The cynical category of “hate speech” is openly used to police the parameters of acceptable thought and to punish those who are considered to hold heretical views that the guardians of moral correctness oppose. So not only are critics of Islam denounced as “hate speakers” — so are feminists who question the cult of transgenderism, Christians who disapprove of same-sex marriage, right-wing people who want stricter immigration controls, etc. These are all entirely legitimate political or moral opinions. The branding of them as “hate speech” — and therefore undeserving of the protections of freedom of speech — is really a way of calling these views heresy. And of course heretics must be cast out. Feminists, Catholics, critics of Islam — hound them off campus, get them off the airwaves, report them to the police for their crimes of hatred. This is an intolerant assault on heresy of the kind that has appeared many times throughout history. Those who say “It isn’t censorship” protest far too much. Deep down they know it is. Deep down they know they are to the 2020s what Joe McCarthy was to the 1950s.
Brendan O’Neill, “Why we must win the fight for free speech”, Spiked, 2020-02-26.
May 27, 2020
QotD: “Hate speech” is the new secular heresy
May 24, 2020
Zuby on why Joe Biden’s “you ain’t black” comment is one of the most racist things said by any US politician recently
I’d embed all the tweets here, but the page loading speed would be monumentally slow, so here’s the initial tweet and I’ve scraped the text from the rest and put it in blockquotes:
I'm seeing a lot of people trying to pass off Joe Biden's #YouAintBlack comment as merely a 'gaffe' or 'joke'…
But it wasn't.
It revealed a deeply rooted and pernicious form of racism that is extremely pervasive in left-wing politics. Let me explain… (1/14)
— ZUBY: (@ZubyMusic) May 23, 2020
Every black person is aware of the power and pain of being considered an ‘outsider’ within one’s own ‘race’.
This happens everywhere, but it is a common phenomenon particularly amongst Black Americans, due to history and culture. (2/14)
—
You are probably familiar with terms like ‘Uncle Tom’, ‘coon’, ‘house n*gga’, ‘coconut’, ‘Bounty’ and ‘race traitor’.
These slurs are used to demean black people by stripping them of their ‘Blackness’. (3/14)
—
ALL black conservatives, libertarians, centrists, or even moderate liberals have been on the receiving end of at least one of these slurs.
Usually levied by another black person, but occasionally by a particularly bold ‘woke white progressive’ type. (4/14)
—
This form of ostracisation is particularly painful for Black Americans. Who are largely disconnected from their African roots due to the horrors of slavery.
As a substitute, many cling to a fuzzy concept of ‘Blackness’. For the sake of identity and community. (5/14)
—
So, to be considered ‘not black’ is like being an outcast of a community that often already feels alienated… (6/14)
—
I am not American and I do not speak on behalf of anybody but myself. These are my own thoughts.
My name is Nzubechukwu and my heritage is of the Igbo tribe in Anambra state in Nigeria 🇳🇬
So NOBODY can take my ‘Blackness’ from me! They will look foolish trying! (7/14)
—
Most Black Americans don’t have this SOLID sense of heritage.
People (of all colours) know this and weaponise it against them to prevent individuals from stepping out of the ‘groupthink’.
Anyone who is perceived to go ‘against’ ‘The Black Community’ must be punished. (8/14)
—
Left-wing politicians, activists and professional race hustlers have used this psychological warfare to keep black people ‘in check’ and voting for them for many decades.
It’s demeaning, discriminatory, and it strips black people of our agency. (9/14)
—
So, when Biden suggested that ‘you ain’t Black’ if you consider voting for Trump instead of him, he exposed a much deeper form of racism.
The sense of ‘ownership’ of Black people. Unearned allegiance and entitlement.
It was a vile statement… (10/14)
—
But it was also honest. Because that’s how a lot of these politicians and ‘progressives’ really feel about black people.
Like they own us. (11/14)
—
If you were born black, then you will die black. There is no such thing as being ‘politically black’. This is nonsense designed to CONTROL you and keep you needy.
NOBODY can take away your ‘Blackness’. Your ‘Black Card’ is your birthright. Regardless of who you vote for. (12/14)
—
I would never dream of telling anyone who they must vote for, based on their skin colour nor genitalia.
That would be extremely arrogant, condescending and discriminatory.
