflict with the man for the 10 years since he started attacking me that I have so much information on hand about his lying, his doubling down, and his psychological projecting.

      As for the other weakness Chris mentioned, which is to say that he wanted to go deeper into the belly of the beast, that is easily rectified. As I mentioned to Spacebunny this morning, I now know what will be my next book project after I complete A Sea of Skulls.

      Professor Nick Flor of the University of New Mexico called it The Art of War for the Digital Media Generation and even provided a brief review in a series of tweets:

      Prof. Nick Flor ‏@ProfessorF
      Okay, so you can probably tell from my Kindle Tweets that I thought @VoxDay’s book “SJWs ALWAYS Lie” was superb. 5/5 stars

      Prof. Nick Flor ‏@ProfessorFSJWinguts are EVERYWHERE—  @voxday’s book teaches you how to recognize & effectively neutralize them. Must read.

      Prof. Nick Flor ‏@ProfessorF
      Man it’s tough to do a 140-character review. The book is like the Art of War, except for the Digital Media Generation.

      Prof. Nick Flor ‏@ProfessorFI really enjoyed the GG chapter and I finally understand Literally Who, Literally Who 2, and Literally Wu.

      Prof. Nick Flor ‏@ProfessorFHe does a great job of putting everything in context, and it really makes you feel good about everything #GamerGate has accomplished.