18 karma · joined June 10, 2015
Like I mentioned earlier in that thread, most armed clashes between antifa and fascists are probably in Russia. There are more recent examples in the US as well. I won't google for you but they are there. The Russian situation is particularly violent.
It's true that most of the left is sadly ignorant of such concepts, but the reason my own praxis has developed so far beyond the typical left is because I've been exposed to them.
Leftists won't phrase things in terms of memetics either, but that's what they're actually optimizing for, and I thought HN would both understand the term and appreciate the specificity, so I used it.
Well, pragmatically, the difference is immaterial, because to maximize the memetic intensity of anti-fascism, we have to attack all fascists everywhere all the time. Within the fold, there is very little opposition, because once one valid point has been made, going against it is nearly impossible.
This is the real danger in going down the ideological-purity path the way the mainstream extreme-liberal tumblerite bloc has. I get around this by maintaining a network of people I trust implicitly as comrades and who also trust me, but this is how ideologic drift happens in, say, activist groups.
>I think Moldbug views himself as anti-fascist
Well, nobody's the villain of their own story.
>Is the blogger a pseudonym, a construct, a caricature, or an alter-ego? Should a comedian be equated with their on-stage persona? An actor with the character they play? An author with their protagonist?
Do you think Moldbug is intended as a fiction?
>I (truly) appreciate the insight your earlier comments provide.
Don't think they provide so much insight. I'm one person and pretty idiosyncratic in my ideology and praxis. I am certainly not representative and I'm sure I would disagree with (just as an example) most of the people whose twitter comments were cited in the OP's article.
I just wanted to say that yes, I fully enjoy the fact that people are now afraid to be racist, sexist, etc., at tech conferences.
Anti-racist and anti-fascist organizing happens under the mantle of a thousand different groups all over the world. There are antifa in Russia that have it much harder than antifa in France or the UK or the US.
Antifa did and do routinely disrupt fascist actions with physical force and frequently got (and get) shot for it. Sometimes the antifa are the ones doing the shooting.
But most of the time the antifa are hilariously underarmed compared to the (as you've pointed out) very well armed rightists and it's a combination of bravado and stupidity that they take the actions they do. The KKK, neo nazis, etc., have all had weapons stronger than baseball bats for a while. There's no "eventually." Do you understand what I'm saying?
But far more put there by the state, make no mistake. It's not like there haven't been plenty of purges and organized campaigns of systematic repression from the state to the left. But you like ignoring that when we talk about fascist programmers not being able to present their widgets, don't you?
It is true that all exercises of political power are at the end of the day coercive. My personal take on this is to minimize political power, but to do this takes a specific social arrangement that doesn't exist in the present day.
The hypothetical I came up with is one where it's easier to attack an existing system than to create new and liberatory systems. This is the same as reality. It is much, much easier to get a fascist talk removed from a conference than it would be to get everyone at that conference to come to an appropriate understanding of feminist and anti-racist thought and praxis. There are certainly people involved in education, propaganda, and outreach, but this is by nature a much slower process and one that will not bear fruit in any reasonable time span. It is certainly not fast enough to counteract things like fascists at conferences, so we shut down the fascists.
I also obviously disagree as to whether denying a fascist the ability to spread fascism is injustice, or more broadly, whether attacking the oppressor classes and limiting their ability to oppress is somehow unjust. But then, I also care much less about any concept of "justice." Certainly the world is not a just place, and I question whether the concept of justice as communicated by oppressor classes is something we need to bring with us into the future.
Finally
>distributed implementation of fascism
Do you notice the contradiction?
If you have a specific idea at all about how the world should be better, the people who oppose that are certainly not your friends. I think you're mistaking vision for myopia, dedication for anger, and pragmatism for hatred... but then you certainly hate me more than I hate you.
I'm probably just as unsure as you about whether I'll achieve my goals, but I have to try, because to do anything less would be a betrayal of all of humanity. I believe everyone is responsible for their actions, and so if I'm to be responsible I have to act somehow.
