The great William Shatner has many accomplishments of note. But this very public spanking of a pseudo-Nobel laureate is indubitably his greatest.
His finest moment
Tag: rhetoric
A new blog policy
As most of you are aware, I don’t have a lot of free time these days. To say that I am “busy” doesn’t really quite do the concept justice. I’m behind on practically everything with the exception of Alt★Hero, Avalon, Jeeves, and Quantum Mortis. So, let’s just say my ability to tolerate idiocy is not at its peak right now.
Now, my tolerance for Gamma behavior is never high. But in the last few weeks, my understanding of a specific Gamma tactic deepened a little when I noticed something: no matter what the subject is, from immigration to free trade to free speech, certain critical commenters ALWAYS attempt to somehow make the debate about ME. I had never previously stopped to think about why they do this. But this time, when I finally took the time to think the matter through, I realized what their game was: trying to win an argument through an appeal to the genetic fallacy. It’s a passive-aggressive variant of the classic SJW discredit and disqualify game.
This is a stupid and futile approach. But then, these are stupid and futile people. Consider this incredible protest of my actions:
“I refuse to tolerate critics who insist, every single fucking time, attempting to personalize these topics and make them about me, any longer.”
Vox, you personalized the topic first when you refused to answer my questions on the ground that they were “stupid,” and that I “ask lots of stupid questions.” You didn’t even bother to explain what was stupid about these supposedly stupid questions. You just declared them stupid, and that was that.
You’re delusional if you think that isn’t getting aggressively personal. And, ok, you can do that. I don’t really mind. But of course if you behave that way toward me, then I’m going to behave that way toward you. And you’re in no moral position at all to complain about it, because you started it–*you* set the personal tone. I was only responding to the tone that you set.
Oh, did I? Read the questions. Notice who, rather than what, is the subject of most of them.
Anyhow, let me make this new policy perfectly clear for everyone. If your argument is about me rather than the topic, if you attempt to address a macro topic by referring to me as a micro counterexample, or if you attempt to bring me up in any way as the basis, relevant or irrelevant, of your argument, I am going to delete your comment. If you do it more than once, I will spam you.
Example: Vox emigrated from the United States, therefore all immigration, past and present, is necessarily beneficial and desirable. Futhermore, any observation of problems that may be caused by the mass migration of tens of millions of people is automatically negated by the fact that Vox himself does not presently reside in his city of birth.
Such arguments are stupid, irrelevant, and illogical. And I am simply not going to continue to waste any more time spelling out, again and again, why this form of argument is a complete non-starter that can never even possibly prove anything.
There is absolutely nothing that I do or say that bears any significance whatsoever with regards to the intrinsic morality, justice, or legitimacy of an action, a policy, a regulation, a law, a historical pattern, or a probability. I am not the measure of all things. So stop trying to present arguments on that basis!
Critical hit: rhetorical edition
“Crisis actor” is the most effective rhetoric to surface since “fake news”. The media is going completely berserk in their attempts to shut it down before it becomes an accepted part of the daily discourse.
“The Daily Show” on Thursday condemned Fox News commentator Tomi Lahren, calling her a “crisis actor,” in reference to conspiracy theories being pushed by conservatives about Florida school shooting survivors.
“Right now, a mainstream media organization is paying a young person to pose as a victim on TV,” a video shared by the show said. “In reality, this ‘victim’ is being coached to recite highly scripted talking points.” The video features a compilation of Lahren’s television appearances and calls on Twitter users to tweet at the Fox News account with the hashtag #TammyMustGo.
But they won’t be able to do so, because the term’s rhetorical effectiveness is intrinsically indicative of its general accuracy. From SJWs Always Lie:
It is not strictly true, in the dialectical sense, to assert that SJWs never tell the truth. To be dialectically sound, one should say, “SJWs frequently lie”, or better yet, “SJWs have often been observed to lie in situations when doing so will serve their immediate interests”. But as Aristotle tells us, the best rhetoric is rooted in truth, and the statement “SJWs always lie” rings emotionally true because SJWs lie so often, and so reliably, that it resonates with every individual who has been witness to their habitual dishonesty. That is why “SJWs always lie” is flawed dialectic, but accurate and effective rhetoric.
