After Elon met w/ Netanyahu last yr, he came back spewing Pro-Israel talking pts.Twitter immediately started banning thousands of accts who exposed Israeli crimes(banned both 'Anti-Racist'-Leftists & 'Pro-White'-RightWingers). Trump brags that he's the most Pro-Israel President ever. When Evan calls Elon & Trump 'Nazis' & refuses to detail their 'contributions' to the slaughter & ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, he's giving cover to Elon & Trump. They are not antisemitic. In fact there are few better friends to the Jewish-Zionist community than Musk & Trump. Calling Elon & Trump 'Nazis' is the best gift you can give to Zionist extremists.(Propaganda by omission is still propaganda). Since the Nazis were defeated in 1945, there is perhaps no more brutal right wing, blood & soil EthnoState in the world, than Israel.
If you truly care about the suffering of 'ppl of color' in the world, you would spend your time detailing untold truths & how billionaires, elites & world leaders keep the population passive & distracted. What you wouldn't do is seemingly copy & paste your average blue haired 13 yr old girls tik-tok acct, filled with name calling & TMZ & CNN headlines.
Hi Evan, I didn't realize Seltzer had linked to this article, so I'll respond now.
I'm sorry that you have to rely on Seltzer (or that orbit of characters) about my "political movement to the right", because that's not really correct. Obviously a Bernie Sanders bro like Seltzer sees right-wingers everywhere he looks, but the truth is a bit more nuanced.
I voted for Gore in 2000, Nader in 2004 (protest vote), McCain in 2008 (formerly the Democrats' most favorite Republican until he ran, and dusted off as a saint when he opposed Trump), Romney in 2012, Clinton in 2016, blank in 2020 (protest vote, again), and RFK Jr. in 2024. In summary, I have voted for both parties, and independents; I assume Seltzer has only voted for Democrats his entire life, yet he pretends I'm the biased one.
In local and state elections, I have voted for both parties, varying from election to election, candidate to candidate. When it comes to referendums and such, I mostly vote along with the Democrats, especially when it comes to old school bread and butter issues.
In Norwegian politics, I have voted for Ap, V and H. I'm what they call a classic liberal, yet find myself having to turn up my nose at the new radical woke movement and all its incarnations in various political parties. Being anti-woke is far from "moving to the right", it's mostly just standing still and refusing to be bullied into absurd political territory, such as suddenly pretending scientific facts about sex no longer applies.
My political journey has been pretty stable since I became more politically aware after 9/11, after an initial turn towards the center and independent affiliation away from the Democrats, due to their dishonest politicization of the Iraq war, a war Clinton, Kerry, Biden and the rest of the lot had always wanted to carry out against Saddam, but then ran against Bush when it proved politically expedient.
The dishonest media attacks on Bush (who also was supposedly Hitler, it's funny how things never really change), and the ease with which it was possible to prove their dishonesty, made me cynical about how the press was using its immense power, not to inform, but to smear, lie, and spread political propaganda, mostly to the benefit of the Democrats (and no, not "liberals", which Seltzer likes to point out, included smearing Bernie Sanders).
You say Trump would have been removed from the political system 20 years ago, and that's probably true, but only because the press at that time had much more control over the public's access to information, and the media business model has changed a lot since then. It's no accident that Trump received billions of dollars in free media from the press during the 2016 campaign; like CBS News chief Moonves openly admitted, Trump is good for business. They thought they were harming Trump with all the negative coverage, but they were actually just giving him an enormous platform.
About Elon Musk's hand gesture, you say that I am the one who pops up to ask people to not believe their own eyes and ask them to suspend disbelief. However, that's backwards, since the media obviously have the supreme power to define such things before people have even seen the video clip, a phenomenon or tactic known as priming, which people have had a lot of fun with when it comes to videos where people see different colors depending on what they were told beforehand.