Be VERY suspicious of anybody who talks like that. They want to control your mind. (13/14)
—
That is all. I hope you enjoyed my TED talk.
Much love. 👊🏾
Zuby
#ImStillBlack
H/T to Darleen for posting the link to David Thompson’s blog.
May 22, 2020
“Angels Calling” Pt. 2 – Guns, Gas and Steel – Sabaton History 068 [Official]
Sabaton History
Published 21 May 2020The shadow of trench warfare is a long one. In fact the soldiers at the front did not just rely on their guns and grenades alone, but on a wartime industry to keep them fighting. Everything had to be produced in the millions. Not only rifles, cartridges and shells, but boots, helmets, spades and everything else that was used on a daily basis. The Great War was a war that thrived on a nation-wide war-economy, the likes of which had never been seen or tried before.
We would like to thank the World of Tanks team for their contribution and help with the video filming. If you’re not yet a World of Tanks player, join the game and get your hands on cool in-game stuff for free via the link: https://redir.wargaming.net/w7fwclmx/…
Support Sabaton History on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/sabatonhistory
Listen to “Angels Calling” on the album Attero Dominatus:
CD: http://bit.ly/AtteroDominatusStore
Spotify: http://bit.ly/AtteroDominatusSpotify
Apple Music: http://bit.ly/AtteroDominatusAppleMusic
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Amazon: http://bit.ly/AtteroDominatusAmzn
Google Play: http://bit.ly/AtteroDominatusGooglePlay
Drücken Sie zum Aktivieren des Screenreaders ⌘+Wahltaste+Z. Informationen zu Tastaturkürzeln erhalten Sie, indem Sie ⌘Schrägstrich drücken.Watch the Official Video of “Angels Calling” here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyZ8w…Check out the trailer for Sabaton’s new album The Great War right here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCZP1…
Listen to Sabaton on Spotify: http://smarturl.it/SabatonSpotify
Official Sabaton Merchandise Shop: http://bit.ly/SabatonOfficialShopHosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Markus Linke and Indy Neidell
Directed by: Astrid Deinhard and Wieke Kapteijns
Produced by: Pär Sundström, Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Executive Producers: Pär Sundström, Joakim Broden, Tomas Sunmo, Indy Neidell, Astrid Deinhard, and Spartacus Olsson
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Edited by: Karolina Dołęga
Sound Editing by: Marek Kaminski
Maps by: Eastory – https://www.youtube.com/c/eastoryArchive by: Reuters/Screenocean https://www.screenocean.com
Music by Sabaton.Sources:
Imperial War Museum: (E(AUS) 1497),(Q 87945), (HU_91107), (Q 109611), (IWM Q 3001), (Q 69229), (Q 14945), (Q 5855), (Q 110355), (Q30009), (Q 9340), (Q 10450), (Q 70680)
Bundesarchive
National Archives NARA
Library of Scotland
Internet Archive Book Images
Bulgarian Archive State Agency
The icons from Noun Project by: Creative Mania, Chanut is Industries, Ben Davis, Vichanon Chaimsuk, Assyifa Art, chiccabubble, Nociconist, Vectors Marke, lastspark, faisal, Nun, Setyo Ari Wibowo, Mohamad Arif Prasetyo, Nibras@design,Creative Stall, Bruno Bosse, ghufronagustian, Karla Design,Gan Khoon Lay, Eucalyp, Anton, Marta Botter, Iconic, Daniel Turner, Naufal Hudallah, Phạm Thanh Lộc, Ruben Vh, Vectorstall, Icon Lauk, Mahmure Alp, Luke Anthony, Deemak Daksina, Sergey Krivoy, Andrejs Kirma, Rflor, Andrejs Kirma, Shovel by David, ProSymbols, Jake Dunham, noSimon Child, Wonmo Kang, Nubaia Karim Barsha, Nikita Kozin, Dolly Holmes, Collicon, Made by Made & Graphic Enginer
Flag of Spain recreated by HansenBCN and SanchoPanzaXXIAn OnLion Entertainment GmbH and Raging Beaver Publishing AB co-Production.
© Raging Beaver Publishing AB, 2019 – all rights reserved.