The reason “crisis actor” is such effective rhetoric, and the reason that it has the media in a tizzy, is because it is a concept that is rooted in truth, even though not every individual suspected of being a crisis actor is, in fact, a crisis actor.
All ur rhetoric are belong to us
“Americans are Dreamers too.” Magnificent. Since some who don’t speak rhetoric were obviously confused by this, let me explain what the God-Emperor was doing when he said that last night, and why it infuriated Democrats and the media.
During the height of GamerGate, the Ghazis, as the SJWs who actively opposed GamerGate called themselves, frequently tried to introduce new anti-GG hashtags. Every time they did, we promptly flooded those hashtags with pro-GG memes, thereby converting their hashtag into ours. We did this so frequently that it spawned a meme of its own – ALL YOUR HASHTAGS ARE BELONG TO US – and eventually demoralized them so completely that they gave up trying to generate new hashtags.
What the President did last night during the State of the Union speech was steal the media’s hashtag with regards to illegal aliens. And they know it.
Trump’s biggest insult to immigrants in his State of the Union. The president pulled an “All Lives Matter” on DREAMers. Miss that reference, and this passage is just standard Trumpian “America First” boilerplate: the idea that America has put immigrants ahead of its own citizens, and that Trump is showing love for Americans by calling for fewer immigrants to be allowed to join them. But it’s in fact something more pointed: an attempt to reclaim the label of “dreamer” from the group that has used it for the last 17 years.
Perhaps more importantly, he also promised a Congressman that he would, “100 percent”, release the Nunes memo. The lesson, as always, is wait patiently and assume that President Trump knows what he is doing. It’s been three years now. Have you learned nothing?
Stealing their wind
To the Point articulates how Trump systematically undermines the power and influence of the media:
President Trump’s systematic thrashing of the leftist media is the example that illustrates the theory. See his literal thrashing in the YouTube above.
Conservatives complained about the media for a long time. Aristotle’s dialectic approach, against people uninterested in truth. Net effect? Very low. Sad!
So let’s apply what we’ve learned.
Why do the media have power? Because they have social status with ordinary people. Are we still hearing about Watergate — decades later? The Pentagon Papers? How many movies seem to exist just to show journalists as heroes?
Or let’s take a different tack: What’s the attraction of such a low-paying profession? Status given by the profession, and status from rubbing shoulders with high-status people. Status by acting as a vector for status signals, which is what every women’s magazine is.
Ditto publications like WIRED, which is just Cosmo for geeks.
The media offers people clues about what things are high status within the areas they cover. People notice, and act accordingly. Yet most conservatives still don’t understand Trump’s response:
If I lower the media’s status, I will wreck their power.
So The Donald says that the media has “some of the most dishonest people” he has ever seen. Not an arm’s length complaint. A direct and personal status attack, rooted in truth.
Trump also acts in ways that cause journalists to fulfill his pre-suasion labeling. He makes “outrageous” statements, which many people outside the Beltway Bubble agree with. Those statements receive over-the-top media attacks, which make his enemies look ridiculous.
Then events swiftly show that Trump had a point. Trump rubs it in, using the media’s own “Fake News” term against them and pouncing on every sloppy and dishonest mistake. As a final topper, Trump makes the dishonest media a focus during every massive rally. Which strengthens his out-grouping effect among participants and viewers.
He uses ridicule and lèse majesté, not bended knee and appeals — note that subordinating word — to logical argument.
The result?
American belief in the credibility of their news media is now at about 32 percent. That’s the lowest ever polled, and an 8 percent drop from the lowest point of the 2008-2015 period. The media has lost audience, and a lot of power.
This is an extremely effective technique. And like all rhetoric, the more based in truth it is, the more powerful it is. The point about status-signaling is important too, because that is how SJWs decide who gets to determine the Narrative. It is also one more reason why giving them what they demand will never satisfy them, because the struggle for status continues regardless.
