Tag: media

Syria or Colorado

Whose elections are less legitimate? Paul Craig Roberts points out the irony of American politicians decrying a purported lack of democratic legitimacy in Syria.

Today (April 14) Syria held parliamentary elections at 7,000 polling stations, keeping the voting open an extra five hours to accommodate the massive turnout. All were allowed to vote, even displaced Syrians from the two provinces still terrorized by Washington and Israeli backed ISIS.

Washington is angry, because Syria held elections before Washington had time to purchase its slate of politicians and organize Washington-funded NGOs to take to the streets to protest and to claim that Assad had stolen the election.

Despite the massive voter turnout and extended hours for voting, the US State Department set the tone by declaring that the elections are not legitimate in Washington’s eyes and do not represent “the will of the Syrian people.”

Washington’s two-bit punk vassals in London and Paris chimed in with both claiming that the war conditions in Syria to which London and Paris have contributed mean that the idea of elections is “totally unrealistic.”

The New York Times lied, characteristically, that the elections, which seem to demonstrate nationwide solidarity against the Western-backed overthrow of the Syrian government, “highlight divisions and uncertainty.” The Washington Post added its lies and misrepresentations to the propagandistic reporting.

The Western governments are far out on a limb with their lies that the Syrian people prefer to be governed by the Washington supported terrorists who were overrunning their country and conducting with Western supplied weapons mass murder on the Syrian people until Russia put a stop to it. Now the Western liars are exposed yet again by election results, and so the liars must pretend that the election lacks validity.

So, Republicans are in the fascinating position of arguing that Syria’s elections, which actually allow people to vote, are illegitimate and do not represent “the will of the people” because “war conditions”, whereas the Republican nomination in Colorado, where no one is even voting, is legitimate and does represent “the will of the people” despite the people having no voice because “rules”.

And people wonder why Americans support a quixotic outsider like Donald Trump. I vote for a blind and incontinent basset hound before I’d vote for any member of the Republican establishment, which now observably includes Ted Cruz. Of course, if I lived in Colorado, I wouldn’t be able to vote at all.

This isn’t that hard. Yes, we all know America is not a democracy. The point is that if you’re going to repeatedly go to war for democracy, then the first place you should do so is in the USA.

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.

Never far from controversy

Allum Bokhari publishes an article about The Complete List of SJW on Breitbart:

Sci-fi author, game designer, and provocateur Theodore Beale (aka Vox Day) is never far from controversy. His latest project, a crowdsourced attempt to catalogue every social justice warrior (left-wing political activists known for their intolerant attitudes) in existence is no exception.

The project, called “SJWlist,” describes itself as a resource to “help SJW-converged organizations locate and identify Social Justice Warriors they wish to hire or otherwise support.” However, critics of Vox Day are calling it a blacklist. Even some opponents of SJWs have distanced themselves from the project.

The 200-strong list already features some of the most notorious names in the world of social justice activism. It includes Australian feminist Clementine Ford, known for getting a man fired over a Facebook comment; Melissa Click, known for her attempt to use physical force to expel a student journalist from a public demonstration; and Randi Lee Harper, known for inciting reputation-destroying internet mobs against her political and personal rivals.

Given SJWs’ penchant for destroying the lives and careers of their opponents, Vox Day’s defenders argue that tracking their activities is a relatively mild response. Day’s recent book, SJWs Always Lie, instructs opponents of the regressive left-wing activists to always “punch back twice as hard,” and defenders of Day argue that this is precisely what SJWlist is doing.

It’s a very fair and balanced article, presenting both the pros and cons, but it is clear from the comments that most people on the right support the list, some of them very enthusiastically. The counter-arguments have to date proven extremely weak and unconvincing; no one has any ideas at all how to stop the SJWs from running roughshod over people other than “be nice to them and hope they’ll stop”.

I can only conclude they haven’t read SJWAL yet, because that is absolutely terrible advice akin to the Swedish government telling Swedish women to tell a migrant intending to rape her “stop” in an authoritative manner. These moderates have no tactics, they have no strategy, they have nothing but wishful thinking to offer. Which is why I usually just ignore them and you should too.