May 21, 2020
QotD: Gullibility and belief in conspiracy theories
Anecdotal thinking vs. statistical thinking. We evolved to do the former so it is natural; science teaches us to do the latter, and it is unnatural. What is natural is to connect two temporally-close events as causally connected. A happens and then B happens. So they must be causally connected, right? I vaccinated my child and shortly after he was diagnosed with autism. They must be connected, right? Not necessarily (and in this case definitely not).
Patternicity: the tendency to find meaningful patterns in both meaningful and meaningless noise. If you already believe in UFOs or Bigfoot, strange lights in the sky or shadowy figures in the trees are interpreted as a meaningful pattern that supports the belief. Often such patterns carry an additional component that I call …
Agenticity: the tendency to infuse those patterns with intentional agents who act in the world. From conspiracies to ghosts, angels, demons, and gods, we tend to impute agency to the goings on around us, as if there’s someone/something out there pulling the strings.
Confirmation Bias: we look for and find confirming evidence for what we already believe and ignore or rationalize away disconfirming evidence. Once you believe that, say, “the Jews” are running the world, or that the U.S. government (or the Bush administration in the case of the 9/11 truthers) is involved in vast global cabals to control oil, it is easy to interpret daily news stories about the goings on of governments in the light of the conspiracy theory in question. Every bit of minutia becomes pregnant with meaning. It’s not chance or contingency, it’s a Vast Right Wing (or Left Wing) Conspiracy!
Michael Shermer, interviewed by Claire Lehmann, “The Skeptical Optimist: Interview with Michael Shermer”, Quillette, 2018-02-24.
May 17, 2020
China sees their public image damaged in the wake of the Wuhan Coronavirus
Arthur Chrenkoff on the ways other countries regard China after the epidemic spread beyond their borders and the Chinese Communist Party’s antics on the world stage:
Welcome to the political chaos theory – or, should we say, fact: a bat flapping its wings in China produces a hurricane… pretty much everywhere around the world. It seems likely that three decades’ worth of good PR painstakingly build up by the Chinese authorities after the downer of the Tiananmien Massacre have all been undone in a few short months of domestic and international missteps, from initially covering up the truth about COVID, through gifting or selling faulty personal safety and medical goods around the world, to now retaliating against countries like Australia which are asking some uncomfortable questions about the origins of the virus.
Earlier today, Australia’s Lowy Institute has released the results of its COVID poll on public attitudes about the Corona pandemic. Of particular interest, the perception of China’s rulers:
At the same time, 37 per cent of Australians think that China will emerge more powerful after the dust (or the viral load) settles, while 36 per cent believe in no change, and only 27 per cent think China will be weaker in the aftermath. By contrast, a majority of 53 per cent and a plurality of 48 per cent believe that the United States and Europe respectively will be less powerful in the post-pandemic future. Reading the two sets of figures together it seems that the prospect of China’s rebound to international power is viewed more with apprehension rather than enthusiasm.
As Lowy’s Natasha Kassam observed, the public trust in China has been already declining, falling dramatically from 52 to 32 per cent in just one year between 2018 and 2019. It will be interesting to see the figure for this year. It’s unlikely that the behaviour of the communist government so far in 2020 would have improved the perception.
Such findings mirror similar public opinion research elsewhere. Pew Research Center’s polling last month showed that the negative view of China in the United States has risen from 47 per cent in 2017 to 66 per cent this year. Seventy-one per cent have no confidence in China’s President for Life Xi and 61 per cent view China’s power and influence as a major threat.
May 15, 2020
“Fields of Verdun” II – The Guns of Verdun – Sabaton History 067 [Official]
Sabaton History
Published 14 May 2020The Meat-Grinder. Dead Man’s Hill. The Bone-Mill. Verdun has many names, as it went down into history as a place of death and destruction. Never before did so many light and heavy artillery guns fire on such a small battlefield. It was the end of the classical field battle and instead turned into a 10 month siege that was fought not by flesh and blood, but by steel and chemistry.