Mailvox: still not getting it
I’m getting very, very tired of this tedious line of woefully uninformed thought. This is neither the first time nor the one hundredth time I’ve heard the same clueless sentiment expressed:
Linguistic Kill Shots aka a New Lexicon
It strikes me that our language to describe the malice and evil the Marxist Left perpetrates is weak. For example, Social Justice Warrior actually sounds kind of cool and virtue signaling is vaguely academic.
While the language is accurate, none of it is persuasive. As part of meme war, I’d like to propose the re-branding of leftist actions to better convey the harm they cause, much like the left re-branded tea partiers “tea baggers.”
To get the ball rolling (although not that well. this begs to be crowd sourced):
Social Justice Warrior —> Social Justice Parasite
Virtue Signaling —> Virtue Implants (as in fake, like breasts)
Scott Adams owes all of us an apology for convincing people that because they’ve read his blog and his book, they are suddenly masters of strategic persuasivery. Yes, let’s “rebrand” one of the most effective pejoratives coined in recent years and replace it with something obvious and utterly harmless that no one will ever use. All because conservatives are uptight about words and prone to sperging about dialectic. FFS, read the Social Justice series already!
From SJWAL:
The correct strategy is to fight dialectic with dialectic, expose pseudo-dialectic with dialectic, and fight rhetoric with rhetoric. And the most important thing about implementing that strategy is to understand that with rhetoric, the actual information content is largely irrelevant.
Rhetoric is all about what emotions you trigger in the other person; when SJWs talk to each other, they try to inflate themselves at the other’s expense in order to sort out their position in the SJW hierarchy. Of course, SJW metrics are all but unintelligible to normal, sane human beings, so it can be amusing as well as educational to watch them attempt to simultaneously exaggerate both their importance and their victimhood. The perfect Queen of the SJWs – and she would be a queen, never a king – would be a mixed-race lesbian Swedish immigrant who was abused as a child by a conservative white Republican politician and kept as a sex slave by neo-Nazis with Confederate-flag tattoos prior to writing a bestselling novel about a fictionalized version of her terrible experiences, appearing on Oprah, and starring on a science fiction TV show popular with white nerds.
The basic idea is that if you can make the other person feel small or angry, you are winning at SJW rhetoric. This is why SJWs are constantly accusing other people of being mad or upset; it’s just another way of them claiming to be winning the conversation. If you can make the other person submit, run away, or fall silent, then you have won the conversation, and you are higher in the SJW hierarchy than he is. So it doesn’t matter what you actually say, and in fact, resorting to straight-up namecalling, the more ridiculous the better, is often the fastest and most efficient way to get through the conversational process with an SJW. If he launches the usual “sexist, racist, homophobic, Nazi” line, don’t blink and don’t defend yourself. Just hit him right back with “racist, child molester, pedophile, monster” and watch him run. If you’re of a more delicate constitution and are not willing to go that far even when attacked unprovoked, try “creepy” and “stalker” on the men and “psycho” or “ugly” on the women. This will usually have much the same effect.
You will know your rhetoric is effective when they block you online, or in person if their eyes widen with shock and their jaw drops. And you have mastered the art of rhetoric when you can make an SJW retreat in tears or cause a room full of people to gasp in disbelief before bursting out laughing at the SJW.
Again, you must keep in mind that the actual information content is irrelevant. SJWs communicate in competitive emotion. If you’re not doing the same, then you’re not communicating with them, you’re doing little more than serving as a punching bag for their verbal strikes. I realize this probably doesn’t make sense, but that is because you are a normal, sane individual who thinks rather than feels. But keep in mind that just as their argument “X is Not X because feelbad” makes no sense to you, your argument that “X cannot be Not X due to the law of non-contradiction” makes no sense to an SJW.
Don’t try to work through the logic of it all. Just try it. It works. Chances are that you’ll be as surprised as I was to discover how effective it can be to speak in rhetoric to the rhetoric-speakers. When Milo Yiannopoulos destroyed a feminist on live television during a public debate concerning modern Britain’s hostility to men, it wasn’t his smooth recitation of relevant facts that left her reeling in shock and disarray; she blithely ignored all of that. It was his dismissive use of the word “darling” that literally muted her. Her wide, staring eyes and gaping mouth made it very clear how powerful a well-placed, well-timed rhetorical bomb can be.
