You’re Only Getting This Now?
When I became an anarchist, I was 18, depressed, anxious, and ready to save the world. I moved in with other anarchists and worked at a vegetarian co-op cafe. I protested against student tuition, prison privatisation, and pipeline extensions. I had lawyer’s numbers sharpied on my ankle and I assisted friends who were pepper-sprayed at demos. I tabled zines, lived with my “chosen family,” and performed slam poems about the end of the world.
In the pages of Quillette, Conor Barnes, a woke apostate, recounts his time among sad radicals:
Radical communities select for particular personality types… They attract hurt people, looking for an explanation for the pain they’ve endured… However, radical communities also attract people looking for an excuse to be violent illegalists. And the surplus of vulnerable people attracts sadists and abusers ready to exploit them. The only gate-keeping that goes on in radical communities is that of language and passion—if you can rail against capitalism in woke language, you’re in…
Abusers thrive in radical communities because radical norms are fragile and exploitable. A culture of freewheeling drug and alcohol use creates situations predators are waiting to exploit. A cultural fetishization of violence provides cover for violent and unstable people. The practice of public “call-outs” is used for power-plays far more often than for constructive feedback… Having somebody yell at me that if I didn’t admit to being a white supremacist her friends might beat me up, and that I should pay her for her emotional labour, was too much for my ideology to spin.
Update, via the comments:
Several commenters have suggested that, if you’re feeling anxious and depressed, it may not be entirely wise to join a “radical community” in which “deconstructing monogamy” and “freewheeling drug and alcohol use” are favoured activities. Especially when membership entails being surrounded by intersectional conspiracy theorists and borderline personalities, and when the stated aim of the “radical community” is to “destroy society because it cannot be redeemed by its own means.” But as we saw a few days ago, unstable people are often drawn to the kinds of activities and social groups that practically guarantee further deterioration.
And it occurs to me that the account above may also explain Laurie Penny’s sour and outlandish view of men, which doesn’t remotely describe any of the men I know, or the kind of men that any of the women I know would choose to associate with. Judging by Laurie’s own writing, her social circle seems to consist largely of far-left activists, fellow “anarcho-communists” and polyamorist suitors who presumably share her taste for disdaining bourgeois proprieties. If, as she claims, the men she associates with are so prone to dysfunction and obnoxious behaviour – more than chance alone would seem to allow – perhaps that’s less to do with men in general and more a feature of her chosen sub-culture.
Which is to say, if you play the cartoon radical and hang out almost exclusively with other cartoon radicals, you will run into a remarkable number of misfits and creeps.
K…So I’ve taken the liberty to create a GoFundMe to purchase a trebuchet for the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It was surprisingly easy to do. Please give generously. Link:
gofundme.com/trebuchet-for-university-of-illinois-uc
I think that “old fashioned” or “traditional” in the ad will probably work, pretty much regardless of where it is placed.
Old fashioned attention to detail. Old fashioned work ethic. Traditional dress code.
It’s not that SJW’s can’t work hard or dress well — and they have values for Africa. What they don’t like is to be seen to be old-fashioned or traditional — it’s literally the opposite of what they want. They’ll recognise it as code for “you won’t fit in here”.
which doesn’t remotely describe any of the men I know, or the kind of men that any of the women I know would choose to associate with
This is a key factor in their worldview.
Normally, when I see raging protesters screaming about things, they are usually describing actions of people which seem like absurd caricatures, and yet to them, they are perfectly normal.
I remember one such protest where the crowd was complaining about everything, and chanting ever leftist trope there was, including “Zionism is Nazism”. Meanwhile, six rows over were skinheads, with swastika tattoos demanding the deaths of all Jews. When asked about the inconsistency, one of the organizers very casually said that, well, of course you’re always going to have some Nazis show up when you have 50 people protesting, that’s inevitable, after all.
And yet Donald Trump can have rallies with tens of thousands of people, without a swastika in sight, but he’s a Nazi because he raised his hand in a salute, like Hitler did. But actual, Mein Kamp quoting, swastika wearing skinheads were chanting for the extermination of all Jews, and it just got brushed aside as an annoyance.
When your peer group is such that you not only can’t get a group together without Nazis showing up, but that they don’t even to stand out, you may want to consider getting a new peer group.
Which it appears Mr. Barnes has done. Expect virulent condemnation from his former associates momentarily.