We would like to thank the World of Tanks team for their contribution and help with the video filming. If you’re not yet a World of Tanks player, join the game and get your hands on cool in-game stuff for free via the link: https://redir.wargaming.net/w7fwclmx/…
Support Sabaton History on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/sabatonhistory
Listen to “Fields of Verdun” on the album The Great War
CD: http://nblast.de/SabatonTheGreatWar
Spotify: https://sabat.one/TheGreatWarSpotify
Apple Music: https://sabat.one/TheGreatWarAppleMusic
iTunes: https://sabat.one/TheGreatWarItunes
Amazon: https://sabat.one/TheGreatWarAmazon
Google Play: https://sabat.one/TheGreatWarGooglePlayWatch the Official Video of Fields of Verdun here:
https://youtu.be/xP8G-LwWNn0Check out the trailer for Sabaton’s new album The Great War right here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCZP1…
Listen to Sabaton on Spotify: http://smarturl.it/SabatonSpotify
Official Sabaton Merchandise Shop: http://bit.ly/SabatonOfficialShopHosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Markus Linke and Indy Neidell
Directed by: Astrid Deinhard and Wieke Kapteijns
Produced by: Pär Sundström, Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Executive Producers: Pär Sundström, Joakim Broden, Tomas Sunmo, Indy Neidell, Astrid Deinhard, and Spartacus Olsson
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Edited by: Iryna Dulka
Sound Editing by: Marek Kaminski
Maps by: Eastory – https://www.youtube.com/c/eastoryArchive by: Reuters/Screenocean https://www.screenocean.com
Music by Sabaton.Sources:
– Imperial War Museum: Q 23892, Q 87441, Q 23760, Q 88017, Q 78041, Art.IWM BUTE 290, Q 27526, Q 108345, Q 56987, Q 58386, Q 87945, Q 56546, Q 69971
– Bibliothèque nationale de FranceAn OnLion Entertainment GmbH and Raging Beaver Publishing AB co-Production.
© Raging Beaver Publishing AB, 2019 – all rights reserved.
May 12, 2020
Dave Grohl on live music
Writing in The Atlantic, he regrets having to miss a particular event:
Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters at Rock am Ring, 3 June 2018.
Photo by Andreas Lawen via Wikimedia Commons.
Where were you planning to be on the Fourth of July this year? Backyard barbecue with your crankiest relatives, fighting over who gets to light the illegal fireworks that your derelict cousin smuggled in from South Carolina? Or maybe out on the Chesapeake Bay, arguing about the amount of mayonnaise in the crab cakes while drinking warm National Bohemian beer? Better yet, tubing down the Shenandoah with a soggy hot dog while blasting Grand Funk Railroad’s “We’re an American Band”?
I know exactly where I was supposed to be: FedExField, outside Washington, D.C., with my band Foo Fighters and roughly 80,000 of our closest friends. We were going to be celebrating the 25th anniversary of our debut album. A red, white, and blue keg party for the ages, it was primed to be an explosive affair shared by throngs of my sunburned hometown brothers and sisters, singing along to more than a quarter century of Foo.
Well, things have changed.
Unfortunately, the coronavirus pandemic has reduced today’s live music to unflattering little windows that look like doorbell security footage and sound like Neil Armstrong’s distorted transmissions from the moon, so stuttered and compressed. It’s enough to make Max Headroom seem lifelike. Don’t get me wrong, I can deal with the monotony and limited cuisine of quarantine (my lasagna game is on point!), and I know that those of us who don’t have to work in hospitals or deliver packages are the lucky ones, but still, I’m hungry for a big old plate of sweaty, ear-shredding, live rock and roll, ASAP. The kind that makes your heart race, your body move, and your soul stir with passion.
There is nothing like the energy and atmosphere of live music. It is the most life-affirming experience, to see your favorite performer onstage, in the flesh, rather than as a one-dimensional image glowing in your lap as you spiral down a midnight YouTube wormhole. Even our most beloved superheroes become human in person. Imagine being at Wembley Stadium in 1985 as Freddie Mercury walked onstage for the Live Aid benefit concert. Forever regarded as one of the most triumphant live performances of all time (clocking in at a mere 22 minutes) Freddie and Queen somehow managed to remind us that behind every rock god is someone who puts on their studded arm bracelet, absurdly tight white tank, and stonewashed jeans one pant leg at a time just like the rest of us. But, it wasn’t necessarily Queen’s musical magic that made history that day. It was Freddie’s connection with the audience that transformed that dilapidated soccer stadium into a sonic cathedral. In broad daylight, he majestically made 72,000 people his instrument, joining them in harmonious unison.
QotD: A jaundiced view of science fiction conventions
The first was that nobody at these gatherings, at least as far as I could tell, actually read science fiction, or much of anything else.
