The Free Speech Coalition has just helped to undermine free speech.

In seeking a High Court review of the Auckland Council's decision to cancel a talk by Lauren Southern & Stefan Molyneux, the Free Speech Coalition risked creating a fearful precedent. Unsurprisingly, news has just confirmed that the Coalition has lost the case. Fortunately, however, it seems the Court has not created any of the precedents we feared.

That they didn't is perhaps only pure chance.

In taking this case, the Coalition did not seek to reverse the council's decision -- the speakers have long returned home, and one of them (Southern) has now announced her retirement from future combat. They sought only the creation of a legal precedent that would force future councils to provide venues for "political dialogue" whenever demanded.  Writing [here and here] at the time of cancellation, I and a fellow guest poster had argued that the Coalition's decision to take the case was a poor one.

Despite their battery of QCs advising and arguing on their behalf, we argued that the Coalition's case had no basis either in law or on the principles of free speech; that, in this instance, council were acting not as all-powerful territorial authorities (which they are, but should not be) but as property owners (which they should not be, but are), and that [as we summarised here] in taking this case the Coalition risked instead creating a precedent that could threaten both speech and property owners:

• by confirming that the Human Rights Act trumps the Bill of Rights Act; and since
• the council was acting as a property owner rather than as a territorial authority, condemning owners of all public venues to be told whom and who not they may host on their own premises.

The case was lost. But while the precedent set is bad, it is not so bad as we feared.

The court did determine that in cancelling the event, the council was not exercising any "public power," but only that of any property owner. But because it was not exercising any public power, the court held that neither the Bill of Rights Act nor the Human Rights Act was relevant to the case. This at least is a relief.

In agreeing however with the council's claim that the decision to cancel was made "exclusively with regard for health and safety considerations arising from anticipated protest," the court has now handed a fresh and legally-minted Thug's Veto to anybody publicly wishing ill on any speaker they would like to "deplatform." This will mean that if controversial events are to go ahead in future in the teeth of public protest, they will require both a "comprehensive security plan and risk assessment," and the sort of courage that Massey University is belatedly showing.

In trying to smack the Council this time, the Coalition's ill-judged legal action threatened to have property owners smacked for all time. Thankfully, they have not been smacked. But all speakers, to the degree they make themselves unpopular, have been harmed.
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Human Rights Commission: "Freedom of thought does not extend to being allowed to adopt thoughts or beliefs at a public event..." #PSA

Be careful what you wish for. Now that the case brought against Auckland Council by the Free Speech Coalition over the visit of Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux has come before the courts, the case so many of you called for, it seems to be playing out just as some of us feared it would.

When the Free Speech Coalition protested Auckland Council's withdrawal of the Town Hall for the visit of Stefan Molyneux and Lauren Southern, threatening legal action against the council's decision, a guest poster and I warned that a legal protest, as the Coalition had elected to pursue, comes with some very serious risks to free speech in New Zealand. [See 'Will the Coalition for Free Speech Instead Play a Part in its Muzzling?' and 'Molyneux & Southern V Goff: This was never about free speech']

The main risk warned about is this:

1. that the council's withdrawal of the hall was not done in its capacity as the territorial authority (which would have been censorship); instead
2. the withdrawal of the hall was done its capacity as the owner of the hall (it did not ban them speaking, it simply withdrew a taxpayer-funded microphone, which is a perfectly legitimate judgment call for any property owner); 
3. the risk with such a legal protest being that, if successful, the courts could then set a precedent in case law that may preclude all property owners from making such legitimate judgments in future, "bringing a ban on so-called 'hate speech' by the back door."

In other words, in order that the Coalition smack the council this time, its legal action threatened to have property owners smacked for all time.

As we commented at the time, that blurring of the boundaries between owner and territorial authority is one reason the council should be out of the business of renting halls. But as long as they are, then if the council follows the guidelines of the misnamed Human Rights Act in making such a call they can argue they are simply acting "neutrally" on the basis of settled law in order to "protect the community."

It seems to be playing out precisely as our guest poster feared. In court this morning, arguing the case, both the council's lawyers and those from the misnamed Human Right Commission argued precisely this point: 

• that council was acting as a commercial party and not in a “governance” role – and therefore the decision to cancel the event is not “judicially reviewable” by the Court; and
• the Coalition's argument about so-called "political discrimination" should be heard only by the Human Rights Review Tribunal and not the High Court (a jurisdictional argument).

It gets worse, according to David Cumin of the Coalition.

Believe it or not, the [misnamed] HRC argues that freedom to form an opinion is only applicable in private – that freedom of thought does not extend to being allowed to adopt thoughts or beliefs at a public event ...

That an organisation calling itself by the name of "human rights' would argue this (if reported correctly) is appalling. It is good that the trial has helped reveal the true nature of this organisation.

Sadly, what the trial also promises to do, however, is to set the very chilling twin precedent that:

• property owners are to be muzzled by the misnamed Human Rights Commission; and
• freedom of thought will not extend to being allowed to adopt thoughts or beliefs in public.