And some have asked about the new SJW doxxing campaign called SocialAutopsy, which is now on Kickstarter. The SJWs behind it have already been added to the list, and if they follow through on their plans, their pages on the SJW List will perfectly reflect whatever tactics they use.

What the SJWs fail to realize is that they lost their ability to influence us once they managed to make us unhireable one way or another. No SJW-influenced organization will ever hire me for anything, and I realized that back in 2008. But having reached that realization, I also realized that I was now free of any employment-related constraints on my actions. As it turns out, there are far more people who are not SJWs and their numbers are growing every day as SJWs increasingly attack moderates and even leftists who fail to submit, or even keep up, with their dynamic Narrative.

The fact that SJWs fear being on the SJW List is an indication that not only are their intimidation tactics failing, they know they are failing. And that scares them, because SJWs Always Project and they fear others doing to them what they have been trying to do to others: discredit, disemploy, and destroy.

UPDATE: BC explains the problem with her position to Status 451 in the comments there.

Look, when the Germans started using poison gas in WWI, the British, French and other allied forces did not tsk tsk disapprovingly and show themselves to be the better people in order to convince the Germans through example to stop using such dastardly tactics. No, they used poison gas right back against the Germans, and did it even more effectively. Please note that this did not turn them into Germans.

The result? Everyone stopped using poison gas.

In the Culture Wars, holding oneself above the fray and showing that you are a better person has a consistent record of losing on nearly every issue for the past 60+ years. It doesn’t work. It is time for different tactics, to fight fire with fire, so to speak.

If you are not willing to fight the good fight, so be it. At least stop turning your guns on your erstwhile allies because… *gasp* …they are using effective tactics that work.

The Second Law in effect

Anti-GG writer Jesse Singal points-and-shrieks at the SJW List at New York Magazine. Needless to say, being the author of the Second Law of SJW, I am entirely unsurprised.

Ever been worried that you might accidentally hire or interact with a “social-justice warrior”? SJWs, as they’re known to the free-speech warriors of gaming message boards, look and often act like anyone else — until they start screaming about lesbian rights in the middle of a meeting. Luckily for those concerned, there’s now a list of known SJWs. Because, generally, making lists of people based on their political and social alignments has worked out well in the past.

On Saturday, the far-right writer Vox Day (“The Jews in Europe are doomed because they spent the last 70 years undermining European nationalism and supporting the transformation of European population demographics”) noted in a blog post that it would be useful to create a list of known SJWs, or social-justice warriors.

And now, voilà, such a list has materialized in the form of a helpful wiki that Day himself likely created (it links to his book, SJWs Always Lie, as well as to his original post). The author cutely implies that the list should be used by SJWs to hire like-minded folk.

I’ve interacted online with many people who fly the anti-SJW flag, including plenty of GamerGaters. They’ll tell you that they didn’t start this fight — it was brought to them by SJWs invading their cultural spaces. These anti-SJWs, of course, have no political agenda of their own: Their views are common sense, and by definition apolitical. They simply want SJWs to stop trying to make everything about wacky far-left politics. Anti-SJWs are for free speech and, unlike SJWs, righteously opposed to the idea of lobbying to get people with unpopular views fired (well, sometimes). They are also sick of how SJWs are constantly trying to launch online shaming campaigns, which they, the anti-SJWs, are opposed to (well, sometimes).

Anyway. Creating an enemies list composed almost entirely of progressive and feminist voices seems like a really smart way to express these sentiments and show the world just how reasonable and commonsensical and apolitical anti-SJWs are.

The amusing thing about SJWs attempting to write hit pieces like this is that they simply don’t know very much about the relevant topics. He’s trying to make my opinion on the future of European Jewry sound controversial, perhaps even anti-semitic, when it happens to be more or less shared by, among others, the Prime Minister of Israel.

And I’m not being cute when I say that I genuinely hope that SJW-converged organizations will learn about the SJWs featured on the list and hire them. From the anti-SJW perspective, there is literally no better outcome.

That’s some great journalism there too. He writes of “a helpful wiki that Day himself likely created”. He could have simply done 10 seconds of research and he would have learned that I did not create it, and that all of the content has been created by the Dread Ilk, not me.