There were plenty of board gamers. (This was long before computer gaming or even Dungeons and Dragons; the hottest item on CRT was Pong, or early versions of Star Trek eating up mainframe time across the country.) There were plenty of self-proclaimed artists of one kind or another, and hordes of kids — of all ages — who loved to dress up in costumes.
Another thing I noticed was that these conventions, or “cons” as they were called, seemed to be the only social life most of their attendees had, a sort of portable soap opera migrating from city to city throughout the year. The atmosphere was heavy with prehistoric rivalries and hatreds, grudges and vendettas, sometimes going back decades.
Actually, the first thing I noticed — although I was too polite to put it first here — was that the vast bulk (and I use the term advisedly) of female attendees could have used a carload of deodorant and long-term memberships in Weight Watchers. Which, of course, was why events like these were the only social life they had. Nobody else wanted them hanging around.
L. Neil Smith, “The Security Syndrome”, The Libertarian Enterprise, 2005-01-15
May 10, 2020
QotD: “Shirtstorm” and other forms of systematic patriarchal oppression of women
Which totally justified making a rocket scientist cry on the day of his greatest triumph. After all, people like him had ruined her life, right?
But it gets worse than that – there was an entire campus filled with supposedly educated (ah!) women terrorized by the statue of a sleep walking man.
And then there’s the ever-elastic definition of “sexual assault” which – I’m not making this up – can now be ratcheted down to “Looked at me in a way that made me feel uncomfortable” or, for that matter “failed to sexually assault me.” Oh, sorry, that last was the definition of racism. Some Palestinian woman looked at rape statistics and found that Israeli women are raped by Palestinian men in much higher numbers than Palestinian women are raped by Israeli men, and immediately concluded this is because Israelis are racist. It beggars the mind.
Another thing that beggars the mind is the progressive image of women as great warriors. You know, in all the movies and half the books (often without supernatural explanation) a 90 lb chick can beat 300 lb men. And women were always great fighters throughout the ages. And, and, and …
And yet, women are peaceful – peaceful, d*mn it. This is why “peaceful planet of women” is a trope on TV tropes. Not just a trope, but a dead horse one.
Attempts to square that circle have included the explanation that women are only violent because patriarchy. There needs be nothing else said because in this context, and with apologies to the ponies, Patriarchy Is Magic. Honorable mention on trying to square the circle must go to Law and Order‘s attempted episode on Gamer Gate where the game the woman designer had written was about Peaceful Amazon Warriors.
Sarah Hoyt, “Give Me My Smelling Salts, Ho! A Blast From The Past From April 2015”, According to Hoyt, 2020-01-22.
May 8, 2020
The Wuhan Coronavirus lockdown – “perhaps the worst policy mistake ever committed by Western governments during peacetime”
Toby Young on the fall of “Professor Lockdown”, the former top advisor to the British government on the response to the Wuhan Coronavirus epidemic:
The reason for looking into the political affiliations of the scientists and experts who’ve been advising governments across the world during this crisis is that it may throw some light on why those governments have made such poor policy decisions. Will the vast majority of those advisers turn out to be left-of-centre, like Professor Ferguson? I’m 99% sure of it, and I think that will help us to understand what’s happened.
I don’t mean they’ve deliberately given right-of-centre governments poor advice in the hope of wrecking their economies for nefarious party political reasons or because they’re members of Extinction Rebellion and want to destroy capitalism. Nor do I believe in any of the conspiracy theories linking these public health panjandrums to Bill Gates and Big Pharma and some diabolical plan to vaccinate 7.8 billion people. I have little doubt they’ve acted in good faith throughout – and that’s part of the problem. The road they’ve led us down has been paved with all the usual good intentions.
The mistakes these liberal policy-makers have made are depressingly familiar to anyone who’s studied the breed: overestimating the ability of the state to solve complicated problems as well as the capacity of state-run agencies to deliver on those solutions; failing to anticipate the unintended consequences of large-scale state interventions; thinking about public policy in terms of moral absolutes rather than trade-offs; chronic fiscal incontinence, with zero inhibitions about adding to the national debt; not trusting in the common sense of ordinary people and believing the only way to get them to avoid risky behaviour is to put strict rules in place and threaten them with fines or imprisonment if they disobey them (and ignoring those rules themselves, obviously); arrogantly assuming that anyone who challenges their policy preferences is either ignorant or evil; never venturing outside their metropolitan echo chambers; citizens of anywhere rather than somewhere… you know the rest. We’ve seen it a hundred times before.
