Tag: interview

Talking to the Devil

Or, as it happens, to the Supreme Dark Lord. This is the controversial interview that The Huffington Post found too hot to handle.

I have written on Political Correctness and the need for civil discourse.

For my next look at the culture wars, I talked to controversial alt-right figure Vox Day: game designer, science fiction author, and Amazon-bestselling political philosopher, who some claim to be an inspiration for Donald Trump’s No Apologies strategy.

He’s written about taking the vote away from women, blamed the lack of woman science fiction writers on poor science education in universities, been involved in #Gamergate and disrupted the venerable Hugo science fiction awards, among other things.

He’s been a regular target of feminists, social justice warriors and left-wing activists. For all that, it is hard to know how seriously he takes some of his positions and how much he is angling for a reaction. I asked Vox that we don’t get into personal attacks. Let’s pretend we’re at a Sunday picnic with nice people.

Vox, thanks for joining me. Can you tell us how you came to be a well-known opponent of the social justice left?

It was initially the result of ideological opposition within the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America to my nationally syndicated column, specifically one I wrote concerning an attack by Susan Estrich on Michael Kinsley.

You were called a misogynist, racist, anti-Semite. It got very heated.

It did. Before long, multiple writers at The Guardian were writing articles about what a terrible, awful, very bad person I am. Media outlets from NPR to the New Zealand Herald were joining in the fun. All that did was introduce me to new readers and turn my little blog into a juggernaut.

You say a lot of things that seem outrageous. To what extent are you winding people up?

Not at all. Everything I advocate has a solid basis in science, reason, and history. I find that it is mostly my tone of open contempt for my intellectual inferiors that tends to upset them.

As Mike Cernovich and Milo Yiannopoulos have repeatedly shown, the big SJW-converged sites can try to no-platform the Alt-Right, but all that accomplishes is to cause people to abandon those platforms and go in search of more compelling content and more interesting characters.

And sometimes, they even seek the truth.

2015 Book of the Year

Bernard Chapin, of Chapin’s Inferno, names SJWs Always Lie his 2015 book of the year:

Reading a book four times is a very rare endeavor for me but it’s a true testament to the value of Vox’s insight. We fight the left here, and SJWs Always Lie is a great “how to” guide for those of you at home. I made two videos concerning the work in the fall but I had a ton of questions to ask him. He’s a very wise guy and it even sounds as if RooshV actively sought out his advice in regards to his immaculate press conference. Roosh’s tactics were completely in line with the rules Vox lays out in the book.

While I’m pleased that SJWAL has been so well-received by so many people, and I very much appreciate the distinction, it is regrettable that the book is necessary in the first place. I look forward to the time when it will be regarded as a curiosity, a historical artifact, and people will wonder if an SJW had something to do with the Whig Party, and what “social justice” might have been.

By the way, Roosh did a hell of a job with that press conference. Because people don’t pay attention to negative accomplishments, most haven’t noticed the way in which it killed the Narrative and completely shut down a global media meme in one fell swoop. It was magnificent. That is something that will need to be analyzed and explicated in SJWADD.

Bernard interviewed me about SJWAL yesterday. And I have to confess, at this point, it is entirely possible that he knows the contents better than I do.

Interview with Mike Cernovich

Mike Cernovich is one of the most inspiring individuals I have ever had the privilege to meet, and I’ve met everyone from Donald Trump and Henry Kissinger to Dolph Lundgren, Slash, and David Lee Roth. As you might expect, the interview is both interesting and informative:

You took, and passed, the California bar first time out of the box, yet failed to get your ticket punched.  Since you’ve written about it publicly, I need to ask: you were the target of a false rape accusation, back in the days when rape still meant rape. What happened? How did that experience affect you, shape your perspective?  What did you learn about the criminal justice system from having been in its clutches?

I was Patient Zero to the false rape epidemic. “Date rape” was common, the media said, and thus there was pressure to prosecute rape cases where there was no evidence of rape.

My case was bogus. I slept with the girl on the living room floor while her best friend was in the room. (Anyone who wants to fact-check me, ask me for a copy of the case file. It’s somewhere in my Gmail, I’m sure.)

The prosecutors were highly sensitive of the media, as was the judge, who once said to my lawyer, “Think about what the media would say if I dismissed this case!”

I was full of rage, anger, depression, and every other toxic emotion. I had followed all of the rules, and my life was “ruined” by a feminist media and legal system.