"So," as my guest poster warned, "instead of the interests of free speech being advanced by the Coalitions's challenge, I fear it may instead give the Act that muzzles free speech more teeth."

It was a risky call to take the case, based upon legs that didn't stand up. And as warned, the outcome of the blunder for free speech may be precisely the opposite for which Free Speech Coalition supporters signed up.

BONUS QotD: "If you think that your most important cultural and political priority is to defend the supposed interests of white people in opposition to the interests of other racial groups, then you are a white supremacist, because that’s what 'supremacy' means. Dress it up however you like, but that’s what you stand for ... Dressing up economic protectionism, white supremacism, and tribalism isn't a defence of western civilisation."

"If you think people are fundamentally defined by the colour of their skin and by their ethnic and genetic background, then you are a racist, because that’s what 'racism' means. If you think that your most important cultural and political priority is to defend the supposed interests of white people in opposition to the interests of other racial groups, then you are a white supremacist, because that’s what 'supremacy' means. Dress it up however you like, but that’s what you stand for...  

  "The central theme of the Western intellectual tradition is about rising above tribalism to arrive at universal values... Tribalism, by contrast, is the default state of every culture and can be found among every people in every corner of the world. There is nothing distinctively Western about it, and it runs against the whole grain of the Western intellectual tradition.    "Dressing up economic protectionism, white supremacism, and tribalism isn't a defence of western civilisation." 

~ Robert Tracinski, from his article (originally entitled) "White Sheets & Red Golf Caps"

RELATED READING:

• “The Universalisability of Western Civilisation” – George Reisman, NOT PC
• 2016: The year the 'alt-right' breached the 'moral quarantine' on racism - Robert Tracinski, THE FEDERALIST
• The winner of the summarise-Stefan Molyneux competition - NOT PC
• Friends don’t let friends listen to Stefan Molyneux - NOT PC
• A 'libertarian' icon's descent into pseudo-science - Stuart Hayashi, TRACINSKI LETTER
• The Racist Moral Rot at the Heart of the Alt-Right – Ian Tuttle, NRO
• What is the difference between multiculturalism and genuine racial tolerance? – OBJECTIVIST ANSWERS
• Time for Lindsay Perigo's SOLO to change its name - NOT PC

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Bonus QotD: "So it turns out that dressing up economic protectionism, white supremacism and tribalism as a defence of western civilisation has flushed out many things once deservedly dead and buried..."

"So it turns out that dressing up economic protectionism, white supremacism and tribalism as a defence of western civilisation has flushed out many things once deservedly dead and buried...
    "Encouraged ... by the phoney equation that being politically incorrect also means being noxious--by the non-thinking that says that if “they” are against it, then “we” must be for it – what this unthinking reaction has produced is the non-idea that the appropriate response to “their” racism is to go hard out on your own.
    "With some, the racism is genuine (and genuinely unwelcome). With others like Stefan Molyneux, it’s more like a career move...
    "Strange are the things people turn to when they think that the world is on fire. Stranger still how they think eugenics and white supremacy would help extinguish and not fan it."
~ excerpt from my 2017 post 'Friends don’t let friends listen to Stefan Molyneux'

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Some propositions on free speech

Since berks are going berserk over the so-called “death of free speech” because a property-owner has said blowhards can't speak on that property,* let’s examine again some basic propositions of free speech, just so we know what the animal looks like -- and how denying someone the right to your platform does not deny their free speech:

Some propositions on free speech

The right to free speech means the right to express one's ideas without danger of coercion, of physical suppression or of interference by the state. 
Censorship is interference by the state in the expression of ideas. (And laws against murder, rape, assault and child sex are sufficient to cover any violation of rights in the censor's current domain.)
A private network refusing to broadcast your views or a property owner deciding not to hire you their venue is not censorship - it is their choice. (Remember choice?)  

A private network choosing to offend is their business. Choosing not to watch or to withdraw advertising is yours.
Bad ideas are still ideas. You should be just as free to air them as I should be to ignore them, or to pillory them, ore to refuse to give them a home.
Just as the right to pursue happiness doesn't require that you be made happy, the principle of free speech doesn't demand that anyone provide you with a platform and a microphone.
Just as the right to do what I like with my health and my life does not mean that I have to smoke cannabis, neither does the right to free speech mean I must offend. Just as I must take responsibility for what I do with my health and my life, so too must I take responsibility for what I say.
I may choose to offend, and I have the right to, but free speech doesn't mean I have to. However, anyone able to épater le bourgeosie has always been able to count on free publicity from those being épater-ed. Drawing attention to something you dislike may give that which you dislike even more attention. Think about it.
By itself, "I'm offended," is not an argument. It's just a whine.
Saying you don't like 'South Park' is not a call for censorship. Saying you want it banned would be. Saying "I don't like that," is not censorship.
Organising a voluntary boycott is not censorship. Organising a government ban however would be.
I may be offended, but I may not commit violence against those who offend me. I may boycott, but I may not behead.
Blocking traffic, threats, and forced entry are no part of the right to protest. They are respectively a traffic hazard, an initiation of force and an act of trespass.
"Hate speech" is an illegitimate package deal. Laws against "hate speech" are illegitimate. Laws against conspiracy to commit murder are not.
The right to free speech gives the smallest minority the absolute protection of the state to air their views. The smallest minority is the individual.
My freedom ends where your nose begins. My free speech ends where your rights begin. The right to free speech does not mean that I may incorrectly besmirch your reputation by telling lies about you. This would be called fraud. Nor does it mean you may shout "fire" in a crowded theatre in which there is none, and in which the exit doors have been locked. This would be called fraud with menaces.
Speech is speech, not violent destruction.
Ridicule is better than bans.
Moral persuasion is better than force.
When tyranny occurs, it can be challenged from a thousand presses - but only if free speech and a free press has been valued in the interim; tyranny can never be easily challenged in the absence of the freedom to speak out.
Free speech has been more valued in the abstract than in reality.
"Freedom but..." is not freedom.
Forcing ideas underground does not eradicate them, it incubates them. Bad ideas are anaerobic -- the oxygen of free inquiry kills them. Bad ideas can only be fought with better ones.
If you don't like it, then just turn it off.  Don't get an arm of the state to do it for you.