Before 99.9% of people saw the video of Musk's gesture, the newspaper title blared: NAZI SALUTE. They were told what they were going to see, before they saw it. Most people are passive conformists, and will try to convince themselves of something someone they see as an authority has already told them is true, even if they have to quench any doubt that might bubble up. I do not have that power, I am working to unwrap this brainwashing after it has already happened, which is almost impossible, not to mention because of social proof: everyone else believes what the media told them, who are you to tell me something different?!
A video surfaced of Tim Walz doing the exact same gesture, albeit not as vigorously as Musk. Is he a secret Nazi? Of course not, no one would have taken him to be one, nor did they see his gesture and pretend they thought it was a Nazi salute. This was not because it didn't resemble one in any way, but because there was no pre-existing desire to tie him to Nazis. With Musk, there was.
I watched the video of Musk before all the headlines about Nazi salutes started popping up, and I too saw what was going to happen: this gesture would no doubt be dubbed a Nazi salute, and plastered everywhere in an attempt to smear Musk. Obviously, I was right, and that's exactly what happened. I've been watching the media operate for 20 years, and I can usually predict exactly how the media is going to cover something.
What Seltzer and many others associated with the media do these days is start with the conclusion, which is usually politically expedient, and then try finding evidence that fits with this. They were already on Musk's case, he had opened the free speech floodgates on Twitter/X, he had removed all of Twitter's previous political censorship, had shut down the various government entities influence operations over Twitter, and now he was doing the ultimate evil: supporting Trump. The anti-Musk and anti-Tesla propaganda started immediately after it became apparent that Musk was going to buy Twitter, and has not abated since then. It was done so out in the open that it does not even need to be studied.
So there was already a need and will to smear Musk, and by extension, Trump. Anything Musk (or Vance, or Trump, or anyone in Trump's orbit) does that can be misconstrued, twisted, warped into a smear on them, will be made into a smear of them. The list for Trump is a mile long by now (the "fine people" hoax, the Russia hoax, etc) but now they're stacking it up for Musk, since he is seen as a threat to government largesse, someone who is widening the Overton window on whether it's OK to support fiscal austerity again.
Does Musk believe that mass immigration is a problem? Yes, as do a large majority of voters in the US and many other countries.
Does Musk exhibit cynicism about the mainstream media, and the political establishment in many countries? Yes, as do a large majority of voters in the US and other countries.
Does Musk have a distaste for everything woke? Yes, as do a majority of voters most places.
Does Musk support political parties that aim to solve or oppose these two things, primarily these three things? Yes, such as AfD in Germany, a populist national conservative party. It would be a mistake, though, to assume that Musk supports them for any other reasons besides those which he explicitly enumerates, because that would be a logical fallacy. Most people aren't political hacks and do not believe or support 100% of everything a party they vote for stands for, yet this is precisely the logic being used against Musk (and many others).
Are some people associated with AfD Nazi-adjacent? Probably. Are most or all? No. Are the 20% of German voters who voted for AfD all a bunch of Nazis? Literally, of course not. In the imaginations of people like Thomas Seltzer, definitely. It's all about the neurotic habit to engage in guilt-by-association, due to a fear of being smeared with the same tactic themselves.
If you read AfD's political program, and if you look back at all the really dumb policies the German political establishment have put their populace through the past 2 decades, you can easily see why any random German would vote for them, entirely independent of the daily smears from the media.
Does Musk loan ideas, thoughts, and information from unsavory sources? Yes, although this gets misconstrued as him supporting everything those sources believe about everything, whereas Musk is transactional in his use of information. To make the point clear: if Hitler had invented a cure for cancer, would you disavow the cure simply because Hitler invented it? Probably not, but who knows these days.
Musk will use and share information from pretty much anyone, as long as that information is useful to him or something he believes to be true; he does not care who came up with it. This is obviously very alarming to neurotic people, but only because they are sick with keeping up appearances and do not want to be smeared with guilty-by-association attacks from other neurotic people, who are always on watch for ways to one-up their peers in a back-handed, passive-aggressive manner.
