Today we took a late evening study of the field opposite the house. A high horizon marked by the tree perimeter, a red house at right. The composition is dominated by the cut line where the crop meets the recently cut grass which travels from lower left to distant right. It is vigorous and varied however there was some trouble with the main body of grass which I perhaps drifted a little too far from the observable and into the graphic. We fought our way to a conclusion however and are now positively buzzing from the experience, perhaps even loosened up a few endorphins.
So all is well. This term 'gaslighting' would seem to be perfect to describe the alt right tactics and strategies of Trump and Johnson. More specifically we should say 'societal gaslighting' as the original term refers to domestic psychological abuse. It came from a play, so the Borg says, but has been taken up in the realm of domestic abuse and refers to a situation whereby a victim is manipulated and tricked into being unsure about what is real, into a state of confusion, made to question ones mind and memory?
My initial source of info was a Canadian affair called Raise The Hammer and an article called How Right-Wing Radicals are Gaslighting Liberal Democracy. Very interesting all in all and a relief to have a term which so well describes and captures the manipulations of the populist right.
Another spin of the wheel1 revealed a plethora of books about gaslighting in the context of domestic abuse but also several recent books and many articles on the subject of Trump and Gaslighting: Gaslighting America: Why We Love It When Trump Lies to Us, Donald Trump is a classic gaslighter in an abusive relationship with America, DONALD TRUMP IS GASLIGHTING AMERICA, Prepare For The Ultimate Gaslighting, Six times Donald Trump used 'sarcasm' to gaslight America. On and on it goes. As a term it is very useful and in fact I cannot think of a term more characteristic of the post truth era than Gaslighting but I do hope that in the above texts there is also some reference made to why this suddenly is working and the forces behind the screen that are enabling and supporting Trump. It would not surprise me if Trump himself just wants to play golf and sit in his resort, he is not the brains behind the gaslighting, so who is? What is the aim? Is it simply a way of winning that any party would use once the effectiveness is proven or is it something more? Could we all be being primed and readied for when some huge event takes place, such as Russia supporting a Trump based coup following a election defeat? Well that, one hopes, is too far but look here, there are some good ideas to be sure in these gaslighting volumes which reveal the strategies of the far alt right and they are just in time to be used come election, but once again let us not think that this is the genius work of Trump; it is the far far alt right space tech Reich. And for this diverse set'a bastards, winning the election is not the main goal believe it of not, it is good but the real goal is to destroy liberal democracy, to break the spell of the cathedral2 etc. That is the aim. In any case the secrets of political gaslighting are out, listen to this from Amanda Carpenter, a republican: "His opponents on the left and right continue to act as if his fake narratives and conspiracy theories will bring him down, when in fact, they are the ruses that raised him up." Yes, have we not hinted at similar again and again. Or here is a interesting point of discussion from a therapist by the name of Sarkis regards the effect on the 'gasliten' and the Orwellian state of contradiction this strategy can achieve. She writes that "on Aug. 21, Trump’s former lawyer pleaded guilty to tax evasion, bank fraud and campaign-finance violations while Trump’s former campaign chairman was convicted on eight counts of bank and tax fraud. At Trump’s rally that evening, the crowd chanted, “Lock her up” — in reference to Hillary Clinton."
Well yes but I rather think that a great percentage of those chanting for Hilary to be nicked are well aware of the contradiction; they just want to win and like south american football fans know too well, to win ugly, to win by cheating and to win whilst enraging the opponents is twice as sweet.3 There will be many too of course that are understandably, given the circumstances, convinced that Trump is right and the liberal swamp of globalists are wrong.
Bad weather has kept us in these past few days where we have worked a little on the ink copies of our Wretched Painter interlude as promised but without any outstanding results. It was a headlong suggestion clearly to think we could just pick up the quill and run with it, but far more urgently than that (the ink work will progress with practice) we have been reading the Burrows text which has proved to be in turns very revealing, disturbing but perhaps even a little logical also. In addition it has given us a sense of the affirmative in the way that the ideas and characters described in the text have backed up some of what we have gleaned from the general chatter we have heard over the past couple of years with regards to the changed context; the cream shop fella Land, the blogger Yarvin, the billionaire supporters who want automation then off to mars and generally how many disparate strands and actors involved in what we still call the Post Truth Era connect up a bit. Flesh on the bone. Boyed by this new engagement we opened another clearly relevant book by a certain Wedling4 which we have hither to avoided on grounds of self preservation. It is called ALT RIGHT: From 4 Chan to the White House and promises to be an eye opening rough ride into the sad little dwellings of the troll army. But first to the Burrows text.