_ _ _ _ _ _  _

* No, the council shouldn't be in the business of owning venues. But as long as it does, it has the right to deny hiring them to whomever it chooses. (we can have a discussion about not being required to fund those oppose in the comments, if you like.) But consider that nothing in the council's refusal to hire a venue to these idiots denies them the right to take their business elsewhere. The fact that these particular hirers have chosen not to perhaps says more about their ticket sales that they might like to let on.

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#TopTen | No. 6: Friends don’t let friends listen to Stefan Molyneux

 

Last year I wrote and posted 801 posts. This was the sixth most popular: an exposé of a retarded YouTube opportunist with an oft-unlikely following …

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Friends Don’t Let Friends Listen to Stefan Molyneux

ONE OF THE LEAST attractive phenomena in more than a decade of unattractive things is the re-emergence into what passes for polite society of eugenics and explicit white supremacy. Even in places and from people I once thought I knew. (If you’re wondering, then I probably do mean you.) With these people, the only right thing to do is to take the advice above.

Trump is partly to blame. “By launching his campaign on a ‘Mexican immigrants are rapists’’ platform,” Donald Trump flushed these things back up from the sewers and made them safe to talk about again. Turns out that dressing up economic protectionism, white supremacism and tribalism as a defence of western civilisation has flushed out many things once deservedly dead and buried, and many things even in friends (now former friends) you hadn’t realised existed.

But he’s only partly to blame for what was probably already latent, and then encouraged in some folk by the phony equation that being politically incorrect also means being noxious;  the non-thinking that says that if “they” are against it, then “we” must be for it – and anyone else is a “cuck.”  (And never mind even what “it” might be.)  What this unthinking reaction has produced is the non-idea saying the appropriate response to “their” racism is to go hard out on your own.

With some, the racism genuine (and genuinely unwelcome). With others like Stefan Molyneux, it’s more like a career move. Who’s Stephan Molyneux? He’s one of the other reasons you’re seeing more and more of this stuff around. Molyneux is a dickhead with a following that, for some reason, some of you here keep recommending.

For the record, Molyneux makes videos of himself talking. Talking interminably, most often about himself. Hardly riveting. For many years he talked about anarchy, seeking to become a big fish in this small pond. Then, seeing a gap in the much bigger phony guru market, he began telling his young followers to abandon their parents and instead devote their lives, their honour and their sacred fortunes to his cause. Which was his wallet.

His arse very publicly handed to him by a woman known as J. Ravin/“TruShibes,” he hunkered down to re-emerge as a promoter of white supremacy who, I Iament, has become unaccountably influential even with people I formerly knew and/or admired.

Strange are the things people turn to when they think that the world is on fire. Stranger still how they think eugenics and white supremacy would help extinguish and not fan it.

A fellow called Stuart Hayashi has researched Molyneux’s rantings, should you have any doubt these two vile causes are what the wanker promotes, and if you’re wondering why you’re seeing this stuff or Molyneux’s name around the traps so much I can heartily recommend reading the results of Stuart’s recent research. Hayashi identifies two premises the toerag promotes that are rarely expounded together (a strategy of deniability, you see), but when combined form the argument, such as it is:

Premise One: Your genes, as associated with your race, are the main determinant of IQ. That is, your race causes you to have a particular IQ number….
Premise Two: Your IQ number is the main factor determining whether you are economically productive or criminally violent.

From those unprepossessing ingredients Molyneux makes a very unedifying stew: We should therefore deduce, at his behest, that a person’s race is what determines whether they are economically productive or criminally violent, therefore [sic] policies should be adopted to bar the many non-white “low-IQ races” from immigrating, from breeding, and from generally being around in polite company.

These days, in the company “Moly” keeps, this no longer called out-and-out eugenics, or even white supremacy – although that’s precisely what it is. Instead it’s given euphemisms like “race realism” or “human biodeversity,” which is they way you may have heard it promoted on websites and fora in which you once participated – or from people with whom you were once friends.  And while Molyneux is just a vector for this disease, not the main source, he’s been unaccountably influential.

