We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Samizdata quote of the day – so which is it? Pro-censors on Substack:
“Hateful content causes real-world violence.”
Also pro-censors on Substack: seek out the hateful content, link to it, talk about it, make sure every one of their followers sees it and has a link to click to get to it, cause it to get significantly more algorithmic juice than it would have otherwise.
Either they’re the dumbest dumbfucks to ever dumb OR they don’t believe what they’re saying.
One. Or. The. Other.
– Holly Math Nerd
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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This is our weakness. We give them credit around thinking.
They are the dumbest dumbfucks to on the planet and they do believe what they’re saying no matter how stupid it is. Where we discuss and disagree on a way forward they don’t waste any time arguing among themselves. That is why they are so successful.
Eventually we will get to that stage and when it happens, deaths will follow. We as a species are just too dumb to learn from history.
Just to contrarian, they may not be as dumb or hypocritical as they seem on the surface. Ideas are dangerous. Put a bug in the right ear and violence can happen. We see it every day with fundamentalist religions where a holy many says “those people need to die. God told me so” and his non-thinking followers just go with it. We saw it in the 20th century with Fascism and Communism when a bunch of guys who said the right things got millions of hopeless folks to do horrible things to other human beings. We see it every time there’s a story on the news about how Pookie and Ray Ray decided to turn a robbery into a murder just because their victim was white and they’ve been told their whole lives that they’re victims because of bad stuff that happened to their ancestors.
On the other hand sunshine is the very best disinfectant. Hiding something like disgusting ideas make them more attractive just because if authority figures say they are wrong, something in us wants to see for ourselves. And there are still a few of us that think the way to defeat evil ideas is to confront them and debate them and show the world why they are wrong and you can’t do that if you keep that evil hidden behind closed doors. And even if you can’t debate it and defeat it in the realm of debate, you can hold it up so the whole world can see just what it really is, what that position wants and how they are willing to get it.
Embrace the healing power of AND.
“Shooting yourself in the foot” is a cliche for a reason. (I knew a guy who actually did shoot himself in the foot, but he was an outlier.) But there are many who actually do keep themselves poor. I know several of them, and they think they’re doing what’s best for themselves. One is a Wobbly. She seems quite contented with it. The others make noise about evils of the wealthy upper classes.
Dumb and/or hypocritical are useful descriptions, but hardly complete. There are those who know how they want the world to be, and will kick and scream and cause all kinds of trouble until they get it. The kind that can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs — but don’t know how to cook. But if they keep trying, the omelet will happen.
The language causes violence, it makes us unsafe = standard Herbert Marcuse attack on Freedom of Speech as “Repressive Tolerance”.
Do they really believe what they are saying, or are they lying? They are lying – and Herbert Marcuse was also lying. His real goal was to censor opponents of Marxism, and of the left generally, using the “Repressive Tolerance” stuff as a nonsense excuse.
The attack packs of leftists on substack are liars as Herbert Marcuse was – but they are correct about one thing, in the end it is destroy or be destroyed. They will destroy us, non Marxists – non “Woke” people, or they themselves will be destroyed – sadly, tragically, there can be no peaceful coexistence.
Not in internet groups – and not outside the internet either. When they come to burn your property to the ground, with you in it, in Portland or other cities, you can not reason with them (they have rejected reason), and you can appeal to their compassion (they have none – they have no mercy).
You can let them destroy you, or you can destroy them – there is no third option. And fleeing the cities is not a solution – for they will follow you, where ever you go.
Confusing cause and effect. I think that it is more the case that nasty people look to justify their nastier impulses.
“So which is it?” – dumb dumbfucks, or they don’t believe what they’re forcing down our throats?
Both – embrace the power of “AND” – “maskirovka, Tovarishch!”
Their purpose is to stop us pointing-out their inconsistencies, their hypocrisy and the historical consequences of their obviouser-by-the-day leanings. So once they seize power, people who label them “Bolsheviks” will quietly disappear, and everybody else will shrug wearily, call the desaparecidos “stupid for opening their mouths when they knew what would happen to them” and plod on down the road, nodding their heads glumly to whatever the Elites say. Instead of rising against them.