More often than not, the “solutions” these left-leaning experts come up with make the problems they’re grappling with even worse, and so it will prove to be in this case. The evidence mounts on a daily basis that locking down whole populations in the hope of “flattening the curve” was a catastrophic error, perhaps the worst policy mistake ever committed by Western governments during peacetime. Just yesterday we learnt that the lockdowns have forced countries across the world to shut down TB treatment programmes which, over the next five years, could lead to 6.3 million additional cases of TB and 1.4 million deaths. There are so many stories like this it’s impossible to keep track. We will soon be able to say with something approaching certainty that the cure has been worse than the disease.
Soldier of Three Armies Pt. 3 – Vietnam War – Sabaton History 066 [Official]
Sabaton History
Published 7 May 2020Crossed the water a new start, war still beating in his heart, a new legend has been born.
Arrested by the Finnish secret police and tried for treason, war-hero and living legend Lauri Törni realized that his home country held no more future for him any longer. Törni made a run for it. Towards a new country, a new life and a new name. And a new war.
Support Sabaton History on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/sabatonhistory
Listen to “Soldier of Three Armies” on the album Heroes:
CD: http://bit.ly/HeroesStore
Spotify: http://bit.ly/HeroesSpotify
Apple Music: http://bit.ly/HeroesAppleMusic
iTunes: http://bit.ly/HeroesiTunes
Amazon: http://bit.ly/HeroesAmz
Google Play: http://bit.ly/HeroesGooglePCheck out the trailer for Sabaton’s new album The Great War right here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCZP1…
Listen to Sabaton on Spotify: http://smarturl.it/SabatonSpotify
Official Sabaton Merchandise Shop: http://bit.ly/SabatonOfficialShopHosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Markus Linke and Indy Neidell
Directed by: Astrid Deinhard and Wieke Kapteijns
Produced by: Pär Sundström, Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Executive Producers: Pär Sundström, Joakim Broden, Tomas Sunmo, Indy Neidell, Astrid Deinhard, and Spartacus Olsson
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Edited by: Iryna Dulka
Sound Editing by: Marek Kaminski
Maps by: Eastory – https://www.youtube.com/c/eastoryArchive by: Reuters/Screenocean https://www.screenocean.com
Music by Sabaton.Sources:
– Helsinki City Museum
– KANSALLISARKISTO
– Lauri Törni in 1951 from Forum Marinum, CC BY-ND 4.0
– Cricket sound by damonmensch from freesound.org
– Photo of Lauri and Marja courtesy of Hillevi KopsAn OnLion Entertainment GmbH and Raging Beaver Publishing AB co-Production.
© Raging Beaver Publishing AB, 2019 – all rights reserved.
May 6, 2020
What’s on your bookshelf?
The self-appointed censors of righteousness demand to know!
Plenty of people like to be filmed against the backdrop of their bookshelves to convey the message or at least create the impression that they are smart. This has become even more common during the current extraordinary conditions of self-isolation, where virtually all the media interviews are conducted from home rather than in studio. Ditto for all the Zoom and other teleconferences. This, in turn, has given some people the opportunity to nose around and check out just what exactly others have on their shelves – presumably having read it and not just for decoration. It should be a fun exercise, but these days of perpetual outrage no fun goes unpunished.
By contrast, the picture of a bookshelf belonging to a Tory minister Michael Gove and his wife Sarah Vine was unsolicited, which probably adds to the regret right about now.
[…]
Books, like other human artifacts, are historical records and documents of our past. You might not like the course that the history took, but it’s important to know it and remember it.
And hypocrisy, because of the double standards.
Sure, Nazis, Nazi sympathisers, Holocaust deniers and assorted other apologists are mad, bad and dangerous to know. But what about communists? How many of those having a go at Gove and his wife for owning an Irving book have on their own shelves works by Marx, if not Lenin, Mao, Che and numerous related others? Those who have been inspired by and followed Marx’s idea (whether you think correctly or not) have been responsible for some 100 million premature deaths in the 20th century and other untold misery and devastation. Mao, the author of the little Red Book, accounts for up to 60 million of those (I happen to have a copy; does that make me a Maoist and a genocide fan?). But socialism is cool and you can’t blame Marx because to do so would be to delegitimise the whole socialist project. And of course the socialist ideals are all beautiful – equality! solidarity! community! dignity! – and, in any case, everyone has had good intentions. So all good, guys.
