Piero San Giorgio and I discuss the recent events in the Middle East.
Available on UATV.
Tag: interview
SSH with Stew Peters
I had a conversation with Stew Peters today. We were planning to discuss the SSH, but we ended up talking more about the phenomenon of controlled opposition and how it hinders the Right. It was a good discussion and you can watch it here.
Be Based, Young Man
An interview with Noor bin Ladin:
By turns, Noor blends optimism and pessimism about the future. “I walk through the streets sometimes and think to myself, ‘My God, so many of these people don’t realise the war we’re in.’” But it’s clear enough to me that her attitude is ultimately one of hope for the future. When I suggest that the pandemic response has been a “great filter” event – an event that decides, quite literally, whether people are going to make it or not – and that most people have failed abjectly, she rebuffs me strongly. However many people have accepted events at face value and gone along with what the good doctor Anthony Fauci has told them, enough people are aware of the “war”, and of the stakes involved, that a globalist victory is anything but assured. Despite the reversals of the last year, what she calls the “Great Awakening”, which began five years ago with the election of Donald Trump, is still going strong. “People are fighting back” – look at the protests in France, the Netherlands and even Australia, which people have been far too quick to write off as totally lost, she says. The increasingly desperate measures taken by authorities, especially vaccine mandates, are a clear sign for Noor that things are not going as planned for the globalists.
And, for all the talk of irreligion, decadence and degeneracy over the past hour – however “far removed from God we are”, as she puts it – she trusts, nonetheless, that “we all have an innate sense of morality” and “people know that what is happening is wrong.”
“But whatever happens,” she adds, “God wins at the end of the day.” This seems like a good place for us to end our conversation.
There’s one last thing, though. Given the gravity of everything we’ve talked about – from Auschwitz to xenoestrogens – it feels almost frivolous to ask Noor the burning question, the question that prompted this interview in the first place. But since we’re wrapping up, I think “what the hell?” and ask it anyway.
So what is it based women really want?
“Oh that’s simple,” Noor replies, with a smile. “Based women want a man who’s even more based than they are.”
The sooner both men and women accept that the entire “Enlightenment” program was the nothing more than the continuation of the religious program of the most wicked of the ancient pagan evils, the sooner they will turn back to Jesus Christ, back to the Good, the Beautiful, and the True, and the sooner Man can return to building civilization rather than tearing it down.
If you can’t fight for the Cross, perhaps you can at least summon the faith to fight for flush toilets. If you don’t believe in Rome, perhaps you can at least summon the will to delenda Carthage. If you can’t accept the Truth, perhaps you can see enough of it to reject the Lie.
And it’s a healthy reminder not to hide your intellectual light under a bushel in a futile attempt to avoid female rejection. Instead, give them something to which they can be drawn.
Interview with Razorfist
Dark Herald interviews Razorfist for Bounding Into Comics about his new Dark Legion book, DEATH MASK as well as the decline and inevitable rise of pulp fiction:
DARK HERALD: Your Nightvale series appears to be strongly inspired by pulp era adventure stories. Pulp fiction was fairly common through the 1980s, but then interest started to taper off over the next twenty years. Why do you think that happened?
RAZÖRFIST: “Logistically speaking, what killed the pulps were the wood rationing and shortages of the mid-’40s.”
“The Shadow, the most popular of the ‘hero’ pulps for a long while, dropped to a shorter digest format and even cut Walter Gibson’s pay to keep the lights on. He would ultimately quit Street & Smith over it. Most pulp publishers were already dead after World War 2 and just didn’t realize it until the bills came due all at once over the next decade.
In the ’50s, those old yellow paperbacks (for a time, distributed via vending machine) seemed to replace Pulp as Television and Comics came to the fore. Ultimately, those got thicker and more pretentious until they became the ‘elevated’ gas station literature you see today”
“With thirty different titles ‘written’ by James Patterson, none of which he was ever even dimly aware of. They did sort of morph into the ‘genre fiction’ you’re alluding to throughout the ’80s. And in a weird way, they live on through Star Trek and Star Wars books, Battletech and so on.
These publishing houses are essentially printing pulp. It’s just a bit more bloated and seems to have aspirations to be more than it is. Sorry to say, it isn’t and never will be. Which is exactly the way I like it.”
DARK HERALD: I’ve recently run into a few other authors like you and Sky Hernstrom that have written new Robert Howard style high adventures. Do you think there is pulp revival underway? Also, who else do you know of who is working in contemporary Pulp?