Killer Clowns, Techno Fogies, and Architectures of Exit: Urbit and Neoreactionary Imaginaries. Send in the killer clowns! A reference to the nature of what politics has become and the rise of the strongman idiot to positions of power all around the world and it is this way into the discussion that seemed so promising. It aims straight for the issues and mechanisms not of so many alt far right crazies slinging this that or the other around the screens of the world but more to the question of why such behaviour, which is not entirely new, has been allowed to become so powerful and influential of mainstream politics and the minds of 'ordinary' people who one might imagine as historically voting for Labour (UK) or at the very least be appalled by racist and misogynistic extremism instead of egging it on and voting for it. Because it cannot be that everyone has gone mad can it? Is it the side effects of addictive smart phones and social media that has steered us into dystopia? Well this text for us at least has provided a logical sense of what has been happening to allow what has become of us become of us, if you will.
The text talks us through some of the ideas of the Neoreactionary ideology (shortened to NRx for some reason) which is a view of the world and where it should be heading that is subscribed to by some rich and powerful people many of whom working in silicon valley and are described as 'tech libertarians'. Now I will not be offering any lengthy description or analysis of the text (perhaps we could attach a link to it) rather just relay how it fits and shapes our understanding of the issues of the day and the effect on the 5 themes of the Dignity Scholarship.
So this NRx business is the product largely of just two individuals and mainly one particular individual by the name of Yarvin. NRx ideology is what Curtis Yarvin cooked up on a decade long blog it would seem, where he writes under the pseudonym of Moldbug. We talked about Moldbug last season and his concept of the cathedral, (whilst out taking a study of the cut grass I believe)5 so it is no revelation but the additional details are a help. The key connection is the taking up of Moldbug by the dashing philosopher Nick Land, whom we have thus far referred to playfully as 'the cream shop fella' due to his living above a cream shop in our old home town of Leamington Spa, where he was apparently hatching what old Burrows calls his 'Deluezian fascism'. But what is it, this NRx? It is firstly a very negative view of the world and of democratic society which is completely hopeless to Yarvin and in need of a complete overhaul. So far so much like many of critical bent think. But young Moldbug is in favour of something with much less democracy involved rather than more, and perhaps no politics at all! His vision involves just a sort of authoritarian, corporate dictatorship which would allow for, and this must be his motivation, accelerated human technological progress, which is being held back in the current world (apparently). Now while this is not the point of the text necessarily, it must be said that the Moldbug blog is very popular or rather has acted as a foundational treaty to the alt right movement, and this according to the Wedling piece also, but Yarvin stops short of the vile fare of the chan boards6 and his thrust it seems fair to say is tech libertarian rather than racist. Indeed it would be an extraordinarily long winded red herring if his decade long blog was a master plan for bringing far right politics into the mainstream. No, while he is responsible for producing an 'ideology' that has proved so effective to the far right it seems he is an accidental creator of a racist ideology rather than the author of some Breivik treaty.7 If that is right I assume he may have spoken out against how his text has been misunderstood. Now for all I know that may be being far too kind but I make the point because it does seem that this two man ideology which has helped create the alt right monster has also been a very useful and nasty little tool for people to advance their own cause for which a little far right chaos is worth unleashing. And look here how many conservatives stay quiet about the far right turn because, while it may be distasteful, will be of benefit to them ultimately?
The second rung on the NRx ladder is Land whom it seems had been a keen subscriber of Moldbug over the years. Land is associated with accellerationism, which is broadly the idea that capitalism must be overcome and the only way is to bring about its destruction toot suite. For Burrows, Land built on the work of Moldbug and gave it some philosophical cache. He did this in a few bits of writing and a book called The Dark Enlightenment which even just in the title is evocative of, and chimes very well with the notion of 'redpilling' which so many subscribe to - the simpletons metaphor for the moment of political awakening and radicalisation similar idea to 'woke'. Once again we flail at the edges, trying to piece something together; imprecise and groping, but we have Yarvin (Moldbug) and we have Land and together they are the NRx. The Land vision leads to the accellerationist left which imagines a positive utopia to strive for where we might find the likes of Mason and Srnicek lauding the coming automation. While Moldbug seems to lead to the far alt right, white supremacism and ethno nationalism.
There is a whole lot more in the pot to be sure and it is once again time to remember our aim to have our Doing reference the times rather than imagine that we must offer some deep and thorough account. It is also wise to keep in mind the way in which too much book notion can dampen the hand sur le motif; it is very much a balance, a case of turning the headlights on to get the picture before going dark to work once more, on the work. It is rather like that I feel but the highest importance is always placed on the creative work because that is the source of energy, of grounding and our well of endorphins, but the lights are on at present, shining on the NRx and their vision for the new world.
