Politicizing history

You might think that a comment or two would not be sufficient to counterbalance an entire life lived, much less a long one lived by a self-made billionaire, sports team owner, and family man. But then, you don't think like an SJW:

Texans owner Bob McNair spent two decades working his way into the exclusive club of NFL ownership, and then into that club’s inner circle of influence. By the start of this decade, he’d arrived, serving on the six-man committee that officiated the NFL’s return to Los Angeles, holding a seat on the commissioner’s compensation committee and chairing the finance committee.

On one hand, that’s who he was—a statesman within ownership ranks who was known for his pragmatism and level-headedness. On another, his legacy will be forever marked by events of October 2017, when a comment he made at an NFL social-justice summit became public, and went viral.

This is why it matters who writes the histories. 

The War in Paris

No, it's not a reference to the Arkhaven comic book, but actual events in Paris:

French police fired tear gas and water cannons to disperse violent demonstrators in Paris on Saturday, as thousands gathered in the capital and beyond and staged road blockades to vent anger against rising fuel taxes.

Thousands of police were deployed nationwide to contain the eighth day of deadly demonstrations that started as protests against tax but morphed into a rebuke of President Emmanuel Macron and the perceived elitism of France’s ruling class. Two people have been killed since Nov. 17 in protest-related tragedies.

Tense clashes on the Champs-Elysees on Saturday saw police face off with demonstrators who burned plywood, wielded placards reading “Death to Taxes” and upturned a large vehicle. At least 20 people, including four police officers, were injured in the day of unrest in Paris, according to police. One person sustained a serious hand injury.

Police said that dozens of protesters were detained for “throwing projectiles,” among other acts. In the Place de la Madeleine, scooters were burned to blackened shells.

“It’s going to trigger a civil war and me, like most other citizens, we’re all ready,” said Benjamin Vrignaud, a 21-year-old protester from Chartres. “They take everything from us. They steal everything from us,” said 21-year-old Laura Cordonnier.

Although its not an overt nationalist revolt, it is an indirect one. Because the obvious and inevitable consequence of the government spending vast quantities of money on unproductive foreigners living off handouts in various guises is higher taxes and lower benefits for the natives. Note one very important aspect of the insurrection:

But authorities are struggling because the movement has no clear leader and has attracted a motley group of people with broadly varying demands.

The anger is mainly over a hike in the diesel fuel tax, which has gone up seven euro cents per liter (nearly 30 U.S. cents per gallon) and will keep climbing in coming years, according to Transport Minister Elisabeth Borne. The tax on gasoline is also to increase four euro cents. Gasoline currently costs about 1.64 euros a liter in Paris ($7.06 a gallon), slightly more than diesel.

That's why you NEVER permit any movement to accept a leader.

Building the infrastructure

The new Arkhaven Comics site is essentially in Beta mode, but it is now operational, complete with a modestly stocked online Shop and an active comics-focused Blog, to which a number of comics pros will be contributing on a regular basis, including The Legend Chuck Dixon. Right now, all we're offering is about 50 Castalia ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats, plus a pair of Arkhaven comics in CBZ and Kindle formats, since we're still in the process of extricating most of our various books and comics from Kindle Select. This process will take until mid-February, although we will continue to keep a few books in KU, as well as selected new releases.

However, we are in the process of listing ALL of our books and comics there, since each product listing provides links to where you can obtain the print editions, audiobooks, and Kindle editions that we can't offer for sale there yet. They should all be up by the end of the weekend. We hope to eventually integrate the Castalia and Arkhaven Direct stores into the site, so you will be able to purchase both digital and print editions there. And yes, we do have crowdfunding capability built into the site, and we expect to open up the AH:Q campaign again for 28 more days next week.

Check it out if you're an Arkhaven fan or backer; we've put up the illustrations for a pair of new Alt-Hero Premium covers you won't have seen before. If you have any suggestions, please feel free to make them. This is very early days, so don't be surprised if there are a few glitches we'll have to sort out.

UPDATE: We took it down for a while to get the spam filters installed. It's back up now.

The math of nuking Omaha

Bring it, explains Larry Correia:

Okay, so let’s say Congressman Swalwell gets his wish, and the government says turn them in or else. And even though the government has become tyrannical enough to send SWAT teams door to door and threaten citizens with drones and attack helicopters, rather than half the states saying fuck you, this means Civil War 2, instead we’ll stick to the rosiest of all possible outcomes, and say that most gun owners comply.

In fact, let’s be super kind. Rather than a realistic number, like half or a third of those people getting really, really pissed off and hoisting the black flag, let’s say that 99% of them decide to totally put all their faith into the government, and that the all-powerful entity which just threatened to kill their entire family will never ever turn tyrannical from now on, pinky swear, so what do they have to lose? And a whopping 90% of gun owners go along peacefully.

That means you are only dealing with six and a half MILLION insurgents. The entire active US military is about 1.3 million, with about 800,000 reserve. Which is also assuming that those two Venn diagrams don’t overlap, which is just plain idiotic, but I’ll get to that too.

Let’s be super generous. I’m talking absurdly generous, and say that a full 99% of US gun owners say won’t somebody think of the children and all hold hands and sing kumbaya, so that then you are only dealing with the angriest, listless malcontents who hate progress…  These are those crazy, knuckle dragging bastards who you will have to put in the ground.

And there are 650,000 of them.

To put that into perspective, we were fighting 22,000 insurgents in Iraq, a country which would fit comfortably inside Texas with plenty of room to spare. This would be almost 30 times as many fighters, spread across 22 times the area.

And that estimated number is pathetically, laughably low.

The bizarre thing that would be amusing if it wasn't so potentially serious is that the gun controllers think gun-owning Americans will simply ignore their part in this. I find that most of them suddenly decide to rethink the notion of using violence to enforce gun control once I point out that the average government skeptics view of the situation is live and let live.

The converse of which, of course, is come for our guns in our homes, we come for you in yours.

Not even a little surprised

I never watched more than a few minutes of any movie from this series, but I picked up a fairly negative vibe from it even in passing. CDAN talks about what was apparently going on behind the scenes while it was being made.

He actually has a chance to be more famous outside of acting in his current career than he ever did acting, despite being in such a huge franchise. He was talking to an interviewer about his new profession and the interviewer asked the former actor why he chose the new profession. The former actor said it was because on the set of the franchise he was scared everyday of getting molested or raped by many of the older men that were on the set. He said this was especially true in the first few films where you learned really quickly not to walk around certain areas of a set or to wander too far away from other people. There were just too many men there who loved nothing more than dragging some 10 year old boy somewhere for 20 minutes and threatening to hit him or get him kicked off the movie if he told anyone. Our former actor said there were only a few older actors who took part, but they were some of the worst. An actor would tell a crew member and the crew member would grab the boy and hold him for the actor and then often the crew member would take a turn too. The former actor said some of the tween girls on the set were bothered, but as far as he knows, none were raped liked the boys. Once the actors got to be a certain age, they could fight or were big enough to get the men to back off, but with new young boys coming in for every film, it was a never ending cycle of sexual abuse and no one did anything to stop it.

Go there to learn which huge franchise it allegedly was.

Crypto.Fashion sale

I would be remiss if I failed to mention that Crypto.Fashion is having a post-Thanksgiving sale this weekend. Everything, including Arkhaven and Dark Lord Designs, is 15-20 percent off.

Just imagine how happy your God-Emperor-hating sister-in-law will be to receive the ladies' version of the Trumpslide 2020 shirt! And picture the beaming face of the SJW in your family when he discovers that he's eligible for a free helicopter ride!

And then, there is my personal favorite, the Official SJWs Always Lie t-shirt in black.

No media, no alternative media, no interviews

While I'm accustomed to being the recipient of an interview request or three per week, the recent launch of Jordanetics has increased that to five or six per day, from media and alternative media around the world, everywhere from South America to Eastern Europe.

I hope no one will take any offense at my decision to decline ALL of these requests, because with a few very specific exceptions, I am no longer going to accept any invitations to an interview or an appearance from the media or the alternative media. My reasoning is very straightforward; every single time I talk to anyone in public, it causes problems and distractions that range from petty personal issues to significant and serious professional ones. They are not only a waste of time in and of themselves, but they take up an amount of time later that would be much more profitably spent on something other than drama and damage control.