The biggest lesson of my rape case is to stay far away from the criminal system. Never talk to the police, even if you’re a witness, because who knows…Maybe they need to close a case, and you were there, after all.

You wrote a book review on Ordinary Injustice, and that was my case. I was a kid with such promise who worked hard, but hey, the media might say something rude about the judge or District Attorney. That’s what really matters.

That mindset, that the players within the system matter more than men charged with serious crimes, is yet another ordinary injustice of our day.

At some point, you “morphed” from the Mike Cernovich at Crime & Federalism, to the Danger & Play guy, your latest venture into blogging, where you have taken up arms promoting masculine health, both physical and mental. What happened? Was this a response to your youth, your having been falsely accused of rape? Your growing fat and realizing you needed to get your shit together?  What turned you into @PlayDangerously?

When you are falsely accused of rape and see the legal system from the inside as a client and the outside as lawyer, your eyes open up. You realize that everything you had been told about the legal system was a lie.

What other lies have we been told, and what are the source of those lies?

We’ve been lied to about rape culture. If you took the arguments about college rape culture seriously, you’d never send your daughter to college. That’d be like sending her to the Congo. Yet, people claim 1 in 4 women are raped while simultaneously sending girls off to college, and those girls even go walking in public and attend parties. It’s almost as if those rape statistics are made-up.

We have been lied to about gender, especially about a man’s role in society. As a man, you’re supposed to live for everyone except yourself. Make a woman happy, even if she nags. Please everyone, expect nothing for yourself because that’s selfish.

When a man buys a cool car, it’s because he’s having a mid-life crisis. A man can’t have fun or do anything he likes without being attacked.

A man who divorces a harpy is evil. A woman who divorces a man because she “just doesn’t feel it anymore” is a hero. Even a woman who cheats on her husband will be celebrated under the Eat, Pray, Love attitude towards women.

Those were lies resulting from what Nietzsche, who I read in college but never understood until I became a man, would call the “slave mindset.”

I began examining those lies one-by-one, and as I did, more lies were revealed.

What Mike saw in the legal system, I saw in the political and business worlds. And later, in the legal system. We both decided we would not play along to get along. After all what profits a man to gain the world if it costs him his soul?

Interview with the Green Thumb of Evil

Viidad’s Q and A with David The Good concerning the latest Castalia House release, the number one gardening bestseller on Amazon: COMPOST EVERYTHING: The Good Guide to Extreme Composting:

Viidad: Why did you write COMPOST EVERYTHING?

David The Good: I suppose I should say “because I love our mother the earth” or “because I want to world to reduce, reuse and recycle” or something stupid like that, but really, it’s because I’m a cheapskate and I hate following all the rules that tell me I should throw out stuff that could be added into my gardens as fertilizer.

Viidad: Like dead bodies.

David The Good: I wish people would stop bringing that up. One or three times does not a pattern make.

Viidad: But the precedent is there…

David The Good: I will not answer any more questions along these lines. I am VFM, craven servant of the Dark Lord, serial number 0156…

Viidad: Are not! That’s my number!

David The Good: Surely The Most Evil One could not have made a mistake…!

Viidad: Never! But… well… hmm… I… whatever.  Okay, weird.  Back to the interview. What about this question: who should really give a flying fetid flip-flop about composting?

I told you he was nuts. Read the rest of the interview at Castalia House.

Interview with the devil

John Brown rather commendably decided that he should learn exactly what I thought about various issues before leaping to any conclusions or judgments about me, and asked me a number of questions on some controversial subjects:

I just had a conversation with the devil.

Well, from what people have been posting, he seemed like the devil. But I know how the internet can be. Mitt Romney at one time was the devil. Now, I think he’s been degraded in those quarters to janitor of the hot place. Yeah, that one Romney who is out raising tons of money to help fix blindness among the poorest of the poor, that evil son-of-a-gun.

So when I saw there was a new head honcho in town, I decided to see what he was all about.

I did try reading various posts on the internet, but after a dozen or so of those, I realized it would just be easier to go to the source. And so I went to Vox Day’s website and clicked the contact link, which popped up an email.

I asked Day if he’d mind answering a few questions.

He agreed.

What you will read below is our conversation, arranged for easy reading.

Why am I doing this?

Well, who doesn’t want to scoop the devil? But beyond that, I agree with George R. R. Martin: internet conversations that are not moderated to maintain a tone of respectful disagreement are a bane upon us all. Actually, Martin said they were part of the devil’s alimentary canal, but I didn’t want to confuse the topic.