“You can vote your way into socialism – you have to shoot your way out.”
One. And. Or. The. Other.
Something I have noticed in social media is a lot of people posting pictures of stacks of books saying “I’m with the banned” or “When in history have the ones banning the books been the bad guys.” These are sentiments I agree with wholeheartedly, but almost always the same people saying this are the ones advocating most strongly for censorship of social media feeds of people they don’t like.
The simple fact is that you can buy “To Kill a Mockingbird” in every state in the union at Amazon or used second hand at many a GoodWill. But the hard core censorship is really quite effective at suppressing voices outside of traditional media like books.
I find the moral certitude, the brazen “claiming the high ground” that these advocates of “freedom of speech (that I approve of)”, quite horrific. To take such a beautiful thing like freedom of speech and abuse it to advocate for its opposite is the most horrible betrayal.
Fraser Orr – it is not new.
Even before Herbert Marcuse (and the other Frankfurt School Marxists) were pushing the line that the only legitimate Freedom of Speech was speech that agreed with them (with any dissent being persecuted as “Repressive Tolerance” or, now, “Hate Speech” – i.e. opinions the Collectivist establishment does not agree with) people were doing this.
“Speech that agrees with me is Freedom of Speech, speech that dissents is evil and people who dissent must be punished” is a very old position.
Vile – but very old.
It is the position of demanding (passionately demanding) Freedom of Speech for one’s own doctrines, and persecuting disagreement as heresy.
Augustine of Hippo, basically, held this position – and he was a long time before the Marxists (of any sect).
Whether it is persecution of heresy (at first mild persecution – but providing the theological and philosophical justification for the later centuries fires and death) or Predestination (which does, does indeed, imply determinism or “compatibilism” – which is a distinction without a difference), even Augustine of Hippo was building on the (bad) ideas of people before him.
People who most certainly supported Freedom of Conscience (including the liberty to express that conscience – Freedom of Speech) as long as it was a “rightly formed conscience” – i.e. a conscience that agreed with them.
As every school child used to know – Freedom of Speech includes the right of people to express beliefs that one DISAGREES with, but many “great thinkers” have held otherwise.
For example, Sir Thomas Moore died rather than not follow his conscience – but he himself had killed people for expressing what he considered the wrong conscience (the wrong beliefs).
“It can be said that he demonstrated in a singular way the value of a moral conscience … even if, in his actions against heretics, he reflected the limits of the culture of his time”.
From the apostolic letter proclaiming Moore a Saint in October 2000. As my knowledge of the man was largely shaped by seeing A Man for All Seasons learning the truth behind this disingenuous wording came as a considerable shock.
(Culture of his time is presumably the Vatican’s way of saying everyone was burning Protestants).
Yes indeed John – and it is not just not true that all powerful people in that age practiced religious persecution. Some did not. As ever what people did, including what powerful people did, depended on their free will (moral agency) CHOICE – Sir Thomas Moore, and others who killed over differences in religions opinion, could-and-should have chosen to do other than they did. Yes (yes indeed) the culture, the historical period, made it harder to be tolerant – but it was still possible to refrain from killing people for their religious opinions, morality is NOT an historical construct, what is morally right is NOT different in different centuries no more than it is right to rob, assault or murder non British people, but not wrong to rob, assault or murder non British people.
I am reminded of a story told by the historian David Starkey – a story that was, unintentionally damning against David (“there are no such things as universal rights”) Starkey himself.
A boy in inner city London, in conversation with Dr Starkey, questioned the morality of Sir Thomas Moore by pointing out that Sir Thomas killed people for their religious opinions.
Rather than being delighted that a boy of humble background had such historical knowledge, and agreeing that the boy had a point, Dr Starkey (by his own account) sneered at the boy, pointing out that Sir Thomas Moore could read and speak Latin and Greek and the boy could not.
As well as being bad behaviour (bad behaviour by Dr Starkey) the response was morally irrelevant.
It does not matter how many languages the late Sir Thomas Moore could read and speak – he could have read and spoken a thousand languages by the age of 6, and it would make no moral difference at all.
The moral point is that Sir Thomas killed people for their religious opinions – and he should-not-have-done-so.