There is a basic lack of empathy from Seltzer and others here, because they believe that everyone else acts, thinks and believes the same way as they do. They have a need to only use thoughts from ideologically pure people, because that off-loads them the responsibility of being associated with anything "wrong" that their source has ever engaged in. They are deathly afraid of what others think of them, and thus try to avoid any possibility of guilt-by-association, even to extremes. That Musk and many others do not fit this manner of being, just does not register with them, because they lack the empathy to understand how other people think and behave, and why.
Or at least they pretend to not understand it, to score political points.
So where you see "interactions with racists, fascists, Nazis, and antisemites", the reality is that there will be a racist that say something mundane, and Musk will agree with it. He doesn't care who this person is, he doesn't do a full background check on them before interacting with them; he's liberal when it comes to who he talks to, and interacts with. Seltzer and others, are of course, the opposite. They will ensure that they never positively engage with anyone who has a single thoughtcrime on their record - to avoid this guilt-by-association game that they themselves play.
Has Musk opened up X to many unsavory characters? Yes, he has - because their speech is protected by the First Amendment, and Musk has stated plainly that he does not believe in creating an arbitrary system of censorship outside of the laws of the country when it comes to the matter of speech.
You can criticize him all you want for the way he interacts with unsavory characters, that he does not do due diligence on everyone he interacts with, that he is willing to have a dialog with and use ideas from people who have other ideas that are unsavory. Yet it's another matter to jump from that over to pretending he believes in and supports every single thing that these people he interacts with do, which is precisely the type of "First Price" stuff you were talking about.
Here you engage in the same type of sleight of hand as Seltzer (well, he has just plagiarized a bunch of your stuff basically), like the claim about Posobiec and "unhuman". If you read the part of the book that first explains what he means by "unhumans", it is those on the left who are all too ready to kill their enemies by accepting the propaganda of their ideological heros, such as the great genocidal communist dictators of our time. You warp this into "labeling people on the political left as "unhumans", removing the qualifiers he used, namely, people who (like the Italian and German brown shirts) will allow themselves to be caught up in a mass movement to murder their political enemies, and who will excuse the mass murder of people in the name of ideology.
You smear Marc Andreassen in the same manner, by taking his mention of Filipo Marinetti out of context. Andreassen was not making a saint out of Marinetti for his involvement with Italian fascism, but because he founded the futurist movement, which ties into the techno-optimism he was writing about. Once again, it's the tired old guilt-by-association gimmick.
Taking Curtis Yarvin out of context is not particularly hard, either. You pretend, like many others, that he is a "fan" of Anders Behring Breivik, by taking small portions of something he has written out of context, and then using that to smear JD Vance, because JD Vance used an entirely unrelated set of ideas from Yarvin. You claim Yarvin is "impressed" by ABB, but anyone who reads his entire texts on the subject, or listens to interviews of him, can immediately realize that this is false; Yarvin in fact ridicules ABB. If one were to try to summarize Yarvin's point(s) about ABB, it is that society does not really disapprove of that type of terrorism, but only when it comes from the right (he uses Nelson Mandela as an example). His point is also to dissuade right-wingers from using that type of violence, because he says that it will not work to accomplish the goals they are using that violence for, mistaken that they can get away with violence like the left can (BLM, Antifa, etc).
See how this guilt-by-association game works? It's dishonest and disingenuous.
Also disingenuous is the sudden unwillingness to accept Musk's own claim of having Aspbergers. Back in 2021 when he revealed this to the world, the media did not disbelieve it at all, and even celebrated it as a great happening for the cause of everyone with autism. See, that was back before Musk became a threat to their interests, simply a quirky character that had made the electric vehicle dream come true, a green hero.