I love zines and have been, on and off, involved in the world of zine and zine making for some decades now. And even at the earliest zine markets I’ve gone to – full of the most amazing and eclectic diversity of publications you can imagine – one marked feature of the markets were the few tables of anarchists and socialists, sitting amongst all the rest. And their publications were all so samey, so predictably ideological, that you really had to wonder what exactly qualified them to be there.
Quite often they’d be waving around newspapers from old-time printing presses – it was a bit like they were straight out of the 1930s in this respect, especially when you could compare them to others at the same zine fair, who would have zines that they’d stitched together themselves, or run off on photocopiers at the last minute, or folded them like origami animals to give them pages. I suppose in their devotion to old technology they were somewhat charmingly anachronistic. In their devotion to old politics, old grudges, old failed economic systems, and old tyrannical forms of government, they were far less charming.
Ordinary people convince themselves to believe, say, a new diet in a supermarket tabloid that promises the ability to lose weight while eating ice cream in bed. Alienated intellectuals, who would scoff at such pedestrian delusions, convince themselves that being furious and miserable and treating other people callously is the counterintuitive path to a world where no one is ever furious or miserable again.
It’s like they believe in homeopathy, but only for the social sciences.
if you’re feeling anxious and depressed, it may not be entirely wise to join a “radical community”… Especially when… the stated aim of the “radical community” is to “destroy society because it cannot be redeemed by its own means.”
When you put it like that…
Patrick Brown
In the end, it took me a while between privately concluding there was no God and no longer calling myself a Christian
I was raised a Christian and similarly rebelled. Then one day I had a flash of inspiration, or possibly a revelation, which was simply this: God does not belong to the church, the church belongs to God. From which I concluded that if I wished to see the beard in the sky as an elderly relative with my best interests at heart I was entirely at liberty to do so. Since then we’ve got on just fine. If others want to see Him as standing there with a stick waiting for a microsin to be committed that’s their problem.
When you put it like that…
Well, you have to wonder exactly how many warning signs – big, red, flashing ones – had to be ignored before the obvious pathologies were registered. Whatever the ideological excuses and convolutions, you’d think there would come a point at which you’d say, “Why the hell am I surrounded by these fucking awful people…?”
But again, vanity is a powerful drug. And would-be radicals are particularly susceptible.
I suppose in their devotion to old technology they were somewhat charmingly anachronistic. In their devotion to old politics, old grudges, old failed economic systems, and old tyrannical forms of government, they were far less charming.
Still amusing . . . .
When I became an anarchist, I was 18, depressed, anxious, and ready to save the world.
Pro Tip: Sort yourself out first.
Ordinary people convince themselves to believe, say, a new diet in a supermarket tabloid that promises the ability to lose weight while eating ice cream in bed. Alienated intellectuals, who would scoff at such pedestrian delusions, convince themselves that being furious and miserable and treating other people callously is the counterintuitive path to a world where no one is ever furious or miserable again.
Some people really want a license to be malevolent and will perform almost any contortion to that end.
Which is to say…
If you surround yourself with clowns, don’t be surprised if a circus breaks out.
Quote from the article:
[I]Morality and politics are intertwined in this system so that good politics become indicative of good morality. Montgomery and Bergman skewer this tendency mercilessly: “To remain pious, the priest must reveal new sins … The new Other is the not-radical-enough, the liberal, the perpetrator, the oppressor.” Because one’s good moral standing can never be guaranteed, the best way to maintain it is to attack the moral standing of others.[/I]
A positional good. Much like the materialistic, upwardly mobile status-seekers, once a critical mass of people obtain (or attain) the positional good such that it becomes banal and (shudder) [I]common[/I], a new good must be found (or, in the case of radical SJWs, invented or imagined) to set them apart on a higher plane from the vulgar (in the classical sense) hoi polloi.
“The [I] progressive stack[/I]? Nobody talks about [I]that[/I] anymore. [I]Now[/I], we implement what’s called (insert some word-salad, jargon-filled gibberish name).” (Left unspoken because it’s so obviously self-evident, “See? I’m so much more woke than you.”)
Dadgummit. Used [ instead of <. I need more coffee, clearly.
A positional good.
Absolutely.
A positional good.
