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Wow - I've literally never heard anyone be this frank before. I disagree with the position but I upvote the candor. I wonder, though, how you feel about all th

by moldbug 15y ago

Wow - I've literally never heard anyone be this frank before. I disagree with the position but I upvote the candor. I wonder, though, how you feel about all the violence we've seen committed in the name of egalitarianism, in the lives of those now living? For instance: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Blokhin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Blokhin Blokhin initially decided on an ambitious quota of 300 executions per night, and engineered an efficient system in which the prisoners were individually led to a small antechamber—which had been painted red and was known as the "Leninist room"—for a brief and cursory positive identification, before being handcuffed and led into the execution room next door. The room was specially designed with padded walls for soundproofing, a sloping concrete floor with a drain and hose, and a log wall for the prisoners to stand against. Blokhin—outfitted in a leather butcher's apron, cap, and shoulder-length gloves to protect his uniform—then, with no procurator present and no reading of the sentence or any other formalities, pushed the prisoner against the log wall and shot him once in the base of the skull with a German Walther Model 2 .25 ACP pistol. He had brought a briefcase full of his own Walther pistols, since he did not trust the reliability of the standard-issue Soviet TT-30 for the frequent, heavy use he intended. If we're going to excommunicate 20th-century philosophies on the grounds of their association with this sort of thing, we find quite quickly that we have to excommunicate everyone - right and left, fascist and communist, nationalist and universalist, racist and egalitarian. And then what's left?

barrkel 15y ago
I think my position is obvious, and naturally believe that the majority of right-thinking people have come to the same conclusion. But the rest of your comment makes very little sense to me. Blokhin seems to have been an instrument of state power. I don't see any relationship, necessary, causal, or otherwise, between an executioner and a pragmatic principle of equality. I also haven't "excommunicated" philosophies on the grounds of association. Rather, I have explained a rationale for a taboo around discussion of certain topics. If "association" with the reprehensible is sufficient grounds for "excommunication", a random walk through Wikipedia should be sufficient to convince oneself that one can trivially "excomunnicate" everything; reductio ad absurdum, hence mere association is not enough.
- moldbug 15y ago
  We're having a productive, sincere conversation here! I don't see any relationship, necessary, causal, or otherwise, between an executioner and a pragmatic principle of equality. But you do see a relationship between racist/nationalist/fascist ideology and racist/nationalist/fascist executioners, right? http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/battalion101.html http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/battal... I certainly can't interpret your post in any other way. (Although I can't interpret "pragmatic principle" in any way at all - it makes me think of jumbo shrimp.) So essentially, you see a necessary and causal relationship between fascist ideology and fascist terror, but you don't see a necessary and causal relationship between communist ideology and communist terror. Or to use the Russian color codes, you see a relationship between White Terror and White ideology, but not between Red Terror and Red ideology. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Terror http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Terror http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror Perhaps you won't take my word for it, but you don't need to - the truth isn't hard to find. I can guarantee you 100% that almost everyone involved with both these systems of terror was completely drenched in, convinced by, and in thrall to the ideologies they served. General Blokhin, for example, single-handedly murdered a substantial percentage of the Polish aristocracy. As he is doing so, is his mind a blank? Or does he conceive himself as freeing the Polish workers and peasants from the grip of the alien, rapacious hereditary nobles? What do you think? With every bullet in the back of some stuck-up count's neck, he's bringing Poland closer to equality. You'll no doubt agree on the ideological nature of Nazi crimes. The "ordinary men" of Reserve Police Battalion 101 are in exactly the same boat - in their minds, as they slaughter the Jews of Poland, they think: the Jews caused this war, we are freeing Germany from Jewish oppression. Likewise, as American airmen incinerate hundreds of thousands of German and Japanese civilians, they are thinking: the Huns and the Japs caused this war, now they're paying the price. We cannot know the mind of any of these individuals. However, the collective propaganda mind of World War II is very easy to recall - all we have to do is read the texts. There is no shortage of American and Soviet propaganda that, read in context, is just as horrifying as anything Goebbels produced. Do you want to hear FDR sneering, raving, and lying like something out of Hitler's Greatest Hits? http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/timeline/411027awp.html http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/timeline/411027awp.html So should we excommunicate it all? Or do you not like that word? Too Catholic, perhaps?

by moldbug 15y ago

barrkel 15y ago

I think my position is obvious, and naturally believe that the majority of right-thinking people have come to the same conclusion. But the rest of your comment makes very little sense to me. Blokhin seems to have been an instrument of state power. I don't see any relationship, necessary, causal, or otherwise, between an executioner and a pragmatic principle of equality. I also haven't "excommunicated" philosophies on the grounds of association. Rather, I have explained a rationale for a taboo around discussion of certain topics. If "association" with the reprehensible is sufficient grounds for "excommunication", a random walk through Wikipedia should be sufficient to convince oneself that one can trivially "excomunnicate" everything; reductio ad absurdum, hence mere association is not enough.

moldbug 15y ago
We're having a productive, sincere conversation here! I don't see any relationship, necessary, causal, or otherwise, between an executioner and a pragmatic principle of equality. But you do see a relationship between racist/nationalist/fascist ideology and racist/nationalist/fascist executioners, right? http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/battalion101.html http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/battal... I certainly can't interpret your post in any other way. (Although I can't interpret "pragmatic principle" in any way at all - it makes me think of jumbo shrimp.) So essentially, you see a necessary and causal relationship between fascist ideology and fascist terror, but you don't see a necessary and causal relationship between communist ideology and communist terror. Or to use the Russian color codes, you see a relationship between White Terror and White ideology, but not between Red Terror and Red ideology. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Terror http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Terror http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror Perhaps you won't take my word for it, but you don't need to - the truth isn't hard to find. I can guarantee you 100% that almost everyone involved with both these systems of terror was completely drenched in, convinced by, and in thrall to the ideologies they served. General Blokhin, for example, single-handedly murdered a substantial percentage of the Polish aristocracy. As he is doing so, is his mind a blank? Or does he conceive himself as freeing the Polish workers and peasants from the grip of the alien, rapacious hereditary nobles? What do you think? With every bullet in the back of some stuck-up count's neck, he's bringing Poland closer to equality. You'll no doubt agree on the ideological nature of Nazi crimes. The "ordinary men" of Reserve Police Battalion 101 are in exactly the same boat - in their minds, as they slaughter the Jews of Poland, they think: the Jews caused this war, we are freeing Germany from Jewish oppression. Likewise, as American airmen incinerate hundreds of thousands of German and Japanese civilians, they are thinking: the Huns and the Japs caused this war, now they're paying the price. We cannot know the mind of any of these individuals. However, the collective propaganda mind of World War II is very easy to recall - all we have to do is read the texts. There is no shortage of American and Soviet propaganda that, read in context, is just as horrifying as anything Goebbels produced. Do you want to hear FDR sneering, raving, and lying like something out of Hitler's Greatest Hits? http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/timeline/411027awp.html http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/timeline/411027awp.html So should we excommunicate it all? Or do you not like that word? Too Catholic, perhaps?