Ah but now, even though the media for many years have pointed out all the telltale signs of his autism, now that complicates the new narrative that obviously he has full control over all his physical communication expressions, and in fact, no person would ever do what he did unless they were a literal Nazi (except for Tim Walz and many others who have done the same type of movements, but they are immune through there being no wish to smear them as Nazis).
You say I don't mention that Musk has made X a playground for facists; but I did, because I said he is a free speech absolutist, and that by definition entails fascists being permitted to take part in the exchange of ideas, which are in fact not illegal by US law, although they probably are (along with any insults of politicians) in countries like Germany. So you are smearing Musk as a fascist for allowing fascists to speak, while holding out Stasi-like control of speech being practiced in Germany, UK and other countries as the "good" model. Why? Well, because you don't actually believe in free speech, you believe in censoring and punishing speech you find distasteful or wrong.
Your entirely disingenuous summary of the censorship conspiracy regarding the Hunter Biden laptop story, shows you are not debating in good faith, or you are simply not interested in wading into subjects where your newfound worldview will be challenged.
Documentary evidence proves that former intelligence resources conspired with the Biden campaign to pretend that the Hunter Biden laptop story in the New York Post was a "hack and leak" scenario connected to Russian propaganda, while former FBI brass James Baker, now working as deputy chief of legal in Twitter, communicated with FBI employees about the need to censor the story, which Baker eventually managed to convince Twitter management about, helpfully with the aid of the aforementioned bullshit from 51 intelligence officials who now, after the fact, have admitted plainly that they did it to help Biden.
Before this happened, sources connected to the FBI set up a workshop at the Aspen Institute to practice this sort of "hack and leak" scenario, where they created a scenario that involved the Bidens, and journalists from New York Times, Washington Post, as well as top people from Facebook, Twitter, etc. were there to be primed for this. How did they know to prime for it? Well, you see, the FBI had been given the laptop one year earlier, and knew it was all true. However, the person who gave it to them, started making noise the following year when they had tried to bury it, and eventually, word of it reached Rudy Giuliani. Sources at the FBI got wind of this, and started taking precautionary measures.
In sum, a presidential campaign (Biden) conspired with former intelligence officials, the media, a former FBI deputy, current FBI agents, to censor America's oldest newspaper, to protect Biden from entirely true information about his sons many shady financial dealings with Chinese and others, in furtherance of tithes to "the big guy", who everyone understands was his father. It put the lie to Joe Biden's many claims that he did not know anything about his son's financial dealings; the laptop had lots of evidence not only of Joe's knowledge, but also taking meetings to use his influence and position.
They censored a newspaper, it was as far as Twitter (under advice from a former FBI deputy) censoring all tweets linking or mentioning the story, as well as suspending the account of the newspaper and the reporters involved, even censoring DMs of people attempting to send each other information about the story. The mainstream media lined up to call it "Russian disinformation" etc, and managed to keep the topic out of the 2nd presidential debate.
If the immense weight of what this actually entails does not register with you, it's because you've decided to be a political hack.
You claim that you do not want a society where personal attacks lies, and being against the truth are normal or OK, but that is in fact precisely what you endorse and engage in yourself.
To get there, you have to pretend that I am some kind of right-winger, that Musk is a Nazi, that Thiel and Andreassen are fascists or Nazis, that 20% of Germany are Nazis, that 50% of America are Nazis, ad naseum. It's all just a parlor game to avoid having a real discussion about the world as it is, and how to best solve the problems before us.
You are all too similar to the enemies you seek to attack, while those of us who are on neither side, get smeared as belonging to The Other.
