philosophy – Page 114

How to Tell if You’re Really A Libertarian

The most famous political chart puts everyone into one of four quadrants: authoritarian left and authoritarian right at the top, and libertarian left and libertarian right at the bottom. It’s fashionable to claim to be libertarian, but not everyone who does so really is. This essay looks at how to tell if you’re really a libertarian.

The political consensus of the Western World is still profoundly affected by the horrors of the authoritarian governments of the 20th century.

Authoritarian governments in the form of Nazism and Communism caused the deaths of some 150 million people, directly or indirectly, through a variety of wars and famines. These acts live on in infamy with names such as the Holocaust and Holodomor, the very mention of which summon images of starvation, misery and death.

Since then, it’s been extremely unfashionable to be authoritarian. But it’s still tempting – as tempting as it ever was. The thought that some ideas are not merely great, but so great that they have to be forced on the populace at gunpoint by a government that will kill its own citizens before it will compromise, is one that reoccurs throughout human history. All that’s necessary for it to actually become a reality is a sufficient degree of arrogance, or self-righteousness, on the part of the rulers.

Once a government has enough hubris – and whether they are left or right doesn’t matter here – they will start thinking that the lessons of history don’t apply to them, or that their actions are so righteous that human nature will change in recognition, or that they are uniquely talented and therefore can achieve things that no previous rulers could.

Once this stage is reached, it’s possible for the government to start doing things to people whether they want it or not, instead of helping them get things done in accordance with their own wills, and at that stage the government meets the definition of authoritarian. We have ideas so good they have to be compulsory! is the rallying-cry of the self-righteous authoritarian.

A person who is really a libertarian will stay committed to liberty no matter how tempting the proposal to abandon it might be. They therefore reject the idea that ideas can be so good that the government has to force them on people. Exceptions to this rule are only made in the gravest circumstances – never to try to make the world better, whether the justification be to “put order to things” or for “the greatest good”.

A person who is really a libertarian will reject proposals from both the left and the right if those proposals are too authoritarian, even if they have minor sympathies towards one of the two poles.

They will not (for example) only reject leftist authoritarian ideas, such as raising taxes or making a minority language compulsory for all school children, while accepting any and all right-wing authoritarian ideas, such as starting wars or drug prohibition.

A person who claims to be a left libertarian will happily criticise the left if it does authoritarian things. Many authoritarian leftists have been agitating to remove speaking rights from various conservatives (or even just people labelled “conservative” by the media), a process they refer to as “deplatforming”. This is blatantly authoritarian, so anyone supporting it on the grounds that it furthers leftist interests cannot also claim to be a libertarian.

Not even if they believe that the left is the side of liberty! Being an authoritarian under the guise that one’s authoritarianism ultimately serves libertarian ends is a fail. All psychopathic dictators claim this.

Likewise, a person who claims to be a right libertarian will genuinely be against crony capitalism and genuinely be against the political influence that large corporate interests exert on the legislation. They will refuse to complain only about taxation, and will also complain about corporate welfare and bailouts of inefficient companies.

Because authoritarianism is so unfashionable, many people will try and sneak authoritarian ideas into the discourse under the guise of them being either left or right. If the person they are speaking with is simple enough to equate either left or right eternally with libertarianism, then getting that person to oppose something is as simple as equating it with whichever of the left or right that person associates with authoritarianism.

The left does this with rhetoric about the need to make up for past injustices and for forced equality of outcome, and the right does this by stirring up fear of government and of minorities. Any person who is really a libertarian will reject all of this reasoning, and will remain steadfast to the belief that ideas should not be forced onto others, because justifying authoritarianism from either the left or the right will justify more of it from the other side as well.

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Are You Naziphobic?

Hatred of foreign ideologies – such as Nazism and Islam – is often rooted in xenophobic prejudice

Naziphobia is a big problem in the West right now. Irrational fear of Nazis, usually rooted in classism against workers and racism against Germans, is causing large amounts of unnecessary misery in the Western World. This essay will help the reader examine themselves for any signs of prejudice against members of the German National Socialist Worker’s Movement.