So, I'm not doing it anymore. I was already not talking to the mainstream media; the Reveal hitpiece that inspired IGG's nonsensical gossiping about nonexistent money laundering was the final straw. Seriously, just how prodigiously stupid do you have to be to fail to grasp that producing and selling MORE content than people believe is possible given the resources concerned is the EXACT OPPOSITE of money laundering, which involves the fabrication of nonexistent sales of products that don't exist to cover for the movement of money derived from other activities?

But talking to the alternative media isn't much better. The various livestreamers, podcasters, bloggers, and writers all have their own agendas, which is fine, but those agendas don't necessarily have anything to do with mine even when our ideological alignments are not in opposition. If people want to know what I think, I have written and published 10 nonfiction books, written 535 columns, posted more than 20,000 blog posts, and recorded nine Voxiversity videos. I suggest anyone who is curious about my opinion on anything to consult any or all of those sources of information.

Now, I will certainly continue to talk to authors who are published by Castalia House. I will continue to talk to the retail outlets for our books and comics and games. I will continue to talk to my old friends and acquaintances with whom I have a personal relationship. But otherwise, I will not be granting interviews to anyone or appearing on any television shows, livestreams, or podcasts, so please don't trouble to invite me even if you are confident you have only the best of intentions.

Warming is not the problem

It's going to look mighty strange when all of the climate scammers abruptly change course and begin screaming about the need to warm up the planet again:

Professor Valentina Zharkova gave a presentation of her Climate and the Solar Magnetic Field hypothesis at the Global Warming Policy Foundation in October, 2018. The information she unveiled should shake/wake you up.

Zharkova was one of the few that correctly predicted solar cycle 24 would be weaker than cycle 23 — only 2 out of 150 models predicted this.

Her models have run at a 93% accuracy and her findings suggest a Super Grand Solar Minimum is on the cards beginning 2020 and running for 350-400 years.

The last time we had a little ice age only two magnetic fields of the sun went out of phase.

This time, all four magnetic fields are going out of phase.

Even if you believe the IPCC’s worst case scenario, Zharkova’s analysis blows any ‘warming’ out of the water.

Lee Wheelbarger sums it up: even if the IPCC’s worst case scenarios are seen, that’s only a 1.5 watts per square meter increase. Zharkova’s analysis shows a 8 watts per square meter decrease in TSI to the planet.

On the plus side, this should significantly reduce the trend of migration from the global south to the north. Perhaps it will even put some steel in the spine of Northern Europeans again.

"Almost everything I said was untrue"

Jordan Peterson deceives his deluded followers even when there is no real reason to do so:

Jordan B Peterson
I spoke a few days ago in Ljubjana, Slovenia, at the behest of my publisher, Družina,  there, to an audience of about 2000. 

Sure, that's why you were in Slovenia. Because your publisher wanted you there. Just a simple book tour, that's all. Hey, wait a minute... are you sure your little trip to a rather out-of-the-way destination didn't have anything to do with the 42nd European Meeting of the Trilateral Commission?

From February to Sunday more than 200 most influential individuals will be literally from all over the world in Ljubljana. Ten years after the collapse of Lehman Brother's, which was the beginning of the global economic crisis, one of the worst in the last hundred years, the economic future of Europe will be discussed in Ljubljana. Former President of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso, former President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy, three former heads of state, and six former presidents of the government come from many distinguished thinkers and businessmen from all over the world, including Nigel Higgins of the Rothschild & Co of London, Jacob Frenkel, JPMorgan Chase International, head of Munich Security Conference Wolfgang Ischinger, former Secretary General of NATO Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, star globally-sold psychologist Jordan Peterson, Internet startup from Israel Yossi Vardi, former Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti, KBC Bank Group Thomas Leysen, former head of EBRD Jean Lemierre , Franz Fischler, Forum Alpbach, Lionel Barber of The Financial Times, President of the Atlantic Grupa Group of Companies Emil Tedeschi, Stanford's Jure Leskovec and so on and so on. Vice-President of the European Commission, Frans Timmermans, the last moment of cancellation of the arrival due to urgent obligations in Brussels, is one of the candidates for the future President of the European Commission. 

One can't help but wonder for what influential position Jordan B. Peterson is a candidate. Prime Minister of Canada? Witch-King of the Third Theosophic Temple? In the meantime, former Peterson fan Buck Daniels reviews Jordanetics. I think it's a particularly valuable review precisely because it is presented from a perspective that does not view me favorably:

With most intellectuals, it is possible to summarize their arguments in a way that conveys their essence to ordinary people who have not read their work. For example, one could summarize Nietzsche’s “slave morality” argument by saying something like: “Nietzsche believed that ancient ‘morality’ was based around the polarities of ‘good’ and ‘bad.’ He believed the good was aligned with the nobility; it is described by things like power, pride, and happiness. The slave-class were resentful of the nobility’s power and happiness, and so they used words to create a new system of values, in which up was down and down was up. They defined noble ‘bad’ (the slaves) as the new ‘good,’ and the noble ‘good’ (the aristocracy) as ‘evil.’ Nietzsche believed that because the noble ‘good’ are the most procreative and pro-life values, the reversal of values and invention of modern morality, and its institution in Christianity in particular, creates a culture that is, in its moral values, hostile to life itself.” Different people may phrase it differently, but I would wager that basically everyone who has read Nietzsche would agree that this is, in essence, his argument.

With Peterson, such a distilled summary is not possible. Ask five Peterson fans what his philosophy is, or what he means when he talks about “truth,” you will likely get three different and mutually exclusive answers. Does he subscribe to a pragmatic definition? A coherence theory? A strange variant of an identity theory? Based on his conversation with Sam Harris, it isn’t a theory that is easily understood or believed even by experts who are nominally on his side, politically.

In philosophy, adversaries are expected to respect the methodological principle of charity which requires interlocutors to interpret each other’s argument in a manner that is the most coherent and rational, if multiple interpretations are possible. If someone says, for example, that it is 11 AM and the sun isn’t up, we could easily conclude that they are delusional—of course the sun would be up at 11 AM. But it is possible that their language loosely meant that the weather was overcast; this interpretation would make more rational and coherent sense of their two statements than simply accepting them on their face.

So would it be possible to apply the principle of charity to Dr. Jordan B. Peterson? Might we be able to stitch together his seemingly disconnected and incoherent philosophy? And if so, what would it look like?

Vox Day’s book—Jordanetics: A Journey into the Mind of Humanity’s Greatest Thinker—is that charitable book. But it is only charitable in the philosophical sense of the term. The worldview that emerges is coherent, but it is not pretty.

It's really not. That's why it's a very good idea to understand what the evil love-child of Tony Robbins and L. Ron Hubbard is actually teaching the unsuspecting.

Do it, Mr. President

The God-Emperor has GOT to start following through on his threats and warnings, no matter who attempts to obstruct him.

REPORTER: “Mr. President, what about the idea that the military may use lethal force against these migrants?”

TRUMP: “If they have to, they’re going to to use lethal force. I’ve given the OK. If they have to, I hope they don’t have to, but you’re dealing with a minimum of 500 serious criminals. So I’m not going to let the military be taken advantage of. I have no choice. Do I want that to happen? Absolutely not, but you’re dealing with rough people. You ask the people in Tijuana, Mexico, they opened up with wide arms, just come in, come in, let me help you, let us take care of you. And within two days, now they’re going crazy to get them out. They want them out. Because things are happening, bad things are happening in Tijuana. And again, it’s not in this country because we’ve closed it up. Actually, two days ago, we closed the border. We actually just closed it. We say nobody is coming in because it was out of control. But you take a look at Tijuana, Mexico. You see what’s happening there. It’s really a bad situation.”

REPORTER: “What do you mean you closed the border and nobody is coming in? What do you mean by that?”

TRUMP: “If we find that it’s uncontrollable, Josh, if we find that it’s — it gets to a level where we are going to lose control or where people are going to start getting hurt, we will close entry into the country for a period of time until we can get it under control.”

REPORTER: “Do you mean the entire border?”