UPDATE: The SJW journalists are belatedly beginning to realize that not everyone is quite as enthusiastic about social justice as they are:

Tess Townsend ‏@Tess_Townsend
This is f-d up. Combing for quotes to harass folks is the opposite of promoting any kind of speech period.

Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
We don’t have to comb for SJW quotes, Tess. You do it for us. Now stop harassing me.

And who said anything about promoting speech anyhow? The SJWs identified can still push their Narrative and pursue people’s jobs if they wish, it’s just that, for better or for worse, everyone is going to know precisely what it is that they have done.

UPDATE II: Jesse Singal tries to check all the boxes. He doesn’t care, but I do, but he was only joking, but I’m a crybaby. It’s like an object lesson in Gamma. 

Jesse Singal ‏@jessesingal
TIL @voxday is a delicate, sensitive soul It’ll be okay man 🙁

 Jesse Singal ‏@jessesingal
I triggered Vox Day. He’s upset. His response is longer than my jokey post

Jesse Singal ‏@jessesingal
.@peterb @CountUlairi @voxday yeah that’s what gets me a/b it. Was such a mild post! If you have ANY self-esteem that shit rolls off you

Jesse Singal ‏@jessesingal
tfw you’re Vox Day and you’ve been triggered by a brief mildly critical blog post and the only person you can tag in is…Mike Cernovich

Jesse Singal ‏@jessesingal
Rare video footage of Vox Day responding to a brief blog post mildly critical of him

Roran_Stehl ‏@Roran_Stehl
why do you guys (i.e. you, @Popehat or @scalzi ) care about that person? I fail to see his relevance.

Jesse Singal@jessesingal
I don’t! He freaked out that I wrote the mildest blog post ever. It is funny! Don’t mistake it for caring about.

The best part: his “jokey post” is 332 words. My response to it is 147 words. No wonder SJWs hate STEM.

So brave

Lee Stranahan courageously resigns from Breitbart:

My Statement: Why I Have Resigned From Breitbart News
by Lee Stranahan

Tonight I informed the management at Breitbart News of my immediate resignation.

As a close personal friend of Andrew Breitbart, I am wicked sad to announce that as of 12:01am Eastern Time, I said “I divorce Breitbart News” three times which officially renders any contract we had null and void, including that thing I signed voluntarily about non-disparagement.

Andrew Breitbart centered his life on just one mission: fight the bullies. His only stated purpose was: more voices, not less. The solo creed he lived by was: e priebus unum. More than anything, be believed in: loyalty. The thing he cared about to the exclusion of all other things was: ‘Merica. His top priorty was: family.

That singular goal has been betrayed.

This sad chain of events leading up to me began in New York City, where Donald Trump’s campaign manager came out of nowhere and yanked me to the ground with a touch that I believe he delivered from several thousand miles away. He seems to have an invisible touch.

Rather than supporting me, Breitbart News instead published an article by me. Then, Breitbart News completely ignored my plight by calling on Mr. Lewandowsky to apologize. After that slap in face to my feeling’s face, they ignored the material that I leaked about the incident to other publications until they wrote about it immediately. I was shocked when they betrayed me by once again calling for an apology by Lewandowsky. Shockingly, at no point during my ordeal did Breitbart News refer to Donald Trump as “Hitler.”

I hope you will all join me in lighting a candle for this brave, brave man, who has suffered so much at Mr. Trump’s hands.

Feminist faux-cons drink the Kool-aid

You will probably note that NONE of these women have ever been featured on this blog, with the exception of Dana Loesch, aka Mamalogues, who once played the part of a punching bag when she took umbrage concerning my lack of respect for mommyblogging. That’s because none of them are anything but feminists of one wave or another who are attempting to make media careers out of the female imperative.