Was recently having a conversation with a younger cow-orker on this very topic. I observed that in the Bad Old Days, the yuppie types were notorious for conspicuous consumption, purchasing some extravagance and leaving the cartons by the garage for at least a week, so that the neighbors could see how successful they were. The really desperate would just find some empty cartons so that they could pretend to have the material success of their neighbors.
Today, that same motivation causes people to fill their front yards and windows with every manner of sign and banner: rainbow flags, BLM placards, “All Are Welcome Here” yard signs, etc. I suppose the signs today are an improvement in that they’re not likely to bankrupt one’s household, but it still irks me that none of these clowns can see their conspicuous virtue signalling for what it really is. In reality, it’s just the new generation’s version of empty cartons meant to mark them as more “successful” than those around them.
I’d pity them, if they weren’t so busy trying to complicate my life.
Well, to be fair, the Left wants all conservatives to shut the fuck up.
Language alert—but it’s worth it, very funny:
https://spectator.us/welcome-back-titania-mcgrath/
Well, to be fair, the Left wants all conservatives to shut the fuck up.
And to be fairer, The Concourse is the Hustler of political rags. For vituperative bitches. And journo Lurid Seething, or whatever it’s name is- uh nevermind.
Well, to be fair, the Left wants all conservatives to shut the fuck up.
Is it me, or do all of these creatures write with the same tone?
I observed that in the Bad Old Days, the yuppie types were notorious for conspicuous consumption…
Ah, the glory days. Like when I showed up at my office as a young associate carrying a gold plated cigarette case with integrated lighter. Then the senior partner noted, “My, isn’t that ostentatious.”
Thus endeth my flirtation with yuppie-dom, as I concentrated on earning money for the bigwigs.
a gold plated cigarette case with integrated lighter.
Blimey. Do you work for British Intelligence?
The saddest thing was, of course, I only got about two days of practicing that slightly cocked head, wry expression “My name is ‘Shermsn…R. Sherman'”, before I was disabused of my sophistication.
Still trying to find it. Commenting here hasn’t seemed to work . . . yet.
Language alert—but it’s worth it, very funny:
“>https://spectator.us/welcome-back-titania-mcgrath/
Knowing its satire you BEG that it’s satire.
Blimey. Do you work for British Intelligence?
I’d stuff the thing with Marlboro Lights, but I left a Dunhill box lying around to fool the peasants.
a gold plated cigarette case with integrated lighter.
Blimey. Do you work for British Intelligence?
Well, there was the with the gold plated lighter, but he wasn’t OHMSS . . . .
cow-orker
I sense another veteran of alt.sysadmin.recovery.
“if you play the cartoon radical and hang out almost exclusively with other cartoon radicals, you will run into a remarkable number of misfits and creeps.”
If someone chooses to hang out almost exclusively with misfits and/or creeps, they probably are one.
Having somebody yell at me that if I didn’t admit to being a white supremacist her friends might beat me up, and that I should pay her for her emotional labour, was too much for my ideology to spin.
‘You should pay me for calling you names and threatening you’.
#wokeprivilege
When I became an anarchist, I… protested against student tuition, prison privatisation
I’m surprised nobody’s mentioned the incongruity of a self-described anarchist wanting the government to keep doing stuff.
“incongruity of a self-described anarchist wanting the government to keep doing stuff”
But it’s to be “safe” anarchy, supported by Luxury Communism. Sheesh.
You know, the more I see of our Brave New World, the more I’m convinced that the Boring Old World was better designed to keep overall order. For instance:
https://www.firstthings.com/article/2019/01/shame-storm
Had Todd known that his revenge would have probably resulted in a sound beating from the author’s husband, father, brother or brothers, or all of the above, he might have been less likely to launch the video that drove her from the U. S. to Australia. Heck, even a slander suit might have given him pause (though not as much as the likelihood of being unable to engage in further tirades because it’s hard to get a good tirade going when your jaw is shattered). Of course, under the new system, the family men would have been jailed. Under the old system, they’d have been excused under the informal, but very real, he-needed-beatin clause.
Do you realize that if we the people can revive the old system, social media might go away? We’re sitting on dynamite here!
“What are the words to avoid and the words to use in an initial job ad that will best repel sjw’s and other narcissists?”
Anything that includes the words “merit-based.” It infuriates them.
Anything that includes the words “merit-based.” It infuriates them.
Although sometimes they use “merit-based” to mean “has the right skin color”.