My translator only reached a third of your essay, Evan. Although I am too busy tomorrow to finish translation, I will before the end of the week. The introduction of the essay is thoughtful, and introspective. I have personally witnessed your support for Palestinians in the past, and at other times, other ethnicities. Who knew? It's possible to stand against bullying of any race without disregarding another one. 👏
After Elon met w/ Netanyahu last yr, he came back spewing Pro-Israel talking pts.Twitter immediately started banning thousands of accts who exposed Israeli crimes(banned both 'Anti-Racist'-Leftists & 'Pro-White'-RightWingers). Trump brags that he's the most Pro-Israel President ever. When Evan calls Elon & Trump 'Nazis' & refuses to detail their 'contributions' to the slaughter & ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, he's giving cover to Elon & Trump. They are not antisemitic. In fact there are few better friends to the Jewish-Zionist community than Musk & Trump. Calling Elon & Trump 'Nazis' is the best gift you can give to Zionist extremists.(Propaganda by omission is still propaganda). Since the Nazis were defeated in 1945, there is perhaps no more brutal right wing, blood & soil EthnoState in the world, than Israel.
If you truly care about the suffering of 'ppl of color' in the world, you would spend your time detailing untold truths & how billionaires, elites & world leaders keep the population passive & distracted. What you wouldn't do is seemingly copy & paste your average blue haired 13 yr old girls tik-tok acct, filled with name calling & TMZ & CNN headlines.
Just gonna let others read my piece and then your comment and decide for themselves how much your input is worth.
Hi Evan, I didn't realize Seltzer had linked to this article, so I'll respond now.
I'm sorry that you have to rely on Seltzer (or that orbit of characters) about my "political movement to the right", because that's not really correct. Obviously a Bernie Sanders bro like Seltzer sees right-wingers everywhere he looks, but the truth is a bit more nuanced.
I voted for Gore in 2000, Nader in 2004 (protest vote), McCain in 2008 (formerly the Democrats' most favorite Republican until he ran, and dusted off as a saint when he opposed Trump), Romney in 2012, Clinton in 2016, blank in 2020 (protest vote, again), and RFK Jr. in 2024. In summary, I have voted for both parties, and independents; I assume Seltzer has only voted for Democrats his entire life, yet he pretends I'm the biased one.
In local and state elections, I have voted for both parties, varying from election to election, candidate to candidate. When it comes to referendums and such, I mostly vote along with the Democrats, especially when it comes to old school bread and butter issues.
In Norwegian politics, I have voted for Ap, V and H. I'm what they call a classic liberal, yet find myself having to turn up my nose at the new radical woke movement and all its incarnations in various political parties. Being anti-woke is far from "moving to the right", it's mostly just standing still and refusing to be bullied into absurd political territory, such as suddenly pretending scientific facts about sex no longer applies.
My political journey has been pretty stable since I became more politically aware after 9/11, after an initial turn towards the center and independent affiliation away from the Democrats, due to their dishonest politicization of the Iraq war, a war Clinton, Kerry, Biden and the rest of the lot had always wanted to carry out against Saddam, but then ran against Bush when it proved politically expedient.
The dishonest media attacks on Bush (who also was supposedly Hitler, it's funny how things never really change), and the ease with which it was possible to prove their dishonesty, made me cynical about how the press was using its immense power, not to inform, but to smear, lie, and spread political propaganda, mostly to the benefit of the Democrats (and no, not "liberals", which Seltzer likes to point out, included smearing Bernie Sanders).
You say Trump would have been removed from the political system 20 years ago, and that's probably true, but only because the press at that time had much more control over the public's access to information, and the media business model has changed a lot since then. It's no accident that Trump received billions of dollars in free media from the press during the 2016 campaign; like CBS News chief Moonves openly admitted, Trump is good for business. They thought they were harming Trump with all the negative coverage, but they were actually just giving him an enormous platform.
About Elon Musk's hand gesture, you say that I am the one who pops up to ask people to not believe their own eyes and ask them to suspend disbelief. However, that's backwards, since the media obviously have the supreme power to define such things before people have even seen the video clip, a phenomenon or tactic known as priming, which people have had a lot of fun with when it comes to videos where people see different colors depending on what they were told beforehand.
