Tag: media

We’re #98

Right Wing News ranks the top 100 conservative sites:

91) Canada Free Press: 68,023
92) Human Events Online: 68,967
93) Jewish World Review: 76,215
94) GOPUSA: 71,293
95) Ricochet: 71,358
96) Day by Day: 73,755
97) Numbers USA: 76,280
98) Vox Day: 76,816
99) X Tribune: 76,417
100) City Journal: 84,176

This would probably appear to be more impressive if I hadn’t ranked 52nd with an Alexa rating of 27,594 in 2014. How is it possible that my ranking dropped 46 places when the monthly pageviews have risen more than 400,000 from one year ago? Simple. The Alexa ratings are nonsense as they are based on links rather than traffic. I bounced the blog rating last year in order to prove my case, then let it decline to its “natural” level because I don’t care about things like that.

So, don’t take any list that is based on Alexa or any similar ranking system too seriously. And also, I’m still not a conservative, but I gave up trying to fight that battle a long time ago.

“The man Canada couldn’t keep out”

The Canadian media is developing a grudging new respect for RooshV:

The man Canada couldn’t keep out: ‘Pickup artist’ unbowed despite public condemnation over lectures

For a man fuelled by controversy, the self-proclaimed “pickup artist” known as Roosh V doesn’t like talking to the media — “I’m a bit squeezed for time,” he said Tuesday, politely rebuffing requests for comment on public condemnation that his speaking engagements in Canada aroused.

“I have my own media channels. It’s not worth my time to talk to reporters,” he said in an email to the National Post. To a Toronto radio station he was more dismissive: “Bell Media can go to hell.”

Daryush Valizadeh, who goes by the name Roosh V and writes about convincing women to have sex, says he gave his lecture in Montreal to a group of 34 in a secret location, travelling in disguise, before he was spotted and chased out of a restaurant and down the street by a small, angry mob on Saturday.

In anticipation of his scheduled appearance in Toronto on Saturday, Toronto mayor John Tory denounced him and his views as a form of hate speech. “While free speech is the law in this country, promoting violence against women is wrong,” Tory tweeted. “I am calling on those hosting this tour to do the right thing — cancel this show.”

    We won. Men won. Free speech won. Here’s my Montreal victory speech:
    Roosh (@rooshv) August 09, 2015

Toronto and Montreal were the two Canadian dates on a tour his website says also includes Berlin, London, Washington D.C., and New York City. In the face of it all, the American blogger appears unbowed, lampooning his detractors in social media for being ineffective and hysterical.

This is what happens when you don’t back down and you don’t flinch in front of the media heat. Roosh is now “the man Canada couldn’t keep out”. I am now “the most hated man in science fiction”. From National Post to Newsweek, from Le Monde to a media outlet that shall remain nameless until the piece runs, the international media is no longer content to let our enemies talk about us, they are asking us to speak directly for ourselves.

That doesn’t happen when you cringe, and apologize, and recant. That doesn’t happen when you flee from criticism like a coward. You have to earn your right to be heard, because no one is going to take you seriously if you don’t stand by what you have said in the face of disapproval. It is only those without character who can expect to avoid repeated attempts to assassinate it.

Milo has some thoughts on the failed Canadian attempt to deny Roosh a platform:

No-platforming, a favourite tactic of the progressive left, denies us, the public, the ability to interrogate a speaker ourselves. It’s not only illiberal and profoundly anti-intellectual but it can create a halo of martyrdom around people who are already pushing at an open door – such as men’s rights activists, who rightly point to dozens of structural inequalities in the way men are spoken about and treated in today’s uber-progressive societies.

Of course, no-platforming is a dangerous strategy, because if the wrong sort of man is no-platformed, he will simply go off and build a new platform, one over which those who previously denied him a platform will not only lack control but even a modicum of influence.

“the American Era is over”

Jerry Pournelle pronounces the end of the American era:

Everyone must understand that the American Era is over: the United States domination of the world is ended, just as the British domination of the world (pink all over the globe) I learned in grade school ended after World War II. For some this was an objective to achieve. For others it is a disaster. For all it is a coming fact. The nuclear weapon, like the .45 Colt, is an equalizer, and it is now inevitable that Iran will acquire nuclear weapons whenever they decide to do so, given that the deal essentially gives up on inspections, and Iran has announced that under no circumstance will there be any inspection of their military installations even if there is inspection – after 24 day’s notice – of their peaceful installations. Intelligence experts say Iran is about a year from their decision to have them. My guess is that there will be a demonstration in Summer, 2017.