The common argument is that Nazism is inherently a hate ideology, and that it inherently calls for the destruction of non-followers. It is true that Mein Kampf does actually contain a plan to invade Eastern Europe and to starve the inhabitants to death to make way for German settlers, and therefore that anyone who supports Nazism is supporting ethnic cleansing and supremacist genocide, but there’s no reason to focus merely on that side of the story.

Some might argue an invasion followed by genocide by starvation is grossly antisocial, and that ideas so grossly antisocial should not be tolerated lest they become more popular. However, against this we can see that the standard for tolerance has been set by the degree shown for Abrahamic religious traditions, whose holy scriptures call for the extermination of non-followers and polytheists (Koran 9:5, Exodus 22:20).

After all, if the standards of tolerance are not exceeded by a holy book that commands its followers to kill polytheists, idolaters or homosexuals, or by an ideology that considers a man who chopped the heads off 600 Jews in one day to be the perfect man, then Nazism is clearly within acceptable bounds. Hitler’s plan merely called for the subjugation of Eastern Europe; Muhammad’s plan calls for the subjugation of the entire planet.

In any case, we cannot blame all Nazis for the actions of a few of their kind. To assume that all Nazis are violent just because many of them are is a form of prejudice and bigotry. Not all Nazis should be tarred with the brush of a violent few, and consideration should be given to the economic circumstances of Nazis before judgment is applied.

People argue that a repeat of a tragedy the size of World War II should be avoided at all costs, but it’s telling that people have to go back over 70 years to find an example of mass-scale Nazi violence. If anything, the fact that there has been no meaningful terrorist action in support of Nazism since 1945 is proof that Nazism has evolved from the barbarism that it’s often portrayed as in mass media.

Not all Nazis are violent. If they were, we’d all be dead by now.

It also has to be considered that some children are born into Nazi families and can’t simply give up the ideology because the rest of us tell them to. Many of these young people already feel like the world is against them, and overt expressions of Naziphobia will only make them less amenable to gentle persuasion.

Some middle-class people who don’t like Nazis ought to challenge themselves for any inner signs of class prejudice. Maybe they don’t really hate Nazis but really just hate working class people, and because working-class people are the most disaffected by the current political arrangement and therefore the most likely to see the appeal in Nazism, are the most likely to become Nazis. Therefore, Nazism is associated with the working class, which explains why so many people are prejudiced against Nazis.

As part of the efforts that need to be made to overcome institutional prejudice against Nazis and children of Nazi families, there is a need for more compassionate portrayals of Nazis in popular culture. The Government ought to fund media that stars Nazi characters and which portrays them as educated, competent and moral people. Perhaps it is even necessary to mandate that a certain percentage of television time be granted to Nazi characters.

Despite this show of compassion, we ought to help people to leave the ideology where possible. There was been success in funding community support groups for anyone willing to leave fundamentalist Abrahamic cults, and the same might be true of Nazism. Nazism is not as rough as Islam, since many Muslim countries still uphold the death penalty for apostasy, but there could still be value in wavering Nazis finding cameraderie in people who have turned their backs on what is really a hate ideology.

Ultimately, the olive branch must be held out to Nazis of all kinds. After all, the more aggressively we display contempt for Nazis, the more that individuals from Nazi families are likely to see us as the enemy and to dig their heels in. Remember, you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.

Therefore, treat Nazis as you would wish to be treated yourselves. Part of this involves maintaining solidarity with Nazis and taking action against those who are prejudiced against Nazis. Anyone who insults Nazism or Nazis should be made aware, in no uncertain terms, that they are a bigot and that their prejudice has no place in a world of ideological diversity.

The Four Ways to Become Enslaved

Chains can be physical, mental, or spiritual

There are many different ways that a person can become enslaved to the will of another or to a group of others. Although people usually associate the term ‘slavery’ with the chattel slavery of the American South, there are as many different kinds of slavery in the human world as there are ways of exploitation in the natural world. This essay describes four distinct ways of being enslaved that accord with the four masculine elements.