Before 99.9% of people saw the video of Musk's gesture, the newspaper title blared: NAZI SALUTE. They were told what they were going to see, before they saw it. Most people are passive conformists, and will try to convince themselves of something someone they see as an authority has already told them is true, even if they have to quench any doubt that might bubble up. I do not have that power, I am working to unwrap this brainwashing after it has already happened, which is almost impossible, not to mention because of social proof: everyone else believes what the media told them, who are you to tell me something different?!
A video surfaced of Tim Walz doing the exact same gesture, albeit not as vigorously as Musk. Is he a secret Nazi? Of course not, no one would have taken him to be one, nor did they see his gesture and pretend they thought it was a Nazi salute. This was not because it didn't resemble one in any way, but because there was no pre-existing desire to tie him to Nazis. With Musk, there was.
I watched the video of Musk before all the headlines about Nazi salutes started popping up, and I too saw what was going to happen: this gesture would no doubt be dubbed a Nazi salute, and plastered everywhere in an attempt to smear Musk. Obviously, I was right, and that's exactly what happened. I've been watching the media operate for 20 years, and I can usually predict exactly how the media is going to cover something.
What Seltzer and many others associated with the media do these days is start with the conclusion, which is usually politically expedient, and then try finding evidence that fits with this. They were already on Musk's case, he had opened the free speech floodgates on Twitter/X, he had removed all of Twitter's previous political censorship, had shut down the various government entities influence operations over Twitter, and now he was doing the ultimate evil: supporting Trump. The anti-Musk and anti-Tesla propaganda started immediately after it became apparent that Musk was going to buy Twitter, and has not abated since then. It was done so out in the open that it does not even need to be studied.
So there was already a need and will to smear Musk, and by extension, Trump. Anything Musk (or Vance, or Trump, or anyone in Trump's orbit) does that can be misconstrued, twisted, warped into a smear on them, will be made into a smear of them. The list for Trump is a mile long by now (the "fine people" hoax, the Russia hoax, etc) but now they're stacking it up for Musk, since he is seen as a threat to government largesse, someone who is widening the Overton window on whether it's OK to support fiscal austerity again.
Does Musk believe that mass immigration is a problem? Yes, as do a large majority of voters in the US and many other countries.
Does Musk exhibit cynicism about the mainstream media, and the political establishment in many countries? Yes, as do a large majority of voters in the US and other countries.
Does Musk have a distaste for everything woke? Yes, as do a majority of voters most places.
Does Musk support political parties that aim to solve or oppose these two things, primarily these three things? Yes, such as AfD in Germany, a populist national conservative party. It would be a mistake, though, to assume that Musk supports them for any other reasons besides those which he explicitly enumerates, because that would be a logical fallacy. Most people aren't political hacks and do not believe or support 100% of everything a party they vote for stands for, yet this is precisely the logic being used against Musk (and many others).
Are some people associated with AfD Nazi-adjacent? Probably. Are most or all? No. Are the 20% of German voters who voted for AfD all a bunch of Nazis? Literally, of course not. In the imaginations of people like Thomas Seltzer, definitely. It's all about the neurotic habit to engage in guilt-by-association, due to a fear of being smeared with the same tactic themselves.
If you read AfD's political program, and if you look back at all the really dumb policies the German political establishment have put their populace through the past 2 decades, you can easily see why any random German would vote for them, entirely independent of the daily smears from the media.
Does Musk loan ideas, thoughts, and information from unsavory sources? Yes, although this gets misconstrued as him supporting everything those sources believe about everything, whereas Musk is transactional in his use of information. To make the point clear: if Hitler had invented a cure for cancer, would you disavow the cure simply because Hitler invented it? Probably not, but who knows these days.
Musk will use and share information from pretty much anyone, as long as that information is useful to him or something he believes to be true; he does not care who came up with it. This is obviously very alarming to neurotic people, but only because they are sick with keeping up appearances and do not want to be smeared with guilty-by-association attacks from other neurotic people, who are always on watch for ways to one-up their peers in a back-handed, passive-aggressive manner.