ONE THING RELIED UPON by these later-day apostles of eugenics is an ignorance about the basic distinction between race and culture, about which the great Thomas Sowell has written so widely and so well. Culture, explains Sowell, should be understood as “the working machinery of everyday life” and like any machinery should be open to criticism and improvement. Some cultures are more productive than others, some less; this is true, but as Sowell points out repeatedly, race itself is irrelevant. It’s culture that’s all important.

One of the eugenicists’ main aims however is to collapse this distinction between race and culture, insisting instead that only race is relevant – that the two are deterministically entwined, with IQ being the measure of superiority.

Yes, it truly is this facile. As Robert Tracinski points out, these are people who understand Western civilisation “not as a set of ideas, but as some kind of symbol of their racial identity.”

Hayashi briefly counters this odious nonsense, noting the very basic fact for example that even if you were to accept IQ as any measure of anything (about which there are huge problems) the causal arrow goes from  wealth to performing well in IQ tests, not the other way around.

He then plunges into a veritable long-drop full of excreta that Molyneux has spewed out on this topic since his dramatic rebirth, leading him to the conclusion he broadcasts almost daily, that “because skills and abilities have not been distributed evenly by Mother Nature among various ethnicities,” the only cure to the impending collapse of western countries is closed borders and racial separatism.

It is from him and the likes of him that this sort of stuff comes from.

It’s like a prepper’s version of a national policy.

Why is this important? Because like all variants of tribalism, it is deadly nonsense; yet I know the bile is unaccountably influential because I keep seeing it spewed out in places and around people I once frequented. And friends don’t let friends believe this stuff.

But if they do, there’s a very simple message for you, and it appears at the very top of this post.

Please take it literally.

Intellectual hygiene demands it.

MORE READING:

• “I take Stefan Molyneux to task for his promoting white supremacism. And I quote him to prove that, yes, that is what he is promoting.”
  Quotations from Stefan Molyneux Showing His Promotion of Eugenics, Pseudoscientific Racism, and Bigotry Against Blacks – Stuart Hayashi, STU-TOPIA
• “The fetid end of the political spectrum is rising up to support statism in the name of protecting IQ – on the basis, say the fetid-swamp warriors, that the “low IQs” will only destroy the culture and are too dumb to deserve freedom anyway. Vile enough, but does their chosen proxy even merit serious consideration? No.”
  The Intellectual Conceit of IQ Ideology – Jeffrey Tucker, NOT PC
• “It's not pretty, and it's sad that this person has any influence at all. In summary, and as a TL;DR: the left is bad, so things the left thinks are wrong by definition and opposition to the left is good by definition. [and more: “…the genius of the Trump campaign has been to convince people they’re defying the elites when they live down to the elites’ worst expectations of them.”]”
  The winner of the summarise-Stefan-Molyneux competition – NOT PC
• “Robert Tracinski ably explains the fetid sewer of support flushed out by Donald Trump – people who understand Western civilisation not as a set of ideas, but as some kind of symbol of their racial identity. They’re calling themselves alt-right; he’s identified them simply as The Other Left. Or even more simply: Yes, The Alt-Right Are Just a Bunch of Racists…”
  “White Sheets and Red Golf Caps” – NOT PC

NB: From now on, I shall be taking this post’s conclusion as my policy on commenting here at NOT PC. The principle of free speech does not demand that I supply eugenicists with a microphone. If you insist on promoting ordure with mine, then fuck off and get your own.

 

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Tomorrow, I post last year’s fifth-most popular post here at EnZed’'’s fourth-most read political blog asking … are we really the world’s most prosperous place?

Hillary Clinton’s Deplorables: Stefan Molyneux

 

Rarely if ever will you see on this blog the phrase “Hillary Clinton was right” – not unless it were to be concluded with phrases such as “to resign,” “to stand down,” or “to jump off a cliff” – but she was right to condemn the deplorable “alt-right” who have taken Donald Trump to their breast, about whom others such as Robert Tracinski and Stuart Hayashi had already exposed.

Stuart has also done sterling work exposing the downright racism of a one-time anarchist who underwent an “ideological transmogrification” to make himself one of the fonts of these deplorables. Tracinski gives over his own newsletter this week to Stuart, who explains as he has before that for all his fine words, Stefan Molyneux is just an old-time racist in a new guise and with new rationalisations.

When it comes to being the main apologist on the Web for Trump and his antics, Molyneux is second only to Milo Yiannopoulos. It is therefore unsurprising that Molyneux is cited occasionally in essays contributed to ‘Breitbart News’ and frequently in its comments section…
    The podcaster’s latest turn as Trump apologist [however] was particularly flabbergasting for those of us in the liberty movement who have been familiar with Molyneux’s podcast for the past decade. How is it that a man who once consistently advocated “market anarchy”—not coincidentally, similar to Murray Rothbard’s—has rebranded himself as an apologist for a political candidate strongly associated with the expansion of government power to restrict immigration and international trade?

Insert here as answer Molyneux’s need for a new (paying) audience after exposure as a disgusting opportunistic charlatan.