TRUMP: “The whole border. I mean the whole border. And Mexico will not be able to sell their cars into the United States where they make so many at great benefit to them — not a great benefit to us, by the way. But at least now we have a good new trade deal with Mexico and with Canada. But we will close the border. And that means that Mexico is not going to be able to sell their cars into the United States until it’s open. But we’re going to either have a border or we’re not. And when they lose control of the border on the Mexico side, we just close the border. And we have a very powerful border. We built a very strong border in a very short period of time. And the military has been fantastic, the job they have done. And by the way, Border Patrol and ICE, all of the law enforcement we have involved, and we have local law enforcement, too, they have done an incredible job. And they have wanted this for you know, I’m the first president who’s done to this extent, but they wanted this for years. And some of the presidents, I guess they didn’t care or they wanted open borders.”

President Trump has proven to be an excellent negotiator. No question at all about that. And he's also shown himself to be considerably more courageous than any politician of either party, up to and including Rep. Ron Paul. I'm not criticizing the man at all, I am aware of what a Herculean task he has taken upon himself, and in fact, the Aegean Stables had nothing at all on the Washingtonian Swamp.

But the time for positioning and posturing is rapidly coming to an end. The time to deliver on the single most important element of his presidency or become a lame duck is rapidly approaching. Pray for the man, pray that he will be granted all the wisdom and courage and resolve that he requires.

Darkstream: The Mirror Con

From the transcript of the Darkstream.

What Peterson is doing when he's talking to Rogan, and I suspect that what he does on a regular basis, is what a lot of fake psychics do. He's doing a cold reading, he is utilizing the clues that he's picking up in order to make you think that he knows more than he does.

It is a guess that is posing as knowledge and you can get away with it, if you're someone like Jordan Peterson you can get away with it a lot. One of the ways that you can tell that someone is doing this is that they're very intent, they're very intent on the other person. They're listening very hard to the other person, but they're not actually listening in order to understand what the person is saying, they're listening for key words that they can target off and use. They're looking for anchor points that they can take from the other person and use to launch to launch their own statement and use it in order to convince the other person of whatever it is they want to convince him.

So listen to this and keep in mind Jordan Peterson has a reason for this whole cockamamie story. You know, people got carried away, they got they got focused on the whole Cider of Doom thing, right, because this was such an epic disaster that it actually did manage to kind of conceal what Peterson was hoping to conceal. See, what he was hoping to achieve when he went on and talked to Joe Rogan about his terrible experience with cider was that he was trying to produce an excuse to cover up his disastrous performance with Sam Harris because that was one of the first times that he was unmasked.

You need to understand Jordan Peterson is exceptionally dishonest. Jordan Peterson is one of the most dishonest people in the public eye other than Hillary Clinton. His level of dishonesty can only be described as Clintonian.

Portrait of a non-leader

Gavin McInnes disassociates himself from the group he founded:

The founder of the Proud Boys, Gavin McInnes, has said he is quitting the group "in all capacities" and "forever" a day after the FBI designated it "extremist." McInnes blamed Democrats and the media for vilifying the group.

"I am officially disassociating myself from the Proud Boys, in all capacities, forever. I quit," McInnes announced on Wednesday in a newly-released YouTube video

The co-founder of Vice Magazine has been making headlines as the de-facto leader of the pro-violence right-wing organization, which McInnes himself describes as "Western chauvinist." McInnes took an active part in the group's protest activities, showing up at rallies across the country, including the infamous Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, that left three people dead.

In his final appearance as the group's public face, McInnes argued that he "was never the leader, only the founder" and that the term "stepping down" cannot apply to him.

Regarding his motivations for ditching the group, McInnes said that he was told by his lawyers that him disowning the group could help "alleviate sentencing" for nine members of the group who were arrested by the NYPD following a brawl with Antifa in October. The clash erupted outside the NYC Republican headquarters with both sides engaging in acts of violence. Three left-wing activists were subsequently arrested on misdemeanor assault charges.

McInnes said that, while he was following the lawyers' advice, he was doing "all of this reluctantly," blaming "terrible journalism, rumors and lies" for penetrating the court system and demonizing the group.

While it's perfectly understandable that McInnes doesn't wish to endure the arbitrary and unfair media and legal pressure to which he is now being subjected, leaving those you have led into trouble in the lurch is no way to accomplish anything. And I very much doubt that "not stepping down, but quitting" is going to help McInnes or any of the members of the group he founded avoid the attacks of the SJWs to whom he has now publicly shown his weakness.

It's important to understand that these media celebrities are not, and can never be, leaders. They don't possess any of the characteristics of a good leader and their primary objectives seldom involve anything beyond personal fame and fortune. Once more we see the fate of those organizations and movements that fail to learn the most important lesson of GamerGate: no leaders.

Leaders are a point of organizational weakness, a point of structural failure. That's precisely why the media is constantly seeking to determine who is the leader and to anoint someone, anyone, no matter how improbable their claim, as the leader, because that is how they seek to destroy the organizations and movements they consider to be threats. The All-Seeing Eye of Sauron focuses like a laser on those who are climbing to the top of the various glass pyramids, and cannot be defeated, cannot even be effectively resisted, by anyone who is outspoken and in the public eye.

Think about how easy it would be to turn back an army of ants, or an army of locusts, if they were dependent upon leaders. It's so much easier to squash a single insect than turn back a rampaging horde; the only thing that saved the West from the Mongol invasions was the fortuitously-timed death of Ögedei Khan. The most counterproductive thing you can do for any anti-establishment movement in these days of the panopticon is to run to the front of the parade and declare yourself to be leading it, which, of course, is why you should always be inclined to reject the various the various narcissists, shills, and fame whores who will invariably attempt to do so.

Are you joking?

Tucker Carlson demonstrates how nationalists care about their nation more than they do about maximizing corporate profits in a very public spanking of Fake American Ben Shapiro.

So would you, Tucker Carlson, be in favor of restrictions on the ability of trucking companies to use this sort of technology specifically to, you know, sort of artificially maintain the number of jobs that are available in the trucking energy?

Are you joking? In a second. In a second! In other words, if I were president and ran the DOT, Department of Transportation, we're not letting driverless trucks on the road, period. Why? Really simple. Driving for a living is the single most common job for high school educated men in this country in all 50 states. Okay, that's the same group whose wages have gone down by 11 percent over the past thirty years. The social cost of limiting their jobs in a ten-year span, five-year span, thirty-year span is so high that it's not sustainable, so the greater good is protecting your citizens.

Look, capitalism is the best economic system I can think of, I think that anyone's ever thought of, but that doesn't mean that it's a religion and everything about it is good. There's no Nicene Creed of capitalism that I have to buy into, what I care about is living in a country where decent people can live happy lives, and so, no, I would say, no, are you joking?

The duty of the nation's leaders is to strive to benefit the actual nation, not "the economy", not the corporations, and certainly not foreigners who happen to be in possession of paperwork that permits them to live among the nationals.

Licensed to kill

The U.S. military now has permission to use force to defend the border:

The White House late Tuesday signed a memo allowing troops stationed at the border to engage in some law enforcement roles and use lethal force, if necessary — a move that legal experts have cautioned may run afoul of the Posse Comitatus Act.

The new “Cabinet order” was signed by White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, not President Donald Trump. It allows “Department of Defense military personnel” to “perform those military protective activities that the Secretary of Defense determines are reasonably necessary” to protect border agents, including “a show or use of force (including lethal force, where necessary), crowd control, temporary detention. and cursory search.”

However an earlier “decision memo” that came to the same recommendations that were contained in the “cabinet memo” was signed by President Trump, according to documents obtained by Newsweek. There are approximately 5,900 active-duty troops and 2,100 National Guard forces deployed to the U.S.-Mexico border.

It's fascinating to observe that the mainstream media has no problem at all with the U.S. military "defending Americans" by killing large quantities of civilians everywhere from Afghanistan to Yemen, or engaging in actual shooting wars in Syria, Libya, Somalia, Iraq, and Niger, but pitches a fainting fit at the idea that it might shoot the only people actually invading the country.

If the U.S. military won't defend the border, then it should be defunded and disbanded. Americans have literally zero need for it.

L'inverno viene

Winter is coming, as are the mass deportations from Europe:

Police in Rome have begun the demolition of eight illegal luxury homes built by an alleged mafia clan renowned for its violence and gaudy lifestyle, as Interior Minister Matteo Salvini swore to knock down 'every last villa belonging to these damn people'.

More than 600 officers kicked 30 members of the Casamonica Mafia clan out of their illegal abodes in a Tuesday dawn raid, and today many of those evicted were at the scene crying foul, claiming they had not been allowed to fetch their belongings. Authorities showed no mercy as bulldozers tore walls apart and destroyed walls and garden fences in the Quadraro district of southeast Rome.