Meanwhile the other nations of the Middle East will rush to acquire their own; they can read the newspapers as well as I can.

It’s impossible to argue with him in light of the following, although the problem would appear to be less the loss of the country’s military dominance and more the fact that the population is now almost completely retarded:

After covering the usual local news, the show began to transition into a segment about one of the Kardashian daughters recently naming her new pet rabbit “Bruce.” (Just typing that sentence made me want to launch my fist into the computer screen where my pupils are currently fixated. Rest assured, I’m still typing, so I obviously mustered up all of the self-control in my being and refrained.) That’s when Brown interrupted the correspondent reporting the “story” in mid-sentence:

“I am having a good Friday, so I refuse to talk about the Kardashians today,” said Brown. “You are on your own, Amy. I can’t do it.”

As the program’s co-host storms off set, he can be heard off-screen shouting, “I’ve had enough Kardashians. I can’t take any more Kardashian stories on this show.”

After a replacement anchor rushes in to fill the void left on the morning show’s couch, the fed-up Brown — whose microphone stays on despite walking off set — can be heard continuing his rant away from the cameras: “I don’t care about this family. I’m sick of this family. It’s a non-story!”

I have never watched a single moment of the Kardashians doing anything, but I have to admit, the idea that the naming of a pet rabbit is a national news story does strike me as surreal.

All I can say is that no matter what happens to America as it gradually slides towards historical oblivion, one cannot possibly argue that its fate was not eminently merited.

RomanceGate

It’s hardly a surprise to learn that the SJWs are attempting to thought-police the romance genre as well as games, comics, and science fiction:

The Nazi romance novel For Such a Time, by bookseller-turned-author Kate Breslin, drew little attention outside of a small but passionate romance literature community when it was published in the spring of 2014.

Now, after being nominated for two major prizes at the Romance Writers of America’s annual conference in late July, the book’s Holocaust-set themes of Christian salvation are tearing the romance world apart—and roiling Gamergaters rushing to its defense….

The group took interest after outspoken science fiction writer and game designer Vox Day shared Wendell’s post on his blog. In an interview with Newsweek, Day—whose blog has previously compared feminists to Nazis—described Wendell as an “SJW” (code for “Social Justice Warrior”) and argued that “political correctness” is a “major problem” in the United States.

“It’s another example of SJW’s attempting to thought-police a particular industry or genre,” Day says of the Breslin outrage. He compares it to the scuffle over the 2015 Hugo Awards, while others have likened it to the #WeNeedDiverseBooks campaign that fought to diversify children’s literature.

“Obviously a lot of people liked the book, because they nominated it,” Day adds. “What they’re trying to do is disqualify all those people’s opinions because they disagree with them. It’s something that the SJWs are getting more and more blatant about, and I think people are getting more and more tired of their attempts to impose political correctness and impose thought-policing on everyone else. Donald Trump’s not having any of it, and I’m certainly not either.”

Day’s followers took the bait. Wendell was distressed to learn from a friend that his post had drawn dozens of comments, some denigrating her and mocking her blog by calling it “Cat-Lady Central.” One commenter went so far as to write that “as long as the SJWs support Moloch Worship (aka Planned Parenthood) that traffics in baby parts, they have no right to criticize the Nazis.”

Day says that abusive treatment is par for the course. “I have absolutely no concern for [Wendell]’s feelings about people speaking rudely about her. She is trying to thought-police people; she deserves every bit of criticism she gets.”

Much to my surprise, Newsweek actually soft-pedaled it a bit. They could have mentioned that I have compared feminists to Nazis… to the detriment of the feminists. I believe the exact quote is: “calling a feminist a feminazi is an insult to the German National Socialist Worker’s Party.”

Anyhow, what we’re seeing here is the SJWs attempts to utilize the power of the press to marginalize and discredit me backfiring on them. It was their running to every media outlet from The Guardian to the New Zealand Herald, from NPR to Entertainment Weekly that brought me to the attention of other media outlets that are not simply pushing their libel campaign, including publications such as Newsweek.