With but a dwindling number of anarchists standing by him, it seemed that either Molyneux would have to end his podcast series or find a new target audience.
    Thereafter Molyneux drifted from one vaguely right-wing ideological hobbyhorse to another, briefly trying to make inroads in the “Men’s Rights Movement.” But by the middle of 2015 he finally found a new movement he could grab onto—the alt-right and its white nationalism.

“White nationalism.” Yes, it is as disgusting as it sounds. Molyneux surfed this wave just in time for his depiction of “modern society as a struggle between native-born whites and brown-skinned aliens threatening Western traditions” to be reflected in Trump’s campaign, making him a natural to cheer the orange-skinned man to a standstill – “even if these rationalisations were convincing to no one other than those already in Trump’s corner.”

Unlike Trump, Molyneux prefers to sound intellectual. To make his predictions of impending race war sound more compelling, Molyneux cites terribly old-fashioned racist pseudoscience.

Stuart cites chapter and verse to demonstrate that this dangerously puerile movement is new only in its terms and rationalisations, beneath which is the same racism and barnyard collectivism of old that views human beings simply as cattle.

That seems to be the popular appeal of [Molyneux’s podcast]—it reinforces prejudices that its audience would otherwise be ashamed to hold.

If it seems unimportant to address this movement and its spokesthings, it’s not, says Tracinski: We should “take seriously the recent resurgence of racism under new guises and with new rationalisations.” Says Hayashi:

Human beings have struggled with racism for millennia. It has been present, historically, in every major culture, and anthropologists theorise that racism, in some form, was even prevalent in the Paleolithic Era, when separate hunter-gatherer clans looked upon one another in mutual distrust and often lingering animosity. One of the greatest achievements of the United States in the late twentieth century was removing the stigma against other races and placing the stigma on racism itself. Open racial hostility became more of an exception, not the norm. It would be a tragedy if we allowed Molyneux and the rest of the alt-right to make brazen racism seem normal once again.

Yes. It would.

So let’s keep calling it what it is, even when both right and left wish to relabel and redefine what is they are both practising.

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Time for SOLO to change its name

 

Why have I posted so many recent posts opposing or explaining the odious Alt-Right movement? Because too many people I know and once valued have become infected by its virus, and intellectual hygiene demands that be acknowledged and rebutted (or an attempt at least made).

One local place that’s become a carrier for the virus is a site that’s still confusingly labelled “Objectivist,” although it’s now clearly anything but.  It should be abundantly evident now to any visitor of Lindsay Perigo’s site “for Sense-of-Life Objectivists” that it promotes neither sense-of-life nor Objectivism -- and should not be confused by anyone for an example of either. Nor of libertarianism.

I  say all this because Lindsay and I have shared stages together, and been long-term collaborators on any number of projects over many years, and any reasonable person may assume I share all his views. I don’t. And very definitely not the views he apparently harbours today.

Mr Perigo’s admirable obsession with opposing Islamist’s thuggery has now sadly morphed, as it has become more single-minded, from being just anti-Muslim to being odiously anti-human. And repellent. After not having been there for some time, here are some examples that sprang out without even needing to dig too deep:

“We need to recognise that most existing ‘humans’ are just that: humans in inverted commas—anti- and sub-human, but existing in human form.”
http://www.solopassion.com/node/9935#comment-123072

"Yes, people are, by and large, scum. That much has become irresistibly apparent to me..."
http://www.solopassion.com/node/10060#comment-124011

"Humanity as a whole (my God, how OrthOists will hate that expression) is still *sub*-human. "Sub" must be circumvented and superseded  ... I cannot imagine it will come about without an intervening cataclysm wherein all sub-humans are Karmally wiped out by the effects of their own mindlessness, and we can start over.
http://www.solopassion.com/node/10253

Humanity “as a whole” is “sub-human,” he says routinely. This from a man who once excoriated what he then called “humanity diminishers.”

“Yes, people are, by and large, scum,” he says without irony on a site that calls itself “Sense-of-Life.” (Can you see that sentiment fitting anywhere within the parameters of that pic above?)

And who you might wonder are all these “sub-humans” for whose end he so fervently hopes? Anyone who disagrees with him, it seems. Including me, who had the temerity to suggest earlier this year that he had chosen an introductory selection of classical music not from the more dramatic moments of romantic music but from the more “tepid” end of the spectrum – I received my indirect response to my riposte that very week; “my answer,” said Perigo, “to the pig-ignorant mewlings of the sub-humans who say Romantic-era music is ‘tepid’." Which was me, except it wasn’t – accuracy too [such as this partial and highly-flawed account of a recent and rare public outing] being another casualty these days of Mr Perigo’s increasingly inward focus.

And how about those he labels “OrthOists,” you ask, of whom he’s often so critical? It’s hard to know since neologising at the expense of clarity is an unfortunate Perigo fetish, but I think (this week at least) it must mean anyone who subscribes to the views espoused by Ayn Rand instead of those emanating from the fever dreams of the conspiracy theorists and worse with whom he now converses daily in his comments section of his site, where most of his site’s work is done.