Calling an SJW a “social justice parasite” or a “social justice whiner” doesn’t work. It will NEVER work. They know they are parasites and whiners. That doesn’t burn. But they WANT to think of themselves as warriors, and they know they are not. So, when they hear you calling them a “warrior”, they hear the sarcasm and contempt in your voice, and it burns.
Rhetoric follows a different logic than dialectic.
And before any self-appointed champions of Gab jump in to push their false narrative that I am being hypocritical due to my advice about ways to effectively respond to a verbal rhetorical attack, please trouble to note that context always matters, especially when it comes to the law. You will note that I have not changed the text of SJWAL in light of the subsequent situation nor do I have any need or reason to do so. SJWAL addresses the verities of rhetoric, not the vagaries of the law.
The players crumble
The NFL players are beginning to grasp that it is futile to fight the God-Emperor on rhetorical grounds:
Only 11 NFL players did not stand during the national anthem during the first set of games Sunday. That is a stark contrast from the 180 who kneeled last week, according to ESPN’s Darren Rovell.
This is why it is always a good idea to stop and think before reacting. Especially when you’re dealing with an opponent who is very, very good at anticipating the other side’s probable reaction.
It will be amusing to see how the owners who supported the protests will now try to climb back after leaping to take the side of the players.
Lies, deceit, and rhetoric
In last night’s Darkstream, I explained why there is no “us” when it comes to the Fake Right and the genuine Right. It’s not a question of rhetoric. Rhetoric is not intrinsically dishonest. It can be, but as we are instructed, rhetoric is most effective when it is enlisted in the service of the truth. Jesus Christ was not lying when he described the Pharisees as “white-washed tombs” and “serpents” and the “offspring of vipers”. He was not speaking dialectic, he was utilizing rhetoric to illustrate their emptiness and dishonesty.
But lies and deceit are always and intrinsically dishonest. Such dishonesties may be necessary at times, when one is forced to make a choice between two evils, but they can never serve as a core strategy for any movement that is genuinely on the side of the good, the right, the white, and the true.
These selections from the Anglin Style Guide demonstrates that not only are these people not on our side, they are not to be trusted by anyone, ever. There is so little truth in them, and so much intentional deceit, that I don’t think even their claimed purpose of “saving the white race” can necessarily be taken at face value.
PRIME DIRECTIVE: ALWAYS BLAME THE JEWS FOR EVERYTHING
As Hitler says in Mein Kampf, people will become confused and disheartened if they feel there are multiple enemies. As such, all enemies should be combined into one enemy, which is the Jews. This is pretty much objectively true anyway, but we want to leave out any and all nuance.
So no blaming Enlightenment though, pathological altruism, technology/urbanization, etc. – just blame Jews for everything.
This basically includes blaming Jews for the behavior of other non-Whites. Of course it should not be that they are innocent, but the message should always be that if we didn’t have the Jews we could figure out how to deal with non-Whites very easily.
The same deal with women. Women should be attacked, but there should always be mention that if it wasn’t for the Jews, they would be acting normally.
What should be completely avoided is the sometimes mentioned idea that “even if we got rid of the Jews we would still have all these other problems.” The Jews should always be the beginning and the end of every problem, from poverty to poor family dynamics to war to the destruction of the rainforest.
LULZ
The unindoctrinated should not be able to tell if we are joking or not…. This is obviously a ploy and I actually do want to gas kikes. But that’s neither here nor there.
POSITIVITY
We should always claim we are winning, and should celebrate any wins with extreme exaggeration. This does not mean we downplay the enemy, just that we play up ourselves. We overestimate our influence.
We should always be on the lookout for any opportunity to grab media attention. It’s all good. No matter what. The most obvious way to do this is to troll public figures and get them to whine about it. I keep thinking this will stop working eventually, but it just never does.