It is a little ironic, of course, that I have been interviewed half as many times by national publications concerning a story in which I am not at all involved as I have been about either of the actual stories in which I am directly involved, #GamerGate or Sad Puppies. But that simply demonstrates the utter corruption and ineptitude of the SJW-infested media. One must not speak to anyone who might disrupt the Narrative, after all.

Read the whole thing. Notice how simply calling the SJWs out puts them immediately on the defensive. They don’t like to be called thought police because that is exactly what they are. In every conflict, someone will end up advancing and someone will end up retreating. Shoot down their assertions as briefly as possible, then go right after them. Whenever you’re faced with an SJW, call them out for thought policing. Call them out for speech policing. Or call them out for the sheer absurdity of their statements.

For example, the next person to respond to one of Wendell’s attacks should hammer her for saying that “redeeming Nazis through the power of Christian salvation sounds like a bad idea.”  She doesn’t think Nazis should be redeemed, so what does she think, they should be encouraged?

The funny thing is that every time I read the word Wendell, our noble spokesmanatee kept coming to mind. It made the whole experience that much more enjoyably surreal. Meeewhooooo Hoooon! And the reaction of the SJW twitterati is even funnier.


Megan Broderick ‏@megbrod12
I’m SO CONFUSED as to why Newsweek quoted vox day in that article. He literally has nothing to do with it at all?? #journalism I guess.

Lenore Tolcser ‏@LenoreTolcser
Oh. My. God. People need to stop giving Vox Day attention! It legitimizes him. NO. BAD.


Michele Mills ‏@mills_michele
I just checked with my 14 yo son –
“You’re not following a man named Vox Day on the internet, are you?”
“No!”
“Good. Don’t…Ever.”

Trump crushes feminist speech police

This is how you handle it when someone calls you sexist, misogynist, or whatever other label they seek to use to discredit, disqualify, or distract you:

MEGYN KELLY, FOX NEWS CHANNEL: Mr. Trump, one of the things people love about you is you speak your mind and you don’t use a politician’s filter. However that is not without its downsides, in particular when it comes to women. You’ve called women you don’t like fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals. Your twitter account–

DONALD TRUMP: Only Rosie O’Donnell.

KELLY: For the record, it was well beyond Rosie O’Donnell.

TRUMP: I’m sure it was.

KELLY: Your Twitter account has several disparaging comments about women’s looks. You once told a contesttent that it would be a pretty picture to see her on her knees.

Does that sound like the temperament of a man we should elect as president?

And how do you answer the charge from Hillary Clinton, who is likely to be the Democratic nominee, that you are part of the war on women?

TRUMP: The big problem this country has is being politically correct. I’ve been challenged by so many people and I don’t frankly have time for total political correctness. And to be honest with you, this country doesn’t have time either. This country is in big trouble. We don’t win anymore. We lose to China, we lose to Mexico both in trade and at the border. We lose to everybody. Frankly what I say and oftentimes it’s fun, it’s kidding, we have a good time. What I say is what I say. And honestly, Megyn if you don’t like it, I’m sorry. I’ve been very nice to you although I could probably not be based on the way you have treated me, but I wouldn’t do that. But you know what? We, we need strength, we need energy, we need quickness and we need brain in this country to turn it around. That I can tell you right now.

Megyn, YOU are a part of the big problem the USA has. Every SJW, every self-appointed thought policeman is a part of the problem. And it is time to start making sure that every time they try to play thought police, we cram that concept right down their throats.

“The big problem this country has is being politically correct.” It’s certainly one big problem that gets in the way of discussing any of the actual issues that matter.

It was good to see Trump put Kelly in her place. I have never understood the conservative affection for her. She’s a feminist, she’s PC, and she’s pro-immigration, ergo she is on the other side.

That being said, good for her and Fox News for actually putting the candidates on the spot for a change.

What passes for SJW “journalism”

It’s not just about ethics in science fiction journalism, it’s about the way SJWs regularly get the most basic facts completely wrong. Because – all together now – SJWs always lie:

Adam Roberts @arrroberts
In a nutshell, my thoughts on the 2015 Hugos kerfuffle.