There is a basic lack of empathy from Seltzer and others here, because they believe that everyone else acts, thinks and believes the same way as they do. They have a need to only use thoughts from ideologically pure people, because that off-loads them the responsibility of being associated with anything "wrong" that their source has ever engaged in. They are deathly afraid of what others think of them, and thus try to avoid any possibility of guilt-by-association, even to extremes. That Musk and many others do not fit this manner of being, just does not register with them, because they lack the empathy to understand how other people think and behave, and why.
Or at least they pretend to not understand it, to score political points.
So where you see "interactions with racists, fascists, Nazis, and antisemites", the reality is that there will be a racist that say something mundane, and Musk will agree with it. He doesn't care who this person is, he doesn't do a full background check on them before interacting with them; he's liberal when it comes to who he talks to, and interacts with. Seltzer and others, are of course, the opposite. They will ensure that they never positively engage with anyone who has a single thoughtcrime on their record - to avoid this guilt-by-association game that they themselves play.
Has Musk opened up X to many unsavory characters? Yes, he has - because their speech is protected by the First Amendment, and Musk has stated plainly that he does not believe in creating an arbitrary system of censorship outside of the laws of the country when it comes to the matter of speech.
You can criticize him all you want for the way he interacts with unsavory characters, that he does not do due diligence on everyone he interacts with, that he is willing to have a dialog with and use ideas from people who have other ideas that are unsavory. Yet it's another matter to jump from that over to pretending he believes in and supports every single thing that these people he interacts with do, which is precisely the type of "First Price" stuff you were talking about.
Here you engage in the same type of sleight of hand as Seltzer (well, he has just plagiarized a bunch of your stuff basically), like the claim about Posobiec and "unhuman". If you read the part of the book that first explains what he means by "unhumans", it is those on the left who are all too ready to kill their enemies by accepting the propaganda of their ideological heros, such as the great genocidal communist dictators of our time. You warp this into "labeling people on the political left as "unhumans", removing the qualifiers he used, namely, people who (like the Italian and German brown shirts) will allow themselves to be caught up in a mass movement to murder their political enemies, and who will excuse the mass murder of people in the name of ideology.
You smear Marc Andreassen in the same manner, by taking his mention of Filipo Marinetti out of context. Andreassen was not making a saint out of Marinetti for his involvement with Italian fascism, but because he founded the futurist movement, which ties into the techno-optimism he was writing about. Once again, it's the tired old guilt-by-association gimmick.
Taking Curtis Yarvin out of context is not particularly hard, either. You pretend, like many others, that he is a "fan" of Anders Behring Breivik, by taking small portions of something he has written out of context, and then using that to smear JD Vance, because JD Vance used an entirely unrelated set of ideas from Yarvin. You claim Yarvin is "impressed" by ABB, but anyone who reads his entire texts on the subject, or listens to interviews of him, can immediately realize that this is false; Yarvin in fact ridicules ABB. If one were to try to summarize Yarvin's point(s) about ABB, it is that society does not really disapprove of that type of terrorism, but only when it comes from the right (he uses Nelson Mandela as an example). His point is also to dissuade right-wingers from using that type of violence, because he says that it will not work to accomplish the goals they are using that violence for, mistaken that they can get away with violence like the left can (BLM, Antifa, etc).
See how this guilt-by-association game works? It's dishonest and disingenuous.
Also disingenuous is the sudden unwillingness to accept Musk's own claim of having Aspbergers. Back in 2021 when he revealed this to the world, the media did not disbelieve it at all, and even celebrated it as a great happening for the cause of everyone with autism. See, that was back before Musk became a threat to their interests, simply a quirky character that had made the electric vehicle dream come true, a green hero.