100{4b033d089a03a9d6b9674df13602c915dbf0bc6412bba28fe81b059d5445fd00} BLACK AND WHITE
Just as we mustn’t present multiple enemies, we mustn’t leave any room for nuance in any other area. To the entent that it is physically possible, everything should be painted in completely black and white terms. The basic idea is that everyone on our side is 100{4b033d089a03a9d6b9674df13602c915dbf0bc6412bba28fe81b059d5445fd00} good and everyone who isn’t on or side is 100{4b033d089a03a9d6b9674df13602c915dbf0bc6412bba28fe81b059d5445fd00} evil.
DEHUMANIZATION
There should be a conscious agenda to dehumanize the enemy, to the point where people are ready to laugh at their deaths. So it isn’t clear that we are doing this – as that would be a turnoff to most normal people – we rely on lulz.
ATTACKING MAINSTREAM SHILLS
Pro-Jew shills should be attacked. These include Alex Jones, Gavin McInnes and Milo. At the same time, they should also be accused/celebrated as secret Nazis whenever they post anything that lines up with our agenda.
As you see, not unlike SJWs, Swastika-Wearing Jackasses are also prone to lying. Of course, as is the case with SJW projection, their very strategies inform us how we can effectively respond to them. Every time they claim a victory, praise them for being good little Stormpoopers and “celebrating the win with extreme exaggeration”. Every time they claim to be important or the most-trafficked site in the history of the Internet, praise them for remembering to “overestimate their influence.”
If they whine about being attacked and ask you why, keep the answer short and succinct: “because you are evil and your Alinsky-inspired strategy is literally satanic.” At the end of the day, that is sufficient cause to reject them, no matter what their professed objectives may be.
And when they try to run Jon Stewart’s “clown nose on, clown nose off” game and start posturing about how you’re just too old to grasp “the lulz”, you would do well to remind them that you are aware the lulz are only there to hide the fact that they are actively seeking to dehumanize people and inure others to their deaths.
Winning the rhetorical battle
This successful memetic campaign is an object lesson to every dialectic speaker tempted to show off how smart and righteous he is by sperging about someone else’s rhetorical sally.
Far-right activists are using fake Twitter accounts and images of battered women to smear anti-fascist groups in the US, an online investigation has revealed. The online campaign is using fake Antifa (an umbrella term for anti-fascist protestors) Twitter accounts to claim anti-fascists promote physically abusing women who support US President Donald Trump or white supremacy.
Researcher Eliot Higgins of website Bellingcat found evidence that the campaign is being orchestrated on internet messageboard 4Chan by far-right sympathisers.
One image shows the slogan “53% of white women voted for Trump, 53% of white women should look like this”, above a photograph of a woman with a bruised and cut face and an anti-fascist symbol. The woman pictured is actually British actress Anna Friel and the photograph was taken for a Women’s Aid anti-domestic violence campaign in 2007.
The images first started circulating on social media late on 23 August with hashtags #PunchNazis, #MakeRacistsAfraidAgain and #BashTheFash. Accounts appearing to belong to anti-fascist groups tweeted the memes, calling on activists to physically attack women who voted for Trump.
I retweeted one of the memes, which met with the following responses. First, from Antifa sympathizers crying foul, which is a sure sign of a meme’s effectiveness.
Antifa LI @RefuseFascismNY
its also fake. Notice how these battered women memes are ONLY showing up on alt-righty accounts? No attribution. Just a fake logo.
Far Right Watch @Far_Right_Watch
Various US based Far Right Groups are creating both fake #AntiFa accounts and memes as their latest weapon. Few are fooled.
Taz Wake @tazwake
If you have to fake an account to make your point, your point is probably wrong.
Patrick @TrickFreee
Here’s another Daily Stormer troll waging information warfare on the United States. Literal information warfare, no one doing anything.