Female Media Members ask Trump Campaign to Fire Core Lewandowski

The press is to have an adversarial, yet civil approach to those in, or running, for elected office. Never in this line of work is it acceptable to respond to reasonable and legitimate questioning with use of physical force. The photographs, audio, videos, and witness accounts documenting the treatment of Michelle Fields by Corey Lewandowski, Donald Trump’s campaign manager, are inexcusable and unprofessional. Donald Trump should immediately remove Lewandowski from his campaign. However unlike the Trump campaign, we believe in making a statement on the record to clearly highlight the difference between right and wrong,” it concludes.

Signed.

Dana Loesch (Radio America, Blaze TV)
Katie Pavlich, (Townhall, Fox News)
Meghan McCain, (America Now Radio, Cosmopolitan, Fox News)
S.E. Cupp, ( New York Daily News, Glamour, CNN)
Mary Katharine Ham, (CNN, The Federalist)
Christine Rosen, (New Atlantis, Commentary)
Christina Hoff Sommers, (American Enterprise Institute)
Bethany Mandel, (The Federalist, Acculturated)
Emily Zanotti, (American Spectator)
Elisha Krauss, (Ben Shapiro’s radio co-host)
Karol Markowicz, (New York Post)
Kristen Soltis Anderson, (Washington Examiner)
Mona Charen, (Ethics and Public Policy Center, Creators Syndicate)
Sarah Rumpf, (freelance)
Brooke Rogers, (National Review)
Mary Chastain, (Breitbart)

Now notice who is not on it. Ann Coulter. Helen Smith. Ilana Mercer. Camille Paglia. Even Michelle Malkin, who was my original model for a conservative media whore, had more sense than to sign on to this collective conservative career suicide note. If I were a right-wing publisher, I would no sooner rely upon any of them to contribute than the average Jezebelle.

The only real disappointment is Christina Hoff Sommers, but this demonstrates that no woman who calls herself a feminist of ANY kind should be trusted to reliably stand up to the Sisterhood.

We are the spectre

Allum Bokhari thoughtfully provides establishment conservatives with a Guide to the Alt Right:

A specter is haunting the dinner parties, fundraisers and think-tanks of the Establishment: the specter of the “alternative right.” Young, creative and eager to commit secular heresies, they have become public enemy number one to beltway conservatives — more hated, even, than Democrats or loopy progressives.

The alternative right, more commonly known as the alt-right, is an amorphous movement. Some — mostly Establishment types — insist it’s little more than a vehicle for the worst dregs of human society: anti-Semites, white supremacists, and other members of the Stormfront set. They’re wrong.

Previously an obscure subculture, the alt-right burst onto the national political scene in 2015. Although initially small in number, the alt-right has a youthful energy and jarring, taboo-defying rhetoric that have boosted its membership and made it impossible to ignore.

It has already triggered a string of fearful op-eds and hit pieces from both Left and Right: Lefties dismiss it as racist, while the conservative press, always desperate to avoid charges of bigotry from the Left, has thrown these young readers and voters to the wolves as well.

National Review attacked them as bitter members of the white working-class who worship “father-Führer” Donald Trump. Betsy Woodruff of The Daily Beast attacked Rush Limbaugh for sympathising with the “white supremacist alt-right.” BuzzFeed begrudgingly acknowledged that the movement has a “great feel for how the internet works,” while simultaneously accusing them of targeting “blacks, Jews, women, Latinos and Muslims.”

The amount of column inches generated by the alt-right is a testament to their cultural punch. But so far, no one has really been able to explain the movement’s appeal and reach without desperate caveats and virtue-signalling to readers.

Part of this is down to the alt-right’s addiction to provocation. The alt-right is a movement born out of the youthful, subversive, underground edges of the internet. 4chan and 8chan are hubs of alt-right activity. For years, members of these forums – political and non-political – have delighted in attention-grabbing, juvenile pranks. Long before the alt-right, 4channers turned trolling the national media into an in-house sport.

I leave it to you to decide whether we belong with:

  • The intellectuals
  • The natural conservatives
  • The meme team
  • The 1488ers 

Regardless of their merits and demerits, all of these alt-righters are to be preferred to the cuckservatives and the GOPe sellouts.  I’ve been called “an alt-right figurehead” and I am perfectly fine with that.

And if you’re going to call me a nationalist, that’s fine. Just make sure that you get it right and call me a “red nationalist”.

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.