So vast amounts of weirdness and worse, and not just from his regular commenters and bloggers, many of whom are expicitly white nationalists under whose influence, it appears, Mr Perigo is now…

…leaning explicitly towards eugenics…

"There is no such thing as a right to breed.  Breeding is an imposition upon the bred without the consent of the bred. It's a form of initiating force. Then, Objectimorons will tell the involuntarily bred they have a duty to stay alive simply because they've been bred. This is rational??!! Benevolent??!! In this shitty world of Peter Keatings??!! ... The most important thing as far as the survival of Western Civilisation is concerned, aside from stopping Islamofilth immigration, is stopping The Filth from proliferating. In most cases, it's the only thing The Filth knows how to do. The Filth must be thwarted."
http://www.solopassion.com/node/10253#comment-125444

"Anyway, there should be a new party proposing licenses to breed and to vote, wresting education from the child-molesters, along with my Not One Muslim immigration policy. I'd like to call it something provocative like the Western Civilisation Party."
http://www.solopassion.com/node/8744#comment-125979

…denying universal rights …

"We don't have a right to life just because we're alive and have a human body, though that's what the OrthOist position amounts to..."
http://www.solopassion.com/node/10253#comment-125418

…expressing unrestrained support for the likes of Pauline Hanson …

"Move Over Brexit! Yoooooooge Setback for Filth in Australia!: Move over Brexit! Pauline Hanson, reviled by Filth, has just won a seat in the Australian Senate, and will possibly pick up two more once this weekend's election results become more clear... I personally delight in contemplating how horrified Obleftivists across the ditch in New Zealand will be at this advance for civilised values and human freedom.”
http://www.solopassion.com/node/10270

…and political assassination.

“If ever Obama were to be targeted by an Omar Mateen [i.e., the mass-murderer], that would be poetic justice. I have no hesitation in saying that Obama is one ‘faggot’ whose martyrdom at the hands of the murderous bigots he has enabled would constitute Karmic justice ….”
http://www.solopassion.com/node/10259

Lest you think any of this is intended as humour, it isn’t.

As for reason, in his view it is apparently now an impotent force in the world with none of the power the “Filth” has to move it. So reason is impotent, and evil a force in the world – and a single obsession has become a near universal reason- and humanity-diminishment.

And yet in all his years of opposing and writing about Islamic thuggery, his decade-long singular obsession, his thinking has never matured beyond “Death to Islam.” No solutions at all, zero, beyond “not one Muslim,” a policy enthusiastically embraced at the fever swamp. As if it were possible to simply ban or bar or wipe out 1.5 billion people from existence.

And a man who once cheered Ronald Reagan demanding a Soviet Premier “tear down this wall” can now be found seriously insisting that America must “build a wall” itself, and not just along its Mexican border but along its Canadian border as well !

True story.

Furthermore, Mr Perigo has explicitly repudiated Objectivism, which he now calls "Obleftivism" (whatever that means). Instead, while repudiating the philosophy that the very masthead of his site trumpets and by which he attracts unaware readers, he is now promoting something he calls "Authenticism" -- which in all the years he’s been talking about it has never bothered to fully define apart from arm-waving about most humans not possessing rights (which humans? "Filth?" sub-humans? people with whom he’s had a disagreement?) and putting humans' animal side before their human. And his own personal cultural and highly unphilosophical heroes now hail from the explicit alt-right, including internet bores Stefan Molyneux (a white nationalist known to SOLO’s visitors as “Molly”), Paul Joseph Watson (who helps runs conspiracy sites like “InfoBores” and “Pathetic Planet”) whom Perigo calls “my new hero,” and Milo Yiannopoulos etc., [Milo for President! enthuses Perigo] as too do those with whom he now converses on his website -- which wears the banner of an Objectivist site while repudiating the philosophy.

So as sense-of-life goes, yet alone commitment to reason and just basic intellectual hygiene, there’s every reason to shun the site and demand he change the name, if not yet his direction.

Because, you know, Mr Perigo is free to adopt whatever repellent views and associates he chooses. But just basic intellectual honesty demands he not label those views and the site they frequent as something they are not.

Time to change the name and just go full retard. (Or, if it’s not too late, to reconsider.)

But since, like the pic at the top of the page, this one at the bottom also represents almost everything to which the site formally known as SOLO now stands opposed (including the grin), I thought I’d finish with this:

.[Pics by ObjectivismForIntellectuals and PlanningForLiberty]

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Friends don’t let friends listen to Stefan Molyneux

 

One of the least attractive phenomena in more than a decade of unattractive things is the re-emergence into what passes for polite society of eugenics and explicit white supremacy. Even in places and from people I once thought I knew. (If you’re wondering, then I probably do mean you.)

Trump is partly to blame. “By launching his campaign on a ‘Mexican immigrants are rapists’’ platform,” Donald Trump flushed these things back up from the sewers and made them safe to talk about again. Turns out that dressing up economic protectionism, white supremacism and tribalism as a defense of western civilisation has flushed out many things you thought were long sunk, and many things even in friends (now former friends) you hadn’t realised existed.