It's very easy to say that "the world needs more love," but love doesn't break bricks, as the saying goes. I doubt your own activism is limited to "love"; you probably do things that are intended to make reality assume some objective state. In doing that, you are preventing your opponents from forcing the world into their preferred state. This is no different from opposing free speech. I just have a more complete vision of the world that I want, and it doesn't include Mein Kampf or Birth of a Nation or hacker news's casual misogyny and racism.
I would give you some discussion questions, but I'm sure you'll never, ever move past this roadblock, so I won't feed the trolls.
But that isn't the hypothetical. Do you understand the concept?
Certainly if I had a faeries & unicorns switch I'd hit that as well, but we don't always have the options we'd like.
In the meantime, if it's possible to make fascist programmers afraid for their careers, that's great for me. It means fascist movements are disrupted before they can even form. God knows leftists have been afraid for long enough.
It's hilarious to me that you seem to think leftists could set off an arms race.
Also, what do you think the black panthers, weather underground, etc., were?
I've been involved in anti-racist/anti-fascist work, either directly or on the periphery, for about ten years at this point. This takes many forms, from street confrontations with fascists, protests at book readings and other events, and also disrupting fascist conferences and similar.
Anti-Racist Action is the organization that has developed the most tactical and strategic influence in this space, not by design, but by chance (and it largely doesn't exist anymore). Disrupting fascist meetings by denying them space by getting hotels to drop them is the bread and butter of any ARA chapter. It's the easiest thing to do, and most modern tumblerites aren't willing to get in the streets with a bandanna and a baseball bat, so it's what gets done now. And in fact, it's likely that this sort of thing happens because ARA activists got involved in more liberal groups, etc., and the tactics just trickled down.
Personally, I have developed political differences with the "SJW" orthodoxy myself (though obviously in the other direction), and have seen the effects of this sort of attack applied on a social level. It has made my own work slightly more difficult, because I have to pick my comrades more carefully to ensure that they won't alienate me from my network. But this isn't a big deal for leftists, because there are already so many camps that are mutually oppositional that you'd need to do that already for some of your politics anyway. What's new in the last few years is having that extend away from your class alignment. (This is an answer to a question you didn't really ask, which is how the "SJW" community itself is affected by this, though it is what came to mind when I asked myself how I felt about it.)
As far as this issue and other similar issues are concerned, I'm overjoyed that, as you put it, a climate of fear exists for fascists, misogynists, racists, and similar. I hope that this continues and only worsens for these people.
I'm happy for many reasons. The first is that it has, as you've said, made privileged people afraid. I think this is only the beginning. Privilege creates safety, and as it is removed, I think the unsafety of the oppressed will in part come to the currently privileged classes. But if I could flip a switch and make every man feel the persistent, gnawing fear that a woman has of men, I would in a heartbeat. I wouldn't even consider whether the consequences were strategic, I would just do it.
I'm also happy that these people are achieving real victories. This is nearly impossible to do in a post-reformist landscape, and so the people involved in getting this fascist kicked out of this conference will have a real victory under their belt where their friends who are campaigning against some law that will inevitably pass or for some reform that will inevitably never happen won't. I hope that these victories can motivate people into taking more action. Burnout is a huge problem in activism and successes stave it off.
I would not say that I set out to defeat a "discourse-stifling" monster. The monsters I set out to defeat were patriarchy, capitalism, and white supremacy. These systems violently oppress, they don't "stifle discourse." In fact, they LOVE discourse! When people are discoursing, they aren't in the streets. I've seen so many promising movements hobbled by reformism that I'm glad the possibility no longer exists, though that isn't at all the fault of SJW-outrage (and is rather a consequence of the fact that the economy is in large part so perilous that nobody can afford the concessions that were previously won by reformists). So if discourse is permanently removed as a tactical and strategic option for future leftists, I'll consider it a victory.
You might be unsurprised to find out that free speech is not valued on the left or among "SJW" groups. I suggest you research this further, because I can't communicate to you in a single hacker news comment why this is, or what theoretical basis it has.