“Nazis. I hate these guys.”

Metayahu@Metayahu
It’s even funnier because the white guy is married to a black woman.
NAZI

Adam Roberts @arrroberts
Since I nowhere call Torgerson (or anyone) a Nazi, I’m not sure of your point.

Peat Moss ‏@DrinkerOfScotch
Do you not see the picture included in your original tweet? The one that says “Nazis, I hate these guys”?

Adam Roberts @arrroberts
You were originally responding to my Guardian piece.

Peat Moss @DrinkerOfScotch
I wasn’t responding to anything previously. So you’re saying you just happened to mention Nazis and Hugos for no reason?

Adam Roberts @arrroberts
The ‘Nazis’ joke (from days before) was about Vox Day. Through to be accurate he’s not a Nazi: he’s a clerical fascist.

Peat Moss @DrinkerOfScotch
Thanks for the clarification. Good to know exactly what your biases are.

Adam Roberts @arrroberts
I have beliefs, predicated on principles, experience and thought. I’m sure you do too. Calling them ‘biases’ is merely rude

Peat Moss @DrinkerOfScotch
I think calling people fascists and misrepresenting the Sad Puppies as racist, sexist, and homophobic is just a bit more rude.

Adam Roberts @arrroberts
You are, perhaps, denying that Vox Day is a clerical fascist, or John C Wright a homophobe? We’ll have to agree to disagree

Peat Moss @DrinkerOfScotch
Vox Day is a libertarian. I disagree with many of his opinions, but he’s not trying to silence people or pass laws against them.

Filotto ‏@Filotto
no. We’ll have to agree you are an outrageous liar. @voxday is demonstarbly not fascist.

Adam Roberts @arrroberts
V.D. is a deeply religious Catholic with militaristic, racist and misogynistic views. He’s no common-garden libertarian.

Filotto ‏@Filotto
why do you lie so stupidly? @voxday is NOT a catholic. And you lie about the rest too.

Vox Day @voxday
You’re pig-ignorant, Roberts. I’m not a Catholic and never have been. I’m not racist or misogynistic either.

Vox Day @voxday
If you were an actual journalist, not an SJW parody of one, you’d talk to me, not to others about me.

Robert G Evans @drawncutlass
Well said.  The whole Sad Puppies controversy has been marked by unethical journalism.

I’ll admit, I’m every bit as racist, sexist, misogynistic, homophobic, and white supremacist as I am Catholic. And Old Martian. The funny thing is that the most recent Catholics in my heritage are a) the Mexicans and b) the Native Americans, two basic facts about me that the SJWs are desperate to deny.

Isn’t it remarkable how they will so readily claim me to be that which I am not, while simultaneously omitting to mention that which I indisputably am?

Au revoir, Reaxxion

I’m disappointed to learn that Roosh is shutting down Reaxxion, as I think there is a real need for a game site like that and I thought the writers were doing some excellent work there.

I’ve decided to close Reaxxion after approximately nine months of operation. Traffic has not grown to a level that allows the site to financially sustain itself. We have not been able to consistently surpass 250,000 page views a month.

I take full blame for the site’s commercial failure. The writers and editor did a great job trying to achieve my vision of what Reaxxion should be, but in spite of that, the growth did not occur. I attribute this failure to creating the site from a spontaneous idea (in response to gamergate) instead of developing it organically based on an actual need. The fact the gamergate continues to be successful and influential in other communities shows that I did not even provide a substantial need to the audience it was intended for.

We’re pretty busy with some other projects, but perhaps when things transition to the next phase, we’ll be able to take a look at doing something similar. But notice how Roosh has implemented the “fail faster” philosophy. That is one reason he continues to be successful.

Success = Try, Succeed/Fail, Try Something Else.
Failure = Try, Quit, Mope.

My 10-second diagnosis is that there were no game reviews or industry news, which rendered it all opinion, no news. But I salute Roosh and the writers for making the effort. It was a good one.