But he’s only partly to blame for what was probably already latent. Also to blame is the phony equation that being politically incorrect also means being noxious;  the un-thinking that says if “they” are against it, then “we” must be for it – and anyone else is a “cuck” -- or the non-idea that the appropriate response to “their” racism is to go hard out on your own.

With some it’s genuine (and genuinely unwelcome). With Stefan Molyneux, it’s a career move. Who’s Stephan Molyneux? He’s one of the other reasons you’re seeing more and more of this stuff around. Molyneux is a dickhead with a following, that for some reason some of you keep recommending. For the record, Molyneux makes videos of himself talking. Talking interminably, often about himself. Hardly riveting. For many years he talked about anarchy, seeking to become a bigfish in this small pond. Then seeing a gap in the much bigger phony pastor market he began telling his young followers to abandon their parents and instead devote their lives, their honour and their sacred fortunes to his cause. Which was his wallet.

His arse very publicly handed to him by a woman known as J. Ravin/“TruShibes,” he hunkered down to re-emerge as a promoter of white supremacy who, I Iament, has become unaccountably influential even with people I formerly knew and/or admired.

Strange are the things people turn to when they think that the world is on fire. Stranger still how they think eugenics and white supremacy would help extinguish and not fan it.

Stuart Hayashi has researched Molyneux’s rantings, should you have any doubt this is what the wanker promotes, and I heartily recommend his post if you’re wondering why you’re seeing this stuff or Molyneux’s name around the traps so much. Hayashi identifies two premises the toerag promotes that are rarely heard together (a strategy of deniability, you see), but when combined form the argument, such as it is.

Premise One: Your genes, as associated with your race, are the main determinant of IQ. That is, your racecauses you to have a particular IQ number….
Premise Two: Your IQ number is the main factor determining whether you are economically productive or criminally violent.

From those unprepossessing ingredients Molyneux makes a very unedifying stew: We should therefore deduce, at his behest, that a person’s race is what determines whether they are economically productive or criminally violent, therefore policies should be adopted to bar the many non-white “low-IQ races” from immigrating, from breeding, from generally being around.

This is not called out-and-out eugenics, these days, or even white supremacy – although that’s what it is. It’s called things like “race realism” or “human biodeversity,” which is they way you may have heard it promoted on websites and fora in which you once participated – or from people with whom you were once friends.  And while Molyneux is just a vector for this disease, not the main source, he’s unaccountably influential.

One thing relied upon is an ignorance about the basic distinction between race and culture, about which Thomas Sowell has written so widely and so well. Culture, explains Sowell, should be understood as “the working machinery of everyday life” and like any machinery should be open to criticism and improvement. Some cultures are more productive than others, some less; this is true, but race itself is irrelevant.

One of the eugenicist’s aims is to collapse this distinction between race and culture, insisting instead that only race is relevant – that the two are deterministically entwined, with IQ being the measure of superiority.

Yes, it truly is this facile. As Robert Tracinski points out, these are people who understand Western civilisation “not as a set of ideas, but as some kind of symbol of their racial identity.”

Hayashi briefly counters this odious nonsense, noting the very basic fact for example that even if you were to accept IQ as any measure of anything (about which there are huge problems) the causal arrow goes from  wealth to performing well in IQ tests, not the other way around.

He then plunges into a veritable long-drop full of excreta on this topic that Molyneux has spewed out since his dramatic rebirth, leading to the conclusion that “because skills and abilities have not been distributed evenly by Mother Nature among various ethnicities,” the only cure to the impending collapse of western countries is closed borders and racial separatism.

It’s like a prepper’s version of a national policy.

Why is this important? Because I keep seeing this stuff in places and around people I once frequented. And friends don’t let friends believe this stuff.

But if they do, there’s a very simple message for you, and it appears at the very top of this post.

Please take it literally.

Intellectual hygiene demands it.

MORE READING:

• “I take Stefan Molyneux to task for his promoting white supremacism. And I quote him to prove that, yes, that is what he is promoting.”
  Quotations from Stefan Molyneux Showing His Promotion of Eugenics, Pseudoscientific Racism, and Bigotry Against Blacks – Stuart Hayashi, STU-TOPIA
• “The fetid end of the political spectrum is rising up to support statism in the name of protecting IQ – on the basis, say the fetid-swamp warriors, that the “low IQs” will only destroy the culture and are too dumb to deserve freedom anyway. Vile enough, but does their chosen proxy even merit serious consideration? No.”
  The Intellectual Conceit of IQ Ideology – Jeffrey Tucker, NOT PC
• “It's not pretty, and it's sad that this person has any influence at all. In summary, and as a TL;DR: the left is bad, so things the left thinks are wrong by definition and opposition to the left is good by definition. [and more: “…the genius of the Trump campaign has been to convince people they’re defying the elites when they live down to the elites’ worst expectations of them.”]”
  The winner of the summarise-Stefan-Molyneux competition – NOT PC
• “Robert Tracinski ably explains the fetid sewer of support flushed out by Donald Trump – people who understand Western civilisation not as a set of ideas, but as some kind of symbol of their racial identity. They’re calling themselves alt-right; he’s identified them simply as The Other Left. Or even more simply: Yes, The Alt-Right Are Just a Bunch of Racists…”
  “White Sheets and Red Golf Caps” – NOT PC

NB: From now on, I shall be taking this post’s conclusion as my policy on commenting here at NOT PC. The principle of free speech does not demand that I supply eugenicists with a microphone. If you insist on promoting ordure with mine, then fuck off and get your own.