Read and own whatever the damn you like – and don’t let the fascists of any kind dictate your bookshelf. Except for 50 Shades of Grey. We’ll all judge you for that.
The main picture: some of my shelves – feel free to judge me.
I thought to take a picture of my own shelves, but Arthur Chrenkoff appears to have a broadly similar selection of books (more heavily weighted to British politics than mine), so I just nicked his photo to save the effort. (Thanks, Arthur! Hope you don’t mind!)
May 5, 2020
The perverse incentives of the Wuhan Coronavirus outbreak
David Warren has clearly taken his cynical pills today:
The daily count of deaths from the Red Chinese Batflu is among the prized, scare-mongering features of our mass media. I am among those who consider these numbers to be significantly overstated, for a reason that Nikolai Gogol would understand. Each corpse is worth cash to some public authority, usually from a higher authority; and as always, finally from the taxpayers. Each also saves money for government programmes, that can be reallocated to the purchase of new votes. As the corpse providers from this virus are very old, and suffering from other life-threatening conditions, in almost every case, this statistical inflation is easy to perform. Death certificates are issued for any who died with “Covid-19,” whether or not they died from it, and more are then added of those who were never tested. Anything respiratory will do. It’s all judgement calls — on which side of the bread is buttered.
Compare if you will the Hong Kong Flu of 1968 and 1969. I was just reading a memoir, from down that memory hole. The death toll was actually higher then, than ours is now, and from within a smaller population; the victims included children and the young. Yet there were no interruptions in economic life; no public emergency theatricals; and at the height of the second wave of that scourge, we had events like Woodstock. (Those were the days, my friend.)
A neat way to correct for all our “judgement calls” might be to look at overall death rates, and see if they have risen or fallen. It is too early to get a clear view, but soon it may be too late, for vested interests will have tampered with them. All my life I have been learning to trust statistics, less — especially from those who dress in labcoats and affect that earnest look. Sometimes an exception must be considered, however. An unpredictable minority may be honest; some others might get numbers right by mistake.
QotD: Social media encourages autistic behaviour
The genetic fallacy, you’ll recall, is the inability to separate the idea from the speaker. Or, if you’re under age 40, it’s simply “communication,” as our public discourse nowadays proceeds in very little other than genetic fallacies. Try it for yourself. We all know what kind of reaction you’ll get in respectable circles if you say “You know, Donald Trump has a point about …”, but you can do it on “our side” of the fence, too. Watch: Obama was right about Race to the Top. No, really: Compared to W’s No Child Left Behind bullshit, pretty much anything short of letting kids be raised by wolves would’ve been better (and hey, even being raised by wolves worked out ok for Romulus and Remus). Even with the qualifier attached, almost everyone on “our side” instinctively bristles — we’ve been so conditioned by the words “Obama” and “race,” especially in close proximity, that we can’t help ourselves. Even I do it.
It’s especially bad for the younger generations who, as I keep arguing, have been effectively autismized (it’s a word) by social media. Twitter, especially, is so constructed that “replies” can come in hours, days, months, years later. Blogs too for that matter — one of the reasons we close the comments here after a few weeks is to prevent drive-by commenters clogging things up trying to re-litigate something from years ago. Modern “communication” must take place in discrete, contextless utterances. That being the case, understanding a statement in context is impossible — I repeat, impossible. So Lenin (or Hitler, or Mao, or William F. Buckley, or the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man) didn’t have a point about ___; because that requires understanding how his point fit into the larger context of his thought, his times, his culture, his world. None of that shit fits into a tweet, so we’re trained to respond to the name — Lenin (etc.) is either a good guy or a bad guy, full stop, so anything he says about anything must be good or bad, automatically.
I hardly need to elaborate on the effect this has on our public culture. If Our Thing really wants to get serious, the first thing any “organization,” no matter how loose, must do is: Ban social media.
Severian, “Education, the Genetic Fallacy, and the Spectrum”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2020-01-27.