This vision imagines the world made up of potentially hundreds or thousands of small nations where the state is run as a corporation ('gov corps'), or simply the nations are corporations run by unelected CEO's. In this vision of society there is no democracy and if one doesn't like life in one gov corp state you simply can fuck off to another one. Indeed 'exit' is the only choice available. Great! Why is all that a good idea? To quote a young William Hague at the 1977 Tory party conference the NRx promised land "surely ranks as the most abhorrent and miserable land that has ever been promised to the people of a nation state". But not so if one dons the sci fi Utopian hat of either the James Bond villain tech wacko (Musk, Bezos, Tiel) or the sci fi communist (Mason, schirneck).
Well ok one can set the imagination off to dream up why this new world could be great, we can all tell stories, but when we get a little real and think about what has to happen to arrive at this we have a rather different picture; chaos, disaster, confusion, war, environmental the accelerated destruction of our world. Now one might protest "but you anticapitalist lefties want to destroy capitalism so this is it", but is it not true that the radical left has tended to imagine more a metamorphosis in recent years rather than violent revolutions dreamed of long ago, where the new world is created, together? But that in itself is a good point, does the NRx ideology imagine any sort of revolution? How do they propose to accelerate through capitalism?
Burrows goes on to examine the notion of 'exit' and of exiting this world that is key to NRx thinking and specifically to the way exit is imagined and the form such move may take. They use the term 'architectures of exit´ and include the concept of 'sea steading' which appears to have a great deal of money and will behind it. The idea is create cities on the sea outside of national jurisdiction which one could enter and leave when one desires in ones multi million dollar deep sea pod. Other exits are of course to the moon and mars but the most grounded of the notions is to transform nations into a high tech gov corps based on cities like Singapore and Dubai but that is the 'architecture' of exit, but exit is important also in terms of the only choice available to a citizen. Again if we are to imagine only a positive version then all is grand but of course a world where the only choice available to a citizen is take it or leave it, or 'if you don't like it there's the door' well it wont be very pleasant. Obviously people cant just leave, what about family, school, friends and in any case if conditions of work or life become so bad in one gov corps why would it be so much better in another? And if it were so wouldn't everyone want to be in that better place? In this future dystopia what factors would determine a good gov corps over a bad one? Presumably we would be living in full automation, would it come down to the internet connection, or perhaps a gov corps with minimal technology? Again one could very well imagine what one wants and it would make a very nice little lesson plan for children to imagine worlds.
Newsflash: Helen fell yesterday and has a very painful left forearm which we have travelled into Bräcke to be treated. I happen to have the lid open in the hospital waiting room with the tv news on, in Swedish, but just now it changed to English and the drone of the Trump who it seems has announced that he wants to delay the election and that he "doesnt want to have the election and find out in three months that the election meant nothing". Away you go trolls! Thats the play and one that does indeed raise the stakes. The election will take place I reckon but this is a way to question the results. One can almost hear the millitant far alt right loading their weapons. Having read the Wedling papers we have grasped a better idea of the way the dog whistles to the chan board trolls who go to work on the play, weaving their meme magic to make it real. The question for me is does the meme magic still work now that the media and people generally are more aware of the tactics? Again, Wedling shows the trail from chan board through to Twitter and Facebook and other social media formats then on to alt right media such as Breibart and onto mainstream right wing media proper, Fox news. That is how it worked four years ago, does it still work like that now and if so will it be effective. Can we imagine Fox news refusing to recognise the election result?
Back to the Burrows text and the gov corps of tomorrow. Of course the far alt right imagine more of an ethnic nationalism, the homeland, nations formed based upon race. How do you exit from that? Which ever way we speculate on the imaginary of NRx ideology there is the sticky problem that we are all alive now and even if Peter Tiel is having the blood of children pumped in to him to delay the inevitable, we perhaps should focus on our actual lives.
We must close the lid now as the Doctor is approaching.
A handshake,
John
1 Likely to refer to an internet search.
2 The invisible force that prevents far right politics from flourishing.
3 Known in Spanish as 'viveza criolla' meaning 'native cunning'. Characteristic of south american football the concept advocates an approach to competition which involves the "capacity to cheat where necessary" in contrast to the notion of 'fair play'.
4 Mike.
5 It was in fact Work 32
6 4 chan and 8 chan. Grassroots websites for the alt right.
7 The text left by far right mass murder Anders Breivik to justify his actions.