The Casamonica are not Italians, but Roma, or gypsies. They are a rootless minority that survives entirely through predatory, non-productive activities. Italy is beginning a census of Roma, many of whom are not legal and none of whom are Italian nationals.

This is just the very beginning of the trend that will restore the nations of Europe. Remember, the globalist trend lasted more than 60 years. The nationalist trend has barely even begun.

Darkstream: Answering the Pharisees

From the transcript of the Darkstream:

The subject is Answering the Pharisees, and what got me thinking about this is the way in which the trolls and shills and alt retards and philosemites are constantly trying to trap people verbally. They're constantly trying to get you to commit yourself to a position in public that they can then use to discredit you. So you know, with me, they will bring up questions from articles that I've written 15 years ago that they think will be that will be damaging to you. There is this constant attempt to get you to disqualify yourself, to get you to discredit yourself, and what it occurred to me is that this is exactly what the Pharisees did to Jesus Christ.

This is exactly what the people who are doing this, whether they're SJWs, whoever they are, they are functionally Pharisees. They are little satans, by which I mean they are little accusers, and so when you look at what they're doing, they are attempting to get you to admit that you're guilty and then they will proceed to prosecute you. And so how did Jesus handle that? I think that as in pretty much everything else, we're very very well-advised to follow Jesus's example whether you're a Christian or not. What did he do, what did he say, when they came to him, when they said people are saying that you are the Son of God, that you are the King of the Jews?

What did he say? The thing that was awesome is that he answered both his enemies and his friends in the same way. He said 'who do you say I am' because he knew what they were doing. He knew exactly what they were up to, and so this was really meaningful for me.

There's a question, wasn't he silent at first? No, that was later that was when he was actually on trial. So when you when you turn it around on them what you're doing is you're making it clear to them that not only do you know what they're doing, you're letting them know that you're not going to play along. That's why it's always a mistake to answer the question honestly. It's a mistake to answer the question in a Socratic manner, and you know it's a mistake to answer the question in the Petersonian manner.

Forgive us our debts

A new book by Michael Hudson puts an intriguing economic spin on the Lord's Prayer, according to a review by Jon Siman:

So let us reconsider Hudson’s fundamental insight in more vivid terms. In ancient Mesopotamian societies it was understood that freedom was preserved by protecting debtors. In what we call Western Civilization, that is, in the plethora of societies that have followed the flowering of the Greek poleis beginning in the eighth century B.C., just the opposite, with only one major exception (Hudson describes the tenth-century A.D. Byzantine Empire of Romanos Lecapenus), has been the case: For us freedom has been understood to sanction the ability of creditors to demand payment from debtors without restraint or oversight. This is the freedom to cannibalize society. This is the freedom to enslave. This is, in the end, the freedom proclaimed by the Chicago School and the mainstream of American economists. And so Hudson emphasizes that our Western notion of freedom has been, for some twenty-eight centuries now, Orwellian in the most literal sense of the word: War is Peace • Freedom is Slavery • Ignorance is Strength. He writes: “A constant dynamic of history has been the drive by financial elites to centralize control in their own hands and manage the economy in predatory, extractive ways. Their ostensible freedom is at the expense of the governing authority and the economy at large. As such, it is the opposite of liberty as conceived in Sumerian times” (p. 266).

And our Orwellian, our neoliberal notion of unrestricted freedom for the creditor dooms us at the very outset of any quest we undertake for a just economic order. Any and every revolution that we wage, no matter how righteous in its conception, is destined to fail.

And we are so doomed, Hudson says, because we have been morally blinded by twenty-eight centuries of deracinated, or as he says, decontextualized history. The true roots of Western Civilization lie not in the Greek poleis that lacked royal oversight to cancel debts, but in the Bronze Age Mesopotamian societies that understood how life, liberty and land would be cyclically restored to debtors again and again. But, in the eighth century B.C., along with the alphabet coming from the Near East to the Greeks, so came the concept of calculating interest on loans. This concept of exponentially-increasing interest was adopted by the Greeks — and subsequently by the Romans — without the balancing concept of Clean Slate amnesty....

After all these centuries, we remain ignorant of the fact that deep in the roots of our civilization is contained the corrective model of cyclical return – what Dominique Charpin calls the “restoration of order” (p. xix). We continue to inundate ourselves with a billion variations of the sales pitch to borrow and borrow, the exhortation to put more and more on credit, because, you know, the future’s so bright I gotta wear shades.

Nowhere, Hudson shows, is it more evident that we are blinded by a deracinated, by a decontextualized understanding of our history than in our ignorance of the career of Jesus. Hence the title of the book: And Forgive Them Their Debts and the cover illustration of Jesus flogging the moneylenders — the creditors who do not forgive debts — in the Temple. For centuries English-speakers have recited the Lord’s Prayer with the assumption that they were merely asking for the forgiveness of their trespasses, their theological sins: “… and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us….” is the translation presented in the Revised Standard Version of the Bible. What is lost in translation is the fact that Jesus came “to preach the gospel to the poor … to preach the acceptable Year of the Lord”: He came, that is, to proclaim a Jubilee Year, a restoration of deror for debtors: He came to institute a Clean Slate Amnesty (which is what Hebrew דְּרוֹר connotes in this context).

So consider the passage from the Lord’s Prayer literally: … καὶ ἄφες ἡμῖν τὰ ὀφειλήματα ἡμῶν: “… and send away (ἄφες) for us our debts (ὀφειλήματα).” The Latin translation is not only grammatically identical to the Greek, but also shows the Greek word ὀφειλήματα revealingly translated as debita: … et dimitte nobis debita nostra: “… and discharge (dimitte) for us our debts (debita).” There was consequently, on the part of the creditor class, a most pressing and practical reason to have Jesus put to death: He was demanding that they restore the property they had rapaciously taken from their debtors. And after His death there was likewise a most pressing and practical reason to have His Jubilee proclamation of a Clean Slate Amnesty made toothless, that is to say, made merely theological: So the rich could continue to oppress the poor, forever and ever. Amen.

I definitely have to read this book, especially in light of Rothbard's economic history that essentially reduces the development of modern economics to the gradual relaxations of Christian society's ban on usury over the centuries. As crazy as it sounds, it is entirely possible that what we think of as a necessity for economic growth is, to the contrary, an integral factor in reestablishing large-scale human slavery.

To paraphrase Philip K. Dick, Jesus Christ's war against the moneylenders never ended.

Just because some people are inclined to binary-thinking, allow me to be very clear and state that I do not think this literal interpretation of the Lord's Prayer negates or adulterates in any way the metaphorical debt of sin to which Jesus Christ was without question referring. But given what we know of these matters after centuries of additional evidence concerning the matter, it is the exact opposite of far-fetched to imagine that the literal context is also relevant.

JFG reviews Jordanetics

I have no idea whether he's praising it or ripping it a new one, but for better or for worse, here is JF Gariepy's livestream review of Jordanetics. Keep in mind that he's a smart guy who spotted Jordan Peterson was a charlatan before I did, so at the very least he is not inclined to mindlessly defend Peterson like the 12-Rule Path cultists.

There is also a review worth reading at Caffeine and Philosophy. What is particularly interesting about it is that it was written by a blogger who previously wrote an open letter to me criticizing my criticism of Jordan Peterson.

Every rule in Peterson’s 12 new Commandments is provided with a coherent interpretation. As you can see, these interpretations are not particularly flattering, nor are they very attractive to most people:

1. Stand up straight with your shoulders back.
Translation: Be mediocre.
2. Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping. (Why won’t you just take your damn pills?)
Translation: God is the balance between Good and Evil.
3. Make friends with people who want the best for you.
Translation: Leave the wounded behind to die.
4. Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.
Translation: Your head is the only truly safe space.
5. Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them.
Translation: Do not excel, because excellence endangers the balance.
6. Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world.
Translation: Inaction is always preferable to action.
7. Pursue what is meaningful (Not what is expedient)
Translation: To reach Heaven above, you must descend into Hell below.
8. Tell the truth–or, at least, don’t lie.
Translation: You can speak a new world into existence through your lies.
9. Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t.
Translation: Dominate the conversation and control the narrative by keeping your mouth shut.
10. Be precise in your speech.
Translation: Transcend the material world and very carefully choose the words that will alter this reality.
11. Do not bother children when they are skateboarding.
Translation: Heal the world by assimilating its evil.
12. Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street.
Translation: To lift the world out of Hell, you must be willing to accept its pain and suffering into yourself.