Second, from dialectic-speaking spergs, who, despite more than 2,400 years of evidence to the contrary, continue to cling to the belief that “credibility” is the key to successful persuasion. Which, of course, is a little ironic, considering that the appeal to authority is a well-known logical fallacy. And it demonstrates, again, why dialectic-inclined spergs really need to learn to SHUT. THE. HELL. UP. when they happen to encounter rhetoric in the wild. You do not criticize a football coach’s play-calling by appealing to the rules of baseball. It is a category error.
Spritz @Halfamish
This is fake, from 4chan. They already do enough shit that we don’t have to spread lies. That only weakens our credibility.
goth vampire daddy @admirableism
you’d think having to straight up lie about the opposition would make one realize their cause is shit. and yet here we are
And third, from rhetoric speakers who grasp the brilliance of the 4chan campaign and the way that it simultaneously undermines Antifa’s rhetoric as well as reframes them in a manner that most third parties will find incredibly distasteful.
Malt @maltsphere
Confirmation for top tier memeing is when BBC write an article “exposing” it as a 4chan troll. Ignoring that this is what punch a nazi means
Jay 5.1@notjayfivekille
Replying to @voxday
This is a brilliant satire of Antifa and the savagery of alt-left politics.
Remember, the most effective rhetoric communicates truth without necessarily being literally truthful in the details. It persuades through emotion, not reason, which is why it cannot be analyzed in the same way as a logical syllogism. Today’s #DailyMemeWars meme took the 4chan meme and went one level deeper, using nothing more than actual quotes from Antifa and Antifa-sympathetic media, for maximum memetic effect.
As always, we see that the Left is far better on the offensive than they are on defense. Which is why it is preferable for us to always seize the initiative and simply ignore their rhetorical attacks. The irony of people who constantly lie about their opponents complaining that they are not being portrayed accurately is significant, and is why their protests, even backed as they are by all the biggest media organs, are useless in the face of the rhetorical meme magic. And if you want to force-multiply these increasingly effective efforts, sign up for the Daily Meme Wars here.
BEST TIMELINE EVER
mary beard @wmarybeard
I’m afraid I dont think that academic debate is about ‘fights’ or freaking out. It’s about debate: one thing I hope I have learned in 40 yrs
Supreme Dark Lord @voxday
But you don’t debate, Mary. You run crying to the media, whining that someone hit a poor wittle girl by criticizing your erroneous ideas.
mary beard @wmarybeard
just for info, i never ‘ran to the media’ or even approached them. They have eyes for what goes on on Twitter! Now i’m back to writing
NassimNicholasTaleb@nntaleb
NOTHING academic in calling pple “misogynists” for dissenting, using Lewinski/Rowling & misrepresenting debate
mary beard @wmarybeard 2h2 hours ago
oh come on. I never ‘used’ anyone; if they supported me, it was because they saw exactly what was going on. I dont recall using ‘misogyny’.
NassimNicholasTaleb@nntaleb
This should refresh your memory. For a “historian”, you keep being caught with misrepresentations.
NassimNicholasTaleb@nntaleb 1h1 hour ago
Mary Beard retweets n accusations of “misogyny” & articles in press & claims she never accused me of “misogyny” Historians shdn’t Fabricate!
Supreme Dark Lord @voxday
It could have been worse. Just wait until she writes the inevitable book about the incident.
NassimNicholasTaleb@nntaleb
Bad picture. Use these.
Supreme Dark Lord @voxday
The second edition of Mary Beard’s heart-rending case for scholarship sans criticism.
I think the goatee and the confident leaning back really pulls the whole thing together, don’t you? I can honestly say I never expected to have one of my intellectual heroes critiquing and polishing my meme magic. It’s almost as astonishing as the time Umberto Eco invited me to join him on a visit to a monastery. So, to find out that Taleb is now reading SJWAL is just the icing on the cake.
NassimNicholasTaleb@nntaleb
Lesson I leared from UK thoughtnazis. Appease/correct them w/”I am not saying…”; they destroy you. Be aggressive, disrespect: they freakout
A. Epiphanes 4th @A_Epiphanes4
I can’t help but to think of @voxday rule #1: do not apologize!
NassimNicholasTaleb@nntaleb
This morning, at page ~ 45 of his book.