May 3, 2020
Slaying Gladiator
Over at Steyn Online, Kathy Shaidle tag-teamed someone else on staff (it probably rhymes with Dark Time) to put the caligulae to Ridley Scott’s Gladiator with Russell Crowe in the leading role:
Germania, 180 AD. Rome is at war with the, er, Germaniacs, who stand around in the Black Forest grunting like Brits on the piss who’ve nutted themselves in one pub fight too many. You need a cool head to take on the Roman Army, and the only one the barbarians have belongs to Caesar’s emissary, whom they thoughtfully decapitated before sending back. They wave the old noggin around like a treasured footie ball, grunting, “Ug Eugh Blug” or, translated from the original gibberish, “Over ‘ere, mate.” It’s a scene that rings oddly contemporary in the age of Isis, although when I first saw it, a year before 9/11, it gave me the giggles. But then barbarians always seem funny from a distance, don’t they? Here they scratch their pelts and grunt some more, seemingly unconcerned by the fact that the Roman legions are lighting up their blazing arrows and fireballs, the smart bombs of the day. The ensuing battle, whose outcome would seem never to be in doubt, is apparently the final bloody act in a twelve-year war.
Despite having had twelve years to get there, the Emperor’s son nevertheless shows up late. “Did I miss it?” he simpers. “Did I miss the battle?” The son’s name is Commodus. No, not Commodus, but Commodus, which sounds like he dates back to a Mel Brooks sketch circa 1962 but in fact goes all the way back to the real Roman Empire. Commodus is that old stand-by of the dynastic drama, the disappointing son. His father, Marcus Aurelius, is a noble philosopher-king, but Commodus is no chip off the old block. We can tell that from the moment we first glimpse Commodus, sprawled in his commodious caravan, but just in case we miss the point Joaquin Phoenix lays on the mincing like a trowel, and the make-up, too. He’s weak, vain, decadent, and has the hots for his sister Lucilla (Connie Nielsen). Even the Bushes would think twice before running this guy for emperor.
Having spent 25 years waging war for the glory of Rome, Marcus Aurelius (Richard Harris) senses there’s not much point leaving it in the hands of an emperor who’d be queen for a day. So he tells Commodus he will not succeed him. Instead, he is going to make his brave general Maximus a “trustee” until Rome is ready to become a republic again. Maximus (Russell Crowe) is a Colin Powell type of general: a nice fellow everyone respects who supposedly has no public ambitions. Commodus, though, has other ideas, and suffocates his father. As the old showbiz saying has it, dying is easy, Commodus is hard. The effete decadent mincer becomes emperor, and promptly orders the death of Maximus and the crucifixion of the general’s wife and child back in Spain.
But Maximus escapes, and what follows in Gladiator is the story of how he takes his revenge and becomes the eponymous Gladiator lui-même. It’s payback time, and, under Ridley Scott’s lean direction, that means there’s no room for sub-plots. Somewhere in pre-production, the archers lobbed their flaming shafts at the script and laid it as bare as those Germanic forests. Not only are there no sub-plots, there’s barely any plot for any sub-plot to be sub-. Once the wife and kid are dead, there’s nothing very emotional at stake. There’s no romantic interest, unless you count Commodus trying to get it on with sis. There’s a hint of backstory at the Senate, where the massed ranks of British Equity have gathered for a vast toga party (the Toga Party having a majority in the Senate at that time). But there’s no dialogue worth speaking of, except statements of the obvious. When the mob is being fickle, as mobs are wont to be, the Emperor is told: “The mob is fickle, sire.” All the lines have been pre-tested in earlier toga romps, and the only one that seems to have been specially written for this picture is Oliver Reed’s complaint that some crook dealer has sold him a pair of homosexual giraffes.
But none of that matters because Ridley Scott photographs the film so brilliantly and mesmerically that they could all be speaking Germaniac and it wouldn’t impair the storytelling. It helps that almost everyone in the movie is a pre-designated great actor, so you tend to assume there’s a lot of great acting going on, even though most of it’s just thoughtful reaction shots. The mob bays for blood. Cut to Derek Jacobi looking thoughtful. They bay some more. Cut to Connie Nielsen looking pensive from atop her fabulous neck. They stop baying. Cut to Russell Crowe looking thoughtful. What are they thinking so pensively? “Hmm. I wish I’d got the gay giraffe line”?