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The winner of the summarise-Stefan-Molyneux competition

 

I keep being sent “recommendations” to follow a fellow called Stefan Molyneux. I’m not sure why. He appears explicitly opposed to virtually everything I value.

Mark Kormes describes for example a recent “podcast” by the creature on Donald Trump (who the Molyneux supports) and Objectivist opposition to his candidacy. As Mr Kormes says, the podcast is very revealing of his mentality

It's not pretty, and it's sad that this person has any influence at all. In summary, and as a TL;DR: the left is bad, so things the left thinks are wrong by definition and opposition to the left is good by definition. [and more: “…the genius of the Trump campaign has been to convince people they’re defying the elites when they live down to the elites’ worst expectations of them.”]

Allowing yourself to be defined by your opponents is neither good strategy nor good intellectual hygiene – yet, you might recall, it is a signal “tactic” of the so-called alt-right of whom the Molyneux is apart, who (with their white sheets and red golf caps) “dress up economic protectionism, white supremacism, and tribalism as a defense of western civilisation.”

Mr Kormes summarises the fatuous pro-Trump/anti-Objectivism points made by the Molyneux in the podcast:

• *If Objectivists were actually for open borders, they'd support them in Israel too, but being bought and paid for by their neocon donors, they don't. Donald Trump is not bought and paid for by neocons.
• *People respond to incentives, and so Third World immigrants are clearly here for the free stuff. That's why Democrats invite them in, and anyone who supports open borders is thus a suicidal de facto Democrat who wants America to be overrun by Third World immigrants. Donald Trump is not a Democrat and does not want America to be overrun by Third World immigrants.
• *We should charge the rest of the world money for the right to trade with us, send us immigrants, and benefit from our military--anything else is anti-American and self-sacrificial. Donald Trump clearly loves America.
• *Objectivists who support open borders and racial equality and are concerned about abuses by police are trying to win "cool points" from leftists and the mainstream media--likely in order to satisfy their neocon donors--though this is a futile effort because leftists want America to be overrun by Third World immigrants and will be satisfied with nothing less than the destruction of Caucasian capitalist America and making any concession to them is suicidal and will win no such "cool points." Donald Trump doesn't care about "cool points."
• *The alt-right aren't racist at all--just heroic anti-leftists. To attack the alt-right is trolling for "cool points" from the left, which will never be forthcoming. One must join the alt-right or one is a leftist dupe who doesn't want to fight back. Donald Trump welcomes their support because he fights back.
• *Feminism rules our culture and makes us irrational because women are usually emotionalist. Feminists hate the alpha male and yet are sexually attracted to him. Donald Trump is a big-time alpha male.
• *Alpha males are hated by our culture unless they are relentless leftists. Non-alpha males are "cuck" conformists who just want the feminists who run our society to sleep with them. Donald Trump has no trouble with the ladies--he is no "cuck."
• *If the right had any balls, they'd have endorsed the "Bell Curve" and all the other data out there showing the brown races are stupid. Even if it's not racial/genetic causes but environmental causes that give those Third Worlders low IQs, we must keep them out of the country or it will swell the welfare rolls to the breaking point. This is simply science--science mandates closed borders, and to support keeping them open is suicidal and irrational. Donald Trump wants to build a huge wall along the Mexican border--he has balls and is not suicidal.
• *Rational discussion requires people to critically discuss whether brown people are stupid and women are emotionalists and not use words like "racist" or "sexist" because doing so is PC leftist talk that silences important discussions based on well-researched facts like the stupidity of brown people and the emotionalism of women. Donald Trump doesn't care about the PC left and unlike Cruz is not religious, so he is a rational man.
• *The way to win over Trump supporters if you think Trump is bad is to listen to their views and give them what they want. To tell them what they want is impossible and/or destructive is a great argument for Trump. The people can't ever be wrong about their desires, and they want Trump or, if not Trump, Trumpism. Therefore, since people respond to incentives and the customers want Trumpism, anti-Trump people must find an alternate way of satisfying the people's demand that immigration be stopped and good jobs brought back to America. Donald Trump is not a PC leftist conformist who wants to destroy America--opposition to him is proof that one is a PC leftist conformist who wants to destroy America.

Did I say fatuous? I don’t even think the “arguments” make that standard.

So, in short, I won’t be spending any time with the Molyneux. But thanks so much for the invitations.

RELATED POSTS:

• Yes, the Alt-Right Are Just a Bunch of Racists – Robert Tracinski, THE FEDERALIST
• The Racist Moral Rot at the Heart of the Alt-Right – Ian Tuttle, NRO
• What is the difference between multiculturalism and genuine racial tolerance? – OBJECTIVIST ANSWERS