Ah but now, even though the media for many years have pointed out all the telltale signs of his autism, now that complicates the new narrative that obviously he has full control over all his physical communication expressions, and in fact, no person would ever do what he did unless they were a literal Nazi (except for Tim Walz and many others who have done the same type of movements, but they are immune through there being no wish to smear them as Nazis).
You say I don't mention that Musk has made X a playground for facists; but I did, because I said he is a free speech absolutist, and that by definition entails fascists being permitted to take part in the exchange of ideas, which are in fact not illegal by US law, although they probably are (along with any insults of politicians) in countries like Germany. So you are smearing Musk as a fascist for allowing fascists to speak, while holding out Stasi-like control of speech being practiced in Germany, UK and other countries as the "good" model. Why? Well, because you don't actually believe in free speech, you believe in censoring and punishing speech you find distasteful or wrong.
Your entirely disingenuous summary of the censorship conspiracy regarding the Hunter Biden laptop story, shows you are not debating in good faith, or you are simply not interested in wading into subjects where your newfound worldview will be challenged.
Documentary evidence proves that former intelligence resources conspired with the Biden campaign to pretend that the Hunter Biden laptop story in the New York Post was a "hack and leak" scenario connected to Russian propaganda, while former FBI brass James Baker, now working as deputy chief of legal in Twitter, communicated with FBI employees about the need to censor the story, which Baker eventually managed to convince Twitter management about, helpfully with the aid of the aforementioned bullshit from 51 intelligence officials who now, after the fact, have admitted plainly that they did it to help Biden.
Before this happened, sources connected to the FBI set up a workshop at the Aspen Institute to practice this sort of "hack and leak" scenario, where they created a scenario that involved the Bidens, and journalists from New York Times, Washington Post, as well as top people from Facebook, Twitter, etc. were there to be primed for this. How did they know to prime for it? Well, you see, the FBI had been given the laptop one year earlier, and knew it was all true. However, the person who gave it to them, started making noise the following year when they had tried to bury it, and eventually, word of it reached Rudy Giuliani. Sources at the FBI got wind of this, and started taking precautionary measures.
In sum, a presidential campaign (Biden) conspired with former intelligence officials, the media, a former FBI deputy, current FBI agents, to censor America's oldest newspaper, to protect Biden from entirely true information about his sons many shady financial dealings with Chinese and others, in furtherance of tithes to "the big guy", who everyone understands was his father. It put the lie to Joe Biden's many claims that he did not know anything about his son's financial dealings; the laptop had lots of evidence not only of Joe's knowledge, but also taking meetings to use his influence and position.
They censored a newspaper, it was as far as Twitter (under advice from a former FBI deputy) censoring all tweets linking or mentioning the story, as well as suspending the account of the newspaper and the reporters involved, even censoring DMs of people attempting to send each other information about the story. The mainstream media lined up to call it "Russian disinformation" etc, and managed to keep the topic out of the 2nd presidential debate.
If the immense weight of what this actually entails does not register with you, it's because you've decided to be a political hack.
You claim that you do not want a society where personal attacks lies, and being against the truth are normal or OK, but that is in fact precisely what you endorse and engage in yourself.
To get there, you have to pretend that I am some kind of right-winger, that Musk is a Nazi, that Thiel and Andreassen are fascists or Nazis, that 20% of Germany are Nazis, that 50% of America are Nazis, ad naseum. It's all just a parlor game to avoid having a real discussion about the world as it is, and how to best solve the problems before us.
You are all too similar to the enemies you seek to attack, while those of us who are on neither side, get smeared as belonging to The Other.
https://evanramseymclaren.substack.com/p/george-gooding-responds
My translator only reached a third of your essay, Evan. Although I am too busy tomorrow to finish translation, I will before the end of the week. The introduction of the essay is thoughtful, and introspective. I have personally witnessed your support for Palestinians in the past, and at other times, other ethnicities. Who knew? It's possible to stand against bullying of any race without disregarding another one. 👏