RAZÖRFIST: “Yeah, I’ve read some of Sky’s stuff in Cirsova and enjoyed it. The first ‘New Pulp’ writer I was aware of was Barry Reese, who does a Shadow-esque vigilante series featuring characters like ‘The Peregrine’ and ‘Lazarus Grey’.”
“I think a Pulp Revival is inevitable. Whether it happens now or decades hence. Attention spans have fallen. Smart devices are tucked away in every pocket. Short fiction and bite-sized stories seem the way to go.
Yet, the ‘Phonebook Fantasy’ writers seem to have a minimum page count of 500 and fill the majority of it with worldbuilding bloat. And despite the name, it isn’t all that novel, either. None of them are doing anything terribly interesting to justify it.
Writing straightforward Fantasy is fine – I love it to death – It’s the pretense that it’s anything more that I can’t abide. And the smug superiority as they look down their nose at shorter, more plot-driven fiction.”
Interview with Susan Cooper
An illuminating 1999 interview with the author of THE DARK IS RISING series.
RT: The books comprise a series. Did you find that what you had written in the earlier books committed you to directions that you subsequently regretted, or wished you had more freedom to change?
SC: No. It was wonderful. It was like writing a symphony, in which each movement is different and yet they all link together. I wish my imagination would give me another shape like that because there are all kinds of satisfactions inside it. Things link together, an early book leads to something in a later book. When I wrote the first book, of course, I didn’t envision a series, but later, when I first had the idea of writing, not just the second book, but the whole sequence, I drew up a plan on a piece of paper. I had little notes written down: I had the four times of the year–focused upon the solstices, Beltane, and such festivals–I had places, and, very roughly, the characters who were in each book. I remember that under The Grey King there was a boy called Bran, but I didn’t know who he was. So that was the only thing that limited me.
There were things I had to remember from early books that had to be either resolved or referred to in later books. Once in a great while some particularly bright child will write me a letter saying, you never said what happened to . . . . But I didn’t find it restricting. No.
RT: Are there any particular details you would like to change, looking back in retrospect?
SC: I would like to have developed the three Drew children more fully in the first book. They develop as the series progresses, but they’re very corny kids’ book characters in Over Sea, Under Stone, it seems to me. I hadn’t gotten to know them.
RT: As the series progresses, Jane in particular grows more interesting, doesn’t she?
SC: Yes. Jane is someone I always wanted to write about again. Silver on the Tree suffered from being the last book where I was tying up all the ends. It has too much in it. My head was going off in all directions. Its structure is not terrific. There was even more in it, but I took some out. Of course when you’re dealing with the substance of myth, which is the fight between good and evil, I suppose, you have to provide the ultimate, terrific, enormous climax. It’s almost impossible.
I’m not promising anything, not yet, but I am optimistic that we may eventually be able to release a Castalia Library edition of the series. And if so, the bar will be a fairly high one to clear, as the Easton Press edition is arguably the most beautiful set that Easton has ever produced.
Interview with an Elder God
While rooting around my WND audio interviews, I discovered an old interview from the 2012 election season with an unlikely political figure.
We are deeply privileged to have the opportunity to speak with another potential candidate for the presidency. He’s been asleep beneath the ice for centuries, but now he’s up, he’s active, and he’s thinking about throwing his tentacles in the ring in 2012! So, I’m pleased to welcome The Thing That Should Not Be himself, Dread Chtulhu! So, Mighty Cthulhu, I understand you’re thinking about a run for the presidency!
Yes, America has tried voting for the lesser evil and you’ve seen how that’s worked out. It’s time to vote for the Greater Evil!
And that would be you?
Yes, of course. Unless Hillary gets into the race again.
But you haven’t made up your mind yet.
Not yet. There are some issues.
Issues?
Potential problems.
Like what?
I’m afraid there may be a few indiscreet tweets.
Really?
Hey, when you’re sleeping beneath the Antarctic Ice, things can get a little slow, you know what I mean?
You’re on Twitter? Who were you tweeting with?
Arianna Huffington. That is one NASTY greek goddess. She’s got a mouth that I can only describe as FILTHY. Nice lady.
Arianna Huffington, wow. Okay, anyone else?
Well, I sent a picture to that little singer girl, Justin Beeber, but she didn’t hit me back.
I think Bieber is a boy.
IS HE? Oh… well, wouldn’t that have been embarrassing.
You said a picture? What kind of picture?
Yeah, well, you want to talk about some RIDICULOUS BULGES. I got ’em. Lots of ’em.
I’m not sure America is ready for a naked tweeting president, Cthulhu.
Who said anything about naked? I was wearing silk boxers.
Classy. But still….
