Why I Debated Curtis Yarvin at Harvard - Danielle Allen oped WSJ (scary ideas)

[question everything]

(snip)

Mr. Yarvin argues that for most of human history people have believed in a hierarchy of races and lived under absolute monarchies. He thinks this combination has served people well by generating efficient governments with missions that are “the same as the mission of a company: to maximize the value of its capital.” Since capital for a state is its land and people, and since Mr. Yarvin believes in a hierarchy of races, maximizing the value of capital means not being afraid of racial cleansing.

In his telling, our age, beginning in the early 20th century, is founded on lies: that human beings are equal and that self-government by free and equal citizens is possible. DNA, he argues, disproves the former; our current political situation disproves the latter. We don’t govern ourselves—because we have become a weak and frivolous people, and because an oligarchy has captured our institutions, including universities, the media and the professions. These figures operate a “ministry of truth” to keep people under control. Because their lies are now foundering on reality, Mr. Yarvin maintains, the time has come for regime change—for an absolute monarch.

(snip)

Mr. Yarvin believes the monarch is Donald Trump, and the time has arrived for consolidation of his power. He writes: “The key question of a 21st-century Caesarism in America or Europe is whether our moribund democracy has enough of a spark left to replace oligarchy with monarchy. Most objective observers would say it obviously doesn’t. But there are always tricks . . . generally involving not commitment, but cohesion. People these days do not cohere well automatically—but a lot can be done with the Internet.”

Why is his argument attractive to so many? He is right that our political institutions are failing. He is also right that their members have failed to see the depth of our governance problems and their own contributions to them through technocracy and political correctness. The ability to unmask the hypocrisies of priests has always won adherents. But Mr. Yarvin leads them astray with his vision of absolute monarchy and racial cleansing.

(snip)

The principle of equality articulated in the Declaration of Independence was meant so seriously that it grounded the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Vermont before the end of the Revolutionary War, and in Rhode Island even before the Declaration. The Confederacy’s own declaration of secession was explicitly a rejection of the founding Declaration. America’s history has always reflected this inconsistency, but the egalitarian principle has been there from the beginning. It isn’t a weak-minded invention of the 20th century.

(snip)

We don’t need his regime change. We need democracy renovation and renewed seriousness about our lives as citizens. This means reconnecting to our civic power, experience and responsibility. This requires civic practice and education. It also means redesigning institutions so they reward participation and deliver effective governance. We need to understand why and how separation of powers, checks and balances, due process, and a national legislature that functions are necessary to protect human freedom.

More..

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/why-i-debated-curtis-yarvin-at-harvard-democracy-monarchy-race-hierarchy-9860aade?st=AAijp3&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

free

[markodochartaigh]

1. I'm glad this is getting out there.

But the idea of neo-totalitarianism is so far from our Overton Window that I think by the time most people have even a minimal understanding of what is happening, it will have happened.

[ILikePie92]

2. This guy

Should be laughed at and ridiculed for his idiocy, not debated. Debating him and giving him that platform legitimizes his racism and misogyny.

I applaud her for doing so and I'm not digging her for doing it......just whomever allowed him the platform to debate to begin with.

Freedom of speech aside, the drunk guy at the end of the bar spouting nonsense doesn't necessarily need a platform.

[slightlv]

4. I don't think he should be debated, but I'm glad to see

these guys' outlandish ideas out there for people to read. There's been too much stuff going on in the background with these people of which we had no knowledge. I mean, I'd have NEVER dreamed there'd be a solid 1/3 of our country that wanted to shitcan Democracy! I knew they had authoritarian bents, but kill the country that birthed them? Nah... that was a surprise. Also a surprise was the extend to which Heritage Foundation wants to take the country via P2025. Were there hints? Yes... but I guess I'm either to naive or too innocent to believe people would actually be that cruel to their fellow citizens.