So I’d read a number of posts that Day had made and others folks had made about Day and saw all the bad juju going back and forth. And I wanted to know what this guy actually believed. Once I understood that, if I disagreed, then I could disagree in a way that I think is actually productive.

We talked about some of his views on two subjects—race and women. Are his ideas provocative? Well, you need to know what they are before you decide.

I thought he was mostly fair, if lamentably inclined to harbor some strong opinions about things he admitted to knowing nothing about. I did find it mildly amusing that my position of support for women voting in universal direct democracy is somehow taken to be more limiting of the electorate than a mere disagreement over where the precise line of the restrictions inherent in so-called representative democracy are best drawn.

As for his points about the rhetoric of offense, this bit actually made me laugh:

Offense closes both parties off to challenges, biases, and ideas. It
closes them off to new information. And new information is such an
integral part of learning.

That sounds nice and all, but I have a one-word rebuttal: Aristotle. As the readers here know, Mr. Brown’s point concerning how my rhetoric “dramatically undermines his ability to get others to consider his ideas, let alone believe them” does little more than inform us of his level of communication. And as you can see, while I provided him with the requested information, it did not change his mind. This is no surprise.

Interview with Martin van Creveld

Daniel Eness interviewed Dr. Martin van Creveld, the author of the newly published Equality: The Impossible Quest, at Castalia:

Q: Do you think that some of the contradictions regarding equality in the U.S. Constitution made the document a more stable guide for a new society, or do you see similar contradictions in Rousseau’s influence on the French Revolution?

MvC: Any attempt to institute equality, of any kind, is bound to result in restrictions on freedom. Personally I think that the U.S Constitution did a credible job in balancing between the two (and, of course, justice). Not so Rousseau who, in his quest for equality, went much too far. Not for nothing did my teacher, Jacob Talmon, see him as the father of “totalitarian democracy.” More problematic still, with him equality is the product of, and requires, constant plebiscites about everything. Given the technical means of the age—there was no Net—such a system implied a very small polity indeed. Against the fiscal-military states of the time it simply stood no chance.

Q: You argue that social equality is not a necessary outcome of economic or legal equality. Can social equality be achieved? Should it?

MvC: The only way to achieve equality is to restrict, or even do away with, liberty. Along with liberty justice and the quest for truth—namely the right to think, believe, say and write that equality is not the supreme good—will also disappear. With political correctness reigning as hard as it does, in many places that is already the case. Just try and say that women, or homosexuals, are and should not be equal in this or that way, and you will see what I mean. So I would argue that equality is a dream, and not even a beautiful one.

Q: What are the sexual and property impacts of organized equality in communal bodies?

MvC: It would differ from one type of community to the next, so let me focus on the kind of community, the Israeli kibbutzim, I know best. The kibbutzim were famous for having no private property. Everybody had his or her meals in the communal dining room and his other needs from the machsan, or magazine. Couples lived in “rooms” Children grew up not with their parents but in their own houses. A few specialists apart, people took turns at doing all kinds of jobs. Decisions were taken by the kibbutz assembly in which everybody had one vote. It elected the secretary-general and also set up special committees for such things as education, culture, etc.

For some two generations, it did not work badly at all. The fact that kibbutzniks saw themselves, and were seen by the rest of Israeli society, as an elite helped. What brought the system down was the women. First, they were unhappy with the endless routine of communal kitchen/communal laundry/communal child houses. Starting in the 1970s, they started taking on paid work outside the kibbutz. Next, they wanted their children back home with them. Families with children at home needed better houses, more appliances, and so on. Gradually the place of the communal dining room as the center of kibbutz life was taken by the home. Once that happened private property re-emerged and the kibbutzim started falling apart.

Read the rest of the interview there. And if you’re interested in the book, you can find it on Amazon as well as at Castalia House.

An interview with Nicholas Wade

Social Matter interviews the author of A Troublesome Inheritance: 

In writing A Troublesome Inheritance, what response did you expect to receive? What has been your impression of reviews so far?

I feared the book would be condemned out of hand and have been delighted that the preponderance of reviews so far have been favorable.  The two main themes of the book – that race is biological, evolution continuous – are not so hard to accept, and I hope that I’m pushing on an open door. 

In your book you write “The rise of the West is an event not just in history but also in human evolution.” How much do we miss in our understanding of the rise and fall of civilizations by not incorporating the role evolution plays in human populations?