If it seems uncharitable to offer “translations” of an intellectual’s stated words, recall that Peterson has fundamentally changed some pretty generally-accepted definitions, including “truth,” “God,” “being,” “order,” and “chaos,” and these new definitions permeate all of the above rules. They literally cannot be understood properly (i.e., through Peterson’s own worldview) without a translation from Jordanetic language into common parlance. Rather, these translations represent an honest upholding of the obligation to charity, not its neglect, as Vox Day is offering the most coherent and internally consistent view of Peterson’s ideas that I have seen.

The fact that this view is not very attractive to most people is no more Vox Day’s fault than is the confusing language which made more coherent interpretations necessary.

Nor is it Vox Day’s fault that Jordan Peterson regularly misrepresents data, theology, history, and sourced articles. It is not his fault that Peterson turns around on people like Milo Yiannopoulos, Faith Goldy, or Brett Kavanaugh, backing down on his support for free speech when push actually comes to shove, and condemning people as hateful or bigoted when they point out a problem with his argument.

Ultimately, it is hard to pick out one of Vox Day’s translations from the 12 Rules and argue that it falsely represents Peterson’s worldview. Just a few examples: Peterson exemplifies rule 3 — leave the wounded behind to die — in his treatment of Milo Yiannopoulos and of Faith Goldy. He exemplifies rule 10 — transcend the material world and very carefully choose the words that will alter this reality — in his various alternative definitions, as well as in his now-infamous interview with Joe Rogan, claiming to have gone 25 days without sleep (presumably as an excuse for his poor performance on the Sam Harris podcast; he claimed the incident happened the day of the interview with Harris).

Taking their best shots

It's always interesting to see how desperate SJWs, or Peterson fans, are to convince people to move along, move along. There is nothing to see here! But you have to give Roderic at least a little credit. After all, he did go to the trouble of actually buying the book and reading the introduction and one chapter. That's considerably more than the average fake reviewer ever manages.

A Cringeworthy Read

At the outset Day tells us why he lit into Peterson. Peterson wrote an article that rejected the idea that there is a conspiracy among Jews to promote the careers of fellow Jews over those of more deserving gentiles.. Day knows that this conspiracy exists because Ben Shapiro is doing so much better than he is. What else could explain this if there's no conspiracy? It's also very important to Day that everyone realize that the Jews are not smarter on average than other groups, as Peterson insists. The evidence Day provides for this is questionable -- you can't compare IQ averages obtained from different countries no doubt using different methods to measure it in the way that he does, and there are other studies to support the idea that Ashkenazi Jews are more intelligent on average plus an undeniable record of achievement by that group in the arts and sciences. Peterson's other great sin was to fail to stand up for a conservative journalist who was criticized for being insufficiently tough in her interview with the Daily Stormer. Foreshadowing the rest of the book, Day lambasts Peterson for applying journalistic standards to that journalist that Peterson never meant to apply. It was clear that Peterson was just concerned about the public relations implications of what the journalist did. Regardless, that Peterson disagreed with Day on these issues was enough to convince Day that Peterson is a mountebank full of evil intent and malice who intends to mislead and lie to the public, and everything else that Peterson has ever said or done is put through that filter. Day set out to expose Peterson for the villain that he is and discredit his work through a torrent of videos, postings on social media, and now this book.

Day's approach is to say that Peterson said something he didn't say, to misinterpret something Peterson said, to use standards of thought that Peterson never meant to employ, and so on, and then to lambast Peterson for the resulting errors and absurdities. There is also a tendency to find small errors in what Peterson writes and then blow them all out of proportion such that everything else that Peterson wrote is supposedly thereby discredited. If Day had a legitimate criticism to make about what Peterson wrote I couldn't find it.

For example, in Day's takedown of Peterson's first rule chapter, Stand Up Straight With Your Shoulder's Back, in the 12 Rules book, Day heaps scorn on Peterson's use of the lobster. Day claims that Peterson wrote that humans “are direct inheritors of the social hierarchy of crustaceans and share common ancestry with them” and therefore share some of their characteristics including brain chemistry and behavior, but of course humans didn't evolve from lobsters, and Day goes on at length about this error and how it shows that Peterson is an ignorant clown. He even brings in an evolutionary biologist who he quotes to bolster this idea. The problem with this is that Peterson never said that humans evolved from lobsters in any way. The chapter isn’t about evolution. What he says is that lobsters are very primitive and ancient, and yet even at that very early point in history when they appeared they had established social hierarchies. They even use serotonin, a brain chemical, to track their status in the hierarchy, similar to the way human brains use it, our mood being good when our status and our serotonin is up and down when those things are down. (This is not surprising since all bilaterally symmetrical creatures, even worms, use serotonin in their nervous systems.) So, as Peterson says elsewhere, social hierarchies are not something that is created arbitrarily by white males to maintain their dominance, they are very old biology. Peterson uses serotonin and the lobster as metaphors for how we are hard wired to live in hierarchies,

The rest of the chapter is a bizarre misinterpretation of Peterson that ends with a quote from Peterson. The quote does not appear anywhere in the lobster chapter or in the 12 Rules book although Day implies that it does. It may be from something else that Peterson wrote. Without the proper context it's impossible to say if that quote planted there is misleading us or not. Suffice to say it does not say what the rest of the chapter says. Peterson is not telling us to be mediocre, as Day claims. Peterson is giving us advice about how we can improve ourselves and elevate our social status and thereby our sense of well being. That we will most likely end up neither at the top nor the bottom of the hierarchy but somewhere in the middle is not something to be held up to contempt. It's just they way things are most of the time. And it's pretty tough at the top, anyway.

The primary problem, of course, is that I never say that Peterson said something he didn't clearly say, assume, or imply. I do not construct strawmen. While it can be difficult to ascertain what he is saying due to his intentionally incoherent writing, the connection Peterson draws between lobster and human is clearly not just metaphorical, as you can see for yourself from this selection from 12 Rules for Life, but posits the very claim of common ancestry that Roderic denies.

Their nervous systems are comparatively simple, with large, easily observable neurons, the magic cells of the brain. Because of this, scientists have been able to map the neural circuitry of lobsters very accurately. This has helped us understand the structure and function of the brain and behaviour of more complex animals, including human beings. Lobsters have more in common with you than you might think....
All that matters, from a Darwinian perspective, is permanence—and the dominance hierarchy, however social or cultural it might appear, has been around for some half a billion years. It’s permanent. It’s real. The dominance hierarchy is not capitalism. It’s not communism, either, for that matter. It’s not the military-industrial complex. It’s not the patriarchy—that disposable, malleable, arbitrary cultural artefact. It’s not even a human creation; not in the most profound sense. It is instead a near-eternal aspect of the environment, and much of what is blamed on these more ephemeral manifestations is a consequence of its unchanging existence. We (the sovereign we, the we that has been around since the beginning of life) have lived in a dominance hierarchy for a long, long time. We were struggling for position before we had skin, or hands, or lungs, or bones. There is little more natural than culture. Dominance hierarchies are older than trees.

The part of our brain that keeps track of our position in the dominance hierarchy is therefore exceptionally ancient and fundamental. It is a master control system, modulating our perceptions, values, emotions, thoughts and actions. It powerfully affects every aspect of our Being, conscious and unconscious alike. This is why, when we are defeated, we act very much like lobsters who have lost a fight. Our posture droops. We face the ground. We feel threatened, hurt, anxious and weak. If things do not improve, we become chronically depressed. Under such conditions, we can’t easily put up the kind of fight that life demands, and we become easy targets for harder-shelled bullies. And it is not only the behavioural and experiential similarities that are striking. Much of the basic neurochemistry is the same.

Consider serotonin, the chemical that governs posture and escape in the lobster. Low-ranking lobsters produce comparatively low levels of serotonin. This is also true of low-ranking human beings (and those low levels decrease more with each defeat). Low serotonin means decreased confidence. Low serotonin means more response to stress and costlier physical preparedness for emergency—as anything whatsoever may happen, at any time, at the bottom of the dominance hierarchy (and rarely something good). Low serotonin means less happiness, more pain and anxiety, more illness, and a shorter lifespan—among humans, just as among crustaceans.