But I'm taking clues from what they're doing right now, and taking notes. One of the things we always got dinged on was our response to a "lack of tolerance" for their thoughts and beliefs. I have WAY fewer days ahead of me than behind me, but I'd like to see us take back our government to such a degree that we can not only undo what these magats have done, but completely do some of our own restructuring... which, for the sake of tolerance and cooperation we never pushed. Like changing the makeup of the SCOTUS. And rewriting the Constitution in language that is clear, concise, and not open to interpretation. I mean, keep the original, of course... but laws would be based on their plain language document. IOW, I would like to see a Constitutional Convention but *only* when we have back the government. Otherwise, we're going to have to find someplace else to live because the country won't be fit to live in if the Repugs rewrite it. I know that makes me as cynical and hard-assed as they are now. But I'm not going to play their wah-wah game any longer. We want a civil society that works for all. Religion and culture is personal... keep it to yourself if it can't be shared with grace. Meanwhile, restrain yourself and act like an adult to get along with other adults. Else, we'll help you find a country that shares your values. And that's where MY head is at now.

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. Sadly, the far right - the guys now in the Trump regime, and the money behind them - have taken him seriously for years

We were talking about him on DU in 2016 and 2017:

"Democracy is — as most writers before the 19th century agreed — an ineffective and destructive system of government," Moldbug writes. Moldbug doesn't actually like the term "democracy." He prefers "demotism," or rule of the people, a label under which he sweeps modern-day developed democracies like the US or Western Europe but also the former Soviet bloc, Nazism, and fascism. "Universalist lawful democracy is the least demotist of demotisms, Demotism Lite if you will," he writes. "Compared to Communism and Nazism, there's much to be said for it. But this is a rather low bar."
...
The neoreactionaries are a distinctly '00s and '10s phenomenon, but they draw on the racialist and traditionalist arguments of a much older movement: paleoconservatism.

http://www.vox.com/2016/4/18/11434098/alt-right-explained

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016166026

Before he emerged on the political scene, an obscure Silicon Valley computer programmer with ties to Trump backer and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel was explaining his behavior. Curtis Yarvin, the self-proclaimed “neoreactionary” who blogs under the name “Mencius Moldbug,” attracted a following in 2008 when he published a wordy treatise asserting, among other things, that “nonsense is a more effective organizing tool than the truth.” When the organizer of a computer science conference canceled Yarvin’s appearance following an outcry over his blogging under his nom de web, Bannon took note: Breitbart News decried the act of censorship in an article about the programmer-blogger’s dismissal.

Moldbug’s dense, discursive musings on history—“What’s so bad about the Nazis?” he asks in one 2008 post that condemns the Holocaust but questions the moral superiority of the Allies—include a belief in the utility of spreading misinformation that now looks like a template for Trump’s approach to truth. “To believe in nonsense is an unforgeable (sic) demonstration of loyalty. It serves as a political uniform. And if you have a uniform, you have an army,” he writes in a May 2008 post.

In one January 2008 post, titled “How I stopped believing in democracy,” he decries the “Georgetownist worldview” of elites like the late diplomat George Kennan. Moldbug’s writings, coming amid the failure of the U.S. state-building project in Iraq, are hard to parse clearly and are open to multiple interpretations, but the author seems aware that his views are provocative. “It's been a while since I posted anything really controversial and offensive here,” he begins in a July 25, 2007, post explaining why he associates democracy with “war, tyranny, destruction and poverty.”

Moldbug, who does not do interviews and could not be reached for this story, has reportedly opened up a line to the White House, communicating with Bannon and his aides through an intermediary, according to a source. Yarvin said he has never spoken with Bannon. During the transition, he made clear his deep skepticism that the Russians were behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee, the source said—a message that Trump himself reiterated several times.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/02/steve-bannon-books-reading-list-214745

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10028613053

The Moldbug Variations: Feudalism is the new conservatism

Three years ago, Peter Thiel called me a conspiracy theorist at a Baffler-hosted debate in New York between him and David Graeber. What prompted the characteristically winking and dismissive Thielian deflection was a question from a New York Times reporter, concerning a story on this very blog by yours truly. The story detailed connections between the democracy-loathing venture capitalist and a prolific, flowery neo-feudalist blogger who called himself Mencius Moldbug.