A thesis of the book is that social institutions rest on human social behavior, which is shaped by evolution.  Institutions have a large cultural component, so it’s hard to know at present how important evolution has been.  But I think we should look out for it in all major social transitions, such as the foraging-settler transition, the escape from tribalism, and the Industrial Revolution, and if one accepts that the natural selection has been active here then all major societies probably have been shaped by evolution to some extent.

I think Wade’s reference to “evolution” is considerably broader than that customarily utilized by biologists when referring to evolution by natural selection, (for example, Wade occasionally uses “natural selection” to encompass selection that does not appear to be based solely on environmental pressures), but among other things, his book points to one obvious point of logical tension in the progressive dogma. If TENS is true, then a lot of progressive dogma is not merely false, but completely impossible. And if TENS is not true, then a lesser, but still considerable amount of progressive dogma has, contra to progressive assumptions, no greater basis in science than many competing non-progressive dogmas.

Which is precisely why most progressives attempt to avoid thinking about such matters. The relative silence with which Wade’s book has met from its anticipated critics is a strong indication that they at least suspect they are not merely outgunned, but scientifically outdated.

Blogging Case Study: Vox Popoli

Sam Scott examines the blog from a professional perspective:

Despite the lack of traditional Internet-marketing practices, Day’s success seems to result from a focus — perhaps unintentionally — on what could be called the two big Cs: content and community.

Since anyone can now start a website or blog, a lot of Internet content is, as a popular SlideShare notes, crap:

Whether Day is discussing the Trinity in Christian theology, the latest economic news, U.S. foreign policy, or changes in the publishing industry, it is obvious that he is a well-informed authority on the issue at hand in addition to being an engaging writer in general. The posts and resulting discussions are in-depth, complex, and often at an academic level — a fact that attracts readers with similar interests and intelligences who likely avoid websites such as BuzzFeed. In short, it is a site that focuses on the quality of the content rather than the quantity. Very few people agree with Day all of the time — a fact that he has told me he acknowledges and likes — but it is the content and discussion that the visitors seem to value.

As a result (perhaps indirectly and even unintentionally), Day has fostered a niche online community of readers and what is termed “brand advocates.” The regular commenters know each other by handle, and their resulting discussions on Day’s original posts routinely lead to hundreds of comments on each one. (In addition, Vox Popoli hosts, among other things, an annual fantasy-football league.) In keeping with the high-level tone of the blog, Day does not hesitate to delete the posts of so-called “trolls” and then ban them.

In the end, Vox Popoli is an example of the primacy of content and community over direct marketing in terms of blogging. Quality marketing will not help a blog whose content is trite, superficial, unoriginal, or poorly written and whose managers do not take the time to foster a community over the long term.

As part of his case study, he also conducted an interview with me.

SS: You discuss various topics including economics, science fiction and fantasy, religion and theology, the publishing industry, and politics. How has such a variety of topics affected the popularity of your blog? Would you generally recommend that a blogger focus on a specific, niche topic or on many different topics? In your experience, what are the positives and negatives of focusing on a single, niche topic and audience versus being a more “general interest” blogger?

VD: I think the unpredictability of it, and the way the discourse is constantly flowing from one topic into another, has helped maintain interest in it. The variety of topics means that more people have a reason to swing by, even if every post isn’t of interest to them. Some are there for the econ, some for the fiction discussions and book reviews, and some for the intellectual community. I think the question of focus has to depend upon the blogger. If you’re a legal expert, that should be your anchor. I’m a dilettante, so I know a little about a lot. That works for an eclectic blog. It probably won’t work so well for specialists who know a lot about a little.

The positives of going deeper is that you can get more substantial. And, obviously, if it’s in an area of intense interest to a lot of people, you can build a very large blog, like Mike Shedlock or the Calculated Risk guy. But the downside is that you can’t fake it. If you don’t really want to focus on one thing to that extent, you will fail. And if your one topic is not of interest to a lot of people, you’ll never build much of an audience.

SS: Have you ever focused on trying to generate advertising revenue? If so, what were the results? If a blogger would want to maximize advertising revenue, would you recommend aiming for this goal in general — and if so, what tactics would you recommend specifically? If not, why is advertising revenue not a realistic goal for bloggers?

VD: No. I get a modest amount of ad revenue, but I’ve never actively pursued it. I’m too controversial for most advertisers anyhow. If you want ad revenue, be a mommy blogger. They seem to be the most in demand.