Let me set one thing straight. When the American people vote for Cthulhu, they will get the promised evil. The Greater Evil. Nonstop, full-time, pure and dedicated evil. I will devour puppies. I will tear the heads off foreign heads of state, and I will make America FEARED again!
You don’t think that sounds too much like Mitt Romney’s platform?
Does it? Hmmm, perhaps I’ll have to rethink my position on healthcare then.
So you’re in?
First we have to see if this Beeber girl goes to the press or not.
What about Arianna?
We’ve got a date this weekend. We’re going to see the Hangover 2. I love that little naked Japanese guy. Makes me laugh every time.
Thank you, Great Cthulhu. America’s next president or long-deceased elder god worshipped by mad homicidal cultists? Only time will tell.
COVID and Climate Change
A three-way conversation between Daniel Sanderson, Steve Keen and me, in which we somehow manage to avoid discussing either COVID or climate change.
DS: That’s a project that we’re releasing in January and I wanted to include in that academy, a course from Steve as well on economics.
VD: That’s going to be intriguing because Steve is not generally what one would consider to be Econ 101 material.
DS: No, it’s not, but we’ve talked a little bit about the show and I think the best thing is to try and summarize what he’s saying and then build off of that. That’s kind of the idea and the course just takes shape.
VD: I can write that for you in five minutes. In 30 seconds, I can summarize everything you need to know about Steve Keen’s work in economics.
DS: Okay here we go! Yeah, here we go.
VD: It’s very simple. Everything you’ve ever read is wrong.
To be clear, I still don’t do interviews. But I absolutely will make the occasional exception on behalf of requests from Castalia and Arkhaven authors, particularly if the Castalia/Arkhaven author happens to be the greatest living economist.
Four game designers, two interviews
My recruitment efforts for high-quality additions to the DevGame site have already been rewarded beyond my reasonable expectations, as two veteran game developers have already agreed to become regular contributors. Restitutor Orbis, a game designer who is the newest contributor to DevGame, interviewed Chris Crawford, legendary game designer and founder of the Game Developers Conference, in 2005:
Eastern Front (1941) was one of Crawford’s most noteworthy creations so I decided to press him for details. “Eastern Front was a creative implementation of an obvious idea. ‘Let’s do a good wargame on a computer!’” he said. “Pulling it off involved an awful lot of creativity, but it required tactical creativity as opposed to strategic creativity.”
I was puzzled by what he meant. Crawford has a reputation for being outspoken, but it’s a cryptic sort of outspokenness, profound to the point of incomprehensibility. Talking to him can be like reading A Brief History of Time at 120 words a minute. You always feel like you’re missing something.
“Tactical creativity is implementation creativity. How do we build a good map? How do we move units around? How do we build a good AI system? You already know where you are going and you are just figuring out how to get there.”
“So would you say in today’s game industry we have a lot of tactical creativity and less strategic creativity?” I asked.
“Nowadays the stuff we call creative is tiny, tiny stuff. It’s hard to even call it creative at all. Technically, yes, I see a lot of creativity. But I see almost no design creativity in the stuff that’s coming out there.”
What was beginning to become apparent in 2005 is now completely obvious to everyone 15 years later. Read the whole thing. For my part, I interviewed Brad Wardell, designer of Galactic Civilizations and publisher of Sins of a Solar Empire and Sorceror King, as part of the 2016 DevGame course:
VD: You’ve moved from doing science fiction with Galactic Civilizations into doing 4X fantasy with Fallen Enchantress and Sorcerer King. What were some of the challenges that were involved in moving from science fiction to fantasy?
Brad: The biggest one for us was going from a space-based game like Galactic Civilizations II to a land-based game like Fallen Enchantress. Specifically, the terrain. You are dealing with the ground. And that turned out to be a huge challenge for us because we had never had to deal with it before. We had never really run up against things like video memory or the limitations of DirectX in terms of how to make a mountain. You think about it, of course, but how you make something like a mountain can be limiting based on DirectX, because there’s only so many points you can put on there. So that turned out to be a huge hurdle for us, and that really bit us in the butt, because, at the time, we didn’t do our homework on what we could and couldn’t do with the current technology.
VD: Interesting. That’s very timely because we’re going to be getting into things like polygon count and so forth when we talk about art later today. Now, in the publishing world, the market for fantasy is considerably larger than the one for science fiction. Is that true in games as well, or do you find that science fiction usually outsells fantasy?
Brad: I read mostly science fiction myself. In the game arena, I would say science fiction tends to be a bit ahead of fantasy, only because the problem people run into with fantasy is that they think fantasy means medieval Europe with magic. And that’s not a just a problem in terms of the designer’s limits, it’s more the expectations of the public. If you move too far outside the box, you are punished for it in the marketplace. Whereas in science fiction, you have a little bit more room to breathe.