And the chapter does not close with "a quote from Peterson" but with an explanation of the paradox that Peterson presents followed by a statement of the true meaning of Peterson's chapter. As fake reviews go, Roderic tries harder than most, but the effect of his effort is spoiled by his obvious ineptitude. I give it a 3/10.

More honest Peterson defenders are finding that the case made against their hero is a substantial one and should not be dismissed lightly:

Serious Criticism that Cannot Be Dismissed

I was initially very skeptical of these arguments, even writing a post defending Jordan Peterson against these criticisms. But the more I thought about them, the harder they were to ignore.

In substance, the points are substantial, namely:
1) Jordan Peterson has, in documented cases, misrepresented statistics, sources, and history
2) Jordan Peterson has, in documented cases, broken his own rules (namely, by lying)
3) It is asserted that Jordan Peterson's argument is motivated by fear and cowardice
4) It is asserted that Jordan Peterson's method of delivery is (seemingly intentionally) vague and left open to multiple interpretations, resulting in confusion and followers who believe that Jordan Peterson is making mutually exclusive assertions
5) Jordan Peterson has, in documented cases, not stood up for free speech when actually pressed on the subject.

These are not the only arguments made, but they were the most substantial and impactful for me personally.

If you have grown to love Jordan Peterson, I understand the anger, suspicion, and outrage you may feel. It was my initial reaction to some of these claims. After feeling that, I could not bring myself to try to shame people for going in for Dr. Peterson. However, I would encourage skeptics and defenders of Peterson to read the book and make the decision for themselves.

I find it interesting that the aspects of the case against Jordan Peterson this reviewer found most convincing are the aspects that I considered little more than laying the foundation for the much more damning elements.

Cuck all you like

They're going to call you a racist Nazi hate group anyhow:

The FBI now classifies the far-right Proud Boys as an “extremist group with ties to white nationalism”, according to a document produced by Washington state law enforcement.

The FBI’s 2018 designation of the self-confessed “western chauvinist group” as extremist has not been previously made public. The Proud Boys was founded by the Vice Media co-founder Gavin McInnes. McInnes has insisted that his group is not white nationalist or “alt-right” but the Proud Boys have a history of misogyny and glorifying violence. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) lists them as a hate group.

The document also says: “The FBI has warned local law enforcement agencies that the Proud Boys are actively recruiting in the Pacific north-west”, and: “Proud Boys members have contributed to the recent escalation of violence at political rallies held on college campuses, and in cities like Charlottesville, Virginia, Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington.”

The report, and the FBI’s warning to south-west Washington police agencies about the Proud Boys’ role in escalating violence at these events came in August, two months before the group was involved in an infamous weekend of street violence in New York City and Portland, and not long after they participated in street violence in downtown Portland on 30 June.

Look, this isn't rocket science at this point. The clear and present objective of the elite that controls the government agencies of the West is to destroy Western civilization, including its three pillars, Christianity, the European nations, and the Graeco-Roman intellectual legacy. So, any organization that genuinely seeks to defend ANY of those three things will be relentlessly discredited, deplatformed, and designated.

Unless and until you decide that the defense of your faith and your nation is more important than not being called nebulous and ever-mutating names, you will live your life in fear of the inevitable. The time to choose is rapidly descending upon you. The only question is whether you are going to submit to the Devil's Narrative and deny Christ and country or stand your ground.

You cannot hide behind the false veils of civic nationalism, the Judeo-Christian heritage, melting pottism, racial equality, the freedom of religion, and free speech any longer. All of them are falsehoods. All of them are compromises with the Narrative. All of them will require your eventual submission.

Global cooling was not a myth

The failure of the long-predicted global warming to show up now has the AGW/CC scammers scrambling to claim that there never was an expectation of global cooling in the 1970s. Fortunately, climate skeptics are exploding the scammers' latest falsehoods.

A review of the climate science literature of the 1965-1979 period is presented and it is shown that there was an overwhelming scientific consensus for climate cooling (typically, 65% for the whole period) but greatly outnumbering the warming papers by more than 5-to-1 during the 1968-1976 period, when there were 85% cooling papers compared with 15% warming.

It is evident that the conclusion of the PCF-08 paper, The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus, is incorrect. The current review shows the opposite conclusion to be more accurate. Namely, the 1970s global cooling consensus was not a myth – the overwhelming scientific consensus was for climate cooling.

It appears that the PCF-08 authors have committed the transgression of which they accuse others; namely, “selectively misreading the texts” of the climate science literature from 1965 to 1979. The PCF-08 authors appear to have done this by neglecting the large number of peer-reviewed papers that were pro-cooling.

I find it very surprising that PCF-08 only uncovered 7 cooling papers and did not uncover the 86 cooling papers in major scientific journals, such as, Journal of American Meteorological Society, Nature, Science, Quaternary Research and similar scientific papers that they reviewed. For example, PCF-08 only found 1 paper in Quaternary Research, namely the warming paper by Mitchell (1976), however, this review found 19 additional papers in that journal, comprising 15 cooling, 3 neutral and 1 warming.

I can only suggest that the authors of PCF-08 concentrated on finding warming papers instead of conducting the impartial “rigorous literature review” that they profess.

If the current climate science debate were more neutral, the PCF-08 paper would either be withdrawn or subjected to a detailed corrigendum to correct its obvious inaccuracies.

This historical revisionism is deeply insulting to the intelligence of at least two generations. Look, I was there at the time! They were absolutely going on about global cooling in much the same way they were banging on about global warming 20 years later. I assure you, as a child growing up in Minnesota who occasionally had to wait outside for up to half an hour for a late schoolbus, in windchilled temperatures as low as -30 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, you do not forget being told that the climate is going to get even colder.

I distinctly remember thinking "how on Earth is anyone ever going to survive here?" when I first encountered news reports of scientists predicting global cooling.

That was fast

Did I not tell you that the Postulants of the 12-Rule Path would react badly to the new book? Did I not predict that they would post fake reviews of it?

Vox published a hack attack against an ideological adversary

I read the book and the descriptions of Jordan Peterson are beyond false based on the multitude of videos predominant on youtube. This is just a hack job by the kids at vox.

That's hilarious. He actually confuses me with the left-wing site called VOX. Apparently it was already removed by Amazon. But regardless, contrast it with a pair of legitimate reviews by former Jordan Peterson fans.

The closing argument is damning

I admit I was a JP fan. I would look at the JP youtube videos and passively cheer on some of the common sense wisdom which seems to be attacked these days. But the best lies are packaged in some truth. The first inkling that something was off was during a pod cast with Sam Harris where JP would not and could not define truth. To have an intelligent debate you need to have a shared definition. However, JP would slither and dither and avoid answering. It seems he refuses to have a clear definition of things because this would pin him down. I recognized this same type of behavior from experts who get caught during cross-examination on the stand stretching things. Wiggle and throw up smoke with techno-babble.

Well, now we have someone who has bothered to read his material. To pin him down with his words. To clear away some of the smoke. And guess what- after the smoke is cleared away, you take away the mannerisms, performance aspect of it, the furrowed brow of concern- you have remarkably little. This book is not a breath of fresh air- it is the ice water challenge for philosophy. Read it and you'll see what I mean.

That's a great quote. "The ice-water challenge for philosophy." I'll take that.

The first person who should read the book is Jordan P

The author presents a range statements by Dr. Peterson and goes on to prove Mr. Peterson to be inconsistent, incoherent or contradictory. I am a fan of Dr. Peterson and have read many of his works, and listened to his entire 'Maps of meaning' lecture series in depth and multiple times. While I sometimes felt that there were inconsistencies, I overlooked them in light of what appeared to be a meaningful expression of the Bible stories. But Author Vox Day has meticulously established many points which should not be ignored. I think the best result would be for Dr. Peterson to read this and hopefully recognize and acknowledge the many areas where he is in error. The book is a fascinating read and is filled with direct quotes by Dr. Peterson. Vox Day addresses each issue with a depth of evidence. Jordanetics is filled with artifacts from Peterson's own works. I went in very doubtful and thought the book was likely a ploy to gain views by using a 'big name'. But upon reading it, I see quite a bit of valid information. Vox Day raises many questions regarding Dr. Peterson which will likely be discussed and debated for quite some time. I'd recommend the book to anyone who enjoys Dr. Peterson's works. Be sure to read Milo Y's forward, it is stinging in it's facts.