The four ways to enslave are, effectively, the four different ways of introducing artificial scarcity. Only when a state of artificial scarcity has been induced will another person surrender themselves to the will of another. There are effectively four ways of doing so: two physical, two non-physical.

The most basic way of asserting dominance over another of your own kind can be observed in other mammals, especially other primates, when they fight over their food supply. To enslave another person in this sense is to deny them the peace and solitude to gather food from nature. The alpha primate will not allow any others to eat until he himself is satisfied. Disobedience is punished with violence.

To be enslaved in this manner is to wear chains of clay. This is because a lack of food is the most natural and immediate survival problem that faces life forms such as mammals, primates or humans. To not be able to eat when one needs to nourish oneself is slavery, because hunger will cause one to grow weak.

Chains of iron are what most people think when they hear the term ‘slavery’. This refers to iron manicles and shackles that prevent or hinder movement when fastened around a person’s wrists or ankles. It’s extremely rare to see a person enslaved by chains of iron nowadays, but it’s still common to see people who are more or less enslaved in the same way as a person wearing irons – i.e. by an artificial scarcity of security in that person.

What chains of iron refers to on a metaphysical level is control of another person’s physical safety, and their ability to remain free from wounding and physical harm. This is effectively how criminal gangs establish a presence in a neighbourhood – business owners are guaranteed physical security for them and for their business, but only if those business owners agree to pay for the “service”.

Chains of silver are frequently used metaphorically, usually to denote a person who has been enslaved by wealth. A person who has allowed themselves to become controlled by the physical objects and possessions they have hoarded could indeed be said to be enslaved by chains of silver, but there’s more to it than just that. Metaphysically, chains of silver refers to all tricks of the mind, which is all lesser magic.

In other words, chains of silver refer to an artificial scarcity of knowledge, in particular knowledge relating to the physical world. A person who has thousands of dollars in credit card debt that they can never clear, so that the bank regularly takes a hundred dollars in interest charges every month, just because they bought some crap they saw on television, could be said to wear chains of silver. In this case the term refers to the financial literacy needed to avoid debt traps like credit cards.

Likewise, a person trapped in a political ideology could be said to wear chains of silver. If a person’s social circle all think in a certain way, and their media organs all speak in the same way, and their courts and Police enforce it, a person might forget that there’s any other way of thinking. Many English speakers are subjected to so much capitalist propaganda that they are astonished, travelling overseas, to see other avenues of solidarity.

Very few people are enslaved by chains of clay and iron nowadays, and although most of us wear chains of silver to some extent, they are seldom a heavy burden.

However, the vast majority of people are enslaved by chains of gold, and many of those are so enfeebled by these gossamer bonds that the other forms of enslavement become virtually inevitable. A person enslaved by chains of gold is someone who is not aware of the fact that consciousness is the prima materia, and who consequently believes that the death of their brain means the extermination of their consciousness.

Chains of gold, therefore, refer to an absence of spiritual knowledge. It is the birthright of all humans to be made aware of the true nature of the relationship between consciousness and the physical world, and therefore anyone who does not possess that knowledge has been enslaved by chains of gold. This is something that has purposefully been done to enslave us by way of destroying our natural spiritual traditions, for example by prohibiting entheogen use.

Gold is the softest of all metals, and fittingly, chains of gold are also the weakest. This does not mean that they are the easiest to break. In fact, the opposite is true. These chains of gold are the trickiest of all, and not just because they are invisible. Those who wear them cannot conceive of them, by any sense. A person enslaved by chains of gold cannot be induced to believe in God.

A person enslaved by chains of gold will not believe in God, and consequently they will not believe in chains of gold. No-one enslaved by chains of gold is aware of it; as soon as a person becomes aware of chains of gold they are broken.

It could be argued that a person can only be enslaved with baser elements if they are first tricked into wearing chains of gold. For instance, a spiritual person might be better able to resist the temptation of loaning some money to satisfy a short-term urge. They might also be unafraid of death, and therefore willing to choose death before submitting to chains of iron.