The missed opportunity

An influential GamerGater, The Ralph Retort, supports Milo’s point about the conservative media completely missing the opportunity presented by #GamerGate:

At the beginning of GamerGate, I was still a card-carrying liberal.
Even though I had become disillusioned with my party, I had yet to
switch my official affiliation. It’s not that I’ve changed all my
positions or radically departed from my past. I just feel like my own
party’s thought leaders have left me behind in a very real way. I was
being called right-wing by people who had never done any real activism
or volunteering at all. They sat on Twitter and spammed #killallmen
constantly, so that made them good leftists. Fuck that shit and fuck
anyone who subscribes to it. I don’t have to toe their line, and I
won’t.

Don’t get me wrong: rank-and-file Democrats still disagree with these
people on radical feminism. I was just personally tired of being called
out over PC concerns and feminist bullshit. Plus, both parties are so
fucking corrupt that I don’t see a point in giving either one my vote
automatically. So, that’s why I personally switched. Even from the
start, though, I was willing to put any kind of political affiliation to
the side in order to fight SJWs. I saw Milo’s very first thread
on 4chan. Some people were up in arms that we were going to be
identified as a conservative movement. What these dopes failed to
realize was, we were always going to be labeled as right-wing by the
media. I already knew it simply because I had been experiencing it for
years, like I just told you.

This whole time, I kept waiting for the conservative media to jump
in, en masse. It never really happened. I guess some of them were too
cowardly to go up against the feminists. Maybe they were afraid to be
falsely labeled as harassers. I don’t know what the problem was, but I
know we were waiting for their support and it never materialized. Where
was Fox News, for fuck’s sake? Talk radio? They left us out on the
battlefield by ourselves with Milo, Based Mom, Cathy Young, R.S. McCain (great column by him here) and a couple others. Mike Cernovich
stepped up as well, although I wouldn’t really call him establishment.
He’s been taking great glee at shitting on those guys all week. While I
like Ms. Young, I can certainly understand his frustration over some
things. I have it too.

There’s still time for them to jump in, but it does feel like they missed the boat last fall.

I really thought that once anti-GamerGate managed to get Anita Sarkeesian in TIME and have GG pilloried in televised dramas as well as in the Washington Post, Fox News was going to recognize it as a story and jump in. But for some reason, they never did. Nor, as Ralph observes, did any of the major talkers or columnists, not even any of the younger ones that you would expect to be at least somewhat conversant with games.

I suspect that there were multiple reasons for this, generational, political, and tonal.

I’m about as old as a gamer in the media gets. There is a very clear divide between people who are only one or two years older than I am and everyone younger. The conservative media is pretty old, and many of the younger media figures are female. So, I strongly suspect that most of the conservative media figures who were peripherally aware of #GamerGate simply couldn’t make heads or tails of what was going on. And, as we’ve seen with “cuckservative”, they are really uncomfortable with the vulgar way that gamers, especially channers, communicate.

On the political side, conservatives are almost as afraid of being accused of being sexist as racist. So, the fact that the media so readily swallowed and pushed the “gamers are harassing poor defenseless women” pretty much guaranteed that the conservative media would be about as likely to get on board with GamerGate as with ISIS. And, as we’ve seen with “cuckservative”, about all that is needed to keep the conservative media away is to cry raciss.

And then there is the tonal aspect. The conservative media, for all its pretensions, is moderate at heart. They spend as much time tone-policing and denouncing the “extremists” on the right as they do attacking the left. Since the GamerGate tone is cheerfully extremist, the conservative media was always more likely to take shots at it than support it.

Granted, the success that both GamerGate and the Puppies have had is causing some in the conservative media to come around a little. That, and the fact that the mainstream organizations they follow, such as NPR and the Wall Street Journal, are paying attention, albeit negative, to GG and the Puppies, has caused them to take another look. But given their reaction to “cuckservative” and Trump, I expect most of them to continue to largely ignore GamerGate until the next big success or two.

At that point, no doubt we’ll see books like The GamerGate Manifesto and The New Puppy Order being written by people who have never had anything to do with either GamerGate or the Puppies and published by Regnery. It’s not until the coopters and self-seekers and parade-leaders show up that one knows a movement has truly broken through to the mainstream.

And I think the shills will be very surprised to learn what sort of reception they’ll get. GG ain’t no tea party and Rabid Puppies won’t hesitate to tear off the hand that tries to put the leash on.