Moldbug was comfortably anonymous, with a modest but influential following in Silicon Valley circles, until TechCrunch revealed his identity as Curtis Yarvin, a San Francisco software engineer whose strange and quixotic startup, Tlön, had garnered some investment capital from Thiel. Moldbug’s moribund blog remains one of the ur-texts of the “neoreactionary” movement, a subset of what is now euphemistically termed the alt-right, but which I characterized at the time—more accurately, I think—as the mouthbreathing Machiavellis of the silicon reich.
...
Yarvin believes there is no such thing as democracy—and Thiel has said as much, as well. Yarvin’s stunted political imagination prizes strict hierarchies—despotisms, monarchies, and experimental new feudalism via a “patchwork” of corporate fiefdoms managed by absolute dictators who might be appointed by a vote of property-owning “shareholders.” Unlike some advocates of Silicon Valley secessionism, Yarvin has never been shy in acknowledging that this amounts to a revolution and would require the forcible overthrow of the established order. He advised, for instance, that the new dictator of California should throw the old elected governor in Alcatraz, and then briskly proceed to pack the government with Google guys.

Yarvin’s Dark Enlightenment dogma also is steeped in pseudoscientific racism. Yarvin preaches that intelligence is determined in large part by the laws of “human biodiversity”—which hold, in his telling, that white people are congenitally smarter than black and brown people, and that Chinese people may be the smartest of all. It takes no great stretch of the imagination to see how a blood-and-soil white nationalist like Bannon and a racist bomb thrower like Donald “Good Genes” Trump would find a great deal of reassurance in this toxic philosophy.

https://thebaffler.com/latest/the-moldbug-variations-pein

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016194547

If a Harvard professor says she's surprised by his influence among Harvard students, then a debate to expose seems worthwhile.

[slightlv]

3. I like this statement:

We need democracy renovation and renewed seriousness about our lives as citizens. This means reconnecting to our civic power, experience and responsibility. This requires civic practice and education.

And that's where they started to derail us... degrading education to the point where civics, geography, Am History, World History, and Government was barely taught... if at all. And none of the teaching methods tied it to current events, in an attempt to train critical thinkers. Magats want a monarchy because they can't handle "choices" of any kind. Ask them if they want Coke, Pepsi, or Water and they *might* say 7-Up. Women shouldn't be given any choices in their lives at all, because their lives exist only to "helpmate" the husband and pop out as many kids as possible as cog fodder.

This guy is wrong when he states that most of human history is bound up in a hierarchy of races, lived under absolute monarchy. That's true for most of the dark ages on, but he forgets Greece. Go back even further to the Middle East before the Monotheistic religions, and you'll find some resource wars but generally you find cooperation among tribes... not competition. Of course, back then resources were plenty because we didn't have 6 billion people living on Mother Earth. And you also had Goddess centered religions, which emphasized the matriarchy and cooperative and nurturing aspects of it. Not to say there weren't warlike females. But for wholescale religion and resource wars to take hold, it took Marduk taking over the middle east. From that point on, women were pushed away from public life and relegated to second class citizenry. I daresay even some slaves were held in higher regard than women.

In old Ireland (I'm talking Pagan Ireland), romans were surprised at how much power women held in society. They could own land, cattle and they were part of the governing councils, etc. Amazingly, all that slipped away once St Patrick drove out the snakes.

To me, it all boils down to what kind of world do you want to live in? One where people are civil and get along with each other, or one where every aspect of life is dog-eat-dog? For me, it's the former. For this guy, it's the latter (no doubt because he is part of the privileged class).

This guy does what a lot of men do -- mansplain in a way that bolsters his argument and circumvents any disagreements. He's not a critical thinker. He just wants you to think he is!

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

5. Just heard about him the other day

Weird dude but like Trump a lot of people take him seriously.