Oh dear. I think Cathy Brennan is the furthest person from being a “Red Piller” possible.
While she has beliefs rooted in radical feminism, and has stated her position as gender critical - it would be an extreme stretch to lump her in with a bunch of misogynist dudes bemoaning a feminist conspiracy with regards to their perceived social and sexual failures.
Huh. That Neoreactionary crowd sounds like latter-day Randians who just put hand-drawn “Galt’s Gulch” signs up over the doors to their basement sanctuaries. “Monarchies & authoritarianism are great, as long as I’m the authoritarian monarch…”
It is trivial to manipulate political compass results. The results URL contains the co-ordinates in plain text.
Good thing they’re young. If they were old, they’d be ranting about chemtrails and vaccines and fluoride, and have no idea what bitcoin is.
(I keep my bitcoins in a box under the bed, just to be sure, heh heh …)
While they call themselves gender critical, they take positions that seem gender essentialist.
It’s funny, but I get the feeling these are the same guys who would have been committed socialists a hundred years ago.
I’ve never thought much of the popular “political compass” quiz, but I’m still surprised by that result. One thing I noticed about the 8chan politics board were frequent assertions that they were astonished that outsiders thought the Nazis were on the extreme right, not on the left. But it’s also of note that many of the participants identified as Nazis or fascists.
It may also be worth noting, that when fascist movements arose in the early twentieth century, some leftist authors were puzzled by the ways in which they were different from familiar patterns of political reaction – arguably the Nazis did appropriate some ideas from the left, most notably reflected by their name. Left and right aren’t the clearest of political descriptors.
Incidentally, I used to follow an email list for the role-playing game Traveller, and for some reason, a lot of its fans described themselves as libertarians who opposed democracy and favored aristocracy. The idea was that aristocrats were trained from childhood to handle governance, so a small government by aristocrats would be more efficient. (They were terrible historians.) The game designers seemed bemused by this; these fans tended to treat the game setting, featuring an empire run by a stagnant and ineffectual interstellar aristocracy, as if it were a description of a future utopia. The funny thing to me now is that I’d mention this to people at the time, and they doubted these people could be real, since libertarianism and aristocracy seemed self-evidently to be direct contradictions. But it’s become an increasingly popular set of ideas in some circles, apparently.
GamerGaters identify as left-libertarians
Darn it. I’ve sometimes tried to use that term to describe my politics, but I certainly don’t share much with those folks and don’t want to associate with them.
What is a good way to say: “I support diversity, inclusion, social justice, equality, personal liberty and am fine with government as a way to coordinate cooperation and provide a safety net (including healthcare and a living wage) while leveling the playing field against monarchs and plutarchs, but I don’t want a government that acts as a nanny or a police state.”
Do we have to invent a new term for that? I mean besides “dream on.”
The not-very-nice area of my brain where I store my Player Characters and Evil GameMaster Plans, upon reading this section, immediately began outlining a plan of targeted ponzi schemes and other such scams, with the intent of using the funds thus accrued for social programs…
I think we call that “Socialist.”
I do so as a complement. Others… not so much.
I wasn’t aware that there was a debate about whether Nazis were/are extreme left or right. Communists were deported to concentrations camps along with Jews, Roma, gays, Catholics, Jehova’s Witnesses, and others.
Neo Nazis are considered extreme right, and fascists are considered extreme right, so how is it possible that Nazis could be considered extreme left? Am I missing something?
I used to moderate the Eclipse Phase forum last year. We had a few of these jokers dominating the forum before I was brought on, and I’ve seen similar patterns to what you’re describing there. One, in fact, was a devout Christian and anarchocapitalist, who outright stated that he was a big Ayn Rand fan and considered himself to be a worshipper of the posthuman friendly AIs. I once asked him obliquely if the cognitive dissonance hurt when it got that extreme.
Basically what these guys are is a revival of mid 20th century fascism, but in our present time of crisis. I am not using fascist here as a term of abuse, but in the descriptive sense. They resurrect a lot of fascist ideas (anti-egalitarianism, racism, anti-liberalism/socialism/communism, anti-democracy, pro-capitalism, religiousity, reactionary traditionalism, etc.), but thanks to fascists starting the largest war in human history, this “Redpill Right” tends to be a bit more circumspect about using the f-word to self describe in polite company. So they strive to present themselves as a new and original political movement to obscure attempts to see them in a proper historical context.
yup. in northern europe that would be a social democrat. You assume that everyone will play nice, regulate when they fail to and always take the side of the citizen over the corporation.
This essay is junk. It repeatedly damns these red pill people for something then uses the same argument against them.
such as the conclusion any woman or person of color who outperforms a Redpiller must have cheated to do so, either with sexual favors or affirmative action. But it takes passive forms, too, such as the corresponding belief that any time white men have an advantage over anyone else, it must be because those men are just better at it, rather than for systemic reasons.
In this example the writer complains that the red pill people think women and PoC “must have cheated” meaning in this case using the politically correct system. Then the writer says men only do better due to systemic reasons.
The disgusting actions of many in the red pill type communities are bad enough without writing one side “attack” pieces against them. I’ve already seen so many have their sympathies drift toward these red pill types because of the uneven handling of pieces like this one that I am sick of it.
I know I will probably get slammed for this but I just don’t see why people can’t take their politics out of their writing when they are purporting to be explaining something. This piece should not be title “a beginners guide” it should be title “my opinion of.”
There are things this piece gets right, but also way too many things which, at least to me, comes across as opinionated slams against groups the author despises.
This comment is only my opinion, but I am just exasperated by articles like this.
No, they would have been committed fascists, because the anti-egalitarian political positions they advocate nearly entirely overlap with fascism from almost a century ago.
Your comma-separated list meshes fairly well with my belief system, and I call myself a Free Market Socialist.
The Nazi party were National Socialism. Claiming that nazis were the left lets people put stalin, pol pot and hitler into the same box and blame leftists for everything bad that has ever happened in the world. It’s convenient to ignore that extremist nationalism and anti-minority authoritarianism is the real commonality.