Yeah, I'm not holding my breath. It won't surprise me if Peterson reads it; he is narcissistic enough to need to read everything that people write about him. But I will be very surprised if he ever mentions either the name of the book or its author. It's early days yet, of course, but these are exactly the sort of reactions to the book that I had hoped to see from both sides.

The Wrong Kind of Chameleon

An excerpt from Milo's Foreword to Jordanetics.

I’m a smart person. Really smart, actually, and very expensively educated! But half the time, I just can’t understand a bloody word Jordan Peterson says. And I’ve been thinking recently about why that could be. Ordinarily, I can listen to someone prattling on and quickly get to the heart of what they are trying to express. That’s one of the skills you pick up as a journalist: You learn to quickly identify the core of a problem, the essence of what’s being said. You learn to filter out the noise—and to identify bullshitters. But with Jordan Peterson, once I’ve filtered out the noise, I don’t find a lot left to work with. And there’s another problem. He lies.

When he first began to speak about me, Jordan Peterson described me as “an amazing person.” This was around the time he called me on the telephone, expressing sympathy for the failed assassination attempt on me in February 2017, when I was wrongly accused of supporting child rapists. He offered to do a series of on-camera interviews with me. He described me publicly, and correctly, as “a trickster figure,” explaining that “trickster figures emerge in times of crisis. And they point out what no one wants to see. And they say things that no one will say.”

He continued: “[Milo’s] brave as can be…. And he’s unstoppable on his feet. He just amazes me. I’ve never seen anyone I don’t think—and I’ve met some pretty smart people—I’ve never seen anyone who can take on an onslaught of criticism and reverse it like he can.” Fast-forward to an on-stage interview with Bari Weiss in June 2018 at the Aspen Ideas Festival. Weiss is talking about about a professor who paired me with Hitler and gave us as examples of Very Bad Things. She alleges that I, the interracially married man, am indeed a racist. To which Peterson replies: “Well, possibly, yeah … I haven’t followed Milo that carefully.”

What happened? By his own definition, this is the way demagogues work: by listening to their audience and adjusting their responses accordingly. Why was Peterson suddenly going along with something he knew wasn’t true and rewriting history, pretending he didn’t know that much at all about someone he had on numerous occasions so intelligently explained? I realize that by asking this question, this you’re going to think I’m just wounded that someone I once admired has since soured on me. But that’s the thing. From the first time I heard Jordan Peterson speak, my nostrils picked up a whiff of sulfur in the air—and not just because he dresses in that awful, drab, monotonous Victoriana.

Read the whole thing there. The irony is that I began writing the book to make a certain case, and wound up being led by the evidence to wind up making Milo's case in the end. Regardless of what you think of Milo, never underestimate his insight.

This Reddit thread full of Postulants of the 12-Rule Path waxing wroth will make for amusing reading afterwards, as apparently the only reason to criticize Jordan Peterson is envy, and Milo, Owen Benjamin, and myself are all just jealous of a mentally ill man with a Messiah complex. If the thread doesn't convince you of the vital importance of this book, nothing will.

Mailvox: How not to critique

This dialogue rather nicely addresses the two most recent Darkstream topics, Jordanetics and learning how to think effectively at the same time. It is perhaps most useful to contemplate this in juxtaposition of how I have gone about criticizing Peterson and his work.

MC: You are confusing the dialectic process which dates back to Socrates himself with dialectical materialism. "Political philosopher..." yeah, right. I challenge you to a livestreamed debate about your essential premise that Jordan is utilizing Marxism to formulate his philosophy.

VD: No, I'm not confusing that. No, that's not my essential premise. Yes, I am one of the bestselling political philosophers alive, with three #1 bestsellers in that category. And no, I'm not going to debate someone who has never read my work and misrepresents my statements. Peterson is not utilizing Marxism to formulate his philosophy, but he is utilizing the same structural approach that Marx did. Thesis-antithesis-synthesis is structurally identical to Chaos-Order-More Perfect Order aka 12-Rule Path to Balance.

MC: You said verbatim that “his intellectual approach is fundamentally Marxist.”  This requires a gross misunderstanding of what the dialectic process— I.e., thesis-antithesis-synthesis— actually involves, and its rich history. It was developed in its earliest stages by Socrates through the Socratic method, and it was adopted by the scholastic Christians as the premise for their dialectic. Far from being philosophically Marxist and anti-Christian, Peterson’s adoption of the dialectic method is both a rejection of Marxism, and an acceptance of a method that has been used by Christians for hundreds of years. As for your credentials, I’m not arguing about how many best sellers you have. Any professional, career political philosopher would laugh at your claim that Dr. Peterson’s intellectual method is Marxist. And I’ve read more of your work than you think. The challenge to debate is still open.

VD: Yes, and obviously I misspoke as I intended to say that his structural approach to his philosophy is fundamentally similar to the Marxist approach. You are trying to build an entire narrative on a false foundation. And you are completely wrong about that being my "essential premise" even given that misstatement. I will never debate you, because you are not honest, you are primarily interested in demonstrating that you are a Smart Boy. You're not a mind reader, you are wrong, and you haven't bothered to even do your homework on this subject. So, drop it before I remove you from the channel.

MC: Now you’re making a different claim— and I appreciate that you’re no longer saying that Peterson’s intellectual approach is fundamentally Marxist. That may not have been considered an essential part of your argument to you, but as someone who watches your videos fairly regularly (and hasn’t criticized your work once until today), it matters to me how you paint the people you criticize. If you had claimed Jordan was fundamentally Marxist and stuck to it, that would have been an extraordinary claim. And in my defense, I am not at all concerned about being viewed as a “Smart Boy.” I am concerned about discovering the truth, wherever it comes from. And by the way, I’m still buying the book because I think there may be worthwhile criticisms in it. But I could not in good conscience let such a drastic accusation slide so easily. Kick me from your channel, if you will, but I think banning and refusal to debate are beneath you. Isn’t that what we criticize the Left about?

VD: Yes, it would have been an extraordinary claim, moreover, it would have been completely in contradiction to every single reference to Peterson and Marxism in the book I just wrote. Not that there are many, since Peterson is not only not a Marxist, he doesn't even know very much about it despite his constant blathering about it.  The point is that your criticism was almost completely off-base. At no point did you ever stop to confirm that the meaning you quite reasonably assigned to it was intended, nor did you possess enough information to know that it was obviously an unintentional statement. Why would I ever debate anyone who suggests a totally irrelevant debate topic? There is literally nothing to debate.

So, what is the problem with this critical approach? Some of you will already have a pretty good idea of not only the problem, but the underlying reason for the problem, but we will ignore the latter as being obvious to those familiar with the topic.

First, never begin with a superior posture. Second, never make a definitive value statement at the start. Third, be very cautious about building a mountain out of a molehill, especially from a single piece of evidence. Fourth, always place more confidence in the written word than the spoken one. Fifth, refrain making any personal judgments in the early stages. And that's just in the first paragraph.

Sixth, accept the responsible party's expression of his intentions unless there is reason to believe he is lying or being evasive. Seventh, do your homework. Eighth, always be slow to leap to judgment. Express your suspicions, do not make concrete assertions.

JORDANETICS: the #1 bestseller in Political Philosophy

JORDANETICS: A Journey Into the Mind of Humanity's Greatest Thinker is now available for Kindle and Kindle Unlimited.

Jordan Peterson is believed by many to be the greatest thinker that humanity has ever known. He is Father Figure, Philosopher-King, and Prophet to the millions of young men who are his most fervent fans. He is the central figure of the Intellectual Dark Web, an academic superstar, and an unparalleled media phenomenon who has shattered all conceptions of what it means to be modern celebrity in the Internet Age.

He has, by his own admission, thought thoughts that no one has ever thought before. He has dreamed dreams that no one has ever dared to dream before.

But Jordan Peterson is also a narcissist, a charlatan, and an intellectual con man who doesn't even bother to learn much about the subjects upon which he lectures. He is a defender of free speech who silences other speakers, a fearless free-thinker who runs away from debate, difficult questions, and controversial issues, a philosopher who rejects the conventional definition of truth, and a learned professor who has failed to read most of the great classics of the Western canon. He is, in short, a shameless and unrepentant fraud.