Even if you’re not a game developer, or a wannabe game developer, there is a good chance you’re going to learn a lot of interesting information from these interviews. And if you’re a gamer, you’re definitely going to want to add DevGame to your daily bookmarks list.
The last interview
I initially declined the interview request, but since I read the Unz Review myself and the interviewer only had a few substantive questions tangential to his very positive review of Alt-Hero, I took a few minutes to email him back. It’s not his fault, but in retrospect, I should have stuck with my instinctive reaction and declined to answer them, as a commenter here noted.
The comments on the UNZ article are a testament to moderating comments as they do here. It’s like a gamma bomb went off under the article.
Precisely. The way the anklebiters who stalk this place and the Darkstream in vain will immediately rush to any media mention of any kind is yet another good reason not to talk to anyone, media or not. Even when the interview is friendly, positive, and substantive, there’s always at least some degree of nonsense and negativity that results from it.
This little gamma bomb is orders of magnitude smaller than the fallout from my previous interview with Bleeding Cool, but nevertheless underlines the point that there is zero net benefit to me from bothering to talk to anyone who isn’t on Unauthorized. So, this little Kersey interview will likely be the last one I give to anyone for the time being. I have my own channels of communication; I have no need for anyone else’s. Anyone who wants to know what I think has dozens of books, hundreds of columns, hundreds of videos, and thousands of blog posts available to them that are more than capable of satisfying their curiosity.
And for those who believe my decision has anything to do with being thin-skinned or unable to take criticism, all I can say is you’re far too short for this ride. What I’ve learned over the years is that all answering questions does is to raise more questions, and that talking to anyone in any form of media, no matter how friendly, places you into an endless cycle of feeding various false narratives even as you attempt to counteract them. There is simply no reason to devote even a modicum of time to activities that are neither productive nor enjoyable.
So, the answer to “will you talk to X?” is an unambiguous NO. It doesn’t matter who it is, whether I like them or not, that you sincerely believe our views are harmonious, or what the purported subject is. While I may interview the occasional author on the Darkstream, I do not plan to publicly speak to anyone who is not on Unauthorized.
Alt-Hero on Unz
Paul Kersey reviewed Alt-Hero and Alt-Hero:Q and asked me a few questions concerning them. As I am a big fan of the Unz Review, I made an exception to my usual policy concerning interviews and media:
My advice: if you want a good actioner, forget pozzed Hollywood and the New York publishing houses. Instead, try Vox Day’s Alt-Hero comic book series—an effective antidote to the modern entertainment industry’s anti-white, anti-male egalitarian poison.
Day, whose excellent website is a daily must-read, has just released Alt★Hero Volume One. Give it a read to see what Day and his collaborators are producing. One of them, by the way, is Chuck Dixon, the country’s top comic book writer and the co-creator of Bane. Dixon is writing Alt★Hero: Q.
Even a glance at Alt★Hero Volume One suggests that Marvel President Kevin Fiege won’t consider it for the big screen. Here’s why:
The Global Justice Initiative, led by Captain Europa, is a group of superheroes dedicated to preserving the European Union and stamping out any European patriot or member of Génération Identitaire who attempts to light a fire for sovereignty from this tyrannical regime.
In the best of Volume One’s six issues, The War In Paris, the Global Justice Initiative employs Antifa, the shock troops of the state and ruling-class establishment, in a massive fight against French nationalists near the Eiffel Tower.
During the climactic battle, Captain Europa tells the resistance leader Durand: “You defend what does not exist! They [the refugees] have the same right to be here as you. They are the new France!”
As the battle rages, Durand reminds Captain Europa that France has been occupied before, that the Germans thought they’d won too.
Captain Europa replies: “What is German? Now we are all Europeans and we are the future of all humanity!”
Day, who is a devout Christian, even worked in Lord of the Rings.
“I never sought this,” a resistance leader says to a woman member of the nationalist cause. “I never wanted this” he says while perusing her library … then stopping at LOTR.
“They neither request nor require your assent,” she replies. “And those who have not swords can still die upon them.”
Alt-Hero impressed me so much I asked Vox Day to answer a few questions about the series and his leadership role in the Dissident Right.
Read the whole thing there. I very much doubt my answers to his questions will be a surprise to any of the readers here, but they may help you understand why the mainstream media never ran the various interviews it did with me back when I was still willing to speak to them.
And, as always, I underline the fact that I am not a leader of anything or anyone except the VFM, the Dread Ilk, and the ELoE. And, of course, GamerGate. But then, who isn’t?