Police vs media SJW

It’s hard to know who to believe when you’re dealing with two sets of known liars. But the fact that the police were simply able to produce the recording is sufficient evidence of Ted Rall having exaggerated his experience with the LAPD without even needing to listen to it. As we all know, if the police had done anything wrong, the cameras wouldn’t have worked, the tape would have been lost, and the digital recording accidentally erased:

In a May 11 post on The Times’ OpinionLA blog, Ted Rall — a freelance cartoonist whose work appears regularly in The Times — described an incident in which he was stopped for jaywalking on Melrose Avenue in 2001. Rall said he was thrown up against a wall, handcuffed and roughed up by an LAPD motorcycle policeman who also threw his driver’s license into the sewer. Rall also wrote that dozens of onlookers shouted in protest at the officer’s conduct.

Since then, the Los Angeles Police Department has provided records about the incident, including a complaint Rall filed at the time. An audiotape of the encounter recorded by the police officer does not back up Rall’s assertions; it gives no indication that there was physical violence of any sort by the policeman or that Rall’s license was thrown into the sewer or that he was handcuffed. Nor is there any evidence on the recording of a crowd of shouting onlookers.

In Rall’s initial complaint to the LAPD, he describes the incident without mentioning any physical violence or handcuffing but says that the police officer was “belligerent and hostile” and that he threw Rall’s license into the “gutter.” The tape depicts a polite interaction.

In addition, Rall wrote in his blog post that the LAPD dismissed his complaint without ever contacting him. Department records show that internal affairs investigators made repeated attempts to contact Rall, without success.Asked to explain these inconsistencies, Rall said he stands by his blog post.

As to why he didn’t mention any physical abuse in his letter to the LAPD in 2001, Rall said he didn’t want to make an enemy of the department, in part because he hosted a local radio talk show at the time. After listening to the tape, Rall noted that it was of poor quality and contained inaudible segments.

However, the recording and other evidence provided by the LAPD raise serious questions about the accuracy of Rall’s blog post. Based on this, the piece should not have been published.

Rall’s future work will not appear in The Times.

That’s a surprisingly harsh standard, though. If the mainstream media is really going to stop publishing journalists and contributors who lie in their articles, it won’t be long before the average newspaper consists of nothing but sports scores and classifieds.

The etymology of “cuckservative”

Nero explains it. TL;DR: think 4chan, not Stormfront:

As the leading conservative authority on interracial intercourse, I therefore feel compelled to set the record straight on the so-called racial origin and dimensions of this insult.

Here’s my verdict: all the writers above are wrong. As someone who’s been covering web culture and online memes for years and who has a great deal of respect for how well many right-wingers have taken to internet culture, I’m slightly embarrassed by my fellow conservatives’ inability to understand a term that returned to popular use not on white power websites, but on 4chan.

Before it became a 4chan meme, “cuckold” was a common term of abuse in mediaeval times and through the Renaissance. Shakespeare plays are replete with the word — that’s where I learned it, anyway, where it’s used as a byword for an emasculated male….

On 4chan, “cuck” is used as a general term of abuse, to describe
someone who caves in, surrenders, or sells out his core supporters. (His
base, in political parlance.) 4chan’s founder Christopher Poole, for
example, is called a “cuck,” not for any racially-charged reason, but
because he capitulated to outside pressure to ban controversial
discussion topics on the website. And because he was allegedly cuckolded
in real life – but not by a black man.

It’s easy to see why “cuck” makes such a good insult. It’s a byword
for needlessly relinquished manliness, for selling out and caving in.
The original metaphor of watching your partner getting slammed by
another dude now simply means abandoned principles and a lack of
backbone. It’s a byword for beta male or coward….

Indeed, the suspicion of many is that this is another case of virtue
signalling from mainstream conservatives, rather proving the point of
the hashtag and demonstrating it better than any gloss yet published. A
sort of meta-definition in action, since it demonstrates supposed
conservatives using precisely the “slander and move on” tactic so
beloved of liberals.

And I think it should be very clear that any cuckservative who would disagree with the leading conservative authority on interracial relations can only be doing so because he is a racist homophobe.

Since, you know, they don’t appear to be hypersensitive to being called names or anything like that.