But is Jordan Peterson more than a mere fraud? Is he something more sinister, more unbalanced, and even more dangerous? In JORDANETICS: A Journey Into the Mind of Humanity's Greatest Thinker, political philosopher Vox Day delves deeply into the core philosophy that Jordan Peterson advocates in both his written works and his video lectures. In doing so, Day methodically builds a shocking case that will convince even the most skeptical Jordan Peterson supporter to reconsider both the man and his teachings.

For a video preview, watch the Darkstream.

From the Introduction:

Read more »

All news is fake news

It's the metahumor here that is the funniest aspect of this story:

He had launched his new website on Facebook during the 2016 presidential campaign as a practical joke among friends — a political satire site started by Blair and a few other liberal bloggers who wanted to make fun of what they considered to be extremist ideas spreading throughout the far right. In the last two years on his page, America’s Last Line of Defense, Blair had made up stories about California instituting sharia, former president Bill Clinton becoming a serial killer, undocumented immigrants defacing Mount Rushmore, and former president Barack Obama dodging the Vietnam draft when he was 9. “Share if you’re outraged!” his posts often read, and thousands of people on Facebook had clicked “like” and then “share,” most of whom did not recognize his posts as satire. Instead, Blair’s page had become one of the most popular on Facebook among Trump-supporting conservatives over 55.

“Nothing on this page is real,” read one of the 14 disclaimers on Blair’s site, and yet in the America of 2018 his stories had become real, reinforcing people’s biases, spreading onto Macedonian and Russian fake news sites, amassing an audience of as many 6 million visitors each month who thought his posts were factual. What Blair had first conceived of as an elaborate joke was beginning to reveal something darker. “No matter how racist, how bigoted, how offensive, how obviously fake we get, people keep coming back,” Blair once wrote, on his own personal Facebook page. “Where is the edge? Is there ever a point where people realize they’re being fed garbage and decide to return to reality?”

The amusing thing is the way that the guy doesn't realize that he's merely replicated the situation that has existed on the Left for decades. They believe literally everything the mainstream media reports, despite the fact that what is generally known as "the news" is a false narrative that has little more than an incidental relationship with the objective truth of what actually happened.

One should also keep in mind that as Owen Benjamin notes, humor is often predictive. The very humor produced by the overstatement tends to come from the discomfort created by the extrapolation of the current trend, which is why his Gay Town is now at least partly real.

Translation: don't bet on undocumented immigrants not defacing Mount Rushmore in the next ten years or California not recognizing sharia.

Striking distance

A few more preorders and we can switch the order of the two top bestsellers in Political Philosophy. A bonus for those of you who have tickets to attend a Jordan Peterson lecture: an appendix containing a list of 12 Questions for Jordan Peterson.

Sample: You have said that you consider group identity to be dangerous and pathological. Do you consider yourself to be a Canadian?

Be sure to review it once you read it, as you know there are going to be beaucoup fake reviews on this one, once it comes to the attention of the Jordaneticians Postulants of the 12-Rule Path.


UPDATE: Now THERE is the image we were waiting for. Thanks to all the Dread Ilk who made it happen in preparation for tomorrow's launch. If you're on Twitter or Facebook, be sure to share it around.

UPDATE: For a chapter-by-chapter video preview of Jordanetics, watch the Darkstream.

Darkstream: Learning how to think more effectively

From the transcript of the Darkstream:

If you look at at other mistakes that people make I would say probably the biggest one, and the one that is the biggest single problem, is the tendency to apply the genetic fallacy. You see that applied all the time to people like me who are on the Right, but you also see people on the Right applying it to people on the Left. What you need to understand is that it is a logical fallacy to dismiss someone because of the nature of the source. Let me rephrase that: it is a logical fallacy to dismiss something based on the nature of the source.

So the fact that Sam Harris is saying something does not mean that it's going to be false. Now, if he is playing around with words and that sort of thing then you can have a heuristic that says: Sam Harris is babbling about definitions again and so he's probably wrong, he's probably not telling the truth. So it it's a useful heuristic, but again you cannot place any heavy reliance upon it. You always need to check and you always need to pay attention. What's what's important is you apply the heuristic when you don't have time, but at no point do you ever claim that it has proved anything.

We're here to help

The USA is graciously offering to protect the freedom of the seas and the financial integrity of several Pacific island nations, whether they want US protection or not.

The US has said it will join Australia in the development of a naval base on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island to “protect the freedom of the seas,” in a move apparently aimed at curbing China’s presence in the Pacific.

Australia, a staunch US ally in the Pacific, had already set its sights on Papua New Guinea’s Lombrum Naval Base on Manus Island earlier in November, seeking to build a deep-water facility for its Navy. Now, Washington apparently has also decided to join the effort, in a move clearly aimed at sending a signal to Beijing, which is already locked in a trade war with Washington and in disputes over the South China Sea.

It is no surprise that the US decision apparently came on the heels of rumors that China might also emerge as the eventual developer of the deep-water base. Some other reports suggested that China approached another Pacific island nation, Vanuatu, seeking to open a military base there.

Apart from that, the US also seems to be concerned that Beijing might use its growing influence over the Pacific island nations to get access to some military infrastructure in the vicinity of major maritime routes in the region. Pence even engaged in an indirect verbal duel with China’s President Xi Jingping at the APEC summit, where the two apparently fought for the attention of the smaller Pacific nations.

"Do not accept debt that could compromise your sovereignty. Protect your interests," Pence called on the island nations, referring to China’s active policy of giving loans to the Pacific states, which might turn it into a major bilateral lender to island economies.

He then called on the Pacific nations to stick with the US as it allegedly offers a “better option” because it would supposedly never “coerce or compromise your independence.” Xi, in turn, said that “no one has the power to stop people from seeking a better life,” while calling on the Pacific nations to “strengthen development cooperation” as well.

However, in its attempt to outplay Beijing in its supposed rush to gain control over strategic locations in the Pacific, the US and Australia seemingly completely forgot to ask the locals about their take on the prospect of the base re-development.

No one has sought support from the locals, Manus Island Governor Charlie Benjamin said, as cited by Reuters. The project was also criticized by a former Papua New Guinea MP from the island, Ronnie Knight, who said that “there is lot of questions to be answered” first.

"There was no discussion with any of the locals, it has just been bulldozed through again and that is what makes people cross," he told Australia’s ABC broadcaster, expressing his concerns about potentially “having a foreign base on our soil.”

See, they're the BAD empire. We'll save you from them, and all out of the goodness of our hearts. Now, shut up, stop talking to them, and do what we tell you to do. While we're at it, can I interest you in an offer of some loans at an interest rate you can't possibly refuse? No, I mean, you literally can't refuse them. Or else.

Don't mind us just doing a little construction over here. It's just a teeny, tiny, little military base. You'll hardly notice it.

An addendum

In writing an appendix to Jordanetics - note that today is the last day to preorder - I revised my numbers a little to account for the inexcusable omission of Indians - dot, not feather - from my earlier statistical review of his claims concerning the high-IQ subset of the U.S. population. I also took a look at his assertion from another perspective, which in addition to better illuminating the absurd nature of his claim, nicely demonstrates his admitted inaptitude for math and statistics.

Less than 4 percent of the 145+ IQ population in the USA is Jewish. Not more than 40 percent.

Note that even if we were to generously allow Peterson his original assertion as well as a causal relationship between IQ and societal success, his math is incorrect. At the high end of his suggested range, Jews would account for 123,690 of the 713,113 high-IQ population of the United States, or 17.3 percent. At the lower end he asserts, a mean IQ of 110, the Jewish percentage would decline to less than one-twelfth of the 145+ IQ set.

And just to demonstrate how ridiculous Peterson’s original statement was, accounting for the 40.8 percent of the U.S. 145+ IQ population claimed by the statistically-challenged professor would require a mean Jewish IQ of 123.4, with 7.5 percent of all U.S. Jews possessing an IQ over 145.

I'm a little bit dubious of some of the numbers that go into this equation, particularly the estimated mean IQ reported for the immigrant Indian population by Forbes, but they are a damned sight more realistic than what serves as the foundation for Peterson's attempt to dismiss observable reality as conspiracy theory.

Truly an inexplicably poor performance by Humanity's Greatest Thinker.