Alchemically speaking, these are the four ways that a person can be enslaved. Although chains made of the baser forms of clay and iron are rare in the modern world, it’s important to remember their historical role, because a return to them is possible if we get weighed down enough by chains of silver and gold.

Is Social Media About to Split Into A Right-Wing Sphere And A Left-Wing Sphere?

Left-wingers rejoiced when a group of major tech companies colluded to ban conspiracy theorist Alex Jones from their sites last week. Right-wingers were horrified, seeing the spectre of Communist-style mass censorship. This essay discusses the possibility that these targeted right-wingers will switch to alt-media, finally following Styxhexenhammer’s repeated admonitions to do so, dividing social media into a right-wing and a left-wing sphere.

The Left is now the Establishment.

If that wasn’t obvious from Brexit, where the Left stood side-by-side with the bankers, big business and the Conservative Party to oppose the working class, or from the American Presidental Election, where the Left threw its weight behind neoliberal warmongering psychopath Hillary Clinton instead of the Bernie Sanders that America needed, it’s obvious by now, after the Free Speech Purges of 2018.

The Left is now the Establishment, and the Right is now the counter-culture.

Neoliberalism is the dominant global political ideology, and has been ever since Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher dumped it on an unsuspecting Anglosphere in the early 1980s. The core belief of neoliberalism is that deregulation brings wealth, therefore we ought to repeal all laws that restrict the movement of both labour and money. Laws restricting the movement of labour are bad for business because they drive up wages, and laws restricting the movement of money restrict the investment freedoms of the wealthy.

Being the Establishment, the Left promotes neoliberalism. This has mostly been achieved through leftist support for mass immigration, which had the benefits of destroying solidarity among the locals who received the immigrants, which in turn helped to destroy unions and to drive down wages. The more immigrants, the lower the wages, and therefore the greater the profits. For over three decades, the Left has been involved in laying guilt trips on anyone who didn’t support this.

Unfortunately for the Establishment – and for us – this mass immigration didn’t go as smoothly as most people had expected. Instead of a multicultural paradise, things turned out a lot more like what mass movements of people historically turned out like – an invasion. Despite 24/7 propaganda intended to convince people that this forced integration of different cultures was a good thing, and has had good results, people have become aware of what they have lost.

Like control freaks everywhere, the Establishment cannot admit that it made a mistake. Once an individual becomes part of the Establishment, they consider themselves second only to God, and so far above the plebs that they simply do not ever have to say sorry. Consequently, the Establishment cannot and will not admit that neoliberalism has been a mistake, that it has actually lowered people’s standards of living, instead of raising them.

As before, so after. We can predict from what happened elsewhere what will happen next. The Establishment will crack down on dissent harder and harder as the failures of neoliberalism become ever more obvious. As the realisation grows that neoliberalism has failed and was only beneficial to a small financial elite, people will get angry. The Establishment will respond with ever more aggressive anti-free speech laws.

These can already be seen on major tech platforms like Reddit, where free speech is limited to a small number of subreddits such as The_Donald, on Twitter where calls for the genocide of white people go unpunished but remarks about Jews or blacks result in instant bannings, and on FaceBook where right-wing jokes result in 30-day bans while left-wing calls to violate the human rights of right-wingers get no sanction.

For alt-centrists such as us here at VJM Publishing, this division of social media is not welcomed, because it is another sign that the political centre is dying and the extremes are growing, which is a sign of impending war. War means waste of blood and treasure, which means that fewer people are willing and able to buy our books.

However, we have to admit that our prediction is for the crackdowns against freethinkers to continue, until those on the Right decide they have had enough. At that point, social media to split into a left-wing sphere where discourse is dominated by Establishment tech firms, and a right-wing sphere where discourse is free. Evidence of this comes in the form of massive recent growth in alt-tech platforms such as Minds and BitChute.

Anyone who thinks that this sounds like a revolution – it is. The revolution against neoliberalism is underway. The political world is about to split into a globalist, authoritarian Left and a nationalist, libertarian Right. This authoritarian Left will be the major apologists for neoliberalism, while the Right will look to the future.